Sir Robert Hart | Page 3

was obliged to sell it.
"When I'm a man," the little fellow would say solemnly after hearing
these things, "I'll buy back Kilmoriarty--and I'll get a title too." Of
course she laughed at him quietly, thinking to herself how time and
circumstances would separate the lad from the goodly company of his
ambitions. Yet, after all, he saw clearer than she; he never wavered in
the serious purpose formed before he reached his teens, and he actually
did buy back Kilmoriarty when it came on the market years afterwards.
As for a 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,