end he was prevented from starting, and the Governor of the school
allowed the eleven-year-old child to travel alone. He managed the
train journey safely as far as Liverpool, betook himself to a hotel,
and called, with a comical man-of-the-world air, for refreshment. Tea,
cold chicken and buns were brought him by the landlady and her maids,
who stood round in a circle watching the young traveller eat. His
serious ways and his solemn air of responsibility touched their
women's hearts so much that when the time came for him to sail they
took him down to the dock and put him on board his ship.

Henry Hart met his son at Belfast, and was so angry, at finding he
had been allowed to travel alone that he vowed the lad should never
go back to Taunton, and therefore sent him to the Wesleyan Connexional
School in Dublin instead. Here his quaint, merry little face, his
ready laugh, and above all his willingness to perform any trickery
that they suggested, made him a favourite among the boys at once. To
the masters he must have been something of a trial, I imagine, with
his habit of asking the why and wherefore of rules and regulations and
his refusal to submit to them without a logical answer. One day, for
instance, when a certain master spoke somewhat sourly and irritably to
him, Robert Hart then and there took it upon himself to deliver him a
lecture which, in its calm reasoning, was most disconcerting.

"It is wonderful the way you treat us boys," he said, "just as if you
were our superior; just as if you were not a little dust and water
like the rest of us. One would think from your manners you were our
master, whereas you are really our servant. It is we who give you your
livelihood--and yet you behave to us in this high-handed manner." That
tirade naturally made a pretty row in the school, but the obdurate
young orator melted under the coaxings and cajolings of the Governor's