Sir Robert Hart | Page 3

title, he gained a knighthood, a grand cross and a baronetcy--thus fulfilling the second part of his promise grandly.
From the care of the phrenologist brothers Arnold, Robert Hart was taken over to a Wesleyan school in Taunton, England, by his father. This journey gave him his first sight of the sea and his first acquaintance with the mysteries of a steamer. The latter took firm hold of his imagination; he long remembered the name of the particular vessel on which they crossed, the Shamrock, and many years later he was destined to meet her again under the strangest circumstances.
In England he stayed only a year, just long enough to make his first friend and learn his first Latin. The friend he lost, but recovered after an interval of forty years; the Latin he kept, added to, and enjoyed all his life long.
When the summer holidays came, one of the tutors, a North of Ireland man himself, agreed to accompany the lad back to Belfast; but in the end he was prevented from starting, and the Governor of the school allowed the eleven-year-old child to travel alone. He managed the train journey safely as far as Liverpool, betook himself to a hotel, and called, with a comical man-of-the-world air, for refreshment. Tea, cold chicken and buns were brought him by the landlady and her maids, who stood round in a circle watching the young traveller eat. His serious ways and his solemn air of responsibility touched their women's hearts so much that when the time came for him to sail they took him down to the dock and put him on board his ship.
Henry Hart met his son at Belfast, and was so angry, at finding he had been allowed to travel alone that he vowed the lad should never go back to Taunton, and therefore sent him to the Wesleyan Connexional School in Dublin instead. Here his quaint, merry little face, his ready laugh, and above all his willingness to perform any trickery that they suggested, made him a favourite among the boys at once. To the masters he must have been something of a trial, I imagine, with his habit of asking the why and wherefore of rules and regulations and his refusal to submit to them without a logical answer. One day, for instance, when a certain master spoke somewhat sourly and irritably to him, Robert Hart then and there took it upon himself to deliver him a lecture which, in its calm reasoning, was most disconcerting.
"It is wonderful the way you treat us boys," he said, "just as if you were our superior; just as if you were not a little dust and water like the rest of us. One would think from your manners you were our master, whereas you are really our servant. It is we who give you your livelihood--and yet you behave to us in this high-handed manner." That tirade naturally made a pretty row in the school, but the obdurate young orator melted under the coaxings and cajolings of the Governor's gentle and distressed wife, and duly apologized.
The slightest of excuses served to turn him suddenly from a clever, scatterbrained imp of mischief into a serious student. It happened that the whole school met on an equality in one subject--Scripture History. The head of that class, therefore, enjoyed a peculiar prestige among his fellows, and it was clearly understood that a certain Freckleton, a senior and the good boy of the school, should hold this pleasant leadership. What was more natural, since he was destined to "wag his head in a pulpit?" But Robert Hart could not see the matter in this light. Some spirit of contradictoriness rising in him, he thought a little dispute for first place in Scripture would add spice to a naughty boy's school life and both amuse and amaze. So on Sundays, while the rest of the boys were otherwise occupied, he would walk up and down the ball alley secretly studying Scripture.
When the examination day came the whole school was assembled; questions flew back and forth. Now one boy, now another dropped out of the game; at last only Freckleton and Hart were left, the big boy prodigiously nervous, rubbing his hands on his knees, the small one aggravatingly cool and collected. At last the examiner called for a list of the Kings of Israel. Freckleton stumbled. The question passed to Hart, and, while the boys sat tense with excitement, he answered fluently and correctly. The first place was his, and a hearty cheer greeted his unexpected success.
After this little victory the Governor of the school remarked to him:
"Now you see what you can do when you try, Hart; why don't you try?"
Why not, indeed? Here was a new idea. He accepted it as a challenge,