Welsh Journals

Old Memories. By the late Sir Henry Jones, C.H. CHAPTER III. A LAD of my own age, called Tom Redfern, had come from Halkyn, near Holywell, to the village school of Llan- gernyw as a pupil teacher. (He is now, and has been for many years, the much respected Rector of Denbigh, and one of the Canons of the Cathedral of St. Asaph). Somehow or another, in a manner which I never quite understood, Tom and I became fast friends. Our friendship was contrary to all rule and precedent for he was conscientious Church and 1 was conscien- tious Chapel." And I think he endured some petty persecution on my account, for, both in religion and in social standing, I was "beneath" him. We saw each other every day, and were together at every interval sharing our views of men and events. In short, a closer or more inveterate friendship there could hardly be. One memorable day Tom was allowed by the schoolmaster and I by my father to have a holi- day. Wombwell's Menagerie had come to Llanrwst, which was only seven miles away and neither Tom nor I had ever seen a lion or tiger, or elephant or camel, or any of the marvels of the animal world. We went to Llanrwst early in the day, arriving long before the show opened. Then we took a walk along the streets of Llanrwst with one of my second cousins, called Sam Roberts, son of a tailor and draper in the town. Looking up the street Sam saw a group of disreputable loungers hanging around the door of a tavern. Then he turned round to me and said, Look at your shop-mates, Harry He meant nothing in particular. It was a perfectly casual remark on his part. But to me It was by far the most startling event in my whole life. I was stunned and helpless. The things that Mrs Roxburgh had told me were true My shop-mates were disreputable Their companion- ship in the workshop would verily be both un- bearable and ruinous. Shoemaking held no future that could be respectable. Such were the thoughts that crowded in upon me. Distrust and deep repugnancy at the very thought of spending my life at shoe-making took immediate and full possession of me. The views which Mrs. Rox- burgh had been pouring into my soul week by week and year by year had accumulated like dammed waters; and now the dam had broken. and I was swept away as by a flood-helpless. resourceless, hopeless. No one can pass through an experience like mine and deny either the reality or the bitterness of sudden and complete con- version. And it was permanent; for I never wavered afterwards. But I made no reply to Sam. I got rid of him as soon as I could, and then I went, with my friend Tom at my side, begging me to tell what had come over me, and sat on the further bank ol the River Conway in an agony of weeping. My whole life seemed to me to have been a mis- take. It lay in ruins around my feet; and it was all from beginning to end my own fault. Only one thing remained. I would become some thing better than a shoe-maker," or I would die in the attempt. I suppose I must at last have given Tom some hint of my trouble. At any rate, the torture slackened, I became calm, we left the river-side and entered the show. We stayed there several hours, and somewhere about ten or eleven at night watched the animals being fed. Then, after a light supper at James Pugh's, the post- man's, we started through the quiet night on our seven mile walk home, in company for the greater part of the way with a third visitor to the show. Left to ourselves, somewhere between one and two in the morning, Tom and I f- ced the new life-problem which had sprung upon me. It was a lovely summer night, and all the world was asleep. Then, when we were about a mile and a half from our village, on the bank of a little stream opposite some cottages called Tangraig, Tom and I shook hands over a solemn oath, that some day we would be graduates of a University. We had London University in our minds. It did not demand attendance at lectures, or residence. We could prepare for its examinations wherever we might be and whatever our occupation. It was a rather unusual proceeding for two boys of 16. And we kept our oath a year or two after I graduated in the University of Glasgow Tom graduated at Cambridge. But for some time nothing was done. Tom went on with his work as a pupil teacher and I as a shoe-maker. There was no evidence of any outlet for me in any direction, nor a glimmer of hope. Indeed, it was not easy for me to confess my change of mind to my father and mother; I had insisted so wilfully on being a shoe-maker. But my father's sympathy was too certain and too valuable, and I was working at his side all day long, so that the confession was not much delayed. They could, however, do nothing. They were as helpless as myself. One day after some months of fruitless anxiety, mv mother went to the other end of the parish, which was called Pandv Tudur, to attend the funeral of an old lady. After it was over it happened that Mr. Price, the schoolmaster of whom I have already spoken, asked her and her companion, a Mrs. Parry, wife of our village blacksmith, to tea. before they started on their two-mile walk home. Over the tea-cups my mother told Mr. Price of my uneasiness," and in her sudden way, full of insight, asked him Is it not possible to make him into a school- master." Mr. Price was full of sympathy with the design, but pronounced it beyond the power