An Encounter

IT WAS JOE Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us. He had a little library made up of old numbers of The Union Jack, Pluck and The Halfpenny Marvel. Every evening after school we met in his back garden and arranged Indian battles. He and his fat young brother Leo, the idler, held the loft of the stable while we tried to carry it by storm; or we fought a pitched battle on the grass. But, however well we fought, we never won siege or battle and all our bouts ended with Joe Dillon's war dance of victory. His parents went to eight-o'clock mass every morning in Gardiner Street and the peaceful odour of Mrs. Dillon was prevalent in the hall of the house. But he played too fiercely for us who were younger and more timid. He looked like some kind of an Indian when he capered round the garden, an old tea-cosy on his head, beating a tin with his fist and yelling:

“Ya! yaka, yaka, yaka!”

Everyone was incredulous when it was reported that he had a vocation for the priesthood. Nevertheless it was true.

A spirit of unruliness diffused itself among us and, under its influence, differences of culture and constitution were waived. We banded ourselves together, some boldly, some in jest and some almost in fear: and of the number of these latter, the reluctant Indians who were afraid to seem studious or lacking in robustness, I was one. The adventures related in the literature of the Wild West were remote from my nature but, at least, they opened doors of escape. I liked better some American detective stories which were traversed from time to time by unkempt fierce and beautiful girls. Though there was nothing wrong in these stories and though their intention was sometimes literary they were circulated secretly at school. One day when Father Butler was hearing the four pages of Roman History clumsy Leo Dillon was discovered with a copy of The Halfpenny Marvel.

“This page or this page? This page Now, Dillon, up! ‘Hardly had the day’…Go on! What day? ‘Hardly had the day dawned’…Have you studied it? What have you there in your pocket?”

Everyone's heart palpitated as Leo Dillon handed up the paper and everyone assumed an innocent face. Father Butler turned over the pages, frowning.

“What is this rubbish?” he said. “The Apache Chief! Is this what you read instead of studying your Roman History? Let me not find any more of this wretched stuff in this college. The man who wrote it, I suppose, was some wretched fellow who writes these things for a drink. I'm surprised at boys like you, educated, reading such stuff. I could understand it if you were…National School boys. Now, Dillon, I advise you strongly, get at your work or…”

This rebuke during the sober hours of school paled much of the glory of the Wild West for me and the confused puffy face of Leo Dillon awakened one of my consciences. But when the restraining influence of the school was at a distance I began to hunger again for wild sensations, for the escape which those chronicles of disorder alone seemed to offer me. The mimic warfare of the evening became at last as wearisome to me as the routine of school in the morning because I wanted real adventures to happen to myself. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to people who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.

The summer holidays were near at hand when I made up my mind to break out of the weariness of school life for one day at least. With Leo Dillon and a boy named Mahony I planned a day's miching. Each of us saved up sixpence. We were to meet at ten in the morning on the Canal Bridge. Mahony's big sister was to write an excuse for him and Leo Dillon was to tell his brother to say he was sick. We arranged to go along the Wharf Road until we came to the ships, then to cross in the ferryboat and walk out to see the Pigeon House. Leo Dillon was afraid we might meet Father Butler or someone out of the college; but Mahony asked, very sensibly, what would Father Butler be doing out at the Pigeon House. We were reassured: and I brought the first stage of the plot to an end by collecting sixpence from the other two, at the same time showing them my own sixpence. When we were making the last arrangements on the eve we were all vaguely excited. We shook hands, laughing, and Mahony said:

“Till to-morrow, mates!”

That night I slept badly. In the morning I was firstcomer to the bridge as I lived nearest. I hid my books in the long grass near the ashpit at the end of the garden where nobody ever came and hurried along the canal bank. It was a mild sunny morning in the first week of June. I sat up on the coping of the bridge admiring my frail canvas shoes which I had diligently pipeclayed overnight and watching the docile horses pulling a tramload of business people up the hill. All the branches of the tall trees which lined the mall were gay with little light green leaves and the sunlight slanted through them on to the water. The granite stone of the bridge was beginning to be warm and I began to pat it with my hands in time to an air in my head. I was very happy.

When I had been sitting there for five or ten minutes I saw Mahony's grey suit approaching. He came up the hill, smiling, and clambered up beside me on the bridge. While we were waiting he brought out the catapult which bulged from his inner pocket and explained some improvements which he had made in it. I asked him why he had brought it and he told me he had brought it to have some gas with the birds. Mahony used slang freely, and spoke of Father Butler as Old Bunser. We waited on for a quarter of an hour more but still there was no sign of Leo Dillon. Mahony, at last, jumped down and said:

“Come along. I knew Fatty'd funk it.”

“And his sixpence…?” I said.

“That's forfeit,” said Mahony. “And so much the better for us—a bob and a tanner instead of a bob.”

We walked along the North Strand Road till we came to the Vitriol Works and then turned to the right along the Wharf Road. Mahony began to play the Indian as soon as we were out of public sight. He chased a crowd of ragged girls, brandishing his unloaded catapult and, when two ragged boys began, out of chivalry, to fling stones at us, he proposed that we should charge them. I objected that the boys were too small and so we walked on, the ragged troop screaming after us: “Swaddlers! Swaddlers!” thinking that we were Protestants because Mahony, who was dark-complexioned, wore the silver badge of a cricket club in his cap. When we came to the Smoothing Iron we arranged a siege; but it was a failure because you must have at least three. We revenged ourselves on Leo Dillon by saying what a funk he was and guessing how many he would get at three o'clock from Mr. Ryan.

We came then near the river. We spent a long time walking about the noisy streets flanked by high stone walls, watching the working of cranes and engines and often being shouted at for our immobility by the drivers of groaning carts. It was noon when we reached the quays and as all the labourers seemed to be eating their lunches, we bought two big currant buns and sat down to eat them on some metal piping beside the river. We pleased ourselves with the spectacle of Dublin's commerce—the barges signaled from far away by their curls of woolly smoke, the brown fishing fleet beyond Ringsend, the big white sailing vessel which was being discharged on the opposite quay. Mahony said it would be right skit to run away to sea on one of those big ships and even I, looking at the high masts, saw, or imagined, the geography which had been scantily dosed to me at school gradually taking substance under my eyes. School and home seemed to recede from us and their influences upon us seemed to wane.

We crossed the Liffey in the ferryboat, paying our toll to be transported in the company of two labourers and a little Jew with a bag. We were serious to the point of solemnity, but once during the short voyage our eyes met and we laughed. When we landed we watched the discharging of the graceful three-master which we had observed from the other quay. Some bystander said that she was a Norwegian vessel. I went to the stern and tried to decipher the legend upon it but, failing to do so, I came back and examined the foreign sailors to see had any of them green eyes for I had some confused notion…The sailors' eyes were blue and grey and even black. The only sailor whose eyes could have been called green was a tall man who amused the crowd on the quay by calling out cheerfully every time the planks fell:

“All right! All right!”

When we were tired of this sight we wandered slowly into Ringsend. The day had grown sultry, and in the windows of the grocers' shops musty biscuits lay bleaching. We bought some biscuits and chocolate which we ate sedulously as we wandered through the squalid streets where the families of the fishermen live. We could find no dairy and so we went into a huckster's shop and bought a bottle of raspberry lemonade each. Refreshed by this, Mahony chased a cat down a lane, but the cat escaped into a wide field. We both felt rather tired and when we reached the field we made at once for a sloping bank over the ridge of which we could see the Dodder.

It was too late and we were too tired to carry out our project of visiting the Pigeon House. We had to be home before four o'clock lest our adventure should be discovered. Mahony looked regretfully at his catapult and I had to suggest going home by train before he regained any cheerfulness. The sun went in behind some clouds and left us to our jaded thoughts and the crumbs of our provisions.

There was nobody but ourselves in the field. When we had lain on the bank for some time without speaking I saw a man approaching from the far end of the field. I watched him lazily as I chewed one of those green stems on which girls tell fortunes. He came along by the bank slowly. He walked with one hand upon his hip and in the other hand he held a stick with which he tapped the turf lightly. He was shabbily dressed in a suit of greenish-black and wore what we used to call a jerry hat with a high crown. He seemed to be fairly old for his moustache was ashen-grey. When he passed at our feet he glanced up at us quickly and then continued his way. We followed him with our eyes and saw that when he had gone on for perhaps fifty paces he turned about and began to retrace his steps. He walked towards us very slowly, always tapping the ground with his stick, so slowly that I thought he was looking for something in the grass.

He stopped when he came level with us and bade us good-day. We answered him and he sat down beside us on the slope slowly and with great care. He began to talk of the weather, saying that it would be a very hot summer and adding that the seasons had changed greatly since he was a boy—a long time ago. He said that the happiest time of one's life was undoubtedly one's schoolboy days and that he would give anything to be young again. While he expressed these sentiments which bored us a little we kept silent. Then he began to talk of school and of books. He asked us whether we had read the poetry of Thomas Moore or the works of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Lytton. I pretended that I had read every book he mentioned so that in the end he said:

“Ah, I can see you are a bookworm like myself. Now,” he added, pointing to Mahony who was regarding us with open eyes, “he is different; he goes in for games.”

He said he had all Sir Walter Scott's works and all Lord Lytton's works at home and never tired of reading them. “Of course,” he said, “there were some of Lord Lytton's works which boys couldn't read.” Mahony asked why couldn't boys read them—a question which agitated and pained me because I was afraid the man would think I was as stupid as Mahony. The man, however, only smiled. I saw that he had great gaps in his mouth between his yellow teeth. Then he asked us which of us had the most sweethearts. Mahony mentioned lightly that he had three totties. The man asked me how many I had. I answered that I had none. He did not believe me and said he was sure I must have one. I was silent.

“Tell us,” said Mahony pertly to the man, “how many have you yourself?”

The man smiled as before and said that when he was our age he had lots of sweethearts.

“Every boy,” he said, “has a little sweetheart.”

His attitude on this point struck me as strangely liberal in a man of his age. In my heart I thought that what he said about boys and sweethearts was reasonable. But I disliked the words in his mouth and I wondered why he shivered once or twice as if he feared something or felt a sudden chill. As he proceeded I noticed that his accent was good. He began to speak to us about girls, saying what nice soft hair they had and how soft their hands were and how all girls were not so good as they seemed to be if one only knew. There was nothing he liked, he said, so much as looking at a nice young girl, at her nice white hands and her beautiful soft hair. He gave me the impression that he was repeating something which he had learned by heart or that, magnetised by some words of his own speech, his mind was slowly circling round and round in the same orbit. At times he spoke as if he were simply alluding to some fact that everybody knew, and at times he lowered his voice and spoke mysteriously as if he were telling us something secret which he did not wish others to overhear. He repeated his phrases over and over again, varying them and surrounding them with his monotonous voice. I continued to gaze towards the foot of the slope, listening to him.

After a long while his monologue paused. He stood up slowly, saying that he had to leave us for a minute or so, a few minutes, and, without changing the direction of my gaze, I saw him walking slowly away from us towards the near end of the field. We remained silent when he had gone. After a silence of a few minutes I heard Mahony exclaim:

“I say! Look what he's doing!”

As I neither answered nor raised my eyes Mahony exclaimed again:

“I say…He's a queer old josser!”

“In case he asks us for our names,” I said, “let you be Murphy and I'll be Smith.”

We said nothing further to each other. I was still considering whether I would go away or not when the man came back and sat down beside us again. Hardly had he sat down when Mahony, catching sight of the cat which had escaped him, sprang up and pursued her across the field. The man and I watched the chase. The cat escaped once more and Mahony began to throw stones at the wall she had escaladed. Desisting from this, he began to wander about the far end of the field, aimlessly.

After an interval the man spoke to me. He said that my friend was a very rough boy and asked did he get whipped often at school. I was going to reply indignantly that we were not National School boys to be whipped, as he called it; but I remained silent. He began to speak on the subject of chastising boys. His mind, as if magnetised again by his speech, seemed to circle slowly round and round its new centre. He said that when boys were that kind they ought to be whipped and well whipped. When a boy was rough and unruly there was nothing would do him any good but a good sound whipping. A slap on the hand or a box on the ear was no good: what he wanted was to get a nice warm whipping. I was surprised at this sentiment and involuntarily glanced up at his face. As I did so I met the gaze of a pair of bottle-green eyes peering at me from under a twitching forehead. I turned my eyes away again.

The man continued his monologue. He seemed to have forgotten his recent liberalism. He said that if ever he found a boy talking to girls or having a girl for a sweetheart he would whip him and whip him; and that would teach him not to be talking to girls. And if a boy had a girl for a sweetheart and told lies about it then he would give him such a whipping as no boy ever got in this world. He said that there was nothing in this world he would like so well as that. He described to me how he would whip such a boy as if he were unfolding some elaborate mystery. He would love that, he said, better than anything in this world; and his voice, as he led me monotonously through the mystery, grew almost affectionate and seemed to plead with me that I should understand him.

I waited till his monologue paused again. Then I stood up abruptly. Lest I should betray my agitation I delayed a few moments pretending to fix my shoe properly and then, saying that I was obliged to go, I bade him goodday. I went up the slope calmly but my heart was beating quickly with fear that he would seize me by the ankles. When I reached the top of the slope I turned round and, without looking at him, called loudly across the field:

“Murphy!”

My voice had an accent of forced bravery in it and I was ashamed of my paltry stratagem. I had to call the name again before Mahony saw me and hallooed in answer. How my heart beat as he came running across the field to me! He ran as if to bring me aid. And I was penitent; for in my heart I had always despised him a little.

Footnotes

  1. Realizing that the old man might be unstable or dangerous, the narrator feigns politeness and abruptly leaves to find his friend "Murphy" in another act of deception in the story. The boy is ashamed of this “paltry stratagem” but is relieved when Mahoney comes to him—as if to rescue him. At the end, we are privy to the narrator's admission of guilt: He has always detested Mahoney for his crude and rather aggressive behavior. This admission represents the story’s last act of betrayal and deception as "An Encounter" draws to a close.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  2. The boys' adventure to this point has been predictable and fairly uneventful. They have looked at ships, snacked, and worn themselves out—even abandoning their original goal of going to the Pigeon House. They've realized that their goals were unrealistic. It is then ironic that just as they have abandoned any chance for excitement, they in fact have a very unusual encounter with the elderly man.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  3. Much of "An Encounter" deals with the theme of deception: from the narrator deceiving his parents and teachers to skip school to his deceiving himself by seeking adventure and escape from his own reality. This is another example where deception comes into play as the narrator suggests that they lie to the old man in case he asks for their names.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  4. This passage speaks to the themes of perversion and deception prevalent in Dubliners. While the conversation with the old man is banal enough at first, readers should notice this shift towards something unsettling or perverse in his speech. The narrator appears to notice it as well, as he points out how the old man focuses so much attention on the description of young girls and how the old man speaks in a secretive manner. By telling the boys a secret, the old man's actions are a kind of perversion, or corruption, of what is usually expected: children customarily seek approval from adults, not the other way around.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  5. A "josser" is slang for a simpleton or simply a fellow when it is used with "old" as it is here. It's unclear what the old man is doing, but considering Mahony's remark, it is likely that the old man's actions are highly inappropriate.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  6. Since the old man asked about sweathearts, from context we know that "totties" means something like "girlfriends." This slang word is also a vulgar term for expensive prostitutes.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  7. The River Dodder is one of the three main rivers in Dublin, the others being the Liffey and the Tolka. The Dodder flows into the Liffey and is its largest tributary.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  8. The boy’s desire to see green eyes and his confusion at having this desire might be an allusion to the seafaring context of Homer’s Odyssey, in which the hero Odysseus (also known as Ulysses) was said to have green eyes. For the narrator, perhaps such an eye color is important to an adventurous lifestyle.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  9. The Liffey is the main river upon which Dublin is built. It flows from west to east, dividing the city between a north and south side. Joyce, as well as all native Dubliners before and after him, would have been conscious of the distinctions between these two sides (such as which is for the more affluent, which is for the poor, etc.).

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  10. Another example of Mahony's slang, "to be a right skit" means that something would be a lot of fun.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  11. A district in Dublin associated with the working class, Ringsend is located south of the mouth of the river Liffey. At the time this story was set, Ringsend was essentially a self-contained village.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  12. This was a well known place to swim on the north side of Dublin bay. Due to building development, it is no longer in existence.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  13. Cricket is an English game and was associated in Ireland with the English conquest. Irish nationalists viewed the game as non-national, preferring the Gaelic games of football and hurling. The Gaelic Athletic Association, founded in 1884, promoted national sports and after 1902 included a ban on its members from participating in “foreign games.”

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  14. "Swaddlers" = [slang] “Protestants”

    In Catholic Ireland, this particular insult is pejorative. It’s possible that the origin of this Dublin slang is an allusion to a passage in the “Protestant” Bible where the baby Jesus is described as being wrapped in “swaddling clothes.”

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  15. These are both slang terms for amounts of money. A "bob" refers to a shilling or an amount worth twelve pence, and a "tanner" is simply another term for six pence.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  16. Our narrator tells us that Mahony is fond of and freely uses slang, and this play on Father Butler’s name is no exception. This combination of Butler and Bunsen Burner (a gas burner that makes an extremely hot blue flame) suggests a disrespectful reference to the Father’s temperament.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  17. Since Mahony couldn't possibly carry a medieval siege weapon in his pocket, this word refers to an instrument made of a forked stick with an elastic band fastened to the two prongs (also known as a slingshot) and it is used to shoot small stones, bullets, peas, etc.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  18. Based on the context of this sentence, "air" here means a tune or melody. This is likely a borrowing from the Italian word aria.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  19. While orthographically the same as a form of the verb "to cope," this noun is pronounced differently (think copper) and refers to an architectural feature. "Coping" is the top layer of a brick or stone wall that is usually higher on one end than the other to allow rain to be carried off easily.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  20. This road, now known as the East Wall Road, runs along the top of a wall built to make sure the River Tolka stays on its course. Without the wall, the city’s northeastern areas could flood.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  21. As the narrator has grown a little older and experienced more, he has lost some of the joy he once found in his pretend adventures and battles with his friends. In longing for escape, he has realized that the stories don't provide him with what he needs anymore, and he knows that he must try to seek real adventure on his own. This sets up the plot for this short tale, as the narrator soon embarks on an adventure of his own.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  22. British Legislation in the early 19th century established a national school system in Ireland. These primary school provided basic education for the majority of Irish children. National Schools were not only considered anti-national by Irish nationalists, but they were also suspect in the eyes of the Catholic Church because National Schools tried to create curriculum that would allow Catholic and Protestant students to be educated together. This last point speaks to Father Butler’s disdain for National School, saying that he would expect such students to be reading such “rubbish.”

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  23. Father Butler is likely unaware of the irony found in his statement. The Halfpenny Marvel, for instance, was one of Alfred Harmsworth's, an Irish newspaper and publishing magnate, adventure tales made with the purpose or getting rid of "penny dreadfuls" and other "wretched" stories out of business. Harmsworth wanted to produce "pure, healthy literature" for boys, and so his intentions in making these stories could arguably be viewed as noble and not simply for profit. Regardless, the priesthood would have likely viewed all texts aside from the Bible and classical ones to be "rubbish."

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  24. Several of the words in this passage speak to larger themes of paralysis and escape prevalent throughout Dubliners. The main character admits to banding with others do to fear, a kind of paralysis, and he also seeks escape from his reality through the adventures in the stories that Joe Dillon has.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  25. In the context of battle, this phrase means to try and take over the stable by "storming," or attacking, it suddenly, with a lot of force, and/or with large numbers.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  26. Based on the setting that Joyce has established in “The Sisters” and this story thus far, Dublin readers would understand this to be Belvedere College, a school for boys run by the Jesuits and renowned for the rigor of its instruction and the quality of its education. Joyce himself went there and many of his experiences provided material for stories in Dubliners as well as in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916).

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  27. The two phrases here (Hardly had the day... and Hardly had the day dawned...) are spoken by Loe Dillon as Father Butler admonishes him. It has been noted that Dillon is likely reading from Caesar’s account of his Gallic wars in Commentarii de Bello Gallico, as several of his opening statements on particular campaign days could be translated this way.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  28. This line means that Father Butler was listening to a student read from accounts of ancient Roman history. Such volumes were a regular part of translation classes from Latin of classical authors. These classics had a large role in the curriculum in British and Irish schools during the late 19th century. In Ireland, the Latin language was also used by the Roman Catholic Church, so instruction in it and the classical texts carried political and cultural weight and implications.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  29. Lord Lytton (1803–1873) was an English politician and novelist. Many of his works, and also his actual life, were considered morally suspect by the prudish and the religious since they involved sensational and romantic material. He also coined many expressions still used today: “It was a dark and stormy night,” and “The pen is mightier than the sword,” among others.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  30. Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) was a Scottish poet and historical novelist whose work is best known for dealing with material that evoke in readers a sense of nostalgia or romanticism about the past.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  31. Thomas Moore (1779–1852) was an Irish poet and the author of Irish Melodies. This text, known as simply Melodies, were enormously popular in Dublin during the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  32. Another slang phrase, “to have some gas” means to have fun with someone or something. In this case, Mahony wants to try shooting some birds with his catapult.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  33. Pipeclay is a type of clay used to make pipes for smoking tobacco, and to “pipeclay” means to clean something with pipeclay. Here, the narrator used pipeclay to clean his white canvas shoes.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  34. “Sixpence” is a small, silver coin that was worth about six pennies. By saving this much, the narrator likely means that they had this amount on them, rather than one coin of this value. At the time this story is set, such an amount of money was likely a week’s allowance for a middle-class child.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  35. A slang word, “miching” means to intentionally miss school. Other terms with this same meaning include playing truant, playing hookey, or skipping.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  36. This is a title of a story in The Halfpenny Marvel which, most likely, is a story about the battles between the Native Americans and the cowboys or United States government. The Apache are an Athabascan tribe whose former territory was an expansive tract of land in southwestern North America.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  37. This is a relatively common phrase used to indicate that someone feels that God is calling him or her to join the faith as a priest. The narrator says that people were "incredulous" (they couldn't believe it) when they found out that Joe Dillon wanted to join the priesthood, because his behavior was likely not very appropriate for church.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  38. The Jesuit church of St. Francis Xavier is located on this street on the north side of Dublin. The Dillons’ choosing to attend a Jesuit church likely suggests that they are socially ambitious, because the Jesuits in Ireland were considered the most intellectual and admirable of the regular clergy.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  39. Eight-o’clock mass is considered early by most standards, with church ceremonies typically starting at a later hour in the morning. As pious as late-19th-century Dublin was, going to mass this early in the morning would have portrayed the attendees as people of very strong faith.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  40. This term refers to the mock battles that children sometimes played with one team pretending to be cowboys; the other, Native Americans. The prevalence of this “game” was directly connected to the adventurous, romantic portrayal of the Wild West in the popular imagination, which the boys likely read about in their magazine stories.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  41. Pluck and The Halfpenny Marvel were popular boys’ magazines that were published in England with the goal to provide clean, instructive stories of adventure. Together with The Union Jack, the goals of these magazines and stories suggest the promotion of an English, imperial agenda in late-Victorian British culture to young boys.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  42. The national flag on the United Kingdom is known as the Union Jack. At the time this story was written, the United Kingdom was officially known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In addition to being the name of the flag, Here, The Union Jack refers to a popular boys’ magazine, like Pluck and The Halfpenny Marvel.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor
  43. Commonly used to refer to the time when the Western United States existed in a period of lawless development, the Wild West also has been used as the setting for adventure stories. This has led to romantic associations in the popular culture of the Wild West with danger, opportunity, and lone heroes.

    — Wesley, Owl Eyes Editor