I should like my last reminiscence of old Copenhagen to be more reputable, for his own last words in gossiping of any one, no matter how foolish or vile, were always generous. And I recall a day when he came from his distant seminary through deep drifts of snow to the town to post a letter that he wished me to revise first. The ‘Courier’ of the week was full of tales of misery among our troops in the Crimean trenches, and Copenhagen’s sympathies were fired. His letter was a suggestion to the Admiralty that in these times of stress it might help my Lords a little if they were relieved of the payment of the pension of Archibald Bain, late of H.M.S. _Elephant_. He was very old, and frail, and tremulous in these days; his hand of write would have sorely puzzled any one but me, who knew so well its eccentricities. His folly touched me to the core; I knew his object, but for the life of me I could not read his letter.
“I think it would be a mistake to send it, Mr Bain,” I said, when he explained.
“Havers!” said he. “What I want you to tell me is if it is shipshape and Bristol fashion, eh? and not likely to give offence. Read it, man, read it!”
“Read it out to me yourself, Mr Bain,” I stammered, “the thing’s beyond me.”
He put on his spectacles and looked closely at his own scrawl. “I declare to you,” he said in a little, laughingly, “I declare to you I cannot read a word of her myself. But no matter, John, we’ll just let her go as she stands; they’re better scholars in London than what we are.”
The letter went, but I never heard that the British Admiralty availed itself of an offer so unusual and kind.
I thought of these things yesterday as I passed the ruins of Copenhagen’s school. How far, since then, have travelled the feet that trod there; how far, how weary, how humbled, how elate, how prosperous, how shamefully down at heel? Dear lads, dear girls, wherever you be, my old companions, were we not here in this poor place, among the hazel and the fern, most fortunate and happy? Has the wide world we travel through for fame or fortune—or, better still, content—added aught to us of joy we did not have (at least in memory) in those irrecoverable, enduring, summer days? Now it is mist for ever on the hill, and the rain-rot in the wood, and clouds and cares chasing each other across our heavens, and flowers that flame from bud to blossom and smoulder into dust almost before we have caught their perfume; then, old friends, we pricked our days out leisurely upon a golden calendar: the scent of the morning hay-fields seemed eternal.