The Gentleman Cadet

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Drayson Alfred Wilks. The Gentleman Cadet

Chapter One. My Home Life

Chapter Two. My First Adventure

Chapter Three. A Cram-School at Woolwich Forty Years Ago

Chapter Four. Experiences at School – My First Fight

Chapter Five. Mr Hostler’s Cram-School

Chapter Six. My First Victory

Chapter Seven. Passed

Chapter Eight. Woolwich Academy Forty Years Ago – Experience of a Last-Joined

Chapter Nine. I Come out as a Runner

Chapter Ten. A “Second-Half” Cadet at Woolwich

Chapter Eleven. Outbreak to Charlton Fair

Chapter Twelve. My Failure at Examination

Chapter Thirteen. Our Row at the Races

Chapter Fourteen. I Pass my Examination Well

Chapter Fifteen. Life as an Old Cadet

Chapter Sixteen. My Last Half

Chapter Seventeen. Finale

Отрывок из книги

On the borders of the New Forest, in Hampshire, stands an old-fashioned thatch-roofed family-house, surrounded by cedars and firs, with a clean-shaved, prim-looking lawn opposite the drawing-room windows, from which a magnificent view was visible of the forest itself and the Southampton waters beyond. In that house I was born; and there I passed the first fourteen years of my existence in a manner that must be briefly recorded, in order to make the reader acquainted with my state of education previous to a somewhat eventful career in a more busy scene.

My father had been intended for the Church, but having at Cambridge taken a dislike to holy orders, and finding himself left, by the death of my grandfather, sole possessor of a sum of about thirty thousand pounds invested in Consols, he decided to live an easy life, and enjoy himself, instead of taking up any profession – an error that caused him to be what may be called “a mistake” all his life, and which was the cause of much suffering to me.

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As we approached the house we met my father, who, on learning who my companion was, welcomed him in the most cordial manner, and gave him a most pressing invitation to take up his residence at our lodge during the time he was surveying near us. That evening he stopped with us, and as we sat near the dining-room window, looking out on the endless glades of the grandest forest in England, Howard entertained us with descriptions of the scenes and adventures through which he had passed in Africa. He was a good talker, and had devoted much of his time to sport and to natural history, and was thus able to give my father descriptions of the rare animals he had met, and which were then but little known in England. As for me, I was simply entranced, and even my father seemed to listen with delight to descriptions of savage life, of which he had previously only read. I felt utterly miserable when Howard left, although he had promised to come on the following evening and stay with us a few days.

When I went to bed that night it was not to sleep; I tossed from side to side without any desire to close my eyes. The scenes of which I had heard were before me as vividly as though I had been an actor in them, and already had I made up my mind that I must be an engineer, and most myself enjoy similar experiences to those of Howard. Of the ways and means by which this result was to be accomplished I knew nothing, but I determined to ask Howard, on the first opportunity, how I could become an engineer officer, and then to try and induce my father to take such steps as would forward my views.

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