William Allair Or Running Away to Sea Author:Ellen Wood Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. HARRY VANE. My dear boys, I have said that this story is written especially for you. As you go on, you will probably discover why I have writt... more »en it. I would wish to warn you against disobedience. You have heard of popular fallacies, but I can tell jou that there never was a more decided one than that fallacy of yours—the belief that you know better than your parents. How often has a boy come to an issue with his father and mother, and decamped to sea in disobedience! He has picked up that agreeable but most deceptive notion, that the going to sea will prove a remedy for all evils under the sun. Another fallacy. I make no doubt you must know some who have so gone : I feel sure you know some who are wanting to go. A boy grows dissatisfied, lazy, tired ; tired of all things ; tired of land—or rather of the life he is leading on land—and he thinks he will go to sea. He thinks it will cure him. So it will, with a vengeance. Talk to him of the hardships he will have to encounter; the endurance he must fortify himself with against the hardships ! You may as well talk to the winds. Did you ever know sons who have gone off to sea in this manner, and have never returned ? I have. I have known some who have only gone out to die. It is a common occurrence, this running away to sea: howcommon, I believe that few of us know or suspect. Some have gone in half opposition; some in downright defiance and disobedience ; some, in cunning stealth, running away clandestinely. These boys are often remarkably unfitted for a sea life ; and that they find out to their cost. A boy who embraces the sea as a profession ought to have been fitted for it by nature, otherwise it will prove for him the most miserable of all lives that he could lead on earth. Many have sunk under the hardships...« less