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THE 



STIiflDD MJlGHZinE 

£/%n Illustrated Jffonthty 



EDITED BY 

GEO. NEWNES 



Vol. II. 

JULY TO DECEMBER 




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Xonfccm : 

BURLEIGH STREET, STRAND 



1891 < 










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THE POWER OF LIGHT. 



George Tinworth and his Work. 



By Edward Salmon. 




THE WHEELWRIGHT S SHOl*. 

(With Portrait of Mr. Tinworth when a boy.) 




'LEXANDER POPE has re- 
corded of himself that he 
lisped in numbers, for the 
numbers came. That is to 
say, he wrote poetry because 
he could not help it. In the 
same way, the subject of this sketch, Mr. 
George Tinworth, whose work in terra- 
cotta is now, we may safely say, world 
famous, is an artist because he came into 
existence one. Like the poet, the true 
artist must be born ; he cannot be made. 
Being born, his genius will not fail to 
assert itself against time and all obstacles. 
A better instance of this truism could not 
be found than Mr. Tinworth. If his be- 
coming an artist had depended on his early 
education, he would never have been what 
he is to-day. Born in a poor neighbour- 
hood, of poor parents,' without a relative or 
friend of artistic sympathy or inclination, 
it is, we think, one of the most extra- 
ordinary facts in Nature, and one of the 



most remarkable proofs forthcoming of the 
superiority of spirit over matter, of mind 
over body, that he should from the first 
have been a sculptor. There was no external 
inducement to him to become an artist ; 
there was, indeed, every inducement to him 
to become anything but an artist. But art 
was part of his nature ; it was irrepressible, 
irresistible ; and, like a beautiful flower in a 
weed-grown garden, a veritable product of 
mother earth, absolutely untended by man, 
it sprung into existence, until one day the 
gardener had it brought before him, and 
fostered it with a loving care due to a per- 
fect perception of the treasure he had 
found. 

One glance at the pictures which accom- 
pany this paper will convey to those of our 
readers who may never have had an oppor- 
tunity of examining Mr. Tinworth's work 
some notion of its excellence from what- 
ever point of view Ave may look at it. It 
is almost incredible that Mr. Tinworth is 



444 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



an absolutely self-educated and self-made 
man. There is that indefinable something 
about his work — a blend of culture, genius, 
assimilation of ideas — which suggests that 
he must have been born into an art 
atmosphere, must have inherited artistic 
faculties, and have received constant en- 
couragement from his friends in his at- 
tempts to body forth the forms of things. 
Precisely the opposite is the truth. George 
Tinworth first saw the light on the 5th of 
November, 1843, having been born near 
Camberwell Gate, Walworth. His father 1 
was a wheelwright, doing indifferent business 
in that busy, overcrowded, uninviting, and 
then, even more than now, dreary part of 
the great metropolis. George Tinworth 
was intended by his parents for the calling 
in which his father did little good for him- 
self, and in the uncongenial surroundings 
of the wheelwright's shop he spent his 
early days. It would be interesting, if it 
were possible to trace it, to know what 
created the feverish desire which as a small 
boy he exhibited to become a sculptor. The 
first things he ever succeeded in cutting 
out — without, be it remembered, any sort 
of hint as to the technique of the subject — 
were some wooden butter stamps. He also 
carved small wooden figures. Mr. Tin- 
worth's reminiscences of his boyhood are 
naturally deeply interesting. One incident 
in it is illustrated in a picture which Mr. 
Tinworth has himself modelled, and which 
is reproduced at the head of this article. It 
shows the wheelwright's shop, and the lad 
standing at a vice, carving a figure out of 
a block of wood with hammer and chisel. 
At the windbw a small boy keeps watch 
for the return of Mr. Tinworth, senior, 
who may be back at any minute. Directly 
the signal is given, the figure is hidden 
out of sight and the work of the shop is 
resumed. On occasions the small boy 
turned traitor, and failed to report the 
father's approach, in which case the as- 
pirant sculptor would get into serious 
trouble. u In the eyes of the elder Mr. 
Tinworth," says Mr. Edmund Gosse, with 
unusual accuracy, " such trifling as this was 
mere wicked waste of time that ought to 
be better spent in tinkering up a coster- 
monger's broken cart." Once young Tin- 
worth commenced carving a head with a 
nail and stone, for the amusement of him- 
self and some other boys, on a poor 
woman's doorstep. He set to work on the 
hard stone, and had made considerable pro- 
gress with the head when the woman 



appeared. The boys all bolted, and though 
the good soul, who perhaps recognised the 
lad's ability, called out to him to come 
back and finish it, he refused to be per- 
suaded that his doorstep decoration was 
sufficiently appreciated to save him from a 
wigging. 

In 1 86 1, when Mr. Tinworth was eighteen, 
he heard of a school of fine art in Lambeth, 
and immediately turned his thoughts to 
becoming a pupil. The school was then 
under the direction of Mr. J. Sparkes, one 
of the ablest art instructors, probably, who 
ever lived. Attracted to the school as by a 
magnet, young Tinworth used to go with a 
friend to have a look at the place. He 
found it difficult to muster up courage to 
enter, but one night luck favoured him. 
He carried with him a small head of Han- 
del, and met Mr. Sparkes at the door. One 
can imagine the trembling hand which 
held out the little figure, carved with a 
hammer and chisel from a piece of sandstone, 
for the great man to examine. Mr. Sparkes 
recognised the subject. " Oh, Handel," he 
said. The boy was delighted, and only 
later remembered that he had scratched 
Handel's name on it, which Mr. Sparkes 
had noticed. The lad was invited in, and 
Mr. Sparkes was quick to detect the stuff 
of which he was made. For some years 
Tinworth was a pupil at the Lambeth 
Schools t his progress being very rapid. 
Mr. Gosse has credited him with working 
all night sometimes, but this, he assures us, 
he never did. In 1864 he was admitted to 
the schools of the Royal Academy, a model 
of " Hercules," executed under the direc- 
tion of Mr. Sparkes, having paved the way. 
The next year he won a silver medal, and 
was congratulated by Sir William Boxall 
for a life study. In 1867 he secured the 
first silver medal in the Life School. Mean- 
while he had become an exhibitor at the 
Royal Academy. In 1866 he sent in a 
group of figures called " Peace and Wrath 
in Low Life." It depicted a scene common 
enough in slum life. Two street arabs 
were engaged in a stiff fight ; two little 
girls were interfering, and a dog barked in 
huge delight at the battle. 

The bare record of Mr. Tinworth 's work 
might leave the impression that life at this 
period had begun to grow brighter for him. 
So far, however, his studies had been a 
luxury pure and simple. No sort of 
opening occurred in which he could utilise 
his peculiar talents. He had mastered his 
art, and he had broken down the opposi- 



■ 



GEORGE TINWORTH AND HIS WORK. 



445 




tion of his father ; 
but he was still a 
wheelwright. About 
this time his father 
died, and the young 
doctor of broken- 
down vehicles, as we 
may call him, in 
order to support his 
mother had to work 
still harder at a trade 
which grew more 
and more distasteful. 
He made a bare thirty 
shillings a week, and 
modest as were his 
requirements it 
would have been 
strange if more con- 
genial employment 
could not be found to 
yield him as much. 
: Mr. Sparkes, ever 
- his good friend, 
i kept a sharp look- 
£ out for an oppor- 
" tunity of enabling 
| him to change his 
* vocation. The op- 
a portunity came at 
i last in the revival 
a of art manufac- 
" tures, which took 
§ place in England 
j as the result of the 
: Paris Exhibition 
I of 1867. Amongst 
those who profited 
most by the revival 
was Mr. (now Sir) 
Henry Doulton. To 
send his pottery forth 
to the world as some- 
thing more than 
mere earthenware 
was his object, and 
Mr. Sparkes rightly 
concluded that the 
man to assist Mr. 
Doulton was his 
young pupil. Mr. 
Doulton gladly gave 
him thirty shillings 
a week to start with. 
After touching up 
pottery moulds for 
a time, Tinworth 
was allowed io exer- 
cise his powers of 



446 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 




invention by modelling filters. He also 
copied some ancient Greek and Sicilian 
coins, executing them in terra cotta many 
times their original size. It was some cf 
these medallions which first attracted the 



notice of Mr. Ruskin, 
who has been among 
Tinworth's warmest 
admirers. In 1869 Mr. 
Tinworth completed 
the fountain designed 
by his master, which 
visitors to Kennington 
Park will know ; a 
little later he executed 
the Amazon Vase, now 
in Fairmont Park, 
Philadelphia ; and in 
1 87 1 he planned a 
handsome salt-cellar 
for Mr. Doulton, on 
the sides of which 
were pictured four 
scenes from the 
hours of Christ. 
It would 
tedious, if it were 
not well-nigh im- 
possible, to give any- 
thing like a detailed 
account of the many 
hundreds of admir- 
able scenes which 
Mr. Tinworth has 
executed in terra- 
cotta, sometimes 
wholly, sometimes 
partly in relief, some- 
times inches in depth 
and width, sometimes 
feet. The work by 
which he has become 
famous has been nearly 
all Biblical. His sculp- 
ture in the Academy 
in 1874-5-6 was suffi- 
ciently remarkable in 
treatment to make 
people anxious to se- 
cure specimens of his 
genius. In particular, 
Mr. Ruskin became 
as strongly convinced 
of his genius as he is 
of Turner's, and whilst 
Mr. Ruskin was not 
slow to tell the world 
what he thought of 
Mr. Tinworth, the late 
Mr. G. E. Street, R A., the architect of the 
Strand Law Courts, determined if possible 
to utilise his peculiar powers. Mr. Street 
was engaged upon York Minster and the 
Military Chapel in Birdcage-walk, and 



last 



be 



GEORGE TINWORTH AND HIS WORK. 



447 




THE GOOD SHEPHERD. 



having secured 
terra-cotta of a 



from Messrs. Doulton a 
tint to suit his purpose, 
Mr. Street gave, or got, Mr. Tinworth 



commissions to execute 
a reredos for York Min- 
ster, and twenty-eight 
semicircular terra-cotta 
panels which anyone 
may see in the Military 
Chapel. This was some 
fifteen years ago, and 
may be regarded as con- 
firming Mr. Tinworth in 
the line of art he has 
since exploited to such 
advantage. Where his 
work has all gone he 
does not know himself. 
It is scattered over the 
face of the globe. In 
addition to those panels 
just mentioned, " Geth- 
semane," " The Foot of 
the Cross," and " The 
Descent from the Cross" 
are to be found in the 
Edinburgh Museum ; 
"The Brazen Serpent" 
and a second panel of 
"The Descent from the 
Cross " are in Sandring- 
ham Church ; "The Last 
Supper " is in Waltham- 
le -Willows Church ; 
" Touch Me Not " is in 
Tisbury Church, near 
Salisbury; "The Miracu- 
lous Draught of Fishes " 
is in Bengeo Church, 
Hertford ; " Christ Be- 
fore Herod," a panel 
some 20 ft. by 10 ft., 
worth travelling far to 
see, is in Messrs. Doul- 
ton 's show room at 
Lambeth ; " The Ascen- 
sion " is in St. Mary 
Magdalene's at Upper 
Tooting ; whilst panels 
for the reredos and font 
of the English Church, 
built by Sir A.W. Blom- 
field at Copenhagen ; 
panels of " Temptation," 
" Faith," " Darkness," 
and " Light " forming 
the memorial to the 
late Mr. Bromley-Daven- 
port at Capesthorne, 
Cheshire ; a portrait panel of Lord Shaftes- 
bury in the Shaftesbury Institute, and 
another of Mr. Samuel Morley in the Morley 



44» 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 




Memorial College, 
are all evidence of 
the wide demand 
which inrecentyears 
has been made on 
Mr. Tinworth's abil- 
ity. A mere list 
of the names and 
homes of his works 
would fill many 
pages of The 
Strand Magazine. 
It is gratifying to 
know that they are 
as highly appreciated 
abroad as at home. 
He was given bronze 
medals in Vienna in 
1873 and in America 
in 1876, a silver 
medal and decora- 
tion in Paris in 1 878, 
and a gold medal at 
Nice in 1884. Also 
decorated by the 
French Govern- 
ment for his ex- 
hibit in the 1878 
Exhibition. 

Mr. Tinworth's 
panels constitute 
what has been 
aptly called "The 
Bible in Sculp- 
ture." From the 
plucking of the apple 
by Eve right away 
through the sacred 
volume to the la^t 
days of Jesus on 
earth, few important 
incidents have es- 
caped his hand. The 
story he has to tell 
is that of Holy Writ. 
His religious predi- 
lection, unlike his 
artistic, is easy to 
account for. His 
mother belonged to 
a strict Noncon- 
formist sect, and 
taught her boy his 
Bible almost as she 
taught him to speak. 
He knew every chap- 
ter thoroughly, long 
before he contem- 
plated attempting to 



GEORGE TINWORTH AND HIS WORK 



449 




convey to others his concep- 
tion of what it was all about. 
Tinworth's success with the 
Bible justifies a wonder and, 
perhaps, even a regret that 
he has not tried his hand at, 
say, some of the scenes in 
Shakespeare. He has, we 
believe, only once essayed a 
subject of importance not 
Biblical, namely, "The Sons 
of Cydippe," suggested by a 
poem of Mr. Gosse's. The 
artist seems to have little 
sympathy with scenes outside 
Scripture, and no doubt Mr. 
Gosse is correct when he says 
that, asMrs.Tinworth trained 
her son to look upon all other 
literature as dross, so " to this 
day the Bible remains the 
only book which he reads 
without indifference." 

If we might make a choice 
where all are so admirable, 
we should be inclined to 
pronounce Mr. Tinworth's 
treatment of subjects from 
the New Testament as pre- 
eminently his triumph. He 
does in sculpture for the 
story of Christ what is done 
every ten years on the 
boards in the Ober-Ammer* 
gau Passion Play. Mr. Tin- 
worth is an evangelist in art. 
Just as the Passion Play is 
intended to point the moral 
of the wondrous narrative of 
the Saviour's sojourn on earth, 
so Mr.Tinworth freely admits 
that he forgets his art in his 
regard for the story he has 
to tell. The highest compli- 
ment we can pay him in all 
sincerity is to confess that he 
makes most of us forget it 
also. 

Let us take the half-dozen 
panels which we reproduce. 
They are like pictures of 
living beings. "Waiting for 
the Head of John the Baptist " 
is a presentment of a tragic 
instance of woman's unright- 
eous influence such as few men, 
could give us. On the left of 
the picture stands Herodias, 
cruel, hard, revengeful, who 



45° 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 




TUG OF WAR. 



has just bidden her daughter ask for the 
head of John the Baptist. Herod had taken 
an oath to give her whatever she demands, 
little expecting that it would be this, and 




CROSSING THE CHANNEL. 



we see him plunged in an agony of grief, 
his face buried in his arms on the table. 
Around are guests, whose countenances 
— handsome, lifelike — are full of anxious 
curiosity. One needs only to note their 
expression to realise that the moment is 
one of pain and shame. Again, a very 
indifferent acquaintance with the circum- 
stances of the judgment of Pilate is neces- 
sary to enable us to grasp the full sig- 
nificance of " The Release of Barabbas.'' 



In the centre stands Pilate, who 
has appealed to the multitude to 
make a choice between Barabbas 
and Christ. The scoffer to-day 
describes the event as the first 
popular election, and in the selec- 
tion of the Son of God for 
punishment, and the release of 
the sinner, finds one of his texts 
for arguments against universal 
suffrage. Contemplation of this 
picture is enough to induce one 
to believe the scoffer is right. 
The smile of triumph on the 
face of Barabbas, and the beautiful 
resignation of Christ — note the 
head thrown slightly back in noble 
dignity, the eyes slightly closed 
in pained consciousness of a great 
misjudgment — are realism itself. 
If that populace had reversed their verdict, 
and Christ had been freed, whilst Barabbas 
had been led forth captive and condemned, 
there would have been no calm acceptance 
of the judgment on the one hand, nor 
sinister smile of triumph on the other. If 
any among us fails to understand the 
character of the God-Man doomed to die 
to save souls, let him look into the face 
presented to us in " The Good Shepherd," 




G. T. — HIS MUG. 



GEORGE TIN 'WORTH AND HIS WORK 



45i 



and in the central figure of " The Power 
of Light.'' Mr. Tin worth makes the ideal 
so real for us, that what has been, perhaps, 
mostly a tradition, becomes 
entirely a living fact. 
Whether it is Christ mocked 
at before Herod, or present 
at the Last Supper, declar- 
ing that one of the Apostles 
shall betray Him, or bless- 
ing the little children, Mr. 
Tinworth's conception of 
Him is, as we have said, so 
perfect in its art, that it 
never occurs to us to in- 
quire whether he is right 
in this technical detail or 
that : we think only of the 
beautiful and pathetic story. 
" The Prodigal Son " illus- 
trates one of the most 
striking parables by which 
Christ enforced His teach- 



ins;. 




MARRIAGE A FAILURE 



Like most geniuses, Mr. 
Tinworth allows himself moments of relaxa- 
tion. He possesses a vein of humour not 
less pronounced at times than his power of 
treating the grandest subjects. He seems 
very conscious of the truth of the adage 
that the ridiculous and the sublime are 
never far apart, and even in so pathetic a 
picture as " Waiting 
for the Head of 
John the Baptist," 
it will be seen he 
has introduced a 
monkey, whose ac- 
tion forms a relief 
to the sombre fea- 
tures of the picture. 
In a panel of "Daniel 
in the Lions' Den " 
a young lion stands 
on his hind legs to 
read something on 
the wall. It is 
Psalm xci. which 
says, "Thou shalt 
tread upon the lion 
and adder ; the 
young lion and the 
dragon shalt thou 
trample under foot." 
The young lion's 
concern is explic- 
able immediately, and even Daniel's peril 
for the moment cannot prevent a smile 
from the spectator. As a rule, however, Mr. 




CUTID SHARPENING HIS ARROWS, 



Tinworth's humour has found vent in the 
devising of small ornaments. He has shown 
considerable partiality for mice and frogs. 
In a characteristic piece, 
" The Tug of War," which 
we illustrate, the mice and 
frogs are striving hard foi 
the mastery. No doubt a 
good many of our readers 
have in their homes a little 
boatload of mice in Doulton 
ware, called " Cockneys at 
Brighton," in which some 
half-dozen mice are in- 
dulging in the favourite 
pastime of the Cockney at 
the seaside. One plays a 
concertina in the stern of 
the boat, and another in the 
bows hangs his head over 
the side in a dreadfully 
bilious manner. It is un- 
pleasant to have to record 
that the mice have exhi- 
bited an utter want of grati- 
tude for the immortality conferred upon 
them. Some of them recently ate away a 
portion of Mr. Tinworth's nether garments, 
and having declared war not only against 
the frogs but against the man who was 
equally fond of both, Mr. Tinworth has felt 
himself compelled to buy a mouse-trap, 
in which many of 
them play the parts 
of criminals instead 
of holiday-makers. 
A mug in Doulton 
ware contains a pro- 
file of Mr. Tin worth, 
which he facetiously 
describes as " G. T., 
his mug." In Henry 
VIII. he modelled 
in miniature, " A 
man who found 
marriage a failure, 
and liked it to be 
so." "Cupid Sharp- 
ening his Arrows " 
is a characteristic 
little piece. Mr. 
Pickwick has also 
tiken Mr. Tin- 
worth's fancy, and 
a complete set of 
/Esop's Fables is 
among his less pretentious work. 

Incomplete as this account of Mr. Tin- 
worth's work must necessarily be, enough 



452 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



has been said to explain why it is that he 
has won the praise of, and made friends 
among, the greatest of artists and art com- 
mentators and critics. Mr. Ruskin puts 
the matter with his usual brilliancy and 
force when he says : " After all the labours 
of past art on the life of Christ, here is an 
English workman fastening, with more 
decision than I recollect in any of them, on 
the gist of the sin of the Jews and their 
rulers, in the choice of Barabbas, and 
making the physical fact of contrast be- 
tween the man released and the man 
condemned clearly visible. We must re- 
ceive it, I suppose, as a flash of really 
prophetic intelligence on the question of 
universal suffrage." Working away in the 
studio which Messrs. Doulton have pro- 
vided for him at the top of their premises 
in Lambeth, — where he is shown in our 



illustration engaged on a sketch model of 
the late Professor Fawcett, — he gets many 
an inspiration. Ever since Christ disap- 
peared from the world, artists with palette 
and brush, or mallet and chisel, or moist 
clay, have sought to embody the events of 
the age in which He lived. To none has 
it been given to present pictures of the 
actors and actresses of that momentous 
time more living and vivid than those of 
Mr. Tin worth ; whilst the elucidation of 
the story of Holy Writ in its fulness is 
certainly assisted by a study of Mr. 
Tinworth's work. 

The photographs from which our illus- 
trations are reduced are by Mr. F. W. 
Edwards, 87, Bellenden-road, Peckham 
Rye, London, whose copyright they are, 
and from whom the very fine originals are 
to be obtained. 




MR. TINWORTH IN HIS STUDIO. 







NIE ARMITT. 




I. 

HE sat with her pen in her 

hand, but she could not write. 

Her heart was full of a story 

that she had heard recently 

and could not forget ; the 

story of a woman who had 
been happier than herself, and yet more 
miserable. She stared at the blank paper 
before her instead of writing, and she said 
to herself: "Why are all the chances in 
life given to those who are not fit to use 
them ? If such a love had been mine once 
I would never have let it go. There is no 
price that I would not have paid to keep 
it ; and she — she threw it away for 
vanity ! " 

The story was very real to her, because 
she loved the man who had told it, and yet 
she had taken the telling of it to mean that 
the true history of his life was over, and that 
he had no love left to give again. The 
confidence he had reposed in her had 
bee.i a compliment to her friendship, but a 
destruction of all her hopes of happiness. 
Before that confidence was made she had Her income was insufficient for herself 



thought that his feeling 
for her was as deep as 
hers for him. 

She^ had been mar- 
ried herself ; but, 
though she had had a 
husband, she had never 
known a true love. Her marriage had 
been a sacrifice, made when she was 
very young, and when she acted almost 
entirely under the influence of a selfish 
mother. Her husband proved selfish, too, 
and — which was worse in her mother's eyes 
— not so prosperous as had been imagined. 
Eleanor's life had been a hard one always, 
and now she was left alone in the world, 
except for the little two years' old baby. It 
was an ailing creature, fretful, and not 
pretty ; but it was something to hold in her 
arms, if not enough to fill her heart. She 
loved it the more passionately perhaps for 
its infirmities ; but sometimes the loneliness 
of her life overpowered her like a flood of 
bitter waters ; she wanted some mind to 
speak to, some heart to answer hers, some 
tenderness to lean upon and trust. She was 
yet but very young, only twenty-two years 
old, and all the currents of life beat stronglv 
within her ; all the imperative demands for 
love, for praise, for happiness, which make 
so large a part of our youth, were still alive 
in her heart, and would not easily be 
silenced. 



454 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



and her delicate child ; she added to it in 
many little ways, as the opportunity was 
offered to her. She had written a few short 
stories for a particular magazine which 
could not afford to number famous authors 
among its contributors, and she had been 
paid for them. An accidental meeting with 
another occasional contributor had given 
her a friend ; and Ralph Webster was at 
that time, perhaps, the only person with 
whom she was on 
terms of familiar 
friendship, and to 
whom she could 
talk on a moral 
and intellectual 
level. His sympa- 
thies and aspira- 
tions were not 
unlike her own ; 
they always un- 
derstood one 
another at least, 
even when they 
did not agree. To 
talk to him was, 
therefore, the 
opening of a new 
experience to her. 
Language had be- 
fore — at least, 
spoken language — 
been only a vehicle 
for the manage- 
ment of affairs, the 
expression of de- 
iires, the receipt of 

information. Now it served to exchange 
thought, to bring two lives into close men- 
tal relation with one another, to console, 
to suggest, to sustain. And she had thought 
he loved her. "He was a little more pros- 
perous in the world than herself, and he 
did not guess that she was so very poor ; 
but he w r as not rich enough to make her 
feel that she would take much more than 
she gave if she became his wife. They 
would work together, as they lived toge- 
ther, and loved together. She had thought, 
with others, 

" Our work shall still be better for our love, 
And still our love be sweeter for our work, 
And both commended, for the sake of each, 
By all true workers and true lovers born." 

And then he had received an appoint- 
ment to travel as special correspondent to 
a great paper, and he had come to say 
good-bye to her, and before saying good- 
bye had told her this story. She had taken 



it for a final farewell. Since his going, 
three days before, she had thought of no- 
thing else. She had work to do, but she 
could not do it. How could she throw 
herself into dream-loves and dream-troubles 
with this pain of loss and loneliness at her 
heart ? And yet the work was necessary, 
and she dared not delay it longer than that 
night. 

She had, the day before, received back 




' HE TOLD HER THIS STORY. 



from her editor a story which she had hoped 
he would accept, with the intimation that 
if she would write him one half as long, to 
be ready in two days, he would almost 
certainly take it, as he wished to fill up a 
corresponding gap in the next number of 
his magazine. 

She urgently needed the money. Her 
baby, little Lorna, was paler and thinner 
even than usual ; the doctor whom she 
consulted said that the child needed country 
air. She had hoped to earn enough money 
to take it away for some weeks to a farm- 
house, when she sent that story to the 
editor of the magazine. She must not 
lose the opportunity which he had offered 
in its place. She had thought of a plot — 
a foolish little commonplace affair — but she 
could not breathe any life into it. When 
she forced her thoughts into the necessary 
channel they flowed back again to another 
story. She saw Ralph Webster standing 



A BREACH OF CONFIDENCE. 



455 



before her ; she heard his voice again, telling 
her the simple tragedy of his life. How 
graphically he had told it, though not with 
many words ! She could fill in the details 
for herself. It was a story of true and 
patient love, and of shameful faithlessness 
and falsehood ; a story in which the wrong- 
doer pitied herself and fancied herself a 
victim, while she accepted her husband's 
sacrifice and spoilt his life. She had been 
cruel to him with the cruelty which 
demands everything, and gives less than 
nothing in return. 

" And yet," said Ralph, when he told 
the story — he had never repeated it to any 
before — "I never ceased to love her while 
she lived ; and when she died the world 
seemed empty to me. I suppose it was 
only this, that I could never take back 
what I had once given." 

There was not much in the story itself, 
but it held Eleanor's thoughts fast, and 
would not let them go ; because the love 
that had been so scorned and wasted would 
have made the happiness of her life. She 
must write her tale, but how ? She could 
not cast into its foolish incidents the burn- 
ing thoughts that possessed her ; 
these were all woven about another 
thread. And while she still 
thought, her child cried, and she 
had to leave her work to soothe it. 
She lay down on the bed beside it, 
and fell asleep. She awoke in the 
dead of the night. The anxious 
thought which watches ever beside 
the pillow of the unhappy leaped at 
once to its place in her mind, giving 
her no respite. "You must write 
your story," it said. She got up 
with the resolution of despair, and 
went back to the table. " I will 
write this" she said, " and have 
done with it." 

There was no difficulty now. 
The facts in her mind ranged them- 
selves instantly into dramatic shape ; 
living words, words that throbbed 
with her own love, and pain, and 
regret, and longing, shaped them- 
selves into eager thought. 
" When vain desire at last and vain regret, 
Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain." 

That was the burden of the 
writing, and it was a very old one ; 
but it seemed new now, because she 
wrote it with all her heart. When 
dawn broke she had eased herself of 
the phantom that had haunted her, 



and was free. How strange it is, this relief 
that comes to some of us after we have put 
into words the thoughts that torment us ! 
She was free now, and she wrote the other 
story — her tale for the magazine ; but she 
knew that it was a miserable affair. 

Lorna was worse that morning. Her 
mother took her into her arms and looked 
into her suffering face. "If I keep her 
here she will leave me too," she eaid to her- 
self. " I shall have nothing left." 

She wrapped up her manuscript and took 
it herself to the editor. She wanted to 
bring his answer back. He was, in fact, 
waiting for the story to go on printing, and 
he was willing to look at it at once. She 
sat and watched him as he did so, with very 
little hope in her face. He read it carefully 
at first, then he turned over the pages 
rapidly, and finally put the manuscript 
down. 

" I am very sorry," he said, " but it won't 
do. It isn't up to your usual level. I would 
make it do if I could, but — it isn't possible." 

"I knew," she said, "it wouldn't." 

He looked at her in surprise, for she was 
unfolding another roll of manuscript. 




THIS CAN GO TO l'KESS AT ONCE. 



456 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



"If you will look at this," she said, "you 
won't say the same." 

He took the paper and began to read 
casually ; then he became interested. He 
read to the end without speaking ; when 
he had fin'shed he rang the bell and gave 
the manuscript to the young man who 
answered his summons. " This can go to 
press at once," he said ; " you have had 
the necessary directions already." 

Eleanor half rose to her feet, and then 
sat down again. She did not utter a word. 

" You have never done anything so good," 
said the editor ; " it is an unpleasant sub- 
iect, but you have treated it cleverly, very 
cleverly." 

"I shall never 
do anything so 
good again," was 
her strange an- 
swer. " I knew 
you would take 
it. Would you 
mind paying me 
for it now ? For 
I must go into - 
the country to- 
morrow." 

He gave her 
the cheque she 
asked for, and she 
took Lorna away 
next day. 

A month after 
she saw Ralph 
Webster again. 
He had returned 
unexpectedly, 
and he sought 
her out at South- 
sea, where she 

was living with her baby. But they did not 
meet as friends ; she saw him with a shock 
of surprise, and he looked at her as she had 
never seen him look before. 

" Mrs. Wakefield," he said, " I have no 
right to follow you here, but I came to ask 
you a single question." 

She understood the situation at once, and 
was ready. " I will answer any question 
that you like to ask," she said. 

He had a magazine in his fingers, and he 
opened it at a page that she well knew. 
Were not the title letters of it, the whole 
aspect of it, burnt into her brain ? They 
were part of the crime that she felt she had 
committed. 

" There is a story here," he said, " that 
occupies a very prominent place. It is 



called ' Hand in Hand to Death.' I think 
that you wrote it." 

" Yes," said Eleanor, in a low voice 
wrote it." 

" There is no one in the world, except 
you and myself, that knows the whole of 
that story. I told it to you because I 
intended, the next time I saw you, to ask 
you to be my wife. I wanted you to have 
time to think of it first. You might not 
have liked me so well after knowing it." 

She folded her child closer in her arms, 
and bent over it, that he might not see her 
face. 

" I need not speak 






such 




to you of sucn a 
subject now. I 
know how much 
you value my 
esteem — my con- 
fidence. You have 
sold my trouble 
to the world. I 
suppose you sold 
it ? " 

" Yes," said 
Eleanor, in a still, 
strange voice ; "I 
was paid eight 
pounds for it." 
She was remem- 
bering that she 
had changed the 
first sovereign to 
purchase her rail- 
way ticket, and 
that she had 
calculated how 
many weeks it 
would keep her 
in the country. 
" I knew that a 
I loved might despise me," said 
" but I could not guess that a 
I trusted would betray me — for 
money." 

She did not answer him anything. There 
was that in his tone which made her not 
care to defend herself. She had injured 
him in a deadly and cruel manner. Let 
him say to her what he Avould. But he 
said no more ; he lifted his hat and went. 

II. 

A year after that found Ralph Webster a 
successful man. He had written a novel 
that hit the public taste ; it was full of 
bitterness and scoffing ; but the public liked 
such bitterness and scoffing, and bought 
the book. 



SAID ELEANOR, IX A LOW VOICE, I WROTE IT. 



woman 
Ralph ; 
woman 



A BREACH OF CONFIDENCE. 



457 



He wondered sometimes what had 
become of Eleanor Wakefield. There was 
no trace of her in her old lodgings, and the 
editor told him that she had sent him no 
more contributions. She had seemed to 
Ralph a noble woman, a woman whom he 
might love on an equal footing, with all 
trust and reverence, without pity or for- 
bearance. And she had failed him strangely 
and meanly, so that the sting of her offence 
had not yet left him entirely; but it troubled 
him a little to remember that she had made 
no defence. This had put him in the 
wrong, and made him wonder what her 
defence could be. 

It was in the dusk of evening that he 
stepped into a railway carriage, which had 
only one occupant. It was a third-class 
carriage, for he had not yet adopted the 
ways of a prosperous man. The lady who 
was seated at the farther end did not move 
at his entrance, and it was only when he 
had been in his place some minutes that 
something in her intense stillness attracted 
his attention. She had desired him to for- 
get her presence, or not to notice it, but the 
effort defeated itself, and his first half- 
curious, half-unconscious glance at her 
made him rise and cross to her side. 
" Mrs. Wakefield ! " he said. 
" Yes," she answered, " it is Mrs. Wake- 
field." Then she added, quietly, "I should 
like, if I may, to congratulate you on your 
great success." 

"You may spare me your congratulations. 
My success is built on my great unhappi- 
ness. None should know that better than 
you." 

"Is it not so with many people ? " she 
asked, gently, ignoring his last remark. 
" But some are unhappy without success." 

He looked at her more attentively. She 
was in mourning, and she was much 
changed. The passive attitude of her hands 
on her lap told him this, as well as the tone 
of her voice. 

" You never followed up your success," he 

remarked. " Mr. Blakely told me that he 

expected great things of you." 

She answered him nothing. 

" Mrs. Wakefield," he went on, vaguely 

hurt by her silence, which tormented him 

with an impression of his own cruelty, " I 

want to apologise to you for what I 

said when we last met. It was too much." 

"It was not too much. I have said 

more to myself before and since. And 

yet," she said, turning her eyes full upon 

him," I do not ask you to forgive me, be- 



cause I do not repent. I would do it again, 
if the past came back to me. It is right 
that you should know how evil I am. I do 
not repent. I would do it again. Yet I 
hate myself for doing it. Besides,' she 
added, in a lower tone, which she could 
hardly have meant him to hear, " it spoilt 
my happiness as well as yours." 

" I do not understand," he said. 

" Why should you understand ? " she 
answered. " It does not matter." 

The train was whirling on in the dark- 
ness. The noise of its rush, the flashing of 
lights in the city they were leaving, seemed 
to increase the solitude of these two, who 
were so near, yet so far apart ; so much akin 
in spirit, and so hopelessly estranged. 

"If it had been for fame," he said, "I 
could have understood the temptation 
better. It would have been a higher sort of 
temptation. But you did not even sign the 
story, and you have not republished it." 

"I hoped," she said, "that it would be 
little read and soon forgotten. You had 
gone away for a long time. I thought that 
you would never see it. And no one else 
could ever guess where I got it from." 

" You made it very clever," he replied. 
" I wonder, having gone so far, that you go 
no further." 

" I shall never write again," she answered. 
" I have no motive. And what I did write 
has cost me too much." 

He did not understand her ; he had not 
known of her past poverty, nor of her 
recent loss. But he went on to say, " When 
I look at you it seems impossible to believe 
that you did such a thing without a reason. 
It may have seemed a little thing to you, 
but it was so much to me." 

" I knew how much," she answered ; " I 
knew all the meanness of what I did, the 
treachery of it, and that it would hurt you 
if you knew, but I thought that you would 
never know." 

" And you did not love me," he added ; 
but he was watching her keenly as he 
spoke. 

Her eyes flashed upon him for a moment. 
"Oh," she said, "it was because I loved 
you that I could not help doing it. If I 
could have escaped from the memory of 
what you told me, and have thought of 
other things instead, it would never have 
been written. If only I could have forgotten 
you ! " 

He was startled and astonished. He 
caught her hands and then let them go 
again. 

K K 



458 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



" I wish I could believe you," he said. 

" You need not. Why should you ? " 
she answered. " I have nothing left to give 
you. What is a love worth that helped me 
to betray you ? " 

" And are you still glad you did it ? " He 
had taken her hands firmly now, that he 
might look into her eyes. There was no 
tenderness there, only a desperate heart- 
broken defiance. 

" Am I glad of anything ? Can I ever be 
glad of anything any more ? It is only that 
I would do it again for the same reason. 
And yet I did not get the thing for which I 
paid such a heavy price." 

" Will you tell me what the thing was ? " 

" It Avas only," she answered, " that I 
thought that treachery the price of my 
baby's life — and now my baby is dead." 

She drew her hands away from his as she 
spoke. There had come into her eyes a 
grief that awed and restrained him. He 
could see that it had nothing to do with 
himself. Her tone was very quiet. It 
seemed to leave him at a great distance 
from her. For a moment he felt that he 
had got his answer, and could speak of love 
to her no more in the presence of such a 



sorrow. Then his courage came back, and 
with it resolution. If he was sure enough 
of his own love for her he could not fail in 
the end to drive away both her sorrow and 
her remorse. 

" I have been cruel to you," he said ; 
" can you forgive me ? " 

"I? " she answered, tremulously ; "how 
can /forgive yon f " 

" Because I have been a fool, and quarrelled 
with my own happiness." And then he 
added, speaking slowly, " The story was a 
part of your own life. You had a right to 
do what you wished with it. At least, you 
can make it a part of your life if you will be 
more generous to me than I was to you." 

She let him take h.-r hands again. She 
looked into his eyes searchingly. What 
she saw there seemed to satisfy her, for she 
answered irrelevantly, '' Oh, I have been so 
lonely. To live in the world Avith nothing 
but myself and your contempt ! You cannot 
guess what it Avaslike." 

" Will you live in the Avorld Avith me and 
my love, and see if you like it better ? " 

She had been too long Avithout happiness 
to fight against it now, and her answer 
ended his trouble and hers. 




Lady Duffer in and the Women of India. 




HE National Association for 
Supplying Female Medical 
Aid to the Women of India 
owes its origin to a wish on 
the part of Her Majesty the 
Queen-Empress to ameliorate 
the condition of the native women of India ; 
and when Her Excellency, the Countess of 
Dufferin and Ava, before her departure for 
India, took leave of Her Majesty, the matter 
was discussed and left in Lady Dufferin's 
hands. To better hands it could not have 
been entrusted, and this noble lady adopted 
every means of ascertaining in what direc- 
tion, and by what means, the wishes of 
Her Majesty could most effectually be 
carried out. 

The universal want of skilled medical aid 
for native women, whom male physicians 
are not permitted 
to attend, pre- 
sented itself as the 
desired avenue. 
The ablest states- 
man would have 
been appalled, 
and the most 
ardent philan- 
thropist would 
have hesitated, 
before an under- 
taking so vast as 
one that had for 
its object the 
providing for the 
physical well- 
being of 100,000, 
000 women. 
Where was the 
wherewithal to 
come from, and 
how were the 
ignorance, super- 
stition, and the 
prejudices of caste 
to be overcome ? 
The " Where " 
and the "How" 
were carefully 
considered, for- 
midable obstacles 
overcome, and 

the experiment made : how well it has 
succeeded I will try to show. 

The National Association for Supplying 




From a I'lioto.by Bourne] lady dufferin. 



Medical Aid to the Women of India was 
founded in 1885. Her Majesty the Queen- 
Empress was its patron, the Governors and 
Lieutenant-Governors were vice-patrons. 
Life councillors, life members, and ordi- 
nary members were to be enrolled accord- 
ing to the amount of their donations. The 
general affairs of the Association were to be 
managed by a central committee, and efforts 
were to be made to establish branches 
throughout the country. The money sub- 
scribed to the National Association was to 
be called the " Countess of Dufferin's Fund." 
Early in the year five and a half lakhs 
of rupees were invested as an endowment 
fund, and the society was registered. By 
permission of the Home Department of 
the Government of India, the Surgeon- 
General aids the society in the selection 
of the most suit- 
able women for 
medical services, 
and they are 
grouped as fol- 
lows : — 

(1) Lady doc- 
tors registered 
under the Medical 
Acts of the 
United Kingdom 
of Great Britain 
and Ireland, or 
possessing such 
certificates as 
would entitle 
them to such 
registration. 

(2) Female as- 
sistant surgeons. 

(3) Female hos- 
pital assistants. 

The women, 
receiving a little 
more pay than 
men, in the same 
grades in the 
Government 
Medical Services, 
because they will 
have no pension, 
nor a regularly 
increasing salary. 
The lady doctors who are brought from 
England receive, in addition to their pas- 
sage and an allowance for outfit, Rs. 300 



[£ Shepherd, Calcutta. 



460 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 




1 u.n a 1'hototype by] 



THE WALTER HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN, OODEYPORE. 



\_K. Hotz. Calcutta. 



per month, with quarters, and they are 
allowed to have a private practice as well. 
The Association was to be unsectarian, 
catholic, and universal. Its aim Avas — 

Firstly. — To provide medical tuition for 
native female students. 

Secondly. — Medical relief, by establishing 
female hospitals and dispensaries, and the 
placing of lady doctors in different towns 
or districts. 

Thirdly. — Supplying trained nurses and 
accoucheuses for women and children in 
hospitals and private houses. 

How nobly — in spite of opposition and 
jealousy — the Association is steadily advanc- 
ing will be seen from the following : — 

There are thirteen lady doctors, twenty- 
seven assistant surgeons and female medical 
practitioners, now working in connection 
with the fund, and 204 pupils studying at 
the medical colleges, and schools, in India 
Boarding houses have aLo been established 
for the students, where, under a lady, they 
can be trained in habits of self-respect, 
gentleness, and dignity, and where they can 
be safely protected on their entrance into a 
comparatively public life, from one of con- 
vent-like seclusion . That the female medical 
students are doing well is conclusively 
proved by the reports. At Hyderabad, Dr. 
Lawrie says : " Two of the lady students 
beat the whole of the male students, and 
secured the first places in their class at the 
half-yearly competitive examination." 

The Nizam's Government is sending 



these two youn^ 
ladies — one of 
whom is a Parsee 
— to England to 
complete their 
medical educa- 
tion. 

Over twelve 
lakhs of rupees 
have been spent 
in the erection 
of buildings es- 
pecially adapted 
for affording 
medical relief to 
native women. 
The number of 
women who re- 
ceived medical 
aid during the 
year 1890 were 
41 1 ,000. The 
princes and chiefs 
of India from the 
first, fully recognised the value of Lady 
Dufferin"s noble work, and have warmly 
supported it. Among the most munificent 
donors are the Maharaja of Jeypore, the 
Nizam of Hyderabad, and the Maharaja of 
Ulwar. In 1886 the Begum of Bhopal 
opened a female dispensary and school, and 
the Nizam of Hyderabad founded six 
scholarships and started female medical 
classes in his State. 

In 1888 the Dufferin Hospital at Nagpur 
was opened, having costRs. 30,000, all sub- 
scribed by Indian nobles ; there is also the 
Walter Hospital at Oodeypore, the Lady 
Lyall boarding-house for students attending 
the Lahore Medical College, towards which 
the Maharaja of Kashmir gave Rs. 50,000 ; 
the Victoria Hospital at Kotah, the Lady 
Dufferin Hospital at Patiala, the Maternity 
Hospital at Agra, the Ishwari Hospital at 
Benares, and the Lady Dufferin Zenana 
Hospital at Calcutta. 

It is impossible for Englishwomen to 
realise the condition and sufferings of their 
unhappy sisters in India before Lady 
Dufferin started her grand crusade on their 
behalf ; the thousands of lives yearly sacri- 
ficed, the wholesale murder of infants, and 
the lifelong injuries inflicted on the mothers 
— who are little more than infants them- 
selves — through the ignorance and the in- 
human practices of the dhais (accoucheuses). 
Lady Dufferin, when giving me a brief 
account of her work, was anxious that I 
should mention the earlier efforts of the 



LADY DUFFER IN AND THE WOMEN OF INDIA. 



461 




From a Phototype by] 



STUDENTS AT THE CAMPBELL MEDICAL HALL, CALCUTTA. 

Zenana Mission, which, she said, " paved 
the way for the National Association." 
Instead of weakening and opposing existing 
charities and societies, the Association has 
been instrumental in assisting and stimu- 
lating them, and supplying a common 
centre of reference and communication. 

Lady Reay, during her residence in 
Bombay, rendered valuable aid in pro- 
moting the means of giving female medical 
aid to the native women ; her sympathy 
and philanthropic activity were unceasing, 
and productive 
of good results. 
The marvellous 
increase of special 
hospitals for 
women, of 
women's and of 
children's wards, 
is mostly due to 
native liberality. 
Lady Reay in 
1890 laid the 
foundation - stone 
of the " AAvabai 
Bhownaggree 
Home for 
Nurses." This 
institution — the 
first of its kind 
in India — was 
intended as a 
home where na- 
tive nurses could 

/ / om a Phototype by] 

receive instruc- class of karen pupils 



tion in their 
duties. It was 
erected from a 
joint fund set 
apart by Govern- 
ment and Mr. M. 
M. Bhownaggree, 
C. I.E., in memory 
of his sister, Miss 
Awabai Bhow- 
naggree, a beau- 
tiful and accom- 
plished Parsee 
lady, greatly es- 
teemed and much 
beloved in the 
highest and most 
select circles in 
Europe, as well 
as in her own 
country. Her 
sudden death at 
the age of nine- 
teen was regarded as a national loss. Her 
charming vivacity and high intellectual 
gifts made her a universal favourite. Dur- 
ing her last visit to England, in 1866, she 
was received by Her Majesty the Queen. 
The Home, which cost Rs. 30,000, hah 
of which was contributed by Mr. M. M. 
Bhowmaggree, was formally opened by 
His Excellency Lord Harris, on Feb- 
ruary 17, 1 89 1, and contains accom- 
modation for twenty nurses. The sani- 
tation and ventilation are perfect ; sepa- 



[R. hotz, UukuAa. 




[11. Iljtz, Calcutta. 

AT THE DUFFERIN MATERNITY HOSPITAL, RANGOON. 



462 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



rate quarters are provided for Parsees, 
Hindoos, and Mahomedans. The building 
is faced with blue stone, with dressings 
and carvings in Porebunder stone. The 
entrance portico is supported by massive 
pillars with carved capitals ; the rooms 
open out of a spacious corridor. It will 
ever remain as a touching tribute from a 
sorrowing and affectionate brother to the 
memory of a deeply loved and only sister. 
No more fitting memorial could have been 
thought of, for Miss Awabai Bhownaggree's 
short life had been one of indefatigable 
labour in promoting works of public 
charity. Thus has Lady Dufferin's Asso- 
ciation given an impetus to native efforts, 
and opened out a great field for the future. 

In spite of the deep-rooted prejudice 
against Western medical and surgical 
methods, the number of women who daily 
seek aid and relief in the hospitals, and 
from lady doctors, prove how sorely such 
aid was needed, and the need is growing ; 
more hospitals, more efficient doctors and 
nurses are required, consequently the Fund 
at the disposal of the Association must be 
correspondingly increased by annual sub- 
scriptions and donations. 

Lady Dufferin, in her interesting book, 
" A Record of Three Years' Work," men- 
tions that a mahant (a Hindu high priest) 



gave a handsome donation to the Fund, 
and also offered two scholarships for hos- 
pital assistants, two gold medals and two 
scholarships for accoucheuses. In addition 
to this he promised to pay half the salary, 
and to provide hospital accommodation, for 
an apothecary or hospital assistant, if one 
could be found to go to his native town. 

" One touch of Nature makes the whole 
world kin." This great work deserves 
national aid ; at least every woman in 
England should consider it a privilege to 
help in such a cause, and to contribute 
voluntarily some sum, however small, to- 
wards advocating " Women's Rights," not 
in the modern sense of the term, but in its 
holiest and purest meaning. 

" The right — ah, best and sweetest ! — 
To stand all undismayed, 
Whenever sorrow, want, or sin, 
Call for a woman's aid." 

The cries of suffering womanhood in 
India are loud enough to reach the hearts 
of their English sisters. Shall they remain 
unheeded ? 

To Lady Dufferin and her co-workers 
India owes an infinite debt of gratitude, 
and an everlasting memorial is raised to 
them in the hearts of those they have 
benefited, as well as those who honour and 
appreciate their unceasing efforts. 




From a Phototype by] [-K- llolz, Calcutta. 

DUFFERIN HOSPITAL (MAIN BUILDING), BAREILLY (n.W. PROVINCES). 



Told in the Studios. 

By Rita. 
STORY THE SECOND.—" CIGARETTE." 




CIGARETTE. 










T is your turn next," said 
Denis O'Hara, turning to a 
grey-bearded, middle - aged 
man, who was smoking his 
brierwood with serene and 
placid content ; "and this," 

handing him a sketch from the heap on the 

table, " this is your subject." 

The artist took it, and for some moments 

gazed quietly down at the subject it 

presented. 

Only a girl, perched in a half-defiant, 

half-coquettish attitude on a wooden table, 

a cigarette in her hand, just as if taken 

from the pretty, petulant lips, which blew 



a cloud of smoke into the laughing face of 
a young man bending over her. 

"It looks more French than English," 
said Denis, musingly ; " and the name — 
Cigarette, isn't that it, Druce ? " 

" That is the name," said Norman Druce. 
A smile, humorous and tender, played round 
his mouth, as he took out the big pipe and 
quietly filled it. " Yes," he said again, as 
he resumed his seat, " there is something 
un-English and unconventional about that 
sketch, but for all that the girl was Eng- 
lish ; and. stranger still, the daughter of a 
country clergyman." 

" That," said Jasper Trenoweth, some- 



4 6 4 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



what cynically, " might account for a good 
deal. The bow that is too tightly strung 
is always the one to rebound most fiercely." 

" She was a character in her way,'' said 
Norman Druce, musingly. " Wild, way- 
ward, impetuous, passionate ; as lovely as a 
dream, as wilful as — well, as a woman ; 
mischievous, coquettish ; yet withal so 
generous and tender-hearted ! Poor 
Cigarette ! " 

" She looks very young here," said 
. Denis. 

"She was only sixteen." He glanced at 
the sketch. "Just such a scene," he said, 
"only supplement it by some half-dozen 
young fellows in their workshop. I — I was 
one of them. We were young then, and 
poor, and sharing a joint studio in a quiet 
little country place in Devon, studying 
landscape-painting. I had been the last to 
join them. Two were personal friends ; 
the others I only knew by name. I arrived 
one summer evening ; and, leaving my 
traps at the inn, walked over to the studio, 
as arranged. It was a long, wooden 
building, lighted by two large windows, 
and had been built on to a little, rustic 
cottage, originally tenanted by an artist. I 
knocked at the door, but the noise of voices 
and laughter Avithin made my diffident 
announcement inaudible. I therefore opened 
the door, and stood for a moment un- 
observed, looking on at the scene presented. 
I never look at this sketch but it all comes 
back. A crash of chords, a medley of sounds, 
;he ringing, audacious notes of a voice 
clear and sweet as a nightingale's, a puff of 
smoke blown saucily from rosy lips, the 
mutinous flash of brown eyes, a figure 
shabbily and poorly clad, yet perfect in its 
youth and grace, and careless ease of move- 
ment — that was Cigarette, as I first saw 
her." 

" It sounds delightful," said Denis 
O'Hara. " Was she a model ? " 

" A model ! I told you she was a clergy- 
man's daughter," said Norman Druce 
indignantly. 

" And sang buffo songs ; smoked cigar- 
ettes in the company of a lot of young 
fellows, puffing smoke from rosy lips into 
their faces — well, you must allow it sounds 
a little — incompatible." 

" Oh," said Norman Druce laughing, 
" she did many worse things than that. All 
the same we adored her. She was the 
veriest incarnation of coquetry and mischief 
that ever wore the garb of woman — a sprite, 
a will-o'-the wisp, a something untamable 



and untrained, and most certainly the plague 
of my life and of many of the others for 
those six months during which we rented 
the studio. She had always been allowed 
to run wild. She had no mother, or bro- 
thers, or sisters. Her father bore a not 
very excellent character, and seemed to let 
her do just what she pleased. That, appa- 
rently, consisted in haunting the studio, 
coquetting with the artists, and spoiling 
canvas, and wasting colour in an attempt 
to produce what she termed ' novel effects ' — 
they were novel, by Jove ! — playing all sorts 
of practical jokes on us, and amusing, inter- 
esting, tormenting each and all of us just as 
the fancy took her. She was likea wild young 
colt. She respected nothing and no one. 
She would parody songs till we had to hold 
our sides for laughing, mimic her father and 
his sermons ; dance, play, sing ; in fact, her 
talents were as versatile as herself. One of 
our number, Val Beresford, alone seemed 
to dislike the girl. He was a wonderfully 
clever artist, out and out the best among 
us, excessively handsome, very ambitious, 
and very fastidious. He made no secret 
that he disliked Cigarette, though he 
laughed and teased her like the rest of us, 
as if she were some pet kitten, with claws as 
yet half sheathed and harmless. But Cigar- 
ette seemed to guess his dislike, and I 
noticed that in his presence she was always 
wilder, bolder, more fantastic and petulant 
than we ever knew her. If he admired a 
song, it was the signal for some audacious 
parody that turned it into ridicule ; if he 
praised art, she abused it ; if he spoke of the 
refinement and delicacy of womanhood, she 
would tear its idealised graces into shreds 
and tatters, and paint them with a scathing 
and bitter contempt that quite startled us. 
On no subject could they or would they 
agree ; strangely enough, too, she would 
sit for any of us with most untiring patience, 
but nothing w r ould ever induce her to do so 
for Val. One day he told her laughingly 
that, with or without her will, he intended 
to make a picture of her, and send it to the 
French Exhibition. 'You are too vivid 
and dangerous for English tastes,' he said 
teasingly. He did not notice, as he spoke, 
how white that lovely rich-hued face of hers 
became ; how swift and fierce a flash shot 
from the dark brown eyes ; so sudden, so 
tempestuous was the change that I felt 
almost frightened, though I knew her tem- 
per, and how variable were her moods. But, 
sudden as was that change, it was checked 
as suddenly. For once Cigarette did not 



TOLD IN THE STUDIOS. 



46: 




storm in anger, or lash him with her sharp 
unsparing tongue. She only turned away, 
saying very low, ' I would sooner kill you 
than let you paint me for — for exhibi- 
tion.' 

" Val only laughed, and at this time no 
more was said on the subject. I think five 
minutes afterwards the little fury was 
sitting at the piano, and giving us what she 
called ' the sense ' of that delightful song 
to Anthea, which Val used to sing so 
splendidly. I believe I can remember the 
words still : — 

' Bid me to paint, and I will paint 

A moon, or sun, or sea, 
Or dirty boys, or village joys, 

For the Acad-a-mee ; 
Or do what all have done before 

(For so doth art decree), 
That fruit and flower may have the power 

To give the lie to me ! 
Bid me to use of oil a cruse 

(Whatever that may be), 
That nature's tints I may abuse, 

For critics all to see ! 
And I will do what all will do, 

To all eterni-tee — 
And mock the praise I cannot raise 

From that Acad-a-mee. 
It is the hope of every heart 

That honours its decree ; 
But genius dwells afar apart, 

Nor there would wish to be ! ' " 



A round of laughter 
clamation, as Norman 
re-light his pipe. 

" By Jove ! " cried Denis O'Hara, 



followed this de- 
Druce paused to 



should like to 
have known that 
girl. She must 
have been a cau- 
tion ! But go on, 
old chap. It's 
getting interest- 
ing. Of course, 
he did paint 
her?" 
f:l "You know 

the sketch," said 
Norman, quietly ; 
" I don't know 
how long he was 
doing it, or when 
he managed to 
get the likeness : 
it is lifelike. We 
none of us knew 
Avhat he was 
about, Cigarette 
least of all. They 
quarrelled as 
much as ever, and 
she seemed as saucily defiant — as mischiev- 
ous and uncertain in her moods as we had 
always known her. But sometimes I thought 
I detected a change in the girl. She had 
fits of quietude, almost of sadness ; she 
seemed to take more pains with her per- 
sonal appearance, to be less random of 
speech, less bold of tongue. I was older 
and graver and steadier than the others, 
and in some vague way she seemed to trust 
me more, and be more natural with me 
than with them. I met her sometimes 
taking long, aimless walks, book in hand — 
she who used to declare she hated books, 
and would ridicule and parody the most 
sublime poem that ever was written. But 
among us all, and specially when Val 
Beresford was present, she was the same 
wild, laughing, mutinous creature we had 
grown to know so well. Time passed on ; our 
tenancy was almost over. We had painted 
and sketched our fill, and were already 
half-regretful that we must give up those 
pleasant quarters and our lazy Bohemian 
life. One night we were all sitting together 
before the fire ; it was close on Christmas, 
and the weather was cold and damp. 
Cigarette had not appeared for two or three 
days. We were wondering at her absence, 
and speculating as to her probable appear- 
ance to-night. 

" ' I hope she will come,' said Val, ' for I 
want to show you all my picture, and I 
should like her to be present.' 

L L 



466 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



" ' You don't care much for her opinion, 
surely ? ' I said. 

" ' Her opinion ? Oh, no ! ' he said, with 
a somewhat odd smile, ' I only want to 
give her a surprise.' 

" As he spoke, the door opened, and 
Cigarette appeared. She had thrown a 
scarlet cloak round her ; the hood was 
drawn over her head. Her great dark eyes 
and flushed cheeks looked out from that 
glowing frame with rare and piquant 
beauty. Val looked at her critically, as 
he had a way of looking, and I saw her 
colour deepen as she met his eyes. 

" ' Will you have me for a model ? ' she 
asked. 

" ' Thanks, no,' he said coolly, ' I've a 
good memory.' 

" With no further word he went to a 
corner of the studio, and, opening a cabinet 
there, took out a small square of canvas. 
This he placed on his easel, and turned it 
round so as to face us all. The full light 
of the swinging lamp above fell on it. 
There was a cry of wonder from us ; of 
rage and passionate indignation from the 
girl. She looked back at herself. Herself — 
to the life, with her petulant grace, and her 
flashing eyes, and her mutinous, lovely, 
riante face, and she sat there in the colour 
and life of the picture as she sits in that 
sketch, puffing a cloud of smoke into the 
face bent down to hers. It was very simple, 
but it was very lifelike and true, and the 
title, ' A Challenge,' said all that was 
needful. We burst into a chorus of praise 
and admiration. None of us had had the 
faintest idea of what Val had been doing, 
only — somehow, I looked not at the picture 
but at the original ; and I was startled to see 
the life and colour die slowly out of the girl's 
face, till it grew cold, whi f e, stern, as never 
had I dreamt it could look. She stood 
there — her breast heaving, her eyes veiled 
by their long lashes, the colour coming 
and going in her face. Val seemed some- 
what uneasy. ' Come, Cigarette,' he said, 
' don't look so angry. The others have 
painted you so often, why shouldn't I ? ' 

" She only looked at him. I — well, I've 
often wondered how he felt. How does a 
deer look wounded to death, turning its 
eyes on its hunters? Hoav might a child 
look torn from arms it loves, and seeing 
only terror and darkness around it ? So 
she looked in that brief moment between 
his question and her reply. Swift as 
thought she seized a brush lying near her. 
One fierce gesture ; one rapid sweep of the 



small, firm hand, and the face on the canvas 
was disfigured beyond all recognition ! 
None of us spoke or moved. We were too 
astonished. ' There,' she cried, throwing 
the brush at Val's feet, ' there is your 
" challenge " answered.' 

"'And rightly answered,' he said very 
quietly. ' Thank you, Cigarette, I deserve 
your rebuke ; I had no right to do it without 
your permission.' 

" He went up to the picture, and turned 
its face to the easel. 

" The girl stood there, silent and trem- 
bling, every vestige of colour gone from 
her face, as every trace of that moment's 
fiery passion had vanished in the shame and 
remorse that had followed its outbreak. 
Then, without a word, she drew the hood 
closely round her head, and turned to the 
door. She paused there for a moment and 
looked back at us. ' I came here to-night,' 
she said, ' to wish you all good-bye. I — I 
am going away to a school in London. I 
shall never see any of you again.' We 
sprang up and crowded round her. Val 
alone remained seated in the chair, smok- 
ing. One would have thought he had not 
heard her. She broke away from us with 
a sob — Cigarette, who never cried, who 
mocked at tears as something more than 
childish. Then she was gone, leaving 
us to wonder or comment as we might. 
How curiously silent Val was ; how im- 
possible we found it to draw anything 
from him that night. I remembered that 
afterwards. 

" It happened that the next morning he 
and I were the first to enter the studio. 
We had to collect our sketches and imple- 
ments, and pack our pictures. As we 
entered I saw that his picture had been 
turned again to its original position. ' Why, 
Val,' I said, ' someone has been here — look ! ' 
For on the edge of the easel lay a bunch of 
flowers, tied together by a long, soft tress 
of brown hair. He came forward and took 
them from my hand. A smile, half sad 
half tender, played around his lips. 

" ' What a child she is,' he said, ' and 
with all her wilfulness and passion, what a 
tender heart.' 

'"I am glad,' I said, 'that you do her 
justice at last. It always seemed to me that 
you have been too hard on her.' 

"He did not answer, and his lips still 
wore that musing tender smile, as he thrust 
the little bunch of flowers into the breast 
pocket of his coat. 



TOLD IN THE STUDIOS. 



467 



" Surely that is no', all/' exclaimed Denis 
O'Hara as Norman Druce leant back in his 
chair and puffed a cloud of smoke towards 
the ceiling. 

" Well," answered Druce, with an odd 
little smile, " I think there is a sequel, if 
you care to hear it.'' He rose as he spoke, 
and took down from the mantel-shelf a box 
of cigarettes, which he handed to Denis. 



" Three or four, are there not ? " he 
said ; " that's the sequel.'' 

" But — but I don't understand,'' ex- 
claimed Denis, looking somewhat be- 
wildered. 

" Don't you ? " said Druce, puffing another 
cloud of smoke from the brierwood ; " oh, 
it's very simple. He married her — after she 
left that school in London.'' 




' ONE SWEEP OF THE HAND, AND THE FACE WAS DISFIGURED. 







*f-> : o^-. $ 



HE manu- 
facture of 
f i r e w o rks 
has really 
become a 
art, and to 
spend a day at a 
factory throws 
considerable 
light as to how 
preparations are made in order to keep green 
the memory of a certain enterprising in- 
dividual whose name is inseparable from 
the 5th of November. Imagine a great 
green field of fifty acres, with a hundred 
small outhouses dotted about here and 
there, and countless tram lines in miniature, 
over which firework trucks run — such is 
the first idea of Messrs. C. T. Brock & Co.'s 
factory at South Norwood, the largest in 
the world. 



It will be as well to take shed by shed, 
and follow the making of the squib, cracker, 
Catherine-wheel, or set piece from start to 
finish. The paper is the first consideration. 
Here is the store. There are thirty tons 
inside now, and a season's manufacture 
involves the using of some 300 tons. It 
costs from £j a ton for the brown to ^50 
a ton for the best white, and this little load 
helps to make twelve million farthing, 
halfpenny, and penny goods a year. 
The wet rolling shed is a square building 
with two great stoves in the centre, which 
are connected with huge racks above con- 
taining 50,000 cases. In the winter months 
the fires are lit, and the cases go through a 
process of drying. Just at the present 
moment some 10,000 rocket cases are sus- 
pended from the roof, intended for Trinity 
House work. 

It is interesting to watch the men at 




GENERAL VIEW OF WORKS. 



FIREWORKS. 



469 



work. A good hand can roll a gross of 
cases a day — a boy industriously pasting 
the paper, which at the same time he 
energetically rolls. Here, too, the shells 
are made — great explosive balls which 
vary in diameter from three and a half 
inches to twenty-five inches. These are 
used for large Government displays and 
State occasions. The biggest of these 
will turn the scale at two and a quarter 
hundredweights, and when it bursts its 
debris covers a radius of a quarter of a 
mile from the bursting point. It costs £z,o 



left for the fuse, and then the two separate 
pieces are joined into the round with glue. 
Look in at the dry rolling shed, where 
a little army of young women are busy 
making coloured lights. They sit at slate 
tables, with paste-pot and brush handy, 
and piles of paper in front of them cut 
to a square about the size sufficient to 
hold half-an-ounce of tobacco. The thin 
rolls of paper are shaped with a steel rod, 
and are used for the great set pieces. 
A girl can roll twenty gross of cases for 
coloured lights in a day. In a corner of 




to fire one. Such a huge shell, however, has 
only been exploded on two occasions, both 
of which were at Lisbon — the first in 1886, 
when the Crown Prince of Portugal was 
married, and again on the visit of the King 
and Queen of* Sweden to the Portuguese 
capital in 1888. The 1886 display cost 
^3,500, and the fireworks were let off -on 
the River Tagus, when thirteen men-of- 
war, troopships, and hulks were called into 
service. The second display cost ^"5,000, 
and these are the two most expensive on 
record. 

Shells are made in a mould of plaster of 
Paris or metal. The two halves are manu- 
factured separately, with forty or fifty 
layers of brown paper for a medium-sized 
shell, securely pasted together. A hole is 



this room is a good lady who has made fire 
balloons for the last twenty years. She 
can turn out three a day, and when it is 
remembered that a fire-balloon stands 
14 ft. high, has a capacity for holding 
400 ft. of gas, and that no fewer than 112 
pieces of paper take part in its construction, 
we are inclined to single her out as a very 
champion of balloon-makers. 

The store-rooms of the Japanese lan- 
terns form an interesting building. Fifty 
thousand lanterns are imported from Japan 
every year, at prices ranging from a 
farthing to ten shillings each. At the 
present moment 25,000 are stored away 
in immense bins — total darkness is neces- 
sary so as to retain the colour — and we 
are assured by our guide that every one 



47° 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 




DRY ROI.I.IN'G SHED. 



of the 25,000 is of a distinctly different 
pattern ! 

The iron house which holds the charcoal 
must not be forgotten. The charcoal is 
stowed away in sacks very much resembling 
soot bags, and fifty tons are used every year. 
Charcoal, indeed, is one of the principal 
ingredients of the common firework — the 
farthing and halfpenny goods. The cheap 
squib or cracker, which the youth of the 
town delight to let off at our heels, is 
principally composed of saltpetre, sulphur, 
and charcoal. Only about twenty tons of 
gunpowder is necessary for a year's manu- 
facture, 1 nd this is only needed to lift shells 
or to make a noise. The better class of 
fireworks, known in the trade as coloured 
fireworks, are for the most part made of 
chlorate of potash, shellac, and a proportion 
of mineral salts to give the requisite colour. 

As we hasten across the field to the 
sacluded houses where the filling takes 
place we do not fail to take note of a 
huge cauldron near an immense boiler. 
The cauldron in question is the paste- 
mixing pot, and it will take a sack of 
flour to fill it. The water is poured in 
and then steam is turned on at some- 
thing like 30 lb. pressure. You could 
count in another building 1 50,000 fairy 
Jamps of every colour of the rainbow — 
violet, blue, white, green, yellow, plum, 
and ruby. The ruby glass — the most 
expensive— is made in Bohemia, and 



the other colours in France. When they 
return from giving a fairy rlike appearance 
to the trees and paths, they are washed in 
pans capable of holding 150 at a time. 
Alas ! many of these fairy lights which 
leave the place are destined never to re- 
turn. 5,000 have been broken at a single 
display, and at a recent flower show at 
Newcastle-on-Tyne, when everything was 
swept away, some 6,ooo little lamps were 
carried away by the windy weather. Just 
a little arithmetical calculation in the car- 
penters' shop, where the strips of wood 
are cut from the great planks which lie 
scattered about the place, for rockets, re- 
veals the fact that close upon a million 
strips are here, and 300 ropes of nine feet 
length, used for putting up set pieces. 

We have now reached the little houses 
where the firework cases are filled, and for 
the first time we realise the great precau- 




SAFETY BOOTS. 



FIREWORKS. 



47 ^ 



tions taken in order to ensure perfect 
safety to the workers. All persons work- 
ing in the factory are searched on entering. 
They must also wear woollen jackets from 
which the pockets are cut out and sewn 
up. They then go to their respective sheds, 
and put on a pair of huge over-all safety 
boots of brown leather of quite a fashionable 
colour, without any nails. 

The houses in which they work have 
much that is interesting about them. They 
are wooden buildings about 16 ft. long by 
12 ft. wide, and of a proportionate height. 
Small gas jets are placed outside the win- 
dows to provide light when working in the 
winter. 

The floor is covered with linoleum or 
lead, and the interiors are scrupulously 
clean. When it is mentioned that a Govern- 
ment inspector has fined the firework 
manufacturer for allowing a cobweb to be 
seen in one of these little houses, it will be 
understood how clean these places are, and 
how totally free from grit or dust. All 
girls who make fireworks, and who are 
responsible for the cleanliness of their 
dwellings, should make capital housewives. 
Every one of these sheds is licensed for the 
different operations which are carried on 
inside. 

The number of people, and the amount 
of explosive matter allowed in the building 
during the operation of filling are set forth 
on little black boards placed 
outside near the door. We 
quote the contents of one of 
these boards in order 
that it may be more 
readily understood. 

A. Filling and 
charging. Fire- 
works 50 lbs. 

Composition 2 5 
lbs. 

Number of per- 
sons, 4. 

Or— 

B. Finishing. Fire- 
works 100 lbs. 

Composition 5 lbs. 
Number of per- 
sons, 6. 
Or— 

C. Packing. Fire- 
works manufactured 
or completed 1,000 
lbs. 

Number of per- 
sons, 4. 




CHARGING SHELLS. 




CHARGING HEAVY ROCKETS, 



Of course, these rules vary in some of the 
sheds, according to the character of work 
which is carried on within. 

In one particular instance the work has 
to be so minutely done that only 30 lbs. of 
composition for fire- 
works is allowed in 
at one time, and 
only one person per- 
mitted to be inside. 

At the door of 
these buildings pails 
filled to the brim 
with water are 
placed in a handy 
position, and the 
working sheds are 
25 yards apart, and 
the magazines from 
25 to 75 yards apart. 
We now peep in- 
to some of these fire- 
work houses ; hav- 
ing put on our boots 
in order that we 
may abide by the 
rules, we enter and 
watch their tenants 
at work. 

In one shed they 
are charging rock- 



472 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 




MAKING CRACKERS. 



ets, in another heavy Government shells. 
The composition with which the firework 
is charged is first mixed in one shed, and 
brought along in a barrel carefully covered 
up. 

The workers sit before three small recep- 
tacles containing the different coloured 
compositions needed. One man has a 
small block, on which is placed the case to 
be filled. He rams the composition into 
a case with a heavy wooden rod, and then 
gives it a strong tap with a box-wood 
mallet to make the ingredients tight. It is 
then placed on one side ready to have the 
finishing touch put to it. 

The services of 
young girls are 
mostly called in- 
to requisition for 
the making of 
crackers and 
Catherine wheels. 
In the trade the 
manufacture of a 
cracker is con- 
sidered the most 
s i in pie of any 
class of fireworks. 
Little paper 
cylinders about 
the same size as 
the stem of a 
tobacco pipe art- 
filled with fine- 
grain gunpowder, 
which is then run 
through a press, 



A girl then bends the flat- 
tened paper cylinder in a 
zigzag fashion, it is passed 
on to another worker who 
ties it together, and finally 
a little piece of blue paper 
is placed on the tip, and 
the cracker is completed. 

Here they are making 
the halfpenny Catherine 
wheels. This, too, is a 
very simple process. The 
paper is taken in hand, 
in the top of which is 
placed a funnel. The 
composition is poured in, 
and, as fast as they are 
filled, away they go to 
another shed to be wound 
round a wooden disc and 
fastened by sealing-wax. 
A blue paper band pasted 
article brings about its corn- 



Roman candle is, 
elaborate. Those 
which suddenly 



round the 
pletion. 

The manufacture of a 
perhaps, a trifle more 
glorious coloured stars 
burst out upon us are little square pieces of 
composition. When a worker has taken a 
Roman candle case in hand he first puts a 
layer of powder in, then a coloured ball, or 
rather, square, followed by a fuse for slow 
burning.- until another layer of powder 
comes, and another ball, and so on to the 
end. The requisite amount of powder 
needed to throw these balls many feet into 
the air is infinitesimally small — just a tiny 




MAKING CATHERINE WHEELS. 



FIREWORKS. 



473 



scoop full, or as much as would cover a 
threepenny-piece. 

You can look into another shed, where 
they are filling the shells, many of which 
have thirty different colours and effects in 
them. Turning away from the sheds and 
the workers therein, we return to a frnge 
house where the set pieces are made. Those 
who have seen the great display at the 
Crystal Palace and other places of entertain- 
ment, cannot fail to be interested in knowing 
something of the process by which these 
immense set pieces are made. We hear 
some startling statistics as to the cost of a 
Crystal Palace display, which is about £10 
a minute. Such a display as that given 
when the Queen was proclaimed Empress 
of India at Delhi cost ^f 3,000. 

The furthest spot which Messrs. Brock & 
Co. have visited for the purpose of letting 
off fireworks was to India, in 1875, on the 
occasion of the visit of the Prince of Wales, 
when hundreds of tons of fireworks a:com- 
panied him for the displays there. 

No fewer than ten displays were given, at 
costs ranging from ^"1,000 to ^2,500 each. 
During the recent Jubilee ^250,000 was 
spent in fireworks, and it is estimated hat 
the amount of money spent on fireworks 
every 5th of November falls little short of 
^"100,000. To make a set piece depicting 
"The Battle of the Nile," which is over 
an eighth of a mile long, takes 400 gross 
of little coloured lights and 7 miles of quick- 



time in this country was 5,000, though on 
the Continent they think nothing of pro- 
viding a display of 10,000 as a bouquet of 
rockets. This is always considered the 
most important feature of a display. 

Supposing one wanted to make a set 
piece — a portrait of the Queen, for in- 
stance. The first thing to do would be to 
make an outline drawing. This is then 
divided off into small squares to a set scale. 
A huge frame of laths is then needed, 
which is divided up into convenient 
squares, some 10 ft. by 5 ft., to work on. 
The whole thing is then laid down on a 
worker takes the draw- 
out over the frame the 
features, &c, in chalk, so as to ensure 
getting a true design. Then a small gang 
of lads come along with canes for curves 
and thin laths for the straight parts. The 
whole of the head, with the crown of Her 



level floor. The 
ing and follows 





'&m&? r ^vf% & 



r 



LIVING FIREWORKS. 



match, to say nothing of half a hundred- 
weight of pins to fasten the various parts 
together. 

One learns, too, that the biggest Catherine 
wheel ever made was 100 ft. in diameter, 
and the biggest display of rockets at one 



Majesty, is now 
ready to be 
pegged — that is, 
little pegs are 
driven in at in- 
tervals of three 
inches along the 
design, and this 
having been done 
it is carried away 
to the place of 
exhibition. A 
body of men re- 
pair to the spot 
where Her Ma- 
jesty is to be seen 
in fireworks, tak- 
ing with them sufficient lances or coloured 
lights to illumine the head. These are put 
on, and at the right moment the whole 
thing is lit up. 

Perhaps the greatest curiosity of recent 
years in the way of firework displays, has 



474 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



been centred round the living fireworks. 
The "fighting cocks" greatly amused the 
Shah when he was over here, and the 
" boxing men " caused unbounded delight 
to the Emperor of Germany. However, 
whilst we were going over the premises the 
whole secret as to how they were worked 
leaked out. They are indeed living fire- 
works. Take the boxers, for instance. 
They are really two men clothed with an 
" asbestos " suit, and entirely protected from 
danger, who have fastened to one side of 
them a framework of fireworks, depicting a 
man in fighting attitude. The whole thing 
is lit up, and the brilliancy of it prevents 
the man behind being seen. He boxes away 
with his opponent, raising his hand, and 
dodging his head, and as he does so the 
frame on which the fireworks are fizzing 
necessarily does the same: 

It is precisely the same with the " fight- 
ing cocks.'' Two men work the whole 
thing, and do it in a very life - like 
manner. 



There are numerous bygone trophies of 
fireworks to be seen about the place. Here 
is a skeleton out of which every spark of 
life has vanished, the remains of a giant. 
Alas ! but a sorry sight of what his im- 
mense statue once must have been. Only 
a few strips of charred wood remain. Here 
are broken bicycles, shattered boats and 
sledges, and here in a corner are the 
original mortars used in Hyde-park in the 
great display which took place to celebrate 
the triumphant conclusion of the Crimean 
War. Mortars marked "Calcutta," "Bom- 
bay," " Delhi," reminiscences of the Prince 
of Wales' visit to the Empire, and just 
close at hand is a curious Japanese mortar 
made of bamboo, riveted together with 
wood, and wound round with cane rope. 




Portraits of Celebrities at different times of their Lives. 





From a Photo, by] age 21. [Uowend Carpenter. 



From a Photo, by] 



AGE 32. 



[Stereoscopic Co. 




--„- .,,, „„ »— , 1 1 ■ ,, ■ i.jh< 1 1 ■ «< ww m i 1 i f, 



From a Photo, by] 



[Fred. Mollyer. 




From a Photo, by] 




THOMAS HARDY. 

Born 1840. 

^HOMAS HARDY, who was born 
■~&| at a Dorsetshire village, was 



educated as an architect in his 
native place, at the same time 
giving much attention to literary 
studies. At twenty-one he came to London, 
where he continued to study design under 



Sir Arthur Blomfield, A.R.A., and modern 
languages at King's College. At twenty- 
two he gained several prizes and medals for 
designs, and also wrote much poetry which 
he never published. At thirty-one he wrote 
his first novel, " Desperate Remedies," and at 
thirty-four " Far from the Madding Crowd," 
his masterpiece, in which the humours and 
pathos of agricultural life are displayed in 
a manner which has had no equal. 



476 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



it:%\ 








From a Photo, t 

CORNEY GRAIN. 

ERE I asked to give a short, 
true, and succinct account of 
my life," says Mr. Corney Grain 
in his entertaining " Reminis- 
cences," " I should do it in the 
following manner : — 

Surname Grain. 

Christian Name... Richard Corney. 

Condition Bachelor. 

Born October 26, 1844. 

Education Average Middle Class. 

Profession i Barrister, April 30, 1866. 

" \ Entertainer, May 16, 1870." 

At the ages of our first two portraits 




Ik KM-, XT DAY. 



[Leslie Ward. 



Mr. Corney Grain was reading for the bar, 
and doing a little amateur acting and 
entertaining. At the age of the third, he 
had recently joined the German Reed's 
entertainment, with which his name has 
ever since been so pleasantly associated, 



PORTRAITS OF CELEBRITIES. 



4/7 




From a\ 



age 16. 



[Painting. 




From a} 



[Pliotoyraii.t. 



MRS. KEELEY. 




F'rom a Photo, by] 



AGE 84. 



[Messrs. Elliott fy Fry. 




JRS. KEELEY was born in Ips- 
| wich in 1806, and although she 
is now in her 85th year, has a 
fund of animal spirits and viva- 
city which the young might envy. Time 
was when she was the idol of the theatrical 
public, as she is now the idol of her numer- 
ous circle of private friends. As far back 
as 1825 she was playing Rosina at the 
Lyceum. At the Adelphi, in 1838, she 



created a sensation by her performance of 
Smike ; but the success she achieved in 
that character was eclipsed by her subse- 
quent triumph as Jack Sheppard. All 
London went to see it, and she was the 
talk of the town. Her brilliant subsequent 
career, too long for this brief memoir, in- 
cluded Betty Martin, which stands perhaps 
as the most remarkable example. The old 
lady enjoys the best of health, and her face 
is as merry and her eyes as bright as in the 
days of her youth. 



478 



THE STRAND MAGAZTNE. 



■ ■--■-,- ■--,:: "■.,?, ^T~" 




AGE 35. 

[From a Photo, by b'radelle dt Young.) 



HENRY NEVILLE 




vigour of his acting in- 
stantly attracted notice. 
He then removed to the 

Rtt T? 1 xt t> -it- From a Photo, by] AGE 3. IDunmore. / ^ 1 . , . . 

. HENRf 01ympic,wherehisappear- 

NEVILLE, the son of a success- ance as Bob Brierley in " The Ticket-of- 

ful actor, appeared on the stage Leave Man " went far to restore the fortunes 



at the early 

age of four, 
in the part of an infant 
laid alone to sleep on a 
mossy bank, but greatly 
amazed and delighted 
the spectators by get- 
ting up and dancing a 
hornpipe on his own ac- 
coixnt. In course of time, 
though his father de- 
sired him to join the 
army, he threw in his 
lot with a strolling 
company, and for some 
time learnt his art in 
the hard but excellent 
school of the provin- 
cial theatres. At 
length, at twenty-three, 
he appeared at the 
Lyceum as Percy Ardent in " The Irish 
Heiress " — a part in which the spirit and 




From a Photo. 



PRESENT DAY 



of a hitherto unlucky 
house. At thirty-six, he 
became manager of this 
theatre — the scene of 
his chief London suc- 
cesses—where his im- 
personations in " Clan- 
carty," "The Two 
Orphans," and " Buck- 
ingham," showed him 
as an actor of great 
pathos as well as vigor- 
ous action. In comedy, 
and especially as a 
stage lover, Mr. Neville 
shines above all rivals, 
and the hearty and 
genuine character of 
his acting makes him 
an ideal heroic soldier. 
For some years his 
school of dramatic art has turned out a 
succession of promising young actors. 



[Conlcy, Bo ton. 



Portraits of celebrities. 



479 





From a] 



AGE 35. 



[1'liotogra; ft. 




From a] 



[I'hotograpn. 



From a Photo, vy] PRESENT DAY. [Elliott db Fry. 



MISS CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. 

^T the age of twenty-one, Miss 
Yonge had already written 
" Abbeychurch," the first of the 
long series of novels which have 
made her name familiar to innumerable 
readers. Miss Yonge's books have done 
good, not only by their healthy moral 
teaching, but by the generous use which 
she has made of the proceeds of their sale. 




The profits of "The Heir of Redclyffe," 
Avhich was written at the age of thirty, she 
devoted chiefly to the fitting-out of the 
missionary schooner, The Southern Cross, 
for the use of Bishop Selwyn ; and the 
sum of ^"2,000, which resulted from the 
sale of " The Daisy Chain,'' to the erec- 
tion of a missionary college at Auckland. 
Miss Yonge is at present editor of The 
Monthly Packet. 



4S0 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



^S\ 




From a 1'hoto. by] age 45. [Lock tjr Whitfield, Brighton 



T0MMAS0 SALVINI. 

Born i 830. 

OMMASO SAL- 
VINI, who be- 
longed to a 
family of actors, 



m 






had gained renown as a l|i 



child-actor before he was 
fourteen ; and soon after, 
in Madame Ristori's com- 
pany, he became recognised 
as the greatest of living 
tragedians. At nineteen 




From rx I'ftnto. hv] AGE 60. {Luelltardt, Vienna. 



Itittwi. i' (urettce. 



he fought in the War of 
Independence, and was 
taken prisoner at the same 
time as his friend Garibaldi. 
Just before the age of our 
first portrait he appeared 
as Othello, with an effect 
which no one who has seen 
that wonderful impersona- 
tion will ever forget. Our 
second portrait, as Othello, 
is the only portrait of 
Salvini ever taken in 
character. 



Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. 



ADVENTURE V.— THE FIVE ORANGE PIPS. 
By A. Conan Doyle. 



s\$%\ 


w 


ftMlTJ 




fcP* 





HEN I glance over my notes 
and records of the Sherlock 
Holmes cases between the 
years '82 and '90, lam faced 
by so many which present 
strange and interesting fea- 
tures, that it is no easy matter to know 
which to choose and which to leave. Some, 
however, have already gained publicity 
through the papers, and others have not 
offered a field for those peculiar qualities 
which my friend possessed in so high a 
degree, and which it is the object of these 
papers to illustrate. Some, too, have 
baffled his analytical skill, and would be, as 
narratives, beginnings without an ending, 
while others have been but partially cleared 
up, and have their explanations founded 
rather upon conjecture and surmise than on 
that absolute logical proof which was so 
dear to him. There is, however, one of 
these last which was so remarkable in its 
details and so startling in its results, that I 
am tempted to give some account of it, in 
spite of the fact that there are points in 
connection with it which never have been, 
and probably never will be, entirely cleared 

The year 87 furnished us with a long 
series of cases of greater or less interest, of 
which I retain the records. Among my 
headings under this one twelve months, I 
find an account of the adventure of the 
Paradol Chamber, of the Amateur Mendi- 
cant Society, who held a luxurious club in 
the lower vault of a furniture warehouse, of 
the facts connected with the loss of the 
British barque Sophy Anderson, of the sin- 
gular adventures of the Grice Patersons 
in the island of Uffa, and finally of the 
Camber well poisoning case. In the latter, 
as may be remembered, Sherlock Holmes 
was able, by winding up the dead man's 
watch, to prove that it had been wound 
up two hours ago, and that therefore 
the deceased had gone to bed within 
that time — a deduction which was of the 
greatest importance in clearing up the case. 
All these I may sketch out at some future 
date, but none of them present such sin- 
gular features as the strange train of cir- 



cumstances which I have now taken up my 
pen to describe. 

It was in the latter days of September, 
and the equinoctial gales had set in with 
exceptional violence. All day the wind 
had screamed and the rain had beaten 
against the windows, so that even here in 
the heart of great, hand-made London we 
were forced to raise our minds for the instant 
from the routine of life, and to recognise 
the presence of those great elemental forces 
which shriek at mankind through the bars 
of his civilisation, like untamed beasts in a 
cage. As evening drew in the storm grew 
higher and louder, and the wind cried and 
sobbed like a child in the chimney. Sher- 
lock Holmes sat moodily at one side of the 
fireplace cross-indexing his records of crime, 
whilst I at the other was deep in one of 
Clark Russell's fine sea-stories, until the 
howl of the gale from without seemed to 
blend with the text, and the splash of the 
rain to lengthen out into the long swash of 
the sea waves. My wife was on a visit to 
her mother's, and for a few days I was a 
dweller once more in my old quarters at 
Baker-street. 

" Why," said I, glancing up at my com- 
panion, " that was surely the bell. Who 
could come to-night ? Some friend of yours, 
perhaps ? " 

" Except yourself I have none," he 
answered. " I do not encourage visitors." 

" A client, then ? " 

" If so, it is a serious case. Nothing less 
would bring a man out on such a day, and 
at such an hour. But I take it that it is 
more likelv to be some crony of the land- 
lady's." 

Sherlock Holmes was wrong in his con- 
jecture, however, for there came a step in 
the passage, and a tapping at the door. He 
stretched out his long arm to turn the lamp 
away from himself and towards the vacant 
chair upon which a new-comer must sit. 
" Come in ! " said he. 

The man who entered was young, some 
two-and-twenty at the outside, well groomed 
and trimly clad, with something of refine- 
ment and delicacy in his bearing. The 
streaming umbrella which he held in his 

MM 



482 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



hand, and his long shining waterproof told 
of the fierce weather through which he had 
come. He looked about him anxiously in 
the glare of the lamp, and I could see that 
his face was pale and his 
eyes heavy, like those of 
a man who is weighed 
down with some great 
anxiety. 

" I owe you an apo- 
logy," he -said, raising 
his golden pinccnez to 
his eyes. " I trust that 
I am not intruding. I 
fear that I have brought 
some traces of the storm 
and the rain into your 
snug chamber." 

" Give me your coat 
and umbrella," said 
Holmes. " They may 
rest here on the hook, 
and will be dry presently. 
You have come up from 
the south-west, I see." 

"Yes, from Horsham." 

" That clay and chalk 
mixture which I see upon 
your toe-caps is quite 
distinctive." 

" I have come for 
advice." 

" That is easily got." 

" And help." 

"That is not always 
so easy." 

" I have heard of you, 
Mr. Holmes. I heard from Major Pren- 
dergast how you saved him in the 
Tankerville Club Scandal." 

"Ah, of course. He was wrongfully 
accused of cheating at cards." 

" He said that you could solve any- 
thing." 

" He said too much." 

" That you are never beaten." 

" I have been beaten four times — three 
times by men, and once by a woman." 

" But what is that compared with the 
number of your successes ? " 

"It is true that I have been generally 
successful." 

" Then you may be so with me." 

" I beg that you will draw your chair up 
to the fire, and favour me with some details 
as to your case." 

" It is no ordinary one." 

" None of those which come to me are. 
I am the last court of appeal." 




HE LOOKED ABOUT HIM ANXIOUSLY. 



" And yet I question, sir, whether, in all 
your experience, you have ever listened to 
a more mysterious and inexplicable chain 
of events than those which have happened 
in my own family." 

" You fill me with 
interest," said Holmes. 
" Pray give us the 
essential facts from the 
commencement, and I 
can afterwards question 
you as to those details 
which seem to me to be 
most important." 

The young man pulled 
his chair up, and pushed 
his wet feet out towards 
the blaze. 

" My name," said he, 
" is John Openshaw, but 
my own affairs have, as 
far as I can understand 
it, little to do with this 
awful business. It is a 
hereditary matter, so in 
order to give you an idea 
of the facts, I must go 
back to the commence- 
ment of the affair. 

" You must know that 
my grandfather had two 
sons — my uncle Elias 
and my father Joseph. 
My father had a small 
factory at Coventry, 
which he enlarged at the 
time of the invention of 
bicycling. He was the patentee of the 
Openshaw unbreakable tire, and his 
business met with such success that he was 
able to sell it, and to retire upon a hand- 
some competence. 

"My uncle Elias emigrated to America 
when he was a young man, and became a 
planter in Florida, where he was reported 
to have done very well. At the time of 
the war he fought in Jackson's army, and 
afterwards under Hood, where he rose to be 
a colonel. When Lee laid down his arms 
my uncle returned to his plantation, where 
he remained for three or four years. About 
1869 or 1870 he came back to Europe, and 
took a small estate in Sussex, near Horsham. 
He had made a very considerable fortune 
in the States, and his reason for leaving 
them was his aversion to the negroes, and 
his dislike of the Republican policy in ex- 
tending the franchise to them. He was 
a singular man, fierce and quick-tem- 



ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. 



483 



pered, very foul-mouthed when he was 
angry, and of a most retiring disposition. 
During all the years that he lived at Hors- 
ham I doubt if ever he set foot in the 
town. He had a garden and two or three 
fields round his house, and there he would 
take his exercise, though very often for 
weeks on end he would never leave his 
room. He drank a great deal of brandy, and 
smoked very heavily, but he would see no 
society, and did net want any friends, not 
even his own brother. 

" He didn't mind me, in fact he took a 
fancy to me, for at the time when he saw 
me first I was a youngster of twelve or so. 
That would be in the year 1878, after he had 
been eight or nine years in England. He 
begged my father to let me live with him, 
and he was very kind to me in his way. 
When he was sober he used to be fond 
of playing backgammon and draughts with 
me, and he would make me his representa- 
tive both with the servants and with the 
tradespeople, so that by the time that I was 
sixteen I was quite master of the house. I 
kept all the keys, and could go where I 
liked and do what I liked, so long as I did 
not disturb him in his privacy. There was 
one singular exception, however, for he had 
a single room, a lumber room up among 
the attics, which was invariably locked, and 
which he would never permit either me or 
anyone else to enter. With a boy's curio- 
sity I have peeped through the keyhole, 
but I was never able to see more than such 
a collection of old trunks and bundles as 
would be expected in such a room. 

"One day — it was in March, 1883 — a 
tetter with a foreign stamp lay upon the table 
in front of the Colonel's plate. It was not a 
common thing for him to receive letters, 
for his bills were all paid in ready money, 
and he had no friends of any sort. ' From 
India ! ' said he, as he took it up, ' Pondi- 
cherry postmark ! What can this be ? ' 
Opening it hurriedly, out there jumped five 
little dried orange pips, which pattered 
down upon his plate. I began to laugh at 
this, but the laugh was struck from my lips 
at the sight of his face. His lip had fallen, 
his eyes were protruding, his skin the colour 
of putty, and he glared at the envelope 
which he still held in his trembling hand. 
'K. K. K.' he shrieked, and then, 'My 
God, my God, my sins have overtaken me.' 

" ' What is it, uncle ? ' I cried. 

" ' Death,' said he, and rising from the 
table he retired to his room, leaving me 
palpitating with horror. I took up the 



envelope, and saw scrawled in red ink 
upon the inner flap, just above the gum, 
the letter K three times repeated. There 
was nothing else save the five dried pips. 
What could be the reason of his overpower- 
ing terror ? I left the breakfast table, and 
as I ascended the stair I met him coming 
down with an old rusty key, which must 
have belonged to the attic, in one hand, and 
a small brass box, like a cash box, in the 
other. 

" ' They may do what they like, but I'll 
checkmate them still,' said he, with an oath. 
' Tell Mary that I shall want a fire in my 
room to-day, and send down to Fordham, 
the Horsham lawyer.' 

"I did as he ordered, and when the lawyer 
arrived I was asked to step up to the room. 
The fire was burning brightly, and in the 
grate there was a mass of black, fluffy ashes, 
as of burned paper, while the brass box 
stood open and empty beside it. As I 
glanced at the box I noticed, with a start, 
that upon the lid were printed the treble K 
which I had read in the morning upon the 
envelope. 

" ' I wish you, John,' said my uncle, ' to 
witness my will. I leave my estate, with 
all its advantages and all its disadvantages 
to my brother, your father, whence it will, 
no doubt, descend to you. If you can enjoy 
it in peace, well and good ! If you find 
you cannot, take my advice, my boy, 
and leave it to your deadliest enemy. I am 
sorry to give you such a two-edged thing, 
but I can't say what turn things are going 
to take. Kindly sign the paper where Mr. 
Fordham shows you.' 

" I signed the paper as directed, and the 
lawyer took it away with him. The 
singular incident made, as you may think, 
the deepest impression upon me, and I 
pondered over it, and turned it every way 
in my mind without being able to make 
anything of it. Yet I could not shake off 
the vague feeling of dread which it left 
behind it, though the sensation grew less 
keen as the weeks passed, and nothing hap- 
pened to disturb the ttsual routine of our 
lives. I could see a change in my uncle, 
however. He drank more than ever, and 
he was less inclined for any sort of society. 
Most of his time he would spend in his 
room, with the door locked upon the inside, 
but sometimes he would emerge in a sort 
of drunken frenzy, and would burst out of 
the house and tear about the garden with 
a revolver in his hand, screaming out that 
he was afraid of no man, and that he was 



4 8 4 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



not to be cooped up, like a sheep in a pen, 
by man or devil. When these hot fits were 
over, however, he would rush tumultuously 
in at the door, and lock and bar it behind 
him, like a man who can brazen it out no 
longer against the terror which lies at the 
roots of his soul. At such times I have 
seen his face, even on a cold day, glisten with 
moisture as though it were new raised from 
a basin. 

" Well, to come to an end of the matter, 
Mr. Holmes, and not to abuse your 
patience, there came a night when he made 
one of those drunken sallies from which he 
never came back. We found him, when 
we went to search for him, face 
downwards in a little green- ._ 
scummed pool, which lay at the 
foot of the garden. There was no 
sign of any violence, and the water 
was but two feet deep, so that the 
jury, having regard to his known 
eccentricity, brought in a verdict 
of suicide. But I, who knew how 
he winced from the very thought 
of death, had much ado to persuade 
myself that he had gone out of 
his way to meet it. The 
matter passed, however, and 
my father entered into 
possession of the estate, and 
of some fourteen thousand 



property, he, at my request, made a careful 
examination of the attic, which had been 
always locked up. We found the brass box 
there, although its contents had been de- 
stroyed. On the inside of the cover was a 
paper label, with the initials K. K. K. re- 
peated upon it, and ' Letters, memoranda, 
receipts, and a register ' written beneath. 
These, we presume, indicated the nature of 
the papers which had been destroyed by 
Colonel Openshaw. For the rest, there was 
nothing of much importance in the attic, 
save a great many scattered papers and 
notebooks bearing upon my uncle's life in 
America. Some of them were of the war 




>,'«!■ f 



' WE FOUND HIM FACi 



WNWARDS IN A LITTLE GREEN SCUMMED POOL. 



pounds, which lay to his credit at the 
bank." 

" One moment," Holmes interposed. 
" Your statement is, I foresee, one of the 
most remarkable to which I have ever lis- 
tened. Let me have the date of the 
reception by your uncle of the letter, and 
the date of his supposed suicide." 

"The latter arrived on March the tenth, 
1883. His death was seven weeks later, 
upon the night of the second of May." 

" Thank you. Pray proceed." 

" When my father took over the Horsham 



time, and showed that he had done his 
duty well, and had borne the repute of 
being a brave soldier. Others were of a 
date during the reconstruction of the 
Southern States, and were mostly - con- 
cerned with politics, for he had evidently 
taken a strong part in opposing the carpet 
bag politicians who had been sent down 
from the North. 

" Well, it was the beginning of '84 when 
my father came to live at Horsham, and 
all went as well as possible with us until 
the January of '85. On the fourth day 



ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. 



485 



after the New Year I heard my father give 
a sharp cry of surprise as we sat together 
at the breakfast table. There he was, sitting 
with a newly-opened envelope in one hand 
and five dried orange-pips in the out- 
stretched palm of the other one. He had 
always laughed at what he called my cock- 
and-a-bull story about the Colonel, but he 
looked very scared and puzzled now that 
the same thing had come upon himself. 

" ' Why, what on earth does this mean, 
John ? ' he stammered. 

"My heart had turned to lead. 'It is 
K. K. K.' said I. 

" He looked inside the envelope. ' So it 
is,' he cried. ' Here are the very 
letters. But what is this written 
above them ? ' 

" ' Put the papers on the sun-dial,' 
1 read, peeping over his shoulder. 

What sun-dial ? ' 



" ' What papers ? 
he asked. 

" ' The sun-dial 
There is no other, 



in the garden. 

said I ; ' but the 

be those that are de- 



papers must 
stroyed.' 

" ' Pooh ! ' said he, gripping hard 
at his courage. ' We are in 
a civilised land here, and we 
can't have tomfoolery of this 
kind. Where does the thing 
come from ? ' 

" ' From Dundee,' I an- 
swered, glancing at the 
postmark. 

'"Some preposterous prac- 
tical joke,' said he. ' What 
have I to do with sun-dials 
and papers ? I shall take no 
notice of such nonsense.' 

" ' I should certainly speak 
to the police,' I said. 

" ' And be laughed at for my pains. 
Nothing of the sort.' 

" ' Then let me do so ? ' 

" ' No, I forbid you. I won't have a fuss 
made about such nonsense.' 

" It was in vain to argue with him, for 
he was a very obst'nate man. I went 
about, however, with a heart which was full 
of forebodings. 

" On the third day after the coming of 
the letter my father went from home to visit 
an old friend of his, Major Freebody, who 
is in command of one of the forts upon 
Portsdown Hill. I was glad that he should 
go, for it seemed to me that he was further 
from danger when he was away from home. 
In that, however, I was in error. Upon the 



second day of his absence I received a tele- 
gram from the Major, imploring me to 
come at once. My father had fallen over 
one of the deep chalk-pits which abound in 
the neighbourhood, and was lying senseless, 
with a shattered skull. I hurried to him, 
but he passed away without having ever 
recovered his consciousness. He had, as it 
appears, been returning from Fareham in 
the twilight, and as the country was un- 
known to him, and the chalk-pit unfenced, 
the jury had no hesitation in bringing in a 
verdict of ' Death from accidental causes.' 
Carefully as I examined every fact con- 
nected with his death, I was unable to find 




'what on earth does this mean?" 

anything which could suggest the idea of 
murder. There were no signs of violence, 
no footmarks, no robbery, no record 01 
strangers having been seen upon the roads. 
And yet I need not tell 3'ou that my mind 
was far from at ease, and that I was well- 
nigh certain that some foul plot had been 
woven round him. 

" In this sinister way I came into my 
inheritance. You will ask me why I did . 
not dispose of it ? I answer because I was 
well convinced that our troubles were in 
some way dependent upon an incident in 
my uncle's life, and that the danger would 
be as pressing in one house as in another. 

"It was in January, '85, that my poor 
father met his end, and two years and eight 



486 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



months have elapsed since then. During 
that time I have lived happily at Horsham, 
and I had begun to hope that this curse 
had passed away from the family, and that 
it had ended with the last generation. I 
had begun to take comfort too soon, how- 
ever ; yesterday morning the blow fell in 
the very shape in which it had come upon 
my father." 

The young man took from his waistcoat 
a crumpled envelope, and, turning to the 
table, he shook out upon it five little dried 
orange pips. 

"This is the envelope," he continued. 
"The postmark is London — eastern 
division. Within are the very 
words which were upon my father's 
last message. ' K. K. K.' ; and then 
'Put the papers on the sun-dial.' " 

" What have you done ? " asked 
Holmes. 

" Nothing." 

" Nothing ? " 

" To tell the truth " — he sank his 
face into his thin, white hands — 
" I have felt helpless. I have felt 
like one of those poor rabbits when 
the snake is writhing towards it. I 
seem to be in the grasp of some 
resistless, inexorable evil, which no 
foresight and no precautions can 
guard against." 

" Tut ! Tut ! " cried Sherlock 
Holmes. " You must act, man, or 
you are lost. Nothing but energy 
can save you. This is no time for 
despair." 

" I have seen the police." 

" Ah ? " 

" But they listened to my story 
with a smile. I am convinced that 
the inspector has formed the opinion 
that the letters are all practical jokes, and 
that the deaths of my relations were really 
accidents, as the jury stated, and were not 
to be connected with the warnings." 

Holmes shook his clenched hands in the 
air. " Incredible imbecility ! " he cried. 

" They have, however, allowed me a 
policeman, who may remain in the house 
with me." 

" Has he come with you to-night ? " 

" No. His orders were to stay in the 
house. 

Again Holmes raved in the air. 

" Why did you come to me ? " he said ; 
" and, above all, why did you not come at 
once ? " 

" I did not know. It was only to-day 



that I spoke to Major Prendergast about 
my troubles, and was advised by him to 
come to you." 

"It is really two days since you had the 
letter. We should have acted before this. 
You have no further evidence, I suppose, 
than that which you have placed before 
us— no suggestive detail which might help 
us ? " 

" There is one thing," said John Open- 
shaw. He rummaged in his coat pocket, 
and, drawing out a piece of discoloured, 
blue-tinted paper, he laid it out upon the 
table. "I have some remembrance," said 




SHOOK OUT FIVE LITTLE DRIED ORANGE PIPS. 

he, " that on the day when my uncle 
burned the papers I observed that the 
small, unburn ed margins which lay amid 
the ashes were of this particular colour. 
I found this single sheet upon the floor of 
his room, and I am inclined to think that 
it may be one of the papers which has, per- 
haps, fluttered out from among the others, 
and in that way have escaped destruction. 
Beyond the mention of pips, I do not see 
that it helps us much. I think myself that 
it is a page from some private diary. The 
writing is undoubtedly my uncle's." 

Holmes moved the lamp, and we both 
bent over the sheet of paper, which showed 
by its ragged edge that it had indeed been 
torn from a book. It was headed, " March, 



ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. 



487 



1869," and beneath were the following 
enigmatical notices : — 

" 4th. Hudson came. Same old plat- 
form. 

" 7th. Set the pips on McCauley, Para- 
* more, and John Swain of St. Augus- 
tine. 

" 9th. McCauley cleared. 

" 10th. John Swain cleared. 

" 1 2th. Visited Paramore. All well." 

"Thank you ! " said Holmes, folding up 
the paper, and returning it to our visitor. 
" And now you must on no account lose 
another instant. We cannot spare time 
even to discuss what you have told me. 
You must get home instantly, and act." 

" What shall I do ? " 

" There is but one thing to do. It must 
be done at once. You must put this piece 
of paper which you have shown us into the 
brass box which you have described. You 
must also put in a note to say that all the 
other papers were burned by your uncle, 
and that this is the only one which re- 
mains. You must assert that in such words 
as will carry conviction with them. Hav- 
ing done this, you must at once put the 
box out upon the sun-dial, as directed. Do 
you understand ? " 

" Entirely." 

" Do not think of revenge, or anything 
of the sort, at present. I think that we 
may gain that by means of the law ; but 
we have our web to weave, while theirs is 
already woven. The first consideration is 
to remove the pressing danger which 
threatens you. The second is to clear up 
the mystery, and to punish the guilty 
parties." 

"I thank you," said the young man, 
rising, and pulling on his overcoat. " You 
have given me fresh life and hope. I shall 
certainly do as you advise." 

" Do not lose an instant. And, above 
all, take care of yourself in the meanwhile, 
for I do not think that there can be a doubt 
that you are threatened by a very real and 
imminent danger. How do you go back ? " 

" By train from Waterloo." 

" It is not yet nine. The streets will be 
crowded, so I trust that you may be in 
safety. And yet you cannot guard yourself 
too closely." 

" I am armed." 

"That is well. To-morrow I shall set to 
work upon your case." 

" I shall see you at Horsham, then ? " 

" No, your secret lies in London. It is 
there that I shall seek it." 



" Then I shall call upon you in a day, or 
in two days, with news as to the box and 
the papers. I shall take your advice in 
every particular." He shook hands with 
us, and took his leave. Outside the wind 
still screamed, and the rain splashed and 
pattered against the windows. This strange, 
wild story seemed to have come to us from 
amid the mad elements — blown in upon us 
like a sheet of sea-weed in a gale — and now 
to have been reabsorbed by them once 
more. 

Sherlock Holmes sat for some time in 
silence with his head sunk forward, and his 
eyes bent upon the red glow of the fire. 
Then he lit his pipe, and leaning back in 
his chair he watched the blue smoke rings 
as they chased each other up to the ceiling. 

" I think, Watson," he remarked at last, 
" that of all our cases we have had none 
more fantastic than this." 

" Save, perhaps, the Sign of Four." 

" Well, yes. Save, perhaps, that. And 
yet this John Openshaw seems to me to be 
walking amid even greater perils than did 
the Sholtos." 

" But have you," I asked, "formed any 
definite conception as to what these perils 
are ? " 

" There can be no question as to their 
nature," he answered. 

" Then what are they ? Who is this 
K. K. K., and why does he pursue this un- 
happy family ? " 

Sherlock Holmes closed his eyes, and 
placed his elbows upon the arms of his 
chair, with his finger-tips together. "The 
ideal reasoner," he remarked, "would, when 
he has once been shoAvn a single fact in all 
its bearings, deduce from it not only all 
the chain of events which led up to it, but 
also all the results which would follow from 
it. As Cuvier could correctly describe a 
whole animal by the contemplation of a 
single bone, so the observer who has 
thoroughly understood one link in a series 
of incidents, should be able to accurately 
state all the other ones, both before and 
after. We have not yet grasped the results 
which the reason alone can attain to. Pro- 
blems may be solved in the. study which 
have baffled all those who have sought a 
solution by the aid of their senses. To 
carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, 
it is necessary that the reasoner should be 
able to utilise all the facts which have come 
to his knowledge, and this in itself implies, 
as you will readily see, a possession of all 
knowledge, which, even in these days of 



488 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 




" HIS EYES BENT UPON THE GLOW OF THE FIRE. 

free education and encyclopaedias, is a some- 
what rare accomplishment. It is not so 
impossible, however, that a man should 
possess all knowledge which is likely to be 
useful to him in his work, and this I have 
endeavoured in my case to do. If I re- 
member rightly, you on one occasion, in 
the early days of our friendship, defined my 
limits in a very precise fashion." 

" Yes," I answered, laughing. "It was a 
singular document. Philosophy, Astro- 
nomy, and Politics were marked at zero, I 
remember. Botany variable, Geology pro- 
found as regards the mud-stains from any 
region within fifty miles of town, chemistry 
eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensa- 
tional literature and crime records unique, 
violin player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, 
and self-poisoner by cucaine and tobacco. 
Those, I think, were the main points of my 
analysis." 

Holmes grinned at the last item. " Well," 
he said, " I say now, as I said then, that a 
man should keep his little brain attic 
stocked with all the furniture that he is 
likely to use, and the rest he can put away 
in the lumber room of his library, where he 
can get it if he wants it. Now, for such a 
case as the one which has been submitted 
to us to-night, we need certainly to muster 



all our resources. Kindly hand me 
down the letter K of the American 
Encyclopaedia which stands upon 
the shelf beside you. Thank you. 
Now let us consider the" situation, 
and see what may be deduced from 
it. In the first place, we may start 
with a strong presumption that 
Colonel Openshaw had some very 
strong reason for leaving America. 
Men at his time of life do not change 
all their habits, and exchange wil- 
lingly the charming climate of Florida 
for the lonely life of an English 
provincial town. His extreme love 
of solitude in England suggests the 
idea that he was in fear of someone 
or something, so we may assume as 
a working hypothesis that it was 
fear of someone or something which 
drove him from America. As to 
what it was he feared, we can only 
deduce that by considering the 
formidable letters which were re- 
ceived by himself and his successors. 
Did you remark the postmarks of 
those letters ? " 

" The first was from Pondicherry, 
the second from Dundee, and the 
third from London." 

" From East London. What do you 
deduce from that ? " 

" They are all sea ports. That the writer 
was on board of a ship." 

" Excellent. We have already a clue. 
There can be no doubt that the probability 
— the strong probability — is that the writer 
was on board of. a ship. And now let us 
consider another point. In the case of 
Pondicherry seven weeks elapsed between 
the threat and its fulfilment, in Dundee it 
was only some three or four days. Does 
that suggest anything ? 

" A greater distance to travel." 
" But the letter had also a greater dis- 
tance to come." 

" Then I do not see the point." 
" There is at least a presumption that the 
vessel in which the man or men are is a 
sailing ship. It looks as if they always sent 
their singular warning or token before them 
when starting upon their mission. You see 
how quickly the deed followed the sign when 
it came from Dundee. If they had come 
from Pondicherry in a steamer they would 
have arrived almost as soon as their letter. 
But as a matter of fact seven weeks elapsed. 
I think that those seven weeks represented 
the difference between the mail boat which 



ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES. 



489 



brought the letter, and the sailing vessel 
which brought the writer." 

" It is possible." 

" More than that. It is probable. And 
now you see the deadly urgency of this 
new case, and why I urged young Open- 
shaw to caution. The blow has always 
fallen at the end of the time which it would 
take the senders to travel the distance. 
But this one comes from London, and 
therefore we cannot count upon delay." 

" Good God ! " I cried. " What can it 
mean, this relentless persecution ? " 

" The papers which Openshaw carried 
are obviously of vital importance to the 
person or persons in ths sailing ship. I 
think that it is quite clear that there must 
be more than one of them. A single man 
could not have carried out two deaths in 
such a way as to deceive a coroner's jury. 
There must" have been several in it, and 
they must have been men of resource and 
determination. Their papers they mean 
to have, be the holder of them who it may. 
In this way you see K. K. K. ceases to be 
the initials of an individual, and becomes 
the badge of a society." 

" But of what society ? " 

"Have you never — " said Sherlock 
Holmes, bending forward and sinking his 
voice — "have you never heard of the Ku 
Klux Klan ? " 

" I never have." 

Holmes turned over the leaves of the 
book upon his knee. " Here it is," said he, 
presently, " Ku Klux Klan. A name de- 
rived from a fanciful resemblance to the 
sound produced by cocking a rifle. This 
terrible secret society was formed by some 
ex-Confederate soldiers in the Southern 
States after the Civil War, and it rapidly 
formed local branches in different parts of 
the country, notably in Tennessee, Louisi- 
ana, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida. 
Its power was used for political purposes, 
principally for the terrorising of the negro 
voters, and the murdering or driving from 
the country of those who were opposed to 
its views. Its outrages were usually pre- 
ceded by a warning sent to the marked 
man in some fantastic but generally recog- 
nised shape — a sprig of oak-leaves in some 
parts, melon seeds or orange pips in others. 
On receiving this the victim might either 
openly abjure his former ways, or might fly 
from the country. If he braved the matter 
out, death would unfailingly come upon 
him, and usually in some strange and un- 
foreseen manner. So perfect was the 



organisation of the society, and so sys- 
tematic its methods, that there is hardly a 
case upon record where any man succeeded 
in braving it with impunity, or in which 
any of its outrages were traced home to the 
perpetrators. For some years the organisa- 
tion flourished, in spite of the efforts of the 
United States Government, and of the better 
classes of the community in the South. 
Eventually, in the year 1869, the movement 
rather suddenly collapsed, although there 
have been sporadic outbreaks of the same 
sort since that date." 

" You will observe," said Holmes, laying 
down the volume, "that the sudden break- 
ing up of the society was coincident with 
the disappearance of Openshaw from 
America with their papers. It may well 
have been cause and effect. It is no wonder 
that he and his family have some of the 
more implacable spirits upon their track. 
You can understand that this register and 
diary may implicate some of the first men 
in the South, and that there may be many 
who will not sleep easy at night until it is 
recovered." 

" Then the page which we have seen — " 
■" Is such as we might expect. It ran, if 
I remember right, ' sent the pips to A, B, 
and C,' — that is, sent the society's warning 
to them. Then there are successive entries 
that A and B cleared, or left the country, 
and finally that C was visited, with, I fear, 
a sinister result for C. Well, I think, 
Doctor, that we may let some light into 
this dark place, and I believe that the only 
chance young Openshaw has in the mean- 
time is to do what I have told him. There 
is nothing more to be said or to be done 
to-night, so hand me over my violin and let 
us try to forget for half an hour the miser- 
able weather, and the still more miserable 
ways of our fellow men." 

It had cleared in the morning, and the 
sun was shining with a subdued brightness 
through the dim veil which hangs over the 
great city. Sherlock Holmes was already 
at breakfast when I came down. 

" You will excuse me for not waiting for 
you," said he ; "I have, I foresee, a very 
busy day before me in looking into this case 
of young Openshaw's." 

" What steps will you take ? " I asked. 

" It will very much depend upon the 
results of my first inquiries. I may have to 
go down to Horsham after all." 

" You will not go there first ? " 

" No, I shall commence with the City. 

N N 



49Q 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 




"HOLMES.'' 1 CRIED, " YOU ARE TOO LATE." 



Just ring the bell and the maid will bring 
up your coffee." 

As I Avaited, I lifted the unopened news- 
paper from the table and glanced my eye 
over it. It rested upon a heading which 
sent a chill to my heart. 

"Holmes," I cried, "you are too late." 

" Ah ! " said he, laying down his cup, " I 
feared as much. How was it done ? " He 
spoke calmly, but I could see that he was 
deeply moved. 

" My eye caught the name of Openshaw, 
and the heading ' Tragedy near Waterloo 
Bridge.' Here is the account : ' Between 
nine and ten last night Police-constable 
Cooke, of the H Division, on duty near 
Waterloo Bridge, heard a cry for help and 
a splash in the water. The night, however, 
was extremely dark and stormy, so that, in 
spite of the help of several passers-by, it 
was quite impossible to effect a rescue. The 
alarm, however, was given, and, by the aid 
of the water police, the body was even- 
tually recovered. It proved to be that of 
a young gentleman whose name, as it 
appears from an envelope which was found 
in his pocket, was John Openshaw, and 
whose residence is near Horsham. It is 
conjectured that he may have been hurry- 
ing down to catch the last train from 



Waterloo Station, and that in his haste 
and the extreme darkness, he missed his 
path, and walked over the edge of one of 
the small landing-places for river steam- 
boats. The body exhibited no traces of 
violence, and there can be no doubt that 
the deceased had been the victim of an 
unfortunate accident, which should have 
the effect of calling the attention of the 
authorities to the condition of the riverside 
landing stages." 

We sat in silence for some minutes, 
Holmes more depressed and shaken than 
I had ever seen him. 

" That hurts my pride, Watson," he said 
at last. " It is a petty feeling, no doubt, 
but it hurts my pride. It becomes a per- 
sonal matter with me now, and, if God 
sends me health, I shall set my hand upon 
this gang. That he should come to me 
for help, and that I should send him away 

to his death ! " He sprang from his 

chair, and paced about the room in uncon- 
trollable agitation, Avith a flush upon his 
salloAv cheeks, and a nervous clasping and 
unclasping of his long, thin hands. 

"They must be cunning devils," he ex- 
claimed, at last. " Hoav could they have 
decoyed him down there ? The Embank- 
ment is not on the direct line to the station. 



ADVENTURES OE SHERLOCK HOLMES. 



491 



The bridge, no doubt, was too crowded, even 
on such a night, for their purpose. Well, 
Watson, we shall see who will win in the 
long run. I am going out now ! " 

" To the police ? " 

" No ; I shall be my own police. When 
I have spun the web they may take the 
flies, but not before." 

All day I was engaged in my professional 
work, and it was -late in the evening before 
I returned to Baker-street. Sherlock 
Holmes had not come back yet. It was 
nearly ten o'clock before he entered, look- 
ing pale and worn. He walked up to the 
sideboard, and, tearing a piece from the 
loaf, he devoured it voraciously, washing it 
down with a long draught of water. 

"You are hungry," I remarked. 

" Starving. It had escaped my memory. 
I have had nothing since breakfast." 

" Nothing ? " 

" Not a bite. I had no time to think of 
it." 

" And how have you succeeded ? " 

" Well." 

" You have a clue ? " 

" I have them in the hollow of my hand. 
Young Openshaw shall not long remain 
unavenged. Why, Watson, let us put 
their own devilish trade-mark upon them. 
It is well thought of ! " 

" What do you mean ? " 

He took an orange from the cupboard, 
and, tearing it to pieces, he squeezed out 
the pips upon the table. Of these he took 
five, and thrust them into an envelope. On 
the inside of the flap he wrote " S. H. for 
J. O." Then he sealed it and addressed 
it to "Captain James Calhoun, Barque 
Lone Star, Savannah, Georgia." 

" That will await him when he enters 
port," said he, chuckling. " It may give 
him a sleepless night. He will find it as 
sure a precursor of his fate as Openshaw 
did before him." 

" And who is this Captain Calhoun ? " 

" The leader of the gang. I shall have 
the others, but he first." 

" How did you trace it, then ? " 

He took a large sheet of paper from 
his pocket, all covered with dates and 
names. 

" I have spent the whole day," said he, 
" over Lloyd's registers and the files of the 
old papers, following the future career of 
every vessel which touched at Pondicherry 
in January and February in '83. There 
were thirty-six ships of fair tonnage which 



were reported there during those months. 
Of these, one, the Lone Star, instantly 
attracted my attention, since, although it 
was reported as having cleared from Lon- 
don, the name is that which is given to 
one of the States of the Union." 

"Texas, I think." 

" I was not and am not sure which ; but 
I knew that the ship must have an Ameri- 
can origin." 

" What then ? " 

" I searched the Dundee records, and 
when I found that the barque Lone Star 
was there in January, '85, my suspicion be- 
came a certainty. I then inquired as to 
the vessels which lay at present in the port 
of London. " 

"Yes?" 

" The Lone Star had arrived here last 
week. I went down to the Albert Dock, 
and found that she had been taken down 
the river by the early tide this, morning, 
homeward bound to Savannah. I wired 
to Gravesend, and learned that she had 
passed some time ago, and as the wind is 
easterly, I have no doubt that she is now 
past the Goodwins, and not very far from 
the Isle of Wight." 

" What will you do, then ? " 

" Oh, I have my hand upon him. He 
and the two mates are, as I learn, the only 
native born Americans in the ship. The 
others are Finns and Germans. I know 
also that they were all three away from the 
ship last night. I had it from the steve- 
dore who has been loading their cargo. 
By the time that their sailing ship reaches 
Savannah the mail-boat will have carried 
this letter, and the cable will have informed 
the police of Savannah that these three 
gentlemen are badly wanted here upon a 
charge of murder." 

There is ever a flaw, however, in the 
best laid of human plans, and the murderers 
of John Openshaw were never to receive 
the orange pips which would show them 
that another, as cunning and as resolute as 
themselves, was upon their track. Very 
long and very severe were the equinoctial 
gales that year. We waited long for news 
of the Lone Star of Savannah, but none 
ever reached us. We did at last hear that 
somewhere far out in the Atlantic, a shat- 
tered sternpost of a boat was seen swinging 
in the trough of a wave, with the letters 
" L. S." carved upon it, and that is all which 
we shall ever know of the fate of the Lone 
Star. 






London from Aloft. 




P in a balloon, boys ! " gaily 
snorts the band ; " Yah, 
ber-loon ! " howls the street- 
boy ; and every man cricks 
his neck till his hat falls off 
behind when a balloon starts 
from a public ground ; and, long after the 
aeronauts are floating in the silent softness 
above, and the bandsmen have begun 
another tune, the cricking of necks still 
goes on, and for miles below the track of 
the big silk bag people rush out of door 
and pop heads out of window, and stare till 
the diminishing brown ball vanishes in the 
clouds or becomes hidden behind tall build- 
■ ings ; whereupon necks are straightened, 
and things proceed as usual. Probably no 
single man, woman, or child who thus has 
stared at a balloon within the hundred years 
or so in which balloons have existed, but 
has longed to experience, at any rate for a 
little while, the sensation of riding on the 
air and gazing at the great world below ; 
but most haven't made the experiment, 
because balloons are wayward birds, and 
leave no man a will of his own as to the 
route— not to speak of dropping into the 
sea and bursting at an awkward moment. 
These are the reflections of 
those below, who let "I dare 
not" wait upon "I would," 
but those who know much of 
the matter know that the pro- 
portion of accidents to ascents 
is a very small one indeed, 
and little to be regarded in 
considering an ordinary trip 
on a fine day — such a trip, for 
instance, as has been again 
and again performed of late 
in Mr. Percival Spencer's 
balloon, " City of York," start- 
ing from the grounds of the 
Naval Exhibition. 

All this notwithstanding, 
there still remain those who 
will not easily be persuaded 
to practical " balloonacy " — 
as somebody calls it — and for 
the benefit of such we pro- 
ceed to make an ascent in 
Mr. Spencer's balloon, carry- 
ing, in deputy for their eye-, 
an instantaneous " Kodak " 



Slowly and tediously, in the eyes of the 
impatient passengers, the gas swells the 
great silk bag, which sways and wobbles 
the more as it fills. When at last the 
proper degree of rotundity is arrived at, the 
ring is fixed in its proper place, and the car 
is connected to the ring. We have half a 
ton of ballast in bags of fifty pounds each, 
and a basket full of lighter ballast — no 
mere uninteresting, wasteful sand with 
which to sprinkle eyes and heads below, but 
neat little circulars, conveying information 
about a particular kind of whisky to thirsty 
souls who stare upward. We have also a 
long rope with a grapnel of great spikiness, 
with which to claw hold of the sinful world 
at such time as it may seem desirable to 
alight upon it. 

These things being satisfactory, we get 
into the car with as much dignity as 
possible, in view of the popular admiration 
which surrounds us. Mr. Spencer, however, 
climbs up on to the ring, and this pro- 
ceeding attracting to him more than his 
due share of public notice, we feel resentful, 
until we reflect that, after all, the car seats 
are a good deal the safer places. Then a 
rope is slipped, and — the grounds of the 




camera. 



"our first picture": the naval exhibition grounds. 



L OND OX FR OM A L OFT. 



493 




TIIF, EMBANKMENT AND EXHIBITION GROUNDS, 



Naval Exhibition, with all the people 
thereupon, begin to sink away from under 
us. We look down upon a thousand up- 
turned faces and open mouths, and we 
press the button of the detective camera. 
Snap ! We have our first 
picture. But now that we 
look again at all those fast- 
receding people, it becomes 
plain that they cannot be 
people at all ; they are black 
cribbage pegs, stuck care- 
lessly into holes, and leaning 
in all kinds of impossible 
directions. Perhaps, how- 
ever, since they move, they 
are people after all, in which 
case the yellow ground near 
the trawler must be a skating- 
rink, and they must all be 
in the act of curling about 
on the outside edge, at 
angles portending number- 
less " howlers." For such is 
the appearance of a crowd 
from a rising balloon. 

Now the people become 
neither skaters nor cribbage 
pegs, but a larger kind of 
ant, and the Exhibition 
grounds and buildings seem 
an architect's coloured plan 



on a small scale. We find 
ourselves in a current of air 
which carries us slowly over 
the Embankment and the 
river. We have snapped the 
shutter of our camera north- 
ward, over Embankment and 
grounds ; and now, at a greater 
elevation, we turn to the 
other side, and take our third 
picture — of the river, Victoria 
Pier and two bridges, the 
dark railway bridge contrast- 
ing well with Chelsea bridge, 
glorious in white, yellow, 
and gold. But here stretches 
before us a picture which 
neither camera nor pen may 
do justice to, for London is 
all below, lying away for 
miles in every direction. 
From Richmond to the docks, 
from the Crystal Palace to 
the northern hills, the eye 
may sweep by the mere turn 
of the head ; and still we 
rise and rise. Away through 
the centre of the mighty panorama lies the 
Thames, like an inlay of shining steel, 
crossed by bridge after bridge, each growing 
narrower and blacker aw r ay toward the 
docks, where the ship-masts stand like fields 






VICTORIA PIEK AND CHELbEA liKIDGK. 



494 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 




BATTERSEA PA 



of hop-poles. We have crossed the river, 
and below us is a large green plan, traversed 
by geometrical white lines. It is Battersea 
Park. Again we reach for the camera, and 
have another picture, taking in the park 
and the river beyond, and as 
much as possible of the town 
beyond that, slightly obscured 
by light wreaths of smoke. 
And now our direction 
changes. The lower currents 
of air have been variable, and 
we have been travelling in 
a different direction to that 
taken by the clouds overhead. 
Now, however, all winds seem 
to join from the south-west, 
and we recross the river. 
Far, far away below us are 
myriad roofs — it is Pimlico — 
and of these we take a photo- 
graph, as we hang somewhere 
over Grosvenor Station, just 
before the throwing out of 
certain ballast, which causes a 
rapid ascent. The streets may 
well be recognised in the 
photograph. Stretching right 
across in an oblique direction, 
almost through the middle 
of the picture is Lupus-street. 
Crossing it may be seen 



Denbigh-street and Claverton- 
street, while, en the left, lying 
parallel, and joining Lupus- 
street at a different angle to 
Denbigh-street, are St.George's- 
road, Cambridge-street, with its 
church, Alderney-street and 
Winchester-street. Ranelagh- 
road and Rutland-street may 
be seen on the right. 

Now we rise, and the little 
white streaks, which are streets, 
grow narrower still. Travelling 
still toward the north-east, we 
attain a height of 5,000 feet — 
just about a mile. Below us 
are Vincent-square, and the 
great Millbank Prison. Here 
we expose our sixth plate. In 
the picture the strange-looking 
hexagonal star, built up of 
pentagons, is Millbank Prison ; 
Vincent-square is the dark 
patch to the left. The small 
round white things, near the 
prison, which look like iced 
birthday-cakes, are great gaso- 
meters ; to the right of the picture the 
river is seen, with Lambeth, Westminster, 
Charing Cross, and Waterloo Bridges ; the 
darker patch up the picture, on the left, 
where the smoke and mist begin to obscure 




LONDON FROM ALOFT. 



495 



detail, is St. James's Park ; on the south 
side of the river, St. Thomas's Hospital may 
be discerned, by the foot of Westminster 
Bridge ; and by the other end of the same 
bridge are the Houses of Parliament. 

We are now in the midst of such a silence 
as exists nowhere on earth. In the most 
solitary parts of the land the air is always 
filled with unnoticed sounds 
— the running, working, and 
dying of insects ; the rustle 
}f leaves or grass ; or the 
rickle and splash of water. 
Here there is nothing — abso- 
lutely nothing — for minutes 
together. One talks in order 
to make some sound and put 
an end to the odd feeling of 
soundlessness ; and the voice 
makes the surrounding still- 
ness the more intense. Then, 
perhaps, comes faintly from 
below the toot of a steam- 
tug's signal, or the muffled 
shriek of a locomotive engine ; 
and all seems stiller than 
before. 

The streets are mere alter- 
nating lines of black and 
white, and it takes a keen 
eye and a long sight to detect, 
even on the largest buildings, 
of which some sort of a side 
view is possible, the specks 
that mean doors and windows. 

The balloon has turned half round since 
starting, so that he on the seat first looking 
south now looks north, and vice versa. 
This motion, like all other motion in this 
wonderful machine which carries us where 
the wind wills, is quite imperceptible. We 
are in a perfect stillness, while clouds above 
and the earth below move this way or that, 
as may be the case. The air is not the air 
of London, but that of the Lake Country on 
a clear day — bright, clean, and fresh. And 
so we pass on, over the Houses of Parlia- 
ment, Westminster Abbey, and Bucking- 
ham Palace. 

Presently all below us grows just a little 
indistinct, as with a thin mist. At the same 
time the air grows cooler, and moist to the 
face. Above there is no blue sky — beyond 
the edge of the great gas bag it is white ; 
below it is foggier. Then all is densely 
white around, above, and below. We are 
in a cloud. 

Suddenly we bound above the cloud, and 
all is warm sunshine. Below, the thick, 



glistening, down-white clouds stretch away 
right and left in heavy folds ; and on this 
great white surface lies, twenty or thirty 
yards off, the clear, sharp-cut shadow of 
our balloon, perfect in every part. Above, 
the sky is deep and blue, flecked in a place 
or two with tiny streaks of cloud, which, 
Mr. Spencer tells us, must be 20,000 feet 




MII.I.BANK AND ITS SURROUNDINGS. 



from the earth. We ourselves have not 
quite reached 8,000 feet. 

Here we float in the great solitude, a little 
planet all by ourselves, with the blue sky 
and the sun above, and below the rolling 
clouds, which, in their season, bless and 
afflict the world far away lower still, with 
rain, hail, thunder, and lightning. It is a 
wrench to the mind at such a time as this 
to bring the thoughts back to so prosaic an 
article as a warranted detective camera 
with all the newest improvements, but it 
has to be done. For are not the readers of 
The Strand Magazine waiting to see 
what clouds are like from above ? 

We know that a photograph will not do 
justice to the splendour before us, but we 
touch the button ; and we have our seventh 
picture, shadow and all complete. 

There is a smell of gas, which is a sign 
that the balloon has attained the utmost 
height consistent with the weight it has to 
carry. Up through the opening we can see 
into the balloon above, and through this 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 






CLOUDS AND BALLOON SHADOW. 



opening hangs the cord communicating 
with the valve at top. All seen through 
this hole is a transparent yellow, where the 
bright sun shines through the silk. 

Our shadow on the clouds, which had 
been growing gradually smaller, now en- 
larges again as we fall. Soon it is nearly of 
full size, and then it becomes dim. The 
blue sky and the sun above look hazy, and 
round about Ave see and feel the cold mist. 
The shadow has vanished and we are in 
the white, moist cloud again. Down, 
down, down, although we feel it not, till 
the fog thins, becomes a mist, then a haze, 
and then vanishes, and we see mother 
earth below us again, and a white instead 
of a blue sky above. 

But where is London ? Where are the 
streets and the great buildings like pill- 
boxes, the shining river, and the bridges ? 
Gone. All below is a vast patchwork quilt 
of varying colours and texture, green and 
yellow predominating, with no two patches 
of the same size or shape. It is the open 
country away in the north-west part of 
Essex, and what we see is a smiling English 
landscape of fertile fields. That glorious 
golden yellow is corn, and in those fields 
where it reddens we can point to the more 
forward of the crops. The hedges we only 
see as a join, and not a thick nor clumsy 
join either. The white streaks with the 



easy curves are roads and 
lanes, and the dark, heavily 
piled velvet is a wood. 

We are away from under 
all clouds, and the sun shines 
gloriously over everything. 
Look below and a little for- 
ward in the direction of our 
course. A dark spot flies 
fast over the bright patch- 
work, clearer in the yellow 
and pale green, less distin- 
guishable in the heavy brown 
and the deep pile of the 
woods. It keeps exact pace 
with us, being always a little 
in front and to the right. 
It is the balloon's shadow 
again, now lying on the earth 
4,000 feet below. 

It is a magnificent map 
which lies below us ; but to 
the untrained eye all is as 
flat as in any other map, but 
the experienced Mr. Spencer 
can point out hills and high 
grounds. There is the Great 
Eastern Railway line. Follow the gravelly 
streak with the eye, and a little ahead you 
will find it looks broader. That is a cut- 
ting, consequently the ground rises there. 
Look a little further, and the line seems 
to end abruptly, beginning again a short 
distance further on. That is a tunnel, and 
we know that the rising ground has become 
a hill, and the space which breaks the line 
is the summit. Mr. Spencer can even judge 
pretty accurately, from the curves in the 
roads, where land rises and falls, and tells 
us that it is generally safe in these parts to 
assume that a long strip of uncultivated land 
marks the side of a hill. 

For some time we follow the railway — a 
beautifully clean-cut line, with here and 
there a graceful, sweeping curve. By its 
side winds the river Stort, flowing to join 
the Lea a few miles behind us. There is 
also a canal, and both canal and river are 
mere tiny trickling threads of quicksilver. 
Away to the left lies a buff-coloured road 
following the same direction as the railway, 
the canal, and the river, and all four lie like 
a loose little bunch of coloured cords. Now 
we recognise the locality. We have lately 
passed Harlow, and the two or three little 
roofs which we are leaving away on the left 
are Sawbridge worth. On we go above specks 
of villages till we pass over Bishop's Stort- 
ford — a mere little group of match boxes. 



LONDON FROM ALOFT. 



497 



On and still on, with the railway line always 
in sight ; and now we begin to fall faster, 
for a cold air-current has caused the gas to 
contract. As we come within nearer range 
we prepare to make another photograph. 
We are about to pass over a private house, 
with conservatories, stabling, and other out- 
buildings, close by where several roads 
converge. Another snap and we have 
photograph number eight. 

Now, as we near Saffron Walden, we fall 
very low indeed. That is to say, we get to 
an elevation of 500 feet, which Mr. Spencer 
calls very low, but which strikes us as quite 
long enough a fall to satisfy anybody. 
Then we get lower still, and we can see an 
intelligent peasantry dropping whatever 
they hold and starting off towards us at the 
double from all directions. Our trail-rope 
is 200 ft. long, and presently it touches. 
Then, with the relief from its weight, we 
descend slower and slower, 
then the car touches, and we 
rise with a bounce, only to 
settle down again in a minute 
or so. And so we swing 
merrily along at about twenty 
miles an hour 1 50 ft. off the 
ground, with 50 ft. of trail- 
rope behind us, which, at its 
pace, eludes every effort of 
many sons of the soil to grab 
it. With many a joyous gibe 
at the top of our voices for 
those below we sail along, and 
wonder whether they under- 
stand our airy chaff or mistake 
it for cries of distress. 

At last an agricultural gen- 
tleman in a suit of corduroy 
and clay manages to intercept 
the J-ope and catch it, with a 
yell of triumph. Mr. Spencer 
shouts to him to let go, but 
he hangs on valiantly till the 

rope goes taut, and then 

well, there is a hedge in the 
way, and for a single second 
we get a view of the soles of 
the agricultural gentleman's very large 
boots, and then he is sitting in a cabbage- 
field at the other side of the hedge, and 
wondering what that earthquake has done 
with his hat, while the rope drags away in 
the next field. 

Now we cut off a corner of Suffolk with 
our trailing rope, and pull it into Cambridge- 
shire. The wind quiets down, and we go 
at something under fifteen miles an hour, 



as the sun sinks away in the west, and the 
blue of the sky in the east deepens and 
deepens. All this time Mr. Spencer has 
regulated our height by a judicious expen- 
diture of ballast, and now we are low 
enough to hear the voices of the enthusi- 
astic populace, as they rush out of door 
with cries of " Balloon ! Balloon ! " 

Soon we go very slowly indeed, and can 
talk to the people almost as easily as from 
the top of an omnibus. One fine old 
farmer in brown gaiters attracts Mr. 
Spencer's attention, and we think to take a 
rise out of the old gentleman by asking the 
way to Newmarket. With an innocence 
which almost reconciles us to returning to 
the deceitful world again, he tells us that 
we must turn to the left ; whereupon Mr. 
Spencer — mad wag, that Mr. Spencer — 
swarms up into the ring, and, seizing the 
neck of the balloon, whirls it round with 




NORTH-EAST ESSEX — OVER THE GREAT EASTERN RAILWAY. 



great energy, and asks our friend if that is 
enough. No ; just a little more, he thinks. 
One more whirl, and then, "All right, 
cap'en, now you're right ! " What a 
delightful old gentleman ! 

But now the wind shifts, and we find, 
after all, that Newmarket is like to be our 
destination. It is about ten miles ahead, 
and as we make towards it we are confi- 
dent that the good old farmer standing 



49* 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



below will never allow any man to tell him 
that he never saw a steering balloon. 

Near Newmarket we examine the ground, 
but it is woody, and unfavourable for a 
descent ; so up we go again, brushing tree- 
tops on our way over Lord Rutland's park. 
Clear of this, we open the valve and fall 
once more. At fifty feet high out goes 
the grapnel, and is immediately surrounded 
by a score of men. And so down we come, 
fair and softly, after nearly eighty miles of 
air travelling. Mr. Spencer proceeds to 
deflate the balloon, and in this operation 
we catch him with our camera, and so take 
our very last picture of this memorable day 
— this time, however, with a full three- 
seconds exposure, for the light is not what 



it was, Then, the balloon having been 
most marvellously packed into the basket, 
we scale a cart and trot off, with many jolts 
and joggles, for Newmarket station, and 
with little love for road travelling after 
nearly four hours in the " City of York " 
balloon. And so home, as our old friend 
Pepys might have said, with much pretty 
discourse, and vowing that many things 
might be worse than an afternoon in a 
balloon ; while in time of war, when one 
might snap the merry camera on the 
wrathsome foe below in all his disposi- 
tions and devices, and in good safety drop 
the joyous bombshell upon the top of his 
hapless head — forsooth what a fine thing 
must be that ! 




Wife or Helpmeet ? 

STUDY OF A WOMAN. 
Translated from the French of Jeanne Mairet. 

[Jeanne Mairet (Madame Charles Bigot) was born at Paris, of American parents— her father being 
George P. Healy, the portrait painter — and educated partly in America and partly in France. She married a 
literary man, Professor Bigot, of the Military School of St. Cyr. Two of her tales — " Marca " and " La tache 
du petit Pierre " have been crowned by the French Academy.] 




T last, here are the sabots 
for Madame ! " 

It was quite an event. 
The lady's maid had been 
on the look-out for their 
arrival for an hour past ; 
even the cook had got interested in them ; 
Madame could scarcely contain her im- 
patience, so when her maid's cry of pleasure 
reached her, she rushed forward. What 
loves of sabots ! Ferry, the maker of 
pretty shoes for pretty feet, had surpassed 
himself. They were good enough imitations 
of wooden shoes to be mistaken for the real 
articles, only they were coquettish 
and light. Tan kid, well-stretched 
over a dainty shape, turned up at the 
tips, and delicately arched for the 
instep, fit for the dainty feet of a 
Parisian elegante. 

All the pretty '' miller's 
wife " costume spread out on 
the bed would have been 
a total failure without the 
sabots, and Madame Karl du 
Boys was determined to have 
the prettiest costume at the 
ball. This peasant ball, given 
by Madame Demol, the 
fashionable portrait painter 
— a charming woman, be- 
loved by everybody — was to 
be the event of the season in 
the world of fashion. It 
had been talked of for a 
month p ist. The studio of 
the fair artist was to be de- 
corated in a manner to sug- 
gest country life : the supper 
tables groaning under a load 
of viands whose forms at 
least would have rendered 
them appetising to a com- 
pany of peasants. That is 
to say, the ices were to be 



shaped like carrots and turnips, and the 
most exquisite dainties were to be disguised 
under rustic exteriors. The conversation 
of the guests was likewise to be borrowed 
from rural districts. All the refined circle, 
tired of the usual drawing-room correct- 
ness, promised itself enjoyment in this 
counterfeit simplicity, just as Marie An- 
toinette took pleasure in milking her cows. 
" If Madame would try on all the cos- 
tume? We cannot tell — perhaps there 
may be some- 
thing amiss here 
or there ! " 




SHE LOOKED A DAINTY MILLERS WIKE. 



^oo 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



Madame was not hard to persuade. She 
looked a dainty miller's wife, out of a comic 
opera. The bright red petticoat was very- 
short, the woollen apron draped to look 
like an overskirt, tightly drawn back and 
gathered into a large puff below the waist ; 
the enormous straw hat was furnished with a 
miniature windmill perched on the crown ; 
a fairy's flour sack slung on the shoulder, 
and the sabots — the pretty little sabots ! 
She was greatly amused to see herself thus, 
and while watching her reflection in the 
mirror, she thought of her youth, how dull 
it had been, and pitied it. 

Jeanne Reynard was only a Parisian 
since her marriage ; this will explain how it 
happened that she was now more Parisian 
than any body else. Her father, a merchant of 
Rouen, had given her a hundred thousand 
francs as dowr) , and at twenty-two she 
had been married to Karl du Boys, whom 
she had known in her childhood, under the 
name of Charles Dubois, a poor neighbour. 

The poor neighbour had become one of the 
great men of his country, and it was con- 
sidered that little Jeanne had been lucky in 
marrying him. Jeanne was now of the 
same way of thinking herself. Karl du 
Boys had made a place apart for himself in 
literature. Without being a man of genius, 
he had much talent, of the supple kind 
which lends itself easily to the popular 
vein of the moment — novelist, journalist, 
critic, historian, as the occasion suited. 
Everything he did was easy, prettily turned, 
airy, and light, and amusing. He seemed 
to be himself the incarnation of good 
humour, and at an epoch when most litera- 
ture was of a sad and depressing character, 
despairing woe forming the chief element 
both in romance and in verse, the good, 
healthy tone of Karl du Boys' writings 
brought something like a requisite consola- 
tion to the minds of the general public. 
Success flowed in on him with a rapidity 
sufficient to turn a head less solidly planted 
than Karl's, but he was wise in his intelli- 
gence ; the exaggerated eulogy which would 
have placed him on a level with writers of 
real genius he treated with a protesting 
shrug of the shoulders. He had the rare 
virtue of modesty. 

The marriage had been brought about, 
}ike many other marriages, by a train of 
circumstances rather than through any 
irresistible attraction between the two in- 
terested parties. Mother Dubois had always 
coveted little Reynard and her hundred 
thousand francs for her son : the ease, 



which had come by degrees through this 
son, had put her at last on a footing of 
equality with the Reynards ; her ambition 
stopped there. They might talk to her as 
they liked about her son being able to find 
a more brilliant match for himself in Paris 
now that his name was so often in the 
papers. She shook her head ; with a mar- 
riage like that she would have nothing to 
do. She wished, in marrying her son, to 
give him a wife of her own choosing. She 
made the first advances ; Monsieur Rey- 
nard hesitated. The merchant, who had 
gained his fortune little by little, put small 
confidence in fame so sudden and wide as 
this ; but when the young man had paid a 
visit to Rouen, and he had seen him so 
feted and coveted by other families, he de- 
cided to consult his daughter. The young 
people saw each other after a long period of 
separation, for Jeanne had been at school, and 
Karl had rarely visited Rouen. She found 
him charming ; the name which he had re- 
cast from the paternal one, and which he 
had rendered celebrated, did not displease 
her ; besides, she was wearied to death of 
her dull existence. Her mother was dead ; 
her two sisters married and far away ; her 
father, absorbed in his business, took her 
nowhere into society : and her greatest 
pleasure in life was to listen to Madame 
Dubois singing the praises of her wonderful 
son. 

Karl, when he paid that visit, had no 
intention of marrying. He was barely 
thirty, and his bachelor life in Paris in no- 
wise disagreed with his tastes. However, 
this little neighbour, whom he had dandled 
on his knees ; this young girl, whom he 
encountered in the kindly intimacy of his 
mother's house, set him dreaming of 
domestic happiness ; he never knew exactly 
how it happened, but, when he left 
Rouen, he was engaged to Mademoiselle 
Reynard, and the wedding day was set. 
He was too busy to be a very ardent lover : 
he wrote to Jeanne every week, and received 
timid little replies, which gave Jeanne an 
infinitude of trouble — to write to a novelist 
frightened her. She was greatly astonished 
to find the letters of this novelist very 
simple and natural, and as far differing as 
possible from what she imagined should be 
the style of a literary man. In point of fact, 
they knew very little of each other when 
marriage threw them into each other's 
arms. 

Karl soon became sincerely attached to 
his young wife ; there was no passion in his 



WIFE OR HELPMEET? 



501 



fondness, however ; he was absorbed in his 
work. The poetry in his composition was 
used up in the exciting scenes of his 
romances ; in real life, the middle-class 
man, fond of his ease, demanding no more 
than the comfort and peace of an affection 
which was kindly, and not too exacting, 
claimed the upper hand. He was affectionate, 
attentive, always good-humoured — the 
easiest man in the world to live with. 
Jeanne never dreamt of any cause for com- 
plaint ; she thought herself very happy, and 
if, now and again, a scarcely acknowledged 
yearning after something more came over 
her in her sadder moments, she quicklv 
reproached herself with ingratitude ; she 
compared her life of dreary dulness, as a 
young girl, with her life as a woman, and 
concluded, like her friends at Rouen, that 
she had been uncommonly lucky. 

On her first arrival in Paris, she felt at 
once that she had a great deal to learn, a 
great deal more to forget. She was 
humble and unobtrusive ; the timidity of 
the young bride from the provinces who 
felt herself strange in an unknown country 
excused her silence, while the 
vivacious intelligence in her 
eyes precluded the possibility 
of belief in her dulness. She 
studied and prepared herself ^., '■ 
that her husband should never 
have cause to blush for an 
awkwardness on her part, n ^r 
for an ignorance innocently 
displayed. Jeanne had feminine tact 
in a high degree, and an almost 
morbid fear of ridicule. 

By degrees she grew hardy ; with- 
out having really any great ori- 
ginality, she had plenty of spirited 
life and gaiety natural to her. 
People began to notice and talk 
about her ; finally, she was some- 
body. With the years, too, the well- 
being of their house was more and 
more established, and they were well 
off. At the commencement of their 
married life, the du Boys had been 
content with a suite of rooms, well 
furnished, indeed; but, after all, a 
suite like anybody else's. Karl was 
making at the rate of twenty thou- 
sand francs a year, and considered 
himself rich, and at the time when 
Madame du Boys was disguising her 
elegant, though, perhaps, rather 
slender person (she was lissom and 
graceful, however) as the miller's 



wife, for a masked ball, the suite had been 
exchanged for a delightful little house on 
the Avenue de Villiers some two years 
since. 

Jeanne, slightly dazzled, enjoyed this 
prosperity to the full. The six years of her 
married life had formed her character ; her 
timidity, which had become useless to her, 
was cast aside, like the short frocks of her 
girlhood. This life of movement, this 
life of worldly pleasure, had, by degree-, 
become necessary to her. Her husband 
had never associated her in any way 
with his work ; he had considered •her 
as a child, ignorant enough, brought up in 
the narrowing boundary of her father's com- 
mercial surroundings, without much regard 
to intellectual ideas. He had noted, with 
pleasure, that she did not lack natural in- 
telligence ; but of the changes which had 
taken place in her since her marriage he 
took very slight note, he was so fully taken 
up with his work. His study was a sacred 
place, even for his wife. Silence was a 
necessity to him, as was also complete isola- 
tion. He required a wide space to walk up 
and down in while 
he gesticulated 
wildly, in pursuit of 
a happy inspiration 
or an apt and neat 
reply. He had come 
to have whims as 




'> 



UK GESTICULATED WUDLY. 



;o2 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



to his methods of working ; his paper must 
be cut in a certain way ; the pens placed 
always in the same place ; the disorder of 
his writing-table was to be respected : all this 
was necessary, and this, the most amiable 
man in the world, would go into a temper, 
like a spoilt child, over a stroke too much or 
too little of a housemaid's feather wand. 

Thus, little by little, the lives of these 
two, who were fond of each other certainly, 
drifted apart. The worker, more and more 
absorbed, went his way ; the pleasure- 
seeker, more and more enthralled, followed 
hers. Karl was pleased at his wife's success ; 
he reposed a blind confidence in her, a hus- 
band's confidence, which, on the other hand, 
was entirely justified. He was content to 
bestow the luxury she appreciated so well ; 
he smiled with almost paternal indulgence 
at her costly toilettes, and her perfectly 
ruinous extravagances. He had no fear for 
the future : even if a child were born to 
them — that child, so hoped for at the first, 
and even yet desired, only less ardently— 
what of it ? He was still young, and capable 
of even harder toil yet ! He felt himself 
full of life and vigour, and faced the future 
with undaunted brow and smiling lips. 
The intimacy of their first years was almost 
at an end ; life .willed it so ; but they re- 
mained good friends — comrades, rather ; 
lovers by fits and starts. Never did a sharp 
word interrupt the harmony of their exist- 
ence ; they were looked upon as quite a 
model pair ; nevertheless 

Nevertheless, Jeanne more than half 
acknowledged to herself that they, unwit- 
tingly, insensibly, had taken different roads, 
and that, year by year, these roads had been 
gently but surely diverging more widely. 
Absence was no longer a thing to be dreaded ; 
they were glad to be together again, but 
they could do without each other and feel 
no discomfort ; the occupations which they 
had created for themselves almost com- 
pletely filled up their lives. Karl went into 
society with his wife when he could manage 
it ; but, oftener, he left her in the hands of 
an intimate friend, an accomplished woman 
of the world, who had formed the little pro- 
vincial dame. The theatre took up a good 
many of his evenings ; when the play 
promised to be amusing his wife accom- 
panied him, but more often he went alone. 
She did not see the fun of being bored, 
merely for the pleasure of being bored in his 
company ; besides, she had so many engage- 
ments he thought it quite natural, and did 
not feel hurt. 



The little " miller's wife,'' looking at her 
own reflection in the glass, while her maid 
altered a fold of her skirt, thought about all 
these things, and suddenly she asked her- 
self what the future had in store for her ; 
seeing far, very far off, not without secret 
terror, old age, the old age of two people 
living together, with none of those mutual 
souvenirs which render old age sweet. She 
would have liked to rush off to her husband, 
to show herself to him, make him, perhaps, 
admire and caress her a little ; she might 
force him to forget his eternal papers for a 
minute to say that he thought her pretty, 
and that he loved her ! 

But Karl had gone out. He was writing 
a great novel, on whose success he counted 
much. For one chapter of this romance 
he required to describe certain details of 
machinery in a manufactory, and one of his 
acquaintances had taken him to a large 
establishment not far from Paris. Jeanne 
was annoyed ; she was afraid that he might 
be detained, and she had set her heart on his 
accompanying her to this peasant ball. It 
was already two o'clock in the afternoon. 
Oh, if he should be detained ! 

" Make it up out of your head ; nobody 
will know the difference,"' she had said in 
the easy jargon which ca>me to her so 
readily. 

Karl had felt somewhat hurt : he prided 
himself on getting his scenes as " real " as 
possible ; by nature and education he was 
romantic, but " realism " was now fashion- 
able, and he, also, must veneer his imagi- 
nary surroundings with this " realism '' so 
much in vogue. In this frame of mind, 
then, he had gone away with his friend, 
and his parting kiss to his wife had been 
bestowed with the coldness of irritation. 

She remembered this ; before, she had 
been too much taken up with her dress to 
think about it, and now it took all the 
pleasure out of her self-admiration. 
Suddenly she heard a noise below, at the 
hall door. 

" There he is ! " she thought. 
Relieved and joyful, she amused herself 
with the idea of presenting herself before 
him in this costume, hoping only that he 
might have returned alone, and that his 
friend had not come with him. She did 
not like the friend. 

She sprang out on to the staircase and 
called him by name. Suddenly she stopped 
short, silent, holding on by the baluster ; 
her eyes starting from her head ; her face 
pale in an instant ; for there, at the entrance 



WIFE OR HELPMEET? 



5°3 




bloody spots showing here and 
there. Shuddering, she ran to 
her room, and, tearing off her 
festal rags, returned to the bed- 
side of her husband. 

That was a horrible night. 
She listened to the doctors in 
consultation, and gathered but 
one idea from them : all hope 
was not lost. Karl had awakened 
from his long faint, and heemed 
to be suffering frightfully. She 
fancied she heard him speak 
her own name, and then, for 
time, the tears came 
eyes, but only for a 
she had need of all 
control 
set ii 



A terrible 
and with it 



"carrying something which looked like a human 

of her bouse, was a mournful group of 
workmen carrying something which looked 
like a human body ; the hand hanging 
down was white like death ; the head 
covered over with a linen bandage smeared 
with blood — bright red ; and Jeanne com- 
prehended that it was her husband they 
were bringing home in this way. 

The morning friend was there, and came 
hurriedly to her, taking her hands. 

" A terrible explosion ! He is not dead — 
I swear to you, he is not dead ! " 

She took everything upon her that wr.s 
to be done. She felt as though she were 
giving her orders in some frightful dream. 
Without a cry, without a tear, she helped 
to undress her husband. Only once, when 
the handkerchief which covered his face 
was removed, she felt on the point of giving 
way. He was unrecognisable; the flesh 
was ploughed into furrows, with pieces 
hanging here and there. He had all the 
appearance of death, but the heart still 
beat. Suddenly raising her eyes, she saw 
herself in a mirror ; pale-faced, haggard- 
eyed, and her carnival dress, on which were 



the first 
into her 
minute ; 
her self- 
fever had 
came dtlirium. 

At last, after dreadful days 
and sleepless nights, they told 
her that her husband would 
not die. A momentary relaxa- 
tion of the contracted muscles 
of her face was her only sign 
of joy. The silent concentra- 
tion she displayed astonished 
everybody. She seemed to live 
only to minister to the sick 
man, like a machine working 
body." in some marvellous way. The 

doctor, who was also a friend 
of the family, was rather uneasy about 
this dumb silence in a woman usually 
so stirring, and lively, and prattling 
as Jeanne was. One day he sat down 
beside her ; and, while talking gently to 
her, going into small details of things with 
a view to interesting her and making her 
talk a little, he gave her to understand that 
the coming back to life after such an acci- 
dent was little short of a miracle. The 
explosion had been frightful. Three work- 
men had been killed on the spot, and a 
dozen others wounded. Several of these 
latter had since succumbed to their injuries. 
Karl had sustained no serious fracture, 
although his whole body had been covered 
with bruises. It was in the face that he 
had been worst attacked ; it had been 
terribly scalded by the steam — the doctor 
hesitated, and looked at the young wife. 
She caught that look, full of pity. 

" He will be disfigured for life ? " She 
spoke low. 

" We cannot tell at present ; there will 

certainly be deep scars ; but " 

< l But what, then ? " 



5°4 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



" My poor child, you will need all your 
courage, all your devotion. The sight is 
lost — at least, we fear so." 

Jeanne, who had been so brave since the 
first day ; who had excited the admiration 
of the doctors, whom she had done her 
best, so gallantly, to second in their en- 
deavours, felt all her fine courage desert 
her in an instant. She rose upright, and 
scanned the doctor's tace for one second to 
see whether this sentence was without 
appeal, then fell her full length, un- 
conscious, on the floor. 




" FF.LL UNCONSCIOUS ON THE FLOOR 

From this time forth she seemed to 
undergo a slow revolution. She measured 
her strength, and thought of the task which 
was set before her, and trembled to find it 
insufficient. It would have taken a closer 
observer than were those friends who ap- 
proached her most nearly, to discover the 
slightest change in that petite Madame du 
Boys, whose praises were in everybody's 
mouth. Her devotion was unlimited. The 
doctors were not sufficiently courageous to 
tell the sorrowful truth, themselves, to their 
patient ; and the day on which the bandage; 



were finally removed from the poor scarr.ed 
face, and Karl first realised that he was 
blind, it was she who bore the brunt of that 
first terrible explosion of despair, the 
despair of a man struck down in full career, 
a man who finds himself dead to all in- 
tents and purposes, whilst in the very midst 
of life. 

The dangerous period once past, and the 
long course of the malady established in 
all its dull monotony, the visits of the 
doctor became fewer and farther apart, and 
Jeanne was left very solitary with her sick 
husband. Life came slowly 
, r >| back to him ; he expe- 

rienced that languor 
which is the outcome of 
extreme weakness ; that 
absorbing somnolence in- 
cident to beginning ex- 
istence all over again. 
Oftenest an oppressive 
silence reigned in the 
darkened room. Jeanne, 
with idle hands in her 
lap, and wide - opened 
eyes seeing nothing they 
seemed to be looking at, 
but sending their gaze 
far, very far into that 
future which frightened 
her, would remain for 
hours without once mov- 
ing. She repeated to her- 
self, without alto- 
gether being able 
to realise it — 

"Blind! and then, 
what ? " And this 
" what ? " showed 
her such dreadful 
possibilities, that she 
shivered with ter- 
ror. What tor- 
mented her was not 
alone the thought of 
that frightful night into which a man 
of thirty-six, full of vigour, who had not 
yet even arrived at the full fruition of his 
mental strength, had been suddenly 
plunged ; that startling arrest of activity 
which had become already proverbial with 
his colleagues. No doubt, she felt great 
pity for her husband ; but there was min- 
gled with it a sort of angry irritation. If he 
had listened to her, only for once, if he 
had but indulged her feminine caprice, all 
this would never have happened ; but this 
man, who was so amiable in many ways, 



WIFE OR HELPMEET? 



would never take any advice but his own ; 
and while she pitied him, she pitied herself 
too, greatly. It was in some degree her 
husband's fault, if the artificial life she had 
been leading for the past few years had be- 
come necessary to her, and in that artificial 
life abundant means were an essential 
factor. Abundance was no longer possible. 
Several times she went all over their pretty 
hou;e, quietly, moving like a shadow, as 
though afraid to break the silence which 
now reigned throughout it. She felt the 
soft draperies, looked lovingly at the costly 
nick-nacks, and a sudden remembrance 
came to her which froze her blood. Long 
ago, in her childhood, 
she remembered once 
when her father had 
thought himself ruined, 
and, all at once, com- 
fort disappeared out of 
the house. She was 
very young at the time, 
but she seemed 
to see again 
the troubled 
face of her 
mother, wor- 
ried with the 
small contriv- 
i ngs of a 
poverty which 
would try to 
conceal itself 
under a false 
appearance of 
well-being. 
The struggle 
to make ends 
meet, the mis- 
erable meals, 
the old dresses 
made over 
again, and, 
above all, the 
melanch oly 

which brooded in moody silence over the 
house, broken only by the vexatious mur- 
murings of small cares. The amenities of 
life often followed on the heels of fortune. 

Ruin was now at her door indeed ; if not 
quite ruin, at least privation. Sitting 
beside her husband's bed, she mused 
on all these things, and, having a 
lively imagination, she saw herself in the 
depths of poverty, alone, abandoned by 
society and her friends even ; for evermore 
in the close companionship of one sad, un- 
fortunate man, whom fate compelled to 




'SITTING BESIDE HER HUSBAND 



idleness, and from whom, little by little, 
she had become detached, so to speak. She 
acknowledged this to herself in a whisper. 
In the early years of their married life she 
had asked nothing better than to love her 
husband with all her heart. She brought 
him her virgin heart, on whose purity no 
passing maiden's fancy even had ever 
traced a shadow, and he had not been able 
to estimate his prize at its full value. He 
had treated her like a child, a child to be 
indulged and gratified with toys and sweet- 
meats, and the 
gifts had gra- 
dually become 
more precious 
to her than 
the affection of 
the giver. 

Karl had 
been brought 
up in a world 
which hardly 
allows women 
to enter really 
into its fold ; 
not from want 
of affection, 
but from the 
conviction 
that, their edu- 
cation being so 
different, they 
are necessarily 
lacking in 
point of intel- 
lectual contact. 
From what- 
ever cause, 
whether a 
slovenly habit 
of thought 
with regard to 
women, or, 
perhaps, from 
a scarcely to 
be so called contempt, or that monstrously 
stupid idea that the intellectual man requires 
a reposeful corresponding inanity on the part 
of his wife, Karl had never treated Jeanne 
as a true helpmeet. Jeanne had accepted 
the place assigned to her, but not without 
always having indignantly resented it. 
Drawn irresistibly into the vortex of fashion 
— and she could find nothing to reproach 
herself for in having been so drawn ; on 
the contrary, she gloried in it ; it was a 
requisite of her highly-strung, nervous 
organisation — this resentment rarely ap- 

oo 



5HE MUSED 



THESE THINGS 



5o6 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



peared on the surface. Now that she had 
all the time to do nothing but think of 
these things, she thought about them with 
a vengeance. 

She refused to see anybody. Every day 
a small heap of cards and letters was 
brought to her, but the heap became 
smaller every day, naturally. You cannot 
force a door which remains obstinately shut ; 
but she saw abandonment in the decreasing 
pile. She was morbidly susceptible to every 
fancied slight. At the time of the accident 
the newspapers had been full of eulogies 




" SHE READ THEM JEALOUSLY." 

and articles more or less resembling obituary 
notices of Karl du Boys ; now that people 
were reassured about him, the papers wrote 
about other subjects. She read them 
jealously, every day, and when his name no 
longer appeared, she felt grieved and hurt. 
It seemed to her as though the silence of 
the tomb were round them both. 

Sometimes a bill or two would crop up 
in her pile of letters ; tradesmen demand- 
ing payment. These scented their down- 
fall, then ? Among these latter was one of 
fifty francs for the sabots — ah, the sabots ! 
That day Jeanne wept. 



The weeks dragged slowly by, and at 
length the sick man was able to get up. 
Life came back in him : one might almost 
say that the poor face, in spite of the scars, 
regained much of its .old appearance, only 
the eyes were dreadful to look upon. Karl 
remained very depressed, and absorbed in 
thoughts which might easily be read in his 
countenance. Knowing that Jeanne was 
constantly near him, taking care of him, 
reading to him aloud when he felt well 
enough to listen, all gentleness and devo- 
tion, he would have liked to thank her, but 
did not know how to set 
about doing so. With a 
sick man's sensitiveness, he 
divined the change in his 
wife. She did her duty 
courageously, but still it was 
her duty : devoted and atten- 
tive as she was, there was 
one thing which betrayed 
her, and that was her voice. 
You may train your counte- 
nance, your words, your ges- 
tures to hide the feelings, 
but the voice rebels against 
constraint, it takes its subtle 
inflexions from your inmost 
thoughts — the sweetest of 
voices may have cruel ca- 
dences, and is cold and blank 
when the heart remains un- 
responsive. The blind man, 
whose hearing was growing 
extremely sensitive, was be- 
wildered at times, trying not 
so much to understand the 
actual meaning of his wife's 
sentences, as striving to 
account for the peculiar 
intonations of her voi e. 
The financial situation, however, had to 
be faced. The expenses of the du Boys' 
housekeeping amounted to, at least, fifty 
thousand francs a year. Even by cutting 
down superfluities — the carriage from the 
livery stables, the man-servant, and a good 
many other luxuries which had become 
useless — Jeanne decided that there was no 
possible means of keeping on their house 
in the Avenue de Villiers. Karl was strongly 
opposed to this change. If he were blind, 
his brain remained intact. With a secretary 
to aid him, he could continue his work : 
not all, indeed — that part of it which 
demanded contact with active life, life out 
of doors, was now impossible. Jeanne tried 
to make him understand that it was exactly 



WIFE OR HELPMEET? 



507 



those impossible ends of the business which 
supplied their daily bread, the regular 
income which paid the monthly bills. His 
stories, it is true, had been very successful ; 
but success of this kind depended so much 
on the popular taste of the hour, and in 
her heart, Jeanne, who judged 
her husband's powers with 
a lucidity which frightened 
herself, had small faith in 
the enduring qualities of 
this kind of success. Mean- 
time, the long illness had 
been expensive ; all their 
small stock of savings had 
been swallowed up by it. 

Jeanne took a sort of 
savage pleasure in despoiling 
herself of the luxuries which 
had been hitherto her every- 
day necessities ; her happi- 
ness had been bound up in 
them. She made all the 
arrangements ; decided for 
both as to their future mode 
of living ; and Karl, after the 
first resistance, let her do as 
she pleased. She found a 
suite of rooms at a modest 
rent, and fixed the day of 
their taking possession. 

All these multifarious occupations left 
her little time to spend with her husband. 
He, nearly recovered now, consented to 
see some of his friends, but all the spirit 
had gone out of him ; this man, who had 
formerly been so light-hearted, stirring, and 
gay and active, seemed plunged in a sort of 
painful stupor. One eye was entirely lost, 
but, contrary to all expectations, the other 
eye retained a feeble amount of its seeing 
power. Karl could distinguish the general 
outline of objects in his immediate vicinity. 
He could go about by himself from one 
room to another, but this piece of unhoped- 
for good fortune did not seem to cheer him 
much ; so long as he found it impossible to 
write, everything else was a matter of perfect 
indifference to him. 

Often he would remain for hours toge- 
ther, scarcely budging, refusing admittance 
to everybody, asking only to be left alone 
in his silent isolation. He was trying to 
recover his old powers — seeking ideas for a 
story, striving to depict a scene of his novel, 
but all his efforts were without result, the 
stupor had chained his brain as well as his 
body, and he could find nothing — nothing. 
The night was round about him, sad and 




WITHOUT HOPE FOR THE MORROW. 



dark, without hope for the morrow, and 
while he mourned his loss as an author, his 
heart as a man was frozen by the maddening, 
gentle coldness of his wife. Their intimate 
relationship was becoming almost embarras- 
sing ; he no longer knew what to say to 
her. Quite shocked, he asked himself how 
they had arrived at such a point, but he could 
find no solution of the mystery. The 
future frightened him, with the tormenting 
dread of a nightmare. 

Three months after the accident, the du 
Boys were installed on the fourth story of 
a large house on the Quai de la Tournelle. 
The house was cold and old, with a wide 
staircase, and vast, high rooms, whose ceil- 
ings were upheld by enormous joists. Red 
tiles replaced the glancing waxed floors 
they were accustomed to ; and on the 
whole, it was not very accommodating, but, 
at least, there was room for their books, 
which was very essential, and the rent was 
low, which was even more essential still. 

Great catastrophes have their smaller 
sides. Everyday cares deduct in some 
measure from heroic misfortune, and pre- 
vent the victims from losing themselves 
altogether in the contemplation of their 



;o8 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



own troubles ; happy for us that it is so. 
Jeanne, obliged to plan and calculate, to 
exert herself, indeed, to the utmost, was 
too tired when she could claim a moment's 
repose, to realise fully all the change that 
had come into her life ; but when all was 
finished, and their future arranged in all its 
undoubted monotony ; when this wedded 
pair settled down to an unending com- 
panionship, what should have constituted 
the supreme happiness of this woman 
became an insupportable torment. 

One day their solitude was broken in 
upon by a friend, the society dame under 
whose auspices Jeanne had made her debut 
in the Parisian world. Her daughter was 
going to be married, and she was giving a 
grand party on the occasion of the signing 
of the contract. She insisted on having 
Jeanne at this great function. " The poor 
child was killing herself." She believed in 
conjugal devotion ; but one might have too 
much of that sort of thing. A -pretty benefit 
she was doing her husband by killing her- 
self, all through taking too much care of 
him. Karl prayed Jeanne 
to accept the invitation. "He 
was very well now, and she 
required some recreation." 
She fancied he showed a kind 
of satisfaction in the thought 
of passing a whole evening 
without her company — one 
word would have held her ; 
but he insisted, and she ac- 
cepted. Karl thought she 
was not very difficult to per- 
suade. 

Jeanne felt out of place in 
the midst of this world of 
society, by which, however, 
her appearance was hailed 
with pleasure. She saw 
more curiosity than good 
feeling in the attitude of her 
old friends, who lavished 
their attentions upon her. 
Time passes quickly in Paris ; 
there were those there who, 
not calculating how many 
months had elapsed since the 
accident, looked upon her 
almost in the light of a 
woman who was neglecting 
her duty to her sick husband. Several 
times she was on the point of bursting into 
tears when someone asked her about him. 

She stole away early, tortured by remorse, 
tormented also by a vague feeling which 



was gradually becoming more definite to 
her. Her place was no longer with those 
who live only for amusement, to whom life 
is one long carnival. Before her rose her 
duty, grave, and stern, and menacing, 
admitting of no dividing interest claiming 
her. 

She glided softly into her husband's 
chamber with a beating heart ; she was 
ready to greet one word of tenderness with 
an outburst of pity, near neighbour to love. 
The heroic sacrifice seemed no longer an 
impossibility : if she could be sure of Karl's 
affection all would yet be well. 

The room, dimly lighted by a night-lamp 
and the dying fire, was all silent. Karl was 
asleep. She came closer to the bed and 
gazed at him a long time ; then something 
cruel slid into her thought. He was not 
really asleep ; but was only pretending, so 
that he might not have to talk to her ; the 
short, laboured breathing was not the regu- 
lar breathing of natural slumber ; the body, 
also, was too rigidly immovable. She re- 
tired noiselessly ; but in an instant all the 




' SHE GAZED AT HIM A LONG TIME. 



WIFE OR HELPMEET? 



509 



generosity of sacrifice, vowed while her 
heart was full, died away. She would do 
her duty, certainly, for she was an honest 
woman ; but it appalled her — she revolted 
at it. What had she ever done to be singled 
out for misery in this way ? 

Karl still intended to continue his work, 
but every day, whether it was that the 
painful memories awakened by the inter- 
rupted story impressed him still too strongly, 
or whether the torpidity of his faculties had 
not yet passed away, he always put it off 
till to-morrow. At length he told his wife 
that he expected a secretary, who had been 
recommended by one of his best friends. 
All that night he could not sleep ; nervous 
excitement made him feverish. He recapi- 
tulated the incidents in the chapter to be 
written, just as a general passes in review 
those troops in which he has not too much 
confidence on the eve of a battle. 

The secretary, a young professor, who 
was at Paris for the purpose of attending 
the public debating classes, arrived at the 
hour mentioned. He was an intelligent 
young fellow, but awkward to a degree, 
without tact, and voluble in expressions of 
condolence and admiration, mingled in an 
exasperating manner. Karl du Boys, who 
was courtesy and politeness personified, 
tried to keep down his temper ; but every 
movement of this well-meaning auxiliary 
grated upon the quivering nerves of the 
excited author, who suffered torture with 
every ill-chosen word. Everything about 
him was offensive ; his manner of settling 
himself to write ; the scratching of the pen 
between his fingers ; the discreet little cough 
by which he signified that a sentence was 
finished ; all irritated the unfortunate man, 
and paralysed his powers. Nevertheless 
he persisted, in spite of all this. He could 
not see the slight lifting of the eyebrows 
which greeted his embarrassed paragraphs, 
his absurd tirades ; but he could divine, by 
the momentary hesitations which occurred 
occasionally, that his secretary judged him, 
and that he condemned him pitilessly. In 
his eyes he was an author doomed. 

The unhappy man recalled his working 
hours in the beautiful studio, where he could 
walk up and down with long strides ; where 
silence was maintained with religious care ; 
the servants banished from that part of the 
house which was sacred to its master ; all 
prying eyes kept at a distance by his wife's 
watchfulness — she herself keeping out of 
the way, for fear of disturbing him. And 
now, to show up his inmost thoughts in all 



their nakedness before this stranger ; to 
display the skeleton of his work, to clothe 
it painfully under the gaze of those un- 
sympathetic eyes, which he could feel were 
fixed in astonishment on his own sightless 
orbs. No, he could never do it ! 

Yet still he wished to go on. The tick- 
tack of the clock told the passing time : the 
sweat stood in beads on his forehead ; his 
nervous fingers clutched the arms of his 
chair convulsively ; slowly and more pain- 
fully came the words. This man who had 
always been so ready a writer — too ready, 
perhaps — went back on himself, again and 
again, changing, considering ; at length 
his strength gave way, and he stopped 
short. 

The secretary waited, not daring to break 
the silence; suffering himself at the sight 
of that suffering which was becoming 
agony. 

Jeanne, who had entered the room a few 
minutes before, noiselessly, with her soft 
slippered feet, came to the rescue of her 
husband. She began to talk in quite a 
natural tone of voice, just as though she had 
seen nothing or divined nothing of what 
was going on. 

" Enough work for one day, gentlemen ; 
I am not going to miss my daily walk, all 
because you are so enthusiastic." 

With a motion of her hand she hastened 
the young professor's departure. She saw 
him out herself, and stopped a moment 
to speak with him at the door. The poor 
fellow thought it his fault, perhaps, that 
things had gone wrong so deplorably at 
this first trial, and begged her to tell him 
what he ought to do, reiterating his ex- 
cuses. Jeanne, growing impatient, was ob- 
liged, almost literally, to put him out, in 
her anxiety to get back to her invalid. 

He never heard her come back. He 
was frightful to look upon. The unfor- 
tunate man at last comprehended that all 
was now over for him. More than his 
eyesight had been killed in that terrible 
explosion ; his intellectual powers had been 
taken, too. This pretty talent of his was 
pure native of Parisian soil ; born of move- 
ment ; striking fire only on contact with 
modern society ; requiring the stimulus of 
touch with externals. He felt himself in- 
capable of that patient study of humanity 
which concentrates itself more as the sub- 
ject becomes more intricate. It seemed to 
him that his imagination, formerly so 
teeming with life and creative power, so 
full of originality, had become as if frozen 



5i° 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



powerless. He pictured it to himself, 
a poor little vessel with pretty white 
sails, made for winging its way under 
sunny skies, in the clutches of polar 
ice and snow. He knew also that this 
dumb coldness which was all about 
him was not alone the result of his 
blindness ; it was the loss of that love 
which had suddenly slipped away 
from out his grasp ; that forced resig- 
nation of Jeanne's ; her severe accom- 
plishment of duty. He did not un- 
derstand it ; it had always seemed so 
natural for him to be beloved by his 
wife that the possibility of ever being 
at a loss for the want of it could 
never have occurred to him. He 
seemed, vaguely, to realise that 
he was himself the culprit ; he 
had allowed that delicate gossamer 
thing of shades and fancies, which 
we call the love of a woman, to 
escape away from him. How had 
this calamity come to pass ? His 
heart failed him too much to try 
to find out. All that he had ever 
counted upon seemed going out of 
his life at once and for ever. One 
day the happiest and most fortu- 
nate of mortals, to whom every- 
thing was easy, finding life plea- 
sant ; the next, a poor unfortunate, 
scarcely worth the name of man ; 
now — a ruin of humanity, who was 
come a painful charge to be supported 
with exasperating patience. He felt as 
though he were going mad. The muscles 
of his scarred face contracted frightfully, 
his hands seemed searching for something ; 
the dead eyeballs made a supreme effort to 
see ; then he remained for a few moments 
entirely still, a gentler mood stole over him. 
Jeanne leant forward to catch the faint 
murmur which parted his lips. It was 
" Jeanne, my poor Jeanne ! " There was 
such despair in the words, such love mingled 
with reproach, that the young wife pressed 
her handkerchief to her mouth to stifle a 
sob. She had followed all his heartrending 
thoughts on that face which had become an 
open book to her. 

All at once he seemed to take a strong 
resolve. He rose, and, feeling his way, 
went to the window. He hesitated, how- 
ever ; his life was nothing but a life accursed 
— yes, but it still was life. He drew a long 
inspiration, as though just to feel once more 
his lungs swelling, and the blood circulating 
rapidly in his veins ; then he laid his 




be- 



"YOU SHALL NOT DIE ! YOU SHALL NOT DIE!" 

hand on the window latch — Jeanne under- 
stood. 

" You shall not die ! You shall not die ! " 

She held him close in her arms, tremb- 
ling ; her voice broken with sobs, seeking 
his lips with hers. 

" I am nothing but a heavy burden, too 
heavy for you, poor child. I should have 
given you happiness only, and now I have 
nothing but privation to offer. Without 
knowing it, perhaps, you resent all this in 
me. This is why I wished to die." 

" You shall not die ! " was all she could 
say, for the sobs which choked her. 

" Ah ! if you loved me truly ; but, no ; 
you pity me, that is all ; you do not love 
me." 

" I do love you ! Do you not feel it, 
then ? What must I do to make you be- 
lieve ? Yes, I know ; I fancied I had 
ceased to love you. You held me aloof in 
our happy days ; it was not your fault — 
you did not know — and you wished to die, 
poor fellow ! Tell me, dearest, that you 
love me. Don't you see that the ugly 
shadow is far away ? I saw you just now 



WIFE OR HELPMEET? 



5" 



suffering so much ; it broke the ice round 
my heart, and I love you, I love you ! 
What must I say to make you believe it ? " 
" Ah ! I do not wish to die now ! " 
He held her clasped in a tight embrace 
— laughing, crying, beginning sentences 
with words to end them in kisses. What 
was all else now to him ? Jeanne loved him ; 
his wife was his own again. Out of infinite 
pity, love had re-risen to give him strength 
to live anew. And when his wife gently 
chid him, asking him how it was that 
during all these terrible months he had 
never tried to re-awaken that love which 
was but slumbering, how it was that she 
had been reduced to the necessity of asking 
herself whether he had ever loved her, he 
replied : 



mourn him a little while, and soon be 
consoled. 

She, pressing closely against his breast, 
spoke in her turn, and told him everything, 
interrupting herself now and then to 
whisper, "I love you," giving him life again 
out of her youth and tenderness. 

Then they reviewed that morning of 
anguish ; his lost gifts, his frozen and 
paralysed talents. He asked her to read 
the chapter he had dictated with so much 
trouble. Jeanne collected the sheets and 
read. Karl listened to the end. He seemed 
to hear once more the death sentence of his 
hopes. He took the paper out of his wife's 
hand, and tore it to fragments, in a sort of 
rage. 

" That mine ? No ! Listen, this is what 







I MUST KIND A WAY.' 



" I could not — you ought to have known 
— I needed you so much." 

Now that the ice was broken, he opened 
his heart to her, and told her all that he 
had suffered ; his horror of the life of 
darkness which lay before him ; how the 
temptation to put an end to it had grown 
upon him. He had reasoned it all out, only 
he wished his death to look like an 
accident, so that the idea of suicide 
should not trouble his widow. She might 



I wanted to say " — and then, with feverish 
rapidity, he sketched the chapter which had 
fallen so. flat and heavy before. He sped it 
forth with all the inspiration of his former 
days, and all their fire. These had been 
the secret of his immense success as a 
popular writer. He interrupted himself 
passionately. 

" That, all that, I have yet in me. It is 
not dead, but it might as well be so. How- 
ever, the blind have learned to write ere 



^12 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



this, and I will find a way — I must find a 
way ! " 

He was quite worn out by all these ex- 
citing emotions. His wife, in her capacity 
of nurse, fearing a return of the fever, 
ordered rest. He stretched himself on a 
sofa, but kept her close by him, like a sick 
child who must be indulged, and like a 
child, too, he was soon sleeping that soft, 
sound sleep which brings repose. When 
he woke, a scarcely audible but regular, 
scraping sound struck his quick ear. At 
first, in a hideous nightmare, he felt himself 
acting over again the torment of that morn- 
ing's experience — the secretary writing to 
his dictation.. 

"Jeanne ! " he called. 

She was beside him in an instant, pettirg 
him gaily, almost maternally. 

"What are you doing there?'' he de- 
manded, suspiciously. 

" I was writing ; there, now ! " 

"What?" 

" Listen." 

Jeanne had the rare gift of a marvellous 
memory. It had often astonished Karl. 
She had remembered, in the most extra- 
ordinary way, the entire passage which her 
husband had recast an hour ago : the very 
turns of the phrases, even the small ex- 
pressions peculiar to him as an author, 
were all there. He listened, holding his 
breath. 

" Well ? " said Jeanne, somewhat intimi- 
dated by his silence. 

" You have saved me, my darling ! " he 
said. " Twice over I owe my life to you." 

From that day forward they worked to- 
gether. At first, it was very trying, no 
doubt ; there were any quantity of pages 
torn up and thrown aside. Karl had quite 
an apprenticeship to serve, and he felt that 
such an apprenticeship would have been 



impossible for him, had it been gained under 
the curious gaze of a stranger. His wife's 
splendid memory was his best servant, for it 
was only after repeated trials that he learnt 
to dictate : his ideas came too quickly for 
that ; the words burst from him, and while 
she listened, he poured forth his story. 
What few notes she could snatch without 
observation were all he would permit, and 
she wrote it out from memory far away 
from earshot of her husband. The necessary 
business of revision found him more tract- 
able ; he even took pleasure in polishing up 
his prose, more than he had ever cared to 
do before. After a while he got accus- 
tomed to this method of working, and 
succeeded finally in subduing his artistic 
over-sensitiveness. He was saved. He 
felt that he had not indeed been mistaken 
in his own estimate of himself. The 
terrible inertness, the enforced idleness 
were no longer his to dread. He shuddered 
when he recalled the past, saying inwardly 
that he had surely skirted the border-land 
of insanity. In quiet moments, he rumina- 
ted his work ; he prepared his chapter to 
follow. Living thus in the society of his 
own fictitious characters, being of necessity 
obliged to ponder well before his ideas 
could take permanent shape, he gradually 
corrected the faults of style which his former 
ease in writing had entailed. He was thus 
aware of a slow, but beneficial change in 
the character of his own composition. 
When, seized with remorse, he asked 
pardon of his wife for the burden of labour 
he was forced to lay upon her, or when he 
expressed some of the astonishment he felt 
at seeing her, the spoilt darling of society, 
settling down into aregular home-bird, and 
none the less gay and lovable for the change, 
her answer was very simple. 

" I am very happy, and I love you." 



The Street Games of Children. 

By Frances H. Low. 




HEN the 
day arrives 
for the "Philo- 
sophy of Street 
Games " to be 
written, it is to be 
hoped that the 
writer will, at least, 
devote a chapter in 
praise of the philo- 
sophy and heroism 
of the persons whose 
daily fate it was to 
sojourn near the 
scenes of such dead ly 
warfare as Tipcat, or 
even the 
milder op- 
^ erations of 
""•3 Skip ping 
and Peg-top whipping. Fortunately for 
those of us who have to pass through 
small back streets, Tipcat is being rigor- 
ously regulated by the police : it 
ought, however, to be entirely abolished, 
except in parks, where, perhaps, it might 
be allowed to be played, as it is immensely 
popular amongst boys, and is in itself a 
highly interesting game. I have not 
attempted to describe all the games that 
are played in the streets. I have purposely 
omitted such well-known ones as Lcap- 
frog, Tom Tiddlers Ground, Hop Chivvy, 
and the various running games which 
are played on the lines of Touch 
wood ; and out of the countless games of 
marbles and buttons I have chosen two or 
three of the most popular and least com- 
plicated. To get a lucid explanation of the 
playing is by no means an easy business, 
partly because, no matter how retired a spot 
one chooses for the demonstration, a huge 
crowd of errand boys, bonnetless women, 
and loafing men is sure to collect round 
within a few minutes ; and partly also be- 
cause it is an extremely difficult matter to 
get the little performers to play slowly, and 
make the successive steps intelligible to an 
uninitiated person. If you ask, " But what 
is Pegsy ? " they look at you for a moment 
with an incredulous grin, which implies 
that in their opinion you are an imbecile, 



and answer, nodding their heads with an 
air of conviction, " Why, o' course, P stands 
for Pegsy ! " and from this position they 
are not to be dislodged. 

Exactly how the traditions concerning 
games are preserved I have not, in spite of 
a good deal of inquiry on the point, been 
able to learn ; but that they are handed 
down from father to son is certain, since 
an elderly man — a Londoner — who hap- 
pened to be a bystander in one of my 
crowds, told me that he, as a boy, some 
forty years ago, played almost precisely 
the same games as the boys of to-day. 
What is perhaps more curious is the early 
age at which street children are initiated 
into the freemasonry — if one may call it 
so — of the games. One of the funniest 
incidents I met with was in connection 
with the game of Buck and Gobs, which I 
shall describe in a minute, and wherein a 
preternaturally acute little imp of five or six 
years old figures. He could not possibly, 
owing to the age of his next brother, have 
been more than six at most, and I was dis- 
inclined to avail myself of his services, upon 
which, however, he insisted. He was a 
wizened, fragile little being, and his hands 
were so tiny and his wrists so weak, that 
he had the utmost difficulty in making 
effective play with the stones, or gobs, as 
they are called. After he had dropped the 
stones some eight or nine times, I said to 
some of the bigger boys who were standing 
round, " Perhaps you had better show me," 
and remarked mildly to the small per- 
former, who was still heroically struggling 
with the stones : ''I don't think you are a 
particularly good player." He looked at 
me steadily for a moment, spat on his small 
hands, and said in the most languid manner 
imaginable, "I'm a deb'lish good player, I 
am ! " After this he put a dirty twig into 
his mouth and regarded the operation of 
his seniors with great contempt, every now 
and again hurling scornful words at them, 
and regarding me with a threatening eye. 

One of the most popular — if not the 
most popular — of all the pavement games, 
both with girls and boys, is " Buck and 
Gobs." Four stones, technically called 
gobs, and a large, round marble comprise 

p p 



SH 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 




"buck and gobs." 

the property required for this game, the 
successful playing of which necessitates a 
large amount of dexterity and practice. 

The player arranges four stones in a 
square on the pavement (see illustration) ; 
he then kneels down, throws up the marble, 
which he holds in his right hand, immedi- 
ately picks up one of the gobs and catches 
the buck in the same hand, after it has 
bounded. After this process has been gone 
through with each of the gobs without 
dropping them, they are placed in twos, the 
player picking up the two gobs together; 
and after this the grouping is three to- 
gether and one ; and, finally, all four gobs 
close together, which are treated in the 
same manner as the single ones. If a 
player has got to this stage successfully, 
that is to say without letting a single gob 
drop throughout, he goes . in . for the final 
round, called " Pegsy." The gobs are again 
placed singly, and the player has to pick up 
one and drop it before seizing the second 
gob, meanwhile maintaining the play with 
the buck. No little skill is required to 
conduct the last operation successfully ; but 
constant practice has made the children 
peculiarly expert, and it is quite usual for 
them to reach the final round without a 
single miss. Promptness of eye and hand 
to seize the buck swiftly, and prevent its 
rolling away, and to grasp the stones with- 
out dropping them is the chief requisite 
for success in this game, which I have 
found invariably played best by the girls, 
who are, however, a long way behind the 
other sex in anything involving exact aiming, 



such as, for instance, in any of the 
numerous games of Buttons. 

This game is almost entirely 
confined to the boys, possibly 
because the little girls are not 
able to supply the necessary play- 
ing instruments in the shape of 
trouser buttons and a big piece 
of lead, which is melted and 
flattened in the fire, and called a 
nicker. Brass trouser buttons 
are articles of immense value in 
the eyes of street boys ; they 
are difficult to obtain, and in the 
majority of cases are cut off by 
the boys from their own garments. 
My little informant, who dis- 
appeared behind a corner and 
returned with half a dozen in his 
hand, said, in answer to my 
somewhat anxious question as to 
whether his mother would not 
be angry : 

" Oh, she won't know. I often rips 
off, but I sews. 'em on again. 'Tain't only 
them girls can sew ! " 

The marked and invariable contempt ex- 
hibited by the boys to the softer sex seems 
quite unjustifiable, as in a large number of 
games the girls are formidable rivals, if not 
actually better players. 

Buttons consists of seven or eight buttons 
being thrown as near as possible a specific 
line on the pavement. The one who gets 



em 




THE STREET GAMES OF CHILDREN. 



$15 



nearest goes in first. He stands on the 
curb, takes his nicker, and aims it at a 
button agreed upon by the rest. If he 
hits it, he gets the button and has another 
turn ; if he misses, the next boy goes in, 
and the one who has got the most buttons 
is the winner. This game is called Nicking. 
Another consists in putting all the buttons 
close together on a line and hitting one out 
of the line without touching the others. 
This is called Hard Buttons, and its suc- 
cessful play necessitates a very neat and 
steady aim. Almost all the other games of 
buttons, of which there are at least some 
seven or eight variations, are played on 
similar lines ; 
and the fact that 
the winner may 
keep all the 
buttons he takes 
no doubt ac- 
counts in a 
measure for 
their great pop- 
ularity. 

Both the 
games described 
above are in 
"season" during 
the summer 
months, as are 
also Hopscotch 
and London, 
whilst a few 
games, like 
marbles, may be 
played pretty 
nearly all the 
year round. I 

have not been able to obtain any precise in- 
formation as to why certain games are played 
at certain seasons : for instance, why marbles 
should be countenanced all the year round 
and buttons only during summer ; but on 
the whole the theory seems to be that 
" hot " games, involving a certain amount 
of physical exertion, such as tops, tip-cat, 
and running games, should be played in 
winter and less active ones in summer ; but 
even this theory is incomplete, as Release, 
which involves a large amount of running, 
is played as much in hot weather as in cold. 

Hopscotch is almost as popular with both 
girls and boys as Buck and Gobs, and is 
decidedly most embarrassing to the pedes- 
trian who happens to walk unwarily across 
the chalk lines and bring the " hopper " to 
a full stop. A glance at the illustration will 
show how the lines are drawn, the spaces 




being respectively named one sie, two sie, 
three sie, four sie, and puddings. The 
exact 'playing varies slightly in different 
districts, but the usual modus operaudiis for 
the player to deposit the bit of broken china 
— generally off a cup or saucer — which she 
holds in her hand, on " one sie." She then 
hops up to P. and back again, picking up 
the bit of china as she comes down again. 
She repeats exactly the same process until 
she has placed the china on " four sie," and 
brought it down with her. Then the real 
play begins with what is called " Hard 
Labour." The. chip of china is placed on"one 
sie," and the player, hopping on the right 

foot, has to chip 
the china into 
each space. If 
it goes on the 
line, or if she 
chips it more 
than once ir. 
each space, she 
is out, and some- 
one else goes in. 
If, however, she 
surmounts these 
difficulties . and 
hops back to one 
sie, chipping the 
china before 
her, she goes in 
for the final heat. 
The bit of china 
is placed on her 
toe, and her ob- 
ject is to walk 
up to " four sie " 
and back with- 
out letting the china drop off, at the same time 
making only one step in each space. This 
game has the additional advantage of keep- 
ing the attention of all the other children 
who are not " in " employed and interested, 
as an artful player who is not carefully 
watched can easily " chip " the china 
" twice," or take two steps, or commit any 
of the other small breaches of the rules, for 
which the bystanders are, of course, on the 
alert. A bit of broken china figures in 
nearly all the games, and it is certainly 
rather a commentary on the people who 
are so anxious to bestow expensive toys of 
all kinds on poor children, that their 
favourite games are played with a bit of 
chalk, a few buttons, a scrap of broken 
china, and some stones out of the roadway. 
London, so far as I can gather, is a 
completely modern game, and is more in 



HOPSCOTCH. 



5i6 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



vogue in the north and west of London 
than in the east. The accompanying illus- 
tration shows the figure that is drawn in 
chalk on the pavement, the two side loops 
being for the player's marks. Should there 
be three or four players, the figure is made 
longer with an additional number of lines, 
and there are extra side loops ; the game is, 
however, usually played by two persons. 
The bit of china is put on the bottom line 
and " nicked," or " spooned," along with the 
finger. If it rolls on, say, 2, the player 
draws a mark in the side loop nearest 2 
from opposite corners. The other player has 
then a turn, each 
player going in 
alternately. The 
second time the 
player's china 
goes on the same 
number a line 
across the oppo- 
site corners is 
drawn ; the third 
time this occurs 
a line is drawn 
across the middle 
of the square 
horizontally, and 
the fourth time 
perpendicularly. 
Here the real 
pleasure of the 
player begins. 

Her object is 
now to get the 
china again into 
2, the number 
by which she has 
obtained her 
marks. If she 
does this she ex- " L0 

claims aloud 

triumphantly; " Now I've got a soldier's 
head ! " She then draws a little round 
close up to her square, but on the other 
side of the line. She then has another 
turn, and, if the china again goes into 2, 
she cries, " Now I've got the soldier's 
belly ! " and adds a large circle on to the 
one she calls the head. If it goes into 
four or five, and she has not previously 
nicked the china into these numbers, she 
simply makes a stroke, as before ; the sixth 
time that the china goes into 2 the player 
gets the soldier's legs, and she has now got 
her soldier. The one who obtains most 
soldiers is the winner. If the china goes 
over any of the boundaries, or on the 




lines, the player is out, and has lost 
the game. The chief attraction of this 
game appears to be in the naming aloud 
of one portion of the soldier's anatomy ; the 
little girls seem to have some sort of idea 
that the language is not quite polite, and I 
observed they looked at me half doubtfully, 
as if in expectation of finding a shocked ex- 
pression on my face, which might result in 
jeopardising the promised pennies. Nothing 
of the sort, however, being visible, they 
proceeded with great gusto to describe 
another soldier, much to my amusement. 
In Duck, which is the name "given to the 
stone which acts 
as a target, a 
hole is scooped 
in the road, in 
front of which a 
stone is placed. 
The game con- 
sists in knocking 
the duck into a 
hole from a little 
distance ; but, if 
the player is un- 
successful, he 
may have an- 
other turn, pro- 
vided he can 
pick up his own 
stone and reach 
the pavement 
without being 
touched by his 
opponent. Dur- 
ing this opera- 
tion the boy or 
girl says : — 

"Gully, gully, all 
round the hole, 
on." One duck on." 

This game, 
which is principally played in the road, is, 
however, fraught with some danger to the 
limbs of the players, who are too intent 
upon grasping their stones and eluding 
their pursuers to regard passing vehicles 
with much attention. 

Of ring games, which appear to be played 
exclusively by girls, there is a large assort- 
ment. Many of them have appropriate 
singing accompaniments, and when grace- 
fully and quietly carried out by the per- 
formers, are very pretty and picturesque. 
The preliminary arrangements of these 
round games form a fine field of observa- 
tion for the student of child character. 
One child, scarcely ever the best looking, or 



Vo* 



THE STREET GAMES OF CHILDREN. 



5i7 



strongest,, or eldest, instinctively assumes 
the leadership, to which the rest of the 
children voluntarily bow. In my square 
there is a certain Mabel , as she is 



Play and cuddle and kiss together ; 
Kiss her once, kiss her twice, 
Kiss her three times over ! " 
( The two in middle kiss boisterously, whilst the ring 
races round singing very quicklv.) 




usually called by her friends, who is nothing 
less than a born general. Amongst her 
squad there are girls who must be at least 
five or six years older than herself, and yet 
her generalship, so far as I can see, is never 
challenged. She selects her own favourite 
companions for the most coveted posts, 
orders the entire company about, admini- 
sters slight corporal punishment to stupid 
or careless recruits, settles in the most 
arbitrary manner any disputes that arise — 
generally to her own advantage — in short, 
by the exercise of goodness knows what 
magical qualities, has some dozen children 
under her command every evening. ^ 

Of round games, I think Poor Jenny 
is a-tveeping is by a long way the favourite. 
Any number of children can join in the 
game, which is played by a ring being 
formed, with one child in the centre, who 
personifies Jenny. The circle moves round 
singing : — 

" Poor Jenny is a-weeping, a-weeping, a-weeping, 
A-weeping, a-weeping, all on a summer day ! 
On the carpet she shall kneel, 

{Here Jenny kneels down) 
While the grass grows in the field. 
Stand up, stand up on your feet, 
{Here fenny stands up) 
And choose the one you love so sweet ; 
Choose once, choose twice, choose her three 
times over. 
{Here Jenny chooses anotht r child and takes her into ring) 

Now you're married, we wish you joy, 

First a girl, and then a boy, 

Seven years after a son and daughter, 



It will be seen from the above specimen 
that one must not expect too much in the 
way of sense or grammar or refinement in 
these street songs ; but there is a heartiness 
in the singing and a zest and enjoyment in 
the dancing round which go far to compen- 
sate for any trifling drawback of this kind. 

A rather curious round game and a very 
favourite one is Bobby Bingo.. There is 
the usual circle, which moves round with 
one child in the centre, and the words run 
in this way : — 

" There was a farmer had a boy 
And his name was Bobby Bingo, 

B ngo (each letter is spe't out), 

Bingo, 

Bingo, 
And Bingo was his name, O ! " 

Then the girl in the centre points to each 
child in the circle with her finger, saying to 
herself as she goes round, Bingo, over 
and o'ver again. If she says any letter but 
" o " aloud she is out. This isbynomeansso 
simple a matter as appears at first sight, as 
can be proved by anyone who spells out 
the ridiculous word several times quickly, 
taking care to say only the last letter aloud. 

There stands a Lady on the Mountain 
is practically the same game with different 
words, and the same applies to Master, 
Master, whereas your Gold f 

In The King of the Barbaree the girls 
march to and fro in long lines singing a 
number of verses, each of which ends in 



o8 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



the " King of the Barbaree," and is accom- 
panied by clapping of hands. 

The piece cie resistance of quite a number 
of round games consists in flopping to the 
ground, a proceeding which seems to be a 
source of hilarious and side-splitting mirth 
to children. In Ring a ring o' roses the 
girls make a ring, and move round singing : 

" Ring a ring o' roses, 
Pocketsful o' posies, 
A maiden's fairy crown, 
We all fall down." 

The last line finds all the little maidens 
seated on the pavement with gleeful and 
delighted faces. Precisely the same wildly 
exciting finale occurs in Our boots are 
made of Spanish, another popular game 
amongst small girls, who also divert them- 
selves with skipping, which is too familiar 



scription of Waggles practically covers most 
of the games played under tipcat. Four 
boys stand at the corners of a large paving 
stone, two of whom are provided with 
sticks, whilst the other two are feeders and 
throw the cat. The batter acts very much 
in the same way as in cricket, except that 
he must hit the cat whilst in the air. He 
hits it as far away as possible, and whilst 
the feeder has gone to find it gets runs 
which count to his side. If either of the 
cats fall to the ground both batters go out 
and the feeders get their turn. The popu- 
lar game of Whacks is played on much 
the same lines, and, as it has to be played 
near railings, usually results in the smashing 
of a window, which is possibly one of the 
reasons of its attractiveness. 

It is not difficult to understand the 




" POOR JENNY IS A-WF.F.PIWG." 



to need any description, and a variety of 
games with soft balls. 

This I think pretty well exhausts girls' 
games and mixed games in general. 

Tipcat is almost exclusively played by 
boys, and although it will not be in season 
again till next spring, it may not be 
inapro/os here to warn persons of its dan- 
gerous results, in the shape of impaired eye- 
sight and even blindness, from the eye being 
struck by the cat. Amongst boys the game 
goes by the name of Cat and Stick, and con- 
sists, as is perhaps superfluous to state, of a 
stick and a small piece of wood sharpened 
at each end. A variety of games can be 
played with these weapons, but they are all 
on much the same principle — that of 
hitting the cat when in the air, and a de- 



fascination of marbles to a healthy boy^ 
who need never be at a loss for amusement 
so long as he carries half a dozen of the 
little round balls in his pocket. The 
various games of marbles appear more pro- 
vocative of disputes than any other street 
game, the reason being due probably to the 
greater desirableness of the prize. For, as 
in buttons, the winner keeps the marbles 
he hits or captures, and one can sympathise 
with the anguished feelings of Tommy 
when he sees his cherished coloured glass 
marble passing into the triumphant pos- 
session of Billy. It is at that tragic 
moment that Tommy is wont to bring the 
accusation of cheating on the tapis. Holy 
Bung, the somewhat unsavoury title given 
to one game, consists in placing one marble 



THE STREET GAMES OF CHILDREN. 



519 



on a hole, and making it act 
as a target for the rest. The 
marble which can hit it three 
times in succession and 
finally be shot into the hole 
is the winning ball, and its 




" nicks" speaks with equal contempt of bowl- 
ing. Sometimes these differences lead to a 
slight disturbance of the peace, more often 
the parties call each other names, and later 
on resume playing. Chipping off the 
Follow me leader, and King of the 
ring, in which six 
marbles in two 
parallel lines arc 
placed in a chalk 
ring, are tolerably 
familiar, and con- 
sist mainly in 
hitting specified 
marbles. Marbles 
are properly in 
fashion during Au- 
gust, but regula- 
tions on this point 
appear to be very lax, and so far 
as I can gather they are " on " 
whenever a group of boys come 
together and find they have got 
any of the little balls in their 
pockets. 

Monday, Tuesday, is one of the 

many ball games patronised by 

boys. It is played by seven boys, 

each of whom appropriates a day 

of the week. The first boy goes in and 

throws a soft ball against the wall, saying 

as the ball is rebounding the name of the 

day that is to catch it. If Tuesday, who is 

named, fails to catch the ball, he picks it 



MONDAY, TUESDAY. 



owner gets all the 
have missed before 
no specific laws as 
to the kind of 
throwing that must 
be employed : shoot- 
ing, bowling, and 
nicking are all 
countenanced, the 
method adopted by 
each boy being the 
one in which he is 
most expert. I have 
observed that if he 
patronises boivling 
he generally takes 
care to inform you 
that this form of art 
is a great deal more 
difficult than nick- 
ing, for instance ; 
whilst the young 
gentleman who 



other marbles which 
his turn. There are 




" TIPCAT.' 



^20 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



up and immediately tries to hit one of 
the boys, who rapidly disperse at a " miss." 
If he succeeds he goes in and throws the 
ball, whilst the boy who gets hit three 
times is '" out," and the winner is the boy 
who has either not been hit at all or hit 
the fewest number of times. 

Lack of space forbids my doing anything 
more than naming the other running 
games, the principal of which, Release, is 
played in playgrounds as well as in streets ; 
Monkey and Boozalum, which are varia- 
tions of the old-fashioned Hide and Seek, 



and Chalk Corners, which is a form of 
paper chase, the trail of which is chalked on 
the corners of paving stones. 

The subject of " Street Games" is deeply 
interesting, and deserves more exhaustive 
treatment than I have been able to give 
to it in a short magazine article. Not the 
least pleasant feature connected with them 
is to be found in the happy temperaments 
of the young players who can get enough 
pleasure and enjoyment out of the mere act 
of playing to be able to dispense with any 
stimulus in the way of prizes. 




'KING OK THE KING. 



An Episode of '63. 

By Henry Murray. 







HE APPROACHED HIM CAUTIOUSLY. 



It! 


I 


t 



IGHT had fallen on the banks 
of the Chippaloga, and the 
fight was over. It had been 
hot and fierce while it lasted, 
and the battered remnant of 
Southern troops, though at 
last they had been forced to flight, leaving 
one-third their force on the field, had 
thinned the numbers of their conquerors. 
Though the smallest of the episodes of a 
war whose issue settled the future of the 
American continent and affected the history 
of all mankind, the battle had brought the 
peace of death to many a valiant heart, its 
bitterness to many a woman and child, who, 
all unaware, were praying, safe in distant 



lips would never more meet theirs. Over- 
head, the stars sparkled keenly in the 
frosty sky, but from the horizon a ridge of 
inky cloud spread upward to the zenith, 
threatening not only to quench their feeble 
fire, but to deepen the crisp powdery snow 
in which the landscape was smothered. 
The river ran like a long black snake 
between its whitened banks. 

To Roland Pearse, monotonously tramp- 
ing on sentry duty along the track worn by 
his own feet in the snow at a tantalising 
distance from the nearest of the small 
gleamed around the 
the officers were sunk 
as if the dawn would 



watch-fires which 

central one, where 

in sleep, it seemed 



gities, for the husbands and fathers whose never come. A year's hard' campaigning 



\22 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



had toughened him to all the accidents of 
war, and the coldest and longest night's 
watch after the hardest day's fighting or 
marching came to him, as a rule, naturally 
enough. But he had been wounded in the 
fight, though not seriously, yet painfully, 
and between the consequent loss of blood 
and the bitter cold was weary well nigh to 
death. In the dead stillness of the night 
the monotonous chant of the river near at 
hand combined with weakness and weari- 
ness to stupefy his senses, and for minutes 
together he shuffled along the track he had 
worn in the snow with a quite unconscious 
persistence, awakening at the end of his 
beat with a nerve-shattering start, and 
falling asleep again ere he had well turned 
to retrace his steps. At last, a deeper doze 
was terminated by his falling at full length 
in the snow. He gathered his stiff, cold 
limbs together, and limped along shivering, 
swearing at the snow which had penetrated 
different loopholes of his ragged uniform, 
and, slowly melted by contact with his 
scarce warmer skin, served at last to keep 
him awake. He drew from his pocket a 
flask containing a modicum of whisky. It 
was little enough — he could gratefully have 
drunk twice the amount ; but, with a self- 
denial taught by many bitter experiences, 
he took only a mouthful, and reserved the 
rest for future needs. It warmed his starven 
blood, and helped the melting snow, now 
trickling down his back in a steady stream, 
to keep him awake. 

With a vague idea that a new beat 
would somewhat relieve the monotony of 
his watch, he struck into another track, 
and trudged resolutely at right angles with 
his former course, the two lines of foot- 
steps making a gigantic cross upon the 
snow. His former lassitude was again be- 
ginning to conquer him, when it was 
suddenly dissipated by a voice, which rang 
out on the stillness with startling sudden- 
ness, instinct with anguish. 

" If you have the heart of a man in your 
breast, for God's sake, help me ! " 

Twenty feet from where he stood, Roland 
beheld the figure of a man raised feebly on 
one elbow above the level of the snow. 
There was only just light enough to distin- 
guish it. He approached him cautiously, 
with his rifle advanced, and shooting rapid 
glances from the prostrate figure to every 
clump of snow-covered herbage or in- 
equality of ground which might afford 
shelter for an ambuscade. 

" I am alone," the man said. 



He spoke each word upon a separate sob 
of pain and weakness. He wore the 
Southern uniform, and Roland saw that 
one arm and one leg dragged from his body, 
helpless and distorted. An old sabre cut 
traversed his face from the cheek-bone to 
the temple. He looked the very genius of 
defeat. 

" I am dying ! " he panted at Roland. 

The young man pulled his beard as he 
looked down at him, and shrugged his 
shoulders with a scarce perceptible gesture. 

" I know," said the Southerner ; " I 
don't growl at that. I've let daylight into 
a few of your fellows in my time, and would 
again, if I got the chance. Now it's my 
turn, and I'm going to take it quiet. But 
I want to say something — to write some- 
thing to my wife in Charlestown. Will 
you do that for me ? . It isn't much for one 
man to ask of another. I don't want to 
die and rot in this cursed wilderness without 
saying good-bye to her." 

" You must look sharp, then," said 
Roland, kneeling beside him, " for I shall 
be called into camp in a few minutes." 

He took an old letter from his pocket, 
and with numbed fingers began to write, 
at the wounded man's dictation, on its 
blank side. 

" My darling Rose," he began. 

Roland started as if stung by a snake, 
and bent a sudden look of questioning 
anger on his companion's face. The 
Southerner looked back at him for a 
moment with a look of surprise. Then his 
face changed. 

" Jim Vickers ! " said Roland. 

" Roland Pearse ! " cried the other ; and 
for a moment there was silence between 
them. 

li Last time your name passed my lips," 
said Roland, slowly, " I swore to put a 
bullet into you on sight." 

" I guess you needn't," said Vickers ; 
" I've got two already. Not that I'm parti- 
cular to a bullet or so, only you might 
finish the letter first, anyhow. For God's 
sake, Pearse," he continued, sudden emotion 
conquering his dare-devil cynicism, " write 
the letter ! It's for Rose. She won't have 
a cent in the world if I can't send her the 
news I want you to write, and she and the 
child will starve. I got her by a trick, I 
know, and a nasty trick too ; but I'd have 
done murder to get her. She was the only 
woman I ever cared a straw for, really. 
And she loves me, too. Shoot me, if you 
like ; but, for God's sake, write the letter ! " 



AN EPISODE OF '6^. 



523 



Roland bent his head over the scrap of 
paper again. 

"Go on," he said hoarsely, and Vickers 
went on, panting out the words Avith an 




HE SAID HOARSELY. 



eagerness which proved the sincerity of his 
affection. The letter had regard to the dis- 
position of certain sums of money for which 
the voucher had been destroyed by fire 
during the siege of Philipville two days pre- 
viously. It was scarcely ended when a bugle 
sounded from the camp. 

"That's the sentinel's recall," said Roland. 
" I must get in. I'll forward the letter the 
first chance I get." 

He rose ; Vickers, with a dumb agony of 
grateful entreaty in his face, feebly held up 
his left hand — the right arm was shattered. 
After a moment's hesitation Roland bent 
and took it. 

" Here," he said, " take this." He drop- 
ped his flask beside him. " Keep your heart 



up, perhaps you ain't as bad as you think- 
I'll see if I can get help for you." 

Tears started to the wounded wretch's 
eyes. 

" Rose had better 
have taken you, I 
guess," he said. 
Roland turned sharply 
away. 

"I'll be back as 
quickly as I can," he 
said, and ploughed his 
way back into camp 
without a single back- 
ward glance. Coming 
to a large tent, the 
only one in the camp, 
roughly run up as a 
temporary hospital, he 
passed between two 
rows of prostrate 
figures, sunk in the 
sleep of exhaustion or 
tossing in agony, to 
where a man in the 
I uniform of an army 
I surgeon was bending, 
pipe in mouth, over 
the body of a patient. 
" I want to speak 
to you when you've 
; finished, Ned." 

The surgeon nodded 
without raising his 
eyes, completed his 
task, ran his blood- 
stained fingers wearily 
through his hair, and 
turned to Roland with 
a yawn and a shiver. 

" That's the last of 
'em," he said ; "I've 
been at it since nightfall, and I'm dead 
beat. Cut it short, old man ; we start in 
an hour, and I meant to get a wink of 
sleep." 

" I'm afraid you'll have to do without it," 
said Roland. " Do you remember Jim 
Vickers ? " 

"Jim Vickers ? " repeated the surgeon. 
" Oh, yes ! The man who married Rose 
Bishop." 

Roland winced, and nodded. 
" He's out there, shot in the arm and leg. 
Says he's dying. He didn't know me, and 
asked me to write a word for him to Rose 
— to his wife. I want you to come and 
have a look at him." 

The surgeon shrugged, with a half yawn. 



524 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



" He's a Reb, I s'pose ? Haven't seen him 
in our crowd." 

" Yes," said Roland, " but one man is 
pretty much the same to you as another, 
I reckon, and — you know Rose. You might 
save him." 

Ned shrugged again, tossed some lint 
and other necessaries into a bag on the table, 
and they set out together. They found 
Vickers asleep, with the empty whisky 
flask lying on the snow beside him. 

" He didn't recognise me," whispered 
Roland, "and I don't want him to."~ 

The surgeon nodded. 

There was a ruined shed at a hundred 
yards distance, to which they carried the 
wounded man, who woke and groaned as 
he was raised. Arrived under shelter, Ned 
silently betook himself to examining 




: YOU MIGHT SAVE HIM." 



Vickers' wounds. Arm and leg were both 
shattered, and three of his ribs were broken 
by a horse's hoof. Roland watched his 
friend's face, but it woie the aspect of even 



gravity common to the faces of men of his 
profession engaged at their work, and no- 
thing was to be learned from it. His task 
finished, he patted his patient's shoulder, 
collected his tools, and left the shed. Roland 
followed him to the door. 

" What do you think ? Can he pull 
through ? " 

" He would with proper nursing and gnod 
food, not without." 

" Can we take him with us ? " 
" No, the Colonel wouldn't hear of it. 
We have to join Meade at Petersburgh in 
two days, and we can't afford to be bothered 
with lame prisoners. Leave him some 
biscuit, and a bottle of whisky, and let him 
take his chance. We've done all we 
could." 

" I cnii't leave him," said Roland. 

" You've got mighty 
fond of him all of a 
sudden," said Ned, with 
something of a sneer. 

" I'm as fond of him as 
I always was," answered 
Roland. "It's Rose." 

"Well," said the other, 
after a moment's silence, 
and with the air he might 
have worn had he found 
himself forced to apply 
the knife to the flesh of 
his own child, " if you 
want my opinion, you 
shall have it. You'll do a 
long sight better business 
for Rose if you let the 
fellow die. And, besides, 
you carft save him. He'd 
take months to heal up 
in hospital, with every 
care and attention." 

" Somebody might come 
along and give me a 
hand to get him to the 
nearest town," said 
Roland vaguely, but tena- 
ciously. • 

" The nearest town is 
thirty miles away. How 
would you get him there ? 
It's impossible. Besides, 
look at this." He pointed 
to the sky, an even blank 
of thick grey cloud. 
" That'll be falling in another hour. You'd 
be snowed up. And then — hang it all, 
man, I must be as mad as you are to 
discuss the thing at all. You don't suppose 



AN EPISODE OE '63. 



525 



you re going to get leave of absence to nurse 
a Johnny Reb." 

"I might take it," said Roland. 

" And be shot for desertion ? " 

" That's as may be. The chances are I 
shouldn't be missed till you were too far 
away to send back for me. I must go 
and answer to my name, and then see if I 
can't drop behind." 

Ned held his head in his hands as if it 



Rose loved, to die, while any possible effort 
of his might suffice to save him ? 

The first flakes of the coming snowstorm 
fell as the detachment started. It marched 
in very loose order, for the road was rough, 
the snow deep, most of the men more or 
less broken with wounds and fatigue, and 
it was known that no enemy was within 
sixty miles. Roland fell, little by little, to 
the rear, where the clumsy country waggons 







"you'll take cake ok the letter," he whispered. 



would el=e burst with the folly of his friend's 
idea. 

"I can't stay here all day talking d 

nonsense," he said, angrily. " I'm off into 
camp." 

He strode away, and Roland kept pace 
with him. He did not need his friend's 
assurance of the folly of the act he medi- 
tated. He quite recognised that, but it was 
only in the background of his thoughts, 
which were filled with the memory of a 
woman's face. How could he leave the man 



lumbered along full of the wounded under 
Ned's charge. 

" You'll take care of the letter," he 
whispered, and thrust it into his friend's 
hand. " Good-bye ; I shall fall in with the 
next detachment if I pull through long 
enough. Knot " 

He nodded, and at a sudden turn of the 
road, here thickly surrounded by maple 
and hemlock, darted among the trees, and 
listened, with his heart in his ears, to the 
jingle and clatter of arms as his comrades 



526 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



marched on. It died away upon the snow- 
laden air, and he retraced his steps to the 
shed with an armful of dry leaves and 
twigs, with which, by the sacrifice of one 
of his few remaining cartridges, he speedily 
made a blazing fire. Vickers lay quiet, 
watching him through half-shut lids. 

" Say, Roland," he said, presently, " what 
sort of game is this ? " 

" I'm going to see if I can pull you 
through," said Roland, with an affectation 
of cheerfulness. 

" You can't," said Vickers ; " I heard 
what Ned said just now. I'm booked for 
the journey through, I know it. Don't 
you be a fool. Follow the boys, and leave 
me here. I'm beyond any man's help. You 
won't ? Well, you always were a nutmeg- 
headed sort of creature. I never knew you 
have more than one idea at a time, and that 
one wasn't worth much, as a general thing. 
But this is madness, sheer, stark madness ! 
Look at the snow ! Another hour or two, 
and we shall be snowed up. It's just chuck- 
ing a good life after a bad one. I know 



you ain't doing it for me. It's for Rose. 
Well, if it was any use, I wouldn't say no. 
But it isn't. I shall be a dead man in 
twenty-four hours at most. Nothing can 
save me." 

"I'm just going to the wood," said 
Roland, taking up his gun, and speaking in 
a quite casual tone. " If there's any game 
about, this weather will drive it under 
cover. I'll be back presently, anyhow." 

He flung some of the broken timber of 
the shed upon the fire, and went out. 

He had not taken six paces through the 
blinding flakes, when Vickers' voice rang 
out with startling loudness and suddenness, 
" Good-bye, Roland," and a loud report 
seemed to shake the crazy old hut to its 
foundation. 

Roland ran back. Vickers was lying dead, 
with the firelight playing brightly on the 
barrel of a revolver clenched in his left hand. 

Ten minutes later he was lying in a deep 
snow drift, and Roland was tramping 
through the snow on the track of his 
detachment. 







Illustrated Interviews. 



No. V.— MR. MONTAGU WILLIAMS, Q.C. 




ELLERAY. 




O start the. day with breakfast 
with Montagu Williams, and 
afterwards to pass every hour 
intervening between meals in 
listening to delightful anec- 
dotes is, to say the least of it, 

distinctly agreeable. Such has been my 

recent experience. On the West Cliffs of 

Ramsgate stands " Elleray," the house to 

which probably the most popular magis- 
trate in London is wont to run 

down from Saturday to Monday, 

after passing a busy week in the 

police-court. " Elleray " is situated 

in a far more exhilarating corner 

than is the armchair of Justice. 

In the latter, day by day, sits a 

frock-coated gentleman — a man 

who can " see through " case by 

case with wonderful acuteness, yet 

with marked kindness to those 

brought before him. At "Elleray" 

— with its great green lawn edged 

with countless evergreens, its blue 

china boxes brimming over with 

golden -feather, red geraniums, and 

tiny bluebells, with a grand bit of FromaP/wto.b!,] 



sea right in front — there, on a garden-seat, 
sits the same man in a light suit, with all 
tokens of a magisterial manner cast on one 
side, and in the very reverse frame of mind 

to that of " sen- 
tencing " or " fin- 
ing" the indi- 
vidual who, with 
note-book in 
hand, occupies 
the other part of 
the seat. 

Mr. Montagu 
Williams has his 
peculiarities, but 
they are very 
happy ones. For 
instance, he has 
two dogs— of the 
silver Skye breed. 
"Roy" is his 
favourite, and 
necessarily — as 
there are only a couple of them — 
" Scamp " occupies second place in favour. 
Roy is Scamp's uncle. Scamp's father 
was a beautiful creature named Tag. 
Poor old Tag ! He was run over in 
Hyde Park and killed. He was buried 
at Richmond. It is Roy's duty to remain 
at Ramsgate during the week while his 
master is away, whilst Scamp has to do 
the journey to town every Monday morning, 
returning on the Saturday. Mr. Williams 
declares with emphasis that he could not 
live without a dog — he loves them, and they 
return his affection. His library at Rams- 




[EUiotl & fry. 



528 



THE STRA1\D MAGAZINE. 




gate is a curiosity. He 
is possessed of a good 
stock of books, which are 
under the care of his daughter, but 
he seldom consults any other author 
than Dickens. "Martin Chuzzle- 
wit" is his particular fancy. Hence 
the library at "Elleray" consists of a complete 
set of the great novelist's creations, and that 
only. In this apartment, over "the library" 
shelf, is an oil painting of his wife, who 
died in 1877. Over the mantelpiece is an 
etching, Stuart Wortley's " Partridge 
Shooting," exhibited in the Royal Academy. 
It was painted under a group of trees seen 
in the picture, and the great turnip field is 
that rented from Lady Fortescue at Burn- 
ham Beeches, by 
Mr. Williams. In 
a niche is an 
engraving of F. 
Newenham's pic- 
ture of John Mil- 
ton at the age of 
twelve, a portrait 
group of the 
Harcourt Cricket 
Club, of which 
the master of 
"Elleray " is pre- 
sident, a water 
colour drawing of 
Mrs. Keeley — 
whose daughter 
Mr. Williams 
married — and an 
engraving of Car- 
dinal Manning. 
Although a Pro- 
testant, Mr. 
Williams at- 
tended all his From a Photo, by] 



Eminence's re- 
ceptions of thirty 
years ago, and 
was so impressed 
by the Cardinal's 
characte r — 
although the sub- 
ject of religion 
had never been 
broached between 
them — that one 
day the brilliant 
barrister observed 
to the Cardinal, 
" Although I am 
not a Romanist, 
if the time should 
come when I 
should be in need 
of spiritual advice, 
I would send for 
you." 

Mr. Williams 
is fond of racing, 
and wheal in Newmarket is a welcome visitor 
at Prince Soltykoff's. Hence the hat-stand 
in the hall takes the shape of a horse-shoe, 
studded with nails in the shape of brass 
pegs. His drawing-room has a magnificent 
view of the sea from the windows. The suite 
is upholstered in yellow satin, as are also 
the curtains at the windows, and the carpet 
on the floor harmonises. There is some grand 
Dresden china, and exquisite inlaid cabinets. 



THE LIBRARY. [Elliott & t'ri 




THE DRAWING-ROOM. 



[Elliott & Fry. 



IL L US TRA TED INTER VIE WS. 



K2Q 



A curiosity in the way of cushions rests on 
the sofa. It is of black satin, with the 
leaves of a Virginia creeper crewelled into 
it — the handiwork of Mrs. Keeley. She 
borrowed the real leaves from Mr. Burnand's 
daughter, who lives near by, and during a 
month's visit she completed the task — a 
very creditable one at the age of eighty- 
three. Next to this room is a bedroom 
specially kept for Mrs. Keeley whenever 
she visits Ramsgate. There is not a single 
picture on the drawing-room walls ; just a 
photograph or two. Mr. Williams is much 
sought after as a god-father. Here are the 
children of his 
own daughter — 
Jessie Mary 
Richardson, wife 
of Colonel 
Richardson, now 
Colonel com- 
manding the Not- 
tingham Sher- 
wood Foresters — 
a quartet of pretty 
youngsters, the 
little lad in High- 
land clothing 
being the magi- 
strate's god-son. 
Mr. Williams also 
took vows at the 
font on behalf of 
little Jack Mon- 
tagu, whose 

mother, Mrs. George Hillyard, carried off 
the lawn tennis champanionship one year, 
and of Cecil Montagu Ward, son of his old 
friend Russell, and grandson of Mrs. E. M. 
Ward, the celebrated artist. 

The dining-room is agreeably comfort- 
able. A signed " As You Like It," by Sir 
John Millais, and proofs before letters of 
Landseer's " Piper and Nut-Crackers," 
"Three Cubs," and " Midsummer's Night's 
Dream," were a present from Mr. Henry 
Graves, as a reminiscence of his successful 
prosecution in the noted case of piracy in 
photographing pictures. Here, too, is an 
extraordinary old print of Napoleon, and 
reproductions of the five pictures by W. P. 
Frith, constituting the " Race for Wealth." 
Mr. Williams points out in the trial scene 
at the Old Bailey excellent portraits 
of Baron Huddleston, Mr. Poland, Q.C., 
Sergeant Ballantine quietly reading a paper, 
Mr. George Lewis handing a barrister a 
brief, the Usher of the Court, and a striking 
likeness of Mr. Williams himself. Being 



educated at Eton, one necessarily finds on 
the walls T. M. Henry's trio of etchings, 
typical of school-life there : " Football at 
the Wall," " Calling Absence," and 
" Speeches in Upper School." 

Mr. Williams is a member of the Orkney 
Cottage Rowing Club, some of the members 
of which are seen in photographs. One of 
their number is pointed out as Henry L. B. 
McCalmont, who stroked the Orkney Cot- 
tage " Four," and who, in the course of 
three years, comes into a fortune of between 
three and four millions sterling. Orkney 
Cottage, Taplow, is the seat of Mr. Edward, 




From a /'/into, by] the dining-koom. 



[Elliott <fc Fry. 



Lawson. This is how Mr. Lawson got 
possession of this charming riverside retreat. 
" About five and thirty years ago," 
said Mr. Williams, " I went down to 
Taplow with my wife, and saw the 
cottage — very different then — with a board 
up, "To let — apply to Jonathan Bond, 
Maidenhead Bridge." When I was at 
Eton during my holidays I used to play 
in the Maidenhead Eleven, and Jonathan 
Bond, a boat-builder, was a bowler in the 
eleven — I remember him ; he bowled 'slow 
lobs ' — with Langton, the brewer, Dicky 
Lovegrove, who kept ' The Bear,' and 
other well-known characters. I went to 
Bond, and asked him about the cottage. 
He remembered me, and advised me not to 
have it, as the best of reputations did not 
hang over its roof. But I didn't mind, so 

QQ 



53o 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



I bought the lease, and having no cheque- 
book with me, made out the cheque on a 
slip of paper. I returned to London with 
the lease in my pocket. Edward Lawson 
then lived in Norfolk-street, Park-lane, and 
on his way home called on me at Upper 
Brooke-street. I told him of my purchase. 
He immediately wanted it for his boys, 
thinking it would be a capital place for them 
to come to from Eton. I couldn't resist 
him, so he gave me a cheque for just what 
I had paid in exchange for the lease. That's 
how Edward Lawson became .possessed of 
one of the prettiest places along the river." 




From a P/wto. by] 



THE SITTING-ROOM, AI.DFOKI) STREET 



When in town Mr. Williams has a house 
in Aldford-street, Park-lane. The apart- 
ments are very cosy — the sitting-room a 
particularly inviting little corner. A pen 
and ink drawing by Charles Matthews is 
near the door. It was done whilst Mr. 
Williams " waited," and bears the date, 
July 26, 1867. Here is a picture, too, of 
the late Colonel Burnaby. The pair were 
great friends, though Mr. Williams was 
counsel in the Colonel's action against 
General Owen Williams, which, happilv 
for the old friendship existing between 
them, was never tried. There are num- 
bers of photos here — a pair of water- 
colours, the one of George Payne and 
Admiral Rous, the other of Fred Archer 
and Lord Falmouth. Two " Vanity Fair " 
sketches — one is of Douglas Straight, the 



present judge at Allahabad, represented 
with a big cigar in his mouth, the other of 
the magistrate himself, with a huge cigar in 
his hand. 

My day at Ramsgate with Mr. Williams 
was spent for the most part in hearing 
hitherto unpublished anecdotes of his 
schoolboy days, with the noting of one or 
two reminiscences of his later life, and a 
cross-examination on a highly interesting 
point, which we decided, as we sat together 
on the garden seat, had hitherto been for- 
gotten, namely that of how it feels to be a 
magistrate. 

Mr. Williams 
is of somewhat 
slight build, with 
an eye that looks 
one through and 
through. He has 
a marvellous 
memory for dates, 
a wonderful fac- 
ulty for telling a 
story, and a de- 
lightful method 
of doing it. He 
is a large-hearted 
man, and revels 
in the happy title 
bestowed upon 
him of being 
" the poor man's 
magistrate." I 
have watched 
him in Court. 
He is down on 
wife-beaters, and 
kindly disposed 
to people charged 
with first offences, whom he will let 
off if he can. The way in which he mea- 
sures out justice is distinctly characteristic. 
He weighs the position of the delinquents in 
the case of a summons, and though two 
people may be charged with the same 
offence, the fine is according to their 
pockets. This is to be commended. 1 heard 
him fine an old lady for selling adulterated 
milk. He called her " a wicked old woman," 
and she had to pay a sovereign and costs. 
She had only a small trade. The next case 
was a similar one, but the delinquent sold 
twice as much milk, and forty shillings was 
the judgment. A man was charged 
with begging. He said he only wanted 
to get his fare to Colchester to get work 
there. Decision : Why should the fellow 
go to prison ? Magistrate gave him the 



{Klliotl # Fr 



ILLUSTRA TED INTER VIE WS. 



S3i 



fare out of own pocket, and a policeman 
was told off to get his railway ticket. " But 
if ever you come before me again — " 

Mr. Williams claims Freshford, in Somer- 
setshire, as . the place of 
his birth, and the date 
thereof the 30th Septem- 
ber, 1835. He 
*' comes of a 

thoroughly legal 
stock. 
He went 
- to Eton 

. 

when he was about 
twelve, and among 
his schoolfellows 
was Mr. F. C. Bur- 
nand. Then in a 
merry mood the magis- 
trate recalls some very 
happy doings there. 

" When I first went to 
Eton," he said, "I was 
extremely small. Whether my 
fellow scholars took advantage 
of my size or not, I cannot say, 
but they certainly took advan- 
tage of my hat. For some 
reason or other there was a 
kind of passion amongst the 
bigger boys to turn my hat 
into a football. No sooner had 
I got a new one on than it was 
spotted ; it was off in a minute 



would despise. Whenever one wanted a 
new hat, you had to go to your tutor, and 
get an order on Devereux's. I got through 
scores, until at last my tutor got so sick of 
writing me orders, that he flatly refused 
to give me any more, and I am perfectly 
serious when I tell you that I went about 
Eton hatless ! 

" I once ventured to write my name on 
the time-honoured walls. The late Provost 
there was then master of the lower division, 
fifth form. Now, he had a nasty knack 
of pretending to be asleep, and, suddenly 
waking up, would 



poor 
such 



catch some 
pupil doing 
things as should be 
left undone. One 
day we were assem- 
bled in his little 
room, just off the 
swishing room, 
where Hawtrey used 
to administer the 





" A TAKE OK AN' ETON HAT 



and away it went. I can assure you I have 
walked about the play-fields there, with my 
hands in my pockets, with a hat on my 
head — the remains of a brim and ventilated 
with innumerable holes — such as a tramp 



instrum ent 
of torture. 
Ah ! and he 
had a strong 
arm, too. 1 



532 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



thought 'Goodford' asleep. I began the 
inscribing of my name on the walls. 
But he wasn't slumbering. He woke 
just as I was in the middle of it. 

" ' Williams,' he cried, ' write out and 
translate your lessons three times. 
Writing on the wall, eh ? That will 
be the only way in which your name 
will be handed down to posterity.' 

" Years passed on, and when he 




''PLEASE, SIR, HERE I AM !" 



became Provost of Eton I met him at a 
cricket m atch between Eton and Win- 
chester. He shook me warmly by the 
hand, and congratulated me on my success 
in life. 

" ' You haven't altered a bit,' he said. 

" ' I hope I have,' was my reply. 

" ' Why ? ' he asked. I told him his 
prediction of my writing on the wall. 
We had a good laugh, and he humorously 
said : 

" ' The fact is, Williams, I mistook your 
writing.' 

" I shall never forget how the boys served 
me once. Really, the average small boy 
lives at a great disadvantage. It was one 



Sunday night, 
and happened 
during what was 
called 'private 
business.' On 
such occasions my 
tutor used to read 
Paley or some 
such work to us, 
and explain it. William 
Gifford Cooksley was my 
master, and he had a 
little country house at 
Farnham, some few miles 
away. He was late. Just 
behind the tutor's desk 
was a clock standing on 
top of a case some four 
feet from the ground, 
partly concealed by cur- 
tains. Now, there was 
just room for one small 
boy in that case, squeezed 
tight in, and some of the 
bigger boys had placed 
me there, and, to amuse 
themselves, were making 
arrows of their quill pens, 
my poor body being the 
bull's-eye. I was bearing 
the reception of these in- 
struments of torture as 
well as possible when sud- 
denly the tutor's step was 
heard in the corridor. 
There was no time to 
take me down, and the 
curtains were hurriedly 
drawn together by, I 
think, Whittingstall, now 
Major Whittingstall, very 
well known in coaching 
circles. Cooksley, the 
tutor, entered. There was a dead silence. 
" He looked round to see if all were 
present. 

" ' Where is that wretched Peccator, that 
miserable sinner Williams ? ' he thundered. 
Think of my feelings behind the curtains 
when he added, ' 'Pon my word, I'll have 
the young rascal well whipped in the 
morning.' 

u A small voice was heard to cry, as the 
owner thereof drew the curtains aside : 
" ' Please, sir, here I am ! ' " 
" I was lifted down, and the whole room 
was condemned to the ordinary punishment 
of a hundred lines." 

From Eton Mr. Williams went as a tutor 



ILL US TRA TED INTER VIE WS. 



533 



to Ipswich Grammar School, remaining 
there two years. Then he went into the 
South Lincoln Militia. At the opening of 
the Crimean War he got his hundred men to 
the line and so got a commission free in the 
96th Regiment. From there he passed 
into the 41st Welsh Regiment, and, upon 
his corps being ordered to the West Indies, 
he resigned. " Starring " about the country 
as an actor was his next move, playing at 
Manchester, Brighton, Glasgow, Edinburgh, 
and other towns. It was whilst playing 
at Edinburgh that he met his wife — Louise 
Keeley, a very gifted woman. She was 
" starring " at Edinburgh when he arrived, 
and after the com- 
pany had finished 
their week's play- 
ing she returned 
again. Mr. Wil- 
liams had to re- 
main behind. 
About ten days 
after seeing her he 
proposed, and in 
six weeks they 
were married. 

" It was on the 
advice of Serjeant 
Parry that I went 
to the bar," he 
continued. "I 
paid my 100 
guineas, and went 
into the chambers 
of Mr. Holl, a well- 
known barrister, 
and now a County 
Court Judge. You 
know how, after 
having been called 
to the bar, I turned 
my attention to 
criminal practice. 

I think I was successful, for in my first 
year I made 600 guineas. I was always 
considered famous at the Bar for my 
quickness in dealing with cases. As a 
magistrate to-day I have often disposed of 
some 70 charges at the Thames Police- 
court in the morning and 40 summonses in 
the afternoon. 

" I remember once I was conducting a 
long firm prosecution before the Recorder. 
There were over a hundred witnesses to 
examine. I was in the midst of " polish- 
ing off" a witness, when I overheard a 
barrister's clerk say, ' There he goes. He's 
determined to finish the case to-night. He's 



From a Photo, by] 



due at Birmingham in the morning. All 
right ! Go it ! Archer up ! ' 

'' About this time I was a member of a 
club called ' The Kaffirs.' We used to 
meet every Saturday afternoon at the Cafe 
de l'Europe. Amongst the ' Kaffirs ' were 
such men as Douglas Jerrold, Albert Smith, 
Keeley, Buckstone, Ben Webster, John 
Povey, Dion Boucicault and John Brougham 
— one of the most genial men who ever 
lived, and, I firmly believe, the author of 
1 London Assurance.' This was thirty 
years ago. Rejlander, a well-known photo- 
grapher in those days, was a member, and 
it was a set rule of the club that all 
' Kaffirs ' should be 
photographed by 
him. 

" I went to him 
one afternoon. He 
took me in several 
positions, when 
suddenly he turned 
to me and said, 
' You've got the 
head of a Roman. 
Here, take off your 
collar.' I did so. 
Then he seized the 
cloth off the table 
and threw it round 
me in the form of 
a toga. I stood 
for my picture. 
When it was 
printed he handed 
it to me and said, 
' You'll never beat 
SpM that as a modern 

Cato!'" Mr. 
Williams handed 
me the original 

{lief.ander. photograph with 

his permission to 
reproduce it in these pages. 

Mr. Williams tells in his " Leaves of a 
Life " the sad reason why he had to retire 
from his labours at the bar ; how that 
whilst in the midst of his speech on behalf 
of a prisoner he felt his voice going, never 
actually to return ; how that a small piece 
of flesh was taken from his throat, and after 
analysis the decision was that he could 
live only two or three months. An opera- 
tion alone might save him — an operation 
rarely successfully performed. But it was 
successful in his case, his life was saved, but 
it was questionable if ever he would regain 
his voice. When asked, one morning, 




A MODERN CATO 



534 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



by Sir James Paget, to try and speak, 
the first words he said were, " Gentlemen of 
the jury." After a long rest he subse- 
quently became a metropolitan magistrate. 
It was on his experience as such that we 
talked for a long time. 

" The position of a magistrate is agree- 
able enough," he said, " but it is very 
monotonous, and has its drawbacks. If you 
happen to be in the East End of London, your 
day is generally very depressing. Let me 
give you a day in the life of a magistrate. 
You arrive at the court at about ten or 
half-past, and the first thing you have to 
do is to see lunatics — not a very inspiriting 
beginning to the labours of the day. 

" And then commences the ordinary 
business of the day. The first thing you 
do is to hear applications, and they are 
certain to be upon every possible complaint 
under which the poor suffer. They are of 
a very miscellaneous character. All the 
home troubles and wants are poured 
into the magisterial ear. I conceived the 
notion shortly after I became a magistrate 
that it was very unfair that these poor 
people's troubles should become public 
property, so I arranged that they should be 
heard before the ordinary visitors were 
admitted ; and instead of sitting on the 
seat of Justice, as my colleagues do, I have 
an armchair brought out into the body of 
the court, where I give to all the use of my 
attention in private. 

" Some of these applications are very 
trivial. It was only the other morning I 
was addressed by an angry mother, accom- 
panied by her little girl, who complained 
that a boy had assaulted her child. Whilst 
listening to her, a man stepped up with a 
boy about the same age as the girl. ' My 
boy has a complaint, sir. She struck him 
first. I want a summons.' I asked the 
boy who struck the first blow. He said, 
' She hit me first, sir,' and on questioning 
the girl she admitted this. I then interro- 
gated her as to what was the cause. She 
replied, ' He called me names.' ' Well, 
what did he call you ? ' I asked. ' He cried 
out, sir, as loud as he could, " There goes 
Danger on the Line." ' Now I was perfectly 
stumped as to what was the meaning of 
' Danger on the Line,' so asked the mother 
if she could interpret these mysterious 
words to me. 'Oh,' she said, 'yes, sir, all 
the boys say that to my little girl ; she 
suffers very much from cold, and has a very 
red nose from always rubbing it.' 

" I think it was very hard on the poor 



little girl's highly-coloured nasal organ, but 
I told the mother it was six of one and 
half-a-dozen of the other. They left the 
Court in a more Christian-like spirit, and I 
have no doubt that in five minutes the 
father of the boy and the mother of the 
girl were having a friendly glass in the 
nearest public-house. I might mention 
that there is always a public-house next 
door or near to a police-court. 

'With regard to the East End of 
London, the people there have great respect 
for a magistrate, and, as a rule, go away 
perfectly satisfied with the way in which 
their case has been dealt with, knowing 
that though they may often have to suffer, 
justice has been done. 

" Then, after the hearing of these varied 
applications, and their name is legion, the 
charges are heard ; and at the East End on 
a Monday and Tuesday, at the Thames and 
Worship-street police-courts, they are very 
heavy. You seldom get fewer than thirty 
or forty cases of drunkenness and disorder- 
lies, and, perhaps, a score more cases of 
offences arising therefrom. These statistics 
principally apply to Monday and Tuesday, 
for as the wages are spent the cases per- 
ceptibly diminish. There is no mistake 
about what is the cause of nearly all the 
crime of the East End of London. The 
curse of all is drink, and I must say that the 
wives are often worse than the husbands. 
The woman often makes the first start 
towards breaking up the home whilst the 
husband is away at work. She forsakes 
her children and domestic cares for the 
bar of a ginshop, to drink with a friend, 
generally another female. There she 
passes most of the day, and when the 
greater portion of the husband's earnings, 
which in most, cases is given bountifully, 
are spent, she goes and goes again to 
the pawnshop, until at last, in a state of 
despair, the husband, at the sacrifice of all 
he has in the world, thinks the publichouse 
not such a bad place after all, and nine men 
out of ten go after the wife. 

" The next step in this fatal downfall is the 
East End lodging-house, and when once an 
honest working-man gets there, then comes 
the beginning of the end. 

" At the conclusion of the charges the 
remands are taken, and then after a brief 
interval for luncheon the magistrate hears 
the summonses for the day. These are very 
varied. School-board, Excise, Revenue, re- 
movals of nuisances, sanitary, assaults, 
threats, wages, in fact almost every subject 



ILLUSTRATED INTERVIEWS. 



535 



under the sun, and by the time these are 
exhausted so is the magistrate." 

Mr. Montagu Williams has recently 
accepted the magisterial chair at. the Mary- 
lebone police-court, in succession to the 
late Mr. Partridge. Referring to his con- 
nection with Worship-street and the 
Thames police-court, he said : — " I was ex- 
tremely fond of the East End of London. 
I admire so much the heroic fortitude with 
which the poor bear misfortunes, and as I 
said the other day when leaving them, it 
was a great wrench for me to go. But 
under the present system it means one 
long, long grind of work, and, yielding 
to the solicitations of friends who take 
far more interest in me than I do 
myself, I determined to take a West 
End Court where the labour is so much 
lighter. The principal reason for this was 
that under the present system the leading 
magistrate of a district never sits out of 
his own Court ; in consequence, as junior 
magistrate of Worship-street I had _ to do 
all the out-door 
work, and for 
four months 
before my 

change I had 
been sitting five 
days, sometimes 
in three or four 
different Courts, 
a week. 

"These Courts 
were situated 
miles from my 
house, and miles 
from one ano- 
ther. There was 
the Thames at 
Stepney, Wor- 
ship-street at 
Finsbury- 
square, North 
London at 
Dalston, and 
Clerkenwell at 
King's-cross. So 
you can easily 
imagine the 
greater part of 
one's life was 
spent on the 
road. Another 
great drawback 

IS that Of One J?romal'hokt.by\ 




magistrate hearing one bit of a case, 
another a second, and a third finishing it. 

"It has been said that two more magistrates 
are essential, and I think I can suggest a 
very easy way to the Treasury to bring this 
about. It is absurd to think that London 
in 1891 is the same as in 1821. Districts 
are changed, some have diminished, others 
greatly increased. What is needed is the 
re-carving out of the map of London. It 
would not involve the expense of the erec- 
tion of new Courts, old Courts should do as 
they are. All that would be required would 
be somebody who thoroughly understands 
the district, say some magistrate who has 
sat at all, re-dividing up the boundaries. 
This seems to me a very economical and 
simple plan. 

" I should just like to say that I take 
the greatest possible interest in the people 
of the East End of London. It has 
been said that the poor there have lost a 
friend. But such is not the case. If at any 
period when times are harder than they 

are at present, 
and I think that 
is a matter of 
impossibility, 
they are in need, 
I should be 
ready to aid and 
assist them, not 
as a magistrate 
but as a private 
friend. I intend 
to keep myself 
in touch with 
the missionary 
of the Court. 

" During the 
three years of 
my life at the 
East End my 
poor-box was 
the largest in 
the metropolis, 
and the friends 
who helped me 
during that time 
will, 1 am per 
fectly certain, 
answer again to 
any appeal on 
behalf of the 
good people of 
the East End." 

Harry How. 



*tfc: 




From the French of George 
Sand. 

LONG time ago — 

a very long time 

— I was young, 

and often heard 

people complain 

of a troublesome 

little creature who 

made her way in 
by the window, after she had 
been driven out at the door. 
She was so light and so tiny 
that she might have been said 
to float rather than to walk, and 
my parents compared her to a 
little fairy. The servants de- 
tested her, and sent her flying 
with their dusting brushes ; but 
they had no sooner dislodged 
her from one resting-place than 
she re-appeared at another. 

She was always dressed in a slatternly 
trailing grey gown, and a sort of veil which 
the least breath of wind sent whirling about 
her head with its yellowish dishevelled locks. 
Seeing her so persecuted made me take 
pity on her, and I willingly allowed her to 
rest herself in my little garden, though she 
oppressed my flowers a great deal. I talked 
with her, but without ever being able to 
draw from her a single word of common 
sense. She wished to touch everything, 
saying she was doing no " harm. I got 
scolded for tolerating her, and when I had 
allowed her to come too near me, I was sent 
to wash myself and change my clothes, and 
was even threatened with being called by 
her name. 

It was such a bad name that I dreaded it 
greatly. She was so dirty that some said 
she slept on the sweepings of the houses 
and streets ; and that that was why she was 
called. Fairy Dust. 




IN MY LITTLE HARDEN. 



" Why are you so dirty ? " I asked 
her, one day, when she wanted to kiss 
me. 

" You are a stupid to be afraid of me," 
she answered, laughingly ; " you belong to 
me, and resemble me more than you think. 
But you are a child, the slave of ignorance, 
and I should waste my time by trying to 
make you understand." 

"Come," I said, "you seem inclined to 
talk sense at last. Explain to me what you 
have just said." 

" I can't talk to you here," she replied. 
" I have too much to say to you, and, as 
soon as I settle down in any part of your 
house I am brushed away with contempt ; 
but, if you wish to know who I am, call me 
three times to-night as soon as you fall 
asleep." 

That said, she hurried away, uttering a 
hearty laugh, and I seemed to see ,her 
dissolve into a mist of gold, reddened by 
the setting sun. 



FAIRY DUST. 



537 



When I was in bed 1 that night I thought 
of her just as I was going to sleep. 

" I've dreamed all that," I said to myself, 
" or else that little old creature is a mad 



At the same moment I was transported 
into an immense garden, in the midst of 
which stood an enchanted palace, and on 
the threshold of this marvellous dwelling 




THE ENCHANTED PALACE. 



thing. How can I possibly call her when 
I am asleep ? " 

I fell off to sleep, and presently dreamed 
that I called her ; I am not sure that I did 
not even call to her aloud, three times, 
" Fairy Dust ! Fairy Dust ! Fairy Dust ! " 



stood awaiting me a lady resplendent with 
youth and beauty, dressed in magnincen 
festal clothes. 

I flew to her, and she kissed me, saying— 
" Welh, do you recognise Fairy Dust ! " 
" No, not i'n the least, madame," 

R R 



538 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



answered, " and I think you must be making 
fun of me.'' 

"I am not making fun of you at all," she 
replied, " but as you are not able to under- 
stand what I say to you, I am going to show 
you a sight which will appear strange, and 
which I will make as brief as possible. 
Follow me ! " 

She led me into the most beautiful part 
of her residence. It was a little limpid 
lake, resembling a green diamond set in a 
ring of flowers, in which were sporting fish 
of all hues of orange and cornelian, Chinese 
amber-coloured carp, black and white swans, 
exotic ducks decked in jewels, and, at the 
bottom, pearl and purple shells, bright- 
coloured aquatic salamanders ; in short, a 
world of living wonders, gliding and plung- 
ing above a bed of silvery sand, on which 
were growing all sorts of water-plants, one 
more charming than another. Around this 
vast basin were ranged in several circles 
a colonnade of porphyry, with alabaster 
capitals. The entablature was made of the 
most precious minerals, and almost disap- 
peared under a growth of clematis, jessamine, 
briony and honeysuckle, amid which a 
thousand birds made their nests. Roses of 
all tints and all scents were reflected in the 
water as well as the porphyry columns 
and the beautiful statues of Parian marble 
placed under the arcades. In the midst 
of the basin a fountain threw a thousand 
jets of diamonds and pearls. 

The bottom of the architectural amphi- 
theatre opened upon flower-beds shaded by 
giant trees, loaded to their summits with 
blossoms and fruit, their branches inter- 
laced with trailing vines, forming above 
the porphyry colonnade a colonnade of 
verdure and flowers. 

There the Fairy made me seat myself 
with her at the entrance to a grotto, whence 
there issued a melodious cascade, flowing 
over fresh moss sparkling with diamond 
drops of water. 

" All that you see there is my work," she 
said to me ; " all that is made of dust. It 
is by the shaking of my gown in the clouds 
that I have furnished all the materials of 
this paradise. My friend Fire, who threw 
them into the air, has taken them back to 
re-cook them, to crystallise or compact 
them, after which my servant Wind took 
them about with him amid the moisture 
and electricity of the clouds, and then cast 
them upon the earth ; this wide plain has 
then arisen from my fecund substance, and 
rain has made sands and grass of it7 after 



having made rocks into porphyries, marbles, 
and metals of all sorts." 

I listened without understanding, and I 
thought that the Fairy was continuing to 
mystify me. How she could have made the 
earth out of dust still passes my compre- 
hension ; that she could have made marble 
and granites and other minerals merely by 
shaking the skirt of her gown, I could not 
believe. But I did not dare to contradict 
her, though I turned involuntarily towards 
her to see whether she was speaking seriously 
of such an absurdity. 

What was my surprise to find she was no 
longer behind me ! but I heard her voice, 
seemingly coming from under the ground, 
calling me. At the same time I also passed 
under ground without being able to resist, 
and found myself in a terrible place where 
all was fire and flame. I had heard tell of 
the infernal region ; I thought that was it. 
Lights, red, blue, green, white, violet — 
now pale, now swelling, replaced daylight, 
and, if the sun penetrated to this place, the 
vapours which arose from the furnace made 
it wholly invisible. 

Formidable sounds, sharp hisses, explo- 
sions, claps of thunder, filled this clouded 
cavern in which I felt myself enclosed. In 
the midst of all this I perceived little 
Fairy Dust, who had gone back to her 
dirty colourless dress. She came and went, 
working, pushing, piling, clutching, pouring 
out I know not what acids ; in a word, 
giving herself up to an incomprehensible 
labour. 

"Don't be afraid," she said to me, in a 
voice that rose above the deafening noises 
of this Tartarus. " You are here in my 
laboratory. Don't you know anything 
about machinery ? " 

" Nothing at all," I shouted, " and I don't 
want to learn about it in such a place as 
this." 

"Yes, you wanted to know, and you must 
resign yourself to me. It is very pleasant 
to live on the surface of the earth, with 
flowers, birds, and domesticated animals, 
to bathe in still waters, to eat nice-tasting 
fruits, to walk upon carpets of greensward 
and daisies. You imagined that life has 
always existed in that way, under such 
blessed conditions. It is time you should 
learn something about the beginning of 
things, and of the power of Fairy Dust, 
your grandmother, your mother, and your 
nurse." 

As she spoke the little creature made me 
roll with her into the depths of the abysm, 



FAIRY DUST. 



539 



through devouring flames, frightful explo- 
sions, acrid black smoke, metals in fusion, 
lavas vomiting hideously, and all the terrors 
of volcanic eruption. 

" These are my furnaces," she said, " the 
underground where my provisions elaborate 
themselves. You see, it is a good place for 
a mind disencumbered of the shell called a 
body. You have left yours in your bed, and 
your mind alone is with me. So you may 
touch and clutch 
primary matter. 
You are ignorant 
of chemistry ; you 
do not yet know 
of what this 
matter is made, 
nor by what 
mysterious opera- 
tion what appears 
here under the 
aspect of solid 
bodies come from 
a gaseous body 
which has shone 
in space, first as a 




nebula and later 
as a beaming sun. 
You are a child ; 
I cannot initiate 
you into the great 
secrets of creation, 
and there is a long 
time yet to be 
passed before your 
professors them- 
selves will know 
them. But I can 
show you the 
products of my 
culinary art. All 
here is somewhat 
confused for you. 
Let us mount a 
stage. Hold the ladder, and follow me." 

A ladder, of which I could not perceive 
either the bottom or the top, stood before us. 
I followed the Fairy, and found myself in 
darkness, but I then noticed that she her- 
self was wholly luminous and radiant as a 
torch. I then observed enormous deposits 
/of oozy paste, blocks of whitish crystal and 
immense waves of black and shining vitre- 
ous matter, which the Fairy took up and 
crumbled between her fingers ; then she 
piled the crystal in little heaps, and mixed 
all with the moist paste, and placed the 
whole on what she was pleased to call a 
gentle fire. 



WHAT DISH ARE YOU GOING TO MAKE OF THAT? 



" What dish are you going to make of 
that ? " I asked. 

" A dish necessary to your poor little 
existencs," she replied. " I am making 
granite, — that is to say, with dust I make 
the hardest and most resisting of stones : 
it needs that to enclose Cocytus and Phle- 
gethon. I make also various mixtures of 
the same elements. Here is what is shown 
to you under barbarous names — gneiss, the 
quartzes, the talcs, 
the micas, et 
cetera. Of all that 
which comes from 
my dust, I, later 
on, make other 
dusts with new 
elements, which 
will then be slates, 
sand, and gravel. 
I am skilful and 
patient ; I pul- 
verise unceasingly 
to reagglomerate. 
Is not flour the 
basis of all cakes ? 
At the present 
time I imprison 
my furnaces, con- 
triving for them 
some necessary 
vents, so that they 
may not burst. 
We will go above 
and see what is 
going on. If you 
are tired, you may 
take a nap, for it 
will take me a 
little to accom- 
plish what I am 
going to do." 

I lost all con- 
sciousness of time, 
and when the Fairy waked me : 

" You have been sleeping a pretty con- 
siderable number of ages ! " she said. 
" How many, Madame Fairy ? " 
" You must ask that of your professors," 
she replied, laughingly. " Let us go on up 
the ladder." 

She made me mount several stages 
through divers deposits, where I saw her 
manipulate the rust of metals, of which 
she made chalk, marl, clay, slate, jasper ; 
and, as I questioned her as to the origin of 
metals : 

" You want to know a great deal about 
it," she said. " Your inquirers may explain 



54° 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



many phenomena by fire and water ; but 
could they know what was passing between 
earth and heaven when all my dust, cast 
by wind from the abyss, has formed solid 
clouds, which clouds of water have rolled 
in their stormy whirl, which thunder has 
penetrated with its mysterious loadstone, 
and which the stronger winds have thrown 
upon a terrestrial surface in torrential 
rains ? There is the origin of the first 
deposits. You are going to witness these 
marvellous transformations." 

We mounted higher, and came to chalks, 
marbles, and banks of limestone enough 
to build a city as big as the entire globe. 



She approached a basin wide as a sea, and, 
plunging her arms into it, drew from it — 
first, strange plants, then animals, stranger 
still, which were as yet half plants ; then 
beings, free and independent of one another, 
living shells ; then, at last, fish, which she 
made leap, saying as she did so : 

" That's what Dame Dust knows how to 
produce, when she pleases, at the bottom 
of water. But there"s something better 
than that. Turn round and look at the 
shore." 

I turned. The calcar and all its com- 
ponents, mixed with flint and clay, had 
formed on the surface a fine brown and rich 
dust, out of which had sprung fibrous plants 
of singular form. 

"That is vegetable earth," said the Fairy. 
"Wait a little while, and you will see trees 
growing." 

I then saw an arborescent vegetation rise 
rapidly from the ground and people itself 
with reptiles and insects, while on the shore 
unknown creatures crawled and darted 
about, and caused me great terror. 




A WORLD OF MONSTERS. 



And as I was wondering at what she was 
able to produce "by sifting, agglomerating, 
metamorphosing, and baking, she said to 
me : 

" All that is nothing ; you are going to 
see a great deal more than that — you are 
going to see life, already hatched in the 
middle of these stones." 



" These animals will not alarm you on 
the earth of the future," said the Fairy. 
" They are destined to manure it with their 
remains. There are not yet any human 
beings here to fear them." 

" Hold ! " I cried ; "here is a world of 
monsters that shock me ! Here is your 
earth belonging to these devouring crea- 



FAIRY DUST. 



54i 



tures who live upon one another. Do you 
need all these massacres and all these stu- 
pidities to make us a muck-heap ? I can 
understand their not being good for any- 
thing else, but I can't understand a creation 
so rich in animated forms to do nothing and 
to leave nothing worth anything behind 
it." 

" Manure is something, if it is not every- 
thing ; the conditions it will create will be 
favourable to different beings who will suc- 
ceed those on which you are looking." 

" And which will disappear in their turn, 
I know that. I know that creation will go 
on improving itself up to the creation of 
Man — at least, that is, I think, what I have 
been told. But I had not pictured to my- 
self this prodigality of life and destruction, 
which terrifies me and fills me with repug- 
nance ; these hideous forms, these gigantic 
amphibia, these monstrous crocodiles, and 
all these crawling or swimming beasts which 
seem to live only to use their teeth and 
devour one another." 

My indignation highly amused Fairy 
Dust. 

" Matter is matter," she replied, " it is 
always logical in its operations. The 
human mind is not — and you have proved 
it — you who live by eating charming birds, 
and a crowd of creatures more beautiful and 
intelligent than these. Have I to teach you 
that there is no production possible without 
permanent destruction, and would you like 
to reverse the order of nature ? " 

" Yes, I would — I should like that all 
should go well from the first day. If 
•Nature is a great fairy she might have done 
without all these abominable experiments, 
and made a world in which we should all 
have been angels, living by mind only, in 
the bosom of an unchangeable and always 
beautiful creation." 

" The great fairy Nature has higher 
views," replied Dame Dust. "She does not 
intend to stop at the things of which you 
know. She is always at work and invent- 
ing. For her, for whom there is no such 
thing as the suspension of life, rest would 
be death. If things did not change the 
work of the King of the Genii would be 
ended, and this king, who is incessant and 
supreme activity, would end with his work. 
The world which you see, and to which you 
will return presently when your vision of 
the past has faded away, this world of man, 
which you think is better than that of the 
ancient animals, this world with which you 
yet are not satisfied, since you wish to live 



eternally in a pure spiritual condition, this 
poor planet, still in a state of infancy, is 
destined to transform itself infinitely. The 
future will make of you all — feeble human 
creatures that you are — fairies and genii 
possessing science, reason, and goodness. 
You have seen what I have shown to you, 
that these first drafts of life, represent- 
ing simply instinct, are nearer to you 
than you are to that which will some day 
be the reign of mind in the earth which 
you inhabit. The occupants of that future 
world will then have the right to despise 
you, as you now despise the world of the 
great saurians." 

" Oh ! if that is so," I replied, " if all that 
I have seen of the past will make me think 
the better of the future, let me see more 
that is new." 

" And, above all," said the Fairy, " don't 
let vis too much despise the past, for fear of 
committing the ingratitude of despising the 
present. When the great Spirit of life 
used the materials which furnished it, 
it did marvels from the first day. Look at 
the eyes of this monster which your learned 
men have called the ichthyosaurus." 

"They are as large as my head, and 
frighten me." 

" They are very superior to yours. They 
are at once long and short-sighted at will. 
They see prey at great distances as with a 
telescope, and when it is quite near, by a 
simple change of action, they see it per- 
fectly at its true distance without needing 
spectacles. At that moment of creation 
nature had but one purpose : to make a 
thinking animal. It gave to this creature 
organs marvellously appropriate to its 
wants. Don't you think it made a very 
pretty beginning — are you not struck by it ? 
In this way it will proceed from better to 
better, with all the beings which are to 
succeed those you now see. Those which 
appear to you poor, ugly, pitiful, are yet 
prodigies of adaptation to the place in the 
midst of which they have manifested them- 
selves." 

" And, like the others, they think of 
nothing but eating ! " 

" Of what would you have them think ? 
The earth has no wish to be admired. The 
sky, which exists to-day and for ever, will 
continue to exist without the aspirations 
and prayers of tiny living creatures adding 
anything to the splendour and majesty of 
its laws. The fairy of your little planet, no 
doubt, knows the great First Cause ; but if 
she is ordered to make a being who shall 



: 4^ 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



perceive or guess that Cause, it will be in 
obedience to the law of time — that law of 
which you can form no idea, because you 
live too short a space to appreciate its 
operations. You think those operations 
slow, yet they are carried on with a bewil- 
dering rapidity. I will free your mind 
from its natural weakness, and show you 
in rotation the results of innumerable 
centuries. Look, and don't cavil any more, 
but profit by my kindness to you.'' 

I felt that the Fairy was right, and I 
looked, with all my eyes, at the succession 
of aspects of the earth. I saw the birth and 
death of vegetables and of animals become 
more and more vigorous from instinct, and 
more and more 
agreeable or im- 
posing in form. 
In proportion as 
the ground 
decked itself with 
productions more 
nearly resembling 
those of our days, 
the inhabitants of 
this widespread 
garden, in which 
great accidents 
were incessantly 
transforming, ap- 
peared to become 
less eager to de- 
stroy each other, 
and more careful 
of their progeny. 
I saw them con- 
struct dwelling- 
places for the use 
of their families, 
and exhibit at- 
tachment for lo- 
calities, so much 
so that, from 
moment to mo- 
ment, I saw a 
world fade away, 
and a new world 
arise in its place, 

like the changing of the scenes in a 
play. 

" Rest awhile,*' the Fairy said to me, 
" for, without suspecting it, you have 
traversed a good many thousands of cen- 
turies, and Mr. Man is going to be born 
when the reign of Mr. Monkey has been 
completed." 

I once more fell asleep, quite overcome 
by fatigue, and when I awoke I found my- 




• THE FA1KY HAD AGAIN BECOME YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL. 



fairy- 



self in the midst of a grand hall in the 
palace of the Fairy, who had again become 
young, beautiful, and splendidly dressed. 

" You see all these charming things, and 
all this charming company ? " she said to 
me. " Well, my child, all that is dust ! 
These walls of porphyry and marble are 
dust, molecules kneaded and roasted to a 
turn. These buildings of cut stone are the 
dust of lime or of granite, brought about 
by the same process. These crystal lustres 
are fine sand baked by the hands of men 
in imitation of the work of Nature. These 
porcelain and china articles are the powder 
of feldtspar, the kaolin of which the Chinese 
have taught us the use. These diamonds 

in which the 
dancers are 
decked is coal- 
dust crystallised. 
These pearls are 
phosphate of lime 
which the oyster 
exudes into its 
shell. Gold and 
all the metals 
have no other 
origin than the 
assemblage, well 
heaped, well 
melted, well 
heated, and well 
cooled, of in- 
finitesimal mole- 
cules. These 
beautiful vege- 
tables, these 
flesh-coloured' 
roses, these stain- 
less lilies, these 
gardenias which 
embalm the air, 
are born of dust 
which I prepared 
for them ; and 
these people who 
dance and smile 
at the sound of 
those musical in- 
struments, these living creatures par 
excellence, who are called persons, they 
also— don't be offended — are born of me, 
and will be returned to me." 

As she said that, the hall and the palace 
disappeared. I found myself with the Fairy 
in a field of corn. She stooped, and picked 
up a stone in which there was a shell 
encrusted. 

" There," she said, "in a fossil state is a 



FAIRY DUST. 



543 



being which I showed you in the earliest 
ages of life. What is it now ? — phosphate 
of lime. Reducing it to dust, people make 
manure of it for l&nd that is too flinty. 
You see, Man is beginning to understand 
one thing — that the master to study is 
Nature." 

She crumbled the shell into powder, and 
scattered it on the cultivated soil, saying : 

" This will come back to my kitchen. I. 
spread destruction to make the germ spring. 
It is so of all dusts, whether they be plants, 
animals, or persons. They are death, after 
having been life, and there is nothing sad 
in it, since, thanks to me, they always be- 
gin again to live after having been dead. 
Farewell ! You greatly admired my ball 
dress : here is a piece of it, which you may 
examine at your leisure." 

All disappeared, and, when I opened my 
eyes, I found myself in my bed. The sun 



had risen, and sent a bright ray towards 
me. I looked for the piece of stuff which 
the Fairy had put into my hand : it was 
nothing but a little heap of dust ; but my 
mind was still under the charm of the 
dream, and it gave to my senses the power 
of distinguishing the smallest atom of this 
dust. 

I was filled with wonderment. There was 
everything in it : air, water, sun, gold, 
diamonds, ashes, the pollen of flowers, 
shells, pearls, the dust of butterflies' wings, 
of thread, of wax, of iron, of wood, and of 
many microscopic bodies ; but in the midst 
of this mixture of imperceptible refuse, I 
saw fermenting I know not what life of 
undistinguishable beings, that appeared to 
be trying to fix themselves to something, 
to hatch or to transform themselves, all 
confounded in a golden mist, or in the 
roseate rays of the rising sun. 




;he stooped and picked up a stone. 



The Queer Side of Things. 



jDtfeouerp 
CHunous 








w^^o. 



F. Sullivan. 

6 ripuiQ i-ii'v tJ' r<p bc<ov-i koi\(jJ tvp'iGKU. 

Works of Grammarian, Book I. 

Mark how th' undaunted hero hastes to tear 
The lurking quarry from its cavernous lair. 

Translation. 

WILL offer no Apology for 
quoting the above beautiful 
Words, in View of their 
notable Aptness to the Sub- 
ject whic': I am now to treat. 
One Morning lately, as I 
sat a-musing upon the Worthiness of the 
good Knight Sir Ogre, who should break 
in upon me but a certain Fellow of my 
Acquaintance that has a most acute Nose 
for the Smelling out of such Things as 
may be amazing, eccentric, or curious ; 
insomuch so that (seeing his Discoveries 
have often provided me with the Subject 
of entertaining Speculations) I hold it in 
nowise an Impertinence to introduce to 
my Reader that which this Discoverer intro- 
duced to me. 



" You shall know," said he, 
" that I am come to carry you to 
a Creature of a very curious In- 
terest that I have but now dis- 
covered ; to wit, a Comic Artist " ; 
whereat I fear me I grimaced 
upon him with no small Incre- 
dulity as on one that would be 
putting some Pleasantry upon 
me ; whereupon (being most 
hugely diverted) " Zounds ! " said 
he, " out upon your gaping and 
glaring, for I had as well spoken 
of the Sea-Serpent." 

" Why," said I, " had you done 
so, I had been as near taking you 
seriously, seeing one mythological 
Monster is as likely a Thing as 
another." 

But perceiving that it was the 
Humour of this Fellow that I 
should attend him, I set out with 
him ; yet not without first select- 
ing a stout oaken Plant in the 
Case this Creature should prove 
of a dangerous or ferocious Dis- 
position ; being, if not fidens ani'mz, 
at least in utrumque paratus ; either certce 
occnmbere morti, or to safely u contrive this 
very Thing " — to wit, the Unearthing of 
this strange Monster. 

I was still casting about in my Mind what 
Manner of Pleasantry my Friend would be 
making with me ; for in no Wise had I 
ever Conceived that a Being so outrageous 




SELECTING A STOUT OAKEN PLANT. 



THE QUEER SIDE OF THINGS. 



; 45 



as your Comic Artist might in Truth exist 
in the Flesh, being contrary to that proper 
Orderliness of Things that Nature. is ever 
for observing in her Works. 

I had indeed observed at Times a certain 
perverse Kind of Illustrations that kept 
Company with Words of a Sort of pro- 
blematical Humour and inconsiderable 
Trifling ; yet I had been of a Persuasion 
that this Kind of Art was but an uninten- 
tional Lapse of the Draughtsman from the 
correct Delineation that he would be 
making. 

Judge then of my Surprise when my Ac- 
quaintance solemnly assured me that he 
did but speak in very Seriousness, and that 
we should presently stand in the Presence 
of the Creature above-mentioned ; at which 



1 N 




AND RATPED UPON A GRIMY DOOR. 

I made much Haste to tuck up the Skirts 
of my Coat and to prepare myself how best 
I might for this Encounter ; "for," thought 
I, "if this be truly no actual strange Beast 
like to set upon us savagely, yet at the least 
it must be some Outcast which it were well 
not to touch ! " 

We now mounted several Flights of 
creaky Stairs and rapped upon a grimy 
Door, whereat I had like to turn Tail and 
run away, had not my Friend detained me ; 
and, the Door being at this Time thrown 
open, I was for the Moment reassured at 
perceiving within no more terrible Being 
than a Person of most ordinary Aspect ; 
and, on my asking with some Trepidation 
at what Moment we might look for the 
Comic Artist, I was told that this was he ; 
whereon I was mightily comforted. 



I was now plunged in a great Amaze- 
ment by my Reflections, among these being 
how this curious. Creature should possess 
the Means of a Subsistence, seeing that as 
it was not to be lightly credited that any 
should pay him Wages for his Trick of 
Buffoonery, neither was it to be expected 
that he should be of an Aspect like to an 
ordinary Person, nor eat the same Food ; 
while here he was smoking a Pipe, and that 
in so ordinary a Manner that none might 
distinguish him from a Human Being ! 

" I would have you know," said he, " that 
I am possessed by a most huge Desire for 
the Advancement and Improving of the 
great Art of which I am an unworthy Prac- 
tiser ; insomuch that, to this End, I have 
matured a most notable Scheme for an 
Academy of Comic Art, which I do not " 
(he added modestly) " propose shall take 
Precedence over our present Royal Academy, 
but shall work Side by Side with it upon a 
Basis of Equality. Among the chiefest 
Elements of my Academy " (he continued) 
" there should be a Comic Art Training 
School (being an Institution which I have 
touched upon in a recent Article upon this 
Subject). You must know that this School 
would be for the right Training as well of 
the Public, as also of the Artists and their 
Models, to the End that each Class might 
be fitted for the nice Conduct and Under- 
standing of this great Art. 

"Let us consider, then, the Department 
for the supply of Comic Models, seeing 
these are a Thing most urgently needed 
yet by no means to be obtained at this 
Time ; for Models are 
now, by reason of long 
Neglect, got into a Way 
of possessing serious and 




'one of the most promising infants' 



546 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 




" PLEASE, SIR, HERE'S THE MODEL COME." 

natural Outlines and an Aspect wanting 
in those humorous Departures from the 
natural Construction of the Human Frame 
which, though indeed in Accordance with 
serious Draughtsmanship, are ever at Vari- 
ance with the true Principle and Instinct 
of Comic Art. 

" Let us consider first," he continued, 
" my training School for Models ; for is it 
not, alas ! owing to the Want of these that 
our Art is presently in so decayed a Con- 
dition ? I would be choosing my Models 
from among the most promising Infants 
that could be hit upon, that is to say, that 
promised to be of a humorous Aspect ; 
and, by the means of a most ingenious 
Machinery of my own inventing, I would 
so encourage in their Persons those Efforts 
towards Humour 
which Dame Nature 
would be for mak- 
ing, as to fit them 
the more completely 
to carry out her In- 
tentions. For I hold 
that, as Nature is 
often inclined to- 
ward a genial 
Humour and Plea- 
santry intended for 
the Delight and Comfort of Mankind ; so 
are her efforts most sadly thwarted by a 
perverse striving in all Men after a Regu- 
larity and Normality of Form which was 
never intended. 




FELIS LEO HERALDICUS IN HIS NATIVE JUNGLE, 



" Therefore, finding an Infant of 
a notable development of Nose, I 
would, by the Use of augmentative 
Ointments, developing Moulds^ and 
other cunning Inventions contrived 
by myself, so foster the first Effort 
of Nature that the Infant should, on 
arriving at Maturity, possess an Organ 
of a Size equal to its Head, or even of 
its whole Body. Picture to yourself 
how well-fitted such a Being would 
be, as well to fulfil the Requirements 
of the Comic Artist, as to minister to 
the Amusement, and therefore greater 
Happiness, of the Public ! 

" In Time,'' he proceeded, " and 
after a few Generations, my Academy 
would possess, by reason of this Treat- 
ment, a Staff of Models of the most 
humorous Aspect ; some having 
Heads an hundred times as large as 
their Trunks (such as are seen in 
Pantomimes) ; and some being quite 
Flat, like a. Sheet of Paper ; while 
others would have developed most comical 
Tails, Web - Feet, Ears that resembled 
Wings, and many other most humorous 
Appendages. 

" Nor would I confine my Attentions to 
the human Frame ; for, even as Nature 
has purposed that a certain Vein of genial 
Pleasantry shall run through all her Works, 
equally I would strive to assist her in this 
her Intent by the extending of my Scheme 
to the Beasts, Birds, and Fishes, and to 
Landscape ; so that I would have most 
laughable Lions and Griffins, having Tails 
that should develop into Scrolls and fantas- 
tic Leaves, such as are presently limned by 
the Heralds' College ; which indeed is, in 
a fashion, a School of Comic Art itself, save 
that it does not go far enough in its carry- 
ing out of Nature's 
Plan. 

" I am in truth 
of an earnest Opi- 
nion that a Mena- 
gerie filled with 
such Beasts as I 
have suggested 
would infuse into 
the Public a very 
intense overpower- 
ing Interest ; even 
as it would in like Wise help in the re- 
storing of that national Merriment and 
Hilarity which have been undermined 
and destroyed by long Continuance of our 
dismal Climate. 



THE QUEER SIDE OF THINGS. 



: 47 



" As touching that Department of my 
Academy which should deal with the Edu- 
cation of the Public in the true Apprecia- 
tion of Humour, I am of a very hopeful 
Persuasion, in that I hold it but necessary 
to shut them out from all Sight and Know- 
ledge of our aforesaid dismal Climate, at 
the same time bringing them in familiar 
Contact with the Productions of our School, 
to bring about the desired End." 

Having finished in his addressing to us 
this Discourse, the worthy Man was at some 
Pains to persuade us to drop a few Coppers 
into an old Hat which he kept by him for 
the Reception of Subscriptions towards the 
Cost of starting his projected Scheme ; 
whereat we, being in too great Haste to 
plead a sudden Engagement elsewhere, and 
making hurriedly for the Stairs, by great 
good Fortune escaped a headlong Tumble, 
and so pell-mell into the Street. 

I fell, in my Walk Home, into a pro- 
found exhaustive Speculation upon the 
Scheme of this ingenious Fellow ; in the 
Outcome of which I became of a most 
pronounced Conviction that great Detri- 
ment would accrue to the Nation if it 
should be carried out ; for it seemed to me 
that the Appreciation of Humour must 
involve so huge and radical a Change in 
the mental Constitution of my Country- 
men as would be like to seriously 
endanger the Stability of the Constitution. 

With a Purpose of establishing or recti- 
fying this my Surmise for the satisfying 
of myself, I presently propounded to a 




THE COMIC MODEL SITTING. 



Fellow-Countrymen that happened to pass 
by the following Queries : — 

" Do you perceive the Humour of ren- 
dering Necessaries more costly by means of 
Strikes ? — the subtile Absurdity of being at 
so great Pains to provide a healthy Atmo- 
sphere for those that make chaotic Laws at 
St. Stephen's, while suffocating and freez- 
ing the Judges that try to decipher them 
in the High Courts ? — the Mirth-provoking 
Pleasantry of permitting Billingsgate to 




THE COMIC MODEL, HIS SON, AND DOG TRUDGING TO WORK. 



54* 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 



deprive London of Fish ? — the grotesque 
Insanity of our wild Rush of Juggernaut 
Fire-Engines through crowded Streets ? — 
the hilarious Jocosity of a Coinage with 
its Values unindicated upon it ? — in short, 
the Comicality of most of your Institu- 
tions ? " 

When I had made an End, the Fellow- 
Countryman fell to shaking his Head 



hopelessly ; by Reason of which I am most 
firmly convinced that I need have no 
Manner of Misgiving on the Score of the 
great Change I have alluded to ; seeing 
that the Change is too great to be anyway 
brought about. 

With which most comforting Reflection 
I shall beg Leave to close the present 
Speculation. 




"do you perceive the humour?' 



I HE QUEER SIDE OF THINGS. 



549 






^^r£v 



Si^p 







PORTRAIT SIGNATURES. 



55o 



THE STRAND MAGAZINE. 




PHOTOGRAPHER (FRESH FROM THE FAR WEST): " MY REPUTATION IS AT STAKE. JUST LOOK 
PLEASANT, OR " 




"WHAT IS INSIDE, MOTHER? ' 



'WJND, MY SON, WIND. 1 ' 










HE THINKS HE HAS GOT THE COW. 



AN HOUR AFTER : HE THINKS THE COW HAS GOT HIM.