Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 February 1886 — American Children. [ARTICLE]

American Children.

Tlie steamship Australia was infested by a small but determined gang of Avhat I may term fiend children—American children, I am sorry to say—and I am sorry to add that they Avere all children of saloon passengers. There were several well-enougli conducted babies in the steerage, and a few tolerable toddlekins in the intermediate cabins; but a more exasperating set of little desperadoes, male and female, than the first-class brats it Avould be difficult to imagine. I am passionately fond of what Leigh Hunt used to call “the small infantry who go to bed by daylight,” and I know that I love and fancy that I understand the pretty ways of ordinary children; but Avlien tlie “small infantry” assumes the aspect of so many diminutive zaptiens and bashi-bazouks in miniature, when they decline to go to bed* bv daylight, or by lamplight either, until tliey are driven like sheep in their bunks; when from sunrise to supper time they never desist from impish tricks, the “small infantry” become to you objects, not of tenderness and sympathy, but of terror and horror. The leader of the gang was an attenuated girl-demon of about 9 to 10. She and the sallow-faced little goblins whom she led made our rives miserable. They ran races in the saloon; they made raids on the steward’s pantry; they blocked up the companion; they worried the cooks in the galley; they raised commotions in the forecastle; they sprawled about the hurricane deck, stopping up with yells of exultation the ventilators, Avhich' should have given a little air to the aptless passengers, sweltering in the cabins below. They perelied on the taffrail, and Avere in continuous peril of tumbling overboard; they hung on the rigging, and made Gordian knots of carefnllv-coiled ropes; they burst into the smokingroom, and disturbed the quietude op the five gentlemen who were constantly playing poker in that divan; they ran between the legs and all but destroyed the equilibrium of the smok-ing-room steAvard, who periodically brought “drinks” to the five pokerplayers; they overturned the .deck chairs and made holes in the awnings; they derided rebuking quartermasters, and spoke to the man -at the wheel—and all this they did, not in the exhuberafice of infantile animal spirits, but in a sheer spirit of wanton turbulence and “enssedness,” wholly unchecked by their mammas or other'female relatives, who were either too seasick or too lazy to look after and control them. Our captain was shocked, but it was aot until late in the voyage, after we

had had one or two good, “northers” and a “southerly buster”—that is to say, stiff gales with a heavy sea running —that seasickness came to our aid, and for a while partially paralyzed the activity of those imps of the ocean.— Mr. Sola’s Letter} in London Telegraph.