THE GREEN HAND THE GREEN HAND Adventures of a Naval Lieutenant BY GEORGE CUPPLES AUTHOR OF "THE TWO FRIGATES" [Illustration] SANDS & COMPANY 23 BEDFORD STREET, LONDON, W.C. AND EDINBURGH. LIFE OF GEORGE CUPPLES (AUTHOR OF "THE GREEN HAND") Excepting for one short episode--that, indeed, to which we owe "The Green Hand"--the life of George Cupples was almost devoid of those external incidents and vicissitudes which lend the interest of romance to biographical narrative. It is therefore possible, even within the narrow limits assigned to the present sketch, to satisfy reasonable curiosity regarding the mere facts of this distinguished author's career. Cupples was, by virtue of two or three generations, a son of the manse. His grandfather, the Rev. George Cupples, was the minister of Swinton; and his father, who bore the same name, was also a minister. The George Cupples with whom we have to do was born at Legerwood, in Berwickshire, on the 2nd of August 1822. He was the eldest of the family, which consisted, including George, of three sons and one daughter. The father was a clergyman of orthodox views, and from the descriptions of him that have been left we may infer that the severity of his Calvinism had imparted a decided severity to his character. "He was much respected," says his son Joseph, "and, indeed, a good deal feared." The children were accordingly treated by him with rigid strictness, modified by their mother's greater leniency. This stern master was George's only teacher during the first ten years of his life. His books were an Arithmetic, Cordery, Ruddiman's Rudiments, and Cornelius Nepos. In his tenth year he and his brother Joseph went to school at Earlston, "walking daily a weary four and a half miles and back again--to lessons at home!" George was in his twelfth year when his father was "translated" to Stirling. While the family was settled here, the wish to go to sea seems to have grown in the boy's mind to a settled determination, fostered, it appears, by his reading of novels, of which he was extremely fond. He was sixteen years of age when his father, probably much against his will, allowed him to be apprenticed as a sailor. So it came about that the minister's son, nurtured on the classics and Calvinism with quite different purposes in view, made a voyage to India and back--an eighteen months' affair it turned out--as a ship's boy. On the nature of his experiences we need not speak here, for whoever reads "The Green Hand" will understand it without further aid. As his biographer strikingly says: "It had a physical effect on him ... made him quiet and still in every expression, in every externality of life afterwards." At all events, the young adventurer returned home perfectly cured of his taste for the sea, petitioned his father to get his indentures cancelled, and declared he would content himself for the future on land.