Enumerates The Accomplishments Of Master Thomas Billings--Introduces Brock As
Doctor Wood--And Announces The Execution Of Ensign Macshane
We are obliged, in recording this history, to follow accurately that great authority, the
"Calendarium Newgaticum Roagorumque Registerium," of which every lover of
literature, in the present day knows the value; and as that remarkable work totally
discards all the unities in its narratives, and reckons the life of its heroes only by their
actions, and not by periods of time, we must follow in the wake of this mighty ark--a
humble cock-boat. When it pauses, we pause; when it runs ten knots an hour, we run
with the same celerity; and as, in order to carry the reader from the penultimate chapter
of this work unto the last chapter, we were compelled to make him leap over a gap of
seven blank years, ten years more must likewise be granted to us before we are at
liberty to resume our history.
During that period, Master Thomas Billings had been under the especial care of his
mother; and, as may be imagined, he rather increased than diminished the
accomplishments for which he had been remarkable while under the roof of his foster-
father. And with this advantage, that while at the blacksmith's, and only three or four
years of age, his virtues were necessarily appreciated only in his family circle and
among those few acquaintances of his own time of life whom a youth of three can be
expected to meet in the alleys or over the gutters of a small country hamlet,--in his
mothers residence, his circle extended with his own growth, and he began to give
proofs of those powers of which in infancy there had been only encouraging indications.
Thus it was nowise remarkable that a child of four years should not know his letters, and
should have had a great disinclination to learn them; but when a young man of fifteen
showed the same creditable ignorance, the same undeviating dislike, it was easy to see
that he possessed much resolution and perseverance. When it was remarked, too, that,
in case of any difference, he not only beat the usher, but by no means disdained to
torment and bully the very smallest boys of the school, it was easy to see that his mind
was comprehensive and careful, as well as courageous and grasping. As it was said of
the Duke of Wellington, in the Peninsula, that he had a thought for everybody--from
Lord Hill to the smallest drummer in the army--in like manner Tom Billings bestowed
HIS attention on high and low; but in the shape of blows: he would fight the strongest
and kick the smallest, and was always at work with one or the other. At thirteen, when
he was removed from the establishment whither he had been sent, he was the cock of
the school out of doors, and the very last boy in. He used to let the little boys and new-
comers pass him by, and laugh; but he always belaboured them unmercifully
afterwards; and then it was, he said, HIS turn to laugh. With such a pugnacious turn,
Tom Billings ought to have been made a soldier, and might have died a marshal; but, by
an unlucky ordinance of fate, he was made a tailor, and died a--never mind what for the
present; suffice it to say, that he was suddenly cut off, at a very early period of his
existence, by a disease which has exercised considerable ravages among the British
youth.
