CHARLES H. WELCH
42
longed for further and richer training, that at the time was out of the question. I then answered an advertisement
for `an intelligent lad' and entered a Tea Broker's establishment in Rood Lane, E.C., and there for a year I ate my
heart out, much as Dickens did in the Blacking Factory, for I hated, as many boys did, the homely chores that an
eldest child perforce had to share. Here, `someone in the city' to his shame, spent most of his time battling with a
never ending mountain of china cups and pots used by the tea-tasters of the firm.
Occasionally I paid a visit to such wharves as Butler's, Hay's, or St. Katharine's, but revolted at the age of
fifteen, gave up the princely salary of five shillings a week, and was out of employment for six or seven weeks,
baffled but unbowed.
Here I must again break the chronological sequence. At the age of twenty-five, that is ten years after being
dismissed from Rood Lane, I was conducting a party around the British Museum, and had been explaining some of
the exhibits seen in the Egyptian Room. As was always a possibility, a member of the public drew near and joined
the party. At a halt in the lecture I turned to him and said `You evidently are interested'. He replied `I am indeed'.
I added `You do not recognize me?' In astonishment he said `No'. I slipped into the Cockney vernacular, saying
`You gave me the sack ten years ago'. He was the Secretary of the firm and rejoiced at such a transformation.
Time's Revenges need not always be saddening. Of course a radical change had come about in those intervening
ten years, to which all the incidents of this narrative are all the while converging.
As no opening had seemed to be forthcoming, my father who was himself in the Leather Bag industry, said I had
better take up the same craft, and so, when I was fifteen I started at Wolfsky & Co., Leather Bag makers, with whom
I stayed, apart from about two years at Seefel's in Barbican and Jacobs in Wilson Street, until I left at the age of
twenty-four to take up the Secretaryship of a Bible Training College.
Whether we be blue blooded aristocrats, or the lowest of classless serfs, our pedigree at last leads us back to the
`one man' through whom `sin entered into the world'; the clay out of which God fashions vessels for His service is
the same in every case.
Upbringing and environment are the instruments used in the shaping of these vessels, and in particular the
influences of parent, home and school during the impressionable years of early youth.
By nature a child is provided with two parents, but modern life often robs him of the balancing care of the father;
a mother's love is immediate and protective, a father's looks to the future and is corrective. Happy is the child who
has both. It should be remembered that the Scripture says `Fathers' not `Mothers' bring up your children in the
nurture and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4; Col. 3:21; Heb. 12:5-12).
My father used to leave home each morning about 7 a.m. and we children still in our beds would hear the little
ritual that was unfailingly observed.
`Good-bye Mum. I'm off'.
`Good-bye. Have you got your bag Dad?'
`Yes my dear'.
Dad would walk to Spa Road station (now demolished) and take either a penny fare to London Bridge, or if extra
weary, a three halfpenny fare to Cannon Street station, and then walk through to Old Street where he was employed.
We saw no more of Dad until eight o'clock at night, and those still young would by then have gone to bed.
Looking back over the years with a sympathetic understanding which only time could bring, I can see that