Full text of "All The Year Round"

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ESTABLISHED 1&72

LAWRENCE, MASS.

"The Story of our Lives from Tear to Year." Shakespeare.

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

ft muMn Sountal.

CONDUCTED BY

CHARLES DICKENS.

WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
ISTIEW SEBIES.

From December 5,- 1868

LONDON:
PUBLISHED AT N- 26, WELLINGTON STREET;

AND BY MESSRS. CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1869.

BBlXTFORT HOUSE, STEAND.

Aboard Ship .
Alaska

Amateur Beat, An .
America, The Irish in
America, The Pacific Railroad
Ancestry, A Question of .
Ancient College Youths .
Angels, City of the .
Anglo-Saxons and Celts .
Armour-plated Houses .
Arthur, Comish Legends of
Aztec Ruins of New Mexico
As the Crow Flies, Due West

Hounslow Heath .

Bedfont to Windsor

Eton to Newbury.

Marlborough to Glastonbury

Bridgewater to Taunton

Taunton to Exeter

Across Dartmoor .

Tavistock to Plymouth

Plymouth

Plymouth to Bodmin .

Bodmin to Padstow .

Padstow to Redruth .

Penryn to the Land's End

Due East (Essex): Barking to
Braintree .

Pleshyand Dunmow to Colches

tor

Australian Gold Fields .
Avebury, Druidic Temple at

Balloons in War .
Bamfleld Moore Carew .
Bare Feet, A Plea for .
Barking to Braintree
Barlow, Mr.
Bed at the Bustard .
Bell Ringers, the Society of
Bengal, Village Life in .
Berlioz the Composer .
Birmingham a Century Ago
Blake, Admiral
Bodmin to Padstow
Boy ! in Madras
Bray, The Vicar of .
Bridgewater to Taunton .
Bridgewater Will Case .
Britany, A Peasant Wedding
Brown-Paper Parcel . "
Bull Fight, Mr. Lufkin at a
Burning Heretics

PAGE
. 12
. 177
. 300
. 510
. 293
318, 428

. 397

318, 428

. 465

Cadbury Castle .... 259
California, Chinese in . 367

Candles ....
Caricature History . . . .184
Casting Statues . . . .276
Century of Birmingham Life . 462
Charles the First, Discovery of the

Body of 113

Children's Hospital at Ratcliffe . 61
Chinese from Home . . .367

Chops 562

Churches Buried in Sand . 453, 474
City of the Angels . . . .397
Civil Wars, Stories of the . 139, 175
258, 322, 342, 418, 594
Clocks and Watches . . 487
Club of Franciscans, The . . 137
Coal, Oil from 58

CONTENTS.

PAGE

Coelongh Battle, The . . 525, 533

Colchester 594

Compact Revolution, A . . . 421
Composite Candles .... 58

Convent Belles 445

Convent Life 445

Convict Question, The . . .414
Cookery Manual for Fast Days . 353
Cornish Legends, The 420, 451, 473, 514
Courts of Justice, French . . 604

Crediton 269

Criminal Community, The . . 414

Daniel Gtjmb 420

Darell the Murderer, Story of . 174
Dart, The River .... 284
Dartmoor, Traditions of. . . 283
Death's Head Moth, The . . 90
Devizes, The Siege of . 176

Dick Steele 8

DickTurpin . . . .41,560
Diamonds, The History of . \ 153
Dinner in an Hour .... 108
Domestic Turks .... 54
Donnington Castle .... 139
Dorking, Origin of the Name . 37
Drake, Sir Francis . . . .322
Dream, Singular Story of a . . 473
Dunmow Flitch, The . . .592

East London, Children's Hospital
East London, The Poor of
Eclipse Seen in India
Education in Italy .
Election Address, A New
Election, Use of Man in the Moon
English and their Origin
English Peasant .
English, The Pedigree of the .

Epping Forest

Eton School, Anecdotes of
Eton to Newbury .
Exchange and Mart Journal .
Execution by Fire in Sicily .
Exeter, Traditions of

250

159

11*

564

428

. 132

318, 428

. 559

. 136

. 33

. 101

. 260

Fasting and Abstinence, A Manual
for 353

Fatal Curiosity, The Story of . 514

Fatal Zero:
A Diary Kept at Homburg 19, 43. 67
95, 117, 139, 162, 189, 212, 237, 262
286, 308, 332, 356

Fish Markets of Paris .

Flogging Captains .

Flowers, Pottery for

Forrabury Bells, The Legend of

Four-in-Hand Club .

Franciscans, The Club of

Frankenstein, A Modern

French Courts of Justice

George the Third at Windsor . 113
Gipsy Glimpses .... 536
Glastonbury Abbey . . .177
Glazed Bricks for Houses . . 465
Gloucester, Murder of the Duke of 591
Gold in Cape Colony . . 107, 288
Gold Fields, down a Mine . . 608
Good Company for New Year's

Day 204

Gunpowder Plot . . . .559

HAYDON'sHome . . . .343

Hector Berlioz 495

Helston, A Festival Day at . . 514
Henry the Eighth, Sisters of . . 644
Herrington-by-the-Sea . . . 329
Hidden Witness . 78>

Highwaymen, Stories of . 39, 560

Holy Fire, The Last Ash of a . 101
Hopton, Sir Ralph . . . .418

Horology 487

Hounslow Heath, Stories of . .39
Houses, Glazed Bricks for . . 465

India, The Eclipse of the Sun in . 250
India, Village Life in Bengal . 581
Indians of New Mexico 468, 493, 517
Injured Innocents .... 414
Inquisition, The Burning of Heretics 101
Irish in America .... 510>
Italy's School Bell . . . .159

Jack of Newbury . . . .139
Jefferies and the Bloody Assize . 211
Jewels 153

Keeley, Mr. Robert . . .438
Kelly, Mrs., The Will of. . . 391
Kimberley's, Lord, Bill . . .415
King Arthur, Legends of . . 451

King Cole 594

King's College Hospital, New

Year's Day in . . . .304
Knights of the Round Table . . 452
Koh-i-noor, The . . . .155

Lamps, Lighting by 268

Land's End, Legends of the .. . 516
Langford (Mr.), upon Birmingham 462
Last Ash of a Holy Fire . . 101
Law Courts, Where to put the . 224
Lead Mills, A Visit to . . .302
Leading and Driving . . . 608

Lighting 268

Lightning, Playing with . . 617

Liskeard 418

Little Italy's School Bell . . 159
Living, Odd Ways of Getting a, 521, 569
Lord Chamberlain, A Report to the

324, 349, 372
Lots of Money .... 491
Loves, The Memory of Old . . 169

MACREADY'S, Mr., Management of
Covent Garden . . . .253

Madras Boy 66

Magna Charta 112

Man in the Moon .... 564
Manual for Fasting Days . . 353
Marlborough to Glastonbury . 173
Martyrs at Newbury . . . 139
Medmenham Abbey . . . 137
Melusina .... 475,498
Memory of Old Loves . . . 169
Merchant's Hanaper, The . . 84
Mexico, Native Tribes of New . 468
493, 517, 540
Mexico, Travelling in 399

Modern Frankenstein . . . 200
Mogul Diamond, The ... 154
Money and Happiness . . . 491
Monmouth's Rebellion . . .209

PAGE

Monsters 223

More of Wills and Will Making . 375
390, 454, 525, 533, 574

Mr. Barlow I 56

Mr. Lufkin at a Bull Fight . . 595
Mr. Volt, Alchemist . . .127
Music Halls and Theatres, 324, 349, 372
Mystery of the Moated Schloss 229, 253
My Version of Poor Jack . . 36

Naphtha 69

Native Tribes of New Mexico . 468

493, 517, 540

Newbury, The Battle of . . . 139

New Lamps for Old Ones . . 33

New Mexico, Native Tribes of . 468

493, 517, 540

New Uncommercial Samples. By

Charles Dickens :

Aboard Ship .... 12

A Small Star in the East . .61

A Little Dinner in an Hour , 108

Mr. Barlow 156

An Amateur Beat . . . 300
A Fly-Leaf in a Life . . .589
New Year's Day at King's College

Hospital 204

North Curry, A Curious Custom at 257
Nun, The Life of a . . . .445

Odd Monsters 223

Odd Ways of Getting a Living 521, 569

Old King Cole 594

Old Loves 169

Oil from Coal 58

Oil upon the Waves . .198

PACIFIC Railroad . . . .293
Padstow to Redruth . . .473
Palermo, Burning Heretics at . 101
Pandemonium, The Royal . . 326
Panton Will Case . . . .574

Parafflne 58

Paris Fish Markets . . . .236
Paris, Odd Ways of Getting a Liv-
ing 521, 569

Pearl Fisheries of Scotland . . 125

Peasant Life 132

Peasant Wedding in Britany . . 150
Pedigree of the English People 318, 428
Penitential Food . . . .353
Penryn to the Land's End . . 514
Penzance, Curious Custom at .515
Phantom of Regatta Island . . 546
Pigeons of Venice .... 17
Playing with Lightning . . . 617
Plea for Bare Feet . . . .402

Pleshy 591

Plymouth, Legends of . . . 341
Police and the Ticket-of-Leave Men 415
Polytechnic, The . . . .617

Poor Jack 36

Portuguese Revolution, A . . 421
Poste Restante . . . .180
Pottery for Flowers . . .615
Pouring Oil upon the Waves . . 198
Precious Stones . . . .153
Prisoners' Aid Society . . . 415
Prose, The Vindication of . . 346
Puebla 397

Punch, The Modern Frankenstein

Question of Ancestry . . .318
Question of Priority . . .428
Quite a New Election Address . 115

Rabbit Skin 247

Reading, The Abbey of . . . 138
Redruth. The Mines at . . . 475
Regatta Island, The Phantom of . 546
Report to the Lord Chamberlain, 324
349, 372
. 591
. 462
. 284

Richard the Second
Riots at Birmingham
River Dart
Robert Keeley
Rochford, The Village of
Rougemont Castle .
Round Table of King Arthur
Runnymede .
Russian Postman .
Royal Pandemonium, The

Sculpture
Second-Class Virtues
Sedgenioor, The Battle of
Sewing Machines .
Schools in Italy
Scotch PeUrls .

56 L
260
452
112
182

Slight Question of Fact .

Society of College Youths

Soft Sackcloth and Ashes

Some Other Odd Livings

South African Gold

Southend

Spanish Post Office

Statue-Making

Steele, Mr., Murder of .

Steele, Sir Richard .

Stonehenge

Stories :

A Hidden Witness .

Bed at the Bustard

Brown-Paper Parcel . i

Death's Head Moth, The

Melusina

Merchant's Hanaper, The

Modern Frankenstein

Mr. Volt, Alchemist .

Mystery of the Moated Schloss
229,

Phantom of Regatta Island
St. Just and St. Keverne

St. Neots

St. Piran, The Buried Church of .

St. Winifred

Sun, The

Tallow Candles .
Taunton after Monmouth'

bellion . ' 211

Tavistock, Traditions of . . 322
Theatres and Music Halls, 324, 319, 372
Those Convent Belles . . . 445
Ticket-of-Leave Men . . . 414

Tilbury Fort 561

Timepieces of the Ancients . . 487
Tintagel Castle . . . .452
Tintern Abbey, The Owners of . 525

Ee-

PAGE

Tiverton 258

To the Lord Chamberlain, 324, 349 372

Tregeagle, Legend of 453

Trelawney, The Bishop . . . 420

Truro 474

Tudor Slip Knot, The ... 544

Turks, Domesticated ... 54

Uncommercial Samples. By
Charles Dickens :

Aboard Ship . . . .12

A Small Star in the East . .61

A Little Dinner in an Hour . 108

Mr. Barlow 156

An Amateur Beat . . . 300

A Fly-Leaf in a Life . . .589

Venice, The Pigeons of . . .17

Vicar of Bray 137

Village Life in Bengal . . .581
Vindication of Prose . . . 346

Virtues 585

Volunteer Commissioner's Report,
A 324,349,372

Walcheren Expedition . . 344
Waltham Abbey . . . .560
War Balloons 297

Wax Lights 270

Weaver, Wit, and Poet ... 441
Wellington, The Town of . . 258
Wesley in Cornwall .... 475
Where to Put the Law Courts . 224

White Lead 302

Wills and Will Making . . .375
390, 454. 525, 533, 574
Wiltshire Downs, Stones of . . 173
Windsor Castle, Legends of . . 112
Westman's Wood . . . . 2S5
Woman Question in Black Letter,

The 611

Wood, Mr., of Gloucester, Wills of 454

Wrecked in Port . . . . 1

25, 49, 73, 97, 121, 145, 169, 193, 217,

241, 265, 289, 313. 337, 361, 385, 409,

433, 457, 481, 505, 529, 553, 577, 601

Wretchedville . . . .277

POETRY.
An Acorn

Blind Man's Fireside
Cluster of Lyrics .
Eternal Pendulum .
Facts and Fancies .
Garland of Lyrics .

Hall Porter at the Club .

Hampton Court

Legend of the Prince's Plume

Lyrical Interludes .

Man Overboard

Milestones

Old Dick Purser .

Out of Work .

Pervigilium Veneris

Planting of the Vine

Poet, The

Poor Man on a Tender Subject

Scotch Sincerity

Witch, The

Wreath of Fancies .

M4
498

540
155

407

024
107
516

132
277

f -gS3i

HE-STOI^Y-OF OTU I\- ilVES -JT^OM "Ye/^TO */V

J%%$!>imifil

CON DUCT Et>- BY

WITH WHICH US

j^COI\PO^ATED

^OlfSEHOLDWoi^DS"

SATURDAY, DECEMBER

TO THE PUBLIC.

A very unjustifiable paragraph has appeared in some newspapers, to the effect that I have
relinquished the Editorship of this Publication. It is not only unjustifiable because it is
wholly untrue, but because it must be either wilfully or negligently untrue, if any respect be
due to the explicit terms of my repeatedly -published announcement of the present New
Series under my own hand. Charles Dickens.

WRECKED IN PORT.

A Serial Story by the Author of " Black Sheep."

CHAPTER I. MORIBUND.

" I say ! Old Ashurst's going to die !
I heard old Osborne say so. I say, Hawkes,
if Ashurst does die, we shall break up at
once, shan't we ?"

" I should think so ! But that don't
matter much to me ; I'm going to leave
this term."

" Don't I wish I was, that's all ! Hawkes,
do you think the governors will give old
Ashurst's place to Joyce ?"

" Joyce ? that snob ! Not they, in-
deed! They'll get a swell from Oxford,
or somewhere, to be head master ; and
I should think he'll give Master Joyce the
sack."

Little Sam Baker, left to himself,
turned out the pocket of his trousers,
which he had not yet explored, found a
half- melted acidulated drop sticking in
one corner, ' removed it, placed it in his
mouth, and enjoyed it with great relish.
This refection finished, he leaned his lit-
tle arms over the park -paling of the
cricket -field, where the above- described
colloquy had taken place, and surveyed the
landscape. Immediately beneath him was
a large meadow, from which the hay had
been just removed, and which, looking

brown and bare and closely shorn as the
chin of some retired Indian civilian, re-
mained yet fragrant from its recent trea-
sure. The meadow sloped down to a broad,
sluggishly- flowing stream, unnavigated and
unnavigable, where the tall green flags,
standing breast - high, bent and nodded
gracefully, under the influence of the gentle
summer breeze, to the broad-leaved water-
lilies couchant below them. A notion of
scuttling across the meadow and having
"a bathe" in a sequestered part of the
stream, which he well knew, faded out of
little Sam Baker's mind before it was half
formed. Though a determined larker and
leader in mischief among his coevals, he
was too chivalrous to take advantage of the
opportunity which their chief's illness gave
him over his natural enemies, the masters.
Their chief's illness. And little Sam
Baker's eyes were lifted from the river and
fixed themselves on a house about a quarter
of a mile further on a low-roofed, one-
storeyed, red-brick house, with a thatched
roof and little mullioned windows, from
one of which a white blind was fluttering
in the evening breeze.

" That's his room," said little Sam
Baker to himself. " Poor old Ashurst !
He wasn't half a bad old chap ; he often

let me off a hundred lines ; he poor

old Ashurst !" And two large tears burst
from the small boy's eyes and rolled down
his cheeks.

2 [December 5, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

The boy was right. Where the white
blind fluttered was the dominie's bedroom,
and there the dominie lay dying. A gaunt,
square, ugly room, with panelled walls, on
which the paint had cracked and rubbed
and blistered, with such furniture as it
possessed old fashioned, lumbering, and
mean, with evidence of poverty everywhere
evidence of poverty which a woman's
hand had evidently tried to screen and
soften without much effect. The bed, its
well-worn red moreen curtains with a dirty
yellow border having been tightly bound
round each sculptured post for the ad-
mittance of air, stood near the window, on
which its occupant frequently turned his
glazed and sunken eyes. The sun had
gone to rest, the invalid had marked its
sinking, and so had those who watched
him. The same thought had occurred to
all, though not a word had been spoken ; but
the roseate flush which he leaves behind
still lingered in the heavens, and, as if in
mockery, gave momentarily to the dying
man's cheek a bright healthy hue, such as
he was destined never to wear in life again.
The flush grew fainter, and faded away,
and then a glance at the face, robbed of its
artificial glory, must have been conclusive
as to the inevitable result. For the cheeks
were hollow and sunken, yellowish-white
in colour, and cold and clammy to the
touch ; the eyes, with scarcely any fire left
in them, seemed set in large bistre rings ;
the nose was thin and pinched, and the
bloodless lips were tightly compressed with
an expression of acute pain.

The Reverend James Ashurst was dying.
Every one in Helmingham knew that, and
nearly every one had a word of kindness
and commiseration for the stricken man,
and for his wife and daughter. Dr. Osborne
had carried the news up to the Park several
days previously, and Sir Thomas had
hemmed and coughed and said, " Dear
me," and Lady Churchill had shaken her
head piteously, on hearing it. "And no-
thing much to leave in the way of eh,

my dear doctor ?" It was the doctor's
turn to shake his head then, and he solaced
himself with a large pinch of snuff, taken
in a flourishing and sonorous manner,
before he replied that he believed matters
in that way were much worse than people
thought ; that he did not believe there was
a single penny not a single penny : indeed,
it was a thing not to be generally talked
of, but he might mention it in the strictest
confidence to Sir Thomas and my lady,
who had always proved themselves such

good friends to the Ashursts that was, he
had mentioned to Mrs. Ashurst that there
was one faint hope of saving her husband's
life, if he would submit to a certain opera-
tion which only one man in England,
Godby, of St. Vitus's Hospital in London,
could perform. But when he had mentioned
Godby 's probable fee and you could not
expect these eminent men to leave their
regular work and come down such a long
distance under a large sum he saw at
once how the land lay, and that it was im-
possible for them to raise the money. Miss
Ashurst curious girl that, so determined
and all that kind of thing had indeed
pressed him so hard that he had sent his
man over to the telegraph office at Brock-
sopp with a message, inquiring what would
be Godby's exact charge for running down
it was a mere question of distance with
these men, so much a mile and so much for
the operation but he knew the sum he
had named was not far out.

From the Park Dr. Osborne had driven
his very decorous little four-wheeler to
"Woolgreaves, the residence of the Cres-
wells, his other great patients, and there he
had given a modified version of his story,
with a very much modified result. For old
Mr. Creswell was away in France, and
neither of the two young ladies was of an
age to feel much sympathy, unless with
their intimate relations, and they had been
educated abroad, and seen but little of the
Helmingham folk ; and as for Tom Cres-
well, he was the imp of the school, having
all Sam Baker's love of mischief without
any of his good heart, and would not have
cared who was ill or who died, provided
illness or death afforded occasion for slack-
ing work and making holiday. Every one
else in the parish was grieved at the news.
The rector bland, polished, and well en-
dowed with worldly goods had been most
actively compassionate towards his less
fortunate brother ; the farmers, who looked
upon " Master Ashurst " as a marvel of
book learning, the labourers who had con-
sented to the removal of the village sports,
held from time immemorial on the village
green, to a remote meadow whence the
noise could not penetrate to the sick man's
room, and who had considerately lowered
the matter as well as the manner of their
singing as they passed the school-house at
night in jovial chorus; all these people
pitied the old man dying, and the old wife
whom he would leave behind. They did not
say much about the daughter ; when they
referred to her it was generally to the effect

Charles Dickens.]

WRECKED EST PORT.

[December 5, 1868.] 3

that she would manage tolerably well for
herself, for " she were a right plucked 'un,
Miss Marian were."

They were right. It needed little skill
in physiognomy to trace, even under the
influence of the special circumstances sur-
rounding her, the pluck, and spirit, and de-
termination in every feature of Marian
Ashurst's face. They were patent to the
most ordinary beholder; patent in the
brown eye, round rather than elongated,
small yet bright as a beryl; in the short
sharply curved nose, in the delicately
rounded chin, which relieved the jaw of a
certain fulness, sufficiently characteristic,
but scarcely pretty. Variety of expression
was Marian's great charm; her mobile
features acting under every impulse of her
mind, and giving expression to her every
thought. Those who had seen her seldom,
or only in one mood, would scarcely have
recognised her in another. To the old man,
lying stretched on his death-bed, she had
been a fairy to be worshipped, a plaything
to be for ever prized. In his presence the
brown eyes were always bright, the small,
sharp, white teeth gleamed between the ripe,
red lips, and one could scarcely have traced
the jaw, that occasionally rose rigid and
hard as iron, in the soft expanse of the
downy cheek. Had he been able to raise
his eyes, he would have seen a very
different look in her face as, after bending
over the bed and ascertaining that her
father slept, she turned to the other
occupant of the room, and said, more in
the tone of one pondering over and repeat-
ing something previously heard than of a
direct question :

"A hundred and thirty guineas, mother !"
For a minute Mrs. Ashurst made her no
reply. Her thoughts were far away. She
could scarcely realise the scene passing
round her, though she had pictured it to
herself a hundred times, in a hundred
different phases. Years ago how many
years ago it seemed ! she was delicate and
fragile, and thought she should die before
her husband, and she would He awake for
hours in the night, rehearsing her own
death-bed, and thinking how she should
tell James not to grieve after her, but to
marry again, anybody except that Eleanor
Shaw, the organist's daughter, and she
should be sorry to think of that flighty
minx going through the linen and china
after she was gone. And now the time
had really come, and he was going to be
taken from her; he, her James, with his
big brown eyes and long silky hair, and

strong lithe figure, as she first remembered
him going to be taken from her now, and
leave her an old woman, poor and lone and
forlorn and Mrs. Ashurst tried to stop the
tears which rolled down her face, and to
reply to her daughter's strange remark.

" A hundred and thirty guineas ! Yes,
my dear, you're thinking of Mr. I forget
his name the surgeon. That was the sum
he named."

"You're sure of it, mother?"
" Certain sure, my dear ! Mr. Casserly,
Dr. Osborne's assistant, a very pleasant-
spoken young man, showed me the tele-
graph message, and I read it for myself.
It gave me such a turn that I thought I
should have dropped, and Mr. Casserly
offered me some sal volatile or peppermint
I mean of his own accord, and never in-
tended to charge for it, I am sure."

"A hundred and thirty guineas! and
the one chance of saving his life is to be
lost because we cannot command that sum !
Good God ! to think of our losing him for

want of Is there no one, mother, from

whom we could get it ? Think, think ! It's
of no use sitting crying there ! Think, is
there no one who could help us in this
strait ?"

The feeling of dignity which Mrs. Ashurst
knew she ought to have assumed was scared
by her daughter's earnestness, so the old
lady merely fell to smoothing her dress,
and, after a minute's pause, said in a
tremulous voice,

" I fear there is no one, my dear ! The
rector, I daresay, would do something, but
I'm afraid your father has already borrowed
money of him, and I know he has of Mr.
King, the chairman of the governors of
the school. I don't know whether Mr.

Casserly "

"Mr. Casserly, mother, a parish doctor's
drudge ! Is it likely that he would be able
to assist us ?"

"Well, I don't know, my dear, about
being able, I'm sure he would be willing !
He was so kind about that sal volatile that

I am sure he would do what Lord ! we

never thought of Mr. Creswell !"

Set and hard as Marian's face had been
throughout the dialogue, it grew even
more rigid as she heard these words. Her
lips tightened, and her brow clouded as
she said, " Do you think that I should have
overlooked that chance, mother ? Do yon
not know that Mr. Creswell is away in
Prance ? He is the very first person to
whom I should have thought of applying."
Under any other circumstances, Mrs.

eQ=

4 [December 5, 1868.]

ALL THE TEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

Ashurst would have been excessively de-
lighted at this announcement. As it was,
she merely said, " The young ladies are at
Woolgreaves, I think."

"The young ladies!" repeated Marian,
bitterly "the young ladies ! The young
dolls dolts dummies to try dresses on !
What are Maude and Gertrude Creswell
to us, mother ? "What kindness, courtesy
even, have they ever shown us ? To get
their uncle's purse is what we most
need "

"Oh, Marian, Marian!" interrupted Mrs.
Ashurst, "what are you saying ?"

"Saying?" replied Marian, calmly

saying ,

The truth! What should I

say, when I know that if we had the com-
mand of Mr. Creswell' s purse, father's life
might from what I gather from Dr.
Osborne most probably would be saved !
Are these circumstances under which one
should be meek and mild and thankful for
one's lot in life ! Is this a time to talk

of gratitude and He's moving! Yes,

darling father, Marian is here !"

Two hours afterwards, Marian and Dr.
Osborne stood in the porch. There were
tears in the eyes of the garrulous but
kindly old man ; but the girl's eyes were
dry, and her face was set harder and more
rigid than ever. The doctor was the first
to speak.

"Good night, my dear child," said he;
" and may God comfort you in your afflic-
tion ! I have given your poor mother a
composing draught, and trust to find her
better in the morning. Fortunately, you
require nothing of that kind. God bless
you, my dear ! It will be a consolation to
you, as it is to me, to know that your
father, my dear old friend, went off perfectly
placid and peacefully."

" It is a consolation, doctor more espe-
cially as I believe such an ending is rare
with people suffering under his disease."

"His disease, child ? Why, what do you
think your father died of?"

" Think, doctor ? I know ! Of the want
of a hundred and thirty guineas !"

CHAPTER II. RETROSPECTIVE.

The Reverend James Ashurst had been
head master of the Helmingham Grammar
School for nearly a quarter of a century.
Many old people in the village had a vivid
recollection of him as a young man, with his
bright brown hair curling over his coat col-
lar, his frank fearless glances, his rapid jerky
walk. They recollected how he was by no

means particularly well received by the
powers that then were, how he was spoken
of as "one of the new school" a term in
itself supposed to convey the highest degree
of opprobrium and how the elders had
shaken their heads and prophesied that no
good would come of the change, and that it
would have been better to have held on to
old Dr. Munch, after all. Old Dr. Munch,
who had been Mr. Ashurst's immediate pre-
decessor, was as bad a specimen of the old-
fashioned, nothing- doing, sinecure-seeking
pedagogue as could well be imagined ; a ro-
tund, red-faced, gouty-footed divine, with a
thick layer of limp white cravat loosely tied
round his short neck, and his suit of clerical
sables splashed with a culinary spray ; a
man whose originally small stock of clas-
sical learning had gradually faded away,
and whose originally large stock of idleness
and self-gratification had simultaneously
increased. Forty male children, born in
lawful wedlock in the parish of Helming-
ham, and properly presented on the foun-
dation, might have enjoyed the advantages
of a free classical and mathematical educa-
tion at the Grammar School under the will
of old Sir Ranulph Clinton, the founder ;
but, under the lax rule of Dr. Munch, the
forty gradually dwindled to twenty, and of
these twenty but few attended school in
the afternoon, knowing perfectly that for
the first few minutes after coming in from
dinner the Doctor paid but little attention
as to which members of the class might be
present, and that in a very few minutes he
fell into a state of pleasant and unbroken
slumber.

This state of affairs was terrible, and,
worst of all, it was getting buzzed abroad.
The two or three conscientious boys who
really wanted to learn shook their heads in
despair, and appealed to their parents to
"let them leave;" the score of lads who
enjoyed the existing state of affairs were,
lad-like, unable to keep it to themselves,
and went about calling on their neighbours
to rejoice with them ; so, speedily, every one
knew the state of affairs in Helmingham
Grammar School. The trustees of the
charity, or " governors," as they were
called, had not the least notion how to pro-
ceed. They were, for the most part, re-
spectable tradesmen of the place, who had
vague ideas about " college" as of a se-
questered spot where young men walked
about in stuff gowns and trencher caps, and
were, by some unexplained circumstance,
rendered fit and ready for the bishop to
convert into clergymen. There must, they

S--

=&.

Charles Dickens.]

WRECKED IN" PORT.

[December 5, 1868.] 5

thought, probably be in this "college"
some one fit to take the place of old Dr.
Munch, who must be got rid of, come what
might. At first, the resident " governors"
the tradesmen of Helmingham thought it
best to write to two of their colleagues,
who were non-resident, and not by any
manner of means tradesmen, being, in fact,
two distinguished peers of the realm, who,
holding property in the neighbourhood,
had, for political reasons, thought fit to
cause themselves to be elected governors of
old Sir Ranulph Clinton's foundation. The
letters explaining the state of affairs, and
asking for advice, were duly written ; but
matters political were at a standstill just
then ; there was not the remotest chance of
an election for years ; and so the two
private secretaries of the two noble lords
pitched their respective letters into their
respective waste-baskets, with mutual grins
of pity and contempt for the writers.
Thrown back on their own resources, the
resident governors determined on applying
to the rector ; acting under the feeling that
he, as a clergyman, must have been to this
"college," and would doubtless be able to
put them in the way of securing such a
man as they required. And they were
right. The then rector, though an old
man, still kept up occasional epistolary in-
tercourse with such of his coevals as re-
mained at the university in the enjoyment
of dignities and fellowships ; and, being him-
self both literate and conscientious, was by
no means sorry to lend a hand towards the
removal of Dr. Munch, whom he looked
upon as a scandal to the cloth. A corre-
spondence entered into between the Rector
of Helmingham and the Principal of St.
Beowulph's College, Oxford, resulted in
the enforced resignation of Dr. Munch as
the head master of Helmingham Gram-
mar School, and the appointment of the
Reverend James Ashurst as his successor.
The old Doctor took his fate very calmly ;
he knew that for a long time he had been
doing nothing, and had been sufficiently well
paid for it. He settled down in a pleasant
village in Kent, where an old crony of his
held the position of warden to a City Com-
pany's charity, and this history knows him
no more.

When James Ashurst received his ap-
pointment he was about eight-and-twenty,
had taken a double second class, had been
scholar and tutor of his college, and stood
well for a fellowship. By nature silent and
reserved, and having found it necessary for
the achievement of his position to renounce

nearly all society for he was by no means
a brilliant man, and his successes had been
gained by plodding industry, and constant
application rather than by the exercise of
any natural talent James Ashurst had
but few acquaintances, and to them he
never talked of his private affairs. They
wondered when they heard that he had.
renounced certain prospects, notably those
of a fellowship, for so poor a preferment as
two hundred pounds a year and a free
house : for they did not know that the odd,
shy, silent man had found time in the in-
tervals of his reading to win the heart of a
pretty, trusting girl, and that the great
hope of his life, that of being able to marry
her and take her to a decent home of
which she would be mistress, was about to
be accomplished.

On a dreary, dull day, in the beginning
of a bitter January, Mr. Ashurst arrived at
Helmingham. He found the schoolhouse
dirty, dingy, and uncomfortable, bearing
traces everywhere of the negligence and
squalor of its previous occupant; but the
chairman of the governors, who met him
on his arrival, told him that it should be
thoroughly cleaned and renovated during
the Easter holidays, and the mention of
those holidays caused James Ashurst's
heart to leap and throb with an intensity
with which house-painting could not pos-
sibly have anything to do. In the Easter
holidays he was to make Mary Bridger his
wife, and that thought sustained him splen-
didly during the three dreary intervening
months, and helped him to make head
against a sea of troubles raging round him.
For the task on which he had entered was
no easy one. Such boys as had remained
in the school under the easy rule of Dr.
Munch were of a class much lower than
that for which the benefits of the founda-
tion had been contemplated by the bene-
volent old knight, and having been un-
accustomed to any discipline, had arrived
at a pitch of lawlessness which required all
the new master's energy to combat. This
necessary strictness made him unpopular
with the boys, and, at first, with their
parents, who made loud complaints of their
children being "put upon," and in some cases
where bodily punishment had been inflicted
retribution had been threatened. Then,
the chief tradespeople and the farmers,
among whom Dr. Munch had been a daily
and nightly guest, drinking his mug of
ale or his tumbler of brandy- and- water,
smoking his long clay pipe, taking his hand
at whist, and listening, if not with pleasure,

6 [December 5, 1868.;

ALL THE YEAE ROUND.

[Conducted by

at any rate without remonstrance, to lan-
guage and stories more than sufficiently
broad and indecorous, found that Mr.
Ashurst civilly, but persistently, refused
their proffered hospitality, and in conse-
quence pronounced him "stuck-up." No
man was more free from class prejudices,
but he had been bred in old Somerset
country society, where the squirearchy
maintained an almost feudal dignity, and
his career in college had not taught him
the policy of being on terms of familiarity
with those whom Fortune had made his
inferiors.

So James Ashurst struggled on during
the first three months of his novitiate at
Helmingham, earnestly and energetically
striving to do his duty, with, it must be
confessed, but poor result. The governors
of the school had been so impressed by the
rector's recommendation, and. by the testi-
monials which the new master had sub-
mitted to them, that they expected to find
the regeneration of the establishment would
commence immediately upon James Ash-
urst' s appearance upon the scene, and were
rather disappointed when they found that,
while the number of scholars remained
much the same as at the time of Dr.
Munch' s retirement, the general dissatis-
faction in the village was much greater
than it had ever been during the reign of
that summarily-treated pedagogue. The
rector, to be sure, remained true to the
choice he had recommended, and main-
tained everywhere that Mr. Ashurst had
done very well in the face of the greatest
difficulties, and would yet bring Helming-
ham into notice. Notwithstanding constant
ocular proof to the contrary, the farmers
held that in the clerical profession, as in
freemasonry, there was a certain occult
something beyond the ordinary ken, which
bound members of "the cloth" together,
and induced them to support each other to
the utmost stretch of their consciences a
proceeding which, in the opinion of free-
thinking Helmingham, allowed of a con-
siderable amount of elasticity.

At length the long looked for Easter tide
arrived, and James Ashurst hurried away
from the dull grey old midland- country
village, to the bright little Thames- bordered
town where lived his love. A wedding
with the church approach one brilliant
pathway of spring flowers, a honeymoon of
such happiness as one knows but once in a
lifetime, passed in the lovely lake country,
and then Helmingham again. But with a
different aspect. The old schoolhouse itself,

brave in fresh paint and new plaster, its
renovated diamond windows, its cleaned
slab, so classically eloquent on the merits
fundatoris nostri, let in over the porch, its
newly stuccoed fives' wall and fresh gra-
velled playground ; all this was strange but
intelligible. But James Ashurst could not
understand yet the change that had come
over his inner life. To return after a hard
day's grinding in a mill of boys to his own
rooms, was, during the first three months
of his career at Helmingham merely to ex-
change active purpose for passive existence.
Now, his life did but begin when the
labours of the day were over, and he and
his wife passed the evenings together, in
planning to combat with the present, in
delightful anticipations of the future. Mr.
Ashurst unwittingly and without the least
intending it, had made a very lucky hit in
his selection of a wife, so far as the Hel-
mingham people were concerned. He was
"that bumptious" as they expressed it, or
as we will more charitably say, he was
so independent, as not to care one rap
what the Helmingham people thought
of anything he did, provided he had, as
indeed at that time he always had for he
was conscientious in the highest degree
the knowledge that he was acting rightly
according to his light. In a very few
weeks the sweetness, the quiet frankness,,
the prepossessing charm of Mrs. Ashurst's
demeanour, had neutralised all the ill-
effects of her husband's three months''
previous career. She was a small-boned,
small- featured, delicate-looking little wo-
man, and, as such, excited a certain amount
of compassion and kindness amid the mid-
land-county ladies, who, as their husbands
said of them, "ran big." It was a positive
relief to one to hear her soft little treble
voice after the booming diapason of the
Helmingham ladies, or to see her pretty
little fat dimpled hands flashing here and
there in some coquetry of needle- work, after
being accustomed to looking on at the
steady play of particularly bony and knuckly
members, in the unremitting torture of
eminently utilitarian employment. High
and low, gentle and simple, rich and poor,
felt equally kindly disposed towards Mrs.
Ashurst. Mrs. Peacock, wife of Squire
Peacock, a tremendous magnate and squire
of the neighbouring parish, fell so much in
love with her that she made her husband
send their only son, a magnificent youth
destined eventually for Eton, Oxford, Par-
liament, and a partnership in a brewery, to
be introduced to the Muses as a parlour-

Charles Dickens.]

WRECKED IN PORT.

[December 5, 18(58.] 7

boarder in Mr. Ashurst's house, and Hiram
Brooks, the blacksmith and minister of the
Independent Chapel, who was at never-
ending war with all the members of the
Establishment, made a special exception in
Mrs. Ashurst's favour, and doffed his greasy-
leathern cap to her as she passed the forge.

And his pretty little wife brought him
good fortune, as well as domestic happiness.
James Ashurst delighted to think so. His
popularity in the village, and in the sur-
rounding country was on the increase ; the
number of scholars on the foundership had
reached its authorised limit (a source of
great gratification, though of no pecuniary
profit, to the head master) ; and Master
Peacock had now two or three fellow-
boarders, each of whom paid a fine annual
sum. The governors thought better of
their head master now, and the old rector
had lived long enough to see his recom-
mendation thoroughly accepted, and his
prophecy, as regarded the improved status
of the school, duly fulfilled. Popular, suc-
cessful in his little way, and happy in his
domestic relations, James Ashurst had but
one want. His wife was childless, and this
was to him a source of discomfort, always
felt and occasionally expressed. He was
just the man who would have doated on a
child, would have suffered himself to have
been pleasantly befooled by its gambols,
and have worshipped it in every phase of
its tyranny. But it was not to be, he sup-
posed ; that was to be the one black drop
in his draught of happiness : and then,
after he had been married for five or six
years, Mrs. Ashurst brought him a little
daughter. His hopes were accomplished,
but he nearly lost his wife in their ac-
complishment ; while he dandled the newly
born treasure in his arms, Mrs. Ashurst's
life was despaired of, and when the chubby
baby had grown up into a strong child, and
from that sphere of life had softened down
into a peaceful girl, her mother, always
slight and delicate, had become a constant
invalid, whose ill health caused her husband
the greatest anxiety, and almost did away
with the delight he had in anticipating
every wish of his darling little Marian.

James Ashurst had longed for a child,
and he loved his little daughter dearly
when she came, but even then his wife held
the deepest and most sacred place in his
heart, and as he marked her faded cheek
and lustreless eye, he felt a pang of re-
morse, and accused himself of having set
himself up against the just judgment of
Providence, and of having now received the

due reward of his repining. For one who
thought his darling must be restored to
health, no sacrifice could be too great to
accomplish that result ; and the Helming-
ham people, who loved Mrs. Ashurst
dearly, but who in their direst straits were
never accustomed to look for any other
advice than that which could be afforded
them by Dr. Osborne, or his village op-
ponent, Mr. Sharood, were struck with ad-
miration when Dr. Langton, the great
county physician, the oracle of Brocksopp,
was called into consultation. Dr. Langton
was a very little man, noted almost as
much for his reticence as for his skill. He
never wasted a word. After a careful ex-
amination of Mrs. Ashurst he pronounced
it to be a tiresome case, and prescribed a
four months' residence at the baths of Ems,
as the likely treatment to effect a mitiga-
tion, if not a cure. Dr. Osborne, after the
great man's departure, laughed aloud in
his bluff way at the idea of a country
schoolmaster sending his wife to Ems.
" Langton is so much in the habit of going
about among the country families, and
these novi homines of manufacturers who
stink of brass, as they say in these parts,
that he forgets there is such a thing as
having to look carefully at ways and
means, my dear Ashurst, and make both
dovetail ! Baths of Ems, indeed ! I'm
afraid you've thrown away your ten
guineas, my good friend, if that's all
you've got out of Langton!" But Dr.
Osborne's smile was suddenly checked
when Mr. Ashurst said very quietly that
as his wife's health was dearer to him than
anything on earth, and that as there was no
sacrifice which he would not make to ac-
complish its restoration, he should find
means of sending her to Germany, and of
keeping her there until it was seen what
efi'ect the change had on her.

And he did it ! For two successive
summers Mrs. Ashurst went to Ems with
the old nurse who had brought her up, and
accompanied her from her pretty river-side
home to Helmingham; and at the end of
the second season she returned compara-
tively well and strong. But she needed all
her strength and health when she looked
at her husband when he came to meet her
in London, and found him thin, changed,
round-shouldered, and hollow-eyed, the
very shadow of his former self. James
Ashurst had carried through his plans as
regarded his wife at enormous sacrifice. He
had no ready money to meet the sudden
call upon his purse which such an expedi-

<rg=

8 [December5, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

tion rendered necessary, and he had re-
course to money-lenders to raise the first
loans required ; then to friends to pay the
interest on and to obtain renewals of these
loans ; then to other money-lenders to re-
place the original sums ; and then to other
friends to repay a portion of the first friendly
loans, until, by the time his wife returned
from the second visit to the Continent, he
found himself so inextricably involved that
he dared not face his position, dared not
think of it himself, much less take her into
his confidence, and so he went blindly on,
paying interest on interest, and hoping
ever, with a vague hope, for some relief
from his troubles.

That relief never came to James Ashurst
in his lifetime. He struggled on in the
same hopeless, helpless, hand-to-mouth
fashion for about eight years more, always
impecunious in the highest degree, always
intending to retrieve his fallen fortune,
always slowly, but surely, breaking and be-
coming less and less of a man under the
harass of pecuniary troubles, when the ill-
ness which for some time had threatened
him set in, and, as we have seen, he died.

DICK STEELE.

There are characters to whom History vouch-
safes no more than a passing sneer or a dispara-
ging monosyllable. Whether, for instance, she
guides the pen of Johnson, of Scott, of Macau-
lay, or of Thackeray, the most dignified of the
Muses misses no opportunity of calling the
author of The Christian Hero "Dick." Sir
Kichard Steele is seldom distinguished in her
pages by his proper title without a spirit of
merriment, as if royalty had knighted him in
jest. Yet the mere mention of his beloved and
loving partner in genius and in fame, is always
graced with some prefix of respect. Where, in
the annals of the Augustan age of English litera-
ture, does History condescend to sport with the
memory of the Eight Honourable Joseph Ad-
dison, and call him " Joe" ?

This difference in distinguishing Steele from
his friend is the more painful to those who
admire him for the sake of his works, because it
is greatly deserved. Contemporary and subse-
quent opinion has, no doubt, been harsh in
selecting " Dick's" sins, as the sponsors who
gave him that name ; but his many virtues
were obscured from all, except from his inti-
mate companions. His own irrepressible can-
dour flourished his worst faults in the faces
of Mankind ; who must not, therefore, be
blamed for forming their judgment of him from
the only evidence presented to them on the
surface. With Addison the result was pre-
cisely opposite. The surface of his character
shone with a polish that always commanded

respect; and it was natural that his failings,
concealed within a grave and stately exterior,
should never have linked his name with the
lightest touch of familiarity.

But, besides the personal shortcomings which
Steele was too open-hearted to conceal, he
laboured under a disadvantage from which his
foremost associates were free ; but which has
since been entirely overlooked. During the
time of his greatest popularity the doctrine of
Caste was paramount. Keaction from the
grand democratic convulsion of the previous
century, had produced a democracy blind to its
own interests. Tory mobs passionately as-
saulted opponents of passive obedience and the
divine right of kings. So fervent was the
worship of the Tuft, that the public at large
liked their nobility and gentry the better for
lording it over them. A fool of quality held
his own, as a matter of course, against a Solon of
humble birth, even in good company. What-
ever the discussion, a well-born disputant in
danger of defeat had only to ask the question,
" Who are you, sir?" to be certain of victory,
if his adversary's answer denoted him to be
nothing better than a plebeian. In case of any
sort of confusion respecting paternity, defeat
would be the more crushing. This kind of
humiliation Sir Richard Steele had constantly
to endure. When teaching in the Tatler " the
minuter decencies and- inferior duties of life,"
Steele excited the ire of all the sharpers, duel-
lists, rakes, mohocks, sots, and swearers extant.
The more prominent ruffians of gentle blood
retorted upon him the withering non sequitur
that nobody could find out who his father was.
When he insisted, in his famous Crisis, that
Dunkirk should be demolished according to
treaty, Dr. Wagstaffe thought he had demol-
ished Steele, by logically declaring that "he
was ashamed of his name," and that he owed
" his birth and condition to a place more bar-
barous than Carrickfergus." As a convincing
argument against reinstating him in the go-
vernorship of Drury Lane Theatre, Dennis
taunted him with being " descended from a
trooper's horse ;" the elegant sentence finishing
with such a fling at his colleague, Cibber, as
unmistakably directed the venom against
Steele's birth, and not against a well-known in-
cident in his youthful career. The authors of
the Examiner, of the Female Tatler, and other
scandalisers flung with more dirt doubts at
his origin, and Steele cleared it all off, except
that which defiled his name. If he had been
once for all explicit on that head, his foes would
have ceased to trouble him, and the doubt
would have ceased to trouble his friends. It
manifestly did trouble them. In the last num-
ber of the Englishman, Steele wrote thus : " In
compliance to the prepossessions of others,
rather than, as I think it a matter of conside-
ration myself, I assert (that no nice man of my
acquaintance may think himself polluted by
conversing with me) that whoever talks to me
is speaking to a gentleman born." No more.
Neither in Steele's private correspondence, nor
in his public writings is this assertion coupled

Charles Dickens.]

DICK STEELE.

[December 5, 1868.] 9

with any more specific statement ; and, although
no gentleman is called upon to plead pedigree in
abatement of abuse levelled at his early history,
yet his friends can always put in that plea for him
when proper data are to be obtained. Delicacy
in the days of Dennis, Curl, Tutchin, Ridpath,
Roper, Wagstaffe, Savage, Mrs. Manley, Pope,
and Swift, could not in the least have restrained
his friends ; for the secrets of private life were
marshalled and made public for party purposes,
on both sides of every question, with lavish
coarseness. Yet the necessary information can
nowhere be picked out of the voluminous lega-
cies left by Steele's contemporaries. Even
Death, which breaks the seals of many myste-
ries, revealed nothing but perplexity. In no
immediate notice of Steele's demise are his birth
and parentage distinctly set forth. Curl, in a
memoir published a year after that event, hits
the mark no nearer than this: "Being de-
scended from English parents, he used to call
himself an Englishman born in Dublin."

The further Time floats us away from the
sources of evidence, the fewer doubts remain.
Open any biographical essay, dictionary, or any
cyclopaedia, and you will find it stated, without
qualification, that Richard Steele's father was
an Irish councillor - at - law and private sec-
retary to James, first Duke of Ormond, and
that his mother's name was Gascoigne. The
date of his birth has never been so confidently
stated. Every year has received that honour
from 1671 to 1676.. The General Dictionary of
Birch and Lockman gives no date ; the Bio-
graphia Britannica mentions 1676; Nathan
Drake, 1675 ; and 1672 has been noted down
more than once : 1671 has remained the fashion
since the publication, by Nichols, of Steele's
Epistolary Correspondence, for a reason which
will be' set forth presently.

Thanks to Sir Bernard Burke the present
successor both of Steele's uncle, Gascoigne, and of
his friend Addison, as keeper of the Birmingham
Record Tower in Dublin Castle the fists of
counsel in the Four Courts have been searched.
No one named Steele appears in them within
the required period ; but a Richard Steele was
admitted a member of the King's Inns as an
attorney, in 1667. Again, no gentleman named
Steele served James, first Duke of Ormond,
as private secretary. Neither in the records
of Kilkenny Castle, nor in the papers abstracted
thence by Carte (when he wrote the life of
Marlborough's rival) and deposited them in the
Bodleian Library, does the name of Steele occur
in any official matter but once, and then it be-
longed to a lawyer's clerk, who was paid a small
sum of money on account of his master. Henry
Gascoigne, Dick Steele's uncle, succeeded Sir
George Lane as the duke's secretary in 1674.

The earliest authentic notice of the date of
Steele's birth is thus recorded in the registers of
the London Charter House, for November
17th, 1684 :

" Richard Steel admitted for the Duke of
Ormond, in the room of Phillip Burrell
aged 13 years 12th March next."

Reckoning that 12th day of March, according

to the old style, to be still in the year 1684, the
date of Steele's birth would thus be fixed in 1671.
It happens that an entry exists in the registers of
St. Bride's Church, Dublin, which coincides ex-
actly too exactly, perhaps with this register:

" Chrissenings commencing from the 25th of
March, 1671.* March ye 12th, Richard, sonn
of Richard Steele, baptised."

This date, therefore, has been generally
adopted as Steele's birthday, ever since the
above document was made known by Nichols,
in his preface to Steele's Epistolary Corre-
spondence. A copy of it, certified by a clergy-
man and two churchwardens, appears amongst
Steele's loose papers in the British Museum, at
the back of a calculation of the profits of Drury
Lane Theatre in 1721, something in cypher
about The Fishpool, and the address of a
chemist in Westminster. Why it was ob-
tained, or whether acknowledged by Steele as
certifying his own date of birth, can never be
ascertained. It sets forth, in fact, no more
than the date of a baptism performed if it re-
cord the baptism of Sir Richard before the
baby was a day old. This slender improbability
got over, the two documents harmonise suf-
ficiently to set doubt at rest. But a third
memorandum, in the register of matriculations
of the University of Oxford, revives it :
" ^Edes Christi.

" Ter e Hilarii 1689. Mar. 13. Ric. Steele
16. R. S. Dublin Gen."

Expanded and translated reading thus : " On
the 13th of March, in Hiliary Term, 16f
Richard Steele, of Christ Church, sixteen years
of age, son of Richard Steele of Dublin, gentle-
man." Had the father been a barrister, he
would have been designated " esquire."

If Steele completed his sixteenth year only
at the above date, he must have been born in
the year 1673. This entry, and that at the
Charter House, are equally authentic, and
equally contradictory of each other ; but
does it matter to the world at large whether
Steele's father was English or Irish, a council-
lor, the private secretary to a duke, or not ; or in
what year Steele himself was born ? These doubts
will not lessen Sir Richard's value to posterity
as a genial humourist, a kind sympathetic cen-
sor, and a sound politician. They can neither
dim nor brighten the lustre of his fame and
they are only put forward here to illustrate
some of Steele's early letters, which now see
the light in print for the first time.

By the courtesy of the Marquis of Ormonde,
the present writer has been granted access to
the archives of Kilkenny Castle, where the
following characteristic letters were discovered
amidst a dazzling treasury of historical docu-
ments dating from Brian Boroihm downwards.
They are addressed to Dick's " uncle," Henry
Gascoigne, the then Duke of Ormond's private
secretary. They are printed exactly as written.
Jan. 5 [1690]

Sir, My Tutour has received ye Certificate
for seven pound, for which I most humbly

* New Year's-day, old style.

"5=

10 [December 5, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by-

thank you. T have been w th Dr Hough who
received y r letter and Enquired very Civilly
after You and my Ladye's health. When I
took my leave of him he desired me to inform
him, if at any time he could be servicable or
assistant to me for he would very readily do it.
Dr Aldridge Gives he's Service to y", and told
me he should write to you himself by this post.
This is all at present from y r most humble Servt
and ever-obedient nephew R. Steele.

Pray S r direct letters to me myself for 'tis
something troublesome to my Tutour y" I am and
have been very much indisposed by a bile just
over my left eye ; but I think it mends now.

Postmark March 31 [1690].
S r , I received your letter, and gave Mr.
Sherwin his paper from you. Most of the
money he had in his hands was before disposed
of, therefore he gave me but five pounds, but
he will give the rest next Wednesday, till
which time I defer my giving y" A true and
particular account how my Tutour and I design
to dispose of the whole ; the night after I writ
my last Mr. Home sent for me to the tavern,
where he and Mr. Wood a fellow of that Coll.,
treated me with Claret and Oysters. I went to
give him an account of what you commanded
me, but I shall Do at the first Opportunity.
Our Dean whome you expected Is, I suppose
now at London, the election for students is not
very far of now ; if y" would be pleased to speak
to him or purchace from my Lord a word or
two ; it would perhaps get me the most Credit-
able preferment for young men in the whole
university there are many here that think of it,
but none speak their mind; the places are
wholly in the Dean and Cannon's dispose with-
out respect to Scholarship ; but if you will
vouchsafe to use your interest in my behalf
there shall be nothing wanting in the endea-
vours of Your most obedient nephew

and most humble servant
R. Steele.

The Dean has two in his gift. My most
humble duty to my lady.

May 14.

S r , I have received the Bundle My Lady
sent to me And do most humbly thank ye for
that and all the rest of y r favours, but my
request to you now is that you would compleat
all the rest by solliciting the Dean who is now
in London in my behalfe for a student's place
here ; I am satisfied that I stand very fair in
his favour. He saw one of my Exercises in the
House and commended it very much and said
y' if I went on in me Study he did not question
but I should make something more than ordi-
nary. I had this from my Tutour. I have I
think a good character throughout the whole
Coll ; I 6peake not this f r out of any vanity or
affectation but to let you know that I have not
been altogether negligent on my part : these
places are not given by merit but acquired by
friends, though I question not but so generous a
man as our Dean would rather prefer one that
was a Scholar before another. I have had so

great advantage in being* *** my own abilities
are so very mean I believe there are very few of
the Gown in the Coll. so good scholars as I am.
My Tutour before told me that if you should be
pleased to use your interest for me, or p' my
lord's letter or word in my behalfe ; it would
certainly do my businesse. And y r Friend Dr.
Hough the new Bishop of Oxon, I believe may
doe much now, for Dr. Aldrich is, as it were,
his Dean. Perhaps, Sir, you may be modest in
solliciting him, because you may think others
trouble him for the same thing ; But pray, S r ,
don't let that hinder you for it will be the same
case next Election, and if we misse this oppor-
tunity 'tis ten to one whether we ever have such
another ; besides the Dean won't have a place
again this three year ; therefore I beseech you
S r as you have been always heretofore very good
to me to use your utmost Endeavour now in my
behalfe And assure y'self that whatever prefer-
ment I ever attain to shall never make me in-
gratefully forget, and not acknowledge the
authour of all my advancement but I shall ever
be proud of writing myself Your most obliged
and

Hum : Ser"

Rich: Steele.

On a sheet of drafted letters on various mat-
ters in Henry Gascoigne's writing, one of
which bears date May 27, 1690 (commencing,
"I was on ship-board about 3 weeks ago,
when I sprained my right arm," which may
account for the delay), is the following memo-
randum : " That your ldship will be pleased to
befriend Dick Steele, who is now entered iu
Ch. Ch., by getting him a student's place there,
or something else, to Exse: mee of charges
beside what is allowed him by the Charter
House." The Duke of Ormond was Chancellor
of the University of Oxford.

This request was not granted, but an equiva-
lent was obtained. Steele eventually became a
postmaster of Merton College. This letter is
addressed to Gascoigne's wife.

Honoured Madam,

Out of a deep sense of y r la" 1 " Goodnesse
Towards me, I could not forbear accusing
myselfe of Ingratitude in omitting my duty, by
not acknowledging y r lad' Mp ' s favours by frequent
letters ; but how to excuse myself as to that
point I know not, but must humbly hope yt as
you have been alwaies soe bountiful to me as to
encourage my endeavours, so y a will be soe mer-
cif ull to me as to pardon my faults and neglects,
but, Madam, should I expresse my gratitude for
every benefit y' I receive at y r lad sh9 '' and my
good Vnkle, I should never sit down to meat
but I must write a letter when I rise from
table ; for to his goodnesse I humbly acknow-
ledge my being, but, Mada m , not to be too
tedious, I shall only subscribe myself Mada ra ,

Humble servant and obedient though unworthy
nephew
R. Steele.

* End of page torn away, and one line illegible.

Ctf

Charles Dickens.]

PERVIGILIUM VENERIS.

[December 5,

I] 11

Pray mada m give my duty to my unkle and
my good Ant, and my love to my Ingenious
Cousin and humble service to good Mrs.
Dwight.

Some of these letters are indorsed with the
dates in Henry Gascoigne's hand " Dick
Steele."

Always Dick from the beginning !

PERVIGILIUM VENERIS.

(paraphrased.)
This poem, commonly printed amongst the verses
"attributed to Gallus," was asserted by Erasmus to
have been written by Catullus, and by Saumasius to be
the work of some unknown poet of the middle ages.
The supposition, however, which attributes the author-
ship of the poem to Annaeus Florus, has been sanctioned
by Wernsdorf : and certainly, whatever be the period
which produced the Pervigilium Veneris, it would seem
to have been a period of literary decadence, such as the
age of Hadrian. That which has tempted to a para-
phrase of this little poem is the essentially modern
character of it. Its defects have the sort of charm
which belongs to features the most faulty, if those fea-
tures strengthen the family likeness in the countenance
of a kinsman.

Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,
Ye that never have loved before !

And to-morrow, again to-morrow,
Ye that have loved, love once more !

New is now the song I sing,

As the freshness of the morn

In the sweetness of the Spring,

When the old world is new-born.

In the Spring the loves assemble,

And the birds in budded bowers ;

In the Spring the young leaves tremble

To wet kissings of sun showers.

'Tis the Spring time, and to-morrow,

All among the leafy groves,

Shall divine Dione borrow,

To make cradles for her Loves,

Myrtle branches glad and green.

And, to-morrow, lord and king

Love shall be, from morn to e'en,

Of the kingdoms of the Spring,

And Love's Mother, lady and queen,

These shall rule the world, I ween.

Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,
Ye that never have loved before !

And to-morrow, again to-morrow,
Ye that have loved, love once more !

Form'd from out the white sea foam

And pure ichor all divine,

'Mid those azure flocks that roam

Pastured on the breezy brine,

When the Spring was on the earth,

And the Spring's warmth in the water,

Did old Ocean's joy give birth

To his wave-born wanton daughter,

Therefore to Dione dear

Is the birth-time of the year.

Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,
Ye that never have loved before !

And to-morrow, again to-morrow,
Ye that have loved, love once more.

She it is, with gemmy blossoms,

That doth paint the purple year.

She, from whose abundant bosoms

(While the amorous atmosphere

Hums for joy) fresh-bubbled showers

Brim the milk-pails warm and white.

She, at morning, decks the flowers

With the lucid tears of night :

Dewy drops, whose downward brightness,

Pausing, trembling, seems to fall,
Yet, sustained by its own lightness,
Cannot leave those petals small !
Silver drops, from stars distill'd
By the balmy night serene :
Silent, sliding touches, skill'd
To unloose that clinging green
Woven the warm buds around
With such quaint concealing care ;
Which their sweet breasts, yet unbound,
Do, for virgin vesture, wear ;
Till the maiden flowers, at morn,
Blushing meet the enamoured sun
For whose kisses they were born ;
Trembling, glowing, one by one
(Timorous and naked brides !)
Each from out her secret bower,
Where no more chill April hides
What to find the wistful shower,
Sighing low, the leaves divide,
Flower peeps forth after flower.
O that blush of maiden woo'd,
When her virgin love is won !
What is like it ? Cypris' blood
And the kiss of Cypris' Son,
And the morning's purple wings,
And the ruby's burning heart,
These, and all delicious things,
Of its beauty are but part !
Yesterday, O trembling maid,
Buried those ripe blushes lay
Under virgin snows, afraid
Of the tale they tell to-day :
Yesterday, that little breast,
Happy bride, hid joy, like sorrow,
Fearful, in its flutter'd vest.
Love shall loose the strings to-morrow.
Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,

Ye that never have loved before !
And to-morrow, again to-morrow,

Ye that have loved, love once more !

She, their gentle Deity,
Calls the nymphs in myrtle grove.
But their leader ? Who is he,
If he be not armed Love ?
No. To-day is holiday.
Lore hath laid his arms aside.
Naked will he sport and play,
All the amorous Spring-tide,
Lest his bow and arrows trim,
Or his torch, should do some ill.
Yet, O nymphs, beware of him I
Naked Love is weapon'd still.
Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,

Ye that never have loved before !
And to-morrow, again to-morrow,

Ye that have loved, love once more !

Maidens, chaste and pure as thou,

Virgin Delia, to thee

Venus sends us. Prithee now

To our revels welcome be.

Leave our pleasant grove unstain'd

By the blood of savage beast,

And, by maiden prayers constrain 'd,

Deign to grace our jocund feast.

Nights of azure weather three,

Dancing these dim woods of thine,

Thou our merry troops shalt see

Crown'd with roses and myrtle twine.

Ceres will not be away ;

Nor the tippling Bacchus, Lady ;

Nor the Lord of lyric lay ;

All along the leafage shady

(IS thou wilt not say us nay)

Thee to charm, the sweet night long,

We will chaunt our roundelay ;

And thyself shalt praise our song.

Prithee, Delia, do not stay

From Dione's court to-day.

12 [December 5, 18G8.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND,

[Conducted by-

Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,
Ye that never have loved before !
And to-morrow, again to-morrow,

Ye that have loved, love once more !
She, amidst Hyblsean flowers,
Bids us build her florid throne ;
And in this light court of ours
Lightly is her bidding done.
All the Graces will be there,
Hybla all her flowers will lend
Treasures which the opulent year
Doth to her, in tribute, send :
Flowers many more than ever
Bloom'd on Enna's meadow bants,
Flowers from every lawn and river
That doth owe Dione thanks !
And the maidens all will come
From the vales and from the mountains ;
Leaving, these their woodland home,
Those their haunts in happy fountains,
Here the nymphs are hastening :
Whilst outspeeding one another,
Boys and maidens homage bring
To the Boy- God's winged Mother,
But she bids you, while 'tis Spring,
Boys and maidens both beware,
Since she let's young love go bare.

Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,
Ye that never have loved before !

And to-morrow, again to-morrow,
Ye that have loved, love once more I

Beauty's self hath bid us gather

Beauteous buds, and bring them to her.

For the all-paternal iEther,

He, the green world's earliest wooer,

Wills that, to his warm embrace,

Her most bounteous womb shall bear

(Youngest of an ancient race !)

Yet another infant year.

On her balmy bosom fall

In delicious dews and rains

His prolific kisses all ;

Whose sweet influence the deep veins

Of the Mighty Mother fill

With such throbbing joys as pant

Into visible forms, and thrill

Every green and grassy haunt,

Lawn, and lake, and dale, and hill,

With love's labour procreant.

Over heaven, and over earth,

On thro' rill, and river, and ocean,

Moves the mystic spirit of birth,

With a soft and secret motion ;

And his breath, with raptures rife,

Opes the glowing gates of life.

Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,
Ye that never have loved before,

And to-morrow, again to-morrow,
Ye that have loved, love once moro !

She, the household gods of Troy
Jnto royal Latium led.
She to her illustrious boy
The Laurentian virgin wed ;
Gave to Mars, in snatcht embrace,
Lips too sweet for Vesta's shrine j
And the Bomulean race
Married to the Sabine line :
Whence the lordly Koman springs
Whence the Conscript Fathers were,
Knights, Quirites, king-born kings,
Caesar's self, and Caesar's heir !

Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,
Ye that never have loved before !

And to-morrow, again to-morrow,
Ye that have loved, love once more !

Far i' the fields doth pleasure stray :

Far i' the fields is Venus found :

Love, himself, was born, they say,
Far i' the fields, on flowery ground.
Him the grassy lawns did guard,
From his happy hour of birth ;
He was born on thymy sward :
He was nurst by Kural Mirth.
Love, to-morrow ! love, to-morrow,

Ye that never have loved before !
And to-morrow, again to-morrow,

Ye that have loved, love once more i
Now his gentle yoke he throws
Over all things far and wide.
Hark ! the lusty bullock lows
After his brown-spotted bride.
The chill ocean's uncouth droves
Couple in their briny bowers :
And the birds pursue their loves,
Singing from their leafy towers.
Even the wild swan's marriage hymny
Thro' the reedy marish rings :
And in poplar shadows dim
All night Philomela sings.
Who that hears her happy song
Could believe that voice laments
A loved sister's bitter wrong ?
No ! she sings, and, singing, vents
Pain (if pain at all) made such
By a too great stress of gladness,
Joy, that were not joy so much
If there were no joy in sadness !
She, and all things else, do sing.
I, alone ? shall I be dumb
When to me the long-wisht Spring
Of my love's sweet prime is come ?
Nay, if I were silent now,
Would not my dishonour'd Muse
Voice, name, fame, and laurel bough.
Evermore to me refuse P
Which were then deserved most,
Mine, or weak Amyclse's fate,
Whom her coward silence lost
When the foe was at the gate ?
Love, to-morrow ! love, to morrow,

Ye that never have loved before I
And to-morrow, again to-morrow,

Ye that have loved, love once more !

NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES.

By Charles Dickens.

aboard ship.

My journeys as Uncommercial Traveller
for the firm of Human Interest Brothers,
have not slackened since I last reported of
them, but have kept me continually on the-
move. I remain in the same idle employ-
ment. I never solicit an order, I never get
any commission, I am the rolling stone that
gathers no moss unless any should by
chance be found among these Samples.

Some half a year ago, I found myself in
my idlest, dreamiest, and least account-
able condition altogether, on board- ship,
in the harbour of the City of New York, in
the United States of America. Of all
the good ships afloat, mine was the good
steam-ship Russia, Captain Cook, Cunard
line, bound for Liverpool. What more could
I wish for ?

I had nothing to wish for, but a pros-
perous passage. My salad-days, when I was

i3=

=fc

Charles Dickens.'

NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES.

[December 5, 1868.] 13

green of visage and sea- sick, being gone
with better things (and worse), no coming
event cast its shadow before. I might,
but a few moments previously, have imi-
tated Sterne, and said, " ' And yet, methinks,
Eugenius' laying my forefinger wistfully
on his coat-sleeve thus ' and yet, methinks,
Eugenius, 'tis but sorry work to part with
thee, for what fresh fields * * * my dear
Eugenius * * * can be fresher than thou
art, and in what pastures new shall I find
Eliza or call her, Eugenius, if thou wilt,
Annie,' " I say I might have done this, but
Eugenius was gone, and I hadn't done it.

I was resting on a skylight on the hurri-
cane-deck, watching the working of the
ship very slowly about, that she might
head for England. It was high noon on a
most brilliant day in April, and the beauti-
ful bay was glorious and glowing. Eull
many a time, on shore there, had I seen
the snow come down, down, down (itself
like down), until it lay deep in all the ways
of men, and particularly, as it seemed, in
my way, for I had not gone dry-shod
many hours for months. Within two or
three days last past, had I watched the
feathery fall setting in with the ardour of a
new idea, instead of dragging at the skirts
of a worn out winter, and permitting
glimpses of a fresh young spring. But a
bright sun and a clear sky had melted the
snow in the great crucible of nature, and it
had been poured out again that morning
over sea and land, transformed into myriads
of gold and silver sparkles.

The ship was fragrant with flowers.
Something of the old Mexican passion for
flowers may have gradually passed into
North America, where flowers are luxu-
riously grown and tastefully combined in
the richest profusion ; but be that as it
may, such gorgeous farewells in flowers had
come on board, that the small Officer's
Cabin on deck, which I tenanted, bloomed
over into the adjacent scuppers, and banks
of other flowers that it couldn't hold, made
a garden of the unoccupied tables in the
passengers' saloon. These delicious scents
of the shore, mingling with the fresh airs
of the sea, made the atmosphere a dreamy,
an enchanting one. And so, with the watch
aloft setting all the sails, and with the
screw below revolving at a mighty rate,
and occasionally giving the ship an angry
shake for resisting, I fell into my idlest
ways and lost myself.

As, for instance, whether it was I lying
there, or some other entity even more mys-
terious, was a matter I was. far too lazy to

look into. What did it signify to me if it
were I or to the more mysterious en-
tity if it were he ? Equally as to the
remembrances that drowsily floated by me
or by him why ask when, or where, the
things happened ? Was it not enough that
they befel at some time, somewhere ?

There was that assisting at the Church
Service on board another steam-ship, one
Sunday, in a stiff breeze. Perhaps on the
passage out. No matter. Pleasant to hear
the ship's bells go, as like church-bells as
they could ; pleasant to see the watch off
duty mustered, and come in ; best hats,
best Guernseys, washed hands and faces,
smoothed heads. But then arose a set
of circumstances so rampantly comical, that
no check which the gravest intentions could
put upon them would hold them in hand.
Thus the scene. Some seventy passengers
assembled at the saloon tables. Prayer-
books on tables. Ship rolling heavily.
Pause. No minister. Rumour has related
that a modest young clergyman on board
has responded to the captain's request that
he will officiate. Pause again, and very
heavy rolling. Closed double doors sud-
denly burst open, and two strong stewards
skate in, supporting minister between them.
General appearance as of somebody picked
up, drunk and incapable, and under convey-
ance to station-house. Stoppage, pause, and
particularly heavy rolling. Stewards watch
their opportunity, and balance themselves,
but cannot balance minister : who, struggling
with a drooping head and a backward ten-
dency, seems determined to return below,
while they are as determined that he shall
be got to the reading-desk in mid-saloon.
Desk portable, sliding away down a long
table, and aiming itself at the breasts of
various members of the congregation. Here
the double doors, which have been carefully
closed by other stewards, fly open again, and
worldly passenger tumbles in, seemingly
with Pale Ale designs : who, seeking friend,
says " Joe !" Perceiving incongruity, says
"Hullo! Beg yer pardon!" and tumbles
out again. All this time the congregation
have been breaking up into sects as the
manner of congregations often is each
sect sliding away by itself, and all pounding
the weakest sect which slid first into the
corner. Utmost point of dissent soon at-
tained in every corner, and violent rolling.
Stewards at length make a dash ; conduct
minister to the mast in the centre of the
saloon, which he embraces with both arms ;
skate out ; and leave him in that condition
to arrange affairs with flock.

14 [December 5

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

There was another Sunday, when an
officer of the ship read the Service. It was
quiet and impressive, until we fell upon the
dangerous and perfectly unnecessary ex-
periment of striking up a hymn. After it
was given out, we all rose, but everybody
left it to somebody else to begin. Silence
resulting, the officer (no singer himself)
rather reproachfully gave us the first line
again, upon which a rosy pippin of an old
gentleman, remarkable throughout the pas-
sage for his cheerful politeness, gave a little
stamp with his boot (as if he were leading
off a country dance), and blithely warbled
us into a show of joining. At the end
of the first verse we became, through
these tactics, so much refreshed and encou-
raged, that none of us, howsoever unmelo-
dious, would submit to be left out of the
second verse; while as to the third we
lifted up our voices in a sacred howl that
left it doubtful whether we were the more
boastful of the sentiments we united in
professing, or of professing them with a
most discordant defiance of time, and tune.

"Lord bless us," thought I, when the
fresh remembrance of these things made me
laugh heartily, alone in the dead water-
gurgling waste of the night, what time I was
wedged into my berth by a wooden bar, or
I must have rolled out of it, " what errand
was I then upon, and to what Abyssinian
point had public events then marched ?
No matter as to me. And as to them, if
the wonderful popular rage for a plaything
(utterly confounding in its inscrutable un-
reason) had not then lighted on a poor
young savage boy, and a poor old screw of
a horse, and hauled the first off by the hair
of his princely head to ' inspect' British
volunteers, and hauled the second off by
the hair of his equine tail to the Crystal
Palace, why so much the better for all of
us outside Bedlam !"

So, sticking to the ship, I was at the
trouble of asking myself would I like to
show the grog distribution in "the fiddle"
at noon, to the Grand United Amalga-
mated Total Abstinence Society. Yes, I
think I should. I think it would do them
good to smell the rum, under, the circum-
stances. Over the grog, mixed in a bucket,
presides the boatswain's mate, small tin
can in hand. Enter the crew, the guilty
consumers, the grown up Brood of Giant
Despair, in contradistinction to the Band of
youthful angel Hope. Some in boots, some
in leggings, some in tarpaulin overalls,
some in frocks, some in pea-coats, a very
few in jackets, most with sou' wester hats,

all with something rough and rugged
round the throat ; all, dripping salt water
where they stand ; all pelted by weather,
besmeared with grease, and blackened by
fhe sooty rigging. Each man's knife in its
sheath in Ms girdle, loosened for dinner.
As the first man, with a knowingly kindled
eye, watches the filling of the poisoned
chalice (truly but a very small tin mug, to
be prosaic), and tossing back his head, tosses
the contents into himself, and passes the
empty chalice and passes on, so the second
man with an anticipatory wipe of his
mouth on sleeve or neck-kerchief, bides his
turn, and drinks and hands, and passes on.
In whom, and in each as his turn approaches,
beams a knowingly-kindled eye, a brighter
temper and a suddenly awakened tendency
to be jocose with some shipmate. Nor do
I even observe that the man in charge of
the ship's lamps, who in right of his office
has a double allowance of poisoned chalices,
seems thereby vastly degraded, even though
he empties the chalices into himself, one
after the other, much as if he were deliver-
ing their contents at some absorbent esta-
blishment in which he had no personal
interest. But vastly comforted I note them
all to be, on deck presently, even to the
circulation of a redder blood in their cold
blue knuckles; and when I look up at
them lying out on the yards and holding
on for life among the beating sails, I cannot
for my life see the justice of visiting on
them or on me the drunken crimes of
any number of criminals arraigned at the
heaviest of Assizes.

Abetting myself in my idle humour, I
closed my eyes and recalled life on board
of one of those mail packets, as I lay, part
of that day, in the bay, of New York !
The regular life began mine always did,
for I never got to sleep afterwards with
the rigging of the pump while it was yet
dark, and washing down of the decks. Any
enormous giant at a prodigious hydropathic
establishment, conscientiously undergoing
the Water Cure in all its departments, and
extremely particular about cleaning his
teeth, would make those noises. Swash,
splash, scrub, rub, toothbrush, bubble,
swash, splash, bubble, toothbrush, splash,
splash, bubble, rub. Then the day would
break, and descending from my berth by a
graceful ladder composed of half-opened
drawers beneath it, I would reopen my
outer deadlight and my inner sliding win-
dow (closed by a watchman during the
"Water Cure), and would look out at the
long - rolling lead - coloured white - topped

*B=

Charles Dickens.;

NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. [December 5, 1868.] 15

waves, over which the dawn, on a cold
winter morning, cast a level lonely glance,
and through which the ship fought her
melancholy way at a terrific rate. And
now, lying down again, awaiting the season
for broiled ham and tea, I would be com-
pelled to listen to the voice of conscience
the Screw.

It might be, in some cases, no more than
the voice of Stomach, but I called it in my
fancy by the higher name. Because, it
seemed to me that we were all of us, all day
long, endeavouring to stifle the Voice. Be-
cause, it was under everybody's pillow,
everybody's plate, everybody's camp-stool,
everybody's book, everybody's occupation.
Because, we pretended not to hear it, espe-
cially at meal times, evening whist, and
morning conversation on deck ; but it was
always among us in an under monotone, not
to be drowned in pea soup, not to be
shuffled with cards, not to be diverted by
books, not to be knitted into any pattern,
not to be walked away from. It was
smoked in the weediest cigar, and drunk in
the strongest cocktail ; it was conveyed on
deck at noon with limp ladies, who lay
there in their wrappers until the stars
shone ; it waited at table with the stewards ;
nobody could put it out with the lights. It
was considered (as on shore) ill bred to
acknowledge the Voice of Conscience. It
was not polite to mention it. One squally
day an amiable gentleman in love, gave
much offence to a surrounding circle, in-
cluding the object of his attachment, by
saying of it, after it had goaded him over
two easy chairs and a skylight : " Screw !"

Sometimes it would appear subdued. In
fleeting moments when bubbles of champagne
pervaded the nose, or when there was " hot
pot" in the bill of fare, or when an old dish
we had had regularly every day, was de-
scribed in that official document by a new
name. Under such excitements, one would
almost believe it hushed. The ceremony of
washing plates on deck, performed after
every meal by a circle as of ringers of
crockery triple-bob majors for a prize,
would keep it down. Hauling the reel,
taking the sun at noon, posting the
twenty-four hours' run, altering the ship's
time by the meridian, casting the waste
food overboard, and attracting the eager
gulls that* followed in our wake; these
events would suppress it for a while. But
the instant any break or pause took place in
any such diversion, the Voice would be at
it again, importuning us to the last extent.
A newly married young pair, who walked

the deck affectionately some twenty miles
per day, would, in the full flush of their ex-
ercise, suddenly become stricken by it, and
stand trembling, but otherwise immovable,
under its reproaches.

When this terrible monitor was most
severe with us, was when the time ap-
proached for our retiring to our dens for
the night. When the lighted candles in the
saloon grew fewer and fewer. When the
deserted glasses with spoons in them, grew
more and more numerous. When waifs of
toasted cheese, and strays of sardines fried
in batter, slid languidly to and fro in the
table-racks. When the man who always
read, had shut up his book and blown out
his candle. When the man who always
talked, had ceased from troubling. When
the man who was always medically re-
ported as going to have delirium tremens,
had put it off till to-morrow. When the
man who every night devoted himself to a
midnight smoke on deck, two hours in
length, and who every night was in bed
within ten minutes afterwards, was button-
ing himself up in his third coat for his
hardy vigil. For then, as we fell off one by
one, and, entering our several hutches, came
into a peculiar atmosphere of bilge water
and Windsor soap, the Voice would shake
us to the centre. Woe to us when we sat
down on our sofa, watching the swinging
candle for ever trying and retrying to stand
upon his head, or our coat upon its peg imi-
tating us as we appeared in our gymnastic
days, by sustaining itself horizontally from
the wail, in emulation of the lighter and
more facile towels. Then would the Voice
especially claim us for its prey and rend us
all to pieces.

Lights out, we in our berths, and the
wind rising, the Voice grows angrier and
deeper. Under the mattress and under the
pillow, under the sofa and under the wash-
ing stand, under the ship and under the sea,
seeming to arise from the foundations under
the earth with every scoop of the great
Atlantic (and why scoop so !), always
the Voice. Vain to deny its existence, in
the night season ; impossible to be hard
of hearing ; Screw, Screw, Screw. Some-
times i it lifts out of the water, and revolves
with'a whirr, like a ferocious firework
except that it never expends itself, but is
always ready to go off again ; sometimes it
seems to be aguish and shivers ; sometimes
it seems to be terrified by its last plunge,
and has a fit which causes it to struggle,
quiver, and for an instant stop. And now
the ship sets in rolling, as only ships so

16 [December 5, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

fiercely screwed through time and space,
day and night, fair weather and foul, can
roll. Did she ever take a roll before, like
that last ? Did she ever take a roll before,
like this worse one that is coming now ?
Here is the partition at my ear, down in the
deep on the lee side. Are we ever coming
np again together ? I think not ; the par-
tition and I are so long abont it that I really
do believe we have overdone it this time.
Heavens, what a scoop ! What a deep
scoop, what a hollow scoop, what a long
scoop ! Will it ever end, and can we bear
the heavy mass of water we have taken on
board, and which has let loose all the table
furniture in the officers' mess, and has
beaten open the door of the little passage
between the purser and me, and is swashing
about, even there, and even here ? The
purser snores reassuringly, and the ship's
bells striking, I hear the cheerful "All's
well !" of the watch musically given back
the length of the deck as the lately diving
partition, now high in air, tries (unsoftened
by what we have gone through together)
to force me out of bed and berth.

"All's well!" Comforting to know,
though surely all might be better. Put
aside the rolling, and the rush of water,
and think of darting through such dark-
ness with such velocity. Think of any
other similar object coming in the opposite
direction ! Whether there may be an at-
traction in two such moving bodies out at
sea, which may help accident to bring them
into collision ? Thoughts too arise (the Voice
never silent all the while, but marvellously
suggestive) of the gulf below ; of the strange
unfruitful mountain ranges and deep valleys
over which we are passing ; of monstrous
fish, midway ; of the ship's suddenly alter-
ing her course on her own account, and with
a wild plunge settling down, and makjng
that voyage, with a crew of dead discoverers.
Now, too, one recalls an almost universal ten-
dency on the part of passengers to stumble,
at some time or other in the day, on the
topic of a certain large steamer making this
same run, which was lost at sea and never
heard of more. Everybody has seemed under
a spell, compelling approach to the threshold
of the grim subject, stoppage, discomfiture,
and pretence of never having been near it.
The boatswain's whistle sounds ! A change
in the wind, hoarse orders issuing, and the
watch very busy. Sails come crashing home
overhead, ropes (that seem all knot) ditto ;
every man engaged appears to have twenty
feet, with twenty times the average amount
of stamping power in each. Gradually the

noise slackens, the hoarse cries die away,
the boatswain's whistle softens into the
soothing and contented notes, which rather
reluctantly admit that the job is done for
the time, and the Voice sets in again. Thus
come unintelligible dreams of up hill and
down hill, and swinging and swaying,
until consciousness revives of atmospherical
Windsor soap and bilge water, and the
Voice announces that the giant has come
for the Water Cure again.

Such were my fanciful reminiscences as
I lay, part of that day, in the Bay, of New
York O ! Also, as we passed clear of the
Narrows and got out to sea ; also, in many
an idle hour a# sea in sunny weather. At
length the observations and. computations
showed that we should make the coast of
Ireland to-night. So I stood watch on
deck all night to-night, to see how we made
the coast of Ireland.

Very dark, and the sea most brilliantly
phosphorescent. Great way on the ship, and
double look-out kept. Vigilant captain on
the bridge, vigilant first officer looking over
the port side, vigilant second officer stand-
ing by the quarter- master at the compass,
vigilant third officer posted at the stern-rail
with a lantern. No passengers on the quiet
decks, but expectation everywhere never-
theless. The two men at the wheel, very
steady, very serious, and very prompt to
answer orders. An order issued sharply
now and then, and echoed back; other-
wise the night drags slowly, silently, and
with no change. All of a sudden, at the
blank hour of two in the morning, a vague
movement of relief from a long strain ex-
presses itself in all hands ; the third officer's
lantern twinkles, and he fires a rocket, and
another rocket. A sullen solitary light is
pointed out to me in the black sky yonder.
A change is expected in the Light, but none
takes place. " Give them two more rockets,
Mr. Vigilant." Two more, and a blue fight
burnt. All eyes watch the light again. At
last a little toy sky-rocket is flashed up
from it, and even as that small streak in
the darkness dies away, we are telegraphed
to Queenstown, Liverpool, and London, and
back again under the Ocean to America.

Then, up come the half-dozen passengers
who are going ashore at Queenstown, and
up comes the Mail- Agent in charge of the
bags, and up come the men who are to
carry the bags into the Mail Tender that
will come off for them out of the harbour.
Lamps and lanterns gleam here and there
about the decks, and impeding bulks are
knocked away with handspikes, and the

Charles Dickens/

THE PIGEONS OF VENICE.

[December 5, 1868/

port-side bulwark, barren but a moment
ago, bursts into a crop of heads of seamen,
stewards, and engineers. The light begins
to be gained upon, begins to be alongside,
begins to be left astern. More rockets, and,
between us and the land, steams beautifully
the Inman steam- ship, City of Paris, for
New York, outward bound. We observe
with complacency that the wind is dead
against her (it being with us), and that
she rolls and pitches. (The sickest pas-
senger on board is the most delighted by
this circumstance.) Time rushes by, as we
rush on, and now we see the light in
Queenstown Harbour, and now the lights
of the Mail Tender coming out to us.
What vagaries the Mail Tender performs
on the way, in every point of the compass,
especially in those where she has no busi-
ness, and why she performs them, Heaven
only knows ! At length she is seen plung-
ing within a cable's length of our port
broadside, and is being roared at through
our speaking trumpets to do this thing, and
not to do that, and to stand by the other,
as if she were a very demented Tender
indeed. Then, we slackening amidst a
deafening roar of steam, this much- abused
Tender is made fast to us by hawsers, and
the men in readiness carry the bags aboard,
and return for more, bending under their
burdens, and looking just like the paste-
board figures of the Miller and his Men in
the Theatre of our boyhood, and comporting
themselves almost as unsteadily. All the
while, the unfortunate Tender plunges high
and low, and is roared at. Then the Queens-
town passengers are put on board of her,
with infinite plunging and roaring, and the
Tender gets heaved up on the sea to that
surprising extent, that she looks within an
ace of washing aboard of us, high and dry.
Roared at with contumely to the last, this
wretched Tender is at length let go, with a
final plunge of great ignominy, and falls
spinning into our wake.

The Voice of conscience resumed its do-
minion, as the day climbed up the sky, and
kept by all of us passengers into port.
Kept by us as we passed other lighthouses,
and dangerous islands off the coast, where
some of the officers, with whom I stood
my watch, had gone ashore in sailing ships
in fogs (and of which by that token they
seemed to have quite an affectionate remem-
brance), and past the Welsh coast, and
past the Cheshire coast, and past every-
thing and everywhere lying between our
ship and her own special dock in the
Off which, at last, at nine of the

clock, on a fair evening early in May, we
stopped, and the Voice ceased. A very
curious sensation, not unlike having my
own ears stopped, ensued upon that silence,
and it was with a no less curious sensation
that I went over the side of the good
Cunard ship Russia (whom Prosperity at-
tend through all her voyages !), and sur-
veyed the outer hull of the gracious monster
that the Voice had inhabited. So, perhaps,
shall we all, in the spirit, one day survey
the frame that held the busier Voice, from
which my vagrant fancy derived this simi-
litude.

THE PIGEONS OF VENICE.

Of all the sights of Venice none are more
remarkable in their way than the sunsets and
the pigeons. Stand on the Molo of a winters
afternoon, with the Doge's Palace on your left
hand, and the church of the Salute (Our Lady
of Health) on your right, and you will see the
Windows of the West thrown open ; you will
see sunsets that suggest the Judgment Day and
the destruction of the world by fire. Wait
until the bells ring and the watcher on the
tower has mumbled his Ave Maria, and you
will see a cloud of pigeons flying from all parts
of the city towards the setting sun. It is the
tocsin of the Virgin Mary; "twenty-four
o'clock," as the Romans say. In a little while,
it will be dark, and these pigeons (sacred birds
of Venice) will have sought their nests among
the domes and spires of the cathedral.

How it came to be a point of pride with the
Venetians to defend these birds and to leave
legacies to them, and afterwards, in a bewil-
dered sort of way, to seek saintships for them
in the local calendar, are matters involved in
mystery. But thus much is known respecting
them.

The pigeons of Venice are the proteges of
the city, as the Lions of St. Mark are its pro-
tectors. They are fed every day at two o'clock.
A dinner bell is rung for them ; and they are
not allowed to be interfered with. Any person
found ill-treating a pigeon is arrested. If it be
his first offence, he is fined ; if he be an old
offender, he is sent to prison. In the good old
days of the Republic, the guilt of shedding a
pigeon's blood could only be expiated by the
law of Moses taking full effect upon the culprit
in the spirit of "an eye for an eye, and a tooth
for a tooth," much as the same law was brought
to bear on poachers, sheepstealers, and others
in our own country, eighty years ago.

It is believed by the credulous that the
pigeons of Venice are in some way connected
with the prosperity of the city ; that they fly
round it three times every day in honour of the
Trinity ; and that their being domiciled in the
town is a sign that it will not be swallowed up
by the waves. When it is high water, they
perch on the top of the tower. When the

18 [December 5, 1868.]

ALL THE TEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

Venetians are at war, or when there is any
prospect of a change of dynasty, they gather
round the Lion of St. Mark, over the entrance
to the cathedral, and consult in a low voice
about the destinies of the city. Doubt these
facts if you like, but not in Venice. What
spiders were to Robert Bruce, what crocodiles
are to certain wild tribes in Africa, the colum-
bines or little pigeons are to the Venetians.

Some writers assert that the birds came to
Venice at the time of the crusades, one of their
number having settled on the helmet of a trou-
badour or "fighting bard," whose songs had
lured it out of Palestine. Other accounts say
that they were originally heard of, in connexion
with a festival or religious procession which
took place soon after the foundation of the
cathedral in 1071. But the real story is this.

On a certain Palm Sunday, in the Middle
Ages, the priests of St. Mark determined to
give the people a treat. They collected a
number of pigeons, tied small weights to their
wings, and set them flying over the Piazza, with
a view to their falling into the hands of " needy
and deserving persons." Stones, sticks, and
knives, were thrown at the birds, and many
birds were killed ; but some escaped and con-
cealed themselves in the crevices of the cathe-
dral. One took refuge under the gown of the
Virgin Mary (a statue so called), and another
got entangled in the hands of a clock and bled
to death. The sacrednessof the place screened
the survivors from further harm, and all
thoughts of pursuing them were abandoned.
They became the pets of the city, and after a
few years were taken under the protection of
the Doge. By that time they had multiplied
to such an extent as to have become almost as
numerous as the sparrows are in London ; and
so great were the love and veneration which
they excited in the breasts of the populace, that
no man's life was considered safe who insulted
a pigeon. Special laws were made for them,
called Pigeon Laws, and Venice ran the risk at
one time of being permanently called Columbia,
or the City of Doves. Finally, a pension was
settled upon them, and a daily dinner-bell was
rung for their accommodation.

A curious part of this affair is, that the birds
never* forget their dinner hour never allow
their excursions on the Lagunes to interfere
with it. Sometimes the bell rings too soon,
sometimes too late; but the birds are always
there at the right time ; and if the bell-ringing
be omitted as it sometimes has been by way
of experiment they scream and flap their
wings in a peculiar manner. This may seem
incredible, but the story has been verified over
and over again, both for the amusement of
visitors and the satisfaction of the authorities.

It is a pretty sight of a summer's day to
watch these birds flying about the Piazza to
the sound of the bells, and finally alighting
under the window of the terrace where their
dinner is thrown out to them in a golden shower
of grain. Once upon a time it was a young
lady who performed this office; now it is a
young man. The change is for the worse.

The pigeons of Venice are black and white
(or grey) with pink eyes and red feet. A beau-
tiful green collaret surrounds the throat; the
body is quite Avhite under the wings. Some of
them have white tails, whiter than the snow
which falls on the summit of the Appenines ;
and opal or topaz eyes, which change their tints
a thousand times a day. It is of birds like
these that mention is made in Eastern stories,
birds that did duty as postmen, and carried
letters to and fro between ladies and gentlemen.
Some say the pigeons of St. Mark are of so rare
a breed that none like them are to be obtained
for love or money out of the sea-city ; but the
vouchers are Venetians.

Their principal foes are the cats, the enemies
of the feathered race in all parts of the world.
Various depredations have been made on the
cathedral by these amateurs of game, causing it
to be feared, at one time, that a one-sided war
of extermination would take place. But these
fears have not been realised. The birds are on
their guard against their enemies, and house-
wives who are troubled with mice tise traps for
their destruction in lieu of cats. Thus, the cats
are often reduced to the last stage of misery
and degradation. More like tigers than do-
mestic animals, they will fly at their foes on the
slightest provocation. But cats are so shame-
fully treated all over Italy, that there is some
excuse for their ferocity. In obscure places
they are looked upon as emissaries of the Devil,
and are burnt for witches.

Pigeon pie is not a favourite dish with the
Venetians. It is considered " shabby genteel "
food. Children accustomed to play with the
birds in the Piazza will not touch it, and
beggars have been known to prefer a crust of
dry bread to pigeon's flesh. It may naturally be
asked how pigeons come to be eaten at all in a
place where they are the object of so much
romantic attachment, and why poulterers ex-
pose them in their shop windows. Ask this
question of an hotel-keeper, and he will tell you
that the pigeons sold for food are not the pigeons
of St. Mark, but have been imported into
Venice from the mainland at great trouble
and expense. He will tell you, if he be a
Venetian, that he would rather die than cook a
city pigeon.

The long and the short of the matter is, that
the pigeons of St. Mark are a remnant of the
ancient glories of the city : a living record of
the days when Venice was the mistress of the
seas, the centre of civilisation, the market-place
and tribune of one-half of the civilised world.
To a Venetian these birds are messengers of
peace tokens of pride and power which will
one day reassert themselves.

Some of the pigeons took part in the revolu-
tion of 1849 (flying between the Austrians and
the Italians) and were shot by mistake ; others
were cooked for food, or eaten raw. But it is
the boast of the Venetians that Venice was
true to the pigeons even in her hour of famine ;
that their dinner-bell was rung regularly ; and
that their dinner was supplied to them without
stint, when hundreds of families were in want

=5=

Charles Dickens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[December 5, 1868.] 19

of the commonest necessaries of life, and were
visited at the same time by fire, famine, and
pestilence. Daniel Manin did his work well.
He defended the city against the Austrians, but
he did not forget the city birds. They were in
a measure bequeathed to him by the Doges, his
predecessors, and the people ate porridge while
the pigeons (in prime condition to be killed)
were flying about the streets. Honour to
Daniel Manin ! His body lies in the cathedral,
but the pigeons of St. Mark have made a dove-
cot of his prison bars, and prefer it (or seem to
prefer it) to the Bridge of Sighs. So say the
people of Venice. And a wild song, sung by
the boatmen of the Molo, declares that the
spirit of Daniel Manin is flying about the
Lagunes to this day, in the shape of a beautiful
white dove.

FATAL ZERO.

A DIARY KEPT AT HOMBURG.
CHAPTER I.

Datchlet, Monday, August the First.
Another day of agony and of acting. Soon
all must be stopped. It cannot go on.
Here is my last day of absence from the
bank, and I am not one bit better. They
have been only too indulgent. But what
can they do ? They must have their work
done, and already they are complaining up
in the London office. A hundred and fifty
pounds a year, and that darling of mine,
Dora^ the children all depending on me.
If I lost this situation, what would become
of us ? And yet I must. My fingers can
scarcely feel the pen, and the trembling
characters swim before my eyes as I write
on ; the paper seems to rise up like waves
of a huge white sea and suffuse my pupils.
What am I to do ? There, my darling has
just gone out with the usual question,
" How do you feel now, dear ? You are
stronger after this rest, are you not ?" And
I falsely say " Yes !" How can I pain her,
she suffers more than I do. 0, what folly
and infatuation to have brought her into
this state of life ! I should have stood by
and let her marry that man, who would
have, at least, maintained her in comfort ;
but my own selfishness would not let me.
He might have turned out a good husband.
Though he was not a good man, she must
have made him one. But my selfishness
must sacrifice her to myself. Like us all !
There ! I open a book a favourite one of
mine Holy Living and Dying, and read a
sentence ; up rises the page to my eyes like
a great wave of foam; a faint buzzing
begins in my ears and swells into the
roar of a great sea. What does all this

mean ? What can be coming ? God pre-
serve my senses ! or can this be a punish-
ment that I have deserved ? Yet the doc-
tor proceeds with his cant, " A little rest is
all that is wanted you must give up
work." How smoothly they say these
things so complacently. And pray will
you, sir, feed her, feed them, pay the rent ?
No ! so far from that, his eye is wander-
ing to her gentle delicate little fingers,
which, ty that divine Aladdin's Lamp a
dear devoted girl contrives to find, have
got hold of what will satisfy him. We
men can find for ourselves readily enough,
but they find for others. There there I
must stop.

That cruel fellow, Maxwell, the manager,
has been twice here in these three days.
A cold, hard, cruel man. He said, he
supposes I am suffering, as I say so, but
really he cannot see what is wrong with
me. With difficulty restraining myself, I
ask him, Did he suppose I was counter-
feiting, or that the doctor was counterfeit-
ing? He answers in his insolent way,
that what he supposed privately did not
bear on the matter ; the question was how
the bank was to get its work done. I must
see that they could not go on paying high
salaries to invalids. He had his duty to
the board and shareholders. I was either
very sick, or only a little sick. If the
former I had better resign, if the latter I
had better return to my work. He really
could give me no longer than to-morrow at
furthest.

Poor Dora shrinks from this cruel sen-
tence as if she were standing in the dock
with a child in her arms.

"Oh, Mr. Maxwell," she cries, "you will
not be so cruel!" He gave her a savage
look.

"That is the word they have for me
through the town. Mr. Maxwell, the hard
man a griping, cruel man. I do my duty,
my good Mrs. Austen, and let every one else
whether they are ladies and gentlemen or
no, do theirs."

That was our crime. He never forgave
that. He had once swept the bank offices,
so the story went. He had no religion but
money and figures. He had never been
seen once in a place of worship, and one of
the clerks saw a cheap translation of the
infidel Renan on his table. Yet whatever
he does to us I can pray for him to an in-
dulgent Lord, and I shall get Dora to do
the same. There again, I must stop. This
agitation makes me forget for a few seconds
that I can't write.

20 [December 5, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

Tuesday, 2nd. At last it has all broken
down. I dare not go to the office. Quite
helpless. She sees it, and knows the
miserable night I have passed. I have
sent to Maxwell, to the bank. He has
cruelly warned me that on the day after to-
morrow they will call upon me to resign.
Then what will be done ! . . . . only one
thing Heaven's will.

Three o'clock. Mr. Stanhope, the clergy-
man, just gone. Lord Langton has fallen
from his horse, and they have got down
Sir Duncan Dennison, the great London
doctor a good man and a charitable
man and Mr. Stanhope has brought
him on to me. But his remedy ! I could
have laughed, but for her sad face. * " My
good friend, no tricks will do here. You
are in a bad way this moment; and I
tell you solemnly your only chance is the
German waters, and, listen, one special one
of those German places Homburg is the
only thing to save you. I snatched a man
from the jaws, from the throat of death, this
year, by packing him off. You must go to-
morrow morning." A fine remedy, and a
precious one truly. Maxwell comes in as
the doctor is there, and Dora passionately
tells him what has been said. He lis-
tens coolly and civilly.

" With that I have nothing to say. We
have to begin making out the report to-
night, and are not going to take on fresh
hands to swell the expenses. The best
thing you can do and I advise you as
manager is to resign at once. I have
another man ready for the place, and I dare
say it could be arranged that a quarter's
salary could be got in some way, as a
bonus, with which you could take your
expedition."

" And leave them to starve ! What do
you suppose is to become of us ? Are they
to be turned out on the road ? Has your
bank, your board of blood-suckers, no heart,
no soul ? "

" The Associated Bank ! God bless me,
yes !" said Sir Duncan, who had been
silent. " I attend at least two of the
directors, as honest and soft fellows as ever
signed a cheque. They're not the fellows
to suck anybody's blood unless at least,
it's in private."

" They are men of business, sir," said
Maxwell, "and do their duty to the bank
and the shareholders."

Then they all left us, Sir Duncan saying :

" My poor fellow, I am sorry for you !
Something may turn up."

We, however, were calm. As I said

before, I had taught Dora whom to turn to
in these straits, and bade her pray for
even Maxwell. On myself I find a sort of
insensibility coming, I suppose from illness.
And yet I have great vitality and life, and
if there was a crisis or purpose before me,
could shake all off for a time.

Four o'clock ! What ungrateful crea-
tures we are ! Oh, to an ever bountiful
Providence be all praise ! It seems like
a miracle; but that confidence, somehow,
never failed. A telegram lies before me
from the directors in London. A note from
Maxwell, at the same time. He would not
come himself, though he came so often
before, to gloat over our miseries. But I
shall find out more of his treachery. Still
I am so joyous, so supremely happy, I
can be angry with no one. Mr. Barnard,
who is a director, but who has been away
on the Continent, has come down himself.
He has seen and told me the plan leave
of absence, and i" am not to resign ! Oh,
happy change ! I feel as in a dream !

Five o'clock. There is more happiness
to set down. I can hardly write these
words not from sickness, but from excite-
ment. It is all settled, and I go, not this
morning, but to-night this very night.
Heaven is very good too good ! Not an
hour ago Mr. Barnard came in here his
knock made me tremble.

" So you are ill ?" he said, it seemed
with sternness. " Well, this can't go on.
You will lose your situation; the bank
must have its work done."

" I know it, sir," I said.

"And so this Sir Duncan says nothing
short of Homburg will do you. A first-
class watering-place, and an expensive
journey for a bank clerk ! Well, well !"

Dora was in a flood of tears. " Oh, he
will die, sir !" she said, passionately.

" No he won't," he said, with a sudden
change in manner " or, at least, if he does,
it shall be his own fault. Come, he shall
go, and this night too."

My dear gave a scream. I felt the
colour in my own face. He sat down and
gave us details of this miraculous deliver-
ance.

Here was the plan, and I do recognise in
it one more proof of that actual guidance of
Providence that positive interference in
our affairs here below. Oh, how unworthy,
I say again, am I of such goodness ! Our
bank, it seems, in London, has a good many
Jew directors, and has been trying to get a
little foreign business in the way of agency.
A rich Frankfurt merchant, whom he knew,

Charles Dickens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[December 5, 1868.] 21

was anxious to buy an estate in England, for
which Barnard was trustee. It was a small
one, but he fancied the situation and the
house. The writings were prepared ; and
a solicitor was going out to have them exe-
cuted, and to receive the money and make
other arrangements, when Mr. Barnard
conceived this idea of substituting me for
the solicitor.

"You shall have your expenses there
and back, and handsome ones, too, out of
which you can squeeze a fortnight's keep.
But you must be back within the month ;
no shirking, mind, for I am your warranty,
and get well, too ; make use of every hour ;
for if you lose this chance, we can't promise
you another."

He has gone. A case with the papers and
a letter of instruction has just come up. A
clerk who brought them counted down fifty
golden sovereigns. It is a dream. Dora
danced round and kissed one of them. If
she were only coming, my love and guar-
dian angel ; but we cannot compass that !
It will be only for one month, and I shall
come back to her happy and strong, and
able to work for our children. Is it a
dream? It is like a wish in a Fairy
Tale. The express leaves to-night at eight.
I shall sleep in London and go on to-
morrow.

Wednesday, London, Charing Cross
Hotel. Bore the journey wonderfully, get-
ting better absolutely. This is all hope
dancing before my eyes. No ledger this
morning my heart is bounding within me.
So curious this great desolate chamber,
where a hundred people are taking break-
fast. Could hear the screaming of the
engine close by. My train, yes, in ten
minutes. Delighful all this excitement. It
is new life a bright sunny day the
bustling crowds going by the gay look
of everything, and the pleasant journey all
before me.

CHAPTER II.

Brussels, six p.m. Such a day. Delicious
sea happy travellers charming green
fields, and that strange look of Ostend, the
first foreign place I have ever seen. All
red tiles and potsherds, it seemed to me, at
a distance. The white quays and yellow
houses. Then the trains through the plea-
sant Belgian country ; the odd faces, and
that singular custom of the guard coming
in so mysteriously at the door, when the
train is at full speed. What things I shall
have to tell and amuse darling Dora,
whose name makes my heart low, only this

excitement prevents me thinking of any-
thing dismal. I shall write a book of
travels, make a little money, and give it all
to her. But this amazing and delicious
capital ! It is awe- striking so solid and
splendid and the glorious cathedral ! Such
wealth, such gorgeousness to be in the
world, which we do not dream of even.
The trees in the streets, the people sitting
out and taking coffee, the splendid carriages,
and all with such a grand and noble air of
stateliness. I have noted a thousand things
to tell Dora when I return. I feel getting
stronger every moment, and a quarter of
an hour ago read an English paper, with-
out finding the words swimming, and the
paper rising up to my eyes. I think I shall
go on to-night.

Friday, Cologne. A long night in the
great roomy carriages, and very comfort-
able. A little curtain to draw over the
lamp, and the whole left to myself: so I
might have been in my own room, yet did
not get to sleep till nearly one o'clock ; not
so much from noise or novelty, as from my
own thoughts, so much was coming back on
me. This was the first time I had been away
from home, from Dora ; and now that I
was at a distance, she, and all that she had
passed, began to rise before me like pic-
tures. I could see now like a man walk-
ing back to get a good view of a picture
her sweet face in the centre, and what a
deal I had gone through to win it for
myself ! Though she never shall know it,
much of what I suffer now is owing to that
six years' feverish anxiety. And I saved
her from him. For a time I did feel some
remorse, yet now I do not. It was all for
a good end.

Let me think now, as an entertainment,
of the first bright day on which I saw her.
Some wealthy people, who lived in tolerable
state, had " filled their house," as it is
called, and had asked me down. I was
reluctant to go. In these days and not
unpleasant days were they how I lived in
the book world, and very pleasant friends I
had among them. For as Richard of Bury
says, in words that sound like old church
bells, "These are the masters that instruct
us without rods ; if you chide them they do
not answer, if you neglect or ill-treat them
they bear no malice. They are always
cheerful, sweet-tempered, ready to talk and
comfort us at any hour of night or day."
For them I felt an affection they seemed
to me beautiful, with charming faces, and
shall I own it ? some of the prettiest faces
of nature when shown to me, appeared to

::o

22 [December 5, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

me, much as these pretty faces would look
on mere money treasures. Do I not re-
member how I used to look out at the
world, as from a window, and punctually as
the clock struck twelve every night, would
put away work, fetch out the best novel
of the day, light the soothing cigar, and
read for two hours ? How enjoyable was
this time, almost too exquisite ! But the
whole was about to collapse like a card
house.

How curious this dark country looks
" roaring by" the window with the glare
and flash from a station. The dull " burr"
of the train, and the lights from the win-
dows dappling the ground. As I look out
I see the small dark figure of the guard
creeping along outside. In this situation,
in my lonely blue chamber, there is a
sort of vacuity for thought, the world
is shut out and the pictures of the past
pour in ... .

Was it not a very stately place a new
castle, grand stabling, horses and carriages
in profusion, as I was shown into the great
drawing-room, and received with welcome
by the hostess. The guests were all out,
shooting, riding, walking, and so unfortu-
nate she says lunch was over. The young
ladies were in the garden, where we would
go and look for them. Stay ; no, here they
were coming, and past the mullioned win-
dows, which ran down to the ground,
flitted two or three figures, led by a little
scarlet cloak. In a second cheerful voices
rang out like music ; the door opened, and
she came tripping in. I did not see the
others. I do not know who they were
to this moment ; but was it not then, my
dear foolish Austen, that everything fell in
like a house of cards that the glory
passed away from the books and never re-
turned?

Her name was Dora a pretty and melo-
dious one ; she was small, elegantly made,
and with dancing eyes, bright sloe black
hair, and a look of refinement about her
small features I have never seen in any one
else. She was full of spirits, and laughter,
and delight. I recollect to this moment
how I was introduced, with what a co-
quettish solemnity she went through the
ceremony, and how, as I bowed, I felt
something whisper to me, " This is an im-
portant moment for you, sir . . ."

She was daughter to a great House in
the neighbourhood. From that hour she
unconsciously entered into my life. She
little thought how her airy figure was to
hover about my study, and of how many

day dreams she was to be the centre. So
do the years go by ; yet that dull blue cloth
before me seems to open and draw away,
and show me that gay noonday and that
"morning room" at House as dis-
tinctly as if it were yesterday. In my
pocket-book I have at this moment a pic-
ture of her, done, not by the fanciful touch
of memory, but by, perhaps, the less en-
during one of the camera. It is hard to
see by this light. Yes, there she is, a
cloud of white sweeping behind her, flowers
in her hand, with a soft inquiring look,
half serious, and that seems on the verge
of breaking into a smile, and spoiling the
operator's whole work. So I saw her then,
so I see her now. What if I was never
to see her again ! But this is too lugu-
brious ! . . .

There, the blast again a flashing and
flaring of lamps, a screaming of the
whistles, and we rumble into a blaze of
light, with buffets and offices lit up, and
sleepy passengers waiting. One fellow in
a white hat invades my blue chamber a
gross Belgian, with a theatrical portman-
teau pushed in before him, and an air as if
he were performing some feat of distinction.
Away flutters the little figure, and from
that moment the charm is broken, clouds
of tobacco- smoke begin, wherein, I sup-
pose fitting back-ground he sees pic-
tures of his own gross dejeuner a la four-
chette, or dinner, at the Trois Freres. A
true beast, that presently grunts and snores,
lives but for the present hour, and never
lifts up his soul in gratitude or humility.
There, he has got out, and we have done
with him. I know now the secret of this
dislike ; he reminded me so of Grainger,
the only evil genius I ever encountered in
my life, and the evil genius that I van-
quished. Rather, grace and strength came
to me from above, to aid me to vanquish
him.

I see the very street in the little town on
that gay morning. How well I remember
our all rushing to the window of the bank
the day the regiment came in when we
heard their music, and I must have seen
him Grainger walk by, his sword drawn,
at the head of his company, and looked at
him, perhaps with admiration. I little
dreamed what he was to be towards me,
later. I thought of their coming with
pleasure ; it would vary the monotony. I
thought of how they would amuse her,
perhaps, for whom a country town must be
dull indeed. Later, I see soldiers walking
about the place, the officers rather fine and

Charles Dickens.j

FATAL ZERO.

U 23

contemptuous, for which one could bear
them no ill-will, as they had fought and bled
for us, and might take little airs.

(A cold blast and rush of air, as the con-
ductor has come in like a spirit, with a
lantern, and wants to see tickets.)

Let me look back again, setting my head,
now aching a good deal, against these com-
fortable cushions. It is not likely that I
shall sleep under these strange conditions.
I like dwelling on little pictures of that time,
and it is an easy and pleasant amusement
constructing them. I next see one of our
country-town little parties, and he making
his way no, not making, he disdained
that trouble, he took it. His way he
chose fitfully ; he selected anything at
hazard, called it his way, and others
cheerfully bowed and adopted it. There
are a few such men in the world, and I
have often envied them. Such a manner is
worth money and place and estate. See
how long one of us takes to carry out a
little play, to get to know people, even.
We hesitate, make timorous advances, lose
days and weeks. He does all in a few
minutes. Time, in this short life, is money,
and more valuable.

I dare say all this time he heartily dis-
liked me I am sure he did and had that
instinctive dislike which one man often has
to another from the very outset. His eyes
seemed to challenge me, and he knew me
for an adversary. How could I com-
pete with him, with such advantages on his
side ? And he had a great one, for in those
days, my dear Dora, you were a little,
ever so little, of a coquette, and liked to
have your amusement, which was very
natural indeed.

I have had my trials. My father had
speculated and lost a fine estate, which he
had also encumbered. We had all then to
work and do what we could. I was a
gentleman, and, though not a rich one,
quite as good as they. But they looked
down on me, because we had lost our for-
tune. Dora's father had bitterly resented
what she had done, and all her fortune and
estate, too, was left away to a cousin a
drinking, hunting fellow who was amazed
at his good fortune. I never regretted it
a moment.

Grainger cast his eyes on her just to fill
up his idle time. For me he affected con-
tempt, but from me he was to have a lesson.
They wished to force her to marry him,
and she was helpless in their hands.
But when I heard that scandal about* the
innkeeper's daughter, where, too, he was

lodging, was I not right to hunt it up ?
Could I have stood by and looked on ?
And though they said, and he protested, it
was false, what of that ? Did I not know
him to be a man of a certain life ? There
were other cases as bad. He was not fit
to be her husband, and if he did " go to the
bad," later, it concerned himself, and
merely proved my discernment. Thank
God I saved her ! and I can now lay my
hand on my heart and feel no compunction

whatever that happy first year !

She changed the whole colour of my life,
made me thoughtful, steady, and taught
me even to pray, which I did little of
before. Angel ! She shall teach me much
more yet.

Saturday. Homburg at last. Delight-
ful and most easy journey. I have written
my letter to her from this sweet and pas-
toral place. I write in the daintiest of
little rooms, the yellow jalousies drawn close
to keep out the sun. Outside the window
is a balcony, Venetian-like in its breadth,
filled up with a whole garden of flowers,
where there is a table, and where one can
walk about. It recals an old and lost
place in the country, before we were ruined,
as they say. Overhead is an awning, and
when the sun is less strong, I can go out,
and walk up and down, and look into the
street. If only Dora were here ! No matter ;
one of these days she shall be, and better
times will come ; " one colour cannot always
be turning up," as the maid said this morn-
ing. And here comes the post a fellow
like a soldier, with a very grim moustache,
who hands in a letter. It is from her, I
could guess at her writing from the very
balcony. I run down to take it from the
landlady's hands and tear it open. It seems
a whole year since I have seen her. Dear
characters ! sweet writing ! I fasten it in
here, at this page of my little diary.

" Dearest, Oh,' how I miss and long for
you. How I long to learn that you have
borne the journey well ; not that you are tetter
already, for that I am not so unreasonable
as to expect. But soon you will tell me so.
Our two little darlings only know that you
have gone away. They think it is to the
nearest town, and that you will be back to-
morrow. Don't fatigue yourself writing,
think only of your dear health. Keep out
of the dreadful sun, and amuse yourself.
I hope this will find you on your arrival.
" Dora."

The underlined words, how delicate, how

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[December 5, 1868.]

like her sweet soul ! She has a faint notion,
but she dares not let it appear, that I
am a little better. I shall write this mo-
ment what joyful news for her ! . . . There,
I have told her all, everything. Four closely
written pages, a little swimming of the head,
but I could almost work at the ledger this
moment. I have told her how I was out be-
times this morning, at six o'clock ; how I
walked up the bright street lined with fairy
looking houses, all with their short broad
balconies loaded with flowers, past the gay
festive pavilions, more than hotels, the
Four Seasons, the Victoria, with the cool
shady courts and porches, past that turn
to the right, down another sweet alley where
are more fairy-like houses with balconies,
and where the great ones live. The Kisse-
leff- street they call it, which gives a grand
and inspiring Russian association. All this
time in front of me, as I ascend, and seem-
ingly far away, yet very close, are the rich,
cool, heavily laden Taunus hills, covered
with trees and verdure, rising slowly and
grandly, and filling up the gap between the
houses at the far end of the town. Then
I walk on upwards, and see lovers of plea-
sure in white coats and straw Panama
hats, sitting out. in front of the hotels and
smoking in the shade. Then I pass the
great red building, the Kursaal, the Temple
of Play, which looks like a king's palace.
Then I turn down to the right, past the
most inviting villas, all colours and shapes,
now a Swiss chalet, now a true Italian
house, but overgrown with the most ex-
quisite foliage, the metal of their balconies
all embroidered with leaves, behind which
you see white dresses, and from behind
which comes the clink of breakfast china.
Other windows, windows lower down, are
thrown wide open, and there the morn-
ing meal goes on, even in the- gardens ;
fat men in white coats and no waist-
coats, with four double chins at least, are
enjoying pipe and coffee. Then the houses
stop short, and the dense greenery begins,
groves upon groves, forest mounting over
forest, walks winding here and winding
there. Along the path, honest Homburgers
have their little table with an awning, under
which is the cool melon, the grape, the de-
licious honey, and mountain butter, most
inviting. If Dora were but on my arm how
she would enjoy all this, as, indeed, I must
stop in this description to tell her.

Well, I walk on through this greenery,
through the most charming alleys, cut in the
groves, and, through the trees, see afar the
glitter of company, the sheen of curious
figures flitting to and fro among the
leaves, the glimpse of a Swiss chalet. Such
crowds, it seems like a Watteau feast ! Down
through the avenues float the balmiest
breezes, health restoring as I feel when they
touch me. Then I emerge on the open
space, and see the most animated scene,
bright colours, bright dresses, white coats,
grey coats, hats white and grey, fluttering
veils, pink and cream coloured parasols,
flowers, " costumes," of every pattern, actu-
ally like the opening scene of the chorus at
an opera seen long, long ago. From a pagoda
came strains of rich music with the clash
of cymbals, and soft stroke of drum. How
new, how delicious all this to me ! In the
centre was the well deep below, with spa-
cious steps leading down, and girls giving
out the water, and crowds pressing forward
to receive it. The chinking of glass every-
where. Beyond, again, rows of little shops
for jewellery and trifles, charming and most
exhilarating scene, as I look on. The ani-
mation and gaiety drive away all the
sinking and weakness, and I seem to grow
strong and hopeful every moment. Down
the steps do they troop, the loveliest of
women, French, English, and American, as
I know by the curious chatter of the voices,
and with them lords, and friends, and ad-

Early in December will be ready
THE COMPLETE SET

TWENTY VOLUMES,

With General Index to the entire work from its
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heretofore.

FAREWELL SERIES OF READINGS.

MR. CHARLES DICKENS.

MESSES. CHAPPELL and Co. have the honour
to announce that Mb. Dickens will read as follows :
Monday, December 7, Thursday, December 10, Friday,
December 11, Monday, December 14, and Saturday
Morning, December 19, Edinburgh; Wednesday, De-
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day, December 22, St. James's Hall, London.

All communications to be addressed to Messes.
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Published at the Office, No. 26, Wellington Street Strand. Printed by C. Whiting, Iieaufort House, Strand.

HE-STOJ^X-QF- OUR; HYES-JROM 'Ye^TO YZJi

COJ^DUCTED-BY

^ETH WB1CE IS If^COI\po^T EO

5l0\liSH0LP'V0HpS ^
sag gfi ' ii a af-r a i%

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 12, 1868

WRECKED IN PORT.

A Serial Story by the Author of "Black Sheep."
CHAPTER III. MARIAN.

The little child who was so long prayed
for, and who came at last in answer to
James Ashnrst's fervent prayers, had no-
thing daring her childhood to distinguish
her from ordinary children. It is scarcely
worthy of record that her mother had a
hundred anecdotes illustrative of her pre-
cocity, of her difference from other infants,
of certain peculiarities never before noticed
in a child of tender years. All mothers say
these things, whether they believe them or
not, and Mrs. Ashurst, stretched on her
sick couch, did believe them, and found in
watching what she believed to be the ab-
normal gambols of her child, a certain relief
from the constant dreary wearing pain
which sapped her strength, and rendered her
life void, and colourless, and unsatisfactory.
James Ashurst believed them fervently;
even if they had required a greater amount
of credulity than that which he was blessed
with, he, knowing it gave the greatest
pleasure to his wife, would have stuck to
the text that Marian was a wonderful,
"really, he might say, a very wonderful,
child." But he had never seen anything
of childhood since his own, which he had
forgotten, and the awakening of the com-
monest faculties in his daughter came upon
him as extraordinary revelations of subtle
character, which, when their possessor had
arrived at years of maturity, would astonish
the world. The Helmingham people did not
subscribe to these opinions. Most of them
had children of their own, who, they con-
sidered, were quite as eccentric, and odd,
and peculiar as Marian Ashurst. "Not
that I'm for 'lowin that to be pert and

sassy one minute, and sittin' mumchance
wi'out sa much as a word to throw at a
dog the next, is quite manners," they would
say among themselves, " but what's ye to
expect ? Poor Mrs. Ashurst layin' on the
brode of her back, and little enough of that,
poor thing, and that poor feckless creature,
the schoolmaster, buzzed i' his 'ed wi' book
larnin' and that ! A pretty pair to bring
up such a tyke as Miss Madge !"

That was in the very early days of her
life. As the " tyke " grew up she dropped
all outward signs of tykeishness, and seemed
to be endeavouring to prove that eccen-
tricity was the very last thing to be as-
cribed to her. The Misses Lewin, whose
finishing school was renowned throughout
the county, declared they had never had
so quick or so hard-working a pupil as Miss
Ashurst, or one who had done them so
much credit in so short a time. The new
rector of Helmingham declared that he
should not have known how to get through
his class and parish work, had it not been
for the assistance which he had received
from Miss Ashurst, at times when when
really well, other young ladies would,
without the slightest harm to themselves,
be it said, have been enjoying themselves
in the croquet-ground. When the wardrobe
woman retired from the school to enter into
the bonds of wedlock with the drill-sergeant
(whose expansive chest and manly figure
when going through the "exercise with-
out clubs," might have softened Medusa
herself), Marian Ashurst at once took upon
herself the vacant situation, and resolutely
refused to allow any one else to fill it.
These may have been put down as eccen-
tricities ; they were evidences of odd cha-
racter certainly not usually found in girls
of Marian's age, but they were proofs of a
spirit far above tykeishness. All her best

eg:

[December 12, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

friends, except of course the members
of her family, whose views regarding her
were naturally extremely circumscribed,
noticed, in the girl an exceedingly great
desire for the acquisition of knowledge, a
power of industry and application quite
unusual, an extraordinary devotion to any-
thing she undertook, which suffered itself
to be turned away by no temptation, to be
wearied by no fatigue. Always, eager to
help in any scheme, always bright-eyed and
clear-headed and keen-witted, never unduly
asserting herself, but always having her
own way while persuading her interlocutors
that she was following their dictates, the
odd shy child grew up into a girl less shy
indeed, but scarcely less odd. And cer-
tainly not loveable ; those who fought her
battles most strongly and even in that
secluded village there were social and do-
mestic battles, strong internecine warfare,
carried on with as much rancour as in the
great city itself were compelled to admit
there was "a something" in her which
they disliked, and which occasionally was
eminently repulsive.

This something had developed itself
strongly in the character of the child, be-
fore she emerged into girlhood, and though
it remained vague as to definition, while
distinct as to impression in the minds of
others, Marian herself understood it per-
fectly, and could have told any one, had
she chosen, what it was that made her un-
like the other children, apart from her
being brighter and smarter than they, a
difference which she also perfectly under-
stood. She would have said, " I am very
fond of money, and the others are not;
they are content to have food and clothes,
but I like to see the money that is paid for
them, and to have some of it, all for myself,
and to heap it up and look at it, and I am
not satisfied as they are, when they have
what they want I want better things,
nicer food, and smarter clothes, and more
than them, the money. I don't say so, be-
cause I know papa hasn't got it, and so he
cannot give it to me, but I wish he could.
There is no use talking and grumbling
about things we cannot have ; people laugh
at you, and are glad you are so foolish
when you do that, so I say nothing about
it, but I wish I was rich."

Marian would have made some such an-
swer to any one who should have endea-
voured to get at her mind to find out what
that was lurking there, never clearly seen,
but always plainly felt, which made her
" old fashioned," in other than the pathetic

and interesting sense in which that ex^
preseion has come to be used with reference
to children, before she had entered upon
her teens.

A clever mother would have found out
this grave and ominous component of the
child's character would have interpreted
the absence of the thoughtless extrava-
gance, so charming, if sometimes so trying,
of childhoods would have been quick to
have noticed that Marian asked, "What
will it cost?" and gravely entered into
mental calculation on occasions when other
children would have demanded the pur-
chase of a coveted article clamorously, and
shrieked if it were refused. But Mrs.
Ashurst was not a clever mother, she was
only a loving, indulgent, rather helpless
one, and the little Marian's careful ways
were such a practical comfort to her, while
the child was young, that it never occurred
to her to investigate their origin, to ask
whether such a very desirable and fortunate
effect could by possibility have a reprehen-
sible, dangerous, insidious cause. Marian
never wasted her pennies, Marian never
spoiled her frocks, Marian never lost or
broke anything ; all these exceptional
virtues Mrs. Ashurst carefully noted and
treasured in the storehouse of her memory.
What she did not notice was, that Marian
never gave anything away, never volun-
tarily shared any of her little possessions
with her playfellows, and, when directed to
do so, complied with a reluctance which all
her pride, all her brave dread of the ap-
pearance of being coerced, hardly enabled
her to subdue, and suffered afterwards in
an unchildlike way. What she did not
observe was, that Marian was not to be
taken in by glitter and show ; that she
preferred, from the early days in which
her power of exhibiting her preference
was limited by the extent of the choice
which the toy-merchant who combined
hardbake and hairdressing with minister-
ing to the pleasures of infancy afforded
within the sum of sixpence. If Marian
took any one into her confidence, or asked
advice on such solemn occasions generally
ensuing on a protracted hoarding of the
coin in question it would not be by the
questions, " Is it the prettiest ?" " Is it the
nicest?" but, "Do you think it is worth
sixpence ?" and the child would look from
the toy to the money, held closely in the
shut palm of her chubby hand, with a per-
turbed countenance, in which the pleasure
of the acquisition was almost neutralised
by the pain of the payment a countenance

Charles Dickens.]

WRECKED IN PORT.

[December 12. 1868.;

in -which the spirit of barter was to be dis-
cerned by knowing eyes. But none such
took note of Marian's childhood. The illu-
mination of love is rather dazzling than
searching in the case of mothers of Mrs.
Ashurst's class, and she was dazzled.
Marian was perfection in her eyes, and at
an age at which the inversion of the rela-
tions between mother and daughter, com-
mon enough in later life, would have
appeared to others unreasonable, prepos-
terous, Mrs. Ashurst surrendered herself
wholly, happily, to the guidance and the
care of her daughter. The inevitable self-
assertion of the stronger mind took place,
the inevitable submission of the weaker.
In this instance, a gentle, persuasive, un-
conscious self-assertion, a joyful yielding,
without one traversing thought of humilia-
tion or deposition.

Her daughter was so clever, so helpful,
so grave, so good, her economy and ma-
nagement surely they were wonderful in
so young a girl, and must have come to her
by instinct ? rendered life such a different,
so much easier a thing, delicate as she was,
and requiring so disproportionate a share of
their small means to be expended on her,
that it was not surprising Mrs. Ashurst
should see no possibility of evil in the origin
of such qualities.

As for Marian's father, he was about as
likely to discover a comet or a continent as
to discern a flaw in his daughter's moral
nature. The child, so longed for, so fer-
vently implored, remained always, in her
father's sight, Heaven's best gift to him;
and he rejoiced exceedingly, and wondered
not a little, as she developed into the girl
whom we have seen beside his death-bed.
He rejoiced because she was so clever, so
quick, so ready, had such a masterly mind
and happy faculty of acquiring knowledge ;
knowledge of the kind he prized and re-
verenced ; of the kind which he felt would
remain to her, an inheritance for her life.
He wondered why she was so strong, for
he knew she did not take the peculiar kind
of strength of character from him or from
her mother.

It was not to be wondered at that these
peculiarities of Marian Ashurst were no-
ticed by the inhabitants of the village
where she was born, and where her
childish days had been passed ; but it was
remarkable that they were regarded with
anything but admiration. For a keen ap-
preciation of money, and an unfailing deter-
mination to obtain their money's worth,
had long been held to be eminently charac-

teristic of the denizens of Helmingham.
The cheese-factor used to declare that the
hardest bargains throughout his county
connexion were those which Mrs. Croke,
and Mrs. Whicher, and, worst of all, old
Mrs. M'Shaw (who, though Helmingham
born and bred, had married Sandy M'Shaw,
a Scotch gardener, imported by old Squire
Creswell) drove with him. Not the very
best ale to be found in the cellars of the
Lion at Brocksopp (and they could give
you a good glass of ale, bright, beaming,
and mellow, at the Lion, when they chose),
not the strongest mahogany - coloured
brandy- and- water, mixed in the bar by the
fair hands of Miss Parkhurst herself, not
even the celebrated rum-punch, the recipe
of which, like the songs of the Scandi-
navian scalds, had never been written out,
but had descended orally to old Tilley, the
short, stout, rubicund landlord had ever
softened the heart of a Helmingham farmer
in the matter of business, or induced him to
take a shilling less for a quarter of wheat,
or a truss of straw, than he had originally
made up his mind to sell it at.

" Canny Helmingham," was its name
throughout the county, and its people
were proud of it. Mr. Frampton, an earnest
clergyman who had succeeded the old rector,
had been forewarned of the popular preju-
dice, and on the second Sunday of his
ministry addressed his parishioners in a
very powerful and eloquent discourse upon
the wickedness of avarice and the folly of
heaping up worldly riches; after which,
seeing that the only effect his sermon had
was to lay him open to palpable rudeness,
he wisely concentrated his energies on his
translation of Horace's Odes (which has
since gained him such great renown, and
of which at least forty copies have been
sold), and left his parishioners' souls to take
care of themselves. But however canny
and saving they might be, and however
sharply they might battle with the cheese-
factor, and look after the dairymaid, as
behoved farmers' wives in these awful days
of free trade (they had a firm belief in
Helmingham that " Cobden," under which
generic name they understood it, was a kind
of pest, as is the smut in wheat, or the tick
in sheep), all the principal dames in the
village were greatly shocked at the un-
natural love of money which it was im-
possible to help noticing in Marian Ashurst.

" There was time enow to think o' they
things, money and such like fash, when
pipple was settled down," as Mrs. Croke
said, " but to see children hardenin' their

28 [December 12, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

hearts and scrooin' their pocket-money is
unnatural, to say the least of it !" It was
unnatural and unpopular in Helmingham.
Mrs. Croke put such a screw on the cheese-
factor, that in the evening after his deal-
ings with her, that worthy filled the com-
mercial room at the Lion with strange
oaths and modern instances of sharp deal-
ing in which Mrs. Croke bore away the
palm ; but she was highly indignant when
Lotty Croke's godmother bought her a
savings bank, a grey edifice, with what
theatrical people call a practicable chimney
down which the intended savings should be
deposited. Mrs. Whicher's dairymaid, who,
being from Ireland, and a Roman Catholic
in faith, was looked upon with suspicion,
not to say fear, in the village, and who
was regarded by the farmers as in con-
stant, though secret, communication with
the Pope of Rome and the Jesuit College
generally, declared that her mistress " can-
thered the life out of her" in the matter of
small wages and much work ; but Mrs.
Whicher's daughter, Emily, had more crim-
son gowns, and more elegant bonnets,
with regular fields of poppies, and perfect
harvests of ears of corn growing out
of them, than any of her compeers, for
which choice articles the heavy bill of
Madame Morgan formerly of Paris, now
of Brocksopp was paid without a murmur.
" It's unnatral in a gell like Marian Ashurst
to think so much o' money and what it
brings," would be a frequent remark at
one of those private Helmingham institu-
tions known as "Thick teas." And then Mrs.
Croke would say, "And what like will a
gell o' that sort look to marry ? Why a
man maun have poun's and poun's before
she'd say, ' yea' and buckle to! "

But that was a matter which Marian had
already decided upon.

CHAPTER IV. MARIAN'S CHOICE.

At a time when it seemed as though
the unchildlike qualities which had distin-
guished the child from her playmates and
coevals were intensifying and maturing in
the girl growing up, then, to all appear-
ance, hard, calculating, and mercenary,
Marian Ashurst fell in love, and thence-
forward the whole current of her being
was diverted into healthier and more na-
tural channels. Fell in love is the right
and the only description of the process, so
far as Marian was concerned. Of course
she had frequently discussed the great
question which racks the hearts of board-
ing school misses, and helps to fill up the

spare time of middle-aged women, with her
young companions ; had listened with out-
ward calmness and propriety, but with an
enormous amount of unshown cynicism, to
their simple gushings ; and had said suffi-
cient to lead them to believe that she
joined in their fervent admiration of and
aspiration for young men with black eyes
and white hands, straight noses, and curly
hair. But all the time Marian was building
for herself a castle in the air, the proprietor
of which, whose wife she intended to be,
was a very different person from the hair-
dressers' dummies whose regularity of fea-
ture caused the hearts of her companions to
palpitate. The personal appearance of her
future husband had never given her an in-
stant's care ; she had no preference in the
colour of his eyes or hair, in his height,
style, or even of his age, except she
thought she would rather he were old.
Being old, he was more likely to be gene-
rous, less likely to be selfish, more likely to
have amassed riches and to be wealthy.
His fortune would be made, not to be
made; there would be no struggling, no
self-denial, no hope required. Marian's
domestic experiences caused her to hate
anything in which hope was required ; she
had been dosed with hope without the
smallest improvement, and had lost faith
in the treatment. Marriage was the one
chance possible for her to carry out the
dearest, most deeply implanted, longest
cherished aspiration of her heart the ac-
quisition of money and power. She knew
that the possession of the one led to the
other, from the time when she had saved
her schoolgirl pennies and had noticed the
court paid to her by her little friends, to
the then moment, when the mere fact of her
having a small stock of ready money, even
more than her sense and shrewdness, gave
her position in that impecunious household,
she had recognised the impossibility of
achieving even a semblance of happiness in
poverty. When she married, it should be
for money, and for money alone. In the
hard school of life in which she had been
trained she had learned that the prize she
was aiming at was a great one, and one
difficult to be obtained ; but that know-
ledge only made her the more determined
in its pursuit. The difficulties around her
were immense ; in the narrow circle in
which she lived she had not any present
chances of meeting with any person likely
to be able to give her the position which
she sought, far less of rendering him sub-
servient to her wishes. But she waited

Charles Dickens.]

WRECKED IN PORT.

[December 12, 1868.] 29

and hoped; she was waiting and hoping,
calmly and quietly fulfilling the ordinary
duties of her very ordinary life, but never
losing sight of her fixed intent. Then
across the path of her life there came a
man who seemed to give promise of even-
tually fulfilling the requirements she had
planned out for herself. It was but a
promise; there was nothing tangible; but
the promise was so good, the girl's heart
yearned for an occupant, and, with all its
hard teaching and its worldly aspirations,
it was but human after all. So her human
heart and her worldly wisdom came to a
compromise in the matter of her acceptance
of a lover, and the result of that compro-
mise was her engagement to Walter Joyce.
When the Helmingham Grammar School
was under the misrule of old Br. Munch,
then at its* lowest ebb, and nominations
to the foundation were to be had for the
asking, and, indeed, in many cases were
sent a-begging, it occurred to the old head
master to offer one of the vacancies to Mr.
Joyce, the principal grocer and maltster of
the village, whose son was then just of an
age to render him accessible to the benefits
of the education which Sir Ranulph Clinton
had demised to the youth of Helmingham,
and which was then being so imperfectly
supplied to them under the auspices of Dr.
Munch. You must not for an instant imagine
that the offer was made by the old Doctor
out of pure loving-kindness and magna-
nimity ; he looked at it, as he did at most
things, from a purely practical point of
view ; he owed Joyce, the grocer, so much
money, and if Joyce, the grocer, would write
him a receipt in full for all his indebtedness
in return for a nomination for Joyce junior,
at least he, the Doctor, would not have done
a bad stroke of business. He would have
wiped out an existing score, the value of
which proceeding meant, in Dr. Munch's
eyes, that he would be enabled at once to
commence a fresh one, while the acquisi-
tion of young Joyce as a scholar would not
cause one atom of difference in the manner
in which the school was conducted, or rather
left to conduct itself. The offer was worth
making, for the debt was heavy, though the
Doctor was by no means sure of its being
accepted. Andrew Joyce was not Helming-
ham born ; he had come from Spindleton,
one of the large inland capitals, and had
purchased the business which he owned.
He was not popular among the Helming-
ham folk, who were all strict church people,
so far as morning service attending, tithe
paying, and parson-respecting were con-

cerned, from the fact that his religious ten-
dencies were suspected to be what the vil-
lagers termed "methodee." He had his
seat in the village church, it is true, and
put in an appearance there on the Sunday
morning, but instead of spending the Sab-
bath evening in the orthodox way which at
Helmingham consisted in sitting in the best
parlour, with a very dim light, and enjoying
the blessings of sound sleep, while Nelson's
Fasts and Festivals, or some equally proper
work, rested on the sleeper's knee, until it
fell off with a crash, and was only recovered
to be held upside down until the grateful
announcement of the arrival of supper Mr.
Joyce was in the habit of dropping into
Salem Chapel, where Mr. Stoker, a shining
light from the pottery district, dealt forth
the most uncomfortable doctrine in the
most forcible manner. The Helming-
ham people declared, too, that Andrew
Joyce was "uncanny" in other ways; he
was close-fisted and niggardly, his name was
to be found on no subscription list ; he was
litigious ; he declared that Mr. Prickett, the
old-fashioned solicitor of the village, was too
slow for him, and he put his law matters
into the hands of Messrs. Sheen and Na-
smyth, attorneys at Brocksopp, who levied
a distress before other people had served a
writ, and who were considered the sharpest
practitioners in the county. Old Dr. Munch
had heard of the process of Messrs. Sheen
and Nasmyth, and the dread of any of it
being exercised on him originally prompted
his offer to Andrew Joyce. He knew that
he might count on an ally in Andrew
Joyce's wife, a superior woman in very
delicate health, who had great influence
with her husband, and who was devoted to
her only son. Mrs. Joyce, when Hester
Baines, had been a Bible-class teacher in
Spindleton, and had had herself a fair
amount of education, would have had more,
for she was a very earnest woman in her
vocation, ever striving to gain more know-
ledge herself for the mere purpose of im-
parting it to others, but from her early
youth she had been fighting with a spinal
disease, to which she was gradually suc-
cumbing, so that although sour granite-
faced Andrew Joyce was not the exact help-
mate that the girl so full of love and trust
would have chosen for herself, when he
offered her his hand and his home, she was
glad to avail herself of the protection thus
afforded, and of the temporary peace which
she could thus enjoy, until called, as she
thought she should be, very speedily to her
eternal rest.

30 [December 12, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

That call did not come nearly as soon as
Hester Baines had anticipated ; not, indeed,
until nearly a score of years after she gave
np Bible-teaching, and became Andrew
Joyce's wife. In the second year of her
marriage a son was born to her, and thence-
forward she lived for him, and for him
alone. He was a small, delicate, sallow-faced
boy, with enormous liquid eyes, and rich red
lips, and a long throat, and thin limbs, and
long skinny hands. A shy retiring lad,
with an invincible dislike to society of any
kind, even that of other boys ; with a hatred
of games, and fun; and an irrepressible
tendency to hide away somewhere, any-
where, in an old lumber-room amid the
disused trunks and broken clothes-horses,
and general lumber, or under the wide-
spreading branches of a tree, and then, ex-
tended prone on his stomach, to he, with his
head resting on his hands, and a book
flat between his face-supporting arms. He
got licked before he had been a week at
the school, because he openly stated he did
not like half-holidays, a doctrine which when
first whispered among his schoolfellows was
looked upon as incredible, but which, on
proof of its promulgation, brought down
upon its holder severe punishment. Despite
of all Dr. Munch's somnolency and neglect,
despite of all his class-fellows' idleness,
ridicule, or contumely, young Joyce would
learn, would make progress, would ac-
quire accurate information in a very extra-
ordinary way. When Mr. Ashurst assumed
the reins of government at Helmingham
Grammar School, the proficiency, promise,
and industry of Walter Joyce were the only
things that gave the new dominie the smallest
gleam of interest in his new avocation.
With the advent of the new head master
Walter Joyce entered upon a new career ;
for the first time in his life he found some
one to appreciate him, some one who could
understand his work, praise what he had
done, and encourage him to greater efforts.
This had hitherto been wanting in the
young man's life. His father liked to
know that the boy " stuck to his book ;"
but was at last incapable of understanding
what that sticking to the book produced,
and his mother, though conscious that her
son possessed talent such as she had al-
ways coveted for him, had no idea of the real
extent of his learning. James Ashurst was
the only one in Helmingham who could
rate his scholar's gifts at their proper value,
and the dominie's kind heart yearned with
delight at the prospect of raising such a
creditable flower of learning in such un-

promising soil. He praised himself, not
merely with the young man's present bnt
with his future. It was his greatest hope
that one of the scholarships at his old col-
lege should be gained by a pupil from
Helmingham, and that that pupil should
be Walter Joyce. Mr. Ashurst had been in
communication with the college authorities
on the subject ; he had obtained a very un-
willing assent an assent that would have
been a refusal had it not been for Mrs.
Joyce's influence from Walter's father that
he would give his son an adequate sum
for his maintenance at the University, and
he was looking forward to a quick coming
time when a scholarship should be vacant,
for which he was certain Walter had a
most excellent chance, when Mrs. Joyce
had a fit and died. From that time forth
Andrew Joyce was a changed man. He
had loved his wife in his grim, sour, puri-
tanical way, loved her sufficiently to strive
against this grimness and puritanism to
the extent of his consenting to five for the
most part in the ordinary fashion of the
world. But when that gentle influence
was once removed, when the hard-headed,
narrow-minded man had no longer the soft
answer to turn away his wrath, the soft
face to look appeahngly up against his
harsh judgment, the quick intellect to
combat his one-sided dogmatisms, he fell
away at once, and blossomed out as the
bitter bigot into which he had gradually
but surely been growing. No college edu-
cation for his son then ; no assistance for
him from a bloated hierarchy, as he re-
marked at a public meeting, glancing at
Mr. Sefton, the curate, who had eighty
pounds a year and four children ; no money
of his to be spent by his son in a dissolute
and debauched career at the university.
Mr. Stoker had not been at any university
as, indeed, he had not, having picked
up most of his limited education from a
travelling tinker, who combined pot-mend-
ing and knife-grinding with Bible and tract
selling and where would you meet with
a better preacher of the Gawspel, a more
shining light, or a comelier vessel ? Mr.
Stoker was all in all to Andrew Joyce then,
and when Andrew Joyce died, six months
afterwards, it was found that, with the
exception of the legacy of a couple of
hundred pounds to his son, he had left all
his money to Mr. Stoker, and to the chapel
and charities represented by that erudite
divine.

It was a sad blow to Walter Joyce, and
almost as sharp a one to James Ashurst.

"8=

=&>

Charles Dickens.;

WRECKED m PORT.

[December 12, 1868.] 31

The two men Walter was a man now
grieved together over the overturned hopes
and the extinguished ambition. It was
impossible for Walter to attempt to go to
college just then. There was no scholarship
vacant, and if there had been, the amount to
be won might probably have been insuffi-
cient even for this modest youth. There was
no help for it ; he must give up the idea,
What, then, was he to do ? Mr. Ashurst
answered that in his usual impulsive way.
Walter should become under-master in the
school. The number of boys had increased
immensely. There was more work than
he and Dr. Breitmann could manage ; oh
yes, he was sure of it, he had thought so a
long time, and Walter should become third
classical master, with a salary of sixty
pounds a year, and board and lodging
in Mr. Asnurst's house. It was a rash
and wild suggestion, just likely to ema-
nate from such a man as James Ashurst.
The number of boys had increased, and
Mr. Ashurst's energy had decreased ;
but there was Dr. Breitmann, a kindly,
well-read, well-educated doctor of phi-
losophy, from Leipzig; a fine classical
scholar, though he pronounced " amo" as
" ahmo," and " Dido" as " Taito ;" a gen-
tleman, though his clothes were thread-
bare, and he only ate meat once a week,
and sometimes not then unless he were
asked out ; and a disciplinarian, though he
smoked like a limekiln ; a habit which in
the Helmingham school-boys' eyes pro-
claimed the confirmed debauchee of the
Giovanni or man-about-town type. Walter
Joyce had been a favourite pupil of the
doctor's, and was welcomed as a colleague
by his old tutor with the utmost warmth.
It was understood that his engagement
was only temporary, he would soon have
enough money to enable him, with a scho-
larship, to astonish the university, and

then ! Meanwhile Mr. Ashurst and all

around repeated that his talents were mar-
vellous, and his future success indisput-
able.

That was the reason why Marian Ashurst
fell in love with him. As has before been
said, she thought nothing of outward ap-
pearance, although Walter Joyce had grown
into a sufficiently comely man, small in-
deed, but with fine eyes and an eloquent
mouth, and a neatly turned figure ; nor,
though a refined and educated girl, did she
estimate his talents save for what they
would bring. He was to make a success
in his future life! that was what she
thought of her father said so, and so far

in matters of cleverness and book learning,
and so on, her father's opinion was worth
something. Walter Joyce was to make
money and position, the two things of
which she thought, and dreamed, and
hoped for, night and day. There was no
one else among her acquaintance with his
power. No farmer within the memory of
living generations had done more than to
keep up the homestead bequeathed to him
whilst attempting to increase the number or
the value of his fields ; and even the gratifi-
cation of her love of money would have been
but a poor compensation to a girl of Ma-
rian's innate good breeding and refinement
for being compelled to pass her life in the
society of a boor or a churl. No ! Walter
Joyce combined the advantage of educa-
tion and good looks, with the prospect of
attaining wealth and distinction ; he was
her father's favourite, and was well thought
of by everybody, and and she loved him
very much, and was delighted to comfort
herself with the thought that in doing so
she had not sacrificed any of what she was
pleased to consider the guiding principles
of her life.

And he, Walter Joyce, did he recipro-
cate, was he in love with Marian ? Has it
ever been your lot to see an ugly or, better
still, what is called an ordinary man for
ugliness has become fashionable both in
fiction and in society to see an ordinary
looking man hitherto politely ignored, if
not snubbed, suddenly taken special notice
of by a handsome woman, a recognised
leader of her set, who, for some special pur-
pose of her own, suddenly discovering that
he has brains, or conversational power, or
some peculiar fascination, singles him out
from the surrounding ruck, steeps him in the
sunlight of her eyes, and intoxicates him
with the subtle wiles of her address ? It does
one good, it acts as a moral shower-bath, to
see such a man under such circumstances.
Tour fine fellow simpers and purrs for a
moment, and takes it all as real legitimate
homage to his beauty; but the ordinary
man cannot, so soon as he has got over his
surprise at the sensation, cannot be too
grateful, cannot find ways and means cum-
brous frequently and ungraceful, but emi-
nently sincere of showing his appreciation
of the woman. Thus it was with Walter
Joyce. The knowledge that he was a
grocer's son had added immensely to the
original shyness and sensitiveness of his
disposition, and the free manner in
which his frank and delicate personal ap-
pearance had been made the butt of out-

32 [December 12, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

spoken " chaff" of the school-boys had
made him singularly misogynistic. Since
the early days of his youth, when he had
been compelled to give a very unwilling
attendance twice a week at the dancing
academy of Mr. Hardy, where the boys of
the Helmingham Grammar School had their
manners softened, nor were suffered to
become brutal, by the study of the terpsi-
chorean art, in the company of the young
ladies from the Misses Lewins' establish-
ment, Walter Joyce had resolutely es-
chewed any and every charge of mixing in
female society. He knew nothing of it,
and pretended to despise it ; it is needless
to say, therefore, that so soon as he was
brought into daily communication with a
girl like Marian Ashurst, possessed both of
beauty and refinement, he fell hopelessly
in love with her, and gave up every
thought, idea, and hope, save that in
which she bore a part. She was his god-
dess, and he would worship her humbly
a,nd at a distance. It would be sufficient
for him to touch the hem of her robe, to
hear the sound of her voice, to gaze at
her with big dilated eyes, which not that
he knew it were eloquent with love, and
tenderness, and worship.

Their love was known to each other, and
to but very few else. Mr. Ashurst, look-
ing up from his newspaper in the blessed
interval between the departure of the boys
to bed, and the modest little supper, the
only meal which the family in which
Joyce was included had in private, may
have noticed the figures of his daughter
and his usher, erst his favourite pupil,
lingering in the deepening twilight round
the lawn, or seen " their plighted shadows
blended into one" in the soft rays of the
moonlight. But, if he thought anything
about it, he never made any remark.
Life was very hard and very earnest with
James Ashurst, and he may have found
something softening and pleasing in this
little bit of romance, something which he
may have wished to leave undisturbed by
worldly suggestions or practical hints. Or,
he may have had no idea of what was
actually going on. A man with an in-
cipient disease beginning to tell upon him,
with a sickly wife, and a perpetual skiving
not merely to make both ends meet, but to
prevent them bursting so wide asunder as
to leave a gap through which he must
inevitably fall into ruin between them, has
but little time, or opportunity, or inclina-
tion, for observing narrowly the conduct
even of those near and dear to him. Mrs.

Ashurst, in her invalid state, was only too
glad to think that the few hours which
Marian took in respite from attendance on
her mother were pleasantly employed, to
inquire where or in whose society they were
passed. Neither Marian's family nor Joyce
kept any company by whom their absence
would be noticed ; and as for the villagers,
they had fully made up their minds on the
one side that Marian was determined to
make a splendid match ; on the other, that
the mere fact of Walter Joyce's scholarship
was so great as to incapacitate him from
the pursuit of ordinary human frailties : so
that not the ghost of a speculation as to
the relative position of the couple had
arisen amongst them. And the two young
people loved, and hoped, and erected their
little castles in the air, which were palatial
indeed as hope- depicted by Marian, though
less ambitious as limned by Walter Joyce,
when Mr. Ashurst's death came upon them
like a thunderbolt, and blew their unsub-
stantial edifices into the air.

See them here on this calm summer
evening, pacing round and round the lawn,
as they used to do, in the old days already
ages ago as it seems, when James Ashurst,
newspaper in hand, would throw occasional
glances at them from the study window.
Marian, instead of letting her fingers
lightly touch her companion's wrist, as is
her wont, has passed her arm through his,
and her fingers are clasped together round
it, and she looks up in his face, as they
come to a standstill beneath the big out-
spread branches of the old oak, with
an earnest tearful gaze such as she has
seldom, if ever, worn before. There must
be matter of moment between these two
just now, for Joyce's face looks wan and
worn ; there are deep hollows beneath his
large eyes, and he strives ineffectually to
conceal, with an occasional movement of his
hand, the rapid anxious play of the muscles
round his mouth. Marian is the first to

And so you take Mr. Benthall's deci-
sion as final, Walter, and are determined to
go to London?"

" Darling, what else can I do ? Here is
Mr. Benthall's letter, in which he tells me
that, without the least wish to disturb me
a mere polite phrase that he shall bring
his own assistant master to Helmingham.
He writes, and means kindly, I've no
doubt but here's the fact !"

" Oh, yes, I'm sure he's a gentleman,
Walter ; his letter to mamma proves that,

Charles Dickens.]

NEW LAMPS FOR OLD ONES.

[December 12, 1868.] 33

offering to defer his arrival at the school-
house until our own time. Of course
that is impossible, and we go into Mr.
Swainson's lodgings at once."

"My dearest Marian, my own pet, I
hate to think of you in lodgings ; I cannot
bear to picture you so !"

"You must make haste and get your
position, and take me to share it, then,
Walter !" said the girl, with a half melan-
choly smile ; " you must do great things,
Walter. Dear papa always said you would,
and you must prove how right he was !"

" Dearest, your poor father calculated on
my success at college for the furtherance of
my fortune, and now all that chance is
over ! Whatever I do now must be "

" By the aid of your own talent and in-
dustry, exactly the same appliances which
you had to rely on if you had gone to the
university, Walter. You don't fear the re-
sult ? you're not alarmed and desponding
at the turn which affairs have taken ? It's
impossible you can fail to attain distinction,
and and money and and position, Walter
you must, don't you feel it ? you
must !"

" Yes, dear, I feel it; I hope I think !
perhaps not so strongly, so enthusiastically
as you do. You see, don't be downcast,
Marian, but it's best to look these things in
the face, darling ! all I can try to get is a
tutor's, or an usher's, or a secretary's place,
and in any of these the want of the uni-
versity stamp is heavily against me. There's
no disguising that, Marian !"

" Oh, indeed ; is that so ?"

"Yes, child, undoubtedly. The uni-
versity degree is like the hall mark in
silver, and I'm afraid I shall find very few
persons willing to accept me as the genuine
article without it."

"And all this risk might have been
avoided if your father had only "

" Well, yes ; but then, Marian darling,
if my father had left me money to go to
college immediately on his death I should
never have known you known you, I
mean, as you are, the dearest and sweetest
of women."

He drew her to him as he spoke and
pressed his lips on her forehead. She re-
ceived the kiss without any undue emo-
tion, and said :

" Perhaps that had been for the best,
Walter."

" Marian, that's rank blasphemy. Fancy
my hearing that, especially, too, on the
night of my parting with you ! No, my
darling, all I want you to have is hope,

and courage, and not too much am-
bition, dearest. Mine has been compara-
tively but a lotus- eating existence hitherto ;
to-morrow I begin the battle of life."

" But slightly armed for the conflict, my
poor Walter !"

"I don't allow that, Marian. Youth,
health, and energy are not bad weapons to
have on one's side, and with your love in
the background "

" And the chance of achieving fame and
fortune for yourself keep that in the fore-
ground !"

" That is to me, in every way, less than
the other, but it is of course an additional
spur. And now "

And then ? When two lovers are on the
eve of parting, their conversation is scarcely
very interesting to any one else. Marian
and Walter talked the usual pleasant non-
sense, and vowed the usual constancy, took
four separate farewells of each other, and
parted, with broken accents, and lingering
hand- clasps, and streaming eyes. But
when Marian Ashurst sat before her toi-
lette-glass that night, in the room which
had so long been her own, and which she
was so soon to vacate, she thought of what
Walter Joyce had said as to his future, and
wondered whether, after all, she had not
miscalculated the strength, not the courage,
of the knight whom she had selected to
wear her colours in his helm in the great
contest.

NEW LAMPS FOR OLD ONES.

It is a fact, concerning the soundness of
which there can be no doubt, that we all keep
by us, among our possessions, a considerable
number of objects which we do not want, for
which we have no possible use, which are very
much in our way, and which we would be ex-
ceedingly glad to be rid of, if we only knew
how. Some people, with little space at their
disposal, have been so encumbered in this way
with large accumulations of rubbish, inherited
from many generations of collectors, that they
have even been heard, after a day spent in
futile attempts to deal with these unvalued
possessions, to express, in the bitterness of
their souls, a longing for a "judicious fire" to
break out in the house. In default of that
great comfort, it would be an excellent arrange-
ment if a perambulating furnace could be
brought round, at certain intervals, and moored
for a time before our doors.

Incremation of this sort, however, is a way
out of the difficulty only available in certain
cases. Some kinds of rubbish are hardly suit-
able for burning. Metallic rubbish, earthen-
ware rubbish, bone and ivory rubbish, old door

cg=

34 [December 12, 186S.]

ALL THE YEAR SOUND.

[Conducted by

handles, disabled locks, bunches of
keys, superseded door knockers, ancient jam
pots, broken china figures, plaster casts with-
out noses, empty ink jars, medicine bottles
half full of mixture which was to be taken
three times a day and wasn't, worn-out tooth-
brush handles, knobs that have come off every-
thing that could have a knob, handles of every-
thing that could have a handle handles of
parasols, of button hooks, of butter knives, of
paper knives, of water jugs, of tea pots. There
are, besides such mere rubbish and refuse, cer-
tain objects which belong to most people, which
are of some occasionally of great intrinsic
value, but which we don't in the slightest
degree appreciate, and secretly yearn to be
delivered from. There is the pair of vases for
the chimneypiece, which were given you on
your marriage day, and which, entirely destroy-
ing the effect of your drawing-room, you have
banished to a bedroom, where they are bitterly
in the way. There is the set of dining-room
chairs, bought by yourself, with your eyes
open, when you paid away hard money and a
good deal of it in order that you might be-
come possessed of what you detest from the
bottom of your soul. There is that claret-
coloured surtout, which will not answer at all,
and which is not likely to wear out, because
you never put it on ; also, the pair of unmen-
tionables, the material of which, when they
were brought home, turned out to be so much
more violent in colour than it looked in the
tailor's pattern-book. What are you to do with
such things as these? You cannot burn a
whole set of dining-room chairs, or a claret-
coloured surtout ; and you don't like the idea
of selling them, because, if it got about, your
friends would at once come to the conclusion
that you were on the eve of bankruptcy, and
so your social position might suffer. What are
you to do ?

What you are to do is simply this : You are
to advertise in a journal called The Exchange
and Mart. You are to advertise that you are
willing to barter these objects which are harass-
ing the life out of you, for certain other ob-
jects, which you specify, and which are equally
harrowing to their present proprietor.

The Exchange and Mart is a weekly periodi-
cal, which has been in existence something
over six months. The object with which this
journal has been started may be best explained
by a quotation from the first page of the work
itself :

"The Exchange and Mart Jouenal" has been
established to provide a medium between tbe seller and
buyer, and at a very cheap rate to enable any one who
wishes to dispose of any article, either by exchange or
by sale, to do so to the very best advantage.

It wall be desirable to give a short explanation of our
scheme, so that intending advertisers may the more
easily avail themselves of the advantages we offer.

First, let us suppose a person wishing to effect an ex-
change through our columns, he will write to the editor
thus: Sir, I wish to make the following exchange
{Sere follows the list of articles to be exchanged), for

which I enclose stamps (enclosing the number of

stamps as per regulations). If the advertiser chooses
to add his own name and address, he can of course do

so ; but supposing he should wish to keep it secret, he
will then send us his name and address, and we shall
attach a number to his advertisement, in place of his
name, and all letters answering his advertisement will
therefore be addressed to that number at our office. In
addition to this, the advertiser can, if he wish, send the
article advertised for exchange to our office on view.
The same rules apply to the department of "The
Mart," with this addition, that a charge of five per
cent will be made on all articles sold at our office. As
to the department of " Wants and Vacancies," the de-
sirability of having some organ where servants and
masters can be brought into communication at a merely
nominal cost, is too obvious to need demonstration.

It will be seen here that not only do the ori-
ginators of this scheme take the interests of
their clients very much to heart, but that great
consideration for their feelings is also exhibited,
and ample provision made for that tendency to
shrink from observation which ever besets the
amateur seller, and which we see provided
against by the pawnbroking fraternity in the
shape of those private doors round the corner,
always inseparable from such of their establish-
ments as are found in our genteeler neigh-
bourhoods.

Some plain directions to intending adver-
tisers follow :

Let us now proceed to point out the course to be pur-
sued by any persons answering the advertisements ;
and first as regards "The Exchange." The person
answering an advertisement of Exchange must enclose
that answer, stamped, and with the distinguishing
number of the advertisement clearly written upon the
top of it, under cover to the editor of The Exchange
and Maet, who will thus bring the two parties into
communication. The same course of procedure applies
to " The Mart."

To ensure that the advertisement should be widely
seen, we guarantee a minimum circulation often thou-
sand weekly."

That last "guarantee" is a bold one, and
shows that the proprietors of the undertaking
regard the class which is ready to fly to ills it
knows not of, rather than to endure those
which it has, as rather a large one. And, in-
deed, judging from the advertisements which
fill more than a dozen large columns of this
wonderful journal, it would seem to be so. It
is pathetic to observe how the means of
making their miseries known having at length
come in their way the proprietors of all sorts
of detested objects hurry forward in search of
deliverance from their passive tormentors. The
present writer once went to see the " Home
for Lost and Starving Dogs ;" and as soon as
he appeared in the yard, every one of those
poor ownerless wretches rushed headlong to
the bars behind which they were confined, each
imagining that his especial proprietor had at
last turned up. So with these advertisers.
They were pining hopeless among those fatal
possessions, when suddenly the proprietors of
The Exchange and Mart appeared on the scene
with signals of deliverance ; and instantly the
advertisers flung themselves at their feet,
frantic with gratitude and hope. " Rescue me
from this concertina, which I can't play !" cries
one. "Deliver me from this statuette, the
sight of which is killing me by inches !" shrieks
another. " This gun," groans a third, "with

Charies Dickens.]

NEW LAMPS FOR OLD ONES.

[December 12, 18C8.] 35

which I have never shot anything ! Remove it
from above my chimneypiece, and take a load
from my heart !"

The advertisers who seek to make their wants
known through, the pages of The Exchange
and Mart, seem to possess many characteristics
in common. The same articles appear to be
popular and unpopular with them. They all
want sealskin jackets and sewing - machines,
and none of them want incomplete pieces of
Berlin wool work, and "boxes of oil paints
nearly new." There is, by the way, a very
brisk desire to get rid of these last, suggesting
the idea that a considerable proportion of the
advertisers have been the victims of a false
impression that they had a vocation for art.
Sometimes the revulsion of feeling brought
about by the acquirement of these " paints" is
very strong indeed, as in the case of an adver-
tiser in the twentieth number of The Exchange,
who suddenly discovers, after cultivating for a
brief space the peaceful arts that soften men's
manners, a certain blood-thirsty tendency, at
once incongruous and terrible. " I have," says
this gentleman, " an oil-paint box almost com-
plete, and very little used. I want a small
breech-loading revolver."

Among the characteristics shared in common
by the clients of the Exchange journal must
be noted a wonderful and touching hopeful-
ness. They are so inexplicably sanguine. They
see nothing outrageous in the idea of getting
new lamps for old ones. The lamps they have
to dispose of are very old ones, and they know
it. The wares they offer for competition are,
for the most part, no doubt, defective, imper-
fect, and disappointing ; yet they expect that
the objects which they are to get in exchange
for them are to possess none of those qualities.
Here is a wonderful instance of this hopeful-
ness. It is headed " Goats !"

"Three pure white Sicilian goats to be ex-
changed for a lock-stitch sewing-machine, Wil-
son preferred, in perfect condition."

A gentleman or lady possessed of a sewing-
machine, by the best maker, in perfect condition,
is expected to part with it, and to receive in
return three terrible goats ! Is this a thing
likely to happen ? Is it likely, again, that the
advertiser who has " a fine tame fox, which he
wishes to exchange for a gold watch or guard,"
will meet with a customer ? Or that the pro-
prietor of an ivory card-case is to be able to
exchange it, or "two pieces of Chinese and
Japanese embroidery" for a " Cleopatra" or a
" AVanzer" sewing-machine, in good order ?

These sewing-machines are in continual re-
quest. In one copy of The Exchange there are no
less than eleven advertisements for these useful
articles, for which the most various and incon-
gruous things guitars, celestial and terrestrial
globes, bantam cocks, and magic lanterns,
among the rest are offered in exchange.

This incongruity between the object offered
and that which is advertised for, is another of
the curiosities of advertisement which the new
journal supplies us with. Besides such instances
as have been already mentioned, we find such

notices as the following, in plenty: "Butter-
dish of carved white wood, with green glass
centre, quite new, never used, cost eight shil-
lings and sixpence. To exchange for Mendels-
sohn's Lieder ohne Worte ; or a pair of lady's
skates, or a round brass American clock, or a
carved fretwork brooch, or Tennyson's poems."
"I will give forty pencil drawings," says one
advertiser, "all good, some excellent, for
twelve pounds of good honey !" " ' Raising
the Maypole,' quite new," says another ; " size,
forty inches by thirty inches. Wanted blankets,
or offers." Another advertiser wishes to change
a pair of archery targets for a good guitar ; an-
other, to become possessed of a small revolver
in place of Knight's Natural History ; another
to exchange a handsome lever gold watch and
seals, for a cow !

Among the remarkable points to which one's
attention is frequently drawn in considering
these notices, is the exceeding popularity oS
sealskin. The advertisements for sealskin
jackets, sealskin muffs, sealskin waistcoats, seal-
skin purses, follow one another in close suc-
cession, and are even more numerous than those
for sewing-machines. Neither do the owners
of the former, any more than the latter, appear
to tire of such possessions, or wish to be rid of
them. There are no instances of advertisers
wishing to part, either with sealskin jackets or
sewing-machines.

Occupying ourselves still with the especial
peculiarities developed in the columns of this
curious periodical, one cannot help noticing
what a rare quality accuracy and intelligibility in
written description is. This is manifested by
the Exchange advertisers, both in describing
the objects they wish to part with, and those of
which they desire to become possessed. Thus,
there are advertisers who announce their pos-
session of a "very good long thick watch-
chain," without specifying of what metal it is
composed ; others, who are in want of a yard
" or so " of piece silk ; others, who yearn for a
large new album, " to hold four in a page "
four what ? Some of the descriptions, too, are
very minute in detail, and some characterised
by a certain conscientiousness. A set of steel
ornaments, for instance, which are "slightly
rusty," are advertised ; and a lace shawl, a
"little soiled;" while one advertiser, in her
desire to be strictly honest, enters into quite a
little narrative of the autobiographical sort : " I
have," she says, " a good bracelet, bought at the
Exhibition in '62. I do not know of what metal
it is made, but I think it cannot be plated, as I
have worn one bought at the same time, a great
deal, and it has not in the least turned colour."

Some people are possessed of very hopeless
goods indeed, and seem to be perfectly con-
scious of their unfortunate position. Here is
an unhappy case : "I have ten gross of plate-
powder, each in packet boxes. I wish to ex-
change for anything useful. Open to offers."
And here another: "I have about a hun-
dred different, mostly freethought, pamphlets,
average price sixpence, which I would ex-
change for anything useful worth a guinea."

36 [December 12, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

The strange phenomena, connected with the
stamp-collecting mania, are among the pecu-
liarities developed in these pages. Extraor-
dinary revelations are made, of the patience and
perseverance exhibited by " collectors" of this
kind. Some of these advertise, for exchange,
books containing upwards of five hundred
stamps, foreign and colonial, or eight hundred
postmarks in an album. Is it conceivable that
anybody can want eight hundred postmarks ?
Another collector offers " a book with double
clasps, containing one thousand and seventy
arms, crests, and monograms, all coloured ;
Oxford and Cambridge Colleges, arms of all
nations, county arms, nearly all the army,
militia, volunteer, schools, &c." There are,
likewise, strange and terrible treasures of the
monogram and stamp kind, and some very
mysterious matters indeed, which are called
"eccentrics." Here is a fearfully mystifying
announcement : "I have twenty military
badges, and Adam and Eve eccentric, to ex-
change for others ; or would give two badges for
Tom Dawson's cat, Miss Senhouse, Miss Charl-
ton's fan, Mr. Milbank's eccentric." Mr. Tom
Dawson's cat is the subject of another adver-
tisement, and is evidently a much prized and
well-known specimen among " eccentrics."

Through the agency of the department of this
Periodical, called the " Exchange," persons
encumbered may get a different set of objects
more suitable to their wants ; while another de-
partment of the Journal, " The Mart," affords
them a chance of turning these same unappre-
ciated wares into money. It is probably a good
thing that such a system as this should be in
existence, for even if the parties to these trans-
actions do not acquire any very valuable ad-
ditions to the number of their possessions, they
at least get a change in the nature of their en-
cumbrances, and that is something. For, even
if you skip out of the frying-pan into the fire,
it must still be admitted that you do get a
change, and perhaps though the general
opinion seems to run the other way a change
not altogether for the worse.

THE HALL PORTER AT THE CLUB.

" How long, good friend, have you sat here,
A warder at the door,
To let none pass but the elect
Into the inner floor ?"
" I think 'tis thirty years at least ;
I came in manly prime,
And now I'm growing frail and old,
And feel the touch of Time.

'' Many's the change that I have seen
Since first I entered here ;
A thousand merry gentlemen
Were members in that year.
And of the thousand there remain

Scarce fifty that I know,
And they are growing old like me,
' And hobble as they go.

" Seven hundred underneath the sod,
The great, the rich, the free ;
A hundred fallen on evil days,
Too poor to pay the fee.

Fifty resigned because their wives

Forbade them to remain ;
And half a score went moody mad

From overwork of brain.
: And two committed suicide,

One for a faithless wife,
And one for fear to face the law

That could not take his life.
But why run o'er the mournful list ?

Each month that passes round,
Sees some old leaf from this old tree

Fall fluttering to the ground.
: And you, my friend, who question me,

Are young, and hale, and strong,
You'll have such memories as mine

If you but live as long !"

; Well ! well ! I know ! Why moralise ?

Or go in search of sorrow ?
Here's half a crown to drink my health ;

And better luck to-morrow !"

MY VERSION OF POOR JACK.

The " Poor Jack" of whom I write is
not a sailor, though perhaps for him also,,
as well as for the Poor Jack whom Charles
Dibdin has immortalised, there may be a
sweet little cherub sitting up aloft. My
Poor Jack is a landsman, and, although
he will npt admit the fact, a beggar.
There is this much to be said for his
denial of the truth, that he is to a certain
extent a trader, and that in the summer
months and the early autumn he does a
certain amount of profitable business
profitable from his humble point of view,
though never sufficiently remunerative to
enable him to deal with either the tailor or
the shoemaker. His whole attire is elee-
mosynary, and his raggedness, though
doubtless very uncomfortable to himself,
is exceedingly picturesque, and might, if
any good artist happened to fall in with
him, procure for him the honour of a
sitting, and such reward in silver as the
pose might be worth. Jack is sixty-five
years of age, and has a large handsome
brown beard, striped rather than sprinkled
with grey. Though I have known him for
three or four years, I never saw him but
once without his hat on a very battered
and tattered one it is and then I dis-
covered that his beard was the only hir-
suteness he could exhibit, and that, in fact,
his head was as bald and devoid of hair
as a basin. His elbows peep out from his
sleeves, and his toes from his miserable old
shoes, and his general raggedness is as
looped and windowed as that which Lear
pitied and Shakespeare described. In his
youth Poor Jack was a carpenter, but he
has not done a stroke of carpenter's work
for upwards of forty years, having, as he
says, been disabled at five-and-twenty by

Charles Dickens]

MY VERSION OF POOR JACK.

[December 12, 1SC8.]

rheumatism in his right shoulder and hand
and in both of his feet rheumatism so
long neglected or so imperfectly treated as
to have become chronic and incurable.
Having no money to set up a shop, and no
friends to help him, he had betaken himself
to the road to live by what he could pick
up ; not perhaps without reliance upon the
sweet little cherub already mentioned, or on
the Providence that takes account of men
as well as of sparrows.

Poor Jack called upon me a few weeks
ago with a basket of mushrooms that he
had gathered in the fields, having a stand-
ing commission from me to give me the
first offer of these dainties whenever he can
find sufficient for a dish. The last time
I had seen him prior to this visit, was
about six weeks previously, when I had
come across him in a byway, sitting by the
side of a ditch, and very drunk indeed. I
reminded him (perhaps unnecessarily) of
the fact, but as I had bought his mush-
rooms at a good price, he was not offended.

"Yes," said he, "I remember; I was
main drunk. I think I was never so drunk
in all my life before. It was with cham-
pagne."

" Champagne ?" I repeated incredulously.

" Yes, champagne ; and not bad stuff
neither, though it did make me uncom-
mon ill."

Jack went on to explain that there had
been a large pic-nic party upon the hill that
day, at which nearly two hundred people
were present, dispersed in groups under the
trees. As attendance upon pic-nics is part of
his regular business, he was, as he said, " to
the fore" on this occasion, to take his chance
either of being ruthlessly driven away, as
he sometimes is for his utter incongruity
with surrounding circumstances, or of being
employed, as he mostly is, in some way or
other, or of obtaining a share of the broken
victuals and remnants of the feast. Jack
had been plashing about all the morning in
the little river that winds and murmurs
under the hill- side, and had the large
basket, which is usually slung at his back,
filled with fresh forget-me-nots, which he
had gathered on the banks of the stream.
Young ladies romantic little dears ! love
the forget-me-not more for its name than
for its beauty, and Jack's venture among
the merry-makers with such an abundant
supply of a flower so suggestive to love-
makers proved to be a success. One young
gentleman gave him a shilling for a bunch,
which he forthwith presented to a young
lady, and such a desire for forget-me-nots

took possession of all the other ladies, young
and old, that the gentlemen in attendance,
as in gallantry and duty bound, made all
haste to gratify their wishes. The conse-
quence was that Jack's forget-me-nots were
speedily sold at highly remunerative prices,
and he found himself in possession of nearly
twelve shillings. " It was the best day's
work I ever did in my life," said Jack;
" nor was this all. Pic-nic people, though
they generally bring plenty of wine, ale, or
ginger-beer with them, always manage to
forget to bring water ; and this party had
not a drop. One of the ladies asked me if
I could get some, and a gentleman sitting
next to her on the grass offered to give me
a bottle of champagne in exchange for six
bottles of cold pump water. They had the
water, and I had the wine. I had heard of
champagne, but I had never tasted a drop
in my life. They all laughed to see me
drinking it. Let them laugh as wins,
thought I, as I sat under a tree by myself,
and drank out of the bottle."

" You liked it, of course ?"

" Liked it ! It was glorious, and did me
a power of good; leastways, I think it
would have done if I had stuck to the one
bottle. But I amused the gentlemen, I
suppose, and made fun for them, so they
gave me more, and more again upon the
top of that, till my head began to spin and
swim, and I felt that I was going to be
very unwell. How I got away I don't re-
member, but I was main ill, and after a
while I fell asleep where you saw me.
When I woke it was pitch dark, and I
heard the church clock at Darkham strike
three in the morning."

"Darkham," said I; " where's that?
You mean Dorking."

" jSTo," replied Jack, very dictatorially, j
and as if sure of his point. " Some people
say Dorking, others say Darking, I say
Darkham."

Jack had begun to interest me, for if I
have a favourite hobby it is philology, and
I had long had a suspicion that the modern
name of this pretty little town was not the
correct one.

" Did you ever hear any one else call it
Darkham ?"

"Yes, my father and my mother, and
scores of people. There is Mickleham, and
Effingham, and Brockham, and Bookham,
and Dark-ham, all in a string, as I might
say."

"Have you any idea what Darkham
means ? Bookham means the home among
the beech-trees, Brockham the home by

38 [December 12, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

the brook, Mickleham the great home, and
Effingham is probably Upping home; but
what is Darkham ?"

" The dark home," said Jack, as if the
question were settled.

" No, that's not it, though I think you
may be right about the name. Darag or
Darach is the old Celtic for oak, and Dark-
ham is the home among the oak-trees."

" You've got it now," said Jack. " That's
it for sartain."

I have had many talks with Jack, and
have taken considerable interest in his
humble fortunes. As soon as the leaves fall
from the trees and the nights begin to grow
cold and frosty, Jack retires from the busy
world into his winter palace. That palace is
the workhouse, or rather the workhouse in-
firmary ; for Jack cannot work if he would,
and his rheumatism or poor man's gout
he does not exactly know to which of the
two names his inveterate malady is properly
entitled requires the treatment that none
but the parish doctor and the parish funds
will supply. But as soon as the cuckoo is
heard in the woods, Jack, after a hyberna-
tion which he has shared with the flies, the
bees, the dormice, and other of God's
creatures, which are mercifully permitted
to sleep all through the season when no
food is to be found for them, emerges once
again into the light of day to ply his voca-
tion. He looks so very miserable, and so
picturesque, that many kind-hearted people
stop him on the road, and give him either
of their own poverty or of their riches the
wherewithal to make himself a little more
comfortable. But he never asks for charity.
For this reason he denies being a beggar
a figment, a white He, a suppressio veri,
whatever it may be called, which does no
harm to anybody, while it administers very
sensibly to the little pride that the world
and old age and hard struggles have left in
him. It is his wish to earn an honest sub-
sistence, and he does his best in that direc-
tion, and with a very patient, humble, and
uncomplaining spirit. The first objects of
his solicitude as soon as he is emancipated
from his winter thraldom are the primrose
roots and flowers, with which he drives his
small bargains in the towns and villages
with people who want to ornament their
little front gardens or their cottage windows,
and which he sells for what he can get for a
penny or a halfpenny a root, or for a piece
of bread, or, better still, for a pair of old
boots or shoes, or any cast-off garment that
may be too ragged for the poorest of the
poor, but which is not utterly valueless to

such as he. He also collects herbs, or, as
he calls them, " yarbs," either for the garden
or for the use of the poor people and the
notable housewives among them, who have
faith in simples for his treatment and cure
of burns and scalds or other simple maladies.
Though, unlike Milton's herbalist, he cannot
Ope his leathern scrip,
And show us simples of a thousand names,

he can display some dozens of varieties in
his basket, and can tell what they were sup-
posed to be good for. One day he got an
order from a village apothecary for cart-
loads of groundsel, if he could collect as
much, and was busy on the job for a whole
fortnight. It was wanted for a military
hospital for the purpose of making poultices.
But he never received so extensive an order
again. Ferns and orchids were other sources
of income, and last, but by no means the
least, were watercresses and mushrooms.
Jack has no faith in the new-fangled ideas
about mushrooms, and does not believe that
there is more than one kind in England that
is edible. ' ' Mushrooms, ' ' said he, with a con-
servatism strongly opposed to the radicalism
of the present day, that will not allow us
our ancient faith even in fungi, " have been
growing in the English meadows for a
thousand years, and if there were more
than one sort good for eating, do you think
our grandfathers and their grandfathers
would not have found it out ? No, no !"
he added, with strong emphasis, " there is
only one mushroom : all the others are
toadstools : and I won't believe otherwise if
all the doctors in England says the con-
trary."

There is a suspicion afloat, that in his
early manhood, and when he first took to
the road, Jack got into trouble, and was
had before a justice of the peace for poach-
ing. But the suspicion is too vague and
shadowy to merit much notice. I have
tried more than once to get him on the
subject of the Game Laws, as affecting
people in his circumstances and the rural
population generally; but he has always
evaded it, and expressed no opinion, or even
made a remark, except " that he did not un-
derstand about that." Jack can read, and
has a small, dog's-eared, and very shabby-
looking and well-thumbed Bible, which he
carries in his basket, and reads every Sunday
in the fields, out of the public path some-
where, when the weather is fine, and he
has enough bread-and-cheese or scraps of
victuals in his pocket to serve for his di nn er.
He never goes to church in the summer
when he is a free man, having been, he

Charles Dickens.]

AS THE CROW FLIES.

[December 12, 1868.]

says, turned from the door of a church
some years ago by the beadle, who told
him he was much too dirty to come in.
" Perhaps what he said was true," observed
Jack, when he told me the circumstance;
" bnt I thought all the same, that I might
hare been allowed to go into a corner.
Howsomever, I went away, and sat upon a
tombstone to rest myself out of the beadle's
sight, and hear the organ play, and thought
that, maybe, when I was put under the
mould, I might be as clean as Mr. Beadle
or Mr. Parson, or any of the grand folks in
the pews ! And I think so still, though, as I
said, it was a good many years ago, and I
was not so near the mould as I am now."
But though Jack avoids church in summer,
he regularly attends the service in the Union
during the winter months, and seems, from
the manner in which he speaks of the
sermons he hears, to be quite as good a
Christian as his betters, who "fare sump-
tuously every day."

The last time I saw Jack he was on his
way to the union workhouse for the winter,
when he showed me the ticket of admission
duly signed by the relieving officer.

" I am afraid," he said, " I shall not
come out again ; though I shall be glad to
see the primroses and hear the cuckoo once
more. I don't think I have been a very bad
man, though once, and only once in my life,
I had a pheasant for dinner."

I thought Jack was going to talk about
that poaching business at last ; but he hesi-
tated, and pulled up suddenly.

" No ! I have not been a very bad man ;
and if I have not worked as hard as other
people, it is because I have not been able to
work."

"Well, Jack!" I said, "your life has
been a hard one, I have no doubt. But I
never knew much harm of you ; and I sup-
pose that, like the rest of us, you have had
your joys as well as your sorrows."

" There was a young woman," he said
but he did not wipe his eye with his cuff,
nor whimper " who was very fond of me,
and she died when I was twenty and she
was eighteen. Since that time the best
things I have known in the world have
been the sunshine and the warm weather.
It is very hard to be poor, and lonely, and
cold. Cold, as far as I know, is the worst
of all worse than hunger; at least I've
found it so. And if it were not for the
cold, I don't think I'd go to the Union
at all, but would try and jog along in the
winter as I do in the summer."

Poor Jack, it will be seen, though he has

a certain amount of pride, has not a very
high spirit how could he have, with such
a hopeless battle to fight ? and by no
means despises the workhouse, or thinks it
derogatory to his manly dignity as some of
the hard-working poor do, to depend upon
it for assistance. Without its kindly hand,
however, he would doubtless die in the cold
December of "serum on the brain," as
the parish doctors have lately taken to call
starvation. So small blame be to hi for
going into it when he must, and for coming
out of it when he can. In spite of his last
fit of despondency, I hope to see the old
fellow out again in the spring, along with
his favourite primroses, listening to the
cuckoo, gathering simples, and drawing
such comfort out of the sunshine as Dio-
genes may have done, but without the
misanthropy, that perhaps was not real,
even with Diogenes.

AS THE CROW FLIES.

DUE WEST. HOUNSLOW HEATH.

[We purpose, in a rapid series of papers, to fly with
the crow in various directions from London, and take a
bird's-eye view of the roads as they have been.]

Swift in a phantom mail coach, the ghosts of
four " spankers" whirl us along the great west
road. The phantom guard blows a faint blast
on his phantom horn as we dash down the long
dingy street of Brentford, and sweep on with
whizzing wheels between the broad nursery
gardens. Here and there, a ladder reared
against the fruit tree boughs, shows where the
last russets and leather jackets have just been
picked for all-devouring London. Faster,
through Brentford, where the ghosts of Ho-
garth's time seem for ever grouped around the
doorway of that quaint inn, The London Ap-
prentice. On past the river almshouses and
the little garden by which the dark barge sails
flit; on between the rows of shops and the
gables of the small town at the Duke's Gate, and
we are at Hounslow and on legendary ground.

Were we magicians we should at once call
together the dispersed atoms of the highwaymen
who rattled in chains above the Hounslow furze
bushes. From the roots of the fir trees, and the
earth beneath the brambles, from the flints of the
road side and the water of the rivulets, we would
collect the fragments of the wicked bodies, until
once more the " Captain " who swore " by the
bones of Jerry Abershaw" should appear in
his black mask, gold-laced cocked hat, and
scarlet roquelaure, with his silver " pops " in
his deep pockets, bestriding his chesnut mare,
the bold and reckless rascal of the pleasant
days when thirteen gibbets stood at one time
near Bason Bridge on the road to Heston.
Yes ! Thirteen shapeless bundles, dangled at one
time in view of the wayfarer across the terrible
heath, in the beginning of this century. It
was an old joke against Lord Islay, who once

40 [December 12, 1858.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

lived at Hounslow, that, on his ordering his
gardener to cut an avenue to open a view, the
perspective disclosed a gibbet with a thief on it,
and that several members of the Campbell
family having died with their shoes on, the
prospect revived such ominous and unpleasant
reminiscences that Lord Islay instantly ordered
the prospect to be closed again with a clump
of thick Scotch firs.

If any highwayman who galloped to the gal-
lows a century ago, could see Hounslow Heath
now, he would wonder where the four thou-
sand acres that covered fourteen parishes had
shrunk to. He would find only a few dozen
acres of grass field enclosed for the cavalry re-
views on one side of the road, and a few dozen
acres of rough furze and bramble on the other
for cavalry drill. Local historians say that the
heath was once an oak forest that spread its
green boughs from Staines to Brentford, and
there is an old tradition that the last wolf
killed, centuries ago now, was hunted down at
Perry Oaks, near Feltham Hill.

In Charles the First's time Hounslow con-
tained one hundred and twenty houses, chiefly
inns and ale-houses relying on travellers. It was
always indeed dependent on the coaches of the
great west road. Every third house is still an
inn or a beer shop. Ruined stables, faded signs
of the Marquis of Granby and other bygone
celebrities, still testify to the old prosperity of
the place, when the Comet used to come flashing
in, five minutes under the hour, from Piccadilly.

Let us sketch the Comet of the old days.
Tom Brown, the coachman, allows only fifty
seconds for changing horses smart's the word
with him. Tom in the neat white hat, the
clean doeskin gloves, the well cut trousers and
dapper frock we quote a contemporaneous
portrait is the pink of Jarvies. The coach is
a strong, well-built, canary- coloured drag : a
bull's head on the doors : a Saracen's head on
the hind boot. It carries fourteen passengers
and goes ten miles an hour, guaranteed pace.
There is a big bell-mouthed blunderbuss, ready
for the Turpin boys ; there are two pistols in
the cases; there is a lamp on each side the
coach, and another gleams out under the foot-
board. In fifty seconds three greys and a pie-
bald have replaced the three chesnuts and a
bay.

The ostler fastens the last buckle ; the
coachman's foot is already on the roller bolt.

" How is Paddy's leg ?" he asks, as he settles
down to his seat and shakes out the reins.

"Nearly right, sir," replies the horse-keeper,
twitching off the last cloth.

"Let 'em go, then," says the great artist,
" and take care of yourselves."

The spankers strike out and away they go,
over what coachmen used to call " the hospital
ground," from Hounslow to Staines. The coach-
man generally sprang his cattle over this bit of
level, where there was no pebble bigger than a
nutmeg. They kept for it all the ' ' box-kickers"
and stiff-mouthed old platers, whose backs
would not hold an ounce down hill or draw an
ounce up queer tempered creatures, that were

over the pole one day and over the bars the
next. So they used to flash past the Scotch
firs where Mr. Steele was murdered, and the
pond where Mr. Mellish was killed, and by the
turn where Courthorpe Knatchbull beat off the
four scoundrels, and the place where Turpin,
according to Mr. Samuel Weller, let fly at the
bishop's too hasty coachman :

And just put a couple of balls in his nob,
And perwailed on him to stop.

The crow takes note, upon the wing, of a
pretty tradition of Hounslow which addresses
itself to the human heart. During those cruel
wars that brought the king's army and the
parliamentarians alternately to encamp on
Hounslow Heath, one Mr. George Trevelyan,
a cavalier gentleman of Nettlecomb, in Somer-
setshire, and suspected of plotting against
Cromwell, was seized by puritan soldiers, and
sent close prisoner to the Tower. His captors,
took care, moreover, to burn and destroy all of
his property that they could, and, above all,
drove off with them from the stables and fields
of Nettlecomb and its neighbourhood, every
horse that would mount a dragoon, or drag a
cannon, or a baggage waggon. They left the
old house beggared, ransacked, and defaced^
and rode off singing their sullen psalms.
Heaven and earth was moved for Trevelyan's
release by his devoted wife ; but Cromwell,
bent on breaking such stubborn spirits, would
not listen to any less ransom than two thousand
pounds. But where to get it? The faithful
steward racked his brains, and the poor wife
wrought and prayed ceaselessly in her great
need. Farms were sold, old oaks were felled, dear
heirlooms were beaten down for the goldsmith
and the Jews ; above all, as the old record espe-
cially notes, " the great Barley Mow" was taken
to market. The tAvo thousand gold pieces were
at last spread by the delighted steward before the
eyes of the tearful wife. The difficulty now, was,
how to get the bags of gold safe up to London,
and escape the hungry highwaymen of Bag-
shot and Hounslow, the rapacious constables of
hostile towns, and the stray snatchers in inn
yards ? At last Heaven sent a thought to her
heart. She had heard of rough roads where
ladies had harnessed strong draught oxen to the
cumbrous family coaches, to drag them through
the sloughs and deep-rutted lanes to some great
dance or solemn assembly. The horses were
all gone for miles round. The thought was at
once turned to action. The great " gold" coach
was provisioned for the long journey, the faith-
ful steward, true as steel, accompanied the
loving wife ; and they took twenty-eight days
doing the hundred and sixty miles. The dark
prison doors flew open. The loving wife
flew into the arms of her free husband.
But she sickened of small-pox at Hounslow
the first halting place for the swift home-
ward horses as it had been the last for the
slow oxen and she died breathing the name
which had been the watchword of her great
devotion. She was buried at Hounslow, on
the site of the home of the old Brotherhood

=&>

Charles Dickens.]

AS THE CROW FLIES.

[December 12, 1868.] 41

of the Trinity, who had devoted their lives to
the redeeming of captives ; and in the church a
simple tablet still exists to her memory, record-
ing only the fact of her burial and the names of
her children.

From the earliest records, Hounslow Heath
was a notorious ride for highwaymen. Whether
it was on this heath that Claude Duval, really
made the knight's lady dance a coranto, and
then charged the husband a hundred pounds
for it, may be uncertain ; but it is certain that
Captain Hind, who tried to stop Cromwell,
and who did rob Bradshaw and Harrison, in-
fested this wild common. The gallant captain
was eventually hung at Worcester, and his
head was set up, as a scarecrow to gentlemen of
his kidney, over the bridge gate. Hind fought
for the king at Worcester, and when the hue
and cry was hot after him, artfully and daringly
came to London, called himself Brown, changed
his wig, dyed his face, and took lodgings at a
barber's opposite St. Lunstan's Church ; but
the worthless barber betrayed the gallant rogue,
who swung for it.

There was seldom great daring in the rob-
beries of the highwaymen. They were but poor
humbugs. They had houses of intelligence ; they
had ostlers, drivers of waggons and packhorses,
innkeepers, barmaids, turnpike men, and car-
riers, in their pay. They did not attack
armed travellers if they could help it, and
when they did so they generally did it by
surprise or by force of numbers. They ob-
tained heavy purses and rich boxes of plate,
but they had to cast money away by handfuls
to their spies and to the constables who tole-
rated them or aided their escapes. Wild drink-
ing and gambling were the desperate reactions
from their dangers and their days of starvation
and short commons. Then came the gallops,
the short cuts, the flying of gates and brooks,
the fording of rivers, to get by moonlight to
Hounslow : with every bridle path, and field,
and hedge of which district every highwayman
was familiar. Then they dashed up to some
coach and exchanged shots, or they rammed
their pistols through the glass windows, and
frightened the ladies into fits, and the men into
submission. The watch was drawn from the
boot, the jewels from under the cushions ; they
tossed the spoil into their deep pannier pockets,
cursed, threatened, and dashed off. Then even-
tually they were leaped on in some brandy shop
parlour, or were torn down in a savage hue and
cry, or were felled by some despairing man, or
were betrayed by some jealous mistress. Next
came the hard jury and the steel-faced judge,
the dim stone room, the staring faces of quid-
nuncs and heartless men of fashion, the last
revel with the turnkey and perhaps the chaplain
(for those were odd times), then the unri vet-
ting of the fetters, the presentation of the nose-
gay, the bellman's mechanical verses, and the
grim ride backward up Holborn-hill to Tyburn.

In the reign of William and Mary, Hounslow
trembled at the name of Whitney, who, like
his successor, Turpin, began life as a butcher.
He then kept an inn in Hertfordshire. The

best story told of him is that he plundered a
gentleman named Long of a hundred pounds in
silver. The traveller represented that he had
far to go, and did not know where to get money
on the road. Whitney at once opened the bag
and handed it to him. Long could not resist
the opportunity, and drew out a brimming hand-
ful. Whitney did not remonstrate, but only
said with a smile, as he rode off : "I thought
you would have had more conscience, sir."
Whitney was at last trapped in a house in Mil-
ford-lane, and died in his shoes at a place
called Porter's Block, near Smithfield. He was
only thirty-four ; highwaymen seldom attained
old age.

Some heroes get their fame very undeservedly.
This is especially the case with Mr. Richard
Turpin, who was but a mean and cruel sort of
thief, let alone a murderer. He was an Essex
butcher, who turned housebreaker, and he and
his gang had a cave in Epping Forest, where
they and their horses lay in ambuscade. The
street ballad writer of 1739 wrote :

On Hounslow Heath, as I rode o'er,
I spied a lawyer riding before.
" Kind, sir," said I, " arn't you afraid
Of Turpin, that mischievous blade ? "

O rare Turpin, hero ! O rare Turpin, !
Says Turpin, " He'll ne'er find me out ;
I've hid my money in my boot."
" Oh," says the lawyer, " there's none can find
My gold, for it's stitched in my cape behind."

O, rare Turpin, &c.
As they rode down by the Powder Mill,
Turpin commands them to stand still.
Said he, " Your cape I must cut off,
For my mare she wants a saddle cloth."
This caused the lawyer much to fret,
To think he was so fairly bet ;
And Turpin robbed him of his store,
Because he knew he'd lie for more.

It is a curious trait of the times that Turpin
was allowed to hold half an hour's conversation
with the hangman before he took his leap from
the ladder.

John Hawkins, one of the wretches that
fed the Hounslow crows in 1722, was the
greatest robber of mail coaches on record. He
stole the bags of five mail coaches in one morn-
ing, of two the next day, and of one the next.
His gang of thieves were even so audacious
as to stop coaches in Chancery-lane and Lin-
coln's Inn-fields. They used to go and dine at
the Three Pigeons at Brentford ; then ride on
about six in the evening to the Post House at
Hounslow, or to Colnbrook, where they would
inquire at what hour the mails were due.

It was by no means uncommon for ruined
gamblers and bankrupt tradesmen to take a
moonlit ride to the heath to retrieve their
shattered fortunes, and in 1750, it is on record
that William Parson, the wild son of a baronet,
and who had been brought up at Eton, and
had been in both the navy and army, com-
mitted a robbery on the fatal heath, after his
return from transportation, and was hung there
in chains to scare the night riders.

But travellers had their artifices as well as
highwaymen. Men of audacity, when stopped,

42 [December 12, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

had sometimes the effrontery to pretend to be
fellow thieves, and were allowed to pass toll
free. On one occasion a bold officer in the army,
forewarned that the coach would be stopped,
hid himself in the basket, and on two highway-
men riding up, shot one through the head, and
drove off the other. In later times, Townshend,
the celebrated Bow-street runner, used often to
ride as an armed escort before coaches conveying
government money. Townshend was a little
fat man, who wore a flaxen wig, kerseymere
breeches, a blue straight cut coat, and a broad-
brimmed white hat. He was daring, dexterous,
and cunning ; and his merits, manners, and odd
sayings were much relished by the royal
family. On one occasion, Townshend having to
escort a carriage to Reading, took with him his
friend Joe Manton, the celebrated gunmaker,
who was fond of adventure, and as brave as a
lion. Soon after reaching Hounslow, three foot-
pads stopped the coach, and Joe was just going
to draw trigger, when Townshend cried out,
" Stop, Joe ; don't fire ! Let me talk to the
gentlemen." A glimpse of the moon revealed
Townshend's dreaded figure to the thieves, who
instantly took to their heels ; but he had already
recognised them. In a few days his rough and
ready hand was on their collars, and they were
soon tried and packed off to Botany Bay.

There is a legend at Hounslow that a certain
Bishop of Raphoe was shot on the heath, being
mistaken for a highwayman. John Rann (alias
Sixteen-string Jack) acquired a name, about
1774, at which Hounslow postilions trembled.
This fellow had been coachman to Lord Sand-
wich, who then lived at the south-east corner
of Bedford-row, and he acquired his singular
name by wearing breeches with eight strings at
either knee, to record the number of his ac-
quittals. He was a handsome impudent fellow,
much admired by his companions ; and he is de-
scribed as swaggering at Bagnigge -wells in a
scarlet coat, deep-flapped tambour waistcoat,
white silk stockings, and laced hat. He drank
freely there, lost, with extreme nonchalance, a
hundred - guinea diamond ring, and openly
boasted that he was a highwayman, and could
replace the lost jewel by one evening's work.
He once showed himself at Barnet races in a blue
satin waistcoat trimmed with silver, and was
followed by an admiring crowd. He even had
the matchless impudence to attend a Tyburn
execution, and push his way through a ring of
constables, saying that he was just the sort of
man who ought to have a good place, as he him-
self might figure there some day. Just before
he was taken for robbing Mr. Devall near the
ninth milestone on the Hounslow road, he had
stopped Dr. Bell, the chaplain to the Princess
Amelia, and taken from him eighteenpence and
an old watch. This fellow used to boast that
Sir John Fielding's people always used him
very genteelly ; consequently if they held up a
finger he would follow them as quiet as a lamb.
When brought before Sir John, Rann wore
a bundle of flowers as big as a broom in
the breast of his coat, and had his irons
tied up tastefully with bhie ribbons. At

his trial he appeared in a pea-green suit,
a ruffled shirt, and a hat bound round with
silver strings. He gave a supper a few
nights before his execution. An intelligent
observer, who saw the cart pass the end of
John-street with Rann in it, bound for Tyburn,
describes him in his pea-green coat, carrying,
as he sat by his coffin, with the chaplain reading
prayers to him, an enormous nosegay, presented,
according to custom, from the steps of St. Se-
pulchre's Church. Nothing in life, however, so
well became Sixteen-string Jack as the leaving
it ; for he died penitently, not like desperate
Abershaw, who, on mounting the gibbet so long
eager for him, kicked his shoes off among the
crowd, and leaped savagely into another world.

It is interesting to remember that the first
suggestion of Gay's Beggars' Opera was a remark
of Swift's, as he sat with his friends, one day in
Pope's villa at Twickenham. Hounslow Heath
then spread within a quarter of a mile of
Twickenham, and Pope must often have seen
flying highwaymen chase past the door. Field-
ing, writing in 1775, does not say much for the
moral tone of the Hounslow population at that
time. He describes a captain of the Guards,
who, being robbed on Hounslow Heath, as
soon as the highwayman left, unharnessed a
horse, mounted it, and pursued the fellow, at
noon day, through Hounslow town, shouting,
"Highwayman! Highwayman V\ but no one
joined in the pursuit.

There was always blood, bad or good, being
spilled on Hounslow Heath ; in 1802 a ter-
rible crime, for a long time hidden in mys-
tery, threw a darker gloom over the gibbet
ground. Mr. Steele, a lavender merchant, in
Catherine-street, Strand, who had a house and
nursery-garden at Feltham, left town for Felt-
ham on the afternoon of the fifth of November.
About seven o'clock on the evening of the
sixth, he left Feltham, on his way back to
town, wearing a round hat, almost new, half
boots, and a great coat. He was never seen
again alive. About a quarter past eight, the
driver of the Gosport coach, about ten minutes
after having changed horses at Hounslow, and
when between some trees near the powder
mills and the eleventh milestone, heard a man
moaning, and several groans. On the tenth
the body of the murdered man was found in a
ditch some little distance off the road, towards
the barracks. The back part of the skull was
beaten in, and there was a strap round the
neck. A bludgeon lay near the body, and a
pair of shoes, and an old soldier's hat, with
worsted binding. No clue was obtained to the
crime until the end of 1806, when a deserter
named Hatfield, just sentenced to the hulks for
theft, confessed it. Holloway and Haggarty,
labourers, had arranged the murder while they
were drinking together at a public-house in
Dyot-street. Haggarty, then a marine in the
Shannon frigate, was apprehendedatDeal. When
asked where he had been, that time four years,
he turned pale and almost fainted. Hatfield
proved that Holloway killed Mr. Steele because
he struggled much, just as a coach was ap-

Charles Dicken8.;

FATAL ZERO.

[December 12, 1868.] 43

proaching. Holloway carried off Mr. Steele's
hat and wore it about London, till, at the in-
stigation of Hatfield, he one day filled it with
stones and threw it over Westminster Bridge.
The booty was only twenty-seven shillings.

The two wretches were hung at Newgate on
February 23, 1807. Holloway kept swearing
he was innocent, and shouting, "No verdict,
no verdict, gentlemen. Innocent, innocent."
The long delay in the arrest of the men, and
some lingering belief in their innocence, had
attracted forty thousand people to the narrow
street of the Old Bailey. When the malefac-
tors appeared on the scaffold, the mob seethed
like a black and angry sea. A struggle for life
began, and several women and boys were in-
stantly crushed to death. A savage fight for
life ensued. At the end of Green Arbour-
court, nearly opposite the debtors' door, a
pieman unfortunately dropped his basket, and
many persons falling over this, were in-
stantly trampled to death. A cart overloaded
with spectators breaking down just then added
to the horror and despair of the scene. The
episodes were agonising. A father saw his son,
a fine boy of twelve, trodden to death, but es-
caped himself with some cruel bruises. A woman
with a child at the breast, in dying threw her
child to a bystander, who tossed it to another
who threw it to another, until it reached some
people in a cart, who saved it. Upwards of a
cart-load of shoes, hats, and petticoats were
picked up. Twenty-seven bodies were taken
to St. Bartholomew's Hospital alone.

Two more legends of the heath must not be
forgotten. In James the First's time (December
5, 1606), two young hot-blooded lawyers fought
a duel alone in a wild part of the heath. They
were found, side by side, each having spitted
the other with his rapier. In this extremity
they had become reconciled, though too weak
from loss of blood to help each other. Three
years before this, Sir John Townsend (who had
been knighted at the siege of Cadiz by the
chivalrous Earl of Essex) fought a duel here
on horseback with Sir Matthew Brown, Baron
of Beech worth, with sword and pistol. Both
combatants were dangerously wounded in this
desperate and fierce rencontre, Sir Matthew
dying on the spot, and Sir John Townsend
soon after. So the crow flies, and so the
world went once.

FATAL ZERO.

A DIARY KEPT AT HOMBURG : A SHORT SERIAL STORY.
CHAPTER III.

The Briton I know him by his talk-
ing loud about my "breakfast." How
often do I hear the florid, white- whiskered
Briton, suffering from the heat acutely,
tell his friend and tell me for he does not
care who hears him, and prefers an audi-
ence that "he'd speak to Grungl, at the
Hesse, about giving some more of that
wild deer," or "that he was going to get

his cutlets, and very odd the Times was so
late;" or else what seems the standard
grumble, about "kreutzers and their in-
fernal money. Look, I say, what can you
make of such things as these ?" And he
does seem to think that wherever the
Englishman goes, his money, meats, steaks,
joints, beds, clubs, Times, &c, should go
with him, and be the money, meat, steaks
of the country. (My dearest Dora, will
you know me after this, or do you suppose
it is your poor invalid that is writing ?
Such a change in me already to be af-
fecting to be funny !) But I go on. Then
I see the great doctor of the place, Seidler,
whose book, Homburg and its Springs, is
in every bookseller's. He is walking about
here, talking to the English, who hang on
his words, and his carriage and horses
wait at the end of the walk a good adver-
tisement, for every stranger asks whose it
is. The Briton with the white whiskers, I
remark, is great on Seidler. At dinner he
tells every one what " Seidler said to me
this morning. Seidler made me cut off
a tumbler of the kayserbrowning, and told
me if I had taken it another day he would
not have answered for it. Egad ! I was
working away, and if he hadn't stopped
me," &c. Seidler, I can see, is looked on
as a magician who can do as he likes with
the springs, and mysteriously check their
whole efficiency if you offend him. Any
one who takes them without consulting
him goes to destruction at once; or else
they do the patient no good at all. We
might as well be quaffing common spring
water. A third of a tumbler, he will
say, every half-hour in the morning, or
a tumbler at seven, and half a tumbler
at a quarter to ten. The idea seems to
be, that, delayed till ten, the prescription
would have no efficacy; and I see the
fresh white- whiskered man, watch in hand,
counting the moments. I go myself to
Seidler, and believe him to be clever ; and
he certainly hit off my case at once. But
these little tricks the English themselves
force on him, as their maladies are so
tricky and fanciful. He says, three weeks of
the water, and, of course, of Seidler three
tumblers of the former, and one interview
with the latter per diem "will make a
new man of me." And I believe him.
My dear, shall I confess it, I can bear this
separation, and am not craving to be back.
It will be better in the end I should be
here. But after ten days I know I shall
get restless and eager to see your pretty
face. Now, dear, I stop this log, for I

44 [December 12, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

have to go to the baths. To-morrow I go
into Frankfort on the business, having heard
from the merchant, who has fixed an hour to
see me. He talks of some difficulty, but I
shall work hard, and do everything to show
our gratitude to our dear benefactor. And
if I can conclude the matter on more fa-
vourable terms, and save him some money,
I shall lessen my obligation a little. I
find a gentleman whom I met in the walks,
and who seems to have a sort of interest in
me, is going back to London to-night. I
shall send him what I have written so far,
and he will post it in London to Dora.

Saturday. The first portion of the log
has gone off. She will have it by Mon-
day, and I know it will amuse them. She
will read it out.

At twelve to-day, I pass by the grand red
granite building, of a rich handsome stone,
and which is Homburg. It is in the centre of
the town in the street, but has a garden in
front ; with a row of orange trees, con-
sidered the noblest in the world. There is
really something grand in the air of these
magnificent strangers, each in his vast green
box, and standing, I suppose, thirty feet
high. The greatest and most tender care
is taken of them : men are watering, wash-
ing, cleaning, coiffeing these aristocrats,
morning, noon, and night. They are al-
lowed to appear abroad during the hot
months only, and when the cooler period
sets in, they are tenderly moved to a vast
palace far off in the woods, built expressly
for them, where they five together all the
winter, with fires, and blanketing, and
matting, and everything luxurious. The
story runs that they were lost, one by one,
by a certain landgrave, or elector, or grand
duke, who staked them against a hundred
pounds a piece ; and now that brings me to
what I have been indirectly fencing off,
and which fills me with a certain dread, as I
think of it. I never felt such a sensation, as
when, after passing through the noble pas-
sage floored with marble, three or four hun-
dred feet long, where a whole town might
promenade, I found myself in a vast cool
shaded hall that seemed like the ban-
queting-room of a palace. It was of noble
proportions, a carved ceiling, and literally
one mass of gorgeous fresco painting and
gold. Noble chandeliers of the most elegant
design hang down the middle, the arches
in the ceiling are animated with figures of
nymphs and cupids, with gardens and
terraces, and the portico furnishing is rich
and solid, and in the most exquisite taste.
From these open other rooms, seen through

arches and beyond the folds of lace cur-
tains, and each decorated in a different
taste one, snowy white and gold, another,
pale pink and gold. The floors are parquet
in the prettiest patterns. Servants in rich
green and gold liveries glide about, and the
most luxurious soft couches in crimson
velvets line the walls. What art has done
is indeed perfect and most innocent ; but
where nature and humanity gathers round,
standing in two long groups down the room,
it almost appals. For I hear the music,
the faint, prolonged "a-a-a-rr." Then the
clatter and sudden rattle and chinking of
silver on silver, of gold on gold, and the
low short sentences of those who preside
over the rite, and silence again. As I join
the group and look over shoulders, then I
see that strange human amphitheatre, that
oval of eager and yet impassive faces, all
looking down on the bright green field
the cloth of gold, indeed. What a sight !
the four magicians, with their sceptres
raised. The piles of gold, the rouleaux, the
rich coils of dollars like glittering silver
snakes, and more dangerous than a snake
the fluttering notes nestling in little velvet-
lined recesses, and peeping out through
the gilt bars of their little cages. There is
something awful in this spectacle, and yet
there is a silent fascination something, I
suppose, that must be akin to the spectacle
at an execution.

The preparation, the prompt covering of
the green ground in those fatal divisions,
the notes here, the little glittering pile of
yellow pieces, the solid handsome dollars,
whose clinking seems music, the lighter
florins, the double Fredericks, and the fat
sausage-like rouleaux, which these wonder-
ful and dexterous rakes adjust so delicately !
Now the cards are being dealt slowly,
while the most perfect stillness reigns, and
every eye is bent on those hands. I hear
him at the end of the first row give a
sort of grunt, "ung!" then begin his
second, and end with a judgment or ver-
dict. There is a general rustle and turning
away of faces, stooping forward, a marking
of paper, and the four fatal rakes begin
sweeping in greedily gold and notes and
silver all in confusion, a perfect rabble
while, this fatal work over, two skilful
hands begin to spout money, as it were, to
the ends of the earth. On the fortunate
heaps left undisturbed come pouring down
whole Danae showers of silver and gold ;
and to the rouleaux come rolling over
softly companion rouleaux. Now do eager
fingers stretch out and clutch their prize.

<Q?r

Charles Dickena]

FATAL ZERO.

[December 12, 1868.] 45

Other faces, yellow and contorted, their
fingers to their lips, look on dismally.
Then it begins again ; figures are stooping
forward to lay on ; and so the wretched
formula goes on, repeated for I made the
calculation some seven hundred times that
day. But it never seems to flag, and every
time has the air of fresh, and fresher,
novelty. It begins to sicken me, and that
air of stern concentrated attention, of
sacrifice even, depresses me ; and when I
think that if a return could be got of the
agitation, palpitations, hopes, fears, despair,
exultation, going on during these seven
hundred operations, it would represent a
total of human agony inconceivable. Then
I see how it can be again multiplied
through the twelve months of this wicked
year. Then I think of the prospective
miseries to others at a distance, to wives
and to children lives wretched, lives un-
settled miserable deaths. I say, I think
of all this, and ask, is it too much to call
these men special ministers of Mephisto-
pheles a band under the decent respect-
able name of a Bank, organised to destroy
souls by a machinery, the like of which for
completeness exists not on this earth ? I
say, there is nothing on earth approaching
this company, whose men and emissaries
ought to wear cock's feathers and red and
black dresses, for their complete and suc-
cessful exertions for destruction and corrup-
tion. They distil their poison over that
green board, and it is carried away to all
countries to England, France, America,
Belgium, Germany, whence the victims re-
turn again and again, bringing fresh ones,
like true decoys. They hang men ; they
punish and imprison for far less crimes ;
but on the heads of these wretches is the
ruin of thousands of bodies and souls, the
spiritual death, and the actual corporeal
death of thousands more, who have hung
themselves to the fair trees planted in sweet
bowers by the "administration," or stifled
themselves with charcoal in front of this
fatal palace, and who have actually dabbled
with their brains over the vile green table on
which they have lost all. A banking com-
pany! all fair, give and take, and such
phrases ! Satan says the same in Ms deal-
ings.

And here is this functionary in the trim
suit a pink-faced, hard, cat-eyed sinner,
who steals about, and watches everybody,
and his own agents also more than any one
else. A capital officer they tell me, skilful
and wary at the accounts. To him the
shareholders will one day present a piece

of plate, or hard cash, which he would
prefer, in acknowledgment of his exertions
in their interest. Oh, that some fitting
punishment could be devised for those
who thus fatten on the blood of the inno-
cent ! I should not come here. I should
not breathe this tainted air look on this
painted vice, and their wretched shabby
baits, to win the approbation of the decent
and the moral, like myself. Here are your
English newspapers of every kind and de-
gree. Pray read all day long in these
charming rooms, and sit on those soft
couches, or out here in these charming gar-
dens while our music plays for you. Do
understand, nothing is expected from you
in return. You, charming English ladies,
so fair and pretty, you can work with those
innocent fingers ; and your nice high-
spirited brothers, they would like to get up
cricket, would they ? Here is a nice field ;
we shall have it mowed and got ready, and
to-morrow shall come from Frankfort the
finest bats, stumps, balls everything com-
plete. Do you give the order ; get them
from London, if you like. We shall pay.
There is shooting, too quite of the best.
We shall be proud to find the guns and
dogs, and even the powder. It will do us
an honour. Get up a little fete ; a dance
in the Salons des Princes. We shall light
it up for you, and find the servants. So
do these tricksters try to impose on us,
with their sham presents, for which our
Toms and Charleses good-natured elder
brothers must pay, and pay secretly, in
many a visit to these tables. They have
built us a superb theatre one of the hand-
somest of its size in Europe. How kind,
how considerate ! yet they charge us a
napoleon for a stall, if there is any one
worth hearing. Presents, indeed ! we
know the poor relative who comes with a
twopenny-halfpenny pot of jam, and ex-
pects to get a handsome testimonial in re-
turn. Everything about our " administra-
tion" is in keeping ; and I almost grieve that
I should have come to such a place. This
resolution, at least, I can make : never to
let the light of an honest man's face beam
on their evil doings.

I feel I am rather warm on this matter,
but it does seem to me that the whole has
been too gently dealt with hitherto, and
treated too indulgently. Even these con-
querors, who, we are told, have given them
notice that they are to be chassed, have
shown too much respect. They talk of
equities a lease. Do we hold to leases
with pirates ? Do we make treaties with

= tP

=2.

46 [December 12, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

Bin Sykes? Had I been the king, I
would have marched two regiments into
their glittering halls, seized their infamous
tools, broken the rakes across the soldiers'
knees, torn up their cards, smashed into
firewood the roulette board and its num-
bers, impounded their gold and silver and
sent it to the hospitals, and, locking the
doors and leaving sentries, have marched
off M. A. and M. B., the admirable men of
business, in a file of soldiers. I should
have these fellows tried, and put to hard
labour for the rest of their fives. As it is,
a culpable weakness has given them three
or four years more to pursue their vile
work, and gather, say, twenty thousand
precious souk into Satan's own bag net.

chapter rv.

Eleven o'clock at night. I cannot en-
dure this terrible spectacle any more, and
shall not go to that place again. "What I
have seen to-night is almost awful. I went
in to those rooms, now fit up, rich in colours,
and glittering like a king's palace. Such a
crowd, and such a contrast ! First, I had
gone on the terrace, and looked down on the
charming gardens, where the innocent were
at the little tables, each surrounded with
its group, sipping coffee ; the music playing
in the pavilion. Then I turn round and
look at the blazing windows, at the great
door behind me, which yawns like a cavern.
I hear the faint "click-click" and "rattle-
rattle," and that vast and quiet group,
crowded together. They are serious and
earnest ; but there are delighted and festive
groups, wandering about happy families,
charming young girls, good-natured papas
and mammas looking on with delight ; and
now one of the young girls comes tripping
back with " Charles," in such delight,
showing something shining in her hand.
The great soft couches round are fined
with festive-looking people. Every one is
" circulating," and there is an air of anima-
tion and motion over all. Some curiosity
makes me finger, and share it also a wish
to describe to my little darling at home
such a strange and singular phase of man-
ners and character. I draw near to that
other table the one I had not seen in the
morning, and which is consecrated to rou-
lette. It glitters all over with pieces, sown
thickly, sown broadcast, dotted here, there,
and everywhere, in perfect spasms of dis-
tribution. They contend with each other,
this yellow, fiery-eyed, and dirty man, and
the keen but pretty girl with the powder
an inch thick on her face, and her pink silk

gathered up about her. They grudge each
other room, do these combatants; they
glare savagely underneath ; the old lady in
black silk guides, with a trembling hand,
her single piece to some number firml y
seen, but whose place she guesses at. As
the ball flies round in its tiny circus, every
arm, with long stretched wrists, lunges out,
eager to be on ; piece jostles piece. " Give
us standing room," they say, no matter
whether they be lost or won. Then comes
the sudden leap and metallic click as the
ball stumbles into its bed ; then the water-
fall comes spouting down from the centre
the heavy streams of coin, directed and
fighting with pleasant jingling on its fel-
lows. No one seems daunted by defeat.
I see one man who has been frantically
piling his gold here, there, and everywhere,
and, by some strange and devilish perver-
sity, is not allowed to win no, not once
while little, mean, cautious fiddlers, with
their shillings and francs, fare admirably.
I see him. biting his lips as his nervous
fingers turn over the half-dozen little gold
pieces, in that agonising uncertainty which
I note so often, whether to play the bold
game now, risk all, or save this little wreck
for another season. And all to be decided
within a second. When it is gone, a
pause, and then that rueful walking away
off the stage, while others rush into his
place. Or another. His all seems gone;
when, after an undecided council, his hand
seeks his breast-pocket a note to be
changed something that he has no right
to meddle with ! Then the girls, young,
pretty, and not innocent of fear ; then the
ladies good sensible wives at home, but
transformed by coming to these places
gradually come in, greedy harpies, and
ready, if they lose, to turn cat-like on their
husbands. All this wreck, this shocking
wreck, caused by this factory of wicked-
ness ! I have had enough for one day and
for one night. I wish I had not seen it,
for it makes me wretched ; and yet it is
worth seeing as a spectacle of infamy.
What I have written, too, will interest my
pet at home; and, as I know she hoards
up every scrap of my writing, perhaps one
day others will find it, and read it, and it
may act as a warning. There ! I am going
to bed infinitely better. God be praised
for his mercy ! and for my pet's sake I will
say over her little prayer, which she will
be saying about the same time :

" Lord! Thou wlw dost guide tlw ship
over the waters, and bring safe to its jour-
ney's end the fiery train, look on me in this

Charles Dickens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[December 12, 1868.] 47

distant land. Save me from harm of soul
and body ; give me back health and strength,
that I may serve Thee more faithfully, and be
able to bring others dependent on me to serve
Thee also, and add to Thy glories ! Amen."

Sunday. How sweet and delicious are
the mornings here ; what soft airs blow
gently from these luxuriant trees and moun-
tains ! One really grows fonder of the
place every moment. The mornings are
the most charming ; ever so pastoral, and
yet it will seem but the pastoral of the
theatre or the opera sham trees and shep-
herdesses ; and I feel all the time that the
corrupting Upas garden spreads its fatal
vanities over all. These pretty wells, en-
chanting walks, innocent flowers, music,
lights, trees, ferns, what not they could
hardly be, without this support. The odious
and plundering vice keeps up and pays
for all, even for the innocent blessings of
nature; and I doubt whether one is not
accessory before the act to those results in
accepting any benefit from so contami-
nated a source, and lending one's coun-
tenance in return to their doings. But this
is too much refining, and my pet at home
will smile at such scruples. I must not
set up to be a saint, and I shall do more
practical work if, by word or example, I
can save some light and careless soul from
the temptation. Some way I seem to
myself to be grown a little too virtuous
since I came here ; but in presence of this
awful destroyer it is hard not to be serious.

Another of the baits to purchase the
good-will of the decent is the reading
room, flooded literally with journals of all
climes. Squire John Bull is paid special
attention to, by half a dozen of his fa-
vourite Times, Pall- Mall, Morning Herald
even though what put that journal in the
heads of the administration it would be
hard to tell and the veteran Galignani.
But a glass door between the Times and
squire, who is stingy at heart, and resents
postage, and at the same time having to
subscribe to his club at home, where he
can have all these papers for nothing
British flesh and blood could not stand
that; so he and his wife I knew him at
once by his gold glass and complacent an-
as he reads come every morning at eleven
o'clock, and sit and devour their cheap
news till one or two. The greediness and
selfishness displayed as to getting papers
by these people is inconceivable. I do
say there is more of the little mean vices
engendered in that room than one could
possibly conceive in so small a space. The

moment he enters there is the questing eye
looking round with suspicion and eager-
ness until he sees the mainsail of his Times
fluttering in another Briton's hand, an old
enemy i.e. one who is a slow reader, and
who reads every word. He himself is a
slow reader, and reads every word ; but
that is nothing to the point. A look of
dislike and anger spreads over his face ;
but there is the other copy, also "in
hand" in the hand of a dowager, with
glasses also " that beast of a woman," he
tells his wife. The person in whose hands
he likes to see his Times is a young
"thing," a "chit of a girl," who just
skims over a column or two, reads the
Court Circular portion, and the account of
the latest opera. Indeed, he thinks that
she has no business to be reading at all.
He prowls about, looking at the owners of
other papers, as who should say, "Ugh,
you !" Now some one lays down a paper,
and he rushes at it, anticipating another
cormorant by a second : it is only the old
journal, not yesterday's. Then, with eyes
of discontent, he goes up to the reader in
possession of the Times, and says, bitterly,
" I'll trouble you when you have done with
that ;" to which the answer is a grunt.
And then he draws a chair close opposite
to him, and if glaring can hurry, or rest-
less moving of the chair, or impatient eja-
culation, he could not fail. When he does
secure it, what a read he has, and how he
does take it out of the others ! If he could
he would have three or four one to sit on,
one lying near him. And yet he is not a
bad man, I am sure, at home ; but the
very atmosphere of this place, perverts
everything. Yet the French and Germans
in this room take the thing tranquilly.
They read their little newspaper quietly and
swiftly, with a little faint eagerness to get
possession of the Figaro, or some diverting
paper ; but no one glares at his neighbour.
My Dora at home will send me out a
paper, so I shall be independent of these
rascals and their pitiful bribes.

Two o'clock. The dogs in the street
drawing the little milk carts, harnessed so
prettily, and drawing so " willingly."
Honest Tray, with his broad jaws well
open, and he himself panting from the
heat, looks up every now and again to the
neat German girl who walks by him. When
she wants him to go on, she leads him
gently by his great yellow ear, as if it was
a bridle. When there are two together they
trot on merrily ; but the work is too much
for the poor paws of a single one. When

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[December 12, 1868.]

they are waiting, I notice she draws them
into the shade, and they He down there, in
their harness.

I must tell you, dearest, ahout the people
here, for this is a great place in which to
study human nature and character. All
the tribes of the earth seem to come here
and take a new sort of shape as they stay.
It is a paradise for women, and for pretty
women, and therefore if my pet were here,
but I must not turn that pretty head.
Neither should I like her to be exposed to
the bold, free-and-easy study of some of
the gentry who walk about here, and sur-
vey beauty leisurely. In England, did any
venture to " stare," as we would call it, in
such a fashion, we should be tempted to
fetch him a good stroke across his insolent
face. But here, in this scattering of all
the licentious free laws of Europe, it is
tolerated and invited even. Yes, women
are actually proud of this questionable sort
of attention, and they give a look in return,
though only a second's length, as if to
challenge fresh attention. And yet it must
be owned our own decent, decorous dames
and girls, they look a poor race here ; they
seem to want style, which is with beauty,
colour, everything save expression. There
is, indeed, a charming-looking girl, who
walks about here with a sister, and has an
air of enjoyment and delight truly refresh-
ing in the fade indifference which prevails.
She has the most mysterious likeness to
my Dora at home : I am glad she is here, as
she will be a little photograph of one who
is so dear to me. The same expression,
the same aristocratic look that she has.
Petite, with an exquisitely- shaped head,
the richest and glossiest dark hair, the
most refined outline of face ; I am struck
with her more and more. What contrasts
to her the Americans, dressed to ex-
travagance in theatrical "costumes," as
they call laces and flounces, and the
shortest of dresses, and the highest of
heels, some certainly two or three inches
high ! Their faces are surprisingly round
and full and brilliant, their figures good
and handsome, which is a surprise ; but
when they open their full lips out streams
the twang, nasal and horny. I shall see
more of them, however, at a ball to be
given presently. I know some little de-
tails of dress, &c, will amuse. What will
my pet say to a rich black silk Watteau

dress, all looped and curtained up, all over
embroidery, with a crimson Spanish petti-
coat seen below, and the black all lit up
here and there with the most delicate
little lines and edging of crimson ? It is
as delicate as a Cardinal's undress. What
will I say ? I hear my pet answer. It would
cost half a year's salary. Then what will
she say to a faint amber-coloured summer
dress, all looped and hanging in festoons,
with a pale blue and white petticoat ?
This is, indeed, dressing in water colour,
and both are American. There is another,
a sort of pale sprite of a fairy, so white and
delicate are her cheeks, so lustrous her
eyes, so artificial the effect. She is all eternal
smiles and giggling, and writhing and
twistings of the neck, a favourite part of
American pantomime. Her dress is be-
comingly short, and the oft- quoted Sir John
Suckling's fine is abolished, and ladies
feet do not, like little mice, "run in and
out;" but rather arrogantly display them-
selves peacock-like, as ostentatiously as
they can. We might find patterns here
for the plumage of all the birds of the air,
from the flamingo downward ; with a good
deal of damaged ware, which I would not for
the world my pet saw, but this is only more
of the work of the Mephistopheles company
yonder. To think, again I say, that these
pure blessings, these life-giving springs,
sent to give strength and innocence, all to
be turned into fresh agents for attracting
villany and vice. Was there ever such
diabolical perversity !

Early in December will be ready
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MESSES. CHAPPELL and Co. have the honour
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17, Glasgow ; Tuesday, December 22, St. James's Hall,
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^HE-STO^-OF- OV*V ilvES JROM-'Y^A^TO *y\

CONDUCTED- BY

'3fotfSH0LD*W0^DS *

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19.

WRECKED IN PORT.

A Serial Stoey by the Author op "Black Sheep.

CHAPTER V. WOOLGREAVES.

" You will be better when you have made
the effort, mother," said Marian Ashurst to
the widow, one day, when the beauty of the
summer was at its height, and death and
grief seemed very hard to bear, in the face
of the unsympathising sunshine. " Don't
think I underrate the effort, for indeed I
don't, but you will be better when you have
made it."

" Perhaps so, my dear," said Mrs.
Ashurst, with reluctant submissiveness.
" You are right ; I am sure you always are
right : but it is so little use to go to any
place where one can't enjoy oneself, and
where everybody must see that it is impos-
sible ; and you have you know " Her

lip trembled, her voice broke. Her little
hands, still soft and pretty, twined them-
selves together, with an expression of pain.
Then she said no more.

Marian had been standing by the open
window, looking out, the side of her head
turned to her mother, who was glancing at
her timidly. Now she crossed the room,
with a quick steady step, and knelt down
by Mrs. Ashurst' s chair, clasping her hands
upon the arm.

" Listen to me, dear," she said, with her
clear eyes fixed on her mother's face, and
her voice, though softened to a tone of the
utmost tenderness, firm and decided. " You
must never forget that I know exactly what
and how much you feel, and that I share it
all" (there was a forlornness in the girl's
face which bore ample testimony to the
truth of what she said) " when I tell you,
in my practical way, what we must do.
You remember, once, then, you spoke to me

about the Creswells, and I made light of
them and their importance and influence.
I would not admit it ; I did not understand
it. I had not fully thought about it then ;
but I admit it now. I understand it now,
and it is my turn to tell you, my dearest
mother, that we must be civil to them ; we
must take, or seem to take, their offers of
kindness, of protection, of intimacy, as they
are made. We cannot afford to do other-
wise, and they are just the sort of people to
be offended with us irreparably, if we did
not allow them to extend their hospitality
to us. It is rather officious, rather ostenta-
tious ; it has all the bitterness of making
us remember more keenly what they might
have done for us, but it is hospitality, and
we need it ; it is the promise of further
services which we shall require urgently.
You must rouse yourself, mother ; this must
be your share of helpfulness to me in the
burthen of our life. And, after all, what
does it matter ? "What real difference does
it make ? My father is as much present to
you and to me in one place as in another.
Nothing can alter, or modify, or soften;
nothing can deepen or embitter that truth.
Come with me the effort will repay itself."
Mrs. Ashurst had begun to look more
resolved, before her daughter, who had
spoken with more than her usual earnest-
ness and decision, had come to an end of
her argument. She put her arm round the
girl's neck, and gave her a timid squeeze,
and then half rose, as though she were
ready to go with her, anywhere she chose,
that very minute. Then Marian, without
asking another word on the subject, busied
herself about her mother's dress, arranging
the widow's heavy sombre drapery with a
deft hand, and talking about the weather,
the pleasantness of their projected walk,
and the daily dole of Helmingham gossip.

50 [December 19, 1888.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

Marian cared little for gossip of any kind
herself, bnt it was a godsend to her some-
times, when she had particular reasons for
not talking to her mother of the things that
were in her mind, and did not find it easy
to invent other things to talk to her about.

The object which Marian had in view
just now, and which she had had some diffi-
culty in attaining, was the inducing of her
mother, who had passed the time since
her bereavement in utter seclusion, to
accept the invitation of Mr. Creswell, the
owner of "Woolgreaves, the local grandee
par excellence, the person whose absence
Marian had so lamented on the occasion of
her father's illness, to pass " a long day"
with him and his nieces. It was not the
first time such an invitation had reached
Mrs. Ashurst. Their rich neighbour, the
dead schoolmaster's friend, had not been
neglectful of the widow and her daughter,
but it was the first time Marian had made
up her mind that this advance on his part
must be met and welcomed. She had as
much reluctance to break through the seclu-
sion of their life as her mother, though of a
somewhat different stamp ; but she had been
pondering and calculating, while her mother
had been only thinking and suffering, and she
had decided that it must be done. She did
not doubt that she should suffer more in
the acting upon this decision than her
mother ; but it was made, and must be
acted upon. So Marian took her mother
to "Woolgreaves. Mr. Creswell had offered
to send a carriage (he rather liked the use
of the indefinite article, which implied the
extent of his establishment) to fetch the
ladies, but Marian had declined this. The
walk would do her mother good, and brace
her nerves ; she meant to talk to her easily,
with seeming carelessness, of the possibili-
ties of the future, on the way. At length
Mrs. Ashurst was ready, and her daughter
and she set forth, in the direction of the
distressingly modern, but really imposing,
mansion, which, for the first time, they ap-
proached, unsupported by him, in whose
presence it had. never occurred to them
to suffer from any feeling of inferiority
of position or means, or to believe that any
one could regard them in a slighting
manner.

Mr. Creswell, of Woolgreaves, had en-
tertained a sincere regard, built on pro-
found respect, for Mr. Ashurst. He
knew the inferiority of his own mind, and
his own education, to those of the man who
had contentedly and laboriously filled so
humble a position one so unworthy of his

talents, as well as he knew the superiority
of his own business abilities, the difference
which had made him a rich man, and which
would, under any circumstances, have kept
Mr. Ashurst poor. He was a man pos-
sessed of much candour of mind and sound
judgment; and though he preferred, quite
sincerely, the practical ability which had
made him what he was, and heartily enjoyed
all the material advantages and pleasures
of his life, he was capable of profound ad-
miration for such unattainable things as
taste, learning, and the indefinable moral
and personal elements which combine to
form a scholar and a gentleman. He was
a commonplace man in every other respect
than this, that he most sincerely despised
and detested flattery, and was incapable of
being deceived by it. He had not failed to
understand that it would have been as im-
possible to James Ashurst to flatter as to
rob him ; and for this reason, as well as for
the superiority he had so fully recognised,
he had felt warm and abiding friendship
for him, and lamented his death, as he had
not mourned any accident of mortality since
the day which had seen his pretty young
wife laid in her early grave. Mr. Creswell,
a poor man in those days, struggling man-
fully very far down on the ladder, which he
had since climbed with the ease which not
unfrequently attends effort, when something
has happened to decrease the value of suc-
cess, had loved his pretty, uneducated, merry
little wife very much, and had felt for a
while after she died, that he was not sure
whether anything was worth working or
striving for. But his constitutional activity
of mind and body had got the better of that
sort of feeling, and he had worked and
striven to remarkably good purpose ; but
he had never asked another woman to share
his fortunes. This was not altogether oc-
casioned by fingering regret for his pretty
Jenny. He was not of a sentimental turn
of mind, and he might even have been
brought to acknowledge, reluctantly, that
his wife would probably have been much
out of place in the fine house, and at the
head of the luxurious establishment which
his wealth had formed. She was humbly
born, like himself, had not been ambitious,
except f love and happiness, and had had
no better education than enabled her to
read and write, not so perfectly as to foster
in her a taste for either occupation. If Mr.
Creswell had a sorrowful remembrance of
her sometimes, it died away with the reflec-
tion that she had been happy while she
lived, and would not have been so happy

*Xr-

Charles Dickens]

WRECKED IN PORT.

[December 19. 1868.]

now. His continued bachelor estate was
occasioned rather by his close and engross-
ing attention to the interests of his busi-
ness, and, perhaps, also to the narrow social
circle in which he lived. Pretty, unedu-
cated, simple young country women will
retain their power of pleasing men who
have acquired education, and made money,
and so elevated themselves far above their
original station ; but the influence of edu-
cation and wealth upon the tastes of men of
this sort is inimical to the chances of the
young women of the classes in society
among which they habitually find their
associates. The women of the "well-to-
do" world are unattractive to those men
who have" not been bom in it. Such
men either retain the predilections of
their youth for women like those whose
girlhood they remember, or cherish ambi-
tious aspirations towards the inimitable, not
to be borrowed or imported, refinement of
the women of social spheres far above them.
The former was Mr. Creswell's case, in as
far as anything except business can be said
to have been active in his affairs. The
" ladies" in the Helmingham district were
utterly uninteresting to him, and he had
made that fact so evident long ago that
they had accepted it ; of course regarding
him as an " oddity," and much to be
pitied ; and since his nieces had taken up
their abode, on the death of their father,
Mr. Creswell's only brother, at Woolgreaves,
a matrimonial development in Mr. Cres-
well's career had been regarded as an im-
possibility. The owner of Woolgreaves
was voted by general feminine consent " a
dear old thing," and a very good neighbour,
and the ladies only hoped he might not
have trouble before him with " that pickle,
young Tom," and were glad to think no
poor woman had been induced to put her-
self in for such a life as that of Tom's step-
mother would have been.

Mr. Creswell's only brother had belonged,
not to the "well-to-do" community, but,
on the contrary, to that of the " ne'er-do-
weels," and he had died without a shilling,
heavily in debt, and leaving two helpless
girls sufficiently delicately nurtured to
feel their destitution with keenness amount-
ing to despair, and sufficiently "fashion-
ably," i.e. ill-educated, to be wholly in-
capable of helping themselves to the mercy
of the world. The contemplation of this
contingency, for which he had plenty of
leisure, for he died of a lingering illness,
did not appear to have distressed Tom
Creswell. He had believed in " luck" all

his life, with the touching devotion of a
selfish man, who defines " luck" as the
making of things comfortable for himself,
and is not troubled with visions of, after
him, the modern version of the deluge,
which takes the squalid form of the pawn-
broker's, and the poor-house ; and "luck"
had lasted bis time. It had even survived
him, so far as his children were concerned,
for his brother, who had quarrelled with
him, more from policy and of deliberate
interest, regarding him as a hopeless spend-
thrift, the helping of whom was a useless
extravagance, than from anger or disgust,
came to the aid of the widow and her
children, when he found that things were
very much worse than he had supposed
they would prove to be.

Mrs. Tom Creswell afforded a living ex-
ample of her husband's " luck." She was
a mild, gentle, very silly, very self-denying,
estimable woman, who loved the " ne'er-
do-weel" so literally with all her heart, that
when he died, she had not enough of that
organ left to go on living with. She did
not see why she should try, and she did
not try, but quietly died in a few months,
to the astonishment of rational people,
who declared that Tom Creswell was a
"good loss," and had never been of the
least use either to himself or any other
human being. What on earth was the
woman about ? Was she such an idiot as
not to see his faults ? Did she not know
what a selfish, idle, extravagant, worthless
fellow he was, and that he had left her to
either pauperism or dependence on any one
who would support her, quite compla-
cently ? If such a husband as he was
what she had seen in him beyond his hand-
some face, and his pleasant manner, they
could not tell was to be honoured in this
way, gone quite daft about, in fact ; they
really could not perceive the advantage to
men in being active, industrious, saving, pru-
dent, and domestic. Nothing could be more
true, more reasonable, more unanswerable,
or more ineffectual. Mrs. Tom Creswell
did not dispute it ; she patiently endured
much bullying by strong-minded, tract-
dropping females of the spinster persua-
sion ; she was quite satisfied to be told she
had proved herself unworthy of a better
husband. She did not murmur as it was
proved to her, in the fiercest forms of
accurate arithmetic, that her Tom had
squandered sums which might have pro-
vided for her and her children decently,
and had not even practised the poor self-
denial of paying for an insurance on his

z &

52 [December 19, 1868.;

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

life. She contradicted no one, she rebuked
no one, she asked forbearance and pity from
no one, she merely wept, and said she was
sure her brother-in-law would be kind to
the girls, and that she would not like to be
a trouble to Mr. Creswell herself, and was
sure her Tom would not have liked her to
be a trouble to Mr. Creswell. On this point
the brother of the " departed saint," as the
widow called the amiable idler of whose
presence she considered the world un-
worthy, by no means agreed with her. Mr.
Creswell was of opinion that so long as
trouble kept clear of Tom, Tom would
have been perfectly indifferent as to where
it lighted. But he did not say so. He had
not much respect for his sister-in-law's
intellect, but he pitied her, and he was not
only generous to her distress, but also
merciful to her weakness. He offered her
a home at Woolgreaves, and it was arranged
that she should "try" to go there, after a
while. But she never tried, and she never
went, she "did not see the good of"
anything, and in six months after Tom
Creswell' s death his daughters were settled
at Woolgreaves, and it is doubtful whether
the state of orphanhood was ever in any
case a more tempered, modified misfortune
than in theirs.

Thus, the family party at the hand-
some house, which Mrs. Ashurst and her
daughter were about to visit, was composed
of Mr. Creswell, his son Tom, a specimen
of the schoolboy class, of whom this history
has already afforded a glimpse, and the
Misses Creswell, the Maud and Gertrude of
whom Marian had, in her grief, spoken in
terms of sharp and contemptuous disparage-
ment, which, though not entirely cen-
surable, judged from her point of view,
were certainly not altogether deserved.

Mr. Creswell earnestly desired to befriend
the visitor and her daughter. Gertrude
Creswell thought it would be very " nice" to
be "great friends" with that clever Miss
Ashurst, and had, with all the impulsiveness
of generous girlhood, exulted in the idea
of being, in her turn, able to extend kind-
ness to people in need of it, even as she
and her sister had been. But Maud, who
though her actual experience of life had
been identical with her sister's, had more
natural intuition and caution, checked the
enthusiasm with which Gertrude drew this
picture :

"We must be very careful, Gerty dear,"
she said. " I fancy this clever Miss Ashurst
is very proud. People say you never find
out the nature of any one until trouble

brings it to the light. It would never do to let
her think one had any notion of doing her
services, you know, she might not like it
from us ; uncle's kindness to them is a
different thing ; but we must remember
that we are, in reality, no better off than
she is."

Gertrude reddened. She had not spoken
with the remotest idea of patronage of Miss
Ashurst in her mind, and her sister's warn-
ing pained her. Gertrude had a dash of
her father's insouciance in her, though in
him it had been selfish joviality, and in her
it was only happy thoughtlessness. It had
occurred to Gertrude, more than once before
to-day, to think she should like to be mar-
ried to some one whom she could love very
much indeed, and away from this fine place
Avbich did not belong to them, though her
uncle was very kind, in a home of her own.
Maud had a habit of saying and looking
things which made Gertrude entertain such
notions, and now she had, with the best in-
tentions, injured her pleasure in the anti-
cipation of the visit of Mrs. Ashurst and
Marian.

It was probably this little incident which
lent the slight touch of coldness and re-
straint to the manner of Gertrude Creswell
which Marian instantly felt, and which she
erroneously interpreted. When they had
met formerly, there had been none of this
hesitating formality.

" These girls don't want us here," said
Marian to herself; ''they grudge us their
uncle's friendship, lest it should take a form
which would deprive them of any of his
money."

Perhaps Marian was not aware of the
resolve lurking in her heart even then, that
such was precisely the form which that
friendship should be made to take. The
evil warp in her otherwise frank and noble
mind told in this. Gertrude Creswell, to
whom in particular she imputed mercenary
feeling, and the forethought of a calculating
jealousy, was entirely incapable of anything
of the kind, and was actuated wholly by her
dread that Marian should misinterpret any
premature advance towards intimacy on
her part as an impertinence. Thus the
foundation of a misunderstanding between
the two was laid.

Marian's thoughts had been busy with
the history of the sisters, as she and her
mother approached Woolgreaves. She had
heard her father describe Tom Creswell and
his wife, and dwell upon the fortunate
destiny which had transferred Maud and
Gertrude to their uncle's care. She thought

Charles Dickens.

WRECKED IN PORT.

[December 19, 1868.] 53

of all that now with bitterness. The con-
trast between her father's character, life,
and fate, and the character, life, and fate of
Tom Creswell, was a problem difficult to
solve, hard to endure. Why had the mea-
sure been so differently she would, she
must say, so unjustly meted to these two
men ? Her fancy dwelt on every point in
that terrible difference, lingered around
the two death-beds, pictured the happy,
sheltered, luxurious, unearned security of
those whom the spendthrift had left un-
cared for, and the harsh, gloomy future be-
fore her mother and herself, in which only
two things, hard work and scanty means,
were certain, which had been the vision her
father must have seen of the fate of those
he loved, when he, so fitted to adorn an
honoured and conspicuous position, had
died, worn out in the long vain strife with
poverty. Here were the children of the
man who had lived utterly for self, and the
widow and child of the " righteous," who
had done his duty manfully from first to
last. Hard and bitter were Marian's re-
flections on this contrast, and earnestly did
she wish that some speedy means of ac-
celerating by efforts of her own the fulfil-
ment of those promises of Providence, in
which she felt sometimes tempted to put
little faith, might arise.

" I suppose he was not exactly forsaken,"
said the girl, in her mind, as she approached
the grand gates of Woolgreaves, whose iron-
mongery displayed itself in the utmost pro-
fusion, allied with artistic designs more
sumptuous than elegant, " and that no one
will see us ' begging our bread ;' but there
is only meagre consolation to me in this,
since he had not what might or all their
service is a pretence, all their ' opinions'
are lies have saved him, and I see little to
rejoice in, in being just above the begging
of bread."

"They have done a great deal to the
place since we were here, Marian," said Mrs.
Ashurst, looking round admiringly upon
the skilful gardening, and rich display of
shrubs, and flowers, and outdoor decorations
of all kinds. " It must take a great many
hands to keep this in order. Not so much
as a leaf or a pebble out of its place."

"They say there are four gardeners
always employed," said Marian. " I wish
we had the money it costs ; we needn't wish
Midsummer-day further off then. But here
is Mr. Creswell, coming to meet us."

Marian Ashurst was much more attrac-
tive in her early womanhood than she had
promised to be as a very young girl, and

the style of her face and figure was of the
kind which is assisted in its effect by a
somewhat severe order of costume. She
was not beautiful, not even positively hand-
some, and it is possible she might have
looked commonplace in the ordinary dress
of young women of limited means, where
cheap material and coarse colouring must
necessarily be used. In her plain attire of
deep mourning, with no ornament save one
or two trinkets of jet, which had been her
mother's, Marian Ashurst looked far from
commonplace, and remarkably ladylike.
The strongly defined character in her face,
the composure of her manner, the quietness
of her movements, were not the charms
which are usually associated with youth,
but they were charms, and her host was a
person to whom they were calculated to
prove especially charming. Except in his
generally benevolent way of entertaining a
kindly regard for his friend's daughter, Mr.
Creswell had never noted nor taken any
particular notice of Marian Ashurst; but
she had not been an hour in his house before
she impressed herself upon him as being
very different from all the other girls of his
acquaintance, and much more interesting
than his nieces.

Mr. Creswell felt rather annoyed with his
nieces. They were civil, certainly ; but they
did not seem to understand the art of mak-
ing the young lady, who was visiting them,
happy and ' ' at home. ' ' There was none of the
freemasonry of "the young person" about
them. After a while, Mr. Creswell found that
the order of things he had been prepared
for what he certainly would have taken to
be the natural order of things was altered,
set aside, he did not know how, and that
he was walking along the trim garden paths,
after luncheon, with Miss Ashurst, while
Maud and Gertrude took charge of the
visitor to whom he had meant to devote
himself, and were making themselves as
amiable and pleasant to her as they had
failed to make themselves to Marian. Per-
haps the fault or the reason was as much
on Miss Ashurst's side as on theirs. Before
he had conducted his visitor over all the
"show" portions of the grounds and
gardens, Mr. Creswell had arrived at the
conclusion that Marian was a remarkable
young woman, with strong powers of ob-
servation, and a decided aptitude for solid
and sensible conversation, which probably
explained the coldness towards her of Maud
and Gertrude, who were not remarkable,
except for fine complexions, and hair to
correspond, and whose talk was of the most

54 [December 19, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

vapid description, so far as he had had the
opportunity of observing.

There was not mnch of importance in
appearance to relate about the occurrences
of a day which was destined to be re-
membered as very important by all who
passed its hours at Woolgreaves. It had
the usual features of a "long day;" spas-
modic attacks of animation and lapses of
weariness, a great deal of good eating and
drinking, much looking at pictures and
parade books, some real gratification, and
not a little imperfectly disguised fatigue.
It differed in one respect, however, from
the usual history of a "long day." There
was one person who was not glad when it
came to an end. That person was Mr.
Creswell.

Poor Mrs. Ashurst had found her visit
to Woolgreaves much more endurable than
she expected. She had indeed found it
almost pleasurable. She had been amused
the time had passed, the young ladies
had been kind to her. She praised them to
Marian.

"They are nice creatures," she said;
" really tender-hearted and sincere. Of
course they are not clever like you, my
dear ; but then all girls cannot be expected
to be that."

"They are very fortunate," said Marian,
moodily. " Just think of the safe and
happy life they lead. Living like that is
living. We only exist. They have no
want for the present; no anxiety for the
future. Everything they see and touch,
all the food they eat, everything they wear,
means money."

"Yes," said Mrs. Ashurst; "and after
all, money is a great thing. Not, indeed,"
she added, with tears in her eyes, " that I
could care much for it now, for it could not,
if we had it, restore what we have lost."

"No," said Marian, frowning, "but it
could have saved us from losing it ; it
could have preserved love and care, home,
position, and happiness to us. True,
mother, money is a great thing."

But Marian's mother was not listening
to her. Her mind had returned to its
familiar train of thought again.

Something had been said that day about
Mrs. Ashurst' s paying Woolgreaves a longer
visit, going for a week or two, of course,
accompanied by Marian. Mrs. Ashurst had
not decidedly accepted or negatived the
proposition. She felt rather nervous about
it herself, and uncertain as to Marian's
sentiments, and her daughter had not aided
her by word or look. Nor did Marian recur

to the subject when they found themselves
at home again in the evening. But she re-
membered it, and discussed it with herself
in the night. Would it be well that her
mother should be habituated to the comforts,
the luxuries of such a house, so unattainable
to her at home, so desirable in her state of
broken health and spirits ? This was the
great difficulty which beset Marian ; and
she felt she could not decide it then.

Her long waking reverie of that night
did not concern itself with the people she
had been with. It was fully occupied with
the place. Her mind mounted from floor
to floor of the handsome house, which re-
presented so much money, reviewing and
appraising the furniture, speculating on the
separate and collective value of the plate,
the mirrors, the hangings, the decorations.
Thousands and thousands of pounds, she
thought, hundreds and hundreds of times
more money than she had ever seen, and
nothing to do for it all. Those girls who
lived among it, what had they done that
they should have all of it ? Why had she,
whose mother needed it so much, who could
so well appreciate it, none of it ? Marian's
last thought before she fell asleep that night
was, not only that money was a great thing,,
but that almost anything would be worth
doing to get money.

DOMESTIC TURKS.

My friend, Nourri Effendi, had passed a con-
siderable portion of his life in the department of
Foreign Affairs, and had spent some time in the
European embassies. His chief western acquire-
ments were French and a little German, but
he was a distinguished oriental scholar. As a
master of the epistolary style in Turkish or
rather in Turkish strongly dashed with Persian
after the ancient fashion few could get near
him, for he mounted to the seventy-seventh
heaven of inspiration. The Effendi, being by
no means a man of the world, continually got
into contentions with his colleagues. Thus he
was often thrown out of employment, and it
was difficult for his numerous old friends and
admirers to find him anything suitable to his
genius; for he did not shine so much in the
quantity of his work, as in his own estimate of
the quality. The quantity was small.

I remember his favouring me by writing a
translation of five lines which were to be ad-
dressed in triplicate to the Grand Vizier, the
Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the Minister
of Commerce. The Effendi, as was his wont,
came later than his appointment, with a time-
honoured excuse, that as Zuleikha Hanum
wanted him to buy something, her errand had
engaged him.

He set himself sedulously and seriously to

Charles Dickens/

DOMESTIC TUKKS.

[December 13, 18GSJ 55

Avork. I asked him now and then how he was
getting on, but he had been three hours at it
before he called my attention to the accom-
plishment of one portion of his task. He then
read me the draft of three lines of his high-
flown Turkish, and solicited me to admire the
beautiful antithesis, and to acknowledge how
well the two parts of the phrase were bal-
anced. " It is almost poetry," said he.

" Mashalla, Effendi," said I, " it is an admi-
rable composition ; but it states the very oppo-
site of my meaning ; and, like poetry, it is not
true."

"It would be a pity, Bey," replied he, "to
sacrifice such a gem. Observe !" He went
on, &c. &c.

He was confident it would excite the atten-
tion and admiration of the Grand Vizier. With
great difficulty I did at last get my own mean-
ing substituted, deeply to his regret.

He then copied out in due form the letter for
his highness ready for the post, and I affixed
my signet.

"Now," said I, " Effendi, quick with the
two copies for the Foreign Minister and the
Minister of Commerce."

"I will at once," responded he, "set about
composing a suitable epistle for his Highness
the Minister of Foreign Affairs."

" Wherefore, Effendi, when there is nothing
more to be done than to copy that to the Grand
Vizier, as it is the communication of the facts ?"

" True," answered he ; " but therefore it will
never do. This letter is composed for the dignity
of the Grand Vizier. As Aali Pasha is one of
the most distinguished scholars in Turkey, I
cannot think of writing to him what is only
suited for the Grand Vizier. While respecting
the exalted rank of Aali Pasha, we must lower
it in style, to adapt it to one who is no longer
grand vizier."

" And the Minister of Commerce," said I ;
" what as to his copy ?"

"Inshallah !" said the Effendi, soberly, " we
will provide for him, too. We must compose
him another letter, with other words, in propor-
tion to his quality ; for he is much lower in
rank than Aali Pasha or a grand vizier. Fear
not !"

The Effendi applied himself to the blithesome
occupation of compiling such an epistle as should
gratify the critical eye of the universally ad-
mired master of learning, and the mail steamer
had worked some two hours down the harbour
with his letter for the Grand Vizier and my
poor and hasty substitutes for the jewelled
literary treasures of Nourri Effendi, before he
had finished Number Two.

"Mashallah, Bey," said he, "the steamer
has gone. What a pity ! For this is indeed a
satisfactory letter."

He went off, having another commission to
execute for his wife on his way home ; and I
never asked him for Number Three.

He was indeed an accomplished master of
his graphic art, and would sit, green spec-
tacles on nose, and smoke, and write, and blot
out, and get another whiff from his chibook,

and another word from the coinage of his brain,
and so his task proceeded. A distinguished
provincial authority, who had been a chamber-
lain of the Sultan, courtly, courteous, and ac-
complished, had received me with some hospi-
tality ; and on his being promoted to a higher
post I was desirous of congratulating him.
Nourri Effendi gladly came to my aid. Three
days did he devote to the composition of a short
letter. Though he expounded to me its mean-
ings and its beauties, for there were many for
each word, it would, in my inferior state of ap-
preciation, have taken me at least three days
more, to arrive at anything near its exact inter-
pretation. I fear that I affixed my mehur or
signet to a document which I very imperfectly
understood.

After many days the slow post brought me a
reply from His Excellency. Having glanced
at it, I transferred it to Nourri Effendi for his
perusal. He was in ecstasies, and he read,
re-read, and remarked upon each passage,
making (I dare say) a most valuable com-
mentary on the recondite mysteries of the
oriental language. The Governor was well
known to be as great a master of the sublime
as Nourri Effendi, and had responded valiantly.

At the Effendi's request I delivered the pre-
cious work of art to him, and at the end of a
month he was still exhibiting to admiring and
bored friends his draft, with the Governor's
admirable response.

Nourri Effendi's domestic claims so much in-
terfered with his public engagements, that his
occasional apologies on this head brought on
many little conversations about family matters.
His wife, although of provincial extraction, had
profited by a long residence in Stambool, to
acquire the tasteful habits of a metropolitan.
There was no need to inquire how many wives
the Effendi had, for there could be but one
autocrat to whose sway he was bound. In vain
had the legislator of Islam conferred on him, as
a true believer, the prerogative of summary
divorce by his own whim or behest, and of
making this irrevocable by the formula of
triple divorce. The Effendi must have been
long ago convinced that such divorces were not
invented for deliverance from such a wife as
his, and that divorce would only have been fol-
lowed by re-marriage to her, under conditions
of severer thraldom. I imagine he had, as the
limit of his liberty, a right of grumbling outside
his own house, and beyond reach of the lady's
ears. The narrow income of the Effendi was
spent under my lady's dictation, and extraordi-
nary budgets were demanded, although they
were obliged to live a life of much enforced
economy, greatly to her discontent. His pro-
vision of tobacco and snuff could only have
been obtained by making a forced levy on the
receipt of his monthly salary ; after which
epoch his purse departed from him.

From this authority I got an insight into
the subject of mothers-in-law in Turkey, and I
grieve to say he was not so devotedly attached
to his mother-in-law as perhaps he ought to
have been. Unluckily he had moved near to

56 [Decembor 19, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

his wife's birthplace, and this not only brought
him a visit from mamma when he could ill
afford it, but his wife exercised her privilege
under the marriage laws of Turkey, by making
a return journey. Mothers-in-law need not
legally be brought into the house, in Turkey,
but whether they can practically be kept out
by an ordinary husband it is hard to say.
Nourri Effendi's relative had kindly gone as
far as Stambool to visit him and his wife. As
for the visits of wives to their mothers, that is
a totally different matter. A refusal to allow
such expression of affection might be attended
by a summons to the nearest police magistrate,
and a warrant to levy on the goods of the
culprit such sum for travelling charges, outfit,
dresses, presents, &c, as the lady might de-
mand, and competent assessors possibly female
declare to be consistent with the wife's pre-
tensions in society.

From Nourri Effendi I learned the opinions
of Turkish wives on the important subject of
followers. "Madame," said he, "has kept me
at home again, asking me to buy her a pair of
black slaves, which she says we absolutely re-
quire for our respectability ; but that I do not
see." I had long known that in Turkey every-
thing must be perfect, and therefore in pairs.
As a boy I had seen the braces of pistols and
the pairs of knives and watches, and this pre-
pared me for seeing the male and female popu-
lation paired off, to avoid the imperfection of
the odd state and the consequent perils of the
evil eye. A pair of slaves was a new idea. The
pair of slaves did not mean two boys or two
girls, but a pair, a boy and a girl.

"I have told her several times we do not
want them, and cannot afford them ; but she
persists, as women will, and says ' they will be
a great economy besides.' I do not like blacks
in the house, because they are only fresh- caught
barbarians, and, besides, we cannot want two.
' Why not,' said I, ' get some decent orphan
girl from the country, whom we can take care
of ;' but madame answers she does not want
girls, as in a short time they are sure to have
brothers and cousins, who will see them ; but a
black from Africa has no cousins."

From the lady with servants, the transition
to the lady without them is not great.

Osman Aga, the son of a good family in a
large provincial city, was, when I knew him, a
retired captain of cavalry on half -pay or pension,
married to a lady whose patrimony was some
small bit of property near the former city of
Assos. Osman had profited little at school ; he
could not write, and he did not like reading
that art, indeed, he now left to his wife. In
those good old times he could be a captain
without them. As every one, instead of sign-
ing his name, affixes his signet, Osman was
sufficiently qualified when he contented himself
with the figures which would fill up a return of
his troop, or make out the quantities in an
account for barley or chopped straw in case
no learned private was at hand to officiate as
clerk.

Besides his long period of service in every

part of the empire, Osman Aga had been in
the brilliant Bulgarian campaign against the
Russians, and wore the medal. He was never
tired of extolling the gallantry and conduct of
the handful of English heroes who had served
with the Ottoman army ; though a thorough
patriot, he often wished that the Turkish
soldiery were led by such officers.

The captain had served so long as to earn his
pension ; a sum of twelve pounds a year, paid
monthly when not in arrear. On this sum,
there are still parts of Turkey in which he
could have kept his wife and daughter ; but he
could not do that in a western city, to which
progress had brought European prices. He in-
herited a small house in a respectable quarter,
but had no other patrimony. His sole remain-
ing resources were the scanty olive and grape
crops on the fields of Adileh Hanum, which
furnished little coin for remittance.

Osman Avas anxious to eke out his narrow
income by some small employment, and had
lately lost a petty berth on the extraordinary
staff at the customs, to which he was waiting to
be restored. A Turkish friend of rank spoke
very strongly to me of Osman Aga as a man of
character and integrity, and begged me to use
my influence to get him temporary occupation.
Osman Aga became, therefore, an occasional
caller at my house. He was a thin man, of
middle height and of soldierly bearing, about
fifty-five. His uniform frock-coat was carefully
kept and brushed. Its smartness was of the
past, and the medals were its only ornament.
He was always neat, though in Turkey a button
or two off, or any such divergence from sym-
metry, is no more thought of than in Munster.

In his walks to my house, he by-and-by
brought a shy little baby girl, with large black
eyes. Sometimes she was in full dress, going
out on a holiday ; her finger-nails and palms
duly stained with henna, a pretty embroidered
handkerchief on her head, with a jewel, a gold
coin, or a flower adorning it ; sometimes she
was in her ordinary muslin walking dress ;
never gaudy. An elder boy had died of fever,
and she was the only child. Little Fatmeh was
soon familiar in my family. Her gentle well-
behaved ways won regard for her, though she
could seldom be prevailed on to accept anything.
When she did so, the fruit, or whatever it might
be, was always first shown to her father, and
then taken home to her mother.

At last, I got a temporary berth for Osman
Aga as kerserdar, or police inspector, at an
unhealthy place in the country : to the great
delight of himself and his family, and also of
mine. The small income would at once place
them at ease. Adileh Hanum called on my
wife, with Fatmeh, to express her gratitude.
She was a quiet ladylike woman of five-and-
thirty ; well and neatly, but not richly, dressed,
with the Constantinople yashmak, and not the-
provincial veil.

This lady told my family of the strain the
captain's loss of office had brought on their
small income, and the benefit my intervention
had conferred on them. They were thankful to

Charles Dickens.]

DOMESTIC TURKS.

[December 19, 1868.] 57

God, and her husband would ever be found
faithful to me.

While the captain was officiating in the
country, and lookiag after evildoers, I some-
times saw him. He told me that his quarters
were bad, but that he had at length found a
small house in the village, and was going to
have his family down. I thought they would
hardly like the change from a city life to the
dulness of a village. " The familia," said he,
" had been used to it in her father's house, and
was fond of goats, and turkeys, and geese, and
fowls, and a garden. It would be quite a treat
for Fatmeh, who could play about all day long."
Familia, or family, is now a common polite
word in Turkish for wife.

The captain's occupation ran out ; he became
a suitor to me again ; the treasury, to remit to
the foreign creditor, and keep faith with him,
held back payments from Osman and other
pensioners and home servants ; and he was as
ill off as ever. Every now and then I got him
some little employment, and received his thanks.
There was never a Bairam, or Christmas, or
Easter, for some years when the complimentary
calls in our house did not include Captain
Osman Aga, with his wife and daughter. I
had become his effective patron and friend, and
his devotion went beyond European bounds,
though the position of a captain in the army in
Turkey is not even yet what it is in Europe.
The captain, yuzbashi, or head of a hundred in
the regular army, was, till the change was made
in my time, no more than a warrant officer ;
commissions beginning with second majors, and
only the sons of country gentlemen or squireens
serving as captains and lieutenants. The
present Sultan, to elevate the army, has given
official precedence to the captains ; but they
hardly realise their new honours at the tail of
the aristocracy. Europeans seldom understand
the real status of the captain, and draw very
disparaging reflections from incidents which
come before them. The captain is often no
more than an illiterate common man raised
from the ranks I must add, though, generally
a conscientious soldier and thorough master of
his drill and business.

A curious story is told of a French ambas-
sador, as an illustration of the want of dig-
nity in what he considered to be Turkish
officers. The old general, being present at
the grand audience, in the Seraglio at the
Bairam, received some attentions from a captain
commanding near him. On leaving, his ex-
cellency desired his dragoman to tender his
thanks to the captain, and invite him, as a
brother- officer, to dinner. The captain ex-
pressed his gratitude, but continued to hang
about, as if wanting something more. "I can
settle it," said the dragoman ; and he evidently
did so, as the captain retired with much ex-
pression of contentment. " How did you
manage it ?" " I gave him a five-franc piece,
with which he was much better satisfied than
with the honour of dining with your excel-
lency." The ambassador naturally wondered
at the low standard of Turkish officers, and it

was no business of the Levantine dragoman to
undeceive him, and inform him that the captain
was not an officer, but a sergeant-major.

As to Osman Aga, both before and after his
elevation to the table of precedency as a func-
tionary of state of the fourth class, his devotion
to me was the same. It never occurred to him,
or to me, that it was a degradation, and it was
what he would willingly have shown to his
general, or to any dear friend. H we were on
a journey, no one but himself was allowed to
saddle my horse, if he could help it. He would
snatch my boots out of the hands of my men,
and polish them himself. There was no act of
personal help he would not tender, and this
without any sycophantism or loss of respect on
either side. The colonel will fill the chibook
of his old general he is as his child. The
major will do as much for the colonel, the
captain for the major under whom he has
served, and so on. Two friends of equal rank
will vie which shall seem to kiss the hem of the
other's robe ; and ladies act in the same way.
However undignified this may seem to Euro-
peans, not being Spaniards, it conveys to the
Osmanli an idea of dignity ; not of humiliation.
Under the old constitution (and the impress of
it is not yet lost), all was so far democratic
that any porter in the street might aspire to the
highest honours, and believe himself destined
to become grand vizier. Those who attain
honours are therefore looked upon as delegates
and representatives of the mass, to whom free-
men cheerfully do homage.

In the course of years, Fatmeh grew bigger,
and not so shy, and I found she had been sent
to school ; on which the captain expressed his
sentiments with as much unction as if he had
never played the dunce. " The Family," said
he, " considers schooling religious and neces-
sary. The Family can read, and Fatmeh, In-
shallah, will get on with her learning, as is her
duty !"

" Inshallah, please God !" responded I.

By-a-nd-by Fatmeh made progress in her
reading, and the reverend schoolmaster, the
captain told me, was much satisfied with her.
She gave me a specimen of her skill out of one
of my books, reading some hard words with all
the precision and ceremony of a Hojah ; nor
did she neglect her needle. Besides work of
her mother's, she brought me a handkerchief
she had embroidered, and my family looked on
her as a bright girl.

Occasionally on festivals we got presents
from Adileh Hanum of choice confectionery or
pastry, and we found the small household con-
ducted with as much comfort and care as Turk-
ish arrangements will allow.

The poor captain was much pinched after I
left ; but I am informed that Fatmeh is married
to a rising merchant, and that there were great
festivities, to which we should all have been
invited, had we been on the spot. Adileh
Hanum spends some of her time in arranging
her daughter's household, and the captain
passes his spare time in the warehouse of his
son-in-law, where, though his expertness is

58 [December 19, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

limited, he is ornamental as a companion to old
customers and a guarantee of respectability to
new acquaintances.

PARAFFINE.

Whence the paraffine about which we read so
much in the newspapers? How was it dis-
covered, where is it obtained, what are its pro-
perties, by what means is it manufactured?
Daily we read of its marvellous capabilities,
its destructive powers, and the numerous and
strange uses to which it can be applied. Occa-
sionally we are startled with reports of terrible
disasters which it has occasioned : railway trains
burnt to ashes, as at Abergele recently ; houses
blown into ruins and the inhabitants maimed
and killed ; heads of quiet households startled
into hysterics by the unexpected explosion of
the evening lamps ; ships lost at sea by incau-
tious stowage of the barrels containing the
liquid. Painfully familiar is the reading public
with the name of paraffine ; but to most persons
it is a name and nothing more.

And yet its history has in it something of ro-
mance. The discovery of the mineral from
which it is extracted was an accident. Its
manufacture was for a long time a secret. The
profits which arose from its production gave rise
to a law-suit, as famous and interminable as those
of Plainestanes v. Peebles, or Jarndyce v. Jarn-
dyce. Its production suddenly raised a poor,
almost unknown, district, into a thriving and
populous seat of industry. Added to all this,
the processes to which it is subjected are among
the most curious and interesting in modern
chemistry.

The word paraffine is almost new to the lan-
guage, its introduction dating back only so far
as the year 1847. About that time, Professor
Lyon Playfair, who was travelling in Derby-
shire, had his attention drawn to a thick, dark,
oily fluid trickling from some rents in a coal
mine. The peculiarity of the liquid arrested his
thoughts ; and after due calculation and experi-
ment, he arrived at the conclusion that this sub-
stance, which was, through ignorance, allowed
to run to waste, contained properties of a very
remarkable and valuable character. Being him-
self occupied with other investigations, he com-
municated the result of his observations to Mr.
James Young, an acquaintance of an analytical
turn of mind, and encouraged him to conduct
experiments with the view of testing the quali-
ties of the crude and mysterious liquor. Acting
upon the hints thus given, and sustained by
strong hopes of a successful issue, that gentle-
man took the matter in hand, bringing to the
prosecution of the Avork great experience, per-
severance, and no inconsiderable degree of
knowledge as a practical chemist. The result
far exceeded his expectations. Subjected to
distillation, the coarse fluid yielded a pale yel-
low-coloured oil, full of floating lustrous par-
ticles. Further experiments proved these to
be crystals of paraffine a substance then only
known to the learned. This discovery led to

the establishment in Derbyshire of a small
manufactory, for distilling burning and lubri-
cating oils from the coarse petroleum issuing
from the coal-mine. The venture proved ex-
ceedingly remunerative ; and for two years a
pretty extensive trade in the new oils was
maintained.

Suddenly the supply of the raw material
ceased : the trickling stream of coarse petroleum
was dried up ; and the manufactory was stopped.
The untoward event caused much chagrin to
the proprietor, who was beginning to look for-
ward Avith assurance to the foundation of a
highly profitable source of commerce. He found
himself at once cut off from employment, and
the experiments which had cost him so much
toil and anxiety threatening to become value-
less. Indomitable will saved him from despair.
He felt persuaded that a substitute could be
found for the petroleum, and to the discovery
of this his energies were directed. Reflection
and observation had, some time before, caused
him to arrive at the conclusion that the crude
petroleum was produced by simple natural
causes ; and further study of the subject con-
vinced him that those causes were merely the
gradual distillation of coal by means of subter-
ranean heat. This was a great step in advance.
Prospects of success again dawned upon him,
and he looked forward to the early resumption
of his manufactory. One desideratum only re-
mained, and that was to be able to produce an
artificial petroleum equal to the natural rock-
oil, the supply of which he had exhausted.
This difficulty also yielded to perseverance and
after two years' investigations in the laboratory,
he found that a liquid of an oleaginous kind,
similar in its properties to the natural oil, was
obtained by subjecting coal to distillation at a
low temperature.

These preliminary obstacles vanquished, the
next point to be considered Avas, Avhere to pro-
cure the requisite mineral ? Petroleum, it Avas
found, could be extracted from any coal of a
bituminous nature ; but the species known as
cannel coal yielded the largest quantities. Even
this, however, was not sufficiently rich in oil-
producing qualities to induce Mr. Young to re-
vive the manufacture. He feared that the
expense would be too great, and that the quan-
tity of petroleum produced would be in very
small proportion to the amount of coal con-
sumed. Various coal-fields were surveyed, and
numerous investigations were conducted, with
the view of deciding whether a mineral could
not be procured Avhich would yield a fair supply
of oil ; but for a long time the result was de-
spaired, of. Almost every coal was suitable,
but none was sufficiently prolific. Clearly, little
prospect of establishing another manufactory !
Just as Aveariness of the heart, arising from
hope deferred, was setting in, a discovery was
made in Linlithgowshire which gave a neAV turn
to events, and promised to realise the most
sanguine wishes of the investigator. This was
in the year 1850. Borings, which had been
carried on near Bathgate for some time, made
knoAvn the fact that a peculiar kind of coal

Charles Dickens.]

PARAFFINE.

[December 19, 18C8] 59

which there abounded was exceedingly rich in
oil. Mr. Young becoming apprised of the fact,
lost no time in acquiring a lease of the coal-
field ; and in the year following he opened the
Bathgate Paraffine Works, which, in the course
of a few years, converted a small weaving
village, with a population of three thousand
souls, into an industrious hive of upwards of
ten thousand.

For the sake of convenience we have described
the substance from which the future paraffine
was to be made as Linlithgowshire " coal ;" but
this designation has been denied it by learned
and competent authorities. To the unpractised
eye, however, it is purely a species of coal, and
may be regarded essentially as such. It is a
hard, lustreless, rusty, black-coloured mineral,
very brittle, and apt to break into thin slabs
like slates. Perhaps there are few more notable
instances of the truth, that you can get men to
swear that black is white, and white black, than
in connexion with the " coal" to which we are
referring. As has been said, it was the subject
of a celebrated law-suit. The proprietor to
whom the coal-field belonged, becoming aware
in due course that an invaluable article called
paraffine was being distilled from it, which was
rapidly pouring a fortune into the treasury of
the distiller, demanded a very large increase of
rental. This was refused, and the dispute went
to court. The case dragged its slow length for
years. Geologists, naturalists, mineralogists,
chemists, colliers; witnesses, learned and un-
learned, were ranged on either side and pitted
against each other. The proprietor of the
estate and his friends declared that the sub-
stance out of which paraffine was being manu-
factured was not " coal," as defined in the lease,
but a mineral of a distinct species, and that
therefore he had the right to increase the rental
(seeing the mineral had turned out so valuable),
or to get the lease cancelled. Mr. Young and his
witnesses, on the other hand, averred that the
substance was coal, and none other than coal ;
and that if he had discovered valuable properties
in it he should reap the benefit. The dispute,
as is generally the case, was ultimately found
to have benefited no one but the lawyers.

Leaving history, let us pass to the process of
manufacture. Here the most wonderful part of
the tale has to be related. Few persons who
are accustomed to use the pure white candles,
delicate as wax in their hue, and known
popularly by the name of "composites;" and
the clear oil, almost as transparent as water,
which is called " paraffine ;" have any idea that
both are produced from a dull, compact coal,
totally devoid of the lustre which gives to that
mineral the appellation of the " black diamond."
And yet this seeming miracle is achieved by the
aid of chemistry that strange science which
changes and transmutes substances, and reveals
properties hidden and mysterious at the will or
instigation of the student. The process by
which the change is effected is complicated and
laborious ; but, freed from its technicalities, it
may be easily explained.
The coal yields four different articles, all of

which are largely employed in daily life, and
have given rise to a considerable commerce.
There is, first, the paraffine oil for burning, at
present manufactured by thousands of gallons ;
which, in many parts of England, where gas is
still unknown, is the staple commodity of illu-
mination. Then a second quality of the same
oil, considerably cruder and coarser, which, on
account of its cheapness and general aptitude,
is largely employed for lubricating machinery.
Naphtha comes next upon the list a light,
volatile fluid ; much used by travelling show-
men to light up their stalls and tents. Lastly,
there is solid paraffine a pure, white, shining,
tasteless substance, scarcely distinguishable
from wax, which is manufactured into candles.
These substances, though widely differing in
colour, properties, and consistency, are all
manufactured by nearly the same process, the
difference consisting merely in the number of
times that a particular operation is repeated.

Boghead mineral is the name of the coal em-
ployed in the manufacture of paraffine ; and this
is conveyed from the pits direct into the heart
of the works, by means of branch lines of rail-
way. Arrived here, the coal is passed through
a huge iron crushing-machine, and broken into
small pieces, to facilitate the labour of subse-
quent stages. The first result to be achieved
is to extract the crude oil from the coal. This
is effected by means of retorts, into which the
mineral is put, and the oleaginous matter ex-
tracted by burning. These retorts may, for our
purposes, be described as huge upright iron
pipes passing through furnaces. The coal is
rilled into the pipe or tube by the top, which is
then closed with an air-tight valve ; and the
bottom of the pipe is led into a pool of water to
prevent the entrance of air from below. A low
red heat of uniform temperature is maintained
constantly in the retorts. As the coal is acted
upon by the fire, it descends gradually in the
tube and becomes entirely decomposed. The
essential or oleaginous property of the mineral
passes off in vapour, and the refuse falls through
the bottom of the pipe into the pool of water,
and is raked away. The vapour or steam, as it
is generated by the decomposition of the coal, is
carried off by a pipe in the side of the retort.
This pipe again communicates with a series of
pipes placed upright in the open air, and ar-
ranged on the same principle as the bars of
a common gridiron, after the fashion that pre-
vails in gasworks. The vapour, in travelling
through this labyrinth of pipes, cools, is con-
densed into liquid, and is run off into an im-
mense reservoir sunk into the ground. The
crude, oily liquor thus collected is a thick,
black, greasy fluid, not unlike tar, which moves
with a sluggish motion when stirred, and gives off
inflammable vapours at the usual atmospheric
temperature. This coarse oil, both in its pro-
perties and appearance, closely resembles natural
petroleum, and is equal to the rock oil, which,
as we have seen, was obtained in Derbyshire.

The raw material thus procured by simple
burning is kept stored in the tank, and is only
drawn off when required. To the observer

*5=

60 [December 19, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

nothing seems stranger than that this heavy,
black, tarry liquid should produce oil as pure
as water, and solid paraffine as white as marble.
And yet the marvel is wrought daily, and on a
scale which supplies distant markets of the
world with oil. It is a mere question of re-
fining. The black liquor is, as it were, boiled,
washed, and bleached, re-boiled, re- washed, and
re-bleached, until the last particle of its dark-
ness and impurity is purged away. The first
step in the work of refinement is in some re-
spects similar to the previous process of decom-
position. The crude tarry liquid is put into
stills, which we may call huge boilers of gigantic
strength, with movable doors or fids. When
the stills have been filled, the doors are closed,
and the joints are stuffed with clay, so as to
render the interior perfectly air-tight. Firos
are then lighted in the furnaces below the
boilers, and kept up to a steady heat, till the
fluid inside distils over and is transmuted again
into vapour. This vapour, as in the former
instance, permeates through another series of
condensing pipes, and, during its transit, is re-
transmuted into liquor, and flows into a second
reservoir. Collected in this tank, the oil shows
abundant evidence of the severity of the ordeal
through which it has been put. It passed into
the stills black, and of the consistency of
treacle ; it has come out of a dark green
colour, and of the consistency of pea-soup. A
large portion of the coal-black has, in fact, been
boiled out of it, which is now to be found in
the bottom of the boilers in the shape of a
lustrous compact residue resembling coke, for
which it makes a very good substitute.

The next stage in the process of purification
is of a different character. The dark green
liquor is transferred to tanks, and a certain
quantity of strong sulphuric acid is added. The
acid is employed in order still further to bleach
the oil, and purge it of some more of the im-
purity with which it is so largely impregnated.
To effect this object it is essential that the oil
and the acid should be mixed up or assimilated
as much as possible a work of some difficulty,
on account of the tendency of the former to
float on the top, by reason of its lighter specific
gravity. This tendency is neutralised by the
action of a revolving stirrer fitted with blades,
which, when put in motion, beats and agitates
the two liquids, and causes them to mingle
equally. For four hours is this operation con-
tinued, until, under the biting influence of the
acid, the dark green oil changes to pale green,
and gives token of having parted with much
of the grosser substances that had rendered it
dull and opaque. The stirrers being at length
stopped, the liquor is allowed to settle, and
the organic impurities that have been separated
from it by the action of the vitriol, collect in the
bottoms of the tanks. The lees in this case
assume the shape of a coarse acid tar, which is
also used as a substitute for fuel.

The oil, thus far cleansed of its foulness, is
now transferred to clean tanks, mixed with a
strong solution of caustic soda, and again sub-
jected to the beating of the stirrers. The action
of the alkali extracts a good deal more of the

colouring matter, and changes the pale green
to yellow. At the end of a second period of
four hours the liquor is allowed to settle, is
drawn off from the lees as before, is pumped
into the stills and re-distilled, and is again
brought back to be put through the acid and
alkali bleaching process ; the result being its as-
sumption of a clear, pale, yellow colour. When
in this stage of its preparation the oil contains
the elements of no less than four different pro-
ducts, each valuable as articles of commerce, to
separate which is the next care of the manu-
facturer.

The separation is effected merely by distilling
the oil at various temperatures. At the lowest
temperature the lightest and most volatile parts
of the oil pass off in the shape of vapour.
Upon being cooled, by passing through pipes,
this vapour yields a liquid which, upon being
distilled by itself, gives a light, transparent, in-
flammable fluid known by the name of naphtha,
the specific gravity of which is considerably
less than that of the naphtha derived from coal-
tar. This naphtha is largely employed as a
substitute for turpentine in india-rubber works,
where it is employed to dissolve the materials-
used in that branch of manufacture. At the
temperature next to the lowest, those parts of
the oil that are next to naphtha in point of
volatility are taken off, distilled and condensed,
and yield paraffine or lamp oil. The processes of
purification and distillation are repeated with
this oil till it has assumed the requisite degree
of purity, and beconles transparent and almost
free from smell. A gallon of this oil weighs
about eight and a quarter pounds, and is, in
point of illuminating power, nearly equal to one
gallon and a quarter of American petroleum. A
yet higher temperature than that which is neces-
sary for the production of the burning oil pro-
duces a thick, heavy, lubricating oil, used in vast
quantities in the Lancashire factories for oiling
the machinery, and also by watch and clock
and philosophical instrument makers. This oil,
when it comes from the still, is largely impreg-
nated with solid paraffine, and when it cools it
assumes the consistency of grease, the paraffine
having coagulated into crystals. Before the
lubricating oil can be made available for what
it is intended, these crystals must be separated
from it ; and here again another operation, but
one of a very simple nature, is requisite. The
oil is poured into thick canvas bags, which are
placed in hydraulic presses. Pressure is then
applied with such force that the oil is squeezed
out of the bags, leaving the crystals within.
The oil thus squeezed out is the lubricating oil,
and is ready for the market ; the crystals are
the paraffine in embryo which has so often been
admired in the shape of candles.

When turned out of the bags the paraffine is
in its coarsest state, and is of a dirty yellow
colour. This hue is the result of the quantity
of oily matter which the substance, in spite of
its frequent purgings, still retains. Its perfect
and final purification is effected by the repeti-
tion of a single process, continued till the re-
quisite clearness is obtained. The paraffine is
dissolved in heated naphtha, and is kept in solu-

Charles Dickens.]

NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. [December 19, 1368.] 61

tion for a considerable time, after which it is
allowed to cool and again assume its crystalline
form. The process of squeezing in the press is
repeated, and when shaken out of the bags this
time the paraffine is seen to have changed from
yellow to dirty white, and is consequently so
much purer. The operations of dissolving and
straining are repeated till perfect pureness and
whiteness are obtained. This result achieved,
the odour of naphtha which clings to the sub-
stance is driven off by steam, and the paraffine,
in a liquid state, is run into moulds, which
form it into thick round cakes. In this shape
it is sent off to the candle -makers.

AN ACOKN.

Within this little shell doth lie

A wonder of the earth and sky ;

Grasped in the hollow of my hand,

But more than I can understand.

A germ, a life, a million lives,

If this small life but lives and thrives,

And draws from earth, and air, and sun,

The endings in this husk begun.

A few years hence, a noble tree,

If time and circumstance agree :

'Twill shelter in the noonday shade

The browsing cattle of the glade.

'Twill harbour in its arching boughs

The ringdove and its tender spouse,

The bright-eyed squirrel, acorn fed,

The dormouse in its wintry bed.

Its stalwart arms and giant girth,

Felled by the woodman's stroke to earth,

May build for kings their regal thrones,

Or coffins to enclose their bones.

And looking further down the groove,

Where Time's great wheels for ever move,

We may behold, all sprung from this,

A woodland in the wilderness.

A forest filled with stately trees,

To rustle in the summer breeze,

Or moan with melancholy song,

When wintry winds blow loud and strong.

And ; would the hope might be fulfilled !

A forest large enough to build,

When war's last shattered flag is furled,

The peaceful navies of the world.

Such possibilities there lie,

In this young nursling of the sky !

We know ; but cannot understand ;

Acorns ourselves in God's right hand !

NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES.
By Charles Dickens,
a small star in the east.
I had been looking, yester- night, through
the famous Dance of Death, and to-day the
grim old wood- cuts arose in my mind with
the new significance of a ghastly monotony
not to be found in the original. The weird
skeleton rattled along the streets before
me, and struck fiercely, but it was never at
the pains of assuming a disguise. It
played on no dulcimer here, was crowned
with no flowers, waved no plume, minced
in no flowing robe or train, lifted no wine-
cup, sat at no feast, cast no dice, counted

no gold. It was simply a bare, gaunt,
famished skeleton, slaying its way along.

The borders of Ratcliffe and Stepney,
Eastward of London, and giving on the
impure river, were the scene of this "uncom-
promising Dance of Death, upon a drizzling
November day. A squalid maze of streets,
courts, and alleys of miserable houses let out
in single rooms. A wilderness of dirt, rags,
and hunger. A mud-desert chiefly inha-
bited by a tribe from whom employment
has departed, or to whom it comes but
fitfully and rarely. They are not skilled
mechanics in any wise. They are but la-
bourers. Dock labourers, water- side la-
bourers, coal porters, ballast heavers, such
like hewers of wood and drawers of water.
But they have come into existence, and
they propagate their wretched race.

One grisly joke alone, methought, the
skeleton seemed to play off here. It had
stuck Election Bills on the walls, which
the wind and rain had deteriorated into
suitable rags. It had even summed up the
state of the poll, in chalk, on the shutters
of one ruined house. It adjured the free
and independent starvers to vote for This-
man and vote for Thatman ; not to plump,
as they valued the state of parties and the
national prosperity (both of great import-
ance to them, I think !), but, by returning
Thisman and Thatman, each nought with-
out the other, to compound a glorious and
immortal whole. Surely the skeleton is
nowhere more cruelly ironical in the ori-
ginal monkish idea !

Pondering in my mind the far-seeing
schemes of Thisman and Thatman, and of
the public blessing called Party, for staying
the degeneracy, physical and moral, of
many thousands (who shall say how
many ?) of the English race ; for devising
employment useful to the community, for
those who want but to work and live ; for
equalising rates, cultivating waste lands,
facilitating emigration, and above all things,
saving and utilising the oncoming genera-
tions, and thereby changing ever-grow-
ing national weakness into strength ; pon-
dering in my mind, I say, these hopeful
exertions, I turned down a narrow street
to look into a house or two.

It was a dark street with a dead wall on
one side. Nearly all the outer doors of the
houses stood open. I took the first entry
and knocked at a parlour door. Might I
come in ? I might, if I plased, Sur.

The woman of the room (Irish) had
picked up some long strips of wood, about
some wharf or barge, and they had just
now been thrust into the otherwise empty

62 [December 19, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

grate, to make two iron pots boil. There
was some fish in one, and there were some
potatoes in the other. The flare of the
burning wood enabled me to see a table
and a broken chair or so, and some old
cheap crockery ornaments about the chim-
neypiece. It was not until I had spoken
with the woman a few minutes that I saw
a horrible brown heap on the floor in a
corner, which, but for previous experience
in this dismal wise, I might not have
suspected to be "the bed." There was
something thrown upon it, and I asked
what that was ?

" 'Tis the poor craythur that stays here,
Sur, and 'tis very bad she is, and 'tis very
bad she's been this long time, and 'tis better
she'll never be, and 'tis slape she doos all
day, and 'tis wake she doos all night, and
'tis the lead, Sur."

" The what ?"

" The lead, Sur. Sure 'tis the lead-mills,
where the women gets took on at eighteen-
pence a day, Sur, when they makes appli-
cation early enough and is lucky and
wanted, and 'tis lead-pisoned she is, Sur, and
some of them gits lead-pisoned soon and
some of them gets lead-pisoned later, and
some but not many niver, and 'tis all ac-
cording to the constitooshun, Sur, and some
constitooshuns is strong and some is weak,
and her constitooshun is lead-pisoned bad
as can be, Sur, and her brain is coming out
at her ear, and it hurts her dreadful, and
that's what it is and niver no more and
niver no less, Sur."

The sick young woman moaning here,
the speaker bent over her, took a bandage
from her head, and threw open a back
door to let in the daylight upon it, from
the smallest and most miserable backyard
I ever saw.

" That's what cooms from her, Sur, being
lead-pisoned, and it cooms from her night
and day the poor sick craythur, and the
pain of it is dreadful, and God he knows
that my husband has walked the sthreets
these four days being a labourer and is
walking them now and is ready to work
and no work for him and no fire and no
food but the bit in the pot, and no more
than ten shillings in a fortnight, God be
good to us, "and it is poor we are and dark
it is and could it is indeed !"

Knowing that I could compensate myself
thereafter for my self-denial, if I saw fit, I
had resolved that I would give nothing in
the course of these visits. I did this to
try the people. I may state at once that
my closest observation could not detect any

indication whatever of an expectation that
I would give money ; they were grateful to
be talked to, about their miserable affairs,
and sympathy was plainly a comfort to them ;
but they neither asked for money in any
case, nor showed the least trace of surprise
or disappointment or resentment at my
giving none.

The woman's married daughter had by
this time come down from her room on
the floor above, to join in the conversation.
She herself had been to the lead-mills very-
early that morning to be " took on," but
had not succeeded. She had four children,
and her husband, also a water- side labourer
and then out seeking work, seemed in no
better case as to finding it, than her
father. She was English, and by nature
of a buxom figure and cheerful. Both in
her poor dress, and in her mother's, there
was an effort to keep up some appearance
of neatness. She knew all about the suf-
ferings of the unfortunate invalid, and all
about the lead-poisoning, and how the
symptoms came on, and how they grew :
having often seen them. The very smell
when you stood inside the door of the
works was enough to knock you down, she
said, yet she was going back again to get
" took on." What could she do ? Better be
ulcerated and paralysed for eighteenpence a
day, while it lasted, than see the children
starve.

A dark and squalid cupboard in this
room, touching the back door and all man-
ner of offence, had been for some time the
sleeping-place of the sick young woman.
But the nights being now wintry, and the
blankets and coverlets " gone to the leaving
shop," she lay all night where she lay all
day, and was lying then. The woman of
the room, her husband, this most miserable
patient, and two others, lay on the one
brown heap together for warmth.

" God bless you, sir, and thank you !"
were the parting words from these people
gratefully spoken too with which I left
this place.

Some streets away, I tapped at another
parlour door on another ground floor.
Looking in, I found a man, his wife, and
four children, sitting at a washing stool
by way of table, at their dinner of bread
and infused tea-leaves. There was a very
scanty cinderous fire in the grate by
which they sat, and there was a tent bed-
stead in the room with a bed upon it and
a coverlet. The man did not rise when I
went in, nor during my stay, but civilly
inclined his head on my pulling off my hat,

Charles Dickens.;

NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES.

[December 19, 1868.] 63

and, in answer to my inquiry whether I
might ask him a question or two, said,
" Certainly." There being a window at
each end of this room, back and front, it
might have been ventilated ; but it was
shut up tight, to keep the cold out, and
was very sickening.

The wife, an intelligent quick woman,
rose and stood at her husband's elbow, and
he glanced up at her as if for help. It soon
appeared that he was rather deaf. He was
a slow simple fellow of about thirty.

" What was he by trade ?"

" Gentleman asks what are you by trade,
John ?"

" I am a boiler-maker ;" looking about
him with an exceedingly perplexed air, as
if for a boiler that had unaccountably
vanished.

" He ain't a mechanic you understand,
sir," the wife put in, " he's only a labourer."

" Are you in work ?"

He looked up at his wife again. " Gen-
tleman says are you in work, John ?"

" In work !" cried this forlorn boiler-
maker, staring aghast at his wife, and then
working his vision's way very slowly round
to me; " Lord, no !"

" Ah ! He ain't indeed !" said the poor
woman, shaking her head, as she looked at
the four children in succession, and then
at him.

" Work !" said the boiler-maker, still
seeking that evaporated boiler, first in
my countenance, then in the air, and then
in the features of his second son at his
knee : "I wish I was in work ! I haven't
had more than a day's work to do, this
three weeks."

" How have you lived ?"

A faint gleam of admiration lighted up
the face of the would-be boiler-maker, as
he stretched out the short sleeve of his
threadbare canvas jacket, and replied, point-
ing her out : "on the work of the wife."

I forget where boiler-making had gone
to, or where he supposed it had gone to ;
but he added some resigned information on
that head, coupled with an expression of
his belief that it was never coming back.

The cheery helpfulness of the wife was
very remarkable. She did slop-work;
made pea-jackets. She produced the pea-
jacket then in hand, and spread it out upon
the bed : the only piece of furniture in the
room on which to spread it. She showed
how much of it she made, and how much
was afterwards finished off by the machine.
According to her calculation at the mo-
ment, deducting what her trimming cost

her, she got for making a pea-jacket ten-
pence halfpenny, and she could make one
in something less than two days. But,
you see, it come to her through two hands,
and of course it didn't come through the
second hand for nothing. Why did it come
through the second hand at all ? Why, this
way. The second hand took the risk of
the given-out work, you see. If she had
money enough to pay the security deposit
call it two pound she could get the
work from the first hand, and so the second
would not have to be deducted for. But
having no money at all, the second hand
come in and took its profit, and so the
whole worked down to tenpence halfpenny.
Having explained all this with great intel-
ligence, even with some little pride, and
without a whine or murmur, she folded
her work again, sat down by her husband's
side at the washing stool, and resumed her
dinner of dry bread. Mean as the meal
was, on the bare board, with its old galli-
pots for cups, and what not other sordid
makeshifts ; shabby as the woman was in
dress, and toning down towards the Bos-
jesman colour, with want of nutriment and
washing ; there was positively a dignity in
her, as the family anchor just holding
the poor shipwrecked boiler-maker's bark.
When I left the room, the boiler-maker's
eyes were slowly turned towards her, as if
his last hope of ever again seeing that
vanished boiler lay in her direction.

These people had never applied for parish
relief but once ; and that was when the
husband met with a disabling accident at
his work.

Not many doors from here, I went into
a room on the first floor. The woman
apologised for its being in "an untidy
mess." The day was Saturday, and she
was boiling the children's clothes in a
saucepan on the hearth. There was no-
thing else into which she could have put
them. There was no crockery, or tinware,
or tub, or bucket. There was an old galli-
pot or two, and there was a broken bottle
or so, and there were some broken boxes
for seats. The last small scraping of coals
left, was raked together in a corner of the
floor. There were some rags in an open
cupboard, also on the floor. In a corner of
the room was a crazy old French bedstead,
with a man lying on his back upon it in a
ragged pilot jacket, and rough oilskin fan-
tail hat. The room was perfectly black.
It was difficult to believe, at first, that it
was not purposely coloured black : the
walls were so begrimed.

64 [December 19, 1868.;

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

As I stood opposite the woman boiling
the children's clothes she had not even a
piece of soap to wash them with and apo-
logising for her occnpation, I could take in
all these things without appearing to notice
them, and could even correct my inventory.
I had missed, at the first glance, some half
a pound of bread in the otherwise empty
safe, an old red ragged crinoline hanging
on the handle of the door by which I had
entered, and certain fragments of rusty iron
scattered on the floor, which looked like
broken tools and a piece of stove-pipe.
A child stood looking on. On the box
nearest to the fire sat two younger chil-
dren ; one, a delicate and pretty little
creature whom the other sometimes kissed.
This woman, like the last, was woe-
fully shabby, and was degenerating to the
Bosjesman complexion. But her figure,
and the ghost of a certain vivacity about
her, and the spectre of a dimple in her
cheek, carried my memory strangely back
to the old days of the Adelphi Theatre,
London, when Mrs. Eitzwilliam was the
friend of Victorine.

" May I ask you what your husband
is?"

" He's a coal-porter, sir." With a glance
and a sigh towards the bed.
" Is he out of work ?"
" Oh yes, sir, and work's at all times very
very scanty with him, and now he's laid
up."

" It's my legs," said the man upon the
bed, " I'll unroll 'em." And immediately
began.

" Have you any older children ?"
" I have a daughter that does the needle-
work, and I have a son that does what he
can. She's at her work now, and he's
trying for work."

" Do they live here ?"
" They sleep here. They can't afford to
pay more rent, and so they come here at
night. The rent is very hard upon us.
It's rose upon us too, now sixpence a
week on account of these new changes in
the law, about the rates. "We are a week
behind; the landlord's been shaking and
rattling at that door, frightful; he says
he'll turn us out. I don't know what's to
come of it."

The man upon the bed ruefully inter-
posed : " Here's my legs. The skin's
broke, besides the swelling. I have had a
many kicks, working, one way and an-
other."

He looked at his legs (which were
much discoloured and misshapen) for a

while, and then appearing to remember
that they were not popular with his fa-
mily, rolled them up again, as if they were
something in the nature of maps or plans
that were not wanted to be referred to,
lay hopelessly down on his back once more
with his fantail hat over his face, and
stirred not.

" Do your eldest son and daughter sleep
in that cupboard ?"

" Yes," replied the woman.
" With the children ?"
" Yes. We have to get together for
warmth. We have little to cover us."

"Have you nothing by you to eat but
the piece of bread I see there ?"

" Nothing. And we had the rest of the
loaf for our breakfast, with water. I don't
know what's to come of it."

" Have you no prospect of improvement ?"
" If my eldest son earns anything to-day,
he'll bring it home. Then we shall have
something to eat to-night, and may be able
to do something towards the rent. J not,
I don't know what's to come of it."
" This is a sad state of things."
" Yes, sir, it's a hard, hard life. Take
care of the stairs as you go sir they're
broken and good day, sir !"

These poople had a mortal dread of
entering the workhouse, and received no
out-of-door relief.

In another room in still another tene-
ment, I found a very decent woman with
five children the last, a baby, and she
herself a patient of the parish doctor- to
whom, her husband being in the Hospital,
the Union allowed for the support of her-
self and family, four shillings a week and
five loaves. I suppose when Thisman,
M.P., and Thatman, M.P., and the public
blessing Party, lay their heads together
in course of time, and come to an Equalisa-
tion of Rating, she may go down the Dance
of Death to the tune of sixpence more.

I could enter no other houses for that
one while, for I could not bear the contem-
plation of the children. Such heart as I
had summoned to sustain me against the
miseries of the adults, failed me when I
looked at the children. I saw how young
they were, how hungry, how serious and
still. I thought of them, sick and dying
in those lairs. I could think of them
dead, without anguish ; but to think of
them, so suffering and so dying, quite un-
manned me.

Down by the river's bank in Ratcliffe, I
was turning upward by a side street,
therefore, to regain the railway, when my

fis

ChaFles Dickens.'

NEW UNCOMMERCIAL SAMPLES. [December 19, 1868.] 65

eyes rested on the inscription across the
road, " East London Children's Hospital."
I could scarcely have seen an inscription
better suited to my frame of mind, and I
went across and went straight in.

I found the Children's Hospital esta-
blished in an old sail-loft or storehouse, of
the roughest nature, and on the simplest
means. There were trap- doors in the floors
where goods had been hoisted up and
down ; heavy feet and heavy weights had
started every knot in the well-trodden
planking; inconvenient bulks and beams
and awkward staircases perplexed my pas-
sage through the wards. But I found it
airy, sweet, and clean. In its seven-and-
thirty beds I saw but little beauty, for
starvation in the second or third gene-
ration takes a pinched look ; but I saw
the sufferings both of infancy and child-
hood tenderly assuaged, I heard the little
patients answering to pet playful names,
the light touch of a delicate lady laid
bare the wasted sticks of arms for me
to pity ; and the claw- like little hands, as
she did so, twined themselves lovingly
around her wedding-ring.

One baby mite there was, as pretty as any
of Raphael's angels. The tiny head was
bandaged, for water on the brain, and it
was suffering with acute bronchitis too,
and made from time to time a plaintive,
though not impatient or complaining little
sound. The smooth curve of the cheeks
and of the chin was faultless in its con-
densation of infantine beauty, and the large
bright eyes were most lovely. It happened,
as I stopped at the foot of the bed, that
these eyes rested upon mine, with that
wistful expression of wondering thought-
fulness which we all know sometimes in
very little children. They remained fixed
on mine, and never turned from me while
I stood there. When the utterance of that
plaintive sound shook the little form, the
gaze still remained unchanged. I felt as
though the child implored me to tell the
story of the little hospital in which it was
sheltered, to any gentle heart I could ad-
dress. Laying my world- worn hand upon
the little unmarked clasped hand at the
chin, I gave it a silent promise that I
would do so.

A gentleman and lady, a young husband
and wife, have bought and fitted up this
building for its present noble use, and have
quietly settled themselves in it as its me-
dical officers and directors. Both have had
considerable practical experience of me-
dicine and surgery ; he, as house-surgeon I

of a great London Hospital ; she, as a very
earnest student, tested by severe examina-
tion, and also as a nurse of the sick poor,
during the prevalence of cholera. With
every qualification to lure them away, with
youth and accomplishments and tastes and
habits that can have no response in any
breast near them, close begirt by every re-
pulsive circumstance inseparable from such
a neighbourhood, there they dwell. They
five in the Hospital itself, and their
rooms are on its first floor. Sitting at
their dinner table they could hear the cry
of one of the children in pain. The lady's
piano, drawing materials, books, and other
such evidences of refinement, are as much
a part of the rough place as the iron bed-
steads of the little patients. They are put
to shifts for room, like passengers on board
ship. The dispenser of medicines (attracted
to them, not by self-interest, but by their
own magnetism and that of their cause)
sleeps in a recess in the dining-room, and
has his washing apparatus in the side-
board.

Their contented manner of making the
best of the things around them, I found so
pleasantly inseparable from their useful-
ness ! Their pride in this partition that we
put up ourselves, or in that partition that
we took down, or in that other partition
that we moved, or in the stove that was
given us for the waiting-room, or in our
nightly conversion of the little consulting-
room into a smoking-room. Their admira-
tion of the situation, if we could only get
rid of its one objectionable incident, the
coal- yard at the back ! " Our hospital
carriage, presented by a friend, and very
useful." That was my presentation to a
perambulator, for which a coach-house had
been discovered in a corner down-stairs,
just large enough to hold it. Coloured
prints in all stages of preparation for being
added to those already decorating the wards,
were plentiful ; a charming wooden pheno-
menon of a bird, with an impossible top-
knot, who ducked his head when you set a
counter weight going, had been inaugurated
as a public statue that very morning ; and
trotting about among the beds, on familiar
terms with all the patients, was a comical
mongrel dog, called Poodles. This comical
dog (quite a tonic in himself) was found
characteristically starving at the door of
the Institution, and was taken in and fed,
and has lived here ever since. An admirer
of his mental endowments has presented
him with a collar bearing the legend,
" Judge not Poodles by external appear-

66 [December 19, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR BOUND.

[Conducted by

ances." He was merrily wagging his tail
on a boy's pillow when he made this modest
appeal to me.

When this Hospital was first opened in
January of the present year, the people
could not possibly conceive but that some-
body paid for the services rendered there ;
and were disposed to claim them as a
right, and to find fault if out of temper.
They soon came to understand the case
better, and have much increased in grati-
tude. The mothers of the patients avail
themselves very freely of the visiting rules ;
the fathers, often on Sundays. There is
an unreasonable (but still, I think, touch-
ing and intelligible), tendency in the
parents to take a child away to its
wretched home, if on the point of death.
One boy who had been thus carried off on
a rainy night, when in a violent state of
inflammation, and who had been afterwards
brought back, had been recovered with
exceeding difficulty; but he was a jolly
boy, with a specially strong interest in his
dinner, when I saw him.

Insufficient food and unwholesome living
are the main causes of disease among these
small patients. So, nourishment, cleanli-
ness, and ventilation, are the main reme-
dies. Discharged patients are looked after,
and invited to come and dine now and
then; so are certain famishing creatures
who never were patients. Both the lady
and the gentleman are well acquainted, not
only with the histories of the patients and
their families, but with the characters and
circumstances of great numbers of their
neighbours : of these they keep a register.
It is their common experience that people
sinking down by inches into deeper and
deeper poverty, will conceal it, even from
them, if possible, unto the very last ex-
tremity.

The nurses of this Hospital are all young ;
ranging, say, from nineteen to four-and-
twenty. They have, even within these
narrow limits, what many well -endowed
Hospitals would not give them : a comfort-
able room of their own in which to take their
meals. It is a beautiful truth that in-
terest in the children and sympathy with
their sorrows, bind these young women to
their places far more strongly than any
other consideration could. The best skilled
of the nurses came originally from a kin-
dred neighbourhood, almost as poor, and
she knew how much the work was needed.
She is a fair dressmaker. The Hospital
cannot pay her as many pounds in the year
as there are months in it, and one day the

lady regarded it as a duty to speak to her
about her improving her prospects and fol-
lowing her trade. No, she said ; she could
never be so useful, or so happy, elsewhere,
any more ; she must stay among the
children. And she stays. One of the
nurses, as I passed her, was washing a
baby-boy. Liking her pleasant face, I
stopped to speak to her charge : a common,
bullet - headed, frowning charge enough,
laying hold of his own nose with a slippery
grasp, and staring very solemnly out of a
blanket. The melting of the pleasant face
into delighted smiles as this young gentle-
man gave an unexpected kick and laughed
at me, was almost worth my previous pain.

An affecting play was acted in Paris
years ago, called The Children's Doctor.
As I parted from my Children's Doctor
now in question, I saw in his easy black
necktie, in his loose buttoned black frock
coat, in his pensive face, in the flow of
his dark hair, in his eyelashes, in the
very turn of his moustache, the exact reali-
sation of the Paris artist's ideal as it was
presented on the stage. But no romancer
that I know of, has had the boldness to
prefigure the life and home of this young
husband and young wife, in the Children's
Hospital in the East of London.

I came away from Ratcliffe by the Step-
ney railway station to the Terminus at
Fenchurch- street. Any one who will re-
verse that route, may retrace my steps.

THE MADRAS BOY.

The Madras boy is not a boy. The word is
a corruption of the Telugu word " boyi," a
palanquin bearer. There is nothing which
sounds stranger to a new-comer in Madras than
the constant cries of Boy ! He makes a call,
and immediately on his entering the room
the lady of the house cries, Boy ! This
startles him. But he is reassured by hearing
"Yes, mam," answered, and seeing a native
(probably of advanced years) appear and receive
orders to have the punkah pulled. The master
of the house comes in, greets his visitor, says
he must stop to tiffin, and immediately roars,
Boy! Again the domestic appears, and is
ordered to have the horse taken out of the
gharie ; and so on at short intervals the silvery
call or the trumpet roar of, Boy ! resounds
through the house. Ladies are generally some
time before they can bring themselves to be
constantly calhng Boy! but in a bachelor's
house the cry seems to be ever in the air. " Boy,
cheroot!" "Boy, fire!" " Boy, soda !" And
ever and anon, when the Boy is dozing, or far
off, one hears the cry " crescendo," until it is
evident that the caller must be red in the face

; P

Charles Dickens]

FATAL ZERO.

[December 19, 1S6S.] 67

with anger and exertion. For, nothing ruffles
a Madrasee more, than to shout Boy in vain.

Ramasami may be taken as the generic
name of the Madras Boy ; just as Jeames is
that of the London footman. There are
Pronasamis, Chimasamis, Appasamis, Autonis,
Lazaruses, Gabriels, and a host of other
names, but these are seldom used or even
known by masters and mistresses. It is as a
bachelor's factotmn that Ramasami is seen
to the best advantage. If his master's salary
be small, Ramasami will manage his house,
wait at table, black his boots, take care of his
clothes, sew on his buttons in short do the
work of half a dozen servants and will smoke
only a few of master's cheroots, and will cheat
him only a little. As his master's salary in-
creases Ramasami takes care that more servants
shall be engaged, and that the expenses shall
increase ; he smokes more of his master's che-
roots, and cheats him a little more. But he is
generally so willing, so handy, and after all
cheats so discreetly, that a Madras Boy is ge-
nerally acknowledged to be the best bachelor's
servant in India. In a family where his accounts
are carefully examined by the mistress daily,
where there are plenty of servants under him,
when he is not kept up to the mark as regards
fire and cool soda, when he is not liable to be
called on unexpectedly in the dead of night to
prepare hot grilled bones and cool beer, then
he generally degenerates into a fat, lazy, com-
monplace butler.

In many ways all Boys are strangely alike,
as if they were all members of one family, or
had all been brought up together. This is par-
ticularly noticeable in their English, which is of
the " pigeon" kind, but much better than that
of the Chinese. The use of the present parti-
ciple and the word only is a marked peculiarity.
u What master saying that only I doing" con-
veys to you Ramasami's intention of acting
according to your order. The word " done" is
also invariably used as an auxiliary to express
the completion of an act. " Boy, have you done
that?" "Done do, sir." The simple perfect,
when used by Ramasami, can never be trusted
as having its proper grammatical force. Ask
the Boy whether the brandy is gone, and if he
says " Yes, sir, gone," should you find ten
minutes afterwards that it is not gone, you must
not look upon this as a great departure from
truth. But if you ask him, "Has the brandy
done go?" and he says "Yes, sir, done go,"
then, if it have not really gone, you are justified
in calling him what David in his haste called
all men. Some Boys have adopted, as pets of
their own, particular English words ; one of the
first Boys the writer had in the country, had
so adopted the word " about." He had origin-
ally been a cook-boy in a regiment, and having
learnt slang and the use of his fists, he con-
stantly aired both accomplishments when he
had differences of opinion with the other ser-
vants or bazaar-men. One day he was brought
to his master, guarded by two police peons
with guns, and a third with a drawn sword,
who declared that the Boy had nearly killed a

man. The Boy was asked what he had to say
for himself ? His reply was to the effect that
he had quarrelled with the man, but had only
slanged him, and that somebody else had done
the beating : which he expressed thus : " I only
jaw about ; 'n other man lick about." But the
schoolmaster is abroad in India, as elsewhere,
and it seems likely that before long the Boy
will speak English as correctly as the ordinary
run of servants at home. It cannot be long
before bells will be introduced into the houses
of Europeans in India, and they will sound the
death -knell of the cry, " Boy !"

FATAL ZERO.

A DIARY KEPT AT II0MBURG : A SHORT SERIAL STORY.
CHAPTER V.

Monday. I am not sorry I adopted
that resolution of forswearing the Kursaal,
its reading-rooms, &c, though I did see
Mr. Lewis, the clergyman of the English
chapel, going in and sitting down, and
reading his Galignani. Can he know what
he is doing ? He is on the spot, a resident,
and it is, as it were, in his parish ; at all
events it is his concern. I even saw him
enter from the colonnade, go up the steps
into the great tavern entrance and pass
through. He was looking for some one.
Still, if I were to refine on the matter, this
garden where I am now, is theirs, kept by
their gardeners. This very seat on which
I sit, was paid for by them. What do you
say, Dora ? Send me some little bit of
casuistry to help me over the matter ....

What scenes I do see, even so far off as
I am now; hints, as it were, of a whole
history. Thus have I come in late to a
theatre, and, standing in the box lobby,
have peeped in through the little glass
window in the door. That glimpse has
a strange mystery, from the fact of all
having been worked up to a point. The
situation seems changed, while we who
look are in quite another region a long
way behind, as it were. I have noticed a
fair-haired youth with a gold " pinch-nose,"
and who is certainly not more than twenty,
and on his arm is a charming little French
girl of seventeen, round and rosy, and
dressed in the most piquant way imagin-
able. I soon found out that they are just
married, not further back than a month.
They were supremely happy, like children
running from one thing to another, and
enjoying everything with a charming hap-
piness and animation. He wore a straw-
coloured silk coat and white hat. She, a
most coquettish little hat and a pink and
white short dress. On the first day I had

68 [December 19, 18G8.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

noticed them standing at the month of
what I call the "yawning cave," hesitating
gently, she looking in with the strangest
air of curiosity, half in amazement, half
in awe. Then I see them go in, and some-
how that seems, hy a sort of instinct, to be
for me the beginning of something that
would end tragically. The look of supreme
happiness seemed, I suppose, to imply a
contrast and supplement of disaster. In
half an hour I saw them come back, she
triumphant, fluttering he with a com-
placent and boyish smile, looking at some-
thing bright in his hand. She skipped
and danced and clapped her hands. I sup-
posed they had won. They were children,
and I had a surprising interest in them I
know not why .... I dined to-day at the
Four Seasons Hotel, which at these places,
is always said to be a most gay and festive
looking hotel, with orange trees in front,
and a kind of scene-painting air. So an
old gentleman, who had been all round the
watering places, told me. He could not ac-
count for it, he said, but "there it was."
I accounted for it to him by the invincible
power of names. Give a girl, I said, a pretty
and romantic name, like Geraldine, or
Dorcas, or Violet, and she will be sure in
some degree to fall into the hey of that pretty
music. He did not seem to see it, but
grunted and moved away from me. An-
other man said, "he supposed it paid,"
which did not touch the matter. Their
table d'hotes are certainly the most festive
way of eating a dinner. There is such
variety in the faces, such pretty, intel-
lectual, stupid, heavy faces faces, indeed,
that seem to have been turned all day long
towards that dinner, and wistfully expect-
ing it. A long narrow room, yet so bright
and airy, and looking on the street ; I can
fancy nothing so cheerful. Every one is in
good humour ; and even the waiters have
a festive air, principally, I believe, from
their being boys and boyish, as is the
custom here, and not the mouldy, ancient,
clumsy - legged, clumsy - fingered veterans
who do duty with us. And what a good
dinner what a choice of wine, instead of
our limited sherry, and claret, and " Bass."
The little flasks dot the table down. The
affenthaler ordinary, but good ; the yellow
hocks, infinite in variety ; the better Ass-
manhauser, and the hockheimer sparkling,
all at such moderate prices. I see complete
families pour in, and take up position in line,
father, stout mother, pleasant daughters,
and the conceited son. Then the dinner
sets in like a torrent; all those pleasan
German dishes. Those vegetables which we

know not of in England, and best of all,
those delicious fowls, wherewith arrives
the late but welcome salad. It does seem
to me that it arrives at the precise and
fitting moment, with a pleasant sense of ex-
pectancy going before it, he and his friend,
the fowl. My dear Dora will hardly think
that this can be her old invalid that is
speaking.

On this day I find myself seated next to
the little husband and wife of the morning,
who come in full of delight and satisfaction
and smiling, they know not why. I con-
fess I am glad to be near so much inno-
cence, and also on account of a little
scheme I have in view. With such a pair,
it is not difficult to begin a conversation.
They were glad of the sympathy. My dear
Dora knows that my stock of French is tole-
rably respectable, and that I can put it to
fair use. They spoke together, and told
me everything about themselves. They
were not rich, but had enough. They were
enjoying themselves so. It was the most
delicious place in the world. " It was
Heaven itself," she said ; " and do you
know," she added, "all the money we
made that is, he made to-day, and so
easily eight napoleons ; and out of it he
bought me this sweet little brooch." And
she showed on her breast what was cer-
tainly a very charming little ornament.
This naivete and her agreeable prattle
began to interest me a great deal ; but I
could see there was in him a certain boyish
self-sufficiency a latent idea that this
gaming success was chiefly owing to his own
cleverness. He talked very wisely about
the principles. I quietly ventured to hint
that luck might change, as it did so often
and so fatally. But he only laughed. Just
as dinner was nearly over, a friend sent in
to him ; he went out, and I was left with
the charming little wife. Something in-
spired me to seize the opportunity and
give a little warning to this interesting
young creature.

" Your husband," I said, " seems quite
excited about his success ; but may I give
you a piece of advice? This beginning
ends always in the same way. You know
not how fatal is this spell, once it gets any
influence. This rage for play, if it takes
possession of any one, destroys all else love,
happiness, everything else. I know it, and
every one here knows it." This way of
putting it was a little artful, and I saw it
had great effect. The pretty face looked a
little scared. I went on. " I speak sin-
cerely and in your interest, though I am a
mere stranger; and I do advise you and

Charles Dickens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[December 19, 1SC8J

warn you to take care and not encourage
jour husband in this pursuit. There is no
harm done as yet, and be content with
your little spoils." This may seem a little
too indulgent, too complacent, to the evil
practice, against which I have sworn war
to the knife, to the death, and from which,
with the blessing of Heaven, I shall rescue
many. But such a foe it is pardonable to
meet with craft like his own.

He had come back, but I saw she had
grown thoughtful. It was something to
do a little bit of good, even in this cheap
way. I see them at night, hovering about
the yawning entrance to the cave, she, with
a little hesitation, whispering him earnestly,
and looking in with trepidation. They do
not see me. They walk away, but, alas,
come back, and enter.

CHAPTER VI.

Tuesday. But I must leave these minor
things quite out of sight, to come to the
strangest thing that has happened, the
most mysterious and inconceivable. Who
could have dreamt of it ? And yet I am
not sorry. Dora, dear, prepared for some-
thing dramatic ! Let me begin calmly. Last
night, after the young pair had gone in, I
was sitting under the long glass colonnade
of the terrace, looking down on the crowd in
those gardens, lit up by the twinkling lamps,
and which have such a charm for me. Along
that colonnade are about a hundred little
tables, all crowded with eager and lively
people, sipping drinks, taking iced beer,
champagne, happy winners, and more
dismal losers. The waiters are flying up
and down, hurrying to and fro, shouting
orders ; while below, among the green
trees and flowers, are the crowds seated,
and on the right the illuminated kiosque,
with the delicious Prussian band pouring
out their strains. ' ' Ravishing" is but a poor
word for these accomplished musicians, who
belong to the Thirty-fourth Regiment, and
are led by the skilful "' chapel - master,"
Parlow. Their vast strength and breath
of sound, their rich instruments, with
every instrument made the most of, their
exquisite taste, volume, clearness, dis-
tinctness, and mastery of the most diffi-
cult passages, makes their performance
almost entrancing. Hear them play three
overtures William Tell, Tiinnhauser, and
Oberon and the musician will be amazed
as well as enraptured, the marvellous violin
passages of the last being performed like
so much child's play -just as an accom-
plished pianoforte player runs up and
down the keys. Hear them, too, in some

fantasia on airs from L'Africaine or Faust,
and revel in the taste and feeling of the
solo, and the dramatic bursts and crashes,
and the "hurrying" and lingering of the
time, as though they were an opera
orchestra. When we think of our crea-
tures those groups of hodmen and me-
chanics who form what is by courtesy
termed " a military band," those mere
grinders and sawyers of music, who play
as though they would dig or hammer
when we think, I say, of our " crack" regi-
ments, our Guards, formed out of the very
pink of professionals, and see how mediocre
is the result, one must feel a little humilia-
tion and some envy, and should be glad to
come this distance to hear those Prussians.
I can hear them, too, with a safe con-
science, for they do not belong to the
administration.

But I am putting off this wonderful
surprise. I am sitting there, listening,
close, also, to the mouth of the cave, which
has still for me that sense of mystery, when
I hear some angry voices, and two men are
coming down the steps in excitement.
One is tall, and in a white Panama hat,
and very excited. I hear him say, " It is
always the way when I listen to your
infernal talk. I'd have had a hundred
in my hand now but for you. I'd like to
pitch you down these steps, on your face !
Go leave me alone !"

The voice seemed familiar to me, so cold
and grating, with all its excitement, that I
seemed to recal it perfectly. Unconsciously
I started up to be quite certain, and, on
the noise, he turned and looked at me.
He knew me; I knew him. His face
turned livid, and a spasm of fury passed
over it.

"Grainger!"

" Austen !"

He advanced towards me, and for a
moment I thought he meant some violence.
But he suddenly checked himself, and then
walked away, down the terrace. Then, as
suddenly turned back and came up to me.

After a pause, " So," he went on, "you
are here. Did you know that I was here ?"

" No, Grainger," I answered ; "I did
not."

" What, no new scheme on hand ? No,
I should say not ; for you had better wait,
my friend, until you know whether the
old account has been closed."

" The only scheme I have," I answered,
"is to get back some health, which is
nearly gone from me."

" Ay. But do you know all that has
gone from me all that you tooh from me ?

70 [December 19, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conductr d by

Eh ? stole from me ! What do you say ?
Answer !"

Again there was something so threaten-
ing in his manner, that I half moved back,
as if to defend myself.

"Oh, don't be afraid," he said; "we
dare not do these things in this place. Here
kellner, come here, will yon ! Bring some
red wine here, strong and good, and don't
be an hour, with your ' Via, monsieur,'
and all that humbug. Come, sit down, Mr.
Austen ; you may as well ; I am not going
to be violent, so you needn't be afraid. I
want to let you know something which you
ought to know."

" Grainger," I said, " when all that took
place, you had your opportunity. I met
you fairly and "

" Met me fairly /" he repeated, his eyes
dropping on me with a flash, " can you
say that ?" Then he laughed. " My good
friend that is all so long ago. An old story
like that must not be exhumed. Let it
rot away in the ground. Dead leaves, my
boy. If you don't rake 'em up, I promise
you I shan't. There. Come ! let us have
something, as earnest. You shall pay for
me, who was the loser, and I think the
injured man."

Something in this phrase struck me, and
I felt there was some truth in what he
said. He was the defeated party ; I was
the victor, and ought to be generous.
"What shall it be," I said, "cham-
pagne ?" " Do you take me for an Ame-
rican ?" he said, with a laugh. "No,
sir ; cognac. Now let us talk. I have
forgiven and forgotten all that though
it ruined me. She had a sort of infatua-
tion over me, that girl I mean, Mrs.
Austen. If she had come here I would
have followed her. I'd have played my
body and soul, that is if I had seen a
chance. You had it all your own way.
How does she look does she hate me?
Come ! And yet a good deal is on her
gentle head. This is my life now, poor
me; a 'hell,' to many others. You saw
what I was then, a gentleman, at least well
off, respected own that ! Well, I had to
leave the army ; I did something I ought
not to have done, from sheer desperation.
Yes, I did, and sank lower and lower, and
all this was your joint work ; but I don't
want to blame you. By Jove, it is I who
am raking up the dead leaves after all!
Ah ! here's the cognac."

I felt a pity for him. There was truth
in what he said. Since you, Dora, had been
saved from him, all these troubles had
come upon him. He had grown desperate ;

he was at least privileged to speak as he
pleased, and have that slight consolation.
I saw, too, that he was altered. At that
time he was considered by the women a
good-looking man, his face having a little
of that rude gauntness which is not un-
pleasing. He had large eyes, and a black
irregular beard and moustache. Now he
had grown careless in his dress. I knew
how much that portended, and felt a deep
pity for him.

" Grainger," I said, " it was hard for
you, for I know you loved her. But I
declare solemnly here, that my loving her
had nothing to do with it, and you know
yourself, Grainger, the marriage with you
could not have been for her happiness after
that business "

His brow contracted. " I know what
you mean," he said. " That was false, false
in everything. Ealse, as I sit here, and
hope to be well I have not much hope of
that,"

"They said it was true," I said; "but
even to have such a rumour, and a fair
innocent young girl, admit yourself, Grain-
ger, it could not be."

He answered in a low voice, " It was
all false, a He, an invention. There was
the sting. Of course, I could not prove it ;
but suppose it untrue, what punishment
would you say was enough for those who
did me so horrid an injury would a whole
life be too long to devote to punishing the
doer of such an injury?"

" I suppose you mean me ?" I said.

" I did mean you then," he said. " I
suppose, if there had been opportunity, of
course I could have killed you. But that
is all over, all past and gone. Nothing
could make Roly Poly as he was before.
The egg-shell is broken, and the yolk run
out. So tell me about yourself, and about
her. What brings you here ?"

There was something so frank, so gene-
rous, so valorous in this way of taking the
thing, that with an involuntary motion I
put out my hand and grasped his. Shall I
say, too, I felt a sudden twinge of con-
science; and had all along a dim fore-
boding that the story might not have been
true, or at least, have got its colouring of
truth, from what might have been in-
terested motives on my side ? I was too
much concerned, perhaps, to be impartial,
and if he was innocent, then some share in
this work might be laid to my account.
What was plainly my duty was to try and
compensate in some way, at least by kind-
ness for I had not much else at my com-
mand for so cruel a wrong as this. I com-

Charles Diekens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[December 19, 1SC8.] 71

plied heartily with his wish ; told him all
that brought me here, and the business I
was about. He listened attentively. Then
we wandered back, step by step, slowly and
agreeably too, till we got to the old, old
days, where we called up all those scenes,
Dora, the military balls, the pleasant
nights, and pleasant days ; what seemed like
pictures or scenes out of a beautiful play
seen in childhood misty, indistinct, but
delightful to think over. He spoke charm-
ingly, regretfully, and even tenderly.

" Those were happy and innocent days,"
he said. " Scarcely happy after all for me,
though there is a sort of happiness in such
suffering. Yet compared with all I have

gone through since ! Still in this life,"

he added, nodding at the cave behind us,
" there is an excitement, too it helps one
to forget."

" But think, how will it end ?" I said, with
some excitement. " It cannot have the
slow progress of what you call a life. It
must hurry on suddenly to destruction.
Oh, Grainger, stop, I implore of you, be-
fore it be too late !"

" But if it be too late," he said, " and
was too late years ago ? But I don't know
if I saw any road. it is all a jungle, or my
eyes have got dim. Still, since you have
talked to me, and brought before me those
days, I don't feel quite so bad. We will
speak of those things again her name to
me may have some power, at least, and if
you will not think it a trouble or a bore

while you are here "

I wrung his hand warmly. " I would
take it as a favour," I said ; "oh, let me
help you in some way, and if I have in-
jured you, let me at least try and keep you
from this life, which nrast end in misery
and ruin."

" "Well, we shall see," he said.
Two people came out of the cave a
little hurriedly. It was the youthful hus-
band walking first, by himself, his hands in
his pockets, his face flushed. She was trip-
ping behind him, with the most dismal de-
picted expression on her face. In a moment
that small hand, it had a tiny black mitten
on, was on his arm. It seemed to receive
an impatient welcome there, and dropped
again.

Grainger followed my eyes, "Ah!" he
said, " the old story !"

Hers met mine, and they seemed to say,
" Oh, how right you were ;" I knew I was
an instinct told me I should be so. After
all, bred in a country town, as I was, my
dear Dora, I have learnt to judge a little
of human nature. It comes by a sort of

instinct. I wish I had been wrong in this
mistake ; but the same instinct whispers to
me that this is but the end of the first act.
Poor little pair !

" That was the way it was with me at
first," said Grainger ; " I know that story
pretty well. I have seen it here over and
over again. Will you come in with me
and see me try my hand a new face brings
new luck. And yet to-night it seems to
jar upon me you have brought me back
into the old days. But still what can I
do. As well tell a man who has sold him-
self to brandy, not to drink. Besides,
what would be the use ? I may as well
finish, as I have begun. I have nothing to
look to now."

" I cannot tell you how this pains me,
Grainger," I said, really distressed. " 0,
if my words could but have some little
effect ! Do as you say the holy influence
of the past is upon you just for this night
abstain. Even for Dora's sake, whom you
once so loved, and who would rejoice to
know that her name even had that little
power left. If you knew its effect on me/"

A very curious look came into his face.
He turned it off with a laugh. " Well, a
night doesn't make much difference. I'm
a fool, I know. There, we'll walk about
instead."

I felt almost a thrill of pleasure at this
unexpected success. My pet's name is,
indeed, an amulet to conjure with. After
so many years, and at so many hundred
miles distance, to have such a power ! And
I think I may fairly claim a small share of
the credit. Earnestness and sincerity go
some way : perhaps, too, that little magna-
nimity. There was some little tact in
my reception of him ; others might have
grown confused or angry. Here am I
praising myself; but I am in such good
spirits. Put up your gentle prayer for
him, Dora.

Wednesday. I found Grainger last night
really entertaining and amusing. Hitherto
a good many of the people here have been
like the figures in front of the old grinding
organs, revolving, and glittering, and ec-
centric to look at, but still without names
or characters. Grainger knows them all,
names, dates, and addresses. There was
the great banker, there was the great spe-
culator, the man who could change paper
into gold by a touch, by a word even, and
who was now wandering about here, as
poor as I or my companion. Did I see
that ascetical-looking-man ? that was the
Bishop of Gravesend; or that woman in
orange and black, the famous Phryne

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[December 19, 1SC8.]

Coralie, English by birth, but who had
risen to the highest rank in whatever " car-
riere " she followed. There was the great
singer, who had shrieked and declaimed
the tragedy queens of opera, who had de-
nounced the craven Pollio many thousand
nights in her life, who had bearded wicked
Counts de Luna as many times more, who
had sang in the garden turning over the
stage jewels with grinning Mephistopheles
and enraptured Faust ; and here she was
taking an ice. Here on the terrace is the
smaller lady, who sits on a lower throne,
but has far more subjects and adorers. Here
is that Baker, known to every one who
comes to these places, who dogs lords and
ladies, and makes them stand while he
pours in Ms little adulatory small shot ;
and here is quite a happy hunting ground
for those ladies of good connexion and title
even, whose wings have been a little burnt
as they fluttered through town drawing-
rooms, but who find them quite sufficient
to support them here, the atmosphere is so

He is infinitely amusing is Grainger, his
stories and his scandal, which I can quite
conceive to be perfectly true. I can see he
has got into spirits as he tells these things ;
and though it is rather light and unpro-
fitable food for the mind, it takes off his
mind from things more dangerous. What
we said last night has left a deep im-
pression : and to think of one so clever, so
observant, so brilliant even, to have been
shipwrecked in this way, indirectly through
our doing ! I must ask my dear pet to
write me out something kind and sympa-
thetic, which I can show to this poor waif
and comfort him. That little heart has
done the mischief, and she must make up
a little, and I lay a husband's despotic
commands on her. For I have set my
heart on bringing this man back into the
path of decency and order, and feel a con-
viction I shall succeed, if I could get but
some power and influence over him. I say
again, my pet must pray.

Sunday. How strange is a Sunday in
this place ! There is an English church, a
chaplain, and a regular round of duty ;
but I think there would be less affectation
in ignoring altogether such religious ma-
chinery. It is at variance with the place,
quite an anachronism. For even in the
relations of, religion to the state I mean

to the " administration" there used to enter
something grotesque and curious. When
the use of the Lutheran church was gra-
ciously conceded to English worshippers
it was an article strictly insisted on, " that
there should be no preaching against going
to the Bank" pleasant euphuism for
gambling. This was a serious warning.
Later on, as the church and chaplain had
to be kept up by voluntary contributions
and " a book," which was sent round to
the visitors, the company found that this
was telling a little indirectly on their in-
terests. Testy fathers grew impatient at
these applications : " infernal begging
place," "have to pay my own man at
home" complaints which were, of course,
nothing to the Bank. But when it was
added, " I shall take care not to come back
here again," it took another shape. Like
the "refait" at their own game, it told,
on the whole, against the player. So it
was conveyed to the chaplain that in their
zeal for the advancement of religion the
administration would be happy to pay him
his salary, and a handsome one too ; the
collecting by a book was scarcely dignified,
&c. This tempting offer had to be de-
clined, possibly with reluctance ; but was a
little too strong. The wages of preaching
to be furnished by the wages of sin ! By-
and-by, too, it might have been required
that a word or two should be delicately in-
sinuated in favour of the harmlessness of
the game.

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MESSRS. CHAPPELL and Co. have the honour
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Wednesday, December 16, and Thursday, December
17, Glasgow ; Saturday Morning, December 19, Edin-
burgh; Tuesday, December 22, St. James's Hall,
London.

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Published at the Office, No. 26, Wellington Street Strand. Printed by C Whitihg, Beaufort House, Strand.

HE-STO^-OJE-' OUR.: HVES-JHoM-TEa^TO *aI\J.

COHDUCTD-BY

With which is J^cob^po^ted
" SlOlfsEMOLD'VoHpS*

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 26,

WRECKED IN PORT.

A Skkial Story by the Althoe op "Black Sheep.'

CHAPTER VI. BREAD SEEKING.

There are few streets in London better
known to that large army of martyrs, the
genteelly-poor, than those which rnn north-
ward from the Strand, and are lost in the
two vast tracts of brick known nnder the
names of Covent- garden and Drury-lane.
Lodging-house keepers do not affect these
streets, preferring the narrow no-thorough-
fares on the other side of the Strand, abut-
ting on the river ; streets eternally ringing
with the hoarse voice of the costermonger,
who descends on one side and ascends on
the other ; eternally echoing to the grinding
of the organ-man, who gets through his
entire repertoire twice over during his pro-
gress to the railing overlooking the mud-
bank, and his return to the pickle- shop at
the top ; eternally haunted by the beer- boy
and the newspaper-boy, by postmen in-
furiated with wrongly addressed letters,
and by luggage - laden cabs. In the
streets bearing northward no costermonger
screams and no organ is found ; the denizens
are business-people, and would very soon put
a stop to any such attempt. Business, and
nothing but business, in that drab- coloured
house with the high wire blinds in the
window, over which you can just catch a
glimpse of the top of a hanging white robe.
Cope and Son are the owners of the drab-
coloured house, and Cope and Son are the
largest retailers of clerical millinery in
London. All day long members of " the
cloth," sleek, pale, emaciated, high church
curates ; stout, fresh- coloured, huge- whis-
kered, broad church rectors; fat, pasty-faced,
straight-haired evangelical ministers, are

pouring into Cope and Son's for clothes,
for hoods, for surplices, for stoles, for every
variety of ecclesiastical garment. Cope and
Son supply all, in every variety, for every sect ;
the M.B. waistcoat and stiff-collared coat
reaching to his heels in which the Honour-
able and Reverend Cyril Genuflex looks so
imposing, as he, before the assembled
vestry, defies the scrutiny of his evange-
lical churchwarden; the pepper-and-salt
cutaway in which the Reverend Pytchley
Quorn follows the hounds ; the black stuff
gown in which the Reverend Locock Con-
greve perspires and groans as he deals out
denunciations of those sitting under him ;
and the purple bedgown, turned up with
yellow satin, and worked all over with
crosses and vagaries, in which poor Tom
Phoole, such a kind-hearted and such a
soft-headed vessel, goes through his ritual-
istic tricks all these come from the esta-
blishment of Cope and Son's, in Rutland-
street, Strand. The next house on the
right is handy for the high church clergy-
men, though the evangelicals shut their
eyes and turn away their heads as they pass
by it. Here Herr Tubelkahn, from Elberfeld,
the cunning worker in metals, the artificer
of brass and steel and iron, and sometimes
of gold and silver, the great ecclesiastical
upholsterer, has set up his lares and penates,
and here he deals in the loveliest of mediae-
valisms and the choicest of renaissance
wares. The sleek long-coated gentry who
come to make purchases can scarcely thread
their way through the heterogeneous con-
tents of Herr Tubelkahn's shop. All massed
together without order ; black oaken chairs,
bought up by Tubelkahn's agents from oc-
cupants of tumbledown old cottages in
midland districts ; crosiers and crucifixes,
ornate and plain, from Elberfeld ; sceptres
and wands from Solingen, lecterns in the

eS=

74 [December 26, 186S.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

shape of enormous brazen eagles with out-
stretched wings from Birmingham, enor-
mous candelabra and gaseliers of Gothic
pattern from Liege, and sculptured pulpits
and carved altar-rails from the Curtain-
road, Shoreditch. Altar-cloths hang from
the tables, and altar carpets, none of your
common loom- woven stuff, but hand- worked
and as Herr Tubelkahn gives you to
understand by the fairest fingers are
spread about to - show their patterns to the
best advantage; while there is so much
stained glass about ready for immediate
transfer to the oriel windows of country
churches, that when the sun shines, Herr
Tubelkahn's customers seem to be sud-
denly invested with Joseph's garment of
many colours, and the whole shop lights up
like a kaleidoscope.

Many of the customers both of Messrs.
Cope and Tubelkahn were customers, or,
more euphuistically, clients, of Messrs.
Camoxon, who kept the celebrated Clerical
and Educational Registry higher up the
street ; but these customers and clients
invariably crossed and recrossed the road,
in proceeding from the one to the other of
these establishments, in order to avoid a cer-
tain door which lay midway between them.
A shabby swing door sun-blistered, and with
its bottom panel scored with heel and toe
kicks from impatient entrance- seeking feet;
a door flanked by two flaming bills, and
surrounded by a host of close- shaven,
sallow-faced men, in shabby clothes and
shiny hats, and red noses, and swinging
canes, noble Romans, roystering cavaliers,
clamorous citizens, fashionable guests, vir-
tuous peasants all at a shilling a night ;
for the door was, in fact, the stage-door of
the Cracksideum Theatre. The shabby
men in threadbare jauntiness smiled fur-
tively, and grinned at each other as they
saw the sleek gentlemen in shining broad-
cloth step out of their path ; but the said
gentlemen felt the proximity of the Thes-
pian temple very acutely, and did not
scruple to say so to Messrs. Camoxon, who,
as in duty bound, shrugged their shoulders
deprecatingly, and changed the conversa-
tion. They were very sorry, but and
they shrugged their shoulders ! When men
shrug then- shoulders to their customers it's
time that they should retire from business.
It was time that the Messrs. Camoxon so
retired, for the old gentleman now seldom
appeared in Rutland- street, but remained
at home at Wimbledon, enacting his fa-
vourite character of the British squire,
and actually dressing the part in a blue

eoat and gilt buttons, grey knee-breeches,
and Hessian boots ; while young George
Camoxon hunted with the queen's hounds,
had dined twice at the Life Guards' mess
at Windsor, and had serious thoughts of
standing for the county. But the business
was far too good to give up ; every one
who had a presentation or an advowson to
sell took it to Camoxons' ; the head clerk
could tell you off-hand the net value of
every valuable living in England, the age
of the incumbent, and the state of his
health, every rector who wanted assist-
ance, every curate who wanted a change,
in servants' phrase, "to better himself,"
every layman who wanted a title for
orders, every vicar who, oddly enough,
wanted to change a dull bleak living in
the north for a pleasant social sphere of
duty in a cheerful neighbourhood in the
south of England ; parents on the look-out
for tutors, tutors in search of pupils all
inscribed their names on Camoxons' books,
and looked to them for assistance in their
extremity. There was a substantial, re-
spectable, orthodox appearance about Cam-
oxons', in the ground-glass windows, with
the device of the Bible and Sceptre duly
inscribed thereon; in the chaste internal
fittings of polished mahogany and plain
horsehair stools, with the Churchman's
Almanack on the wall in mediaeval type,
very illegible, and in a highly mediaeval
frame, all bosses and clamps ; in the big
ledgers and address books, and in the Post-
office Directory, which here shed its trucu-
lent red cover, and was scarcely recog-
nisable in a meek sad-coloured calf bind-
ing ; and, above all, in the grave, solemn,
sable-clad clerks, who moved noiselessly
about, and who looked like clergymen play-
ing at business.

Up and down Rutland- street had Walter
Joyce paced full a thousand times since his
arrival in London. The name of the
street and of its principal inhabitants were
familiar to him, through the advertisements
in the clerical newspaper which used to be
sent to Mr. Ashurst at Helmingham ; and
no sooner was he settled down in his little
lodging in Winchester - street, than he
crossed the mighty artery of the Strand,
and sought out the street and the shops of
which he had already heard so much. He
saw them, peered in at Copes' and at
Tubelkahn's, and looked earnestly at
Camoxons' ground-glass window, and half
thought of going in to see whether they
had anything which might suit him on
their books. But he refrained until he had

Charles Dickens.]

WRECKED m PORT.

[December 25

received the answers to a certain advertise-
ment which he had inserted in the news-
papers, setting forth that a yonng man
with excellent testimonials he knew he
could get them from the rector of Helin-
ingham was desirous of giving instruc-
tion in the classics and mathematics.
Advertising, he thought, was a better and
more gentlemanly medium than causing a
detailed list of his accomplishments to be
inscribed in the books of the Ecclesiastical
Registry, as a horse's pedigree and per-
formances are entered in the horsedealer's
list; but when, after hunting for half an
hour through the columns of the news-
paper's supplement, he found his adver-
tisement amongst a score of others, all
of them from men with college honours, or
promising greater advantages than he could
hold forth, he began to doubt the wisdom
of his proceeding. However, he would
wait and see the result. He did so wait
for three days, but not a single line ad-
dressed, as requested, to W. J. found its
way to Winchester- street. Then he sent
for the newspaper again, and began to
reply to the advertisements which he
thought might suit him. He had no high
thoughts or hopes, no notions of regene-
rating the living generation, or of placing
tuition on a new footing, or rendering it
easy by some hitherto unexplained pro-
cess. He had been an usher in a school,
for the place of an usher in a school he
had advertised, and if he could have ob-
tained that position he would have been
contented. But when the few answers to
his advertisement arrived, he saw that it
was impossible to accept any of the offers
they contained. One man wanted him to
teach French with a guaranteed Parisian
accent, to devote his whole time out of
school hours to the boys, to supervise them
in the Indian sceptre athletic exercises, and
to rule over a dormitory of thirteen, "where,
in consequence of the lax supervision of the
last didaskolos, severe measures would be
required," for twenty pounds a year. An-
other gentleman, whose note-paper was
ornamented with a highly florid Maltese
cross, and who dated his letter " Eve of S.
Boanerges," wished to know his opinion
of the impostor- firebrand M. Luther, and
whether he (the advertiser) had any con-
nexions in the florist or decorative line,
with whom an arrangement in the mutual
accommodation way could be entered into ;
while a third, evidently a grave senten-
tious man, with a keen eye to business,
expressed, on old-fashioned Bath-post, gilt-

edged letter paper, his desire to know
"what sum W. J. would be willing to
contribute for the permission to state, after
a year's residence, that he had been one of
Dr. Sumph's most trusted helpmates and
assistants ?"

No good to be got that way, then, and a
visit to Camoxons' imminent, for the money
was running very, very short, and the
conventional upturning of stones must be
proceeded with. Visit to Camoxons' paid,
after much staring through the ground-
glass windows (opaque generally, but trans-
parent in the Bible and Sceptre artistic bits)
much ascent and descent of two steps cogi-
tatively, final rush up top step wildly, and
hurried, not to say pantomimic, entrance
through the ground-glass door, to be con-
fronted by the oldest and most composed
of the sable- clad clerks. Bows exchanged ;
name and address required ; name and ad-
dress given in a low and serious whisper, and
repeated aloud in a clear high treble, each
word, as it was uttered, being transcribed
in a hand which was the very essence of
copperplate into an enormous book. Po-
sition required ? Second or third master-
ship in a classical school, private tutor-
ship, as secretary or librarian to a noble-
man or gentleman. So glibly ran the
old gentleman's steel pen over these items
that Walter Joyce began to fancy that ap-
plicants for one post were generally ready
and willing to take all or any, as indeed they
were. "Which university, what college?"
The old gentleman scratched his head with
the end of his steel-pen holder, and looked
across at Walter, with a benevolent expres-
sion which seemed to convey that he would
rather the young man would say Christ-
church than St. Mary's, and Trinity in
preference to Clare. Walter Joyce grew
hot to his ear tips, and his tongue felt
too large for his mouth, as he stammered
out, " I have not been to either Uni-
versity I ," but the remainder of the

sentence was lost in the loud bang with
which the old gentleman clapped to the
heavy sides of the big book, clasped it with
its brazen clasp, and hoisted it on to a
shelf behind him with the dexterity of a
juggler.

" My good young friend," said the old
clerk, blandly ; " you might have saved
yourself a vast amount of vexation, and me
a certain amount of trouble, if you had
made that announcement earlier ! Good
morning !"

" But do you mean to say "

" I mean to say that in that book at the

76 [December 2G, 18G8.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

present moment are the names of sixty
gentlemen seeking just the employment
which you have named, all of whom are
not merely members of colleges, but mem-
bers who have taken rank, prizemen, first-
class men, wranglers, senior optimes ; they
are on our books, and they may remain there
for months before we get them off. You
may judge, then, what chance you would
have. At most agencies they would have
taken your money and given you hope.
But we don't do that here it isn't our
way good morning !"

" Then you think I have no chance "

" I'm sure of it through us at least
good- morning !"

Joyce would have made another effort,
but the old gentleman had already turned
on his heel, and feigned to be busy with
some letters on a desk before him, so Walter
turned round too, and silently left the
registry office. *

Silently, and with an aching heart. The
old clerk had said but little, but Walter
felt that his dictum was correct, and that
all hopes of getting a situation as a tutor
were at an end. Oh, if his father had only
left him money enough to go to college,
he would have had a future before him
which but then, Marian ? He would
never have known that pure, faithful,
earnest love, failing which, life in its
brightest and best form would have been
dull and distasteful to him. He had that
love still, thank Heaven, and in that
thought there were the elements of hope,
and the promptings to bestir himself yet
once more in his hard self-appointed task
of bread- winning.

Money running very short, and time
running rapidly on. Not the shortest
step in advance since he had first set
foot in London, and the bottom of his
purse growing painfully visible. He had
taken to frequenting a small coffee-house
in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden,
where, as he munched the roll and drank
the tea, which now too often served him as
a dinner, he could read the newspapers and
scan the advertisements to see if there were
anything likely to suit him among the my-
riad columns. It was a quiet and secluded
little place, where but few strangers entered
he saw the same faces night after night, as
he noticed and where he could have his
letters addressed to him under his initials,
which was a great comfort, as he had
noticed lately that his landlady in his
river-side lodging-house had demurred to
the receipt of so much initialled correspon-

dence, ascribing it, as Walter afterwards
learned from the " slavey" or maid-of-all-
work, either to " castin' orryscopes, tellin'
charickters by 'andwritin', or rejen'rative
bolsum for the 'air !" things utterly at
variance with the respectability of her es-
tablishment.

A quiet secluded little place, sand- floored
and spittoon-decorated, with a cosy clock
and a cosy red-faced fire, singing with
steaming kettles, and cooking chops, and
frizzling bacon ; with a sleepy cat, a pet of
the customers, dozing before the hearth,
and taking occasional quarter-of-an-hour
turns round the room, to be back-rubbed,
and whisker- scratched, and tit-bit fed;
with tea and coffee and cocoa, in thick
blue China half-pint mugs, and with
bacon of which the edge was by no
means to be cut off and thrown away,
but was thick, and crisp, and deli-
cious as the rest of it, on willow-pattern
plates ; with little yellow pats of country
butter, looking as if the cow whose im-
pressed form they bore had only fed upon
buttercups, as different from the ordinary
petrified cold cream which in London
passes current for butter as chalk from
cheese. " Bliffkins's" the house was
supposed to have been leased to Bliff kins
as the Elephant, and appeared under that
title in the Directories ; but no one knew
it but as " Bliffkins's" was a Somerset-
shire house, and kept a neat placard
framed and glazed in its front window to
the effect that the Somerset County Ga-
zette was taken in. So that among the
thin pale London folk who "used" the
house you occasionally came upon stal-
wart giants, big- chested, horny-handed,
deep- voiced, with z's sticking out all over
their pronunciation, jolly Zummerzetshire
men, who brought Bliff kins the latest gossip
from his old native place of Bruton and
its neighbourhood, and who, during their
stay and notably at cattle- show period
were kings of the house. At ordinary
times, however, the frequenters of the
house never varied indeed it was under-
stood that Bliffkins's was a "connexion,"
and did not in the least depend upon
chance custom. Certain people sat in cer-
tain places, ordered certain refreshment,
and went away at certain hours, never
varying in the slightest particular. Mr.
Byrne, a wizened old man, who invariably
bore on his coat and on his hair traces of
fur, and fluff, and wool, who was known to
be a bird-stuffer by trade, and who was re-
puted to be an extreme radical in politics

Charles Dickens.]

WRECKED m PORT.

[December 2G, 1868.] 77

and the writer of some of those spirit-
stirring letters in the weekly press signed
"Lucius Junius Brutus" and " Scrutator,"
sat in the right-hand corner box nearest
the door, where he was out of the draught,
and had the readiest chance of pouncing
upon the boy who brought in the evening
papers, and securing them before his rival,
Mr. Wickwar, could effect a seizure. Mr.
Wickwar, who was a retired tailor, and had
plenty of means, the sole bane of his life
being the danger to the constitution from
the recklessly advanced feeling of the
times, sat at the other end of the room,
being gouty and immobile, contenting him-
self with glaring at his democratic enemy,
and occasionally withering him with choice
extracts from the Magna Charta weekly
journal. The box between them was
usually devoted of an evening to Messrs.
O' Shane and Begson, gentlemen attached
to the press, capital company, full of anec-
dote and repartee, though liable to be
suddenly called away in the exigence of
their literary pursuits. The top of the
policeman's helmet or the flat cap of the
fireman on duty just protruded through
the swing-door in their direction, acted as
tocsins to these indefatigable public ser-
vants, cut them off in the midst of a story,
and sent them flying on -the back of an
engine, or at the tail of a crowd, to witness
scenes which, pourtrayed by their graphic
pencils, afforded an additional relish to the
morning muffin at thousands of respectable
breakfast-tables. Between these gentle-
men and a Mr. Shimmer, a youngish man,
with bright eyes, hectic colour, and a
general sense of nervous irritation, there
was a certain spirit of camaraderie which
the other frequenters of Bliffkins's could
not understand. Mr. Shimmer always
sat alone, and during his meal inva-
riably buried himself in one of the choice
volumes of Bliffkins's library, consisting of
old volumes of Blackwood's, Bentley's,
and Tait's magazines, from which he
would occasionally make extracts in a
very small hand in a very small note-
book. It was probably from the fact of a
printer's boy having called at Bliffkins's
with what was understood to be a " proof,"
that a rumour arose and was received
throughout the Bliffkins connexion that
Mr. Shimmer edited the Times news-
paper. Be that as it might, there was
no doubt, both from external circum-
stances and from the undefined defer-
ence paid to him by the other gentle-
men of the press, that Mr. Shimmer

was a literary man of position, and that
Bliffkins held him in respect, and, what
was more practical for him, gave him
credit on that account. An ex-parish clerk,
who took snuff and sleep in alternate
pinches ; a potato salesman in Covent
Garden, who drank coffee to keep himself
awake, and who went briskly off to busi-
ness when the other customers dropped
off wearily to bed; a marker at an adjoin-
ing bowling-alley, who would have been a
pleasant fellow had it not been for his
biceps, which got into his head and into his
mouth, and pervaded his conversation;
and a seedsman, a terrific republican, who
named his innocent bulbs and hyacinths
after the most sanguinary heroes of the
French revolution, filled up the list of
Bliffkins's " regulars."

Among these quiet people "Walter Joyce
took up his place night after night, until
he began to be looked upon as of and be-
longing to them. They were intolerant of
strangers at Bliffkins's, of strangers that is
to say, who, tempted by the comforts of the
place, renewed their visits, and threatened
to make them habitual. These were for
the most part received at about their third
appearance, when they came in with a
pleasant smile and thought they had made
an impression, with a strong stare and a
dead silence, under the influences of which
they ordered refreshment which they did
not want, had to pay for, and went away
without eating, amid the contemptuous
grins of the regulars. But Walter Joyce
was so quiet and unobtrusive, so evidently
a gentleman, desirous of peace and shelter
and refuge at a cheap rate, that the great
heart of Bliffkins' softened to him at once ;
they themselves had known the feelings
under which he sought the asylum of that
Long-acre Patmos, and they respected him.
No one spoke to him, there was no acknow-
ledgment of his presence among them ;
they knew well enough that any such
manifestation would have been out of place ;
but when, after finishing his very simple
evening meal, he would take a few sheets
of paper from his pocket, draw to him the
Times' supplement, and, constantly refer-
ring to it, commence writing a series of
letters, they knew what all that portended,
and all of them, including old Wickwar, the
ex-tailor and great conservative, silently
wished him godspeed.

Ah, those letters, dated from Bliffkins's
coffee-house, and written in Walter Joyce's
roundest hand, in reply to the hundred of
chances which each day's newspaper sheet

78 [December 23, 1SG8.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

offered to every enterprising bread-seeker,
chances so promising at the first glance,
so barren and so fall of rottenness when they
came to be tested ! Clerkships ? Clerkships
galore! legal, mercantile, general clerks
were wanted everywhere, only apply to
A. B. or Y. Z., and take them ! Bnt when
A. B. or Y. Z. replied, Walter Joyce found
that the legal clerks must write the regular
engrossing hand, must sweep out the office
ready for the other clerks by nine A.M., and-
must remain there occasionally till nine P.M.,
with a little outdoor work in the service of
writs and notices of ejectment. The duties
required of the mercantile clerk were but
little better, and those of the general clerks
were worst of all, while throughout a net
income of eighteen shillings a week ap-
peared to be the average remuneration.
" A secretary wanted." Certainly, four se-
cretaries wanted nearly every day, for public
companies which were about to bring forth
an article in universal demand, but of
which the supply had hitherto been limited,
and which could not fail to meet with an
enormous success and return a large divi-
dend. In all cases the secretary must be
a man of education and of gentlemanly
manners, so said the advertisements ; but
the reply to Walter Joyce's application,
said in addition that he must be able to
advance the sum of three hundred pounds,
to be invested in the shares of the com-
pany, which would bear interest at the
rate of twenty-five per cent per annum.
The Press ? Through the medium of their
London fraternity the provincial press was
clamorous for educated men who could
write leading articles, general articles and
reviews ; but on inquiry the press required
the same educated men to be able to com-
bine shorthand reporting with editorial
writing, and in many cases suggested the
advisability of the editorial writer being
able to set up his own leaders in type at case.
The literary institutions throughout the
country were languishing for lecturers, but
when Walter Joyce wrote to them, offering
them a choice of certain subjects which he
had studied, and on which he thought him-
self competent of conveying real information,
he received answers from the secretaries,
that only men of name were paid by the
institutions, but that the committee would
be happy to set apart a night for him if he
chose to lecture gratis, or that if he felt
inclined to address the inhabitants of
Knuckleborough on his own account, the
charge for the great hall was three pounds,
for the smaller hall thirty shillings a night,

in both cases exclusive of gas, while the
secretary, who kept the principal stationer's
shop and library in the town, would be
happy to become his agent, and sell his
tickets at the usual charge of ten per cent.
Four pounds a week, guaranteed ! Not a
bad income for a penniless man ; to be
earned, too, in the discharge of a light and
gentlemanly occupation, to be acquired by
the outlay of three shillings' worth of
postage stamps. Walter Joyce sent the
postage stamps, and received in return a
lithographic circular, very dirty about the
folded edges, instructing him in the easiest
method of modelling wax flowers !

That was the final straw. On the receipt
of that letter, and on the reading of it
he had taken it from the stately old look-
ing-glass over the fire-place to the box
where of late he usually sat Walter Joyce
gave a deep groan, and buried his face in
his hands. A minute after he felt his hair
slightly touched, and looking up saw old
Jack Byrne bending over him.

" What ails ye, lad ?" asked the old
man, tenderly.

" Misery despair starvation !"

" I thought so !" said the old man calmly.
Then taking a small battered flask from
his breast and emptying its contents into a
clean cup before him " Here, drink this,
and come outside. We can't talk here !"

Walter swallowed the contents of the
cup, mechanically, and followed his new
friend into the street.

A HIDDEN WITNESS.

" She is positively starving, and this money
will be the saving of her."

These words were spoken in the course of a
conversation between my old friend Mr. John
Irwin, retired civil-servant, and myself ; both
sitting on a fine September morning in a little
summer-house, in the garden of our mutual
friend the Rev. Henry Tyson, Rector of North -
wick-Balham, in the county of Berkshire. The
subject of our conversation had been a piece
of very flagitious behaviour on the part of a
wealthy retired tradesman, Harding by name,
who lived in the neighbourhood. A sum of
money, amounting to a hundred pounds, was
owing by this man to a widow, living also
close at hand, for work done by her husband,
just before he died. The validity of the claim
had been denied by Mr. Harding, and pay-
ment obstinately refused.

" I have made it all right, however," said my
friend, with something approaching to a chuckle.
" It happens that this Harding is to a certain
extent in my power. The particulars of a

=5*

Charles Dickens.]

A HIDDEN" WITNESS.

[December !

years ago, not of the most creditable nature,
and all the facts relating to which came before
me in the course of my official career, are not
only perfectly well known to me, but he knows
that I know of them, and is aware that I could
even at this day use them against him if I chose.
Consequently he is always exceedingly civil to
me, and when, in the course of a conversation be-
tween us yesterday, I explained to him assum-
ing as I did so a dangerous look, which I could
see had its effect that I should take it exceed-
ingly ill if he did not at once consider this poor
woman's claim, and forthwith pay her what he
had owed to her husband, he turned very pale,
and informed me that since a person on whose
judgment he could so entirely rely as he could on
mine, was of opinion, after duly considering the
claim, that it was a just one, he would at once
give up his own view of the case, which had
certainly hitherto been opposed to mine, and
would without delay discharge the liability.
He only begged that he might be spared the
annoyance of a personal interview with his
creditor, and that I would undertake in my own
person to see the widow and transact the busi-
ness part of the arrangement myself.

"You know," continued Mr. Irwin, "how
interested I have always been in this poor soul's
case, and you will believe how readily I under-
took the charge. This very afternoon the busi-
ness is to be brought to a conclusion. I have
arranged to call on Harding (who as you know
lives close by) at three o'clock, to get the
money, and I will then convey it with my own
hands to the poor woman as a surprise."

" You have never done a better day's work,"
I said. " How do you mean to go ?"

" I shall walk. It is not above a couple of
miles. The path across the fields by Gorfield
Copse is the nearest way, isn't it ?"

" Yes, by a good deal," I answered. "Would
you like a companion ?"

" Well, I should like one, certainly," was my
friend's answer, "but I feel a little delicacy
about introducing a stranger into the business
either that with Mr. Harding himself, or
with my friend the widow, who is the proudest
and most sensitive woman in the world."

I assented to the justice of this objection,
and having some letters to write, got up to go,
leaving my friend sitting in the summer-house.
As I quitted it, turning sharply round to go
into the house, I came suddenly upon a man
who was emerging from among the shrubs
which formed the back of the little arbour.

He was an occasional helper about the place,
and I had noticed him more than once, and not
with favour. He was a very peculiar, and, as I
thought, a very ill-looking man. He was a shy,
slouching sort of creature, who always started
and got out of the way when you met him. A
man with hollow sunken eyes, a small mean
pinched sort of nose, and a prominent savage-
looking under jaw, with teeth like tusks, which
his beard did not always conceal. This beard,
by-the-by, was one of the most marked charac-
teristics of the man's appearance, it being as
was his hair also of that flaming red colour

which is not very often seen really red, with
no pretensions to those auburn, or chesnut, or
golden tints which have become fashionable of
late years. The blazing effect of this man's
colouring was increased very much by the head-
dress he wore : an old cricketing cap of brightest
scarlet. He was otherwise dressed in one of
those short white canvas shirts or frocks
which are much worn by engineers, stokers,
and plasterers, over their ordinary clothes.
There was a great brown patch of new
material let into the front of this garment
which showed very conspicuously, even at a
distance. His lower extremities were clad in
common velveteen trousers, old and worn.

Such was the man who appeared suddenly
in my path as I left the summer-house, and who
disappeared as suddenly out of it a moment
after our encounter, gliding stealthily off in the
direction of the kitchen garden.

I saw my good friend Mr. Irwin once more
before he started on his beneficent errand.
He was in high spirits, and had got himself up
in great style for the occasion, with a light-
coloured summer over- coat, to keep off the
dust, and a white hat. I think he had a flower
in his button-hole.

There was one part of Mr. Irwin's equipment
a little out of the common way, and this was a
butterfly net fixed to the end of a stick. My
friend was a most enthusiastic entomologist,
and when in the country never stirred without
carrying with him this means of securing his
favourite specimens. I joked him a little on
the introduction of this unusual element into a
business transaction, suggesting that Mr. Hard-
ing would think that he had brought it as a
receptacle for the widow's money. " I must
have it with me," said the old gentleman, " for
if I ever venture to go out without it I invari-
ably meet with some invaluable specimen which
escapes me in a heart-rending manner. But,"
he added, " I'm not going to let Harding dis-
cover my weakness, you may be sure. I'll
leave it outside among the bushes, and recover
it when the interview is over."

" Well, good luck attend you any way," I
called after him, " a successful end to your
negotiations, and plenty of butterflies."

The good-hearted old fellow gave me a nod
and a smile, and, flourishing his net, was pre-
sently off on his mission.

I had what we familiarly call " the fidgets"
that afternoon. I could not settle down to
anything. Having tried wandering about the
garden, I now took, in turn, to wandering
about the house, going first into one room and
then into another, looking at the pictures,
taking up different objects which lay about,
and examining them in an entirely purposeless
way.

At the top of my friend's house there was a
little room in a tower, which was used as a
smoking-room, and also as a kind of observa-
tory : my host being in the habit of observ-
ing the heavenly bodies through his telescope
when favourable occasion offered. I remem-
bered the existence of this apartment now, and

80 [December 26, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND,

[Conducted by-

feeling that a small dose of tobacco would suit
my present condition very well, determined to
climb the turret staircase, and enjoy a quiet
smoke in the observatory.

The room was charming. There were large
windows in it, and the view was most exten-
sive, taking in scenery of a very varied kind
hill and dale, wood, river, and plain. The
signs of habitation were not numerous, the
country being but thinly populated : still there
were cottages and farmhouses scattered here
and there, and even one or two villages in the
distance. I lighted my cigar and gave myself
up to tranquil enjoyment of the scene before
me.

As I sat thus, the clock of my host's church
struck three. Kemembering that to be the hour
of Mr. Irwin's interview with Harding, my
thoughts reverted to the subject of the widow's
debt, and to the good-nature which my old
friend had displayed in giving himself so
much trouble and undertaking such a thank-
less office. My mind did not dwell long on
these things, however. I happened to catch
sight of the telescope, which was put away in a
corner of the room ; and being restless, and
not in a mood in which total inaction was
agreeable to me, I determined to have it out and
examine the details of the landscape which I
had just been studying on a large scale.

The day was very favourable for my pur-
pose. The sun was shining and there was an
east wind : a combination which often produces
a remarkable clearness in the atmosphere.
Circumstances could not possibly be more suit-
able for telescopic operations, so placing the
instrument on its stand before one of the open
windows, I sat down and commenced my
survey.

It was a superb telescope, and although I
knew it well, and had often used it before, I
found myself still astonished at its power and
range. I set myself to trying experiments as
to the extent of its capacity, taking the time
by the church clock of a village two miles off,
trying to make out what people were doing in
the extreme distance, and in other ways putting
the capabilities of the instrument to the test.
That done, with results of the most satisfactory
kind, I went to work in a more leisurely fashion,
shifting the glass from point to point of the
landscape, as the fancy took me, and enjoying
the delicious little circular pictures, which, in
endless variety, seemed to fit themselves, one
after another, into the end of the instrument.
The little round pictures were some of them
very pretty. Here was one the first the tele-
scope showed me in the front of which was a
small patch of purple earth just brought under
the plough. A little copse bounded one side
of this arable land ; there was a very bright
green field in the distance ; and in the fore-
ground the plough itself was crawling slowly
along, drawn by a couple of ponderous and
sturdy horses, a bay and a white, whose course
was directed by an old man with a blue necker-
chief, the ends hanging loose, a boy being in at-
tendance to turn the horses at the end of each

furrow, and generally to keep them up to their
work.

A turn of the glass, and another picture
takes its place. A road-side ale-house now.
One of the upper windows has a muslin half
blind betokening the guest chamber, another
on the ground floor is ornamented with a red
curtain the tap-room, this, where convivial
spirits congregate on Saturday nights. The
inn has a painted sign ; somebody in a scarlet
coat and with something on his head which I
can't quite make out; perhaps it is a three-
cornered hat, and perhaps the inn is dedicated
to the inevitable Marquis of Granby. Stay ! I
recollect now seeing such an inn in one of my
walks in the neighbourhood. It is the Marquis
of Granby, as I well remember. An empty
cart is standing in front of the house, the driver
watering his horses, and beering himself, just
before the house door, where I can see him
plainly

Another and a more extensive turn, and the
little railway station comes within the limits of
the magic circle. Not much to interest here :
a small whitewashed, slate-roofed, formal build-
ing, hard, and angular, and hideous. A lot of
sacks piled up against the wall, waiting to be
sent off by the luggage train, a great signal post
rising into the air, a row of telegraphic poles
stretching away in perspective.

Now a prosperous farmstead, with a big
thatched house, where the farmer and his
family reside, with well-preserved sheds and
outhouses: there is a straw-yard, too, with
cattle standing knee-deep, and eating out of
racks well found in hay ; and there are pigs
wallowing in the mire, and there are cocks and
hens jerking themselves hither and thither,
and pecking, and generally fussing, as their
manner is. This picture in its circular frame
pleases me well, and so does the next. A gen-
tleman's seat of the entirely comfortable, not of
the showy and ostentatious, sort. The grounds
are large enough to be called a park, and the
house lying rather low, as it was the fashion to
build a century or two ago, stands in the midst
of them, with a trim and pleasantly formal
flower-garden round about it. It is a red brick
house of the Hanoverian time, with a rather
high slate (green slate) roof, with dormer win-
dows in it. The other windows have white
sashes which are flush with the wall, and not,
as in these days, sunk in a recess.

I look long on this scene, and then, not with-
out reluctance, shift my glass, and turning away
from human habitations, begin to examine the
more retired and unfrequented parts of the
landscape. The magic circle now encloses
nothing but trees and meadows, and little quiet
nooks and corners, where the lazy cows stand
about in shady places too idle even to feed, or
where the crows blacken the very ground by
their numbers, unmolested by shouting boys,
unscared by even the old traditional hat and
coat upon a stick. I come presently to a little
bright green paddock, with a pony feeding in
it a refreshing little round picture pleasant to
dwell on. There is a pond in one corner of the

Charles Dickens.]

A HIDDEN WITNESS.

[December 26, 1S6S.;

paddock, surrounded with pollard willows : the
water reflecting them upon its surface, as also a
little patch of sky which it gets sight of some-
how, between the branches. It is a comfortable
and innocent little place this, with a small
wood close by, with a haystack near the gate,
and stay what is this ? There are figures here
two men how plainly I see them ! But
What are they doing ? They are in violent
movement. Are they fighting, wrestling, strug-
gling ? It is so. A struggle is going on be-
tween them, and one of the two he wears a
bright red cap has the best of it. He has his
antagonist, who seems to be weak and makes
but faint resistance, by the throat ; he strikes
fiercely at the wretched man's head with a thick
stick or club he holds, and pressing on him
sorely, beats him fiercely to the ground. The
man who has the best of it there is something
more of red about him besides his cap ; is it his
beard? does not spare the fallen man, but
beats him still about the head a gray head
surely with his club. Horrible sight to look
on. I would give anything to tear myself
away from the telescope or at least to close my
eyes, and shut out the sickening spectacle.
But the butchery is nearly over. The gray-
haired man continues yet to struggle and re-
sist, but only for a little while. In a very
short time the contest, as I plainly see, will be
over. The conquered man, making one more
supreme effort, rises nearly to his feet, receives
another crushing blow, falls suddenly to the
ground, and is still. Merciful Heaven! what
is this ! Who are these two men ? Do I know
them ? It cannot be that that is my dear old
friend lying helpless on the ground, and that
the other is the man whom I took note of, just
now, in the. rectory garden. It cannot be that
this deed, of which I have been a witness in-
active, powerless to help or save is a murder !
I felt for a moment as if all presence of mind,
and power of action, had deserted me. What
was I to do ? That was all that I coidd say,
over and over again, as I sat still gazing
through the telescope with an instinctive feel-
ing that I must not lose one single incident
of the scene before me. All that happened I
must see. I recalled my senses by a mighty
effort, and reasoned as men do in a crisis.
What was to be done ? The place where this
horrible deed was being committed was so far
off about three quarters of a mile as the crow
flies, more than a mile by any road I knew of
that there could be no possibility of my
getting there in time to be of the slightest
use. The end, if it had not come already
and I felt certain that it had must most surely
have come before I could traverse that dis-
tance. There was but one way now in which
I could be of any service, and that was in
securing the detection of the murderer. I
must remain at my post and watch his every
movement, besides endeavouring to render my-
self certain, so far as the glass would enable me
to be so, concerning his appearance and dress.
So there I sat, helpless and spell-bound, but
watching with devouring eyes. There was a

sudden stillness where there had been before so
much of struggling and movement. The blows
had ceased to fall now. The deed was accom-
plished, and there was no more need for them.
The man himself, the murderer, was still, and I
made sure of his identity. There was the red
hair, there was the red beard, there was the
scarlet cap lying on the ground, there was the
canvas frock with the patch in front. There
was no doubt. Alas ! was there any doubt
either about that other figure lying on the grass
beside him ? The light-coloured summer coat
which he had worn when I last saw him, the
white hairs. It was nearly too much to bear,
but a savage craving for vengeance came to my
aid, and braced up my energies I dispelled
by an effort of the will a dimness which came
before my eyes, and straining them more in-
tensely than ever, saw the man with the red
cap start up, as if suddenly conscious that
he was losing time, and set himself to work to
rifle the body of his victim. As far as I could
see, he was engaged in emptying the poor old
man's pockets, and once I thought I saw the
gleam of something golden ; but this might have
been fancy. At all events he continued for
some time to turn the body over and over,
and then, having, I suppose, satisfied himself
with what he had secured, he got up, and
dragging the corpse after him, made his way to
the little wood close by, and entering it, dis-
appeared from sight. And now, indeed, a crisis
had arrived when it was difficult in the extreme
to know how to act. What if that disappearance
were final ? What if he should get out of the
wood at the further extremity and I should see
him no more ?

It was a breathless moment. I continued to
watch, and hardly breathed. At last, and
when I was becoming desperate with un-
certainty, I saw something move again. The
trees were parted, and at the same place where
the murderer had entered the wood, bearing
with him the body of my old friend, he now re-
appeared, alone. He stood a moment as if un-
decided, and then came out, looking behind
him first, and then arranging the disturbed
boughs as though to make the place look as
if no one had passed that way. That done,
he stood still for a moment, looking about
him as if in search of something, and then
he moved across how unconscious of the
pursuer on his track, the telescope following his
every step, unseen and unsuspected ! to
where at the corner of the meadow there was,
as I have mentioned, a little pond with pollard
willows round about its margin. He stooped
and took up some object lying beside the pond.
What was it? There was something green
about it. Was it old Mr. Irwin's butterfly net?
I could not see with certainty, but no doubt it
was, and no doubt the poor old gentleman had
wandered away from the footpath, which was
near at hand, in pursuit of some entomological
specimen.

The man with the red cap threw this object
into the water. Then taking off his canvas
frock, he began to wash the front of it, stained

82 [December 26, 1868.;

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

no doubt with blood. Then he washed his
hands and face, and putting on the frock,
wet as it was in part, stood up and once
more looked suspiciously about. All this took
time, but I dared not remove my eye from the
glass for a single instant. Once I had tried to
reach the bell-handle, but I could not. Some-
thing would, however, have to be done pre-
sently, and done on the instant.

For he was going He turned his back upon
the pond ; looked about, as if to see whether
there were any traces of his crime visible ; then
crossed the field, got over the gate by the hay-
stack, was lost to sight for a moment, appeared
again, disappeared again, and finally, after
being out of sight for some time, showed at
last, walking along the high road, until he
came to a road-side inn, that very Marquis of
Granby spoken of above, into which he entered.

And now, indeed, I felt that the time had
come when some decisive step must be taken.
If he were not secured now, while he was in
the public-house if he got out of it without
being taken he might get off by ways which
were hidden from my range of vision, and
so escape. I still dared not move my eye from
the telescope or the telescope from the inn-
door. It was absolutely indispensable that he
should not be able to leave the house without
my knowing it. I must not stir then ; but as
something required to be done instantly, some-
body else must stir for me. In a moment I de-
cided on my course. Remaining motionless at
my post, I lifted up my voice, and gave utter-
ance to such a succession of shouts that I con-
fidently expected that the whole establishment
would rush up-stairs to the observatory, think-
ing that I myself was being murdered. It was
not so, however, and considering the noise I
made, it seemed really astonishing how long I
called in vain. At last it did appear that I was
heard. The head gardener was in the grounds
close by, and the sound of my voice reached
him at length through the open window. Even
when he heard, however, it was evident that
he could not make out whence the cries
which reached him came. ""Who calls?"' he
cried. " Here," I shouted. " In the tower.
Help, help at once ! There is not a moment to
lose." And very soon I heard the welcome
sound of footsteps hurrying up the turret
stairs. Almost before the door was opened, or
the gardener in the room, I issued my orders.
" Jump upon the pony," I cried, still with my
glass fixed on the door of the old inn, " and
gallop at full speed down to the Marquis of
Granby. There has been a murder committed,
and the murderer is in that house. He has on
a scarlet cap, has red hair and a red beard, and
a canvas frock, with a dark patch in front."

" What ! My helper here ?" cried the gar-
dener.

"The same. Seize him, or, if he has left
when you get there, raise the hue and cry, and
follow him. He has murdered poor old Mr.
Irwin. Don't stop to answer," I added, as the
man uttered an exclamation of surprise and
horror. " Go go at once. I dare not leave

this post. Go, and if you meet any one on
your way send him her any one to me."

The man was a sharp fellow, and disappeared
instantly. Very soon I had the satisfaction of
hearing the sound of a horse's hoofs galloping
out of the yard at the back. Meanwhile, half
the household, alarmed by Avhat the man had
told them, had rushed up to the observatory,
and were now gathered round me as I sat at
the telescope. They were silent for a time,
and I could feel, though my eyes were en-
gaged, that they were watching me intently.

" "What is his name ?" I asked, after a while.

"His name is Mason," somebody replied:
" "William Mason." Then there was silence
again as I went on watching.

" For God's sake, what is it, sir?" cried the
old housekeeper, suddenly, in answer, I sup-
pose, to an involuntary exclamation of mine.

" The door has opened," I answered.

" Is he coming out ?"

No one appeared for a moment ; at last some
one passed out. It was not he, however it
was an old woman carrying a bundle.

There were several false alarms of this kind,
as different people who had been taking re-
freshment at the tap came out, one after
another, in pretty rapid succession. At last,
after a longer interval than usual, the door
opened quickly once again.

"It is he," I said, hardly knowing till I
heard the confused murmur of an exclamation
from the group behind me that I spoke. " He
has come out. He is looking first one way and
then another, and now he is gone, and the gar-
dener will be too late !"

I could still see him, and could make out in
which direction he was going.

" Is any one belonging to the stable here ?"

" Yes, sir," replied a voice I knew.

" Get a horse saddled at once, Matthew, and
bring him round. The swiftest you have in."

In a moment I heard the man's footsteps
clattering down the stairs.

" Can you see him still ?" asked the old house-
keeper.

" At present I can, but I shall not be able to
do so long. The part of the road he is ap-
proaching is hidden from my view."

Yery soon my prediction came true. There
was a turn in the road. Trees and buildings
and rising ground intervened and hid the figure.
It did not show again for a long space : when
it did it came out by the railway station.

I sat and thought the situation over, and the
conviction forced itself upon me, more and
more strongly, that this railway station would
be the ultimate destination of the murderer,
and that the only chance now was to keep a
steady watch upon its approaches. But my
eyes, especially the left eye, which I had to
keep closed, were now so tired that I could
hardly use them. I found it, however, by- no
means easy to get a substitute.

There were only present at this time the
women servants and a boy. The boy could not
be trusted, of course, and the women, one and
all, proclaimed, as they seated themselves

= ^

Charles Dickens.]

A HIDDEN WITNESS.

[December 20, 1SCS.;

by turns before the glass, that they could only
see " something dark bobbing up and down at
the end of it." At last it was suggested that
Martin, the vicar's factotum, who had been out,
must be at home by this time, and a servant
being despatched in search of him, he presently
appeared and took my place at the glass :
through which he could see perfectly.

" He lives just there, sir, between the part
of the road where you say he disappeared and
the station," said Martin, when he had heard
all the foregoing particulars. " Just behind
that row of poplars you see down yonder."

This opened a new view of the matter. Mar-
tin suggested that perhaps he had gone home,
and that the right course might be to send there
to capture him. The propriety of this, however,
I doubted.

" Keep your attention fixed upon the sta-
tion," I said, "and let me be informed of all
that goes on there. He will find his way there
at last."

Martin kept his glass fixed on the little
building in silence. Everything appeared to be
at a standstill for the moment.

" An old woman carrying a basket is making
her way slowly to the station," said Martin ;
"one or two other people are beginning to
arrive."

" AVhat sort of people ?"
" Oh, not our man. One is a lad, looks like
a gentleman's groom, come to fetch some
parcel. The other is a miller with a sack of
meal. There are signs of some stir about the
place, and I can make out the porters moving
about. What time is it, sir ?" asked the man,
suddenly.

" Twenty minutes past four," I answered.
" The down train is due at 4.29," said Martin.
" That accounts for the bustle."
"Where does it go to?" I asked.
" It's the Bristol train, sir," was the answer.
Just the place where, I thought, the mur-
derer would want to go.

" There's a cart driven by an old man with a
great many parcels, which the porters are re-
moving, and taking into the station ; there's a
man with a couple of pointers coupled. The
train's coming, sir, I can see the smoke, and
they're working the signals as hard as they can
go. Here's a carriage driving up with a pair
of white horses. It's the Westbrook carriage
I can see the liveries. There's Squire West-
brook getting out, and there are the two young
ladies. Here's the postman with his leather
bag. Here's a woman with a little boy ; the
train's in now, and they're just going to shut
the doors. Here comes somebody running.
He's a volunteer, one of our own corps. He'll
be too late. No ; the porter sees "him, and
beckons him to make haste. The volunteer
runs harder than ever, the porter drags him
into the station and the door is shut."

" Is there nobody else?" I asked, in violent
excitement.

" Not a soul, sir, and now the train is off."
" And are you sure you've not missed any
one ?"

" Quite sure, sir."

I was profoundly disappointed, and for the
moment puzzled how to act. Watching the
station was, for the present, useless. There
would not be another train until eight o'clock
at night. The only chance under these circum-
stances seemed to be the chance of finding the
man at his own house. Thither I determined
to go, thinking that even if he were not there I
might obtain some information from the neigh-
bours which might prove of use. I got a de-
scription of the house and its situation from
Martin, and, leaving him with directions still to
keep a watch on the station, ran down-stairs, and
finding the horse I had ordered waiting for me
at the door, went off at full speed.

The horse carried me so well that in a very
short time I had reached the little clump of
cottages to which I had been directed, and one
of which was the dwelling-place of the murderer.
I dismounted, and throwing my horse's bridle
on the palings in front of the cottage, passed
along the little path which led to the door, and
proceeded to try the latch. The door was
locked. Looking up at the windows there
were but two I saw that they also were firmly
secured, and that the blinds were down. The
small abode had a deserted look, and I felt that
it was empty ; but I knocked loudly, neverthe-
less, and shook the door.

The noise of my arrival, and of my knocking,
at length disturbed some of the neighbours, and
one or two of them appeared.

" Is this William Mason's house?" I asked,
addressing one of them : an old man, who looked
tolerably intelligent, but wasn't.

" Yes, sir. But he's not there now. He's
gone out," the man replied, after a minute or
two devoted to thought.

" Gone out ? How long ago ?"
"Well," replied the man, after more time
spent in reflection, " I should think it was
about half an hour."

" Which way did he go ?"
The old man took more time than ever to
consider this question, driving me almost wild
with his delay. Then, after looking first one
way and then the other, he pointed in the
direction of the station. I was already on
horseback again, and just about to move off,
when another of the neighbours interposed.

"I do think," said this one, speaking, if
possible, more deliberately than the other,
" that he went to his drill."

"Drill!" I cried. "What drill?"
" Why, volunteer drill, to be sure."
" What !" I screamed. " Was he a volun-
teer?"

"Yes, sir. The parson he requires every-
body in his employment "

I did not wait for more, but galloped off,
as fast as my horse could go, to the railway
station. I saw it all now. In the interval
during which we had lost sight of the man he
had been home, and, thinking that a change of
costume might baffle pursuit, had assumed the
volunteer dress as the best disguise at his dis-
posal.

84 [December 26, 1808.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

" Does any one here remember a man, in a
volunteer uniform, who went off just now by
the down train ?" This was my inquiry, ad-
dressed to the first person I met at the station
a porter, who referred me to the station
clerk, to whom I put the same question. This
man answered in the affirmative at once. His
attention had been particularly directed to this
volunteer, by his having required change for a
five-pound note, at the last moment, as the
train was going to start.

" For what place did he take his ticket ?"

" Bristol."

"That man is a murderer," I said, "and
must be arrested. If you telegraph at once to
Bath, the message will be there long before the
train, and he can be stopped."

And so this terrible experience the par-
ticulars of which 1 have related just as they
occurred came to an end. The murderer was
arrested at Bath, and on his being searched
the hundred pounds except the small sum
which he had expended on his railway ticket
were found upon him. The evidence against
him was in all points overwhelming. The
body of poor Mr. Irwin was discovered in the
little wood. I myself directed the search.
When it was concluded I wandered away to
the willow pond to look for the butterfly-net.
One end of the stick was visible above the
water, the other end being sunk by the weight
of the metal ring which was attached to it.

There was no link wanting in the mass
of proof. The evidence, which it was my part
to give on the trial, was irresistible. Great
attempts were made to shake it, to prove that
I might easily have made a mistake of identity ;
and that such details as I had described could
not have been visible through the telescope at
such a distance. Opticians were consulted ; ex-
periments were made. It was distinctly proved
that it was really possible for me to have seen
all that I stated I had seen ; and though
there was much discussion raised about the
case, and though some of the newspapers took
it up, and urged that men's lives were not to
be sacrificed to the whims of "an idle gentle-
man who chose to spend his afternoons in
looking out of window through a spy-glass,"
the jury returned a verdict against the prisoner,
and William Mason was convicted and hanged.

The reader may, perhaps, be sufficiently in-
terested in the facts of this case to be glad to
hear that the poor woman, who was the inno-
cent cause of the commission of this ghastly
crime, did get her hundred pounds after all,
though not from the hands of Mr. James Irwin.

THE ETERNAL PENDULUM.
Swing on, old pendulum of the world,

For ever and for ever,
Keeping the time of suns and 6tars,

^ The march that endeth never.
Your monotone speaks joy and grief,

And failure and endeavour,
Swing on, old pendulum, to and fro,

For ever and for ever !

Long as you swing shall earth be glad,

And men be partly good and bad,

And in each hour that passes by,

A thousand souls be born and die ;

Die from the earth, to live we trust,

Unshackled, unallied with dust.

Long as you swing shall wrong come right,

As sure as morning follows night ;

The days go wrong the ages never

Swing on, old pendulum swing for ever !

THE MERCHANT'S HANAPER.

"You have often wondered why I did
not marry Ashley Graham when I told you
that he asked me," Rose Mantell said to-
me one evening, as we sat by the open,
window looking out on the moonlight
quivering over the lake, and silvering the
old mountains like a fine hoar frost spread
over them ; " and now you want to know
why I am going to America, where I have
no friends at least, none you know of.
Well, I have always put you off when you
have questioned me, but to-night I will make
a clean breast of it, as people say, and tell
you my whole story."

You remember when we lived in Percy-
street, my brother James and I ? and you
remember how poor we were, and what a
miserable thing we made of it together, he
with his painting and I with my music ? We
did not hide things from you as we did
from others, but let you into the mysteries
of our numerous makeshifts and contri-
vances, and how we managed to exist on
what others would have starved on. And
you remember how proud and sensitive
James was ? and how, with his wretched
income so hardly earned, too, poor fellow I
he was determined to keep up appear-
ances, and never let the "world know how
poor he was ? It was hard work, I can
assure you; and the heavy end of the
stick fell to me ; the heavy end of this kind
cf stick always does fall to the woman ; for,
as the housekeeper, I had to make the best
of things and to feel the worst, to pull the
two gaping ends together as well as I could
and to put myself in the gap when I could
not.

Of course you remember Ashley Graham,
my brother's great friend ? They had been
students together at the Academy; and
once or twice in old days James had been
down to the Lakes where Ashley lived ; and
in his humble modest way, dear fellow,
looked up to his friend as to a superior
being infinitely beyond him in everything.
Certainly Ashley's family was better than
ours; and, though they were all ruined

--S 3

Chades Dickens. J

THE MERCHANT'S HANAPER.

[December 26, 1868.] 85

now, his early bringing up had been more
luxurious and refined than ours had been ;
so that he in a manner condescended when
he came into our home sphere, and he
made me understand that he condescended.
You know how men can make women
understand this. With James of course
Ashley was all that was genial and brotherly,
though there was that certain flavour of the
superior being in all he said or did ; but he
treated me very much as if I was an upper
servant or an automaton. He never spoke
to me ; never even shook hands with
me when he came in or went away ;
if he had anything to ask, anything he
wanted done for him, he looked at James
and asked him, though I had to do it ; and
if by any chance he came when James was
out, and waited for him, he used to take a
book and busy himself in that, without pay-
ing more attention to me than he did to the
cat. And not quite so much. So this was
how I knew that Ashley Graham held him-
self superior to us. He was too honourable
to treat me as his equal when he knew that
I was his inferior, I used to think ; and I
liked him all the better for his haughtiness.

Ashley knew very little about our real
circumstances, and we hid the seamy side
from him, perhaps foolishly. For instance,
he did not know that we had only two
rooms ; that behind the large old Indian
screen of our sitting-room was James's bed ;
and that the other little room at the top of
the house was mine. He was as poor as
we were, but he was in society and we were
not ; and that gave him an appearance of
superior condition, which of course he
wanted to keep up for the sake of his
family. Still, he knew that James did not
sell many pictures, and, as I tell you, we
were all half- starved together. But Ashley
thought we were better off than we were,
and only I knew how poor he was.

He was often in our rooms, and lately he
got into the way of sleeping there. The
first time he asked for a bed it was a wild
wet winter's night, when no one with a
heart could have turned out even a dog. In
those days he lived over at Holloway, or
some unearthly place like that ; it was past
twelve, and the last omnibus had gone ; a
cab would have ruined him outright a
cab from Percy- street to Holloway for a
poor painter who did not sell his pictures,
the thing was impossible ! so when he
asked, in that off-hand cavalier way of his,
if we could take him in, and James looked
at me, I answered briskly, " Yes, certainly ;"
and, with a sign to James, " if Mr. Graham

does not object to a little room at the top
of the house."

No, Mr. Graham did not object to a little
room at the top of the house : he said this
quite graciously, as if he was conferring a
favour, not receiving it ; upon which I
went up- stairs, and began to arrange my
own room for him. It was a pleasure !
Georgie ! I was just a slave, and nothing
more ! I brought out my poor little hoard
of meagre prettinesses, and laid them about
the room where they made the most effect ;
I hid away my own things, so that he should
not know whose room it was ; and when my
brother took him up- stairs, even he scarcely
seemed to know what I had done, and I re-
ally believe imagined I had somehow chan-
ged my room, and that I was to be quite
comfortable myself for the night. He did not
see me again to ask me how I had managed
I am speaking now of James and neither
he nor Ashley knew that I had passed the
night sitting on a wooden chair by the empty
kitchen hearth ; for the landlady let us have
a little kitchen for my cooking and washing,
&c. It had been originally the scullery,
and was a dirty, damp old hole ; but it did
well enough. We were too poor to be fas-
tidious.

In the morning I took up Ashley's hot
water and his boots, which I had cleaned
with my own hands. He thought it was
the landlady's servant who had waited on
him, and as he passed me on the stairs he
gave her sixpence, which the girl took quite
tranquilly, as even less than her due. Those
boots let me into the secret of Ashley's
poverty. They were old and worn, and I
mended them for him, I must say, cleverly.
I often did this ; for Ashley, never dreaming
that I had only a hard wooden chair for my
bed when he slept with us, continually now
overstayed his time, playing chess or " talk-
ing shop" with my brother, and at last got
to ask for his room as almost a matter of
course. James was too proud and timid,
poor fellow ! to tell the truth, and I was too
happy to be of use to Ashley to murmur at
any sacrifice that I could make. It was the
sweetest time of my life ! That humble un-
recognised self-sacrifice for the one you
honour is almost more delicious than grati-
tude !

And all this time Ashley took no more
notice of me than before. I was very young.
James was only a protection in name, not
in reality ; and, girl as I was, I could under-
stand something of the motive of his reserve,
and see into the value of it. And yet I used
to think he might have been just a little

[December 2G, 1SCS.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

more cognisant of my existence ! He need
not have made love to me, or been very at-
tentive, but just a little as I used to say,
just as much as to the cat !

One day Ashley came to us in a terrible
state. Even James saw that something had
happened, and I, studying his every mood
and expression as I did, knew at once that
some distress was in the background. And it
was something so new to see Ashley moved
so strong and almost hard as he was
that one felt it more in him than if it had
been any other man. At least I did.

" James, my good fellow !" he said, in an
excited way, " lend me five pounds, can you ?
My mother is dangerously ill, and they have
written for me to go to her to-night. I
happen not to have as much money about
me at this moment, and I cannot get any
from old Campbell until I have finished my
work. He as good as bought my Herodias
Dancing yesterday, but still you know it
was not done out and out, so I could not
very well ask him for the money, could I ?"

Poor Ashley ! His Herodias Dancing
one of the most hideous things you ever
saw was no more sold to old Campbell
than I was ! If Ashley could have got into
the hands of any picture- dealer whatsoever
he would have considered his fortune made.
James blushed and hesitated. Five pounds !
Ashley might as well have asked him for
five hundred. We had not five shillings in
the house ; for we had had a bad week, and
I was thinking somewhat ruefully of the
short commons we should have to go upon,
and how we were to get fed at all for the
next ten days or so ; and now Ashley was
in trouble too, and wanted us to help him.
James looked at me in great embarrassment.
One by one we had parted with all our little
valuables, but I had kept back one, a very
handsome pearl ring of my dear mother's,
which our father had given her on her wed-
ding day. This was emphatically the last
of our treasures, and I had struggled hard
and made many sacrifices to keep it.

When James looked at me so wistfully,
and when I thought of Ashley's trouble
his mother perhaps dying, and he her only
son, and so fond of her ! I could not help
crying; but I could not hesitate. What
had been sacred to me for my mother's
sake should be given to him for his. There
was no sacrilege in this ; it was a righteous
disposition of a sacred treasure.

" I will get the money from the bank,
James," I said.

And Ashley, though he stared, was taken
in by the quiet matter-of-fact way in which

I spoke. A poor artist in Percy-street, and
a banker ? Well ! it was a land of miracle,
if true; but then there are miracles yet
afloat. So I went out and pawned my ring,
and came back with the money to Ashley.
And of the two, James was decidedly the
more astonished. Ashley took the money,
said carelessly to me, " I am sorry you
have had so much trouble, Miss Mantell,"
and thanked James very warmly. When
he went away I ran up- stairs, and flinging
myself on the bed sobbed bitterly. This
precious ring my last possession and
James thanked for lending out of a super-
fluous balance what I had procured by the
sacrifice of my best treasure ! It was a
little hard ; don't you think so, too, Georgie ?
But I did not let my brother see what I
felt ; and James, as you know, was one of
those dear good creatures who never see any-
thing they are not absolutely told or shown.

But I was half afraid that I had opened
the door to a good deal of discomfort in the
future; for Ashley would be sure to do
about money as he had done about the bed-
room, taking for granted that he could have
whatever he asked for, and that James
could help him with money from that ba-
lance at his banker's as he could help him
with a room from his liberal arrangement
of lodging. Not that he was selfish ; you
must not think that ; but he was thought-
less. Was he not an artist ? and could he,
therefore, be anything but thoughtless ?
Besides, he did not know the kind of
reverential feeling that both James and I
had for him, and how we would have
rather sacrificed ourselves than see him
want anything that we could get for him.

Of course Ashley believed in the banker's
balance, and, from the ease with which the
loan of five pounds had been had, assumed
that more might be had as easily ; and not
long after his return from the north for
his mother got better, against all expectation
he asked James for another loan; this
time to enable his mother and sister to
come up to London and make a home with
him. And when he spoke of his sister
his dear and beautiful Cora I saw, what I
had long suspected, that one cause of my
brother's intense attachment to Ashley was
in his love for Cora. It was almost pathetic
to watch the expression that came over his
face while Ashley was speaking. If only
Cora could be brought to London ! if only
he might sometimes see her !

Ashley wanted twenty pounds. If five
could only be had by pawning my ring, I
ask you, Georgie, where could twenty come

Charles Dickens]

THE MERCHANT'S HANAPEE,

[December 26, 18C8.] 87

from ? James was in an agony, and I was
powerless to help him. If sorrow and pain
could have bought these men their happi-
ness they would have had it without much
delay ; but what could a weak and ignorant
girl do for them ? Absolutely nothing !
I saw James look round the shabby room,
and I saw where his eyes rested. By rare
good fortune he had been commissioned
to paint a portrait for one of those so-called
patrons of art whose patronage consists in
getting the best productions of clever young
men, yet unknown, at merely nominal
prices. It was for a rich City merchant to
whom James had been introduced, and it
was to be thirty pounds when done. Could
he mortgage it ? There was no use in ask-
ing Mr. Hawes to give him an advance.
He thought he had done great things in
giving the order at all ; and there was every
probability that if he paid him on delivery
lie would charge him a per-centage on the
transaction, and make a profit out of his
" cash down." ~No there was no use in
going to him ! He had lent my brother
a magnificent silver- gilt hanaper which he
wanted introduced into his picture. It had
been a presentation-piece from some society
or other, and the City merchant was very
proud of his cup. It was a hideous thing,
artistically speaking, but it was worth some
hundreds of pounds.

My brother looked at this tankard. I
do not know what made me do it, but I took
it up quietly, and dusted it with my apron.

"I hope this has not got scratched or
hurt in any way," I said; and it was rare
that I spoke before Ashley. "You re-
member Mr. Hawes is coming for it to-
morrow, Jamie ?"

" What a shame that a fellow like that
should have such a thing and so vilely
ugly too !" said Ashley. " It is worth only
the weight of metal ; but that is being
worth something," he added, as if reflecting.

"Yes, it is hideously ugly criminally
ugly !" said James ; "but it cost no end of
money, I dare say. Old Hawes, I know, sets
great store by it, the old rhinoceros ! But as
it is, it is too good for him. And to think that
we should be at the orders of such a man !
that we should be obliged to put such a
vile thing as that into our work !"

He spoke in the artist's injured tone. I
have often noticed that artists are injured
when they are employed by men who do
not understand art Philistines as they call
them.

"Better send it to the smcl ting-pot !"
laughed Ashley.

I say laughed, but it was a bitter sneer
rather than a laugh.

James flushed, and I trembled. It never
occurred to me as possible that my brother
could do anything so dishonourable as deal
with another man's property my dear
Jamie, the very soul of chivalrous feeling !
and yet I somehow feared Ashley's sugges-
tion. I knew how he loved that man, and
I knew that he, quite as much as Ashley,
wanted to see Cora and Mrs. Graham in
London. But wishing and doing, envying
and stealing, are two different things ; and
though I trembled I did not definitely dis-
trust.

That night Ashley slept with us. I was
going to say as usual ; for, indeed, it was a
very frequent thing now ; and I passed the
night sitting on a wooden chair before the
empty kitchen hearth.

I had fallen into an uneasy doze just at
the last hours, as the day began to break,
when I was awakened by hearing a step
on the stairs. The house was one of those
creaking old places where a mouse could
hardly stir without being heard ; and there
was something in the build of it that made
my little kitchen like an echoing vault.
The step came down the stairs and across
the hall ; I heard the door- chain rattle, and
the bolt shoot back ; and then the door
opened and slammed to again; and a
hurried footfall passed on the pavement.
How like Ashley's step ! An unaccountable
terror came over me ; what was he doing
out so early ? but then I thought it might
be Mr. Thomson, the lodger, who lived next
door to me up-stairs, and who used some-
times to go out very early before any one
else was astir. He was a commission agent,
as he called himself ; an irreverent servant
used to speak of him as " our commercial
gent ;" and, my brother, who had an artist's
contempt for commerce in all its branches,
always called him the bagman. He was a
bold, coarse, good-looking man, with large
roving eyes and long fingers; a man for
whom I had an especial horror, partly be-
cause he would waylay me on the top landing
when I went to bed, asking me all manner
of things about my brother and his work,
and who were his patrons, and what he got
for such and such a picture, &c. He wished
to pass himself off as knowing something
about painting, and he knew as much of it
as I did of algebra ! Still, we had no right
to dislike him as we did, and so I often
said to James when Ave were alone.

Determined then that it should be Mr.
Thomson who had gone out early, I tried to

88 [December 2G, 18GS.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

calm my nerves for I was nervous, foolish
as it sounds. One cannot sit night after
night in a damp, dark kitchen, without get-
ting nervous ! By degrees the day broke
fully, and I went up- stairs to do the house
work before my brother got up. Eor I
was the only servant we had ; we could not
afford even a share in the drudge kept
for the house. When I went up- stairs I
found the door of our sitting-room open
just ajar as if it had been pulled to and
not shut. I went in. James was still
asleep behind the screen. I could hear his
breathing, poor fellow ! such a fast and
heavy sleeper as he was ! I looked round
the room with a kind of dread, as if I
expected to see something terrible ; on the
table, where the hanaper had stood last
night, lay the velvet-lined oaken case open
and empty. The precious deposit which
the rich City merchant had left, not without
some half-insulting words of caution, and
which he was coming to reclaim to-day,
was gone.

I called my brother hurriedly, and he
woke up.

"James!" I said, "what has become of
the hanaper?"

" The hanaper ? what ? what do you
mean?" he answered.

" It is not here, James ; it has been taken
out of the case it has gone."

"Gone! nonsense!" he said. "Why,
who could have taken it, Rose ?"

I did not speak I could not. It was so
clear, and yet so dreadful.

" Call Ashley," said James, his thoughts
turning instinctively to the man he loved
and trusted most.

All this time James had been dressing
hastily behind the screen, and now he came
out into the room. Just as he did so, the
street-door opened by a latch-key, and Ash-
ley came up the stairs and straight into our
sitting-room. His coat was wet it was
raining heavily and he carried the latch-
key in his hand.

" Here, old fellow," he said to James,
quietly ; " here is your latch-key. I took it
with me, as I went out so early."

" Ashley !" said James, in his scared way.

"Hey! what's the matter?" cried the
other.

"The hanaper!" was all my brother
could say.

" What about it, man ?"
"It is gone !"

" By Jupiter ! you don't say so," said
Ashley, turning pale.

" I can swear it was here last night," said

Jamie, excitedly, "Rose herself put it away
in the case."

" Yes, I saw it," answered Ashley,
gloomily.

Then he turned suddenly to me, and
looked at me as I thought suspiciously. I
reddened under his eyes, and he saw me
flush. It seemed to me as if he could read
my thoughts as if he knew what I knew.
And how could he ? Young people always
imagine that they are seen through, and I
thought I was seen through now.

Jamie saw nothing suspected nothing.
He was sitting with his head resting on his
hands, and his elbows on his knees, feeling
as a man does when he is suddenly plunged
into destruction when his name is tainted
and his career closed. As for me, the whole
world seemed to have crashed into ruin at
my feet ; but the one I could not under-
stand was Ashley. If I might have died
before this moment ! I could not believe
him guilty, and yet I could not doubt the
evidence of my senses. He had been out
in the early morning so far indeed he con-
fessed honestly enough ; no one else had
been out that. I could swear to ; and cer-
tainly no burglary had been committed.
And it was not to be supposed that we
harboured thieves in the house.

At that moment Mr. Thomson came
down- stairs, whistling as he passed our
door. He looked in and nodded, and his
great black eyes roved all about the place
and seemed to take in every inch and scrap
there was to be seen.

"A wet morning," he said, in his thick
oily voice, shaking his large loose cloak
about him as he gave a kind of growling
shiver. Then he strode down the stairs,
flung open the street-door, and slammed it
against him noisily : and bo went on his
way, whistling. How I wished that we all
had as light a heart as this unpleasant bag-
man ! and that one among us had so clear
a conscience !

I was so sorry for poor James ! He
seemed quite paralysed, and though Ashley
proposed sending for the police, and putting
the whole place under a kind of arrest
and I wondered at his audacity yet my
brother refused to adopt this or any other
suggestion, but sat, as I tell you, with his
head on his hands and his elbows resting
on his knees, more like a creature crazed
with dread than anything else. Meanwhile
time was drawing on, and it drew close to
the hour when Mr. Hawes had appointed
to come for his treasure.

" James," I said, " dear Jamie ! you must

Charles Dickens.]

THE MERCHANT'S HANAPER.

[December 26, 1868.] 89

decide on something ! It is twelve o'clock
now, and Mr. Hawes conies at one. What
will you do, dear ? What can we do ?"

I ought to have told you that by this
time James and I were alone. Ashley had
been obliged to leave, and for the first time
in our acquaintance I had not been sorry to
see him go. He had been very kind to me
and very cheery with James, but I shrank
from him visibly ; though he looked at me
as people do look at something seen for the
first time, and seemed almost as if he had
found me out, after such a long period of
overlooking ! At any other time I should
have been transported with his attention ;
it would have been my pride, my joy, my
heaven, but now I felt degraded by it, as
if he wanted to buy my silence, to make
me an accomplice in his crime through my
love. Oh, Georgie, what an awful thing it
is to feel that the one you love above all
else in life is base and false !

Well ! when I spoke to James like this
I seemed to startle him as if from a dream.
"Yes, Rose, I remember," he said, getting
up and pushing his dank fair hair from his
white face. " I will go and make it all right
with him. My poor little Rose ! you have
had a nasty fright, dear, and you are quite
pale and trembling. Never mind now, it
will soon be all right."

He kissed me tenderly, and before I could
stop him, or even answer back his loving
words, he too had left the house, and left
me indeed alone.

I cannot tell you much more of what hap-
pened, for I only remember things very con-
fusedly. I remember Mr. Hawes coming
to the house, and I remember his loud angry
voice and furious face ; I remember a swarm
of policemen in the room the place seemed
filled with them and I remember Ashley's
grand bearing and noble look in the midst
of them. He seemed like a beautiful demon
to me like Lucifer: a god, but a fallen
one. And then oh, Georgie, do not let me
think of it ! I remember a noise, as of men's
feet, a tumult of voices, and a hustling at
the door, and Something was brought in
and laid tenderly on the bed. It was my
brother all that was of him now ! found
dead in a lonely part of Kensington Gardens,
with an empty bottle of poison in his hand.
Proud and sensitive as he was, the shock
and horror had been too much for him, and
he chose to brave the wrath of God rather
than undergo the doubt, the accusation of
his fellow-men.

After this the newspaper reports can tell
you the story better than I. You know that

Ashley was arrested on suspicion, tried, and
acquitted for want of sufiicient evidence;
acquitted but not cleared ; for all that my
dear Jamie's death divided the suspicion.
The oddest part of it was that the hanaper
could not be traced in the remotest way.
It had apparently vanished off the face of
the earth, and how it had gone, or what had
become of it, was as much a mystery to the
police as to us. It looked as if Ashley had
taken it and for my own part I never
doubted it ; but what had he done with it ?
who had he sold it to ? and how was it that
the police could not trace it ? And how was
it, too, that Ashley was suddenly so flush of
money if he had not stolen it ? He said an
old aunt had died and left him a legacy. God
forgive me ! I did not believe a word of it !
And yet I loved him, Georgie ! Unworthy
as I believed him to be, and the cause of
that poor boy's death, I loved him with my
whole heart. I had grown into womanhood
loving him ; and, if even I had wished it, I
could not have cut him out of my life now.
But I would not marry him. He asked me
more than once, and he pleaded passionately
for he suddenly quite changed towards
me, as I have said, and from utter neglect
passed into the most intense love. But I
was firm. I could not have married him
then ! So he went away to America, and
I came down here to Ambleside, as gover-
ness to the rector's children ; and here I
have been ever since two years two long,
painful, weary years ! And now I am go-
ing to America next week ; my passage is
taken, and in a fortnight's time I shall be
standing on the quay at New York, with
Ashley's Graham's hand in mine ! If
you read this letter you will see what has
changed my life, and what has taken me as
a penitent to the feet of the man I love, and
have always loved.

She gave me an open letter written in a
faint and trembling hand, and signed A.
Thomson. It said that "he, the writer,
being now at the point of death, wished to
make confession, and reparation so far as
he could, of the evil he had caused. For it
was he who had taken the hanaper ; and
he had it under his large cloak while he
stood by the open door of the room, and
nodded, and spoke to Rose Mantell of the
weather. It was a bold stroke," he said,
" and the idea occurred to him only when
he heard Ashley go out so early. Know-
ing the habits of the Mantells, and their
hours, he had stolen down- stairs to James's
room and found the door ajar. Ashley had

90 [December 26, 1868.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

left it open when lie went in for the latch-
key. He had often seen the hanaper, and
as often coveted it, and thought how much
he could make of it ; for among his ac-
quaintances was a ' fence' " (he had
the grace to explain the word further
on) "and who was perfectly safe. He
saw the oaken case ; noiselessly unslid the
clasp ; and in a quarter of an hour after
he left the house, the rich City merchant's
presentation plate was seething in the
smelting pot. He had timed his going
out to accord just with Ashley's return
that he might show himself at the door of
the room unconcerned and ignorant of the
trouble there was within it ; and while they
were all too much dazed with their loss to
know very clearly what was best to be done.
No suspicion had ever fallen on him, though
his rooms had been searched, as those of
the other inmates of the house ; and he had
gone on living in his garret with honour
and punctual payments until now. And
now he wished to pay his last debt ; when
he could die in peace, and with an easy
conscience." Easy conscience, the rogue !
and yet, who is to limit the mercy of the
Infinite ! God forgive us all, sinners that
we are !

THE DEATH'S HEAD MOTH.

I. THE PALACE DINNER.

The court of the Grand Duke of Eisenherz
was dining, and dining moodily. It had been
said by the cynics of the Grand Duke's capital
that the only pleasant hour spent by the
miserable court was the dinner hour ; yet on
this particular occasion even that hour was
not very agreeable. The sickly little duke,
a voluptuary, a fop, and a fool, as heartless
as he was brainless, was testy, snappish, fretful,
and splenetic, and in the most vexatious of
tempers, complaining of the wine, swearing
terrible oaths at his servants, kicking his pet
spaniels, snubbing the Lord Chamberlain,
almost barking at the minister of war, old iron-
necked General Blossow, contradicting the
Countess Schwellenberg, the lady of the robes,
and refusing even to look in the direction of
that old painted hag his stepmother, the
duchess, who, reddening behind the thick coats
of white and of red vermilion that choked up
her wrinkles, was in as viperish a temper as
could rise from the depths of a proud and evil
heart, corrupted by all the petty ambitions of
a small and depraved court in that demoralised
age that immediately preceded the red deluge
of the great revolution.

It was an October twilight, the few pale
gleams of day lingered on the glasses, jugs,
fruit dishes, and silver that strewed the
vast table. Here and there the blade of a

fruit knife, or the stopper of a decanter,
glanced out of the" gloom which elsewhere
had risen slowly like a black flood, and sub-
merged the German Pharaohling and all his
host. The duke's face, pale, jaded, and fretful,
could be dimly seen by the light of his powdered
hair, but the duchess, who sat gaunt and erect,
with her back to a central window, appeared
a mere shapeless mass of darkness.

In all that concourse there were only two
persons really natural and at their ease, and
even these two were unhappy more unhappy,
indeed, than their fellows. The one was a
beautiful young girl, who sat on the right hand
of the duchess. Her tender face, irradiated
with clusters of sunshiny hair, was spiritualised
by a fine intelligence, and dignified by a certain
calm power that gave almost a queenly cha-
racter to a beauty otherwise specially gentle,
loving, and womanly. She seemed unable and
unwilling to conceal a certain foreboding of
coming rank ; but pride in that gentle heart
was no evil passion. In that pure soil the
poison plant had lost its venom, and glowed
only with amaranthine flowers. The sceptre
she would sway, those who loved her said,
would be rather a branch of lilies than the
hated sword.

The other was a pale intellectual-looking
young man, dressed in a plain austere black
velvet suit, reflecting light only from the
cut steel buttons which glistened here and
there in the last glimmer of day. Professor
Mohrart was the court physician, an honour
acquired by him at an early age, rather by
dint of his acknowledged learning than any
special regard borne him by either the dowager
duchess or the duke, whom he disdained to
flatter, and whose patronage of alchemy and
astrology he strongly condemned. He spoke but
little, and seemed lost in contemplation, except
when now and then his large dark eyes fell with
a mournful and tender regard on Mademoiselle
Blossow, the daughter of the minister of war,
and the duke's betrothed. There was indeed a
rumour in Eisenherz that a few years before he
had been attached to Mademoiselle Blossow,
but that the stern old general, from ambitious
motives, had refused him her hand. This
dream was no doubt long past. He had about
him now the preoccupied air of the student,
and he seemed out of place among those
heartless courtiers and self-conscious ladi^ of
honour.

"We start then to-morrow, Frederick, to
Schwarzstein," said the duchess, suddenly, in
her shrill voice. " The coaches must be ready
by three, to reach Graffenberg by dusk."

" My honoured and revered stepmother,"
said the young duke, with listless spitefulness,
" you are only too good and kind in arranging
the movements of our court. Since we last
spoke to you we have changed our mind. I
and the general take Beatrice with us to-
morrow hunting in the forest at Eichenwald.
That exercise will be too fatiguing for you, we
fear. The chamberlain can go with you to
your worthy cousin at Schwarzstein."

Charles Dickens.]

THE DEATH'S HEAD MOTH.

[December 2<3, 1868.] 91

The dowager duchess turned livid through
her paint, but made no reply, and said insolently
to one of the ladies in waiting, ' ' Light that
candle for me that is on the mantelpiece. It is
like sitting in a vault."

The lady so harshly bidden to do this servile
duty, performed it with an obsequious and unre-
sisting humility, and as she did so, a large moth,
with rich brown and yellow and mottled wings,
and a black and yellow speckled body, settled
on the wall before the light. It was a death's
head moth, with that curious mark that is vul-
garly supposed to resemble a skull unusually
conspicuous on its thorax. It uttered a faint
shrill plaintive cry like that of a mouse, and
flew back into the darkness. It passed close to
Mademoiselle Beatrice, wavered over to Pro-
fessor Mohrart, then brushed the face of the
ex-duchess with its wings, and settled on the
table before the young duke, who, snatching
the fan of a lady next him, struck at the moth
with such force that, though he missed the insect,
he snapped the stems of several wine-glasses.
The hidden tiger within him leaped out now as
he sprang up, threw down his chair, and tore at
the great crimson bell-rope, till the corridors
echoed again, and half a dozen servants hurried
in with candelabra.

" Madame la Duchesse," he said, petulantly,
to his mother, " you know I detest darkness,
yet you will force me to sit here to save half a
dozen wax candles. We will not be controlled.
Charles, Louis, tell the major-domo we will
dine no more without lights, no,- not even in
summer. There seems to be a doubt amongst
some of you who reigns at Eisenherz ; you shall
soon learn. Mademoiselle Beatrice, I kiss
your hand. Ladies, adieu. Gentlemen, the
faro table is ready let us try fortune again ;
and you fellows, search the room and kill
that moth. I hate to have those things buzzing
about."

" Poor moth," thought the professor. " Poor
Eisenherz! That man will grow up a mon-
ster."

" That moth brings bad luck to some of us,"
said one of the footmen to another.

II. THE CUP OF CHOCOLATE.

Two things were well known to the meanest
lacqueys of the palace. First, that the dowager
duchess detested the intended marriage of her
stepson ; secondly, that the quarrels between
the duke and his ambitious stepmother were
every day growing more embittered.

It was the evening of the day that the
duchess was to return from Schwarzstein. The
duke has come in tired from hunting, and re-
tired to his private apartment. In the embra-
sure of a window in one of the brightly lit ante-
chambers sat the young physician, looking out
thoughtfully into the starry night, half shel-
tered by a heavy crimson velvet curtain which
he held back from the mullioned panes.

"She loved me once," he thought. "She
told me she did, and I loved her, till her
father and the cruel world came between us.

Does she love me still ? Oh, could I but learn
that !"

He started ; for an icy hand like that of a
corpse had touched him on the shoulder. He
looked round. It was the duchess, who pointed
to the open door of an inner boudoir, and led
him in. She locked the door, and stood close
to the surprised professor.

"Professor Mohrart," she said, "you well
know how great a regard I feel for you. What
honours we have destined for you, you may
not know so well. We know you wise,
faithful, and true ; we would trust you with
an especial duty. We claim but one small
service."

The young physician bowed gravely.

"Madame la Duchesse," he said, "I am a
faithful servant of the house of Eisenherz.
Your wishes are laws. All that I can do, sub-
servient to my duty to God and man, I will do
to serve either you or the duke."

" Answer me first one question truly. You
did once love Mademoiselle Beatrice, the duke's
betrothed ?"

The young man hesitated ; then, with almost
a groan, he said, " I did."

"And you still love Beatrice Blossow?"

Professor Mohrart made no reply.

" You do love her. I have seen a letter
you wrote her, urging her to fly with you to
England, to escape the match she detested;
you see, I know all. You have her letter,
refusing to go, but professing unalterable
love for you. Give me that letter ; you
are not rich. You shall have ten thousand
Friedrich d'ors for that mere small square of
pink paper."

The professor remained silent.

" You shall marry the daughter of the richest
noble in all Eisenherz."

" Madame la Duchesse," said the professor at
last, " you would prevent the marriage of the
duke, it is clear. Whatever I may or may not
have once felt, I now owe all humble homage
and duty to that beautiful and amiable lady,
and I will give you no help in this matter."

" You refuse, then ?"

" I refuse."

" You defy my anger ?"

" I neither defy it nor dread it. I refuse to
help you to prevent the marriage of the duke,
your stepson, with Mademoiselle Beatrice."

" You persist in that?"

"I do."

" You love her, and yet you would marry her
to another ! She loves you, yet prefers wealth
and a title. Bah !"

" No ; she has forgotten me ; and I wish her
to have that title, which is her ambition."

" And you deny recent letters ?"

"I do. They may have been written, but
they have never reached me."

" And your own of the fourth of last month ?"

" That I wrote, but Mademoiselle Beatrice
has not replied to me, Madame la Duchesse,
since I broke off the engagement on her not
answering my letter pressing her to fly at the
first rumour of the duke's attentions."

92 [December 2G, 18C8.]

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

" Fool !" the duchess as she spoke unlocked
a secretaire, and drew out a small packet of let-
ters " there are both hers and yours ; they
were intercepted by my orders. All I want you
to do is to take her last and produce it yourself
to the duke, altering the date of it to yester-
day as a proof of her contempt and hatred of
him. Fool! do you not see she has taken
his hand only in despair of gaining back
yours? Punish her for so easily relinquish-
ing you."

Mohrart stood there like a man mortally
wounded : his heart ceased almost to beat.
Then a fire came into his eyes. " Tempter, sent
from below," he said, "you have wrecked the
happiness of two hearts, merely to help for-
ward some evil scheme, to advance some
evil purpose, whither tending you yourself
best know; but I will not interrupt the
progress of Beatrice to the rank and power
she will ennoble. I have prayed to Heaven to
give me the strength to surrender her for the
happiness of this people. The strength was
given me. I will not turn back. I will not be
faithless to Heaven now to advance the wicked
intrigues of a corrupt woman."

The duchess was at a white heat. She
burned, but there were no sparkles and there
was no blaze.

" 'Tis well," she said. " Wise only in books,
you push from you honours I offered you. Fools !
you shall both perish ; you shall learn what it is
to brave my anger. Had I found you obedient
I might have seated you on the throne by my
side, now only misery and desolation await you.
You do not comprehend the grandeur of my
views, and you place yourself beneath the foot
of a mindless girl. Be it so. You shall soon
learn how devastating is the anger of a
slighted woman."

Here the duchess unlocked the door and
angrily rang a silver bell that stood on the table.
A hard-featured female attendant instantly ap-
peared with a tray of chocolate and a little
crystal bottle of ratafia.

"Professor," she said, "will you please add
two drops of that ratafia to the duke's choco-
late ; my hand shakes ; he prefers it to vanille.
Louise, tell the duke his chocolate awaits him
here."

"I did not wish Louise to see that we had
quarrelled," said the duchess. " Adieu, Pro-
fessor Mohrart. Adieu, long-suffering lover.
You have not gall enough to hate even the man
who will marry the woman who still loves you.
Excellent Christian, adieu ; some day, perhaps,
you will think of revenge, but beware of mine
first."

The duke's voice was heard at the very mo-
ment the last glimpse of the crimson silk train
of the duchess swept from the room. He
came in patting a huge tawny stag hound with
which a long-eared spaniel of the finest dimen-
sions was playing with dignified condescen-
sion.

" Well, professor," he said, as he threw him-
self languidly in a gilt chair, " to tell you the
truth, I am infernally wearied with that absurd

pastime that men have christened hunting, and
which seems to me a mere ingenious way of en-
couraging men of fashion to break their valuable
necks. My amiable stepmother sent me word
that Desanges had brought my chocolate here.
Aye, there I see it is. Would you oblige me
by handing it a thousand thanks. Do you
care for Sevres, M. le Professor?"

The professor replied in the affirmative.

" This cup of mine is mere peasant crockery to
the jewelled set I have ordered for our wedding
breakfast by the by, my dear professor, why
did you never marry ? There's that handsome
blonde daughter of the lord chamberlain with
thirty thousand "

Here the duke raised the cup to his lips and
began languidly to sip. He put it down.

" This chocolate is far too strong of the
ratafia." As he said this the duke suddenly rose
with a peculiar wild stare in his eyes, staggered,
caught at the tablecloth for support, and dragged
it towards him till it fell on the floor, throwing
the candelabra down with a crash. Then he
fell heavily forward upon his face before the
astonished professor could run to his as-
sistance.

The professor knelt over the fallen man, and
was in the act of loosening his neckcloth as the
duchess and her servant entered. They uttered
piercing cries of horror, and ran to raise the
duke in their arms ; but already the duke was
in the agonies of death. The only Avords he
faintly articulated were :

" It was Mohrart who put poison into my
chocolate. I always thought he hated me.
Mind you, people, that he is broken on the

wheel " Then he moaned again, made

a faint effort to rise, groaned twice, and fell
back dead in the arms of a servant.

III. THE SEALED KNOTS.

" There is no hope for him," said a barber
in a crowd outside the town hall of Eisenherz,
the day of Mohrart's trial, to his friend the
saddler, "no hope at all, I tell you. The
Lord Chamberlain's own man, who has been
all day at the trial, tells me that the dowager
duchess's maid can swear she saw Mohrart
pour laurel water into the duke's chocolate,
a bottle of ratafia mixed with laurel water
was actually found on the floor of Mohrart's
bedroom, and there was laurel water after-
wards discovered in the chocolate left in the
cup. Oh, he was a double-dyed villain ! Yet
he looked so plausible. Well, I shall go and
see him on the wheel, neighbour."

" And the duchess's gentleman, I hear," said
a third gossip, who just then came up " has
produced intercepted letters, showing love still
existed between Mohrart and Lady Beatrice ;
but Mohrart's defence is that the dates have been
forged, or that they were letters of a year
ago, before the duke admired Beatrice, and
when he and Beatrice were engaged to be
married. There is a report that the Sealed Knots
intend to rescue him from prison, believing him
a victim of some state intrigue, so the guards

Cbaries Dickeus.]

THE DEATH'S HEAD MOTH.

[December 2C, 1808.] 93

at the prison were yesterday doubled. Our
duchess has a tight grasp."

"Stuff!" said the other, "I not only don't
believe it, but what's more, I don't even be-
lieve there are any conspirators in Eisenherz
who assume such a name."

" Come, come, neighbour," said the first,
" we know there are disaffected people in Eisen-
herz, and it does not much matter what name
they go by. You yourself probably are one of
them, because you deny what every one knows
is a fact. They know each other, that's
certain."

The gossips were but too correct. Poor
Mohrart was that day found guilty and sen-
tenced to be broken on the wheel on the first
day of November. An hour before midnight
of the day of his trial the prisoner's cell door
grated open. Mohrart leaped up from his
knees, for he was praying. It was General
Blossow.

"Mohrart," he said, "I was no friend of
yours when you were in prosperity. I hated you
because I thought you had proudly refused to
answer the letters of my daughter who loved
you, you thought I coveted the duke's power
and title ; but now I see it all. The asso-
ciates of the Sealed Knots have proved to
me that the dates of the letters shown at
the trial were forged, and that it was the
duchess and not you who poisoned the duke.
She had long resolved his death. Through one
of the same secret societies I have just gained
access here to-night to plan your escape. Do
you still love Beatrice? Did you ever really
love her ?"

" General Blossow, I love your daughter, so
that I would not dread even that terrible
death to-morrow, could I but press my lips
to hers but once more. I always loved her. It
was my evil pride alone that forbade me to ask
the reason why my letters of passionate appeal
as well as of passionate accusation were never
answered. Saints in Heaven, how could I ever
suspect her gentle heart of forgetfulness or of
mean ambition !"

" Beatrice is here. You shall see her ; she
knows all now," said the general, throwing open
the door. The next instant the lovers were
clasped in each other's arms, in all the ecstatic
joy of renewed hope.

Suddenly their conversation was interrupted
by the tramp of feet, and a sound of grounded
muskets. The door flew open, and the duchess
appeared upon the threshold.

" General," she said, mockingly, with the old
viperish hatred in her pursed- up eyes, " you
seem surprised to see me. You were rash to
trust my paid emissaries. I too, you see, have
dealings with conspirators. Every step you
took I knew. As for this wanton, seize her
soldiers, for she has been an accomplice in this
detestable crime, as I before found. General
Blossow, you shall answer us promptly for this
treason. Where are your brave conspirators of
the Sealed Knot now ? As for you, poisoner,
the wheel will soon be ready for you. Yes, if
half Eisenherz had joined in killing my poor

stepson, half Eisenherz should perish miserably
as you shall. Soldiers, to separate prisons with
them. Remove them. Jailers, tear that woman
from the murderer's arms."

There was a groan, the shriek of a fainting
woman, and the ponderous door closed upon the
unhappy Mohrart as the doors of a vault might
do upon a corpse. The next time it opened it
would be for the soldiers who were to lead him
to a death of shame.

He seemed forsaken even by Heaven.

IV. THE INSURRECTION.

There is a limit to the patience even of slaves.
An insurrection had broken out in the city of
Eisenherz. A rumour that Count SchweUen-
berg was marching upon the city from Hesse
Darmstadt, with ten thousand men, having been
summoned by the urgent entreaties of the
duchess, had set every heart on fire. The
mysterious members of the Sealed Knot Club
had been, however, it was said, untiring in their
efforts to delay the revolt, which they con-
sidered premature.

The insurgents, in an irresistible deluge, were
pouring on towards the palace, now closely
guarded by two thousand Hessian soldiers, who
had sworn to defend the duchess to the last. The
sea of angry faces had already surged into the
great square of the cathedral, to mass together
for the attack upon the palace. A dozen black-
smiths having dragged a cannon from the adja-
cent park, were already shouting for the advance,
when a small group of masked men quietly
emerged from a house next the cathedral, and
dispersing through the crowd, whispered direc-
tions to the leaders of the mob. Their mandates
at first seemed to be disputed.

" Let's burn the Hell-cat !" cried some. " She
showed no mercy for others ; she has no mercy
for Mohrart or the general's daughter."

"Break her on the wheel," cried another,
" as she did my father !"

"Hang her from the cathedral tower!"
screamed a third. " She had my son shot yes-
terday for merely crying, ' Long five General
Blossow.' "

But the frantic outcries of these men were in
vain. A secret irresistible agency seemed at
work. Even the blacksmiths left the cannon
at the cathedral doors, the savage pikemen and!
hammermen, by twos and threes, turned sul-
lenly homeward. The roaring crowd gradually
grew silent as by enchantment, and melted like
ice, for so the Sealed Knots had willed it.

When the duchess heard of it, she smiled,,
tapped her fan, and calmly said, "I thought
the scum would never face bayonets. The
instinct of self-preservation is still, you see,
strong, even in the detested canaille."

V. THE CHAPEL ON THE MOUNTAIN.

It was the annual custom of the duchess, who
was as superstitious as she was cruel, to spend
two days in the first week of every November in
a little chapel half way up a lonely mountain,

94 [December 2G, 1868.]

ALL THE TEAR ROUND.

[Conducted by

three miles from Eisenherz. Her enemies said
that by that short seclusion the wretched
woman believed that she atoned for all the sins
of the past twelvemonth. She usually went
with only one attendant, the old soldier and
his wife, who took care of the chapel, providing
her with simple food.

It was a cold and foggy evening when the
duchess descended from her great gilt coach,
and took the winding way through the woods
that led her to the chapel. Her yellow
velvet train rustled over the wet dead leaves.
The wind was sighing among the leafless
larches, and moaning among the black boughs
of the fir trees. Two hundred yards up, a stir-
ring in the brake startled the duchess ; she
looked, and saw, by the light her servant car-
ried, an old man, whom she recognised as the
old guardian of the chapel, kneeling and gather-
ing fir-cones. He looked pale and ill, and did
not at first rise, but shook either with cold or
fear when the duchess addressed him.

" Karl Hauffman," she cried, " why are you
so far from the chapel? Did you not expect
me ? Is the man imbecile ? Answer."

The old man rose, drew himself feebly up,
and made the military salute, still trembling
with the cold as he made the salute, and
came nearer. Just then an owl hooted three
times.

"Your royal highness,-' he said, his teeth
chattering, "we did expect you; we had your
message yesterday ; but my wife is ill, and I
have been out gathering fir-cones for the
fire."

" You should not leave the chapel. Are the
altar lamps lit for our devotions ?"

"Your royal highness, they are. We ex-
pected you half an hour ago."

"And are the candles ready in the room of
the Twelve Apostles ?"

" Everything has been made ready for your
royal highness ; and I will go forward with the
lantern through the wood"

" The wind seems rising," said the duchess.

" There will be a storm soon," said the old
man, as he led on with the light.

As the old man pushed open the rusty chapel
door, which was wet with damp, the wind shook
the mouldy black and silver hangings of the
walls, which rose and fell with a melancholy
wavelike swell. Two of the candles on the altar
blew out with the draught. At that moment a
horn sounded higher up the mountain, and
seemed to be answered by an echo far down
towards the city, and an owl screeched as if
in answer. Then there was a deep silence.

The duchess knelt for some time in prayer.
Then she rose, and said to her attendant,
"You remain here, while I go and make my
confessions, according to my custom, in the
chamber of the Apostles."

The duchess rose, crossed herself, and lifting
the black hangings to the left of the altar,
entered the apartment which her superstition
had so strangely furnished. The black curtain
fell behind her, and seemed to shut her out for
ever from all living things. It seemed a grave

that she had entered. It was a long low-roofed
room, dimly lit, and hung with dark tapestry
like the chapel. In the centre stood a long
table, covered with a dark red cloth, round
which, with gilt cups before them, sat twelve
wax figures of the apostles, as large as life,
with flaxen hair and beards, and clothed ac-
cording to the strictest tradition of the old
painters. The wax faces and staring black
eyes of eleven of the number were fixed on
Saint Peter, who, with the gilt cross keys in
his right hand, sat at their head. The at-
titude of each apostle was varied. Saint
John was turned half round listening to Saint
Thomas ; Judas was clutching the bag ; Saint
James was pointing to Heaven ; Saint Mark
was gazing thoughtfully on Saint Luke ; Saint
Luke was regarding Saint Peter with the in-
tensest veneration. Three apostles alone at
the lower end of the table were in shadow,
for the lights at that end of the table had blown
out.

The mind of the guilty duchess was rapt in
awe at the sight of these august figures, which
strongly stirred her imagination. She cast her-
self at the feet of Saint Peter.

"Holy Saint Peter,"she exclaimed, "intercede
for me at the golden gates, I pray thee, intercede
for one who has done evil, it is true, but only
that good might come. I struck down my chief
enemy only that the people might be the more
wisely governed and the town be saved from
the tyranny of heresy. To-morrow a traitor
dies upon the wheel, and an ambitious wanton
will be found dead in her cell. Pardon, Holy
Saint ! Pardon ! Let a miraculous voice, I
pray thee, answer the penitent who now lies"
at thy feet. He does not answer. Is Heaven
silent? Ye lesser apostles hear me then. Spare
a guilty woman ! Spare me ! Spare "

As she uttered these incoherent prayers, the
wretched woman, casting off her jewels and dis-
hevelling her powdered hair, crept round from
figure to figure in an agony of the most abject
and superstitious fear.

Suddenly, as she burst into hysterical tears
of passionate supplication, and crept on her
knees from figure to figure, the first apostle in
shadow, at whose feet she knelt and whose robe
she at that moment clasped, sprang to his feet,
held her down and seized her throat before she
could utter a cry for help ; a second and a third
figure rose, and the three struck her to the
ground with three fierce, swift, and simultane-
ous stabs. Then the three men disguised as
apostles strode into the outer chapel.

"Woman!" they said to the terrified at-
tendant of the duchess, " your mistress needs
your help. Tell her the Sealed Knots planned
this vengeance for her crimes. In the palace
where it had long awaited her the vengeance
might have been less sure and deadly." In a
moment they had disappeared in the dark-
ness.

It was afterwards said that on the frozen
painted cruel face of that detestable dying
woman, a Death's Head Moth was found rest-
ing. The omen had been accomplished. As

Charles Dickens.]

FATAL ZERO.

[December 26,

9r>

they raised the stiffened body the insect flew
off into the fir wood and was no more seen.

The miserable woman did not survive many
hours. Her party lost all heart after her death,
the chief ministers of her cruelty fled. General
Blossow, instantly released, at once surrendered
the town to the Bavarian troops, who, thanks
to the Sealed Knots, were in time to garrison
Eisenherz and repulse an attempt to surprise
the town by the cousin of the duchess. Mohrart
and Beatrice were married the moment the
Bavarian rule was established and the city
grew secure.

This strange story is a true one, and is still
preserved as a tradition in the south of Ger-
many. The chapel on the mountain side, now
a ruin, still crowns the mountain above Eisen-
herz, and the road winds on towards Schwarz-
stein and the Bavarian frontier.

FATAL ZERO.

A DIARY KEPT AT HOMBURG ! A SHORT SERIAL STORY.
CHAPTER VII.

Thursday. I have not yet heard from
Frankfort, but they tell me here that the
merchant is away at his estates. There is no
hurry, however nay, I should wish for a
little time to devote myself to this mission,
as I may call it. I have watched Grainger all
this day, and he has not gone in at least I
have not seen him myself; for I must keep
to my fixed rule of not entering that cruel
spiders' net, that tigers' den. I asked him
this evening. He laughed, and would give
me no answer. "Don't expect miracles,"
he said ; " you can't expect a man to reform
all at once. That little picture we made
out together last night is still going about
with me, dancing before my eyes. I wish
I could shut it out; I did so for some
years. Come in," he added, " and let us at
least look at them, as the hungry beggars
find some relief in looking into a cook-shop
window."

I shook my head. " I have made a sort
of resolution," I said, "and must keep to
it. It would be sanctioning, in some sort,
what I cannot approve."

"What rubbish!" he said, suddenly
turning on me, then checked himself. " I
beg your pardon ; I have not got rid of my
old ways as yet. I wash I had had those
scruples. Talk to me now about her,
about Dora Mrs. Austen, I mean. It's
like Annot Lyle and her harp."

These little allusions and turns of ex-
pressions which dotted over all Grainger's
conversation, with many others that I can-
not recal, show what a cultivated taste he
had. I did not give him credit for being

so entertaining and amusing. We dined
together that day, and again we strayed
back to the old subject.

" The night," he said, "when I got that
news, is one I cannot dare to look back to.
It makes my head unsteady; you know
the feeling. Here, kellner, cognac ! That's
the only thing."

" No," I said, "it is not the only thing;
it is as dangerous as the other. Forgive
me if I advise you again. I am going to
have some sherry, and oblige me by taking
some of it instead."

He groaned, laughed a little roughly, as
his habit was, and said :

" Well, I suppose so. No cognac, then.
What on earth is all this ? You are making
me do things that no other man could
attempt."

" I hare no power," I said, looking down.
" I am working with another charm."

He paused. " Ah, yes ; I suppose that
is so."

I had already come to know the clergy-
man of the place. He had sent me his
book, and I suspect some of the gamblers'
money figured there to a good amount. I
met this gentleman in the evening, and he
came up to speak to me. There was some-
thing about him I did not like, and he had
an authoritative air which I was inclined
to resent. (I hear Dora, who believes
in clergymen to the very bottom of her
gentle heart, and, I suspect, believes that,
with their coats, shovel hats, white ties,
&c, they have come down straight from
Heaven ; have a sort of angelic conforma-
tion, wings folded up, &c.)

" I see," he said, sitting down next me
on one of the green garden chairs " I see
you are intimate with that man here, Mr.
Grainger, or Captain Grainger, as he calls
himself. May I ask, do you know what his
character is?"

I was happy to answer him with both
facts and logic.

" The War Office also calls him captain,"
I said ; " and I do know a good deal about
him."

" I am afraid nothing good, then ; for it
is my duty to warn you, as a sort of tem-
porary parishioner, the care of whose soul
I have, that his character is very bad
indeed, and that he is not a person any one
of character should be seen with. He is a
most dangerous man. You are young and
inexperienced, Mr. Austen, and he has led
several, as young and experienced, into
mischief already. That is the reason I
speak to you."

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

[December 26, 18GS.;

I could not help smiling. This rustic I
clergyman, fetched out of some outlying j
district to this doubtful duty, lecturing me I
and others ! It was, of course, in his duty,
and he meant well; but I think it was
rather free and easy to a mere stranger.

" I am quite capable of taking care of
myself, Mr. Lewis," I said. " I have my
own reasons for associating with that gen-
tleman. What if I succeeded in influencing
him in changing his life and heart; does
that at all enter into your philosophy ?"

" Oh, well and good," he said, smiling.
"God forbid I should interfere. But we
must judge these things by the ordinary
rule of the world. Have you any reason to
lead you to hope ?"

"Yes," I said.

" Well, then, you ought to go and look
after him now ; for I was passing from the
news-room just now, and saw him playing
frantically. Come with me, and I will
show him to you."

" I never go into that place," I said,
coldly, and meaning a rebuke.

" Into the news-room ?" he said. " Why
not ? Ah, you haven't patience to wait for
the papers. It's a very good school for
patience."