The Argosy — page 263: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

244 Lady Grace. “As I could not have a commission bought, I don’t much care what I do,” Cyras was beginning: but Dr. Baumgarten laid his hand upon his arm. ‘‘Cyras, I have told you the truth,” he said, with emotion. “I had not the purchase-money, neither could I have made you the necessary yearly allowance. My boy, you little know how hard up I am, and how claims press upon me daily. Sometimes I think the trouble will be too much for me.” “T’m sure J/ will not add to it,” cried Cyras, in his good-natured, careless way. ‘I shall get along first-rate, father, you’ll see.” ‘If you would only enter the Church, Cyras, I could take care of your preferment ; you’d be provided for for life. Don’t bring up that nonsense to me again about conscience. I should be deeply grieved to think that a son of mine could have aught of sin upon his conscience to unfit him for entering upon a sacred calling.” ‘Oh, it’s not that,” said Cyras, lightly. ‘I wouldn’t mind taking Orders to-morrow, but a parson must lead so straitlaced a life—at least, if he is what a parson ought to be—and I couldn’t do that, you know. I couldn’t, indeed, father. I should be turning Roman Catholic, or something of that sort, to get rid of my gown—Metho- dist parson, perhaps.” The Dean sighed. It seemed a hopeless case. “T will talk with you again, Cyras,” he said; ‘‘but I do fear you are going to be another source of trouble and expense to me.” The opportunity for further talk did not come. Cyras disappeared from home; and the next heard of him was that he was on board ship, sailing for New Zealand. His letter to the Dean, despatched by the pilot who had conveyed the ship down Channel, was characteristic of him. ‘My DEAR FATHER,—Here I am, on board the good ship ising Star, a clipper, A 1, bound for Wellington. I know you think me careless and indifferent, and all the rest of it, but you may believe me when I say that I would not willingly bring trouble on you for all the world. I know I shall get on over there. They’ll give me a place at once in Brice’s shipping house. I’m sure of that, if I choose to take it—I’ve spoken to Brice here, and he says so; but I may, perhaps, find my way to Melbourne instead, and try my luck at the gold-fields. I don’t mean to be any more expense at all to you; I hope I shan’t be, and I’ve shipped as a common sailor before the mast to work my way out, rather than ask you for the passage money. I daresay you’d not have given it me if I had asked; you’d have forbidden me to go, and I thought the safest way was to say nothing about it. So I chiselled a young sailor fellow out of his papers—he had broken his leg, and must lie up for a year to come—and I went down to the office, rigged out in a glazed hat and pea-jacket, stood there as bold as any sailor among them, and signed articles for the CORMICIHOOKS (E(0) im .