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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12223 ***
+
+THE IDLER MAGAZINE.
+AN ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY.
+
+EDITED BY JEROME K. JEROME & ROBERT BARR.
+
+
+VOL. III. FEBRUARY TO JULY, 1893.
+
+XIII. FEB. 1893.
+
+
+LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS, 214, PICCADILLY. 1893.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHEATING THE GALLOWS.
+    BY I. ZANGWILL.
+
+MY FIRST NOVEL.--THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT.
+    BY MISS M. E. BRADDON.
+
+NOVEL NOTES.
+    BY JEROME K. JEROME.
+
+THE SKATER.
+    BY WILLIAM CANTON.
+
+MY SERVANT ANDREAS.
+    BY ARCHIBALD FORBES.
+
+TOLD BY THE COLONEL.--
+    X. A MATRIMONIAL ROMANCE.
+    BY W. L. ALDEN.
+
+"LIONS IN THEIR DENS."--
+    II. GEORGE GROSSMITH AND THE HUMOUR OF HIM.
+    BY RAYMOND BLATHWAYT.
+
+A BLIND BEGGARMAN.
+    BY FRANK MATHEW.
+
+CHURCH AND STAGE.--A REVIEW OF HENRY IRVING.
+    BY THE REV. DR. JOSEPH PARKER.
+
+THAT BEAST BEAUTY.
+    BY KIRBY HARE.
+
+PEOPLE I HAVE NEVER MET.--MRS. HUMPHRY WARD.
+    BY SCOTT RANKIN.
+
+THE IDLERS CLUB
+    Is Love a Practical Reality or a Pleasing Fiction?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+CHEATING THE GALLOWS.
+
+BY I. ZANGWILL.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEO. HUTCHINSON.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+CURIOUS COUPLE.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE CORPSE WASHED UP BY THE RIVER.]
+
+They say that a union of opposites makes the happiest marriage, and
+perhaps it is on the same principle that men who chum are always so
+oddly assorted. You shall find a man of letters sharing diggings with an
+auctioneer, and a medical student pigging with a stockbroker's clerk.
+Perhaps each thus escapes the temptation to talk "shop" in his hours of
+leisure, while he supplements his own experiences of life by his
+companion's.
+
+[Illustration: TOM PETERS.]
+[Illustration: EVERARD G. ROXDAL.]
+
+There could not be an odder couple than Tom Peters and Everard G.
+Roxdal--the contrast began with their names, and ran through the entire
+chapter. They had a bedroom and a sitting-room in common, but it would
+not be easy to find what else. To his landlady, worthy Mrs. Seacon, Tom
+Peters's profession was a little vague, but everybody knew that Roxdal
+was the manager of the City and Suburban Bank, and it puzzled her to
+think why a bank manager should live with such a seedy-looking person,
+who smoked clay pipes and sipped whiskey and water all the evening when
+he was at home. For Roxdal was as spruce and erect as his fellow-lodger
+was round-shouldered and shabby; he never smoked, and he confined
+himself to a small glass of claret at dinner.
+
+It is possible to live with a man and see very little of him. Where each
+of the partners lives his own life in his own way, with his own circle
+of friends and external amusements, days may go by without the men
+having five minutes together. Perhaps this explains why these
+partnerships jog along so much more peaceably than marriages, where the
+chain is drawn so much tighter, and galls the partners rather than links
+them. Diverse, however, as were the hours and habits of the chums, they
+often breakfasted together, and they agreed in one thing--they never
+stayed out at night. For the rest Peters sought his diversions in the
+company of journalists, and frequented debating rooms, where he
+propounded the most iconoclastic views; while Roxdal had highly
+respectable houses open to him in the suburbs, and was, in fact, engaged
+to be married to Clara Newell, the charming daughter of a retired corn
+merchant, a widower with no other child.
+
+[Illustration: ASKED TWENTY-FIVE PER CENT. MORE.]
+
+Clara naturally took up a good deal of Roxdal's time, and he often
+dressed to go to the play with her, while Peters stayed at home in a
+faded dressing-gown and loose slippers. Mrs. Seacon liked to see
+gentlemen about the house in evening dress, and made comparisons not
+favourable to Peters. And this in spite of the fact that he gave her
+infinitely less trouble than the younger man. It was Peters who first
+took the apartments, and it was characteristic of his easy-going
+temperament that he was so openly and naïvely delighted with the view of
+the Thames obtainable from the bedroom window, that Mrs. Seacon was
+emboldened to ask twenty-five per cent. more than she had intended. She
+soon returned to her normal terms, however, when his friend Roxdal
+called the next day to inspect the rooms, and overwhelmed her with a
+demonstration of their numerous shortcomings. He pointed out that their
+being on the ground floor was not an advantage, but a disadvantage,
+since they were nearer the noises of the street--in fact, the house
+being a corner one, the noises of two streets. Roxdal continued to
+exhibit the same finicking temperament in the petty details of the
+_ménage_. His shirt fronts were never sufficiently starched, nor his
+boots sufficiently polished. Tom Peters, having no regard for rigid
+linen, was always good-tempered and satisfied, and never acquired the
+respect of his landlady. He wore blue check shirts and loose ties even
+on Sundays. It is true he did not go to church, but slept on till Roxdal
+returned from morning service, and even then it was difficult to get him
+out of bed, or to make him hurry up his toilette operations. Often the
+mid-day meal would be smoking on the table while Peters would smoke in
+the bed, and Roxdal, with his head thrust through the folding doors that
+separated the bedroom from the sitting-room, would be adjuring the
+sluggard to arise and shake off his slumbers, and threatening to sit
+down without him, lest the dinner be spoilt. In revenge, Tom was usually
+up first on week-days, sometimes at such unearthly hours that Polly had
+not yet removed the boots from outside the bedroom door, and would bawl
+down to the kitchen for his shaving water. For Tom, lazy and indolent as
+he was, shaved with the unfailing regularity of a man to whom shaving
+has become an instinct. If he had not kept fairly regular hours, Mrs.
+Seacon would have set him down as an actor, so clean shaven was he.
+Roxdal did not shave. He wore a full beard, and, being a fine figure of
+a man to boot, no uneasy investor could look upon him without being
+reassured as to the stability of the bank he managed so successfully.
+And thus the two men lived in an economical comradeship, all the firmer,
+perhaps, for their mutual incongruities.
+
+[Illustration: FOR HIS SHAVING WATER.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+A WOMAN'S INSTINCT.
+
+
+[Illustration: "TOM SHAMBLED FROM THE SITTING-ROOM."]
+
+It was on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of October, ten days after
+Roxdal had settled in his new rooms, that Clara Newell paid her first
+visit to him there. She enjoyed a good deal of liberty, and did not mind
+accepting his invitation to tea. The corn merchant, himself
+indifferently educated, had an exaggerated sense of the value of
+culture, and so Clara, who had artistic tastes without much actual
+talent, had gone in for painting, and might be seen, in pretty
+toilettes, copying pictures in the Museum. At one time it looked as if
+she might be reduced to working seriously at her art, for Satan, who
+finds mischief still for idle hands to do, had persuaded her father to
+embark the fruits of years of toil in bubble companies. However, things
+turned out not so bad as they might have been, a little was saved from
+the wreck, and the appearance of a suitor, in the person of Everard G.
+Roxdal, ensured her a future of competence, if not of the luxury she had
+been entitled to expect. She had a good deal of affection for Everard,
+who was unmistakably a clever man, as well as a good-looking one. The
+prospect seemed fair and cloudless. Nothing presaged the terrible storm
+that was about to break over these two lives. Nothing had ever for a
+moment come to vex their mutual contentment, till this Sunday afternoon.
+The October sky, blue and sunny, with an Indian summer sultriness,
+seemed an exact image of her life, with its aftermath of a happiness
+that had once seemed blighted.
+
+Everard had always been so attentive, so solicitous, that she was as
+much surprised as chagrined to find that he had apparently forgotten the
+appointment. Hearing her astonished interrogation of Polly in the
+passage, Tom shambled from the sitting-room in his loose slippers and
+his blue check shirt, with his eternal clay pipe in his mouth, and
+informed her that Roxdal had gone out suddenly earlier in the afternoon.
+
+"G-g-one out," stammered poor Clara; all confused. "But he asked me to
+come to tea."
+
+"Oh, you're Miss Newell, I suppose," said Tom.
+
+"Yes, I am Miss Newell."
+
+"He has told me a great deal about you, but I wasn't able honestly to
+congratulate him on his choice till now."
+
+Clara blushed uneasily under the compliment, and under the ardour of his
+admiring gaze. Instinctively she distrusted the man. The very first
+tones of his deep bass voice gave her a peculiar shudder. And then his
+impoliteness in smoking that vile clay was so gratuitous.
+
+"Oh, then you must be Mr. Peters," she said in return. "He has often
+spoken to me of you."
+
+"Ah!" said Tom, laughingly, "I suppose he's told you all my vices. That
+accounts for your not being surprised at my Sunday attire."
+
+She smiled a little, showing a row of pearly teeth. "Everard ascribes to
+you all the virtues," she said.
+
+"Now that's what I call a friend!" he cried, ecstatically. "But won't
+you come in? He must be back in a moment. He surely would not break an
+appointment with _you_." The admiration latent in the accentuation of
+the last pronoun was almost offensive.
+
+She shook her head. She had a just grievance against Everard, and would
+punish him by going away indignantly.
+
+"Do let _me_ give you a cup of tea," Tom pleaded. "You must be awfully
+thirsty this sultry weather. There! I will make a bargain with you! If
+you will come in now, I promise to clear out the moment Everard returns,
+and not spoil your _tête-à-tête_." But Clara was obstinate; she did not
+at all relish this man's society, and besides, she was not going to
+throw away her grievance against Everard. "I know Everard will slang me
+dreadfully when he comes in if I let you go," Tom urged. "Tell me at
+least where he can find you."
+
+"I am going to take the 'bus at Charing Cross, and I'm going straight
+home," Clara announced determinedly. She put up her parasol in a pet,
+and went up the street into the Strand. A cold shadow seemed to have
+fallen over all things. But just as she was getting into the 'bus, a
+hansom dashed down Trafalgar Square, and a well-known voice hailed her.
+The hansom stopped, and Everard got out and held out his hand.
+
+"I'm so glad you're a bit late," he said. "I was called out
+unexpectedly, and have been trying to rush back in time. You wouldn't
+have found me if you had been punctual. But I thought," he added,
+laughing, "I could rely on you as a woman."
+
+"I _was_ punctual," Clara said angrily. "I was not getting out of this
+'bus, as you seem to imagine, but into it, and was going home."
+
+"My darling!" he cried remorsefully. "A thousand apologies." The regret
+on his handsome face soothed her. He took the rose he was wearing in the
+button-hole of his fashionably-cut coat and gave it to her.
+
+"Why were you so cruel?" he murmured, as she nestled against him in the
+hansom. "Think of my despair if I had come home to hear you had come and
+gone. Why didn't you wait a moment?"
+
+[Illustration: "SHE NESTLED AGAINST HIM."]
+
+A shudder traversed her frame. "Not with that man, Peters!" she
+murmured.
+
+"Not with that man, Peters!" he echoed sharply. "What is the matter with
+Peters?"
+
+"I don't know," she said. "I don't like him."
+
+"Clara," he said, half sternly, half cajolingly, "I thought you were
+above these feminine weaknesses; you are punctual, strive also to be
+reasonable. Tom is my best friend. From boyhood we have been always
+together. There is nothing Tom would not do for me, or I for Tom. You
+must like him, Clara; you must, if only for my sake."
+
+"I'll try," Clara promised, and then he kissed her in gratitude and
+broad daylight.
+
+"You'll be very nice to him at tea, won't you?" he said anxiously. "I
+shouldn't like you two to be bad friends."
+
+"I don't want to be bad friends," Clara protested; "only the moment I
+saw him a strange repulsion and mistrust came over me."
+
+"You are quite wrong about him--quite wrong," he assured her earnestly.
+"When you know him better, you'll find him the best of fellows. Oh, I
+know," he said suddenly, "I suppose he was very untidy, and you women go
+so much by appearances!"
+
+"Not at all," Clara retorted. "'Tis you men who go by appearances."
+
+"Yes, you do. That's why you care for me," he said, smiling.
+
+She assured him it wasn't, and she didn't care for him so much as he
+plumed himself, but he smiled on. His smile died away, however, when he
+entered his rooms and found Tom nowhere.
+
+"I daresay you've made him run about hunting for me," he grumbled.
+
+"Perhaps he knew I'd come back, and went away to leave us together," she
+answered. "He said he would when you came."
+
+"And yet you say you don't like him!"
+
+She smiled reassuringly. Inwardly, however, she felt pleased at the
+man's absence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+POLLY RECEIVES A PROPOSAL.
+
+
+[Illustration: "CARRYING ON WITH POLLY."]
+
+If Clara Newell could have seen Tom Peters carrying on with Polly in the
+passage, she might have felt justified in her prejudice against him. It
+must be confessed, though, that Everard also carried on with Polly.
+Alas! it is to be feared that men are much of a muchness where women are
+concerned; shabby men and smart men, bank managers and journalists,
+bachelors and semi-detached bachelors. Perhaps it was a mistake after
+all to say the chums had nothing patently in common. Everard, I am
+afraid, kissed Polly rather more often than Clara, and although it was
+because he respected her less, the reason would perhaps not have been
+sufficiently consoling to his affianced wife. For Polly was pretty,
+especially on alternate Sunday afternoons, and when at ten p.m. she
+returned from her outings, she was generally met in the passage by one
+or other of the men. Polly liked to receive the homage of real
+gentlemen, and set her white cap at all indifferently. Thus, just before
+Clara knocked on that memorable Sunday afternoon, Polly, being confined
+to the house by the unwritten code regulating the lives of servants, was
+amusing herself by flirting with Peters.
+
+"You _are_ fond of me a little bit," the graceless Tom whispered,
+"aren't you?"
+
+"You know I am, sir," Polly replied.
+
+"You don't care for anyone else in the house?"
+
+"Oh no, sir, and never let anyone kiss me but you. I wonder how it is,
+sir?" Polly replied ingenuously.
+
+"Give me another," Tom answered.
+
+She gave him another, and tripped to the door to answer Clara's knock.
+
+[Illustration: POLLY AND ROXDAL.]
+
+And that very evening, when Clara was gone and Tom still out, Polly
+turned without the faintest atom of scrupulosity, or even jealousy, to
+the more fascinating Roxdal, and accepted his amorous advances. If it
+would seem at first sight that Everard had less excuse for such
+frivolity than his friend, perhaps the seriousness he showed in this
+interview may throw a different light upon the complex character of
+the man.
+
+"You're quite sure you don't care for anyone but me?" he asked
+earnestly.
+
+"Of course not, sir!" Polly replied indignantly. "How could I?"
+
+"But you care for that soldier I saw you out with last Sunday?"
+
+"Oh no, sir, he's only my young man," she said apologetically.
+
+"Would you give him up?" he hissed suddenly.
+
+Polly's pretty face took a look of terror. "I couldn't, sir! He'd kill
+me. He's such a jealous brute, you've no idea."
+
+"Yes, but suppose I took you away from here?" he whispered eagerly.
+"Somewhere where he couldn't find you--South America, Africa, somewhere
+thousands of miles across the seas."
+
+"Oh, sir, you frighten me!" whispered Polly, cowering before his ardent
+eyes, which shone in the dimly-lit passage.
+
+"Would you come with me?" he hissed. She did not answer; she shook
+herself free and ran into the kitchen, trembling with a vague fear.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE CRASH.
+
+
+One morning, earlier than his earliest hour of demanding his shaving
+water, Tom rang the bell violently and asked the alarmed Polly what had
+become of Mr. Roxdal.
+
+"How should I know, sir?" she gasped. "Ain't he been in, sir?"
+
+"Apparently not," Tom answered anxiously. "He never remains out. We have
+been here three weeks now, and I can't recall a single night he hasn't
+been home before twelve. I can't make it out." All enquiries proved
+futile. Mrs. Seacon reminded him of the thick fog that had come on
+suddenly the night before.
+
+"What fog?" asked Tom.
+
+"Lord! didn't you notice it, sir?"
+
+"No, I came in early, smoked, read, and went to bed about eleven. I
+never thought of looking out of the window."
+
+"It began about ten," said Mrs. Seacon, "and got thicker and thicker. I
+couldn't see the lights of the river from my bedroom. The poor gentleman
+has been and gone and walked into the water." She began to whimper.
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense," said Tom, though his expression belied his words.
+"At the worst I should think he couldn't find his way home, and couldn't
+get a cab, so put up for the night at some hotel. I daresay it will be
+all right." He began to whistle as if in restored cheerfulness. At eight
+o'clock there came a letter for Roxdal, marked "immediate," but as he
+did not turn up for breakfast, Tom went round personally to the City and
+Suburban Bank. He waited half-an-hour there, but the manager did not
+make his appearance. Then he left the letter with the cashier and went
+away with anxious countenance.
+
+That afternoon it was all over London that the manager of the City and
+Suburban had disappeared, and that many thousand pounds of gold and
+notes had disappeared with him.
+
+[Illustration: "SCOTLAND YARD OPENED THE LETTER."]
+
+Scotland Yard opened the letter marked "immediate," and noted that there
+had been a delay in its delivery, for the address had been obscure, and
+an official alteration had been made. It was written in a feminine hand
+and said: "On second thoughts I cannot accompany you. Do not try to see
+me again. Forget me. I shall never forget you."
+
+There was no signature.
+
+Clara Newell, distracted, disclaimed all knowledge of this letter. Polly
+deposed that the fugitive had proposed flight to her, and the routes to
+Africa and South America were especially watched. Some months passed
+without result. Tom Peters went about overwhelmed with grief and
+astonishment. The police took possession of all the missing man's
+effects. Gradually the hue and cry dwindled, died.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+FAITH AND UNFAITH.
+
+
+"At last we meet!" cried Tom Peters, while his face lit up in joy. "How
+_are_ you, dear Miss Newell?" Clara greeted him coldly. Her face had an
+abiding pallor now. Her lover's flight and shame had prostrated her for
+weeks. Her soul was the arena of contending instincts. Alone of all the
+world she still believed in Everard's innocence, felt that there was
+something more than met the eye, divined some devilish mystery behind it
+all. And yet that damning letter from the anonymous lady shook her
+sadly. Then, too, there was the deposition of Polly. When she heard
+Peters's voice accosting her all her old repugnance resurged. It flashed
+upon her that this man--Roxdal's boon companion--must know far more than
+he had told to the police. She remembered how Everard had spoken of him,
+with what affection and confidence! Was it likely he was utterly
+ignorant of Everard's movements? Mastering her repugnance, she held out
+her hand. It might be well to keep in touch with him; he was possibly
+the clue to the mystery. She noticed he was dressed a shade more trimly,
+and was smoking a meerschaum. He walked along at her side, making no
+offer to put his pipe out.
+
+"You have not heard from Everard?" he asked. She flushed. "Do you think
+I'm an accessory after the fact?" she cried.
+
+"No, no," he said soothingly. "Pardon me, I was thinking he might have
+written--giving no exact address, of course. Men do sometimes dare to
+write thus to women. But, of course, he knows you too well--you would
+have put the police on his track."
+
+"Certainly," she exclaimed, indignantly. "Even if he is innocent he must
+face the charge."
+
+"Do you still entertain the possibility of his innocence?"
+
+"I do," she said boldly, and looked him full in the face. His eyelids
+drooped with a quiver. "Don't you?"
+
+"I have hoped against hope," he replied, in a voice faltering with
+emotion. "Poor old Everard! But I am afraid there is no room for doubt.
+Oh, this wicked curse of money--tempting the noblest and the best
+of us."
+
+[Illustration: "SHE DID NOT REPULSE HIM."]
+
+The weeks rolled on. Gradually she found herself seeing more and more of
+Tom Peters, and gradually, strange to say, he grew less repulsive. From
+the talks they had together, she began to see that there was really no
+reason to put faith in Everard; his criminality, his faithlessness, were
+too flagrant. Gradually she grew ashamed of her early mistrust of
+Peters; remorse bred esteem, and esteem ultimately ripened into feelings
+so warm, that when Tom gave freer vent to the love that had been visible
+to Clara from the first, she did not repulse him.
+
+It is only in books that love lives for ever. Clara, so her father
+thought, showed herself a sensible girl in plucking out an unworthy
+affection and casting it from her heart. He invited the new lover to his
+house, and took to him at once. Roxdal's somewhat supercilious manner
+had always jarred upon the unsophisticated corn merchant. With Tom the
+old man got on much better. While evidently quite as well informed and
+cultured as his whilom friend, Tom knew how to impart his superior
+knowledge with the accent on the knowledge rather than on the
+superiority, while he had the air of gaining much information in return.
+Those who are most conscious of defects of early education are most
+resentful of other people sharing their consciousness Moreover, Tom's
+_bonhomie_ was far more to the old fellow's liking than the studied
+politeness of his predecessor, so that on the whole Tom made more of a
+conquest of the father than of the daughter. Nevertheless, Clara was by
+no means unresponsive to Tom's affection, and when, after one of his
+visits to the house, the old man kissed her fondly and spoke of the
+happy turn things had taken, and how, for the second time in their
+lives, things had mended when they seemed at their blackest, her heart
+swelled with a gush of gratitude and joy and tenderness, and she fell
+sobbing into her father's arms.
+
+[Illustration: "WITH TOM THE OLD MAN GOT ON MUCH BETTER."]
+
+Tom calculated that he made a clear five hundred a year by occasional
+journalism, besides possessing some profitable investments which he had
+inherited from his mother, so that there was no reason for delaying the
+marriage. It was fixed for May-day, and the honeymoon was to be spent
+in Italy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE DREAM AND THE AWAKENING
+
+
+But Clara was not destined to happiness. From the moment she had
+promised herself to her first love's friend old memories began to rise
+up and reproach her. Strange thoughts stirred in the depths of her soul,
+and in the silent watches of the night she seemed to hear Everard's
+accents, charged with grief and upbraiding. Her uneasiness increased as
+her wedding-day drew near. One night, after a pleasant afternoon spent
+in being rowed by Tom among the upper reaches of the Thames, she retired
+to rest full of vague forebodings. And she dreamt a terrible dream. The
+dripping form of Everard stood by her bedside, staring at her with
+ghastly eyes. Had he been drowned on the passage to his land of exile?
+Frozen with horror, she put the question.
+
+"I have never left England!" the vision answered.
+
+Her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth.
+
+"Never left England?" she repeated, in tones which did not seem to be
+hers.
+
+The wraith's stony eyes stared on, but there was silence.
+
+"Where have you been then?" she asked in her dream.
+
+"Very near you," came the answer.
+
+"There has been foul play then!" she shrieked.
+
+The phantom shook its head in doleful assent.
+
+"I knew it!" she shrieked. "Tom Peters--Tom Peters has done away with
+you. Is it not he? Speak!"
+
+"Yes, it is he--Tom Peters--whom I loved more than all the world."
+
+Even in the terrible oppression of the dream she could not resist
+saying, woman-like:
+
+"Did I not warn you against him?"
+
+The phantom stared on silently and made no reply.
+
+"But what was his motive?" she asked at length.
+
+"Love of gold--and you. And you are giving yourself to him," it said
+sternly.
+
+"No, no, Everard! I will not! I will not! I swear it! Forgive me!"
+
+The spirit shook its head sceptically.
+
+"You love him. Women are false--as false as men."
+
+She strove to protest again, but her tongue refused its office.
+
+"If you marry him, I shall always be with you! Beware!"
+
+The dripping figure vanished as suddenly as it came, and Clara awoke in
+a cold perspiration. Oh, it was horrible! The man she had learnt to
+love, the murderer of the man she had learnt to forget! How her original
+prejudice had been justified! Distracted, shaken to her depths, she
+would not take counsel even of her father, but informed the police of
+her suspicions. A raid was made on Tom's rooms, and lo! the stolen notes
+were discovered in a huge bundle. It was found that he had several
+banking accounts, with a large, recently-paid amount in each bank. Tom
+was arrested. Attention was now concentrated on the corpses washed up by
+the river. It was not long before the body of Roxdal came to shore, the
+face distorted almost beyond recognition by long immersion, but the
+clothes patently his, and a pocket-book in the breast-pocket removing
+the last doubt. Mrs. Seacon and Polly and Clara Newell all identified
+the body. Both juries returned a verdict of murder against Tom Peters,
+the recital of Clara's dream producing a unique impression in the court
+and throughout the country. The theory of the prosecution was that
+Roxdal had brought home the money, whether to fly alone or to divide it,
+or whether even for some innocent purpose, as Clara believed, was
+immaterial. That Peters determined to have it all, that he had gone out
+for a walk with the deceased, and, taking advantage of the fog, had
+pushed him into the river, and that he was further impelled to the crime
+by love for Clara Newell, as was evident from his subsequent relations
+with her. The judge put on the black cap. Tom Peters was duly hung by
+the neck till he was dead.
+
+[Illustration: "IDENTIFIED THE BODY."]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+BRIEF RÉSUMÉ OF THE CULPRIT'S CONFESSION.
+
+
+When you all read this I shall be dead and laughing at you. I have been
+hung for my own murder. I am Everard G. Roxdal. I am also Tom Peters. We
+two were one. When I was a young man my moustache and beard wouldn't
+come. I bought false ones to improve my appearance. One day, after I had
+become manager of the City and Suburban Bank, I took off my beard and
+moustache at home, and then the thought crossed my mind that nobody
+would know me without them. I was another man. Instantly it flashed upon
+me that if I ran away from the Bank, that other man could be left in
+London, while the police were scouring the world for a non-existent
+fugitive. But this was only the crude germ of the idea. Slowly I matured
+my plan. The man who was going to be left in London must be known to a
+circle of acquaintance beforehand. It would be easy enough to masquerade
+in the evenings in my beardless condition, with other disguises of dress
+and voice. But this was not brilliant enough. I conceived the idea of
+living with him. It was Box and Cox reversed. We shared rooms at Mrs.
+Seacon's. It was a great strain, but it was only for a few weeks. I had
+trick clothes in my bedroom like those of quick-change artistes; in a
+moment I could pass from Roxdal to Peters and from Peters to Roxdal.
+Polly had to clean two pairs of boots a morning, cook two dinners, &c.,
+&c. She and Mrs. Seacon saw one or the other of us every moment; it
+never dawned upon them they never saw us _both together_. At meals I
+would not be interrupted, ate off two plates, and conversed with my
+friend in loud tones. At other times we dined at different hours. On
+Sundays he was supposed to be asleep when I was in church. There is no
+landlady in the world to whom the idea would have occurred that one man
+was troubling himself to be two (and to pay for two, including washing).
+I worked up the idea of Roxdal's flight, asked Polly to go with me,
+manufactured that feminine letter that arrived on the morning of my
+disappearance. As Tom Peters I mixed with a journalistic set. I had
+another room where I kept the gold and notes till I mistakenly thought
+the thing had blown over. Unfortunately, returning from here on the
+night of my disappearance, with Roxdal's clothes in a bundle I intended
+to drop into the river, it was stolen from me in the fog, and the man
+into whose possession it ultimately came appears to have committed
+suicide. What, perhaps, ruined me was my desire to keep Clara's love,
+and to transfer it to the survivor. Everard told her I was the best of
+fellows. Once married to her, I would not have had much fear. Even if
+she had discovered the trick, a wife cannot give evidence against her
+husband, and often does not want to. I made none of the usual slips, but
+no man can guard against a girl's nightmare after a day up the river and
+a supper at the Star and Garter. I might have told the judge he was an
+ass, but then I should have had penal servitude for bank robbery, and
+that is worse than death. The only thing that puzzles me, though, is
+whether the law has committed murder or I suicide.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+My First Novel.
+
+THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT.
+
+BY MISS M. E. BRADDON.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY MISS F. L. FULLER.
+
+
+My first novel! Far back in the distinctness of childish memories I see
+a little girl who has lately learnt to write, who has lately been given
+a beautiful brand new mahogany desk, with a red velvet slope, and a
+glass ink bottle, such a desk as might now be bought for three and
+sixpence, but which in the forties cost at least half-a-guinea. Very
+proud is the little girl, with the Kenwigs pigtails, and the Kenwigs
+frills, of that mahogany desk, and its infinite capacities for literary
+labour, above all, gem of gems, its stick of variegated sealing-wax,
+brown, speckled with gold, and its little glass seal with an intaglio
+representing two doves--Pliny's doves perhaps, famous in mosaic, only
+the little girl had never heard of Pliny, or his Laurentine Villa.
+
+[Illustration: LICHFIELD HOUSE, RICHMOND.]
+
+Armed with that desk and its supply of stationery, Mary Elizabeth
+Braddon--very fond of writing her name at full-length, and her address
+also at full-length, though the word "Middlesex" offered
+difficulties--began that pilgrimage on the broad high road of fiction,
+which was destined to be a longish one. So much for the little girl of
+eight years old, in the third person, and now to become strictly
+autobiographical.
+
+My first story was based on those fairy tales which first opened to me
+the world of imaginative literature. My first attempt in fiction, and in
+round-hand, on carefully pencilled double lines, was a story of two
+sisters, a good sister and a wicked, and I fear adhered more faithfully
+to the lines of the archetypal story than the writer's pen kept to the
+double fence which should have ensured neatness.
+
+[Illustration: THE HALL.]
+
+The interval between the ages of eight and twelve was a prolific period,
+fertile in unfinished MSS., among which I can now trace a historical
+novel on the Siege of Calais--an Eastern story, suggested by a
+passionate love of Miss Pardoe's Turkish tales, and Byron's "Bride of
+Abydos," which my mother, a devoted Byron worshipper, allowed me to read
+aloud to her--and doubtless murder in the reading--a story of the Hartz
+Mountains, with audacious flights in German diablerie; and lastly, very
+seriously undertaken, and very perseveringly worked upon, a domestic
+story, the outline of which was suggested by the same dear and
+sympathetic mother.
+
+Now it is a curious fact, which may or may not be common to other
+story-spinners, that I have never been able to take kindly to a plot--or
+the suggestion of a plot--offered to me by anybody else. The moment a
+friend tells me that he or she is desirous of imparting a series of
+facts--strictly true--as if truth in fiction mattered one jot!--which in
+his or her opinion would make the ground plan of an admirable,
+startling, and altogether original three-volume novel, I know in advance
+that my imagination will never grapple with those startling
+circumstances--that my thoughts will begin to wander before my friend
+has got half through the remarkable chain of events, and that if the
+obliging purveyor of romantic incidents were to examine me at the end of
+the story, I should be spun ignominiously. For the most part, such
+subjects as have been proposed to me by friends have been hopelessly
+unfit for the circulating library; or, where not immoral, have been
+utterly dull; but it is, I believe, a fixed idea in the novel-reader's
+mind that any combination of events out of the beaten way of life will
+make an admirable subject for the novelist's art.
+
+[Illustration: THE STAIRCASE.]
+
+My dear mother, taking into consideration my tender years, and perhaps
+influenced in somewise by her own love of picking up odd bits of
+Sheraton or Chippendale furniture in the storehouses of the less
+ambitious second-hand dealers of those simpler days, offered me the
+following _scenario_ for a domestic story. It was an incident which, I
+doubt not, she had often read at the tail of a newspaper column, and
+which certainly savours of the gigantic gooseberry, the sea-serpent, and
+the agricultural labourer who unexpectedly inherits half-a-million. It
+was eminently a Simple Story, and far more worthy of that title than
+Mrs. Inchbald's long and involved romance.
+
+An honest couple, in humble circumstances, possess among their small
+household gear a good old easy chair, which has been the pride of a
+former generation, and is the choicest of their household gods. A
+comfortable cushioned chair, snug and restful, albeit the chintz
+covering, though clean and tidy, as virtuous people's furniture always
+is in fiction, is worn thin by long service, while the dear chair itself
+is no longer the chair it once was as to legs and framework.
+
+Evil days come upon the praiseworthy couple and their dependent brood,
+among whom I faintly remember the love interest of the story to have
+lain; and that direful day arrives when the average landlord of juvenile
+fiction, whose heart is of adamant and brain of brass, distrains for the
+rent. The rude broker swoops upon the humble dovecot; a cart or
+hand-barrow waits on the carefully hearth-stoned door-step for the
+household gods; the family gather round the cherished chair, on which
+the rude broker has already laid his grimy fingers; they hang over the
+back and fondle the padded arms; and the old grandmother, with clasped
+hands, entreats that, if able to raise the money in a few days, they may
+be allowed to buy back that loved heirloom.
+
+[Illustration: THE DINING ROOM.]
+
+The broker laughs the plea to scorn; they might have their chair, and
+cheap enough, he had no doubt. The cover was darned and patched--as only
+the virtuous poor of fiction do darn and do patch--and he made no doubt
+the stuffing was nothing better than brown wool; and with that coarse
+taunt the coarser broker dug his clasp-knife into the cushion against
+which grandfatherly backs had leaned in happier days, and lo! an
+avalanche of banknotes fell out of the much-maligned horse-hair, and the
+family was lifted from penury to wealth. Nothing more simple--or more
+natural. A prudent but eccentric ancestor had chosen this mode of
+putting by his savings, assured that, whenever discovered, the money
+would be useful to--somebody.
+
+So ran the _scenario_: but I fancy my juvenile pen hardly held on to the
+climax. My brief experience of boarding school occurred at this time,
+and I well remember writing "The Old Arm Chair" in a penny account book,
+in the schoolroom of Cresswell Lodge, and that I was both surprised and
+offended at the laughter of the kindly music-teacher who, coming into
+the room to summon a pupil, and seeing me gravely occupied, enquired
+what I was doing, and was intensely amused at my stolid method of
+composition, plodding on undisturbed by the voices and occupations of
+the older girls around me. "The Old Arm Chair" was certainly my first
+serious, painstaking effort in fiction; but as it was abandoned
+unfinished before my eleventh birthday, and as no line thereof ever
+achieved the distinction of type, it can hardly rank as my first novel.
+
+[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM.]
+
+There came a very few years later the sentimental period, in which my
+unfinished novels assumed a more ambitious form, and were modelled
+chiefly upon Jane Eyre, with occasional tentative imitations of
+Thackeray. Stories of gentle hearts that loved in vain, always ending in
+renunciation. One romance there was, I well remember, begun with
+resolute purpose, after the first reading of Esmond, and in the
+endeavour to give life and local colour to a story of the Restoration
+period, a brilliantly wicked interval in the social history of England,
+which, after the lapse of thirty years, I am still as bent upon taking
+for the background of a love story as I was when I began "Master
+Anthony's Record" in Esmondese, and made my girlish acquaintance with
+the Reading-room of the British Museum, where I went in quest of local
+colour, and where much kindness was shown to my youth and inexperience
+of the book world. Poring over a folio edition of the State Trials at my
+uncle's quiet rectory in sleepy Sandwich, I had discovered the
+passionate romantic story of Lord Grey's elopement with his
+sister-in-law, next in sequence to the trial of Lawrence Braddon and
+Hugh Speke for conspiracy. At the risk of seeming disloyal to my own
+race, I must add that it seemed to me a very tinpot order of plot to
+which these two learned gentlemen bent their legal minds, and which cost
+the Braddon family a heavy fine in land near Camelford--confiscation
+which I have heard my father complain of as especially unfair--Lawrence
+being a younger son. The romantic story of Lord Grey was to be the
+subject of "Master Anthony's Record," but Master Anthony's sentimental
+autobiography went the way of all my earlier efforts. It was but a year
+or so after the collapse of Master Anthony, that a blindly-enterprising
+printer of Beverley, who had seen my poor little verses in the _Beverley
+Recorder_, made me the spirited offer of ten pounds for a serial story,
+to be set up and printed at Beverley, and published on commission by a
+London firm in Warwick Lane. I cannot picture to myself, in my
+after-knowledge of the bookselling trade, any enterprise more futile in
+its inception or more feeble in its execution; but to my youthful
+ambition the actual commission to write a novel, with an advance payment
+of fifty shillings to show good faith on the part of my Yorkshire
+speculator, seemed like the opening of that pen-and-ink paradise which I
+had sighed for ever since I could hold a pen. I had, previously to this
+date, found a Mæcenas in Beverley, in the person of a learned gentleman
+who volunteered to foster my love of the Muses by buying the copyright
+of a volume of poems and publishing the same at his own expense--which
+he did, poor man, without stint, and by which noble patronage of Poet's
+Corner verse, he must have lost money. He had, however, the privilege of
+dictating the subject of the principal poem, which was to sing--however
+feebly--Garibaldi's Sicilian campaign.
+
+[Illustration: THE EVENING ROOM.]
+
+The Beverley printer suggested that my Warwick Lane serial should
+combine, as far as my powers allowed, the human interest and genial
+humour of Dickens with the plot-weaving of G. W. R. Reynolds; and,
+furnished with these broad instructions, I filled my ink bottle, spread
+out my foolscap, and, on a hopelessly wet afternoon, began my first
+novel--now known as "The Trail of the Serpent"--but published in Warwick
+Lane, and later in the stirring High Street of Beverley, as "Three Times
+Dead." In "Three Times Dead" I gave loose to all my leanings to the
+violent in melodrama. Death stalked in ghastliest form across my pages;
+and villainy reigned triumphant till the Nemesis of the last chapter. I
+wrote with all the freedom of one who feared not the face of a critic;
+and, indeed, thanks to the obscurity of its original production, and its
+re-issue as the ordinary two-shilling railway novel, this first novel of
+mine has almost entirely escaped the critical lash, and has pursued its
+way as a chartered libertine. People buy it and read it, and its faults
+and follies are forgiven as the exuberances of a pen unchastened by
+experience; but faster and more facile at that initial stage than it
+ever became after long practice.
+
+[Illustration: THE SMOKING-ROOM.]
+
+I dashed headlong at my work, conjured up my images of horror or of
+mirth, and boldly built the framework of my story, and set my puppets
+moving. To me, at least, they were living creatures, who seemed to
+follow impulses of their own, to be impelled by their own passions, to
+love and hate, and plot and scheme of their own accord. There was
+unalloyed pleasure in the composition of that first story, and the
+knowledge that it was to be actually printed and published, and not to
+be declined with thanks by adamantine magazine editors, like a certain
+short story which I had lately written, and which contained the germ of
+"Lady Audley's Secret." Indeed, at this period of my life, the postman's
+knock had become associated in my mind with the sharp sound of a
+rejected MS. dropping through the open letter-box on to the floor of the
+hall, while my heart seemed to drop in sympathy with that
+book-post packet.
+
+[Illustration: THE LIBRARY.]
+
+Short of never being printed at all, my Beverley-born novel could have
+hardly entered upon the world of books in a more profound obscurity.
+That one living creature ever bought a number of "Three Times Dead" I
+greatly doubt. I can recall the thrill of emotion with which I tore open
+the envelope that contained my complimentary copy of the first number,
+folded across, and in aspect inferior to a gratis pamphlet about a
+patent medicine. The miserable little wood block which illustrated that
+first number would have disgraced a baker's whitey-brown bag, would have
+been unworthy to illustrate a penny bun. My spirits were certainly
+dashed at the technical shortcomings of that first serial, and I was
+hardly surprised when I was informed a few weeks later, that although my
+admirers at Beverley were deeply interested in the story, it was not a
+financial success, and that it would be only obliging on my part, and in
+accordance with my known kindness of heart, if I were to restrict the
+development of the romance to half its intended length, and to accept
+five pounds in lieu of ten as my reward. Having no desire that the rash
+Beverley printer should squander his own or his children's fortune in
+the obscurity of Warwick Lane, I immediately acceded to his request,
+shortened sail, and went on with my story, perhaps with a shade less
+enthusiasm, having seen the shabby figure it was to make in the book
+world. I may add that the Beverley publisher's payments began and ended
+with his noble advance of fifty shillings. The balance was never paid;
+and it was rather hard lines that, on his becoming bankrupt in his poor
+little way a few years later, a judge in the Bankruptcy Court remarked
+that, as Miss Braddon was now making a good deal of money by her pen,
+she ought to "come to the relief" of her first publisher.
+
+[Illustration: MISS BRADDON'S FAVOURITE MARE.]
+
+And now my volume of verses being well under weigh, I went with my
+mother to farm-house lodgings in the neighbourhood of that very
+Beverley, where I spent, perhaps, the happiest half-year of my
+life--half a year of tranquil, studious days, far from the madding
+crowd, with the mother whose society was always all sufficient for
+me--half a year among level pastures, with unlimited books from the
+library in Hull, an old farm-horse to ride about the green lanes, the
+breath of summer, with all its sweet odours of flower and herb, around
+and about us: half a year of unalloyed bliss, had it not been for one
+dark shadow, the heroic figure of Garibaldi, the sailor soldier, looming
+large upon the foreground of my literary labours, as the hero of a
+lengthy narrative poem in the Spenserian metre.
+
+My chief business at Beverley was to complete the volume of verse
+commissioned by my Yorkshire Mæcenas, at that time a very rich man, who
+paid me a much better price for my literary work than his townsman, the
+enterprising printer, and who had the first claim on my thought
+and time.
+
+[Illustration: THE ORANGERY.]
+
+With the business-like punctuality of a salaried clerk, I went every
+morning to my file of the _Times_, and pored and puzzled over Neapolitan
+revolution and Sicilian campaign, and I can only say that if Emile Zola
+has suffered as much over Sedan as I suffered in the freshness of my
+youth, when flowery meadows and the old chestnut mare invited to summer
+idlesse, over the fighting in Sicily, his dogged perseverance in
+uncongenial labour should place him among the Immortal Forty. How I
+hated the great Joseph G. and the Spenserian metre, with its exacting
+demands upon the rhyming faculty. How I hated my own ignorance of modern
+Italian history, and my own eyes for never having looked upon Italian
+landscape, whereby historical allusion and local colour were both
+wanting to that dry-as-dust record of heroic endeavour. I had only the
+_Times_ correspondent; where he was picturesque I could be
+picturesque--allowing always for the Spenserian straining--where he was
+rich in local colour I did my utmost to reproduce his colouring,
+stretched always on the Spenserian rack, and lengthened out by the
+bitter necessity of finding triple rhymes. Next to Guiseppe Garibaldi I
+hated Edmund Spenser, and it may be from a vengeful remembrance of those
+early struggles with a difficult form of versification, that, although
+throughout my literary life I have been a lover of England's earlier
+poet, and have delighted in the quaintness and _naïveté_ of Chaucer, I
+have refrained from reading more than a casual stanza or two of the
+"Faëry Queen." When I lived at Beverley, Spenser was to me but a name,
+and Byron's "Childe Harold" was my only model for that exacting verse. I
+should add that the Beverley Mæcenas, when commissioning this volume of
+verse, was less superb in his ideas than the literary patron of the
+past. He looked at the matter from a purely commercial standpoint, and
+believed that a volume of verse, such as I could produce, would pay--a
+delusion on his part which I honestly strove to combat before accepting
+his handsome offer of remuneration for my time and labour. It was with
+this idea in his mind that he chose and insisted upon the Sicilian
+Campaign as a subject for my muse, and thus started me heavily
+handicapped on the racecourse of Parnassus.
+
+[Illustration: MISS BRADDON'S COTTAGE AT LYNDHURST.]
+
+The weekly number of "Three Times Dead" was "thrown off" in brief
+intervals of rest from my _magnum opus_, and it was an infinite relief
+to turn from Garibaldi and his brothers in arms to the angels and the
+monsters which my own brain had engendered, and which to me seemed more
+alive than the good great man whose arms I so laboriously sang. My
+rustic pipe far better loved to sing of melodramatic poisoners and
+ubiquitous detectives; of fine houses in the West of London, and dark
+dens in the East. So the weekly chapter of my first novel ran merrily
+off my pen while the printer's boy waited in the farm-house kitchen.
+
+Happy, happy days, so near to memory, and yet so far. In that peaceful
+summer I finished my first novel, knocked Garibaldi on the head with a
+closing rhapsody, saw the York spring and summer races in hopelessly wet
+weather, learnt to love the Yorkshire people, and left Yorkshire almost
+broken-heartedly on a dull gray October morning, to travel Londonwards
+through a landscape that was mostly under water.
+
+And, behold, since that October morning I have written fifty-three
+novels; I have lost dear old friends and found new friends, who are also
+dear, but I have never looked on a Yorkshire landscape since I turned my
+reluctant eyes from those level meadows and green lanes where the old
+chestnut mare used to carry me ploddingly to and fro between tall,
+tangled hedges of eglantine and honeysuckle.
+
+[Illustration: MISS BRADDON'S INKSTAND.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+NOVEL NOTES.
+
+BY JEROME K. JEROME.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. GÜLICH AND J. GREIG,
+
+PART X.
+
+
+[Illustration: "DISCUSSION AT OUR LAST MEETING."]
+
+The final question discussed at our last meeting had been: What shall
+our hero be? MacShaugnassy had suggested an author, with a critic for
+the villain. Brown's fancy was an artist. My idea was a stockbroker,
+with an undercurrent of romance in his nature. Said Jephson, who has a
+practical mind, approaching at times the commercial: "The question is
+not what we like, but what the female novel-reader likes."
+
+"That is so," agreed MacShaugnassy. "I propose that we collect feminine
+opinion upon this point. I will write to my aunt, and get from her the
+old lady's view. You," he said, turning to me, "can put the case to your
+wife, and get the young lady's ideal. Let Brown write to his sister at
+Newnham, and find out whom the intellectual maiden favours, while
+Jephson can learn from Miss Medbury what is most attractive to the
+common-sensed girl."
+
+This plan we had adopted, and the result was now under consideration.
+MacShaugnassy opened the proceedings by reading his aunt's letter. Wrote
+the old lady:
+
+    "I think, if I were you, my dear boy, I should choose a
+    soldier. You know your poor grandfather, who ran away to
+    America with that _wicked_ Mrs. Featherly, the banker's wife,
+    was a soldier, and so was your poor cousin Robert, who lost
+    eight thousand pounds at Monte Carlo. I have always felt
+    singularly drawn towards soldiers, even as a girl; though your
+    poor dear uncle could not bear them. You will find many
+    allusions to soldiers and men of war in the Old Testament (see
+    Jer. 48,14). Of course one does not like to think of their
+    fighting and killing each other, but then they do not seem to
+    do much of that sort of thing nowadays."
+
+"So much for the old lady," said MacShaugnassy, as he folded up the
+letter and returned it to his pocket. "What says culture?"
+
+[Illustration: BROWN READ AS FOLLOWS.]
+
+Brown produced from his cigar-case a letter addressed in a bold round
+hand, and read as follows:
+
+    "What a curious coincidence! A few of us were discussing this
+    very subject last night in Millicent Hightopper's rooms, and I
+    may tell you at once that our decision was unanimous in favour
+    of soldiers. You see, my dear Selkirk, in human nature the
+    attraction is towards the opposite. To a milliner's apprentice
+    a poet would no doubt be satisfying; to a woman of intelligence
+    he would be an unutterable bore. The man of brain is not for
+    the woman of brain. What the intellectual woman requires in man
+    is not something to argue with, but something to look at. To an
+    empty-headed woman I can imagine the soldier type proving vapid
+    and uninteresting; to the woman of mind he represents her ideal
+    of man--a creature strong, handsome, well-dressed, and not
+    too clever."
+
+"That gives us two votes for the army," remarked MacShaugnassy, as Brown
+tore his sister's letter in two, and threw the pieces into the
+waste-paper basket. "What says the common-sensed girl?"
+
+"First catch your common-sensed girl," muttered Jephson, a little
+grumpily, as it seemed to me. "Where do you propose finding her?"
+
+"Well," returned MacShaugnassy, "I looked to find her in Miss Medbury."
+
+As a rule, the mention of Miss Medbury's name brings a flush of joy to
+Jephson's face; but now his features wore an expression distinctly
+approaching a scowl.
+
+"Oh!" he replied, "did you? Well, then, the common-sensed girl loves the
+military, also."
+
+"By Jove!" exclaimed MacShaugnassy, "what an extraordinary thing. What
+reason does she give?"
+
+"That they look so nice when they're dressed, and that they dance so
+divinely," answered Jephson, shortly.
+
+"Well, you do surprise me," murmured MacShaugnassy, "I am astonished."
+
+Then to me he said: "And what does the young married woman say? The
+same?"
+
+"Yes," I replied, "precisely the same."
+
+"Does _she_ give a reason?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, yes," I explained; "because you can't help liking them."
+
+There was silence for the next few minutes, while we smoked and thought.
+I fancy we were all wishing we had never started this enquiry.
+
+That four distinctly different types of educated womanhood should, with
+promptness and unanimity quite unfeminine, have selected the soldier as
+their ideal, was certainly discouraging to the civilian heart. Had they
+been nursemaids or servant girls, I should have expected it. The worship
+of Mars by the Venus of the white cap is one of the few vital religions
+left to this devoutless age. A year or two ago I lodged near a barracks,
+and the sight to be seen round its huge iron gates on Sunday afternoons
+I shall never forget. The girls began to assemble about twelve o'clock.
+By two, at which hour the army, with its hair nicely oiled and a cane in
+its hand, was ready for a stroll, there would be some four or five
+hundred of them waiting in a line. Formerly they had collected in a wild
+mob, and as the soldiers were let out to them two at a time, had fought
+for them, as lions for early Christians. This, however, had led to
+scenes of such disorder and brutality, that the police had been obliged
+to interfere; and the girls were now marshalled in _queue_, two abreast,
+and compelled, by a force of constables specially told off for the
+purpose, to keep their places and wait their proper turn.
+
+At three o'clock the sentry on duty would come down to the wicket and
+close it. "They're all gone, my dears," he would shout out to the girls
+still left; "it's no good your stopping, we've no more for you to-day."
+
+"Oh, not one!" some poor child would murmur pleadingly, while the tears
+welled up into her big round eyes, "not even a little one. I've been
+waiting _such_ a long time."
+
+"Can't help that," the honest fellow would reply, gruffly, but not
+unkindly, turning aside to hide his emotion; "you've had 'em all between
+you. We don't make 'em, you know: you can't have 'em if we haven't got
+'em, can you? Come earlier next time."
+
+[Illustration: "NOW THEN, PASS ALONG."]
+
+Then he would hurry away to escape further importunity; and the police,
+who appeared to have been waiting for this moment with gloating
+anticipation, would jeeringly hustle away the weeping remnant. "Now
+then, pass along, you girls, pass along," they would say, in that
+irritatingly unsympathetic voice of theirs. "You've had your chance.
+Can't have the roadway blocked up all the afternoon with this 'ere
+demonstration of the unloved. You'll have to put up with your ordinary
+young men for to-day. Pass along."
+
+In connection with this same barracks, our charwoman told Amenda, who
+told Ethelbertha, who told me a story, which I now told the boys.
+
+Into a certain house, in a certain street in the neighbourhood, there
+moved one day a certain family. Their servant had left them--most of
+their servants did at the end of a week--and the day after the moving-in
+an advertisement was drawn up and sent to the _Chronicle_ for a
+domestic. It ran thus:
+
+    WANTED GENERAL SERVANT, in small family of eleven. Wages, £6;
+    no beer money. Must be early riser and hard worker. Washing
+    done at home. Must be good cook, and not object to
+    window-cleaning. Unitarian preferred.--Apply, with references,
+    to A. B., &C.
+
+That advertisement was sent off on Wednesday afternoon. At seven o'clock
+on Thursday morning the whole family were awakened by continuous ringing
+of the street door bell. The husband, looking out of window, was
+surprised to see a crowd of about fifty girls surrounding the house. He
+slipped on his dressing-gown and went down to see what was the matter.
+The moment he opened the door, fifteen of them charged tumultuously into
+the passage, sweeping him completely off his legs. Once inside, these
+fifteen faced round, fought the other thirty-five or so back on to the
+door-step, and slammed the door in their faces. Then they picked up the
+master of the house, and asked him politely to conduct them to "A. B."
+
+[Illustration: "SURPRISED TO SEE ABOUT FIFTY GIRLS."]
+
+At first, owing to the clamour of the mob outside, who were hammering at
+the door and shouting curses through the keyhole on those inside, he was
+too confused to understand anything, but by dint of great exertion they
+succeeded at length in explaining to him that they were domestic
+servants come in answer to his wife's advertisement. The man went and
+told his wife, and his wife said she would see them, one at a time.
+
+Which one should have audience first was a delicate question to decide.
+The man, on being appealed to, said he would prefer to leave it to them.
+They accordingly discussed the matter among themselves. At the end of a
+quarter of an hour, the victor, having borrowed a packet of pins and a
+looking-glass from our charwoman, who had slept in the house, went
+upstairs, while the remaining fourteen sat down in the hall, and fanned
+themselves with their bonnets.
+
+"A. B." was a good deal astonished when the first applicant presented
+herself. She was a tall, genteel-looking, well-dressed girl. Up to
+yesterday she had been head housemaid at Lady Stanton's, and before that
+she had been under-cook for two years to the Duchess of York.
+
+"And why did you leave Lady Stanton?" asked "A. B."
+
+"To come here, mum," replied the girl.
+
+The lady was puzzled.
+
+"And you'll be satisfied with six pounds a year?" she asked.
+
+"Certainly, mum, I think it ample."
+
+"And you don't mind hard work?"
+
+"I love it, mum."
+
+"And you're an early riser?"
+
+"Oh yes, mum, it upsets me stopping in bed after half-past five."
+
+"You know we do the washing at home?"
+
+"Yes, mum. I think it so much better to do it at home. Those laundries
+ruin good clothes. They're so careless."
+
+"Are you a Unitarian?" continued the lady.
+
+"Not yet, mum," replied the girl, "but I should like to be one."
+
+The lady took her reference, and said she would write her.
+
+"I do hope you will give me a trial, mum," pleaded the girl, as she rose
+to go; "I would try so hard to give you satisfaction."
+
+The next applicant offered to come for three pounds--thought six pounds
+too much. She also expressed her willingness to sleep in the back
+kitchen: a shakedown under the sink was all she wanted. She likewise had
+yearnings towards Unitarianism.
+
+The third girl did not require any wages at all--could not understand
+what servants wanted with wages--thought wages only encouraged a love of
+foolish finery--thought a comfortable home in a Unitarian family ought
+to be sufficient wages for any girl.
+
+This girl said there was one stipulation she should like to make, and
+that was that she should be allowed to pay for all breakages caused by
+her own carelessness or neglect. She objected to holidays and evenings
+out on principle; she held that they distracted a girl from her work.
+
+[Illustration: "MET THE NEXT DOOR LADY ON THE DOOR-STEP."]
+
+The fourth candidate offered a premium of five pounds for the place; and
+then "A.B." began to get frightened, and refused to see any more of the
+girls, convinced that they must be lunatics from some neighbouring
+asylum out for a walk.
+
+Later in the day, meeting the next door lady on the door-step, she
+related her morning's experiences.
+
+"Oh, that's nothing extraordinary," said the next door lady; "none of us
+on this side of the street pay wages; and we get the pick of all the
+best servants in London. Why, girls will come from the other end of the
+kingdom to get into one of these houses. It's the dream of their lives.
+They save up for years, so as to be able to come here for nothing."
+
+"What's the attraction?" asked "A. B.," more amazed than ever.
+
+"Why, don't you see," explained the next door lady, "our back windows
+open upon the barrack yard. A girl living in one of these houses is
+always close to soldiers. By looking out of window she can always see
+soldiers; and sometimes a soldier will nod to her, or even call up to
+her. They never dream of asking for wages. They'll work eighteen hours a
+day, and put up with anything just to be allowed to stop."
+
+"A.B." profited by this information, and engaged the girl who offered
+the five pounds premium. She found her a perfect treasure of a servant.
+She was invariably willing and respectful, slept on a sofa in the
+kitchen, and was always contented with an egg for her dinner.
+
+[Illustration: "A SOLDIER'S ARM ROUND THE WAIST."]
+
+The truth of this story I cannot vouch for. Myself, I can believe it.
+Brown and MacShaugnassy made no attempt to do so, which seemed
+unfriendly. Jephson excused himself on the plea of a headache. I admit
+there are points in it presenting difficulties to the average intellect.
+As I explained at the commencement, it was told to me by Ethelbertha,
+who had it from Amenda, who got it from the charwoman, and exaggerations
+may have crept into it. The following, however, were incidents that came
+under my own personal observation. They afforded a still stronger
+example of the influence exercised by Tommy Atkins upon the British
+domestic, and I therefore thought it right to relate them also to
+the boys.
+
+"The heroine of them," I said, "is our Amenda. Now, you would call her a
+tolerably well-behaved, orderly young woman, would you not?"
+
+"She is my ideal of unostentatious respectability," answered
+MacShaugnassy.
+
+"That was my opinion also," I replied. "You can, therefore, imagine my
+feelings on passing her one evening in the Folkestone High Street with a
+Panama hat upon her head (my Panama hat), and a soldier's arm round her
+waist. She was one of a mob, composed of all the unoccupied riff-raff of
+Folkestone, who were following the band of the Third Berkshire Infantry,
+then in camp at Sandgate. There was an ecstatic, far-away look in her
+eyes. She was dancing rather than walking, and with her left hand she
+beat time to the music."
+
+"I should say you were suffering from a mild attack of D.T. when you saw
+all that," said MacShaugnassy.
+
+"So I might have thought myself," I said; "but Ethelbertha was with me
+at the time, and she saw it too. We stared after the procession until it
+had turned the corner, and then we stared at each other.
+
+"'Oh, it's impossible,' said Ethelbertha to me.
+
+"'But that was my hat,' I said to Ethelbertha.
+
+"The moment we reached home Ethelbertha looked for Amenda, and I looked
+for my hat. Neither were to be found.
+
+[Illustration: "AND HUNG MY HAT UP."]
+
+"Nine o'clock struck, ten o'clock struck. At half-past ten, we went down
+and got our own supper, and had it in the kitchen. At a quarter-past
+eleven, Amenda returned. She walked into the kitchen without a word,
+hung my hat up behind the door, and commenced clearing away the
+supper things.
+
+"Ethelbertha rose, calm but severe.
+
+"'Where have you been, Amenda?' she enquired.
+
+"'Gadding half over the county with a lot of low soldiers,' answered
+Amenda, continuing her work.
+
+"'You had on my hat,' I added, somewhat gloomily. It was not the right
+view to take of the case, I know, but, personally, that fact grieved me
+more than all the other incidents in the proceeding put together, sad
+though I felt these to be. It was an expensive hat, and Ethelbertha said
+it suited me (there are not many that do). After seeing it that night on
+Amenda's head, my pride in it was gone.
+
+"'Yes, sir,' replied Amenda, still continuing her work, 'it was the
+first thing that came to hand. What I'm thankful for is that it wasn't
+missis's best bonnet.'
+
+"Whether Ethelbertha was mollified by the proper spirit displayed in
+this last remark, I cannot say, but I think it probable. At all events,
+it was in a voice more of sorrow than of anger that she resumed her
+examination.
+
+"'You were walking with a soldier's arm around your waist when we passed
+you, Amenda?' she observed interrogatively.
+
+"'I know, mum,' admitted Amenda, 'I found it there myself when the music
+stopped.'
+
+"Ethelbertha looked her enquiries. Amenda filled a saucepan with water,
+and then replied to them.
+
+"'I'm a disgrace to a decent household,' she said; 'no mistress who
+respected herself would keep me a moment. I ought to be put out on the
+doorstep with my box and a month's wages.'
+
+"'But why did you do it then?' said Ethelbertha, with natural
+astonishment.
+
+"'Because I'm a helpless ninny, mum.' There was no trace of bitterness
+or passion in Amenda's tones. She spoke in the calm, even voice of a
+person stating facts.
+
+"'I can't help myself,' she went on; 'if I see soldiers I'm bound to
+follow them. It runs in our family. My poor cousin Emma was just such
+another fool. She was engaged to be married to a quiet, respectable
+young fellow with a shop of his own, and three days before the wedding
+she ran off with a regiment of marines and married the colour-sergeant.
+That's what I shall end by doing. I've been all the way to Sandgate with
+that lot you saw me with, and I've kissed four of them--the nasty
+wretches. I'm a nice sort of girl to be walking out with a
+respectable milkman.'
+
+"She was so deeply disgusted with herself that it seemed superfluous for
+anybody else to be indignant with her; and Ethelbertha changed her tone
+and tried to comfort her.
+
+"'Oh, you'll get over all that nonsense, Amenda,' she said, laughingly;
+'you see yourself how silly it is. You must tell Mr. Bowles to keep you
+away from soldiers.'
+
+"'Ah, I can't look at it in the same light way that you do, mum,'
+returned Amenda, somewhat reprovingly; 'a girl that can't see a bit of
+red marching down the street without wanting to rush out and follow it
+ain't fit to be anybody's wife. Why I should be leaving the shop with
+nobody in it about twice a week, and he'd have to go the round of all
+the barracks in London, looking for me. I shall save up and get myself
+into a lunatic asylum, that's what I shall do.'
+
+"Ethelbertha began to grow quite troubled. 'But surely this is something
+altogether new, Amenda,' she said; 'you must have often met soldiers
+when you've been out in London?'
+
+"'Oh, yes, one or two at a time, walking about anyhow, I can stand that
+all right. It's when there's a lot of them all together with a band that
+I lose my head.'
+
+[Illustration: "'WHEN THERE'S A LOT OF THEM WITH A BAND, I LOSE MY
+HEAD.'"]
+
+"'You don't know what it's like, mum,' she added, noticing Ethelbertha's
+puzzled expression; 'you've never had it. I only hope you never may.'
+
+"We kept a careful watch over Amenda during the remainder of our stay at
+Folkestone, and an anxious time we had of it. Every day some regiment or
+other would march through the town, and at the first sound of its music
+Amenda would become restless and excited. The Pied Piper's reed could
+not have stirred the Hamelin children deeper than did those Sandgate
+bands the heart of our domestic. Fortunately, they generally passed
+early in the morning when we were indoors, but one day, returning home
+to lunch, we heard distant strains dying away upon the Hythe Road. We
+hurried in. Ethelbertha ran down into the kitchen; it was empty!--up
+into Amenda's bedroom; it was vacant! We called. There was no answer.
+
+"'That miserable girl has gone off again,' said Ethelbertha. 'What a
+terrible misfortune it is for her. It's quite a disease.'
+
+"Ethelbertha wanted me to go to Sandgate camp and enquire for her. I was
+sorry for the girl myself, but the picture of a young and
+innocent-looking man wandering about a complicated camp, enquiring for a
+lost domestic, presenting itself to my mind, I said that I'd rather not.
+
+"Ethelbertha thought me heartless, and said that if I would not go she
+would go herself. I replied that I thought one female member of my
+household was enough in that camp at a time, and requested her not to.
+Ethelbertha expressed her sense of my inhuman behaviour by haughtily
+declining to eat any lunch, and I expressed my sense of her
+unreasonableness by sweeping the whole meal into the grate, after which
+Ethelbertha suddenly developed exuberant affection for the cat (who
+didn't want anybody's love, but wanted to get under the grate after the
+lunch), and I became supernaturally absorbed in the day-before-
+yesterday's newspaper.
+
+[Illustration: "'WHO LOCKED YOU IN THERE?'"]
+
+"In the afternoon, strolling out into the garden, I heard the faint cry
+of a female in distress. I listened attentively, and the cry was
+repeated. I thought it sounded like Amenda's voice, but where it came
+from I could not conceive. It drew nearer, however, as I approached the
+bottom of the garden, and at last I located it in a small wooden shed,
+used by the proprietor of the house as a dark room for developing
+photographs.
+
+"The door was locked. 'Is that you, Amenda?' I cried through the
+keyhole.
+
+"'Yes, sir,' came back the muffled answer. 'Will you please let me out;
+you'll find the key on the ground near the door.'
+
+"I discovered it on the grass about a yard away, and released her. 'Who
+locked you in there?' I asked.
+
+"'I did, sir,' she replied; 'I locked myself in, and pushed the key out
+under the door. I had to do it, or I should have gone off with those
+beastly soldiers.'
+
+"'I hope I haven't inconvenienced you, sir,' she added, stepping out; 'I
+left the lunch all laid.'"
+
+Amenda's passion for soldiers was her one tribute to sentiment. Towards
+all others of the male sex she maintained an attitude of callous
+unsusceptibility, and her engagements with them (which were numerous)
+were entered into or abandoned on grounds so sordid as to seriously
+shock Ethelbertha.
+
+When she came to us she was engaged to a pork butcher--with a milkman in
+reserve. For Amenda's sake we dealt with the man, but we never liked
+him, and we liked his pork still less. When, therefore, Amenda announced
+to us that her engagement with him was "off," and intimated that her
+feelings would in no way suffer by our going elsewhere for our bacon, we
+secretly rejoiced.
+
+[Illustration: "HER ENGAGEMENT WAS 'OFF.'"]
+
+"I am confident you have done right, Amenda," said Ethelbertha; "you
+would never have been happy with that man."
+
+"No, mum, I don't think I ever should," replied Amenda. "I don't see how
+any girl could as hadn't got the digestion of an ostrich."
+
+Ethelbertha looked puzzled. "But what has digestion got to do with it?"
+she asked.
+
+"A pretty good deal, mum," answered Amenda, "when you're thinking of
+marrying a man as can't make a sausage fit to eat."
+
+"But, surely," exclaimed Ethelbertha, "you don't mean to say you're
+breaking off the match because you don't like his sausages!"
+
+"Well, I suppose that's what it comes to," agreed Amenda, unconcernedly.
+
+"What an awful idea!" sighed poor Ethelbertha, after a long pause. "Do
+you think you ever really loved him?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Amenda, "I loved him right enough, but it's no good
+loving a man that wants you to live on sausages that keep you awake
+all night."
+
+"But does he want you to live on sausages?" persisted Ethelbertha.
+
+"Oh, he doesn't say anything about it," explained Amenda; "but you know
+what it is, mum, when you marry a pork butcher: you're expected to eat
+what's left over. That's the mistake my poor cousin Eliza made. She
+married a muffin man. Of course, what he didn't sell they had to finish
+up themselves. Why, one winter, when he had a run of bad luck, they
+lived for two months on nothing but muffins. I never saw a girl so
+changed in all my life. One has to think of these things, you know."
+
+Later on, she engaged herself to a solicitor's messenger. She did
+this--as she frankly avowed to Ethelbertha--to assist her family, who
+were prosecuting some petty law case at the time. He was a smart, steady
+man, a great favourite with his employers, and, out of kindly feeling
+towards him, they did the business for Amenda's father, charging only
+"out-of-pockets."
+
+[Illustration: "GAVE HER A COCOANUT."]
+
+Six months after the case was ended, she broke off the match. She said
+that, on reflection, she could not help seeing what an advantage he
+would have over her--he being in a solicitor's office, with the law at
+his fingers' ends--should she ever find it necessary to summons him.
+
+"But, my good girl," said Ethelbertha, quite distressed, "one doesn't
+marry a man with the idea of subsequently summonsing him!"
+
+"No, mum," said Amenda, "one always hopes one will never need to, I'm
+sure, but it's just as well to be prepared. I knew a girl, when I was in
+service at Hastings, that loved a printer, and they were both going to
+commit suicide because her parents didn't want 'em to marry; and now he
+costs her four shillings a month regular in summonses. It's no good
+shutting one's eyes to things, mum."
+
+But the most shamefully mercenary engagement that I think Amenda ever
+entered into was one with a 'bus conductor. We were living in the North
+of London then, and she had a young man, a cheesemonger, who kept a shop
+in Lupus Street, Chelsea. He could not come up to her because of the
+shop, so once a week she used to go down to him. One did not ride ten
+miles for a penny in those days, and she found the fare from Holloway to
+Victoria and back a severe tax upon her purse. The same 'bus that took
+her down at six brought her back at ten. During the first journey the
+'bus conductor stared at Amenda; during the second he talked to her,
+during the third he gave her a cocoanut, during the fourth he proposed
+to her, and was promptly accepted. After that, Amenda was enabled to
+visit her cheesemonger without expense.
+
+[Illustration: "'I DESIRE SHARING CROSS.'"]
+
+He was a quaint character himself, was this 'bus conductor. I often rode
+with him to Fleet Street. He knew me quite well (I suppose Amenda must
+have pointed me out to him), and would always ask me after her--aloud,
+before all the other passengers, which was trying--and give me messages
+to take back to her. Where women were concerned he had what is called "a
+way" with him, and from the extent and variety of his female
+acquaintance, and the evident tenderness with which the majority of them
+regarded him, I am inclined to hope that Amenda's desertion of him
+(which happened contemporaneously with her jilting of the cheesemonger)
+caused him less prolonged suffering than might otherwise have been
+the case.
+
+He was a man from whom I derived a good deal of amusement one way and
+another. Thinking of him brings back to my mind a somewhat odd incident.
+
+One afternoon, I jumped upon his 'bus in the Seven Sisters Road. An
+elderly Frenchman was the only other occupant of the vehicle. "You vil
+not forget me," the Frenchman was saying as I entered, "I desire
+Sharing Cross."
+
+"I won't forget yer," answered the conductor, "you shall 'ave yer
+Sharing Cross. Don't make a fuss about it."
+
+"That's the third time 'ee's arst me not to forget 'im," he remarked to
+me in a stentorian aside; "'ee don't giv' yer much chance of doin' it,
+does 'ee?"
+
+At the corner of the Holloway Road we drew up, and our conductor began
+to shout after the manner of his species: "Charing Cross--Charing
+Cross--'ere yer are--Come along, lady--Charing Cross."
+
+The little Frenchman jumped up, and prepared to exit; the conductor
+pushed him back.
+
+"Sit down and don't be silly," he said; "this ain't Charing Cross."
+
+The Frenchman looked puzzled, but collapsed meekly. We picked up a few
+passengers, and proceeded on our way. Half a mile up the Liverpool Road
+a lady stood on the kerb regarding us as we passed with that pathetic
+mingling of desire and distrust which is the average woman's attitude
+towards conveyances of all kinds. Our conductor stopped.
+
+"Where d'yer want to go to?" he asked her severely--omnibus conductors
+have a manner of addressing all pedestrians as though they were lost
+children or suspicious loiterers--"Strand--Charing Cross?"
+
+[Illustration: "THE CONDUCTOR COLLARED HIM."]
+
+The Frenchman did not hear or did not understand the first part of the
+speech, but he caught the words "Charing Cross," and bounced up and out
+on to the step. The conductor collared him as he was getting off, and
+jerked him back savagely.
+
+"Carnt yer keep still a minute," he cried indignantly; "blessed if you
+don't want lookin' after like a bloomin' kid."
+
+"I vont to be put down at Sharing Cross," answered the little Frenchman,
+humbly.
+
+"You vont to be put down at Sharing Cross," repeated the other bitterly,
+as he led him back to his seat. "I shall put yer down in the middle of
+the road if I 'ave much more of yer. You stop there till I come and
+sling yer out. I ain't likely to let yer go much past yer Sharing Cross,
+I shall be too jolly glad to get rid o' yer."
+
+The poor Frenchman subsided, and we jolted on. At "The Angel" we, of
+course, stopped. "Charing Cross," shouted the conductor, and up sprang
+the Frenchman.
+
+"Oh, my Gawd," said the conductor, taking him by the shoulders and
+forcing him down into the corner seat, "wot am I to do? Carnt somebody
+sit on 'im?"
+
+[Illustration: "'BLESSED IF I DIDN'T RUN HIM ON TO VICTORIA.'"]
+
+He held him firmly down until the 'bus started, and then released him.
+At the top of Chancery Lane the same scene took place, and the poor
+little Frenchman became exasperated.
+
+"He keep on saying Sharing Cross, Sharing Cross," he exclaimed, turning
+to the other passengers; "and it is _not_ Sharing Cross. He is fool."
+
+"Carnt yer understand," retorted the conductor, equally indignant; "of
+course I say Sharing Cross--I mean Charing Cross, but that don't mean
+that it _is_ Charing Cross. That means that--" and then perceiving from
+the blank look in the Frenchman's face the utter impossibility of ever
+making the matter clear to him, he turned to us with an appealing
+gesture, and asked:
+
+"Does any gentleman know the French for 'bloomin' idiot'?"
+
+A day or two afterwards, I happened to enter his omnibus again.
+
+"Well," I asked him, "did you get your French friend to Charing Cross
+all right?"
+
+"No, sir," he replied, "you'll 'ardly believe it, but I 'ad a bit of a
+row with a policeman just before I got to the corner, and it put 'im
+clean out o' my 'ead. Blessed if I didn't run 'im on to Victoria."
+
+(_To be continued_.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THE SKATER.
+
+BY WILLIAM CANTON. ILLUSTRATED BY A. L. BOWLEY.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+      O'er glassy levels of the mere
+        She glides on slanting skate;
+      She loves in fairy curves to veer
+        And weave her figure eight.
+    Bright flower in fur, I would thy feet
+    Could weave my heart and thine, my sweet,
+    Thus into one glad life complete!
+      Harsh winter, rage thy rudest:
+        Freeze, freeze, thou churlish sky;
+      Blow, arctic wind, thy shrewdest--
+        What care my heart and I!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+MY SERVANT ANDREAS
+
+BY ARCHIBALD FORBES.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY FREDERIC VILLIERS.
+
+
+[Illustration: "ANDREAS."]
+
+I think it quite likely that some of my young American friends, about
+ten months ago, were burning to have an opportunity of accompanying
+General Miles down the Pacific coast, and of describing in glowing
+sentences to their countrymen at home how Uncle Sam's young man turned
+to flight the Chilian insurrectionists, who were breathing out
+threatening and slaughter against the great Northern Republic. There is
+an undoubted fascination in the picturesque and adventurous life of the
+war correspondent. One must, of course, have a distinct bent for the
+avocation, and if he is to succeed he must possess certain salient
+attributes. He must expose himself to rather greater risks than fall to
+the lot of the average fighting man, without enjoying any of the
+happiness of retaliation which stirs the blood of the latter; the
+correspondent must sit quietly on his horse in the fire, and, while
+watching every turn in the battle, must wear the aspect as if he rather
+enjoyed the storm of missiles than otherwise. When the fighting is over,
+the soldier, if not killed, generally can eat and sleep; ere the echoes
+of it are silent, the correspondent of energy--and if he has not energy
+he is not worth his salt--must already be galloping his hardest towards
+the nearest telegraph wire, which, as like as not, is a hundred miles
+distant. He must "get there," by hook or by crook, in a minimum of time;
+and as soon as his message is on the wires, he must be hurrying back to
+the army, else he may chance to miss the great battle of the war. The
+correspondent must be most things to all men; he must have the sweet,
+angelic temper of a woman, be as affable as if he were running for
+office, and at the same time be big and ugly enough to impress the
+conviction that it would be extremely unwise to take any liberties
+with him.
+
+The career, no doubt, has some incidental drawbacks. No fewer than five
+British correspondents were killed in the recent campaigns in the
+Soudan. General Sherman threatened to hang all the correspondents found
+in his camp after a certain day, and General Sherman was the kind of man
+to fulfil any threat he made. I suppose there was no correspondent
+taking part in the Franco-German and Russo-Turkish wars who was not in
+custody over and over again on suspicion of being a spy. I have been a
+prisoner myself in France, Spain, Servia, Germany, Austria, Hungary,
+Russia, Roumania and Bulgaria; and I may perhaps venture to remark in
+passing that I cannot recommend any of these countries from this point
+of view. But the casual confinements, half irritating, half comic, to
+which he may be subjected, do not bother the war correspondent of the
+old world nearly as much as do the foreign languages which, if he is not
+a good linguist, hamper him every hour of every day. He really should
+possess the gift of tongues--be conversant with all European languages,
+a neat assortment of the Asiatic languages, and a few of the African
+tongues, such as Abyssinian, Ashantee, Zulu, and Soudanese. But how few
+in the nature of things can approximate this polyglot versatility. Often
+in Eastern Europe, and in Afghanistan, I have envied Messrs. Swinton,
+Smalley, Whitelaw Reed, and the other notable war correspondents of the
+American Civil War, in that they had not the difficulties of outlandish
+tongues to contend with. I own myself to be a poor linguist, and have
+many and many a time suffered for my dullness of what the Scotch call
+"up-take." It is true that I was fairly conversant with French and
+German, and could express my wants in Russian, Roumanian, Bulgarian,
+Spanish, Turkish, Hindustanee, Pushtoo, and Burmese, every word of which
+smatterings I have long since forgotten. But the truth is that the
+poorest peoples in the world in acquiring foreign languages are the
+English and the French; the readiest are the Russians and Americans. It
+was, after a fashion, a liberal education to listen to the fluency in
+some half-dozen languages of Poor McGahan, the "Ohio boy," who graduated
+from the plough to be perhaps the most brilliant war correspondent of
+modern times. His compatriot and colleague, Frank Millet, who has fallen
+away from glory as a war correspondent, and has taken to the inferior
+trade of painting, seemed to pick up a language by the mere accident of
+finding himself on the soil where it was spoken. In the first three
+days, after crossing the Danube into Bulgaria, Millet went about with
+book in hand, gathering in the names of things at which he pointed, and
+jotting down each acquisition in the book. On the fourth day he could
+swear in Bulgarian, copiously, fervently, and with a measure of
+intelligibility. Within a week he had conquered the uncouth tongue. As
+he voyaged lately down the Danube from source to mouth, charmingly
+describing the scenic panorama of the great river in the pages of
+_Harper_, those of you who have read those sketches will not have failed
+to notice how Millet talked to German, Hungarian, Servian, Bulgarian,
+Roumanian, and Turkish, each in his own tongue, those diverse languages
+having been acquired by him during the few months of the
+Russo-Turkish war.
+
+[Illustration: "MACGAHAN AND FRANK MILLET."]
+
+By this time, you may be wondering just where "Andreas" comes in.
+Perhaps I have been over long in getting to my specific subject; but I
+will not be discursive any more. It was at the _table d'hote_ in the
+Serbische Krone Hotel, in Belgrade, where I first set eyes on Andreas.
+In the year 1876, Servia had thought proper to throw off the yoke of her
+Turkish suzerain, and to attempt to assert her independence by force of
+arms. But for very irregularly paid tribute she was virtually
+independent already, and probably in all Servia there were not two
+hundred Turks. But she ambitiously desired to have the name of as well
+as the actuality of being independent; the Russians helped her with
+arms, officers, and volunteer soldiers; and when I reached Belgrade, in
+May of the year named, there had already been fighting, in which the
+Servians had by no means got the worst. No word of the Servian tongue
+had I, and it was the reverse of pleasant for a war correspondent in
+such plight to learn that outside of Belgrade nobody, or at least hardly
+anybody, knew a word of any other language than the native Servian. As I
+ate, I was being attended by a very assiduous waiter, whose alertness
+and anxiety to please were very conspicuous. He was smart with quite
+un-Oriental smartness; he whisked about the tables with deftness; he
+spoke to me in German, to the Russian officers over against me in what I
+assumed was Russian, to the Servians dining behind me in what I took to
+be Servian. I liked the look of the man; there was intelligence in his
+aspect. One could not call him handsome, but there was character in the
+keen black eye, the high features and the pronounced chin, fringed on
+either side by bushy black whiskers.
+
+[Illustration: "ANDREAS AS A FORAGER."]
+
+I had brought no servant with me; the average British servant is worse
+than useless in a foreign country, and the dubiously-polyglot courier is
+a snare and a deception on campaign. I had my eye on Andreas for a
+couple of days, during which he was of immense service to me. He seemed
+to know and stand well with everyone in Belgrade; it was he, indeed, who
+presented me in the restaurant to the Prime Minister and the Minister
+for War, who got together for me my field necessaries, who helped me to
+buy my horses, and who narrated to me the progress of the campaign so
+far as it had gone. On the third day I had him in my room and asked
+whether he would like to come with me into the field as my servant. He
+accepted the offer with effusion; we struck hands on the compact; he
+tendered me credentials which I ascertained to be extremely
+satisfactory; and then he gave me a little sketch of himself. It was
+somewhat mixed, as indeed was his origin. Primarily he was a Servian,
+but his maternal grandmother had been a Bosniak, an earlier ancestress
+had been in a Turkish harem, there was a strain in his blood of the
+Hungarian zinganee--the gipsy of Eastern Europe, and one could not look
+at his profile without a suspicion that there was a Jewish element in
+his pedigree. "A pure mongrel," was what a gentleman of the British
+Legation termed Andreas, and this self-contradictory epithet was
+scarcely out of place.
+
+Andreas turned out well. He was as hardy as a hill-goat, careless how
+and when he ate, or where he slept, which, indeed, was mostly in the
+open. It seemed to me that he had cousins all over Servia, chiefly of
+the female persuasion, and I am morally certain that the Turkish strain
+in his blood had in Andreas its natural development in a species of
+_fin-de-siècle_ polygamy. Sherman's prize "bummer" was not in it with
+Andreas as a forager. At first, indeed, I suspected him of actual
+plundering, so copiously did he bring in supplies, and so little had I
+to pay for them; but I was not long in discovering that all kinds of
+produce were dirt cheap in Servia, and that as I could myself buy a lamb
+for a quarter, it was not surprising that Andreas, to the manner born,
+could easily obtain one for half the money. He was an excellent
+horsemaster, and the stern vigour with which he chastised the occasional
+neglect of the cousin whom he had brought into my service as groom, was
+borne in upon me by the frequent howls which were audible from the rear
+of my tent. There was not a road in all Servia with whose every winding
+Andreas was not conversant, and this "extensive and peculiar" knowledge
+of his was often of great service to me. He was a light-weight and an
+excellent rider; I have sent him off to Belgrade with a telegram at
+dusk, and he was back again by breakfast time next morning, after a
+gallop of quite a hundred miles.
+
+No exertion fatigued him; I never saw the man out of humour; there was
+but one matter in regard to which I ever had to chide him, and in that I
+had perforce to let him have his own way, because I do not believe that
+he could restrain himself. He had served the term in the army which is,
+or was then, obligatory on all Servians; and on the road or in camp he
+was rather more of a "peace at any price" man than ever was the late Mr.
+John Bright himself. When the first fight occurred, Andreas claimed to
+be allowed to witness it along with me. I demurred; he might get hit;
+and if anything should happen to him, what should I do for a servant? At
+length I gave him the firm order to remain in camp, and started myself
+with the groom behind me on my second horse. The fighting occurred eight
+miles from camp, and in the course of it, leaving the groom in the rear,
+I had accompanied the Russian General Dochtouroff into a most
+unpleasantly hot place, where a storm of Turkish shells were falling in
+the effort to hinder the withdrawal of a disabled Servian battery. I
+happened to glance over my shoulder, and lo! Andreas on foot was at my
+horse's tail, obviously in a state of ecstatic enjoyment of the
+situation. I peremptorily ordered him back, and he departed sullenly,
+calmly strolling along the line of Turkish fire. Just then, Tchernaieff,
+the Servian Commander-in-Chief, had, it seemed, ordered a detachment of
+infantry to take in flank the Turkish guns. From where we stood I could
+discern the Servian soldiers hurrying forward close under the fringe of
+a wood near the line of retirement along which Andreas was sulking.
+Andreas saw them too, and retreated no step further, but cut across to
+them, snatching up a gun as he ran, and the last I saw of him was while
+he was waving on the militiamen with his billycock, and loosing off an
+occasional bullet, while he emitted yells of defiance against the Turks,
+which might well have struck terror into their very marrow. Andreas came
+into camp at night very streaky with powder stains, minus the lobe of
+one ear, uneasy as he caught my eye, yet with a certain elateness of
+mien. I sacked him that night, and he said he didn't care, and that he
+was not ashamed of himself. Next morning, as I was rising, he rushed
+into the tent, knelt down, clasped my knees, and bedewed my ankles with
+his tears. Of course I reinstated him; I couldn't do without him, and I
+think he knew it.
+
+[Illustration: "SNATCHING UP A GUN AS HE RAN."]
+
+But I had yielded too easily. Andreas had established a precedent. He
+insisted, in a quiet, positive manner, on accompanying me to every
+subsequent battle; and I had to consent, always taking his pledge that
+he would obey the injunctions I might lay upon him. And, as a matter of
+course, he punctually and invariably violated that pledge when the
+crisis of the fighting was drawing to a head, and just when this "peace
+at any price" man could not control the bloodthirst that was
+parching him.
+
+One never knows how events are to fall out. It happened that this
+resolution on the part of Andreas to accompany me into the fights once
+assuredly saved my life. It was on the day of Djunis, the last battle
+fought by the Servians. In the early part of the day there was a good
+deal of scattered woodland fighting in front of the entrenched line,
+which they abandoned when the Turks came on in earnest. Andreas and I
+were among the trees trying to find a position from which something was
+to be seen, when all of a sudden I, who was in advance, plumped right
+into the centre of a small scouting party of Turks. They tore me out of
+the saddle, and I had given myself up for lost--for the Turks took no
+prisoners, their cheerful practice being to slaughter first and then
+abominably to mutilate--when suddenly Andreas dashed in among my
+captors, shouting aloud in a language which I took to be Turkish, since
+he bellowed "Effendi" as he pointed to me. He had thrown away his
+billycock and substituted a fez, which he afterwards told me he always
+carried in case of accidents, and in one hand he waved a dingy piece of
+parchment with a seal dangling from it, which I assumed was some
+obsolete firman. The result was truly amazing, and the scene had some
+real humour in it. With profound salaams, the Turks unhanded me, helped
+me to mount, and, as I rode off at a tangent with Andreas at my horse's
+head, called after me what sounded like friendly farewells. When we were
+back among the Russians--I don't remember seeing much of the Servians
+later on that day--Andreas explained that he had passed himself for the
+Turkish dragoman of a British correspondent whom the Padishah delighted
+to honour, and that, after expressing a burning desire to defile the
+graves of their collective female ancestry, he had assured my captors
+that they might count themselves as dead men if they did not immediately
+release me. To his ready-witted conduct I undoubtedly owe the ability to
+write now this record of a man of curiously complicated nature.
+
+When the campaign ended with the Servian defeat at Djunis, Andreas went
+back to his headwaitership at the Serbische Krone in Belgrade. Before
+leaving that capital I had the honour of being present at his nuptials,
+a ceremony the amenity of which was somewhat disturbed by the violent
+incursion into the sacred edifice of sundry ladies all claiming to have
+prior claims on the bridegroom of the hour. They were, however,
+placated, and subsequently joined the marriage feast in the great arbour
+behind the Krone. Andreas faithfully promised to come to me to the ends
+of the earth on receipt of a telegram, if I should require his services,
+and he were alive.
+
+[Illustration: "ANDREAS DASHED IN AMONG MY CAPTORS."]
+
+Next spring the Russo-Turkish war broke out, and I hurried eastward in
+time to see the first Cossack cross the Pruth. I had telegraphed to
+Andreas from England to meet me at Bazias on the Danube below Belgrade.
+Bazias is the place where the railway used to end, and where we took
+steamer for the Lower Danube. Andreas was duly on hand, ready and
+serviceable as of old, a little fatter, and a trifle more consequential
+than when we had last parted. He was, if possible, rather more at home
+in Bucharest than he had been in Belgrade, and recommended me to
+Brofft's Hotel, in comparison with which the charges of the Brunswick in
+New York are infinitesimal. He bought my wagon and team, he found riding
+horses when they were said to be unprocurable, he constructed a most
+ingenious tent, of which the wagon was, so to speak, the roof-tree, he
+laid in stores, arranged for relays of couriers, and furnished me with a
+coachman in the person of a Roumanian Jew who he one day owned was a
+distant connection, and whose leading attribute was, that he could
+survive more sleep than any other human being I have ever known. We took
+the field auspiciously, Mr. Frederic Villiers, the war artist of the
+London _Graphic_, being my campaigning comrade. Thus early I discerned a
+slight rift in the lute. Andreas did not like Villiers, which showed his
+bad taste, or rather, perhaps, the narrowness of his capacity of
+affection; and I fear Villiers did not much like Andreas, whom he
+thought too familiar. This was true, and it was my fault; but really it
+was with difficulty that I could bring myself to treat Andreas as a
+servant. He was more, in my estimation, in the nature of the
+confidential major-domo, and to me he was simply invaluable. Villiers
+had to chew his moustache, and glower discontentedly at Andreas.
+
+I had some good couriers for the conveyance of despatches back across
+the Danube to Bucharest, whence everything was telegraphed to London;
+but they were essentially fair-weather men. The casual courier may be
+alert, loyal, and trustworthy; he may be relied on to try his honest
+best, but it is not to be expected of him that he will greatly dare and
+count his life but as dross when his incentive to enterprise is merely
+filthy lucre. But I could trust Andreas to dare and to endure--to
+overcome obstacles, and, if man could, to "get there," where, in the
+base-quarters in Bucharest, the amanuenses were waiting to copy out in
+round hand for the foreign telegraphist the rapid script of the
+correspondent scribbling for life in the saddle or the cleft of a
+commanding tree while the shells were whistling past. We missed him
+dreadfully when he was gone--even Villiers, who liked good cooking,
+owned to thinking long for his return. For, in addition to his other
+virtues, Andreas was a capital cook. It is true that his courses had a
+habit of arriving at long and uncertain intervals. After a dish of
+pungent stew, no other viands appearing to loom in the near future,
+Villiers and myself would betake ourselves to smoking, and perhaps on a
+quiet day would lapse into slumber. From this we would be aroused by
+Andreas to partake of a second course of roast chicken, the bird having
+been alive and unconscious of its impending fate when the first course
+had been served. No man is perfect, and as regarded Andreas there were
+some petty spots on the sun. He had, for instance, a mania for the
+purchase of irrelevant poultry, and for accommodating the fowls in our
+wagon, tied by the legs, against the day of starvation, which he always,
+but causelessly, apprehended. I do not suppose any reader has ever had
+any experience of domestic poultry as bedfellows, and I may caution him
+earnestly against making any such experiment.
+
+I do not know whether it is a detraction from Andreas's worth to mention
+that another characteristic of his was the habit of awaking us in the
+still watches of the night, for the purpose of imparting his views on
+recondite phases of the great Eastern question. But how trivial were
+such peccadilloes in a man who was so resolute not to be beaten in
+getting my despatch to the telegraph wire, that once, when three
+pontoons of the bridge across the Danube were sunk, he crossed the gap
+hand over hand by the hand-rope, sloshing down with the current as the
+slack of the rope gave to his weight! Andreas became quite an
+institution in the Russian camp. When Ignatieff, the Tsar's intimate,
+the great diplomatist who has now curiously fizzled out, would honour us
+by partaking sometimes of afternoon tea in our tent, he would call
+Andreas by his name and call him "Molodetz"--the Russian for "brave
+fellow." In the Servian campaign Dochtouroff had got him the Takova
+cross, which Andreas sported with great pride, and Ignatieff used to
+tell him that the Tsar was seriously thinking of conferring on him the
+Cross of St. George, badinage which Andreas took as dead earnest.
+MacGahan used gravely to entreat him to take greater care of his
+invaluable life, and hint that if any calamity occurred to him, the
+campaign would _ipso facto_ come to an end. Andreas knew that MacGahan
+was quizzing him, but it was exceedingly droll how he purred and bridled
+under the light touch of that genial humourist, whose merits his own
+countrymen, to my thinking, have never adequately recognised. The old
+story of a prophet having scant honour in his own country.
+
+[Illustration: "CROSSED THE GAP HAND OVER HAND."]
+
+After the long strain of the desperate but futile attack made by the
+Russians on Plevna in the early part of the September of the war, I fell
+a victim to the malarial fever of the Lower Danube, and had to be
+invalided back to Bucharest. The illness grew upon me, and my condition
+became very serious. Worthy Andreas nursed me with great tenderness and
+assiduity in the lodgings to which I had been brought, since they would
+not accept a fever patient at Brofft's. After some days of wretchedness
+I became delirious, and, of course, lost consciousness; my last
+recollection was of Andreas wetting my parched lips with lemonade. When
+I recovered my senses, and looked out feebly, there was nobody in the
+room. How long I had been unconscious I had no idea. I lay there in a
+half stupor till evening, unable from weakness to summon any assistance.
+In the dusk came the English doctor who had been attending me. "Where is
+Andreas?" he asked. I could not tell him. "He was here last night," he
+said; "you have been delirious for seven days." The woman of the house
+was summoned. She had not seen Andreas since the previous night, but,
+busy about her own domestic affairs, had no suspicion until she entered
+the room that Andreas was not with me still.
+
+Andreas never returned. It appeared that he had taken away all his
+belongings. One day, when gradually mending, I put my hand under the
+pillow with intent to find my watch, which was an heirloom, and wind it
+up. I could find no watch. No more could I find the bag of ducats which
+was alongside the watch before I lost my senses. Search was made
+throughout the room without success, and, with whatever reluctance to
+believe a thing so utterly unlikely, I could not refrain from the
+conviction that Andreas must have carried off both money and watch.
+The thought caused a relapse, but at length I attained convalescence,
+and was able to drive out. But the doctor was firm that during the now
+imminent winter I was not to return to the field. Fortunately, my able
+colleagues, MacGahan and Millet, were there; and I was therefore the
+less distressed by Dr. ----'s peremptory sentence on me. I was
+condemned to return to England as soon as I should be strong enough to
+travel.
+
+When I had to leave the Plevna front, my colleagues temporarily took
+charge of my field equipment. But I had brought back to Bucharest my
+best riding horse, and during my illness he had been standing at livery
+in the stables of the English Tramway Company. Determining now on the
+melancholy necessity of selling an animal which had on many a hard day
+and many a long night-ride served me staunchly, I drove to the stables,
+and instructed the manager to sell my horse. "Your horse!" he exclaimed,
+in evident surprise; "your horse was sold weeks ago! Your man, Andreas,
+came here with a message that we were to dispose of it; and I sold it
+next day to General Todleben on his way through Bucharest to take the
+command before Plevna. It fetched a good price, 105 ducats, more than
+you gave for it; Andreas called for the money, and, of course, I gave
+it to him."
+
+So Andreas was thief and rogue--deliberate thief and rogue. I was angry,
+but I was yet more heart-sorry that so fine and true a native should
+have thus fallen. Just as I was leaving Bucharest for England, a letter
+came to me from a friend in Galatz, a commercial city of Roumania, near
+the mouth of the Danube. Its P.S. only is worth quoting. "So you have
+parted with your man, Andreas. I thought from what you had told me that
+you would retain him for life. He is here now, I saw him drunk in the
+street yesterday. He told Kennedy that he believed you were dead."
+
+[Illustration: "ANDREAS DROPPED ON HIS KNEES."]
+
+I went straight to Galatz, a long half-day's journey. Andreas was not
+hard to find; he was smoking in the "Concordia" saloon. I saw him before
+he saw me; he had a furtive air, he was pallid and his lips twitched; he
+looked to me on the verge of _delirium tremens_. I approached him from
+behind, and uttered the one word, "Andreas!" At the word, he started as
+if he had been shot, spun round, dropped on his knees, with his hands
+raised beseechingly, and cried in a broken voice, "Before God, master, I
+thought you were dead, else I should never have done it! I have not had
+a happy moment since I threw away my good name--I could not go home!
+Kill me, send me to prison, punish me how you choose. I shall rejoice to
+suffer!" And the poor wretch grovelled before me on his stomach.
+
+I had meant to punish him; but he was too broken for chastisement. I
+could not send to prison the man who had saved my life among the
+pine-trees of Djunis. I wonder if he really thought me dead--not that,
+if so, his act was thereby materially palliated. And I thought of two
+little sentences which my mother taught me when I was a child: "Judge
+not that ye be not judged," and "Lead us not into temptation." I pulled
+the man on to his feet and grasped his hand, then with the words, "Give
+me my father's watch--good-bye, Andreas. I shall remember all the good
+in you, and forget those last bad days." I turned from him, and quitted
+the "Concordia" with a lump in my throat that I could not swallow down.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+TOLD BY THE COLONEL.
+
+X.
+
+A MATRIMONIAL ROMANCE.
+
+BY W. L. ALDEN.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY R. JACK.
+
+
+"And by the way," continued the Colonel, "a curious thing about this
+Josiah Wilson was that he was married for fifteen years and never had
+any wife whatever."
+
+The Colonel had begun a story concerning one Josiah Wilson, which
+promised to be interesting, but his incidental allusion to Mr. Wilson's
+matrimonial experience awakened our curiosity, and we begged him to
+interrupt his narrative long enough to tell us how it came to pass that
+Josiah was a married man who never had a wife.
+
+[Illustration: "HOWLED FOR HELP."]
+
+"The marriage laws in the United States," said the Colonel, giving his
+chair an increased tilt backwards, which was his usual way of beginning
+a fresh anecdote, "are as peculiar in their way as are the divorce laws.
+You would think to look at them that they would permit anybody to marry
+anybody else in any way that either of them might choose, but for all
+that they sometimes make it impossible for a man or a woman to get
+married. There was a couple who intended to be married in a balloon,
+which is a style of lunacy that is quite fashionable in some parts of
+the country, though I can't see why a man should want to risk his neck
+in a balloon on his wedding day unless it is that it takes so much
+courage to be married at all that a man forgets all about such minor
+dangers as are connected with ballooning. The bride, the minister, and
+two witnesses of assorted sexes went up in the balloon at the appointed
+time, and, naturally, the bridegroom intended to go with them, but he
+accidentally caught his foot in a neglected guy-rope, and went up head
+downwards about twenty feet below the car. The party in the balloon
+could not haul him up because they could not get hold of the rope, and
+the bride would not consent to give up the trip, because the groom had
+always been a little shy, and she was afraid that, if she let him go
+this time, she might not be able to land him again. So the parson went
+on with the ceremony, and the groom made most of his responses in bad
+language, and howled for help when he wasn't swearing. When the ceremony
+was over, the aeronaut managed to land the balloon without seriously
+damaging the bridegroom, but when, a year or two afterwards, the bride
+wanted to get her divorce, the court held that there had never been any
+marriage, for the reason that both the groom and the bride had not
+appeared together in the presence of the officiating minister, and that,
+furthermore, there was no provision in the law which would permit a man
+to be married upside down.
+
+[Illustration: "SMITH'S BULL-DOG."]
+
+"But to get back to Josiah Wilson. He lived in Indiana, close to the
+boundary line between that State and Illinois, and he courted Melinda
+Smith, a young woman who lived a little way up the mountain side with
+her father and three brothers. The girl was anxious to be married, but
+her family was dead against it. You see Josiah was a Republican and a
+Methodist, while the Smiths were Democrats and Baptists, and, naturally,
+they hated each other like poison, and one night as old man Smith and
+Josiah met on their way to rival prayer meetings, they exchanged
+revolver shots, without, however, doing any harm. Then once Josiah had
+most of the calf of his leg taken off by the Smiths' bull-dog, and twice
+the Smith boys came into the sitting-room where Josiah was calling on
+Melinda, and suggested to him with their shot-guns that he had better go
+home. Gradually Josiah and Melinda came to the conclusion that her
+family was resolved to discourage the match, so they determined to elope
+and be married without the knowledge or consent of anybody.
+
+"One dark night Josiah carried a ladder and planted it under Melinda's
+window. He had advised her to walk out of the front door, which was
+always left unlocked at night, but she refused, saying that if she was
+going to elope she should do it in the proper way, and that if Josiah
+had no respect for her, she had some little respect for herself. She
+climbed down the ladder with a good deal of difficulty, because she
+insisted that Josiah should help her, and also that he should stand
+forty yards away, for reasons connected with her ankles, and he found it
+rather trying to follow out these contradictory orders. However, Melinda
+reached the ground at last, and the pair started in a carriage that had
+been waiting just around a bend in the road, in company with the
+Methodist minister. Their plan was to drive to the next town and there
+to be married, but it happened that one of the Smith boys, being
+restless, got up in the night, and, looking out of the window, saw the
+ladder standing at Melinda's window. In about twenty minutes after the
+young people had started, the whole Smith family and their shot-guns
+were following the runaways in a waggon, and gaining on them fast.
+
+"The Methodist minister, whose hearing was unusually good, heard the
+sound of hoofs before Josiah noticed it, and told the young people that
+there was not the least doubt that they were pursued, and would be
+overtaken in a very few minutes. 'And then, you know,' he added, 'the
+chances are that, being Baptists, they will shoot first, and ask for
+explanations afterwards. The only thing for us to do is to get the
+marriage ceremony over before they come up. Then they will see that
+opposition is of no use, and will listen to reason.'
+
+[Illustration: "THEY WERE MARRIED."]
+
+"Josiah and Melinda at once consented, and the parson, noticing a little
+clearing in the woods on the left hand side of the road, and a flat sort
+of tombstone standing in the middle of it, said that he would stand on
+that stone and marry his young friends so quick that it would make their
+hair curl. He was particularly glad to meet with a handy tombstone, for
+he said that a tombstone was the next thing to a church, and that to be
+married by the side of a tomb would be almost as solemn as to be married
+in a minister's study. So the party hastily descended; the parson
+mounted the stone; Josiah and Melinda joined hands in front of him, and
+they were married, and the parson had kissed the bride and pocketed his
+fee just as the Smiths' waggon drove up and the Smith boys cocked their
+guns and covered the party. But the parson was wide awake. He had his
+revolver out and old man Smith covered before anybody had taken aim at
+him, but, instead of shooting, he remarked that he was a minister of the
+blessed gospel of peace; that there was no necessity for bloodshed, and
+that he would blow a hole through old Smith unless the Smith boys
+lowered their weapons and consented to argue the matter. 'The fact is,
+Colonel Smith,' said the parson, 'you're too late. The young people are
+legally married, and the sooner you accept the situation the better. I
+married them not two minutes ago, standing on that identical tombstone.'
+
+[Illustration: "'YOU'LL COME STRAIGHT HOME WITH ME.'"]
+
+"Colonel Smith was a lawyer, and the sharpest one in that part of the
+country. He saw the force of the minister's remarks, so he told the boys
+to put up their guns, and he shook hands with the minister. Then he
+inquired, in a careless sort of way, where Josiah and Melinda had stood
+while they were being married. The parson showed the footprints of the
+bride and groom, and then Colonel Smith turned to Melinda and said,
+'You'll come straight home with me. There hasn't been any marriage yet.
+That stone is the boundary mark between Indiana and Illinois, and you
+were standing in Indiana and that other idiot was standing in Illinois
+when the parson tried to marry you. Nobody can marry in two States at
+the same time, and I shan't recognise the pretended marriage till a
+court of law compels me to do so, which will be never. I hope this will
+teach you the folly of fooling with Methodism. When you want to get
+married next time try a Baptist minister, who will know the difference
+between a tombstone and a boundary mark.' There were too many Smiths,
+and they were too well armed to be reasoned with successfully, so the
+upshot was that Melinda went home with her family, and Josiah and the
+parson went to see a lawyer.
+
+"The next day Josiah brought a suit for divorce against Melinda. It was
+a friendly suit, you understand, and his only object was to test the
+question of the validity of his marriage, for, of course, no man can get
+a divorce unless he first proves that he is married. Old man Smith
+conducted the case on his side, and a lawyer named Starkweather, who is
+now a member of the Illinois Legislature, appeared for Josiah Wilson.
+Colonel Smith argued that while the parson who conducted the alleged
+marriage ceremony could undoubtedly have married a couple in the State
+of Indiana, he could not marry a woman in Indiana to a man in Illinois,
+for the reason that the man and the woman could not be in the same place
+while they were in two different commonwealths, and that hence Josiah
+and Melinda had not legally appeared together before the officiating
+minister. Furthermore, he argued that the minister at the time of the
+pretended marriage was standing neither in Indiana nor in Illinois, but
+on the boundary line; that the statute defined the boundary line as 'an
+imaginary line' running from such and such a point to such and such a
+point, and that a minister who stands in a purely imaginative locality
+stands virtually nowhere, and hence cannot perform any function of
+his calling.
+
+"On the other hand, Josiah's lawyer claimed that the minister had
+married Melinda Smith in the State of Indiana; that consequently she
+must have been married to somebody, and that that somebody was
+unquestionably Josiah Wilson. As to the point that the minister stood in
+an imaginary locality because, as was alleged, he stood on the boundary
+line, the lawyer maintained that it was a physical impossibility that a
+minister weighing two hundred and fifty pounds could stand in a purely
+imaginative place. Moreover, he was prepared to prove that, while
+performing the ceremony, at least one of the minister's feet was in the
+State of Indiana, which was sufficient to make him legally present in
+that State.
+
+"The arguments lasted three days, and the court before which it was
+tried, consisting of three judges, took all the third day to deliver its
+verdict. It decided that Melinda Smith was legally married to some
+person unknown, though not to Josiah Wilson, and that Josiah Wilson was
+also married to some unknown woman, who was not Melinda Smith, whoever
+else she might be; that no marriage between the plaintiff and the
+defendant had ever taken place, and that no divorce could be granted,
+but that if either of them married anyone else, he or she would be
+guilty of bigamy.
+
+[Illustration: "SHE WAS A GOOD DEAL CAST DOWN."]
+
+"The Smiths, with the exception of Melinda, were delighted with the
+decision, for it made it reasonably certain that Josiah could never be
+recognised as her husband. She was a good deal cast down about it, for,
+like every other Indiana girl, she had looked forward to being married
+and divorced as the natural lot of woman. Now it appeared that she was
+married, but in such an unsatisfactory way, that she could never have a
+husband, and never be divorced from anyone. As for Josiah, he was
+furious, but there was no help for it, the law was against him, and, as
+a law-abiding man, he was obliged to respect it, especially as he could
+not hope to kill off all four of the Smiths, if he decided to make a
+family feud of it; he himself having no family whatever, and no one to
+help him to keep up his end of the feud.
+
+"For the next fifteen years Josiah lived a single man except in name,
+and Melinda mourned her hard fate and kept house for her father and
+brothers; but one day Josiah's lawyer, who was by this time in the
+Legislature, came to him and offered to have his marriage to Melinda
+made legal in all respects for five hundred dollars. The lawyer was so
+certain that he could do this that he was willing to wait for his pay
+until after he had gained a verdict, and Josiah, after a little
+bargaining such as every self-respecting man would have made, in his
+place, consented to the lawyer's terms. It seems that the lawyer had
+accidentally discovered that there had been a mistake in the survey of
+part of the boundary line between Indiana and Illinois, and at the very
+place where Josiah and Melinda were married, A rectification of this
+mistake would move the line ten feet west, and so place the spot where
+the pair stood during their wedding entirely within the state of
+Indiana. The proper steps to obtain the rectification of the boundary
+were taken, and it was rectified. Then Melinda in her turn began a suit
+for divorce against Josiah, and had no difficulty in proving the
+marriage and in obtaining a decree. Josiah paid the lawyer his five
+hundred dollars, and was overjoyed at being finally able to call his
+Melinda his own. But he met with a little disappointment. Now that
+Melinda had obtained her divorce she thought she might as well live up
+to it, and marry a fresh husband. So she married the Methodist minister,
+who had just lost his third wife, and lived happily ever afterwards.
+
+[Illustration: "OFFERED TO HAVE HIS MARRIAGE MADE LEGAL."]
+
+"It was just after this that Josiah, being perhaps made a little
+reckless by his disappointment, became involved in the affair that I was
+going to tell you about when you interrupted me, and wanted to hear
+about his marriage. Matrimony is a mighty curious thing, and you can
+never tell precisely how it is going to turn out. That is one reason why
+I was never married but once, though I spent ten years of my life in
+Chicago, and had friends at bar who stood ready to obtain divorces for
+me at any moment and without a dollar of expense."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: IDLERS.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+"LIONS IN THEIR DENS."
+
+No. II.--GEORGE GROSSMITH AND THE HUMOUR OF HIM.
+
+BY RAYMOND BLATHWAYT.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEO. HUTCHINSON.
+
+(_Photographs by Messrs. Fraddle and Young and Alfred Ellis._)
+
+
+[Illustration: MR. GEORGE GROSSMITH.]
+
+A little, slight man, with a thin, clever, mobile, clean-shaven face, a
+sharp inquisitive nose surmounted by a perpetual pair of _pince-nez_,
+and a rather sarcastic mouth, from which wit and humour as light and
+airy as the cigarette smoke which accompanied each remark
+continually flowed.
+
+Mr. George Grossmith, the well-known actor and society clown.
+
+He stands on the hearthrug of his own special sanctum in his handsome
+house in Dorset Square, with his back to the fire, cigarette in his
+mouth, his hands now in his pockets, now waving in the air, as he
+vivaciously tells me the story of his busy, energetic and wonderfully
+interesting life.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. GEORGE GROSSMITH.]
+
+"I was born," said he, "in 1847. I come of a family of actors and
+reciters. My father, whose portrait you see there on the wall, was a
+well-known lecturer and entertainer. Sixty or seventy years ago my uncle
+created a great sensation as a child actor, and he was commonly known as
+the 'celebrated infant Roscius.' Come out into the hall," continued the
+lively little entertainer, "and I will show you some old engravings
+which represent him in his favourite characters. Then my brother Weedon,
+as you know, is, of course, a well-known actor, as well as a clever
+artist, and part author with myself of several sketches which have
+appeared in _Punch_. My eldest son now begins to display the family
+tendency to a most alarming extent. For my own part, I started my career
+as a reporter at Bow Street Police Court, a training which I have found
+invaluable in many respects ever since. My subsequent history as actor
+and society clown is so well known that I need not trouble you with it
+any further."
+
+"I suppose you find the taste of your audiences has gone up considerably
+within the last twenty years, do you not?"
+
+"Why, yes," he replied. "They wouldn't stand to-day what they used to
+roar at then. My music is quite elaborate compared with the two or three
+chords which easily satisfied people in the sixties and early seventies.
+Listen to this," continued my host, as he sat down to the _piano_ and
+struck a couple of very simple chords. Then he glided softly into what
+he termed a modern accompaniment. It was all the difference between "Ten
+Little Niggers" and a slumber song of Schubert.
+
+[Illustration: MR. GROSSMITH'S HOUSE.]
+
+"And do you find the public very critical?"
+
+"Well," he replied, with a smile, "they are very kind. It is your
+professional critic who is severe, though I can honestly say they
+invariably treat me well. Criticism up to a certain point is good
+enough. Beyond that point it is absolutely disabling to me. My father
+was a very severe critic. When we went out together he used to take the
+first half-hour, and then go to the back of the hall and criticise me.
+But it so hampered me by causing me to think of and consider every pose
+that I had to beg of him to desist. And then again, as regards
+criticism, I always think--it may be very conceited on my part--that I
+know a great deal more what the public want than my critics do. I
+declare to you I should have to take everything out of my sketches if I
+attempted to carry out all the suggestions that are made to me. I can
+absolutely feel the public pulse after so many years upon the platform.
+I am almost always right. When I first started 'See me Dance the Polka'
+it fell quite flat. I gave it up, although I felt sure it ought to go.
+The public then demanded it, and it went with a swing. The public had
+changed its mind. Not I."
+
+[Illustration: THE DINING ROOM.]
+
+"And how do you prepare your sketches?" said I, as Mr. Grossmith lit
+another cigarette, and took up his position on the hearthrug again.
+
+"Anyhow and anywhere the idea comes to me for a sketch. I am seated in a
+railway train, and I think of a sea-side sketch. I close my eyes and try
+to recall every single feature of interest on a crowded fashionable
+beach in the height of the season. Nothing is too unimportant. The way
+in which an old lady settles herself comfortably into her chair, the
+manner in which a man, especially a shy man, walks into the room, all
+these things, slightly exaggerated, but still true to nature, are
+immensely appreciated. First I have the idea, then I elaborate,
+sometimes for months, then I produce on the stage, and the people say,
+'How remarkable it is you should invent all this on the spur of the
+moment!' That, of course, is a great compliment. The song-writing is
+always amusing," continued Mr. Grossmith, as he placed in my hand a
+little notebook in which were suggestions and elaborations innumerable.
+One thing I noticed, which he himself had condemned, but which was
+decidedly amusing, although it has never been allowed to see the
+light of day:
+
+[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM.]
+
+    "I've been engaged to many,
+    Quite a score of times at least;
+    I don't think I with safety _can say_
+    Where I met my first _fiancée_.
+    Oh! 'tis better to have loved and lost
+    Than never to have loved at all;
+    So I may say I have loved and _lost a lot_,
+    And my fickleness has _cost a lot_."
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Grossmith, as he leaned over me and saw what I was
+reading; "my better judgment told me that was not good enough for
+the public."
+
+Then came a pencilled note in this little book, "You can take a horse to
+water, but can't make him drink." "That gave me an idea," cried Mr.
+Grossmith, as he sprang to his feet. "You can take a boy to the piano,
+but you can't make him play.' Thought I to myself, that would make a
+capital sketch. And here is how I set about it," continued he, as he
+proceeded to illustrate his remarks. "Imagine a little fellow in the
+corner there. I then begin in dumb show to encourage him to come to the
+piano. 'Come on, my boy; you know you can play that pretty piece you
+played yesterday. Come on, there's a good fellow!' Wonderful what you
+can do with persuasion! He refuses. I attempt to lead him to the piano.
+He won't budge an inch. I carry him under my arm and seat him in front
+of the instrument, the audience roaring all the time. At last his
+mistakes are so many and so ridiculous, I lose all patience and catch
+him a mighty box upon the ears! Tableau!! Of course there is no boy on
+the platform at all, I am quite alone, but I have so thoroughly lost
+myself in my imagination that people have declared years after, 'Oh! but
+I am quite sure you had a boy with you; why, don't you remember how you
+boxed his ears?'"
+
+[Illustration: "I ENCOURAGE HIM."]
+[Illustration: "I ATTEMPT TO LEAD HIM."]
+[Illustration: "I CARRY HIM."]
+[Illustration: "I LOSE ALL PATIENCE."]
+
+No less marvellous than his power of acting is his power of mimicry. "I
+will show you how I do Irving," said he, and in a moment the little man
+had ruffled his hair, had assumed to the life not only Irving's peculiar
+gait, but, even more remarkable still, had managed to secure almost
+exactly the very expression of the great tragedian's face.
+
+[Illustration: "HOW I DO IRVING."]
+
+"Then again, I find it a good idea to take up some craze or topic of the
+moment. 'The Drama on Crutches' I wrote when the craze first arose
+amongst the aristocracy for going on the stage. One of the sketches
+which you will find outlined in that little notebook is entitled, 'Is
+Music a Failure?' and I endeavoured to answer the question by showing
+how popular it is among all classes of the community." I will quote
+pretty freely from this outlined sketch, as it will give my readers an
+idea, better than anything else would do, of the manner in which Mr.
+Grossmith prepares his delightful sketches.
+
+"I am not going to treat the subject seriously," he writes, "but in my
+own particular, impertinent way. The question often arises--are we a
+musical nation? The foreigners think we are not. But where in the wide,
+wide world is there a country where you will hear so many organs and
+German bands? Where is the country, excepting ours, that can appreciate
+the concertina? Where, except in England, can you hear that delightful
+combination of harp and cornet outside a house of refreshment? The
+prejudice of other nations is distressing; and as for their ignorance,
+why, I don't suppose Italy and Germany have even heard of the ocarino
+and the Jew's harp."
+
+And so the sketch runs on, until, in speaking of the universal manner in
+which music is appreciated in England by all classes, Mr. Grossmith goes
+on to say: "We have made rapid strides, so have our servants. They don't
+know how to dust the piano, but they can play it. Everybody plays the
+piano, from the Peerage to the School Board. Then look how music has
+crept into our homes and social circles. Besides the piano, the mother
+and daughters play the banjo, the son plays the first fiddle, and the
+father the second fiddle--as usual. I know of a Lord Mayor who plays the
+trombone, a clergyman who plays the big drum--that's a nice
+unpretentious, giddy instrument!--and I know of any number of members of
+Parliament who blow their own trumpets!!" And so the notes go brightly
+on through many pages.
+
+[Illustration: THE STUDY.]
+[Illustration: MR. WEEDON GROSSMITH.]
+
+"This," explained my host, "is a fair specimen of the method I employ in
+preparing a drawing-room sketch. As a rule, my audiences of that class
+are capital. I always love a well-dressed audience, it is so cheerful.
+You mayn't perhaps get as much applause as you do from the sixpenny
+gallery, but then applause often spoils your point. Once, however, I
+remember singing at a private house in the country to an odd assortment
+of people. I was informed that the party followed a wedding which had
+taken place in the morning. If it had followed a funeral it could not
+have been more gloomy and depressed than it was. I played the piano and
+the fool for three-quarters of an hour, and anything more dismal than
+the result it would be impossible to conceive. A temptation seized me
+suddenly, and I said: 'Ladies and gentlemen,--I am going to reveal to
+you a secret. Pray don't let it go any further. This is supposed to be a
+comic entertainment. I don't expect you to laugh at it in the least; but
+if, during the next sketch, you would only once oblige me with a society
+smile, it would give me a great deal of encouragement.' The audience for
+a moment were dumbfounded. They first began to titter, then to laugh,
+and actually to roar, and for a time I could not proceed with the
+sketch. They were transformed into a capital and enthusiastic audience,
+and the hostess told me that both her guests and herself were most
+grateful to me. I am sometimes amused with the little eccentricities of
+people who wish to secure my services for their parties. A gentleman
+once wrote to me to entertain some friends of his, and, added he, 'I
+trust that your sketches are strictly _comme il faut_, as I have several
+young daughters.' I was so immensely tickled by this that, rightly or
+wrongly, I replied that my entertainments _were_ as they should be, for
+I was recently married, and hoped myself to have several young
+daughters. He wrote thanking me for this assurance, and I was to
+consider myself accordingly engaged. There is a story I tell in my book
+which will bear repetition: A young gentleman once called upon me. He
+explained that he was acting as a sort of ambassador for a friend of
+his, Mrs. ----, of Mayfair, who wished me to dine at her house. I
+replied that I had not the honour of the lady's acquaintance, and,
+though appreciating her kind invitation, I did not see how I could very
+well avail myself of it. He said that Prince Somebody or other and La
+Comtesse de So-and-so would be dining there, and Mrs. ---- would be so
+pleased if I would join the party, and sing a little song after dinner.
+'Oh,' I said, 'if Mrs. ---- wishes to engage me professionally, that is
+another matter, and if I am at liberty, I will come with much pleasure.'
+'Well,' said the ambassador, 'I fancy Mrs. ---- is under the impression
+that if she includes you in her dinner party it is an understood thing
+that you sing afterwards.' 'I am afraid I do not understand that,' I
+said. 'It would not pay me to do so. I only consume about ten shillings
+worth of food and wine, and my terms are more than that.' There," said
+Mr. Grossmith, "could you have believed that anyone would have been so
+inconceivably mean and caddish?"
+
+[Illustration: OLD ENGRAVINGS.]
+[Illustration: MR. GEORGE GROSSMITH.]
+[Illustration: MR. GEO. GROSSMITH, JUN.]
+
+"I have had some curious experiences on tour," he went on. "That is hard
+work, if you like. I have gone a four months' tour without missing a
+night. It takes it out of one terribly. But it is very paying work. In
+the South of England I have made as much as £300 a week. My friends
+tried to frighten me as to the apathy of my Scotch audiences; as a
+matter of fact, I have no better audiences anywhere. I like performing
+to country audiences. I am never nervous as I am apt to be at St.
+James's, where there are a number of my friends. And it is on my country
+tours that I have many curious experiences. Amateurs invariably call at
+the hotel to see me, and to ask my advice as to their powers of
+recitation. Some are quite hopeless, and I haven't the heart to condemn
+them utterly, or to go beyond 'I tell you quite candidly, since you ask
+me, that I have heard better.' As a rule they are very quiet and modest,
+but now and again one encounters some fearful specimens. I remember once
+at a country town, which we will call Mudborough, a flashy young cad, in
+a very loud suit, called to see me with a parcel under his arm. He had
+come, he told me, to learn my opinion of his singing. He further
+informed me that he was known as 'the Mudborough Grossmith.' He didn't
+have the courtesy to take off his hat; he walked up and down my room,
+whistling, singing, and handing me over now and again specimens of his
+powers as a water-colour painter. I looked at them. At last, tired of
+the idiot and his airs, I said, 'I hope your musical sketches are better
+than you water-colour sketches.' Nothing, however, could snub this
+fellow. He proceeded straightway to sing me an improved version of 'See
+me Dance the Polka.' 'Do your audience like it?' I asked. 'I should
+think they did,' he replied; 'I will let you have that last verse if you
+like.' I thanked him sarcastically, and at last he withdrew. I have,
+however, come across some real talent in this way. For instance, that
+admirable actor and entertainer, Eric Lewis, is a _protégé_ of mine, and
+you could not have a better man than he. Another amusing incident
+occurred at Southsea. My secretary was in a shop one day, and he
+overheard three ladies discussing the respective merits of Corney Grain
+and myself. Two of them were for Corney Grain and one was for me.
+Finding at last that the odds were too strong for her, she departed with
+this final shot: 'Well, never mind, Mr. Corney Grain can't jump on to a
+piano,' referring to my imitation of Minnie Palmer."
+
+[Illustration: "A FLASHY YOUNG CAD, IN A VERY LOUD SUIT."]
+
+Replying to a question I put to him as to his theatrical experiences,
+Mr. Grossmith told me that it was in the November of 1877 that he
+received the following letter:--
+
+"Beefsteak Club,
+
+"King William Street,
+
+"Tuesday Night.
+
+"Dear Mr. Grossmith,--Are you inclined to go on the stage for a time?
+There is a part in the new piece I am doing with Gilbert which I think
+you would play admirably. I can't find a good man for it. Let me have a
+line, or come to Albert Mansions to-morrow, after 4; or Thursday,
+before 2.30.
+
+"Yours sincerely,
+
+"ARTHUR SULLIVAN."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"This was a great moment in my life, although at the time my father,
+whose good judgment I valued much, was of opinion that I was not very
+successful as an actor. Sullivan, however, who had heard me give a
+musical sketch at a dinner party, was of the contrary opinion, and felt
+sure that I should suit him. It appears he and Arthur Cecil were both
+writing letters at the Beefsteak, when the former said, 'I can't find a
+fellow for this opera.' Cecil said, 'I wonder if Grossmith--' Before he
+had finished the sentence, Arthur Sullivan said, 'The very man!' And so
+I was engaged. I am much indebted to these two Arthurs," continued the
+bright little man with a laugh. "I reverence the very name of Arthur. I
+remember when Gilbert wanted to engage me for the part of _John
+Wellington Wells_, though I saw the part would suit me to perfection, I
+said to him, 'I should have thought you required a fine man with a fine
+voice for the part of a magician.' I can still see Gilbert's humorous
+expression as he replied, 'That is just what we _don't_ want.' I played
+_Sir Joseph Porter_ in 'Pinafore' every night for nearly two years. Long
+runs don't affect the nerves of the actors nearly as much as they affect
+the performance. Constant repetition begets mechanism, and that is a
+terrible enemy to contend against. I make a point of playing my best to
+a bad house; for it is a monstrous thing to slur through one's work
+because the stalls are empty, and thereby punish those who _have_ come
+for the fault of those who _have not_. Still, I repeat it, constant
+repetition is a dreadful thing. Fancy playing 'Pinafore,' as I did, for
+700 nights without missing a single performance!"
+
+[Illustration]
+[Illustration]
+
+As he said this Mr. Grossmith led the way out of the room in which we
+had been talking, and which he told me was his own special sanctum,
+"into which no one is ever allowed to come except my wife, for anyone
+rushing in here when I was composing or thinking out a sketch would
+inevitably drive every single idea from my head," and we went upstairs
+together. Here in the drawing-room he set himself down to a spinet which
+bore the date of 1770, and he struck a few exceedingly sweet-sounding,
+if slightly tinkling, chords from it. "And this," said he, "is the
+oldest _Broadwood_ in England. You can see for yourself the date--1795."
+Downstairs he showed me a beautiful model of a steam engine, upon which
+he was enabled to ride, and which he could drive himself. "I thoroughly
+understand locomotives," said he, as he pointed to a shelf full of all
+the works upon the subject which he had been able to discover.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+A BLIND BEGGARMAN
+
+BY FRANK MATHEW.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. PEGRAM.
+
+
+    "Left dark among mine enemies."
+
+Long ago, the Fairies often stole children; they chose the prettiest,
+and carried them to Fairyland--the Kingdom of Tyrnanoge,--leaving
+hideous Changelings instead. In those days no man had call to be ashamed
+of his offspring, since it a baby was deformed or idiotic it was known
+to be a Changeling.
+
+[Illustration: "THE PIG WAS A FRIENDLY ANIMAL."]
+
+It is sixty years now since old Mike Lonergan, who lived in a hovel in
+Moher Village, was robbed of his child. It was his wife first found out
+the theft, for she had seen her unborn son in a dream, and he was
+beautiful; so when she saw the sickly and ugly baby, she knew that he
+was not hers, and that the Fairies had stolen the child of her dream.
+Many advised her to roast the Changeling on the turf-fire, but the White
+Witch of Moher said it would be safer to leave him alone. So the child
+Andy grew up as a stranger in his father's hovel and had a dreary time
+of it, he got little food and no kindness. The Lonergans gave him
+neither offence nor welcome, hoping that he might see fit to go home to
+Tyrnanoge and yet bear them no grudge. He grew up an odd wizened little
+wretch, and everyone shunned him. The children loathed him because they
+were afraid of him, so they hooted him from a distance, or stoned him
+from behind walls.
+
+Indeed, at this time his only ally was the pig that lived in one corner
+of the hovel. The pig was a friendly animal, his front half was a dull
+white and the other half black, and this gave him a homely look as if he
+was sitting in his shirt-sleeves. Andy would shrink into the corner, and
+sit cuddled there with one arm round the pig's neck. Old Mike Lonergan
+took to drink, and spent every evening at the Shebeen--small blame to
+him--for how could a man be expected to stay at home with a Changeling
+sitting in a corner and staring at him?
+
+When the pig was driven to the Fair at Ennistimon, Andy was left
+friendless, and then--in all winds and weather--was to be found on the
+Cliffs of Moher. Sometimes he stopped out all night, till hunger would
+bring him back when the Lonergans were rejoicing at his disappearance.
+He knew every inch of the Cliffs, and spent half his time lying on the
+edge of the grey precipice, looking down at the sea, six hundred feet
+below, or watching the clouds of sea-birds; he found new paths down the
+cliff-side and clambered like a goat; he knew where the gulls nested,
+but never robbed them, and the caves where the seals lived, and the
+seals shouldered their way through the water close by him, looking at
+him with soft eyes.
+
+When he was about fourteen, the Famine Year came; fever and "The Hunger"
+swept Clare. The fever took Lonergan and his wife, and they were buried
+in the dead-pit at Liscannor; it left Andy, but it left him blind. Then
+the neighbours began to have their doubts whether he was a Changeling
+after all; for the Fairies are faithful, and who ever heard of a
+Changeling being left blind and penniless? If he was only mortal he had
+been cruelly treated, so to make amends they gave him the fiddle that
+had belonged to the "Dark" Man--that is the blind man--of St. Bridget's
+Well, who had lately starved. There was still a feeling that he was
+unfit for a Holy Well, so he took up a post at the Liscannor
+Cross-roads, and there levied a toll on passers with the professional
+heart-broken cry:
+
+"Remember the Dark Man! For God's sake, remember the Dark Man!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For nearly twenty years Andy haunted the Cross-roads, he came to be
+honoured as one of the institutions of Moher, though the folk considered
+there was much that was uncanny about him, he was so silent, and he
+hated the smell of whisky. Now those were the times when Cornelius
+Desmond ruled Moher in the old open-handed haphazard way, never
+troubling penniless tenants. But "Corney" died and the daisies grew over
+him, so the estate was managed by an agent who made short work of
+paupers, and evicted "Dark" Andy from his ancestral hovel. Andy did not
+seem to know his misfortune. He spent the day of the eviction, as usual,
+at the Cross-roads, and came back at night to a ruin. His neighbour,
+Larry Ronan the blacksmith, was grieved to see that he took the change
+as a matter of course, and that after groping in the four corners of the
+cabin he sat on the window-ledge as if unaware that nothing was left of
+his home but the walls.
+
+Next day it was rumoured that Bridget McCaura, of Moher Farm, had
+sheltered Dark Andy. Bridget was a warm woman, a "woman of three cows,"
+a masterful old maid, who in her time had refused many a pretty fellow,
+perhaps because she suspected them of hankering after her live stock,
+her poultry, and her sixty acres of rocks. Then the old parish priest,
+Father Peter Flannery, rode over to see her. Bridget was called out of
+her house to speak to him; he was afraid to dismount. She stood in the
+narrow gateway in front of her farm, with her arms akimbo, ready to
+defend her home against all comers. Peter's heart trembled; he has a
+great dread of angry women.
+
+"Is it thrue?" he asked--and was so frightened that he looked even
+sterner than usual--"is it thrue what I'm afther hearing, Bridget
+McCaura, that ye've taken the Dark Man, Lonergan, to live with ye--to
+live in the Farm?"
+
+"Is it thrue? 'Tis so," said Bridget.
+
+"But ye're not going to keep him, are ye now?"
+
+"Keep him? I am that," said Bridget.
+
+Peter screwed up his courage and told her warily, that though it was
+well-meant of her, and "'tis you have the kind warm heart, Bridget me
+dear," still, that propriety forbade it.
+
+He was afraid to look at her as he spoke. Bridget was purple.
+
+"What! a misfortnit ould omadhaun the likes of that?" she cried.
+
+"I know, I know," said Peter (this is a pet phrase of his and usually
+means that he does not know). "I know, I know, but 'tis because ye're a
+lone woman, tell me now are ye listening to me? If ye'd been married
+now, 'twould have been another thing."
+
+"Married!" cried Bridget with infinite scorn--"Married! If that's all,
+I'll marry the craythur to-morrow!"
+
+And so Dark Andy was married to the richest woman in Moher. He seemed
+indifferent; as for Bridget, she had made up her mind to shelter him,
+and there was an end of it, she took pleasure in astounding her
+neighbours.
+
+[Illustration: "I'LL MARRY THE CRAYTHUR TO-MORROW!"]
+
+There was never such excitement in Clare as when those banns were read.
+Everyone saw that poor Bridget McCaura--"dacint woman"--had been
+bewitched. All the old stories about Dark Andy came to life, there was
+no room for doubt now, and the bravest unbelievers trembled before him.
+There was many a woman would never hear his name without crossing
+herself, and he got the credit of every misfortune between Kilkee and
+Kinvarra, though some doubted whether a blind man could have the Evil
+Eye. It was felt that he should be asked to give up his post by the
+Cross-roads, since it was inconvenient for the neighbours to have to
+climb two stone walls to avoid passing him. However, no one could be
+found to suggest this to him, so he still sat there daily, for he liked
+to feel that he was earning his own livelihood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One rough afternoon during my first visit to Clare I was caught in a
+storm of rain, and took refuge at the Liscannor Cross-roads under a
+thick clump of trees that are stunted and bent eastward by cowering from
+the sea-wind. As I reached them I heard a shrill cry, "Remember the Dark
+Man!" Then I saw the blind beggarman sitting huddled in a ragged
+great-coat so much too big for him that till he stood up I did not see
+how tiny he was. He had a doleful peaked face, set in a shock of grey
+hair. By him sat a little brown dog--the queerest of mongrels--with a
+tin can tied round his neck.
+
+Andy was friendly that day, and talked eagerly in a shrill, stammering
+voice. I found later that he was wretched in still weather, and loved
+the malicious rush of the rain; he was happiest when the wind rattled in
+his ears and the rain whipped his face. "Call that rain?" he said, "sure
+th' air is flooded, an' ye might as well swim as walk."
+
+Many times after that I went out of my way on my long solitary walks to
+pass the Cross-roads, but as often as not he was glum and silent, and
+then Bonaparte, sharing his mood, would growl like a small thunderstorm.
+The seat was well chosen, for the cowering trees are like a shed over
+it, and there is a pleasant landscape in front (though that mattered
+little to Andy), a landscape of dim green moors--with brown stains on
+them where sedge grows and black shadows where bushes huddle in
+clefts--chequered by a grey net of low walls, dotted with the white
+gables of cabins, and framed by a wavering line of hills.
+
+Sometimes I found him playing his fiddle to keep himself company, but he
+stopped when he heard me, and, to tell the truth, I was glad of it, for
+his playing was uncanny. Sometimes I met him shambling along the brink
+of the Cliffs--a grotesque little figure, with his old shapeless hat,
+his huge coat flapping behind him, and the mighty blackthorn he
+carried--he knew the ground so well that he walked as if he could see
+(indeed, he saw more than I could, for while to me the breakers were
+only streaks of light, he spoke as if he was close to them on the wet
+weedy rocks), or I came on him lying by the edge, listening to the
+grumbling of the breakers and the cries of the gulls.
+
+[Illustration: "LISTENING TO THE GRUMBLING OF THE BREAKERS AND THE CRIES
+OF THE GULLS."]
+
+Mostly he was unsociable, he shrank from his neighbours because they had
+been cruel to him when they were children, and the dislike was more than
+returned; yet I think that, but for the loneliness of his whole life, he
+would have been friendly enough. No one knew more of folklore--I think
+he half believed that he was a Changeling, and found comfort in the
+thought of that former life when he was one of the merry "Little Good
+People"--and sure old Mike Lonergan and his wife ought to have known
+best. He knew the ways of every ghost in the county, and it was even
+said that he was on speaking terms with the Headless Man who haunted
+Liscannor. Of course he knew all about Fairies. When the fallen leaves
+scurried past his feet he knew that the "Little Good People" were
+playing football, when the wind whispered in the leaves overhead he
+heard them chatting, and when it whined in the creaking bare branches,
+heard the poor little folk crying with cold and bewailing the days when
+they found shelter by snug firesides and sat there unseen but not
+unwelcome. Once, before the world grew hard, they gathered in the
+cabins, and the roughest fare grew pleasanter, the saddest hearts
+lighter, from their good wishes; but no one cares for them now, and they
+cannot rest in unfriendly houses.
+
+[Illustration: "HE WAS ON SPEAKING TERMS WITH THE HEADLESS MAN OF
+LISCANNOR."]
+
+As he grew older, he talked more of them, grew more moody and restless,
+could not sit quiet while the wind was up, and spent night after night
+out of doors. My friend Father Peter Flannery, who is my chief authority
+for this history, told me that often, riding on his sick calls in stormy
+weather, he met Andy staggering along the rough roads.
+
+Last year on November Eve--the night when the Fairies have power, and
+the dead wake and dance reels with them--the blind beggarman started out
+from the Farm. An Atlantic gale was shattering seas against the Cliffs,
+the air was salt with foam, and throbbed with the pulse of the breakers.
+Bridget tried in vain to stop him; he said the "Little Good People" were
+calling him. She watched him disappear into the darkness, the whimpering
+of his fiddle died into the shrieks of the wind. "'Tis a quare divil, he
+is," she said, "God help him!"
+
+Once in the night she thought she heard a snatch of the "Fairies' Reel";
+but Andy never came back. Next morning they found Bonaparte whining on
+the edge of the Cliffs; there was no sign of his master. He must have
+gone over the Cliffs in the darkness, but the waves gave no token.
+
+Some folk in Moher believe that the Fairies took back their child, and
+that the old blind fiddler lives now in the Kingdom of Tyrnanoge, and
+makes music for their dances in that enchanted country where the old
+grow young and the blind see. Some say that he still haunts the
+Cross-roads, and only a week ago, Larry Ronan, coming back at night from
+Ennistimon Fair, saw a black shadowy figure under the black trees, and
+heard a heart-broken voice cry "Remember the Dark Man!" Larry's natural
+surprise at this accounted for his being found next morning asleep in
+the ditch. But it is agreed in Moher that Andy left life on November
+Eve, whether he became the playfellow of the Fairies or the plaything of
+the waves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+CHURCH AND STAGE.
+
+A REVIEW OF HENRY IRVING,
+
+BY THE REV. DR. JOSEPH PARKER.
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM F. BARNARD AND J. BERNARD PARTRIDGE.
+
+
+[Illustration: MR. IRVING AS "HAMLET."
+(_From the Portrait by EDWIN LONG._)]
+
+[Illustration: MR. IRVING AS "DIGBY GRANT" IN "TWO ROSES."]
+
+The innumerable reviews of Mr. Irving by literary and artistic experts
+have left room enough for an amateur estimate by a man who is accustomed
+to regard human life mainly from a religious standpoint. A complete
+review of the Stage by the Pulpit could hardly be the work of a single
+pen; for my own part, therefore, I can only make a very small
+contribution to such a review by indicating a few points which have
+occurred to me in the study of one particular actor. At once, however,
+the question arises, Is Mr. Irving a man who can be thus summarily
+characterised? In a dramatic sense, are there not many Mr. Irvings? When
+a man can act "The Two Roses" and "The Dead Heart" with equal effect,
+when he can at will be as vulgar as _Robert Macaire_, or as dignified as
+_Cardinal Wolsey;_ when he can be either as young as Hamlet or as old as
+Lear, the inquiry as to his plurality becomes natural and pertinent. For
+my part, I rank Mr. Irving the comedian above Mr. Irving the tragedian,
+just as I rank Nature above Art: each may be highest in its own way, yet
+the one may have a charm which the other cannot boast. Mr. Irving's
+tragedy sometimes requires working up, but his comedy is spontaneous and
+immediate. The needful working up of tragedy is no fault of the actor.
+Tragedy should hardly ever begin at once. The murder may come too soon.
+Premature rage is followed by untimely laughter. _Digby Grant_ begins at
+once, and can be his best self in the very first sentence, but _Macbeth_
+must move towards his passion by finely-graded ascents. In Mr. Irving's
+exquisite representation, _Macbeth's_ anxieties and perturbations, his
+rapid alternations of courage and cowardice, make delicate but obvious
+record of themselves in deepening the grey of his hair, and ploughing
+more deeply the lines of his face. A comedy may be judged scene by
+scene, almost sentence by sentence, but a tragedy can be truly estimated
+only when viewed in final perspective.
+
+[Illustration: "A LITTLE CHEQUE."
+(MR. IRVING AS "DIGBY GRANT" IN "TWO ROSES.")]
+
+Judged by this test, I have no hesitation in regarding Mr. Irving's
+_King Lear_ as the finest creation of his genius. This is an instance in
+which the actor creates the piece. Shakespeare is, as a poet and
+playwright, at his worst in "King Lear." Yet his accessories are
+wonderful in variety and suggestiveness. Only Shakespeare could have
+created the heath, and have so ordered the old King's passion, as to
+make his madness part of the very thunder and lightning. That was
+Shakespeare's magnificent conception, and Mr. Irving's rendering is
+worthy of its tempestuous grandeur. How to talk up to the storm, how to
+pierce the tumult with the cries of human distress, how to escape the
+ridiculous and the incongruous, how to be a King on the desolate heath,
+and to make the royalty gleam through the angry darkness, were the
+problems, and Mr. Irving solved them one and all, even with redundance
+of faculty and skill. At the end of the heath scene the man is more
+remembered than the storm. It has been objected that in the first scene
+Mr. Irving's _Lear_ is too old and feeble. I venture to think otherwise.
+I further venture to think that the King's age and the King's imbecility
+have both been accurately appreciated. A man at eighty, a man athirst
+for flattery, a man who would pay a kingdom in exchange for adulation,
+must have outlived all that is best and strongest in human nature. He
+comes upon the stage as a wreck. His vanity has eaten up his sagacity,
+so that she, _Goneril_ or _Regan_, who can flatter most, can lie most,
+and can play the devil best, shall fare most lavishly at his hands. Is
+it not well partly to excuse these excesses of self-valuation by such
+mitigations as can be found in the infirmity of old age? Even in an
+elderly man they would have been treated with contempt; they could only
+be endured in one whose eighty years had been doubled by the hardness of
+his life lot.
+
+In "Henry VIII." Mr. Irving had little to do. In that play the labour
+and the glory fell upon another, to the infinite delight of the public.
+In "Lear," Mr. Irving has everything to do. From beginning to end there
+is only one character. Even the fascinating _Cordelia_ is but a silver
+cloud on the far horizon. "The King is coming" is the cry of the play.
+His madness is more, as to display and effect, than the sense of all the
+others. The scene is stiff and cold until his wild hair is observed to
+approach the front, and then the whole spectacle is alight with feeling
+and purpose. The other actors are not to blame that, to a large extent,
+they are thrown into the shade; indeed, they are to be warmly
+congratulated upon their self-suppression and their passive sympathy. It
+is a hard task to play the part of two heartless and treacherous
+daughters, and a pitiful fate to have to represent the villainy of
+_Edmund_, yet all this was admirably done. It cannot be an easy thing to
+come forward to play the villain well, for the better the dramatic
+villain is played the more is the actor compelled to recognise in his
+execration the exact degree of his success. So admirably can Mr. Irving
+himself play the villain, that it is difficult to believe that any
+godparents ever, on his unconscious behalf, renounced the pomps and
+vanities of this wicked world.
+
+In many minor parts--or along the subsidiary lines of great parts--Mr.
+Irving's subtlest power comes into effective play. Who, for example, can
+be more gentle or more graceful with a little child? Who could hug the
+"fool" more fondly than old _King Lear_? Then recall his wonderful
+recognitions of old friends. When, in "The Dead Heart," he is liberated
+from the Bastille, how old times slowly but surely dawn into
+consciousness, and how quickly the dawn hastens into the noontide of the
+tenderest fellowship and highest festival of joy. It is verily a
+resurrection. After eighteen years' entombment this political Lazarus
+comes forth to liberty, to leadership, to dominance.
+
+In "Lear," there are two wonderful instances of recognition, the
+recognition of _Gloster_ and of _Cordelia_. _Gloster_ is blind and
+bandaged. _Cordelia_ has been long out of sight--if not in actual days
+yet in depth of feeling--and the King himself is demented. Little by
+little things shape themselves in the memory and fancy of the King.
+There is something confusedly familiar in the voice of _Gloster_ which,
+tone by tone, settles into recognition. In the case of _Cordelia_ the
+father gradually subdues the King, and instinct takes the place of
+reason; then, in a fine strain, comes the identification:
+
+            "Do not laugh at me,
+    For, as I am a man, I think this lady
+    To be my child Cordelia."
+
+The utterance of these words by Mr. Irving is simply thrilling. The
+tones, the glances, the approach, the embrace, lift up the words into
+new light, keen and tender as the brightness of a summer morning. The
+words themselves are by no means striking, are, indeed, the merest
+commonplace, but, uttered with the natural pathos of a consummate actor,
+they carry the play to its most subduing climax. The humanity and the
+genius satisfy expectation in its most eager and jealous temper. Failure
+at that point would have ruined the play. Which was better, _Lear_ or
+_Cordelia_, in that critical action? We must first settle, Which is
+better, the star of morning or the morning star?
+
+[Illustration: MR. IRVING AS "KING LEAR." (FROM THE LYCEUM SOUVENIR.)]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As I opened this brief review with a reference to the religious
+standpoint, it may be well now to ask how the Church is to regard the
+Stage as an educational institution? The Stage cannot be put down. It
+responds to an instinct which is ineradicable, and which need not be
+ignoble. The parables of the New Testament are the sublimest recognition
+of that instinct. The drama is older than the theatre. Much of the
+greatest preaching has been dramatic, by which I mean that it has
+touched human life through the medium of story and parable, coloured and
+toned by a living fancy. Sometimes, too truly, the dramatic in preaching
+has degenerated into impossible anecdotes, most of them originating in
+the Far West of America, yet even such anecdotes testify to the
+overpowering force of the dramatic instincts when limited to their most
+vulgar conditions. My submission is, that a properly-conducted stage
+might be the most powerful ally of the pulpit. I advance upon this
+submission, and contend that the function of the preacher is infinitely
+superior to the function of the actor. Whatever the preacher has to say
+that is distinctive he can trace to what he believes to be a Divine and
+authoritative origin. I hold the great preacher to be a spiritual
+medium. In his next evolution he will simply tell the people whatever
+may have been given him in the same hour to say. This does not mean that
+indolence will supersede industry. Through the indolent man God sends no
+messages. The true prophet will always be preparing himself. By
+learning, by meditation, by self-discipline, the true prophet will
+prepare his heart for the incoming of the Eternal Spirit, and the glory
+of Heaven will be as a fire on the altar of the honest heart. Art
+preachers we have had in too great abundance. Mechanical talkers have
+brought upon the pulpit the disrepute of dulness. The age now waits for
+the messenger in whose loving heart there is the glow and the radiance
+of divinest sympathy. The great actor himself would be the first to
+admit that the preacher cannot trace his own public secondariness to the
+poverty of his themes. Where the preacher falls behind the actor, it is
+because the preacher does not realise the majesty and the tenderness,
+the vehemence and the urgency, of his own message.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THAT BEAST BEAUTY.
+
+BY KIRBY HARE.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY ERNEST M. JESSOP.
+
+
+I was a man born to misfortune. In fact, my first misfortune, the death
+of my father, happened three months before I came into the world. When I
+did duly appear, and was giving a proper howl of disgust, a fresh
+misfortune fell upon me; my mother departed to join my father, leaving
+me in the lurch in a vale of unavailing tears. I should have preferred
+going with my family to that blessed Utopia where there are neither
+births, deaths, marriages, divorces, breaches of promise, nor return
+tickets; only, unfortunately, I was not invited. So I became a
+posthumous orphan, soothed by Daffy's elixir and the skim-milk of human
+kindness. The milk was none too sweet, human kindness did not spare the
+rod, and I firmly believe it was Daffy's elixir that turned my hair red.
+However, I grew up at length into stand-up collars and tail coats, and
+at the age of seventeen springs was adopted (on trial) by a maiden aunt
+of seven-and-forty autumns. Like a gleam of sunshine hope flashed into
+my loveless life, lighting up my path to fortune. But it was only the
+glimmer of an _ignis fatuus_, which led me into a quicksand and snuffed
+itself out in a fog.
+
+[Illustration: A PROPER HOWL OF DISGUST.]
+
+[Illustration: HIS MAIDEN AUNT.]
+
+My relative had plenty of money, and plenty of other equally good
+qualities in the long run, no doubt; but the period of my adoption was
+too short to make sure of either the one or the other. If the wealthy
+maiden was really a worthy soul she did not let her nephew know it.
+Corporeally she was angular and iron-grey, with a summary tongue and
+wintry temper, chastened by a fondness for feline favourites. Unluckily,
+I was always falling foul of the latter, and my aunt continually fell
+foul of me in consequence. Crabbed age and youth could not live together
+in our case on account of cats. Age, as represented by the mature
+virgin, adored the brutes; youth, in the shape of a sprouting
+hobbledehoy, abhorred them altogether, and one evil minded black Tom in
+particular. My aunt called him Beauty, in happy ignorance that all her
+household called him a Beast. I admire beauty in the abstract; I also
+like it in the concrete; and in the concreted form of youthful feminine
+humanity I love it. But that feline black Beauty was the most outrageous
+misnomer unhanged. I had tried to hang him several times, down in the
+cellar in the dead of night; but his patent cast-iron neck set
+suspensory science at defiance, and Beauty triumphantly refused to give
+up the ghost. At first, he kicked and fought against it lustily, and
+yelled murder with all his might; but after a little practice the
+malefactor acted more philosophically, regarding the performance quite
+as part of his nocturnal programme. He never allowed it to make him late
+for breakfast, nor take away his appetite. Each morning, after
+execution, the moment the bell rang for prayers, in marched Beauty with
+a swollen head well on one side, growling anathemas from somewhere round
+the corner all prayer-time; after which the escaped convict devoured
+breakfast with the voracity of a stiffnecked cannibal.
+
+[Illustration: ONE EVIL-MINDED BLACK TOM.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Finding the beast utterly unhangable, I determined to try drowning. My
+nature is by no means a cruel one, quite the reverse; but Beauty's cup
+of iniquity had long been full to the brim, and running over into the
+saucer. He had gulped down my canaries like pills, poached my pigeons,
+fricasseed my rabbits, and made himself an abominable beast generally;
+and had now committed a crime that capped everything.
+
+My cock bantam, which had won first prize at the Slocum-Pogis poultry
+show, mysteriously disappeared. Jim, the gardener's boy, and I hunted
+everywhere without finding any trace till we sighted Beauty. The beast
+was seated on my verbena bed, with fearfully distended stomach, waving
+my poor little bantam's tail feathers from between his teeth. Had I been
+an ancient Egyptian high priest, and Beauty at the top of the tree of
+holy cats, his diabolical godship should have been made into a mummy
+instanter. As things were, he had to be drowned forthwith.
+
+[Illustration: AT A CABINET COUNCIL IN THE COAL CELLAR.]
+
+At a cabinet council in the coal cellar, composed of the cook, footman,
+Jim, and myself, all the executive details were arranged; my aunt being,
+of course, kept in happy ignorance of our intentions. As soon as my
+respected relative uttered the preliminary snore of her afternoon
+siesta, Beauty made an involuntary exit out of the house, all the lower
+doors and windows having been carefully fastened. Then commenced a
+silent cat-hunt, a serio-comic drama in dumb show, with a crowded
+audience breathlessly gazing from the windows. The scenery was a series
+of dissolving views, beginning on a flower-decked lawn, and ending at a
+mill-pool a mile or so away from the audience. Beauty played leading
+actor with considerable activity, notwithstanding the drawback of being
+handicapped with an undigested bantam. He flew over dozens of
+flower-beds, through all the outhouses, over the stable, out into the
+park, up and down all the tallest trees, and all over the country, till
+he took refuge in the deserted old mill. There we wriggled him into an
+ancient sack, and tied him up in the harmonious company of a couple of
+brickbats. Then we committed the body to the deep. The burial service
+was short, but hearty. "One--two--three, and away!" sung out in unison,
+was the special form for the occasion, accompanied by Beauty's farewell
+blessing as we "awayed" him into the silent depths of the mill-dam.
+There was a splash, a shrill cry from a frightened moorhen, a short
+jubilate from Jim, to which I piously added "amen," and all was over.
+Jim ran home with half-a-sovereign in his pocket, while I walked back to
+dress for dinner. On the stairs I met my aunt, already in evening array,
+and looking hungry. I knew the sign, and stealthily tried to
+vanish, vainly.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE DESERTED OLD MILL.]
+
+"Late again, Samuel!" she remarked, with a freezing spectacle-gleam that
+fixed me to the stair-carpet--my right foot two steps above the left.
+"You have just come in, I suppose. Have you seen Beauty?"
+
+[Illustration: "LATE AGAIN, SAMUEL!"]
+
+Horror! Could she suspect anything? I felt my face growing the colour of
+my hair, and my tongue frozen solid.
+
+"Can't you answer?" she went on wrathfully. "And can't you stand up
+straight?"
+
+I pulled my legs together and commenced to stammer.
+
+"I--I saw Beauty out--outside, aunt, in the garden," I managed to mutter.
+
+"Which way was he going?"
+
+"Why, I think he was running towards the house, aunt."
+
+[Illustration: THIRTY MILES AN HOUR.]
+
+And then the remembrance of how he _was_ running--thirty miles an hour,
+with tail on end and ears flat to his head, with Jim and my long-legged
+self racing in rear--made me choke with laughter I was forced to
+swallow. But my aunt's eyes were on me, and her gold-rimmed barnacles
+blazed through me, so I suffocated in silence.
+
+"Don't stand making faces like an idiot. Go and dress, and be quick,"
+snapped my loving relative, as she marched away downstairs and I flew to
+the region above.
+
+My bedroom door was partly open, and I dashed in hastily, pulling off my
+things as I went.
+
+[Illustration: DRESSING FOR DINNER.]
+
+My evening clothes were laid out ready on the bed, and--what was that on
+my shirt?--a black mass of--something moving!--some animal! Why, heavens
+and earth, it was the ghost of--that beast Beauty! It was Beauty
+himself! I ran for the poker; Beauty rushed out of the door. Confound
+that rotten old sack!
+
+I was late for dinner, and found Beauty seated in my chair, sleek and
+dry, with a ravenously whetted appetite. My aunt was so pleased with her
+favourite's improved appearance that she became quite affable, even to
+me. I was informed that as I had not been looking well lately I might go
+for a few days' change to the seaside; the salubrious air of
+Muddiford-on-the-Ooze would just suit me. What a blessing! To have
+escaped from those ice-gleaming spectacles and from that resuscitated
+beast Beauty I would gladly have gone to Jericho, much more to
+Muddiford-on-the-Ooze. Then my aunt continued her course of
+instructions, with the nearest approach to a smile I had ever seen
+on her face.
+
+[Illustration: A SHOW AT MUDDIFORD-ON-THE-OOZE.]
+
+"You will enjoy yourself, I am sure, Samuel, and you will also be able
+to show what pains you can take to please me," she said, sipping her
+first glass of Burgundy with approving relish. "There is to be a show at
+Muddiford the day after to-morrow, at which I intend exhibiting, and you
+will be able to manage everything for me; so mind you are careful to do
+your best."
+
+"I shall be most delighted," I declared gushingly. "What show is it? And
+what can I have the pleasure of taking charge of for you, my dear aunt?"
+
+"It's the Grand All-England Cat Show, and you will take Beauty; and I
+shall be greatly disappointed if you do not bring me back the first
+prize. So be on your best behaviour, Samuel, or perhaps you may live to
+regret it."
+
+My jaw dropped, and I thought I should have slid under the table. Good
+heavens! It was that beast Beauty who was to go for a holiday, while I
+was to act as the infernal fiend's keeper! O my prophetic soul--my aunt!
+But there was no help for it; I was bound in bonds of gold.
+
+On the following day, Beauty and I were duly driven to the station, the
+former being luxuriously nested in a small hamper specially furnished
+for the occasion. About half-way on the road, just as we had mounted a
+long, steep hill, the cat managed to roll his residence from the stern
+of the dog-cart and trundle himself half-way home again. Luckily, he
+screeched blue murder at the tip-top of his voice, or we might not have
+missed the beast. As it was, his cyclical retrogression made us just too
+late for the train, and we had to wait two hours for the next. So I
+seated myself on the hamper--like Patience on the proverbial
+monument--and beheld the coachman depart homewards, with a sympathetic
+hat-touching salute, leaving me with a gloomy conviction of coming
+misfortune. The train, when it did arrive, was tolerably empty, and I
+secured a vacant first-class. For a time all went happily; then the cat
+commenced groaning.
+
+[Illustration: SEATED MYSELF ON THE HAMPER.]
+
+My aunt having solemnly ordered me to give the brute dinner, I now
+prepared to stop his mouth with cold chicken. While I was cautiously
+unfastening the hamper lid, Beauty remained quiet as a dormouse; and
+then he proceeded personally to assist the unfastening, with a
+vengeance. There was a bouncing volcanic eruption, a blood-curdling
+howl, a mixed-up whirling round the carriage, and then--smash!--bang
+through the window went Beauty!--leaving me doubled up on the seat,
+holding out half a chicken. It was a forty-feline-power hurricane, while
+it lasted; and drops of perspiration trickled down my nose on to the
+chicken, at which I sat stupidly staring. After a dazed pause I
+staggered to the broken window and looked out. There was Beauty, with a
+perpendicular tail like a young fir-tree, going like great guns in
+exactly the wrong direction. We had just come through a long tunnel, and
+the last I saw of my aunt's pet demon was as he dived headlong into its
+Hades-like mouth. And I had to take home first prize for him from the
+Grand All-England Cat Show!
+
+[Illustration: LEAVING THE RAILWAY CARRIAGE.]
+
+[Illustration: INTO ITS HADES-LIKE MOUTH.]
+
+[Illustration: INCIPIENT CATALEPSY.]
+
+When the 4.40 down express arrived at Muddiford-on-the-Ooze station, an
+auburn-haired youth limply emerged from a first-class carriage. In his
+arms he bore a basket, and his grey-green eyes gleamed with incipient
+catalepsy. Yes, such would undoubtedly have been my description had I
+posed as the momentary hero of a penny novelette. I forgot all about my
+luggage, imbecilely clinging to the late habitation of the lost beast
+Beauty, wandering I knew not why nor whither. Outside the station, round
+a quiet corner, my steps were arrested by the surprising sight
+of--Beauty!--the very identical devil himself! There stood the
+unhangable, undrownable, hurricane-creating beast, looking as serene as
+a newly-born black cherub, washing his fiendish face! I approached on
+tiptoe, breathlessly, with the basket behind my back and the half
+chicken extended as a peaceable card of introduction. He scented it
+instantly--my aunt always keeping Beauty's tit-bits until sufficiently
+gamey to suit his highly epicurean taste.
+
+[Illustration: WASHING HIS FIENDISH FACE!]
+
+With a finishing toe-touch to his whiskers, he amicably trotted up to me
+and--yes!--actually rubbed against my new trousers! What could have
+happened to him! Had his run through the tunnel turned him out virtuous?
+And how could he possibly have got here? Experience has shown that a
+leopard can change his spots, and a negro can grow spotted; but could a
+diabolical cat become even as a sucking dove and fly over twelve miles
+all in the space of twenty minutes? Impossible! So I put on a pair of
+folder-glasses and scrutinised this new arrival doubtingly. No; it was
+_not_ Beauty--not nearly ugly enough. It was a twin, but larger,
+blacker, sleeker, a million times more amiable, and very much fatter.
+Ah!--ha, ha!--hurrah!--happy thought! Why not? I would. And, thereupon,
+I instantly did it.
+
+Placing the basket gently on the ground, I opened the lid and put in the
+cold chicken, when lo! in jumped the amiable twin. Half an hour later
+that basket, that heaven-descended twin, and that successful chicken,
+were safely deposited in custody of the cat-show steward, with the
+errant Beauty's entry ticket affixed. If the steward had never seen the
+real original he would never discover the difference; and if he did
+happen to be acquainted with the genuine article he could but think that
+the beast was surprisingly improved, and might even award it first prize
+for having turned over such a notable new leaf. And for the same reason,
+my aunt ought to be highly delighted at her favourite's favourable
+transformation. My heart was lightened of its oppressive troubles, as my
+hands were free from their feline load. With a hearty appetite I ate an
+excellent dinner at the hotel, went to the theatre, and turned into bed
+thankful for all fortune's favours.
+
+[Illustration: I ATE AN EXCELLENT DINNER.]
+
+During the two following days, carefully steering clear of the cat-show,
+I enjoyed my freedom gaily, and had--what our three-thousand-miles-
+removed cousins would call--real good time. On the third morning a
+letter arrived from my aunt, with an enclosure which for the first
+moment I took to be a big cheque--a grateful offering, as I hoped, for
+services skilfully performed. However, it proved to be merely a second
+letter, in writing that was strange to me, and which with some curiosity
+I proceeded to peruse. As I unfolded the sheet, a vision suddenly
+crossed my mind of that savage beast Beauty; a chilly shiver shot
+through my marrow, and I sent the waiter for soda and brandy. It was an
+awful thought of what that unkillable cat might do! There he was,
+rampaging over a civilised country populated with children and lambs,
+and other unprotected innocents, half mad, perhaps, with hunger, where
+neither canaries nor pigeons, rabbits or cold chicken were grabbable.
+What desperate murders he might commit! And should I be held
+responsible? Here the timely arrival of the waiter helped to raise my
+spirits by a strong dose of B. and S., and I began the enclosed letter.
+
+[Illustration: WHAT DESPERATE MURDERS HE MIGHT COMMIT!]
+
+It was headed from the cat-show secretary's office. Why, of course, that
+charming twin had got first prize, no doubt. Let us see. "Dear Madam,"
+so ran the official note, "I beg to call your attention to what I
+imagine must, in some way, have been an oversight. Your cat, described
+on the entrance form as 'a black male, named Beauty,' which was, on the
+evening of its arrival, placed in the class pertaining to the
+descriptive form, was found this morning to have presented us with four
+remarkably fine kittens. This, of course, necessitated the family's
+removal from the male cat class. I have much pleasure in being able to
+inform you that both mother and kittens are in the best of health, and
+will be carefully attended upon. If you will kindly forward your
+instructions respecting their disposal, I shall be greatly obliged."
+That was the note, and wildly did the letters dance before my eyes.
+
+[Illustration: FOUR REMARKABLY FINE KITTENS.]
+
+[Illustration: GASPING FOR BREATH.]
+
+Having saved myself from fainting by finishing the B. and S., I sat for
+some minutes gasping for breath. Then I rubbed my eyes and reread that
+awful epistle. Yes--it was so--in solemn, sober black ink! Beauty's twin
+had got four fine kittens! Great Jehoshaphat! How could I ever get over
+those confounded kittens! It was too late to murder them. And my
+aunt--but stop! Let me read her letter; it might suggest something--some
+feline legerdemain method of conjuring four fine kittens into a first
+prize black male cat. So here goes. And this is how it went: "I always
+considered you to be a fool, Samuel, but nothing worse, until now.
+Unless the enclosed letter is immediately fully explained, and the
+matter set right, I shall plainly let you know what I do think of you
+now, and act accordingly. See the secretary, and telegraph me the result
+at once." Not much hope in that, worse luck; only a limited respite.
+
+[Illustration: WENT FISHING.]
+
+Away I went to the show, saw the secretary--from a safe distance--and
+immediately telegraphed: "Have seen the secretary. Hard at work setting
+matters right. Awfully sorry." Then I hired a boat, and went fishing for
+the rest of the day. In the evening I wired: "Beauty must have got
+changed. Cats now all going home. Found clue and am following up. All
+right shortly." But my aunt's patience had expired. Next morning came a
+curt note saying she would at once join me, and either rescue Beauty or
+settle that secretary. How could I ever face those searching spectacles!
+I fled. From a lonely spot on the wilds of Dartmoor I wired: "Am
+following clue sharp. Getting close up. Good news next time." Back came
+an answer: "Shall be with you to-morrow at noon." At noon next day, I
+boarded the mail packet Tongariro, bound from Plymouth to New Zealand.
+
+[Illustration: OFF TO NEW ZEALAND.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+PEOPLE I HAVE NEVER MET
+
+BY SCOTT RANKIN.
+
+MRS. HUMPHRY WARD.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+    "You can do nothing by despising the past and its products; you
+    also can do nothing by being too much afraid of them.... Be
+    content to be a new 'sect,' 'conventicle,' or what not, so long
+    as you feel that you are _something_, with a life and purpose
+    of its own, in this tangle of a world."--_Robert Elsmere_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THE IDLERS CLUB
+
+Is Love a Practical Reality or a Pleasing Fiction?
+
+
+[Sidenote: Mrs. Lynn Linton thinks there is no doubt as to Love's
+reality.]
+
+Of the desperate reality of the passion there is no doubt; of the
+intrinsic value of the thing beloved there may be many. The passion for
+which men and women have died stands like a tower four-square to all the
+winds of heaven; but how far that tower has been self-created by fancy,
+and how much is objectively real, who is the wise man that can
+determine? What is Love? We know nothing of its source. Sense and sex
+cannot wholly explain its mystery, else would there be no friendship
+left among us; and elective affinity is but a dainty carving on the
+chancel stalls. The loveliness which makes that special person the
+veritable Rose of the World to us exists but in our imagination. It is
+no rose that we adore--only at the best a bedeguar, of which the origin
+is a disagreeable little insect. We believe in the exquisite harmony of
+those atoms which have arranged themselves to form the thing we love.
+And we marry our human ideal, expecting the unbroken continuance of that
+harmony. But the discord comes; colours clash; the jarring note spoils
+the chord; the idol once accepted as of gold and precious stones, proves
+to be only common clay, thinly gilt. The diamonds are paste; the pearls
+are beads of glass filled with shining fishes' scales; and the love
+which we thought would be a practical reality for life, is nothing but a
+pleasing fiction, good for its day, and now dead and done with. The
+lover sees nothing as it is. Life is distorted between jealousy and
+admiration, and the plain teaching of common-sense is as little
+understood as the conditions of the fourth dimension or the poetic
+aspirations of the Simian tongue. The adored is not a real person; the
+happiness anticipated is not practical nor practicable. Both are on
+all-fours with the substantiality of a cloud and the serviceable roadway
+of a rainbow. Custom, familiarity, daily habits are the sole tests by
+which the reality of the thing beloved can be tried--the reality of the
+thing beloved and consequent validity of love. Before these tests are
+applied, the whole affair is as a fairy dream born of the perfume and
+the mystery of night. With the clear cold breath of morning the dream
+vanishes, but--what is left? The sigh of the vanishing god?--a tear on
+the cheek of Psyche?--the loathing of the man who finds Mélusine a
+serpent rather than a woman?--or the peaceful joy of the child who
+dreams of angels and wakes in its mother's arms?--of those who sleeping
+on the ocean wake to find themselves safe in port?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: "Rita" thinks Love is beautiful and wise.]
+
+At one period of life, love is simply an emotion--the outcome of
+attraction, or the effect of that vague mystery which surrounds sex. In
+this emotional stage the _feeling_ may be real enough, but the passion
+is an illusion. A girl is often more in love with Love than with an
+actual lover. The youth who beholds his ideal in the First Woman is in
+love with the woman herself who for the time (usually very brief)
+embodies that ideal. But to the girl and the youth comes an hour when
+they are humiliatingly conscious of study wasted on a prettily-bound
+work of fiction that for all use and purpose in life is quite valueless.
+The edifice of romance is constructed much on the same plan as a child's
+castle of cards, and deservedly shares the same fate. That is to say,
+the topmost card overbalances the whole structure. It is usually the
+hand of Reason that topples over Love's romantic tenement by crowning it
+with the card of Common Sense. When we find Love has become a practical
+reality, the discovery is often very unpleasant. We would rather not be
+unhappy if we had the choice. Unfortunately, we haven't, and find
+ourselves in that condition without exactly knowing how we drifted into
+it. Drifters often discover Love to be a very practical reality, because
+of unpleasant consequences. It is decidedly humiliating to find
+ourselves in the toils of a siren the very reverse of our high ideal of
+the personage who is to have the honour and glory of subjugating us.
+This is one of Love's amusing little ways of proving that ideals are
+really not important. The best and safest test of the reality of Love is
+to ask yourself how much you have suffered on account of it. I don't
+speak of such trifles as tears, heartaches, sleepless nights, fevers of
+jealousy and despair, sacrifices, or discomforts, but of _real_ genuine
+self-torment and mental torture which only this passion is capable of
+inflicting on its victims. The most sceptical will acknowledge that its
+powers in this line are only excelled by its apparent animosity. To
+discover the life that completes and contents our own is not given to
+many of us poor mortals. Here and there some fortunate individuals have
+made that discovery--but they are rare--and not given to boasting on the
+subject; yet though worldly wise folk scoff at love as a myth, I
+question whether they could name any other passion of the heart which
+has occupied so important a place in the world's history, which has
+given life to all that is great and divine in art, or inspired such
+deeds of heroism, self-sacrifice, and martyrdom. Before its patient
+strength men have stood mute and wondering, and proud heads have bent in
+reverence, and stern eyes grown dim. For Love is beautiful, despite
+faults, and wise, despite follies. It alone of all human emotions can
+lift our souls heavenwards, and make even life's thorny path a thing
+of beauty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: John Strange Winter's opinions.]
+
+Love may be classed under several heads. The first, the great, the
+unattainable, the one-sided, and the worn-out. They are all real! What
+can be more real than the perhaps not very practical passion which first
+makes young hearts ache? What agony it is to _her_ when _he_ dances
+three times running with that horrid, stuck-up London girl, with her
+fashionable jargon, her languorous movements, just a turn or two, and
+then stop for as many minutes! First love is not often last love. _He_
+thinks _her_ unreasonable to mind those dances, yet when a great love
+comes into her life, making her think of him as "just a boy," he suffers
+all, or nearly all, the pangs of a great passion. Unavailing pain! _She_
+has cast the die of her life, and past loves are shadows compared with
+the absorbing power that now grips her heart like a vice. Much may
+happen to the great love, but it is very real! A great love may merge
+into matrimony, and life may run on oiled wheels, and Darby and Joan may
+pass through the world, loving faithfully, and without digression, to
+the end. Or something may come between, and the great love may become
+the unattainable! It will not be the less real for that.
+
+[Sidenote: The Unattainable.]
+
+The unattainable has more in it of pathos than despair. Romance sweetens
+it, and the romance never dies. The tenderness of "what might have been"
+gives balm to many a suffering soul! The wife may be unhappy, neglected,
+heartsick, she may even loathe him whose name she bears, but she is
+often upholden by the thought that _he_ would have been wholly
+different! A husband may know that he has married the wrong woman, yet
+he bears what is, because he cannot have _her_ who would have made life
+all sunshine. Few pity the one-sided love, helpless, hopeless, and
+without justification as it is; yet it is very real to the lonely soul.
+The worn-out love is the very essence of sadness! It is heart-breaking
+to watch the efforts of a foolish heart to keep a love dying or already
+dead, to see love, which would once have made a paradise, poured out at
+the feet of one who is only bored and not even touched by it. Nothing is
+so dead as a dead love--yet, even _that_ is real!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Miss May Crommelin takes a professional view]
+
+Can any sensible novelist hesitate? Does a shoe-maker depreciate
+leather? Would you saw off the tree-branch you sit on? Now, on this
+subject, anybody's opinion (full-grown) is as good as another's. Let the
+footman bring down word that love is the drawing-room topic, and the
+cook will cry out, "What do they know more about it than _us_?" Is it
+not a human feeling, call it instinct or no? Surely old Sally Jones has
+simpler feelings than the Dowager Countess; as much experience in this.
+Love is just as real as a rainbow on a wet day; as--as influenza. The
+first may be a "pleysing payne": the latter must be a very displeasing
+one. But there is little fiction about either to the victims. Well,
+suppose love a mere brain-fantasm; an odd survival when sensible folk
+have swept away beliefs in witchcraft, fairies, and the virtue of fire
+and faggot for the wicked ones who don't say their prayers the same way
+we do. _Still, was it not worth while to have invented it?_ However the
+idea was evoluted, just consider the glamour it throws over thorns and
+thistles, as we dig through life's long day of toil. As Trollope's stout
+widow says, when choosing her second: "It's a whiff of the rocks and the
+valleys." (So she had her marriage settlements tightly drawn up, to
+enjoy her romance comfortably.) Consider this epitaph--a real one--
+
+    "Poorly lived, and poorly died;
+    Poorly buried, and _nobody cried_."
+
+Broach this subject of love to a circle after dinner, round a good fire.
+Everybody laughs! The young men and maidens look conscious. What they
+feel is as real to them as pleasure in music they hear; in the taste of
+wine. Yes, and far more--while it lasts. Some elders profess scorn,
+because their minds are so choked with years' dust of daily cares they
+have forgotten how they, too, once believed love real--while it lasted!
+Ay! there's the rub. You are told--truthfully--that love is strong as
+death: inconstant as every breeze. Some declare, for them--
+
+    "In the whole wide world there was but one."
+
+Other as honest souls confess their hearts have known, since first love,
+"many other lodgers." This seems clear, love is real to those who _give
+it_! Only they who care more to _get it_, call it moonshine and naughty
+names. Like figures on an Egyptian monument, each follows one who looks
+at another. Never one scorned, but has rejected a third.
+
+    "As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the satyr,
+    The satyr Lyda--and so the three went weeping."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Quiller Couch wishes Love were a pleasing fiction.]
+
+"Pleasing fiction," forsooth; would that it were! It is a very real
+game, and the rules thereof are practical. I know it, for verily I
+myself have suffered. Let it not be understood, however, that it is _as_
+a "practical, real lover" that I have suffered. Not at all. It is that
+this order of beings walks abroad, and I am not of it, and I meet it,
+and I am pained, and I feel sorry. Could Love be but a pleasing fiction,
+how comfortable to sit aside and contemplate it--a trifle to talk of, a
+dainty to dally with, a joy to the juvenescent, a blessing to the
+book-writer, yet never an inconvenience. But it is a practical reality,
+and it has great effects. Why, I have seen good, healthy people, quite
+nice-tempered people, brought to a shadow by it and churned into so many
+pounds of incompetent irritability; _so_ exacting about trifles, so
+fidgetty about catching the mail, and so careless of the health of the
+uninteresting majority. There was one man I knew down in a village, and
+he fell in love with a pretty girl--they mostly do that--but she would
+have nothing to say to him; and after every rejected proposal he went
+straight home and made a three-legged stool (he was a carpenter by
+trade, or perhaps it might have affected him differently). He was what
+one might call an importunate man, for he proposed nineteen times in
+all, and nineteen three-legged stools stood as silent witnesses of his
+importunity. He changed houses after the twelfth, for he found a sad joy
+in contemplating his handiwork as he sat at his lonely meals, and his
+first sitting-room was only twelve feet by eight. Finally, either
+because of his importunity, or because she disliked the thought that the
+wordless witnesses might fall into unsympathetic hands, the girl married
+the man, and scrubbed the stools nicely with soap and sand, and grew
+quite fond of them. And only once did she regret her surrender; and that
+was when it flashed across her one day that twenty would have been a
+prettier number: but she stifled that pain as years went on, and grew
+happy. Then there was Dante's love for Beatrice, which caused him to sit
+down and write such a lot. Most remarkable persons seem to have produced
+something rather excellent as the outcome of their love. I know a
+naturally lazy and slightly dingy boy who endured a nice clean collar
+every day, and it cut his neck, and his soul abhorred it, for he told me
+so; and he spent from seventy-five to ninety minutes over his toilet
+every morning, while he loved, and he knew he could dress in four
+minutes and a quarter, for he had done it often. Love was a great
+beautifier. In this case I must admit that the lover suffered more than
+we outsiders, except that he became irritable in his cleanliness. Love
+should not be scorned, even if it is real and sometimes uncomfortably
+practical. It is very beautiful, and lovers make a pretty sight. What I
+protest is, that all creatures should be lovers--or _none_. It is the
+half-and-half state of the world which is irksome.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Morley Roberts hopes Love will some day be a pleasing
+reality]
+
+Ah, my gentle cocksure friends, how well you all know Love, and how
+ready you are to say what it is, to cut it up, to carve it, to classify
+it, and generally to spread it out. We live in a world of lies, and
+conventions, the dead leavings of an ignorant past, bind us still. Some
+day, perhaps, when men and women are free, Love will be a pleasing
+reality. It can never be so in the majority of cases so long as we play
+at make-believe, and teach nothing that we have learned. The good man
+won't teach his sons; he leaves them to learn in the gutter. The good
+woman keeps her daughters ignorant. As it stands it is an evil to love
+anyone over-much. And when we love we love over-much, for Love has been
+repressed till it has got savage in the race. "La privation radicale
+d'une chose crée léxeés." All the trouble comes from this--that we men
+have partially created women. But Nature had something to do with her
+compounding. That is, perhaps, a pity from the social point of view. For
+Nature can't be nice and comfortable. She is only kind when we go her
+way. Let us remember that Love is the foundation of the world. The very
+protoplasmic cells from which we sprang could love. The time will come,
+perhaps, when, having chipped away the lies and faced the truth, we
+shall find reality a thousand times more pleasing than any fiction. Love
+is something real and wonderful, and in a natural world we shall have
+passed through the blood-splashed gates of Passion and be calm. Now Love
+is tortured, for we love ignorantly. We are like shipwrecked folk on
+some strange land--we know not the fruits of the trees of it. We learn
+the poisons by experiment, and we let others learn. This is Love the
+Fiction. But some day when we awake we shall know what we now dream, and
+Love will be always the most precious flower that grows in the garden of
+the soul. It has the subtle fragrance of the heaven that is our own if
+we walk bravely in the world, desiring truth. Under its influence we
+discover ourselves. We build ships for new voyages, and burst into
+unknown waters with our Viking shields of victory ablaze in the morning
+sun. The air is sharp and keen, not foetid with poisonous lies; the
+waters are blue and beautiful; there are shining shores about us, and
+marvels of a new nature on every hand. We who were in the night, and of
+it, become vivid with the sun. Our atheism banishes the worshipped gods
+of evil that are no more extant in our dogmatic creed of joy. For Truth
+and Beauty have guided us hand in hand, and all they ask of us is to
+throw away the Law of Lies and to acknowledge that the two are one.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Zangwill reviews the evidence.]
+
+The traces left by Love in life are so numerous and diverse that I am
+almost tempted to the hypothesis that it really exists. There seems to
+be no other way of accounting for the facts. When you start learning a
+new language you always find yourself confronted with the verb "to
+love"--invariably the normal type of the first conjugation. In every
+language on earth the student may be heard declaring, with more zeal
+than discretion, that he and you and they and every other person,
+singular or plural, have loved, and do love, and will love. "To love" is
+the model verb; expressing the archetype of activity. Once you can love
+grammatically there is a world of things you may do without stumbling.
+For, strange to say, "to love," which in real life is associated with so
+much that is bizarre and violent, is always "regular" in grammar, and
+this without barring accidence of any kind. For ancient and modern
+tongues tell the same tale--from Hebrew to street-Arabic, from Greek to
+the elephantine language that was "made in Germany." Not only is "to
+love" deficient in no language (as _home_ is deficient in French, and
+_Geist_ in English), but it is never even "defective." No mood or tense
+is ever wanting--a proof of how it has been conjugated in every mood and
+tense of life, in association with every variety of proper and improper
+noun, and every pronoun at all personal. Not merely have people loved
+unconditionally in every language, but there is none in which they would
+not have loved, or might not have loved, had circumstances permitted;
+none in which they have not been loved, or (for hope springs eternal in
+the human breast) have been about to be loved. Even woman has an Active
+Voice in the matter; indeed, "to love" is so perfect that, compared with
+it, "to marry" is quite irregular. For, while "to love" is sufficient
+for both sexes, directly you get to marriage you find in some languages
+that division has crept in, and that there is one word for the use of
+ladies and another for gentlemen only. Turning from the evidence
+enshrined in language to the records of history, the same truth meets us
+at any date we appoint. Everywhere "'Tis love that makes the world go
+round," though more especially in ball-rooms. It is awful to think what
+would have happened if Eve had not accepted Adam. What could have
+attracted her if it was not love? Surely not his money, nor his family.
+For these she couldn't have cared a fig-leaf. Unfortunately, the
+daughters of Eve have not always taken after their mother. The
+statistics of crime and insanity testify eloquently to the reality of
+love, arithmetic teaching the same lesson as history and grammar.
+Consider, too, the piles of love at Mudie's! A million story-tellers in
+all periods and at all places cannot have told all stories, though they
+have all, alas! told the same story. They must have had mole-hills for
+their mountains, if not straw for their bricks. There are those who,
+with Bacon, consider love a variety of insanity; but it is more often
+merely a form of misunderstanding. When the misunderstanding is mutual,
+it may even lead to marriage. As a rule Beauty begets man's love, Power
+woman's. At least, so women tell me. But then, I am not beautiful. It
+must be said for the man that every lover is a species of Platonist--he
+identifies the Beautiful with the Good and the True. The woman's
+admiration has less of the ethical quality; she is dazzled, and too
+often feels, "If he be but true to me, what care I how false he be." The
+Romantic Love of the poets and novelists was of late birth; the savage
+and many civilisations knew it not, and philosophers explain that it
+could not be developed till Roman Law had developed the conception of
+Marriage as a Contract. Even to this day it is as rare as large paper
+editions of the books about it. Roughly speaking, I should say it would
+spring up here and there among all classes of the population, except
+poets and novelists. Romantic Love is the rose Evolution has grown on
+earthly soil. _Floreat!_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Burgin thinks it all depends on the people who love.]
+
+One morning the average man gets up, lights his pipe, roams round his
+rooms in all the ease of unshaven countenance and dressing-gown-clad
+form. Then he goes out, and meets _her_. There may be a hundred women in
+the room, or park, or tennis ground, wherever the tragedy (Love is a
+tragedy) commences. When the lights are low he comes back, and is low
+also. Wonders how men can be such brutes as to want dinner; thinks his
+life has been misspent; that he is unworthy to touch her hand; that he
+has wallowed in the fleshpots, and here is a way out of them. And if the
+man's nature be noble and sweet and true; if he has hitherto drifted
+adown the stream of circumstance because his fellows have also drifted;
+then, with the deepening tides of his passion, the old spirit of
+knight-errantry descends upon him with its mystic mantle of white
+samite. And slowly out of this deepening torrent of bewildered impulse
+and devotion is born a new man--a man with a soul--a man who can dare
+all things, do all things, endure all things, for the sake of the woman
+he loves. At the baptism of her touch he becomes whole, and shapes his
+life to noble ends. Even if he can't marry her, he is the better for his
+passion. Such a love endures until the leaves of the Judgment Book
+unroll; for it laughs to scorn the pitiful fools who boast of
+infidelity, the "male hogs in armour," as Kingsley calls them, who look
+upon women as toys, the sport of an idle moment, rather than the
+spiritual force which leavens the world, and makes it an endurable and
+joyous dwelling-place.
+
+[Sidenote: And on the woman loved.]
+
+Of course, I was speaking of good women. I once heard a story about a
+bad woman--a woman of the world, who was very much amused at being taken
+seriously by a boy who loved her. "Tell me all about it," she would say
+to him. "Explain what you feel, why you love me, why you believe in me.
+Don't you see I'm courted and admired--a social force--that men flock
+round me everywhere I go?" "Oh, yes," said the boy, "I see all that. But
+you're an angel of goodness, and can't help men liking you. If I lost
+faith in you, I'd kill myself." "Ah," she rejoined, "that's what you all
+say. You would doubt me, and live on." Then, one afternoon, he had good
+cause to doubt, inasmuch as her engagement to another man was announced.
+That evening she received a note from him: "Good-bye. If I lived on, I
+might doubt; it's better to die and--believe!" They told her of the--the
+accident that night, and she wrote a touching little paragraph about it
+for the Society papers before dining out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Gribble generaliseth confidently.]
+
+In a sense, of course, Love is necessarily a fiction, whether pleasing
+or otherwise; for illusion is of the essence of it. The lover, in fact,
+is like the artist who sees things through a temperament, and, by
+eliminating the irrelevant, builds up the ideal on the foundation of the
+real. Tityrus sees more in Amaryllis than his brother shepherds see,
+just as Mr. Whistler sees more in a November fog than is visible to the
+eye of the casual wayfarer who gets lost in it, and mingles profanity
+with his coughs, yet, granting this, the reality and completeness of the
+illusion does not admit of doubt. On no alternative hypothesis can the
+great majority of marriages be explained. If commonplace people saw each
+other as others see them, surely they would remain single all their
+lives. Yet most people are commonplace, and most people marry. The
+reality--the controlling over-mastering reality--of Love has to be
+assumed to make their behaviour intelligible.
+
+[Sidenote: Having hasted from a wedding for the purpose.]
+
+This point struck me forcibly the last time I was present at a wedding.
+It was a Jewish wedding, celebrated at the little synagogue behind the
+Haymarket. I had no acquaintance with anyone concerned in the ceremony,
+but had dropped in quite casually, having heard that Jewish weddings
+were picturesque. The one thing that impressed me more than anything
+else was the decided undesirability of both the bridegroom and the
+bride. That the bride was not comely goes for little. But her forehead
+indicated a limited range and low ideals; the corners of her mouth spoke
+of an irritable temper; her bearing was vulgar; her voice had a twang
+that made one long to take her by the shoulders and shake her violently.
+She was also escorted by gaudy female relatives, by looking at whom one
+could anticipate the awful possibilities of her maturity. As for the
+bridegroom, he was a Hebrew of the florid type. His waistcoat was
+protuberant; he had a red face with red whiskers sprawling all over it;
+he wore flash jewellery; his hair shone with pomatum; there was that in
+his bearing which indicated that he followed some sordid calling, such
+as pawnbroking, or the backing of horses on commission. Yet one could
+see that these two unattractive persons were really attracted by each
+other. A great and beautiful miracle had been performed; and the power
+which had performed it was that Love in which some profess to
+disbelieve.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Frank Mathew displays his Ignorance.]
+
+Ignorance--says some wiseacre--is the mother of eloquence, and I take it
+that the less one knows of Love the easier it is to write of it. I side
+with those who hold that the Love described by poets and other wordy
+people is mainly fanciful, a flattering picture, that the best school
+for such writing is an unhappy affection, and that no man can want
+better luck than to have his heart broken, and so be made proof against
+lovesickness. An unrequited love runs no risk of being dulled by the
+prose of life. A man so fortunate as to be jilted or rejected finds his
+Beloved remaining beautiful and young to him when her husband sees her
+an unwieldy and wearisome old woman. And when at times he grows
+sentimental--a bachelor's privilege--he can feel again the old hopes
+that he never found false, and see the old perfections that were never
+disproved. He has a life-companion who comes only when she is wanted,
+and then with a "smile on her face and a rose in her hair," whose voice
+is always gentle, to whom wrinkles are not necessary and bills are
+not known.
+
+[Sidenote: And praises ugliness.]
+
+I am one of those who prefer the luckless adorers in novels to the
+conquering heroes; and hold that the quality an ideal lover needs most
+is ugliness, so that he may honour beauty the more. Once I knew a boy
+who was uglier than sin, and who wrote a story--in a sprawling hand and
+on ruled paper--a wonderful story, telling how an unlovely but admirable
+Knight, worshipping a Princess, rode out to win her by great deeds, and
+how when he came back triumphant, the sight of her brought his
+unworthiness home to him so that he dared not claim her. And I knew
+another boy who was good-looking, and wrote a story (during study-time,
+of course, and by stealth) about a handsome hero who went to Court in
+fine clothes, and was worshipped by all the girls. I think now that he
+was the manlier, but that the first would have made the more devout
+lover. But the drawback of luckless adorers is that their constancy has
+not been tried by the ordeal of success. Many a fellow who lived loyal
+and heart-broken would have made an unfaithful husband.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: 'Q.' is surprised at his sister.]
+
+Love, no doubt, is a subject of popular interest, but a man is always
+staggered to find his sister holding an opinion upon it. If I remember
+rightly, in the days when Lilian Quiller Couch (then aged seven) did me
+the honour of playing Juliet to my Romeo, the interest was mainly
+acrobatic, Romeo descending the gardener's ladder head-foremost, while
+Juliet tilted her body as far over the nursery window-sill as she could
+manage without breaking her neck. We "cut" the love speeches. Two years
+later, indeed, my sister schemed to marry me to our common governess.
+There was no love on my side; so she turned over the Prayer-book, hoping
+to find "A man may not marry his governess" in the table of Forbidden
+Degrees. Such a prohibition (she well knew) would be a trumpet-call to
+my native spirit of disobedience. But I am convinced that even then the
+nature of true affection did not enter into her calculations. She merely
+counted on my marital influence to end or mend the French irregular
+verbs. I am delighted that, in these later days, she sees Love to be a
+"practical reality." For my part, I want a definition. Popular custom
+bestows the name of Love on a green sickness which is in fact a part of
+Nature's wise economy. I will expound. Almost all young men, say between
+the ages of nineteen and twenty-five, incline to consume much meat and
+do next to no work. Were there no corrective, it is clear that in a few
+years the face of the earth would be eaten bare as by locusts. But at
+this season Nature by the simplest stroke--the flush of a commonplace
+cheek, the warm touch of a commonplace hand--in a twinkling redresses
+the balance. Forthwith the ideal devourer of crops and herbs not only
+loses his appetite, but arising, smacks the earth with a hoe till the
+clods fly and the fields laugh with harvest. Thereon he mops his
+steaming brow, bedecks him with a bunch of white ribbons, and jogs
+jovially to church arm in arm with the pretty cause of all this
+beneficent disturbance. And the spectacle is mighty taking and
+commendable; but you'll excuse me for holding that it is not Love. It
+bears about the same relation to Love that Bumble-puppy bears to good
+whist. Among the eccentricities that make up the Average Man I find none
+more diverting than his complacent belief that he is, or has been, or
+will certainly some day be, in love. As a matter of fact, the capacity
+to love belongs to one man or woman in ten thousand. Listen to
+Matthew Arnold:
+
+    "But in the world I learnt, what there
+      Thou wilt too surely one day prove,
+    That will, that energy, though rare,
+      Are yet far, far less rare than love."
+
+I go further and believe it rarer even than Genius. Indeed, the capacity
+to love, is a specialised form of genius. You understand that I am not
+commending it. Its possessors are often disreputable and almost always
+unhappy. Their recompense is that they, and they only, have seen the
+splendours of the passion, and vibrated to the shaking inner music of
+the sheep-boy's pipe.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12223 ***
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Idler Magazine, Vol. 3. Feb 1893</title>
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+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12223 ***</div>
+    
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/001-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/001-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a></p>
+
+        <h1>THE IDLER MAGAZINE.</h1>
+
+        <h2>AN ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY.</h2>
+
+        <h4>EDITED BY JEROME K. JEROME &amp; ROBERT BARR.</h4>
+
+        <h2>VOL. III.</h2>
+
+        <h3>FEBRUARY TO JULY, 1893.</h3>
+
+        <h2>XIII. FEBRUARY 1893.</h2>
+
+        <h4>LONDON: CHATTO &amp; WINDUS, 214, PICCADILLY. 1893.</h4>
+        <hr class="full" />
+
+        <h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+        <ul>
+            <li><a href="#i13s1">Cheating The Gallows.</a> By I.
+            Zangwill.</li>
+
+            <li>
+                <a href="#i13s2">My First Novel.</a> By Miss M. E.
+                Braddon.
+
+                <ul>
+                    <li>The Trail Of The Serpent.</li>
+                </ul>
+            </li>
+
+            <li><a href="#i13s3">Novel Notes.</a> By Jerome K.
+            Jerome.</li>
+
+            <li><a href="#i13s4">The Skater.</a> By William Canton.</li>
+
+            <li><a href="#i13s5">My Servant Andreas.</a> By Archibald
+            Forbes.</li>
+
+            <li>
+                <a href="#i13s6">Told By The Colonel.</a> By W. L. Alden.
+
+                <ul>
+                    <li>X. A Matrimonial Romance.</li>
+                </ul>
+            </li>
+
+            <li>
+                <a href="#i13s7">"Lions In Their Dens."</a> By Raymond
+                Blathwayt.
+
+                <ul>
+                    <li>II.&mdash;George Grossmith And The Humour Of
+                    Him.</li>
+                </ul>
+            </li>
+
+            <li><a href="#i13s8">A Blind Beggarman.</a> By Frank
+            Mathew.</li>
+
+            <li><a href="#i13s9">Church And Stage. A Review of Henry
+            Irving.</a> By The Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker.</li>
+
+            <li><a href="#i13s10">That Beast Beauty.</a> By Kirby
+            Hare.</li>
+
+            <li>
+                <a href="#i13s11">People I Have Never Met.</a> By Scott
+                Rankin.
+
+                <ul>
+                    <li>Mrs. Humphry Ward.</li>
+                </ul>
+            </li>
+
+            <li>
+                <a href="#i13s12">The Idlers Club</a>
+
+                <ul>
+                    <li>Is Love a Practical Reality or a Pleasing
+                    Fiction?</li>
+                </ul>
+            </li>
+        </ul>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s1" name="i13s1"></a>CHEATING THE GALLOWS.</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY I. ZANGWILL.</h3>
+
+        <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEO. HUTCHINSON.</h4>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/005-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/005-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        THE CORPSE WASHED UP BY THE RIVER.</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <h3>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+        <h3>CURIOUS COUPLE.</h3>
+
+        <p>They say that a union of opposites makes the happiest marriage,
+        and perhaps it is on the same principle that men who chum are always
+        so oddly assorted. You shall find a man of letters sharing diggings
+        with an auctioneer, and a medical student pigging with a
+        stockbroker's clerk. Perhaps each thus escapes the temptation to talk
+        "shop" in his hours of leisure, while he supplements his own
+        experiences of life by his companion's.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width: 40%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/006-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/006-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            TOM PETERS.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:30%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/006-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/006-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            EVERARD G. ROXDAL.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>There could not be an odder couple than Tom Peters and Everard G.
+        Roxdal&mdash;the contrast began with their names, and ran through the
+        entire chapter. They had a bedroom and a sitting-room in common, but
+        it would not be easy to find what else. To his landlady, worthy Mrs.
+        Seacon, Tom Peters's profession was a little vague, but everybody
+        knew that Roxdal was the manager of the City and Suburban Bank, and
+        it puzzled her to think why a bank manager should live with such a
+        seedy-looking person, who smoked clay pipes and sipped whiskey and
+        water all the evening when he was at home. For Roxdal was as spruce
+        and erect as his fellow-lodger was round-shouldered and shabby; he
+        never smoked, and he confined himself to a small glass of claret at
+        dinner.</p>
+
+        <p>It is possible to live with a man and see very little of him.
+        Where each of the partners lives his own life in his own way, with
+        his own circle of friends and external amusements, days may go by
+        without the men having five minutes together. Perhaps this explains
+        why these partnerships jog along so much more peaceably than
+        marriages, where the chain is drawn so much tighter, and galls the
+        partners rather than links them. Diverse, however, as were the hours
+        and habits of the chums, they often breakfasted together, and they
+        agreed in one thing&mdash;they never stayed out at night. For the
+        rest Peters sought his diversions in the company of journalists, and
+        frequented debating rooms, where he propounded the most iconoclastic
+        views; while Roxdal had highly respectable houses open to him in the
+        suburbs, and was, in fact, engaged to be married to Clara Newell, the
+        charming daughter of a retired corn merchant, a widower with no other
+        child.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:50%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/007-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/007-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            ASKED TWENTY-FIVE PER CENT. MORE.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:50%; clear:right;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/008-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/008-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            FOR HIS SHAVING WATER.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>Clara naturally took up a good deal of Roxdal's time, and he often
+        dressed to go to the play with her, while Peters stayed at home in a
+        faded dressing-gown and loose slippers. Mrs. Seacon liked to see
+        gentlemen about the house in evening dress, and made comparisons not
+        favourable to Peters. And this in spite of the fact that he gave her
+        infinitely less trouble than the younger man. It was Peters who first
+        took the apartments, and it was characteristic of his easy-going
+        temperament that he was so openly and na&iuml;vely delighted with the
+        view of the Thames obtainable from the bedroom window, that Mrs.
+        Seacon was emboldened to ask twenty-five per cent. more than she had
+        intended. She soon returned to her normal terms, however, when his
+        friend Roxdal called the next day to inspect the rooms, and
+        overwhelmed her with a demonstration of their numerous shortcomings.
+        He pointed out that their being on the ground floor was not an
+        advantage, but a disadvantage, since they were nearer the noises of
+        the street&mdash;in fact, the house being a corner one, the noises of
+        two streets. Roxdal continued to exhibit the same finicking
+        temperament in the petty details of the <i>m&eacute;nage</i>. His
+        shirt fronts were never sufficiently starched, nor his boots
+        sufficiently polished. Tom Peters, having no regard for rigid linen,
+        was always good-tempered and satisfied, and never acquired the
+        respect of his landlady. He wore blue check shirts and loose ties
+        even on Sundays. It is true he did not go to church, but slept on
+        till Roxdal returned from morning service, and even then it was
+        difficult to get him out of bed, or to make him hurry up his toilette
+        operations. Often the mid-day meal would be smoking on the table
+        while Peters would smoke in the bed, and Roxdal, with his head thrust
+        through the folding doors that separated the bedroom from the
+        sitting-room, would be adjuring the sluggard to arise and shake off
+        his slumbers, and threatening to sit down without him, lest the
+        dinner be spoilt. In revenge, Tom was usually up first on week-days,
+        sometimes at such unearthly hours that Polly had not yet removed the
+        boots from outside the bedroom door, and would bawl down to the
+        kitchen for his shaving water. For Tom, lazy and indolent as he was,
+        shaved with the unfailing regularity of a man to whom shaving has
+        become an instinct. If he had not kept fairly regular hours, Mrs.
+        Seacon would have set him down as an actor, so clean shaven was he.
+        Roxdal did not shave. He wore a full beard, and, being a fine figure
+        of a man to boot, no uneasy investor could look upon him without
+        being reassured as to the stability of the bank he managed so
+        successfully. And thus the two men lived in an economical
+        comradeship, all the firmer, perhaps, for their mutual
+        incongruities.</p>
+        <hr style="clear:both;" />
+
+        <h3>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+        <h3>A WOMAN'S INSTINCT.</h3>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:80%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/009-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/009-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "TOM SHAMBLED FROM THE SITTING-ROOM."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>It was on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of October, ten days
+        after Roxdal had settled in his new rooms, that Clara Newell paid her
+        first visit to him there. She enjoyed a good deal of liberty, and did
+        not mind accepting his invitation to tea. The corn merchant, himself
+        indifferently educated, had an exaggerated sense of the value of
+        culture, and so Clara, who had artistic tastes without much actual
+        talent, had gone in for painting, and might be seen, in pretty
+        toilettes, copying pictures in the Museum. At one time it looked as
+        if she might be reduced to working seriously at her art, for Satan,
+        who finds mischief still for idle hands to do, had persuaded her
+        father to embark the fruits of years of toil in bubble companies.
+        However, things turned out not so bad as they might have been, a
+        little was saved from the wreck, and the appearance of a suitor, in
+        the person of Everard G. Roxdal, ensured her a future of competence,
+        if not of the luxury she had been entitled to expect. She had a good
+        deal of affection for Everard, who was unmistakably a clever man, as
+        well as a good-looking one. The prospect seemed fair and cloudless.
+        Nothing presaged the terrible storm that was about to break over
+        these two lives. Nothing had ever for a moment come to vex their
+        mutual contentment, till this Sunday afternoon. The October sky, blue
+        and sunny, with an Indian summer sultriness, seemed an exact image of
+        her life, with its aftermath of a happiness that had once seemed
+        blighted.</p>
+
+        <p>Everard had always been so attentive, so solicitous, that she was
+        as much surprised as chagrined to find that he had apparently
+        forgotten the appointment. Hearing her astonished interrogation of
+        Polly in the passage, Tom shambled from the sitting-room in his loose
+        slippers and his blue check shirt, with his eternal clay pipe in his
+        mouth, and informed her that Roxdal had gone out suddenly earlier in
+        the afternoon.</p>
+
+        <p>"G-g-one out," stammered poor Clara; all confused. "But he asked
+        me to come to tea."</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh, you're Miss Newell, I suppose," said Tom.</p>
+
+        <p>"Yes, I am Miss Newell."</p>
+
+        <p>"He has told me a great deal about you, but I wasn't able honestly
+        to congratulate him on his choice till now."</p>
+
+        <p>Clara blushed uneasily under the compliment, and under the ardour
+        of his admiring gaze. Instinctively she distrusted the man. The very
+        first tones of his deep bass voice gave her a peculiar shudder. And
+        then his impoliteness in smoking that vile clay was so
+        gratuitous.</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh, then you must be Mr. Peters," she said in return. "He has
+        often spoken to me of you."</p>
+
+        <p>"Ah!" said Tom, laughingly, "I suppose he's told you all my vices.
+        That accounts for your not being surprised at my Sunday attire."</p>
+
+        <p>She smiled a little, showing a row of pearly teeth. "Everard
+        ascribes to you all the virtues," she said.</p>
+
+        <p>"Now that's what I call a friend!" he cried, ecstatically. "But
+        won't you come in? He must be back in a moment. He surely would not
+        break an appointment with <i>you</i>." The admiration latent in the
+        accentuation of the last pronoun was almost offensive.</p>
+
+        <p>She shook her head. She had a just grievance against Everard, and
+        would punish him by going away indignantly.</p>
+
+        <p>"Do let <i>me</i> give you a cup of tea," Tom pleaded. "You must
+        be awfully thirsty this sultry weather. There! I will make a bargain
+        with you! If you will come in now, I promise to clear out the moment
+        Everard returns, and not spoil your
+        <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i>." But Clara was obstinate; she
+        did not at all relish this man's society, and besides, she was not
+        going to throw away her grievance against Everard. "I know Everard
+        will slang me dreadfully when he comes in if I let you go," Tom
+        urged. "Tell me at least where he can find you."</p>
+
+        <p>"I am going to take the 'bus at Charing Cross, and I'm going
+        straight home," Clara announced determinedly. She put up her parasol
+        in a pet, and went up the street into the Strand. A cold shadow
+        seemed to have fallen over all things. But just as she was getting
+        into the 'bus, a hansom dashed down Trafalgar Square, and a
+        well-known voice hailed her. The hansom stopped, and Everard got out
+        and held out his hand.</p>
+
+        <p>"I'm so glad you're a bit late," he said. "I was called out
+        unexpectedly, and have been trying to rush back in time. You wouldn't
+        have found me if you had been punctual. But I thought," he added,
+        laughing, "I could rely on you as a woman."</p>
+
+        <p>"I <i>was</i> punctual," Clara said angrily. "I was not getting
+        out of this 'bus, as you seem to imagine, but into it, and was going
+        home."</p>
+
+        <p>"My darling!" he cried remorsefully. "A thousand apologies." The
+        regret on his handsome face soothed her. He took the rose he was
+        wearing in the button-hole of his fashionably-cut coat and gave it to
+        her.</p>
+
+        <p>"Why were you so cruel?" he murmured, as she nestled against him
+        in the hansom. "Think of my despair if I had come home to hear you
+        had come and gone. Why didn't you wait a moment?"</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/011-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/011-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "SHE NESTLED AGAINST HIM."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>A shudder traversed her frame. "Not with that man, Peters!" she
+        murmured.</p>
+
+        <p>"Not with that man, Peters!" he echoed sharply. "What is the
+        matter with Peters?"</p>
+
+        <p>"I don't know," she said. "I don't like him."</p>
+
+        <p>"Clara," he said, half sternly, half cajolingly, "I thought you
+        were above these feminine weaknesses; you are punctual, strive also
+        to be reasonable. Tom is my best friend. From boyhood we have been
+        always together. There is nothing Tom would not do for me, or I for
+        Tom. You must like him, Clara; you must, if only for my sake."</p>
+
+        <p>"I'll try," Clara promised, and then he kissed her in gratitude
+        and broad daylight.</p>
+
+        <p>"You'll be very nice to him at tea, won't you?" he said anxiously.
+        "I shouldn't like you two to be bad friends."</p>
+
+        <p>"I don't want to be bad friends," Clara protested; "only the
+        moment I saw him a strange repulsion and mistrust came over me."</p>
+
+        <p>"You are quite wrong about him&mdash;quite wrong," he assured her
+        earnestly. "When you know him better, you'll find him the best of
+        fellows. Oh, I know," he said suddenly, "I suppose he was very
+        untidy, and you women go so much by appearances!"</p>
+
+        <p>"Not at all," Clara retorted. "'Tis you men who go by
+        appearances."</p>
+
+        <p>"Yes, you do. That's why you care for me," he said, smiling.</p>
+
+        <p>She assured him it wasn't, and she didn't care for him so much as
+        he plumed himself, but he smiled on. His smile died away, however,
+        when he entered his rooms and found Tom nowhere.</p>
+
+        <p>"I daresay you've made him run about hunting for me," he
+        grumbled.</p>
+
+        <p>"Perhaps he knew I'd come back, and went away to leave us
+        together," she answered. "He said he would when you came."</p>
+
+        <p>"And yet you say you don't like him!"</p>
+
+        <p>She smiled reassuringly. Inwardly, however, she felt pleased at
+        the man's absence.</p>
+        <hr style="clear:both;" />
+
+        <h3>CHAPTER III.</h3>
+
+        <h3>POLLY RECEIVES A PROPOSAL.</h3>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:50%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/012-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/012-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "CARRYING ON WITH POLLY."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>If Clara Newell could have seen Tom Peters carrying on with Polly
+        in the passage, she might have felt justified in her prejudice
+        against him. It must be confessed, though, that Everard also carried
+        on with Polly. Alas! it is to be feared that men are much of a
+        muchness where women are concerned; shabby men and smart men, bank
+        managers and journalists, bachelors and semi-detached bachelors.
+        Perhaps it was a mistake after all to say the chums had nothing
+        patently in common. Everard, I am afraid, kissed Polly rather more
+        often than Clara, and although it was because he respected her less,
+        the reason would perhaps not have been sufficiently consoling to his
+        affianced wife. For Polly was pretty, especially on alternate Sunday
+        afternoons, and when at ten p.m. she returned from her outings, she
+        was generally met in the passage by one or other of the men. Polly
+        liked to receive the homage of real gentlemen, and set her white cap
+        at all indifferently. Thus, just before Clara knocked on that
+        memorable Sunday afternoon, Polly, being confined to the house by the
+        unwritten code regulating the lives of servants, was amusing herself
+        by flirting with Peters.</p>
+
+        <p>"You <i>are</i> fond of me a little bit," the graceless Tom
+        whispered, "aren't you?"</p>
+
+        <p>"You know I am, sir," Polly replied.</p>
+
+        <p>"You don't care for anyone else in the house?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh no, sir, and never let anyone kiss me but you. I wonder how it
+        is, sir?" Polly replied ingenuously.</p>
+
+        <p>"Give me another," Tom answered.</p>
+
+        <p>She gave him another, and tripped to the door to answer Clara's
+        knock.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:50%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/013-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/013-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            POLLY AND ROXDAL.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>And that very evening, when Clara was gone and Tom still out,
+        Polly turned without the faintest atom of scrupulosity, or even
+        jealousy, to the more fascinating Roxdal, and accepted his amorous
+        advances. If it would seem at first sight that Everard had less
+        excuse for such frivolity than his friend, perhaps the seriousness he
+        showed in this interview may throw a different light upon the complex
+        character of the man.</p>
+
+        <p>"You're quite sure you don't care for anyone but me?" he asked
+        earnestly.</p>
+
+        <p>"Of course not, sir!" Polly replied indignantly. "How could
+        I?"</p>
+
+        <p>"But you care for that soldier I saw you out with last
+        Sunday?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh no, sir, he's only my young man," she said apologetically.</p>
+
+        <p>"Would you give him up?" he hissed suddenly.</p>
+
+        <p>Polly's pretty face took a look of terror. "I couldn't, sir! He'd
+        kill me. He's such a jealous brute, you've no idea."</p>
+
+        <p>"Yes, but suppose I took you away from here?" he whispered
+        eagerly. "Somewhere where he couldn't find you&mdash;South America,
+        Africa, somewhere thousands of miles across the seas."</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh, sir, you frighten me!" whispered Polly, cowering before his
+        ardent eyes, which shone in the dimly-lit passage.</p>
+
+        <p>"Would you come with me?" he hissed. She did not answer; she shook
+        herself free and ran into the kitchen, trembling with a vague
+        fear.</p>
+        <hr style="clear:both;" />
+
+        <h3>CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+
+        <h3>THE CRASH.</h3>
+
+        <p>One morning, earlier than his earliest hour of demanding his
+        shaving water, Tom rang the bell violently and asked the alarmed
+        Polly what had become of Mr. Roxdal.</p>
+
+        <p>"How should I know, sir?" she gasped. "Ain't he been in, sir?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Apparently not," Tom answered anxiously. "He never remains out.
+        We have been here three weeks now, and I can't recall a single night
+        he hasn't been home before twelve. I can't make it out." All
+        enquiries proved futile. Mrs. Seacon reminded him of the thick fog
+        that had come on suddenly the night before.</p>
+
+        <p>"What fog?" asked Tom.</p>
+
+        <p>"Lord! didn't you notice it, sir?"</p>
+
+        <p>"No, I came in early, smoked, read, and went to bed about eleven.
+        I never thought of looking out of the window."</p>
+
+        <p>"It began about ten," said Mrs. Seacon, "and got thicker and
+        thicker. I couldn't see the lights of the river from my bedroom. The
+        poor gentleman has been and gone and walked into the water." She
+        began to whimper.</p>
+
+        <p>"Nonsense, nonsense," said Tom, though his expression belied his
+        words. "At the worst I should think he couldn't find his way home,
+        and couldn't get a cab, so put up for the night at some hotel. I
+        daresay it will be all right." He began to whistle as if in restored
+        cheerfulness. At eight o'clock there came a letter for Roxdal, marked
+        "immediate," but as he did not turn up for breakfast, Tom went round
+        personally to the City and Suburban Bank. He waited half-an-hour
+        there, but the manager did not make his appearance. Then he left the
+        letter with the cashier and went away with anxious countenance.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:50%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/015-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/015-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "SCOTLAND YARD OPENED THE LETTER."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>That afternoon it was all over London that the manager of the City
+        and Suburban had disappeared, and that many thousand pounds of gold
+        and notes had disappeared with him.</p>
+
+        <p>Scotland Yard opened the letter marked "immediate," and noted that
+        there had been a delay in its delivery, for the address had been
+        obscure, and an official alteration had been made. It was written in
+        a feminine hand and said: "On second thoughts I cannot accompany you.
+        Do not try to see me again. Forget me. I shall never forget you."</p>
+
+        <p>There was no signature.</p>
+
+        <p>Clara Newell, distracted, disclaimed all knowledge of this letter.
+        Polly deposed that the fugitive had proposed flight to her, and the
+        routes to Africa and South America were especially watched. Some
+        months passed without result. Tom Peters went about overwhelmed with
+        grief and astonishment. The police took possession of all the missing
+        man's effects. Gradually the hue and cry dwindled, died.</p>
+        <hr style="clear:both;" />
+
+        <h3>CHAPTER V.</h3>
+
+        <h3>FAITH AND UNFAITH.</h3>
+
+        <p>"At last we meet!" cried Tom Peters, while his face lit up in joy.
+        "How <i>are</i> you, dear Miss Newell?" Clara greeted him coldly. Her
+        face had an abiding pallor now. Her lover's flight and shame had
+        prostrated her for weeks. Her soul was the arena of contending
+        instincts. Alone of all the world she still believed in Everard's
+        innocence, felt that there was something more than met the eye,
+        divined some devilish mystery behind it all. And yet that damning
+        letter from the anonymous lady shook her sadly. Then, too, there was
+        the deposition of Polly. When she heard Peters's voice accosting her
+        all her old repugnance resurged. It flashed upon her that this
+        man&mdash;Roxdal's boon companion&mdash;must know far more than he
+        had told to the police. She remembered how Everard had spoken of him,
+        with what affection and confidence! Was it likely he was utterly
+        ignorant of Everard's movements? Mastering her repugnance, she held
+        out her hand. It might be well to keep in touch with him; he was
+        possibly the clue to the mystery. She noticed he was dressed a shade
+        more trimly, and was smoking a meerschaum. He walked along at her
+        side, making no offer to put his pipe out.</p>
+
+        <p>"You have not heard from Everard?" he asked. She flushed. "Do you
+        think I'm an accessory after the fact?" she cried.</p>
+
+        <p>"No, no," he said soothingly. "Pardon me, I was thinking he might
+        have written&mdash;giving no exact address, of course. Men do
+        sometimes dare to write thus to women. But, of course, he knows you
+        too well&mdash;you would have put the police on his track."</p>
+
+        <p>"Certainly," she exclaimed, indignantly. "Even if he is innocent
+        he must face the charge."</p>
+
+        <p>"Do you still entertain the possibility of his innocence?"</p>
+
+        <p>"I do," she said boldly, and looked him full in the face. His
+        eyelids drooped with a quiver. "Don't you?"</p>
+
+        <p>"I have hoped against hope," he replied, in a voice faltering with
+        emotion. "Poor old Everard! But I am afraid there is no room for
+        doubt. Oh, this wicked curse of money&mdash;tempting the noblest and
+        the best of us."</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/016-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/016-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "SHE DID NOT REPULSE HIM."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>The weeks rolled on. Gradually she found herself seeing more and
+        more of Tom Peters, and gradually, strange to say, he grew less
+        repulsive. From the talks they had together, she began to see that
+        there was really no reason to put faith in Everard; his criminality,
+        his faithlessness, were too flagrant. Gradually she grew ashamed of
+        her early mistrust of Peters; remorse bred esteem, and esteem
+        ultimately ripened into feelings so warm, that when Tom gave freer
+        vent to the love that had been visible to Clara from the first, she
+        did not repulse him.</p>
+
+        <p>It is only in books that love lives for ever. Clara, so her father
+        thought, showed herself a sensible girl in plucking out an unworthy
+        affection and casting it from her heart. He invited the new lover to
+        his house, and took to him at once. Roxdal's somewhat supercilious
+        manner had always jarred upon the unsophisticated corn merchant. With
+        Tom the old man got on much better. While evidently quite as well
+        informed and cultured as his whilom friend, Tom knew how to impart
+        his superior knowledge with the accent on the knowledge rather than
+        on the superiority, while he had the air of gaining much information
+        in return. Those who are most conscious of defects of early education
+        are most resentful of other people sharing their consciousness
+        Moreover, Tom's <i>bonhomie</i> was far more to the old fellow's
+        liking than the studied politeness of his predecessor, so that on the
+        whole Tom made more of a conquest of the father than of the daughter.
+        Nevertheless, Clara was by no means unresponsive to Tom's affection,
+        and when, after one of his visits to the house, the old man kissed
+        her fondly and spoke of the happy turn things had taken, and how, for
+        the second time in their lives, things had mended when they seemed at
+        their blackest, her heart swelled with a gush of gratitude and joy
+        and tenderness, and she fell sobbing into her father's arms.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/017-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/017-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        "WITH TOM THE OLD MAN GOT ON MUCH BETTER."</p>
+
+        <p>Tom calculated that he made a clear five hundred a year by
+        occasional journalism, besides possessing some profitable investments
+        which he had inherited from his mother, so that there was no reason
+        for delaying the marriage. It was fixed for May-day, and the
+        honeymoon was to be spent in Italy.</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <h3>CHAPTER VI</h3>
+
+        <h3>THE DREAM AND THE AWAKENING</h3>
+
+        <p>But Clara was not destined to happiness. From the moment she had
+        promised herself to her first love's friend old memories began to
+        rise up and reproach her. Strange thoughts stirred in the depths of
+        her soul, and in the silent watches of the night she seemed to hear
+        Everard's accents, charged with grief and upbraiding. Her uneasiness
+        increased as her wedding-day drew near. One night, after a pleasant
+        afternoon spent in being rowed by Tom among the upper reaches of the
+        Thames, she retired to rest full of vague forebodings. And she dreamt
+        a terrible dream. The dripping form of Everard stood by her bedside,
+        staring at her with ghastly eyes. Had he been drowned on the passage
+        to his land of exile? Frozen with horror, she put the question.</p>
+
+        <p>"I have never left England!" the vision answered.</p>
+
+        <p>Her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth.</p>
+
+        <p>"Never left England?" she repeated, in tones which did not seem to
+        be hers.</p>
+
+        <p>The wraith's stony eyes stared on, but there was silence.</p>
+
+        <p>"Where have you been then?" she asked in her dream.</p>
+
+        <p>"Very near you," came the answer.</p>
+
+        <p>"There has been foul play then!" she shrieked.</p>
+
+        <p>The phantom shook its head in doleful assent.</p>
+
+        <p>"I knew it!" she shrieked. "Tom Peters&mdash;Tom Peters has done
+        away with you. Is it not he? Speak!"</p>
+
+        <p>"Yes, it is he&mdash;Tom Peters&mdash;whom I loved more than all
+        the world."</p>
+
+        <p>Even in the terrible oppression of the dream she could not resist
+        saying, woman-like:</p>
+
+        <p>"Did I not warn you against him?"</p>
+
+        <p>The phantom stared on silently and made no reply.</p>
+
+        <p>"But what was his motive?" she asked at length.</p>
+
+        <p>"Love of gold&mdash;and you. And you are giving yourself to him,"
+        it said sternly.</p>
+
+        <p>"No, no, Everard! I will not! I will not! I swear it! Forgive
+        me!"</p>
+
+        <p>The spirit shook its head sceptically.</p>
+
+        <p>"You love him. Women are false&mdash;as false as men."</p>
+
+        <p>She strove to protest again, but her tongue refused its
+        office.</p>
+
+        <p>"If you marry him, I shall always be with you! Beware!"</p>
+
+        <p>The dripping figure vanished as suddenly as it came, and Clara
+        awoke in a cold perspiration. Oh, it was horrible! The man she had
+        learnt to love, the murderer of the man she had learnt to forget! How
+        her original prejudice had been justified! Distracted, shaken to her
+        depths, she would not take counsel even of her father, but informed
+        the police of her suspicions. A raid was made on Tom's rooms, and lo!
+        the stolen notes were discovered in a huge bundle. It was found that
+        he had several banking accounts, with a large, recently-paid amount
+        in each bank. Tom was arrested. Attention was now concentrated on the
+        corpses washed up by the river. It was not long before the body of
+        Roxdal came to shore, the face distorted almost beyond recognition by
+        long immersion, but the clothes patently his, and a pocket-book in
+        the breast-pocket removing the last doubt. Mrs. Seacon and Polly and
+        Clara Newell all identified the body. Both juries returned a verdict
+        of murder against Tom Peters, the recital of Clara's dream producing
+        a unique impression in the court and throughout the country. The
+        theory of the prosecution was that Roxdal had brought home the money,
+        whether to fly alone or to divide it, or whether even for some
+        innocent purpose, as Clara believed, was immaterial. That Peters
+        determined to have it all, that he had gone out for a walk with the
+        deceased, and, taking advantage of the fog, had pushed him into the
+        river, and that he was further impelled to the crime by love for
+        Clara Newell, as was evident from his subsequent relations with her.
+        The judge put on the black cap. Tom Peters was duly hung by the neck
+        till he was dead.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/019-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/019-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        "IDENTIFIED THE BODY."</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <h3>CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+
+        <h3>BRIEF R&Eacute;SUM&Eacute; OF THE CULPRIT'S CONFESSION.</h3>
+
+        <p>When you all read this I shall be dead and laughing at you. I have
+        been hung for my own murder. I am Everard G. Roxdal. I am also Tom
+        Peters. We two were one. When I was a young man my moustache and
+        beard wouldn't come. I bought false ones to improve my appearance.
+        One day, after I had become manager of the City and Suburban Bank, I
+        took off my beard and moustache at home, and then the thought crossed
+        my mind that nobody would know me without them. I was another man.
+        Instantly it flashed upon me that if I ran away from the Bank, that
+        other man could be left in London, while the police were scouring the
+        world for a non-existent fugitive. But this was only the crude germ
+        of the idea. Slowly I matured my plan. The man who was going to be
+        left in London must be known to a circle of acquaintance beforehand.
+        It would be easy enough to masquerade in the evenings in my beardless
+        condition, with other disguises of dress and voice. But this was not
+        brilliant enough. I conceived the idea of living with him. It was Box
+        and Cox reversed. We shared rooms at Mrs. Seacon's. It was a great
+        strain, but it was only for a few weeks. I had trick clothes in my
+        bedroom like those of quick-change artistes; in a moment I could pass
+        from Roxdal to Peters and from Peters to Roxdal. Polly had to clean
+        two pairs of boots a morning, cook two dinners, &amp;c., &amp;c. She
+        and Mrs. Seacon saw one or the other of us every moment; it never
+        dawned upon them they never saw us <i>both together</i>. At meals I
+        would not be interrupted, ate off two plates, and conversed with my
+        friend in loud tones. At other times we dined at different hours. On
+        Sundays he was supposed to be asleep when I was in church. There is
+        no landlady in the world to whom the idea would have occurred that
+        one man was troubling himself to be two (and to pay for two,
+        including washing). I worked up the idea of Roxdal's flight, asked
+        Polly to go with me, manufactured that feminine letter that arrived
+        on the morning of my disappearance. As Tom Peters I mixed with a
+        journalistic set. I had another room where I kept the gold and notes
+        till I mistakenly thought the thing had blown over. Unfortunately,
+        returning from here on the night of my disappearance, with Roxdal's
+        clothes in a bundle I intended to drop into the river, it was stolen
+        from me in the fog, and the man into whose possession it ultimately
+        came appears to have committed suicide. What, perhaps, ruined me was
+        my desire to keep Clara's love, and to transfer it to the survivor.
+        Everard told her I was the best of fellows. Once married to her, I
+        would not have had much fear. Even if she had discovered the trick, a
+        wife cannot give evidence against her husband, and often does not
+        want to. I made none of the usual slips, but no man can guard against
+        a girl's nightmare after a day up the river and a supper at the Star
+        and Garter. I might have told the judge he was an ass, but then I
+        should have had penal servitude for bank robbery, and that is worse
+        than death. The only thing that puzzles me, though, is whether the
+        law has committed murder or I suicide.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/021-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/021-1.jpg" width="50%" alt="" /></a></p>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s2" name="i13s2"></a>MY FIRST NOVEL.</h2>
+
+        <h3>THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT.</h3>
+
+        <h3>BY MISS M. E. BRADDON.</h3>
+
+        <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS BY MISS F. L. FULLER.</h4>
+
+        <p>My first novel! Far back in the distinctness of childish memories
+        I see a little girl who has lately learnt to write, who has lately
+        been given a beautiful brand new mahogany desk, with a red velvet
+        slope, and a glass ink bottle, such a desk as might now be bought for
+        three and sixpence, but which in the forties cost at least
+        half-a-guinea. Very proud is the little girl, with the Kenwigs
+        pigtails, and the Kenwigs frills, of that mahogany desk, and its
+        infinite capacities for literary labour, above all, gem of gems, its
+        stick of variegated sealing-wax, brown, speckled with gold, and its
+        little glass seal with an intaglio representing two
+        doves&mdash;Pliny's doves perhaps, famous in mosaic, only the little
+        girl had never heard of Pliny, or his Laurentine Villa.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/022-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/022-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        LICHFIELD HOUSE, RICHMOND.</p>
+
+        <p>Armed with that desk and its supply of stationery, Mary Elizabeth
+        Braddon&mdash;very fond of writing her name at full-length, and her
+        address also at full-length, though the word "Middlesex" offered
+        difficulties&mdash;began that pilgrimage on the broad high road of
+        fiction, which was destined to be a longish one. So much for the
+        little girl of eight years old, in the third person, and now to
+        become strictly autobiographical.</p>
+
+        <p>My first story was based on those fairy tales which first opened
+        to me the world of imaginative literature. My first attempt in
+        fiction, and in round-hand, on carefully pencilled double lines, was
+        a story of two sisters, a good sister and a wicked, and I fear
+        adhered more faithfully to the lines of the archetypal story than the
+        writer's pen kept to the double fence which should have ensured
+        neatness.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/023-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/023-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            THE HALL.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/024-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/024-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            THE STAIRCASE.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>The interval between the ages of eight and twelve was a prolific
+        period, fertile in unfinished MSS., among which I can now trace a
+        historical novel on the Siege of Calais&mdash;an Eastern story,
+        suggested by a passionate love of Miss Pardoe's Turkish tales, and
+        Byron's "Bride of Abydos," which my mother, a devoted Byron
+        worshipper, allowed me to read aloud to her&mdash;and doubtless
+        murder in the reading&mdash;a story of the Hartz Mountains, with
+        audacious flights in German diablerie; and lastly, very seriously
+        undertaken, and very perseveringly worked upon, a domestic story, the
+        outline of which was suggested by the same dear and sympathetic
+        mother.</p>
+
+        <p>Now it is a curious fact, which may or may not be common to other
+        story-spinners, that I have never been able to take kindly to a
+        plot&mdash;or the suggestion of a plot&mdash;offered to me by anybody
+        else. The moment a friend tells me that he or she is desirous of
+        imparting a series of facts&mdash;strictly true&mdash;as if truth in
+        fiction mattered one jot!&mdash;which in his or her opinion would
+        make the ground plan of an admirable, startling, and altogether
+        original three-volume novel, I know in advance that my imagination
+        will never grapple with those startling circumstances&mdash;that my
+        thoughts will begin to wander before my friend has got half through
+        the remarkable chain of events, and that if the obliging purveyor of
+        romantic incidents were to examine me at the end of the story, I
+        should be spun ignominiously. For the most part, such subjects as
+        have been proposed to me by friends have been hopelessly unfit for
+        the circulating library; or, where not immoral, have been utterly
+        dull; but it is, I believe, a fixed idea in the novel-reader's mind
+        that any combination of events out of the beaten way of life will
+        make an admirable subject for the novelist's art.</p>
+
+        <p>My dear mother, taking into consideration my tender years, and
+        perhaps influenced in somewise by her own love of picking up odd bits
+        of Sheraton or Chippendale furniture in the storehouses of the less
+        ambitious second-hand dealers of those simpler days, offered me the
+        following <i>scenario</i> for a domestic story. It was an incident
+        which, I doubt not, she had often read at the tail of a newspaper
+        column, and which certainly savours of the gigantic gooseberry, the
+        sea-serpent, and the agricultural labourer who unexpectedly inherits
+        half-a-million. It was eminently a Simple Story, and far more worthy
+        of that title than Mrs. Inchbald's long and involved romance.</p>
+
+        <p>An honest couple, in humble circumstances, possess among their
+        small household gear a good old easy chair, which has been the pride
+        of a former generation, and is the choicest of their household gods.
+        A comfortable cushioned chair, snug and restful, albeit the chintz
+        covering, though clean and tidy, as virtuous people's furniture
+        always is in fiction, is worn thin by long service, while the dear
+        chair itself is no longer the chair it once was as to legs and
+        framework.</p>
+
+        <p>Evil days come upon the praiseworthy couple and their dependent
+        brood, among whom I faintly remember the love interest of the story
+        to have lain; and that direful day arrives when the average landlord
+        of juvenile fiction, whose heart is of adamant and brain of brass,
+        distrains for the rent. The rude broker swoops upon the humble
+        dovecot; a cart or hand-barrow waits on the carefully hearth-stoned
+        door-step for the household gods; the family gather round the
+        cherished chair, on which the rude broker has already laid his grimy
+        fingers; they hang over the back and fondle the padded arms; and the
+        old grandmother, with clasped hands, entreats that, if able to raise
+        the money in a few days, they may be allowed to buy back that loved
+        heirloom.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/025-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/025-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            THE DINING ROOM.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>The broker laughs the plea to scorn; they might have their chair,
+        and cheap enough, he had no doubt. The cover was darned and
+        patched&mdash;as only the virtuous poor of fiction do darn and do
+        patch&mdash;and he made no doubt the stuffing was nothing better than
+        brown wool; and with that coarse taunt the coarser broker dug his
+        clasp-knife into the cushion against which grandfatherly backs had
+        leaned in happier days, and lo! an avalanche of banknotes fell out of
+        the much-maligned horse-hair, and the family was lifted from penury
+        to wealth. Nothing more simple&mdash;or more natural. A prudent but
+        eccentric ancestor had chosen this mode of putting by his savings,
+        assured that, whenever discovered, the money would be useful
+        to&mdash;somebody.</p>
+
+        <p>So ran the <i>scenario</i>: but I fancy my juvenile pen hardly
+        held on to the climax. My brief experience of boarding school
+        occurred at this time, and I well remember writing "The Old Arm
+        Chair" in a penny account book, in the schoolroom of Cresswell Lodge,
+        and that I was both surprised and offended at the laughter of the
+        kindly music-teacher who, coming into the room to summon a pupil, and
+        seeing me gravely occupied, enquired what I was doing, and was
+        intensely amused at my stolid method of composition, plodding on
+        undisturbed by the voices and occupations of the older girls around
+        me. "The Old Arm Chair" was certainly my first serious, painstaking
+        effort in fiction; but as it was abandoned unfinished before my
+        eleventh birthday, and as no line thereof ever achieved the
+        distinction of type, it can hardly rank as my first novel.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/026-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/026-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        THE DRAWING-ROOM.</p>
+
+        <p>There came a very few years later the sentimental period, in which
+        my unfinished novels assumed a more ambitious form, and were modelled
+        chiefly upon Jane Eyre, with occasional tentative imitations of
+        Thackeray. Stories of gentle hearts that loved in vain, always ending
+        in renunciation. One romance there was, I well remember, begun with
+        resolute purpose, after the first reading of Esmond, and in the
+        endeavour to give life and local colour to a story of the Restoration
+        period, a brilliantly wicked interval in the social history of
+        England, which, after the lapse of thirty years, I am still as bent
+        upon taking for the background of a love story as I was when I began
+        "Master Anthony's Record" in Esmondese, and made my girlish
+        acquaintance with the Reading-room of the British Museum, where I
+        went in quest of local colour, and where much kindness was shown to
+        my youth and inexperience of the book world. Poring over a folio
+        edition of the State Trials at my uncle's quiet rectory in sleepy
+        Sandwich, I had discovered the passionate romantic story of Lord
+        Grey's elopement with his sister-in-law, next in sequence to the
+        trial of Lawrence Braddon and Hugh Speke for conspiracy. At the risk
+        of seeming disloyal to my own race, I must add that it seemed to me a
+        very tinpot order of plot to which these two learned gentlemen bent
+        their legal minds, and which cost the Braddon family a heavy fine in
+        land near Camelford&mdash;confiscation which I have heard my father
+        complain of as especially unfair&mdash;Lawrence being a younger son.
+        The romantic story of Lord Grey was to be the subject of "Master
+        Anthony's Record," but Master Anthony's sentimental autobiography
+        went the way of all my earlier efforts. It was but a year or so after
+        the collapse of Master Anthony, that a blindly-enterprising printer
+        of Beverley, who had seen my poor little verses in the <i>Beverley
+        Recorder</i>, made me the spirited offer of ten pounds for a serial
+        story, to be set up and printed at Beverley, and published on
+        commission by a London firm in Warwick Lane. I cannot picture to
+        myself, in my after-knowledge of the bookselling trade, any
+        enterprise more futile in its inception or more feeble in its
+        execution; but to my youthful ambition the actual commission to write
+        a novel, with an advance payment of fifty shillings to show good
+        faith on the part of my Yorkshire speculator, seemed like the opening
+        of that pen-and-ink paradise which I had sighed for ever since I
+        could hold a pen. I had, previously to this date, found a
+        M&aelig;cenas in Beverley, in the person of a learned gentleman who
+        volunteered to foster my love of the Muses by buying the copyright of
+        a volume of poems and publishing the same at his own
+        expense&mdash;which he did, poor man, without stint, and by which
+        noble patronage of Poet's Corner verse, he must have lost money. He
+        had, however, the privilege of dictating the subject of the principal
+        poem, which was to sing&mdash;however feebly&mdash;Garibaldi's
+        Sicilian campaign.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/027-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/027-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        THE EVENING ROOM.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/028-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/028-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            THE SMOKING-ROOM.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>The Beverley printer suggested that my Warwick Lane serial should
+        combine, as far as my powers allowed, the human interest and genial
+        humour of Dickens with the plot-weaving of G. W. R. Reynolds; and,
+        furnished with these broad instructions, I filled my ink bottle,
+        spread out my foolscap, and, on a hopelessly wet afternoon, began my
+        first novel&mdash;now known as "The Trail of the Serpent"&mdash;but
+        published in Warwick Lane, and later in the stirring High Street of
+        Beverley, as "Three Times Dead." In "Three Times Dead" I gave loose
+        to all my leanings to the violent in melodrama. Death stalked in
+        ghastliest form across my pages; and villainy reigned triumphant till
+        the Nemesis of the last chapter. I wrote with all the freedom of one
+        who feared not the face of a critic; and, indeed, thanks to the
+        obscurity of its original production, and its re-issue as the
+        ordinary two-shilling railway novel, this first novel of mine has
+        almost entirely escaped the critical lash, and has pursued its way as
+        a chartered libertine. People buy it and read it, and its faults and
+        follies are forgiven as the exuberances of a pen unchastened by
+        experience; but faster and more facile at that initial stage than it
+        ever became after long practice.</p>
+
+        <p>I dashed headlong at my work, conjured up my images of horror or
+        of mirth, and boldly built the framework of my story, and set my
+        puppets moving. To me, at least, they were living creatures, who
+        seemed to follow impulses of their own, to be impelled by their own
+        passions, to love and hate, and plot and scheme of their own accord.
+        There was unalloyed pleasure in the composition of that first story,
+        and the knowledge that it was to be actually printed and published,
+        and not to be declined with thanks by adamantine magazine editors,
+        like a certain short story which I had lately written, and which
+        contained the germ of "Lady Audley's Secret." Indeed, at this period
+        of my life, the postman's knock had become associated in my mind with
+        the sharp sound of a rejected MS. dropping through the open
+        letter-box on to the floor of the hall, while my heart seemed to drop
+        in sympathy with that book-post packet.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure" style="clear:both;"><a href=
+        "images/029-1.jpg"><img src="images/029-1.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+        "" /></a><br />
+        THE LIBRARY.</p>
+
+        <p>Short of never being printed at all, my Beverley-born novel could
+        have hardly entered upon the world of books in a more profound
+        obscurity. That one living creature ever bought a number of "Three
+        Times Dead" I greatly doubt. I can recall the thrill of emotion with
+        which I tore open the envelope that contained my complimentary copy
+        of the first number, folded across, and in aspect inferior to a
+        gratis pamphlet about a patent medicine. The miserable little wood
+        block which illustrated that first number would have disgraced a
+        baker's whitey-brown bag, would have been unworthy to illustrate a
+        penny bun. My spirits were certainly dashed at the technical
+        shortcomings of that first serial, and I was hardly surprised when I
+        was informed a few weeks later, that although my admirers at Beverley
+        were deeply interested in the story, it was not a financial success,
+        and that it would be only obliging on my part, and in accordance with
+        my known kindness of heart, if I were to restrict the development of
+        the romance to half its intended length, and to accept five pounds in
+        lieu of ten as my reward. Having no desire that the rash Beverley
+        printer should squander his own or his children's fortune in the
+        obscurity of Warwick Lane, I immediately acceded to his request,
+        shortened sail, and went on with my story, perhaps with a shade less
+        enthusiasm, having seen the shabby figure it was to make in the book
+        world. I may add that the Beverley publisher's payments began and
+        ended with his noble advance of fifty shillings. The balance was
+        never paid; and it was rather hard lines that, on his becoming
+        bankrupt in his poor little way a few years later, a judge in the
+        Bankruptcy Court remarked that, as Miss Braddon was now making a good
+        deal of money by her pen, she ought to "come to the relief" of her
+        first publisher.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/030-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/030-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            MISS BRADDON'S FAVOURITE MARE.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>And now my volume of verses being well under weigh, I went with my
+        mother to farm-house lodgings in the neighbourhood of that very
+        Beverley, where I spent, perhaps, the happiest half-year of my
+        life&mdash;half a year of tranquil, studious days, far from the
+        madding crowd, with the mother whose society was always all
+        sufficient for me&mdash;half a year among level pastures, with
+        unlimited books from the library in Hull, an old farm-horse to ride
+        about the green lanes, the breath of summer, with all its sweet
+        odours of flower and herb, around and about us: half a year of
+        unalloyed bliss, had it not been for one dark shadow, the heroic
+        figure of Garibaldi, the sailor soldier, looming large upon the
+        foreground of my literary labours, as the hero of a lengthy narrative
+        poem in the Spenserian metre.</p>
+
+        <p>My chief business at Beverley was to complete the volume of verse
+        commissioned by my Yorkshire M&aelig;cenas, at that time a very rich
+        man, who paid me a much better price for my literary work than his
+        townsman, the enterprising printer, and who had the first claim on my
+        thought and time.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/031-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/031-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            THE ORANGERY.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>With the business-like punctuality of a salaried clerk, I went
+        every morning to my file of the <i>Times</i>, and pored and puzzled
+        over Neapolitan revolution and Sicilian campaign, and I can only say
+        that if Emile Zola has suffered as much over Sedan as I suffered in
+        the freshness of my youth, when flowery meadows and the old chestnut
+        mare invited to summer idlesse, over the fighting in Sicily, his
+        dogged perseverance in uncongenial labour should place him among the
+        Immortal Forty. How I hated the great Joseph G. and the Spenserian
+        metre, with its exacting demands upon the rhyming faculty. How I
+        hated my own ignorance of modern Italian history, and my own eyes for
+        never having looked upon Italian landscape, whereby historical
+        allusion and local colour were both wanting to that dry-as-dust
+        record of heroic endeavour. I had only the <i>Times</i>
+        correspondent; where he was picturesque I could be
+        picturesque&mdash;allowing always for the Spenserian
+        straining&mdash;where he was rich in local colour I did my utmost to
+        reproduce his colouring, stretched always on the Spenserian rack, and
+        lengthened out by the bitter necessity of finding triple rhymes. Next
+        to Guiseppe Garibaldi I hated Edmund Spenser, and it may be from a
+        vengeful remembrance of those early struggles with a difficult form
+        of versification, that, although throughout my literary life I have
+        been a lover of England's earlier poet, and have delighted in the
+        quaintness and <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i> of Chaucer, I have
+        refrained from reading more than a casual stanza or two of the
+        "Fa&euml;ry Queen." When I lived at Beverley, Spenser was to me but a
+        name, and Byron's "Childe Harold" was my only model for that exacting
+        verse. I should add that the Beverley M&aelig;cenas, when
+        commissioning this volume of verse, was less superb in his ideas than
+        the literary patron of the past. He looked at the matter from a
+        purely commercial standpoint, and believed that a volume of verse,
+        such as I could produce, would pay&mdash;a delusion on his part which
+        I honestly strove to combat before accepting his handsome offer of
+        remuneration for my time and labour. It was with this idea in his
+        mind that he chose and insisted upon the Sicilian Campaign as a
+        subject for my muse, and thus started me heavily handicapped on the
+        racecourse of Parnassus.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/032-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/032-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        MISS BRADDON'S COTTAGE AT LYNDHURST.</p>
+
+        <p>The weekly number of "Three Times Dead" was "thrown off" in brief
+        intervals of rest from my <i>magnum opus</i>, and it was an infinite
+        relief to turn from Garibaldi and his brothers in arms to the angels
+        and the monsters which my own brain had engendered, and which to me
+        seemed more alive than the good great man whose arms I so laboriously
+        sang. My rustic pipe far better loved to sing of melodramatic
+        poisoners and ubiquitous detectives; of fine houses in the West of
+        London, and dark dens in the East. So the weekly chapter of my first
+        novel ran merrily off my pen while the printer's boy waited in the
+        farm-house kitchen.</p>
+
+        <p>Happy, happy days, so near to memory, and yet so far. In that
+        peaceful summer I finished my first novel, knocked Garibaldi on the
+        head with a closing rhapsody, saw the York spring and summer races in
+        hopelessly wet weather, learnt to love the Yorkshire people, and left
+        Yorkshire almost broken-heartedly on a dull gray October morning, to
+        travel Londonwards through a landscape that was mostly under
+        water.</p>
+
+        <p>And, behold, since that October morning I have written fifty-three
+        novels; I have lost dear old friends and found new friends, who are
+        also dear, but I have never looked on a Yorkshire landscape since I
+        turned my reluctant eyes from those level meadows and green lanes
+        where the old chestnut mare used to carry me ploddingly to and fro
+        between tall, tangled hedges of eglantine and honeysuckle.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/033-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/033-1.jpg" width="40%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        MISS BRADDON'S INKSTAND.</p>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s3" name="i13s3"></a>NOVEL NOTES.</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY JEROME K. JEROME.</h3>
+
+        <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. G&Uuml;LICH AND J. GREIG,</h4>
+
+        <h3>PART X.</h3>
+        <hr />
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:80%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/034-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/034-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "DISCUSSION AT OUR LAST MEETING."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>The final question discussed at our last meeting had been: What
+        shall our hero be? MacShaugnassy had suggested an author, with a
+        critic for the villain. Brown's fancy was an artist. My idea was a
+        stockbroker, with an undercurrent of romance in his nature. Said
+        Jephson, who has a practical mind, approaching at times the
+        commercial: "The question is not what we like, but what the female
+        novel-reader likes."</p>
+
+        <p>"That is so," agreed MacShaugnassy. "I propose that we collect
+        feminine opinion upon this point. I will write to my aunt, and get
+        from her the old lady's view. You," he said, turning to me, "can put
+        the case to your wife, and get the young lady's ideal. Let Brown
+        write to his sister at Newnham, and find out whom the intellectual
+        maiden favours, while Jephson can learn from Miss Medbury what is
+        most attractive to the common-sensed girl."</p>
+
+        <p>This plan we had adopted, and the result was now under
+        consideration. MacShaugnassy opened the proceedings by reading his
+        aunt's letter. Wrote the old lady:</p>
+
+        <blockquote><p>
+            "I think, if I were you, my dear boy, I should choose a soldier.
+            You know your poor grandfather, who ran away to America with that
+            <i>wicked</i> Mrs. Featherly, the banker's wife, was a soldier,
+            and so was your poor cousin Robert, who lost eight thousand
+            pounds at Monte Carlo. I have always felt singularly drawn
+            towards soldiers, even as a girl; though your poor dear uncle
+            could not bear them. You will find many allusions to soldiers and
+            men of war in the Old Testament (see Jer. 48,14). Of course one
+            does not like to think of their fighting and killing each other,
+            but then they do not seem to do much of that sort of thing
+            nowadays."</p>
+        </blockquote>
+
+        <p>"So much for the old lady," said MacShaugnassy, as he folded up
+        the letter and returned it to his pocket. "What says culture?"</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:25%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/035-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/035-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            BROWN READ AS FOLLOWS.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>Brown produced from his cigar-case a letter addressed in a bold
+        round hand, and read as follows:</p>
+
+        <blockquote><p>
+            "What a curious coincidence! A few of us were discussing this
+            very subject last night in Millicent Hightopper's rooms, and I
+            may tell you at once that our decision was unanimous in favour of
+            soldiers. You see, my dear Selkirk, in human nature the
+            attraction is towards the opposite. To a milliner's apprentice a
+            poet would no doubt be satisfying; to a woman of intelligence he
+            would be an unutterable bore. The man of brain is not for the
+            woman of brain. What the intellectual woman requires in man is
+            not something to argue with, but something to look at. To an
+            empty-headed woman I can imagine the soldier type proving vapid
+            and uninteresting; to the woman of mind he represents her ideal
+            of man&mdash;a creature strong, handsome, well-dressed, and not
+            too clever."</p>
+        </blockquote>
+
+        <p>"That gives us two votes for the army," remarked MacShaugnassy, as
+        Brown tore his sister's letter in two, and threw the pieces into the
+        waste-paper basket. "What says the common-sensed girl?"</p>
+
+        <p>"First catch your common-sensed girl," muttered Jephson, a little
+        grumpily, as it seemed to me. "Where do you propose finding her?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Well," returned MacShaugnassy, "I looked to find her in Miss
+        Medbury."</p>
+
+        <p>As a rule, the mention of Miss Medbury's name brings a flush of
+        joy to Jephson's face; but now his features wore an expression
+        distinctly approaching a scowl.</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh!" he replied, "did you? Well, then, the common-sensed girl
+        loves the military, also."</p>
+
+        <p>"By Jove!" exclaimed MacShaugnassy, "what an extraordinary thing.
+        What reason does she give?"</p>
+
+        <p>"That they look so nice when they're dressed, and that they dance
+        so divinely," answered Jephson, shortly.</p>
+
+        <p>"Well, you do surprise me," murmured MacShaugnassy, "I am
+        astonished."</p>
+
+        <p>Then to me he said: "And what does the young married woman say?
+        The same?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Yes," I replied, "precisely the same."</p>
+
+        <p>"Does <i>she</i> give a reason?" he asked.</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh, yes," I explained; "because you can't help liking them."</p>
+
+        <p>There was silence for the next few minutes, while we smoked and
+        thought. I fancy we were all wishing we had never started this
+        enquiry.</p>
+
+        <p>That four distinctly different types of educated womanhood should,
+        with promptness and unanimity quite unfeminine, have selected the
+        soldier as their ideal, was certainly discouraging to the civilian
+        heart. Had they been nursemaids or servant girls, I should have
+        expected it. The worship of Mars by the Venus of the white cap is one
+        of the few vital religions left to this devoutless age. A year or two
+        ago I lodged near a barracks, and the sight to be seen round its huge
+        iron gates on Sunday afternoons I shall never forget. The girls began
+        to assemble about twelve o'clock. By two, at which hour the army,
+        with its hair nicely oiled and a cane in its hand, was ready for a
+        stroll, there would be some four or five hundred of them waiting in a
+        line. Formerly they had collected in a wild mob, and as the soldiers
+        were let out to them two at a time, had fought for them, as lions for
+        early Christians. This, however, had led to scenes of such disorder
+        and brutality, that the police had been obliged to interfere; and the
+        girls were now marshalled in <i>queue</i>, two abreast, and
+        compelled, by a force of constables specially told off for the
+        purpose, to keep their places and wait their proper turn.</p>
+
+        <p>At three o'clock the sentry on duty would come down to the wicket
+        and close it. "They're all gone, my dears," he would shout out to the
+        girls still left; "it's no good your stopping, we've no more for you
+        to-day."</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh, not one!" some poor child would murmur pleadingly, while the
+        tears welled up into her big round eyes, "not even a little one. I've
+        been waiting <i>such</i> a long time."</p>
+
+        <p>"Can't help that," the honest fellow would reply, gruffly, but not
+        unkindly, turning aside to hide his emotion; "you've had 'em all
+        between you. We don't make 'em, you know: you can't have 'em if we
+        haven't got 'em, can you? Come earlier next time."</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/037-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/037-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "NOW THEN, PASS ALONG."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>Then he would hurry away to escape further importunity; and the
+        police, who appeared to have been waiting for this moment with
+        gloating anticipation, would jeeringly hustle away the weeping
+        remnant. "Now then, pass along, you girls, pass along," they would
+        say, in that irritatingly unsympathetic voice of theirs. "You've had
+        your chance. Can't have the roadway blocked up all the afternoon with
+        this 'ere demonstration of the unloved. You'll have to put up with
+        your ordinary young men for to-day. Pass along."</p>
+
+        <p>In connection with this same barracks, our charwoman told Amenda,
+        who told Ethelbertha, who told me a story, which I now told the
+        boys.</p>
+
+        <p>Into a certain house, in a certain street in the neighbourhood,
+        there moved one day a certain family. Their servant had left
+        them&mdash;most of their servants did at the end of a week&mdash;and
+        the day after the moving-in an advertisement was drawn up and sent to
+        the <i>Chronicle</i> for a domestic. It ran thus:</p>
+
+        <blockquote><p>
+            WANTED GENERAL SERVANT, in small family of eleven. Wages,
+            &pound;6; no beer money. Must be early riser and hard worker.
+            Washing done at home. Must be good cook, and not object to
+            window-cleaning. Unitarian preferred.&mdash;Apply, with
+            references, to A. B., &amp;C.</p>
+        </blockquote>
+
+        <p>That advertisement was sent off on Wednesday afternoon. At seven
+        o'clock on Thursday morning the whole family were awakened by
+        continuous ringing of the street door bell. The husband, looking out
+        of window, was surprised to see a crowd of about fifty girls
+        surrounding the house. He slipped on his dressing-gown and went down
+        to see what was the matter. The moment he opened the door, fifteen of
+        them charged tumultuously into the passage, sweeping him completely
+        off his legs. Once inside, these fifteen faced round, fought the
+        other thirty-five or so back on to the door-step, and slammed the
+        door in their faces. Then they picked up the master of the house, and
+        asked him politely to conduct them to "A. B."</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:50%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/038-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/038-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "SURPRISED TO SEE ABOUT FIFTY GIRLS."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>At first, owing to the clamour of the mob outside, who were
+        hammering at the door and shouting curses through the keyhole on
+        those inside, he was too confused to understand anything, but by dint
+        of great exertion they succeeded at length in explaining to him that
+        they were domestic servants come in answer to his wife's
+        advertisement. The man went and told his wife, and his wife said she
+        would see them, one at a time.</p>
+
+        <p>Which one should have audience first was a delicate question to
+        decide. The man, on being appealed to, said he would prefer to leave
+        it to them. They accordingly discussed the matter among themselves.
+        At the end of a quarter of an hour, the victor, having borrowed a
+        packet of pins and a looking-glass from our charwoman, who had slept
+        in the house, went upstairs, while the remaining fourteen sat down in
+        the hall, and fanned themselves with their bonnets.</p>
+
+        <p>"A. B." was a good deal astonished when the first applicant
+        presented herself. She was a tall, genteel-looking, well-dressed
+        girl. Up to yesterday she had been head housemaid at Lady Stanton's,
+        and before that she had been under-cook for two years to the Duchess
+        of York.</p>
+
+        <p>"And why did you leave Lady Stanton?" asked "A. B."</p>
+
+        <p>"To come here, mum," replied the girl.</p>
+
+        <p>The lady was puzzled.</p>
+
+        <p>"And you'll be satisfied with six pounds a year?" she asked.</p>
+
+        <p>"Certainly, mum, I think it ample."</p>
+
+        <p>"And you don't mind hard work?"</p>
+
+        <p>"I love it, mum."</p>
+
+        <p>"And you're an early riser?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh yes, mum, it upsets me stopping in bed after half-past
+        five."</p>
+
+        <p>"You know we do the washing at home?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Yes, mum. I think it so much better to do it at home. Those
+        laundries ruin good clothes. They're so careless."</p>
+
+        <p>"Are you a Unitarian?" continued the lady.</p>
+
+        <p>"Not yet, mum," replied the girl, "but I should like to be
+        one."</p>
+
+        <p>The lady took her reference, and said she would write her.</p>
+
+        <p>"I do hope you will give me a trial, mum," pleaded the girl, as
+        she rose to go; "I would try so hard to give you satisfaction."</p>
+
+        <p>The next applicant offered to come for three pounds&mdash;thought
+        six pounds too much. She also expressed her willingness to sleep in
+        the back kitchen: a shakedown under the sink was all she wanted. She
+        likewise had yearnings towards Unitarianism.</p>
+
+        <p>The third girl did not require any wages at all&mdash;could not
+        understand what servants wanted with wages&mdash;thought wages only
+        encouraged a love of foolish finery&mdash;thought a comfortable home
+        in a Unitarian family ought to be sufficient wages for any girl.</p>
+
+        <p>This girl said there was one stipulation she should like to make,
+        and that was that she should be allowed to pay for all breakages
+        caused by her own carelessness or neglect. She objected to holidays
+        and evenings out on principle; she held that they distracted a girl
+        from her work.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/039-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/039-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "MET THE NEXT DOOR LADY ON THE DOOR-STEP."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>The fourth candidate offered a premium of five pounds for the
+        place; and then "A.B." began to get frightened, and refused to see
+        any more of the girls, convinced that they must be lunatics from some
+        neighbouring asylum out for a walk.</p>
+
+        <p>Later in the day, meeting the next door lady on the door-step, she
+        related her morning's experiences.</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh, that's nothing extraordinary," said the next door lady; "none
+        of us on this side of the street pay wages; and we get the pick of
+        all the best servants in London. Why, girls will come from the other
+        end of the kingdom to get into one of these houses. It's the dream of
+        their lives. They save up for years, so as to be able to come here
+        for nothing."</p>
+
+        <p>"What's the attraction?" asked "A. B.," more amazed than ever.</p>
+
+        <p>"Why, don't you see," explained the next door lady, "our back
+        windows open upon the barrack yard. A girl living in one of these
+        houses is always close to soldiers. By looking out of window she can
+        always see soldiers; and sometimes a soldier will nod to her, or even
+        call up to her. They never dream of asking for wages. They'll work
+        eighteen hours a day, and put up with anything just to be allowed to
+        stop."</p>
+
+        <p>"A.B." profited by this information, and engaged the girl who
+        offered the five pounds premium. She found her a perfect treasure of
+        a servant. She was invariably willing and respectful, slept on a sofa
+        in the kitchen, and was always contented with an egg for her
+        dinner.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/040-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/040-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "A SOLDIER'S ARM ROUND THE WAIST."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>The truth of this story I cannot vouch for. Myself, I can believe
+        it. Brown and MacShaugnassy made no attempt to do so, which seemed
+        unfriendly. Jephson excused himself on the plea of a headache. I
+        admit there are points in it presenting difficulties to the average
+        intellect. As I explained at the commencement, it was told to me by
+        Ethelbertha, who had it from Amenda, who got it from the charwoman,
+        and exaggerations may have crept into it. The following, however,
+        were incidents that came under my own personal observation. They
+        afforded a still stronger example of the influence exercised by Tommy
+        Atkins upon the British domestic, and I therefore thought it right to
+        relate them also to the boys.</p>
+
+        <p>"The heroine of them," I said, "is our Amenda. Now, you would call
+        her a tolerably well-behaved, orderly young woman, would you
+        not?"</p>
+
+        <p>"She is my ideal of unostentatious respectability," answered
+        MacShaugnassy.</p>
+
+        <p>"That was my opinion also," I replied. "You can, therefore,
+        imagine my feelings on passing her one evening in the Folkestone High
+        Street with a Panama hat upon her head (my Panama hat), and a
+        soldier's arm round her waist. She was one of a mob, composed of all
+        the unoccupied riff-raff of Folkestone, who were following the band
+        of the Third Berkshire Infantry, then in camp at Sandgate. There was
+        an ecstatic, far-away look in her eyes. She was dancing rather than
+        walking, and with her left hand she beat time to the music."</p>
+
+        <p>"I should say you were suffering from a mild attack of D.T. when
+        you saw all that," said MacShaugnassy.</p>
+
+        <p>"So I might have thought myself," I said; "but Ethelbertha was
+        with me at the time, and she saw it too. We stared after the
+        procession until it had turned the corner, and then we stared at each
+        other.</p>
+
+        <p>"'Oh, it's impossible,' said Ethelbertha to me.</p>
+
+        <p>"'But that was my hat,' I said to Ethelbertha.</p>
+
+        <p>"The moment we reached home Ethelbertha looked for Amenda, and I
+        looked for my hat. Neither were to be found.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/041-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/041-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "AND HUNG MY HAT UP."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"Nine o'clock struck, ten o'clock struck. At half-past ten, we
+        went down and got our own supper, and had it in the kitchen. At a
+        quarter-past eleven, Amenda returned. She walked into the kitchen
+        without a word, hung my hat up behind the door, and commenced
+        clearing away the supper things.</p>
+
+        <p>"Ethelbertha rose, calm but severe.</p>
+
+        <p>"'Where have you been, Amenda?' she enquired.</p>
+
+        <p>"'Gadding half over the county with a lot of low soldiers,'
+        answered Amenda, continuing her work.</p>
+
+        <p>"'You had on my hat,' I added, somewhat gloomily. It was not the
+        right view to take of the case, I know, but, personally, that fact
+        grieved me more than all the other incidents in the proceeding put
+        together, sad though I felt these to be. It was an expensive hat, and
+        Ethelbertha said it suited me (there are not many that do). After
+        seeing it that night on Amenda's head, my pride in it was gone.</p>
+
+        <p>"'Yes, sir,' replied Amenda, still continuing her work, 'it was
+        the first thing that came to hand. What I'm thankful for is that it
+        wasn't missis's best bonnet.'</p>
+
+        <p>"Whether Ethelbertha was mollified by the proper spirit displayed
+        in this last remark, I cannot say, but I think it probable. At all
+        events, it was in a voice more of sorrow than of anger that she
+        resumed her examination.</p>
+
+        <p>"'You were walking with a soldier's arm around your waist when we
+        passed you, Amenda?' she observed interrogatively.</p>
+
+        <p>"'I know, mum,' admitted Amenda, 'I found it there myself when the
+        music stopped.'</p>
+
+        <p>"Ethelbertha looked her enquiries. Amenda filled a saucepan with
+        water, and then replied to them.</p>
+
+        <p>"'I'm a disgrace to a decent household,' she said; 'no mistress
+        who respected herself would keep me a moment. I ought to be put out
+        on the doorstep with my box and a month's wages.'</p>
+
+        <p>"'But why did you do it then?' said Ethelbertha, with natural
+        astonishment.</p>
+
+        <p>"'Because I'm a helpless ninny, mum.' There was no trace of
+        bitterness or passion in Amenda's tones. She spoke in the calm, even
+        voice of a person stating facts.</p>
+
+        <p>"'I can't help myself,' she went on; 'if I see soldiers I'm bound
+        to follow them. It runs in our family. My poor cousin Emma was just
+        such another fool. She was engaged to be married to a quiet,
+        respectable young fellow with a shop of his own, and three days
+        before the wedding she ran off with a regiment of marines and married
+        the colour-sergeant. That's what I shall end by doing. I've been all
+        the way to Sandgate with that lot you saw me with, and I've kissed
+        four of them&mdash;the nasty wretches. I'm a nice sort of girl to be
+        walking out with a respectable milkman.'</p>
+
+        <p>"She was so deeply disgusted with herself that it seemed
+        superfluous for anybody else to be indignant with her; and
+        Ethelbertha changed her tone and tried to comfort her.</p>
+
+        <p>"'Oh, you'll get over all that nonsense, Amenda,' she said,
+        laughingly; 'you see yourself how silly it is. You must tell Mr.
+        Bowles to keep you away from soldiers.'</p>
+
+        <p>"'Ah, I can't look at it in the same light way that you do, mum,'
+        returned Amenda, somewhat reprovingly; 'a girl that can't see a bit
+        of red marching down the street without wanting to rush out and
+        follow it ain't fit to be anybody's wife. Why I should be leaving the
+        shop with nobody in it about twice a week, and he'd have to go the
+        round of all the barracks in London, looking for me. I shall save up
+        and get myself into a lunatic asylum, that's what I shall do.'</p>
+
+        <p>"Ethelbertha began to grow quite troubled. 'But surely this is
+        something altogether new, Amenda,' she said; 'you must have often met
+        soldiers when you've been out in London?'</p>
+
+        <p>"'Oh, yes, one or two at a time, walking about anyhow, I can stand
+        that all right. It's when there's a lot of them all together with a
+        band that I lose my head.'</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:50%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/043-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/043-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "'WHEN THERE'S A LOT OF THEM WITH A BAND, I LOSE MY HEAD.'"</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"'You don't know what it's like, mum,' she added, noticing
+        Ethelbertha's puzzled expression; 'you've never had it. I only hope
+        you never may.'</p>
+
+        <p>"We kept a careful watch over Amenda during the remainder of our
+        stay at Folkestone, and an anxious time we had of it. Every day some
+        regiment or other would march through the town, and at the first
+        sound of its music Amenda would become restless and excited. The Pied
+        Piper's reed could not have stirred the Hamelin children deeper than
+        did those Sandgate bands the heart of our domestic. Fortunately, they
+        generally passed early in the morning when we were indoors, but one
+        day, returning home to lunch, we heard distant strains dying away
+        upon the Hythe Road. We hurried in. Ethelbertha ran down into the
+        kitchen; it was empty!&mdash;up into Amenda's bedroom; it was vacant!
+        We called. There was no answer.</p>
+
+        <p>"'That miserable girl has gone off again,' said Ethelbertha. 'What
+        a terrible misfortune it is for her. It's quite a disease.'</p>
+
+        <p>"Ethelbertha wanted me to go to Sandgate camp and enquire for her.
+        I was sorry for the girl myself, but the picture of a young and
+        innocent-looking man wandering about a complicated camp, enquiring
+        for a lost domestic, presenting itself to my mind, I said that I'd
+        rather not.</p>
+
+        <p>"Ethelbertha thought me heartless, and said that if I would not go
+        she would go herself. I replied that I thought one female member of
+        my household was enough in that camp at a time, and requested her not
+        to. Ethelbertha expressed her sense of my inhuman behaviour by
+        haughtily declining to eat any lunch, and I expressed my sense of her
+        unreasonableness by sweeping the whole meal into the grate, after
+        which Ethelbertha suddenly developed exuberant affection for the cat
+        (who didn't want anybody's love, but wanted to get under the grate
+        after the lunch), and I became supernaturally absorbed in the
+        day-before-yesterday's newspaper.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/044-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/044-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "'WHO LOCKED YOU IN THERE?'"</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"In the afternoon, strolling out into the garden, I heard the
+        faint cry of a female in distress. I listened attentively, and the
+        cry was repeated. I thought it sounded like Amenda's voice, but where
+        it came from I could not conceive. It drew nearer, however, as I
+        approached the bottom of the garden, and at last I located it in a
+        small wooden shed, used by the proprietor of the house as a dark room
+        for developing photographs.</p>
+
+        <p>"The door was locked. 'Is that you, Amenda?' I cried through the
+        keyhole.</p>
+
+        <p>"'Yes, sir,' came back the muffled answer. 'Will you please let me
+        out; you'll find the key on the ground near the door.'</p>
+
+        <p>"I discovered it on the grass about a yard away, and released her.
+        'Who locked you in there?' I asked.</p>
+
+        <p>"'I did, sir,' she replied; 'I locked myself in, and pushed the
+        key out under the door. I had to do it, or I should have gone off
+        with those beastly soldiers.'</p>
+
+        <p>"'I hope I haven't inconvenienced you, sir,' she added, stepping
+        out; 'I left the lunch all laid.'"</p>
+
+        <p>Amenda's passion for soldiers was her one tribute to sentiment.
+        Towards all others of the male sex she maintained an attitude of
+        callous unsusceptibility, and her engagements with them (which were
+        numerous) were entered into or abandoned on grounds so sordid as to
+        seriously shock Ethelbertha.</p>
+
+        <p>When she came to us she was engaged to a pork butcher&mdash;with a
+        milkman in reserve. For Amenda's sake we dealt with the man, but we
+        never liked him, and we liked his pork still less. When, therefore,
+        Amenda announced to us that her engagement with him was "off," and
+        intimated that her feelings would in no way suffer by our going
+        elsewhere for our bacon, we secretly rejoiced.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/045-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/045-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "HER ENGAGEMENT WAS 'OFF.'"</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"I am confident you have done right, Amenda," said Ethelbertha;
+        "you would never have been happy with that man."</p>
+
+        <p>"No, mum, I don't think I ever should," replied Amenda. "I don't
+        see how any girl could as hadn't got the digestion of an
+        ostrich."</p>
+
+        <p>Ethelbertha looked puzzled. "But what has digestion got to do with
+        it?" she asked.</p>
+
+        <p>"A pretty good deal, mum," answered Amenda, "when you're thinking
+        of marrying a man as can't make a sausage fit to eat."</p>
+
+        <p>"But, surely," exclaimed Ethelbertha, "you don't mean to say
+        you're breaking off the match because you don't like his
+        sausages!"</p>
+
+        <p>"Well, I suppose that's what it comes to," agreed Amenda,
+        unconcernedly.</p>
+
+        <p>"What an awful idea!" sighed poor Ethelbertha, after a long pause.
+        "Do you think you ever really loved him?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh, yes," said Amenda, "I loved him right enough, but it's no
+        good loving a man that wants you to live on sausages that keep you
+        awake all night."</p>
+
+        <p>"But does he want you to live on sausages?" persisted
+        Ethelbertha.</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh, he doesn't say anything about it," explained Amenda; "but you
+        know what it is, mum, when you marry a pork butcher: you're expected
+        to eat what's left over. That's the mistake my poor cousin Eliza
+        made. She married a muffin man. Of course, what he didn't sell they
+        had to finish up themselves. Why, one winter, when he had a run of
+        bad luck, they lived for two months on nothing but muffins. I never
+        saw a girl so changed in all my life. One has to think of these
+        things, you know."</p>
+
+        <p>Later on, she engaged herself to a solicitor's messenger. She did
+        this&mdash;as she frankly avowed to Ethelbertha&mdash;to assist her
+        family, who were prosecuting some petty law case at the time. He was
+        a smart, steady man, a great favourite with his employers, and, out
+        of kindly feeling towards him, they did the business for Amenda's
+        father, charging only "out-of-pockets."</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/046-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/046-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "GAVE HER A COCOANUT."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>Six months after the case was ended, she broke off the match. She
+        said that, on reflection, she could not help seeing what an advantage
+        he would have over her&mdash;he being in a solicitor's office, with
+        the law at his fingers' ends&mdash;should she ever find it necessary
+        to summons him.</p>
+
+        <p>"But, my good girl," said Ethelbertha, quite distressed, "one
+        doesn't marry a man with the idea of subsequently summonsing
+        him!"</p>
+
+        <p>"No, mum," said Amenda, "one always hopes one will never need to,
+        I'm sure, but it's just as well to be prepared. I knew a girl, when I
+        was in service at Hastings, that loved a printer, and they were both
+        going to commit suicide because her parents didn't want 'em to marry;
+        and now he costs her four shillings a month regular in summonses.
+        It's no good shutting one's eyes to things, mum."</p>
+
+        <p>But the most shamefully mercenary engagement that I think Amenda
+        ever entered into was one with a 'bus conductor. We were living in
+        the North of London then, and she had a young man, a cheesemonger,
+        who kept a shop in Lupus Street, Chelsea. He could not come up to her
+        because of the shop, so once a week she used to go down to him. One
+        did not ride ten miles for a penny in those days, and she found the
+        fare from Holloway to Victoria and back a severe tax upon her purse.
+        The same 'bus that took her down at six brought her back at ten.
+        During the first journey the 'bus conductor stared at Amenda; during
+        the second he talked to her, during the third he gave her a cocoanut,
+        during the fourth he proposed to her, and was promptly accepted.
+        After that, Amenda was enabled to visit her cheesemonger without
+        expense.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/047-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/047-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "'I DESIRE SHARING CROSS.'"</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>He was a quaint character himself, was this 'bus conductor. I
+        often rode with him to Fleet Street. He knew me quite well (I suppose
+        Amenda must have pointed me out to him), and would always ask me
+        after her&mdash;aloud, before all the other passengers, which was
+        trying&mdash;and give me messages to take back to her. Where women
+        were concerned he had what is called "a way" with him, and from the
+        extent and variety of his female acquaintance, and the evident
+        tenderness with which the majority of them regarded him, I am
+        inclined to hope that Amenda's desertion of him (which happened
+        contemporaneously with her jilting of the cheesemonger) caused him
+        less prolonged suffering than might otherwise have been the case.</p>
+
+        <p>He was a man from whom I derived a good deal of amusement one way
+        and another. Thinking of him brings back to my mind a somewhat odd
+        incident.</p>
+
+        <p>One afternoon, I jumped upon his 'bus in the Seven Sisters Road.
+        An elderly Frenchman was the only other occupant of the vehicle. "You
+        vil not forget me," the Frenchman was saying as I entered, "I desire
+        Sharing Cross."</p>
+
+        <p>"I won't forget yer," answered the conductor, "you shall 'ave yer
+        Sharing Cross. Don't make a fuss about it."</p>
+
+        <p>"That's the third time 'ee's arst me not to forget 'im," he
+        remarked to me in a stentorian aside; "'ee don't giv' yer much chance
+        of doin' it, does 'ee?"</p>
+
+        <p>At the corner of the Holloway Road we drew up, and our conductor
+        began to shout after the manner of his species: "Charing
+        Cross&mdash;Charing Cross&mdash;'ere yer are&mdash;Come along,
+        lady&mdash;Charing Cross."</p>
+
+        <p>The little Frenchman jumped up, and prepared to exit; the
+        conductor pushed him back.</p>
+
+        <p>"Sit down and don't be silly," he said; "this ain't Charing
+        Cross."</p>
+
+        <p>The Frenchman looked puzzled, but collapsed meekly. We picked up a
+        few passengers, and proceeded on our way. Half a mile up the
+        Liverpool Road a lady stood on the kerb regarding us as we passed
+        with that pathetic mingling of desire and distrust which is the
+        average woman's attitude towards conveyances of all kinds. Our
+        conductor stopped.</p>
+
+        <p>"Where d'yer want to go to?" he asked her severely&mdash;omnibus
+        conductors have a manner of addressing all pedestrians as though they
+        were lost children or suspicious
+        loiterers&mdash;"Strand&mdash;Charing Cross?"</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/048-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/048-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "THE CONDUCTOR COLLARED HIM."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>The Frenchman did not hear or did not understand the first part of
+        the speech, but he caught the words "Charing Cross," and bounced up
+        and out on to the step. The conductor collared him as he was getting
+        off, and jerked him back savagely.</p>
+
+        <p>"Carnt yer keep still a minute," he cried indignantly; "blessed if
+        you don't want lookin' after like a bloomin' kid."</p>
+
+        <p>"I vont to be put down at Sharing Cross," answered the little
+        Frenchman, humbly.</p>
+
+        <p>"You vont to be put down at Sharing Cross," repeated the other
+        bitterly, as he led him back to his seat. "I shall put yer down in
+        the middle of the road if I 'ave much more of yer. You stop there
+        till I come and sling yer out. I ain't likely to let yer go much past
+        yer Sharing Cross, I shall be too jolly glad to get rid o' yer."</p>
+
+        <p>The poor Frenchman subsided, and we jolted on. At "The Angel" we,
+        of course, stopped. "Charing Cross," shouted the conductor, and up
+        sprang the Frenchman.</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh, my Gawd," said the conductor, taking him by the shoulders and
+        forcing him down into the corner seat, "wot am I to do? Carnt
+        somebody sit on 'im?"</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/049-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/049-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "'BLESSED IF I DIDN'T RUN HIM ON TO VICTORIA.'"</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>He held him firmly down until the 'bus started, and then released
+        him. At the top of Chancery Lane the same scene took place, and the
+        poor little Frenchman became exasperated.</p>
+
+        <p>"He keep on saying Sharing Cross, Sharing Cross," he exclaimed,
+        turning to the other passengers; "and it is <i>not</i> Sharing Cross.
+        He is fool."</p>
+
+        <p>"Carnt yer understand," retorted the conductor, equally indignant;
+        "of course I say Sharing Cross&mdash;I mean Charing Cross, but that
+        don't mean that it <i>is</i> Charing Cross. That means that&mdash;"
+        and then perceiving from the blank look in the Frenchman's face the
+        utter impossibility of ever making the matter clear to him, he turned
+        to us with an appealing gesture, and asked:</p>
+
+        <p>"Does any gentleman know the French for 'bloomin' idiot'?"</p>
+
+        <p>A day or two afterwards, I happened to enter his omnibus
+        again.</p>
+
+        <p>"Well," I asked him, "did you get your French friend to Charing
+        Cross all right?"</p>
+
+        <p>"No, sir," he replied, "you'll 'ardly believe it, but I 'ad a bit
+        of a row with a policeman just before I got to the corner, and it put
+        'im clean out o' my 'ead. Blessed if I didn't run 'im on to
+        Victoria."</p>
+
+        <h5>(<i>To be continued</i>.)</h5>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s4" name="i13s4"></a>THE SKATER.</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY WILLIAM CANTON.</h3>
+
+        <h4>ILLUSTRATED BY A. L. BOWLEY.</h4>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/050-1.jpg"><img width="100%" src=
+        "images/050-1.jpg" alt="" /></a></p>
+
+        <table class="poetry">
+            <tbody>
+                <tr>
+                    <td>&nbsp;&nbsp; O'er glassy levels of the mere<br />
+                    &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; She glides on slanting
+                    skate;<br />
+                    &nbsp;&nbsp; She loves in fairy curves to veer<br />
+                    &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And weave her figure
+                    eight.<br />
+                    Bright flower in fur, I would thy feet<br />
+                    Could weave my heart and thine, my sweet,<br />
+                    Thus into one glad life complete!<br />
+                    &nbsp;&nbsp; Harsh winter, rage thy rudest:<br />
+                    &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Freeze, freeze, thou churlish
+                    sky;<br />
+                    &nbsp;&nbsp; Blow, arctic wind, thy
+                    shrewdest&mdash;<br />
+                    &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What care my heart and
+                    I!<br /></td>
+                </tr>
+            </tbody>
+        </table>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s5" name="i13s5"></a>MY SERVANT ANDREAS.</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY ARCHIBALD FORBES.</h3>
+
+        <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS BY FREDERIC VILLIERS.</h4>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/051-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/051-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "ANDREAS."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>I think it quite likely that some of my young American friends,
+        about ten months ago, were burning to have an opportunity of
+        accompanying General Miles down the Pacific coast, and of describing
+        in glowing sentences to their countrymen at home how Uncle Sam's
+        young man turned to flight the Chilian insurrectionists, who were
+        breathing out threatening and slaughter against the great Northern
+        Republic. There is an undoubted fascination in the picturesque and
+        adventurous life of the war correspondent. One must, of course, have
+        a distinct bent for the avocation, and if he is to succeed he must
+        possess certain salient attributes. He must expose himself to rather
+        greater risks than fall to the lot of the average fighting man,
+        without enjoying any of the happiness of retaliation which stirs the
+        blood of the latter; the correspondent must sit quietly on his horse
+        in the fire, and, while watching every turn in the battle, must wear
+        the aspect as if he rather enjoyed the storm of missiles than
+        otherwise. When the fighting is over, the soldier, if not killed,
+        generally can eat and sleep; ere the echoes of it are silent, the
+        correspondent of energy&mdash;and if he has not energy he is not
+        worth his salt&mdash;must already be galloping his hardest towards
+        the nearest telegraph wire, which, as like as not, is a hundred miles
+        distant. He must "get there," by hook or by crook, in a minimum of
+        time; and as soon as his message is on the wires, he must be hurrying
+        back to the army, else he may chance to miss the great battle of the
+        war. The correspondent must be most things to all men; he must have
+        the sweet, angelic temper of a woman, be as affable as if he were
+        running for office, and at the same time be big and ugly enough to
+        impress the conviction that it would be extremely unwise to take any
+        liberties with him.</p>
+
+        <p>The career, no doubt, has some incidental drawbacks. No fewer than
+        five British correspondents were killed in the recent campaigns in
+        the Soudan. General Sherman threatened to hang all the correspondents
+        found in his camp after a certain day, and General Sherman was the
+        kind of man to fulfil any threat he made. I suppose there was no
+        correspondent taking part in the Franco-German and Russo-Turkish wars
+        who was not in custody over and over again on suspicion of being a
+        spy. I have been a prisoner myself in France, Spain, Servia, Germany,
+        Austria, Hungary, Russia, Roumania and Bulgaria; and I may perhaps
+        venture to remark in passing that I cannot recommend any of these
+        countries from this point of view. But the casual confinements, half
+        irritating, half comic, to which he may be subjected, do not bother
+        the war correspondent of the old world nearly as much as do the
+        foreign languages which, if he is not a good linguist, hamper him
+        every hour of every day. He really should possess the gift of
+        tongues&mdash;be conversant with all European languages, a neat
+        assortment of the Asiatic languages, and a few of the African
+        tongues, such as Abyssinian, Ashantee, Zulu, and Soudanese. But how
+        few in the nature of things can approximate this polyglot
+        versatility. Often in Eastern Europe, and in Afghanistan, I have
+        envied Messrs. Swinton, Smalley, Whitelaw Reed, and the other notable
+        war correspondents of the American Civil War, in that they had not
+        the difficulties of outlandish tongues to contend with. I own myself
+        to be a poor linguist, and have many and many a time suffered for my
+        dullness of what the Scotch call "up-take." It is true that I was
+        fairly conversant with French and German, and could express my wants
+        in Russian, Roumanian, Bulgarian, Spanish, Turkish, Hindustanee,
+        Pushtoo, and Burmese, every word of which smatterings I have long
+        since forgotten. But the truth is that the poorest peoples in the
+        world in acquiring foreign languages are the English and the French;
+        the readiest are the Russians and Americans. It was, after a fashion,
+        a liberal education to listen to the fluency in some half-dozen
+        languages of Poor McGahan, the "Ohio boy," who graduated from the
+        plough to be perhaps the most brilliant war correspondent of modern
+        times. His compatriot and colleague, Frank Millet, who has fallen
+        away from glory as a war correspondent, and has taken to the inferior
+        trade of painting, seemed to pick up a language by the mere accident
+        of finding himself on the soil where it was spoken. In the first
+        three days, after crossing the Danube into Bulgaria, Millet went
+        about with book in hand, gathering in the names of things at which he
+        pointed, and jotting down each acquisition in the book. On the fourth
+        day he could swear in Bulgarian, copiously, fervently, and with a
+        measure of intelligibility. Within a week he had conquered the
+        uncouth tongue. As he voyaged lately down the Danube from source to
+        mouth, charmingly describing the scenic panorama of the great river
+        in the pages of <i>Harper</i>, those of you who have read those
+        sketches will not have failed to notice how Millet talked to German,
+        Hungarian, Servian, Bulgarian, Roumanian, and Turkish, each in his
+        own tongue, those diverse languages having been acquired by him
+        during the few months of the Russo-Turkish war.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/053-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/053-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "MACGAHAN AND FRANK MILLET."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>By this time, you may be wondering just where "Andreas" comes in.
+        Perhaps I have been over long in getting to my specific subject; but
+        I will not be discursive any more. It was at the <i>table d'hote</i>
+        in the Serbische Krone Hotel, in Belgrade, where I first set eyes on
+        Andreas. In the year 1876, Servia had thought proper to throw off the
+        yoke of her Turkish suzerain, and to attempt to assert her
+        independence by force of arms. But for very irregularly paid tribute
+        she was virtually independent already, and probably in all Servia
+        there were not two hundred Turks. But she ambitiously desired to have
+        the name of as well as the actuality of being independent; the
+        Russians helped her with arms, officers, and volunteer soldiers; and
+        when I reached Belgrade, in May of the year named, there had already
+        been fighting, in which the Servians had by no means got the worst.
+        No word of the Servian tongue had I, and it was the reverse of
+        pleasant for a war correspondent in such plight to learn that outside
+        of Belgrade nobody, or at least hardly anybody, knew a word of any
+        other language than the native Servian. As I ate, I was being
+        attended by a very assiduous waiter, whose alertness and anxiety to
+        please were very conspicuous. He was smart with quite un-Oriental
+        smartness; he whisked about the tables with deftness; he spoke to me
+        in German, to the Russian officers over against me in what I assumed
+        was Russian, to the Servians dining behind me in what I took to be
+        Servian. I liked the look of the man; there was intelligence in his
+        aspect. One could not call him handsome, but there was character in
+        the keen black eye, the high features and the pronounced chin,
+        fringed on either side by bushy black whiskers.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/054-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/054-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "ANDREAS AS A FORAGER."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>I had brought no servant with me; the average British servant is
+        worse than useless in a foreign country, and the dubiously-polyglot
+        courier is a snare and a deception on campaign. I had my eye on
+        Andreas for a couple of days, during which he was of immense service
+        to me. He seemed to know and stand well with everyone in Belgrade; it
+        was he, indeed, who presented me in the restaurant to the Prime
+        Minister and the Minister for War, who got together for me my field
+        necessaries, who helped me to buy my horses, and who narrated to me
+        the progress of the campaign so far as it had gone. On the third day
+        I had him in my room and asked whether he would like to come with me
+        into the field as my servant. He accepted the offer with effusion; we
+        struck hands on the compact; he tendered me credentials which I
+        ascertained to be extremely satisfactory; and then he gave me a
+        little sketch of himself. It was somewhat mixed, as indeed was his
+        origin. Primarily he was a Servian, but his maternal grandmother had
+        been a Bosniak, an earlier ancestress had been in a Turkish harem,
+        there was a strain in his blood of the Hungarian zinganee&mdash;the
+        gipsy of Eastern Europe, and one could not look at his profile
+        without a suspicion that there was a Jewish element in his pedigree.
+        "A pure mongrel," was what a gentleman of the British Legation termed
+        Andreas, and this self-contradictory epithet was scarcely out of
+        place.</p>
+
+        <p>Andreas turned out well. He was as hardy as a hill-goat, careless
+        how and when he ate, or where he slept, which, indeed, was mostly in
+        the open. It seemed to me that he had cousins all over Servia,
+        chiefly of the female persuasion, and I am morally certain that the
+        Turkish strain in his blood had in Andreas its natural development in
+        a species of <i>fin-de-si&egrave;cle</i> polygamy. Sherman's prize
+        "bummer" was not in it with Andreas as a forager. At first, indeed, I
+        suspected him of actual plundering, so copiously did he bring in
+        supplies, and so little had I to pay for them; but I was not long in
+        discovering that all kinds of produce were dirt cheap in Servia, and
+        that as I could myself buy a lamb for a quarter, it was not
+        surprising that Andreas, to the manner born, could easily obtain one
+        for half the money. He was an excellent horsemaster, and the stern
+        vigour with which he chastised the occasional neglect of the cousin
+        whom he had brought into my service as groom, was borne in upon me by
+        the frequent howls which were audible from the rear of my tent. There
+        was not a road in all Servia with whose every winding Andreas was not
+        conversant, and this "extensive and peculiar" knowledge of his was
+        often of great service to me. He was a light-weight and an excellent
+        rider; I have sent him off to Belgrade with a telegram at dusk, and
+        he was back again by breakfast time next morning, after a gallop of
+        quite a hundred miles.</p>
+
+        <p>No exertion fatigued him; I never saw the man out of humour; there
+        was but one matter in regard to which I ever had to chide him, and in
+        that I had perforce to let him have his own way, because I do not
+        believe that he could restrain himself. He had served the term in the
+        army which is, or was then, obligatory on all Servians; and on the
+        road or in camp he was rather more of a "peace at any price" man than
+        ever was the late Mr. John Bright himself. When the first fight
+        occurred, Andreas claimed to be allowed to witness it along with me.
+        I demurred; he might get hit; and if anything should happen to him,
+        what should I do for a servant? At length I gave him the firm order
+        to remain in camp, and started myself with the groom behind me on my
+        second horse. The fighting occurred eight miles from camp, and in the
+        course of it, leaving the groom in the rear, I had accompanied the
+        Russian General Dochtouroff into a most unpleasantly hot place, where
+        a storm of Turkish shells were falling in the effort to hinder the
+        withdrawal of a disabled Servian battery. I happened to glance over
+        my shoulder, and lo! Andreas on foot was at my horse's tail,
+        obviously in a state of ecstatic enjoyment of the situation. I
+        peremptorily ordered him back, and he departed sullenly, calmly
+        strolling along the line of Turkish fire. Just then, Tchernaieff, the
+        Servian Commander-in-Chief, had, it seemed, ordered a detachment of
+        infantry to take in flank the Turkish guns. From where we stood I
+        could discern the Servian soldiers hurrying forward close under the
+        fringe of a wood near the line of retirement along which Andreas was
+        sulking. Andreas saw them too, and retreated no step further, but cut
+        across to them, snatching up a gun as he ran, and the last I saw of
+        him was while he was waving on the militiamen with his billycock, and
+        loosing off an occasional bullet, while he emitted yells of defiance
+        against the Turks, which might well have struck terror into their
+        very marrow. Andreas came into camp at night very streaky with powder
+        stains, minus the lobe of one ear, uneasy as he caught my eye, yet
+        with a certain elateness of mien. I sacked him that night, and he
+        said he didn't care, and that he was not ashamed of himself. Next
+        morning, as I was rising, he rushed into the tent, knelt down,
+        clasped my knees, and bedewed my ankles with his tears. Of course I
+        reinstated him; I couldn't do without him, and I think he knew
+        it.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/056-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/056-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "SNATCHING UP A GUN AS HE RAN."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>But I had yielded too easily. Andreas had established a precedent.
+        He insisted, in a quiet, positive manner, on accompanying me to every
+        subsequent battle; and I had to consent, always taking his pledge
+        that he would obey the injunctions I might lay upon him. And, as a
+        matter of course, he punctually and invariably violated that pledge
+        when the crisis of the fighting was drawing to a head, and just when
+        this "peace at any price" man could not control the bloodthirst that
+        was parching him.</p>
+
+        <p>One never knows how events are to fall out. It happened that this
+        resolution on the part of Andreas to accompany me into the fights
+        once assuredly saved my life. It was on the day of Djunis, the last
+        battle fought by the Servians. In the early part of the day there was
+        a good deal of scattered woodland fighting in front of the entrenched
+        line, which they abandoned when the Turks came on in earnest. Andreas
+        and I were among the trees trying to find a position from which
+        something was to be seen, when all of a sudden I, who was in advance,
+        plumped right into the centre of a small scouting party of Turks.
+        They tore me out of the saddle, and I had given myself up for
+        lost&mdash;for the Turks took no prisoners, their cheerful practice
+        being to slaughter first and then abominably to mutilate&mdash;when
+        suddenly Andreas dashed in among my captors, shouting aloud in a
+        language which I took to be Turkish, since he bellowed "Effendi" as
+        he pointed to me. He had thrown away his billycock and substituted a
+        fez, which he afterwards told me he always carried in case of
+        accidents, and in one hand he waved a dingy piece of parchment with a
+        seal dangling from it, which I assumed was some obsolete firman. The
+        result was truly amazing, and the scene had some real humour in it.
+        With profound salaams, the Turks unhanded me, helped me to mount,
+        and, as I rode off at a tangent with Andreas at my horse's head,
+        called after me what sounded like friendly farewells. When we were
+        back among the Russians&mdash;I don't remember seeing much of the
+        Servians later on that day&mdash;Andreas explained that he had passed
+        himself for the Turkish dragoman of a British correspondent whom the
+        Padishah delighted to honour, and that, after expressing a burning
+        desire to defile the graves of their collective female ancestry, he
+        had assured my captors that they might count themselves as dead men
+        if they did not immediately release me. To his ready-witted conduct I
+        undoubtedly owe the ability to write now this record of a man of
+        curiously complicated nature.</p>
+
+        <p>When the campaign ended with the Servian defeat at Djunis, Andreas
+        went back to his headwaitership at the Serbische Krone in Belgrade.
+        Before leaving that capital I had the honour of being present at his
+        nuptials, a ceremony the amenity of which was somewhat disturbed by
+        the violent incursion into the sacred edifice of sundry ladies all
+        claiming to have prior claims on the bridegroom of the hour. They
+        were, however, placated, and subsequently joined the marriage feast
+        in the great arbour behind the Krone. Andreas faithfully promised to
+        come to me to the ends of the earth on receipt of a telegram, if I
+        should require his services, and he were alive.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/058-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/058-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "ANDREAS DASHED IN AMONG MY CAPTORS."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>Next spring the Russo-Turkish war broke out, and I hurried
+        eastward in time to see the first Cossack cross the Pruth. I had
+        telegraphed to Andreas from England to meet me at Bazias on the
+        Danube below Belgrade. Bazias is the place where the railway used to
+        end, and where we took steamer for the Lower Danube. Andreas was duly
+        on hand, ready and serviceable as of old, a little fatter, and a
+        trifle more consequential than when we had last parted. He was, if
+        possible, rather more at home in Bucharest than he had been in
+        Belgrade, and recommended me to Brofft's Hotel, in comparison with
+        which the charges of the Brunswick in New York are infinitesimal. He
+        bought my wagon and team, he found riding horses when they were said
+        to be unprocurable, he constructed a most ingenious tent, of which
+        the wagon was, so to speak, the roof-tree, he laid in stores,
+        arranged for relays of couriers, and furnished me with a coachman in
+        the person of a Roumanian Jew who he one day owned was a distant
+        connection, and whose leading attribute was, that he could survive
+        more sleep than any other human being I have ever known. We took the
+        field auspiciously, Mr. Frederic Villiers, the war artist of the
+        London <i>Graphic</i>, being my campaigning comrade. Thus early I
+        discerned a slight rift in the lute. Andreas did not like Villiers,
+        which showed his bad taste, or rather, perhaps, the narrowness of his
+        capacity of affection; and I fear Villiers did not much like Andreas,
+        whom he thought too familiar. This was true, and it was my fault; but
+        really it was with difficulty that I could bring myself to treat
+        Andreas as a servant. He was more, in my estimation, in the nature of
+        the confidential major-domo, and to me he was simply invaluable.
+        Villiers had to chew his moustache, and glower discontentedly at
+        Andreas.</p>
+
+        <p>I had some good couriers for the conveyance of despatches back
+        across the Danube to Bucharest, whence everything was telegraphed to
+        London; but they were essentially fair-weather men. The casual
+        courier may be alert, loyal, and trustworthy; he may be relied on to
+        try his honest best, but it is not to be expected of him that he will
+        greatly dare and count his life but as dross when his incentive to
+        enterprise is merely filthy lucre. But I could trust Andreas to dare
+        and to endure&mdash;to overcome obstacles, and, if man could, to "get
+        there," where, in the base-quarters in Bucharest, the amanuenses were
+        waiting to copy out in round hand for the foreign telegraphist the
+        rapid script of the correspondent scribbling for life in the saddle
+        or the cleft of a commanding tree while the shells were whistling
+        past. We missed him dreadfully when he was gone&mdash;even Villiers,
+        who liked good cooking, owned to thinking long for his return. For,
+        in addition to his other virtues, Andreas was a capital cook. It is
+        true that his courses had a habit of arriving at long and uncertain
+        intervals. After a dish of pungent stew, no other viands appearing to
+        loom in the near future, Villiers and myself would betake ourselves
+        to smoking, and perhaps on a quiet day would lapse into slumber. From
+        this we would be aroused by Andreas to partake of a second course of
+        roast chicken, the bird having been alive and unconscious of its
+        impending fate when the first course had been served. No man is
+        perfect, and as regarded Andreas there were some petty spots on the
+        sun. He had, for instance, a mania for the purchase of irrelevant
+        poultry, and for accommodating the fowls in our wagon, tied by the
+        legs, against the day of starvation, which he always, but
+        causelessly, apprehended. I do not suppose any reader has ever had
+        any experience of domestic poultry as bedfellows, and I may caution
+        him earnestly against making any such experiment.</p>
+
+        <p>I do not know whether it is a detraction from Andreas's worth to
+        mention that another characteristic of his was the habit of awaking
+        us in the still watches of the night, for the purpose of imparting
+        his views on recondite phases of the great Eastern question. But how
+        trivial were such peccadilloes in a man who was so resolute not to be
+        beaten in getting my despatch to the telegraph wire, that once, when
+        three pontoons of the bridge across the Danube were sunk, he crossed
+        the gap hand over hand by the hand-rope, sloshing down with the
+        current as the slack of the rope gave to his weight! Andreas became
+        quite an institution in the Russian camp. When Ignatieff, the Tsar's
+        intimate, the great diplomatist who has now curiously fizzled out,
+        would honour us by partaking sometimes of afternoon tea in our tent,
+        he would call Andreas by his name and call him "Molodetz"&mdash;the
+        Russian for "brave fellow." In the Servian campaign Dochtouroff had
+        got him the Takova cross, which Andreas sported with great pride, and
+        Ignatieff used to tell him that the Tsar was seriously thinking of
+        conferring on him the Cross of St. George, badinage which Andreas
+        took as dead earnest. MacGahan used gravely to entreat him to take
+        greater care of his invaluable life, and hint that if any calamity
+        occurred to him, the campaign would <i>ipso facto</i> come to an end.
+        Andreas knew that MacGahan was quizzing him, but it was exceedingly
+        droll how he purred and bridled under the light touch of that genial
+        humourist, whose merits his own countrymen, to my thinking, have
+        never adequately recognised. The old story of a prophet having scant
+        honour in his own country.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/060-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/060-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "CROSSED THE GAP HAND OVER HAND."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>After the long strain of the desperate but futile attack made by
+        the Russians on Plevna in the early part of the September of the war,
+        I fell a victim to the malarial fever of the Lower Danube, and had to
+        be invalided back to Bucharest. The illness grew upon me, and my
+        condition became very serious. Worthy Andreas nursed me with great
+        tenderness and assiduity in the lodgings to which I had been brought,
+        since they would not accept a fever patient at Brofft's. After some
+        days of wretchedness I became delirious, and, of course, lost
+        consciousness; my last recollection was of Andreas wetting my parched
+        lips with lemonade. When I recovered my senses, and looked out
+        feebly, there was nobody in the room. How long I had been unconscious
+        I had no idea. I lay there in a half stupor till evening, unable from
+        weakness to summon any assistance. In the dusk came the English
+        doctor who had been attending me. "Where is Andreas?" he asked. I
+        could not tell him. "He was here last night," he said; "you have been
+        delirious for seven days." The woman of the house was summoned. She
+        had not seen Andreas since the previous night, but, busy about her
+        own domestic affairs, had no suspicion until she entered the room
+        that Andreas was not with me still.</p>
+
+        <p>Andreas never returned. It appeared that he had taken away all his
+        belongings. One day, when gradually mending, I put my hand under the
+        pillow with intent to find my watch, which was an heirloom, and wind
+        it up. I could find no watch. No more could I find the bag of ducats
+        which was alongside the watch before I lost my senses. Search was
+        made throughout the room without success, and, with whatever
+        reluctance to believe a thing so utterly unlikely, I could not
+        refrain from the conviction that Andreas must have carried off both
+        money and watch. The thought caused a relapse, but at length I
+        attained convalescence, and was able to drive out. But the doctor was
+        firm that during the now imminent winter I was not to return to the
+        field. Fortunately, my able colleagues, MacGahan and Millet, were
+        there; and I was therefore the less distressed by Dr.
+        &mdash;&mdash;'s peremptory sentence on me. I was condemned to return
+        to England as soon as I should be strong enough to travel.</p>
+
+        <p>When I had to leave the Plevna front, my colleagues temporarily
+        took charge of my field equipment. But I had brought back to
+        Bucharest my best riding horse, and during my illness he had been
+        standing at livery in the stables of the English Tramway Company.
+        Determining now on the melancholy necessity of selling an animal
+        which had on many a hard day and many a long night-ride served me
+        staunchly, I drove to the stables, and instructed the manager to sell
+        my horse. "Your horse!" he exclaimed, in evident surprise; "your
+        horse was sold weeks ago! Your man, Andreas, came here with a message
+        that we were to dispose of it; and I sold it next day to General
+        Todleben on his way through Bucharest to take the command before
+        Plevna. It fetched a good price, 105 ducats, more than you gave for
+        it; Andreas called for the money, and, of course, I gave it to
+        him."</p>
+
+        <p>So Andreas was thief and rogue&mdash;deliberate thief and rogue. I
+        was angry, but I was yet more heart-sorry that so fine and true a
+        native should have thus fallen. Just as I was leaving Bucharest for
+        England, a letter came to me from a friend in Galatz, a commercial
+        city of Roumania, near the mouth of the Danube. Its P.S. only is
+        worth quoting. "So you have parted with your man, Andreas. I thought
+        from what you had told me that you would retain him for life. He is
+        here now, I saw him drunk in the street yesterday. He told Kennedy
+        that he believed you were dead."</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/062-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/062-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "ANDREAS DROPPED ON HIS KNEES."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>I went straight to Galatz, a long half-day's journey. Andreas was
+        not hard to find; he was smoking in the "Concordia" saloon. I saw him
+        before he saw me; he had a furtive air, he was pallid and his lips
+        twitched; he looked to me on the verge of <i>delirium tremens</i>. I
+        approached him from behind, and uttered the one word, "Andreas!" At
+        the word, he started as if he had been shot, spun round, dropped on
+        his knees, with his hands raised beseechingly, and cried in a broken
+        voice, "Before God, master, I thought you were dead, else I should
+        never have done it! I have not had a happy moment since I threw away
+        my good name&mdash;I could not go home! Kill me, send me to prison,
+        punish me how you choose. I shall rejoice to suffer!" And the poor
+        wretch grovelled before me on his stomach.</p>
+
+        <p>I had meant to punish him; but he was too broken for chastisement.
+        I could not send to prison the man who had saved my life among the
+        pine-trees of Djunis. I wonder if he really thought me dead&mdash;not
+        that, if so, his act was thereby materially palliated. And I thought
+        of two little sentences which my mother taught me when I was a child:
+        "Judge not that ye be not judged," and "Lead us not into temptation."
+        I pulled the man on to his feet and grasped his hand, then with the
+        words, "Give me my father's watch&mdash;good-bye, Andreas. I shall
+        remember all the good in you, and forget those last bad days." I
+        turned from him, and quitted the "Concordia" with a lump in my throat
+        that I could not swallow down.</p>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s6" name="i13s6"></a>TOLD BY THE COLONEL.</h2>
+
+        <h3>X.</h3>
+
+        <h2>A MATRIMONIAL ROMANCE.</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY W. L. ALDEN.</h3>
+
+        <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS BY R. JACK.</h4>
+
+        <p>"And by the way," continued the Colonel, "a curious thing about
+        this Josiah Wilson was that he was married for fifteen years and
+        never had any wife whatever."</p>
+
+        <p>The Colonel had begun a story concerning one Josiah Wilson, which
+        promised to be interesting, but his incidental allusion to Mr.
+        Wilson's matrimonial experience awakened our curiosity, and we begged
+        him to interrupt his narrative long enough to tell us how it came to
+        pass that Josiah was a married man who never had a wife.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/063-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/063-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "HOWLED FOR HELP."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"The marriage laws in the United States," said the Colonel, giving
+        his chair an increased tilt backwards, which was his usual way of
+        beginning a fresh anecdote, "are as peculiar in their way as are the
+        divorce laws. You would think to look at them that they would permit
+        anybody to marry anybody else in any way that either of them might
+        choose, but for all that they sometimes make it impossible for a man
+        or a woman to get married. There was a couple who intended to be
+        married in a balloon, which is a style of lunacy that is quite
+        fashionable in some parts of the country, though I can't see why a
+        man should want to risk his neck in a balloon on his wedding day
+        unless it is that it takes so much courage to be married at all that
+        a man forgets all about such minor dangers as are connected with
+        ballooning. The bride, the minister, and two witnesses of assorted
+        sexes went up in the balloon at the appointed time, and, naturally,
+        the bridegroom intended to go with them, but he accidentally caught
+        his foot in a neglected guy-rope, and went up head downwards about
+        twenty feet below the car. The party in the balloon could not haul
+        him up because they could not get hold of the rope, and the bride
+        would not consent to give up the trip, because the groom had always
+        been a little shy, and she was afraid that, if she let him go this
+        time, she might not be able to land him again. So the parson went on
+        with the ceremony, and the groom made most of his responses in bad
+        language, and howled for help when he wasn't swearing. When the
+        ceremony was over, the aeronaut managed to land the balloon without
+        seriously damaging the bridegroom, but when, a year or two
+        afterwards, the bride wanted to get her divorce, the court held that
+        there had never been any marriage, for the reason that both the groom
+        and the bride had not appeared together in the presence of the
+        officiating minister, and that, furthermore, there was no provision
+        in the law which would permit a man to be married upside down.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/064-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/064-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "SMITH'S BULL-DOG."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"But to get back to Josiah Wilson. He lived in Indiana, close to
+        the boundary line between that State and Illinois, and he courted
+        Melinda Smith, a young woman who lived a little way up the mountain
+        side with her father and three brothers. The girl was anxious to be
+        married, but her family was dead against it. You see Josiah was a
+        Republican and a Methodist, while the Smiths were Democrats and
+        Baptists, and, naturally, they hated each other like poison, and one
+        night as old man Smith and Josiah met on their way to rival prayer
+        meetings, they exchanged revolver shots, without, however, doing any
+        harm. Then once Josiah had most of the calf of his leg taken off by
+        the Smiths' bull-dog, and twice the Smith boys came into the
+        sitting-room where Josiah was calling on Melinda, and suggested to
+        him with their shot-guns that he had better go home. Gradually Josiah
+        and Melinda came to the conclusion that her family was resolved to
+        discourage the match, so they determined to elope and be married
+        without the knowledge or consent of anybody.</p>
+
+        <p>"One dark night Josiah carried a ladder and planted it under
+        Melinda's window. He had advised her to walk out of the front door,
+        which was always left unlocked at night, but she refused, saying that
+        if she was going to elope she should do it in the proper way, and
+        that if Josiah had no respect for her, she had some little respect
+        for herself. She climbed down the ladder with a good deal of
+        difficulty, because she insisted that Josiah should help her, and
+        also that he should stand forty yards away, for reasons connected
+        with her ankles, and he found it rather trying to follow out these
+        contradictory orders. However, Melinda reached the ground at last,
+        and the pair started in a carriage that had been waiting just around
+        a bend in the road, in company with the Methodist minister. Their
+        plan was to drive to the next town and there to be married, but it
+        happened that one of the Smith boys, being restless, got up in the
+        night, and, looking out of the window, saw the ladder standing at
+        Melinda's window. In about twenty minutes after the young people had
+        started, the whole Smith family and their shot-guns were following
+        the runaways in a waggon, and gaining on them fast.</p>
+
+        <p>"The Methodist minister, whose hearing was unusually good, heard
+        the sound of hoofs before Josiah noticed it, and told the young
+        people that there was not the least doubt that they were pursued, and
+        would be overtaken in a very few minutes. 'And then, you know,' he
+        added, 'the chances are that, being Baptists, they will shoot first,
+        and ask for explanations afterwards. The only thing for us to do is
+        to get the marriage ceremony over before they come up. Then they will
+        see that opposition is of no use, and will listen to reason.'</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/065-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/065-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "THEY WERE MARRIED."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"Josiah and Melinda at once consented, and the parson, noticing a
+        little clearing in the woods on the left hand side of the road, and a
+        flat sort of tombstone standing in the middle of it, said that he
+        would stand on that stone and marry his young friends so quick that
+        it would make their hair curl. He was particularly glad to meet with
+        a handy tombstone, for he said that a tombstone was the next thing to
+        a church, and that to be married by the side of a tomb would be
+        almost as solemn as to be married in a minister's study. So the party
+        hastily descended; the parson mounted the stone; Josiah and Melinda
+        joined hands in front of him, and they were married, and the parson
+        had kissed the bride and pocketed his fee just as the Smiths' waggon
+        drove up and the Smith boys cocked their guns and covered the party.
+        But the parson was wide awake. He had his revolver out and old man
+        Smith covered before anybody had taken aim at him, but, instead of
+        shooting, he remarked that he was a minister of the blessed gospel of
+        peace; that there was no necessity for bloodshed, and that he would
+        blow a hole through old Smith unless the Smith boys lowered their
+        weapons and consented to argue the matter. 'The fact is, Colonel
+        Smith,' said the parson, 'you're too late. The young people are
+        legally married, and the sooner you accept the situation the better.
+        I married them not two minutes ago, standing on that identical
+        tombstone.'</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/066-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/066-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "'YOU'LL COME STRAIGHT HOME WITH ME.'"</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"Colonel Smith was a lawyer, and the sharpest one in that part of
+        the country. He saw the force of the minister's remarks, so he told
+        the boys to put up their guns, and he shook hands with the minister.
+        Then he inquired, in a careless sort of way, where Josiah and Melinda
+        had stood while they were being married. The parson showed the
+        footprints of the bride and groom, and then Colonel Smith turned to
+        Melinda and said, 'You'll come straight home with me. There hasn't
+        been any marriage yet. That stone is the boundary mark between
+        Indiana and Illinois, and you were standing in Indiana and that other
+        idiot was standing in Illinois when the parson tried to marry you.
+        Nobody can marry in two States at the same time, and I shan't
+        recognise the pretended marriage till a court of law compels me to do
+        so, which will be never. I hope this will teach you the folly of
+        fooling with Methodism. When you want to get married next time try a
+        Baptist minister, who will know the difference between a tombstone
+        and a boundary mark.' There were too many Smiths, and they were too
+        well armed to be reasoned with successfully, so the upshot was that
+        Melinda went home with her family, and Josiah and the parson went to
+        see a lawyer.</p>
+
+        <p>"The next day Josiah brought a suit for divorce against Melinda.
+        It was a friendly suit, you understand, and his only object was to
+        test the question of the validity of his marriage, for, of course, no
+        man can get a divorce unless he first proves that he is married. Old
+        man Smith conducted the case on his side, and a lawyer named
+        Starkweather, who is now a member of the Illinois Legislature,
+        appeared for Josiah Wilson. Colonel Smith argued that while the
+        parson who conducted the alleged marriage ceremony could undoubtedly
+        have married a couple in the State of Indiana, he could not marry a
+        woman in Indiana to a man in Illinois, for the reason that the man
+        and the woman could not be in the same place while they were in two
+        different commonwealths, and that hence Josiah and Melinda had not
+        legally appeared together before the officiating minister.
+        Furthermore, he argued that the minister at the time of the pretended
+        marriage was standing neither in Indiana nor in Illinois, but on the
+        boundary line; that the statute defined the boundary line as 'an
+        imaginary line' running from such and such a point to such and such a
+        point, and that a minister who stands in a purely imaginative
+        locality stands virtually nowhere, and hence cannot perform any
+        function of his calling.</p>
+
+        <p>"On the other hand, Josiah's lawyer claimed that the minister had
+        married Melinda Smith in the State of Indiana; that consequently she
+        must have been married to somebody, and that that somebody was
+        unquestionably Josiah Wilson. As to the point that the minister stood
+        in an imaginary locality because, as was alleged, he stood on the
+        boundary line, the lawyer maintained that it was a physical
+        impossibility that a minister weighing two hundred and fifty pounds
+        could stand in a purely imaginative place. Moreover, he was prepared
+        to prove that, while performing the ceremony, at least one of the
+        minister's feet was in the State of Indiana, which was sufficient to
+        make him legally present in that State.</p>
+
+        <p>"The arguments lasted three days, and the court before which it
+        was tried, consisting of three judges, took all the third day to
+        deliver its verdict. It decided that Melinda Smith was legally
+        married to some person unknown, though not to Josiah Wilson, and that
+        Josiah Wilson was also married to some unknown woman, who was not
+        Melinda Smith, whoever else she might be; that no marriage between
+        the plaintiff and the defendant had ever taken place, and that no
+        divorce could be granted, but that if either of them married anyone
+        else, he or she would be guilty of bigamy.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/068-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/068-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "SHE WAS A GOOD DEAL CAST DOWN."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"The Smiths, with the exception of Melinda, were delighted with
+        the decision, for it made it reasonably certain that Josiah could
+        never be recognised as her husband. She was a good deal cast down
+        about it, for, like every other Indiana girl, she had looked forward
+        to being married and divorced as the natural lot of woman. Now it
+        appeared that she was married, but in such an unsatisfactory way,
+        that she could never have a husband, and never be divorced from
+        anyone. As for Josiah, he was furious, but there was no help for it,
+        the law was against him, and, as a law-abiding man, he was obliged to
+        respect it, especially as he could not hope to kill off all four of
+        the Smiths, if he decided to make a family feud of it; he himself
+        having no family whatever, and no one to help him to keep up his end
+        of the feud.</p>
+
+        <p>"For the next fifteen years Josiah lived a single man except in
+        name, and Melinda mourned her hard fate and kept house for her father
+        and brothers; but one day Josiah's lawyer, who was by this time in
+        the Legislature, came to him and offered to have his marriage to
+        Melinda made legal in all respects for five hundred dollars. The
+        lawyer was so certain that he could do this that he was willing to
+        wait for his pay until after he had gained a verdict, and Josiah,
+        after a little bargaining such as every self-respecting man would
+        have made, in his place, consented to the lawyer's terms. It seems
+        that the lawyer had accidentally discovered that there had been a
+        mistake in the survey of part of the boundary line between Indiana
+        and Illinois, and at the very place where Josiah and Melinda were
+        married, A rectification of this mistake would move the line ten feet
+        west, and so place the spot where the pair stood during their wedding
+        entirely within the state of Indiana. The proper steps to obtain the
+        rectification of the boundary were taken, and it was rectified. Then
+        Melinda in her turn began a suit for divorce against Josiah, and had
+        no difficulty in proving the marriage and in obtaining a decree.
+        Josiah paid the lawyer his five hundred dollars, and was overjoyed at
+        being finally able to call his Melinda his own. But he met with a
+        little disappointment. Now that Melinda had obtained her divorce she
+        thought she might as well live up to it, and marry a fresh husband.
+        So she married the Methodist minister, who had just lost his third
+        wife, and lived happily ever afterwards.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure" style="clear:both;"><a href=
+        "images/069-1.jpg"><img src="images/069-1.jpg" width="80%" alt=
+        "" /></a><br />
+        "OFFERED TO HAVE HIS MARRIAGE MADE LEGAL."</p>
+
+        <p>"It was just after this that Josiah, being perhaps made a little
+        reckless by his disappointment, became involved in the affair that I
+        was going to tell you about when you interrupted me, and wanted to
+        hear about his marriage. Matrimony is a mighty curious thing, and you
+        can never tell precisely how it is going to turn out. That is one
+        reason why I was never married but once, though I spent ten years of
+        my life in Chicago, and had friends at bar who stood ready to obtain
+        divorces for me at any moment and without a dollar of expense."</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/070-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/070-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        IDLERS.</p>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s7" name="i13s7"></a>"LIONS IN THEIR DENS."</h2>
+
+        <h2>No. II.&mdash;GEORGE GROSSMITH AND THE HUMOUR OF HIM.</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY RAYMOND BLATHWAYT.</h3>
+
+        <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEO. HUTCHINSON.</h4>
+
+        <h4>(<i>Photographs by Messrs. Fraddle and Young and Alfred
+        Ellis.</i>)</h4>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/071-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/071-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        MR. GEORGE GROSSMITH.</p>
+
+        <p>A little, slight man, with a thin, clever, mobile, clean-shaven
+        face, a sharp inquisitive nose surmounted by a perpetual pair of
+        <i>pince-nez</i>, and a rather sarcastic mouth, from which wit and
+        humour as light and airy as the cigarette smoke which accompanied
+        each remark continually flowed.</p>
+
+        <p>Mr. George Grossmith, the well-known actor and society clown.</p>
+
+        <p>He stands on the hearthrug of his own special sanctum in his
+        handsome house in Dorset Square, with his back to the fire, cigarette
+        in his mouth, his hands now in his pockets, now waving in the air, as
+        he vivaciously tells me the story of his busy, energetic and
+        wonderfully interesting life.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/072-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/072-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            MRS. GEORGE GROSSMITH.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"I was born," said he, "in 1847. I come of a family of actors and
+        reciters. My father, whose portrait you see there on the wall, was a
+        well-known lecturer and entertainer. Sixty or seventy years ago my
+        uncle created a great sensation as a child actor, and he was commonly
+        known as the 'celebrated infant Roscius.' Come out into the hall,"
+        continued the lively little entertainer, "and I will show you some
+        old engravings which represent him in his favourite characters. Then
+        my brother Weedon, as you know, is, of course, a well-known actor, as
+        well as a clever artist, and part author with myself of several
+        sketches which have appeared in <i>Punch</i>. My eldest son now
+        begins to display the family tendency to a most alarming extent. For
+        my own part, I started my career as a reporter at Bow Street Police
+        Court, a training which I have found invaluable in many respects ever
+        since. My subsequent history as actor and society clown is so well
+        known that I need not trouble you with it any further."</p>
+
+        <p>"I suppose you find the taste of your audiences has gone up
+        considerably within the last twenty years, do you not?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Why, yes," he replied. "They wouldn't stand to-day what they used
+        to roar at then. My music is quite elaborate compared with the two or
+        three chords which easily satisfied people in the sixties and early
+        seventies. Listen to this," continued my host, as he sat down to the
+        <i>piano</i> and struck a couple of very simple chords. Then he
+        glided softly into what he termed a modern accompaniment. It was all
+        the difference between "Ten Little Niggers" and a slumber song of
+        Schubert.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/073-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/073-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            MR. GROSSMITH'S HOUSE.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"And do you find the public very critical?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Well," he replied, with a smile, "they are very kind. It is your
+        professional critic who is severe, though I can honestly say they
+        invariably treat me well. Criticism up to a certain point is good
+        enough. Beyond that point it is absolutely disabling to me. My father
+        was a very severe critic. When we went out together he used to take
+        the first half-hour, and then go to the back of the hall and
+        criticise me. But it so hampered me by causing me to think of and
+        consider every pose that I had to beg of him to desist. And then
+        again, as regards criticism, I always think&mdash;it may be very
+        conceited on my part&mdash;that I know a great deal more what the
+        public want than my critics do. I declare to you I should have to
+        take everything out of my sketches if I attempted to carry out all
+        the suggestions that are made to me. I can absolutely feel the public
+        pulse after so many years upon the platform. I am almost always
+        right. When I first started 'See me Dance the Polka' it fell quite
+        flat. I gave it up, although I felt sure it ought to go. The public
+        then demanded it, and it went with a swing. The public had changed
+        its mind. Not I."</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/074-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/074-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            THE DINING ROOM.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"And how do you prepare your sketches?" said I, as Mr. Grossmith
+        lit another cigarette, and took up his position on the hearthrug
+        again.</p>
+
+        <p>"Anyhow and anywhere the idea comes to me for a sketch. I am
+        seated in a railway train, and I think of a sea-side sketch. I close
+        my eyes and try to recall every single feature of interest on a
+        crowded fashionable beach in the height of the season. Nothing is too
+        unimportant. The way in which an old lady settles herself comfortably
+        into her chair, the manner in which a man, especially a shy man,
+        walks into the room, all these things, slightly exaggerated, but
+        still true to nature, are immensely appreciated. First I have the
+        idea, then I elaborate, sometimes for months, then I produce on the
+        stage, and the people say, 'How remarkable it is you should invent
+        all this on the spur of the moment!' That, of course, is a great
+        compliment. The song-writing is always amusing," continued Mr.
+        Grossmith, as he placed in my hand a little notebook in which were
+        suggestions and elaborations innumerable. One thing I noticed, which
+        he himself had condemned, but which was decidedly amusing, although
+        it has never been allowed to see the light of day:</p>
+
+        <p class="figure" style="clear:both;"><a href=
+        "images/075-1.jpg"><img src="images/075-1.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+        "" /></a><br />
+        THE DRAWING-ROOM.</p>
+
+        <table class="poetry">
+            <tbody>
+                <tr>
+                    <td>"I've been engaged to many,<br />
+                    Quite a score of times at least;<br />
+                    I don't think I with safety <i>can say</i><br />
+                    Where I met my first <i>fianc&eacute;e</i>.<br />
+                    Oh! 'tis better to have loved and lost<br />
+                    Than never to have loved at all;<br />
+                    So I may say I have loved and <i>lost a lot</i>,<br />
+                    And my fickleness has <i>cost a lot</i>."<br /></td>
+                </tr>
+            </tbody>
+        </table>
+
+        <p>"Ah!" said Mr. Grossmith, as he leaned over me and saw what I was
+        reading; "my better judgment told me that was not good enough for the
+        public."</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:20%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/076-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/076-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a></p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/076-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/076-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "I ENCOURAGE HIM."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/076-3.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/076-3.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "I ATTEMPT TO LEAD HIM."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="clear:both;">
+            &nbsp;
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/076-4.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/076-4.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "I CARRY HIM."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/076-5.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/076-5.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "I LOSE ALL PATIENCE."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>Then came a pencilled note in this little book, "You can take a
+        horse to water, but can't make him drink." "That gave me an idea,"
+        cried Mr. Grossmith, as he sprang to his feet. "You can take a boy to
+        the piano, but you can't make him play.' Thought I to myself, that
+        would make a capital sketch. And here is how I set about it,"
+        continued he, as he proceeded to illustrate his remarks. "Imagine a
+        little fellow in the corner there. I then begin in dumb show to
+        encourage him to come to the piano. 'Come on, my boy; you know you
+        can play that pretty piece you played yesterday. Come on, there's a
+        good fellow!' Wonderful what you can do with persuasion! He refuses.
+        I attempt to lead him to the piano. He won't budge an inch. I carry
+        him under my arm and seat him in front of the instrument, the
+        audience roaring all the time. At last his mistakes are so many and
+        so ridiculous, I lose all patience and catch him a mighty box upon
+        the ears! Tableau!! Of course there is no boy on the platform at all,
+        I am quite alone, but I have so thoroughly lost myself in my
+        imagination that people have declared years after, 'Oh! but I am
+        quite sure you had a boy with you; why, don't you remember how you
+        boxed his ears?'"</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/077-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/077-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "HOW I DO IRVING."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>No less marvellous than his power of acting is his power of
+        mimicry. "I will show you how I do Irving," said he, and in a moment
+        the little man had ruffled his hair, had assumed to the life not only
+        Irving's peculiar gait, but, even more remarkable still, had managed
+        to secure almost exactly the very expression of the great tragedian's
+        face.</p>
+
+        <p>"Then again, I find it a good idea to take up some craze or topic
+        of the moment. 'The Drama on Crutches' I wrote when the craze first
+        arose amongst the aristocracy for going on the stage. One of the
+        sketches which you will find outlined in that little notebook is
+        entitled, 'Is Music a Failure?' and I endeavoured to answer the
+        question by showing how popular it is among all classes of the
+        community." I will quote pretty freely from this outlined sketch, as
+        it will give my readers an idea, better than anything else would do,
+        of the manner in which Mr. Grossmith prepares his delightful
+        sketches.</p>
+
+        <p>"I am not going to treat the subject seriously," he writes, "but
+        in my own particular, impertinent way. The question often
+        arises&mdash;are we a musical nation? The foreigners think we are
+        not. But where in the wide, wide world is there a country where you
+        will hear so many organs and German bands? Where is the country,
+        excepting ours, that can appreciate the concertina? Where, except in
+        England, can you hear that delightful combination of harp and cornet
+        outside a house of refreshment? The prejudice of other nations is
+        distressing; and as for their ignorance, why, I don't suppose Italy
+        and Germany have even heard of the ocarino and the Jew's harp."</p>
+
+        <p>And so the sketch runs on, until, in speaking of the universal
+        manner in which music is appreciated in England by all classes, Mr.
+        Grossmith goes on to say: "We have made rapid strides, so have our
+        servants. They don't know how to dust the piano, but they can play
+        it. Everybody plays the piano, from the Peerage to the School Board.
+        Then look how music has crept into our homes and social circles.
+        Besides the piano, the mother and daughters play the banjo, the son
+        plays the first fiddle, and the father the second fiddle&mdash;as
+        usual. I know of a Lord Mayor who plays the trombone, a clergyman who
+        plays the big drum&mdash;that's a nice unpretentious, giddy
+        instrument!&mdash;and I know of any number of members of Parliament
+        who blow their own trumpets!!" And so the notes go brightly on
+        through many pages.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:35%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/078-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/078-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            MR. WEEDON GROSSMITH.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:65%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/078-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/078-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            THE STUDY.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:35%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/080-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/080-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            MR. GEO. GROSSMITH, JUN.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:65%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/079-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/079-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            OLD ENGRAVINGS.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="clear:both;">
+            &nbsp;
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"This," explained my host, "is a fair specimen of the method I
+        employ in preparing a drawing-room sketch. As a rule, my audiences of
+        that class are capital. I always love a well-dressed audience, it is
+        so cheerful. You mayn't perhaps get as much applause as you do from
+        the sixpenny gallery, but then applause often spoils your point.
+        Once, however, I remember singing at a private house in the country
+        to an odd assortment of people. I was informed that the party
+        followed a wedding which had taken place in the morning. If it had
+        followed a funeral it could not have been more gloomy and depressed
+        than it was. I played the piano and the fool for three-quarters of an
+        hour, and anything more dismal than the result it would be impossible
+        to conceive. A temptation seized me suddenly, and I said: 'Ladies and
+        gentlemen,&mdash;I am going to reveal to you a secret. Pray don't let
+        it go any further. This is supposed to be a comic entertainment. I
+        don't expect you to laugh at it in the least; but if, during the next
+        sketch, you would only once oblige me with a society smile, it would
+        give me a great deal of encouragement.' The audience for a moment
+        were dumbfounded. They first began to titter, then to laugh, and
+        actually to roar, and for a time I could not proceed with the sketch.
+        They were transformed into a capital and enthusiastic audience, and
+        the hostess told me that both her guests and herself were most
+        grateful to me. I am sometimes amused with the little eccentricities
+        of people who wish to secure my services for their parties. A
+        gentleman once wrote to me to entertain some friends of his, and,
+        added he, 'I trust that your sketches are strictly <i>comme il
+        faut</i>, as I have several young daughters.' I was so immensely
+        tickled by this that, rightly or wrongly, I replied that my
+        entertainments <i>were</i> as they should be, for I was recently
+        married, and hoped myself to have several young daughters. He wrote
+        thanking me for this assurance, and I was to consider myself
+        accordingly engaged. There is a story I tell in my book which will
+        bear repetition: A young gentleman once called upon me. He explained
+        that he was acting as a sort of ambassador for a friend of his, Mrs.
+        &mdash;&mdash;, of Mayfair, who wished me to dine at her house. I
+        replied that I had not the honour of the lady's acquaintance, and,
+        though appreciating her kind invitation, I did not see how I could
+        very well avail myself of it. He said that Prince Somebody or other
+        and La Comtesse de So-and-so would be dining there, and Mrs.
+        &mdash;&mdash; would be so pleased if I would join the party, and
+        sing a little song after dinner. 'Oh,' I said, 'if Mrs.
+        &mdash;&mdash; wishes to engage me professionally, that is another
+        matter, and if I am at liberty, I will come with much pleasure.'
+        'Well,' said the ambassador, 'I fancy Mrs. &mdash;&mdash; is under
+        the impression that if she includes you in her dinner party it is an
+        understood thing that you sing afterwards.' 'I am afraid I do not
+        understand that,' I said. 'It would not pay me to do so. I only
+        consume about ten shillings worth of food and wine, and my terms are
+        more than that.' There," said Mr. Grossmith, "could you have believed
+        that anyone would have been so inconceivably mean and caddish?"</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/079-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/079-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            MR. GEORGE GROSSMITH.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/081-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/081-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "A FLASHY YOUNG CAD, IN A VERY LOUD SUIT."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"I have had some curious experiences on tour," he went on. "That
+        is hard work, if you like. I have gone a four months' tour without
+        missing a night. It takes it out of one terribly. But it is very
+        paying work. In the South of England I have made as much as
+        &pound;300 a week. My friends tried to frighten me as to the apathy
+        of my Scotch audiences; as a matter of fact, I have no better
+        audiences anywhere. I like performing to country audiences. I am
+        never nervous as I am apt to be at St. James's, where there are a
+        number of my friends. And it is on my country tours that I have many
+        curious experiences. Amateurs invariably call at the hotel to see me,
+        and to ask my advice as to their powers of recitation. Some are quite
+        hopeless, and I haven't the heart to condemn them utterly, or to go
+        beyond 'I tell you quite candidly, since you ask me, that I have
+        heard better.' As a rule they are very quiet and modest, but now and
+        again one encounters some fearful specimens. I remember once at a
+        country town, which we will call Mudborough, a flashy young cad, in a
+        very loud suit, called to see me with a parcel under his arm. He had
+        come, he told me, to learn my opinion of his singing. He further
+        informed me that he was known as 'the Mudborough Grossmith.' He
+        didn't have the courtesy to take off his hat; he walked up and down
+        my room, whistling, singing, and handing me over now and again
+        specimens of his powers as a water-colour painter. I looked at them.
+        At last, tired of the idiot and his airs, I said, 'I hope your
+        musical sketches are better than you water-colour sketches.' Nothing,
+        however, could snub this fellow. He proceeded straightway to sing me
+        an improved version of 'See me Dance the Polka.' 'Do your audience
+        like it?' I asked. 'I should think they did,' he replied; 'I will let
+        you have that last verse if you like.' I thanked him sarcastically,
+        and at last he withdrew. I have, however, come across some real
+        talent in this way. For instance, that admirable actor and
+        entertainer, Eric Lewis, is a <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;</i> of mine,
+        and you could not have a better man than he. Another amusing incident
+        occurred at Southsea. My secretary was in a shop one day, and he
+        overheard three ladies discussing the respective merits of Corney
+        Grain and myself. Two of them were for Corney Grain and one was for
+        me. Finding at last that the odds were too strong for her, she
+        departed with this final shot: 'Well, never mind, Mr. Corney Grain
+        can't jump on to a piano,' referring to my imitation of Minnie
+        Palmer."</p>
+
+        <p>Replying to a question I put to him as to his theatrical
+        experiences, Mr. Grossmith told me that it was in the November of
+        1877 that he received the following letter:&mdash;</p>
+
+        <blockquote>
+            <p>"Beefsteak Club,</p>
+
+            <p>"King William Street,</p>
+
+            <p>"Tuesday Night.</p>
+
+            <p>"Dear Mr. Grossmith,&mdash;Are you inclined to go on the stage
+            for a time? There is a part in the new piece I am doing with
+            Gilbert which I think you would play admirably. I can't find a
+            good man for it. Let me have a line, or come to Albert Mansions
+            to-morrow, after 4; or Thursday, before 2.30.</p>
+
+            <p>"Yours sincerely,</p>
+
+            <p>"ARTHUR SULLIVAN."</p>
+        </blockquote>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:49%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/082-1.jpg"><img width="100%"
+            src="images/082-1.jpg" alt="" /></a></p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:49%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/082-2.jpg"><img width="100%"
+            src="images/082-2.jpg" alt="" /></a></p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="clear:both;">
+            &nbsp;
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"This was a great moment in my life, although at the time my
+        father, whose good judgment I valued much, was of opinion that I was
+        not very successful as an actor. Sullivan, however, who had heard me
+        give a musical sketch at a dinner party, was of the contrary opinion,
+        and felt sure that I should suit him. It appears he and Arthur Cecil
+        were both writing letters at the Beefsteak, when the former said, 'I
+        can't find a fellow for this opera.' Cecil said, 'I wonder if
+        Grossmith&mdash;' Before he had finished the sentence, Arthur
+        Sullivan said, 'The very man!' And so I was engaged. I am much
+        indebted to these two Arthurs," continued the bright little man with
+        a laugh. "I reverence the very name of Arthur. I remember when
+        Gilbert wanted to engage me for the part of <i>John Wellington
+        Wells</i>, though I saw the part would suit me to perfection, I said
+        to him, 'I should have thought you required a fine man with a fine
+        voice for the part of a magician.' I can still see Gilbert's humorous
+        expression as he replied, 'That is just what we <i>don't</i> want.' I
+        played <i>Sir Joseph Porter</i> in 'Pinafore' every night for nearly
+        two years. Long runs don't affect the nerves of the actors nearly as
+        much as they affect the performance. Constant repetition begets
+        mechanism, and that is a terrible enemy to contend against. I make a
+        point of playing my best to a bad house; for it is a monstrous thing
+        to slur through one's work because the stalls are empty, and thereby
+        punish those who <i>have</i> come for the fault of those who <i>have
+        not</i>. Still, I repeat it, constant repetition is a dreadful thing.
+        Fancy playing 'Pinafore,' as I did, for 700 nights without missing a
+        single performance!"</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:49%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/083-1.jpg"><img width="100%"
+            src="images/083-1.jpg" alt="" /></a></p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:49%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/083-2.jpg"><img width="100%"
+            src="images/083-2.jpg" alt="" /></a></p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="clear:both;">
+            &nbsp;
+        </div>
+
+        <p>As he said this Mr. Grossmith led the way out of the room in which
+        we had been talking, and which he told me was his own special
+        sanctum, "into which no one is ever allowed to come except my wife,
+        for anyone rushing in here when I was composing or thinking out a
+        sketch would inevitably drive every single idea from my head," and we
+        went upstairs together. Here in the drawing-room he set himself down
+        to a spinet which bore the date of 1770, and he struck a few
+        exceedingly sweet-sounding, if slightly tinkling, chords from it.
+        "And this," said he, "is the oldest <i>Broadwood</i> in England. You
+        can see for yourself the date&mdash;1795." Downstairs he showed me a
+        beautiful model of a steam engine, upon which he was enabled to ride,
+        and which he could drive himself. "I thoroughly understand
+        locomotives," said he, as he pointed to a shelf full of all the works
+        upon the subject which he had been able to discover.</p>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s8" name="i13s8"></a>A BLIND BEGGARMAN</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY FRANK MATHEW.</h3>
+
+        <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. PEGRAM.</h4>
+        <hr />
+
+        <table class="poetry">
+            <tbody>
+                <tr>
+                    <td>"Left dark among mine enemies."</td>
+                </tr>
+            </tbody>
+        </table>
+
+        <p>Long ago, the Fairies often stole children; they chose the
+        prettiest, and carried them to Fairyland&mdash;the Kingdom of
+        Tyrnanoge,&mdash;leaving hideous Changelings instead. In those days
+        no man had call to be ashamed of his offspring, since it a baby was
+        deformed or idiotic it was known to be a Changeling.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:50%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/085-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/085-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "THE PIG WAS A FRIENDLY ANIMAL."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>It is sixty years now since old Mike Lonergan, who lived in a
+        hovel in Moher Village, was robbed of his child. It was his wife
+        first found out the theft, for she had seen her unborn son in a
+        dream, and he was beautiful; so when she saw the sickly and ugly
+        baby, she knew that he was not hers, and that the Fairies had stolen
+        the child of her dream. Many advised her to roast the Changeling on
+        the turf-fire, but the White Witch of Moher said it would be safer to
+        leave him alone. So the child Andy grew up as a stranger in his
+        father's hovel and had a dreary time of it, he got little food and no
+        kindness. The Lonergans gave him neither offence nor welcome, hoping
+        that he might see fit to go home to Tyrnanoge and yet bear them no
+        grudge. He grew up an odd wizened little wretch, and everyone shunned
+        him. The children loathed him because they were afraid of him, so
+        they hooted him from a distance, or stoned him from behind walls.</p>
+
+        <p>Indeed, at this time his only ally was the pig that lived in one
+        corner of the hovel. The pig was a friendly animal, his front half
+        was a dull white and the other half black, and this gave him a homely
+        look as if he was sitting in his shirt-sleeves. Andy would shrink
+        into the corner, and sit cuddled there with one arm round the pig's
+        neck. Old Mike Lonergan took to drink, and spent every evening at the
+        Shebeen&mdash;small blame to him&mdash;for how could a man be
+        expected to stay at home with a Changeling sitting in a corner and
+        staring at him?</p>
+
+        <p>When the pig was driven to the Fair at Ennistimon, Andy was left
+        friendless, and then&mdash;in all winds and weather&mdash;was to be
+        found on the Cliffs of Moher. Sometimes he stopped out all night,
+        till hunger would bring him back when the Lonergans were rejoicing at
+        his disappearance. He knew every inch of the Cliffs, and spent half
+        his time lying on the edge of the grey precipice, looking down at the
+        sea, six hundred feet below, or watching the clouds of sea-birds; he
+        found new paths down the cliff-side and clambered like a goat; he
+        knew where the gulls nested, but never robbed them, and the caves
+        where the seals lived, and the seals shouldered their way through the
+        water close by him, looking at him with soft eyes.</p>
+
+        <p>When he was about fourteen, the Famine Year came; fever and "The
+        Hunger" swept Clare. The fever took Lonergan and his wife, and they
+        were buried in the dead-pit at Liscannor; it left Andy, but it left
+        him blind. Then the neighbours began to have their doubts whether he
+        was a Changeling after all; for the Fairies are faithful, and who
+        ever heard of a Changeling being left blind and penniless? If he was
+        only mortal he had been cruelly treated, so to make amends they gave
+        him the fiddle that had belonged to the "Dark" Man&mdash;that is the
+        blind man&mdash;of St. Bridget's Well, who had lately starved. There
+        was still a feeling that he was unfit for a Holy Well, so he took up
+        a post at the Liscannor Cross-roads, and there levied a toll on
+        passers with the professional heart-broken cry:</p>
+
+        <p>"Remember the Dark Man! For God's sake, remember the Dark
+        Man!"</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p>For nearly twenty years Andy haunted the Cross-roads, he came to
+        be honoured as one of the institutions of Moher, though the folk
+        considered there was much that was uncanny about him, he was so
+        silent, and he hated the smell of whisky. Now those were the times
+        when Cornelius Desmond ruled Moher in the old open-handed haphazard
+        way, never troubling penniless tenants. But "Corney" died and the
+        daisies grew over him, so the estate was managed by an agent who made
+        short work of paupers, and evicted "Dark" Andy from his ancestral
+        hovel. Andy did not seem to know his misfortune. He spent the day of
+        the eviction, as usual, at the Cross-roads, and came back at night to
+        a ruin. His neighbour, Larry Ronan the blacksmith, was grieved to see
+        that he took the change as a matter of course, and that after groping
+        in the four corners of the cabin he sat on the window-ledge as if
+        unaware that nothing was left of his home but the walls.</p>
+
+        <p>Next day it was rumoured that Bridget McCaura, of Moher Farm, had
+        sheltered Dark Andy. Bridget was a warm woman, a "woman of three
+        cows," a masterful old maid, who in her time had refused many a
+        pretty fellow, perhaps because she suspected them of hankering after
+        her live stock, her poultry, and her sixty acres of rocks. Then the
+        old parish priest, Father Peter Flannery, rode over to see her.
+        Bridget was called out of her house to speak to him; he was afraid to
+        dismount. She stood in the narrow gateway in front of her farm, with
+        her arms akimbo, ready to defend her home against all comers. Peter's
+        heart trembled; he has a great dread of angry women.</p>
+
+        <p>"Is it thrue?" he asked&mdash;and was so frightened that he looked
+        even sterner than usual&mdash;"is it thrue what I'm afther hearing,
+        Bridget McCaura, that ye've taken the Dark Man, Lonergan, to live
+        with ye&mdash;to live in the Farm?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Is it thrue? 'Tis so," said Bridget.</p>
+
+        <p>"But ye're not going to keep him, are ye now?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Keep him? I am that," said Bridget.</p>
+
+        <p>Peter screwed up his courage and told her warily, that though it
+        was well-meant of her, and "'tis you have the kind warm heart,
+        Bridget me dear," still, that propriety forbade it.</p>
+
+        <p>He was afraid to look at her as he spoke. Bridget was purple.</p>
+
+        <p>"What! a misfortnit ould omadhaun the likes of that?" she
+        cried.</p>
+
+        <p>"I know, I know," said Peter (this is a pet phrase of his and
+        usually means that he does not know). "I know, I know, but 'tis
+        because ye're a lone woman, tell me now are ye listening to me? If
+        ye'd been married now, 'twould have been another thing."</p>
+
+        <p>"Married!" cried Bridget with infinite scorn&mdash;"Married! If
+        that's all, I'll marry the craythur to-morrow!"</p>
+
+        <p>And so Dark Andy was married to the richest woman in Moher. He
+        seemed indifferent; as for Bridget, she had made up her mind to
+        shelter him, and there was an end of it, she took pleasure in
+        astounding her neighbours.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure" style="clear:both;"><a href=
+        "images/088-1.jpg"><img src="images/088-1.jpg" width="80%" alt=
+        "" /></a><br />
+        "I'LL MARRY THE CRAYTHUR TO-MORROW!"</p>
+
+        <p>There was never such excitement in Clare as when those banns were
+        read. Everyone saw that poor Bridget McCaura&mdash;"dacint
+        woman"&mdash;had been bewitched. All the old stories about Dark Andy
+        came to life, there was no room for doubt now, and the bravest
+        unbelievers trembled before him. There was many a woman would never
+        hear his name without crossing herself, and he got the credit of
+        every misfortune between Kilkee and Kinvarra, though some doubted
+        whether a blind man could have the Evil Eye. It was felt that he
+        should be asked to give up his post by the Cross-roads, since it was
+        inconvenient for the neighbours to have to climb two stone walls to
+        avoid passing him. However, no one could be found to suggest this to
+        him, so he still sat there daily, for he liked to feel that he was
+        earning his own livelihood.</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p>One rough afternoon during my first visit to Clare I was caught in
+        a storm of rain, and took refuge at the Liscannor Cross-roads under a
+        thick clump of trees that are stunted and bent eastward by cowering
+        from the sea-wind. As I reached them I heard a shrill cry, "Remember
+        the Dark Man!" Then I saw the blind beggarman sitting huddled in a
+        ragged great-coat so much too big for him that till he stood up I did
+        not see how tiny he was. He had a doleful peaked face, set in a shock
+        of grey hair. By him sat a little brown dog&mdash;the queerest of
+        mongrels&mdash;with a tin can tied round his neck.</p>
+
+        <p>Andy was friendly that day, and talked eagerly in a shrill,
+        stammering voice. I found later that he was wretched in still
+        weather, and loved the malicious rush of the rain; he was happiest
+        when the wind rattled in his ears and the rain whipped his face.
+        "Call that rain?" he said, "sure th' air is flooded, an' ye might as
+        well swim as walk."</p>
+
+        <p>Many times after that I went out of my way on my long solitary
+        walks to pass the Cross-roads, but as often as not he was glum and
+        silent, and then Bonaparte, sharing his mood, would growl like a
+        small thunderstorm. The seat was well chosen, for the cowering trees
+        are like a shed over it, and there is a pleasant landscape in front
+        (though that mattered little to Andy), a landscape of dim green
+        moors&mdash;with brown stains on them where sedge grows and black
+        shadows where bushes huddle in clefts&mdash;chequered by a grey net
+        of low walls, dotted with the white gables of cabins, and framed by a
+        wavering line of hills.</p>
+
+        <p>Sometimes I found him playing his fiddle to keep himself company,
+        but he stopped when he heard me, and, to tell the truth, I was glad
+        of it, for his playing was uncanny. Sometimes I met him shambling
+        along the brink of the Cliffs&mdash;a grotesque little figure, with
+        his old shapeless hat, his huge coat flapping behind him, and the
+        mighty blackthorn he carried&mdash;he knew the ground so well that he
+        walked as if he could see (indeed, he saw more than I could, for
+        while to me the breakers were only streaks of light, he spoke as if
+        he was close to them on the wet weedy rocks), or I came on him lying
+        by the edge, listening to the grumbling of the breakers and the cries
+        of the gulls.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/090-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/090-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        "LISTENING TO THE GRUMBLING OF THE BREAKERS AND THE CRIES OF THE
+        GULLS."</p>
+
+        <p>Mostly he was unsociable, he shrank from his neighbours because
+        they had been cruel to him when they were children, and the dislike
+        was more than returned; yet I think that, but for the loneliness of
+        his whole life, he would have been friendly enough. No one knew more
+        of folklore&mdash;I think he half believed that he was a Changeling,
+        and found comfort in the thought of that former life when he was one
+        of the merry "Little Good People"&mdash;and sure old Mike Lonergan
+        and his wife ought to have known best. He knew the ways of every
+        ghost in the county, and it was even said that he was on speaking
+        terms with the Headless Man who haunted Liscannor. Of course he knew
+        all about Fairies. When the fallen leaves scurried past his feet he
+        knew that the "Little Good People" were playing football, when the
+        wind whispered in the leaves overhead he heard them chatting, and
+        when it whined in the creaking bare branches, heard the poor little
+        folk crying with cold and bewailing the days when they found shelter
+        by snug firesides and sat there unseen but not unwelcome. Once,
+        before the world grew hard, they gathered in the cabins, and the
+        roughest fare grew pleasanter, the saddest hearts lighter, from their
+        good wishes; but no one cares for them now, and they cannot rest in
+        unfriendly houses.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/091-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/091-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        "HE WAS ON SPEAKING TERMS WITH THE HEADLESS MAN OF LISCANNOR."</p>
+
+        <p>As he grew older, he talked more of them, grew more moody and
+        restless, could not sit quiet while the wind was up, and spent night
+        after night out of doors. My friend Father Peter Flannery, who is my
+        chief authority for this history, told me that often, riding on his
+        sick calls in stormy weather, he met Andy staggering along the rough
+        roads.</p>
+
+        <p>Last year on November Eve&mdash;the night when the Fairies have
+        power, and the dead wake and dance reels with them&mdash;the blind
+        beggarman started out from the Farm. An Atlantic gale was shattering
+        seas against the Cliffs, the air was salt with foam, and throbbed
+        with the pulse of the breakers. Bridget tried in vain to stop him; he
+        said the "Little Good People" were calling him. She watched him
+        disappear into the darkness, the whimpering of his fiddle died into
+        the shrieks of the wind. "'Tis a quare divil, he is," she said, "God
+        help him!"</p>
+
+        <p>Once in the night she thought she heard a snatch of the "Fairies'
+        Reel"; but Andy never came back. Next morning they found Bonaparte
+        whining on the edge of the Cliffs; there was no sign of his master.
+        He must have gone over the Cliffs in the darkness, but the waves gave
+        no token.</p>
+
+        <p>Some folk in Moher believe that the Fairies took back their child,
+        and that the old blind fiddler lives now in the Kingdom of Tyrnanoge,
+        and makes music for their dances in that enchanted country where the
+        old grow young and the blind see. Some say that he still haunts the
+        Cross-roads, and only a week ago, Larry Ronan, coming back at night
+        from Ennistimon Fair, saw a black shadowy figure under the black
+        trees, and heard a heart-broken voice cry "Remember the Dark Man!"
+        Larry's natural surprise at this accounted for his being found next
+        morning asleep in the ditch. But it is agreed in Moher that Andy left
+        life on November Eve, whether he became the playfellow of the Fairies
+        or the plaything of the waves.</p>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s9" name="i13s9"></a>CHURCH AND STAGE.</h2>
+
+        <h2>A REVIEW OF HENRY IRVING,</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY THE REV. DR. JOSEPH PARKER.</h3>
+
+        <h4>WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM F. BARNARD AND J. BERNARD PARTRIDGE.</h4>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/093-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/093-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        MR. IRVING AS "HAMLET." (<i>From the Portrait by EDWIN
+        LONG.</i>)<br /><br /></p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/094-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/094-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            MR. IRVING AS "DIGBY GRANT" IN "TWO ROSES."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>The innumerable reviews of Mr. Irving by literary and artistic
+        experts have left room enough for an amateur estimate by a man who is
+        accustomed to regard human life mainly from a religious standpoint. A
+        complete review of the Stage by the Pulpit could hardly be the work
+        of a single pen; for my own part, therefore, I can only make a very
+        small contribution to such a review by indicating a few points which
+        have occurred to me in the study of one particular actor. At once,
+        however, the question arises, Is Mr. Irving a man who can be thus
+        summarily characterised? In a dramatic sense, are there not many Mr.
+        Irvings? When a man can act "The Two Roses" and "The Dead Heart" with
+        equal effect, when he can at will be as vulgar as <i>Robert
+        Macaire</i>, or as dignified as <i>Cardinal Wolsey;</i> when he can
+        be either as young as Hamlet or as old as Lear, the inquiry as to his
+        plurality becomes natural and pertinent. For my part, I rank Mr.
+        Irving the comedian above Mr. Irving the tragedian, just as I rank
+        Nature above Art: each may be highest in its own way, yet the one may
+        have a charm which the other cannot boast. Mr. Irving's tragedy
+        sometimes requires working up, but his comedy is spontaneous and
+        immediate. The needful working up of tragedy is no fault of the
+        actor. Tragedy should hardly ever begin at once. The murder may come
+        too soon. Premature rage is followed by untimely laughter. <i>Digby
+        Grant</i> begins at once, and can be his best self in the very first
+        sentence, but <i>Macbeth</i> must move towards his passion by
+        finely-graded ascents. In Mr. Irving's exquisite representation,
+        <i>Macbeth's</i> anxieties and perturbations, his rapid alternations
+        of courage and cowardice, make delicate but obvious record of
+        themselves in deepening the grey of his hair, and ploughing more
+        deeply the lines of his face. A comedy may be judged scene by scene,
+        almost sentence by sentence, but a tragedy can be truly estimated
+        only when viewed in final perspective.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/095-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/095-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "A LITTLE CHEQUE." (MR. IRVING AS "DIGBY GRANT" IN "TWO
+            ROSES.")</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>Judged by this test, I have no hesitation in regarding Mr.
+        Irving's <i>King Lear</i> as the finest creation of his genius. This
+        is an instance in which the actor creates the piece. Shakespeare is,
+        as a poet and playwright, at his worst in "King Lear." Yet his
+        accessories are wonderful in variety and suggestiveness. Only
+        Shakespeare could have created the heath, and have so ordered the old
+        King's passion, as to make his madness part of the very thunder and
+        lightning. That was Shakespeare's magnificent conception, and Mr.
+        Irving's rendering is worthy of its tempestuous grandeur. How to talk
+        up to the storm, how to pierce the tumult with the cries of human
+        distress, how to escape the ridiculous and the incongruous, how to be
+        a King on the desolate heath, and to make the royalty gleam through
+        the angry darkness, were the problems, and Mr. Irving solved them one
+        and all, even with redundance of faculty and skill. At the end of the
+        heath scene the man is more remembered than the storm. It has been
+        objected that in the first scene Mr. Irving's <i>Lear</i> is too old
+        and feeble. I venture to think otherwise. I further venture to think
+        that the King's age and the King's imbecility have both been
+        accurately appreciated. A man at eighty, a man athirst for flattery,
+        a man who would pay a kingdom in exchange for adulation, must have
+        outlived all that is best and strongest in human nature. He comes
+        upon the stage as a wreck. His vanity has eaten up his sagacity, so
+        that she, <i>Goneril</i> or <i>Regan</i>, who can flatter most, can
+        lie most, and can play the devil best, shall fare most lavishly at
+        his hands. Is it not well partly to excuse these excesses of
+        self-valuation by such mitigations as can be found in the infirmity
+        of old age? Even in an elderly man they would have been treated with
+        contempt; they could only be endured in one whose eighty years had
+        been doubled by the hardness of his life lot.</p>
+
+        <p>In "Henry VIII." Mr. Irving had little to do. In that play the
+        labour and the glory fell upon another, to the infinite delight of
+        the public. In "Lear," Mr. Irving has everything to do. From
+        beginning to end there is only one character. Even the fascinating
+        <i>Cordelia</i> is but a silver cloud on the far horizon. "The King
+        is coming" is the cry of the play. His madness is more, as to display
+        and effect, than the sense of all the others. The scene is stiff and
+        cold until his wild hair is observed to approach the front, and then
+        the whole spectacle is alight with feeling and purpose. The other
+        actors are not to blame that, to a large extent, they are thrown into
+        the shade; indeed, they are to be warmly congratulated upon their
+        self-suppression and their passive sympathy. It is a hard task to
+        play the part of two heartless and treacherous daughters, and a
+        pitiful fate to have to represent the villainy of <i>Edmund</i>, yet
+        all this was admirably done. It cannot be an easy thing to come
+        forward to play the villain well, for the better the dramatic villain
+        is played the more is the actor compelled to recognise in his
+        execration the exact degree of his success. So admirably can Mr.
+        Irving himself play the villain, that it is difficult to believe that
+        any godparents ever, on his unconscious behalf, renounced the pomps
+        and vanities of this wicked world.</p>
+
+        <p>In many minor parts&mdash;or along the subsidiary lines of great
+        parts&mdash;Mr. Irving's subtlest power comes into effective play.
+        Who, for example, can be more gentle or more graceful with a little
+        child? Who could hug the "fool" more fondly than old <i>King
+        Lear</i>? Then recall his wonderful recognitions of old friends.
+        When, in "The Dead Heart," he is liberated from the Bastille, how old
+        times slowly but surely dawn into consciousness, and how quickly the
+        dawn hastens into the noontide of the tenderest fellowship and
+        highest festival of joy. It is verily a resurrection. After eighteen
+        years' entombment this political Lazarus comes forth to liberty, to
+        leadership, to dominance.</p>
+
+        <p>In "Lear," there are two wonderful instances of recognition, the
+        recognition of <i>Gloster</i> and of <i>Cordelia</i>. <i>Gloster</i>
+        is blind and bandaged. <i>Cordelia</i> has been long out of
+        sight&mdash;if not in actual days yet in depth of feeling&mdash;and
+        the King himself is demented. Little by little things shape
+        themselves in the memory and fancy of the King. There is something
+        confusedly familiar in the voice of <i>Gloster</i> which, tone by
+        tone, settles into recognition. In the case of <i>Cordelia</i> the
+        father gradually subdues the King, and instinct takes the place of
+        reason; then, in a fine strain, comes the identification:</p>
+
+        <table class="poetry">
+            <tbody>
+                <tr>
+                    <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "Do not
+                    laugh at me,<br />
+                    For, as I am a man, I think this lady<br />
+                    To be my child Cordelia."<br /></td>
+                </tr>
+            </tbody>
+        </table>
+
+        <p>The utterance of these words by Mr. Irving is simply thrilling.
+        The tones, the glances, the approach, the embrace, lift up the words
+        into new light, keen and tender as the brightness of a summer
+        morning. The words themselves are by no means striking, are, indeed,
+        the merest commonplace, but, uttered with the natural pathos of a
+        consummate actor, they carry the play to its most subduing climax.
+        The humanity and the genius satisfy expectation in its most eager and
+        jealous temper. Failure at that point would have ruined the play.
+        Which was better, <i>Lear</i> or <i>Cordelia</i>, in that critical
+        action? We must first settle, Which is better, the star of morning or
+        the morning star?</p>
+        <hr style="clear:both;" />
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/097-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/097-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            MR. IRVING AS "KING LEAR." (FROM THE LYCEUM SOUVENIR.)</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>As I opened this brief review with a reference to the religious
+        standpoint, it may be well now to ask how the Church is to regard the
+        Stage as an educational institution? The Stage cannot be put down. It
+        responds to an instinct which is ineradicable, and which need not be
+        ignoble. The parables of the New Testament are the sublimest
+        recognition of that instinct. The drama is older than the theatre.
+        Much of the greatest preaching has been dramatic, by which I mean
+        that it has touched human life through the medium of story and
+        parable, coloured and toned by a living fancy. Sometimes, too truly,
+        the dramatic in preaching has degenerated into impossible anecdotes,
+        most of them originating in the Far West of America, yet even such
+        anecdotes testify to the overpowering force of the dramatic instincts
+        when limited to their most vulgar conditions. My submission is, that
+        a properly-conducted stage might be the most powerful ally of the
+        pulpit. I advance upon this submission, and contend that the function
+        of the preacher is infinitely superior to the function of the actor.
+        Whatever the preacher has to say that is distinctive he can trace to
+        what he believes to be a Divine and authoritative origin. I hold the
+        great preacher to be a spiritual medium. In his next evolution he
+        will simply tell the people whatever may have been given him in the
+        same hour to say. This does not mean that indolence will supersede
+        industry. Through the indolent man God sends no messages. The true
+        prophet will always be preparing himself. By learning, by meditation,
+        by self-discipline, the true prophet will prepare his heart for the
+        incoming of the Eternal Spirit, and the glory of Heaven will be as a
+        fire on the altar of the honest heart. Art preachers we have had in
+        too great abundance. Mechanical talkers have brought upon the pulpit
+        the disrepute of dulness. The age now waits for the messenger in
+        whose loving heart there is the glow and the radiance of divinest
+        sympathy. The great actor himself would be the first to admit that
+        the preacher cannot trace his own public secondariness to the poverty
+        of his themes. Where the preacher falls behind the actor, it is
+        because the preacher does not realise the majesty and the tenderness,
+        the vehemence and the urgency, of his own message.</p>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s10" name="i13s10"></a>THAT BEAST BEAUTY.</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY KIRBY HARE.</h3>
+
+        <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS BY ERNEST M. JESSOP.</h4>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/099-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/099-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            A PROPER HOWL OF DISGUST.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:30%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/099-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/099-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            HIS MAIDEN AUNT.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>I was a man born to misfortune. In fact, my first misfortune, the
+        death of my father, happened three months before I came into the
+        world. When I did duly appear, and was giving a proper howl of
+        disgust, a fresh misfortune fell upon me; my mother departed to join
+        my father, leaving me in the lurch in a vale of unavailing tears. I
+        should have preferred going with my family to that blessed Utopia
+        where there are neither births, deaths, marriages, divorces, breaches
+        of promise, nor return tickets; only, unfortunately, I was not
+        invited. So I became a posthumous orphan, soothed by Daffy's elixir
+        and the skim-milk of human kindness. The milk was none too sweet,
+        human kindness did not spare the rod, and I firmly believe it was
+        Daffy's elixir that turned my hair red. However, I grew up at length
+        into stand-up collars and tail coats, and at the age of seventeen
+        springs was adopted (on trial) by a maiden aunt of seven-and-forty
+        autumns. Like a gleam of sunshine hope flashed into my loveless life,
+        lighting up my path to fortune. But it was only the glimmer of an
+        <i>ignis fatuus</i>, which led me into a quicksand and snuffed itself
+        out in a fog.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/100-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/100-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            ONE EVIL-MINDED BLACK TOM.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:30%; clear:right;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/100-2.jpg"><img width="100%"
+            src="images/100-2.jpg" alt="" /></a></p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>My relative had plenty of money, and plenty of other equally good
+        qualities in the long run, no doubt; but the period of my adoption
+        was too short to make sure of either the one or the other. If the
+        wealthy maiden was really a worthy soul she did not let her nephew
+        know it. Corporeally she was angular and iron-grey, with a summary
+        tongue and wintry temper, chastened by a fondness for feline
+        favourites. Unluckily, I was always falling foul of the latter, and
+        my aunt continually fell foul of me in consequence. Crabbed age and
+        youth could not live together in our case on account of cats. Age, as
+        represented by the mature virgin, adored the brutes; youth, in the
+        shape of a sprouting hobbledehoy, abhorred them altogether, and one
+        evil minded black Tom in particular. My aunt called him Beauty, in
+        happy ignorance that all her household called him a Beast. I admire
+        beauty in the abstract; I also like it in the concrete; and in the
+        concreted form of youthful feminine humanity I love it. But that
+        feline black Beauty was the most outrageous misnomer unhanged. I had
+        tried to hang him several times, down in the cellar in the dead of
+        night; but his patent cast-iron neck set suspensory science at
+        defiance, and Beauty triumphantly refused to give up the ghost. At
+        first, he kicked and fought against it lustily, and yelled murder
+        with all his might; but after a little practice the malefactor acted
+        more philosophically, regarding the performance quite as part of his
+        nocturnal programme. He never allowed it to make him late for
+        breakfast, nor take away his appetite. Each morning, after execution,
+        the moment the bell rang for prayers, in marched Beauty with a
+        swollen head well on one side, growling anathemas from somewhere
+        round the corner all prayer-time; after which the escaped convict
+        devoured breakfast with the voracity of a stiffnecked cannibal.</p>
+
+        <p>Finding the beast utterly unhangable, I determined to try
+        drowning. My nature is by no means a cruel one, quite the reverse;
+        but Beauty's cup of iniquity had long been full to the brim, and
+        running over into the saucer. He had gulped down my canaries like
+        pills, poached my pigeons, fricasseed my rabbits, and made himself an
+        abominable beast generally; and had now committed a crime that capped
+        everything.</p>
+
+        <p>My cock bantam, which had won first prize at the Slocum-Pogis
+        poultry show, mysteriously disappeared. Jim, the gardener's boy, and
+        I hunted everywhere without finding any trace till we sighted Beauty.
+        The beast was seated on my verbena bed, with fearfully distended
+        stomach, waving my poor little bantam's tail feathers from between
+        his teeth. Had I been an ancient Egyptian high priest, and Beauty at
+        the top of the tree of holy cats, his diabolical godship should have
+        been made into a mummy instanter. As things were, he had to be
+        drowned forthwith.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/101-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/101-1.jpg" width="60%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        AT A CABINET COUNCIL IN THE COAL CELLAR.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/102-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/102-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            IN THE DESERTED OLD MILL.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>At a cabinet council in the coal cellar, composed of the cook,
+        footman, Jim, and myself, all the executive details were arranged; my
+        aunt being, of course, kept in happy ignorance of our intentions. As
+        soon as my respected relative uttered the preliminary snore of her
+        afternoon siesta, Beauty made an involuntary exit out of the house,
+        all the lower doors and windows having been carefully fastened. Then
+        commenced a silent cat-hunt, a serio-comic drama in dumb show, with a
+        crowded audience breathlessly gazing from the windows. The scenery
+        was a series of dissolving views, beginning on a flower-decked lawn,
+        and ending at a mill-pool a mile or so away from the audience. Beauty
+        played leading actor with considerable activity, notwithstanding the
+        drawback of being handicapped with an undigested bantam. He flew over
+        dozens of flower-beds, through all the outhouses, over the stable,
+        out into the park, up and down all the tallest trees, and all over
+        the country, till he took refuge in the deserted old mill. There we
+        wriggled him into an ancient sack, and tied him up in the harmonious
+        company of a couple of brickbats. Then we committed the body to the
+        deep. The burial service was short, but hearty.
+        "One&mdash;two&mdash;three, and away!" sung out in unison, was the
+        special form for the occasion, accompanied by Beauty's farewell
+        blessing as we "awayed" him into the silent depths of the mill-dam.
+        There was a splash, a shrill cry from a frightened moorhen, a short
+        jubilate from Jim, to which I piously added "amen," and all was over.
+        Jim ran home with half-a-sovereign in his pocket, while I walked back
+        to dress for dinner. On the stairs I met my aunt, already in evening
+        array, and looking hungry. I knew the sign, and stealthily tried to
+        vanish, vainly.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/102-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/102-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "LATE AGAIN, SAMUEL!"</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"Late again, Samuel!" she remarked, with a freezing
+        spectacle-gleam that fixed me to the stair-carpet&mdash;my right foot
+        two steps above the left. "You have just come in, I suppose. Have you
+        seen Beauty?"</p>
+
+        <p>Horror! Could she suspect anything? I felt my face growing the
+        colour of my hair, and my tongue frozen solid.</p>
+
+        <p>"Can't you answer?" she went on wrathfully. "And can't you stand
+        up straight?"</p>
+
+        <p>I pulled my legs together and commenced to stammer.</p>
+
+        <p>"I&mdash;I saw Beauty out&mdash;outside, aunt, in the garden," I   managed
+        to mutter.</p>
+
+        <p>"Which way was he going?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Why, I think he was running towards the house, aunt."</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/103-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/103-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            THIRTY MILES AN HOUR.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>And then the remembrance of how he <i>was</i> running&mdash;thirty
+        miles an hour, with tail on end and ears flat to his head, with Jim
+        and my long-legged self racing in rear&mdash;made me choke with
+        laughter I was forced to swallow. But my aunt's eyes were on me, and
+        her gold-rimmed barnacles blazed through me, so I suffocated in
+        silence.</p>
+
+        <p>"Don't stand making faces like an idiot. Go and dress, and be
+        quick," snapped my loving relative, as she marched away downstairs
+        and I flew to the region above.</p>
+
+        <p>My bedroom door was partly open, and I dashed in hastily, pulling
+        off my things as I went.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/103-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/103-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            DRESSING FOR DINNER.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/104-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/104-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            A SHOW AT MUDDIFORD-ON-THE-OOZE.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>My evening clothes were laid out ready on the bed, and&mdash;what
+        was that on my shirt?&mdash;a black mass of&mdash;something
+        moving!&mdash;some animal! Why, heavens and earth, it was the ghost
+        of&mdash;that beast Beauty! It was Beauty himself! I ran for the
+        poker; Beauty rushed out of the door. Confound that rotten old
+        sack!</p>
+
+        <p>I was late for dinner, and found Beauty seated in my chair, sleek
+        and dry, with a ravenously whetted appetite. My aunt was so pleased
+        with her favourite's improved appearance that she became quite
+        affable, even to me. I was informed that as I had not been looking
+        well lately I might go for a few days' change to the seaside; the
+        salubrious air of Muddiford-on-the-Ooze would just suit me. What a
+        blessing! To have escaped from those ice-gleaming spectacles and from
+        that resuscitated beast Beauty I would gladly have gone to Jericho,
+        much more to Muddiford-on-the-Ooze. Then my aunt continued her course
+        of instructions, with the nearest approach to a smile I had ever seen
+        on her face.</p>
+
+        <p>"You will enjoy yourself, I am sure, Samuel, and you will also be
+        able to show what pains you can take to please me," she said, sipping
+        her first glass of Burgundy with approving relish. "There is to be a
+        show at Muddiford the day after to-morrow, at which I intend
+        exhibiting, and you will be able to manage everything for me; so mind
+        you are careful to do your best."</p>
+
+        <p>"I shall be most delighted," I declared gushingly. "What show is
+        it? And what can I have the pleasure of taking charge of for you, my
+        dear aunt?"</p>
+
+        <p>"It's the Grand All-England Cat Show, and you will take Beauty;
+        and I shall be greatly disappointed if you do not bring me back the
+        first prize. So be on your best behaviour, Samuel, or perhaps you may
+        live to regret it."</p>
+
+        <p>My jaw dropped, and I thought I should have slid under the table.
+        Good heavens! It was that beast Beauty who was to go for a holiday,
+        while I was to act as the infernal fiend's keeper! O my prophetic
+        soul&mdash;my aunt! But there was no help for it; I was bound in
+        bonds of gold.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%; clear:left;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/104-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/104-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            SEATED MYSELF ON THE HAMPER.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/105-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/105-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            LEAVING THE RAILWAY CARRIAGE.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:39%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/105-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/105-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            INTO ITS HADES-LIKE MOUTH.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="clear:left;">
+            &nbsp;
+        </div>
+
+        <p>On the following day, Beauty and I were duly driven to the
+        station, the former being luxuriously nested in a small hamper
+        specially furnished for the occasion. About half-way on the road,
+        just as we had mounted a long, steep hill, the cat managed to roll
+        his residence from the stern of the dog-cart and trundle himself
+        half-way home again. Luckily, he screeched blue murder at the tip-top
+        of his voice, or we might not have missed the beast. As it was, his
+        cyclical retrogression made us just too late for the train, and we
+        had to wait two hours for the next. So I seated myself on the
+        hamper&mdash;like Patience on the proverbial monument&mdash;and
+        beheld the coachman depart homewards, with a sympathetic hat-touching
+        salute, leaving me with a gloomy conviction of coming misfortune. The
+        train, when it did arrive, was tolerably empty, and I secured a
+        vacant first-class. For a time all went happily; then the cat
+        commenced groaning.</p>
+
+        <p>My aunt having solemnly ordered me to give the brute dinner, I now
+        prepared to stop his mouth with cold chicken. While I was cautiously
+        unfastening the hamper lid, Beauty remained quiet as a dormouse; and
+        then he proceeded personally to assist the unfastening, with a
+        vengeance. There was a bouncing volcanic eruption, a blood-curdling
+        howl, a mixed-up whirling round the carriage, and
+        then&mdash;smash!&mdash;bang through the window went
+        Beauty!&mdash;leaving me doubled up on the seat, holding out half a
+        chicken. It was a forty-feline-power hurricane, while it lasted; and
+        drops of perspiration trickled down my nose on to the chicken, at
+        which I sat stupidly staring. After a dazed pause I staggered to the
+        broken window and looked out. There was Beauty, with a perpendicular
+        tail like a young fir-tree, going like great guns in exactly the
+        wrong direction. We had just come through a long tunnel, and the last
+        I saw of my aunt's pet demon was as he dived headlong into its
+        Hades-like mouth. And I had to take home first prize for him from the
+        Grand All-England Cat Show!</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:25%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/105-3.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/105-3.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            INCIPIENT CATALEPSY.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/106-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/106-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            WASHING HIS FIENDISH FACE!</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>When the 4.40 down express arrived at Muddiford-on-the-Ooze
+        station, an auburn-haired youth limply emerged from a first-class
+        carriage. In his arms he bore a basket, and his grey-green eyes
+        gleamed with incipient catalepsy. Yes, such would undoubtedly have
+        been my description had I posed as the momentary hero of a penny
+        novelette. I forgot all about my luggage, imbecilely clinging to the
+        late habitation of the lost beast Beauty, wandering I knew not why
+        nor whither. Outside the station, round a quiet corner, my steps were
+        arrested by the surprising sight of&mdash;Beauty!&mdash;the very
+        identical devil himself! There stood the unhangable, undrownable,
+        hurricane-creating beast, looking as serene as a newly-born black
+        cherub, washing his fiendish face! I approached on tiptoe,
+        breathlessly, with the basket behind my back and the half chicken
+        extended as a peaceable card of introduction. He scented it
+        instantly&mdash;my aunt always keeping Beauty's tit-bits until
+        sufficiently gamey to suit his highly epicurean taste.</p>
+
+        <p>With a finishing toe-touch to his whiskers, he amicably trotted up
+        to me and&mdash;yes!&mdash;actually rubbed against my new trousers!
+        What could have happened to him! Had his run through the tunnel
+        turned him out virtuous? And how could he possibly have got here?
+        Experience has shown that a leopard can change his spots, and a negro
+        can grow spotted; but could a diabolical cat become even as a sucking
+        dove and fly over twelve miles all in the space of twenty minutes?
+        Impossible! So I put on a pair of folder-glasses and scrutinised this
+        new arrival doubtingly. No; it was <i>not</i> Beauty&mdash;not nearly
+        ugly enough. It was a twin, but larger, blacker, sleeker, a million
+        times more amiable, and very much fatter. Ah!&mdash;ha,
+        ha!&mdash;hurrah!&mdash;happy thought! Why not? I would. And,
+        thereupon, I instantly did it.</p>
+
+        <p>Placing the basket gently on the ground, I opened the lid and put
+        in the cold chicken, when lo! in jumped the amiable twin. Half an
+        hour later that basket, that heaven-descended twin, and that
+        successful chicken, were safely deposited in custody of the cat-show
+        steward, with the errant Beauty's entry ticket affixed. If the
+        steward had never seen the real original he would never discover the
+        difference; and if he did happen to be acquainted with the genuine
+        article he could but think that the beast was surprisingly improved,
+        and might even award it first prize for having turned over such a
+        notable new leaf. And for the same reason, my aunt ought to be highly
+        delighted at her favourite's favourable transformation. My heart was
+        lightened of its oppressive troubles, as my hands were free from
+        their feline load. With a hearty appetite I ate an excellent dinner
+        at the hotel, went to the theatre, and turned into bed thankful for
+        all fortune's favours.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/107-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/107-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            I ATE AN EXCELLENT DINNER.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>During the two following days, carefully steering clear of the
+        cat-show, I enjoyed my freedom gaily, and had&mdash;what our
+        three-thousand-miles-removed cousins would call&mdash;real good time.
+        On the third morning a letter arrived from my aunt, with an enclosure
+        which for the first moment I took to be a big cheque&mdash;a grateful
+        offering, as I hoped, for services skilfully performed. However, it
+        proved to be merely a second letter, in writing that was strange to
+        me, and which with some curiosity I proceeded to peruse. As I
+        unfolded the sheet, a vision suddenly crossed my mind of that savage
+        beast Beauty; a chilly shiver shot through my marrow, and I sent the
+        waiter for soda and brandy. It was an awful thought of what that
+        unkillable cat might do! There he was, rampaging over a civilised
+        country populated with children and lambs, and other unprotected
+        innocents, half mad, perhaps, with hunger, where neither canaries nor
+        pigeons, rabbits or cold chicken were grabbable. What desperate
+        murders he might commit! And should I be held responsible? Here the
+        timely arrival of the waiter helped to raise my spirits by a strong
+        dose of B. and S., and I began the enclosed letter.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:50%; clear:right;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/107-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/107-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            WHAT DESPERATE MURDERS HE MIGHT COMMIT!</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:50%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/108-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/108-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            FOUR REMARKABLY FINE KITTENS.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>It was headed from the cat-show secretary's office. Why, of
+        course, that charming twin had got first prize, no doubt. Let us see.
+        "Dear Madam," so ran the official note, "I beg to call your attention
+        to what I imagine must, in some way, have been an oversight. Your
+        cat, described on the entrance form as 'a black male, named Beauty,'
+        which was, on the evening of its arrival, placed in the class
+        pertaining to the descriptive form, was found this morning to have
+        presented us with four remarkably fine kittens. This, of course,
+        necessitated the family's removal from the male cat class. I have
+        much pleasure in being able to inform you that both mother and
+        kittens are in the best of health, and will be carefully attended
+        upon. If you will kindly forward your instructions respecting their
+        disposal, I shall be greatly obliged." That was the note, and wildly
+        did the letters dance before my eyes.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/108-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/108-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            GASPING FOR BREATH.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>Having saved myself from fainting by finishing the B. and S., I
+        sat for some minutes gasping for breath. Then I rubbed my eyes and
+        reread that awful epistle. Yes&mdash;it was so&mdash;in solemn, sober
+        black ink! Beauty's twin had got four fine kittens! Great
+        Jehoshaphat! How could I ever get over those confounded kittens! It
+        was too late to murder them. And my aunt&mdash;but stop! Let me read
+        her letter; it might suggest something&mdash;some feline legerdemain
+        method of conjuring four fine kittens into a first prize black male
+        cat. So here goes. And this is how it went: "I always considered you
+        to be a fool, Samuel, but nothing worse, until now. Unless the
+        enclosed letter is immediately fully explained, and the matter set
+        right, I shall plainly let you know what I do think of you now, and
+        act accordingly. See the secretary, and telegraph me the result at
+        once." Not much hope in that, worse luck; only a limited respite.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/108-3.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/108-3.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            WENT FISHING.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>Away I went to the show, saw the secretary&mdash;from a safe
+        distance&mdash;and immediately telegraphed: "Have seen the secretary.
+        Hard at work setting matters right. Awfully sorry." Then I hired a
+        boat, and went fishing for the rest of the day. In the evening I
+        wired: "Beauty must have got changed. Cats now all going home. Found
+        clue and am following up. All right shortly." But my aunt's patience
+        had expired. Next morning came a curt note saying she would at once
+        join me, and either rescue Beauty or settle that secretary. How could
+        I ever face those searching spectacles! I fled. From a lonely spot on
+        the wilds of Dartmoor I wired: "Am following clue sharp. Getting
+        close up. Good news next time." Back came an answer: "Shall be with
+        you to-morrow at noon." At noon next day, I boarded the mail packet
+        Tongariro, bound from Plymouth to New Zealand.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure" style="clear:both;"><a href=
+        "images/109-1.jpg"><img src="images/109-1.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+        "" /></a><br />
+        OFF TO NEW ZEALAND.</p>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s11" name="i13s11"></a>PEOPLE I HAVE NEVER MET</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY SCOTT RANKIN.</h3>
+
+        <h2>MRS. HUMPHRY WARD.</h2>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/110-1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+        "images/110-1.jpg" alt="" /></a></p>
+
+        <blockquote><p>
+            "You can do nothing by despising the past and its products; you
+            also can do nothing by being too much afraid of them.... Be
+            content to be a new 'sect,' 'conventicle,' or what not, so long
+            as you feel that you are <i>something</i>, with a life and
+            purpose of its own, in this tangle of a world."&mdash;<i>Robert
+            Elsmere</i>.</p>
+        </blockquote>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/111-1.jpg"><img width="100%" src=
+        "images/111-1.jpg" alt="" /></a></p>
+
+        <h2><a name="i13s12"></a>THE IDLERS CLUB</h2>
+
+        <h2>Is Love a Practical Reality or a Pleasing Fiction?</h2>
+
+        <p class="sidenote">Mrs. Lynn Linton thinks there is no doubt as to
+        Love's reality.</p>
+
+        <p>Of the desperate reality of the passion there is no doubt; of the
+        intrinsic value of the thing beloved there may be many. The passion
+        for which men and women have died stands like a tower four-square to
+        all the winds of heaven; but how far that tower has been self-created
+        by fancy, and how much is objectively real, who is the wise man that
+        can determine? What is Love? We know nothing of its source. Sense and
+        sex cannot wholly explain its mystery, else would there be no
+        friendship left among us; and elective affinity is but a dainty
+        carving on the chancel stalls. The loveliness which makes that
+        special person the veritable Rose of the World to us exists but in
+        our imagination. It is no rose that we adore&mdash;only at the best a
+        bedeguar, of which the origin is a disagreeable little insect. We
+        believe in the exquisite harmony of those atoms which have arranged
+        themselves to form the thing we love. And we marry our human ideal,
+        expecting the unbroken continuance of that harmony. But the discord
+        comes; colours clash; the jarring note spoils the chord; the idol
+        once accepted as of gold and precious stones, proves to be only
+        common clay, thinly gilt. The diamonds are paste; the pearls are
+        beads of glass filled with shining fishes' scales; and the love which
+        we thought would be a practical reality for life, is nothing but a
+        pleasing fiction, good for its day, and now dead and done with. The
+        lover sees nothing as it is. Life is distorted between jealousy and
+        admiration, and the plain teaching of common-sense is as little
+        understood as the conditions of the fourth dimension or the poetic
+        aspirations of the Simian tongue. The adored is not a real person;
+        the happiness anticipated is not practical nor practicable. Both are
+        on all-fours with the substantiality of a cloud and the serviceable
+        roadway of a rainbow. Custom, familiarity, daily habits are the sole
+        tests by which the reality of the thing beloved can be
+        tried&mdash;the reality of the thing beloved and consequent validity
+        of love. Before these tests are applied, the whole affair is as a
+        fairy dream born of the perfume and the mystery of night. With the
+        clear cold breath of morning the dream vanishes, but&mdash;what is
+        left? The sigh of the vanishing god?&mdash;a tear on the cheek of
+        Psyche?&mdash;the loathing of the man who finds M&eacute;lusine a
+        serpent rather than a woman?&mdash;or the peaceful joy of the child
+        who dreams of angels and wakes in its mother's arms?&mdash;of those
+        who sleeping on the ocean wake to find themselves safe in port?</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">"Rita" thinks Love is beautiful and wise.</p>
+
+        <p>At one period of life, love is simply an emotion&mdash;the outcome
+        of attraction, or the effect of that vague mystery which surrounds
+        sex. In this emotional stage the <i>feeling</i> may be real enough,
+        but the passion is an illusion. A girl is often more in love with
+        Love than with an actual lover. The youth who beholds his ideal in
+        the First Woman is in love with the woman herself who for the time
+        (usually very brief) embodies that ideal. But to the girl and the
+        youth comes an hour when they are humiliatingly conscious of study
+        wasted on a prettily-bound work of fiction that for all use and
+        purpose in life is quite valueless. The edifice of romance is
+        constructed much on the same plan as a child's castle of cards, and
+        deservedly shares the same fate. That is to say, the topmost card
+        overbalances the whole structure. It is usually the hand of Reason
+        that topples over Love's romantic tenement by crowning it with the
+        card of Common Sense. When we find Love has become a practical
+        reality, the discovery is often very unpleasant. We would rather not
+        be unhappy if we had the choice. Unfortunately, we haven't, and find
+        ourselves in that condition without exactly knowing how we drifted
+        into it. Drifters often discover Love to be a very practical reality,
+        because of unpleasant consequences. It is decidedly humiliating to
+        find ourselves in the toils of a siren the very reverse of our high
+        ideal of the personage who is to have the honour and glory of
+        subjugating us. This is one of Love's amusing little ways of proving
+        that ideals are really not important. The best and safest test of the
+        reality of Love is to ask yourself how much you have suffered on
+        account of it. I don't speak of such trifles as tears, heartaches,
+        sleepless nights, fevers of jealousy and despair, sacrifices, or
+        discomforts, but of <i>real</i> genuine self-torment and mental
+        torture which only this passion is capable of inflicting on its
+        victims. The most sceptical will acknowledge that its powers in this
+        line are only excelled by its apparent animosity. To discover the
+        life that completes and contents our own is not given to many of us
+        poor mortals. Here and there some fortunate individuals have made
+        that discovery&mdash;but they are rare&mdash;and not given to
+        boasting on the subject; yet though worldly wise folk scoff at love
+        as a myth, I question whether they could name any other passion of
+        the heart which has occupied so important a place in the world's
+        history, which has given life to all that is great and divine in art,
+        or inspired such deeds of heroism, self-sacrifice, and martyrdom.
+        Before its patient strength men have stood mute and wondering, and
+        proud heads have bent in reverence, and stern eyes grown dim. For
+        Love is beautiful, despite faults, and wise, despite follies. It
+        alone of all human emotions can lift our souls heavenwards, and make
+        even life's thorny path a thing of beauty.</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">John Strange Winter's opinions.</p>
+
+        <p>Love may be classed under several heads. The first, the great, the
+        unattainable, the one-sided, and the worn-out. They are all real!
+        What can be more real than the perhaps not very practical passion
+        which first makes young hearts ache? What agony it is to <i>her</i>
+        when <i>he</i> dances three times running with that horrid, stuck-up
+        London girl, with her fashionable jargon, her languorous movements,
+        just a turn or two, and then stop for as many minutes! First love is
+        not often last love. <i>He</i> thinks <i>her</i> unreasonable to mind
+        those dances, yet when a great love comes into her life, making her
+        think of him as "just a boy," he suffers all, or nearly all, the
+        pangs of a great passion. Unavailing pain! <i>She</i> has cast the
+        die of her life, and past loves are shadows compared with the
+        absorbing power that now grips her heart like a vice. Much may happen
+        to the great love, but it is very real! A great love may merge into
+        matrimony, and life may run on oiled wheels, and Darby and Joan may
+        pass through the world, loving faithfully, and without digression, to
+        the end. Or something may come between, and the great love may become
+        the unattainable! It will not be the less real for that.</p>
+
+        <p class="sidenote">The Unattainable.</p>
+
+        <p>The unattainable has more in it of pathos than despair. Romance
+        sweetens it, and the romance never dies. The tenderness of "what
+        might have been" gives balm to many a suffering soul! The wife may be
+        unhappy, neglected, heartsick, she may even loathe him whose name she
+        bears, but she is often upholden by the thought that <i>he</i> would
+        have been wholly different! A husband may know that he has married
+        the wrong woman, yet he bears what is, because he cannot have
+        <i>her</i> who would have made life all sunshine. Few pity the
+        one-sided love, helpless, hopeless, and without justification as it
+        is; yet it is very real to the lonely soul. The worn-out love is the
+        very essence of sadness! It is heart-breaking to watch the efforts of
+        a foolish heart to keep a love dying or already dead, to see love,
+        which would once have made a paradise, poured out at the feet of one
+        who is only bored and not even touched by it. Nothing is so dead as a
+        dead love&mdash;yet, even <i>that</i> is real!</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">Miss May Crommelin takes a professional view</p>
+
+        <p>Can any sensible novelist hesitate? Does a shoe-maker depreciate
+        leather? Would you saw off the tree-branch you sit on? Now, on this
+        subject, anybody's opinion (full-grown) is as good as another's. Let
+        the footman bring down word that love is the drawing-room topic, and
+        the cook will cry out, "What do they know more about it than
+        <i>us</i>?" Is it not a human feeling, call it instinct or no? Surely
+        old Sally Jones has simpler feelings than the Dowager Countess; as
+        much experience in this. Love is just as real as a rainbow on a wet
+        day; as&mdash;as influenza. The first may be a "pleysing payne": the
+        latter must be a very displeasing one. But there is little fiction
+        about either to the victims. Well, suppose love a mere brain-fantasm;
+        an odd survival when sensible folk have swept away beliefs in
+        witchcraft, fairies, and the virtue of fire and faggot for the wicked
+        ones who don't say their prayers the same way we do. <i>Still, was it
+        not worth while to have invented it?</i> However the idea was
+        evoluted, just consider the glamour it throws over thorns and
+        thistles, as we dig through life's long day of toil. As Trollope's
+        stout widow says, when choosing her second: "It's a whiff of the
+        rocks and the valleys." (So she had her marriage settlements tightly
+        drawn up, to enjoy her romance comfortably.) Consider this
+        epitaph&mdash;a real one&mdash;</p>
+
+        <table class="poetry">
+            <tbody>
+                <tr>
+                    <td>"Poorly lived, and poorly died;<br />
+                    Poorly buried, and <i>nobody cried</i>."<br /></td>
+                </tr>
+            </tbody>
+        </table>
+
+        <p>Broach this subject of love to a circle after dinner, round a good
+        fire. Everybody laughs! The young men and maidens look conscious.
+        What they feel is as real to them as pleasure in music they hear; in
+        the taste of wine. Yes, and far more&mdash;while it lasts. Some
+        elders profess scorn, because their minds are so choked with years'
+        dust of daily cares they have forgotten how they, too, once believed
+        love real&mdash;while it lasted! Ay! there's the rub. You are
+        told&mdash;truthfully&mdash;that love is strong as death:
+        inconstant as every breeze. Some declare, for them&mdash;</p>
+
+        <table class="poetry">
+            <tbody>
+                <tr>
+                    <td>"In the whole wide world there was but
+                    one."<br /></td>
+                </tr>
+            </tbody>
+        </table>
+
+        <p>Other as honest souls confess their hearts have known, since first
+        love, "many other lodgers." This seems clear, love is real to those
+        who <i>give it</i>! Only they who care more to <i>get it</i>, call it
+        moonshine and naughty names. Like figures on an Egyptian monument,
+        each follows one who looks at another. Never one scorned, but has
+        rejected a third.</p>
+
+        <table class="poetry">
+            <tbody>
+                <tr>
+                    <td>"As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the satyr,<br />
+                    The satyr Lyda&mdash;and so the three went
+                    weeping."<br /></td>
+                </tr>
+            </tbody>
+        </table>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">Miss Quiller Couch wishes Love were a pleasing
+        fiction.</p>
+
+        <p>"Pleasing fiction," forsooth; would that it were! It is a very
+        real game, and the rules thereof are practical. I know it, for verily
+        I myself have suffered. Let it not be understood, however, that it is
+        <i>as</i> a "practical, real lover" that I have suffered. Not at all.
+        It is that this order of beings walks abroad, and I am not of it, and
+        I meet it, and I am pained, and I feel sorry. Could Love be but a
+        pleasing fiction, how comfortable to sit aside and contemplate
+        it&mdash;a trifle to talk of, a dainty to dally with, a joy to the
+        juvenescent, a blessing to the book-writer, yet never an
+        inconvenience. But it is a practical reality, and it has great
+        effects. Why, I have seen good, healthy people, quite nice-tempered
+        people, brought to a shadow by it and churned into so many pounds of
+        incompetent irritability; <i>so</i> exacting about trifles, so
+        fidgetty about catching the mail, and so careless of the health of
+        the uninteresting majority. There was one man I knew down in a
+        village, and he fell in love with a pretty girl&mdash;they mostly do
+        that&mdash;but she would have nothing to say to him; and after every
+        rejected proposal he went straight home and made a three-legged stool
+        (he was a carpenter by trade, or perhaps it might have affected him
+        differently). He was what one might call an importunate man, for he
+        proposed nineteen times in all, and nineteen three-legged stools
+        stood as silent witnesses of his importunity. He changed houses after
+        the twelfth, for he found a sad joy in contemplating his handiwork as
+        he sat at his lonely meals, and his first sitting-room was only
+        twelve feet by eight. Finally, either because of his importunity, or
+        because she disliked the thought that the wordless witnesses might
+        fall into unsympathetic hands, the girl married the man, and scrubbed
+        the stools nicely with soap and sand, and grew quite fond of them.
+        And only once did she regret her surrender; and that was when it
+        flashed across her one day that twenty would have been a prettier
+        number: but she stifled that pain as years went on, and grew happy.
+        Then there was Dante's love for Beatrice, which caused him to sit
+        down and write such a lot. Most remarkable persons seem to have
+        produced something rather excellent as the outcome of their love. I
+        know a naturally lazy and slightly dingy boy who endured a nice clean
+        collar every day, and it cut his neck, and his soul abhorred it, for
+        he told me so; and he spent from seventy-five to ninety minutes over
+        his toilet every morning, while he loved, and he knew he could dress
+        in four minutes and a quarter, for he had done it often. Love was a
+        great beautifier. In this case I must admit that the lover suffered
+        more than we outsiders, except that he became irritable in his
+        cleanliness. Love should not be scorned, even if it is real and
+        sometimes uncomfortably practical. It is very beautiful, and lovers
+        make a pretty sight. What I protest is, that all creatures should be
+        lovers&mdash;or <i>none</i>. It is the half-and-half state of the
+        world which is irksome.</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">Morley Roberts hopes Love will some day be a
+        pleasing reality</p>
+
+        <p>Ah, my gentle cocksure friends, how well you all know Love, and
+        how ready you are to say what it is, to cut it up, to carve it, to
+        classify it, and generally to spread it out. We live in a world of
+        lies, and conventions, the dead leavings of an ignorant past, bind us
+        still. Some day, perhaps, when men and women are free, Love will be a
+        pleasing reality. It can never be so in the majority of cases so long
+        as we play at make-believe, and teach nothing that we have learned.
+        The good man won't teach his sons; he leaves them to learn in the
+        gutter. The good woman keeps her daughters ignorant. As it stands it
+        is an evil to love anyone over-much. And when we love we love
+        over-much, for Love has been repressed till it has got savage in the
+        race. "La privation radicale d'une chose cr&eacute;e
+        l&eacute;xe&eacute;s." All the trouble comes from this&mdash;that we
+        men have partially created women. But Nature had something to do with
+        her compounding. That is, perhaps, a pity from the social point of
+        view. For Nature can't be nice and comfortable. She is only kind when
+        we go her way. Let us remember that Love is the foundation of the
+        world. The very protoplasmic cells from which we sprang could love.
+        The time will come, perhaps, when, having chipped away the lies and
+        faced the truth, we shall find reality a thousand times more pleasing
+        than any fiction. Love is something real and wonderful, and in a
+        natural world we shall have passed through the blood-splashed gates
+        of Passion and be calm. Now Love is tortured, for we love ignorantly.
+        We are like shipwrecked folk on some strange land&mdash;we know not
+        the fruits of the trees of it. We learn the poisons by experiment,
+        and we let others learn. This is Love the Fiction. But some day when
+        we awake we shall know what we now dream, and Love will be always the
+        most precious flower that grows in the garden of the soul. It has the
+        subtle fragrance of the heaven that is our own if we walk bravely in
+        the world, desiring truth. Under its influence we discover ourselves.
+        We build ships for new voyages, and burst into unknown waters with
+        our Viking shields of victory ablaze in the morning sun. The air is
+        sharp and keen, not foetid with poisonous lies; the waters are blue
+        and beautiful; there are shining shores about us, and marvels of a
+        new nature on every hand. We who were in the night, and of it, become
+        vivid with the sun. Our atheism banishes the worshipped gods of evil
+        that are no more extant in our dogmatic creed of joy. For Truth and
+        Beauty have guided us hand in hand, and all they ask of us is to
+        throw away the Law of Lies and to acknowledge that the two are
+        one.</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">Zangwill reviews the evidence.</p>
+
+        <p>The traces left by Love in life are so numerous and diverse that I
+        am almost tempted to the hypothesis that it really exists. There
+        seems to be no other way of accounting for the facts. When you start
+        learning a new language you always find yourself confronted with the
+        verb "to love"&mdash;invariably the normal type of the first
+        conjugation. In every language on earth the student may be heard
+        declaring, with more zeal than discretion, that he and you and they
+        and every other person, singular or plural, have loved, and do love,
+        and will love. "To love" is the model verb; expressing the archetype
+        of activity. Once you can love grammatically there is a world of
+        things you may do without stumbling. For, strange to say, "to love,"
+        which in real life is associated with so much that is bizarre and
+        violent, is always "regular" in grammar, and this without barring
+        accidence of any kind. For ancient and modern tongues tell the same
+        tale&mdash;from Hebrew to street-Arabic, from Greek to the
+        elephantine language that was "made in Germany." Not only is "to
+        love" deficient in no language (as <i>home</i> is deficient in
+        French, and <i>Geist</i> in English), but it is never even
+        "defective." No mood or tense is ever wanting&mdash;a proof of how it
+        has been conjugated in every mood and tense of life, in association
+        with every variety of proper and improper noun, and every pronoun at
+        all personal. Not merely have people loved unconditionally in every
+        language, but there is none in which they would not have loved, or
+        might not have loved, had circumstances permitted; none in which they
+        have not been loved, or (for hope springs eternal in the human
+        breast) have been about to be loved. Even woman has an Active Voice
+        in the matter; indeed, "to love" is so perfect that, compared with
+        it, "to marry" is quite irregular. For, while "to love" is sufficient
+        for both sexes, directly you get to marriage you find in some
+        languages that division has crept in, and that there is one word for
+        the use of ladies and another for gentlemen only. Turning from the
+        evidence enshrined in language to the records of history, the same
+        truth meets us at any date we appoint. Everywhere "'Tis love that
+        makes the world go round," though more especially in ball-rooms. It
+        is awful to think what would have happened if Eve had not accepted
+        Adam. What could have attracted her if it was not love? Surely not
+        his money, nor his family. For these she couldn't have cared a
+        fig-leaf. Unfortunately, the daughters of Eve have not always taken
+        after their mother. The statistics of crime and insanity testify
+        eloquently to the reality of love, arithmetic teaching the same
+        lesson as history and grammar. Consider, too, the piles of love at
+        Mudie's! A million story-tellers in all periods and at all places
+        cannot have told all stories, though they have all, alas! told the
+        same story. They must have had mole-hills for their mountains, if not
+        straw for their bricks. There are those who, with Bacon, consider
+        love a variety of insanity; but it is more often merely a form of
+        misunderstanding. When the misunderstanding is mutual, it may even
+        lead to marriage. As a rule Beauty begets man's love, Power woman's.
+        At least, so women tell me. But then, I am not beautiful. It must be
+        said for the man that every lover is a species of Platonist&mdash;he
+        identifies the Beautiful with the Good and the True. The woman's
+        admiration has less of the ethical quality; she is dazzled, and too
+        often feels, "If he be but true to me, what care I how false he be."
+        The Romantic Love of the poets and novelists was of late birth; the
+        savage and many civilisations knew it not, and philosophers explain
+        that it could not be developed till Roman Law had developed the
+        conception of Marriage as a Contract. Even to this day it is as rare
+        as large paper editions of the books about it. Roughly speaking, I
+        should say it would spring up here and there among all classes of the
+        population, except poets and novelists. Romantic Love is the rose
+        Evolution has grown on earthly soil. <i>Floreat!</i></p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">Burgin thinks it all depends on the people who
+        love.</p>
+
+        <p>One morning the average man gets up, lights his pipe, roams round
+        his rooms in all the ease of unshaven countenance and
+        dressing-gown-clad form. Then he goes out, and meets <i>her</i>.
+        There may be a hundred women in the room, or park, or tennis ground,
+        wherever the tragedy (Love is a tragedy) commences. When the lights
+        are low he comes back, and is low also. Wonders how men can be such
+        brutes as to want dinner; thinks his life has been misspent; that he
+        is unworthy to touch her hand; that he has wallowed in the fleshpots,
+        and here is a way out of them. And if the man's nature be noble and
+        sweet and true; if he has hitherto drifted adown the stream of
+        circumstance because his fellows have also drifted; then, with the
+        deepening tides of his passion, the old spirit of knight-errantry
+        descends upon him with its mystic mantle of white samite. And slowly
+        out of this deepening torrent of bewildered impulse and devotion is
+        born a new man&mdash;a man with a soul&mdash;a man who can dare all
+        things, do all things, endure all things, for the sake of the woman
+        he loves. At the baptism of her touch he becomes whole, and shapes
+        his life to noble ends. Even if he can't marry her, he is the better
+        for his passion. Such a love endures until the leaves of the Judgment
+        Book unroll; for it laughs to scorn the pitiful fools who boast of
+        infidelity, the "male hogs in armour," as Kingsley calls them, who
+        look upon women as toys, the sport of an idle moment, rather than the
+        spiritual force which leavens the world, and makes it an endurable
+        and joyous dwelling-place.</p>
+
+        <p class="sidenote">And on the woman loved.</p>
+
+        <p>Of course, I was speaking of good women. I once heard a story
+        about a bad woman&mdash;a woman of the world, who was very much
+        amused at being taken seriously by a boy who loved her. "Tell me all
+        about it," she would say to him. "Explain what you feel, why you love
+        me, why you believe in me. Don't you see I'm courted and
+        admired&mdash;a social force&mdash;that men flock round me everywhere
+        I go?" "Oh, yes," said the boy, "I see all that. But you're an angel
+        of goodness, and can't help men liking you. If I lost faith in you,
+        I'd kill myself." "Ah," she rejoined, "that's what you all say. You
+        would doubt me, and live on." Then, one afternoon, he had good cause
+        to doubt, inasmuch as her engagement to another man was announced.
+        That evening she received a note from him: "Good-bye. If I lived on,
+        I might doubt; it's better to die and&mdash;believe!" They told her
+        of the&mdash;the accident that night, and she wrote a touching little
+        paragraph about it for the Society papers before dining out.</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">Gribble generaliseth confidently.</p>
+
+        <p>In a sense, of course, Love is necessarily a fiction, whether
+        pleasing or otherwise; for illusion is of the essence of it. The
+        lover, in fact, is like the artist who sees things through a
+        temperament, and, by eliminating the irrelevant, builds up the ideal
+        on the foundation of the real. Tityrus sees more in Amaryllis than
+        his brother shepherds see, just as Mr. Whistler sees more in a
+        November fog than is visible to the eye of the casual wayfarer who
+        gets lost in it, and mingles profanity with his coughs, yet, granting
+        this, the reality and completeness of the illusion does not admit of
+        doubt. On no alternative hypothesis can the great majority of
+        marriages be explained. If commonplace people saw each other as
+        others see them, surely they would remain single all their lives. Yet
+        most people are commonplace, and most people marry. The
+        reality&mdash;the controlling over-mastering reality&mdash;of Love
+        has to be assumed to make their behaviour intelligible.</p>
+
+        <p class="sidenote">Having hasted from a wedding for the purpose.</p>
+
+        <p>This point struck me forcibly the last time I was present at a
+        wedding. It was a Jewish wedding, celebrated at the little synagogue
+        behind the Haymarket. I had no acquaintance with anyone concerned in
+        the ceremony, but had dropped in quite casually, having heard that
+        Jewish weddings were picturesque. The one thing that impressed me
+        more than anything else was the decided undesirability of both the
+        bridegroom and the bride. That the bride was not comely goes for
+        little. But her forehead indicated a limited range and low ideals;
+        the corners of her mouth spoke of an irritable temper; her bearing
+        was vulgar; her voice had a twang that made one long to take her by
+        the shoulders and shake her violently. She was also escorted by gaudy
+        female relatives, by looking at whom one could anticipate the awful
+        possibilities of her maturity. As for the bridegroom, he was a Hebrew
+        of the florid type. His waistcoat was protuberant; he had a red face
+        with red whiskers sprawling all over it; he wore flash jewellery; his
+        hair shone with pomatum; there was that in his bearing which
+        indicated that he followed some sordid calling, such as pawnbroking,
+        or the backing of horses on commission. Yet one could see that these
+        two unattractive persons were really attracted by each other. A great
+        and beautiful miracle had been performed; and the power which had
+        performed it was that Love in which some profess to disbelieve.</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">Frank Mathew displays his Ignorance.</p>
+
+        <p>Ignorance&mdash;says some wiseacre&mdash;is the mother of
+        eloquence, and I take it that the less one knows of Love the easier
+        it is to write of it. I side with those who hold that the Love
+        described by poets and other wordy people is mainly fanciful, a
+        flattering picture, that the best school for such writing is an
+        unhappy affection, and that no man can want better luck than to have
+        his heart broken, and so be made proof against lovesickness. An
+        unrequited love runs no risk of being dulled by the prose of life. A
+        man so fortunate as to be jilted or rejected finds his Beloved
+        remaining beautiful and young to him when her husband sees her an
+        unwieldy and wearisome old woman. And when at times he grows
+        sentimental&mdash;a bachelor's privilege&mdash;he can feel again the
+        old hopes that he never found false, and see the old perfections that
+        were never disproved. He has a life-companion who comes only when she
+        is wanted, and then with a "smile on her face and a rose in her
+        hair," whose voice is always gentle, to whom wrinkles are not
+        necessary and bills are not known.</p>
+
+        <p class="sidenote">And praises ugliness.</p>
+
+        <p>I am one of those who prefer the luckless adorers in novels to the
+        conquering heroes; and hold that the quality an ideal lover needs
+        most is ugliness, so that he may honour beauty the more. Once I knew
+        a boy who was uglier than sin, and who wrote a story&mdash;in a
+        sprawling hand and on ruled paper&mdash;a wonderful story, telling
+        how an unlovely but admirable Knight, worshipping a Princess, rode
+        out to win her by great deeds, and how when he came back triumphant,
+        the sight of her brought his unworthiness home to him so that he
+        dared not claim her. And I knew another boy who was good-looking, and
+        wrote a story (during study-time, of course, and by stealth) about a
+        handsome hero who went to Court in fine clothes, and was worshipped
+        by all the girls. I think now that he was the manlier, but that the
+        first would have made the more devout lover. But the drawback of
+        luckless adorers is that their constancy has not been tried by the
+        ordeal of success. Many a fellow who lived loyal and heart-broken
+        would have made an unfaithful husband.</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">'Q.' is surprised at his sister.</p>
+
+        <p>Love, no doubt, is a subject of popular interest, but a man is
+        always staggered to find his sister holding an opinion upon it. If I
+        remember rightly, in the days when Lilian Quiller Couch (then aged
+        seven) did me the honour of playing Juliet to my Romeo, the interest
+        was mainly acrobatic, Romeo descending the gardener's ladder
+        head-foremost, while Juliet tilted her body as far over the nursery
+        window-sill as she could manage without breaking her neck. We "cut"
+        the love speeches. Two years later, indeed, my sister schemed to
+        marry me to our common governess. There was no love on my side; so
+        she turned over the Prayer-book, hoping to find "A man may not marry
+        his governess" in the table of Forbidden Degrees. Such a prohibition
+        (she well knew) would be a trumpet-call to my native spirit of
+        disobedience. But I am convinced that even then the nature of true
+        affection did not enter into her calculations. She merely counted on
+        my marital influence to end or mend the French irregular verbs. I am
+        delighted that, in these later days, she sees Love to be a "practical
+        reality." For my part, I want a definition. Popular custom bestows
+        the name of Love on a green sickness which is in fact a part of
+        Nature's wise economy. I will expound. Almost all young men, say
+        between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five, incline to consume much
+        meat and do next to no work. Were there no corrective, it is clear
+        that in a few years the face of the earth would be eaten bare as by
+        locusts. But at this season Nature by the simplest stroke&mdash;the
+        flush of a commonplace cheek, the warm touch of a commonplace
+        hand&mdash;in a twinkling redresses the balance. Forthwith the ideal
+        devourer of crops and herbs not only loses his appetite, but arising,
+        smacks the earth with a hoe till the clods fly and the fields laugh
+        with harvest. Thereon he mops his steaming brow, bedecks him with a
+        bunch of white ribbons, and jogs jovially to church arm in arm with
+        the pretty cause of all this beneficent disturbance. And the
+        spectacle is mighty taking and commendable; but you'll excuse me for
+        holding that it is not Love. It bears about the same relation to Love
+        that Bumble-puppy bears to good whist. Among the eccentricities that
+        make up the Average Man I find none more diverting than his
+        complacent belief that he is, or has been, or will certainly some day
+        be, in love. As a matter of fact, the capacity to love belongs to one
+        man or woman in ten thousand. Listen to Matthew Arnold:</p>
+
+        <table class="poetry">
+            <tbody>
+                <tr>
+                    <td>"But in the world I learnt, what there<br />
+                    &nbsp;&nbsp; Thou wilt too surely one day prove,<br />
+                    That will, that energy, though rare,<br />
+                    &nbsp;&nbsp; Are yet far, far less rare than
+                    love."<br /></td>
+                </tr>
+            </tbody>
+        </table>
+
+        <p>I go further and believe it rarer even than Genius. Indeed, the
+        capacity to love, is a specialised form of genius. You understand
+        that I am not commending it. Its possessors are often disreputable
+        and almost always unhappy. Their recompense is that they, and they
+        only, have seen the splendours of the passion, and vibrated to the
+        shaking inner music of the sheep-boy's pipe.</p>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12223 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #12223 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12223)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893
+       An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: May 1, 2004 [eBook #12223]
+[Most recently updated: January 27, 2023]
+
+Language: English
+
+Produced by: Jonathan Ingram and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IDLER, NO. 13 ***
+
+
+
+
+THE IDLER MAGAZINE.
+AN ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY.
+
+EDITED BY JEROME K. JEROME & ROBERT BARR.
+
+
+VOL. III. FEBRUARY TO JULY, 1893.
+
+XIII. FEB. 1893.
+
+
+LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS, 214, PICCADILLY. 1893.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHEATING THE GALLOWS.
+    BY I. ZANGWILL.
+
+MY FIRST NOVEL.--THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT.
+    BY MISS M. E. BRADDON.
+
+NOVEL NOTES.
+    BY JEROME K. JEROME.
+
+THE SKATER.
+    BY WILLIAM CANTON.
+
+MY SERVANT ANDREAS.
+    BY ARCHIBALD FORBES.
+
+TOLD BY THE COLONEL.--
+    X. A MATRIMONIAL ROMANCE.
+    BY W. L. ALDEN.
+
+"LIONS IN THEIR DENS."--
+    II. GEORGE GROSSMITH AND THE HUMOUR OF HIM.
+    BY RAYMOND BLATHWAYT.
+
+A BLIND BEGGARMAN.
+    BY FRANK MATHEW.
+
+CHURCH AND STAGE.--A REVIEW OF HENRY IRVING.
+    BY THE REV. DR. JOSEPH PARKER.
+
+THAT BEAST BEAUTY.
+    BY KIRBY HARE.
+
+PEOPLE I HAVE NEVER MET.--MRS. HUMPHRY WARD.
+    BY SCOTT RANKIN.
+
+THE IDLERS CLUB
+    Is Love a Practical Reality or a Pleasing Fiction?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+CHEATING THE GALLOWS.
+
+BY I. ZANGWILL.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEO. HUTCHINSON.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+CURIOUS COUPLE.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE CORPSE WASHED UP BY THE RIVER.]
+
+They say that a union of opposites makes the happiest marriage, and
+perhaps it is on the same principle that men who chum are always so
+oddly assorted. You shall find a man of letters sharing diggings with an
+auctioneer, and a medical student pigging with a stockbroker's clerk.
+Perhaps each thus escapes the temptation to talk "shop" in his hours of
+leisure, while he supplements his own experiences of life by his
+companion's.
+
+[Illustration: TOM PETERS.]
+[Illustration: EVERARD G. ROXDAL.]
+
+There could not be an odder couple than Tom Peters and Everard G.
+Roxdal--the contrast began with their names, and ran through the entire
+chapter. They had a bedroom and a sitting-room in common, but it would
+not be easy to find what else. To his landlady, worthy Mrs. Seacon, Tom
+Peters's profession was a little vague, but everybody knew that Roxdal
+was the manager of the City and Suburban Bank, and it puzzled her to
+think why a bank manager should live with such a seedy-looking person,
+who smoked clay pipes and sipped whiskey and water all the evening when
+he was at home. For Roxdal was as spruce and erect as his fellow-lodger
+was round-shouldered and shabby; he never smoked, and he confined
+himself to a small glass of claret at dinner.
+
+It is possible to live with a man and see very little of him. Where each
+of the partners lives his own life in his own way, with his own circle
+of friends and external amusements, days may go by without the men
+having five minutes together. Perhaps this explains why these
+partnerships jog along so much more peaceably than marriages, where the
+chain is drawn so much tighter, and galls the partners rather than links
+them. Diverse, however, as were the hours and habits of the chums, they
+often breakfasted together, and they agreed in one thing--they never
+stayed out at night. For the rest Peters sought his diversions in the
+company of journalists, and frequented debating rooms, where he
+propounded the most iconoclastic views; while Roxdal had highly
+respectable houses open to him in the suburbs, and was, in fact, engaged
+to be married to Clara Newell, the charming daughter of a retired corn
+merchant, a widower with no other child.
+
+[Illustration: ASKED TWENTY-FIVE PER CENT. MORE.]
+
+Clara naturally took up a good deal of Roxdal's time, and he often
+dressed to go to the play with her, while Peters stayed at home in a
+faded dressing-gown and loose slippers. Mrs. Seacon liked to see
+gentlemen about the house in evening dress, and made comparisons not
+favourable to Peters. And this in spite of the fact that he gave her
+infinitely less trouble than the younger man. It was Peters who first
+took the apartments, and it was characteristic of his easy-going
+temperament that he was so openly and naïvely delighted with the view of
+the Thames obtainable from the bedroom window, that Mrs. Seacon was
+emboldened to ask twenty-five per cent. more than she had intended. She
+soon returned to her normal terms, however, when his friend Roxdal
+called the next day to inspect the rooms, and overwhelmed her with a
+demonstration of their numerous shortcomings. He pointed out that their
+being on the ground floor was not an advantage, but a disadvantage,
+since they were nearer the noises of the street--in fact, the house
+being a corner one, the noises of two streets. Roxdal continued to
+exhibit the same finicking temperament in the petty details of the
+_ménage_. His shirt fronts were never sufficiently starched, nor his
+boots sufficiently polished. Tom Peters, having no regard for rigid
+linen, was always good-tempered and satisfied, and never acquired the
+respect of his landlady. He wore blue check shirts and loose ties even
+on Sundays. It is true he did not go to church, but slept on till Roxdal
+returned from morning service, and even then it was difficult to get him
+out of bed, or to make him hurry up his toilette operations. Often the
+mid-day meal would be smoking on the table while Peters would smoke in
+the bed, and Roxdal, with his head thrust through the folding doors that
+separated the bedroom from the sitting-room, would be adjuring the
+sluggard to arise and shake off his slumbers, and threatening to sit
+down without him, lest the dinner be spoilt. In revenge, Tom was usually
+up first on week-days, sometimes at such unearthly hours that Polly had
+not yet removed the boots from outside the bedroom door, and would bawl
+down to the kitchen for his shaving water. For Tom, lazy and indolent as
+he was, shaved with the unfailing regularity of a man to whom shaving
+has become an instinct. If he had not kept fairly regular hours, Mrs.
+Seacon would have set him down as an actor, so clean shaven was he.
+Roxdal did not shave. He wore a full beard, and, being a fine figure of
+a man to boot, no uneasy investor could look upon him without being
+reassured as to the stability of the bank he managed so successfully.
+And thus the two men lived in an economical comradeship, all the firmer,
+perhaps, for their mutual incongruities.
+
+[Illustration: FOR HIS SHAVING WATER.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+A WOMAN'S INSTINCT.
+
+
+[Illustration: "TOM SHAMBLED FROM THE SITTING-ROOM."]
+
+It was on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of October, ten days after
+Roxdal had settled in his new rooms, that Clara Newell paid her first
+visit to him there. She enjoyed a good deal of liberty, and did not mind
+accepting his invitation to tea. The corn merchant, himself
+indifferently educated, had an exaggerated sense of the value of
+culture, and so Clara, who had artistic tastes without much actual
+talent, had gone in for painting, and might be seen, in pretty
+toilettes, copying pictures in the Museum. At one time it looked as if
+she might be reduced to working seriously at her art, for Satan, who
+finds mischief still for idle hands to do, had persuaded her father to
+embark the fruits of years of toil in bubble companies. However, things
+turned out not so bad as they might have been, a little was saved from
+the wreck, and the appearance of a suitor, in the person of Everard G.
+Roxdal, ensured her a future of competence, if not of the luxury she had
+been entitled to expect. She had a good deal of affection for Everard,
+who was unmistakably a clever man, as well as a good-looking one. The
+prospect seemed fair and cloudless. Nothing presaged the terrible storm
+that was about to break over these two lives. Nothing had ever for a
+moment come to vex their mutual contentment, till this Sunday afternoon.
+The October sky, blue and sunny, with an Indian summer sultriness,
+seemed an exact image of her life, with its aftermath of a happiness
+that had once seemed blighted.
+
+Everard had always been so attentive, so solicitous, that she was as
+much surprised as chagrined to find that he had apparently forgotten the
+appointment. Hearing her astonished interrogation of Polly in the
+passage, Tom shambled from the sitting-room in his loose slippers and
+his blue check shirt, with his eternal clay pipe in his mouth, and
+informed her that Roxdal had gone out suddenly earlier in the afternoon.
+
+"G-g-one out," stammered poor Clara; all confused. "But he asked me to
+come to tea."
+
+"Oh, you're Miss Newell, I suppose," said Tom.
+
+"Yes, I am Miss Newell."
+
+"He has told me a great deal about you, but I wasn't able honestly to
+congratulate him on his choice till now."
+
+Clara blushed uneasily under the compliment, and under the ardour of his
+admiring gaze. Instinctively she distrusted the man. The very first
+tones of his deep bass voice gave her a peculiar shudder. And then his
+impoliteness in smoking that vile clay was so gratuitous.
+
+"Oh, then you must be Mr. Peters," she said in return. "He has often
+spoken to me of you."
+
+"Ah!" said Tom, laughingly, "I suppose he's told you all my vices. That
+accounts for your not being surprised at my Sunday attire."
+
+She smiled a little, showing a row of pearly teeth. "Everard ascribes to
+you all the virtues," she said.
+
+"Now that's what I call a friend!" he cried, ecstatically. "But won't
+you come in? He must be back in a moment. He surely would not break an
+appointment with _you_." The admiration latent in the accentuation of
+the last pronoun was almost offensive.
+
+She shook her head. She had a just grievance against Everard, and would
+punish him by going away indignantly.
+
+"Do let _me_ give you a cup of tea," Tom pleaded. "You must be awfully
+thirsty this sultry weather. There! I will make a bargain with you! If
+you will come in now, I promise to clear out the moment Everard returns,
+and not spoil your _tête-à-tête_." But Clara was obstinate; she did not
+at all relish this man's society, and besides, she was not going to
+throw away her grievance against Everard. "I know Everard will slang me
+dreadfully when he comes in if I let you go," Tom urged. "Tell me at
+least where he can find you."
+
+"I am going to take the 'bus at Charing Cross, and I'm going straight
+home," Clara announced determinedly. She put up her parasol in a pet,
+and went up the street into the Strand. A cold shadow seemed to have
+fallen over all things. But just as she was getting into the 'bus, a
+hansom dashed down Trafalgar Square, and a well-known voice hailed her.
+The hansom stopped, and Everard got out and held out his hand.
+
+"I'm so glad you're a bit late," he said. "I was called out
+unexpectedly, and have been trying to rush back in time. You wouldn't
+have found me if you had been punctual. But I thought," he added,
+laughing, "I could rely on you as a woman."
+
+"I _was_ punctual," Clara said angrily. "I was not getting out of this
+'bus, as you seem to imagine, but into it, and was going home."
+
+"My darling!" he cried remorsefully. "A thousand apologies." The regret
+on his handsome face soothed her. He took the rose he was wearing in the
+button-hole of his fashionably-cut coat and gave it to her.
+
+"Why were you so cruel?" he murmured, as she nestled against him in the
+hansom. "Think of my despair if I had come home to hear you had come and
+gone. Why didn't you wait a moment?"
+
+[Illustration: "SHE NESTLED AGAINST HIM."]
+
+A shudder traversed her frame. "Not with that man, Peters!" she
+murmured.
+
+"Not with that man, Peters!" he echoed sharply. "What is the matter with
+Peters?"
+
+"I don't know," she said. "I don't like him."
+
+"Clara," he said, half sternly, half cajolingly, "I thought you were
+above these feminine weaknesses; you are punctual, strive also to be
+reasonable. Tom is my best friend. From boyhood we have been always
+together. There is nothing Tom would not do for me, or I for Tom. You
+must like him, Clara; you must, if only for my sake."
+
+"I'll try," Clara promised, and then he kissed her in gratitude and
+broad daylight.
+
+"You'll be very nice to him at tea, won't you?" he said anxiously. "I
+shouldn't like you two to be bad friends."
+
+"I don't want to be bad friends," Clara protested; "only the moment I
+saw him a strange repulsion and mistrust came over me."
+
+"You are quite wrong about him--quite wrong," he assured her earnestly.
+"When you know him better, you'll find him the best of fellows. Oh, I
+know," he said suddenly, "I suppose he was very untidy, and you women go
+so much by appearances!"
+
+"Not at all," Clara retorted. "'Tis you men who go by appearances."
+
+"Yes, you do. That's why you care for me," he said, smiling.
+
+She assured him it wasn't, and she didn't care for him so much as he
+plumed himself, but he smiled on. His smile died away, however, when he
+entered his rooms and found Tom nowhere.
+
+"I daresay you've made him run about hunting for me," he grumbled.
+
+"Perhaps he knew I'd come back, and went away to leave us together," she
+answered. "He said he would when you came."
+
+"And yet you say you don't like him!"
+
+She smiled reassuringly. Inwardly, however, she felt pleased at the
+man's absence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+POLLY RECEIVES A PROPOSAL.
+
+
+[Illustration: "CARRYING ON WITH POLLY."]
+
+If Clara Newell could have seen Tom Peters carrying on with Polly in the
+passage, she might have felt justified in her prejudice against him. It
+must be confessed, though, that Everard also carried on with Polly.
+Alas! it is to be feared that men are much of a muchness where women are
+concerned; shabby men and smart men, bank managers and journalists,
+bachelors and semi-detached bachelors. Perhaps it was a mistake after
+all to say the chums had nothing patently in common. Everard, I am
+afraid, kissed Polly rather more often than Clara, and although it was
+because he respected her less, the reason would perhaps not have been
+sufficiently consoling to his affianced wife. For Polly was pretty,
+especially on alternate Sunday afternoons, and when at ten p.m. she
+returned from her outings, she was generally met in the passage by one
+or other of the men. Polly liked to receive the homage of real
+gentlemen, and set her white cap at all indifferently. Thus, just before
+Clara knocked on that memorable Sunday afternoon, Polly, being confined
+to the house by the unwritten code regulating the lives of servants, was
+amusing herself by flirting with Peters.
+
+"You _are_ fond of me a little bit," the graceless Tom whispered,
+"aren't you?"
+
+"You know I am, sir," Polly replied.
+
+"You don't care for anyone else in the house?"
+
+"Oh no, sir, and never let anyone kiss me but you. I wonder how it is,
+sir?" Polly replied ingenuously.
+
+"Give me another," Tom answered.
+
+She gave him another, and tripped to the door to answer Clara's knock.
+
+[Illustration: POLLY AND ROXDAL.]
+
+And that very evening, when Clara was gone and Tom still out, Polly
+turned without the faintest atom of scrupulosity, or even jealousy, to
+the more fascinating Roxdal, and accepted his amorous advances. If it
+would seem at first sight that Everard had less excuse for such
+frivolity than his friend, perhaps the seriousness he showed in this
+interview may throw a different light upon the complex character of
+the man.
+
+"You're quite sure you don't care for anyone but me?" he asked
+earnestly.
+
+"Of course not, sir!" Polly replied indignantly. "How could I?"
+
+"But you care for that soldier I saw you out with last Sunday?"
+
+"Oh no, sir, he's only my young man," she said apologetically.
+
+"Would you give him up?" he hissed suddenly.
+
+Polly's pretty face took a look of terror. "I couldn't, sir! He'd kill
+me. He's such a jealous brute, you've no idea."
+
+"Yes, but suppose I took you away from here?" he whispered eagerly.
+"Somewhere where he couldn't find you--South America, Africa, somewhere
+thousands of miles across the seas."
+
+"Oh, sir, you frighten me!" whispered Polly, cowering before his ardent
+eyes, which shone in the dimly-lit passage.
+
+"Would you come with me?" he hissed. She did not answer; she shook
+herself free and ran into the kitchen, trembling with a vague fear.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE CRASH.
+
+
+One morning, earlier than his earliest hour of demanding his shaving
+water, Tom rang the bell violently and asked the alarmed Polly what had
+become of Mr. Roxdal.
+
+"How should I know, sir?" she gasped. "Ain't he been in, sir?"
+
+"Apparently not," Tom answered anxiously. "He never remains out. We have
+been here three weeks now, and I can't recall a single night he hasn't
+been home before twelve. I can't make it out." All enquiries proved
+futile. Mrs. Seacon reminded him of the thick fog that had come on
+suddenly the night before.
+
+"What fog?" asked Tom.
+
+"Lord! didn't you notice it, sir?"
+
+"No, I came in early, smoked, read, and went to bed about eleven. I
+never thought of looking out of the window."
+
+"It began about ten," said Mrs. Seacon, "and got thicker and thicker. I
+couldn't see the lights of the river from my bedroom. The poor gentleman
+has been and gone and walked into the water." She began to whimper.
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense," said Tom, though his expression belied his words.
+"At the worst I should think he couldn't find his way home, and couldn't
+get a cab, so put up for the night at some hotel. I daresay it will be
+all right." He began to whistle as if in restored cheerfulness. At eight
+o'clock there came a letter for Roxdal, marked "immediate," but as he
+did not turn up for breakfast, Tom went round personally to the City and
+Suburban Bank. He waited half-an-hour there, but the manager did not
+make his appearance. Then he left the letter with the cashier and went
+away with anxious countenance.
+
+That afternoon it was all over London that the manager of the City and
+Suburban had disappeared, and that many thousand pounds of gold and
+notes had disappeared with him.
+
+[Illustration: "SCOTLAND YARD OPENED THE LETTER."]
+
+Scotland Yard opened the letter marked "immediate," and noted that there
+had been a delay in its delivery, for the address had been obscure, and
+an official alteration had been made. It was written in a feminine hand
+and said: "On second thoughts I cannot accompany you. Do not try to see
+me again. Forget me. I shall never forget you."
+
+There was no signature.
+
+Clara Newell, distracted, disclaimed all knowledge of this letter. Polly
+deposed that the fugitive had proposed flight to her, and the routes to
+Africa and South America were especially watched. Some months passed
+without result. Tom Peters went about overwhelmed with grief and
+astonishment. The police took possession of all the missing man's
+effects. Gradually the hue and cry dwindled, died.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+FAITH AND UNFAITH.
+
+
+"At last we meet!" cried Tom Peters, while his face lit up in joy. "How
+_are_ you, dear Miss Newell?" Clara greeted him coldly. Her face had an
+abiding pallor now. Her lover's flight and shame had prostrated her for
+weeks. Her soul was the arena of contending instincts. Alone of all the
+world she still believed in Everard's innocence, felt that there was
+something more than met the eye, divined some devilish mystery behind it
+all. And yet that damning letter from the anonymous lady shook her
+sadly. Then, too, there was the deposition of Polly. When she heard
+Peters's voice accosting her all her old repugnance resurged. It flashed
+upon her that this man--Roxdal's boon companion--must know far more than
+he had told to the police. She remembered how Everard had spoken of him,
+with what affection and confidence! Was it likely he was utterly
+ignorant of Everard's movements? Mastering her repugnance, she held out
+her hand. It might be well to keep in touch with him; he was possibly
+the clue to the mystery. She noticed he was dressed a shade more trimly,
+and was smoking a meerschaum. He walked along at her side, making no
+offer to put his pipe out.
+
+"You have not heard from Everard?" he asked. She flushed. "Do you think
+I'm an accessory after the fact?" she cried.
+
+"No, no," he said soothingly. "Pardon me, I was thinking he might have
+written--giving no exact address, of course. Men do sometimes dare to
+write thus to women. But, of course, he knows you too well--you would
+have put the police on his track."
+
+"Certainly," she exclaimed, indignantly. "Even if he is innocent he must
+face the charge."
+
+"Do you still entertain the possibility of his innocence?"
+
+"I do," she said boldly, and looked him full in the face. His eyelids
+drooped with a quiver. "Don't you?"
+
+"I have hoped against hope," he replied, in a voice faltering with
+emotion. "Poor old Everard! But I am afraid there is no room for doubt.
+Oh, this wicked curse of money--tempting the noblest and the best
+of us."
+
+[Illustration: "SHE DID NOT REPULSE HIM."]
+
+The weeks rolled on. Gradually she found herself seeing more and more of
+Tom Peters, and gradually, strange to say, he grew less repulsive. From
+the talks they had together, she began to see that there was really no
+reason to put faith in Everard; his criminality, his faithlessness, were
+too flagrant. Gradually she grew ashamed of her early mistrust of
+Peters; remorse bred esteem, and esteem ultimately ripened into feelings
+so warm, that when Tom gave freer vent to the love that had been visible
+to Clara from the first, she did not repulse him.
+
+It is only in books that love lives for ever. Clara, so her father
+thought, showed herself a sensible girl in plucking out an unworthy
+affection and casting it from her heart. He invited the new lover to his
+house, and took to him at once. Roxdal's somewhat supercilious manner
+had always jarred upon the unsophisticated corn merchant. With Tom the
+old man got on much better. While evidently quite as well informed and
+cultured as his whilom friend, Tom knew how to impart his superior
+knowledge with the accent on the knowledge rather than on the
+superiority, while he had the air of gaining much information in return.
+Those who are most conscious of defects of early education are most
+resentful of other people sharing their consciousness Moreover, Tom's
+_bonhomie_ was far more to the old fellow's liking than the studied
+politeness of his predecessor, so that on the whole Tom made more of a
+conquest of the father than of the daughter. Nevertheless, Clara was by
+no means unresponsive to Tom's affection, and when, after one of his
+visits to the house, the old man kissed her fondly and spoke of the
+happy turn things had taken, and how, for the second time in their
+lives, things had mended when they seemed at their blackest, her heart
+swelled with a gush of gratitude and joy and tenderness, and she fell
+sobbing into her father's arms.
+
+[Illustration: "WITH TOM THE OLD MAN GOT ON MUCH BETTER."]
+
+Tom calculated that he made a clear five hundred a year by occasional
+journalism, besides possessing some profitable investments which he had
+inherited from his mother, so that there was no reason for delaying the
+marriage. It was fixed for May-day, and the honeymoon was to be spent
+in Italy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE DREAM AND THE AWAKENING
+
+
+But Clara was not destined to happiness. From the moment she had
+promised herself to her first love's friend old memories began to rise
+up and reproach her. Strange thoughts stirred in the depths of her soul,
+and in the silent watches of the night she seemed to hear Everard's
+accents, charged with grief and upbraiding. Her uneasiness increased as
+her wedding-day drew near. One night, after a pleasant afternoon spent
+in being rowed by Tom among the upper reaches of the Thames, she retired
+to rest full of vague forebodings. And she dreamt a terrible dream. The
+dripping form of Everard stood by her bedside, staring at her with
+ghastly eyes. Had he been drowned on the passage to his land of exile?
+Frozen with horror, she put the question.
+
+"I have never left England!" the vision answered.
+
+Her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth.
+
+"Never left England?" she repeated, in tones which did not seem to be
+hers.
+
+The wraith's stony eyes stared on, but there was silence.
+
+"Where have you been then?" she asked in her dream.
+
+"Very near you," came the answer.
+
+"There has been foul play then!" she shrieked.
+
+The phantom shook its head in doleful assent.
+
+"I knew it!" she shrieked. "Tom Peters--Tom Peters has done away with
+you. Is it not he? Speak!"
+
+"Yes, it is he--Tom Peters--whom I loved more than all the world."
+
+Even in the terrible oppression of the dream she could not resist
+saying, woman-like:
+
+"Did I not warn you against him?"
+
+The phantom stared on silently and made no reply.
+
+"But what was his motive?" she asked at length.
+
+"Love of gold--and you. And you are giving yourself to him," it said
+sternly.
+
+"No, no, Everard! I will not! I will not! I swear it! Forgive me!"
+
+The spirit shook its head sceptically.
+
+"You love him. Women are false--as false as men."
+
+She strove to protest again, but her tongue refused its office.
+
+"If you marry him, I shall always be with you! Beware!"
+
+The dripping figure vanished as suddenly as it came, and Clara awoke in
+a cold perspiration. Oh, it was horrible! The man she had learnt to
+love, the murderer of the man she had learnt to forget! How her original
+prejudice had been justified! Distracted, shaken to her depths, she
+would not take counsel even of her father, but informed the police of
+her suspicions. A raid was made on Tom's rooms, and lo! the stolen notes
+were discovered in a huge bundle. It was found that he had several
+banking accounts, with a large, recently-paid amount in each bank. Tom
+was arrested. Attention was now concentrated on the corpses washed up by
+the river. It was not long before the body of Roxdal came to shore, the
+face distorted almost beyond recognition by long immersion, but the
+clothes patently his, and a pocket-book in the breast-pocket removing
+the last doubt. Mrs. Seacon and Polly and Clara Newell all identified
+the body. Both juries returned a verdict of murder against Tom Peters,
+the recital of Clara's dream producing a unique impression in the court
+and throughout the country. The theory of the prosecution was that
+Roxdal had brought home the money, whether to fly alone or to divide it,
+or whether even for some innocent purpose, as Clara believed, was
+immaterial. That Peters determined to have it all, that he had gone out
+for a walk with the deceased, and, taking advantage of the fog, had
+pushed him into the river, and that he was further impelled to the crime
+by love for Clara Newell, as was evident from his subsequent relations
+with her. The judge put on the black cap. Tom Peters was duly hung by
+the neck till he was dead.
+
+[Illustration: "IDENTIFIED THE BODY."]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+BRIEF RÉSUMÉ OF THE CULPRIT'S CONFESSION.
+
+
+When you all read this I shall be dead and laughing at you. I have been
+hung for my own murder. I am Everard G. Roxdal. I am also Tom Peters. We
+two were one. When I was a young man my moustache and beard wouldn't
+come. I bought false ones to improve my appearance. One day, after I had
+become manager of the City and Suburban Bank, I took off my beard and
+moustache at home, and then the thought crossed my mind that nobody
+would know me without them. I was another man. Instantly it flashed upon
+me that if I ran away from the Bank, that other man could be left in
+London, while the police were scouring the world for a non-existent
+fugitive. But this was only the crude germ of the idea. Slowly I matured
+my plan. The man who was going to be left in London must be known to a
+circle of acquaintance beforehand. It would be easy enough to masquerade
+in the evenings in my beardless condition, with other disguises of dress
+and voice. But this was not brilliant enough. I conceived the idea of
+living with him. It was Box and Cox reversed. We shared rooms at Mrs.
+Seacon's. It was a great strain, but it was only for a few weeks. I had
+trick clothes in my bedroom like those of quick-change artistes; in a
+moment I could pass from Roxdal to Peters and from Peters to Roxdal.
+Polly had to clean two pairs of boots a morning, cook two dinners, &c.,
+&c. She and Mrs. Seacon saw one or the other of us every moment; it
+never dawned upon them they never saw us _both together_. At meals I
+would not be interrupted, ate off two plates, and conversed with my
+friend in loud tones. At other times we dined at different hours. On
+Sundays he was supposed to be asleep when I was in church. There is no
+landlady in the world to whom the idea would have occurred that one man
+was troubling himself to be two (and to pay for two, including washing).
+I worked up the idea of Roxdal's flight, asked Polly to go with me,
+manufactured that feminine letter that arrived on the morning of my
+disappearance. As Tom Peters I mixed with a journalistic set. I had
+another room where I kept the gold and notes till I mistakenly thought
+the thing had blown over. Unfortunately, returning from here on the
+night of my disappearance, with Roxdal's clothes in a bundle I intended
+to drop into the river, it was stolen from me in the fog, and the man
+into whose possession it ultimately came appears to have committed
+suicide. What, perhaps, ruined me was my desire to keep Clara's love,
+and to transfer it to the survivor. Everard told her I was the best of
+fellows. Once married to her, I would not have had much fear. Even if
+she had discovered the trick, a wife cannot give evidence against her
+husband, and often does not want to. I made none of the usual slips, but
+no man can guard against a girl's nightmare after a day up the river and
+a supper at the Star and Garter. I might have told the judge he was an
+ass, but then I should have had penal servitude for bank robbery, and
+that is worse than death. The only thing that puzzles me, though, is
+whether the law has committed murder or I suicide.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+My First Novel.
+
+THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT.
+
+BY MISS M. E. BRADDON.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY MISS F. L. FULLER.
+
+
+My first novel! Far back in the distinctness of childish memories I see
+a little girl who has lately learnt to write, who has lately been given
+a beautiful brand new mahogany desk, with a red velvet slope, and a
+glass ink bottle, such a desk as might now be bought for three and
+sixpence, but which in the forties cost at least half-a-guinea. Very
+proud is the little girl, with the Kenwigs pigtails, and the Kenwigs
+frills, of that mahogany desk, and its infinite capacities for literary
+labour, above all, gem of gems, its stick of variegated sealing-wax,
+brown, speckled with gold, and its little glass seal with an intaglio
+representing two doves--Pliny's doves perhaps, famous in mosaic, only
+the little girl had never heard of Pliny, or his Laurentine Villa.
+
+[Illustration: LICHFIELD HOUSE, RICHMOND.]
+
+Armed with that desk and its supply of stationery, Mary Elizabeth
+Braddon--very fond of writing her name at full-length, and her address
+also at full-length, though the word "Middlesex" offered
+difficulties--began that pilgrimage on the broad high road of fiction,
+which was destined to be a longish one. So much for the little girl of
+eight years old, in the third person, and now to become strictly
+autobiographical.
+
+My first story was based on those fairy tales which first opened to me
+the world of imaginative literature. My first attempt in fiction, and in
+round-hand, on carefully pencilled double lines, was a story of two
+sisters, a good sister and a wicked, and I fear adhered more faithfully
+to the lines of the archetypal story than the writer's pen kept to the
+double fence which should have ensured neatness.
+
+[Illustration: THE HALL.]
+
+The interval between the ages of eight and twelve was a prolific period,
+fertile in unfinished MSS., among which I can now trace a historical
+novel on the Siege of Calais--an Eastern story, suggested by a
+passionate love of Miss Pardoe's Turkish tales, and Byron's "Bride of
+Abydos," which my mother, a devoted Byron worshipper, allowed me to read
+aloud to her--and doubtless murder in the reading--a story of the Hartz
+Mountains, with audacious flights in German diablerie; and lastly, very
+seriously undertaken, and very perseveringly worked upon, a domestic
+story, the outline of which was suggested by the same dear and
+sympathetic mother.
+
+Now it is a curious fact, which may or may not be common to other
+story-spinners, that I have never been able to take kindly to a plot--or
+the suggestion of a plot--offered to me by anybody else. The moment a
+friend tells me that he or she is desirous of imparting a series of
+facts--strictly true--as if truth in fiction mattered one jot!--which in
+his or her opinion would make the ground plan of an admirable,
+startling, and altogether original three-volume novel, I know in advance
+that my imagination will never grapple with those startling
+circumstances--that my thoughts will begin to wander before my friend
+has got half through the remarkable chain of events, and that if the
+obliging purveyor of romantic incidents were to examine me at the end of
+the story, I should be spun ignominiously. For the most part, such
+subjects as have been proposed to me by friends have been hopelessly
+unfit for the circulating library; or, where not immoral, have been
+utterly dull; but it is, I believe, a fixed idea in the novel-reader's
+mind that any combination of events out of the beaten way of life will
+make an admirable subject for the novelist's art.
+
+[Illustration: THE STAIRCASE.]
+
+My dear mother, taking into consideration my tender years, and perhaps
+influenced in somewise by her own love of picking up odd bits of
+Sheraton or Chippendale furniture in the storehouses of the less
+ambitious second-hand dealers of those simpler days, offered me the
+following _scenario_ for a domestic story. It was an incident which, I
+doubt not, she had often read at the tail of a newspaper column, and
+which certainly savours of the gigantic gooseberry, the sea-serpent, and
+the agricultural labourer who unexpectedly inherits half-a-million. It
+was eminently a Simple Story, and far more worthy of that title than
+Mrs. Inchbald's long and involved romance.
+
+An honest couple, in humble circumstances, possess among their small
+household gear a good old easy chair, which has been the pride of a
+former generation, and is the choicest of their household gods. A
+comfortable cushioned chair, snug and restful, albeit the chintz
+covering, though clean and tidy, as virtuous people's furniture always
+is in fiction, is worn thin by long service, while the dear chair itself
+is no longer the chair it once was as to legs and framework.
+
+Evil days come upon the praiseworthy couple and their dependent brood,
+among whom I faintly remember the love interest of the story to have
+lain; and that direful day arrives when the average landlord of juvenile
+fiction, whose heart is of adamant and brain of brass, distrains for the
+rent. The rude broker swoops upon the humble dovecot; a cart or
+hand-barrow waits on the carefully hearth-stoned door-step for the
+household gods; the family gather round the cherished chair, on which
+the rude broker has already laid his grimy fingers; they hang over the
+back and fondle the padded arms; and the old grandmother, with clasped
+hands, entreats that, if able to raise the money in a few days, they may
+be allowed to buy back that loved heirloom.
+
+[Illustration: THE DINING ROOM.]
+
+The broker laughs the plea to scorn; they might have their chair, and
+cheap enough, he had no doubt. The cover was darned and patched--as only
+the virtuous poor of fiction do darn and do patch--and he made no doubt
+the stuffing was nothing better than brown wool; and with that coarse
+taunt the coarser broker dug his clasp-knife into the cushion against
+which grandfatherly backs had leaned in happier days, and lo! an
+avalanche of banknotes fell out of the much-maligned horse-hair, and the
+family was lifted from penury to wealth. Nothing more simple--or more
+natural. A prudent but eccentric ancestor had chosen this mode of
+putting by his savings, assured that, whenever discovered, the money
+would be useful to--somebody.
+
+So ran the _scenario_: but I fancy my juvenile pen hardly held on to the
+climax. My brief experience of boarding school occurred at this time,
+and I well remember writing "The Old Arm Chair" in a penny account book,
+in the schoolroom of Cresswell Lodge, and that I was both surprised and
+offended at the laughter of the kindly music-teacher who, coming into
+the room to summon a pupil, and seeing me gravely occupied, enquired
+what I was doing, and was intensely amused at my stolid method of
+composition, plodding on undisturbed by the voices and occupations of
+the older girls around me. "The Old Arm Chair" was certainly my first
+serious, painstaking effort in fiction; but as it was abandoned
+unfinished before my eleventh birthday, and as no line thereof ever
+achieved the distinction of type, it can hardly rank as my first novel.
+
+[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM.]
+
+There came a very few years later the sentimental period, in which my
+unfinished novels assumed a more ambitious form, and were modelled
+chiefly upon Jane Eyre, with occasional tentative imitations of
+Thackeray. Stories of gentle hearts that loved in vain, always ending in
+renunciation. One romance there was, I well remember, begun with
+resolute purpose, after the first reading of Esmond, and in the
+endeavour to give life and local colour to a story of the Restoration
+period, a brilliantly wicked interval in the social history of England,
+which, after the lapse of thirty years, I am still as bent upon taking
+for the background of a love story as I was when I began "Master
+Anthony's Record" in Esmondese, and made my girlish acquaintance with
+the Reading-room of the British Museum, where I went in quest of local
+colour, and where much kindness was shown to my youth and inexperience
+of the book world. Poring over a folio edition of the State Trials at my
+uncle's quiet rectory in sleepy Sandwich, I had discovered the
+passionate romantic story of Lord Grey's elopement with his
+sister-in-law, next in sequence to the trial of Lawrence Braddon and
+Hugh Speke for conspiracy. At the risk of seeming disloyal to my own
+race, I must add that it seemed to me a very tinpot order of plot to
+which these two learned gentlemen bent their legal minds, and which cost
+the Braddon family a heavy fine in land near Camelford--confiscation
+which I have heard my father complain of as especially unfair--Lawrence
+being a younger son. The romantic story of Lord Grey was to be the
+subject of "Master Anthony's Record," but Master Anthony's sentimental
+autobiography went the way of all my earlier efforts. It was but a year
+or so after the collapse of Master Anthony, that a blindly-enterprising
+printer of Beverley, who had seen my poor little verses in the _Beverley
+Recorder_, made me the spirited offer of ten pounds for a serial story,
+to be set up and printed at Beverley, and published on commission by a
+London firm in Warwick Lane. I cannot picture to myself, in my
+after-knowledge of the bookselling trade, any enterprise more futile in
+its inception or more feeble in its execution; but to my youthful
+ambition the actual commission to write a novel, with an advance payment
+of fifty shillings to show good faith on the part of my Yorkshire
+speculator, seemed like the opening of that pen-and-ink paradise which I
+had sighed for ever since I could hold a pen. I had, previously to this
+date, found a Mæcenas in Beverley, in the person of a learned gentleman
+who volunteered to foster my love of the Muses by buying the copyright
+of a volume of poems and publishing the same at his own expense--which
+he did, poor man, without stint, and by which noble patronage of Poet's
+Corner verse, he must have lost money. He had, however, the privilege of
+dictating the subject of the principal poem, which was to sing--however
+feebly--Garibaldi's Sicilian campaign.
+
+[Illustration: THE EVENING ROOM.]
+
+The Beverley printer suggested that my Warwick Lane serial should
+combine, as far as my powers allowed, the human interest and genial
+humour of Dickens with the plot-weaving of G. W. R. Reynolds; and,
+furnished with these broad instructions, I filled my ink bottle, spread
+out my foolscap, and, on a hopelessly wet afternoon, began my first
+novel--now known as "The Trail of the Serpent"--but published in Warwick
+Lane, and later in the stirring High Street of Beverley, as "Three Times
+Dead." In "Three Times Dead" I gave loose to all my leanings to the
+violent in melodrama. Death stalked in ghastliest form across my pages;
+and villainy reigned triumphant till the Nemesis of the last chapter. I
+wrote with all the freedom of one who feared not the face of a critic;
+and, indeed, thanks to the obscurity of its original production, and its
+re-issue as the ordinary two-shilling railway novel, this first novel of
+mine has almost entirely escaped the critical lash, and has pursued its
+way as a chartered libertine. People buy it and read it, and its faults
+and follies are forgiven as the exuberances of a pen unchastened by
+experience; but faster and more facile at that initial stage than it
+ever became after long practice.
+
+[Illustration: THE SMOKING-ROOM.]
+
+I dashed headlong at my work, conjured up my images of horror or of
+mirth, and boldly built the framework of my story, and set my puppets
+moving. To me, at least, they were living creatures, who seemed to
+follow impulses of their own, to be impelled by their own passions, to
+love and hate, and plot and scheme of their own accord. There was
+unalloyed pleasure in the composition of that first story, and the
+knowledge that it was to be actually printed and published, and not to
+be declined with thanks by adamantine magazine editors, like a certain
+short story which I had lately written, and which contained the germ of
+"Lady Audley's Secret." Indeed, at this period of my life, the postman's
+knock had become associated in my mind with the sharp sound of a
+rejected MS. dropping through the open letter-box on to the floor of the
+hall, while my heart seemed to drop in sympathy with that
+book-post packet.
+
+[Illustration: THE LIBRARY.]
+
+Short of never being printed at all, my Beverley-born novel could have
+hardly entered upon the world of books in a more profound obscurity.
+That one living creature ever bought a number of "Three Times Dead" I
+greatly doubt. I can recall the thrill of emotion with which I tore open
+the envelope that contained my complimentary copy of the first number,
+folded across, and in aspect inferior to a gratis pamphlet about a
+patent medicine. The miserable little wood block which illustrated that
+first number would have disgraced a baker's whitey-brown bag, would have
+been unworthy to illustrate a penny bun. My spirits were certainly
+dashed at the technical shortcomings of that first serial, and I was
+hardly surprised when I was informed a few weeks later, that although my
+admirers at Beverley were deeply interested in the story, it was not a
+financial success, and that it would be only obliging on my part, and in
+accordance with my known kindness of heart, if I were to restrict the
+development of the romance to half its intended length, and to accept
+five pounds in lieu of ten as my reward. Having no desire that the rash
+Beverley printer should squander his own or his children's fortune in
+the obscurity of Warwick Lane, I immediately acceded to his request,
+shortened sail, and went on with my story, perhaps with a shade less
+enthusiasm, having seen the shabby figure it was to make in the book
+world. I may add that the Beverley publisher's payments began and ended
+with his noble advance of fifty shillings. The balance was never paid;
+and it was rather hard lines that, on his becoming bankrupt in his poor
+little way a few years later, a judge in the Bankruptcy Court remarked
+that, as Miss Braddon was now making a good deal of money by her pen,
+she ought to "come to the relief" of her first publisher.
+
+[Illustration: MISS BRADDON'S FAVOURITE MARE.]
+
+And now my volume of verses being well under weigh, I went with my
+mother to farm-house lodgings in the neighbourhood of that very
+Beverley, where I spent, perhaps, the happiest half-year of my
+life--half a year of tranquil, studious days, far from the madding
+crowd, with the mother whose society was always all sufficient for
+me--half a year among level pastures, with unlimited books from the
+library in Hull, an old farm-horse to ride about the green lanes, the
+breath of summer, with all its sweet odours of flower and herb, around
+and about us: half a year of unalloyed bliss, had it not been for one
+dark shadow, the heroic figure of Garibaldi, the sailor soldier, looming
+large upon the foreground of my literary labours, as the hero of a
+lengthy narrative poem in the Spenserian metre.
+
+My chief business at Beverley was to complete the volume of verse
+commissioned by my Yorkshire Mæcenas, at that time a very rich man, who
+paid me a much better price for my literary work than his townsman, the
+enterprising printer, and who had the first claim on my thought
+and time.
+
+[Illustration: THE ORANGERY.]
+
+With the business-like punctuality of a salaried clerk, I went every
+morning to my file of the _Times_, and pored and puzzled over Neapolitan
+revolution and Sicilian campaign, and I can only say that if Emile Zola
+has suffered as much over Sedan as I suffered in the freshness of my
+youth, when flowery meadows and the old chestnut mare invited to summer
+idlesse, over the fighting in Sicily, his dogged perseverance in
+uncongenial labour should place him among the Immortal Forty. How I
+hated the great Joseph G. and the Spenserian metre, with its exacting
+demands upon the rhyming faculty. How I hated my own ignorance of modern
+Italian history, and my own eyes for never having looked upon Italian
+landscape, whereby historical allusion and local colour were both
+wanting to that dry-as-dust record of heroic endeavour. I had only the
+_Times_ correspondent; where he was picturesque I could be
+picturesque--allowing always for the Spenserian straining--where he was
+rich in local colour I did my utmost to reproduce his colouring,
+stretched always on the Spenserian rack, and lengthened out by the
+bitter necessity of finding triple rhymes. Next to Guiseppe Garibaldi I
+hated Edmund Spenser, and it may be from a vengeful remembrance of those
+early struggles with a difficult form of versification, that, although
+throughout my literary life I have been a lover of England's earlier
+poet, and have delighted in the quaintness and _naïveté_ of Chaucer, I
+have refrained from reading more than a casual stanza or two of the
+"Faëry Queen." When I lived at Beverley, Spenser was to me but a name,
+and Byron's "Childe Harold" was my only model for that exacting verse. I
+should add that the Beverley Mæcenas, when commissioning this volume of
+verse, was less superb in his ideas than the literary patron of the
+past. He looked at the matter from a purely commercial standpoint, and
+believed that a volume of verse, such as I could produce, would pay--a
+delusion on his part which I honestly strove to combat before accepting
+his handsome offer of remuneration for my time and labour. It was with
+this idea in his mind that he chose and insisted upon the Sicilian
+Campaign as a subject for my muse, and thus started me heavily
+handicapped on the racecourse of Parnassus.
+
+[Illustration: MISS BRADDON'S COTTAGE AT LYNDHURST.]
+
+The weekly number of "Three Times Dead" was "thrown off" in brief
+intervals of rest from my _magnum opus_, and it was an infinite relief
+to turn from Garibaldi and his brothers in arms to the angels and the
+monsters which my own brain had engendered, and which to me seemed more
+alive than the good great man whose arms I so laboriously sang. My
+rustic pipe far better loved to sing of melodramatic poisoners and
+ubiquitous detectives; of fine houses in the West of London, and dark
+dens in the East. So the weekly chapter of my first novel ran merrily
+off my pen while the printer's boy waited in the farm-house kitchen.
+
+Happy, happy days, so near to memory, and yet so far. In that peaceful
+summer I finished my first novel, knocked Garibaldi on the head with a
+closing rhapsody, saw the York spring and summer races in hopelessly wet
+weather, learnt to love the Yorkshire people, and left Yorkshire almost
+broken-heartedly on a dull gray October morning, to travel Londonwards
+through a landscape that was mostly under water.
+
+And, behold, since that October morning I have written fifty-three
+novels; I have lost dear old friends and found new friends, who are also
+dear, but I have never looked on a Yorkshire landscape since I turned my
+reluctant eyes from those level meadows and green lanes where the old
+chestnut mare used to carry me ploddingly to and fro between tall,
+tangled hedges of eglantine and honeysuckle.
+
+[Illustration: MISS BRADDON'S INKSTAND.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+NOVEL NOTES.
+
+BY JEROME K. JEROME.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. GÜLICH AND J. GREIG,
+
+PART X.
+
+
+[Illustration: "DISCUSSION AT OUR LAST MEETING."]
+
+The final question discussed at our last meeting had been: What shall
+our hero be? MacShaugnassy had suggested an author, with a critic for
+the villain. Brown's fancy was an artist. My idea was a stockbroker,
+with an undercurrent of romance in his nature. Said Jephson, who has a
+practical mind, approaching at times the commercial: "The question is
+not what we like, but what the female novel-reader likes."
+
+"That is so," agreed MacShaugnassy. "I propose that we collect feminine
+opinion upon this point. I will write to my aunt, and get from her the
+old lady's view. You," he said, turning to me, "can put the case to your
+wife, and get the young lady's ideal. Let Brown write to his sister at
+Newnham, and find out whom the intellectual maiden favours, while
+Jephson can learn from Miss Medbury what is most attractive to the
+common-sensed girl."
+
+This plan we had adopted, and the result was now under consideration.
+MacShaugnassy opened the proceedings by reading his aunt's letter. Wrote
+the old lady:
+
+    "I think, if I were you, my dear boy, I should choose a
+    soldier. You know your poor grandfather, who ran away to
+    America with that _wicked_ Mrs. Featherly, the banker's wife,
+    was a soldier, and so was your poor cousin Robert, who lost
+    eight thousand pounds at Monte Carlo. I have always felt
+    singularly drawn towards soldiers, even as a girl; though your
+    poor dear uncle could not bear them. You will find many
+    allusions to soldiers and men of war in the Old Testament (see
+    Jer. 48,14). Of course one does not like to think of their
+    fighting and killing each other, but then they do not seem to
+    do much of that sort of thing nowadays."
+
+"So much for the old lady," said MacShaugnassy, as he folded up the
+letter and returned it to his pocket. "What says culture?"
+
+[Illustration: BROWN READ AS FOLLOWS.]
+
+Brown produced from his cigar-case a letter addressed in a bold round
+hand, and read as follows:
+
+    "What a curious coincidence! A few of us were discussing this
+    very subject last night in Millicent Hightopper's rooms, and I
+    may tell you at once that our decision was unanimous in favour
+    of soldiers. You see, my dear Selkirk, in human nature the
+    attraction is towards the opposite. To a milliner's apprentice
+    a poet would no doubt be satisfying; to a woman of intelligence
+    he would be an unutterable bore. The man of brain is not for
+    the woman of brain. What the intellectual woman requires in man
+    is not something to argue with, but something to look at. To an
+    empty-headed woman I can imagine the soldier type proving vapid
+    and uninteresting; to the woman of mind he represents her ideal
+    of man--a creature strong, handsome, well-dressed, and not
+    too clever."
+
+"That gives us two votes for the army," remarked MacShaugnassy, as Brown
+tore his sister's letter in two, and threw the pieces into the
+waste-paper basket. "What says the common-sensed girl?"
+
+"First catch your common-sensed girl," muttered Jephson, a little
+grumpily, as it seemed to me. "Where do you propose finding her?"
+
+"Well," returned MacShaugnassy, "I looked to find her in Miss Medbury."
+
+As a rule, the mention of Miss Medbury's name brings a flush of joy to
+Jephson's face; but now his features wore an expression distinctly
+approaching a scowl.
+
+"Oh!" he replied, "did you? Well, then, the common-sensed girl loves the
+military, also."
+
+"By Jove!" exclaimed MacShaugnassy, "what an extraordinary thing. What
+reason does she give?"
+
+"That they look so nice when they're dressed, and that they dance so
+divinely," answered Jephson, shortly.
+
+"Well, you do surprise me," murmured MacShaugnassy, "I am astonished."
+
+Then to me he said: "And what does the young married woman say? The
+same?"
+
+"Yes," I replied, "precisely the same."
+
+"Does _she_ give a reason?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, yes," I explained; "because you can't help liking them."
+
+There was silence for the next few minutes, while we smoked and thought.
+I fancy we were all wishing we had never started this enquiry.
+
+That four distinctly different types of educated womanhood should, with
+promptness and unanimity quite unfeminine, have selected the soldier as
+their ideal, was certainly discouraging to the civilian heart. Had they
+been nursemaids or servant girls, I should have expected it. The worship
+of Mars by the Venus of the white cap is one of the few vital religions
+left to this devoutless age. A year or two ago I lodged near a barracks,
+and the sight to be seen round its huge iron gates on Sunday afternoons
+I shall never forget. The girls began to assemble about twelve o'clock.
+By two, at which hour the army, with its hair nicely oiled and a cane in
+its hand, was ready for a stroll, there would be some four or five
+hundred of them waiting in a line. Formerly they had collected in a wild
+mob, and as the soldiers were let out to them two at a time, had fought
+for them, as lions for early Christians. This, however, had led to
+scenes of such disorder and brutality, that the police had been obliged
+to interfere; and the girls were now marshalled in _queue_, two abreast,
+and compelled, by a force of constables specially told off for the
+purpose, to keep their places and wait their proper turn.
+
+At three o'clock the sentry on duty would come down to the wicket and
+close it. "They're all gone, my dears," he would shout out to the girls
+still left; "it's no good your stopping, we've no more for you to-day."
+
+"Oh, not one!" some poor child would murmur pleadingly, while the tears
+welled up into her big round eyes, "not even a little one. I've been
+waiting _such_ a long time."
+
+"Can't help that," the honest fellow would reply, gruffly, but not
+unkindly, turning aside to hide his emotion; "you've had 'em all between
+you. We don't make 'em, you know: you can't have 'em if we haven't got
+'em, can you? Come earlier next time."
+
+[Illustration: "NOW THEN, PASS ALONG."]
+
+Then he would hurry away to escape further importunity; and the police,
+who appeared to have been waiting for this moment with gloating
+anticipation, would jeeringly hustle away the weeping remnant. "Now
+then, pass along, you girls, pass along," they would say, in that
+irritatingly unsympathetic voice of theirs. "You've had your chance.
+Can't have the roadway blocked up all the afternoon with this 'ere
+demonstration of the unloved. You'll have to put up with your ordinary
+young men for to-day. Pass along."
+
+In connection with this same barracks, our charwoman told Amenda, who
+told Ethelbertha, who told me a story, which I now told the boys.
+
+Into a certain house, in a certain street in the neighbourhood, there
+moved one day a certain family. Their servant had left them--most of
+their servants did at the end of a week--and the day after the moving-in
+an advertisement was drawn up and sent to the _Chronicle_ for a
+domestic. It ran thus:
+
+    WANTED GENERAL SERVANT, in small family of eleven. Wages, £6;
+    no beer money. Must be early riser and hard worker. Washing
+    done at home. Must be good cook, and not object to
+    window-cleaning. Unitarian preferred.--Apply, with references,
+    to A. B., &C.
+
+That advertisement was sent off on Wednesday afternoon. At seven o'clock
+on Thursday morning the whole family were awakened by continuous ringing
+of the street door bell. The husband, looking out of window, was
+surprised to see a crowd of about fifty girls surrounding the house. He
+slipped on his dressing-gown and went down to see what was the matter.
+The moment he opened the door, fifteen of them charged tumultuously into
+the passage, sweeping him completely off his legs. Once inside, these
+fifteen faced round, fought the other thirty-five or so back on to the
+door-step, and slammed the door in their faces. Then they picked up the
+master of the house, and asked him politely to conduct them to "A. B."
+
+[Illustration: "SURPRISED TO SEE ABOUT FIFTY GIRLS."]
+
+At first, owing to the clamour of the mob outside, who were hammering at
+the door and shouting curses through the keyhole on those inside, he was
+too confused to understand anything, but by dint of great exertion they
+succeeded at length in explaining to him that they were domestic
+servants come in answer to his wife's advertisement. The man went and
+told his wife, and his wife said she would see them, one at a time.
+
+Which one should have audience first was a delicate question to decide.
+The man, on being appealed to, said he would prefer to leave it to them.
+They accordingly discussed the matter among themselves. At the end of a
+quarter of an hour, the victor, having borrowed a packet of pins and a
+looking-glass from our charwoman, who had slept in the house, went
+upstairs, while the remaining fourteen sat down in the hall, and fanned
+themselves with their bonnets.
+
+"A. B." was a good deal astonished when the first applicant presented
+herself. She was a tall, genteel-looking, well-dressed girl. Up to
+yesterday she had been head housemaid at Lady Stanton's, and before that
+she had been under-cook for two years to the Duchess of York.
+
+"And why did you leave Lady Stanton?" asked "A. B."
+
+"To come here, mum," replied the girl.
+
+The lady was puzzled.
+
+"And you'll be satisfied with six pounds a year?" she asked.
+
+"Certainly, mum, I think it ample."
+
+"And you don't mind hard work?"
+
+"I love it, mum."
+
+"And you're an early riser?"
+
+"Oh yes, mum, it upsets me stopping in bed after half-past five."
+
+"You know we do the washing at home?"
+
+"Yes, mum. I think it so much better to do it at home. Those laundries
+ruin good clothes. They're so careless."
+
+"Are you a Unitarian?" continued the lady.
+
+"Not yet, mum," replied the girl, "but I should like to be one."
+
+The lady took her reference, and said she would write her.
+
+"I do hope you will give me a trial, mum," pleaded the girl, as she rose
+to go; "I would try so hard to give you satisfaction."
+
+The next applicant offered to come for three pounds--thought six pounds
+too much. She also expressed her willingness to sleep in the back
+kitchen: a shakedown under the sink was all she wanted. She likewise had
+yearnings towards Unitarianism.
+
+The third girl did not require any wages at all--could not understand
+what servants wanted with wages--thought wages only encouraged a love of
+foolish finery--thought a comfortable home in a Unitarian family ought
+to be sufficient wages for any girl.
+
+This girl said there was one stipulation she should like to make, and
+that was that she should be allowed to pay for all breakages caused by
+her own carelessness or neglect. She objected to holidays and evenings
+out on principle; she held that they distracted a girl from her work.
+
+[Illustration: "MET THE NEXT DOOR LADY ON THE DOOR-STEP."]
+
+The fourth candidate offered a premium of five pounds for the place; and
+then "A.B." began to get frightened, and refused to see any more of the
+girls, convinced that they must be lunatics from some neighbouring
+asylum out for a walk.
+
+Later in the day, meeting the next door lady on the door-step, she
+related her morning's experiences.
+
+"Oh, that's nothing extraordinary," said the next door lady; "none of us
+on this side of the street pay wages; and we get the pick of all the
+best servants in London. Why, girls will come from the other end of the
+kingdom to get into one of these houses. It's the dream of their lives.
+They save up for years, so as to be able to come here for nothing."
+
+"What's the attraction?" asked "A. B.," more amazed than ever.
+
+"Why, don't you see," explained the next door lady, "our back windows
+open upon the barrack yard. A girl living in one of these houses is
+always close to soldiers. By looking out of window she can always see
+soldiers; and sometimes a soldier will nod to her, or even call up to
+her. They never dream of asking for wages. They'll work eighteen hours a
+day, and put up with anything just to be allowed to stop."
+
+"A.B." profited by this information, and engaged the girl who offered
+the five pounds premium. She found her a perfect treasure of a servant.
+She was invariably willing and respectful, slept on a sofa in the
+kitchen, and was always contented with an egg for her dinner.
+
+[Illustration: "A SOLDIER'S ARM ROUND THE WAIST."]
+
+The truth of this story I cannot vouch for. Myself, I can believe it.
+Brown and MacShaugnassy made no attempt to do so, which seemed
+unfriendly. Jephson excused himself on the plea of a headache. I admit
+there are points in it presenting difficulties to the average intellect.
+As I explained at the commencement, it was told to me by Ethelbertha,
+who had it from Amenda, who got it from the charwoman, and exaggerations
+may have crept into it. The following, however, were incidents that came
+under my own personal observation. They afforded a still stronger
+example of the influence exercised by Tommy Atkins upon the British
+domestic, and I therefore thought it right to relate them also to
+the boys.
+
+"The heroine of them," I said, "is our Amenda. Now, you would call her a
+tolerably well-behaved, orderly young woman, would you not?"
+
+"She is my ideal of unostentatious respectability," answered
+MacShaugnassy.
+
+"That was my opinion also," I replied. "You can, therefore, imagine my
+feelings on passing her one evening in the Folkestone High Street with a
+Panama hat upon her head (my Panama hat), and a soldier's arm round her
+waist. She was one of a mob, composed of all the unoccupied riff-raff of
+Folkestone, who were following the band of the Third Berkshire Infantry,
+then in camp at Sandgate. There was an ecstatic, far-away look in her
+eyes. She was dancing rather than walking, and with her left hand she
+beat time to the music."
+
+"I should say you were suffering from a mild attack of D.T. when you saw
+all that," said MacShaugnassy.
+
+"So I might have thought myself," I said; "but Ethelbertha was with me
+at the time, and she saw it too. We stared after the procession until it
+had turned the corner, and then we stared at each other.
+
+"'Oh, it's impossible,' said Ethelbertha to me.
+
+"'But that was my hat,' I said to Ethelbertha.
+
+"The moment we reached home Ethelbertha looked for Amenda, and I looked
+for my hat. Neither were to be found.
+
+[Illustration: "AND HUNG MY HAT UP."]
+
+"Nine o'clock struck, ten o'clock struck. At half-past ten, we went down
+and got our own supper, and had it in the kitchen. At a quarter-past
+eleven, Amenda returned. She walked into the kitchen without a word,
+hung my hat up behind the door, and commenced clearing away the
+supper things.
+
+"Ethelbertha rose, calm but severe.
+
+"'Where have you been, Amenda?' she enquired.
+
+"'Gadding half over the county with a lot of low soldiers,' answered
+Amenda, continuing her work.
+
+"'You had on my hat,' I added, somewhat gloomily. It was not the right
+view to take of the case, I know, but, personally, that fact grieved me
+more than all the other incidents in the proceeding put together, sad
+though I felt these to be. It was an expensive hat, and Ethelbertha said
+it suited me (there are not many that do). After seeing it that night on
+Amenda's head, my pride in it was gone.
+
+"'Yes, sir,' replied Amenda, still continuing her work, 'it was the
+first thing that came to hand. What I'm thankful for is that it wasn't
+missis's best bonnet.'
+
+"Whether Ethelbertha was mollified by the proper spirit displayed in
+this last remark, I cannot say, but I think it probable. At all events,
+it was in a voice more of sorrow than of anger that she resumed her
+examination.
+
+"'You were walking with a soldier's arm around your waist when we passed
+you, Amenda?' she observed interrogatively.
+
+"'I know, mum,' admitted Amenda, 'I found it there myself when the music
+stopped.'
+
+"Ethelbertha looked her enquiries. Amenda filled a saucepan with water,
+and then replied to them.
+
+"'I'm a disgrace to a decent household,' she said; 'no mistress who
+respected herself would keep me a moment. I ought to be put out on the
+doorstep with my box and a month's wages.'
+
+"'But why did you do it then?' said Ethelbertha, with natural
+astonishment.
+
+"'Because I'm a helpless ninny, mum.' There was no trace of bitterness
+or passion in Amenda's tones. She spoke in the calm, even voice of a
+person stating facts.
+
+"'I can't help myself,' she went on; 'if I see soldiers I'm bound to
+follow them. It runs in our family. My poor cousin Emma was just such
+another fool. She was engaged to be married to a quiet, respectable
+young fellow with a shop of his own, and three days before the wedding
+she ran off with a regiment of marines and married the colour-sergeant.
+That's what I shall end by doing. I've been all the way to Sandgate with
+that lot you saw me with, and I've kissed four of them--the nasty
+wretches. I'm a nice sort of girl to be walking out with a
+respectable milkman.'
+
+"She was so deeply disgusted with herself that it seemed superfluous for
+anybody else to be indignant with her; and Ethelbertha changed her tone
+and tried to comfort her.
+
+"'Oh, you'll get over all that nonsense, Amenda,' she said, laughingly;
+'you see yourself how silly it is. You must tell Mr. Bowles to keep you
+away from soldiers.'
+
+"'Ah, I can't look at it in the same light way that you do, mum,'
+returned Amenda, somewhat reprovingly; 'a girl that can't see a bit of
+red marching down the street without wanting to rush out and follow it
+ain't fit to be anybody's wife. Why I should be leaving the shop with
+nobody in it about twice a week, and he'd have to go the round of all
+the barracks in London, looking for me. I shall save up and get myself
+into a lunatic asylum, that's what I shall do.'
+
+"Ethelbertha began to grow quite troubled. 'But surely this is something
+altogether new, Amenda,' she said; 'you must have often met soldiers
+when you've been out in London?'
+
+"'Oh, yes, one or two at a time, walking about anyhow, I can stand that
+all right. It's when there's a lot of them all together with a band that
+I lose my head.'
+
+[Illustration: "'WHEN THERE'S A LOT OF THEM WITH A BAND, I LOSE MY
+HEAD.'"]
+
+"'You don't know what it's like, mum,' she added, noticing Ethelbertha's
+puzzled expression; 'you've never had it. I only hope you never may.'
+
+"We kept a careful watch over Amenda during the remainder of our stay at
+Folkestone, and an anxious time we had of it. Every day some regiment or
+other would march through the town, and at the first sound of its music
+Amenda would become restless and excited. The Pied Piper's reed could
+not have stirred the Hamelin children deeper than did those Sandgate
+bands the heart of our domestic. Fortunately, they generally passed
+early in the morning when we were indoors, but one day, returning home
+to lunch, we heard distant strains dying away upon the Hythe Road. We
+hurried in. Ethelbertha ran down into the kitchen; it was empty!--up
+into Amenda's bedroom; it was vacant! We called. There was no answer.
+
+"'That miserable girl has gone off again,' said Ethelbertha. 'What a
+terrible misfortune it is for her. It's quite a disease.'
+
+"Ethelbertha wanted me to go to Sandgate camp and enquire for her. I was
+sorry for the girl myself, but the picture of a young and
+innocent-looking man wandering about a complicated camp, enquiring for a
+lost domestic, presenting itself to my mind, I said that I'd rather not.
+
+"Ethelbertha thought me heartless, and said that if I would not go she
+would go herself. I replied that I thought one female member of my
+household was enough in that camp at a time, and requested her not to.
+Ethelbertha expressed her sense of my inhuman behaviour by haughtily
+declining to eat any lunch, and I expressed my sense of her
+unreasonableness by sweeping the whole meal into the grate, after which
+Ethelbertha suddenly developed exuberant affection for the cat (who
+didn't want anybody's love, but wanted to get under the grate after the
+lunch), and I became supernaturally absorbed in the day-before-
+yesterday's newspaper.
+
+[Illustration: "'WHO LOCKED YOU IN THERE?'"]
+
+"In the afternoon, strolling out into the garden, I heard the faint cry
+of a female in distress. I listened attentively, and the cry was
+repeated. I thought it sounded like Amenda's voice, but where it came
+from I could not conceive. It drew nearer, however, as I approached the
+bottom of the garden, and at last I located it in a small wooden shed,
+used by the proprietor of the house as a dark room for developing
+photographs.
+
+"The door was locked. 'Is that you, Amenda?' I cried through the
+keyhole.
+
+"'Yes, sir,' came back the muffled answer. 'Will you please let me out;
+you'll find the key on the ground near the door.'
+
+"I discovered it on the grass about a yard away, and released her. 'Who
+locked you in there?' I asked.
+
+"'I did, sir,' she replied; 'I locked myself in, and pushed the key out
+under the door. I had to do it, or I should have gone off with those
+beastly soldiers.'
+
+"'I hope I haven't inconvenienced you, sir,' she added, stepping out; 'I
+left the lunch all laid.'"
+
+Amenda's passion for soldiers was her one tribute to sentiment. Towards
+all others of the male sex she maintained an attitude of callous
+unsusceptibility, and her engagements with them (which were numerous)
+were entered into or abandoned on grounds so sordid as to seriously
+shock Ethelbertha.
+
+When she came to us she was engaged to a pork butcher--with a milkman in
+reserve. For Amenda's sake we dealt with the man, but we never liked
+him, and we liked his pork still less. When, therefore, Amenda announced
+to us that her engagement with him was "off," and intimated that her
+feelings would in no way suffer by our going elsewhere for our bacon, we
+secretly rejoiced.
+
+[Illustration: "HER ENGAGEMENT WAS 'OFF.'"]
+
+"I am confident you have done right, Amenda," said Ethelbertha; "you
+would never have been happy with that man."
+
+"No, mum, I don't think I ever should," replied Amenda. "I don't see how
+any girl could as hadn't got the digestion of an ostrich."
+
+Ethelbertha looked puzzled. "But what has digestion got to do with it?"
+she asked.
+
+"A pretty good deal, mum," answered Amenda, "when you're thinking of
+marrying a man as can't make a sausage fit to eat."
+
+"But, surely," exclaimed Ethelbertha, "you don't mean to say you're
+breaking off the match because you don't like his sausages!"
+
+"Well, I suppose that's what it comes to," agreed Amenda, unconcernedly.
+
+"What an awful idea!" sighed poor Ethelbertha, after a long pause. "Do
+you think you ever really loved him?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Amenda, "I loved him right enough, but it's no good
+loving a man that wants you to live on sausages that keep you awake
+all night."
+
+"But does he want you to live on sausages?" persisted Ethelbertha.
+
+"Oh, he doesn't say anything about it," explained Amenda; "but you know
+what it is, mum, when you marry a pork butcher: you're expected to eat
+what's left over. That's the mistake my poor cousin Eliza made. She
+married a muffin man. Of course, what he didn't sell they had to finish
+up themselves. Why, one winter, when he had a run of bad luck, they
+lived for two months on nothing but muffins. I never saw a girl so
+changed in all my life. One has to think of these things, you know."
+
+Later on, she engaged herself to a solicitor's messenger. She did
+this--as she frankly avowed to Ethelbertha--to assist her family, who
+were prosecuting some petty law case at the time. He was a smart, steady
+man, a great favourite with his employers, and, out of kindly feeling
+towards him, they did the business for Amenda's father, charging only
+"out-of-pockets."
+
+[Illustration: "GAVE HER A COCOANUT."]
+
+Six months after the case was ended, she broke off the match. She said
+that, on reflection, she could not help seeing what an advantage he
+would have over her--he being in a solicitor's office, with the law at
+his fingers' ends--should she ever find it necessary to summons him.
+
+"But, my good girl," said Ethelbertha, quite distressed, "one doesn't
+marry a man with the idea of subsequently summonsing him!"
+
+"No, mum," said Amenda, "one always hopes one will never need to, I'm
+sure, but it's just as well to be prepared. I knew a girl, when I was in
+service at Hastings, that loved a printer, and they were both going to
+commit suicide because her parents didn't want 'em to marry; and now he
+costs her four shillings a month regular in summonses. It's no good
+shutting one's eyes to things, mum."
+
+But the most shamefully mercenary engagement that I think Amenda ever
+entered into was one with a 'bus conductor. We were living in the North
+of London then, and she had a young man, a cheesemonger, who kept a shop
+in Lupus Street, Chelsea. He could not come up to her because of the
+shop, so once a week she used to go down to him. One did not ride ten
+miles for a penny in those days, and she found the fare from Holloway to
+Victoria and back a severe tax upon her purse. The same 'bus that took
+her down at six brought her back at ten. During the first journey the
+'bus conductor stared at Amenda; during the second he talked to her,
+during the third he gave her a cocoanut, during the fourth he proposed
+to her, and was promptly accepted. After that, Amenda was enabled to
+visit her cheesemonger without expense.
+
+[Illustration: "'I DESIRE SHARING CROSS.'"]
+
+He was a quaint character himself, was this 'bus conductor. I often rode
+with him to Fleet Street. He knew me quite well (I suppose Amenda must
+have pointed me out to him), and would always ask me after her--aloud,
+before all the other passengers, which was trying--and give me messages
+to take back to her. Where women were concerned he had what is called "a
+way" with him, and from the extent and variety of his female
+acquaintance, and the evident tenderness with which the majority of them
+regarded him, I am inclined to hope that Amenda's desertion of him
+(which happened contemporaneously with her jilting of the cheesemonger)
+caused him less prolonged suffering than might otherwise have been
+the case.
+
+He was a man from whom I derived a good deal of amusement one way and
+another. Thinking of him brings back to my mind a somewhat odd incident.
+
+One afternoon, I jumped upon his 'bus in the Seven Sisters Road. An
+elderly Frenchman was the only other occupant of the vehicle. "You vil
+not forget me," the Frenchman was saying as I entered, "I desire
+Sharing Cross."
+
+"I won't forget yer," answered the conductor, "you shall 'ave yer
+Sharing Cross. Don't make a fuss about it."
+
+"That's the third time 'ee's arst me not to forget 'im," he remarked to
+me in a stentorian aside; "'ee don't giv' yer much chance of doin' it,
+does 'ee?"
+
+At the corner of the Holloway Road we drew up, and our conductor began
+to shout after the manner of his species: "Charing Cross--Charing
+Cross--'ere yer are--Come along, lady--Charing Cross."
+
+The little Frenchman jumped up, and prepared to exit; the conductor
+pushed him back.
+
+"Sit down and don't be silly," he said; "this ain't Charing Cross."
+
+The Frenchman looked puzzled, but collapsed meekly. We picked up a few
+passengers, and proceeded on our way. Half a mile up the Liverpool Road
+a lady stood on the kerb regarding us as we passed with that pathetic
+mingling of desire and distrust which is the average woman's attitude
+towards conveyances of all kinds. Our conductor stopped.
+
+"Where d'yer want to go to?" he asked her severely--omnibus conductors
+have a manner of addressing all pedestrians as though they were lost
+children or suspicious loiterers--"Strand--Charing Cross?"
+
+[Illustration: "THE CONDUCTOR COLLARED HIM."]
+
+The Frenchman did not hear or did not understand the first part of the
+speech, but he caught the words "Charing Cross," and bounced up and out
+on to the step. The conductor collared him as he was getting off, and
+jerked him back savagely.
+
+"Carnt yer keep still a minute," he cried indignantly; "blessed if you
+don't want lookin' after like a bloomin' kid."
+
+"I vont to be put down at Sharing Cross," answered the little Frenchman,
+humbly.
+
+"You vont to be put down at Sharing Cross," repeated the other bitterly,
+as he led him back to his seat. "I shall put yer down in the middle of
+the road if I 'ave much more of yer. You stop there till I come and
+sling yer out. I ain't likely to let yer go much past yer Sharing Cross,
+I shall be too jolly glad to get rid o' yer."
+
+The poor Frenchman subsided, and we jolted on. At "The Angel" we, of
+course, stopped. "Charing Cross," shouted the conductor, and up sprang
+the Frenchman.
+
+"Oh, my Gawd," said the conductor, taking him by the shoulders and
+forcing him down into the corner seat, "wot am I to do? Carnt somebody
+sit on 'im?"
+
+[Illustration: "'BLESSED IF I DIDN'T RUN HIM ON TO VICTORIA.'"]
+
+He held him firmly down until the 'bus started, and then released him.
+At the top of Chancery Lane the same scene took place, and the poor
+little Frenchman became exasperated.
+
+"He keep on saying Sharing Cross, Sharing Cross," he exclaimed, turning
+to the other passengers; "and it is _not_ Sharing Cross. He is fool."
+
+"Carnt yer understand," retorted the conductor, equally indignant; "of
+course I say Sharing Cross--I mean Charing Cross, but that don't mean
+that it _is_ Charing Cross. That means that--" and then perceiving from
+the blank look in the Frenchman's face the utter impossibility of ever
+making the matter clear to him, he turned to us with an appealing
+gesture, and asked:
+
+"Does any gentleman know the French for 'bloomin' idiot'?"
+
+A day or two afterwards, I happened to enter his omnibus again.
+
+"Well," I asked him, "did you get your French friend to Charing Cross
+all right?"
+
+"No, sir," he replied, "you'll 'ardly believe it, but I 'ad a bit of a
+row with a policeman just before I got to the corner, and it put 'im
+clean out o' my 'ead. Blessed if I didn't run 'im on to Victoria."
+
+(_To be continued_.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THE SKATER.
+
+BY WILLIAM CANTON. ILLUSTRATED BY A. L. BOWLEY.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+      O'er glassy levels of the mere
+        She glides on slanting skate;
+      She loves in fairy curves to veer
+        And weave her figure eight.
+    Bright flower in fur, I would thy feet
+    Could weave my heart and thine, my sweet,
+    Thus into one glad life complete!
+      Harsh winter, rage thy rudest:
+        Freeze, freeze, thou churlish sky;
+      Blow, arctic wind, thy shrewdest--
+        What care my heart and I!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+MY SERVANT ANDREAS
+
+BY ARCHIBALD FORBES.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY FREDERIC VILLIERS.
+
+
+[Illustration: "ANDREAS."]
+
+I think it quite likely that some of my young American friends, about
+ten months ago, were burning to have an opportunity of accompanying
+General Miles down the Pacific coast, and of describing in glowing
+sentences to their countrymen at home how Uncle Sam's young man turned
+to flight the Chilian insurrectionists, who were breathing out
+threatening and slaughter against the great Northern Republic. There is
+an undoubted fascination in the picturesque and adventurous life of the
+war correspondent. One must, of course, have a distinct bent for the
+avocation, and if he is to succeed he must possess certain salient
+attributes. He must expose himself to rather greater risks than fall to
+the lot of the average fighting man, without enjoying any of the
+happiness of retaliation which stirs the blood of the latter; the
+correspondent must sit quietly on his horse in the fire, and, while
+watching every turn in the battle, must wear the aspect as if he rather
+enjoyed the storm of missiles than otherwise. When the fighting is over,
+the soldier, if not killed, generally can eat and sleep; ere the echoes
+of it are silent, the correspondent of energy--and if he has not energy
+he is not worth his salt--must already be galloping his hardest towards
+the nearest telegraph wire, which, as like as not, is a hundred miles
+distant. He must "get there," by hook or by crook, in a minimum of time;
+and as soon as his message is on the wires, he must be hurrying back to
+the army, else he may chance to miss the great battle of the war. The
+correspondent must be most things to all men; he must have the sweet,
+angelic temper of a woman, be as affable as if he were running for
+office, and at the same time be big and ugly enough to impress the
+conviction that it would be extremely unwise to take any liberties
+with him.
+
+The career, no doubt, has some incidental drawbacks. No fewer than five
+British correspondents were killed in the recent campaigns in the
+Soudan. General Sherman threatened to hang all the correspondents found
+in his camp after a certain day, and General Sherman was the kind of man
+to fulfil any threat he made. I suppose there was no correspondent
+taking part in the Franco-German and Russo-Turkish wars who was not in
+custody over and over again on suspicion of being a spy. I have been a
+prisoner myself in France, Spain, Servia, Germany, Austria, Hungary,
+Russia, Roumania and Bulgaria; and I may perhaps venture to remark in
+passing that I cannot recommend any of these countries from this point
+of view. But the casual confinements, half irritating, half comic, to
+which he may be subjected, do not bother the war correspondent of the
+old world nearly as much as do the foreign languages which, if he is not
+a good linguist, hamper him every hour of every day. He really should
+possess the gift of tongues--be conversant with all European languages,
+a neat assortment of the Asiatic languages, and a few of the African
+tongues, such as Abyssinian, Ashantee, Zulu, and Soudanese. But how few
+in the nature of things can approximate this polyglot versatility. Often
+in Eastern Europe, and in Afghanistan, I have envied Messrs. Swinton,
+Smalley, Whitelaw Reed, and the other notable war correspondents of the
+American Civil War, in that they had not the difficulties of outlandish
+tongues to contend with. I own myself to be a poor linguist, and have
+many and many a time suffered for my dullness of what the Scotch call
+"up-take." It is true that I was fairly conversant with French and
+German, and could express my wants in Russian, Roumanian, Bulgarian,
+Spanish, Turkish, Hindustanee, Pushtoo, and Burmese, every word of which
+smatterings I have long since forgotten. But the truth is that the
+poorest peoples in the world in acquiring foreign languages are the
+English and the French; the readiest are the Russians and Americans. It
+was, after a fashion, a liberal education to listen to the fluency in
+some half-dozen languages of Poor McGahan, the "Ohio boy," who graduated
+from the plough to be perhaps the most brilliant war correspondent of
+modern times. His compatriot and colleague, Frank Millet, who has fallen
+away from glory as a war correspondent, and has taken to the inferior
+trade of painting, seemed to pick up a language by the mere accident of
+finding himself on the soil where it was spoken. In the first three
+days, after crossing the Danube into Bulgaria, Millet went about with
+book in hand, gathering in the names of things at which he pointed, and
+jotting down each acquisition in the book. On the fourth day he could
+swear in Bulgarian, copiously, fervently, and with a measure of
+intelligibility. Within a week he had conquered the uncouth tongue. As
+he voyaged lately down the Danube from source to mouth, charmingly
+describing the scenic panorama of the great river in the pages of
+_Harper_, those of you who have read those sketches will not have failed
+to notice how Millet talked to German, Hungarian, Servian, Bulgarian,
+Roumanian, and Turkish, each in his own tongue, those diverse languages
+having been acquired by him during the few months of the
+Russo-Turkish war.
+
+[Illustration: "MACGAHAN AND FRANK MILLET."]
+
+By this time, you may be wondering just where "Andreas" comes in.
+Perhaps I have been over long in getting to my specific subject; but I
+will not be discursive any more. It was at the _table d'hote_ in the
+Serbische Krone Hotel, in Belgrade, where I first set eyes on Andreas.
+In the year 1876, Servia had thought proper to throw off the yoke of her
+Turkish suzerain, and to attempt to assert her independence by force of
+arms. But for very irregularly paid tribute she was virtually
+independent already, and probably in all Servia there were not two
+hundred Turks. But she ambitiously desired to have the name of as well
+as the actuality of being independent; the Russians helped her with
+arms, officers, and volunteer soldiers; and when I reached Belgrade, in
+May of the year named, there had already been fighting, in which the
+Servians had by no means got the worst. No word of the Servian tongue
+had I, and it was the reverse of pleasant for a war correspondent in
+such plight to learn that outside of Belgrade nobody, or at least hardly
+anybody, knew a word of any other language than the native Servian. As I
+ate, I was being attended by a very assiduous waiter, whose alertness
+and anxiety to please were very conspicuous. He was smart with quite
+un-Oriental smartness; he whisked about the tables with deftness; he
+spoke to me in German, to the Russian officers over against me in what I
+assumed was Russian, to the Servians dining behind me in what I took to
+be Servian. I liked the look of the man; there was intelligence in his
+aspect. One could not call him handsome, but there was character in the
+keen black eye, the high features and the pronounced chin, fringed on
+either side by bushy black whiskers.
+
+[Illustration: "ANDREAS AS A FORAGER."]
+
+I had brought no servant with me; the average British servant is worse
+than useless in a foreign country, and the dubiously-polyglot courier is
+a snare and a deception on campaign. I had my eye on Andreas for a
+couple of days, during which he was of immense service to me. He seemed
+to know and stand well with everyone in Belgrade; it was he, indeed, who
+presented me in the restaurant to the Prime Minister and the Minister
+for War, who got together for me my field necessaries, who helped me to
+buy my horses, and who narrated to me the progress of the campaign so
+far as it had gone. On the third day I had him in my room and asked
+whether he would like to come with me into the field as my servant. He
+accepted the offer with effusion; we struck hands on the compact; he
+tendered me credentials which I ascertained to be extremely
+satisfactory; and then he gave me a little sketch of himself. It was
+somewhat mixed, as indeed was his origin. Primarily he was a Servian,
+but his maternal grandmother had been a Bosniak, an earlier ancestress
+had been in a Turkish harem, there was a strain in his blood of the
+Hungarian zinganee--the gipsy of Eastern Europe, and one could not look
+at his profile without a suspicion that there was a Jewish element in
+his pedigree. "A pure mongrel," was what a gentleman of the British
+Legation termed Andreas, and this self-contradictory epithet was
+scarcely out of place.
+
+Andreas turned out well. He was as hardy as a hill-goat, careless how
+and when he ate, or where he slept, which, indeed, was mostly in the
+open. It seemed to me that he had cousins all over Servia, chiefly of
+the female persuasion, and I am morally certain that the Turkish strain
+in his blood had in Andreas its natural development in a species of
+_fin-de-siècle_ polygamy. Sherman's prize "bummer" was not in it with
+Andreas as a forager. At first, indeed, I suspected him of actual
+plundering, so copiously did he bring in supplies, and so little had I
+to pay for them; but I was not long in discovering that all kinds of
+produce were dirt cheap in Servia, and that as I could myself buy a lamb
+for a quarter, it was not surprising that Andreas, to the manner born,
+could easily obtain one for half the money. He was an excellent
+horsemaster, and the stern vigour with which he chastised the occasional
+neglect of the cousin whom he had brought into my service as groom, was
+borne in upon me by the frequent howls which were audible from the rear
+of my tent. There was not a road in all Servia with whose every winding
+Andreas was not conversant, and this "extensive and peculiar" knowledge
+of his was often of great service to me. He was a light-weight and an
+excellent rider; I have sent him off to Belgrade with a telegram at
+dusk, and he was back again by breakfast time next morning, after a
+gallop of quite a hundred miles.
+
+No exertion fatigued him; I never saw the man out of humour; there was
+but one matter in regard to which I ever had to chide him, and in that I
+had perforce to let him have his own way, because I do not believe that
+he could restrain himself. He had served the term in the army which is,
+or was then, obligatory on all Servians; and on the road or in camp he
+was rather more of a "peace at any price" man than ever was the late Mr.
+John Bright himself. When the first fight occurred, Andreas claimed to
+be allowed to witness it along with me. I demurred; he might get hit;
+and if anything should happen to him, what should I do for a servant? At
+length I gave him the firm order to remain in camp, and started myself
+with the groom behind me on my second horse. The fighting occurred eight
+miles from camp, and in the course of it, leaving the groom in the rear,
+I had accompanied the Russian General Dochtouroff into a most
+unpleasantly hot place, where a storm of Turkish shells were falling in
+the effort to hinder the withdrawal of a disabled Servian battery. I
+happened to glance over my shoulder, and lo! Andreas on foot was at my
+horse's tail, obviously in a state of ecstatic enjoyment of the
+situation. I peremptorily ordered him back, and he departed sullenly,
+calmly strolling along the line of Turkish fire. Just then, Tchernaieff,
+the Servian Commander-in-Chief, had, it seemed, ordered a detachment of
+infantry to take in flank the Turkish guns. From where we stood I could
+discern the Servian soldiers hurrying forward close under the fringe of
+a wood near the line of retirement along which Andreas was sulking.
+Andreas saw them too, and retreated no step further, but cut across to
+them, snatching up a gun as he ran, and the last I saw of him was while
+he was waving on the militiamen with his billycock, and loosing off an
+occasional bullet, while he emitted yells of defiance against the Turks,
+which might well have struck terror into their very marrow. Andreas came
+into camp at night very streaky with powder stains, minus the lobe of
+one ear, uneasy as he caught my eye, yet with a certain elateness of
+mien. I sacked him that night, and he said he didn't care, and that he
+was not ashamed of himself. Next morning, as I was rising, he rushed
+into the tent, knelt down, clasped my knees, and bedewed my ankles with
+his tears. Of course I reinstated him; I couldn't do without him, and I
+think he knew it.
+
+[Illustration: "SNATCHING UP A GUN AS HE RAN."]
+
+But I had yielded too easily. Andreas had established a precedent. He
+insisted, in a quiet, positive manner, on accompanying me to every
+subsequent battle; and I had to consent, always taking his pledge that
+he would obey the injunctions I might lay upon him. And, as a matter of
+course, he punctually and invariably violated that pledge when the
+crisis of the fighting was drawing to a head, and just when this "peace
+at any price" man could not control the bloodthirst that was
+parching him.
+
+One never knows how events are to fall out. It happened that this
+resolution on the part of Andreas to accompany me into the fights once
+assuredly saved my life. It was on the day of Djunis, the last battle
+fought by the Servians. In the early part of the day there was a good
+deal of scattered woodland fighting in front of the entrenched line,
+which they abandoned when the Turks came on in earnest. Andreas and I
+were among the trees trying to find a position from which something was
+to be seen, when all of a sudden I, who was in advance, plumped right
+into the centre of a small scouting party of Turks. They tore me out of
+the saddle, and I had given myself up for lost--for the Turks took no
+prisoners, their cheerful practice being to slaughter first and then
+abominably to mutilate--when suddenly Andreas dashed in among my
+captors, shouting aloud in a language which I took to be Turkish, since
+he bellowed "Effendi" as he pointed to me. He had thrown away his
+billycock and substituted a fez, which he afterwards told me he always
+carried in case of accidents, and in one hand he waved a dingy piece of
+parchment with a seal dangling from it, which I assumed was some
+obsolete firman. The result was truly amazing, and the scene had some
+real humour in it. With profound salaams, the Turks unhanded me, helped
+me to mount, and, as I rode off at a tangent with Andreas at my horse's
+head, called after me what sounded like friendly farewells. When we were
+back among the Russians--I don't remember seeing much of the Servians
+later on that day--Andreas explained that he had passed himself for the
+Turkish dragoman of a British correspondent whom the Padishah delighted
+to honour, and that, after expressing a burning desire to defile the
+graves of their collective female ancestry, he had assured my captors
+that they might count themselves as dead men if they did not immediately
+release me. To his ready-witted conduct I undoubtedly owe the ability to
+write now this record of a man of curiously complicated nature.
+
+When the campaign ended with the Servian defeat at Djunis, Andreas went
+back to his headwaitership at the Serbische Krone in Belgrade. Before
+leaving that capital I had the honour of being present at his nuptials,
+a ceremony the amenity of which was somewhat disturbed by the violent
+incursion into the sacred edifice of sundry ladies all claiming to have
+prior claims on the bridegroom of the hour. They were, however,
+placated, and subsequently joined the marriage feast in the great arbour
+behind the Krone. Andreas faithfully promised to come to me to the ends
+of the earth on receipt of a telegram, if I should require his services,
+and he were alive.
+
+[Illustration: "ANDREAS DASHED IN AMONG MY CAPTORS."]
+
+Next spring the Russo-Turkish war broke out, and I hurried eastward in
+time to see the first Cossack cross the Pruth. I had telegraphed to
+Andreas from England to meet me at Bazias on the Danube below Belgrade.
+Bazias is the place where the railway used to end, and where we took
+steamer for the Lower Danube. Andreas was duly on hand, ready and
+serviceable as of old, a little fatter, and a trifle more consequential
+than when we had last parted. He was, if possible, rather more at home
+in Bucharest than he had been in Belgrade, and recommended me to
+Brofft's Hotel, in comparison with which the charges of the Brunswick in
+New York are infinitesimal. He bought my wagon and team, he found riding
+horses when they were said to be unprocurable, he constructed a most
+ingenious tent, of which the wagon was, so to speak, the roof-tree, he
+laid in stores, arranged for relays of couriers, and furnished me with a
+coachman in the person of a Roumanian Jew who he one day owned was a
+distant connection, and whose leading attribute was, that he could
+survive more sleep than any other human being I have ever known. We took
+the field auspiciously, Mr. Frederic Villiers, the war artist of the
+London _Graphic_, being my campaigning comrade. Thus early I discerned a
+slight rift in the lute. Andreas did not like Villiers, which showed his
+bad taste, or rather, perhaps, the narrowness of his capacity of
+affection; and I fear Villiers did not much like Andreas, whom he
+thought too familiar. This was true, and it was my fault; but really it
+was with difficulty that I could bring myself to treat Andreas as a
+servant. He was more, in my estimation, in the nature of the
+confidential major-domo, and to me he was simply invaluable. Villiers
+had to chew his moustache, and glower discontentedly at Andreas.
+
+I had some good couriers for the conveyance of despatches back across
+the Danube to Bucharest, whence everything was telegraphed to London;
+but they were essentially fair-weather men. The casual courier may be
+alert, loyal, and trustworthy; he may be relied on to try his honest
+best, but it is not to be expected of him that he will greatly dare and
+count his life but as dross when his incentive to enterprise is merely
+filthy lucre. But I could trust Andreas to dare and to endure--to
+overcome obstacles, and, if man could, to "get there," where, in the
+base-quarters in Bucharest, the amanuenses were waiting to copy out in
+round hand for the foreign telegraphist the rapid script of the
+correspondent scribbling for life in the saddle or the cleft of a
+commanding tree while the shells were whistling past. We missed him
+dreadfully when he was gone--even Villiers, who liked good cooking,
+owned to thinking long for his return. For, in addition to his other
+virtues, Andreas was a capital cook. It is true that his courses had a
+habit of arriving at long and uncertain intervals. After a dish of
+pungent stew, no other viands appearing to loom in the near future,
+Villiers and myself would betake ourselves to smoking, and perhaps on a
+quiet day would lapse into slumber. From this we would be aroused by
+Andreas to partake of a second course of roast chicken, the bird having
+been alive and unconscious of its impending fate when the first course
+had been served. No man is perfect, and as regarded Andreas there were
+some petty spots on the sun. He had, for instance, a mania for the
+purchase of irrelevant poultry, and for accommodating the fowls in our
+wagon, tied by the legs, against the day of starvation, which he always,
+but causelessly, apprehended. I do not suppose any reader has ever had
+any experience of domestic poultry as bedfellows, and I may caution him
+earnestly against making any such experiment.
+
+I do not know whether it is a detraction from Andreas's worth to mention
+that another characteristic of his was the habit of awaking us in the
+still watches of the night, for the purpose of imparting his views on
+recondite phases of the great Eastern question. But how trivial were
+such peccadilloes in a man who was so resolute not to be beaten in
+getting my despatch to the telegraph wire, that once, when three
+pontoons of the bridge across the Danube were sunk, he crossed the gap
+hand over hand by the hand-rope, sloshing down with the current as the
+slack of the rope gave to his weight! Andreas became quite an
+institution in the Russian camp. When Ignatieff, the Tsar's intimate,
+the great diplomatist who has now curiously fizzled out, would honour us
+by partaking sometimes of afternoon tea in our tent, he would call
+Andreas by his name and call him "Molodetz"--the Russian for "brave
+fellow." In the Servian campaign Dochtouroff had got him the Takova
+cross, which Andreas sported with great pride, and Ignatieff used to
+tell him that the Tsar was seriously thinking of conferring on him the
+Cross of St. George, badinage which Andreas took as dead earnest.
+MacGahan used gravely to entreat him to take greater care of his
+invaluable life, and hint that if any calamity occurred to him, the
+campaign would _ipso facto_ come to an end. Andreas knew that MacGahan
+was quizzing him, but it was exceedingly droll how he purred and bridled
+under the light touch of that genial humourist, whose merits his own
+countrymen, to my thinking, have never adequately recognised. The old
+story of a prophet having scant honour in his own country.
+
+[Illustration: "CROSSED THE GAP HAND OVER HAND."]
+
+After the long strain of the desperate but futile attack made by the
+Russians on Plevna in the early part of the September of the war, I fell
+a victim to the malarial fever of the Lower Danube, and had to be
+invalided back to Bucharest. The illness grew upon me, and my condition
+became very serious. Worthy Andreas nursed me with great tenderness and
+assiduity in the lodgings to which I had been brought, since they would
+not accept a fever patient at Brofft's. After some days of wretchedness
+I became delirious, and, of course, lost consciousness; my last
+recollection was of Andreas wetting my parched lips with lemonade. When
+I recovered my senses, and looked out feebly, there was nobody in the
+room. How long I had been unconscious I had no idea. I lay there in a
+half stupor till evening, unable from weakness to summon any assistance.
+In the dusk came the English doctor who had been attending me. "Where is
+Andreas?" he asked. I could not tell him. "He was here last night," he
+said; "you have been delirious for seven days." The woman of the house
+was summoned. She had not seen Andreas since the previous night, but,
+busy about her own domestic affairs, had no suspicion until she entered
+the room that Andreas was not with me still.
+
+Andreas never returned. It appeared that he had taken away all his
+belongings. One day, when gradually mending, I put my hand under the
+pillow with intent to find my watch, which was an heirloom, and wind it
+up. I could find no watch. No more could I find the bag of ducats which
+was alongside the watch before I lost my senses. Search was made
+throughout the room without success, and, with whatever reluctance to
+believe a thing so utterly unlikely, I could not refrain from the
+conviction that Andreas must have carried off both money and watch.
+The thought caused a relapse, but at length I attained convalescence,
+and was able to drive out. But the doctor was firm that during the now
+imminent winter I was not to return to the field. Fortunately, my able
+colleagues, MacGahan and Millet, were there; and I was therefore the
+less distressed by Dr. ----'s peremptory sentence on me. I was
+condemned to return to England as soon as I should be strong enough to
+travel.
+
+When I had to leave the Plevna front, my colleagues temporarily took
+charge of my field equipment. But I had brought back to Bucharest my
+best riding horse, and during my illness he had been standing at livery
+in the stables of the English Tramway Company. Determining now on the
+melancholy necessity of selling an animal which had on many a hard day
+and many a long night-ride served me staunchly, I drove to the stables,
+and instructed the manager to sell my horse. "Your horse!" he exclaimed,
+in evident surprise; "your horse was sold weeks ago! Your man, Andreas,
+came here with a message that we were to dispose of it; and I sold it
+next day to General Todleben on his way through Bucharest to take the
+command before Plevna. It fetched a good price, 105 ducats, more than
+you gave for it; Andreas called for the money, and, of course, I gave
+it to him."
+
+So Andreas was thief and rogue--deliberate thief and rogue. I was angry,
+but I was yet more heart-sorry that so fine and true a native should
+have thus fallen. Just as I was leaving Bucharest for England, a letter
+came to me from a friend in Galatz, a commercial city of Roumania, near
+the mouth of the Danube. Its P.S. only is worth quoting. "So you have
+parted with your man, Andreas. I thought from what you had told me that
+you would retain him for life. He is here now, I saw him drunk in the
+street yesterday. He told Kennedy that he believed you were dead."
+
+[Illustration: "ANDREAS DROPPED ON HIS KNEES."]
+
+I went straight to Galatz, a long half-day's journey. Andreas was not
+hard to find; he was smoking in the "Concordia" saloon. I saw him before
+he saw me; he had a furtive air, he was pallid and his lips twitched; he
+looked to me on the verge of _delirium tremens_. I approached him from
+behind, and uttered the one word, "Andreas!" At the word, he started as
+if he had been shot, spun round, dropped on his knees, with his hands
+raised beseechingly, and cried in a broken voice, "Before God, master, I
+thought you were dead, else I should never have done it! I have not had
+a happy moment since I threw away my good name--I could not go home!
+Kill me, send me to prison, punish me how you choose. I shall rejoice to
+suffer!" And the poor wretch grovelled before me on his stomach.
+
+I had meant to punish him; but he was too broken for chastisement. I
+could not send to prison the man who had saved my life among the
+pine-trees of Djunis. I wonder if he really thought me dead--not that,
+if so, his act was thereby materially palliated. And I thought of two
+little sentences which my mother taught me when I was a child: "Judge
+not that ye be not judged," and "Lead us not into temptation." I pulled
+the man on to his feet and grasped his hand, then with the words, "Give
+me my father's watch--good-bye, Andreas. I shall remember all the good
+in you, and forget those last bad days." I turned from him, and quitted
+the "Concordia" with a lump in my throat that I could not swallow down.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+TOLD BY THE COLONEL.
+
+X.
+
+A MATRIMONIAL ROMANCE.
+
+BY W. L. ALDEN.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY R. JACK.
+
+
+"And by the way," continued the Colonel, "a curious thing about this
+Josiah Wilson was that he was married for fifteen years and never had
+any wife whatever."
+
+The Colonel had begun a story concerning one Josiah Wilson, which
+promised to be interesting, but his incidental allusion to Mr. Wilson's
+matrimonial experience awakened our curiosity, and we begged him to
+interrupt his narrative long enough to tell us how it came to pass that
+Josiah was a married man who never had a wife.
+
+[Illustration: "HOWLED FOR HELP."]
+
+"The marriage laws in the United States," said the Colonel, giving his
+chair an increased tilt backwards, which was his usual way of beginning
+a fresh anecdote, "are as peculiar in their way as are the divorce laws.
+You would think to look at them that they would permit anybody to marry
+anybody else in any way that either of them might choose, but for all
+that they sometimes make it impossible for a man or a woman to get
+married. There was a couple who intended to be married in a balloon,
+which is a style of lunacy that is quite fashionable in some parts of
+the country, though I can't see why a man should want to risk his neck
+in a balloon on his wedding day unless it is that it takes so much
+courage to be married at all that a man forgets all about such minor
+dangers as are connected with ballooning. The bride, the minister, and
+two witnesses of assorted sexes went up in the balloon at the appointed
+time, and, naturally, the bridegroom intended to go with them, but he
+accidentally caught his foot in a neglected guy-rope, and went up head
+downwards about twenty feet below the car. The party in the balloon
+could not haul him up because they could not get hold of the rope, and
+the bride would not consent to give up the trip, because the groom had
+always been a little shy, and she was afraid that, if she let him go
+this time, she might not be able to land him again. So the parson went
+on with the ceremony, and the groom made most of his responses in bad
+language, and howled for help when he wasn't swearing. When the ceremony
+was over, the aeronaut managed to land the balloon without seriously
+damaging the bridegroom, but when, a year or two afterwards, the bride
+wanted to get her divorce, the court held that there had never been any
+marriage, for the reason that both the groom and the bride had not
+appeared together in the presence of the officiating minister, and that,
+furthermore, there was no provision in the law which would permit a man
+to be married upside down.
+
+[Illustration: "SMITH'S BULL-DOG."]
+
+"But to get back to Josiah Wilson. He lived in Indiana, close to the
+boundary line between that State and Illinois, and he courted Melinda
+Smith, a young woman who lived a little way up the mountain side with
+her father and three brothers. The girl was anxious to be married, but
+her family was dead against it. You see Josiah was a Republican and a
+Methodist, while the Smiths were Democrats and Baptists, and, naturally,
+they hated each other like poison, and one night as old man Smith and
+Josiah met on their way to rival prayer meetings, they exchanged
+revolver shots, without, however, doing any harm. Then once Josiah had
+most of the calf of his leg taken off by the Smiths' bull-dog, and twice
+the Smith boys came into the sitting-room where Josiah was calling on
+Melinda, and suggested to him with their shot-guns that he had better go
+home. Gradually Josiah and Melinda came to the conclusion that her
+family was resolved to discourage the match, so they determined to elope
+and be married without the knowledge or consent of anybody.
+
+"One dark night Josiah carried a ladder and planted it under Melinda's
+window. He had advised her to walk out of the front door, which was
+always left unlocked at night, but she refused, saying that if she was
+going to elope she should do it in the proper way, and that if Josiah
+had no respect for her, she had some little respect for herself. She
+climbed down the ladder with a good deal of difficulty, because she
+insisted that Josiah should help her, and also that he should stand
+forty yards away, for reasons connected with her ankles, and he found it
+rather trying to follow out these contradictory orders. However, Melinda
+reached the ground at last, and the pair started in a carriage that had
+been waiting just around a bend in the road, in company with the
+Methodist minister. Their plan was to drive to the next town and there
+to be married, but it happened that one of the Smith boys, being
+restless, got up in the night, and, looking out of the window, saw the
+ladder standing at Melinda's window. In about twenty minutes after the
+young people had started, the whole Smith family and their shot-guns
+were following the runaways in a waggon, and gaining on them fast.
+
+"The Methodist minister, whose hearing was unusually good, heard the
+sound of hoofs before Josiah noticed it, and told the young people that
+there was not the least doubt that they were pursued, and would be
+overtaken in a very few minutes. 'And then, you know,' he added, 'the
+chances are that, being Baptists, they will shoot first, and ask for
+explanations afterwards. The only thing for us to do is to get the
+marriage ceremony over before they come up. Then they will see that
+opposition is of no use, and will listen to reason.'
+
+[Illustration: "THEY WERE MARRIED."]
+
+"Josiah and Melinda at once consented, and the parson, noticing a little
+clearing in the woods on the left hand side of the road, and a flat sort
+of tombstone standing in the middle of it, said that he would stand on
+that stone and marry his young friends so quick that it would make their
+hair curl. He was particularly glad to meet with a handy tombstone, for
+he said that a tombstone was the next thing to a church, and that to be
+married by the side of a tomb would be almost as solemn as to be married
+in a minister's study. So the party hastily descended; the parson
+mounted the stone; Josiah and Melinda joined hands in front of him, and
+they were married, and the parson had kissed the bride and pocketed his
+fee just as the Smiths' waggon drove up and the Smith boys cocked their
+guns and covered the party. But the parson was wide awake. He had his
+revolver out and old man Smith covered before anybody had taken aim at
+him, but, instead of shooting, he remarked that he was a minister of the
+blessed gospel of peace; that there was no necessity for bloodshed, and
+that he would blow a hole through old Smith unless the Smith boys
+lowered their weapons and consented to argue the matter. 'The fact is,
+Colonel Smith,' said the parson, 'you're too late. The young people are
+legally married, and the sooner you accept the situation the better. I
+married them not two minutes ago, standing on that identical tombstone.'
+
+[Illustration: "'YOU'LL COME STRAIGHT HOME WITH ME.'"]
+
+"Colonel Smith was a lawyer, and the sharpest one in that part of the
+country. He saw the force of the minister's remarks, so he told the boys
+to put up their guns, and he shook hands with the minister. Then he
+inquired, in a careless sort of way, where Josiah and Melinda had stood
+while they were being married. The parson showed the footprints of the
+bride and groom, and then Colonel Smith turned to Melinda and said,
+'You'll come straight home with me. There hasn't been any marriage yet.
+That stone is the boundary mark between Indiana and Illinois, and you
+were standing in Indiana and that other idiot was standing in Illinois
+when the parson tried to marry you. Nobody can marry in two States at
+the same time, and I shan't recognise the pretended marriage till a
+court of law compels me to do so, which will be never. I hope this will
+teach you the folly of fooling with Methodism. When you want to get
+married next time try a Baptist minister, who will know the difference
+between a tombstone and a boundary mark.' There were too many Smiths,
+and they were too well armed to be reasoned with successfully, so the
+upshot was that Melinda went home with her family, and Josiah and the
+parson went to see a lawyer.
+
+"The next day Josiah brought a suit for divorce against Melinda. It was
+a friendly suit, you understand, and his only object was to test the
+question of the validity of his marriage, for, of course, no man can get
+a divorce unless he first proves that he is married. Old man Smith
+conducted the case on his side, and a lawyer named Starkweather, who is
+now a member of the Illinois Legislature, appeared for Josiah Wilson.
+Colonel Smith argued that while the parson who conducted the alleged
+marriage ceremony could undoubtedly have married a couple in the State
+of Indiana, he could not marry a woman in Indiana to a man in Illinois,
+for the reason that the man and the woman could not be in the same place
+while they were in two different commonwealths, and that hence Josiah
+and Melinda had not legally appeared together before the officiating
+minister. Furthermore, he argued that the minister at the time of the
+pretended marriage was standing neither in Indiana nor in Illinois, but
+on the boundary line; that the statute defined the boundary line as 'an
+imaginary line' running from such and such a point to such and such a
+point, and that a minister who stands in a purely imaginative locality
+stands virtually nowhere, and hence cannot perform any function of
+his calling.
+
+"On the other hand, Josiah's lawyer claimed that the minister had
+married Melinda Smith in the State of Indiana; that consequently she
+must have been married to somebody, and that that somebody was
+unquestionably Josiah Wilson. As to the point that the minister stood in
+an imaginary locality because, as was alleged, he stood on the boundary
+line, the lawyer maintained that it was a physical impossibility that a
+minister weighing two hundred and fifty pounds could stand in a purely
+imaginative place. Moreover, he was prepared to prove that, while
+performing the ceremony, at least one of the minister's feet was in the
+State of Indiana, which was sufficient to make him legally present in
+that State.
+
+"The arguments lasted three days, and the court before which it was
+tried, consisting of three judges, took all the third day to deliver its
+verdict. It decided that Melinda Smith was legally married to some
+person unknown, though not to Josiah Wilson, and that Josiah Wilson was
+also married to some unknown woman, who was not Melinda Smith, whoever
+else she might be; that no marriage between the plaintiff and the
+defendant had ever taken place, and that no divorce could be granted,
+but that if either of them married anyone else, he or she would be
+guilty of bigamy.
+
+[Illustration: "SHE WAS A GOOD DEAL CAST DOWN."]
+
+"The Smiths, with the exception of Melinda, were delighted with the
+decision, for it made it reasonably certain that Josiah could never be
+recognised as her husband. She was a good deal cast down about it, for,
+like every other Indiana girl, she had looked forward to being married
+and divorced as the natural lot of woman. Now it appeared that she was
+married, but in such an unsatisfactory way, that she could never have a
+husband, and never be divorced from anyone. As for Josiah, he was
+furious, but there was no help for it, the law was against him, and, as
+a law-abiding man, he was obliged to respect it, especially as he could
+not hope to kill off all four of the Smiths, if he decided to make a
+family feud of it; he himself having no family whatever, and no one to
+help him to keep up his end of the feud.
+
+"For the next fifteen years Josiah lived a single man except in name,
+and Melinda mourned her hard fate and kept house for her father and
+brothers; but one day Josiah's lawyer, who was by this time in the
+Legislature, came to him and offered to have his marriage to Melinda
+made legal in all respects for five hundred dollars. The lawyer was so
+certain that he could do this that he was willing to wait for his pay
+until after he had gained a verdict, and Josiah, after a little
+bargaining such as every self-respecting man would have made, in his
+place, consented to the lawyer's terms. It seems that the lawyer had
+accidentally discovered that there had been a mistake in the survey of
+part of the boundary line between Indiana and Illinois, and at the very
+place where Josiah and Melinda were married, A rectification of this
+mistake would move the line ten feet west, and so place the spot where
+the pair stood during their wedding entirely within the state of
+Indiana. The proper steps to obtain the rectification of the boundary
+were taken, and it was rectified. Then Melinda in her turn began a suit
+for divorce against Josiah, and had no difficulty in proving the
+marriage and in obtaining a decree. Josiah paid the lawyer his five
+hundred dollars, and was overjoyed at being finally able to call his
+Melinda his own. But he met with a little disappointment. Now that
+Melinda had obtained her divorce she thought she might as well live up
+to it, and marry a fresh husband. So she married the Methodist minister,
+who had just lost his third wife, and lived happily ever afterwards.
+
+[Illustration: "OFFERED TO HAVE HIS MARRIAGE MADE LEGAL."]
+
+"It was just after this that Josiah, being perhaps made a little
+reckless by his disappointment, became involved in the affair that I was
+going to tell you about when you interrupted me, and wanted to hear
+about his marriage. Matrimony is a mighty curious thing, and you can
+never tell precisely how it is going to turn out. That is one reason why
+I was never married but once, though I spent ten years of my life in
+Chicago, and had friends at bar who stood ready to obtain divorces for
+me at any moment and without a dollar of expense."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: IDLERS.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+"LIONS IN THEIR DENS."
+
+No. II.--GEORGE GROSSMITH AND THE HUMOUR OF HIM.
+
+BY RAYMOND BLATHWAYT.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEO. HUTCHINSON.
+
+(_Photographs by Messrs. Fraddle and Young and Alfred Ellis._)
+
+
+[Illustration: MR. GEORGE GROSSMITH.]
+
+A little, slight man, with a thin, clever, mobile, clean-shaven face, a
+sharp inquisitive nose surmounted by a perpetual pair of _pince-nez_,
+and a rather sarcastic mouth, from which wit and humour as light and
+airy as the cigarette smoke which accompanied each remark
+continually flowed.
+
+Mr. George Grossmith, the well-known actor and society clown.
+
+He stands on the hearthrug of his own special sanctum in his handsome
+house in Dorset Square, with his back to the fire, cigarette in his
+mouth, his hands now in his pockets, now waving in the air, as he
+vivaciously tells me the story of his busy, energetic and wonderfully
+interesting life.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. GEORGE GROSSMITH.]
+
+"I was born," said he, "in 1847. I come of a family of actors and
+reciters. My father, whose portrait you see there on the wall, was a
+well-known lecturer and entertainer. Sixty or seventy years ago my uncle
+created a great sensation as a child actor, and he was commonly known as
+the 'celebrated infant Roscius.' Come out into the hall," continued the
+lively little entertainer, "and I will show you some old engravings
+which represent him in his favourite characters. Then my brother Weedon,
+as you know, is, of course, a well-known actor, as well as a clever
+artist, and part author with myself of several sketches which have
+appeared in _Punch_. My eldest son now begins to display the family
+tendency to a most alarming extent. For my own part, I started my career
+as a reporter at Bow Street Police Court, a training which I have found
+invaluable in many respects ever since. My subsequent history as actor
+and society clown is so well known that I need not trouble you with it
+any further."
+
+"I suppose you find the taste of your audiences has gone up considerably
+within the last twenty years, do you not?"
+
+"Why, yes," he replied. "They wouldn't stand to-day what they used to
+roar at then. My music is quite elaborate compared with the two or three
+chords which easily satisfied people in the sixties and early seventies.
+Listen to this," continued my host, as he sat down to the _piano_ and
+struck a couple of very simple chords. Then he glided softly into what
+he termed a modern accompaniment. It was all the difference between "Ten
+Little Niggers" and a slumber song of Schubert.
+
+[Illustration: MR. GROSSMITH'S HOUSE.]
+
+"And do you find the public very critical?"
+
+"Well," he replied, with a smile, "they are very kind. It is your
+professional critic who is severe, though I can honestly say they
+invariably treat me well. Criticism up to a certain point is good
+enough. Beyond that point it is absolutely disabling to me. My father
+was a very severe critic. When we went out together he used to take the
+first half-hour, and then go to the back of the hall and criticise me.
+But it so hampered me by causing me to think of and consider every pose
+that I had to beg of him to desist. And then again, as regards
+criticism, I always think--it may be very conceited on my part--that I
+know a great deal more what the public want than my critics do. I
+declare to you I should have to take everything out of my sketches if I
+attempted to carry out all the suggestions that are made to me. I can
+absolutely feel the public pulse after so many years upon the platform.
+I am almost always right. When I first started 'See me Dance the Polka'
+it fell quite flat. I gave it up, although I felt sure it ought to go.
+The public then demanded it, and it went with a swing. The public had
+changed its mind. Not I."
+
+[Illustration: THE DINING ROOM.]
+
+"And how do you prepare your sketches?" said I, as Mr. Grossmith lit
+another cigarette, and took up his position on the hearthrug again.
+
+"Anyhow and anywhere the idea comes to me for a sketch. I am seated in a
+railway train, and I think of a sea-side sketch. I close my eyes and try
+to recall every single feature of interest on a crowded fashionable
+beach in the height of the season. Nothing is too unimportant. The way
+in which an old lady settles herself comfortably into her chair, the
+manner in which a man, especially a shy man, walks into the room, all
+these things, slightly exaggerated, but still true to nature, are
+immensely appreciated. First I have the idea, then I elaborate,
+sometimes for months, then I produce on the stage, and the people say,
+'How remarkable it is you should invent all this on the spur of the
+moment!' That, of course, is a great compliment. The song-writing is
+always amusing," continued Mr. Grossmith, as he placed in my hand a
+little notebook in which were suggestions and elaborations innumerable.
+One thing I noticed, which he himself had condemned, but which was
+decidedly amusing, although it has never been allowed to see the
+light of day:
+
+[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM.]
+
+    "I've been engaged to many,
+    Quite a score of times at least;
+    I don't think I with safety _can say_
+    Where I met my first _fiancée_.
+    Oh! 'tis better to have loved and lost
+    Than never to have loved at all;
+    So I may say I have loved and _lost a lot_,
+    And my fickleness has _cost a lot_."
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Grossmith, as he leaned over me and saw what I was
+reading; "my better judgment told me that was not good enough for
+the public."
+
+Then came a pencilled note in this little book, "You can take a horse to
+water, but can't make him drink." "That gave me an idea," cried Mr.
+Grossmith, as he sprang to his feet. "You can take a boy to the piano,
+but you can't make him play.' Thought I to myself, that would make a
+capital sketch. And here is how I set about it," continued he, as he
+proceeded to illustrate his remarks. "Imagine a little fellow in the
+corner there. I then begin in dumb show to encourage him to come to the
+piano. 'Come on, my boy; you know you can play that pretty piece you
+played yesterday. Come on, there's a good fellow!' Wonderful what you
+can do with persuasion! He refuses. I attempt to lead him to the piano.
+He won't budge an inch. I carry him under my arm and seat him in front
+of the instrument, the audience roaring all the time. At last his
+mistakes are so many and so ridiculous, I lose all patience and catch
+him a mighty box upon the ears! Tableau!! Of course there is no boy on
+the platform at all, I am quite alone, but I have so thoroughly lost
+myself in my imagination that people have declared years after, 'Oh! but
+I am quite sure you had a boy with you; why, don't you remember how you
+boxed his ears?'"
+
+[Illustration: "I ENCOURAGE HIM."]
+[Illustration: "I ATTEMPT TO LEAD HIM."]
+[Illustration: "I CARRY HIM."]
+[Illustration: "I LOSE ALL PATIENCE."]
+
+No less marvellous than his power of acting is his power of mimicry. "I
+will show you how I do Irving," said he, and in a moment the little man
+had ruffled his hair, had assumed to the life not only Irving's peculiar
+gait, but, even more remarkable still, had managed to secure almost
+exactly the very expression of the great tragedian's face.
+
+[Illustration: "HOW I DO IRVING."]
+
+"Then again, I find it a good idea to take up some craze or topic of the
+moment. 'The Drama on Crutches' I wrote when the craze first arose
+amongst the aristocracy for going on the stage. One of the sketches
+which you will find outlined in that little notebook is entitled, 'Is
+Music a Failure?' and I endeavoured to answer the question by showing
+how popular it is among all classes of the community." I will quote
+pretty freely from this outlined sketch, as it will give my readers an
+idea, better than anything else would do, of the manner in which Mr.
+Grossmith prepares his delightful sketches.
+
+"I am not going to treat the subject seriously," he writes, "but in my
+own particular, impertinent way. The question often arises--are we a
+musical nation? The foreigners think we are not. But where in the wide,
+wide world is there a country where you will hear so many organs and
+German bands? Where is the country, excepting ours, that can appreciate
+the concertina? Where, except in England, can you hear that delightful
+combination of harp and cornet outside a house of refreshment? The
+prejudice of other nations is distressing; and as for their ignorance,
+why, I don't suppose Italy and Germany have even heard of the ocarino
+and the Jew's harp."
+
+And so the sketch runs on, until, in speaking of the universal manner in
+which music is appreciated in England by all classes, Mr. Grossmith goes
+on to say: "We have made rapid strides, so have our servants. They don't
+know how to dust the piano, but they can play it. Everybody plays the
+piano, from the Peerage to the School Board. Then look how music has
+crept into our homes and social circles. Besides the piano, the mother
+and daughters play the banjo, the son plays the first fiddle, and the
+father the second fiddle--as usual. I know of a Lord Mayor who plays the
+trombone, a clergyman who plays the big drum--that's a nice
+unpretentious, giddy instrument!--and I know of any number of members of
+Parliament who blow their own trumpets!!" And so the notes go brightly
+on through many pages.
+
+[Illustration: THE STUDY.]
+[Illustration: MR. WEEDON GROSSMITH.]
+
+"This," explained my host, "is a fair specimen of the method I employ in
+preparing a drawing-room sketch. As a rule, my audiences of that class
+are capital. I always love a well-dressed audience, it is so cheerful.
+You mayn't perhaps get as much applause as you do from the sixpenny
+gallery, but then applause often spoils your point. Once, however, I
+remember singing at a private house in the country to an odd assortment
+of people. I was informed that the party followed a wedding which had
+taken place in the morning. If it had followed a funeral it could not
+have been more gloomy and depressed than it was. I played the piano and
+the fool for three-quarters of an hour, and anything more dismal than
+the result it would be impossible to conceive. A temptation seized me
+suddenly, and I said: 'Ladies and gentlemen,--I am going to reveal to
+you a secret. Pray don't let it go any further. This is supposed to be a
+comic entertainment. I don't expect you to laugh at it in the least; but
+if, during the next sketch, you would only once oblige me with a society
+smile, it would give me a great deal of encouragement.' The audience for
+a moment were dumbfounded. They first began to titter, then to laugh,
+and actually to roar, and for a time I could not proceed with the
+sketch. They were transformed into a capital and enthusiastic audience,
+and the hostess told me that both her guests and herself were most
+grateful to me. I am sometimes amused with the little eccentricities of
+people who wish to secure my services for their parties. A gentleman
+once wrote to me to entertain some friends of his, and, added he, 'I
+trust that your sketches are strictly _comme il faut_, as I have several
+young daughters.' I was so immensely tickled by this that, rightly or
+wrongly, I replied that my entertainments _were_ as they should be, for
+I was recently married, and hoped myself to have several young
+daughters. He wrote thanking me for this assurance, and I was to
+consider myself accordingly engaged. There is a story I tell in my book
+which will bear repetition: A young gentleman once called upon me. He
+explained that he was acting as a sort of ambassador for a friend of
+his, Mrs. ----, of Mayfair, who wished me to dine at her house. I
+replied that I had not the honour of the lady's acquaintance, and,
+though appreciating her kind invitation, I did not see how I could very
+well avail myself of it. He said that Prince Somebody or other and La
+Comtesse de So-and-so would be dining there, and Mrs. ---- would be so
+pleased if I would join the party, and sing a little song after dinner.
+'Oh,' I said, 'if Mrs. ---- wishes to engage me professionally, that is
+another matter, and if I am at liberty, I will come with much pleasure.'
+'Well,' said the ambassador, 'I fancy Mrs. ---- is under the impression
+that if she includes you in her dinner party it is an understood thing
+that you sing afterwards.' 'I am afraid I do not understand that,' I
+said. 'It would not pay me to do so. I only consume about ten shillings
+worth of food and wine, and my terms are more than that.' There," said
+Mr. Grossmith, "could you have believed that anyone would have been so
+inconceivably mean and caddish?"
+
+[Illustration: OLD ENGRAVINGS.]
+[Illustration: MR. GEORGE GROSSMITH.]
+[Illustration: MR. GEO. GROSSMITH, JUN.]
+
+"I have had some curious experiences on tour," he went on. "That is hard
+work, if you like. I have gone a four months' tour without missing a
+night. It takes it out of one terribly. But it is very paying work. In
+the South of England I have made as much as £300 a week. My friends
+tried to frighten me as to the apathy of my Scotch audiences; as a
+matter of fact, I have no better audiences anywhere. I like performing
+to country audiences. I am never nervous as I am apt to be at St.
+James's, where there are a number of my friends. And it is on my country
+tours that I have many curious experiences. Amateurs invariably call at
+the hotel to see me, and to ask my advice as to their powers of
+recitation. Some are quite hopeless, and I haven't the heart to condemn
+them utterly, or to go beyond 'I tell you quite candidly, since you ask
+me, that I have heard better.' As a rule they are very quiet and modest,
+but now and again one encounters some fearful specimens. I remember once
+at a country town, which we will call Mudborough, a flashy young cad, in
+a very loud suit, called to see me with a parcel under his arm. He had
+come, he told me, to learn my opinion of his singing. He further
+informed me that he was known as 'the Mudborough Grossmith.' He didn't
+have the courtesy to take off his hat; he walked up and down my room,
+whistling, singing, and handing me over now and again specimens of his
+powers as a water-colour painter. I looked at them. At last, tired of
+the idiot and his airs, I said, 'I hope your musical sketches are better
+than you water-colour sketches.' Nothing, however, could snub this
+fellow. He proceeded straightway to sing me an improved version of 'See
+me Dance the Polka.' 'Do your audience like it?' I asked. 'I should
+think they did,' he replied; 'I will let you have that last verse if you
+like.' I thanked him sarcastically, and at last he withdrew. I have,
+however, come across some real talent in this way. For instance, that
+admirable actor and entertainer, Eric Lewis, is a _protégé_ of mine, and
+you could not have a better man than he. Another amusing incident
+occurred at Southsea. My secretary was in a shop one day, and he
+overheard three ladies discussing the respective merits of Corney Grain
+and myself. Two of them were for Corney Grain and one was for me.
+Finding at last that the odds were too strong for her, she departed with
+this final shot: 'Well, never mind, Mr. Corney Grain can't jump on to a
+piano,' referring to my imitation of Minnie Palmer."
+
+[Illustration: "A FLASHY YOUNG CAD, IN A VERY LOUD SUIT."]
+
+Replying to a question I put to him as to his theatrical experiences,
+Mr. Grossmith told me that it was in the November of 1877 that he
+received the following letter:--
+
+"Beefsteak Club,
+
+"King William Street,
+
+"Tuesday Night.
+
+"Dear Mr. Grossmith,--Are you inclined to go on the stage for a time?
+There is a part in the new piece I am doing with Gilbert which I think
+you would play admirably. I can't find a good man for it. Let me have a
+line, or come to Albert Mansions to-morrow, after 4; or Thursday,
+before 2.30.
+
+"Yours sincerely,
+
+"ARTHUR SULLIVAN."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"This was a great moment in my life, although at the time my father,
+whose good judgment I valued much, was of opinion that I was not very
+successful as an actor. Sullivan, however, who had heard me give a
+musical sketch at a dinner party, was of the contrary opinion, and felt
+sure that I should suit him. It appears he and Arthur Cecil were both
+writing letters at the Beefsteak, when the former said, 'I can't find a
+fellow for this opera.' Cecil said, 'I wonder if Grossmith--' Before he
+had finished the sentence, Arthur Sullivan said, 'The very man!' And so
+I was engaged. I am much indebted to these two Arthurs," continued the
+bright little man with a laugh. "I reverence the very name of Arthur. I
+remember when Gilbert wanted to engage me for the part of _John
+Wellington Wells_, though I saw the part would suit me to perfection, I
+said to him, 'I should have thought you required a fine man with a fine
+voice for the part of a magician.' I can still see Gilbert's humorous
+expression as he replied, 'That is just what we _don't_ want.' I played
+_Sir Joseph Porter_ in 'Pinafore' every night for nearly two years. Long
+runs don't affect the nerves of the actors nearly as much as they affect
+the performance. Constant repetition begets mechanism, and that is a
+terrible enemy to contend against. I make a point of playing my best to
+a bad house; for it is a monstrous thing to slur through one's work
+because the stalls are empty, and thereby punish those who _have_ come
+for the fault of those who _have not_. Still, I repeat it, constant
+repetition is a dreadful thing. Fancy playing 'Pinafore,' as I did, for
+700 nights without missing a single performance!"
+
+[Illustration]
+[Illustration]
+
+As he said this Mr. Grossmith led the way out of the room in which we
+had been talking, and which he told me was his own special sanctum,
+"into which no one is ever allowed to come except my wife, for anyone
+rushing in here when I was composing or thinking out a sketch would
+inevitably drive every single idea from my head," and we went upstairs
+together. Here in the drawing-room he set himself down to a spinet which
+bore the date of 1770, and he struck a few exceedingly sweet-sounding,
+if slightly tinkling, chords from it. "And this," said he, "is the
+oldest _Broadwood_ in England. You can see for yourself the date--1795."
+Downstairs he showed me a beautiful model of a steam engine, upon which
+he was enabled to ride, and which he could drive himself. "I thoroughly
+understand locomotives," said he, as he pointed to a shelf full of all
+the works upon the subject which he had been able to discover.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+A BLIND BEGGARMAN
+
+BY FRANK MATHEW.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. PEGRAM.
+
+
+    "Left dark among mine enemies."
+
+Long ago, the Fairies often stole children; they chose the prettiest,
+and carried them to Fairyland--the Kingdom of Tyrnanoge,--leaving
+hideous Changelings instead. In those days no man had call to be ashamed
+of his offspring, since it a baby was deformed or idiotic it was known
+to be a Changeling.
+
+[Illustration: "THE PIG WAS A FRIENDLY ANIMAL."]
+
+It is sixty years now since old Mike Lonergan, who lived in a hovel in
+Moher Village, was robbed of his child. It was his wife first found out
+the theft, for she had seen her unborn son in a dream, and he was
+beautiful; so when she saw the sickly and ugly baby, she knew that he
+was not hers, and that the Fairies had stolen the child of her dream.
+Many advised her to roast the Changeling on the turf-fire, but the White
+Witch of Moher said it would be safer to leave him alone. So the child
+Andy grew up as a stranger in his father's hovel and had a dreary time
+of it, he got little food and no kindness. The Lonergans gave him
+neither offence nor welcome, hoping that he might see fit to go home to
+Tyrnanoge and yet bear them no grudge. He grew up an odd wizened little
+wretch, and everyone shunned him. The children loathed him because they
+were afraid of him, so they hooted him from a distance, or stoned him
+from behind walls.
+
+Indeed, at this time his only ally was the pig that lived in one corner
+of the hovel. The pig was a friendly animal, his front half was a dull
+white and the other half black, and this gave him a homely look as if he
+was sitting in his shirt-sleeves. Andy would shrink into the corner, and
+sit cuddled there with one arm round the pig's neck. Old Mike Lonergan
+took to drink, and spent every evening at the Shebeen--small blame to
+him--for how could a man be expected to stay at home with a Changeling
+sitting in a corner and staring at him?
+
+When the pig was driven to the Fair at Ennistimon, Andy was left
+friendless, and then--in all winds and weather--was to be found on the
+Cliffs of Moher. Sometimes he stopped out all night, till hunger would
+bring him back when the Lonergans were rejoicing at his disappearance.
+He knew every inch of the Cliffs, and spent half his time lying on the
+edge of the grey precipice, looking down at the sea, six hundred feet
+below, or watching the clouds of sea-birds; he found new paths down the
+cliff-side and clambered like a goat; he knew where the gulls nested,
+but never robbed them, and the caves where the seals lived, and the
+seals shouldered their way through the water close by him, looking at
+him with soft eyes.
+
+When he was about fourteen, the Famine Year came; fever and "The Hunger"
+swept Clare. The fever took Lonergan and his wife, and they were buried
+in the dead-pit at Liscannor; it left Andy, but it left him blind. Then
+the neighbours began to have their doubts whether he was a Changeling
+after all; for the Fairies are faithful, and who ever heard of a
+Changeling being left blind and penniless? If he was only mortal he had
+been cruelly treated, so to make amends they gave him the fiddle that
+had belonged to the "Dark" Man--that is the blind man--of St. Bridget's
+Well, who had lately starved. There was still a feeling that he was
+unfit for a Holy Well, so he took up a post at the Liscannor
+Cross-roads, and there levied a toll on passers with the professional
+heart-broken cry:
+
+"Remember the Dark Man! For God's sake, remember the Dark Man!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For nearly twenty years Andy haunted the Cross-roads, he came to be
+honoured as one of the institutions of Moher, though the folk considered
+there was much that was uncanny about him, he was so silent, and he
+hated the smell of whisky. Now those were the times when Cornelius
+Desmond ruled Moher in the old open-handed haphazard way, never
+troubling penniless tenants. But "Corney" died and the daisies grew over
+him, so the estate was managed by an agent who made short work of
+paupers, and evicted "Dark" Andy from his ancestral hovel. Andy did not
+seem to know his misfortune. He spent the day of the eviction, as usual,
+at the Cross-roads, and came back at night to a ruin. His neighbour,
+Larry Ronan the blacksmith, was grieved to see that he took the change
+as a matter of course, and that after groping in the four corners of the
+cabin he sat on the window-ledge as if unaware that nothing was left of
+his home but the walls.
+
+Next day it was rumoured that Bridget McCaura, of Moher Farm, had
+sheltered Dark Andy. Bridget was a warm woman, a "woman of three cows,"
+a masterful old maid, who in her time had refused many a pretty fellow,
+perhaps because she suspected them of hankering after her live stock,
+her poultry, and her sixty acres of rocks. Then the old parish priest,
+Father Peter Flannery, rode over to see her. Bridget was called out of
+her house to speak to him; he was afraid to dismount. She stood in the
+narrow gateway in front of her farm, with her arms akimbo, ready to
+defend her home against all comers. Peter's heart trembled; he has a
+great dread of angry women.
+
+"Is it thrue?" he asked--and was so frightened that he looked even
+sterner than usual--"is it thrue what I'm afther hearing, Bridget
+McCaura, that ye've taken the Dark Man, Lonergan, to live with ye--to
+live in the Farm?"
+
+"Is it thrue? 'Tis so," said Bridget.
+
+"But ye're not going to keep him, are ye now?"
+
+"Keep him? I am that," said Bridget.
+
+Peter screwed up his courage and told her warily, that though it was
+well-meant of her, and "'tis you have the kind warm heart, Bridget me
+dear," still, that propriety forbade it.
+
+He was afraid to look at her as he spoke. Bridget was purple.
+
+"What! a misfortnit ould omadhaun the likes of that?" she cried.
+
+"I know, I know," said Peter (this is a pet phrase of his and usually
+means that he does not know). "I know, I know, but 'tis because ye're a
+lone woman, tell me now are ye listening to me? If ye'd been married
+now, 'twould have been another thing."
+
+"Married!" cried Bridget with infinite scorn--"Married! If that's all,
+I'll marry the craythur to-morrow!"
+
+And so Dark Andy was married to the richest woman in Moher. He seemed
+indifferent; as for Bridget, she had made up her mind to shelter him,
+and there was an end of it, she took pleasure in astounding her
+neighbours.
+
+[Illustration: "I'LL MARRY THE CRAYTHUR TO-MORROW!"]
+
+There was never such excitement in Clare as when those banns were read.
+Everyone saw that poor Bridget McCaura--"dacint woman"--had been
+bewitched. All the old stories about Dark Andy came to life, there was
+no room for doubt now, and the bravest unbelievers trembled before him.
+There was many a woman would never hear his name without crossing
+herself, and he got the credit of every misfortune between Kilkee and
+Kinvarra, though some doubted whether a blind man could have the Evil
+Eye. It was felt that he should be asked to give up his post by the
+Cross-roads, since it was inconvenient for the neighbours to have to
+climb two stone walls to avoid passing him. However, no one could be
+found to suggest this to him, so he still sat there daily, for he liked
+to feel that he was earning his own livelihood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One rough afternoon during my first visit to Clare I was caught in a
+storm of rain, and took refuge at the Liscannor Cross-roads under a
+thick clump of trees that are stunted and bent eastward by cowering from
+the sea-wind. As I reached them I heard a shrill cry, "Remember the Dark
+Man!" Then I saw the blind beggarman sitting huddled in a ragged
+great-coat so much too big for him that till he stood up I did not see
+how tiny he was. He had a doleful peaked face, set in a shock of grey
+hair. By him sat a little brown dog--the queerest of mongrels--with a
+tin can tied round his neck.
+
+Andy was friendly that day, and talked eagerly in a shrill, stammering
+voice. I found later that he was wretched in still weather, and loved
+the malicious rush of the rain; he was happiest when the wind rattled in
+his ears and the rain whipped his face. "Call that rain?" he said, "sure
+th' air is flooded, an' ye might as well swim as walk."
+
+Many times after that I went out of my way on my long solitary walks to
+pass the Cross-roads, but as often as not he was glum and silent, and
+then Bonaparte, sharing his mood, would growl like a small thunderstorm.
+The seat was well chosen, for the cowering trees are like a shed over
+it, and there is a pleasant landscape in front (though that mattered
+little to Andy), a landscape of dim green moors--with brown stains on
+them where sedge grows and black shadows where bushes huddle in
+clefts--chequered by a grey net of low walls, dotted with the white
+gables of cabins, and framed by a wavering line of hills.
+
+Sometimes I found him playing his fiddle to keep himself company, but he
+stopped when he heard me, and, to tell the truth, I was glad of it, for
+his playing was uncanny. Sometimes I met him shambling along the brink
+of the Cliffs--a grotesque little figure, with his old shapeless hat,
+his huge coat flapping behind him, and the mighty blackthorn he
+carried--he knew the ground so well that he walked as if he could see
+(indeed, he saw more than I could, for while to me the breakers were
+only streaks of light, he spoke as if he was close to them on the wet
+weedy rocks), or I came on him lying by the edge, listening to the
+grumbling of the breakers and the cries of the gulls.
+
+[Illustration: "LISTENING TO THE GRUMBLING OF THE BREAKERS AND THE CRIES
+OF THE GULLS."]
+
+Mostly he was unsociable, he shrank from his neighbours because they had
+been cruel to him when they were children, and the dislike was more than
+returned; yet I think that, but for the loneliness of his whole life, he
+would have been friendly enough. No one knew more of folklore--I think
+he half believed that he was a Changeling, and found comfort in the
+thought of that former life when he was one of the merry "Little Good
+People"--and sure old Mike Lonergan and his wife ought to have known
+best. He knew the ways of every ghost in the county, and it was even
+said that he was on speaking terms with the Headless Man who haunted
+Liscannor. Of course he knew all about Fairies. When the fallen leaves
+scurried past his feet he knew that the "Little Good People" were
+playing football, when the wind whispered in the leaves overhead he
+heard them chatting, and when it whined in the creaking bare branches,
+heard the poor little folk crying with cold and bewailing the days when
+they found shelter by snug firesides and sat there unseen but not
+unwelcome. Once, before the world grew hard, they gathered in the
+cabins, and the roughest fare grew pleasanter, the saddest hearts
+lighter, from their good wishes; but no one cares for them now, and they
+cannot rest in unfriendly houses.
+
+[Illustration: "HE WAS ON SPEAKING TERMS WITH THE HEADLESS MAN OF
+LISCANNOR."]
+
+As he grew older, he talked more of them, grew more moody and restless,
+could not sit quiet while the wind was up, and spent night after night
+out of doors. My friend Father Peter Flannery, who is my chief authority
+for this history, told me that often, riding on his sick calls in stormy
+weather, he met Andy staggering along the rough roads.
+
+Last year on November Eve--the night when the Fairies have power, and
+the dead wake and dance reels with them--the blind beggarman started out
+from the Farm. An Atlantic gale was shattering seas against the Cliffs,
+the air was salt with foam, and throbbed with the pulse of the breakers.
+Bridget tried in vain to stop him; he said the "Little Good People" were
+calling him. She watched him disappear into the darkness, the whimpering
+of his fiddle died into the shrieks of the wind. "'Tis a quare divil, he
+is," she said, "God help him!"
+
+Once in the night she thought she heard a snatch of the "Fairies' Reel";
+but Andy never came back. Next morning they found Bonaparte whining on
+the edge of the Cliffs; there was no sign of his master. He must have
+gone over the Cliffs in the darkness, but the waves gave no token.
+
+Some folk in Moher believe that the Fairies took back their child, and
+that the old blind fiddler lives now in the Kingdom of Tyrnanoge, and
+makes music for their dances in that enchanted country where the old
+grow young and the blind see. Some say that he still haunts the
+Cross-roads, and only a week ago, Larry Ronan, coming back at night from
+Ennistimon Fair, saw a black shadowy figure under the black trees, and
+heard a heart-broken voice cry "Remember the Dark Man!" Larry's natural
+surprise at this accounted for his being found next morning asleep in
+the ditch. But it is agreed in Moher that Andy left life on November
+Eve, whether he became the playfellow of the Fairies or the plaything of
+the waves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+CHURCH AND STAGE.
+
+A REVIEW OF HENRY IRVING,
+
+BY THE REV. DR. JOSEPH PARKER.
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM F. BARNARD AND J. BERNARD PARTRIDGE.
+
+
+[Illustration: MR. IRVING AS "HAMLET."
+(_From the Portrait by EDWIN LONG._)]
+
+[Illustration: MR. IRVING AS "DIGBY GRANT" IN "TWO ROSES."]
+
+The innumerable reviews of Mr. Irving by literary and artistic experts
+have left room enough for an amateur estimate by a man who is accustomed
+to regard human life mainly from a religious standpoint. A complete
+review of the Stage by the Pulpit could hardly be the work of a single
+pen; for my own part, therefore, I can only make a very small
+contribution to such a review by indicating a few points which have
+occurred to me in the study of one particular actor. At once, however,
+the question arises, Is Mr. Irving a man who can be thus summarily
+characterised? In a dramatic sense, are there not many Mr. Irvings? When
+a man can act "The Two Roses" and "The Dead Heart" with equal effect,
+when he can at will be as vulgar as _Robert Macaire_, or as dignified as
+_Cardinal Wolsey;_ when he can be either as young as Hamlet or as old as
+Lear, the inquiry as to his plurality becomes natural and pertinent. For
+my part, I rank Mr. Irving the comedian above Mr. Irving the tragedian,
+just as I rank Nature above Art: each may be highest in its own way, yet
+the one may have a charm which the other cannot boast. Mr. Irving's
+tragedy sometimes requires working up, but his comedy is spontaneous and
+immediate. The needful working up of tragedy is no fault of the actor.
+Tragedy should hardly ever begin at once. The murder may come too soon.
+Premature rage is followed by untimely laughter. _Digby Grant_ begins at
+once, and can be his best self in the very first sentence, but _Macbeth_
+must move towards his passion by finely-graded ascents. In Mr. Irving's
+exquisite representation, _Macbeth's_ anxieties and perturbations, his
+rapid alternations of courage and cowardice, make delicate but obvious
+record of themselves in deepening the grey of his hair, and ploughing
+more deeply the lines of his face. A comedy may be judged scene by
+scene, almost sentence by sentence, but a tragedy can be truly estimated
+only when viewed in final perspective.
+
+[Illustration: "A LITTLE CHEQUE."
+(MR. IRVING AS "DIGBY GRANT" IN "TWO ROSES.")]
+
+Judged by this test, I have no hesitation in regarding Mr. Irving's
+_King Lear_ as the finest creation of his genius. This is an instance in
+which the actor creates the piece. Shakespeare is, as a poet and
+playwright, at his worst in "King Lear." Yet his accessories are
+wonderful in variety and suggestiveness. Only Shakespeare could have
+created the heath, and have so ordered the old King's passion, as to
+make his madness part of the very thunder and lightning. That was
+Shakespeare's magnificent conception, and Mr. Irving's rendering is
+worthy of its tempestuous grandeur. How to talk up to the storm, how to
+pierce the tumult with the cries of human distress, how to escape the
+ridiculous and the incongruous, how to be a King on the desolate heath,
+and to make the royalty gleam through the angry darkness, were the
+problems, and Mr. Irving solved them one and all, even with redundance
+of faculty and skill. At the end of the heath scene the man is more
+remembered than the storm. It has been objected that in the first scene
+Mr. Irving's _Lear_ is too old and feeble. I venture to think otherwise.
+I further venture to think that the King's age and the King's imbecility
+have both been accurately appreciated. A man at eighty, a man athirst
+for flattery, a man who would pay a kingdom in exchange for adulation,
+must have outlived all that is best and strongest in human nature. He
+comes upon the stage as a wreck. His vanity has eaten up his sagacity,
+so that she, _Goneril_ or _Regan_, who can flatter most, can lie most,
+and can play the devil best, shall fare most lavishly at his hands. Is
+it not well partly to excuse these excesses of self-valuation by such
+mitigations as can be found in the infirmity of old age? Even in an
+elderly man they would have been treated with contempt; they could only
+be endured in one whose eighty years had been doubled by the hardness of
+his life lot.
+
+In "Henry VIII." Mr. Irving had little to do. In that play the labour
+and the glory fell upon another, to the infinite delight of the public.
+In "Lear," Mr. Irving has everything to do. From beginning to end there
+is only one character. Even the fascinating _Cordelia_ is but a silver
+cloud on the far horizon. "The King is coming" is the cry of the play.
+His madness is more, as to display and effect, than the sense of all the
+others. The scene is stiff and cold until his wild hair is observed to
+approach the front, and then the whole spectacle is alight with feeling
+and purpose. The other actors are not to blame that, to a large extent,
+they are thrown into the shade; indeed, they are to be warmly
+congratulated upon their self-suppression and their passive sympathy. It
+is a hard task to play the part of two heartless and treacherous
+daughters, and a pitiful fate to have to represent the villainy of
+_Edmund_, yet all this was admirably done. It cannot be an easy thing to
+come forward to play the villain well, for the better the dramatic
+villain is played the more is the actor compelled to recognise in his
+execration the exact degree of his success. So admirably can Mr. Irving
+himself play the villain, that it is difficult to believe that any
+godparents ever, on his unconscious behalf, renounced the pomps and
+vanities of this wicked world.
+
+In many minor parts--or along the subsidiary lines of great parts--Mr.
+Irving's subtlest power comes into effective play. Who, for example, can
+be more gentle or more graceful with a little child? Who could hug the
+"fool" more fondly than old _King Lear_? Then recall his wonderful
+recognitions of old friends. When, in "The Dead Heart," he is liberated
+from the Bastille, how old times slowly but surely dawn into
+consciousness, and how quickly the dawn hastens into the noontide of the
+tenderest fellowship and highest festival of joy. It is verily a
+resurrection. After eighteen years' entombment this political Lazarus
+comes forth to liberty, to leadership, to dominance.
+
+In "Lear," there are two wonderful instances of recognition, the
+recognition of _Gloster_ and of _Cordelia_. _Gloster_ is blind and
+bandaged. _Cordelia_ has been long out of sight--if not in actual days
+yet in depth of feeling--and the King himself is demented. Little by
+little things shape themselves in the memory and fancy of the King.
+There is something confusedly familiar in the voice of _Gloster_ which,
+tone by tone, settles into recognition. In the case of _Cordelia_ the
+father gradually subdues the King, and instinct takes the place of
+reason; then, in a fine strain, comes the identification:
+
+            "Do not laugh at me,
+    For, as I am a man, I think this lady
+    To be my child Cordelia."
+
+The utterance of these words by Mr. Irving is simply thrilling. The
+tones, the glances, the approach, the embrace, lift up the words into
+new light, keen and tender as the brightness of a summer morning. The
+words themselves are by no means striking, are, indeed, the merest
+commonplace, but, uttered with the natural pathos of a consummate actor,
+they carry the play to its most subduing climax. The humanity and the
+genius satisfy expectation in its most eager and jealous temper. Failure
+at that point would have ruined the play. Which was better, _Lear_ or
+_Cordelia_, in that critical action? We must first settle, Which is
+better, the star of morning or the morning star?
+
+[Illustration: MR. IRVING AS "KING LEAR." (FROM THE LYCEUM SOUVENIR.)]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As I opened this brief review with a reference to the religious
+standpoint, it may be well now to ask how the Church is to regard the
+Stage as an educational institution? The Stage cannot be put down. It
+responds to an instinct which is ineradicable, and which need not be
+ignoble. The parables of the New Testament are the sublimest recognition
+of that instinct. The drama is older than the theatre. Much of the
+greatest preaching has been dramatic, by which I mean that it has
+touched human life through the medium of story and parable, coloured and
+toned by a living fancy. Sometimes, too truly, the dramatic in preaching
+has degenerated into impossible anecdotes, most of them originating in
+the Far West of America, yet even such anecdotes testify to the
+overpowering force of the dramatic instincts when limited to their most
+vulgar conditions. My submission is, that a properly-conducted stage
+might be the most powerful ally of the pulpit. I advance upon this
+submission, and contend that the function of the preacher is infinitely
+superior to the function of the actor. Whatever the preacher has to say
+that is distinctive he can trace to what he believes to be a Divine and
+authoritative origin. I hold the great preacher to be a spiritual
+medium. In his next evolution he will simply tell the people whatever
+may have been given him in the same hour to say. This does not mean that
+indolence will supersede industry. Through the indolent man God sends no
+messages. The true prophet will always be preparing himself. By
+learning, by meditation, by self-discipline, the true prophet will
+prepare his heart for the incoming of the Eternal Spirit, and the glory
+of Heaven will be as a fire on the altar of the honest heart. Art
+preachers we have had in too great abundance. Mechanical talkers have
+brought upon the pulpit the disrepute of dulness. The age now waits for
+the messenger in whose loving heart there is the glow and the radiance
+of divinest sympathy. The great actor himself would be the first to
+admit that the preacher cannot trace his own public secondariness to the
+poverty of his themes. Where the preacher falls behind the actor, it is
+because the preacher does not realise the majesty and the tenderness,
+the vehemence and the urgency, of his own message.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THAT BEAST BEAUTY.
+
+BY KIRBY HARE.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY ERNEST M. JESSOP.
+
+
+I was a man born to misfortune. In fact, my first misfortune, the death
+of my father, happened three months before I came into the world. When I
+did duly appear, and was giving a proper howl of disgust, a fresh
+misfortune fell upon me; my mother departed to join my father, leaving
+me in the lurch in a vale of unavailing tears. I should have preferred
+going with my family to that blessed Utopia where there are neither
+births, deaths, marriages, divorces, breaches of promise, nor return
+tickets; only, unfortunately, I was not invited. So I became a
+posthumous orphan, soothed by Daffy's elixir and the skim-milk of human
+kindness. The milk was none too sweet, human kindness did not spare the
+rod, and I firmly believe it was Daffy's elixir that turned my hair red.
+However, I grew up at length into stand-up collars and tail coats, and
+at the age of seventeen springs was adopted (on trial) by a maiden aunt
+of seven-and-forty autumns. Like a gleam of sunshine hope flashed into
+my loveless life, lighting up my path to fortune. But it was only the
+glimmer of an _ignis fatuus_, which led me into a quicksand and snuffed
+itself out in a fog.
+
+[Illustration: A PROPER HOWL OF DISGUST.]
+
+[Illustration: HIS MAIDEN AUNT.]
+
+My relative had plenty of money, and plenty of other equally good
+qualities in the long run, no doubt; but the period of my adoption was
+too short to make sure of either the one or the other. If the wealthy
+maiden was really a worthy soul she did not let her nephew know it.
+Corporeally she was angular and iron-grey, with a summary tongue and
+wintry temper, chastened by a fondness for feline favourites. Unluckily,
+I was always falling foul of the latter, and my aunt continually fell
+foul of me in consequence. Crabbed age and youth could not live together
+in our case on account of cats. Age, as represented by the mature
+virgin, adored the brutes; youth, in the shape of a sprouting
+hobbledehoy, abhorred them altogether, and one evil minded black Tom in
+particular. My aunt called him Beauty, in happy ignorance that all her
+household called him a Beast. I admire beauty in the abstract; I also
+like it in the concrete; and in the concreted form of youthful feminine
+humanity I love it. But that feline black Beauty was the most outrageous
+misnomer unhanged. I had tried to hang him several times, down in the
+cellar in the dead of night; but his patent cast-iron neck set
+suspensory science at defiance, and Beauty triumphantly refused to give
+up the ghost. At first, he kicked and fought against it lustily, and
+yelled murder with all his might; but after a little practice the
+malefactor acted more philosophically, regarding the performance quite
+as part of his nocturnal programme. He never allowed it to make him late
+for breakfast, nor take away his appetite. Each morning, after
+execution, the moment the bell rang for prayers, in marched Beauty with
+a swollen head well on one side, growling anathemas from somewhere round
+the corner all prayer-time; after which the escaped convict devoured
+breakfast with the voracity of a stiffnecked cannibal.
+
+[Illustration: ONE EVIL-MINDED BLACK TOM.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Finding the beast utterly unhangable, I determined to try drowning. My
+nature is by no means a cruel one, quite the reverse; but Beauty's cup
+of iniquity had long been full to the brim, and running over into the
+saucer. He had gulped down my canaries like pills, poached my pigeons,
+fricasseed my rabbits, and made himself an abominable beast generally;
+and had now committed a crime that capped everything.
+
+My cock bantam, which had won first prize at the Slocum-Pogis poultry
+show, mysteriously disappeared. Jim, the gardener's boy, and I hunted
+everywhere without finding any trace till we sighted Beauty. The beast
+was seated on my verbena bed, with fearfully distended stomach, waving
+my poor little bantam's tail feathers from between his teeth. Had I been
+an ancient Egyptian high priest, and Beauty at the top of the tree of
+holy cats, his diabolical godship should have been made into a mummy
+instanter. As things were, he had to be drowned forthwith.
+
+[Illustration: AT A CABINET COUNCIL IN THE COAL CELLAR.]
+
+At a cabinet council in the coal cellar, composed of the cook, footman,
+Jim, and myself, all the executive details were arranged; my aunt being,
+of course, kept in happy ignorance of our intentions. As soon as my
+respected relative uttered the preliminary snore of her afternoon
+siesta, Beauty made an involuntary exit out of the house, all the lower
+doors and windows having been carefully fastened. Then commenced a
+silent cat-hunt, a serio-comic drama in dumb show, with a crowded
+audience breathlessly gazing from the windows. The scenery was a series
+of dissolving views, beginning on a flower-decked lawn, and ending at a
+mill-pool a mile or so away from the audience. Beauty played leading
+actor with considerable activity, notwithstanding the drawback of being
+handicapped with an undigested bantam. He flew over dozens of
+flower-beds, through all the outhouses, over the stable, out into the
+park, up and down all the tallest trees, and all over the country, till
+he took refuge in the deserted old mill. There we wriggled him into an
+ancient sack, and tied him up in the harmonious company of a couple of
+brickbats. Then we committed the body to the deep. The burial service
+was short, but hearty. "One--two--three, and away!" sung out in unison,
+was the special form for the occasion, accompanied by Beauty's farewell
+blessing as we "awayed" him into the silent depths of the mill-dam.
+There was a splash, a shrill cry from a frightened moorhen, a short
+jubilate from Jim, to which I piously added "amen," and all was over.
+Jim ran home with half-a-sovereign in his pocket, while I walked back to
+dress for dinner. On the stairs I met my aunt, already in evening array,
+and looking hungry. I knew the sign, and stealthily tried to
+vanish, vainly.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE DESERTED OLD MILL.]
+
+"Late again, Samuel!" she remarked, with a freezing spectacle-gleam that
+fixed me to the stair-carpet--my right foot two steps above the left.
+"You have just come in, I suppose. Have you seen Beauty?"
+
+[Illustration: "LATE AGAIN, SAMUEL!"]
+
+Horror! Could she suspect anything? I felt my face growing the colour of
+my hair, and my tongue frozen solid.
+
+"Can't you answer?" she went on wrathfully. "And can't you stand up
+straight?"
+
+I pulled my legs together and commenced to stammer.
+
+"I--I saw Beauty out--outside, aunt, in the garden," I managed to mutter.
+
+"Which way was he going?"
+
+"Why, I think he was running towards the house, aunt."
+
+[Illustration: THIRTY MILES AN HOUR.]
+
+And then the remembrance of how he _was_ running--thirty miles an hour,
+with tail on end and ears flat to his head, with Jim and my long-legged
+self racing in rear--made me choke with laughter I was forced to
+swallow. But my aunt's eyes were on me, and her gold-rimmed barnacles
+blazed through me, so I suffocated in silence.
+
+"Don't stand making faces like an idiot. Go and dress, and be quick,"
+snapped my loving relative, as she marched away downstairs and I flew to
+the region above.
+
+My bedroom door was partly open, and I dashed in hastily, pulling off my
+things as I went.
+
+[Illustration: DRESSING FOR DINNER.]
+
+My evening clothes were laid out ready on the bed, and--what was that on
+my shirt?--a black mass of--something moving!--some animal! Why, heavens
+and earth, it was the ghost of--that beast Beauty! It was Beauty
+himself! I ran for the poker; Beauty rushed out of the door. Confound
+that rotten old sack!
+
+I was late for dinner, and found Beauty seated in my chair, sleek and
+dry, with a ravenously whetted appetite. My aunt was so pleased with her
+favourite's improved appearance that she became quite affable, even to
+me. I was informed that as I had not been looking well lately I might go
+for a few days' change to the seaside; the salubrious air of
+Muddiford-on-the-Ooze would just suit me. What a blessing! To have
+escaped from those ice-gleaming spectacles and from that resuscitated
+beast Beauty I would gladly have gone to Jericho, much more to
+Muddiford-on-the-Ooze. Then my aunt continued her course of
+instructions, with the nearest approach to a smile I had ever seen
+on her face.
+
+[Illustration: A SHOW AT MUDDIFORD-ON-THE-OOZE.]
+
+"You will enjoy yourself, I am sure, Samuel, and you will also be able
+to show what pains you can take to please me," she said, sipping her
+first glass of Burgundy with approving relish. "There is to be a show at
+Muddiford the day after to-morrow, at which I intend exhibiting, and you
+will be able to manage everything for me; so mind you are careful to do
+your best."
+
+"I shall be most delighted," I declared gushingly. "What show is it? And
+what can I have the pleasure of taking charge of for you, my dear aunt?"
+
+"It's the Grand All-England Cat Show, and you will take Beauty; and I
+shall be greatly disappointed if you do not bring me back the first
+prize. So be on your best behaviour, Samuel, or perhaps you may live to
+regret it."
+
+My jaw dropped, and I thought I should have slid under the table. Good
+heavens! It was that beast Beauty who was to go for a holiday, while I
+was to act as the infernal fiend's keeper! O my prophetic soul--my aunt!
+But there was no help for it; I was bound in bonds of gold.
+
+On the following day, Beauty and I were duly driven to the station, the
+former being luxuriously nested in a small hamper specially furnished
+for the occasion. About half-way on the road, just as we had mounted a
+long, steep hill, the cat managed to roll his residence from the stern
+of the dog-cart and trundle himself half-way home again. Luckily, he
+screeched blue murder at the tip-top of his voice, or we might not have
+missed the beast. As it was, his cyclical retrogression made us just too
+late for the train, and we had to wait two hours for the next. So I
+seated myself on the hamper--like Patience on the proverbial
+monument--and beheld the coachman depart homewards, with a sympathetic
+hat-touching salute, leaving me with a gloomy conviction of coming
+misfortune. The train, when it did arrive, was tolerably empty, and I
+secured a vacant first-class. For a time all went happily; then the cat
+commenced groaning.
+
+[Illustration: SEATED MYSELF ON THE HAMPER.]
+
+My aunt having solemnly ordered me to give the brute dinner, I now
+prepared to stop his mouth with cold chicken. While I was cautiously
+unfastening the hamper lid, Beauty remained quiet as a dormouse; and
+then he proceeded personally to assist the unfastening, with a
+vengeance. There was a bouncing volcanic eruption, a blood-curdling
+howl, a mixed-up whirling round the carriage, and then--smash!--bang
+through the window went Beauty!--leaving me doubled up on the seat,
+holding out half a chicken. It was a forty-feline-power hurricane, while
+it lasted; and drops of perspiration trickled down my nose on to the
+chicken, at which I sat stupidly staring. After a dazed pause I
+staggered to the broken window and looked out. There was Beauty, with a
+perpendicular tail like a young fir-tree, going like great guns in
+exactly the wrong direction. We had just come through a long tunnel, and
+the last I saw of my aunt's pet demon was as he dived headlong into its
+Hades-like mouth. And I had to take home first prize for him from the
+Grand All-England Cat Show!
+
+[Illustration: LEAVING THE RAILWAY CARRIAGE.]
+
+[Illustration: INTO ITS HADES-LIKE MOUTH.]
+
+[Illustration: INCIPIENT CATALEPSY.]
+
+When the 4.40 down express arrived at Muddiford-on-the-Ooze station, an
+auburn-haired youth limply emerged from a first-class carriage. In his
+arms he bore a basket, and his grey-green eyes gleamed with incipient
+catalepsy. Yes, such would undoubtedly have been my description had I
+posed as the momentary hero of a penny novelette. I forgot all about my
+luggage, imbecilely clinging to the late habitation of the lost beast
+Beauty, wandering I knew not why nor whither. Outside the station, round
+a quiet corner, my steps were arrested by the surprising sight
+of--Beauty!--the very identical devil himself! There stood the
+unhangable, undrownable, hurricane-creating beast, looking as serene as
+a newly-born black cherub, washing his fiendish face! I approached on
+tiptoe, breathlessly, with the basket behind my back and the half
+chicken extended as a peaceable card of introduction. He scented it
+instantly--my aunt always keeping Beauty's tit-bits until sufficiently
+gamey to suit his highly epicurean taste.
+
+[Illustration: WASHING HIS FIENDISH FACE!]
+
+With a finishing toe-touch to his whiskers, he amicably trotted up to me
+and--yes!--actually rubbed against my new trousers! What could have
+happened to him! Had his run through the tunnel turned him out virtuous?
+And how could he possibly have got here? Experience has shown that a
+leopard can change his spots, and a negro can grow spotted; but could a
+diabolical cat become even as a sucking dove and fly over twelve miles
+all in the space of twenty minutes? Impossible! So I put on a pair of
+folder-glasses and scrutinised this new arrival doubtingly. No; it was
+_not_ Beauty--not nearly ugly enough. It was a twin, but larger,
+blacker, sleeker, a million times more amiable, and very much fatter.
+Ah!--ha, ha!--hurrah!--happy thought! Why not? I would. And, thereupon,
+I instantly did it.
+
+Placing the basket gently on the ground, I opened the lid and put in the
+cold chicken, when lo! in jumped the amiable twin. Half an hour later
+that basket, that heaven-descended twin, and that successful chicken,
+were safely deposited in custody of the cat-show steward, with the
+errant Beauty's entry ticket affixed. If the steward had never seen the
+real original he would never discover the difference; and if he did
+happen to be acquainted with the genuine article he could but think that
+the beast was surprisingly improved, and might even award it first prize
+for having turned over such a notable new leaf. And for the same reason,
+my aunt ought to be highly delighted at her favourite's favourable
+transformation. My heart was lightened of its oppressive troubles, as my
+hands were free from their feline load. With a hearty appetite I ate an
+excellent dinner at the hotel, went to the theatre, and turned into bed
+thankful for all fortune's favours.
+
+[Illustration: I ATE AN EXCELLENT DINNER.]
+
+During the two following days, carefully steering clear of the cat-show,
+I enjoyed my freedom gaily, and had--what our three-thousand-miles-
+removed cousins would call--real good time. On the third morning a
+letter arrived from my aunt, with an enclosure which for the first
+moment I took to be a big cheque--a grateful offering, as I hoped, for
+services skilfully performed. However, it proved to be merely a second
+letter, in writing that was strange to me, and which with some curiosity
+I proceeded to peruse. As I unfolded the sheet, a vision suddenly
+crossed my mind of that savage beast Beauty; a chilly shiver shot
+through my marrow, and I sent the waiter for soda and brandy. It was an
+awful thought of what that unkillable cat might do! There he was,
+rampaging over a civilised country populated with children and lambs,
+and other unprotected innocents, half mad, perhaps, with hunger, where
+neither canaries nor pigeons, rabbits or cold chicken were grabbable.
+What desperate murders he might commit! And should I be held
+responsible? Here the timely arrival of the waiter helped to raise my
+spirits by a strong dose of B. and S., and I began the enclosed letter.
+
+[Illustration: WHAT DESPERATE MURDERS HE MIGHT COMMIT!]
+
+It was headed from the cat-show secretary's office. Why, of course, that
+charming twin had got first prize, no doubt. Let us see. "Dear Madam,"
+so ran the official note, "I beg to call your attention to what I
+imagine must, in some way, have been an oversight. Your cat, described
+on the entrance form as 'a black male, named Beauty,' which was, on the
+evening of its arrival, placed in the class pertaining to the
+descriptive form, was found this morning to have presented us with four
+remarkably fine kittens. This, of course, necessitated the family's
+removal from the male cat class. I have much pleasure in being able to
+inform you that both mother and kittens are in the best of health, and
+will be carefully attended upon. If you will kindly forward your
+instructions respecting their disposal, I shall be greatly obliged."
+That was the note, and wildly did the letters dance before my eyes.
+
+[Illustration: FOUR REMARKABLY FINE KITTENS.]
+
+[Illustration: GASPING FOR BREATH.]
+
+Having saved myself from fainting by finishing the B. and S., I sat for
+some minutes gasping for breath. Then I rubbed my eyes and reread that
+awful epistle. Yes--it was so--in solemn, sober black ink! Beauty's twin
+had got four fine kittens! Great Jehoshaphat! How could I ever get over
+those confounded kittens! It was too late to murder them. And my
+aunt--but stop! Let me read her letter; it might suggest something--some
+feline legerdemain method of conjuring four fine kittens into a first
+prize black male cat. So here goes. And this is how it went: "I always
+considered you to be a fool, Samuel, but nothing worse, until now.
+Unless the enclosed letter is immediately fully explained, and the
+matter set right, I shall plainly let you know what I do think of you
+now, and act accordingly. See the secretary, and telegraph me the result
+at once." Not much hope in that, worse luck; only a limited respite.
+
+[Illustration: WENT FISHING.]
+
+Away I went to the show, saw the secretary--from a safe distance--and
+immediately telegraphed: "Have seen the secretary. Hard at work setting
+matters right. Awfully sorry." Then I hired a boat, and went fishing for
+the rest of the day. In the evening I wired: "Beauty must have got
+changed. Cats now all going home. Found clue and am following up. All
+right shortly." But my aunt's patience had expired. Next morning came a
+curt note saying she would at once join me, and either rescue Beauty or
+settle that secretary. How could I ever face those searching spectacles!
+I fled. From a lonely spot on the wilds of Dartmoor I wired: "Am
+following clue sharp. Getting close up. Good news next time." Back came
+an answer: "Shall be with you to-morrow at noon." At noon next day, I
+boarded the mail packet Tongariro, bound from Plymouth to New Zealand.
+
+[Illustration: OFF TO NEW ZEALAND.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+PEOPLE I HAVE NEVER MET
+
+BY SCOTT RANKIN.
+
+MRS. HUMPHRY WARD.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+    "You can do nothing by despising the past and its products; you
+    also can do nothing by being too much afraid of them.... Be
+    content to be a new 'sect,' 'conventicle,' or what not, so long
+    as you feel that you are _something_, with a life and purpose
+    of its own, in this tangle of a world."--_Robert Elsmere_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THE IDLERS CLUB
+
+Is Love a Practical Reality or a Pleasing Fiction?
+
+
+[Sidenote: Mrs. Lynn Linton thinks there is no doubt as to Love's
+reality.]
+
+Of the desperate reality of the passion there is no doubt; of the
+intrinsic value of the thing beloved there may be many. The passion for
+which men and women have died stands like a tower four-square to all the
+winds of heaven; but how far that tower has been self-created by fancy,
+and how much is objectively real, who is the wise man that can
+determine? What is Love? We know nothing of its source. Sense and sex
+cannot wholly explain its mystery, else would there be no friendship
+left among us; and elective affinity is but a dainty carving on the
+chancel stalls. The loveliness which makes that special person the
+veritable Rose of the World to us exists but in our imagination. It is
+no rose that we adore--only at the best a bedeguar, of which the origin
+is a disagreeable little insect. We believe in the exquisite harmony of
+those atoms which have arranged themselves to form the thing we love.
+And we marry our human ideal, expecting the unbroken continuance of that
+harmony. But the discord comes; colours clash; the jarring note spoils
+the chord; the idol once accepted as of gold and precious stones, proves
+to be only common clay, thinly gilt. The diamonds are paste; the pearls
+are beads of glass filled with shining fishes' scales; and the love
+which we thought would be a practical reality for life, is nothing but a
+pleasing fiction, good for its day, and now dead and done with. The
+lover sees nothing as it is. Life is distorted between jealousy and
+admiration, and the plain teaching of common-sense is as little
+understood as the conditions of the fourth dimension or the poetic
+aspirations of the Simian tongue. The adored is not a real person; the
+happiness anticipated is not practical nor practicable. Both are on
+all-fours with the substantiality of a cloud and the serviceable roadway
+of a rainbow. Custom, familiarity, daily habits are the sole tests by
+which the reality of the thing beloved can be tried--the reality of the
+thing beloved and consequent validity of love. Before these tests are
+applied, the whole affair is as a fairy dream born of the perfume and
+the mystery of night. With the clear cold breath of morning the dream
+vanishes, but--what is left? The sigh of the vanishing god?--a tear on
+the cheek of Psyche?--the loathing of the man who finds Mélusine a
+serpent rather than a woman?--or the peaceful joy of the child who
+dreams of angels and wakes in its mother's arms?--of those who sleeping
+on the ocean wake to find themselves safe in port?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: "Rita" thinks Love is beautiful and wise.]
+
+At one period of life, love is simply an emotion--the outcome of
+attraction, or the effect of that vague mystery which surrounds sex. In
+this emotional stage the _feeling_ may be real enough, but the passion
+is an illusion. A girl is often more in love with Love than with an
+actual lover. The youth who beholds his ideal in the First Woman is in
+love with the woman herself who for the time (usually very brief)
+embodies that ideal. But to the girl and the youth comes an hour when
+they are humiliatingly conscious of study wasted on a prettily-bound
+work of fiction that for all use and purpose in life is quite valueless.
+The edifice of romance is constructed much on the same plan as a child's
+castle of cards, and deservedly shares the same fate. That is to say,
+the topmost card overbalances the whole structure. It is usually the
+hand of Reason that topples over Love's romantic tenement by crowning it
+with the card of Common Sense. When we find Love has become a practical
+reality, the discovery is often very unpleasant. We would rather not be
+unhappy if we had the choice. Unfortunately, we haven't, and find
+ourselves in that condition without exactly knowing how we drifted into
+it. Drifters often discover Love to be a very practical reality, because
+of unpleasant consequences. It is decidedly humiliating to find
+ourselves in the toils of a siren the very reverse of our high ideal of
+the personage who is to have the honour and glory of subjugating us.
+This is one of Love's amusing little ways of proving that ideals are
+really not important. The best and safest test of the reality of Love is
+to ask yourself how much you have suffered on account of it. I don't
+speak of such trifles as tears, heartaches, sleepless nights, fevers of
+jealousy and despair, sacrifices, or discomforts, but of _real_ genuine
+self-torment and mental torture which only this passion is capable of
+inflicting on its victims. The most sceptical will acknowledge that its
+powers in this line are only excelled by its apparent animosity. To
+discover the life that completes and contents our own is not given to
+many of us poor mortals. Here and there some fortunate individuals have
+made that discovery--but they are rare--and not given to boasting on the
+subject; yet though worldly wise folk scoff at love as a myth, I
+question whether they could name any other passion of the heart which
+has occupied so important a place in the world's history, which has
+given life to all that is great and divine in art, or inspired such
+deeds of heroism, self-sacrifice, and martyrdom. Before its patient
+strength men have stood mute and wondering, and proud heads have bent in
+reverence, and stern eyes grown dim. For Love is beautiful, despite
+faults, and wise, despite follies. It alone of all human emotions can
+lift our souls heavenwards, and make even life's thorny path a thing
+of beauty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: John Strange Winter's opinions.]
+
+Love may be classed under several heads. The first, the great, the
+unattainable, the one-sided, and the worn-out. They are all real! What
+can be more real than the perhaps not very practical passion which first
+makes young hearts ache? What agony it is to _her_ when _he_ dances
+three times running with that horrid, stuck-up London girl, with her
+fashionable jargon, her languorous movements, just a turn or two, and
+then stop for as many minutes! First love is not often last love. _He_
+thinks _her_ unreasonable to mind those dances, yet when a great love
+comes into her life, making her think of him as "just a boy," he suffers
+all, or nearly all, the pangs of a great passion. Unavailing pain! _She_
+has cast the die of her life, and past loves are shadows compared with
+the absorbing power that now grips her heart like a vice. Much may
+happen to the great love, but it is very real! A great love may merge
+into matrimony, and life may run on oiled wheels, and Darby and Joan may
+pass through the world, loving faithfully, and without digression, to
+the end. Or something may come between, and the great love may become
+the unattainable! It will not be the less real for that.
+
+[Sidenote: The Unattainable.]
+
+The unattainable has more in it of pathos than despair. Romance sweetens
+it, and the romance never dies. The tenderness of "what might have been"
+gives balm to many a suffering soul! The wife may be unhappy, neglected,
+heartsick, she may even loathe him whose name she bears, but she is
+often upholden by the thought that _he_ would have been wholly
+different! A husband may know that he has married the wrong woman, yet
+he bears what is, because he cannot have _her_ who would have made life
+all sunshine. Few pity the one-sided love, helpless, hopeless, and
+without justification as it is; yet it is very real to the lonely soul.
+The worn-out love is the very essence of sadness! It is heart-breaking
+to watch the efforts of a foolish heart to keep a love dying or already
+dead, to see love, which would once have made a paradise, poured out at
+the feet of one who is only bored and not even touched by it. Nothing is
+so dead as a dead love--yet, even _that_ is real!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Miss May Crommelin takes a professional view]
+
+Can any sensible novelist hesitate? Does a shoe-maker depreciate
+leather? Would you saw off the tree-branch you sit on? Now, on this
+subject, anybody's opinion (full-grown) is as good as another's. Let the
+footman bring down word that love is the drawing-room topic, and the
+cook will cry out, "What do they know more about it than _us_?" Is it
+not a human feeling, call it instinct or no? Surely old Sally Jones has
+simpler feelings than the Dowager Countess; as much experience in this.
+Love is just as real as a rainbow on a wet day; as--as influenza. The
+first may be a "pleysing payne": the latter must be a very displeasing
+one. But there is little fiction about either to the victims. Well,
+suppose love a mere brain-fantasm; an odd survival when sensible folk
+have swept away beliefs in witchcraft, fairies, and the virtue of fire
+and faggot for the wicked ones who don't say their prayers the same way
+we do. _Still, was it not worth while to have invented it?_ However the
+idea was evoluted, just consider the glamour it throws over thorns and
+thistles, as we dig through life's long day of toil. As Trollope's stout
+widow says, when choosing her second: "It's a whiff of the rocks and the
+valleys." (So she had her marriage settlements tightly drawn up, to
+enjoy her romance comfortably.) Consider this epitaph--a real one--
+
+    "Poorly lived, and poorly died;
+    Poorly buried, and _nobody cried_."
+
+Broach this subject of love to a circle after dinner, round a good fire.
+Everybody laughs! The young men and maidens look conscious. What they
+feel is as real to them as pleasure in music they hear; in the taste of
+wine. Yes, and far more--while it lasts. Some elders profess scorn,
+because their minds are so choked with years' dust of daily cares they
+have forgotten how they, too, once believed love real--while it lasted!
+Ay! there's the rub. You are told--truthfully--that love is strong as
+death: inconstant as every breeze. Some declare, for them--
+
+    "In the whole wide world there was but one."
+
+Other as honest souls confess their hearts have known, since first love,
+"many other lodgers." This seems clear, love is real to those who _give
+it_! Only they who care more to _get it_, call it moonshine and naughty
+names. Like figures on an Egyptian monument, each follows one who looks
+at another. Never one scorned, but has rejected a third.
+
+    "As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the satyr,
+    The satyr Lyda--and so the three went weeping."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Quiller Couch wishes Love were a pleasing fiction.]
+
+"Pleasing fiction," forsooth; would that it were! It is a very real
+game, and the rules thereof are practical. I know it, for verily I
+myself have suffered. Let it not be understood, however, that it is _as_
+a "practical, real lover" that I have suffered. Not at all. It is that
+this order of beings walks abroad, and I am not of it, and I meet it,
+and I am pained, and I feel sorry. Could Love be but a pleasing fiction,
+how comfortable to sit aside and contemplate it--a trifle to talk of, a
+dainty to dally with, a joy to the juvenescent, a blessing to the
+book-writer, yet never an inconvenience. But it is a practical reality,
+and it has great effects. Why, I have seen good, healthy people, quite
+nice-tempered people, brought to a shadow by it and churned into so many
+pounds of incompetent irritability; _so_ exacting about trifles, so
+fidgetty about catching the mail, and so careless of the health of the
+uninteresting majority. There was one man I knew down in a village, and
+he fell in love with a pretty girl--they mostly do that--but she would
+have nothing to say to him; and after every rejected proposal he went
+straight home and made a three-legged stool (he was a carpenter by
+trade, or perhaps it might have affected him differently). He was what
+one might call an importunate man, for he proposed nineteen times in
+all, and nineteen three-legged stools stood as silent witnesses of his
+importunity. He changed houses after the twelfth, for he found a sad joy
+in contemplating his handiwork as he sat at his lonely meals, and his
+first sitting-room was only twelve feet by eight. Finally, either
+because of his importunity, or because she disliked the thought that the
+wordless witnesses might fall into unsympathetic hands, the girl married
+the man, and scrubbed the stools nicely with soap and sand, and grew
+quite fond of them. And only once did she regret her surrender; and that
+was when it flashed across her one day that twenty would have been a
+prettier number: but she stifled that pain as years went on, and grew
+happy. Then there was Dante's love for Beatrice, which caused him to sit
+down and write such a lot. Most remarkable persons seem to have produced
+something rather excellent as the outcome of their love. I know a
+naturally lazy and slightly dingy boy who endured a nice clean collar
+every day, and it cut his neck, and his soul abhorred it, for he told me
+so; and he spent from seventy-five to ninety minutes over his toilet
+every morning, while he loved, and he knew he could dress in four
+minutes and a quarter, for he had done it often. Love was a great
+beautifier. In this case I must admit that the lover suffered more than
+we outsiders, except that he became irritable in his cleanliness. Love
+should not be scorned, even if it is real and sometimes uncomfortably
+practical. It is very beautiful, and lovers make a pretty sight. What I
+protest is, that all creatures should be lovers--or _none_. It is the
+half-and-half state of the world which is irksome.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Morley Roberts hopes Love will some day be a pleasing
+reality]
+
+Ah, my gentle cocksure friends, how well you all know Love, and how
+ready you are to say what it is, to cut it up, to carve it, to classify
+it, and generally to spread it out. We live in a world of lies, and
+conventions, the dead leavings of an ignorant past, bind us still. Some
+day, perhaps, when men and women are free, Love will be a pleasing
+reality. It can never be so in the majority of cases so long as we play
+at make-believe, and teach nothing that we have learned. The good man
+won't teach his sons; he leaves them to learn in the gutter. The good
+woman keeps her daughters ignorant. As it stands it is an evil to love
+anyone over-much. And when we love we love over-much, for Love has been
+repressed till it has got savage in the race. "La privation radicale
+d'une chose crée léxeés." All the trouble comes from this--that we men
+have partially created women. But Nature had something to do with her
+compounding. That is, perhaps, a pity from the social point of view. For
+Nature can't be nice and comfortable. She is only kind when we go her
+way. Let us remember that Love is the foundation of the world. The very
+protoplasmic cells from which we sprang could love. The time will come,
+perhaps, when, having chipped away the lies and faced the truth, we
+shall find reality a thousand times more pleasing than any fiction. Love
+is something real and wonderful, and in a natural world we shall have
+passed through the blood-splashed gates of Passion and be calm. Now Love
+is tortured, for we love ignorantly. We are like shipwrecked folk on
+some strange land--we know not the fruits of the trees of it. We learn
+the poisons by experiment, and we let others learn. This is Love the
+Fiction. But some day when we awake we shall know what we now dream, and
+Love will be always the most precious flower that grows in the garden of
+the soul. It has the subtle fragrance of the heaven that is our own if
+we walk bravely in the world, desiring truth. Under its influence we
+discover ourselves. We build ships for new voyages, and burst into
+unknown waters with our Viking shields of victory ablaze in the morning
+sun. The air is sharp and keen, not foetid with poisonous lies; the
+waters are blue and beautiful; there are shining shores about us, and
+marvels of a new nature on every hand. We who were in the night, and of
+it, become vivid with the sun. Our atheism banishes the worshipped gods
+of evil that are no more extant in our dogmatic creed of joy. For Truth
+and Beauty have guided us hand in hand, and all they ask of us is to
+throw away the Law of Lies and to acknowledge that the two are one.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Zangwill reviews the evidence.]
+
+The traces left by Love in life are so numerous and diverse that I am
+almost tempted to the hypothesis that it really exists. There seems to
+be no other way of accounting for the facts. When you start learning a
+new language you always find yourself confronted with the verb "to
+love"--invariably the normal type of the first conjugation. In every
+language on earth the student may be heard declaring, with more zeal
+than discretion, that he and you and they and every other person,
+singular or plural, have loved, and do love, and will love. "To love" is
+the model verb; expressing the archetype of activity. Once you can love
+grammatically there is a world of things you may do without stumbling.
+For, strange to say, "to love," which in real life is associated with so
+much that is bizarre and violent, is always "regular" in grammar, and
+this without barring accidence of any kind. For ancient and modern
+tongues tell the same tale--from Hebrew to street-Arabic, from Greek to
+the elephantine language that was "made in Germany." Not only is "to
+love" deficient in no language (as _home_ is deficient in French, and
+_Geist_ in English), but it is never even "defective." No mood or tense
+is ever wanting--a proof of how it has been conjugated in every mood and
+tense of life, in association with every variety of proper and improper
+noun, and every pronoun at all personal. Not merely have people loved
+unconditionally in every language, but there is none in which they would
+not have loved, or might not have loved, had circumstances permitted;
+none in which they have not been loved, or (for hope springs eternal in
+the human breast) have been about to be loved. Even woman has an Active
+Voice in the matter; indeed, "to love" is so perfect that, compared with
+it, "to marry" is quite irregular. For, while "to love" is sufficient
+for both sexes, directly you get to marriage you find in some languages
+that division has crept in, and that there is one word for the use of
+ladies and another for gentlemen only. Turning from the evidence
+enshrined in language to the records of history, the same truth meets us
+at any date we appoint. Everywhere "'Tis love that makes the world go
+round," though more especially in ball-rooms. It is awful to think what
+would have happened if Eve had not accepted Adam. What could have
+attracted her if it was not love? Surely not his money, nor his family.
+For these she couldn't have cared a fig-leaf. Unfortunately, the
+daughters of Eve have not always taken after their mother. The
+statistics of crime and insanity testify eloquently to the reality of
+love, arithmetic teaching the same lesson as history and grammar.
+Consider, too, the piles of love at Mudie's! A million story-tellers in
+all periods and at all places cannot have told all stories, though they
+have all, alas! told the same story. They must have had mole-hills for
+their mountains, if not straw for their bricks. There are those who,
+with Bacon, consider love a variety of insanity; but it is more often
+merely a form of misunderstanding. When the misunderstanding is mutual,
+it may even lead to marriage. As a rule Beauty begets man's love, Power
+woman's. At least, so women tell me. But then, I am not beautiful. It
+must be said for the man that every lover is a species of Platonist--he
+identifies the Beautiful with the Good and the True. The woman's
+admiration has less of the ethical quality; she is dazzled, and too
+often feels, "If he be but true to me, what care I how false he be." The
+Romantic Love of the poets and novelists was of late birth; the savage
+and many civilisations knew it not, and philosophers explain that it
+could not be developed till Roman Law had developed the conception of
+Marriage as a Contract. Even to this day it is as rare as large paper
+editions of the books about it. Roughly speaking, I should say it would
+spring up here and there among all classes of the population, except
+poets and novelists. Romantic Love is the rose Evolution has grown on
+earthly soil. _Floreat!_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Burgin thinks it all depends on the people who love.]
+
+One morning the average man gets up, lights his pipe, roams round his
+rooms in all the ease of unshaven countenance and dressing-gown-clad
+form. Then he goes out, and meets _her_. There may be a hundred women in
+the room, or park, or tennis ground, wherever the tragedy (Love is a
+tragedy) commences. When the lights are low he comes back, and is low
+also. Wonders how men can be such brutes as to want dinner; thinks his
+life has been misspent; that he is unworthy to touch her hand; that he
+has wallowed in the fleshpots, and here is a way out of them. And if the
+man's nature be noble and sweet and true; if he has hitherto drifted
+adown the stream of circumstance because his fellows have also drifted;
+then, with the deepening tides of his passion, the old spirit of
+knight-errantry descends upon him with its mystic mantle of white
+samite. And slowly out of this deepening torrent of bewildered impulse
+and devotion is born a new man--a man with a soul--a man who can dare
+all things, do all things, endure all things, for the sake of the woman
+he loves. At the baptism of her touch he becomes whole, and shapes his
+life to noble ends. Even if he can't marry her, he is the better for his
+passion. Such a love endures until the leaves of the Judgment Book
+unroll; for it laughs to scorn the pitiful fools who boast of
+infidelity, the "male hogs in armour," as Kingsley calls them, who look
+upon women as toys, the sport of an idle moment, rather than the
+spiritual force which leavens the world, and makes it an endurable and
+joyous dwelling-place.
+
+[Sidenote: And on the woman loved.]
+
+Of course, I was speaking of good women. I once heard a story about a
+bad woman--a woman of the world, who was very much amused at being taken
+seriously by a boy who loved her. "Tell me all about it," she would say
+to him. "Explain what you feel, why you love me, why you believe in me.
+Don't you see I'm courted and admired--a social force--that men flock
+round me everywhere I go?" "Oh, yes," said the boy, "I see all that. But
+you're an angel of goodness, and can't help men liking you. If I lost
+faith in you, I'd kill myself." "Ah," she rejoined, "that's what you all
+say. You would doubt me, and live on." Then, one afternoon, he had good
+cause to doubt, inasmuch as her engagement to another man was announced.
+That evening she received a note from him: "Good-bye. If I lived on, I
+might doubt; it's better to die and--believe!" They told her of the--the
+accident that night, and she wrote a touching little paragraph about it
+for the Society papers before dining out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Gribble generaliseth confidently.]
+
+In a sense, of course, Love is necessarily a fiction, whether pleasing
+or otherwise; for illusion is of the essence of it. The lover, in fact,
+is like the artist who sees things through a temperament, and, by
+eliminating the irrelevant, builds up the ideal on the foundation of the
+real. Tityrus sees more in Amaryllis than his brother shepherds see,
+just as Mr. Whistler sees more in a November fog than is visible to the
+eye of the casual wayfarer who gets lost in it, and mingles profanity
+with his coughs, yet, granting this, the reality and completeness of the
+illusion does not admit of doubt. On no alternative hypothesis can the
+great majority of marriages be explained. If commonplace people saw each
+other as others see them, surely they would remain single all their
+lives. Yet most people are commonplace, and most people marry. The
+reality--the controlling over-mastering reality--of Love has to be
+assumed to make their behaviour intelligible.
+
+[Sidenote: Having hasted from a wedding for the purpose.]
+
+This point struck me forcibly the last time I was present at a wedding.
+It was a Jewish wedding, celebrated at the little synagogue behind the
+Haymarket. I had no acquaintance with anyone concerned in the ceremony,
+but had dropped in quite casually, having heard that Jewish weddings
+were picturesque. The one thing that impressed me more than anything
+else was the decided undesirability of both the bridegroom and the
+bride. That the bride was not comely goes for little. But her forehead
+indicated a limited range and low ideals; the corners of her mouth spoke
+of an irritable temper; her bearing was vulgar; her voice had a twang
+that made one long to take her by the shoulders and shake her violently.
+She was also escorted by gaudy female relatives, by looking at whom one
+could anticipate the awful possibilities of her maturity. As for the
+bridegroom, he was a Hebrew of the florid type. His waistcoat was
+protuberant; he had a red face with red whiskers sprawling all over it;
+he wore flash jewellery; his hair shone with pomatum; there was that in
+his bearing which indicated that he followed some sordid calling, such
+as pawnbroking, or the backing of horses on commission. Yet one could
+see that these two unattractive persons were really attracted by each
+other. A great and beautiful miracle had been performed; and the power
+which had performed it was that Love in which some profess to
+disbelieve.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Frank Mathew displays his Ignorance.]
+
+Ignorance--says some wiseacre--is the mother of eloquence, and I take it
+that the less one knows of Love the easier it is to write of it. I side
+with those who hold that the Love described by poets and other wordy
+people is mainly fanciful, a flattering picture, that the best school
+for such writing is an unhappy affection, and that no man can want
+better luck than to have his heart broken, and so be made proof against
+lovesickness. An unrequited love runs no risk of being dulled by the
+prose of life. A man so fortunate as to be jilted or rejected finds his
+Beloved remaining beautiful and young to him when her husband sees her
+an unwieldy and wearisome old woman. And when at times he grows
+sentimental--a bachelor's privilege--he can feel again the old hopes
+that he never found false, and see the old perfections that were never
+disproved. He has a life-companion who comes only when she is wanted,
+and then with a "smile on her face and a rose in her hair," whose voice
+is always gentle, to whom wrinkles are not necessary and bills are
+not known.
+
+[Sidenote: And praises ugliness.]
+
+I am one of those who prefer the luckless adorers in novels to the
+conquering heroes; and hold that the quality an ideal lover needs most
+is ugliness, so that he may honour beauty the more. Once I knew a boy
+who was uglier than sin, and who wrote a story--in a sprawling hand and
+on ruled paper--a wonderful story, telling how an unlovely but admirable
+Knight, worshipping a Princess, rode out to win her by great deeds, and
+how when he came back triumphant, the sight of her brought his
+unworthiness home to him so that he dared not claim her. And I knew
+another boy who was good-looking, and wrote a story (during study-time,
+of course, and by stealth) about a handsome hero who went to Court in
+fine clothes, and was worshipped by all the girls. I think now that he
+was the manlier, but that the first would have made the more devout
+lover. But the drawback of luckless adorers is that their constancy has
+not been tried by the ordeal of success. Many a fellow who lived loyal
+and heart-broken would have made an unfaithful husband.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: 'Q.' is surprised at his sister.]
+
+Love, no doubt, is a subject of popular interest, but a man is always
+staggered to find his sister holding an opinion upon it. If I remember
+rightly, in the days when Lilian Quiller Couch (then aged seven) did me
+the honour of playing Juliet to my Romeo, the interest was mainly
+acrobatic, Romeo descending the gardener's ladder head-foremost, while
+Juliet tilted her body as far over the nursery window-sill as she could
+manage without breaking her neck. We "cut" the love speeches. Two years
+later, indeed, my sister schemed to marry me to our common governess.
+There was no love on my side; so she turned over the Prayer-book, hoping
+to find "A man may not marry his governess" in the table of Forbidden
+Degrees. Such a prohibition (she well knew) would be a trumpet-call to
+my native spirit of disobedience. But I am convinced that even then the
+nature of true affection did not enter into her calculations. She merely
+counted on my marital influence to end or mend the French irregular
+verbs. I am delighted that, in these later days, she sees Love to be a
+"practical reality." For my part, I want a definition. Popular custom
+bestows the name of Love on a green sickness which is in fact a part of
+Nature's wise economy. I will expound. Almost all young men, say between
+the ages of nineteen and twenty-five, incline to consume much meat and
+do next to no work. Were there no corrective, it is clear that in a few
+years the face of the earth would be eaten bare as by locusts. But at
+this season Nature by the simplest stroke--the flush of a commonplace
+cheek, the warm touch of a commonplace hand--in a twinkling redresses
+the balance. Forthwith the ideal devourer of crops and herbs not only
+loses his appetite, but arising, smacks the earth with a hoe till the
+clods fly and the fields laugh with harvest. Thereon he mops his
+steaming brow, bedecks him with a bunch of white ribbons, and jogs
+jovially to church arm in arm with the pretty cause of all this
+beneficent disturbance. And the spectacle is mighty taking and
+commendable; but you'll excuse me for holding that it is not Love. It
+bears about the same relation to Love that Bumble-puppy bears to good
+whist. Among the eccentricities that make up the Average Man I find none
+more diverting than his complacent belief that he is, or has been, or
+will certainly some day be, in love. As a matter of fact, the capacity
+to love belongs to one man or woman in ten thousand. Listen to
+Matthew Arnold:
+
+    "But in the world I learnt, what there
+      Thou wilt too surely one day prove,
+    That will, that energy, though rare,
+      Are yet far, far less rare than love."
+
+I go further and believe it rarer even than Genius. Indeed, the capacity
+to love, is a specialised form of genius. You understand that I am not
+commending it. Its possessors are often disreputable and almost always
+unhappy. Their recompense is that they, and they only, have seen the
+splendours of the passion, and vibrated to the shaking inner music of
+the sheep-boy's pipe.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IDLER, NO. 13 ***
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Idler Magazine, Vol. 3. Feb 1893</title>
+
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+  	text-align: center; font-size: 0.7em;}
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+
+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893, by Various</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
+at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893<br />
+  An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome &amp; Robert Barr</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Various</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: May 1, 2004 [eBook #12223]<br />
+[Most recently updated: January 27, 2023]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Jonathan Ingram and PG Distributed Proofreaders</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IDLER, NO. 13 ***</div>
+    
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/001-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/001-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a></p>
+
+        <h1>THE IDLER MAGAZINE.</h1>
+
+        <h2>AN ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY.</h2>
+
+        <h4>EDITED BY JEROME K. JEROME &amp; ROBERT BARR.</h4>
+
+        <h2>VOL. III.</h2>
+
+        <h3>FEBRUARY TO JULY, 1893.</h3>
+
+        <h2>XIII. FEBRUARY 1893.</h2>
+
+        <h4>LONDON: CHATTO &amp; WINDUS, 214, PICCADILLY. 1893.</h4>
+        <hr class="full" />
+
+        <h2>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+        <ul>
+            <li><a href="#i13s1">Cheating The Gallows.</a> By I.
+            Zangwill.</li>
+
+            <li>
+                <a href="#i13s2">My First Novel.</a> By Miss M. E.
+                Braddon.
+
+                <ul>
+                    <li>The Trail Of The Serpent.</li>
+                </ul>
+            </li>
+
+            <li><a href="#i13s3">Novel Notes.</a> By Jerome K.
+            Jerome.</li>
+
+            <li><a href="#i13s4">The Skater.</a> By William Canton.</li>
+
+            <li><a href="#i13s5">My Servant Andreas.</a> By Archibald
+            Forbes.</li>
+
+            <li>
+                <a href="#i13s6">Told By The Colonel.</a> By W. L. Alden.
+
+                <ul>
+                    <li>X. A Matrimonial Romance.</li>
+                </ul>
+            </li>
+
+            <li>
+                <a href="#i13s7">"Lions In Their Dens."</a> By Raymond
+                Blathwayt.
+
+                <ul>
+                    <li>II.&mdash;George Grossmith And The Humour Of
+                    Him.</li>
+                </ul>
+            </li>
+
+            <li><a href="#i13s8">A Blind Beggarman.</a> By Frank
+            Mathew.</li>
+
+            <li><a href="#i13s9">Church And Stage. A Review of Henry
+            Irving.</a> By The Rev. Dr. Joseph Parker.</li>
+
+            <li><a href="#i13s10">That Beast Beauty.</a> By Kirby
+            Hare.</li>
+
+            <li>
+                <a href="#i13s11">People I Have Never Met.</a> By Scott
+                Rankin.
+
+                <ul>
+                    <li>Mrs. Humphry Ward.</li>
+                </ul>
+            </li>
+
+            <li>
+                <a href="#i13s12">The Idlers Club</a>
+
+                <ul>
+                    <li>Is Love a Practical Reality or a Pleasing
+                    Fiction?</li>
+                </ul>
+            </li>
+        </ul>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s1" name="i13s1"></a>CHEATING THE GALLOWS.</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY I. ZANGWILL.</h3>
+
+        <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEO. HUTCHINSON.</h4>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/005-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/005-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        THE CORPSE WASHED UP BY THE RIVER.</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <h3>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+        <h3>CURIOUS COUPLE.</h3>
+
+        <p>They say that a union of opposites makes the happiest marriage,
+        and perhaps it is on the same principle that men who chum are always
+        so oddly assorted. You shall find a man of letters sharing diggings
+        with an auctioneer, and a medical student pigging with a
+        stockbroker's clerk. Perhaps each thus escapes the temptation to talk
+        "shop" in his hours of leisure, while he supplements his own
+        experiences of life by his companion's.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width: 40%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/006-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/006-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            TOM PETERS.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:30%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/006-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/006-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            EVERARD G. ROXDAL.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>There could not be an odder couple than Tom Peters and Everard G.
+        Roxdal&mdash;the contrast began with their names, and ran through the
+        entire chapter. They had a bedroom and a sitting-room in common, but
+        it would not be easy to find what else. To his landlady, worthy Mrs.
+        Seacon, Tom Peters's profession was a little vague, but everybody
+        knew that Roxdal was the manager of the City and Suburban Bank, and
+        it puzzled her to think why a bank manager should live with such a
+        seedy-looking person, who smoked clay pipes and sipped whiskey and
+        water all the evening when he was at home. For Roxdal was as spruce
+        and erect as his fellow-lodger was round-shouldered and shabby; he
+        never smoked, and he confined himself to a small glass of claret at
+        dinner.</p>
+
+        <p>It is possible to live with a man and see very little of him.
+        Where each of the partners lives his own life in his own way, with
+        his own circle of friends and external amusements, days may go by
+        without the men having five minutes together. Perhaps this explains
+        why these partnerships jog along so much more peaceably than
+        marriages, where the chain is drawn so much tighter, and galls the
+        partners rather than links them. Diverse, however, as were the hours
+        and habits of the chums, they often breakfasted together, and they
+        agreed in one thing&mdash;they never stayed out at night. For the
+        rest Peters sought his diversions in the company of journalists, and
+        frequented debating rooms, where he propounded the most iconoclastic
+        views; while Roxdal had highly respectable houses open to him in the
+        suburbs, and was, in fact, engaged to be married to Clara Newell, the
+        charming daughter of a retired corn merchant, a widower with no other
+        child.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:50%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/007-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/007-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            ASKED TWENTY-FIVE PER CENT. MORE.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:50%; clear:right;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/008-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/008-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            FOR HIS SHAVING WATER.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>Clara naturally took up a good deal of Roxdal's time, and he often
+        dressed to go to the play with her, while Peters stayed at home in a
+        faded dressing-gown and loose slippers. Mrs. Seacon liked to see
+        gentlemen about the house in evening dress, and made comparisons not
+        favourable to Peters. And this in spite of the fact that he gave her
+        infinitely less trouble than the younger man. It was Peters who first
+        took the apartments, and it was characteristic of his easy-going
+        temperament that he was so openly and na&iuml;vely delighted with the
+        view of the Thames obtainable from the bedroom window, that Mrs.
+        Seacon was emboldened to ask twenty-five per cent. more than she had
+        intended. She soon returned to her normal terms, however, when his
+        friend Roxdal called the next day to inspect the rooms, and
+        overwhelmed her with a demonstration of their numerous shortcomings.
+        He pointed out that their being on the ground floor was not an
+        advantage, but a disadvantage, since they were nearer the noises of
+        the street&mdash;in fact, the house being a corner one, the noises of
+        two streets. Roxdal continued to exhibit the same finicking
+        temperament in the petty details of the <i>m&eacute;nage</i>. His
+        shirt fronts were never sufficiently starched, nor his boots
+        sufficiently polished. Tom Peters, having no regard for rigid linen,
+        was always good-tempered and satisfied, and never acquired the
+        respect of his landlady. He wore blue check shirts and loose ties
+        even on Sundays. It is true he did not go to church, but slept on
+        till Roxdal returned from morning service, and even then it was
+        difficult to get him out of bed, or to make him hurry up his toilette
+        operations. Often the mid-day meal would be smoking on the table
+        while Peters would smoke in the bed, and Roxdal, with his head thrust
+        through the folding doors that separated the bedroom from the
+        sitting-room, would be adjuring the sluggard to arise and shake off
+        his slumbers, and threatening to sit down without him, lest the
+        dinner be spoilt. In revenge, Tom was usually up first on week-days,
+        sometimes at such unearthly hours that Polly had not yet removed the
+        boots from outside the bedroom door, and would bawl down to the
+        kitchen for his shaving water. For Tom, lazy and indolent as he was,
+        shaved with the unfailing regularity of a man to whom shaving has
+        become an instinct. If he had not kept fairly regular hours, Mrs.
+        Seacon would have set him down as an actor, so clean shaven was he.
+        Roxdal did not shave. He wore a full beard, and, being a fine figure
+        of a man to boot, no uneasy investor could look upon him without
+        being reassured as to the stability of the bank he managed so
+        successfully. And thus the two men lived in an economical
+        comradeship, all the firmer, perhaps, for their mutual
+        incongruities.</p>
+        <hr style="clear:both;" />
+
+        <h3>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+        <h3>A WOMAN'S INSTINCT.</h3>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:80%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/009-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/009-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "TOM SHAMBLED FROM THE SITTING-ROOM."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>It was on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of October, ten days
+        after Roxdal had settled in his new rooms, that Clara Newell paid her
+        first visit to him there. She enjoyed a good deal of liberty, and did
+        not mind accepting his invitation to tea. The corn merchant, himself
+        indifferently educated, had an exaggerated sense of the value of
+        culture, and so Clara, who had artistic tastes without much actual
+        talent, had gone in for painting, and might be seen, in pretty
+        toilettes, copying pictures in the Museum. At one time it looked as
+        if she might be reduced to working seriously at her art, for Satan,
+        who finds mischief still for idle hands to do, had persuaded her
+        father to embark the fruits of years of toil in bubble companies.
+        However, things turned out not so bad as they might have been, a
+        little was saved from the wreck, and the appearance of a suitor, in
+        the person of Everard G. Roxdal, ensured her a future of competence,
+        if not of the luxury she had been entitled to expect. She had a good
+        deal of affection for Everard, who was unmistakably a clever man, as
+        well as a good-looking one. The prospect seemed fair and cloudless.
+        Nothing presaged the terrible storm that was about to break over
+        these two lives. Nothing had ever for a moment come to vex their
+        mutual contentment, till this Sunday afternoon. The October sky, blue
+        and sunny, with an Indian summer sultriness, seemed an exact image of
+        her life, with its aftermath of a happiness that had once seemed
+        blighted.</p>
+
+        <p>Everard had always been so attentive, so solicitous, that she was
+        as much surprised as chagrined to find that he had apparently
+        forgotten the appointment. Hearing her astonished interrogation of
+        Polly in the passage, Tom shambled from the sitting-room in his loose
+        slippers and his blue check shirt, with his eternal clay pipe in his
+        mouth, and informed her that Roxdal had gone out suddenly earlier in
+        the afternoon.</p>
+
+        <p>"G-g-one out," stammered poor Clara; all confused. "But he asked
+        me to come to tea."</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh, you're Miss Newell, I suppose," said Tom.</p>
+
+        <p>"Yes, I am Miss Newell."</p>
+
+        <p>"He has told me a great deal about you, but I wasn't able honestly
+        to congratulate him on his choice till now."</p>
+
+        <p>Clara blushed uneasily under the compliment, and under the ardour
+        of his admiring gaze. Instinctively she distrusted the man. The very
+        first tones of his deep bass voice gave her a peculiar shudder. And
+        then his impoliteness in smoking that vile clay was so
+        gratuitous.</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh, then you must be Mr. Peters," she said in return. "He has
+        often spoken to me of you."</p>
+
+        <p>"Ah!" said Tom, laughingly, "I suppose he's told you all my vices.
+        That accounts for your not being surprised at my Sunday attire."</p>
+
+        <p>She smiled a little, showing a row of pearly teeth. "Everard
+        ascribes to you all the virtues," she said.</p>
+
+        <p>"Now that's what I call a friend!" he cried, ecstatically. "But
+        won't you come in? He must be back in a moment. He surely would not
+        break an appointment with <i>you</i>." The admiration latent in the
+        accentuation of the last pronoun was almost offensive.</p>
+
+        <p>She shook her head. She had a just grievance against Everard, and
+        would punish him by going away indignantly.</p>
+
+        <p>"Do let <i>me</i> give you a cup of tea," Tom pleaded. "You must
+        be awfully thirsty this sultry weather. There! I will make a bargain
+        with you! If you will come in now, I promise to clear out the moment
+        Everard returns, and not spoil your
+        <i>t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te</i>." But Clara was obstinate; she
+        did not at all relish this man's society, and besides, she was not
+        going to throw away her grievance against Everard. "I know Everard
+        will slang me dreadfully when he comes in if I let you go," Tom
+        urged. "Tell me at least where he can find you."</p>
+
+        <p>"I am going to take the 'bus at Charing Cross, and I'm going
+        straight home," Clara announced determinedly. She put up her parasol
+        in a pet, and went up the street into the Strand. A cold shadow
+        seemed to have fallen over all things. But just as she was getting
+        into the 'bus, a hansom dashed down Trafalgar Square, and a
+        well-known voice hailed her. The hansom stopped, and Everard got out
+        and held out his hand.</p>
+
+        <p>"I'm so glad you're a bit late," he said. "I was called out
+        unexpectedly, and have been trying to rush back in time. You wouldn't
+        have found me if you had been punctual. But I thought," he added,
+        laughing, "I could rely on you as a woman."</p>
+
+        <p>"I <i>was</i> punctual," Clara said angrily. "I was not getting
+        out of this 'bus, as you seem to imagine, but into it, and was going
+        home."</p>
+
+        <p>"My darling!" he cried remorsefully. "A thousand apologies." The
+        regret on his handsome face soothed her. He took the rose he was
+        wearing in the button-hole of his fashionably-cut coat and gave it to
+        her.</p>
+
+        <p>"Why were you so cruel?" he murmured, as she nestled against him
+        in the hansom. "Think of my despair if I had come home to hear you
+        had come and gone. Why didn't you wait a moment?"</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/011-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/011-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "SHE NESTLED AGAINST HIM."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>A shudder traversed her frame. "Not with that man, Peters!" she
+        murmured.</p>
+
+        <p>"Not with that man, Peters!" he echoed sharply. "What is the
+        matter with Peters?"</p>
+
+        <p>"I don't know," she said. "I don't like him."</p>
+
+        <p>"Clara," he said, half sternly, half cajolingly, "I thought you
+        were above these feminine weaknesses; you are punctual, strive also
+        to be reasonable. Tom is my best friend. From boyhood we have been
+        always together. There is nothing Tom would not do for me, or I for
+        Tom. You must like him, Clara; you must, if only for my sake."</p>
+
+        <p>"I'll try," Clara promised, and then he kissed her in gratitude
+        and broad daylight.</p>
+
+        <p>"You'll be very nice to him at tea, won't you?" he said anxiously.
+        "I shouldn't like you two to be bad friends."</p>
+
+        <p>"I don't want to be bad friends," Clara protested; "only the
+        moment I saw him a strange repulsion and mistrust came over me."</p>
+
+        <p>"You are quite wrong about him&mdash;quite wrong," he assured her
+        earnestly. "When you know him better, you'll find him the best of
+        fellows. Oh, I know," he said suddenly, "I suppose he was very
+        untidy, and you women go so much by appearances!"</p>
+
+        <p>"Not at all," Clara retorted. "'Tis you men who go by
+        appearances."</p>
+
+        <p>"Yes, you do. That's why you care for me," he said, smiling.</p>
+
+        <p>She assured him it wasn't, and she didn't care for him so much as
+        he plumed himself, but he smiled on. His smile died away, however,
+        when he entered his rooms and found Tom nowhere.</p>
+
+        <p>"I daresay you've made him run about hunting for me," he
+        grumbled.</p>
+
+        <p>"Perhaps he knew I'd come back, and went away to leave us
+        together," she answered. "He said he would when you came."</p>
+
+        <p>"And yet you say you don't like him!"</p>
+
+        <p>She smiled reassuringly. Inwardly, however, she felt pleased at
+        the man's absence.</p>
+        <hr style="clear:both;" />
+
+        <h3>CHAPTER III.</h3>
+
+        <h3>POLLY RECEIVES A PROPOSAL.</h3>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:50%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/012-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/012-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "CARRYING ON WITH POLLY."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>If Clara Newell could have seen Tom Peters carrying on with Polly
+        in the passage, she might have felt justified in her prejudice
+        against him. It must be confessed, though, that Everard also carried
+        on with Polly. Alas! it is to be feared that men are much of a
+        muchness where women are concerned; shabby men and smart men, bank
+        managers and journalists, bachelors and semi-detached bachelors.
+        Perhaps it was a mistake after all to say the chums had nothing
+        patently in common. Everard, I am afraid, kissed Polly rather more
+        often than Clara, and although it was because he respected her less,
+        the reason would perhaps not have been sufficiently consoling to his
+        affianced wife. For Polly was pretty, especially on alternate Sunday
+        afternoons, and when at ten p.m. she returned from her outings, she
+        was generally met in the passage by one or other of the men. Polly
+        liked to receive the homage of real gentlemen, and set her white cap
+        at all indifferently. Thus, just before Clara knocked on that
+        memorable Sunday afternoon, Polly, being confined to the house by the
+        unwritten code regulating the lives of servants, was amusing herself
+        by flirting with Peters.</p>
+
+        <p>"You <i>are</i> fond of me a little bit," the graceless Tom
+        whispered, "aren't you?"</p>
+
+        <p>"You know I am, sir," Polly replied.</p>
+
+        <p>"You don't care for anyone else in the house?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh no, sir, and never let anyone kiss me but you. I wonder how it
+        is, sir?" Polly replied ingenuously.</p>
+
+        <p>"Give me another," Tom answered.</p>
+
+        <p>She gave him another, and tripped to the door to answer Clara's
+        knock.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:50%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/013-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/013-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            POLLY AND ROXDAL.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>And that very evening, when Clara was gone and Tom still out,
+        Polly turned without the faintest atom of scrupulosity, or even
+        jealousy, to the more fascinating Roxdal, and accepted his amorous
+        advances. If it would seem at first sight that Everard had less
+        excuse for such frivolity than his friend, perhaps the seriousness he
+        showed in this interview may throw a different light upon the complex
+        character of the man.</p>
+
+        <p>"You're quite sure you don't care for anyone but me?" he asked
+        earnestly.</p>
+
+        <p>"Of course not, sir!" Polly replied indignantly. "How could
+        I?"</p>
+
+        <p>"But you care for that soldier I saw you out with last
+        Sunday?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh no, sir, he's only my young man," she said apologetically.</p>
+
+        <p>"Would you give him up?" he hissed suddenly.</p>
+
+        <p>Polly's pretty face took a look of terror. "I couldn't, sir! He'd
+        kill me. He's such a jealous brute, you've no idea."</p>
+
+        <p>"Yes, but suppose I took you away from here?" he whispered
+        eagerly. "Somewhere where he couldn't find you&mdash;South America,
+        Africa, somewhere thousands of miles across the seas."</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh, sir, you frighten me!" whispered Polly, cowering before his
+        ardent eyes, which shone in the dimly-lit passage.</p>
+
+        <p>"Would you come with me?" he hissed. She did not answer; she shook
+        herself free and ran into the kitchen, trembling with a vague
+        fear.</p>
+        <hr style="clear:both;" />
+
+        <h3>CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+
+        <h3>THE CRASH.</h3>
+
+        <p>One morning, earlier than his earliest hour of demanding his
+        shaving water, Tom rang the bell violently and asked the alarmed
+        Polly what had become of Mr. Roxdal.</p>
+
+        <p>"How should I know, sir?" she gasped. "Ain't he been in, sir?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Apparently not," Tom answered anxiously. "He never remains out.
+        We have been here three weeks now, and I can't recall a single night
+        he hasn't been home before twelve. I can't make it out." All
+        enquiries proved futile. Mrs. Seacon reminded him of the thick fog
+        that had come on suddenly the night before.</p>
+
+        <p>"What fog?" asked Tom.</p>
+
+        <p>"Lord! didn't you notice it, sir?"</p>
+
+        <p>"No, I came in early, smoked, read, and went to bed about eleven.
+        I never thought of looking out of the window."</p>
+
+        <p>"It began about ten," said Mrs. Seacon, "and got thicker and
+        thicker. I couldn't see the lights of the river from my bedroom. The
+        poor gentleman has been and gone and walked into the water." She
+        began to whimper.</p>
+
+        <p>"Nonsense, nonsense," said Tom, though his expression belied his
+        words. "At the worst I should think he couldn't find his way home,
+        and couldn't get a cab, so put up for the night at some hotel. I
+        daresay it will be all right." He began to whistle as if in restored
+        cheerfulness. At eight o'clock there came a letter for Roxdal, marked
+        "immediate," but as he did not turn up for breakfast, Tom went round
+        personally to the City and Suburban Bank. He waited half-an-hour
+        there, but the manager did not make his appearance. Then he left the
+        letter with the cashier and went away with anxious countenance.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:50%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/015-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/015-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "SCOTLAND YARD OPENED THE LETTER."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>That afternoon it was all over London that the manager of the City
+        and Suburban had disappeared, and that many thousand pounds of gold
+        and notes had disappeared with him.</p>
+
+        <p>Scotland Yard opened the letter marked "immediate," and noted that
+        there had been a delay in its delivery, for the address had been
+        obscure, and an official alteration had been made. It was written in
+        a feminine hand and said: "On second thoughts I cannot accompany you.
+        Do not try to see me again. Forget me. I shall never forget you."</p>
+
+        <p>There was no signature.</p>
+
+        <p>Clara Newell, distracted, disclaimed all knowledge of this letter.
+        Polly deposed that the fugitive had proposed flight to her, and the
+        routes to Africa and South America were especially watched. Some
+        months passed without result. Tom Peters went about overwhelmed with
+        grief and astonishment. The police took possession of all the missing
+        man's effects. Gradually the hue and cry dwindled, died.</p>
+        <hr style="clear:both;" />
+
+        <h3>CHAPTER V.</h3>
+
+        <h3>FAITH AND UNFAITH.</h3>
+
+        <p>"At last we meet!" cried Tom Peters, while his face lit up in joy.
+        "How <i>are</i> you, dear Miss Newell?" Clara greeted him coldly. Her
+        face had an abiding pallor now. Her lover's flight and shame had
+        prostrated her for weeks. Her soul was the arena of contending
+        instincts. Alone of all the world she still believed in Everard's
+        innocence, felt that there was something more than met the eye,
+        divined some devilish mystery behind it all. And yet that damning
+        letter from the anonymous lady shook her sadly. Then, too, there was
+        the deposition of Polly. When she heard Peters's voice accosting her
+        all her old repugnance resurged. It flashed upon her that this
+        man&mdash;Roxdal's boon companion&mdash;must know far more than he
+        had told to the police. She remembered how Everard had spoken of him,
+        with what affection and confidence! Was it likely he was utterly
+        ignorant of Everard's movements? Mastering her repugnance, she held
+        out her hand. It might be well to keep in touch with him; he was
+        possibly the clue to the mystery. She noticed he was dressed a shade
+        more trimly, and was smoking a meerschaum. He walked along at her
+        side, making no offer to put his pipe out.</p>
+
+        <p>"You have not heard from Everard?" he asked. She flushed. "Do you
+        think I'm an accessory after the fact?" she cried.</p>
+
+        <p>"No, no," he said soothingly. "Pardon me, I was thinking he might
+        have written&mdash;giving no exact address, of course. Men do
+        sometimes dare to write thus to women. But, of course, he knows you
+        too well&mdash;you would have put the police on his track."</p>
+
+        <p>"Certainly," she exclaimed, indignantly. "Even if he is innocent
+        he must face the charge."</p>
+
+        <p>"Do you still entertain the possibility of his innocence?"</p>
+
+        <p>"I do," she said boldly, and looked him full in the face. His
+        eyelids drooped with a quiver. "Don't you?"</p>
+
+        <p>"I have hoped against hope," he replied, in a voice faltering with
+        emotion. "Poor old Everard! But I am afraid there is no room for
+        doubt. Oh, this wicked curse of money&mdash;tempting the noblest and
+        the best of us."</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/016-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/016-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "SHE DID NOT REPULSE HIM."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>The weeks rolled on. Gradually she found herself seeing more and
+        more of Tom Peters, and gradually, strange to say, he grew less
+        repulsive. From the talks they had together, she began to see that
+        there was really no reason to put faith in Everard; his criminality,
+        his faithlessness, were too flagrant. Gradually she grew ashamed of
+        her early mistrust of Peters; remorse bred esteem, and esteem
+        ultimately ripened into feelings so warm, that when Tom gave freer
+        vent to the love that had been visible to Clara from the first, she
+        did not repulse him.</p>
+
+        <p>It is only in books that love lives for ever. Clara, so her father
+        thought, showed herself a sensible girl in plucking out an unworthy
+        affection and casting it from her heart. He invited the new lover to
+        his house, and took to him at once. Roxdal's somewhat supercilious
+        manner had always jarred upon the unsophisticated corn merchant. With
+        Tom the old man got on much better. While evidently quite as well
+        informed and cultured as his whilom friend, Tom knew how to impart
+        his superior knowledge with the accent on the knowledge rather than
+        on the superiority, while he had the air of gaining much information
+        in return. Those who are most conscious of defects of early education
+        are most resentful of other people sharing their consciousness
+        Moreover, Tom's <i>bonhomie</i> was far more to the old fellow's
+        liking than the studied politeness of his predecessor, so that on the
+        whole Tom made more of a conquest of the father than of the daughter.
+        Nevertheless, Clara was by no means unresponsive to Tom's affection,
+        and when, after one of his visits to the house, the old man kissed
+        her fondly and spoke of the happy turn things had taken, and how, for
+        the second time in their lives, things had mended when they seemed at
+        their blackest, her heart swelled with a gush of gratitude and joy
+        and tenderness, and she fell sobbing into her father's arms.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/017-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/017-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        "WITH TOM THE OLD MAN GOT ON MUCH BETTER."</p>
+
+        <p>Tom calculated that he made a clear five hundred a year by
+        occasional journalism, besides possessing some profitable investments
+        which he had inherited from his mother, so that there was no reason
+        for delaying the marriage. It was fixed for May-day, and the
+        honeymoon was to be spent in Italy.</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <h3>CHAPTER VI</h3>
+
+        <h3>THE DREAM AND THE AWAKENING</h3>
+
+        <p>But Clara was not destined to happiness. From the moment she had
+        promised herself to her first love's friend old memories began to
+        rise up and reproach her. Strange thoughts stirred in the depths of
+        her soul, and in the silent watches of the night she seemed to hear
+        Everard's accents, charged with grief and upbraiding. Her uneasiness
+        increased as her wedding-day drew near. One night, after a pleasant
+        afternoon spent in being rowed by Tom among the upper reaches of the
+        Thames, she retired to rest full of vague forebodings. And she dreamt
+        a terrible dream. The dripping form of Everard stood by her bedside,
+        staring at her with ghastly eyes. Had he been drowned on the passage
+        to his land of exile? Frozen with horror, she put the question.</p>
+
+        <p>"I have never left England!" the vision answered.</p>
+
+        <p>Her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth.</p>
+
+        <p>"Never left England?" she repeated, in tones which did not seem to
+        be hers.</p>
+
+        <p>The wraith's stony eyes stared on, but there was silence.</p>
+
+        <p>"Where have you been then?" she asked in her dream.</p>
+
+        <p>"Very near you," came the answer.</p>
+
+        <p>"There has been foul play then!" she shrieked.</p>
+
+        <p>The phantom shook its head in doleful assent.</p>
+
+        <p>"I knew it!" she shrieked. "Tom Peters&mdash;Tom Peters has done
+        away with you. Is it not he? Speak!"</p>
+
+        <p>"Yes, it is he&mdash;Tom Peters&mdash;whom I loved more than all
+        the world."</p>
+
+        <p>Even in the terrible oppression of the dream she could not resist
+        saying, woman-like:</p>
+
+        <p>"Did I not warn you against him?"</p>
+
+        <p>The phantom stared on silently and made no reply.</p>
+
+        <p>"But what was his motive?" she asked at length.</p>
+
+        <p>"Love of gold&mdash;and you. And you are giving yourself to him,"
+        it said sternly.</p>
+
+        <p>"No, no, Everard! I will not! I will not! I swear it! Forgive
+        me!"</p>
+
+        <p>The spirit shook its head sceptically.</p>
+
+        <p>"You love him. Women are false&mdash;as false as men."</p>
+
+        <p>She strove to protest again, but her tongue refused its
+        office.</p>
+
+        <p>"If you marry him, I shall always be with you! Beware!"</p>
+
+        <p>The dripping figure vanished as suddenly as it came, and Clara
+        awoke in a cold perspiration. Oh, it was horrible! The man she had
+        learnt to love, the murderer of the man she had learnt to forget! How
+        her original prejudice had been justified! Distracted, shaken to her
+        depths, she would not take counsel even of her father, but informed
+        the police of her suspicions. A raid was made on Tom's rooms, and lo!
+        the stolen notes were discovered in a huge bundle. It was found that
+        he had several banking accounts, with a large, recently-paid amount
+        in each bank. Tom was arrested. Attention was now concentrated on the
+        corpses washed up by the river. It was not long before the body of
+        Roxdal came to shore, the face distorted almost beyond recognition by
+        long immersion, but the clothes patently his, and a pocket-book in
+        the breast-pocket removing the last doubt. Mrs. Seacon and Polly and
+        Clara Newell all identified the body. Both juries returned a verdict
+        of murder against Tom Peters, the recital of Clara's dream producing
+        a unique impression in the court and throughout the country. The
+        theory of the prosecution was that Roxdal had brought home the money,
+        whether to fly alone or to divide it, or whether even for some
+        innocent purpose, as Clara believed, was immaterial. That Peters
+        determined to have it all, that he had gone out for a walk with the
+        deceased, and, taking advantage of the fog, had pushed him into the
+        river, and that he was further impelled to the crime by love for
+        Clara Newell, as was evident from his subsequent relations with her.
+        The judge put on the black cap. Tom Peters was duly hung by the neck
+        till he was dead.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/019-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/019-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        "IDENTIFIED THE BODY."</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <h3>CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+
+        <h3>BRIEF R&Eacute;SUM&Eacute; OF THE CULPRIT'S CONFESSION.</h3>
+
+        <p>When you all read this I shall be dead and laughing at you. I have
+        been hung for my own murder. I am Everard G. Roxdal. I am also Tom
+        Peters. We two were one. When I was a young man my moustache and
+        beard wouldn't come. I bought false ones to improve my appearance.
+        One day, after I had become manager of the City and Suburban Bank, I
+        took off my beard and moustache at home, and then the thought crossed
+        my mind that nobody would know me without them. I was another man.
+        Instantly it flashed upon me that if I ran away from the Bank, that
+        other man could be left in London, while the police were scouring the
+        world for a non-existent fugitive. But this was only the crude germ
+        of the idea. Slowly I matured my plan. The man who was going to be
+        left in London must be known to a circle of acquaintance beforehand.
+        It would be easy enough to masquerade in the evenings in my beardless
+        condition, with other disguises of dress and voice. But this was not
+        brilliant enough. I conceived the idea of living with him. It was Box
+        and Cox reversed. We shared rooms at Mrs. Seacon's. It was a great
+        strain, but it was only for a few weeks. I had trick clothes in my
+        bedroom like those of quick-change artistes; in a moment I could pass
+        from Roxdal to Peters and from Peters to Roxdal. Polly had to clean
+        two pairs of boots a morning, cook two dinners, &amp;c., &amp;c. She
+        and Mrs. Seacon saw one or the other of us every moment; it never
+        dawned upon them they never saw us <i>both together</i>. At meals I
+        would not be interrupted, ate off two plates, and conversed with my
+        friend in loud tones. At other times we dined at different hours. On
+        Sundays he was supposed to be asleep when I was in church. There is
+        no landlady in the world to whom the idea would have occurred that
+        one man was troubling himself to be two (and to pay for two,
+        including washing). I worked up the idea of Roxdal's flight, asked
+        Polly to go with me, manufactured that feminine letter that arrived
+        on the morning of my disappearance. As Tom Peters I mixed with a
+        journalistic set. I had another room where I kept the gold and notes
+        till I mistakenly thought the thing had blown over. Unfortunately,
+        returning from here on the night of my disappearance, with Roxdal's
+        clothes in a bundle I intended to drop into the river, it was stolen
+        from me in the fog, and the man into whose possession it ultimately
+        came appears to have committed suicide. What, perhaps, ruined me was
+        my desire to keep Clara's love, and to transfer it to the survivor.
+        Everard told her I was the best of fellows. Once married to her, I
+        would not have had much fear. Even if she had discovered the trick, a
+        wife cannot give evidence against her husband, and often does not
+        want to. I made none of the usual slips, but no man can guard against
+        a girl's nightmare after a day up the river and a supper at the Star
+        and Garter. I might have told the judge he was an ass, but then I
+        should have had penal servitude for bank robbery, and that is worse
+        than death. The only thing that puzzles me, though, is whether the
+        law has committed murder or I suicide.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/021-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/021-1.jpg" width="50%" alt="" /></a></p>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s2" name="i13s2"></a>MY FIRST NOVEL.</h2>
+
+        <h3>THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT.</h3>
+
+        <h3>BY MISS M. E. BRADDON.</h3>
+
+        <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS BY MISS F. L. FULLER.</h4>
+
+        <p>My first novel! Far back in the distinctness of childish memories
+        I see a little girl who has lately learnt to write, who has lately
+        been given a beautiful brand new mahogany desk, with a red velvet
+        slope, and a glass ink bottle, such a desk as might now be bought for
+        three and sixpence, but which in the forties cost at least
+        half-a-guinea. Very proud is the little girl, with the Kenwigs
+        pigtails, and the Kenwigs frills, of that mahogany desk, and its
+        infinite capacities for literary labour, above all, gem of gems, its
+        stick of variegated sealing-wax, brown, speckled with gold, and its
+        little glass seal with an intaglio representing two
+        doves&mdash;Pliny's doves perhaps, famous in mosaic, only the little
+        girl had never heard of Pliny, or his Laurentine Villa.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/022-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/022-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        LICHFIELD HOUSE, RICHMOND.</p>
+
+        <p>Armed with that desk and its supply of stationery, Mary Elizabeth
+        Braddon&mdash;very fond of writing her name at full-length, and her
+        address also at full-length, though the word "Middlesex" offered
+        difficulties&mdash;began that pilgrimage on the broad high road of
+        fiction, which was destined to be a longish one. So much for the
+        little girl of eight years old, in the third person, and now to
+        become strictly autobiographical.</p>
+
+        <p>My first story was based on those fairy tales which first opened
+        to me the world of imaginative literature. My first attempt in
+        fiction, and in round-hand, on carefully pencilled double lines, was
+        a story of two sisters, a good sister and a wicked, and I fear
+        adhered more faithfully to the lines of the archetypal story than the
+        writer's pen kept to the double fence which should have ensured
+        neatness.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/023-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/023-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            THE HALL.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/024-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/024-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            THE STAIRCASE.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>The interval between the ages of eight and twelve was a prolific
+        period, fertile in unfinished MSS., among which I can now trace a
+        historical novel on the Siege of Calais&mdash;an Eastern story,
+        suggested by a passionate love of Miss Pardoe's Turkish tales, and
+        Byron's "Bride of Abydos," which my mother, a devoted Byron
+        worshipper, allowed me to read aloud to her&mdash;and doubtless
+        murder in the reading&mdash;a story of the Hartz Mountains, with
+        audacious flights in German diablerie; and lastly, very seriously
+        undertaken, and very perseveringly worked upon, a domestic story, the
+        outline of which was suggested by the same dear and sympathetic
+        mother.</p>
+
+        <p>Now it is a curious fact, which may or may not be common to other
+        story-spinners, that I have never been able to take kindly to a
+        plot&mdash;or the suggestion of a plot&mdash;offered to me by anybody
+        else. The moment a friend tells me that he or she is desirous of
+        imparting a series of facts&mdash;strictly true&mdash;as if truth in
+        fiction mattered one jot!&mdash;which in his or her opinion would
+        make the ground plan of an admirable, startling, and altogether
+        original three-volume novel, I know in advance that my imagination
+        will never grapple with those startling circumstances&mdash;that my
+        thoughts will begin to wander before my friend has got half through
+        the remarkable chain of events, and that if the obliging purveyor of
+        romantic incidents were to examine me at the end of the story, I
+        should be spun ignominiously. For the most part, such subjects as
+        have been proposed to me by friends have been hopelessly unfit for
+        the circulating library; or, where not immoral, have been utterly
+        dull; but it is, I believe, a fixed idea in the novel-reader's mind
+        that any combination of events out of the beaten way of life will
+        make an admirable subject for the novelist's art.</p>
+
+        <p>My dear mother, taking into consideration my tender years, and
+        perhaps influenced in somewise by her own love of picking up odd bits
+        of Sheraton or Chippendale furniture in the storehouses of the less
+        ambitious second-hand dealers of those simpler days, offered me the
+        following <i>scenario</i> for a domestic story. It was an incident
+        which, I doubt not, she had often read at the tail of a newspaper
+        column, and which certainly savours of the gigantic gooseberry, the
+        sea-serpent, and the agricultural labourer who unexpectedly inherits
+        half-a-million. It was eminently a Simple Story, and far more worthy
+        of that title than Mrs. Inchbald's long and involved romance.</p>
+
+        <p>An honest couple, in humble circumstances, possess among their
+        small household gear a good old easy chair, which has been the pride
+        of a former generation, and is the choicest of their household gods.
+        A comfortable cushioned chair, snug and restful, albeit the chintz
+        covering, though clean and tidy, as virtuous people's furniture
+        always is in fiction, is worn thin by long service, while the dear
+        chair itself is no longer the chair it once was as to legs and
+        framework.</p>
+
+        <p>Evil days come upon the praiseworthy couple and their dependent
+        brood, among whom I faintly remember the love interest of the story
+        to have lain; and that direful day arrives when the average landlord
+        of juvenile fiction, whose heart is of adamant and brain of brass,
+        distrains for the rent. The rude broker swoops upon the humble
+        dovecot; a cart or hand-barrow waits on the carefully hearth-stoned
+        door-step for the household gods; the family gather round the
+        cherished chair, on which the rude broker has already laid his grimy
+        fingers; they hang over the back and fondle the padded arms; and the
+        old grandmother, with clasped hands, entreats that, if able to raise
+        the money in a few days, they may be allowed to buy back that loved
+        heirloom.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/025-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/025-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            THE DINING ROOM.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>The broker laughs the plea to scorn; they might have their chair,
+        and cheap enough, he had no doubt. The cover was darned and
+        patched&mdash;as only the virtuous poor of fiction do darn and do
+        patch&mdash;and he made no doubt the stuffing was nothing better than
+        brown wool; and with that coarse taunt the coarser broker dug his
+        clasp-knife into the cushion against which grandfatherly backs had
+        leaned in happier days, and lo! an avalanche of banknotes fell out of
+        the much-maligned horse-hair, and the family was lifted from penury
+        to wealth. Nothing more simple&mdash;or more natural. A prudent but
+        eccentric ancestor had chosen this mode of putting by his savings,
+        assured that, whenever discovered, the money would be useful
+        to&mdash;somebody.</p>
+
+        <p>So ran the <i>scenario</i>: but I fancy my juvenile pen hardly
+        held on to the climax. My brief experience of boarding school
+        occurred at this time, and I well remember writing "The Old Arm
+        Chair" in a penny account book, in the schoolroom of Cresswell Lodge,
+        and that I was both surprised and offended at the laughter of the
+        kindly music-teacher who, coming into the room to summon a pupil, and
+        seeing me gravely occupied, enquired what I was doing, and was
+        intensely amused at my stolid method of composition, plodding on
+        undisturbed by the voices and occupations of the older girls around
+        me. "The Old Arm Chair" was certainly my first serious, painstaking
+        effort in fiction; but as it was abandoned unfinished before my
+        eleventh birthday, and as no line thereof ever achieved the
+        distinction of type, it can hardly rank as my first novel.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/026-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/026-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        THE DRAWING-ROOM.</p>
+
+        <p>There came a very few years later the sentimental period, in which
+        my unfinished novels assumed a more ambitious form, and were modelled
+        chiefly upon Jane Eyre, with occasional tentative imitations of
+        Thackeray. Stories of gentle hearts that loved in vain, always ending
+        in renunciation. One romance there was, I well remember, begun with
+        resolute purpose, after the first reading of Esmond, and in the
+        endeavour to give life and local colour to a story of the Restoration
+        period, a brilliantly wicked interval in the social history of
+        England, which, after the lapse of thirty years, I am still as bent
+        upon taking for the background of a love story as I was when I began
+        "Master Anthony's Record" in Esmondese, and made my girlish
+        acquaintance with the Reading-room of the British Museum, where I
+        went in quest of local colour, and where much kindness was shown to
+        my youth and inexperience of the book world. Poring over a folio
+        edition of the State Trials at my uncle's quiet rectory in sleepy
+        Sandwich, I had discovered the passionate romantic story of Lord
+        Grey's elopement with his sister-in-law, next in sequence to the
+        trial of Lawrence Braddon and Hugh Speke for conspiracy. At the risk
+        of seeming disloyal to my own race, I must add that it seemed to me a
+        very tinpot order of plot to which these two learned gentlemen bent
+        their legal minds, and which cost the Braddon family a heavy fine in
+        land near Camelford&mdash;confiscation which I have heard my father
+        complain of as especially unfair&mdash;Lawrence being a younger son.
+        The romantic story of Lord Grey was to be the subject of "Master
+        Anthony's Record," but Master Anthony's sentimental autobiography
+        went the way of all my earlier efforts. It was but a year or so after
+        the collapse of Master Anthony, that a blindly-enterprising printer
+        of Beverley, who had seen my poor little verses in the <i>Beverley
+        Recorder</i>, made me the spirited offer of ten pounds for a serial
+        story, to be set up and printed at Beverley, and published on
+        commission by a London firm in Warwick Lane. I cannot picture to
+        myself, in my after-knowledge of the bookselling trade, any
+        enterprise more futile in its inception or more feeble in its
+        execution; but to my youthful ambition the actual commission to write
+        a novel, with an advance payment of fifty shillings to show good
+        faith on the part of my Yorkshire speculator, seemed like the opening
+        of that pen-and-ink paradise which I had sighed for ever since I
+        could hold a pen. I had, previously to this date, found a
+        M&aelig;cenas in Beverley, in the person of a learned gentleman who
+        volunteered to foster my love of the Muses by buying the copyright of
+        a volume of poems and publishing the same at his own
+        expense&mdash;which he did, poor man, without stint, and by which
+        noble patronage of Poet's Corner verse, he must have lost money. He
+        had, however, the privilege of dictating the subject of the principal
+        poem, which was to sing&mdash;however feebly&mdash;Garibaldi's
+        Sicilian campaign.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/027-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/027-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        THE EVENING ROOM.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/028-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/028-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            THE SMOKING-ROOM.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>The Beverley printer suggested that my Warwick Lane serial should
+        combine, as far as my powers allowed, the human interest and genial
+        humour of Dickens with the plot-weaving of G. W. R. Reynolds; and,
+        furnished with these broad instructions, I filled my ink bottle,
+        spread out my foolscap, and, on a hopelessly wet afternoon, began my
+        first novel&mdash;now known as "The Trail of the Serpent"&mdash;but
+        published in Warwick Lane, and later in the stirring High Street of
+        Beverley, as "Three Times Dead." In "Three Times Dead" I gave loose
+        to all my leanings to the violent in melodrama. Death stalked in
+        ghastliest form across my pages; and villainy reigned triumphant till
+        the Nemesis of the last chapter. I wrote with all the freedom of one
+        who feared not the face of a critic; and, indeed, thanks to the
+        obscurity of its original production, and its re-issue as the
+        ordinary two-shilling railway novel, this first novel of mine has
+        almost entirely escaped the critical lash, and has pursued its way as
+        a chartered libertine. People buy it and read it, and its faults and
+        follies are forgiven as the exuberances of a pen unchastened by
+        experience; but faster and more facile at that initial stage than it
+        ever became after long practice.</p>
+
+        <p>I dashed headlong at my work, conjured up my images of horror or
+        of mirth, and boldly built the framework of my story, and set my
+        puppets moving. To me, at least, they were living creatures, who
+        seemed to follow impulses of their own, to be impelled by their own
+        passions, to love and hate, and plot and scheme of their own accord.
+        There was unalloyed pleasure in the composition of that first story,
+        and the knowledge that it was to be actually printed and published,
+        and not to be declined with thanks by adamantine magazine editors,
+        like a certain short story which I had lately written, and which
+        contained the germ of "Lady Audley's Secret." Indeed, at this period
+        of my life, the postman's knock had become associated in my mind with
+        the sharp sound of a rejected MS. dropping through the open
+        letter-box on to the floor of the hall, while my heart seemed to drop
+        in sympathy with that book-post packet.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure" style="clear:both;"><a href=
+        "images/029-1.jpg"><img src="images/029-1.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+        "" /></a><br />
+        THE LIBRARY.</p>
+
+        <p>Short of never being printed at all, my Beverley-born novel could
+        have hardly entered upon the world of books in a more profound
+        obscurity. That one living creature ever bought a number of "Three
+        Times Dead" I greatly doubt. I can recall the thrill of emotion with
+        which I tore open the envelope that contained my complimentary copy
+        of the first number, folded across, and in aspect inferior to a
+        gratis pamphlet about a patent medicine. The miserable little wood
+        block which illustrated that first number would have disgraced a
+        baker's whitey-brown bag, would have been unworthy to illustrate a
+        penny bun. My spirits were certainly dashed at the technical
+        shortcomings of that first serial, and I was hardly surprised when I
+        was informed a few weeks later, that although my admirers at Beverley
+        were deeply interested in the story, it was not a financial success,
+        and that it would be only obliging on my part, and in accordance with
+        my known kindness of heart, if I were to restrict the development of
+        the romance to half its intended length, and to accept five pounds in
+        lieu of ten as my reward. Having no desire that the rash Beverley
+        printer should squander his own or his children's fortune in the
+        obscurity of Warwick Lane, I immediately acceded to his request,
+        shortened sail, and went on with my story, perhaps with a shade less
+        enthusiasm, having seen the shabby figure it was to make in the book
+        world. I may add that the Beverley publisher's payments began and
+        ended with his noble advance of fifty shillings. The balance was
+        never paid; and it was rather hard lines that, on his becoming
+        bankrupt in his poor little way a few years later, a judge in the
+        Bankruptcy Court remarked that, as Miss Braddon was now making a good
+        deal of money by her pen, she ought to "come to the relief" of her
+        first publisher.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/030-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/030-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            MISS BRADDON'S FAVOURITE MARE.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>And now my volume of verses being well under weigh, I went with my
+        mother to farm-house lodgings in the neighbourhood of that very
+        Beverley, where I spent, perhaps, the happiest half-year of my
+        life&mdash;half a year of tranquil, studious days, far from the
+        madding crowd, with the mother whose society was always all
+        sufficient for me&mdash;half a year among level pastures, with
+        unlimited books from the library in Hull, an old farm-horse to ride
+        about the green lanes, the breath of summer, with all its sweet
+        odours of flower and herb, around and about us: half a year of
+        unalloyed bliss, had it not been for one dark shadow, the heroic
+        figure of Garibaldi, the sailor soldier, looming large upon the
+        foreground of my literary labours, as the hero of a lengthy narrative
+        poem in the Spenserian metre.</p>
+
+        <p>My chief business at Beverley was to complete the volume of verse
+        commissioned by my Yorkshire M&aelig;cenas, at that time a very rich
+        man, who paid me a much better price for my literary work than his
+        townsman, the enterprising printer, and who had the first claim on my
+        thought and time.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/031-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/031-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            THE ORANGERY.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>With the business-like punctuality of a salaried clerk, I went
+        every morning to my file of the <i>Times</i>, and pored and puzzled
+        over Neapolitan revolution and Sicilian campaign, and I can only say
+        that if Emile Zola has suffered as much over Sedan as I suffered in
+        the freshness of my youth, when flowery meadows and the old chestnut
+        mare invited to summer idlesse, over the fighting in Sicily, his
+        dogged perseverance in uncongenial labour should place him among the
+        Immortal Forty. How I hated the great Joseph G. and the Spenserian
+        metre, with its exacting demands upon the rhyming faculty. How I
+        hated my own ignorance of modern Italian history, and my own eyes for
+        never having looked upon Italian landscape, whereby historical
+        allusion and local colour were both wanting to that dry-as-dust
+        record of heroic endeavour. I had only the <i>Times</i>
+        correspondent; where he was picturesque I could be
+        picturesque&mdash;allowing always for the Spenserian
+        straining&mdash;where he was rich in local colour I did my utmost to
+        reproduce his colouring, stretched always on the Spenserian rack, and
+        lengthened out by the bitter necessity of finding triple rhymes. Next
+        to Guiseppe Garibaldi I hated Edmund Spenser, and it may be from a
+        vengeful remembrance of those early struggles with a difficult form
+        of versification, that, although throughout my literary life I have
+        been a lover of England's earlier poet, and have delighted in the
+        quaintness and <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i> of Chaucer, I have
+        refrained from reading more than a casual stanza or two of the
+        "Fa&euml;ry Queen." When I lived at Beverley, Spenser was to me but a
+        name, and Byron's "Childe Harold" was my only model for that exacting
+        verse. I should add that the Beverley M&aelig;cenas, when
+        commissioning this volume of verse, was less superb in his ideas than
+        the literary patron of the past. He looked at the matter from a
+        purely commercial standpoint, and believed that a volume of verse,
+        such as I could produce, would pay&mdash;a delusion on his part which
+        I honestly strove to combat before accepting his handsome offer of
+        remuneration for my time and labour. It was with this idea in his
+        mind that he chose and insisted upon the Sicilian Campaign as a
+        subject for my muse, and thus started me heavily handicapped on the
+        racecourse of Parnassus.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/032-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/032-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        MISS BRADDON'S COTTAGE AT LYNDHURST.</p>
+
+        <p>The weekly number of "Three Times Dead" was "thrown off" in brief
+        intervals of rest from my <i>magnum opus</i>, and it was an infinite
+        relief to turn from Garibaldi and his brothers in arms to the angels
+        and the monsters which my own brain had engendered, and which to me
+        seemed more alive than the good great man whose arms I so laboriously
+        sang. My rustic pipe far better loved to sing of melodramatic
+        poisoners and ubiquitous detectives; of fine houses in the West of
+        London, and dark dens in the East. So the weekly chapter of my first
+        novel ran merrily off my pen while the printer's boy waited in the
+        farm-house kitchen.</p>
+
+        <p>Happy, happy days, so near to memory, and yet so far. In that
+        peaceful summer I finished my first novel, knocked Garibaldi on the
+        head with a closing rhapsody, saw the York spring and summer races in
+        hopelessly wet weather, learnt to love the Yorkshire people, and left
+        Yorkshire almost broken-heartedly on a dull gray October morning, to
+        travel Londonwards through a landscape that was mostly under
+        water.</p>
+
+        <p>And, behold, since that October morning I have written fifty-three
+        novels; I have lost dear old friends and found new friends, who are
+        also dear, but I have never looked on a Yorkshire landscape since I
+        turned my reluctant eyes from those level meadows and green lanes
+        where the old chestnut mare used to carry me ploddingly to and fro
+        between tall, tangled hedges of eglantine and honeysuckle.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/033-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/033-1.jpg" width="40%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        MISS BRADDON'S INKSTAND.</p>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s3" name="i13s3"></a>NOVEL NOTES.</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY JEROME K. JEROME.</h3>
+
+        <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. G&Uuml;LICH AND J. GREIG,</h4>
+
+        <h3>PART X.</h3>
+        <hr />
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:80%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/034-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/034-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "DISCUSSION AT OUR LAST MEETING."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>The final question discussed at our last meeting had been: What
+        shall our hero be? MacShaugnassy had suggested an author, with a
+        critic for the villain. Brown's fancy was an artist. My idea was a
+        stockbroker, with an undercurrent of romance in his nature. Said
+        Jephson, who has a practical mind, approaching at times the
+        commercial: "The question is not what we like, but what the female
+        novel-reader likes."</p>
+
+        <p>"That is so," agreed MacShaugnassy. "I propose that we collect
+        feminine opinion upon this point. I will write to my aunt, and get
+        from her the old lady's view. You," he said, turning to me, "can put
+        the case to your wife, and get the young lady's ideal. Let Brown
+        write to his sister at Newnham, and find out whom the intellectual
+        maiden favours, while Jephson can learn from Miss Medbury what is
+        most attractive to the common-sensed girl."</p>
+
+        <p>This plan we had adopted, and the result was now under
+        consideration. MacShaugnassy opened the proceedings by reading his
+        aunt's letter. Wrote the old lady:</p>
+
+        <blockquote><p>
+            "I think, if I were you, my dear boy, I should choose a soldier.
+            You know your poor grandfather, who ran away to America with that
+            <i>wicked</i> Mrs. Featherly, the banker's wife, was a soldier,
+            and so was your poor cousin Robert, who lost eight thousand
+            pounds at Monte Carlo. I have always felt singularly drawn
+            towards soldiers, even as a girl; though your poor dear uncle
+            could not bear them. You will find many allusions to soldiers and
+            men of war in the Old Testament (see Jer. 48,14). Of course one
+            does not like to think of their fighting and killing each other,
+            but then they do not seem to do much of that sort of thing
+            nowadays."</p>
+        </blockquote>
+
+        <p>"So much for the old lady," said MacShaugnassy, as he folded up
+        the letter and returned it to his pocket. "What says culture?"</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:25%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/035-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/035-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            BROWN READ AS FOLLOWS.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>Brown produced from his cigar-case a letter addressed in a bold
+        round hand, and read as follows:</p>
+
+        <blockquote><p>
+            "What a curious coincidence! A few of us were discussing this
+            very subject last night in Millicent Hightopper's rooms, and I
+            may tell you at once that our decision was unanimous in favour of
+            soldiers. You see, my dear Selkirk, in human nature the
+            attraction is towards the opposite. To a milliner's apprentice a
+            poet would no doubt be satisfying; to a woman of intelligence he
+            would be an unutterable bore. The man of brain is not for the
+            woman of brain. What the intellectual woman requires in man is
+            not something to argue with, but something to look at. To an
+            empty-headed woman I can imagine the soldier type proving vapid
+            and uninteresting; to the woman of mind he represents her ideal
+            of man&mdash;a creature strong, handsome, well-dressed, and not
+            too clever."</p>
+        </blockquote>
+
+        <p>"That gives us two votes for the army," remarked MacShaugnassy, as
+        Brown tore his sister's letter in two, and threw the pieces into the
+        waste-paper basket. "What says the common-sensed girl?"</p>
+
+        <p>"First catch your common-sensed girl," muttered Jephson, a little
+        grumpily, as it seemed to me. "Where do you propose finding her?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Well," returned MacShaugnassy, "I looked to find her in Miss
+        Medbury."</p>
+
+        <p>As a rule, the mention of Miss Medbury's name brings a flush of
+        joy to Jephson's face; but now his features wore an expression
+        distinctly approaching a scowl.</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh!" he replied, "did you? Well, then, the common-sensed girl
+        loves the military, also."</p>
+
+        <p>"By Jove!" exclaimed MacShaugnassy, "what an extraordinary thing.
+        What reason does she give?"</p>
+
+        <p>"That they look so nice when they're dressed, and that they dance
+        so divinely," answered Jephson, shortly.</p>
+
+        <p>"Well, you do surprise me," murmured MacShaugnassy, "I am
+        astonished."</p>
+
+        <p>Then to me he said: "And what does the young married woman say?
+        The same?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Yes," I replied, "precisely the same."</p>
+
+        <p>"Does <i>she</i> give a reason?" he asked.</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh, yes," I explained; "because you can't help liking them."</p>
+
+        <p>There was silence for the next few minutes, while we smoked and
+        thought. I fancy we were all wishing we had never started this
+        enquiry.</p>
+
+        <p>That four distinctly different types of educated womanhood should,
+        with promptness and unanimity quite unfeminine, have selected the
+        soldier as their ideal, was certainly discouraging to the civilian
+        heart. Had they been nursemaids or servant girls, I should have
+        expected it. The worship of Mars by the Venus of the white cap is one
+        of the few vital religions left to this devoutless age. A year or two
+        ago I lodged near a barracks, and the sight to be seen round its huge
+        iron gates on Sunday afternoons I shall never forget. The girls began
+        to assemble about twelve o'clock. By two, at which hour the army,
+        with its hair nicely oiled and a cane in its hand, was ready for a
+        stroll, there would be some four or five hundred of them waiting in a
+        line. Formerly they had collected in a wild mob, and as the soldiers
+        were let out to them two at a time, had fought for them, as lions for
+        early Christians. This, however, had led to scenes of such disorder
+        and brutality, that the police had been obliged to interfere; and the
+        girls were now marshalled in <i>queue</i>, two abreast, and
+        compelled, by a force of constables specially told off for the
+        purpose, to keep their places and wait their proper turn.</p>
+
+        <p>At three o'clock the sentry on duty would come down to the wicket
+        and close it. "They're all gone, my dears," he would shout out to the
+        girls still left; "it's no good your stopping, we've no more for you
+        to-day."</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh, not one!" some poor child would murmur pleadingly, while the
+        tears welled up into her big round eyes, "not even a little one. I've
+        been waiting <i>such</i> a long time."</p>
+
+        <p>"Can't help that," the honest fellow would reply, gruffly, but not
+        unkindly, turning aside to hide his emotion; "you've had 'em all
+        between you. We don't make 'em, you know: you can't have 'em if we
+        haven't got 'em, can you? Come earlier next time."</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/037-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/037-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "NOW THEN, PASS ALONG."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>Then he would hurry away to escape further importunity; and the
+        police, who appeared to have been waiting for this moment with
+        gloating anticipation, would jeeringly hustle away the weeping
+        remnant. "Now then, pass along, you girls, pass along," they would
+        say, in that irritatingly unsympathetic voice of theirs. "You've had
+        your chance. Can't have the roadway blocked up all the afternoon with
+        this 'ere demonstration of the unloved. You'll have to put up with
+        your ordinary young men for to-day. Pass along."</p>
+
+        <p>In connection with this same barracks, our charwoman told Amenda,
+        who told Ethelbertha, who told me a story, which I now told the
+        boys.</p>
+
+        <p>Into a certain house, in a certain street in the neighbourhood,
+        there moved one day a certain family. Their servant had left
+        them&mdash;most of their servants did at the end of a week&mdash;and
+        the day after the moving-in an advertisement was drawn up and sent to
+        the <i>Chronicle</i> for a domestic. It ran thus:</p>
+
+        <blockquote><p>
+            WANTED GENERAL SERVANT, in small family of eleven. Wages,
+            &pound;6; no beer money. Must be early riser and hard worker.
+            Washing done at home. Must be good cook, and not object to
+            window-cleaning. Unitarian preferred.&mdash;Apply, with
+            references, to A. B., &amp;C.</p>
+        </blockquote>
+
+        <p>That advertisement was sent off on Wednesday afternoon. At seven
+        o'clock on Thursday morning the whole family were awakened by
+        continuous ringing of the street door bell. The husband, looking out
+        of window, was surprised to see a crowd of about fifty girls
+        surrounding the house. He slipped on his dressing-gown and went down
+        to see what was the matter. The moment he opened the door, fifteen of
+        them charged tumultuously into the passage, sweeping him completely
+        off his legs. Once inside, these fifteen faced round, fought the
+        other thirty-five or so back on to the door-step, and slammed the
+        door in their faces. Then they picked up the master of the house, and
+        asked him politely to conduct them to "A. B."</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:50%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/038-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/038-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "SURPRISED TO SEE ABOUT FIFTY GIRLS."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>At first, owing to the clamour of the mob outside, who were
+        hammering at the door and shouting curses through the keyhole on
+        those inside, he was too confused to understand anything, but by dint
+        of great exertion they succeeded at length in explaining to him that
+        they were domestic servants come in answer to his wife's
+        advertisement. The man went and told his wife, and his wife said she
+        would see them, one at a time.</p>
+
+        <p>Which one should have audience first was a delicate question to
+        decide. The man, on being appealed to, said he would prefer to leave
+        it to them. They accordingly discussed the matter among themselves.
+        At the end of a quarter of an hour, the victor, having borrowed a
+        packet of pins and a looking-glass from our charwoman, who had slept
+        in the house, went upstairs, while the remaining fourteen sat down in
+        the hall, and fanned themselves with their bonnets.</p>
+
+        <p>"A. B." was a good deal astonished when the first applicant
+        presented herself. She was a tall, genteel-looking, well-dressed
+        girl. Up to yesterday she had been head housemaid at Lady Stanton's,
+        and before that she had been under-cook for two years to the Duchess
+        of York.</p>
+
+        <p>"And why did you leave Lady Stanton?" asked "A. B."</p>
+
+        <p>"To come here, mum," replied the girl.</p>
+
+        <p>The lady was puzzled.</p>
+
+        <p>"And you'll be satisfied with six pounds a year?" she asked.</p>
+
+        <p>"Certainly, mum, I think it ample."</p>
+
+        <p>"And you don't mind hard work?"</p>
+
+        <p>"I love it, mum."</p>
+
+        <p>"And you're an early riser?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh yes, mum, it upsets me stopping in bed after half-past
+        five."</p>
+
+        <p>"You know we do the washing at home?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Yes, mum. I think it so much better to do it at home. Those
+        laundries ruin good clothes. They're so careless."</p>
+
+        <p>"Are you a Unitarian?" continued the lady.</p>
+
+        <p>"Not yet, mum," replied the girl, "but I should like to be
+        one."</p>
+
+        <p>The lady took her reference, and said she would write her.</p>
+
+        <p>"I do hope you will give me a trial, mum," pleaded the girl, as
+        she rose to go; "I would try so hard to give you satisfaction."</p>
+
+        <p>The next applicant offered to come for three pounds&mdash;thought
+        six pounds too much. She also expressed her willingness to sleep in
+        the back kitchen: a shakedown under the sink was all she wanted. She
+        likewise had yearnings towards Unitarianism.</p>
+
+        <p>The third girl did not require any wages at all&mdash;could not
+        understand what servants wanted with wages&mdash;thought wages only
+        encouraged a love of foolish finery&mdash;thought a comfortable home
+        in a Unitarian family ought to be sufficient wages for any girl.</p>
+
+        <p>This girl said there was one stipulation she should like to make,
+        and that was that she should be allowed to pay for all breakages
+        caused by her own carelessness or neglect. She objected to holidays
+        and evenings out on principle; she held that they distracted a girl
+        from her work.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/039-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/039-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "MET THE NEXT DOOR LADY ON THE DOOR-STEP."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>The fourth candidate offered a premium of five pounds for the
+        place; and then "A.B." began to get frightened, and refused to see
+        any more of the girls, convinced that they must be lunatics from some
+        neighbouring asylum out for a walk.</p>
+
+        <p>Later in the day, meeting the next door lady on the door-step, she
+        related her morning's experiences.</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh, that's nothing extraordinary," said the next door lady; "none
+        of us on this side of the street pay wages; and we get the pick of
+        all the best servants in London. Why, girls will come from the other
+        end of the kingdom to get into one of these houses. It's the dream of
+        their lives. They save up for years, so as to be able to come here
+        for nothing."</p>
+
+        <p>"What's the attraction?" asked "A. B.," more amazed than ever.</p>
+
+        <p>"Why, don't you see," explained the next door lady, "our back
+        windows open upon the barrack yard. A girl living in one of these
+        houses is always close to soldiers. By looking out of window she can
+        always see soldiers; and sometimes a soldier will nod to her, or even
+        call up to her. They never dream of asking for wages. They'll work
+        eighteen hours a day, and put up with anything just to be allowed to
+        stop."</p>
+
+        <p>"A.B." profited by this information, and engaged the girl who
+        offered the five pounds premium. She found her a perfect treasure of
+        a servant. She was invariably willing and respectful, slept on a sofa
+        in the kitchen, and was always contented with an egg for her
+        dinner.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/040-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/040-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "A SOLDIER'S ARM ROUND THE WAIST."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>The truth of this story I cannot vouch for. Myself, I can believe
+        it. Brown and MacShaugnassy made no attempt to do so, which seemed
+        unfriendly. Jephson excused himself on the plea of a headache. I
+        admit there are points in it presenting difficulties to the average
+        intellect. As I explained at the commencement, it was told to me by
+        Ethelbertha, who had it from Amenda, who got it from the charwoman,
+        and exaggerations may have crept into it. The following, however,
+        were incidents that came under my own personal observation. They
+        afforded a still stronger example of the influence exercised by Tommy
+        Atkins upon the British domestic, and I therefore thought it right to
+        relate them also to the boys.</p>
+
+        <p>"The heroine of them," I said, "is our Amenda. Now, you would call
+        her a tolerably well-behaved, orderly young woman, would you
+        not?"</p>
+
+        <p>"She is my ideal of unostentatious respectability," answered
+        MacShaugnassy.</p>
+
+        <p>"That was my opinion also," I replied. "You can, therefore,
+        imagine my feelings on passing her one evening in the Folkestone High
+        Street with a Panama hat upon her head (my Panama hat), and a
+        soldier's arm round her waist. She was one of a mob, composed of all
+        the unoccupied riff-raff of Folkestone, who were following the band
+        of the Third Berkshire Infantry, then in camp at Sandgate. There was
+        an ecstatic, far-away look in her eyes. She was dancing rather than
+        walking, and with her left hand she beat time to the music."</p>
+
+        <p>"I should say you were suffering from a mild attack of D.T. when
+        you saw all that," said MacShaugnassy.</p>
+
+        <p>"So I might have thought myself," I said; "but Ethelbertha was
+        with me at the time, and she saw it too. We stared after the
+        procession until it had turned the corner, and then we stared at each
+        other.</p>
+
+        <p>"'Oh, it's impossible,' said Ethelbertha to me.</p>
+
+        <p>"'But that was my hat,' I said to Ethelbertha.</p>
+
+        <p>"The moment we reached home Ethelbertha looked for Amenda, and I
+        looked for my hat. Neither were to be found.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/041-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/041-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "AND HUNG MY HAT UP."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"Nine o'clock struck, ten o'clock struck. At half-past ten, we
+        went down and got our own supper, and had it in the kitchen. At a
+        quarter-past eleven, Amenda returned. She walked into the kitchen
+        without a word, hung my hat up behind the door, and commenced
+        clearing away the supper things.</p>
+
+        <p>"Ethelbertha rose, calm but severe.</p>
+
+        <p>"'Where have you been, Amenda?' she enquired.</p>
+
+        <p>"'Gadding half over the county with a lot of low soldiers,'
+        answered Amenda, continuing her work.</p>
+
+        <p>"'You had on my hat,' I added, somewhat gloomily. It was not the
+        right view to take of the case, I know, but, personally, that fact
+        grieved me more than all the other incidents in the proceeding put
+        together, sad though I felt these to be. It was an expensive hat, and
+        Ethelbertha said it suited me (there are not many that do). After
+        seeing it that night on Amenda's head, my pride in it was gone.</p>
+
+        <p>"'Yes, sir,' replied Amenda, still continuing her work, 'it was
+        the first thing that came to hand. What I'm thankful for is that it
+        wasn't missis's best bonnet.'</p>
+
+        <p>"Whether Ethelbertha was mollified by the proper spirit displayed
+        in this last remark, I cannot say, but I think it probable. At all
+        events, it was in a voice more of sorrow than of anger that she
+        resumed her examination.</p>
+
+        <p>"'You were walking with a soldier's arm around your waist when we
+        passed you, Amenda?' she observed interrogatively.</p>
+
+        <p>"'I know, mum,' admitted Amenda, 'I found it there myself when the
+        music stopped.'</p>
+
+        <p>"Ethelbertha looked her enquiries. Amenda filled a saucepan with
+        water, and then replied to them.</p>
+
+        <p>"'I'm a disgrace to a decent household,' she said; 'no mistress
+        who respected herself would keep me a moment. I ought to be put out
+        on the doorstep with my box and a month's wages.'</p>
+
+        <p>"'But why did you do it then?' said Ethelbertha, with natural
+        astonishment.</p>
+
+        <p>"'Because I'm a helpless ninny, mum.' There was no trace of
+        bitterness or passion in Amenda's tones. She spoke in the calm, even
+        voice of a person stating facts.</p>
+
+        <p>"'I can't help myself,' she went on; 'if I see soldiers I'm bound
+        to follow them. It runs in our family. My poor cousin Emma was just
+        such another fool. She was engaged to be married to a quiet,
+        respectable young fellow with a shop of his own, and three days
+        before the wedding she ran off with a regiment of marines and married
+        the colour-sergeant. That's what I shall end by doing. I've been all
+        the way to Sandgate with that lot you saw me with, and I've kissed
+        four of them&mdash;the nasty wretches. I'm a nice sort of girl to be
+        walking out with a respectable milkman.'</p>
+
+        <p>"She was so deeply disgusted with herself that it seemed
+        superfluous for anybody else to be indignant with her; and
+        Ethelbertha changed her tone and tried to comfort her.</p>
+
+        <p>"'Oh, you'll get over all that nonsense, Amenda,' she said,
+        laughingly; 'you see yourself how silly it is. You must tell Mr.
+        Bowles to keep you away from soldiers.'</p>
+
+        <p>"'Ah, I can't look at it in the same light way that you do, mum,'
+        returned Amenda, somewhat reprovingly; 'a girl that can't see a bit
+        of red marching down the street without wanting to rush out and
+        follow it ain't fit to be anybody's wife. Why I should be leaving the
+        shop with nobody in it about twice a week, and he'd have to go the
+        round of all the barracks in London, looking for me. I shall save up
+        and get myself into a lunatic asylum, that's what I shall do.'</p>
+
+        <p>"Ethelbertha began to grow quite troubled. 'But surely this is
+        something altogether new, Amenda,' she said; 'you must have often met
+        soldiers when you've been out in London?'</p>
+
+        <p>"'Oh, yes, one or two at a time, walking about anyhow, I can stand
+        that all right. It's when there's a lot of them all together with a
+        band that I lose my head.'</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:50%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/043-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/043-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "'WHEN THERE'S A LOT OF THEM WITH A BAND, I LOSE MY HEAD.'"</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"'You don't know what it's like, mum,' she added, noticing
+        Ethelbertha's puzzled expression; 'you've never had it. I only hope
+        you never may.'</p>
+
+        <p>"We kept a careful watch over Amenda during the remainder of our
+        stay at Folkestone, and an anxious time we had of it. Every day some
+        regiment or other would march through the town, and at the first
+        sound of its music Amenda would become restless and excited. The Pied
+        Piper's reed could not have stirred the Hamelin children deeper than
+        did those Sandgate bands the heart of our domestic. Fortunately, they
+        generally passed early in the morning when we were indoors, but one
+        day, returning home to lunch, we heard distant strains dying away
+        upon the Hythe Road. We hurried in. Ethelbertha ran down into the
+        kitchen; it was empty!&mdash;up into Amenda's bedroom; it was vacant!
+        We called. There was no answer.</p>
+
+        <p>"'That miserable girl has gone off again,' said Ethelbertha. 'What
+        a terrible misfortune it is for her. It's quite a disease.'</p>
+
+        <p>"Ethelbertha wanted me to go to Sandgate camp and enquire for her.
+        I was sorry for the girl myself, but the picture of a young and
+        innocent-looking man wandering about a complicated camp, enquiring
+        for a lost domestic, presenting itself to my mind, I said that I'd
+        rather not.</p>
+
+        <p>"Ethelbertha thought me heartless, and said that if I would not go
+        she would go herself. I replied that I thought one female member of
+        my household was enough in that camp at a time, and requested her not
+        to. Ethelbertha expressed her sense of my inhuman behaviour by
+        haughtily declining to eat any lunch, and I expressed my sense of her
+        unreasonableness by sweeping the whole meal into the grate, after
+        which Ethelbertha suddenly developed exuberant affection for the cat
+        (who didn't want anybody's love, but wanted to get under the grate
+        after the lunch), and I became supernaturally absorbed in the
+        day-before-yesterday's newspaper.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/044-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/044-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "'WHO LOCKED YOU IN THERE?'"</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"In the afternoon, strolling out into the garden, I heard the
+        faint cry of a female in distress. I listened attentively, and the
+        cry was repeated. I thought it sounded like Amenda's voice, but where
+        it came from I could not conceive. It drew nearer, however, as I
+        approached the bottom of the garden, and at last I located it in a
+        small wooden shed, used by the proprietor of the house as a dark room
+        for developing photographs.</p>
+
+        <p>"The door was locked. 'Is that you, Amenda?' I cried through the
+        keyhole.</p>
+
+        <p>"'Yes, sir,' came back the muffled answer. 'Will you please let me
+        out; you'll find the key on the ground near the door.'</p>
+
+        <p>"I discovered it on the grass about a yard away, and released her.
+        'Who locked you in there?' I asked.</p>
+
+        <p>"'I did, sir,' she replied; 'I locked myself in, and pushed the
+        key out under the door. I had to do it, or I should have gone off
+        with those beastly soldiers.'</p>
+
+        <p>"'I hope I haven't inconvenienced you, sir,' she added, stepping
+        out; 'I left the lunch all laid.'"</p>
+
+        <p>Amenda's passion for soldiers was her one tribute to sentiment.
+        Towards all others of the male sex she maintained an attitude of
+        callous unsusceptibility, and her engagements with them (which were
+        numerous) were entered into or abandoned on grounds so sordid as to
+        seriously shock Ethelbertha.</p>
+
+        <p>When she came to us she was engaged to a pork butcher&mdash;with a
+        milkman in reserve. For Amenda's sake we dealt with the man, but we
+        never liked him, and we liked his pork still less. When, therefore,
+        Amenda announced to us that her engagement with him was "off," and
+        intimated that her feelings would in no way suffer by our going
+        elsewhere for our bacon, we secretly rejoiced.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/045-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/045-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "HER ENGAGEMENT WAS 'OFF.'"</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"I am confident you have done right, Amenda," said Ethelbertha;
+        "you would never have been happy with that man."</p>
+
+        <p>"No, mum, I don't think I ever should," replied Amenda. "I don't
+        see how any girl could as hadn't got the digestion of an
+        ostrich."</p>
+
+        <p>Ethelbertha looked puzzled. "But what has digestion got to do with
+        it?" she asked.</p>
+
+        <p>"A pretty good deal, mum," answered Amenda, "when you're thinking
+        of marrying a man as can't make a sausage fit to eat."</p>
+
+        <p>"But, surely," exclaimed Ethelbertha, "you don't mean to say
+        you're breaking off the match because you don't like his
+        sausages!"</p>
+
+        <p>"Well, I suppose that's what it comes to," agreed Amenda,
+        unconcernedly.</p>
+
+        <p>"What an awful idea!" sighed poor Ethelbertha, after a long pause.
+        "Do you think you ever really loved him?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh, yes," said Amenda, "I loved him right enough, but it's no
+        good loving a man that wants you to live on sausages that keep you
+        awake all night."</p>
+
+        <p>"But does he want you to live on sausages?" persisted
+        Ethelbertha.</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh, he doesn't say anything about it," explained Amenda; "but you
+        know what it is, mum, when you marry a pork butcher: you're expected
+        to eat what's left over. That's the mistake my poor cousin Eliza
+        made. She married a muffin man. Of course, what he didn't sell they
+        had to finish up themselves. Why, one winter, when he had a run of
+        bad luck, they lived for two months on nothing but muffins. I never
+        saw a girl so changed in all my life. One has to think of these
+        things, you know."</p>
+
+        <p>Later on, she engaged herself to a solicitor's messenger. She did
+        this&mdash;as she frankly avowed to Ethelbertha&mdash;to assist her
+        family, who were prosecuting some petty law case at the time. He was
+        a smart, steady man, a great favourite with his employers, and, out
+        of kindly feeling towards him, they did the business for Amenda's
+        father, charging only "out-of-pockets."</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/046-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/046-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "GAVE HER A COCOANUT."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>Six months after the case was ended, she broke off the match. She
+        said that, on reflection, she could not help seeing what an advantage
+        he would have over her&mdash;he being in a solicitor's office, with
+        the law at his fingers' ends&mdash;should she ever find it necessary
+        to summons him.</p>
+
+        <p>"But, my good girl," said Ethelbertha, quite distressed, "one
+        doesn't marry a man with the idea of subsequently summonsing
+        him!"</p>
+
+        <p>"No, mum," said Amenda, "one always hopes one will never need to,
+        I'm sure, but it's just as well to be prepared. I knew a girl, when I
+        was in service at Hastings, that loved a printer, and they were both
+        going to commit suicide because her parents didn't want 'em to marry;
+        and now he costs her four shillings a month regular in summonses.
+        It's no good shutting one's eyes to things, mum."</p>
+
+        <p>But the most shamefully mercenary engagement that I think Amenda
+        ever entered into was one with a 'bus conductor. We were living in
+        the North of London then, and she had a young man, a cheesemonger,
+        who kept a shop in Lupus Street, Chelsea. He could not come up to her
+        because of the shop, so once a week she used to go down to him. One
+        did not ride ten miles for a penny in those days, and she found the
+        fare from Holloway to Victoria and back a severe tax upon her purse.
+        The same 'bus that took her down at six brought her back at ten.
+        During the first journey the 'bus conductor stared at Amenda; during
+        the second he talked to her, during the third he gave her a cocoanut,
+        during the fourth he proposed to her, and was promptly accepted.
+        After that, Amenda was enabled to visit her cheesemonger without
+        expense.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/047-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/047-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "'I DESIRE SHARING CROSS.'"</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>He was a quaint character himself, was this 'bus conductor. I
+        often rode with him to Fleet Street. He knew me quite well (I suppose
+        Amenda must have pointed me out to him), and would always ask me
+        after her&mdash;aloud, before all the other passengers, which was
+        trying&mdash;and give me messages to take back to her. Where women
+        were concerned he had what is called "a way" with him, and from the
+        extent and variety of his female acquaintance, and the evident
+        tenderness with which the majority of them regarded him, I am
+        inclined to hope that Amenda's desertion of him (which happened
+        contemporaneously with her jilting of the cheesemonger) caused him
+        less prolonged suffering than might otherwise have been the case.</p>
+
+        <p>He was a man from whom I derived a good deal of amusement one way
+        and another. Thinking of him brings back to my mind a somewhat odd
+        incident.</p>
+
+        <p>One afternoon, I jumped upon his 'bus in the Seven Sisters Road.
+        An elderly Frenchman was the only other occupant of the vehicle. "You
+        vil not forget me," the Frenchman was saying as I entered, "I desire
+        Sharing Cross."</p>
+
+        <p>"I won't forget yer," answered the conductor, "you shall 'ave yer
+        Sharing Cross. Don't make a fuss about it."</p>
+
+        <p>"That's the third time 'ee's arst me not to forget 'im," he
+        remarked to me in a stentorian aside; "'ee don't giv' yer much chance
+        of doin' it, does 'ee?"</p>
+
+        <p>At the corner of the Holloway Road we drew up, and our conductor
+        began to shout after the manner of his species: "Charing
+        Cross&mdash;Charing Cross&mdash;'ere yer are&mdash;Come along,
+        lady&mdash;Charing Cross."</p>
+
+        <p>The little Frenchman jumped up, and prepared to exit; the
+        conductor pushed him back.</p>
+
+        <p>"Sit down and don't be silly," he said; "this ain't Charing
+        Cross."</p>
+
+        <p>The Frenchman looked puzzled, but collapsed meekly. We picked up a
+        few passengers, and proceeded on our way. Half a mile up the
+        Liverpool Road a lady stood on the kerb regarding us as we passed
+        with that pathetic mingling of desire and distrust which is the
+        average woman's attitude towards conveyances of all kinds. Our
+        conductor stopped.</p>
+
+        <p>"Where d'yer want to go to?" he asked her severely&mdash;omnibus
+        conductors have a manner of addressing all pedestrians as though they
+        were lost children or suspicious
+        loiterers&mdash;"Strand&mdash;Charing Cross?"</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/048-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/048-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "THE CONDUCTOR COLLARED HIM."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>The Frenchman did not hear or did not understand the first part of
+        the speech, but he caught the words "Charing Cross," and bounced up
+        and out on to the step. The conductor collared him as he was getting
+        off, and jerked him back savagely.</p>
+
+        <p>"Carnt yer keep still a minute," he cried indignantly; "blessed if
+        you don't want lookin' after like a bloomin' kid."</p>
+
+        <p>"I vont to be put down at Sharing Cross," answered the little
+        Frenchman, humbly.</p>
+
+        <p>"You vont to be put down at Sharing Cross," repeated the other
+        bitterly, as he led him back to his seat. "I shall put yer down in
+        the middle of the road if I 'ave much more of yer. You stop there
+        till I come and sling yer out. I ain't likely to let yer go much past
+        yer Sharing Cross, I shall be too jolly glad to get rid o' yer."</p>
+
+        <p>The poor Frenchman subsided, and we jolted on. At "The Angel" we,
+        of course, stopped. "Charing Cross," shouted the conductor, and up
+        sprang the Frenchman.</p>
+
+        <p>"Oh, my Gawd," said the conductor, taking him by the shoulders and
+        forcing him down into the corner seat, "wot am I to do? Carnt
+        somebody sit on 'im?"</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/049-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/049-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "'BLESSED IF I DIDN'T RUN HIM ON TO VICTORIA.'"</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>He held him firmly down until the 'bus started, and then released
+        him. At the top of Chancery Lane the same scene took place, and the
+        poor little Frenchman became exasperated.</p>
+
+        <p>"He keep on saying Sharing Cross, Sharing Cross," he exclaimed,
+        turning to the other passengers; "and it is <i>not</i> Sharing Cross.
+        He is fool."</p>
+
+        <p>"Carnt yer understand," retorted the conductor, equally indignant;
+        "of course I say Sharing Cross&mdash;I mean Charing Cross, but that
+        don't mean that it <i>is</i> Charing Cross. That means that&mdash;"
+        and then perceiving from the blank look in the Frenchman's face the
+        utter impossibility of ever making the matter clear to him, he turned
+        to us with an appealing gesture, and asked:</p>
+
+        <p>"Does any gentleman know the French for 'bloomin' idiot'?"</p>
+
+        <p>A day or two afterwards, I happened to enter his omnibus
+        again.</p>
+
+        <p>"Well," I asked him, "did you get your French friend to Charing
+        Cross all right?"</p>
+
+        <p>"No, sir," he replied, "you'll 'ardly believe it, but I 'ad a bit
+        of a row with a policeman just before I got to the corner, and it put
+        'im clean out o' my 'ead. Blessed if I didn't run 'im on to
+        Victoria."</p>
+
+        <h5>(<i>To be continued</i>.)</h5>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s4" name="i13s4"></a>THE SKATER.</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY WILLIAM CANTON.</h3>
+
+        <h4>ILLUSTRATED BY A. L. BOWLEY.</h4>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/050-1.jpg"><img width="100%" src=
+        "images/050-1.jpg" alt="" /></a></p>
+
+        <table class="poetry">
+            <tbody>
+                <tr>
+                    <td>&nbsp;&nbsp; O'er glassy levels of the mere<br />
+                    &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; She glides on slanting
+                    skate;<br />
+                    &nbsp;&nbsp; She loves in fairy curves to veer<br />
+                    &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And weave her figure
+                    eight.<br />
+                    Bright flower in fur, I would thy feet<br />
+                    Could weave my heart and thine, my sweet,<br />
+                    Thus into one glad life complete!<br />
+                    &nbsp;&nbsp; Harsh winter, rage thy rudest:<br />
+                    &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Freeze, freeze, thou churlish
+                    sky;<br />
+                    &nbsp;&nbsp; Blow, arctic wind, thy
+                    shrewdest&mdash;<br />
+                    &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; What care my heart and
+                    I!<br /></td>
+                </tr>
+            </tbody>
+        </table>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s5" name="i13s5"></a>MY SERVANT ANDREAS.</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY ARCHIBALD FORBES.</h3>
+
+        <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS BY FREDERIC VILLIERS.</h4>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/051-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/051-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "ANDREAS."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>I think it quite likely that some of my young American friends,
+        about ten months ago, were burning to have an opportunity of
+        accompanying General Miles down the Pacific coast, and of describing
+        in glowing sentences to their countrymen at home how Uncle Sam's
+        young man turned to flight the Chilian insurrectionists, who were
+        breathing out threatening and slaughter against the great Northern
+        Republic. There is an undoubted fascination in the picturesque and
+        adventurous life of the war correspondent. One must, of course, have
+        a distinct bent for the avocation, and if he is to succeed he must
+        possess certain salient attributes. He must expose himself to rather
+        greater risks than fall to the lot of the average fighting man,
+        without enjoying any of the happiness of retaliation which stirs the
+        blood of the latter; the correspondent must sit quietly on his horse
+        in the fire, and, while watching every turn in the battle, must wear
+        the aspect as if he rather enjoyed the storm of missiles than
+        otherwise. When the fighting is over, the soldier, if not killed,
+        generally can eat and sleep; ere the echoes of it are silent, the
+        correspondent of energy&mdash;and if he has not energy he is not
+        worth his salt&mdash;must already be galloping his hardest towards
+        the nearest telegraph wire, which, as like as not, is a hundred miles
+        distant. He must "get there," by hook or by crook, in a minimum of
+        time; and as soon as his message is on the wires, he must be hurrying
+        back to the army, else he may chance to miss the great battle of the
+        war. The correspondent must be most things to all men; he must have
+        the sweet, angelic temper of a woman, be as affable as if he were
+        running for office, and at the same time be big and ugly enough to
+        impress the conviction that it would be extremely unwise to take any
+        liberties with him.</p>
+
+        <p>The career, no doubt, has some incidental drawbacks. No fewer than
+        five British correspondents were killed in the recent campaigns in
+        the Soudan. General Sherman threatened to hang all the correspondents
+        found in his camp after a certain day, and General Sherman was the
+        kind of man to fulfil any threat he made. I suppose there was no
+        correspondent taking part in the Franco-German and Russo-Turkish wars
+        who was not in custody over and over again on suspicion of being a
+        spy. I have been a prisoner myself in France, Spain, Servia, Germany,
+        Austria, Hungary, Russia, Roumania and Bulgaria; and I may perhaps
+        venture to remark in passing that I cannot recommend any of these
+        countries from this point of view. But the casual confinements, half
+        irritating, half comic, to which he may be subjected, do not bother
+        the war correspondent of the old world nearly as much as do the
+        foreign languages which, if he is not a good linguist, hamper him
+        every hour of every day. He really should possess the gift of
+        tongues&mdash;be conversant with all European languages, a neat
+        assortment of the Asiatic languages, and a few of the African
+        tongues, such as Abyssinian, Ashantee, Zulu, and Soudanese. But how
+        few in the nature of things can approximate this polyglot
+        versatility. Often in Eastern Europe, and in Afghanistan, I have
+        envied Messrs. Swinton, Smalley, Whitelaw Reed, and the other notable
+        war correspondents of the American Civil War, in that they had not
+        the difficulties of outlandish tongues to contend with. I own myself
+        to be a poor linguist, and have many and many a time suffered for my
+        dullness of what the Scotch call "up-take." It is true that I was
+        fairly conversant with French and German, and could express my wants
+        in Russian, Roumanian, Bulgarian, Spanish, Turkish, Hindustanee,
+        Pushtoo, and Burmese, every word of which smatterings I have long
+        since forgotten. But the truth is that the poorest peoples in the
+        world in acquiring foreign languages are the English and the French;
+        the readiest are the Russians and Americans. It was, after a fashion,
+        a liberal education to listen to the fluency in some half-dozen
+        languages of Poor McGahan, the "Ohio boy," who graduated from the
+        plough to be perhaps the most brilliant war correspondent of modern
+        times. His compatriot and colleague, Frank Millet, who has fallen
+        away from glory as a war correspondent, and has taken to the inferior
+        trade of painting, seemed to pick up a language by the mere accident
+        of finding himself on the soil where it was spoken. In the first
+        three days, after crossing the Danube into Bulgaria, Millet went
+        about with book in hand, gathering in the names of things at which he
+        pointed, and jotting down each acquisition in the book. On the fourth
+        day he could swear in Bulgarian, copiously, fervently, and with a
+        measure of intelligibility. Within a week he had conquered the
+        uncouth tongue. As he voyaged lately down the Danube from source to
+        mouth, charmingly describing the scenic panorama of the great river
+        in the pages of <i>Harper</i>, those of you who have read those
+        sketches will not have failed to notice how Millet talked to German,
+        Hungarian, Servian, Bulgarian, Roumanian, and Turkish, each in his
+        own tongue, those diverse languages having been acquired by him
+        during the few months of the Russo-Turkish war.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/053-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/053-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "MACGAHAN AND FRANK MILLET."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>By this time, you may be wondering just where "Andreas" comes in.
+        Perhaps I have been over long in getting to my specific subject; but
+        I will not be discursive any more. It was at the <i>table d'hote</i>
+        in the Serbische Krone Hotel, in Belgrade, where I first set eyes on
+        Andreas. In the year 1876, Servia had thought proper to throw off the
+        yoke of her Turkish suzerain, and to attempt to assert her
+        independence by force of arms. But for very irregularly paid tribute
+        she was virtually independent already, and probably in all Servia
+        there were not two hundred Turks. But she ambitiously desired to have
+        the name of as well as the actuality of being independent; the
+        Russians helped her with arms, officers, and volunteer soldiers; and
+        when I reached Belgrade, in May of the year named, there had already
+        been fighting, in which the Servians had by no means got the worst.
+        No word of the Servian tongue had I, and it was the reverse of
+        pleasant for a war correspondent in such plight to learn that outside
+        of Belgrade nobody, or at least hardly anybody, knew a word of any
+        other language than the native Servian. As I ate, I was being
+        attended by a very assiduous waiter, whose alertness and anxiety to
+        please were very conspicuous. He was smart with quite un-Oriental
+        smartness; he whisked about the tables with deftness; he spoke to me
+        in German, to the Russian officers over against me in what I assumed
+        was Russian, to the Servians dining behind me in what I took to be
+        Servian. I liked the look of the man; there was intelligence in his
+        aspect. One could not call him handsome, but there was character in
+        the keen black eye, the high features and the pronounced chin,
+        fringed on either side by bushy black whiskers.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/054-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/054-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "ANDREAS AS A FORAGER."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>I had brought no servant with me; the average British servant is
+        worse than useless in a foreign country, and the dubiously-polyglot
+        courier is a snare and a deception on campaign. I had my eye on
+        Andreas for a couple of days, during which he was of immense service
+        to me. He seemed to know and stand well with everyone in Belgrade; it
+        was he, indeed, who presented me in the restaurant to the Prime
+        Minister and the Minister for War, who got together for me my field
+        necessaries, who helped me to buy my horses, and who narrated to me
+        the progress of the campaign so far as it had gone. On the third day
+        I had him in my room and asked whether he would like to come with me
+        into the field as my servant. He accepted the offer with effusion; we
+        struck hands on the compact; he tendered me credentials which I
+        ascertained to be extremely satisfactory; and then he gave me a
+        little sketch of himself. It was somewhat mixed, as indeed was his
+        origin. Primarily he was a Servian, but his maternal grandmother had
+        been a Bosniak, an earlier ancestress had been in a Turkish harem,
+        there was a strain in his blood of the Hungarian zinganee&mdash;the
+        gipsy of Eastern Europe, and one could not look at his profile
+        without a suspicion that there was a Jewish element in his pedigree.
+        "A pure mongrel," was what a gentleman of the British Legation termed
+        Andreas, and this self-contradictory epithet was scarcely out of
+        place.</p>
+
+        <p>Andreas turned out well. He was as hardy as a hill-goat, careless
+        how and when he ate, or where he slept, which, indeed, was mostly in
+        the open. It seemed to me that he had cousins all over Servia,
+        chiefly of the female persuasion, and I am morally certain that the
+        Turkish strain in his blood had in Andreas its natural development in
+        a species of <i>fin-de-si&egrave;cle</i> polygamy. Sherman's prize
+        "bummer" was not in it with Andreas as a forager. At first, indeed, I
+        suspected him of actual plundering, so copiously did he bring in
+        supplies, and so little had I to pay for them; but I was not long in
+        discovering that all kinds of produce were dirt cheap in Servia, and
+        that as I could myself buy a lamb for a quarter, it was not
+        surprising that Andreas, to the manner born, could easily obtain one
+        for half the money. He was an excellent horsemaster, and the stern
+        vigour with which he chastised the occasional neglect of the cousin
+        whom he had brought into my service as groom, was borne in upon me by
+        the frequent howls which were audible from the rear of my tent. There
+        was not a road in all Servia with whose every winding Andreas was not
+        conversant, and this "extensive and peculiar" knowledge of his was
+        often of great service to me. He was a light-weight and an excellent
+        rider; I have sent him off to Belgrade with a telegram at dusk, and
+        he was back again by breakfast time next morning, after a gallop of
+        quite a hundred miles.</p>
+
+        <p>No exertion fatigued him; I never saw the man out of humour; there
+        was but one matter in regard to which I ever had to chide him, and in
+        that I had perforce to let him have his own way, because I do not
+        believe that he could restrain himself. He had served the term in the
+        army which is, or was then, obligatory on all Servians; and on the
+        road or in camp he was rather more of a "peace at any price" man than
+        ever was the late Mr. John Bright himself. When the first fight
+        occurred, Andreas claimed to be allowed to witness it along with me.
+        I demurred; he might get hit; and if anything should happen to him,
+        what should I do for a servant? At length I gave him the firm order
+        to remain in camp, and started myself with the groom behind me on my
+        second horse. The fighting occurred eight miles from camp, and in the
+        course of it, leaving the groom in the rear, I had accompanied the
+        Russian General Dochtouroff into a most unpleasantly hot place, where
+        a storm of Turkish shells were falling in the effort to hinder the
+        withdrawal of a disabled Servian battery. I happened to glance over
+        my shoulder, and lo! Andreas on foot was at my horse's tail,
+        obviously in a state of ecstatic enjoyment of the situation. I
+        peremptorily ordered him back, and he departed sullenly, calmly
+        strolling along the line of Turkish fire. Just then, Tchernaieff, the
+        Servian Commander-in-Chief, had, it seemed, ordered a detachment of
+        infantry to take in flank the Turkish guns. From where we stood I
+        could discern the Servian soldiers hurrying forward close under the
+        fringe of a wood near the line of retirement along which Andreas was
+        sulking. Andreas saw them too, and retreated no step further, but cut
+        across to them, snatching up a gun as he ran, and the last I saw of
+        him was while he was waving on the militiamen with his billycock, and
+        loosing off an occasional bullet, while he emitted yells of defiance
+        against the Turks, which might well have struck terror into their
+        very marrow. Andreas came into camp at night very streaky with powder
+        stains, minus the lobe of one ear, uneasy as he caught my eye, yet
+        with a certain elateness of mien. I sacked him that night, and he
+        said he didn't care, and that he was not ashamed of himself. Next
+        morning, as I was rising, he rushed into the tent, knelt down,
+        clasped my knees, and bedewed my ankles with his tears. Of course I
+        reinstated him; I couldn't do without him, and I think he knew
+        it.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/056-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/056-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "SNATCHING UP A GUN AS HE RAN."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>But I had yielded too easily. Andreas had established a precedent.
+        He insisted, in a quiet, positive manner, on accompanying me to every
+        subsequent battle; and I had to consent, always taking his pledge
+        that he would obey the injunctions I might lay upon him. And, as a
+        matter of course, he punctually and invariably violated that pledge
+        when the crisis of the fighting was drawing to a head, and just when
+        this "peace at any price" man could not control the bloodthirst that
+        was parching him.</p>
+
+        <p>One never knows how events are to fall out. It happened that this
+        resolution on the part of Andreas to accompany me into the fights
+        once assuredly saved my life. It was on the day of Djunis, the last
+        battle fought by the Servians. In the early part of the day there was
+        a good deal of scattered woodland fighting in front of the entrenched
+        line, which they abandoned when the Turks came on in earnest. Andreas
+        and I were among the trees trying to find a position from which
+        something was to be seen, when all of a sudden I, who was in advance,
+        plumped right into the centre of a small scouting party of Turks.
+        They tore me out of the saddle, and I had given myself up for
+        lost&mdash;for the Turks took no prisoners, their cheerful practice
+        being to slaughter first and then abominably to mutilate&mdash;when
+        suddenly Andreas dashed in among my captors, shouting aloud in a
+        language which I took to be Turkish, since he bellowed "Effendi" as
+        he pointed to me. He had thrown away his billycock and substituted a
+        fez, which he afterwards told me he always carried in case of
+        accidents, and in one hand he waved a dingy piece of parchment with a
+        seal dangling from it, which I assumed was some obsolete firman. The
+        result was truly amazing, and the scene had some real humour in it.
+        With profound salaams, the Turks unhanded me, helped me to mount,
+        and, as I rode off at a tangent with Andreas at my horse's head,
+        called after me what sounded like friendly farewells. When we were
+        back among the Russians&mdash;I don't remember seeing much of the
+        Servians later on that day&mdash;Andreas explained that he had passed
+        himself for the Turkish dragoman of a British correspondent whom the
+        Padishah delighted to honour, and that, after expressing a burning
+        desire to defile the graves of their collective female ancestry, he
+        had assured my captors that they might count themselves as dead men
+        if they did not immediately release me. To his ready-witted conduct I
+        undoubtedly owe the ability to write now this record of a man of
+        curiously complicated nature.</p>
+
+        <p>When the campaign ended with the Servian defeat at Djunis, Andreas
+        went back to his headwaitership at the Serbische Krone in Belgrade.
+        Before leaving that capital I had the honour of being present at his
+        nuptials, a ceremony the amenity of which was somewhat disturbed by
+        the violent incursion into the sacred edifice of sundry ladies all
+        claiming to have prior claims on the bridegroom of the hour. They
+        were, however, placated, and subsequently joined the marriage feast
+        in the great arbour behind the Krone. Andreas faithfully promised to
+        come to me to the ends of the earth on receipt of a telegram, if I
+        should require his services, and he were alive.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/058-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/058-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "ANDREAS DASHED IN AMONG MY CAPTORS."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>Next spring the Russo-Turkish war broke out, and I hurried
+        eastward in time to see the first Cossack cross the Pruth. I had
+        telegraphed to Andreas from England to meet me at Bazias on the
+        Danube below Belgrade. Bazias is the place where the railway used to
+        end, and where we took steamer for the Lower Danube. Andreas was duly
+        on hand, ready and serviceable as of old, a little fatter, and a
+        trifle more consequential than when we had last parted. He was, if
+        possible, rather more at home in Bucharest than he had been in
+        Belgrade, and recommended me to Brofft's Hotel, in comparison with
+        which the charges of the Brunswick in New York are infinitesimal. He
+        bought my wagon and team, he found riding horses when they were said
+        to be unprocurable, he constructed a most ingenious tent, of which
+        the wagon was, so to speak, the roof-tree, he laid in stores,
+        arranged for relays of couriers, and furnished me with a coachman in
+        the person of a Roumanian Jew who he one day owned was a distant
+        connection, and whose leading attribute was, that he could survive
+        more sleep than any other human being I have ever known. We took the
+        field auspiciously, Mr. Frederic Villiers, the war artist of the
+        London <i>Graphic</i>, being my campaigning comrade. Thus early I
+        discerned a slight rift in the lute. Andreas did not like Villiers,
+        which showed his bad taste, or rather, perhaps, the narrowness of his
+        capacity of affection; and I fear Villiers did not much like Andreas,
+        whom he thought too familiar. This was true, and it was my fault; but
+        really it was with difficulty that I could bring myself to treat
+        Andreas as a servant. He was more, in my estimation, in the nature of
+        the confidential major-domo, and to me he was simply invaluable.
+        Villiers had to chew his moustache, and glower discontentedly at
+        Andreas.</p>
+
+        <p>I had some good couriers for the conveyance of despatches back
+        across the Danube to Bucharest, whence everything was telegraphed to
+        London; but they were essentially fair-weather men. The casual
+        courier may be alert, loyal, and trustworthy; he may be relied on to
+        try his honest best, but it is not to be expected of him that he will
+        greatly dare and count his life but as dross when his incentive to
+        enterprise is merely filthy lucre. But I could trust Andreas to dare
+        and to endure&mdash;to overcome obstacles, and, if man could, to "get
+        there," where, in the base-quarters in Bucharest, the amanuenses were
+        waiting to copy out in round hand for the foreign telegraphist the
+        rapid script of the correspondent scribbling for life in the saddle
+        or the cleft of a commanding tree while the shells were whistling
+        past. We missed him dreadfully when he was gone&mdash;even Villiers,
+        who liked good cooking, owned to thinking long for his return. For,
+        in addition to his other virtues, Andreas was a capital cook. It is
+        true that his courses had a habit of arriving at long and uncertain
+        intervals. After a dish of pungent stew, no other viands appearing to
+        loom in the near future, Villiers and myself would betake ourselves
+        to smoking, and perhaps on a quiet day would lapse into slumber. From
+        this we would be aroused by Andreas to partake of a second course of
+        roast chicken, the bird having been alive and unconscious of its
+        impending fate when the first course had been served. No man is
+        perfect, and as regarded Andreas there were some petty spots on the
+        sun. He had, for instance, a mania for the purchase of irrelevant
+        poultry, and for accommodating the fowls in our wagon, tied by the
+        legs, against the day of starvation, which he always, but
+        causelessly, apprehended. I do not suppose any reader has ever had
+        any experience of domestic poultry as bedfellows, and I may caution
+        him earnestly against making any such experiment.</p>
+
+        <p>I do not know whether it is a detraction from Andreas's worth to
+        mention that another characteristic of his was the habit of awaking
+        us in the still watches of the night, for the purpose of imparting
+        his views on recondite phases of the great Eastern question. But how
+        trivial were such peccadilloes in a man who was so resolute not to be
+        beaten in getting my despatch to the telegraph wire, that once, when
+        three pontoons of the bridge across the Danube were sunk, he crossed
+        the gap hand over hand by the hand-rope, sloshing down with the
+        current as the slack of the rope gave to his weight! Andreas became
+        quite an institution in the Russian camp. When Ignatieff, the Tsar's
+        intimate, the great diplomatist who has now curiously fizzled out,
+        would honour us by partaking sometimes of afternoon tea in our tent,
+        he would call Andreas by his name and call him "Molodetz"&mdash;the
+        Russian for "brave fellow." In the Servian campaign Dochtouroff had
+        got him the Takova cross, which Andreas sported with great pride, and
+        Ignatieff used to tell him that the Tsar was seriously thinking of
+        conferring on him the Cross of St. George, badinage which Andreas
+        took as dead earnest. MacGahan used gravely to entreat him to take
+        greater care of his invaluable life, and hint that if any calamity
+        occurred to him, the campaign would <i>ipso facto</i> come to an end.
+        Andreas knew that MacGahan was quizzing him, but it was exceedingly
+        droll how he purred and bridled under the light touch of that genial
+        humourist, whose merits his own countrymen, to my thinking, have
+        never adequately recognised. The old story of a prophet having scant
+        honour in his own country.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/060-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/060-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "CROSSED THE GAP HAND OVER HAND."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>After the long strain of the desperate but futile attack made by
+        the Russians on Plevna in the early part of the September of the war,
+        I fell a victim to the malarial fever of the Lower Danube, and had to
+        be invalided back to Bucharest. The illness grew upon me, and my
+        condition became very serious. Worthy Andreas nursed me with great
+        tenderness and assiduity in the lodgings to which I had been brought,
+        since they would not accept a fever patient at Brofft's. After some
+        days of wretchedness I became delirious, and, of course, lost
+        consciousness; my last recollection was of Andreas wetting my parched
+        lips with lemonade. When I recovered my senses, and looked out
+        feebly, there was nobody in the room. How long I had been unconscious
+        I had no idea. I lay there in a half stupor till evening, unable from
+        weakness to summon any assistance. In the dusk came the English
+        doctor who had been attending me. "Where is Andreas?" he asked. I
+        could not tell him. "He was here last night," he said; "you have been
+        delirious for seven days." The woman of the house was summoned. She
+        had not seen Andreas since the previous night, but, busy about her
+        own domestic affairs, had no suspicion until she entered the room
+        that Andreas was not with me still.</p>
+
+        <p>Andreas never returned. It appeared that he had taken away all his
+        belongings. One day, when gradually mending, I put my hand under the
+        pillow with intent to find my watch, which was an heirloom, and wind
+        it up. I could find no watch. No more could I find the bag of ducats
+        which was alongside the watch before I lost my senses. Search was
+        made throughout the room without success, and, with whatever
+        reluctance to believe a thing so utterly unlikely, I could not
+        refrain from the conviction that Andreas must have carried off both
+        money and watch. The thought caused a relapse, but at length I
+        attained convalescence, and was able to drive out. But the doctor was
+        firm that during the now imminent winter I was not to return to the
+        field. Fortunately, my able colleagues, MacGahan and Millet, were
+        there; and I was therefore the less distressed by Dr.
+        &mdash;&mdash;'s peremptory sentence on me. I was condemned to return
+        to England as soon as I should be strong enough to travel.</p>
+
+        <p>When I had to leave the Plevna front, my colleagues temporarily
+        took charge of my field equipment. But I had brought back to
+        Bucharest my best riding horse, and during my illness he had been
+        standing at livery in the stables of the English Tramway Company.
+        Determining now on the melancholy necessity of selling an animal
+        which had on many a hard day and many a long night-ride served me
+        staunchly, I drove to the stables, and instructed the manager to sell
+        my horse. "Your horse!" he exclaimed, in evident surprise; "your
+        horse was sold weeks ago! Your man, Andreas, came here with a message
+        that we were to dispose of it; and I sold it next day to General
+        Todleben on his way through Bucharest to take the command before
+        Plevna. It fetched a good price, 105 ducats, more than you gave for
+        it; Andreas called for the money, and, of course, I gave it to
+        him."</p>
+
+        <p>So Andreas was thief and rogue&mdash;deliberate thief and rogue. I
+        was angry, but I was yet more heart-sorry that so fine and true a
+        native should have thus fallen. Just as I was leaving Bucharest for
+        England, a letter came to me from a friend in Galatz, a commercial
+        city of Roumania, near the mouth of the Danube. Its P.S. only is
+        worth quoting. "So you have parted with your man, Andreas. I thought
+        from what you had told me that you would retain him for life. He is
+        here now, I saw him drunk in the street yesterday. He told Kennedy
+        that he believed you were dead."</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/062-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/062-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "ANDREAS DROPPED ON HIS KNEES."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>I went straight to Galatz, a long half-day's journey. Andreas was
+        not hard to find; he was smoking in the "Concordia" saloon. I saw him
+        before he saw me; he had a furtive air, he was pallid and his lips
+        twitched; he looked to me on the verge of <i>delirium tremens</i>. I
+        approached him from behind, and uttered the one word, "Andreas!" At
+        the word, he started as if he had been shot, spun round, dropped on
+        his knees, with his hands raised beseechingly, and cried in a broken
+        voice, "Before God, master, I thought you were dead, else I should
+        never have done it! I have not had a happy moment since I threw away
+        my good name&mdash;I could not go home! Kill me, send me to prison,
+        punish me how you choose. I shall rejoice to suffer!" And the poor
+        wretch grovelled before me on his stomach.</p>
+
+        <p>I had meant to punish him; but he was too broken for chastisement.
+        I could not send to prison the man who had saved my life among the
+        pine-trees of Djunis. I wonder if he really thought me dead&mdash;not
+        that, if so, his act was thereby materially palliated. And I thought
+        of two little sentences which my mother taught me when I was a child:
+        "Judge not that ye be not judged," and "Lead us not into temptation."
+        I pulled the man on to his feet and grasped his hand, then with the
+        words, "Give me my father's watch&mdash;good-bye, Andreas. I shall
+        remember all the good in you, and forget those last bad days." I
+        turned from him, and quitted the "Concordia" with a lump in my throat
+        that I could not swallow down.</p>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s6" name="i13s6"></a>TOLD BY THE COLONEL.</h2>
+
+        <h3>X.</h3>
+
+        <h2>A MATRIMONIAL ROMANCE.</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY W. L. ALDEN.</h3>
+
+        <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS BY R. JACK.</h4>
+
+        <p>"And by the way," continued the Colonel, "a curious thing about
+        this Josiah Wilson was that he was married for fifteen years and
+        never had any wife whatever."</p>
+
+        <p>The Colonel had begun a story concerning one Josiah Wilson, which
+        promised to be interesting, but his incidental allusion to Mr.
+        Wilson's matrimonial experience awakened our curiosity, and we begged
+        him to interrupt his narrative long enough to tell us how it came to
+        pass that Josiah was a married man who never had a wife.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/063-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/063-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "HOWLED FOR HELP."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"The marriage laws in the United States," said the Colonel, giving
+        his chair an increased tilt backwards, which was his usual way of
+        beginning a fresh anecdote, "are as peculiar in their way as are the
+        divorce laws. You would think to look at them that they would permit
+        anybody to marry anybody else in any way that either of them might
+        choose, but for all that they sometimes make it impossible for a man
+        or a woman to get married. There was a couple who intended to be
+        married in a balloon, which is a style of lunacy that is quite
+        fashionable in some parts of the country, though I can't see why a
+        man should want to risk his neck in a balloon on his wedding day
+        unless it is that it takes so much courage to be married at all that
+        a man forgets all about such minor dangers as are connected with
+        ballooning. The bride, the minister, and two witnesses of assorted
+        sexes went up in the balloon at the appointed time, and, naturally,
+        the bridegroom intended to go with them, but he accidentally caught
+        his foot in a neglected guy-rope, and went up head downwards about
+        twenty feet below the car. The party in the balloon could not haul
+        him up because they could not get hold of the rope, and the bride
+        would not consent to give up the trip, because the groom had always
+        been a little shy, and she was afraid that, if she let him go this
+        time, she might not be able to land him again. So the parson went on
+        with the ceremony, and the groom made most of his responses in bad
+        language, and howled for help when he wasn't swearing. When the
+        ceremony was over, the aeronaut managed to land the balloon without
+        seriously damaging the bridegroom, but when, a year or two
+        afterwards, the bride wanted to get her divorce, the court held that
+        there had never been any marriage, for the reason that both the groom
+        and the bride had not appeared together in the presence of the
+        officiating minister, and that, furthermore, there was no provision
+        in the law which would permit a man to be married upside down.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/064-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/064-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "SMITH'S BULL-DOG."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"But to get back to Josiah Wilson. He lived in Indiana, close to
+        the boundary line between that State and Illinois, and he courted
+        Melinda Smith, a young woman who lived a little way up the mountain
+        side with her father and three brothers. The girl was anxious to be
+        married, but her family was dead against it. You see Josiah was a
+        Republican and a Methodist, while the Smiths were Democrats and
+        Baptists, and, naturally, they hated each other like poison, and one
+        night as old man Smith and Josiah met on their way to rival prayer
+        meetings, they exchanged revolver shots, without, however, doing any
+        harm. Then once Josiah had most of the calf of his leg taken off by
+        the Smiths' bull-dog, and twice the Smith boys came into the
+        sitting-room where Josiah was calling on Melinda, and suggested to
+        him with their shot-guns that he had better go home. Gradually Josiah
+        and Melinda came to the conclusion that her family was resolved to
+        discourage the match, so they determined to elope and be married
+        without the knowledge or consent of anybody.</p>
+
+        <p>"One dark night Josiah carried a ladder and planted it under
+        Melinda's window. He had advised her to walk out of the front door,
+        which was always left unlocked at night, but she refused, saying that
+        if she was going to elope she should do it in the proper way, and
+        that if Josiah had no respect for her, she had some little respect
+        for herself. She climbed down the ladder with a good deal of
+        difficulty, because she insisted that Josiah should help her, and
+        also that he should stand forty yards away, for reasons connected
+        with her ankles, and he found it rather trying to follow out these
+        contradictory orders. However, Melinda reached the ground at last,
+        and the pair started in a carriage that had been waiting just around
+        a bend in the road, in company with the Methodist minister. Their
+        plan was to drive to the next town and there to be married, but it
+        happened that one of the Smith boys, being restless, got up in the
+        night, and, looking out of the window, saw the ladder standing at
+        Melinda's window. In about twenty minutes after the young people had
+        started, the whole Smith family and their shot-guns were following
+        the runaways in a waggon, and gaining on them fast.</p>
+
+        <p>"The Methodist minister, whose hearing was unusually good, heard
+        the sound of hoofs before Josiah noticed it, and told the young
+        people that there was not the least doubt that they were pursued, and
+        would be overtaken in a very few minutes. 'And then, you know,' he
+        added, 'the chances are that, being Baptists, they will shoot first,
+        and ask for explanations afterwards. The only thing for us to do is
+        to get the marriage ceremony over before they come up. Then they will
+        see that opposition is of no use, and will listen to reason.'</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/065-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/065-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "THEY WERE MARRIED."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"Josiah and Melinda at once consented, and the parson, noticing a
+        little clearing in the woods on the left hand side of the road, and a
+        flat sort of tombstone standing in the middle of it, said that he
+        would stand on that stone and marry his young friends so quick that
+        it would make their hair curl. He was particularly glad to meet with
+        a handy tombstone, for he said that a tombstone was the next thing to
+        a church, and that to be married by the side of a tomb would be
+        almost as solemn as to be married in a minister's study. So the party
+        hastily descended; the parson mounted the stone; Josiah and Melinda
+        joined hands in front of him, and they were married, and the parson
+        had kissed the bride and pocketed his fee just as the Smiths' waggon
+        drove up and the Smith boys cocked their guns and covered the party.
+        But the parson was wide awake. He had his revolver out and old man
+        Smith covered before anybody had taken aim at him, but, instead of
+        shooting, he remarked that he was a minister of the blessed gospel of
+        peace; that there was no necessity for bloodshed, and that he would
+        blow a hole through old Smith unless the Smith boys lowered their
+        weapons and consented to argue the matter. 'The fact is, Colonel
+        Smith,' said the parson, 'you're too late. The young people are
+        legally married, and the sooner you accept the situation the better.
+        I married them not two minutes ago, standing on that identical
+        tombstone.'</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/066-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/066-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "'YOU'LL COME STRAIGHT HOME WITH ME.'"</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"Colonel Smith was a lawyer, and the sharpest one in that part of
+        the country. He saw the force of the minister's remarks, so he told
+        the boys to put up their guns, and he shook hands with the minister.
+        Then he inquired, in a careless sort of way, where Josiah and Melinda
+        had stood while they were being married. The parson showed the
+        footprints of the bride and groom, and then Colonel Smith turned to
+        Melinda and said, 'You'll come straight home with me. There hasn't
+        been any marriage yet. That stone is the boundary mark between
+        Indiana and Illinois, and you were standing in Indiana and that other
+        idiot was standing in Illinois when the parson tried to marry you.
+        Nobody can marry in two States at the same time, and I shan't
+        recognise the pretended marriage till a court of law compels me to do
+        so, which will be never. I hope this will teach you the folly of
+        fooling with Methodism. When you want to get married next time try a
+        Baptist minister, who will know the difference between a tombstone
+        and a boundary mark.' There were too many Smiths, and they were too
+        well armed to be reasoned with successfully, so the upshot was that
+        Melinda went home with her family, and Josiah and the parson went to
+        see a lawyer.</p>
+
+        <p>"The next day Josiah brought a suit for divorce against Melinda.
+        It was a friendly suit, you understand, and his only object was to
+        test the question of the validity of his marriage, for, of course, no
+        man can get a divorce unless he first proves that he is married. Old
+        man Smith conducted the case on his side, and a lawyer named
+        Starkweather, who is now a member of the Illinois Legislature,
+        appeared for Josiah Wilson. Colonel Smith argued that while the
+        parson who conducted the alleged marriage ceremony could undoubtedly
+        have married a couple in the State of Indiana, he could not marry a
+        woman in Indiana to a man in Illinois, for the reason that the man
+        and the woman could not be in the same place while they were in two
+        different commonwealths, and that hence Josiah and Melinda had not
+        legally appeared together before the officiating minister.
+        Furthermore, he argued that the minister at the time of the pretended
+        marriage was standing neither in Indiana nor in Illinois, but on the
+        boundary line; that the statute defined the boundary line as 'an
+        imaginary line' running from such and such a point to such and such a
+        point, and that a minister who stands in a purely imaginative
+        locality stands virtually nowhere, and hence cannot perform any
+        function of his calling.</p>
+
+        <p>"On the other hand, Josiah's lawyer claimed that the minister had
+        married Melinda Smith in the State of Indiana; that consequently she
+        must have been married to somebody, and that that somebody was
+        unquestionably Josiah Wilson. As to the point that the minister stood
+        in an imaginary locality because, as was alleged, he stood on the
+        boundary line, the lawyer maintained that it was a physical
+        impossibility that a minister weighing two hundred and fifty pounds
+        could stand in a purely imaginative place. Moreover, he was prepared
+        to prove that, while performing the ceremony, at least one of the
+        minister's feet was in the State of Indiana, which was sufficient to
+        make him legally present in that State.</p>
+
+        <p>"The arguments lasted three days, and the court before which it
+        was tried, consisting of three judges, took all the third day to
+        deliver its verdict. It decided that Melinda Smith was legally
+        married to some person unknown, though not to Josiah Wilson, and that
+        Josiah Wilson was also married to some unknown woman, who was not
+        Melinda Smith, whoever else she might be; that no marriage between
+        the plaintiff and the defendant had ever taken place, and that no
+        divorce could be granted, but that if either of them married anyone
+        else, he or she would be guilty of bigamy.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/068-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/068-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "SHE WAS A GOOD DEAL CAST DOWN."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"The Smiths, with the exception of Melinda, were delighted with
+        the decision, for it made it reasonably certain that Josiah could
+        never be recognised as her husband. She was a good deal cast down
+        about it, for, like every other Indiana girl, she had looked forward
+        to being married and divorced as the natural lot of woman. Now it
+        appeared that she was married, but in such an unsatisfactory way,
+        that she could never have a husband, and never be divorced from
+        anyone. As for Josiah, he was furious, but there was no help for it,
+        the law was against him, and, as a law-abiding man, he was obliged to
+        respect it, especially as he could not hope to kill off all four of
+        the Smiths, if he decided to make a family feud of it; he himself
+        having no family whatever, and no one to help him to keep up his end
+        of the feud.</p>
+
+        <p>"For the next fifteen years Josiah lived a single man except in
+        name, and Melinda mourned her hard fate and kept house for her father
+        and brothers; but one day Josiah's lawyer, who was by this time in
+        the Legislature, came to him and offered to have his marriage to
+        Melinda made legal in all respects for five hundred dollars. The
+        lawyer was so certain that he could do this that he was willing to
+        wait for his pay until after he had gained a verdict, and Josiah,
+        after a little bargaining such as every self-respecting man would
+        have made, in his place, consented to the lawyer's terms. It seems
+        that the lawyer had accidentally discovered that there had been a
+        mistake in the survey of part of the boundary line between Indiana
+        and Illinois, and at the very place where Josiah and Melinda were
+        married, A rectification of this mistake would move the line ten feet
+        west, and so place the spot where the pair stood during their wedding
+        entirely within the state of Indiana. The proper steps to obtain the
+        rectification of the boundary were taken, and it was rectified. Then
+        Melinda in her turn began a suit for divorce against Josiah, and had
+        no difficulty in proving the marriage and in obtaining a decree.
+        Josiah paid the lawyer his five hundred dollars, and was overjoyed at
+        being finally able to call his Melinda his own. But he met with a
+        little disappointment. Now that Melinda had obtained her divorce she
+        thought she might as well live up to it, and marry a fresh husband.
+        So she married the Methodist minister, who had just lost his third
+        wife, and lived happily ever afterwards.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure" style="clear:both;"><a href=
+        "images/069-1.jpg"><img src="images/069-1.jpg" width="80%" alt=
+        "" /></a><br />
+        "OFFERED TO HAVE HIS MARRIAGE MADE LEGAL."</p>
+
+        <p>"It was just after this that Josiah, being perhaps made a little
+        reckless by his disappointment, became involved in the affair that I
+        was going to tell you about when you interrupted me, and wanted to
+        hear about his marriage. Matrimony is a mighty curious thing, and you
+        can never tell precisely how it is going to turn out. That is one
+        reason why I was never married but once, though I spent ten years of
+        my life in Chicago, and had friends at bar who stood ready to obtain
+        divorces for me at any moment and without a dollar of expense."</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/070-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/070-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        IDLERS.</p>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s7" name="i13s7"></a>"LIONS IN THEIR DENS."</h2>
+
+        <h2>No. II.&mdash;GEORGE GROSSMITH AND THE HUMOUR OF HIM.</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY RAYMOND BLATHWAYT.</h3>
+
+        <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEO. HUTCHINSON.</h4>
+
+        <h4>(<i>Photographs by Messrs. Fraddle and Young and Alfred
+        Ellis.</i>)</h4>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/071-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/071-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        MR. GEORGE GROSSMITH.</p>
+
+        <p>A little, slight man, with a thin, clever, mobile, clean-shaven
+        face, a sharp inquisitive nose surmounted by a perpetual pair of
+        <i>pince-nez</i>, and a rather sarcastic mouth, from which wit and
+        humour as light and airy as the cigarette smoke which accompanied
+        each remark continually flowed.</p>
+
+        <p>Mr. George Grossmith, the well-known actor and society clown.</p>
+
+        <p>He stands on the hearthrug of his own special sanctum in his
+        handsome house in Dorset Square, with his back to the fire, cigarette
+        in his mouth, his hands now in his pockets, now waving in the air, as
+        he vivaciously tells me the story of his busy, energetic and
+        wonderfully interesting life.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/072-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/072-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            MRS. GEORGE GROSSMITH.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"I was born," said he, "in 1847. I come of a family of actors and
+        reciters. My father, whose portrait you see there on the wall, was a
+        well-known lecturer and entertainer. Sixty or seventy years ago my
+        uncle created a great sensation as a child actor, and he was commonly
+        known as the 'celebrated infant Roscius.' Come out into the hall,"
+        continued the lively little entertainer, "and I will show you some
+        old engravings which represent him in his favourite characters. Then
+        my brother Weedon, as you know, is, of course, a well-known actor, as
+        well as a clever artist, and part author with myself of several
+        sketches which have appeared in <i>Punch</i>. My eldest son now
+        begins to display the family tendency to a most alarming extent. For
+        my own part, I started my career as a reporter at Bow Street Police
+        Court, a training which I have found invaluable in many respects ever
+        since. My subsequent history as actor and society clown is so well
+        known that I need not trouble you with it any further."</p>
+
+        <p>"I suppose you find the taste of your audiences has gone up
+        considerably within the last twenty years, do you not?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Why, yes," he replied. "They wouldn't stand to-day what they used
+        to roar at then. My music is quite elaborate compared with the two or
+        three chords which easily satisfied people in the sixties and early
+        seventies. Listen to this," continued my host, as he sat down to the
+        <i>piano</i> and struck a couple of very simple chords. Then he
+        glided softly into what he termed a modern accompaniment. It was all
+        the difference between "Ten Little Niggers" and a slumber song of
+        Schubert.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/073-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/073-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            MR. GROSSMITH'S HOUSE.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"And do you find the public very critical?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Well," he replied, with a smile, "they are very kind. It is your
+        professional critic who is severe, though I can honestly say they
+        invariably treat me well. Criticism up to a certain point is good
+        enough. Beyond that point it is absolutely disabling to me. My father
+        was a very severe critic. When we went out together he used to take
+        the first half-hour, and then go to the back of the hall and
+        criticise me. But it so hampered me by causing me to think of and
+        consider every pose that I had to beg of him to desist. And then
+        again, as regards criticism, I always think&mdash;it may be very
+        conceited on my part&mdash;that I know a great deal more what the
+        public want than my critics do. I declare to you I should have to
+        take everything out of my sketches if I attempted to carry out all
+        the suggestions that are made to me. I can absolutely feel the public
+        pulse after so many years upon the platform. I am almost always
+        right. When I first started 'See me Dance the Polka' it fell quite
+        flat. I gave it up, although I felt sure it ought to go. The public
+        then demanded it, and it went with a swing. The public had changed
+        its mind. Not I."</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:60%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/074-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/074-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            THE DINING ROOM.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"And how do you prepare your sketches?" said I, as Mr. Grossmith
+        lit another cigarette, and took up his position on the hearthrug
+        again.</p>
+
+        <p>"Anyhow and anywhere the idea comes to me for a sketch. I am
+        seated in a railway train, and I think of a sea-side sketch. I close
+        my eyes and try to recall every single feature of interest on a
+        crowded fashionable beach in the height of the season. Nothing is too
+        unimportant. The way in which an old lady settles herself comfortably
+        into her chair, the manner in which a man, especially a shy man,
+        walks into the room, all these things, slightly exaggerated, but
+        still true to nature, are immensely appreciated. First I have the
+        idea, then I elaborate, sometimes for months, then I produce on the
+        stage, and the people say, 'How remarkable it is you should invent
+        all this on the spur of the moment!' That, of course, is a great
+        compliment. The song-writing is always amusing," continued Mr.
+        Grossmith, as he placed in my hand a little notebook in which were
+        suggestions and elaborations innumerable. One thing I noticed, which
+        he himself had condemned, but which was decidedly amusing, although
+        it has never been allowed to see the light of day:</p>
+
+        <p class="figure" style="clear:both;"><a href=
+        "images/075-1.jpg"><img src="images/075-1.jpg" width="100%" alt=
+        "" /></a><br />
+        THE DRAWING-ROOM.</p>
+
+        <table class="poetry">
+            <tbody>
+                <tr>
+                    <td>"I've been engaged to many,<br />
+                    Quite a score of times at least;<br />
+                    I don't think I with safety <i>can say</i><br />
+                    Where I met my first <i>fianc&eacute;e</i>.<br />
+                    Oh! 'tis better to have loved and lost<br />
+                    Than never to have loved at all;<br />
+                    So I may say I have loved and <i>lost a lot</i>,<br />
+                    And my fickleness has <i>cost a lot</i>."<br /></td>
+                </tr>
+            </tbody>
+        </table>
+
+        <p>"Ah!" said Mr. Grossmith, as he leaned over me and saw what I was
+        reading; "my better judgment told me that was not good enough for the
+        public."</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:20%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/076-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/076-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a></p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/076-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/076-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "I ENCOURAGE HIM."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/076-3.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/076-3.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "I ATTEMPT TO LEAD HIM."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="clear:both;">
+            &nbsp;
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/076-4.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/076-4.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "I CARRY HIM."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/076-5.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/076-5.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "I LOSE ALL PATIENCE."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>Then came a pencilled note in this little book, "You can take a
+        horse to water, but can't make him drink." "That gave me an idea,"
+        cried Mr. Grossmith, as he sprang to his feet. "You can take a boy to
+        the piano, but you can't make him play.' Thought I to myself, that
+        would make a capital sketch. And here is how I set about it,"
+        continued he, as he proceeded to illustrate his remarks. "Imagine a
+        little fellow in the corner there. I then begin in dumb show to
+        encourage him to come to the piano. 'Come on, my boy; you know you
+        can play that pretty piece you played yesterday. Come on, there's a
+        good fellow!' Wonderful what you can do with persuasion! He refuses.
+        I attempt to lead him to the piano. He won't budge an inch. I carry
+        him under my arm and seat him in front of the instrument, the
+        audience roaring all the time. At last his mistakes are so many and
+        so ridiculous, I lose all patience and catch him a mighty box upon
+        the ears! Tableau!! Of course there is no boy on the platform at all,
+        I am quite alone, but I have so thoroughly lost myself in my
+        imagination that people have declared years after, 'Oh! but I am
+        quite sure you had a boy with you; why, don't you remember how you
+        boxed his ears?'"</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/077-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/077-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "HOW I DO IRVING."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>No less marvellous than his power of acting is his power of
+        mimicry. "I will show you how I do Irving," said he, and in a moment
+        the little man had ruffled his hair, had assumed to the life not only
+        Irving's peculiar gait, but, even more remarkable still, had managed
+        to secure almost exactly the very expression of the great tragedian's
+        face.</p>
+
+        <p>"Then again, I find it a good idea to take up some craze or topic
+        of the moment. 'The Drama on Crutches' I wrote when the craze first
+        arose amongst the aristocracy for going on the stage. One of the
+        sketches which you will find outlined in that little notebook is
+        entitled, 'Is Music a Failure?' and I endeavoured to answer the
+        question by showing how popular it is among all classes of the
+        community." I will quote pretty freely from this outlined sketch, as
+        it will give my readers an idea, better than anything else would do,
+        of the manner in which Mr. Grossmith prepares his delightful
+        sketches.</p>
+
+        <p>"I am not going to treat the subject seriously," he writes, "but
+        in my own particular, impertinent way. The question often
+        arises&mdash;are we a musical nation? The foreigners think we are
+        not. But where in the wide, wide world is there a country where you
+        will hear so many organs and German bands? Where is the country,
+        excepting ours, that can appreciate the concertina? Where, except in
+        England, can you hear that delightful combination of harp and cornet
+        outside a house of refreshment? The prejudice of other nations is
+        distressing; and as for their ignorance, why, I don't suppose Italy
+        and Germany have even heard of the ocarino and the Jew's harp."</p>
+
+        <p>And so the sketch runs on, until, in speaking of the universal
+        manner in which music is appreciated in England by all classes, Mr.
+        Grossmith goes on to say: "We have made rapid strides, so have our
+        servants. They don't know how to dust the piano, but they can play
+        it. Everybody plays the piano, from the Peerage to the School Board.
+        Then look how music has crept into our homes and social circles.
+        Besides the piano, the mother and daughters play the banjo, the son
+        plays the first fiddle, and the father the second fiddle&mdash;as
+        usual. I know of a Lord Mayor who plays the trombone, a clergyman who
+        plays the big drum&mdash;that's a nice unpretentious, giddy
+        instrument!&mdash;and I know of any number of members of Parliament
+        who blow their own trumpets!!" And so the notes go brightly on
+        through many pages.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:35%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/078-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/078-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            MR. WEEDON GROSSMITH.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:65%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/078-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/078-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            THE STUDY.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:35%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/080-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/080-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            MR. GEO. GROSSMITH, JUN.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:65%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/079-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/079-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            OLD ENGRAVINGS.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="clear:both;">
+            &nbsp;
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"This," explained my host, "is a fair specimen of the method I
+        employ in preparing a drawing-room sketch. As a rule, my audiences of
+        that class are capital. I always love a well-dressed audience, it is
+        so cheerful. You mayn't perhaps get as much applause as you do from
+        the sixpenny gallery, but then applause often spoils your point.
+        Once, however, I remember singing at a private house in the country
+        to an odd assortment of people. I was informed that the party
+        followed a wedding which had taken place in the morning. If it had
+        followed a funeral it could not have been more gloomy and depressed
+        than it was. I played the piano and the fool for three-quarters of an
+        hour, and anything more dismal than the result it would be impossible
+        to conceive. A temptation seized me suddenly, and I said: 'Ladies and
+        gentlemen,&mdash;I am going to reveal to you a secret. Pray don't let
+        it go any further. This is supposed to be a comic entertainment. I
+        don't expect you to laugh at it in the least; but if, during the next
+        sketch, you would only once oblige me with a society smile, it would
+        give me a great deal of encouragement.' The audience for a moment
+        were dumbfounded. They first began to titter, then to laugh, and
+        actually to roar, and for a time I could not proceed with the sketch.
+        They were transformed into a capital and enthusiastic audience, and
+        the hostess told me that both her guests and herself were most
+        grateful to me. I am sometimes amused with the little eccentricities
+        of people who wish to secure my services for their parties. A
+        gentleman once wrote to me to entertain some friends of his, and,
+        added he, 'I trust that your sketches are strictly <i>comme il
+        faut</i>, as I have several young daughters.' I was so immensely
+        tickled by this that, rightly or wrongly, I replied that my
+        entertainments <i>were</i> as they should be, for I was recently
+        married, and hoped myself to have several young daughters. He wrote
+        thanking me for this assurance, and I was to consider myself
+        accordingly engaged. There is a story I tell in my book which will
+        bear repetition: A young gentleman once called upon me. He explained
+        that he was acting as a sort of ambassador for a friend of his, Mrs.
+        &mdash;&mdash;, of Mayfair, who wished me to dine at her house. I
+        replied that I had not the honour of the lady's acquaintance, and,
+        though appreciating her kind invitation, I did not see how I could
+        very well avail myself of it. He said that Prince Somebody or other
+        and La Comtesse de So-and-so would be dining there, and Mrs.
+        &mdash;&mdash; would be so pleased if I would join the party, and
+        sing a little song after dinner. 'Oh,' I said, 'if Mrs.
+        &mdash;&mdash; wishes to engage me professionally, that is another
+        matter, and if I am at liberty, I will come with much pleasure.'
+        'Well,' said the ambassador, 'I fancy Mrs. &mdash;&mdash; is under
+        the impression that if she includes you in her dinner party it is an
+        understood thing that you sing afterwards.' 'I am afraid I do not
+        understand that,' I said. 'It would not pay me to do so. I only
+        consume about ten shillings worth of food and wine, and my terms are
+        more than that.' There," said Mr. Grossmith, "could you have believed
+        that anyone would have been so inconceivably mean and caddish?"</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/079-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/079-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            MR. GEORGE GROSSMITH.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/081-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/081-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "A FLASHY YOUNG CAD, IN A VERY LOUD SUIT."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"I have had some curious experiences on tour," he went on. "That
+        is hard work, if you like. I have gone a four months' tour without
+        missing a night. It takes it out of one terribly. But it is very
+        paying work. In the South of England I have made as much as
+        &pound;300 a week. My friends tried to frighten me as to the apathy
+        of my Scotch audiences; as a matter of fact, I have no better
+        audiences anywhere. I like performing to country audiences. I am
+        never nervous as I am apt to be at St. James's, where there are a
+        number of my friends. And it is on my country tours that I have many
+        curious experiences. Amateurs invariably call at the hotel to see me,
+        and to ask my advice as to their powers of recitation. Some are quite
+        hopeless, and I haven't the heart to condemn them utterly, or to go
+        beyond 'I tell you quite candidly, since you ask me, that I have
+        heard better.' As a rule they are very quiet and modest, but now and
+        again one encounters some fearful specimens. I remember once at a
+        country town, which we will call Mudborough, a flashy young cad, in a
+        very loud suit, called to see me with a parcel under his arm. He had
+        come, he told me, to learn my opinion of his singing. He further
+        informed me that he was known as 'the Mudborough Grossmith.' He
+        didn't have the courtesy to take off his hat; he walked up and down
+        my room, whistling, singing, and handing me over now and again
+        specimens of his powers as a water-colour painter. I looked at them.
+        At last, tired of the idiot and his airs, I said, 'I hope your
+        musical sketches are better than you water-colour sketches.' Nothing,
+        however, could snub this fellow. He proceeded straightway to sing me
+        an improved version of 'See me Dance the Polka.' 'Do your audience
+        like it?' I asked. 'I should think they did,' he replied; 'I will let
+        you have that last verse if you like.' I thanked him sarcastically,
+        and at last he withdrew. I have, however, come across some real
+        talent in this way. For instance, that admirable actor and
+        entertainer, Eric Lewis, is a <i>prot&eacute;g&eacute;</i> of mine,
+        and you could not have a better man than he. Another amusing incident
+        occurred at Southsea. My secretary was in a shop one day, and he
+        overheard three ladies discussing the respective merits of Corney
+        Grain and myself. Two of them were for Corney Grain and one was for
+        me. Finding at last that the odds were too strong for her, she
+        departed with this final shot: 'Well, never mind, Mr. Corney Grain
+        can't jump on to a piano,' referring to my imitation of Minnie
+        Palmer."</p>
+
+        <p>Replying to a question I put to him as to his theatrical
+        experiences, Mr. Grossmith told me that it was in the November of
+        1877 that he received the following letter:&mdash;</p>
+
+        <blockquote>
+            <p>"Beefsteak Club,</p>
+
+            <p>"King William Street,</p>
+
+            <p>"Tuesday Night.</p>
+
+            <p>"Dear Mr. Grossmith,&mdash;Are you inclined to go on the stage
+            for a time? There is a part in the new piece I am doing with
+            Gilbert which I think you would play admirably. I can't find a
+            good man for it. Let me have a line, or come to Albert Mansions
+            to-morrow, after 4; or Thursday, before 2.30.</p>
+
+            <p>"Yours sincerely,</p>
+
+            <p>"ARTHUR SULLIVAN."</p>
+        </blockquote>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:49%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/082-1.jpg"><img width="100%"
+            src="images/082-1.jpg" alt="" /></a></p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:49%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/082-2.jpg"><img width="100%"
+            src="images/082-2.jpg" alt="" /></a></p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="clear:both;">
+            &nbsp;
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"This was a great moment in my life, although at the time my
+        father, whose good judgment I valued much, was of opinion that I was
+        not very successful as an actor. Sullivan, however, who had heard me
+        give a musical sketch at a dinner party, was of the contrary opinion,
+        and felt sure that I should suit him. It appears he and Arthur Cecil
+        were both writing letters at the Beefsteak, when the former said, 'I
+        can't find a fellow for this opera.' Cecil said, 'I wonder if
+        Grossmith&mdash;' Before he had finished the sentence, Arthur
+        Sullivan said, 'The very man!' And so I was engaged. I am much
+        indebted to these two Arthurs," continued the bright little man with
+        a laugh. "I reverence the very name of Arthur. I remember when
+        Gilbert wanted to engage me for the part of <i>John Wellington
+        Wells</i>, though I saw the part would suit me to perfection, I said
+        to him, 'I should have thought you required a fine man with a fine
+        voice for the part of a magician.' I can still see Gilbert's humorous
+        expression as he replied, 'That is just what we <i>don't</i> want.' I
+        played <i>Sir Joseph Porter</i> in 'Pinafore' every night for nearly
+        two years. Long runs don't affect the nerves of the actors nearly as
+        much as they affect the performance. Constant repetition begets
+        mechanism, and that is a terrible enemy to contend against. I make a
+        point of playing my best to a bad house; for it is a monstrous thing
+        to slur through one's work because the stalls are empty, and thereby
+        punish those who <i>have</i> come for the fault of those who <i>have
+        not</i>. Still, I repeat it, constant repetition is a dreadful thing.
+        Fancy playing 'Pinafore,' as I did, for 700 nights without missing a
+        single performance!"</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:49%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/083-1.jpg"><img width="100%"
+            src="images/083-1.jpg" alt="" /></a></p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:49%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/083-2.jpg"><img width="100%"
+            src="images/083-2.jpg" alt="" /></a></p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="clear:both;">
+            &nbsp;
+        </div>
+
+        <p>As he said this Mr. Grossmith led the way out of the room in which
+        we had been talking, and which he told me was his own special
+        sanctum, "into which no one is ever allowed to come except my wife,
+        for anyone rushing in here when I was composing or thinking out a
+        sketch would inevitably drive every single idea from my head," and we
+        went upstairs together. Here in the drawing-room he set himself down
+        to a spinet which bore the date of 1770, and he struck a few
+        exceedingly sweet-sounding, if slightly tinkling, chords from it.
+        "And this," said he, "is the oldest <i>Broadwood</i> in England. You
+        can see for yourself the date&mdash;1795." Downstairs he showed me a
+        beautiful model of a steam engine, upon which he was enabled to ride,
+        and which he could drive himself. "I thoroughly understand
+        locomotives," said he, as he pointed to a shelf full of all the works
+        upon the subject which he had been able to discover.</p>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s8" name="i13s8"></a>A BLIND BEGGARMAN</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY FRANK MATHEW.</h3>
+
+        <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. PEGRAM.</h4>
+        <hr />
+
+        <table class="poetry">
+            <tbody>
+                <tr>
+                    <td>"Left dark among mine enemies."</td>
+                </tr>
+            </tbody>
+        </table>
+
+        <p>Long ago, the Fairies often stole children; they chose the
+        prettiest, and carried them to Fairyland&mdash;the Kingdom of
+        Tyrnanoge,&mdash;leaving hideous Changelings instead. In those days
+        no man had call to be ashamed of his offspring, since it a baby was
+        deformed or idiotic it was known to be a Changeling.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:50%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/085-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/085-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "THE PIG WAS A FRIENDLY ANIMAL."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>It is sixty years now since old Mike Lonergan, who lived in a
+        hovel in Moher Village, was robbed of his child. It was his wife
+        first found out the theft, for she had seen her unborn son in a
+        dream, and he was beautiful; so when she saw the sickly and ugly
+        baby, she knew that he was not hers, and that the Fairies had stolen
+        the child of her dream. Many advised her to roast the Changeling on
+        the turf-fire, but the White Witch of Moher said it would be safer to
+        leave him alone. So the child Andy grew up as a stranger in his
+        father's hovel and had a dreary time of it, he got little food and no
+        kindness. The Lonergans gave him neither offence nor welcome, hoping
+        that he might see fit to go home to Tyrnanoge and yet bear them no
+        grudge. He grew up an odd wizened little wretch, and everyone shunned
+        him. The children loathed him because they were afraid of him, so
+        they hooted him from a distance, or stoned him from behind walls.</p>
+
+        <p>Indeed, at this time his only ally was the pig that lived in one
+        corner of the hovel. The pig was a friendly animal, his front half
+        was a dull white and the other half black, and this gave him a homely
+        look as if he was sitting in his shirt-sleeves. Andy would shrink
+        into the corner, and sit cuddled there with one arm round the pig's
+        neck. Old Mike Lonergan took to drink, and spent every evening at the
+        Shebeen&mdash;small blame to him&mdash;for how could a man be
+        expected to stay at home with a Changeling sitting in a corner and
+        staring at him?</p>
+
+        <p>When the pig was driven to the Fair at Ennistimon, Andy was left
+        friendless, and then&mdash;in all winds and weather&mdash;was to be
+        found on the Cliffs of Moher. Sometimes he stopped out all night,
+        till hunger would bring him back when the Lonergans were rejoicing at
+        his disappearance. He knew every inch of the Cliffs, and spent half
+        his time lying on the edge of the grey precipice, looking down at the
+        sea, six hundred feet below, or watching the clouds of sea-birds; he
+        found new paths down the cliff-side and clambered like a goat; he
+        knew where the gulls nested, but never robbed them, and the caves
+        where the seals lived, and the seals shouldered their way through the
+        water close by him, looking at him with soft eyes.</p>
+
+        <p>When he was about fourteen, the Famine Year came; fever and "The
+        Hunger" swept Clare. The fever took Lonergan and his wife, and they
+        were buried in the dead-pit at Liscannor; it left Andy, but it left
+        him blind. Then the neighbours began to have their doubts whether he
+        was a Changeling after all; for the Fairies are faithful, and who
+        ever heard of a Changeling being left blind and penniless? If he was
+        only mortal he had been cruelly treated, so to make amends they gave
+        him the fiddle that had belonged to the "Dark" Man&mdash;that is the
+        blind man&mdash;of St. Bridget's Well, who had lately starved. There
+        was still a feeling that he was unfit for a Holy Well, so he took up
+        a post at the Liscannor Cross-roads, and there levied a toll on
+        passers with the professional heart-broken cry:</p>
+
+        <p>"Remember the Dark Man! For God's sake, remember the Dark
+        Man!"</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p>For nearly twenty years Andy haunted the Cross-roads, he came to
+        be honoured as one of the institutions of Moher, though the folk
+        considered there was much that was uncanny about him, he was so
+        silent, and he hated the smell of whisky. Now those were the times
+        when Cornelius Desmond ruled Moher in the old open-handed haphazard
+        way, never troubling penniless tenants. But "Corney" died and the
+        daisies grew over him, so the estate was managed by an agent who made
+        short work of paupers, and evicted "Dark" Andy from his ancestral
+        hovel. Andy did not seem to know his misfortune. He spent the day of
+        the eviction, as usual, at the Cross-roads, and came back at night to
+        a ruin. His neighbour, Larry Ronan the blacksmith, was grieved to see
+        that he took the change as a matter of course, and that after groping
+        in the four corners of the cabin he sat on the window-ledge as if
+        unaware that nothing was left of his home but the walls.</p>
+
+        <p>Next day it was rumoured that Bridget McCaura, of Moher Farm, had
+        sheltered Dark Andy. Bridget was a warm woman, a "woman of three
+        cows," a masterful old maid, who in her time had refused many a
+        pretty fellow, perhaps because she suspected them of hankering after
+        her live stock, her poultry, and her sixty acres of rocks. Then the
+        old parish priest, Father Peter Flannery, rode over to see her.
+        Bridget was called out of her house to speak to him; he was afraid to
+        dismount. She stood in the narrow gateway in front of her farm, with
+        her arms akimbo, ready to defend her home against all comers. Peter's
+        heart trembled; he has a great dread of angry women.</p>
+
+        <p>"Is it thrue?" he asked&mdash;and was so frightened that he looked
+        even sterner than usual&mdash;"is it thrue what I'm afther hearing,
+        Bridget McCaura, that ye've taken the Dark Man, Lonergan, to live
+        with ye&mdash;to live in the Farm?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Is it thrue? 'Tis so," said Bridget.</p>
+
+        <p>"But ye're not going to keep him, are ye now?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Keep him? I am that," said Bridget.</p>
+
+        <p>Peter screwed up his courage and told her warily, that though it
+        was well-meant of her, and "'tis you have the kind warm heart,
+        Bridget me dear," still, that propriety forbade it.</p>
+
+        <p>He was afraid to look at her as he spoke. Bridget was purple.</p>
+
+        <p>"What! a misfortnit ould omadhaun the likes of that?" she
+        cried.</p>
+
+        <p>"I know, I know," said Peter (this is a pet phrase of his and
+        usually means that he does not know). "I know, I know, but 'tis
+        because ye're a lone woman, tell me now are ye listening to me? If
+        ye'd been married now, 'twould have been another thing."</p>
+
+        <p>"Married!" cried Bridget with infinite scorn&mdash;"Married! If
+        that's all, I'll marry the craythur to-morrow!"</p>
+
+        <p>And so Dark Andy was married to the richest woman in Moher. He
+        seemed indifferent; as for Bridget, she had made up her mind to
+        shelter him, and there was an end of it, she took pleasure in
+        astounding her neighbours.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure" style="clear:both;"><a href=
+        "images/088-1.jpg"><img src="images/088-1.jpg" width="80%" alt=
+        "" /></a><br />
+        "I'LL MARRY THE CRAYTHUR TO-MORROW!"</p>
+
+        <p>There was never such excitement in Clare as when those banns were
+        read. Everyone saw that poor Bridget McCaura&mdash;"dacint
+        woman"&mdash;had been bewitched. All the old stories about Dark Andy
+        came to life, there was no room for doubt now, and the bravest
+        unbelievers trembled before him. There was many a woman would never
+        hear his name without crossing herself, and he got the credit of
+        every misfortune between Kilkee and Kinvarra, though some doubted
+        whether a blind man could have the Evil Eye. It was felt that he
+        should be asked to give up his post by the Cross-roads, since it was
+        inconvenient for the neighbours to have to climb two stone walls to
+        avoid passing him. However, no one could be found to suggest this to
+        him, so he still sat there daily, for he liked to feel that he was
+        earning his own livelihood.</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p>One rough afternoon during my first visit to Clare I was caught in
+        a storm of rain, and took refuge at the Liscannor Cross-roads under a
+        thick clump of trees that are stunted and bent eastward by cowering
+        from the sea-wind. As I reached them I heard a shrill cry, "Remember
+        the Dark Man!" Then I saw the blind beggarman sitting huddled in a
+        ragged great-coat so much too big for him that till he stood up I did
+        not see how tiny he was. He had a doleful peaked face, set in a shock
+        of grey hair. By him sat a little brown dog&mdash;the queerest of
+        mongrels&mdash;with a tin can tied round his neck.</p>
+
+        <p>Andy was friendly that day, and talked eagerly in a shrill,
+        stammering voice. I found later that he was wretched in still
+        weather, and loved the malicious rush of the rain; he was happiest
+        when the wind rattled in his ears and the rain whipped his face.
+        "Call that rain?" he said, "sure th' air is flooded, an' ye might as
+        well swim as walk."</p>
+
+        <p>Many times after that I went out of my way on my long solitary
+        walks to pass the Cross-roads, but as often as not he was glum and
+        silent, and then Bonaparte, sharing his mood, would growl like a
+        small thunderstorm. The seat was well chosen, for the cowering trees
+        are like a shed over it, and there is a pleasant landscape in front
+        (though that mattered little to Andy), a landscape of dim green
+        moors&mdash;with brown stains on them where sedge grows and black
+        shadows where bushes huddle in clefts&mdash;chequered by a grey net
+        of low walls, dotted with the white gables of cabins, and framed by a
+        wavering line of hills.</p>
+
+        <p>Sometimes I found him playing his fiddle to keep himself company,
+        but he stopped when he heard me, and, to tell the truth, I was glad
+        of it, for his playing was uncanny. Sometimes I met him shambling
+        along the brink of the Cliffs&mdash;a grotesque little figure, with
+        his old shapeless hat, his huge coat flapping behind him, and the
+        mighty blackthorn he carried&mdash;he knew the ground so well that he
+        walked as if he could see (indeed, he saw more than I could, for
+        while to me the breakers were only streaks of light, he spoke as if
+        he was close to them on the wet weedy rocks), or I came on him lying
+        by the edge, listening to the grumbling of the breakers and the cries
+        of the gulls.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/090-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/090-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        "LISTENING TO THE GRUMBLING OF THE BREAKERS AND THE CRIES OF THE
+        GULLS."</p>
+
+        <p>Mostly he was unsociable, he shrank from his neighbours because
+        they had been cruel to him when they were children, and the dislike
+        was more than returned; yet I think that, but for the loneliness of
+        his whole life, he would have been friendly enough. No one knew more
+        of folklore&mdash;I think he half believed that he was a Changeling,
+        and found comfort in the thought of that former life when he was one
+        of the merry "Little Good People"&mdash;and sure old Mike Lonergan
+        and his wife ought to have known best. He knew the ways of every
+        ghost in the county, and it was even said that he was on speaking
+        terms with the Headless Man who haunted Liscannor. Of course he knew
+        all about Fairies. When the fallen leaves scurried past his feet he
+        knew that the "Little Good People" were playing football, when the
+        wind whispered in the leaves overhead he heard them chatting, and
+        when it whined in the creaking bare branches, heard the poor little
+        folk crying with cold and bewailing the days when they found shelter
+        by snug firesides and sat there unseen but not unwelcome. Once,
+        before the world grew hard, they gathered in the cabins, and the
+        roughest fare grew pleasanter, the saddest hearts lighter, from their
+        good wishes; but no one cares for them now, and they cannot rest in
+        unfriendly houses.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/091-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/091-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        "HE WAS ON SPEAKING TERMS WITH THE HEADLESS MAN OF LISCANNOR."</p>
+
+        <p>As he grew older, he talked more of them, grew more moody and
+        restless, could not sit quiet while the wind was up, and spent night
+        after night out of doors. My friend Father Peter Flannery, who is my
+        chief authority for this history, told me that often, riding on his
+        sick calls in stormy weather, he met Andy staggering along the rough
+        roads.</p>
+
+        <p>Last year on November Eve&mdash;the night when the Fairies have
+        power, and the dead wake and dance reels with them&mdash;the blind
+        beggarman started out from the Farm. An Atlantic gale was shattering
+        seas against the Cliffs, the air was salt with foam, and throbbed
+        with the pulse of the breakers. Bridget tried in vain to stop him; he
+        said the "Little Good People" were calling him. She watched him
+        disappear into the darkness, the whimpering of his fiddle died into
+        the shrieks of the wind. "'Tis a quare divil, he is," she said, "God
+        help him!"</p>
+
+        <p>Once in the night she thought she heard a snatch of the "Fairies'
+        Reel"; but Andy never came back. Next morning they found Bonaparte
+        whining on the edge of the Cliffs; there was no sign of his master.
+        He must have gone over the Cliffs in the darkness, but the waves gave
+        no token.</p>
+
+        <p>Some folk in Moher believe that the Fairies took back their child,
+        and that the old blind fiddler lives now in the Kingdom of Tyrnanoge,
+        and makes music for their dances in that enchanted country where the
+        old grow young and the blind see. Some say that he still haunts the
+        Cross-roads, and only a week ago, Larry Ronan, coming back at night
+        from Ennistimon Fair, saw a black shadowy figure under the black
+        trees, and heard a heart-broken voice cry "Remember the Dark Man!"
+        Larry's natural surprise at this accounted for his being found next
+        morning asleep in the ditch. But it is agreed in Moher that Andy left
+        life on November Eve, whether he became the playfellow of the Fairies
+        or the plaything of the waves.</p>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s9" name="i13s9"></a>CHURCH AND STAGE.</h2>
+
+        <h2>A REVIEW OF HENRY IRVING,</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY THE REV. DR. JOSEPH PARKER.</h3>
+
+        <h4>WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM F. BARNARD AND J. BERNARD PARTRIDGE.</h4>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/093-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/093-1.jpg" width="80%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        MR. IRVING AS "HAMLET." (<i>From the Portrait by EDWIN
+        LONG.</i>)<br /><br /></p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/094-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/094-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            MR. IRVING AS "DIGBY GRANT" IN "TWO ROSES."</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>The innumerable reviews of Mr. Irving by literary and artistic
+        experts have left room enough for an amateur estimate by a man who is
+        accustomed to regard human life mainly from a religious standpoint. A
+        complete review of the Stage by the Pulpit could hardly be the work
+        of a single pen; for my own part, therefore, I can only make a very
+        small contribution to such a review by indicating a few points which
+        have occurred to me in the study of one particular actor. At once,
+        however, the question arises, Is Mr. Irving a man who can be thus
+        summarily characterised? In a dramatic sense, are there not many Mr.
+        Irvings? When a man can act "The Two Roses" and "The Dead Heart" with
+        equal effect, when he can at will be as vulgar as <i>Robert
+        Macaire</i>, or as dignified as <i>Cardinal Wolsey;</i> when he can
+        be either as young as Hamlet or as old as Lear, the inquiry as to his
+        plurality becomes natural and pertinent. For my part, I rank Mr.
+        Irving the comedian above Mr. Irving the tragedian, just as I rank
+        Nature above Art: each may be highest in its own way, yet the one may
+        have a charm which the other cannot boast. Mr. Irving's tragedy
+        sometimes requires working up, but his comedy is spontaneous and
+        immediate. The needful working up of tragedy is no fault of the
+        actor. Tragedy should hardly ever begin at once. The murder may come
+        too soon. Premature rage is followed by untimely laughter. <i>Digby
+        Grant</i> begins at once, and can be his best self in the very first
+        sentence, but <i>Macbeth</i> must move towards his passion by
+        finely-graded ascents. In Mr. Irving's exquisite representation,
+        <i>Macbeth's</i> anxieties and perturbations, his rapid alternations
+        of courage and cowardice, make delicate but obvious record of
+        themselves in deepening the grey of his hair, and ploughing more
+        deeply the lines of his face. A comedy may be judged scene by scene,
+        almost sentence by sentence, but a tragedy can be truly estimated
+        only when viewed in final perspective.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/095-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/095-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "A LITTLE CHEQUE." (MR. IRVING AS "DIGBY GRANT" IN "TWO
+            ROSES.")</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>Judged by this test, I have no hesitation in regarding Mr.
+        Irving's <i>King Lear</i> as the finest creation of his genius. This
+        is an instance in which the actor creates the piece. Shakespeare is,
+        as a poet and playwright, at his worst in "King Lear." Yet his
+        accessories are wonderful in variety and suggestiveness. Only
+        Shakespeare could have created the heath, and have so ordered the old
+        King's passion, as to make his madness part of the very thunder and
+        lightning. That was Shakespeare's magnificent conception, and Mr.
+        Irving's rendering is worthy of its tempestuous grandeur. How to talk
+        up to the storm, how to pierce the tumult with the cries of human
+        distress, how to escape the ridiculous and the incongruous, how to be
+        a King on the desolate heath, and to make the royalty gleam through
+        the angry darkness, were the problems, and Mr. Irving solved them one
+        and all, even with redundance of faculty and skill. At the end of the
+        heath scene the man is more remembered than the storm. It has been
+        objected that in the first scene Mr. Irving's <i>Lear</i> is too old
+        and feeble. I venture to think otherwise. I further venture to think
+        that the King's age and the King's imbecility have both been
+        accurately appreciated. A man at eighty, a man athirst for flattery,
+        a man who would pay a kingdom in exchange for adulation, must have
+        outlived all that is best and strongest in human nature. He comes
+        upon the stage as a wreck. His vanity has eaten up his sagacity, so
+        that she, <i>Goneril</i> or <i>Regan</i>, who can flatter most, can
+        lie most, and can play the devil best, shall fare most lavishly at
+        his hands. Is it not well partly to excuse these excesses of
+        self-valuation by such mitigations as can be found in the infirmity
+        of old age? Even in an elderly man they would have been treated with
+        contempt; they could only be endured in one whose eighty years had
+        been doubled by the hardness of his life lot.</p>
+
+        <p>In "Henry VIII." Mr. Irving had little to do. In that play the
+        labour and the glory fell upon another, to the infinite delight of
+        the public. In "Lear," Mr. Irving has everything to do. From
+        beginning to end there is only one character. Even the fascinating
+        <i>Cordelia</i> is but a silver cloud on the far horizon. "The King
+        is coming" is the cry of the play. His madness is more, as to display
+        and effect, than the sense of all the others. The scene is stiff and
+        cold until his wild hair is observed to approach the front, and then
+        the whole spectacle is alight with feeling and purpose. The other
+        actors are not to blame that, to a large extent, they are thrown into
+        the shade; indeed, they are to be warmly congratulated upon their
+        self-suppression and their passive sympathy. It is a hard task to
+        play the part of two heartless and treacherous daughters, and a
+        pitiful fate to have to represent the villainy of <i>Edmund</i>, yet
+        all this was admirably done. It cannot be an easy thing to come
+        forward to play the villain well, for the better the dramatic villain
+        is played the more is the actor compelled to recognise in his
+        execration the exact degree of his success. So admirably can Mr.
+        Irving himself play the villain, that it is difficult to believe that
+        any godparents ever, on his unconscious behalf, renounced the pomps
+        and vanities of this wicked world.</p>
+
+        <p>In many minor parts&mdash;or along the subsidiary lines of great
+        parts&mdash;Mr. Irving's subtlest power comes into effective play.
+        Who, for example, can be more gentle or more graceful with a little
+        child? Who could hug the "fool" more fondly than old <i>King
+        Lear</i>? Then recall his wonderful recognitions of old friends.
+        When, in "The Dead Heart," he is liberated from the Bastille, how old
+        times slowly but surely dawn into consciousness, and how quickly the
+        dawn hastens into the noontide of the tenderest fellowship and
+        highest festival of joy. It is verily a resurrection. After eighteen
+        years' entombment this political Lazarus comes forth to liberty, to
+        leadership, to dominance.</p>
+
+        <p>In "Lear," there are two wonderful instances of recognition, the
+        recognition of <i>Gloster</i> and of <i>Cordelia</i>. <i>Gloster</i>
+        is blind and bandaged. <i>Cordelia</i> has been long out of
+        sight&mdash;if not in actual days yet in depth of feeling&mdash;and
+        the King himself is demented. Little by little things shape
+        themselves in the memory and fancy of the King. There is something
+        confusedly familiar in the voice of <i>Gloster</i> which, tone by
+        tone, settles into recognition. In the case of <i>Cordelia</i> the
+        father gradually subdues the King, and instinct takes the place of
+        reason; then, in a fine strain, comes the identification:</p>
+
+        <table class="poetry">
+            <tbody>
+                <tr>
+                    <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; "Do not
+                    laugh at me,<br />
+                    For, as I am a man, I think this lady<br />
+                    To be my child Cordelia."<br /></td>
+                </tr>
+            </tbody>
+        </table>
+
+        <p>The utterance of these words by Mr. Irving is simply thrilling.
+        The tones, the glances, the approach, the embrace, lift up the words
+        into new light, keen and tender as the brightness of a summer
+        morning. The words themselves are by no means striking, are, indeed,
+        the merest commonplace, but, uttered with the natural pathos of a
+        consummate actor, they carry the play to its most subduing climax.
+        The humanity and the genius satisfy expectation in its most eager and
+        jealous temper. Failure at that point would have ruined the play.
+        Which was better, <i>Lear</i> or <i>Cordelia</i>, in that critical
+        action? We must first settle, Which is better, the star of morning or
+        the morning star?</p>
+        <hr style="clear:both;" />
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/097-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/097-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            MR. IRVING AS "KING LEAR." (FROM THE LYCEUM SOUVENIR.)</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>As I opened this brief review with a reference to the religious
+        standpoint, it may be well now to ask how the Church is to regard the
+        Stage as an educational institution? The Stage cannot be put down. It
+        responds to an instinct which is ineradicable, and which need not be
+        ignoble. The parables of the New Testament are the sublimest
+        recognition of that instinct. The drama is older than the theatre.
+        Much of the greatest preaching has been dramatic, by which I mean
+        that it has touched human life through the medium of story and
+        parable, coloured and toned by a living fancy. Sometimes, too truly,
+        the dramatic in preaching has degenerated into impossible anecdotes,
+        most of them originating in the Far West of America, yet even such
+        anecdotes testify to the overpowering force of the dramatic instincts
+        when limited to their most vulgar conditions. My submission is, that
+        a properly-conducted stage might be the most powerful ally of the
+        pulpit. I advance upon this submission, and contend that the function
+        of the preacher is infinitely superior to the function of the actor.
+        Whatever the preacher has to say that is distinctive he can trace to
+        what he believes to be a Divine and authoritative origin. I hold the
+        great preacher to be a spiritual medium. In his next evolution he
+        will simply tell the people whatever may have been given him in the
+        same hour to say. This does not mean that indolence will supersede
+        industry. Through the indolent man God sends no messages. The true
+        prophet will always be preparing himself. By learning, by meditation,
+        by self-discipline, the true prophet will prepare his heart for the
+        incoming of the Eternal Spirit, and the glory of Heaven will be as a
+        fire on the altar of the honest heart. Art preachers we have had in
+        too great abundance. Mechanical talkers have brought upon the pulpit
+        the disrepute of dulness. The age now waits for the messenger in
+        whose loving heart there is the glow and the radiance of divinest
+        sympathy. The great actor himself would be the first to admit that
+        the preacher cannot trace his own public secondariness to the poverty
+        of his themes. Where the preacher falls behind the actor, it is
+        because the preacher does not realise the majesty and the tenderness,
+        the vehemence and the urgency, of his own message.</p>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s10" name="i13s10"></a>THAT BEAST BEAUTY.</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY KIRBY HARE.</h3>
+
+        <h4>ILLUSTRATIONS BY ERNEST M. JESSOP.</h4>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/099-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/099-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            A PROPER HOWL OF DISGUST.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:30%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/099-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/099-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            HIS MAIDEN AUNT.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>I was a man born to misfortune. In fact, my first misfortune, the
+        death of my father, happened three months before I came into the
+        world. When I did duly appear, and was giving a proper howl of
+        disgust, a fresh misfortune fell upon me; my mother departed to join
+        my father, leaving me in the lurch in a vale of unavailing tears. I
+        should have preferred going with my family to that blessed Utopia
+        where there are neither births, deaths, marriages, divorces, breaches
+        of promise, nor return tickets; only, unfortunately, I was not
+        invited. So I became a posthumous orphan, soothed by Daffy's elixir
+        and the skim-milk of human kindness. The milk was none too sweet,
+        human kindness did not spare the rod, and I firmly believe it was
+        Daffy's elixir that turned my hair red. However, I grew up at length
+        into stand-up collars and tail coats, and at the age of seventeen
+        springs was adopted (on trial) by a maiden aunt of seven-and-forty
+        autumns. Like a gleam of sunshine hope flashed into my loveless life,
+        lighting up my path to fortune. But it was only the glimmer of an
+        <i>ignis fatuus</i>, which led me into a quicksand and snuffed itself
+        out in a fog.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/100-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/100-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            ONE EVIL-MINDED BLACK TOM.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:30%; clear:right;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/100-2.jpg"><img width="100%"
+            src="images/100-2.jpg" alt="" /></a></p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>My relative had plenty of money, and plenty of other equally good
+        qualities in the long run, no doubt; but the period of my adoption
+        was too short to make sure of either the one or the other. If the
+        wealthy maiden was really a worthy soul she did not let her nephew
+        know it. Corporeally she was angular and iron-grey, with a summary
+        tongue and wintry temper, chastened by a fondness for feline
+        favourites. Unluckily, I was always falling foul of the latter, and
+        my aunt continually fell foul of me in consequence. Crabbed age and
+        youth could not live together in our case on account of cats. Age, as
+        represented by the mature virgin, adored the brutes; youth, in the
+        shape of a sprouting hobbledehoy, abhorred them altogether, and one
+        evil minded black Tom in particular. My aunt called him Beauty, in
+        happy ignorance that all her household called him a Beast. I admire
+        beauty in the abstract; I also like it in the concrete; and in the
+        concreted form of youthful feminine humanity I love it. But that
+        feline black Beauty was the most outrageous misnomer unhanged. I had
+        tried to hang him several times, down in the cellar in the dead of
+        night; but his patent cast-iron neck set suspensory science at
+        defiance, and Beauty triumphantly refused to give up the ghost. At
+        first, he kicked and fought against it lustily, and yelled murder
+        with all his might; but after a little practice the malefactor acted
+        more philosophically, regarding the performance quite as part of his
+        nocturnal programme. He never allowed it to make him late for
+        breakfast, nor take away his appetite. Each morning, after execution,
+        the moment the bell rang for prayers, in marched Beauty with a
+        swollen head well on one side, growling anathemas from somewhere
+        round the corner all prayer-time; after which the escaped convict
+        devoured breakfast with the voracity of a stiffnecked cannibal.</p>
+
+        <p>Finding the beast utterly unhangable, I determined to try
+        drowning. My nature is by no means a cruel one, quite the reverse;
+        but Beauty's cup of iniquity had long been full to the brim, and
+        running over into the saucer. He had gulped down my canaries like
+        pills, poached my pigeons, fricasseed my rabbits, and made himself an
+        abominable beast generally; and had now committed a crime that capped
+        everything.</p>
+
+        <p>My cock bantam, which had won first prize at the Slocum-Pogis
+        poultry show, mysteriously disappeared. Jim, the gardener's boy, and
+        I hunted everywhere without finding any trace till we sighted Beauty.
+        The beast was seated on my verbena bed, with fearfully distended
+        stomach, waving my poor little bantam's tail feathers from between
+        his teeth. Had I been an ancient Egyptian high priest, and Beauty at
+        the top of the tree of holy cats, his diabolical godship should have
+        been made into a mummy instanter. As things were, he had to be
+        drowned forthwith.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/101-1.jpg"><img src=
+        "images/101-1.jpg" width="60%" alt="" /></a><br />
+        AT A CABINET COUNCIL IN THE COAL CELLAR.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/102-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/102-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            IN THE DESERTED OLD MILL.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>At a cabinet council in the coal cellar, composed of the cook,
+        footman, Jim, and myself, all the executive details were arranged; my
+        aunt being, of course, kept in happy ignorance of our intentions. As
+        soon as my respected relative uttered the preliminary snore of her
+        afternoon siesta, Beauty made an involuntary exit out of the house,
+        all the lower doors and windows having been carefully fastened. Then
+        commenced a silent cat-hunt, a serio-comic drama in dumb show, with a
+        crowded audience breathlessly gazing from the windows. The scenery
+        was a series of dissolving views, beginning on a flower-decked lawn,
+        and ending at a mill-pool a mile or so away from the audience. Beauty
+        played leading actor with considerable activity, notwithstanding the
+        drawback of being handicapped with an undigested bantam. He flew over
+        dozens of flower-beds, through all the outhouses, over the stable,
+        out into the park, up and down all the tallest trees, and all over
+        the country, till he took refuge in the deserted old mill. There we
+        wriggled him into an ancient sack, and tied him up in the harmonious
+        company of a couple of brickbats. Then we committed the body to the
+        deep. The burial service was short, but hearty.
+        "One&mdash;two&mdash;three, and away!" sung out in unison, was the
+        special form for the occasion, accompanied by Beauty's farewell
+        blessing as we "awayed" him into the silent depths of the mill-dam.
+        There was a splash, a shrill cry from a frightened moorhen, a short
+        jubilate from Jim, to which I piously added "amen," and all was over.
+        Jim ran home with half-a-sovereign in his pocket, while I walked back
+        to dress for dinner. On the stairs I met my aunt, already in evening
+        array, and looking hungry. I knew the sign, and stealthily tried to
+        vanish, vainly.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/102-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/102-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            "LATE AGAIN, SAMUEL!"</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>"Late again, Samuel!" she remarked, with a freezing
+        spectacle-gleam that fixed me to the stair-carpet&mdash;my right foot
+        two steps above the left. "You have just come in, I suppose. Have you
+        seen Beauty?"</p>
+
+        <p>Horror! Could she suspect anything? I felt my face growing the
+        colour of my hair, and my tongue frozen solid.</p>
+
+        <p>"Can't you answer?" she went on wrathfully. "And can't you stand
+        up straight?"</p>
+
+        <p>I pulled my legs together and commenced to stammer.</p>
+
+        <p>"I&mdash;I saw Beauty out&mdash;outside, aunt, in the garden," I   managed
+        to mutter.</p>
+
+        <p>"Which way was he going?"</p>
+
+        <p>"Why, I think he was running towards the house, aunt."</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/103-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/103-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            THIRTY MILES AN HOUR.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>And then the remembrance of how he <i>was</i> running&mdash;thirty
+        miles an hour, with tail on end and ears flat to his head, with Jim
+        and my long-legged self racing in rear&mdash;made me choke with
+        laughter I was forced to swallow. But my aunt's eyes were on me, and
+        her gold-rimmed barnacles blazed through me, so I suffocated in
+        silence.</p>
+
+        <p>"Don't stand making faces like an idiot. Go and dress, and be
+        quick," snapped my loving relative, as she marched away downstairs
+        and I flew to the region above.</p>
+
+        <p>My bedroom door was partly open, and I dashed in hastily, pulling
+        off my things as I went.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/103-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/103-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            DRESSING FOR DINNER.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/104-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/104-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            A SHOW AT MUDDIFORD-ON-THE-OOZE.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>My evening clothes were laid out ready on the bed, and&mdash;what
+        was that on my shirt?&mdash;a black mass of&mdash;something
+        moving!&mdash;some animal! Why, heavens and earth, it was the ghost
+        of&mdash;that beast Beauty! It was Beauty himself! I ran for the
+        poker; Beauty rushed out of the door. Confound that rotten old
+        sack!</p>
+
+        <p>I was late for dinner, and found Beauty seated in my chair, sleek
+        and dry, with a ravenously whetted appetite. My aunt was so pleased
+        with her favourite's improved appearance that she became quite
+        affable, even to me. I was informed that as I had not been looking
+        well lately I might go for a few days' change to the seaside; the
+        salubrious air of Muddiford-on-the-Ooze would just suit me. What a
+        blessing! To have escaped from those ice-gleaming spectacles and from
+        that resuscitated beast Beauty I would gladly have gone to Jericho,
+        much more to Muddiford-on-the-Ooze. Then my aunt continued her course
+        of instructions, with the nearest approach to a smile I had ever seen
+        on her face.</p>
+
+        <p>"You will enjoy yourself, I am sure, Samuel, and you will also be
+        able to show what pains you can take to please me," she said, sipping
+        her first glass of Burgundy with approving relish. "There is to be a
+        show at Muddiford the day after to-morrow, at which I intend
+        exhibiting, and you will be able to manage everything for me; so mind
+        you are careful to do your best."</p>
+
+        <p>"I shall be most delighted," I declared gushingly. "What show is
+        it? And what can I have the pleasure of taking charge of for you, my
+        dear aunt?"</p>
+
+        <p>"It's the Grand All-England Cat Show, and you will take Beauty;
+        and I shall be greatly disappointed if you do not bring me back the
+        first prize. So be on your best behaviour, Samuel, or perhaps you may
+        live to regret it."</p>
+
+        <p>My jaw dropped, and I thought I should have slid under the table.
+        Good heavens! It was that beast Beauty who was to go for a holiday,
+        while I was to act as the infernal fiend's keeper! O my prophetic
+        soul&mdash;my aunt! But there was no help for it; I was bound in
+        bonds of gold.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%; clear:left;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/104-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/104-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            SEATED MYSELF ON THE HAMPER.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/105-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/105-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            LEAVING THE RAILWAY CARRIAGE.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:39%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/105-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/105-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            INTO ITS HADES-LIKE MOUTH.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="clear:left;">
+            &nbsp;
+        </div>
+
+        <p>On the following day, Beauty and I were duly driven to the
+        station, the former being luxuriously nested in a small hamper
+        specially furnished for the occasion. About half-way on the road,
+        just as we had mounted a long, steep hill, the cat managed to roll
+        his residence from the stern of the dog-cart and trundle himself
+        half-way home again. Luckily, he screeched blue murder at the tip-top
+        of his voice, or we might not have missed the beast. As it was, his
+        cyclical retrogression made us just too late for the train, and we
+        had to wait two hours for the next. So I seated myself on the
+        hamper&mdash;like Patience on the proverbial monument&mdash;and
+        beheld the coachman depart homewards, with a sympathetic hat-touching
+        salute, leaving me with a gloomy conviction of coming misfortune. The
+        train, when it did arrive, was tolerably empty, and I secured a
+        vacant first-class. For a time all went happily; then the cat
+        commenced groaning.</p>
+
+        <p>My aunt having solemnly ordered me to give the brute dinner, I now
+        prepared to stop his mouth with cold chicken. While I was cautiously
+        unfastening the hamper lid, Beauty remained quiet as a dormouse; and
+        then he proceeded personally to assist the unfastening, with a
+        vengeance. There was a bouncing volcanic eruption, a blood-curdling
+        howl, a mixed-up whirling round the carriage, and
+        then&mdash;smash!&mdash;bang through the window went
+        Beauty!&mdash;leaving me doubled up on the seat, holding out half a
+        chicken. It was a forty-feline-power hurricane, while it lasted; and
+        drops of perspiration trickled down my nose on to the chicken, at
+        which I sat stupidly staring. After a dazed pause I staggered to the
+        broken window and looked out. There was Beauty, with a perpendicular
+        tail like a young fir-tree, going like great guns in exactly the
+        wrong direction. We had just come through a long tunnel, and the last
+        I saw of my aunt's pet demon was as he dived headlong into its
+        Hades-like mouth. And I had to take home first prize for him from the
+        Grand All-England Cat Show!</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:25%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/105-3.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/105-3.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            INCIPIENT CATALEPSY.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:40%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/106-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/106-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            WASHING HIS FIENDISH FACE!</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>When the 4.40 down express arrived at Muddiford-on-the-Ooze
+        station, an auburn-haired youth limply emerged from a first-class
+        carriage. In his arms he bore a basket, and his grey-green eyes
+        gleamed with incipient catalepsy. Yes, such would undoubtedly have
+        been my description had I posed as the momentary hero of a penny
+        novelette. I forgot all about my luggage, imbecilely clinging to the
+        late habitation of the lost beast Beauty, wandering I knew not why
+        nor whither. Outside the station, round a quiet corner, my steps were
+        arrested by the surprising sight of&mdash;Beauty!&mdash;the very
+        identical devil himself! There stood the unhangable, undrownable,
+        hurricane-creating beast, looking as serene as a newly-born black
+        cherub, washing his fiendish face! I approached on tiptoe,
+        breathlessly, with the basket behind my back and the half chicken
+        extended as a peaceable card of introduction. He scented it
+        instantly&mdash;my aunt always keeping Beauty's tit-bits until
+        sufficiently gamey to suit his highly epicurean taste.</p>
+
+        <p>With a finishing toe-touch to his whiskers, he amicably trotted up
+        to me and&mdash;yes!&mdash;actually rubbed against my new trousers!
+        What could have happened to him! Had his run through the tunnel
+        turned him out virtuous? And how could he possibly have got here?
+        Experience has shown that a leopard can change his spots, and a negro
+        can grow spotted; but could a diabolical cat become even as a sucking
+        dove and fly over twelve miles all in the space of twenty minutes?
+        Impossible! So I put on a pair of folder-glasses and scrutinised this
+        new arrival doubtingly. No; it was <i>not</i> Beauty&mdash;not nearly
+        ugly enough. It was a twin, but larger, blacker, sleeker, a million
+        times more amiable, and very much fatter. Ah!&mdash;ha,
+        ha!&mdash;hurrah!&mdash;happy thought! Why not? I would. And,
+        thereupon, I instantly did it.</p>
+
+        <p>Placing the basket gently on the ground, I opened the lid and put
+        in the cold chicken, when lo! in jumped the amiable twin. Half an
+        hour later that basket, that heaven-descended twin, and that
+        successful chicken, were safely deposited in custody of the cat-show
+        steward, with the errant Beauty's entry ticket affixed. If the
+        steward had never seen the real original he would never discover the
+        difference; and if he did happen to be acquainted with the genuine
+        article he could but think that the beast was surprisingly improved,
+        and might even award it first prize for having turned over such a
+        notable new leaf. And for the same reason, my aunt ought to be highly
+        delighted at her favourite's favourable transformation. My heart was
+        lightened of its oppressive troubles, as my hands were free from
+        their feline load. With a hearty appetite I ate an excellent dinner
+        at the hotel, went to the theatre, and turned into bed thankful for
+        all fortune's favours.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/107-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/107-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            I ATE AN EXCELLENT DINNER.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>During the two following days, carefully steering clear of the
+        cat-show, I enjoyed my freedom gaily, and had&mdash;what our
+        three-thousand-miles-removed cousins would call&mdash;real good time.
+        On the third morning a letter arrived from my aunt, with an enclosure
+        which for the first moment I took to be a big cheque&mdash;a grateful
+        offering, as I hoped, for services skilfully performed. However, it
+        proved to be merely a second letter, in writing that was strange to
+        me, and which with some curiosity I proceeded to peruse. As I
+        unfolded the sheet, a vision suddenly crossed my mind of that savage
+        beast Beauty; a chilly shiver shot through my marrow, and I sent the
+        waiter for soda and brandy. It was an awful thought of what that
+        unkillable cat might do! There he was, rampaging over a civilised
+        country populated with children and lambs, and other unprotected
+        innocents, half mad, perhaps, with hunger, where neither canaries nor
+        pigeons, rabbits or cold chicken were grabbable. What desperate
+        murders he might commit! And should I be held responsible? Here the
+        timely arrival of the waiter helped to raise my spirits by a strong
+        dose of B. and S., and I began the enclosed letter.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:50%; clear:right;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/107-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/107-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            WHAT DESPERATE MURDERS HE MIGHT COMMIT!</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:50%;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/108-1.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/108-1.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            FOUR REMARKABLY FINE KITTENS.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>It was headed from the cat-show secretary's office. Why, of
+        course, that charming twin had got first prize, no doubt. Let us see.
+        "Dear Madam," so ran the official note, "I beg to call your attention
+        to what I imagine must, in some way, have been an oversight. Your
+        cat, described on the entrance form as 'a black male, named Beauty,'
+        which was, on the evening of its arrival, placed in the class
+        pertaining to the descriptive form, was found this morning to have
+        presented us with four remarkably fine kittens. This, of course,
+        necessitated the family's removal from the male cat class. I have
+        much pleasure in being able to inform you that both mother and
+        kittens are in the best of health, and will be carefully attended
+        upon. If you will kindly forward your instructions respecting their
+        disposal, I shall be greatly obliged." That was the note, and wildly
+        did the letters dance before my eyes.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:right; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/108-2.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/108-2.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            GASPING FOR BREATH.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>Having saved myself from fainting by finishing the B. and S., I
+        sat for some minutes gasping for breath. Then I rubbed my eyes and
+        reread that awful epistle. Yes&mdash;it was so&mdash;in solemn, sober
+        black ink! Beauty's twin had got four fine kittens! Great
+        Jehoshaphat! How could I ever get over those confounded kittens! It
+        was too late to murder them. And my aunt&mdash;but stop! Let me read
+        her letter; it might suggest something&mdash;some feline legerdemain
+        method of conjuring four fine kittens into a first prize black male
+        cat. So here goes. And this is how it went: "I always considered you
+        to be a fool, Samuel, but nothing worse, until now. Unless the
+        enclosed letter is immediately fully explained, and the matter set
+        right, I shall plainly let you know what I do think of you now, and
+        act accordingly. See the secretary, and telegraph me the result at
+        once." Not much hope in that, worse luck; only a limited respite.</p>
+
+        <div style="float:left; width:30%; clear:both;">
+            <p class="figure"><a href="images/108-3.jpg"><img src=
+            "images/108-3.jpg" width="100%" alt="" /></a><br />
+            WENT FISHING.</p>
+        </div>
+
+        <p>Away I went to the show, saw the secretary&mdash;from a safe
+        distance&mdash;and immediately telegraphed: "Have seen the secretary.
+        Hard at work setting matters right. Awfully sorry." Then I hired a
+        boat, and went fishing for the rest of the day. In the evening I
+        wired: "Beauty must have got changed. Cats now all going home. Found
+        clue and am following up. All right shortly." But my aunt's patience
+        had expired. Next morning came a curt note saying she would at once
+        join me, and either rescue Beauty or settle that secretary. How could
+        I ever face those searching spectacles! I fled. From a lonely spot on
+        the wilds of Dartmoor I wired: "Am following clue sharp. Getting
+        close up. Good news next time." Back came an answer: "Shall be with
+        you to-morrow at noon." At noon next day, I boarded the mail packet
+        Tongariro, bound from Plymouth to New Zealand.</p>
+
+        <p class="figure" style="clear:both;"><a href=
+        "images/109-1.jpg"><img src="images/109-1.jpg" width="30%" alt=
+        "" /></a><br />
+        OFF TO NEW ZEALAND.</p>
+
+        <h2><a id="i13s11" name="i13s11"></a>PEOPLE I HAVE NEVER MET</h2>
+
+        <h3>BY SCOTT RANKIN.</h3>
+
+        <h2>MRS. HUMPHRY WARD.</h2>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/110-1.jpg"><img width="80%" src=
+        "images/110-1.jpg" alt="" /></a></p>
+
+        <blockquote><p>
+            "You can do nothing by despising the past and its products; you
+            also can do nothing by being too much afraid of them.... Be
+            content to be a new 'sect,' 'conventicle,' or what not, so long
+            as you feel that you are <i>something</i>, with a life and
+            purpose of its own, in this tangle of a world."&mdash;<i>Robert
+            Elsmere</i>.</p>
+        </blockquote>
+
+        <p class="figure"><a href="images/111-1.jpg"><img width="100%" src=
+        "images/111-1.jpg" alt="" /></a></p>
+
+        <h2><a name="i13s12"></a>THE IDLERS CLUB</h2>
+
+        <h2>Is Love a Practical Reality or a Pleasing Fiction?</h2>
+
+        <p class="sidenote">Mrs. Lynn Linton thinks there is no doubt as to
+        Love's reality.</p>
+
+        <p>Of the desperate reality of the passion there is no doubt; of the
+        intrinsic value of the thing beloved there may be many. The passion
+        for which men and women have died stands like a tower four-square to
+        all the winds of heaven; but how far that tower has been self-created
+        by fancy, and how much is objectively real, who is the wise man that
+        can determine? What is Love? We know nothing of its source. Sense and
+        sex cannot wholly explain its mystery, else would there be no
+        friendship left among us; and elective affinity is but a dainty
+        carving on the chancel stalls. The loveliness which makes that
+        special person the veritable Rose of the World to us exists but in
+        our imagination. It is no rose that we adore&mdash;only at the best a
+        bedeguar, of which the origin is a disagreeable little insect. We
+        believe in the exquisite harmony of those atoms which have arranged
+        themselves to form the thing we love. And we marry our human ideal,
+        expecting the unbroken continuance of that harmony. But the discord
+        comes; colours clash; the jarring note spoils the chord; the idol
+        once accepted as of gold and precious stones, proves to be only
+        common clay, thinly gilt. The diamonds are paste; the pearls are
+        beads of glass filled with shining fishes' scales; and the love which
+        we thought would be a practical reality for life, is nothing but a
+        pleasing fiction, good for its day, and now dead and done with. The
+        lover sees nothing as it is. Life is distorted between jealousy and
+        admiration, and the plain teaching of common-sense is as little
+        understood as the conditions of the fourth dimension or the poetic
+        aspirations of the Simian tongue. The adored is not a real person;
+        the happiness anticipated is not practical nor practicable. Both are
+        on all-fours with the substantiality of a cloud and the serviceable
+        roadway of a rainbow. Custom, familiarity, daily habits are the sole
+        tests by which the reality of the thing beloved can be
+        tried&mdash;the reality of the thing beloved and consequent validity
+        of love. Before these tests are applied, the whole affair is as a
+        fairy dream born of the perfume and the mystery of night. With the
+        clear cold breath of morning the dream vanishes, but&mdash;what is
+        left? The sigh of the vanishing god?&mdash;a tear on the cheek of
+        Psyche?&mdash;the loathing of the man who finds M&eacute;lusine a
+        serpent rather than a woman?&mdash;or the peaceful joy of the child
+        who dreams of angels and wakes in its mother's arms?&mdash;of those
+        who sleeping on the ocean wake to find themselves safe in port?</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">"Rita" thinks Love is beautiful and wise.</p>
+
+        <p>At one period of life, love is simply an emotion&mdash;the outcome
+        of attraction, or the effect of that vague mystery which surrounds
+        sex. In this emotional stage the <i>feeling</i> may be real enough,
+        but the passion is an illusion. A girl is often more in love with
+        Love than with an actual lover. The youth who beholds his ideal in
+        the First Woman is in love with the woman herself who for the time
+        (usually very brief) embodies that ideal. But to the girl and the
+        youth comes an hour when they are humiliatingly conscious of study
+        wasted on a prettily-bound work of fiction that for all use and
+        purpose in life is quite valueless. The edifice of romance is
+        constructed much on the same plan as a child's castle of cards, and
+        deservedly shares the same fate. That is to say, the topmost card
+        overbalances the whole structure. It is usually the hand of Reason
+        that topples over Love's romantic tenement by crowning it with the
+        card of Common Sense. When we find Love has become a practical
+        reality, the discovery is often very unpleasant. We would rather not
+        be unhappy if we had the choice. Unfortunately, we haven't, and find
+        ourselves in that condition without exactly knowing how we drifted
+        into it. Drifters often discover Love to be a very practical reality,
+        because of unpleasant consequences. It is decidedly humiliating to
+        find ourselves in the toils of a siren the very reverse of our high
+        ideal of the personage who is to have the honour and glory of
+        subjugating us. This is one of Love's amusing little ways of proving
+        that ideals are really not important. The best and safest test of the
+        reality of Love is to ask yourself how much you have suffered on
+        account of it. I don't speak of such trifles as tears, heartaches,
+        sleepless nights, fevers of jealousy and despair, sacrifices, or
+        discomforts, but of <i>real</i> genuine self-torment and mental
+        torture which only this passion is capable of inflicting on its
+        victims. The most sceptical will acknowledge that its powers in this
+        line are only excelled by its apparent animosity. To discover the
+        life that completes and contents our own is not given to many of us
+        poor mortals. Here and there some fortunate individuals have made
+        that discovery&mdash;but they are rare&mdash;and not given to
+        boasting on the subject; yet though worldly wise folk scoff at love
+        as a myth, I question whether they could name any other passion of
+        the heart which has occupied so important a place in the world's
+        history, which has given life to all that is great and divine in art,
+        or inspired such deeds of heroism, self-sacrifice, and martyrdom.
+        Before its patient strength men have stood mute and wondering, and
+        proud heads have bent in reverence, and stern eyes grown dim. For
+        Love is beautiful, despite faults, and wise, despite follies. It
+        alone of all human emotions can lift our souls heavenwards, and make
+        even life's thorny path a thing of beauty.</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">John Strange Winter's opinions.</p>
+
+        <p>Love may be classed under several heads. The first, the great, the
+        unattainable, the one-sided, and the worn-out. They are all real!
+        What can be more real than the perhaps not very practical passion
+        which first makes young hearts ache? What agony it is to <i>her</i>
+        when <i>he</i> dances three times running with that horrid, stuck-up
+        London girl, with her fashionable jargon, her languorous movements,
+        just a turn or two, and then stop for as many minutes! First love is
+        not often last love. <i>He</i> thinks <i>her</i> unreasonable to mind
+        those dances, yet when a great love comes into her life, making her
+        think of him as "just a boy," he suffers all, or nearly all, the
+        pangs of a great passion. Unavailing pain! <i>She</i> has cast the
+        die of her life, and past loves are shadows compared with the
+        absorbing power that now grips her heart like a vice. Much may happen
+        to the great love, but it is very real! A great love may merge into
+        matrimony, and life may run on oiled wheels, and Darby and Joan may
+        pass through the world, loving faithfully, and without digression, to
+        the end. Or something may come between, and the great love may become
+        the unattainable! It will not be the less real for that.</p>
+
+        <p class="sidenote">The Unattainable.</p>
+
+        <p>The unattainable has more in it of pathos than despair. Romance
+        sweetens it, and the romance never dies. The tenderness of "what
+        might have been" gives balm to many a suffering soul! The wife may be
+        unhappy, neglected, heartsick, she may even loathe him whose name she
+        bears, but she is often upholden by the thought that <i>he</i> would
+        have been wholly different! A husband may know that he has married
+        the wrong woman, yet he bears what is, because he cannot have
+        <i>her</i> who would have made life all sunshine. Few pity the
+        one-sided love, helpless, hopeless, and without justification as it
+        is; yet it is very real to the lonely soul. The worn-out love is the
+        very essence of sadness! It is heart-breaking to watch the efforts of
+        a foolish heart to keep a love dying or already dead, to see love,
+        which would once have made a paradise, poured out at the feet of one
+        who is only bored and not even touched by it. Nothing is so dead as a
+        dead love&mdash;yet, even <i>that</i> is real!</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">Miss May Crommelin takes a professional view</p>
+
+        <p>Can any sensible novelist hesitate? Does a shoe-maker depreciate
+        leather? Would you saw off the tree-branch you sit on? Now, on this
+        subject, anybody's opinion (full-grown) is as good as another's. Let
+        the footman bring down word that love is the drawing-room topic, and
+        the cook will cry out, "What do they know more about it than
+        <i>us</i>?" Is it not a human feeling, call it instinct or no? Surely
+        old Sally Jones has simpler feelings than the Dowager Countess; as
+        much experience in this. Love is just as real as a rainbow on a wet
+        day; as&mdash;as influenza. The first may be a "pleysing payne": the
+        latter must be a very displeasing one. But there is little fiction
+        about either to the victims. Well, suppose love a mere brain-fantasm;
+        an odd survival when sensible folk have swept away beliefs in
+        witchcraft, fairies, and the virtue of fire and faggot for the wicked
+        ones who don't say their prayers the same way we do. <i>Still, was it
+        not worth while to have invented it?</i> However the idea was
+        evoluted, just consider the glamour it throws over thorns and
+        thistles, as we dig through life's long day of toil. As Trollope's
+        stout widow says, when choosing her second: "It's a whiff of the
+        rocks and the valleys." (So she had her marriage settlements tightly
+        drawn up, to enjoy her romance comfortably.) Consider this
+        epitaph&mdash;a real one&mdash;</p>
+
+        <table class="poetry">
+            <tbody>
+                <tr>
+                    <td>"Poorly lived, and poorly died;<br />
+                    Poorly buried, and <i>nobody cried</i>."<br /></td>
+                </tr>
+            </tbody>
+        </table>
+
+        <p>Broach this subject of love to a circle after dinner, round a good
+        fire. Everybody laughs! The young men and maidens look conscious.
+        What they feel is as real to them as pleasure in music they hear; in
+        the taste of wine. Yes, and far more&mdash;while it lasts. Some
+        elders profess scorn, because their minds are so choked with years'
+        dust of daily cares they have forgotten how they, too, once believed
+        love real&mdash;while it lasted! Ay! there's the rub. You are
+        told&mdash;truthfully&mdash;that love is strong as death:
+        inconstant as every breeze. Some declare, for them&mdash;</p>
+
+        <table class="poetry">
+            <tbody>
+                <tr>
+                    <td>"In the whole wide world there was but
+                    one."<br /></td>
+                </tr>
+            </tbody>
+        </table>
+
+        <p>Other as honest souls confess their hearts have known, since first
+        love, "many other lodgers." This seems clear, love is real to those
+        who <i>give it</i>! Only they who care more to <i>get it</i>, call it
+        moonshine and naughty names. Like figures on an Egyptian monument,
+        each follows one who looks at another. Never one scorned, but has
+        rejected a third.</p>
+
+        <table class="poetry">
+            <tbody>
+                <tr>
+                    <td>"As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the satyr,<br />
+                    The satyr Lyda&mdash;and so the three went
+                    weeping."<br /></td>
+                </tr>
+            </tbody>
+        </table>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">Miss Quiller Couch wishes Love were a pleasing
+        fiction.</p>
+
+        <p>"Pleasing fiction," forsooth; would that it were! It is a very
+        real game, and the rules thereof are practical. I know it, for verily
+        I myself have suffered. Let it not be understood, however, that it is
+        <i>as</i> a "practical, real lover" that I have suffered. Not at all.
+        It is that this order of beings walks abroad, and I am not of it, and
+        I meet it, and I am pained, and I feel sorry. Could Love be but a
+        pleasing fiction, how comfortable to sit aside and contemplate
+        it&mdash;a trifle to talk of, a dainty to dally with, a joy to the
+        juvenescent, a blessing to the book-writer, yet never an
+        inconvenience. But it is a practical reality, and it has great
+        effects. Why, I have seen good, healthy people, quite nice-tempered
+        people, brought to a shadow by it and churned into so many pounds of
+        incompetent irritability; <i>so</i> exacting about trifles, so
+        fidgetty about catching the mail, and so careless of the health of
+        the uninteresting majority. There was one man I knew down in a
+        village, and he fell in love with a pretty girl&mdash;they mostly do
+        that&mdash;but she would have nothing to say to him; and after every
+        rejected proposal he went straight home and made a three-legged stool
+        (he was a carpenter by trade, or perhaps it might have affected him
+        differently). He was what one might call an importunate man, for he
+        proposed nineteen times in all, and nineteen three-legged stools
+        stood as silent witnesses of his importunity. He changed houses after
+        the twelfth, for he found a sad joy in contemplating his handiwork as
+        he sat at his lonely meals, and his first sitting-room was only
+        twelve feet by eight. Finally, either because of his importunity, or
+        because she disliked the thought that the wordless witnesses might
+        fall into unsympathetic hands, the girl married the man, and scrubbed
+        the stools nicely with soap and sand, and grew quite fond of them.
+        And only once did she regret her surrender; and that was when it
+        flashed across her one day that twenty would have been a prettier
+        number: but she stifled that pain as years went on, and grew happy.
+        Then there was Dante's love for Beatrice, which caused him to sit
+        down and write such a lot. Most remarkable persons seem to have
+        produced something rather excellent as the outcome of their love. I
+        know a naturally lazy and slightly dingy boy who endured a nice clean
+        collar every day, and it cut his neck, and his soul abhorred it, for
+        he told me so; and he spent from seventy-five to ninety minutes over
+        his toilet every morning, while he loved, and he knew he could dress
+        in four minutes and a quarter, for he had done it often. Love was a
+        great beautifier. In this case I must admit that the lover suffered
+        more than we outsiders, except that he became irritable in his
+        cleanliness. Love should not be scorned, even if it is real and
+        sometimes uncomfortably practical. It is very beautiful, and lovers
+        make a pretty sight. What I protest is, that all creatures should be
+        lovers&mdash;or <i>none</i>. It is the half-and-half state of the
+        world which is irksome.</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">Morley Roberts hopes Love will some day be a
+        pleasing reality</p>
+
+        <p>Ah, my gentle cocksure friends, how well you all know Love, and
+        how ready you are to say what it is, to cut it up, to carve it, to
+        classify it, and generally to spread it out. We live in a world of
+        lies, and conventions, the dead leavings of an ignorant past, bind us
+        still. Some day, perhaps, when men and women are free, Love will be a
+        pleasing reality. It can never be so in the majority of cases so long
+        as we play at make-believe, and teach nothing that we have learned.
+        The good man won't teach his sons; he leaves them to learn in the
+        gutter. The good woman keeps her daughters ignorant. As it stands it
+        is an evil to love anyone over-much. And when we love we love
+        over-much, for Love has been repressed till it has got savage in the
+        race. "La privation radicale d'une chose cr&eacute;e
+        l&eacute;xe&eacute;s." All the trouble comes from this&mdash;that we
+        men have partially created women. But Nature had something to do with
+        her compounding. That is, perhaps, a pity from the social point of
+        view. For Nature can't be nice and comfortable. She is only kind when
+        we go her way. Let us remember that Love is the foundation of the
+        world. The very protoplasmic cells from which we sprang could love.
+        The time will come, perhaps, when, having chipped away the lies and
+        faced the truth, we shall find reality a thousand times more pleasing
+        than any fiction. Love is something real and wonderful, and in a
+        natural world we shall have passed through the blood-splashed gates
+        of Passion and be calm. Now Love is tortured, for we love ignorantly.
+        We are like shipwrecked folk on some strange land&mdash;we know not
+        the fruits of the trees of it. We learn the poisons by experiment,
+        and we let others learn. This is Love the Fiction. But some day when
+        we awake we shall know what we now dream, and Love will be always the
+        most precious flower that grows in the garden of the soul. It has the
+        subtle fragrance of the heaven that is our own if we walk bravely in
+        the world, desiring truth. Under its influence we discover ourselves.
+        We build ships for new voyages, and burst into unknown waters with
+        our Viking shields of victory ablaze in the morning sun. The air is
+        sharp and keen, not foetid with poisonous lies; the waters are blue
+        and beautiful; there are shining shores about us, and marvels of a
+        new nature on every hand. We who were in the night, and of it, become
+        vivid with the sun. Our atheism banishes the worshipped gods of evil
+        that are no more extant in our dogmatic creed of joy. For Truth and
+        Beauty have guided us hand in hand, and all they ask of us is to
+        throw away the Law of Lies and to acknowledge that the two are
+        one.</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">Zangwill reviews the evidence.</p>
+
+        <p>The traces left by Love in life are so numerous and diverse that I
+        am almost tempted to the hypothesis that it really exists. There
+        seems to be no other way of accounting for the facts. When you start
+        learning a new language you always find yourself confronted with the
+        verb "to love"&mdash;invariably the normal type of the first
+        conjugation. In every language on earth the student may be heard
+        declaring, with more zeal than discretion, that he and you and they
+        and every other person, singular or plural, have loved, and do love,
+        and will love. "To love" is the model verb; expressing the archetype
+        of activity. Once you can love grammatically there is a world of
+        things you may do without stumbling. For, strange to say, "to love,"
+        which in real life is associated with so much that is bizarre and
+        violent, is always "regular" in grammar, and this without barring
+        accidence of any kind. For ancient and modern tongues tell the same
+        tale&mdash;from Hebrew to street-Arabic, from Greek to the
+        elephantine language that was "made in Germany." Not only is "to
+        love" deficient in no language (as <i>home</i> is deficient in
+        French, and <i>Geist</i> in English), but it is never even
+        "defective." No mood or tense is ever wanting&mdash;a proof of how it
+        has been conjugated in every mood and tense of life, in association
+        with every variety of proper and improper noun, and every pronoun at
+        all personal. Not merely have people loved unconditionally in every
+        language, but there is none in which they would not have loved, or
+        might not have loved, had circumstances permitted; none in which they
+        have not been loved, or (for hope springs eternal in the human
+        breast) have been about to be loved. Even woman has an Active Voice
+        in the matter; indeed, "to love" is so perfect that, compared with
+        it, "to marry" is quite irregular. For, while "to love" is sufficient
+        for both sexes, directly you get to marriage you find in some
+        languages that division has crept in, and that there is one word for
+        the use of ladies and another for gentlemen only. Turning from the
+        evidence enshrined in language to the records of history, the same
+        truth meets us at any date we appoint. Everywhere "'Tis love that
+        makes the world go round," though more especially in ball-rooms. It
+        is awful to think what would have happened if Eve had not accepted
+        Adam. What could have attracted her if it was not love? Surely not
+        his money, nor his family. For these she couldn't have cared a
+        fig-leaf. Unfortunately, the daughters of Eve have not always taken
+        after their mother. The statistics of crime and insanity testify
+        eloquently to the reality of love, arithmetic teaching the same
+        lesson as history and grammar. Consider, too, the piles of love at
+        Mudie's! A million story-tellers in all periods and at all places
+        cannot have told all stories, though they have all, alas! told the
+        same story. They must have had mole-hills for their mountains, if not
+        straw for their bricks. There are those who, with Bacon, consider
+        love a variety of insanity; but it is more often merely a form of
+        misunderstanding. When the misunderstanding is mutual, it may even
+        lead to marriage. As a rule Beauty begets man's love, Power woman's.
+        At least, so women tell me. But then, I am not beautiful. It must be
+        said for the man that every lover is a species of Platonist&mdash;he
+        identifies the Beautiful with the Good and the True. The woman's
+        admiration has less of the ethical quality; she is dazzled, and too
+        often feels, "If he be but true to me, what care I how false he be."
+        The Romantic Love of the poets and novelists was of late birth; the
+        savage and many civilisations knew it not, and philosophers explain
+        that it could not be developed till Roman Law had developed the
+        conception of Marriage as a Contract. Even to this day it is as rare
+        as large paper editions of the books about it. Roughly speaking, I
+        should say it would spring up here and there among all classes of the
+        population, except poets and novelists. Romantic Love is the rose
+        Evolution has grown on earthly soil. <i>Floreat!</i></p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">Burgin thinks it all depends on the people who
+        love.</p>
+
+        <p>One morning the average man gets up, lights his pipe, roams round
+        his rooms in all the ease of unshaven countenance and
+        dressing-gown-clad form. Then he goes out, and meets <i>her</i>.
+        There may be a hundred women in the room, or park, or tennis ground,
+        wherever the tragedy (Love is a tragedy) commences. When the lights
+        are low he comes back, and is low also. Wonders how men can be such
+        brutes as to want dinner; thinks his life has been misspent; that he
+        is unworthy to touch her hand; that he has wallowed in the fleshpots,
+        and here is a way out of them. And if the man's nature be noble and
+        sweet and true; if he has hitherto drifted adown the stream of
+        circumstance because his fellows have also drifted; then, with the
+        deepening tides of his passion, the old spirit of knight-errantry
+        descends upon him with its mystic mantle of white samite. And slowly
+        out of this deepening torrent of bewildered impulse and devotion is
+        born a new man&mdash;a man with a soul&mdash;a man who can dare all
+        things, do all things, endure all things, for the sake of the woman
+        he loves. At the baptism of her touch he becomes whole, and shapes
+        his life to noble ends. Even if he can't marry her, he is the better
+        for his passion. Such a love endures until the leaves of the Judgment
+        Book unroll; for it laughs to scorn the pitiful fools who boast of
+        infidelity, the "male hogs in armour," as Kingsley calls them, who
+        look upon women as toys, the sport of an idle moment, rather than the
+        spiritual force which leavens the world, and makes it an endurable
+        and joyous dwelling-place.</p>
+
+        <p class="sidenote">And on the woman loved.</p>
+
+        <p>Of course, I was speaking of good women. I once heard a story
+        about a bad woman&mdash;a woman of the world, who was very much
+        amused at being taken seriously by a boy who loved her. "Tell me all
+        about it," she would say to him. "Explain what you feel, why you love
+        me, why you believe in me. Don't you see I'm courted and
+        admired&mdash;a social force&mdash;that men flock round me everywhere
+        I go?" "Oh, yes," said the boy, "I see all that. But you're an angel
+        of goodness, and can't help men liking you. If I lost faith in you,
+        I'd kill myself." "Ah," she rejoined, "that's what you all say. You
+        would doubt me, and live on." Then, one afternoon, he had good cause
+        to doubt, inasmuch as her engagement to another man was announced.
+        That evening she received a note from him: "Good-bye. If I lived on,
+        I might doubt; it's better to die and&mdash;believe!" They told her
+        of the&mdash;the accident that night, and she wrote a touching little
+        paragraph about it for the Society papers before dining out.</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">Gribble generaliseth confidently.</p>
+
+        <p>In a sense, of course, Love is necessarily a fiction, whether
+        pleasing or otherwise; for illusion is of the essence of it. The
+        lover, in fact, is like the artist who sees things through a
+        temperament, and, by eliminating the irrelevant, builds up the ideal
+        on the foundation of the real. Tityrus sees more in Amaryllis than
+        his brother shepherds see, just as Mr. Whistler sees more in a
+        November fog than is visible to the eye of the casual wayfarer who
+        gets lost in it, and mingles profanity with his coughs, yet, granting
+        this, the reality and completeness of the illusion does not admit of
+        doubt. On no alternative hypothesis can the great majority of
+        marriages be explained. If commonplace people saw each other as
+        others see them, surely they would remain single all their lives. Yet
+        most people are commonplace, and most people marry. The
+        reality&mdash;the controlling over-mastering reality&mdash;of Love
+        has to be assumed to make their behaviour intelligible.</p>
+
+        <p class="sidenote">Having hasted from a wedding for the purpose.</p>
+
+        <p>This point struck me forcibly the last time I was present at a
+        wedding. It was a Jewish wedding, celebrated at the little synagogue
+        behind the Haymarket. I had no acquaintance with anyone concerned in
+        the ceremony, but had dropped in quite casually, having heard that
+        Jewish weddings were picturesque. The one thing that impressed me
+        more than anything else was the decided undesirability of both the
+        bridegroom and the bride. That the bride was not comely goes for
+        little. But her forehead indicated a limited range and low ideals;
+        the corners of her mouth spoke of an irritable temper; her bearing
+        was vulgar; her voice had a twang that made one long to take her by
+        the shoulders and shake her violently. She was also escorted by gaudy
+        female relatives, by looking at whom one could anticipate the awful
+        possibilities of her maturity. As for the bridegroom, he was a Hebrew
+        of the florid type. His waistcoat was protuberant; he had a red face
+        with red whiskers sprawling all over it; he wore flash jewellery; his
+        hair shone with pomatum; there was that in his bearing which
+        indicated that he followed some sordid calling, such as pawnbroking,
+        or the backing of horses on commission. Yet one could see that these
+        two unattractive persons were really attracted by each other. A great
+        and beautiful miracle had been performed; and the power which had
+        performed it was that Love in which some profess to disbelieve.</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">Frank Mathew displays his Ignorance.</p>
+
+        <p>Ignorance&mdash;says some wiseacre&mdash;is the mother of
+        eloquence, and I take it that the less one knows of Love the easier
+        it is to write of it. I side with those who hold that the Love
+        described by poets and other wordy people is mainly fanciful, a
+        flattering picture, that the best school for such writing is an
+        unhappy affection, and that no man can want better luck than to have
+        his heart broken, and so be made proof against lovesickness. An
+        unrequited love runs no risk of being dulled by the prose of life. A
+        man so fortunate as to be jilted or rejected finds his Beloved
+        remaining beautiful and young to him when her husband sees her an
+        unwieldy and wearisome old woman. And when at times he grows
+        sentimental&mdash;a bachelor's privilege&mdash;he can feel again the
+        old hopes that he never found false, and see the old perfections that
+        were never disproved. He has a life-companion who comes only when she
+        is wanted, and then with a "smile on her face and a rose in her
+        hair," whose voice is always gentle, to whom wrinkles are not
+        necessary and bills are not known.</p>
+
+        <p class="sidenote">And praises ugliness.</p>
+
+        <p>I am one of those who prefer the luckless adorers in novels to the
+        conquering heroes; and hold that the quality an ideal lover needs
+        most is ugliness, so that he may honour beauty the more. Once I knew
+        a boy who was uglier than sin, and who wrote a story&mdash;in a
+        sprawling hand and on ruled paper&mdash;a wonderful story, telling
+        how an unlovely but admirable Knight, worshipping a Princess, rode
+        out to win her by great deeds, and how when he came back triumphant,
+        the sight of her brought his unworthiness home to him so that he
+        dared not claim her. And I knew another boy who was good-looking, and
+        wrote a story (during study-time, of course, and by stealth) about a
+        handsome hero who went to Court in fine clothes, and was worshipped
+        by all the girls. I think now that he was the manlier, but that the
+        first would have made the more devout lover. But the drawback of
+        luckless adorers is that their constancy has not been tried by the
+        ordeal of success. Many a fellow who lived loyal and heart-broken
+        would have made an unfaithful husband.</p>
+        <hr />
+
+        <p class="sidenote">'Q.' is surprised at his sister.</p>
+
+        <p>Love, no doubt, is a subject of popular interest, but a man is
+        always staggered to find his sister holding an opinion upon it. If I
+        remember rightly, in the days when Lilian Quiller Couch (then aged
+        seven) did me the honour of playing Juliet to my Romeo, the interest
+        was mainly acrobatic, Romeo descending the gardener's ladder
+        head-foremost, while Juliet tilted her body as far over the nursery
+        window-sill as she could manage without breaking her neck. We "cut"
+        the love speeches. Two years later, indeed, my sister schemed to
+        marry me to our common governess. There was no love on my side; so
+        she turned over the Prayer-book, hoping to find "A man may not marry
+        his governess" in the table of Forbidden Degrees. Such a prohibition
+        (she well knew) would be a trumpet-call to my native spirit of
+        disobedience. But I am convinced that even then the nature of true
+        affection did not enter into her calculations. She merely counted on
+        my marital influence to end or mend the French irregular verbs. I am
+        delighted that, in these later days, she sees Love to be a "practical
+        reality." For my part, I want a definition. Popular custom bestows
+        the name of Love on a green sickness which is in fact a part of
+        Nature's wise economy. I will expound. Almost all young men, say
+        between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five, incline to consume much
+        meat and do next to no work. Were there no corrective, it is clear
+        that in a few years the face of the earth would be eaten bare as by
+        locusts. But at this season Nature by the simplest stroke&mdash;the
+        flush of a commonplace cheek, the warm touch of a commonplace
+        hand&mdash;in a twinkling redresses the balance. Forthwith the ideal
+        devourer of crops and herbs not only loses his appetite, but arising,
+        smacks the earth with a hoe till the clods fly and the fields laugh
+        with harvest. Thereon he mops his steaming brow, bedecks him with a
+        bunch of white ribbons, and jogs jovially to church arm in arm with
+        the pretty cause of all this beneficent disturbance. And the
+        spectacle is mighty taking and commendable; but you'll excuse me for
+        holding that it is not Love. It bears about the same relation to Love
+        that Bumble-puppy bears to good whist. Among the eccentricities that
+        make up the Average Man I find none more diverting than his
+        complacent belief that he is, or has been, or will certainly some day
+        be, in love. As a matter of fact, the capacity to love belongs to one
+        man or woman in ten thousand. Listen to Matthew Arnold:</p>
+
+        <table class="poetry">
+            <tbody>
+                <tr>
+                    <td>"But in the world I learnt, what there<br />
+                    &nbsp;&nbsp; Thou wilt too surely one day prove,<br />
+                    That will, that energy, though rare,<br />
+                    &nbsp;&nbsp; Are yet far, far less rare than
+                    love."<br /></td>
+                </tr>
+            </tbody>
+        </table>
+
+        <p>I go further and believe it rarer even than Genius. Indeed, the
+        capacity to love, is a specialised form of genius. You understand
+        that I am not commending it. Its possessors are often disreputable
+        and almost always unhappy. Their recompense is that they, and they
+        only, have seen the splendours of the passion, and vibrated to the
+        shaking inner music of the sheep-boy's pipe.</p>
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII.,
+February 1893, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893
+       An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: May 1, 2004 [EBook #12223]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IDLER, NO. 13 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+THE IDLER MAGAZINE.
+AN ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY.
+
+EDITED BY JEROME K. JEROME & ROBERT BARR.
+
+
+VOL. III. FEBRUARY TO JULY, 1893.
+
+XIII. FEB. 1893.
+
+
+LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS, 214, PICCADILLY. 1893.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHEATING THE GALLOWS.
+    BY I. ZANGWILL.
+
+MY FIRST NOVEL.--THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT.
+    BY MISS M. E. BRADDON.
+
+NOVEL NOTES.
+    BY JEROME K. JEROME.
+
+THE SKATER.
+    BY WILLIAM CANTON.
+
+MY SERVANT ANDREAS.
+    BY ARCHIBALD FORBES.
+
+TOLD BY THE COLONEL.--
+    X. A MATRIMONIAL ROMANCE.
+    BY W. L. ALDEN.
+
+"LIONS IN THEIR DENS."--
+    II. GEORGE GROSSMITH AND THE HUMOUR OF HIM.
+    BY RAYMOND BLATHWAYT.
+
+A BLIND BEGGARMAN.
+    BY FRANK MATHEW.
+
+CHURCH AND STAGE.--A REVIEW OF HENRY IRVING.
+    BY THE REV. DR. JOSEPH PARKER.
+
+THAT BEAST BEAUTY.
+    BY KIRBY HARE.
+
+PEOPLE I HAVE NEVER MET.--MRS. HUMPHRY WARD.
+    BY SCOTT RANKIN.
+
+THE IDLERS CLUB
+    Is Love a Practical Reality or a Pleasing Fiction?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+CHEATING THE GALLOWS.
+
+BY I. ZANGWILL.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEO. HUTCHINSON.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+CURIOUS COUPLE.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE CORPSE WASHED UP BY THE RIVER.]
+
+They say that a union of opposites makes the happiest marriage, and
+perhaps it is on the same principle that men who chum are always so
+oddly assorted. You shall find a man of letters sharing diggings with an
+auctioneer, and a medical student pigging with a stockbroker's clerk.
+Perhaps each thus escapes the temptation to talk "shop" in his hours of
+leisure, while he supplements his own experiences of life by his
+companion's.
+
+[Illustration: TOM PETERS.]
+[Illustration: EVERARD G. ROXDAL.]
+
+There could not be an odder couple than Tom Peters and Everard G.
+Roxdal--the contrast began with their names, and ran through the entire
+chapter. They had a bedroom and a sitting-room in common, but it would
+not be easy to find what else. To his landlady, worthy Mrs. Seacon, Tom
+Peters's profession was a little vague, but everybody knew that Roxdal
+was the manager of the City and Suburban Bank, and it puzzled her to
+think why a bank manager should live with such a seedy-looking person,
+who smoked clay pipes and sipped whiskey and water all the evening when
+he was at home. For Roxdal was as spruce and erect as his fellow-lodger
+was round-shouldered and shabby; he never smoked, and he confined
+himself to a small glass of claret at dinner.
+
+It is possible to live with a man and see very little of him. Where each
+of the partners lives his own life in his own way, with his own circle
+of friends and external amusements, days may go by without the men
+having five minutes together. Perhaps this explains why these
+partnerships jog along so much more peaceably than marriages, where the
+chain is drawn so much tighter, and galls the partners rather than links
+them. Diverse, however, as were the hours and habits of the chums, they
+often breakfasted together, and they agreed in one thing--they never
+stayed out at night. For the rest Peters sought his diversions in the
+company of journalists, and frequented debating rooms, where he
+propounded the most iconoclastic views; while Roxdal had highly
+respectable houses open to him in the suburbs, and was, in fact, engaged
+to be married to Clara Newell, the charming daughter of a retired corn
+merchant, a widower with no other child.
+
+[Illustration: ASKED TWENTY-FIVE PER CENT. MORE.]
+
+Clara naturally took up a good deal of Roxdal's time, and he often
+dressed to go to the play with her, while Peters stayed at home in a
+faded dressing-gown and loose slippers. Mrs. Seacon liked to see
+gentlemen about the house in evening dress, and made comparisons not
+favourable to Peters. And this in spite of the fact that he gave her
+infinitely less trouble than the younger man. It was Peters who first
+took the apartments, and it was characteristic of his easy-going
+temperament that he was so openly and na�vely delighted with the view of
+the Thames obtainable from the bedroom window, that Mrs. Seacon was
+emboldened to ask twenty-five per cent. more than she had intended. She
+soon returned to her normal terms, however, when his friend Roxdal
+called the next day to inspect the rooms, and overwhelmed her with a
+demonstration of their numerous shortcomings. He pointed out that their
+being on the ground floor was not an advantage, but a disadvantage,
+since they were nearer the noises of the street--in fact, the house
+being a corner one, the noises of two streets. Roxdal continued to
+exhibit the same finicking temperament in the petty details of the
+_m�nage_. His shirt fronts were never sufficiently starched, nor his
+boots sufficiently polished. Tom Peters, having no regard for rigid
+linen, was always good-tempered and satisfied, and never acquired the
+respect of his landlady. He wore blue check shirts and loose ties even
+on Sundays. It is true he did not go to church, but slept on till Roxdal
+returned from morning service, and even then it was difficult to get him
+out of bed, or to make him hurry up his toilette operations. Often the
+mid-day meal would be smoking on the table while Peters would smoke in
+the bed, and Roxdal, with his head thrust through the folding doors that
+separated the bedroom from the sitting-room, would be adjuring the
+sluggard to arise and shake off his slumbers, and threatening to sit
+down without him, lest the dinner be spoilt. In revenge, Tom was usually
+up first on week-days, sometimes at such unearthly hours that Polly had
+not yet removed the boots from outside the bedroom door, and would bawl
+down to the kitchen for his shaving water. For Tom, lazy and indolent as
+he was, shaved with the unfailing regularity of a man to whom shaving
+has become an instinct. If he had not kept fairly regular hours, Mrs.
+Seacon would have set him down as an actor, so clean shaven was he.
+Roxdal did not shave. He wore a full beard, and, being a fine figure of
+a man to boot, no uneasy investor could look upon him without being
+reassured as to the stability of the bank he managed so successfully.
+And thus the two men lived in an economical comradeship, all the firmer,
+perhaps, for their mutual incongruities.
+
+[Illustration: FOR HIS SHAVING WATER.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+A WOMAN'S INSTINCT.
+
+
+[Illustration: "TOM SHAMBLED FROM THE SITTING-ROOM."]
+
+It was on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of October, ten days after
+Roxdal had settled in his new rooms, that Clara Newell paid her first
+visit to him there. She enjoyed a good deal of liberty, and did not mind
+accepting his invitation to tea. The corn merchant, himself
+indifferently educated, had an exaggerated sense of the value of
+culture, and so Clara, who had artistic tastes without much actual
+talent, had gone in for painting, and might be seen, in pretty
+toilettes, copying pictures in the Museum. At one time it looked as if
+she might be reduced to working seriously at her art, for Satan, who
+finds mischief still for idle hands to do, had persuaded her father to
+embark the fruits of years of toil in bubble companies. However, things
+turned out not so bad as they might have been, a little was saved from
+the wreck, and the appearance of a suitor, in the person of Everard G.
+Roxdal, ensured her a future of competence, if not of the luxury she had
+been entitled to expect. She had a good deal of affection for Everard,
+who was unmistakably a clever man, as well as a good-looking one. The
+prospect seemed fair and cloudless. Nothing presaged the terrible storm
+that was about to break over these two lives. Nothing had ever for a
+moment come to vex their mutual contentment, till this Sunday afternoon.
+The October sky, blue and sunny, with an Indian summer sultriness,
+seemed an exact image of her life, with its aftermath of a happiness
+that had once seemed blighted.
+
+Everard had always been so attentive, so solicitous, that she was as
+much surprised as chagrined to find that he had apparently forgotten the
+appointment. Hearing her astonished interrogation of Polly in the
+passage, Tom shambled from the sitting-room in his loose slippers and
+his blue check shirt, with his eternal clay pipe in his mouth, and
+informed her that Roxdal had gone out suddenly earlier in the afternoon.
+
+"G-g-one out," stammered poor Clara; all confused. "But he asked me to
+come to tea."
+
+"Oh, you're Miss Newell, I suppose," said Tom.
+
+"Yes, I am Miss Newell."
+
+"He has told me a great deal about you, but I wasn't able honestly to
+congratulate him on his choice till now."
+
+Clara blushed uneasily under the compliment, and under the ardour of his
+admiring gaze. Instinctively she distrusted the man. The very first
+tones of his deep bass voice gave her a peculiar shudder. And then his
+impoliteness in smoking that vile clay was so gratuitous.
+
+"Oh, then you must be Mr. Peters," she said in return. "He has often
+spoken to me of you."
+
+"Ah!" said Tom, laughingly, "I suppose he's told you all my vices. That
+accounts for your not being surprised at my Sunday attire."
+
+She smiled a little, showing a row of pearly teeth. "Everard ascribes to
+you all the virtues," she said.
+
+"Now that's what I call a friend!" he cried, ecstatically. "But won't
+you come in? He must be back in a moment. He surely would not break an
+appointment with _you_." The admiration latent in the accentuation of
+the last pronoun was almost offensive.
+
+She shook her head. She had a just grievance against Everard, and would
+punish him by going away indignantly.
+
+"Do let _me_ give you a cup of tea," Tom pleaded. "You must be awfully
+thirsty this sultry weather. There! I will make a bargain with you! If
+you will come in now, I promise to clear out the moment Everard returns,
+and not spoil your _t�te-�-t�te_." But Clara was obstinate; she did not
+at all relish this man's society, and besides, she was not going to
+throw away her grievance against Everard. "I know Everard will slang me
+dreadfully when he comes in if I let you go," Tom urged. "Tell me at
+least where he can find you."
+
+"I am going to take the 'bus at Charing Cross, and I'm going straight
+home," Clara announced determinedly. She put up her parasol in a pet,
+and went up the street into the Strand. A cold shadow seemed to have
+fallen over all things. But just as she was getting into the 'bus, a
+hansom dashed down Trafalgar Square, and a well-known voice hailed her.
+The hansom stopped, and Everard got out and held out his hand.
+
+"I'm so glad you're a bit late," he said. "I was called out
+unexpectedly, and have been trying to rush back in time. You wouldn't
+have found me if you had been punctual. But I thought," he added,
+laughing, "I could rely on you as a woman."
+
+"I _was_ punctual," Clara said angrily. "I was not getting out of this
+'bus, as you seem to imagine, but into it, and was going home."
+
+"My darling!" he cried remorsefully. "A thousand apologies." The regret
+on his handsome face soothed her. He took the rose he was wearing in the
+button-hole of his fashionably-cut coat and gave it to her.
+
+"Why were you so cruel?" he murmured, as she nestled against him in the
+hansom. "Think of my despair if I had come home to hear you had come and
+gone. Why didn't you wait a moment?"
+
+[Illustration: "SHE NESTLED AGAINST HIM."]
+
+A shudder traversed her frame. "Not with that man, Peters!" she
+murmured.
+
+"Not with that man, Peters!" he echoed sharply. "What is the matter with
+Peters?"
+
+"I don't know," she said. "I don't like him."
+
+"Clara," he said, half sternly, half cajolingly, "I thought you were
+above these feminine weaknesses; you are punctual, strive also to be
+reasonable. Tom is my best friend. From boyhood we have been always
+together. There is nothing Tom would not do for me, or I for Tom. You
+must like him, Clara; you must, if only for my sake."
+
+"I'll try," Clara promised, and then he kissed her in gratitude and
+broad daylight.
+
+"You'll be very nice to him at tea, won't you?" he said anxiously. "I
+shouldn't like you two to be bad friends."
+
+"I don't want to be bad friends," Clara protested; "only the moment I
+saw him a strange repulsion and mistrust came over me."
+
+"You are quite wrong about him--quite wrong," he assured her earnestly.
+"When you know him better, you'll find him the best of fellows. Oh, I
+know," he said suddenly, "I suppose he was very untidy, and you women go
+so much by appearances!"
+
+"Not at all," Clara retorted. "'Tis you men who go by appearances."
+
+"Yes, you do. That's why you care for me," he said, smiling.
+
+She assured him it wasn't, and she didn't care for him so much as he
+plumed himself, but he smiled on. His smile died away, however, when he
+entered his rooms and found Tom nowhere.
+
+"I daresay you've made him run about hunting for me," he grumbled.
+
+"Perhaps he knew I'd come back, and went away to leave us together," she
+answered. "He said he would when you came."
+
+"And yet you say you don't like him!"
+
+She smiled reassuringly. Inwardly, however, she felt pleased at the
+man's absence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+POLLY RECEIVES A PROPOSAL.
+
+
+[Illustration: "CARRYING ON WITH POLLY."]
+
+If Clara Newell could have seen Tom Peters carrying on with Polly in the
+passage, she might have felt justified in her prejudice against him. It
+must be confessed, though, that Everard also carried on with Polly.
+Alas! it is to be feared that men are much of a muchness where women are
+concerned; shabby men and smart men, bank managers and journalists,
+bachelors and semi-detached bachelors. Perhaps it was a mistake after
+all to say the chums had nothing patently in common. Everard, I am
+afraid, kissed Polly rather more often than Clara, and although it was
+because he respected her less, the reason would perhaps not have been
+sufficiently consoling to his affianced wife. For Polly was pretty,
+especially on alternate Sunday afternoons, and when at ten p.m. she
+returned from her outings, she was generally met in the passage by one
+or other of the men. Polly liked to receive the homage of real
+gentlemen, and set her white cap at all indifferently. Thus, just before
+Clara knocked on that memorable Sunday afternoon, Polly, being confined
+to the house by the unwritten code regulating the lives of servants, was
+amusing herself by flirting with Peters.
+
+"You _are_ fond of me a little bit," the graceless Tom whispered,
+"aren't you?"
+
+"You know I am, sir," Polly replied.
+
+"You don't care for anyone else in the house?"
+
+"Oh no, sir, and never let anyone kiss me but you. I wonder how it is,
+sir?" Polly replied ingenuously.
+
+"Give me another," Tom answered.
+
+She gave him another, and tripped to the door to answer Clara's knock.
+
+[Illustration: POLLY AND ROXDAL.]
+
+And that very evening, when Clara was gone and Tom still out, Polly
+turned without the faintest atom of scrupulosity, or even jealousy, to
+the more fascinating Roxdal, and accepted his amorous advances. If it
+would seem at first sight that Everard had less excuse for such
+frivolity than his friend, perhaps the seriousness he showed in this
+interview may throw a different light upon the complex character of
+the man.
+
+"You're quite sure you don't care for anyone but me?" he asked
+earnestly.
+
+"Of course not, sir!" Polly replied indignantly. "How could I?"
+
+"But you care for that soldier I saw you out with last Sunday?"
+
+"Oh no, sir, he's only my young man," she said apologetically.
+
+"Would you give him up?" he hissed suddenly.
+
+Polly's pretty face took a look of terror. "I couldn't, sir! He'd kill
+me. He's such a jealous brute, you've no idea."
+
+"Yes, but suppose I took you away from here?" he whispered eagerly.
+"Somewhere where he couldn't find you--South America, Africa, somewhere
+thousands of miles across the seas."
+
+"Oh, sir, you frighten me!" whispered Polly, cowering before his ardent
+eyes, which shone in the dimly-lit passage.
+
+"Would you come with me?" he hissed. She did not answer; she shook
+herself free and ran into the kitchen, trembling with a vague fear.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE CRASH.
+
+
+One morning, earlier than his earliest hour of demanding his shaving
+water, Tom rang the bell violently and asked the alarmed Polly what had
+become of Mr. Roxdal.
+
+"How should I know, sir?" she gasped. "Ain't he been in, sir?"
+
+"Apparently not," Tom answered anxiously. "He never remains out. We have
+been here three weeks now, and I can't recall a single night he hasn't
+been home before twelve. I can't make it out." All enquiries proved
+futile. Mrs. Seacon reminded him of the thick fog that had come on
+suddenly the night before.
+
+"What fog?" asked Tom.
+
+"Lord! didn't you notice it, sir?"
+
+"No, I came in early, smoked, read, and went to bed about eleven. I
+never thought of looking out of the window."
+
+"It began about ten," said Mrs. Seacon, "and got thicker and thicker. I
+couldn't see the lights of the river from my bedroom. The poor gentleman
+has been and gone and walked into the water." She began to whimper.
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense," said Tom, though his expression belied his words.
+"At the worst I should think he couldn't find his way home, and couldn't
+get a cab, so put up for the night at some hotel. I daresay it will be
+all right." He began to whistle as if in restored cheerfulness. At eight
+o'clock there came a letter for Roxdal, marked "immediate," but as he
+did not turn up for breakfast, Tom went round personally to the City and
+Suburban Bank. He waited half-an-hour there, but the manager did not
+make his appearance. Then he left the letter with the cashier and went
+away with anxious countenance.
+
+That afternoon it was all over London that the manager of the City and
+Suburban had disappeared, and that many thousand pounds of gold and
+notes had disappeared with him.
+
+[Illustration: "SCOTLAND YARD OPENED THE LETTER."]
+
+Scotland Yard opened the letter marked "immediate," and noted that there
+had been a delay in its delivery, for the address had been obscure, and
+an official alteration had been made. It was written in a feminine hand
+and said: "On second thoughts I cannot accompany you. Do not try to see
+me again. Forget me. I shall never forget you."
+
+There was no signature.
+
+Clara Newell, distracted, disclaimed all knowledge of this letter. Polly
+deposed that the fugitive had proposed flight to her, and the routes to
+Africa and South America were especially watched. Some months passed
+without result. Tom Peters went about overwhelmed with grief and
+astonishment. The police took possession of all the missing man's
+effects. Gradually the hue and cry dwindled, died.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+FAITH AND UNFAITH.
+
+
+"At last we meet!" cried Tom Peters, while his face lit up in joy. "How
+_are_ you, dear Miss Newell?" Clara greeted him coldly. Her face had an
+abiding pallor now. Her lover's flight and shame had prostrated her for
+weeks. Her soul was the arena of contending instincts. Alone of all the
+world she still believed in Everard's innocence, felt that there was
+something more than met the eye, divined some devilish mystery behind it
+all. And yet that damning letter from the anonymous lady shook her
+sadly. Then, too, there was the deposition of Polly. When she heard
+Peters's voice accosting her all her old repugnance resurged. It flashed
+upon her that this man--Roxdal's boon companion--must know far more than
+he had told to the police. She remembered how Everard had spoken of him,
+with what affection and confidence! Was it likely he was utterly
+ignorant of Everard's movements? Mastering her repugnance, she held out
+her hand. It might be well to keep in touch with him; he was possibly
+the clue to the mystery. She noticed he was dressed a shade more trimly,
+and was smoking a meerschaum. He walked along at her side, making no
+offer to put his pipe out.
+
+"You have not heard from Everard?" he asked. She flushed. "Do you think
+I'm an accessory after the fact?" she cried.
+
+"No, no," he said soothingly. "Pardon me, I was thinking he might have
+written--giving no exact address, of course. Men do sometimes dare to
+write thus to women. But, of course, he knows you too well--you would
+have put the police on his track."
+
+"Certainly," she exclaimed, indignantly. "Even if he is innocent he must
+face the charge."
+
+"Do you still entertain the possibility of his innocence?"
+
+"I do," she said boldly, and looked him full in the face. His eyelids
+drooped with a quiver. "Don't you?"
+
+"I have hoped against hope," he replied, in a voice faltering with
+emotion. "Poor old Everard! But I am afraid there is no room for doubt.
+Oh, this wicked curse of money--tempting the noblest and the best
+of us."
+
+[Illustration: "SHE DID NOT REPULSE HIM."]
+
+The weeks rolled on. Gradually she found herself seeing more and more of
+Tom Peters, and gradually, strange to say, he grew less repulsive. From
+the talks they had together, she began to see that there was really no
+reason to put faith in Everard; his criminality, his faithlessness, were
+too flagrant. Gradually she grew ashamed of her early mistrust of
+Peters; remorse bred esteem, and esteem ultimately ripened into feelings
+so warm, that when Tom gave freer vent to the love that had been visible
+to Clara from the first, she did not repulse him.
+
+It is only in books that love lives for ever. Clara, so her father
+thought, showed herself a sensible girl in plucking out an unworthy
+affection and casting it from her heart. He invited the new lover to his
+house, and took to him at once. Roxdal's somewhat supercilious manner
+had always jarred upon the unsophisticated corn merchant. With Tom the
+old man got on much better. While evidently quite as well informed and
+cultured as his whilom friend, Tom knew how to impart his superior
+knowledge with the accent on the knowledge rather than on the
+superiority, while he had the air of gaining much information in return.
+Those who are most conscious of defects of early education are most
+resentful of other people sharing their consciousness Moreover, Tom's
+_bonhomie_ was far more to the old fellow's liking than the studied
+politeness of his predecessor, so that on the whole Tom made more of a
+conquest of the father than of the daughter. Nevertheless, Clara was by
+no means unresponsive to Tom's affection, and when, after one of his
+visits to the house, the old man kissed her fondly and spoke of the
+happy turn things had taken, and how, for the second time in their
+lives, things had mended when they seemed at their blackest, her heart
+swelled with a gush of gratitude and joy and tenderness, and she fell
+sobbing into her father's arms.
+
+[Illustration: "WITH TOM THE OLD MAN GOT ON MUCH BETTER."]
+
+Tom calculated that he made a clear five hundred a year by occasional
+journalism, besides possessing some profitable investments which he had
+inherited from his mother, so that there was no reason for delaying the
+marriage. It was fixed for May-day, and the honeymoon was to be spent
+in Italy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE DREAM AND THE AWAKENING
+
+
+But Clara was not destined to happiness. From the moment she had
+promised herself to her first love's friend old memories began to rise
+up and reproach her. Strange thoughts stirred in the depths of her soul,
+and in the silent watches of the night she seemed to hear Everard's
+accents, charged with grief and upbraiding. Her uneasiness increased as
+her wedding-day drew near. One night, after a pleasant afternoon spent
+in being rowed by Tom among the upper reaches of the Thames, she retired
+to rest full of vague forebodings. And she dreamt a terrible dream. The
+dripping form of Everard stood by her bedside, staring at her with
+ghastly eyes. Had he been drowned on the passage to his land of exile?
+Frozen with horror, she put the question.
+
+"I have never left England!" the vision answered.
+
+Her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth.
+
+"Never left England?" she repeated, in tones which did not seem to be
+hers.
+
+The wraith's stony eyes stared on, but there was silence.
+
+"Where have you been then?" she asked in her dream.
+
+"Very near you," came the answer.
+
+"There has been foul play then!" she shrieked.
+
+The phantom shook its head in doleful assent.
+
+"I knew it!" she shrieked. "Tom Peters--Tom Peters has done away with
+you. Is it not he? Speak!"
+
+"Yes, it is he--Tom Peters--whom I loved more than all the world."
+
+Even in the terrible oppression of the dream she could not resist
+saying, woman-like:
+
+"Did I not warn you against him?"
+
+The phantom stared on silently and made no reply.
+
+"But what was his motive?" she asked at length.
+
+"Love of gold--and you. And you are giving yourself to him," it said
+sternly.
+
+"No, no, Everard! I will not! I will not! I swear it! Forgive me!"
+
+The spirit shook its head sceptically.
+
+"You love him. Women are false--as false as men."
+
+She strove to protest again, but her tongue refused its office.
+
+"If you marry him, I shall always be with you! Beware!"
+
+The dripping figure vanished as suddenly as it came, and Clara awoke in
+a cold perspiration. Oh, it was horrible! The man she had learnt to
+love, the murderer of the man she had learnt to forget! How her original
+prejudice had been justified! Distracted, shaken to her depths, she
+would not take counsel even of her father, but informed the police of
+her suspicions. A raid was made on Tom's rooms, and lo! the stolen notes
+were discovered in a huge bundle. It was found that he had several
+banking accounts, with a large, recently-paid amount in each bank. Tom
+was arrested. Attention was now concentrated on the corpses washed up by
+the river. It was not long before the body of Roxdal came to shore, the
+face distorted almost beyond recognition by long immersion, but the
+clothes patently his, and a pocket-book in the breast-pocket removing
+the last doubt. Mrs. Seacon and Polly and Clara Newell all identified
+the body. Both juries returned a verdict of murder against Tom Peters,
+the recital of Clara's dream producing a unique impression in the court
+and throughout the country. The theory of the prosecution was that
+Roxdal had brought home the money, whether to fly alone or to divide it,
+or whether even for some innocent purpose, as Clara believed, was
+immaterial. That Peters determined to have it all, that he had gone out
+for a walk with the deceased, and, taking advantage of the fog, had
+pushed him into the river, and that he was further impelled to the crime
+by love for Clara Newell, as was evident from his subsequent relations
+with her. The judge put on the black cap. Tom Peters was duly hung by
+the neck till he was dead.
+
+[Illustration: "IDENTIFIED THE BODY."]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+BRIEF R�SUM� OF THE CULPRIT'S CONFESSION.
+
+
+When you all read this I shall be dead and laughing at you. I have been
+hung for my own murder. I am Everard G. Roxdal. I am also Tom Peters. We
+two were one. When I was a young man my moustache and beard wouldn't
+come. I bought false ones to improve my appearance. One day, after I had
+become manager of the City and Suburban Bank, I took off my beard and
+moustache at home, and then the thought crossed my mind that nobody
+would know me without them. I was another man. Instantly it flashed upon
+me that if I ran away from the Bank, that other man could be left in
+London, while the police were scouring the world for a non-existent
+fugitive. But this was only the crude germ of the idea. Slowly I matured
+my plan. The man who was going to be left in London must be known to a
+circle of acquaintance beforehand. It would be easy enough to masquerade
+in the evenings in my beardless condition, with other disguises of dress
+and voice. But this was not brilliant enough. I conceived the idea of
+living with him. It was Box and Cox reversed. We shared rooms at Mrs.
+Seacon's. It was a great strain, but it was only for a few weeks. I had
+trick clothes in my bedroom like those of quick-change artistes; in a
+moment I could pass from Roxdal to Peters and from Peters to Roxdal.
+Polly had to clean two pairs of boots a morning, cook two dinners, &c.,
+&c. She and Mrs. Seacon saw one or the other of us every moment; it
+never dawned upon them they never saw us _both together_. At meals I
+would not be interrupted, ate off two plates, and conversed with my
+friend in loud tones. At other times we dined at different hours. On
+Sundays he was supposed to be asleep when I was in church. There is no
+landlady in the world to whom the idea would have occurred that one man
+was troubling himself to be two (and to pay for two, including washing).
+I worked up the idea of Roxdal's flight, asked Polly to go with me,
+manufactured that feminine letter that arrived on the morning of my
+disappearance. As Tom Peters I mixed with a journalistic set. I had
+another room where I kept the gold and notes till I mistakenly thought
+the thing had blown over. Unfortunately, returning from here on the
+night of my disappearance, with Roxdal's clothes in a bundle I intended
+to drop into the river, it was stolen from me in the fog, and the man
+into whose possession it ultimately came appears to have committed
+suicide. What, perhaps, ruined me was my desire to keep Clara's love,
+and to transfer it to the survivor. Everard told her I was the best of
+fellows. Once married to her, I would not have had much fear. Even if
+she had discovered the trick, a wife cannot give evidence against her
+husband, and often does not want to. I made none of the usual slips, but
+no man can guard against a girl's nightmare after a day up the river and
+a supper at the Star and Garter. I might have told the judge he was an
+ass, but then I should have had penal servitude for bank robbery, and
+that is worse than death. The only thing that puzzles me, though, is
+whether the law has committed murder or I suicide.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+My First Novel.
+
+THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT.
+
+BY MISS M. E. BRADDON.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY MISS F. L. FULLER.
+
+
+My first novel! Far back in the distinctness of childish memories I see
+a little girl who has lately learnt to write, who has lately been given
+a beautiful brand new mahogany desk, with a red velvet slope, and a
+glass ink bottle, such a desk as might now be bought for three and
+sixpence, but which in the forties cost at least half-a-guinea. Very
+proud is the little girl, with the Kenwigs pigtails, and the Kenwigs
+frills, of that mahogany desk, and its infinite capacities for literary
+labour, above all, gem of gems, its stick of variegated sealing-wax,
+brown, speckled with gold, and its little glass seal with an intaglio
+representing two doves--Pliny's doves perhaps, famous in mosaic, only
+the little girl had never heard of Pliny, or his Laurentine Villa.
+
+[Illustration: LICHFIELD HOUSE, RICHMOND.]
+
+Armed with that desk and its supply of stationery, Mary Elizabeth
+Braddon--very fond of writing her name at full-length, and her address
+also at full-length, though the word "Middlesex" offered
+difficulties--began that pilgrimage on the broad high road of fiction,
+which was destined to be a longish one. So much for the little girl of
+eight years old, in the third person, and now to become strictly
+autobiographical.
+
+My first story was based on those fairy tales which first opened to me
+the world of imaginative literature. My first attempt in fiction, and in
+round-hand, on carefully pencilled double lines, was a story of two
+sisters, a good sister and a wicked, and I fear adhered more faithfully
+to the lines of the archetypal story than the writer's pen kept to the
+double fence which should have ensured neatness.
+
+[Illustration: THE HALL.]
+
+The interval between the ages of eight and twelve was a prolific period,
+fertile in unfinished MSS., among which I can now trace a historical
+novel on the Siege of Calais--an Eastern story, suggested by a
+passionate love of Miss Pardoe's Turkish tales, and Byron's "Bride of
+Abydos," which my mother, a devoted Byron worshipper, allowed me to read
+aloud to her--and doubtless murder in the reading--a story of the Hartz
+Mountains, with audacious flights in German diablerie; and lastly, very
+seriously undertaken, and very perseveringly worked upon, a domestic
+story, the outline of which was suggested by the same dear and
+sympathetic mother.
+
+Now it is a curious fact, which may or may not be common to other
+story-spinners, that I have never been able to take kindly to a plot--or
+the suggestion of a plot--offered to me by anybody else. The moment a
+friend tells me that he or she is desirous of imparting a series of
+facts--strictly true--as if truth in fiction mattered one jot!--which in
+his or her opinion would make the ground plan of an admirable,
+startling, and altogether original three-volume novel, I know in advance
+that my imagination will never grapple with those startling
+circumstances--that my thoughts will begin to wander before my friend
+has got half through the remarkable chain of events, and that if the
+obliging purveyor of romantic incidents were to examine me at the end of
+the story, I should be spun ignominiously. For the most part, such
+subjects as have been proposed to me by friends have been hopelessly
+unfit for the circulating library; or, where not immoral, have been
+utterly dull; but it is, I believe, a fixed idea in the novel-reader's
+mind that any combination of events out of the beaten way of life will
+make an admirable subject for the novelist's art.
+
+[Illustration: THE STAIRCASE.]
+
+My dear mother, taking into consideration my tender years, and perhaps
+influenced in somewise by her own love of picking up odd bits of
+Sheraton or Chippendale furniture in the storehouses of the less
+ambitious second-hand dealers of those simpler days, offered me the
+following _scenario_ for a domestic story. It was an incident which, I
+doubt not, she had often read at the tail of a newspaper column, and
+which certainly savours of the gigantic gooseberry, the sea-serpent, and
+the agricultural labourer who unexpectedly inherits half-a-million. It
+was eminently a Simple Story, and far more worthy of that title than
+Mrs. Inchbald's long and involved romance.
+
+An honest couple, in humble circumstances, possess among their small
+household gear a good old easy chair, which has been the pride of a
+former generation, and is the choicest of their household gods. A
+comfortable cushioned chair, snug and restful, albeit the chintz
+covering, though clean and tidy, as virtuous people's furniture always
+is in fiction, is worn thin by long service, while the dear chair itself
+is no longer the chair it once was as to legs and framework.
+
+Evil days come upon the praiseworthy couple and their dependent brood,
+among whom I faintly remember the love interest of the story to have
+lain; and that direful day arrives when the average landlord of juvenile
+fiction, whose heart is of adamant and brain of brass, distrains for the
+rent. The rude broker swoops upon the humble dovecot; a cart or
+hand-barrow waits on the carefully hearth-stoned door-step for the
+household gods; the family gather round the cherished chair, on which
+the rude broker has already laid his grimy fingers; they hang over the
+back and fondle the padded arms; and the old grandmother, with clasped
+hands, entreats that, if able to raise the money in a few days, they may
+be allowed to buy back that loved heirloom.
+
+[Illustration: THE DINING ROOM.]
+
+The broker laughs the plea to scorn; they might have their chair, and
+cheap enough, he had no doubt. The cover was darned and patched--as only
+the virtuous poor of fiction do darn and do patch--and he made no doubt
+the stuffing was nothing better than brown wool; and with that coarse
+taunt the coarser broker dug his clasp-knife into the cushion against
+which grandfatherly backs had leaned in happier days, and lo! an
+avalanche of banknotes fell out of the much-maligned horse-hair, and the
+family was lifted from penury to wealth. Nothing more simple--or more
+natural. A prudent but eccentric ancestor had chosen this mode of
+putting by his savings, assured that, whenever discovered, the money
+would be useful to--somebody.
+
+So ran the _scenario_: but I fancy my juvenile pen hardly held on to the
+climax. My brief experience of boarding school occurred at this time,
+and I well remember writing "The Old Arm Chair" in a penny account book,
+in the schoolroom of Cresswell Lodge, and that I was both surprised and
+offended at the laughter of the kindly music-teacher who, coming into
+the room to summon a pupil, and seeing me gravely occupied, enquired
+what I was doing, and was intensely amused at my stolid method of
+composition, plodding on undisturbed by the voices and occupations of
+the older girls around me. "The Old Arm Chair" was certainly my first
+serious, painstaking effort in fiction; but as it was abandoned
+unfinished before my eleventh birthday, and as no line thereof ever
+achieved the distinction of type, it can hardly rank as my first novel.
+
+[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM.]
+
+There came a very few years later the sentimental period, in which my
+unfinished novels assumed a more ambitious form, and were modelled
+chiefly upon Jane Eyre, with occasional tentative imitations of
+Thackeray. Stories of gentle hearts that loved in vain, always ending in
+renunciation. One romance there was, I well remember, begun with
+resolute purpose, after the first reading of Esmond, and in the
+endeavour to give life and local colour to a story of the Restoration
+period, a brilliantly wicked interval in the social history of England,
+which, after the lapse of thirty years, I am still as bent upon taking
+for the background of a love story as I was when I began "Master
+Anthony's Record" in Esmondese, and made my girlish acquaintance with
+the Reading-room of the British Museum, where I went in quest of local
+colour, and where much kindness was shown to my youth and inexperience
+of the book world. Poring over a folio edition of the State Trials at my
+uncle's quiet rectory in sleepy Sandwich, I had discovered the
+passionate romantic story of Lord Grey's elopement with his
+sister-in-law, next in sequence to the trial of Lawrence Braddon and
+Hugh Speke for conspiracy. At the risk of seeming disloyal to my own
+race, I must add that it seemed to me a very tinpot order of plot to
+which these two learned gentlemen bent their legal minds, and which cost
+the Braddon family a heavy fine in land near Camelford--confiscation
+which I have heard my father complain of as especially unfair--Lawrence
+being a younger son. The romantic story of Lord Grey was to be the
+subject of "Master Anthony's Record," but Master Anthony's sentimental
+autobiography went the way of all my earlier efforts. It was but a year
+or so after the collapse of Master Anthony, that a blindly-enterprising
+printer of Beverley, who had seen my poor little verses in the _Beverley
+Recorder_, made me the spirited offer of ten pounds for a serial story,
+to be set up and printed at Beverley, and published on commission by a
+London firm in Warwick Lane. I cannot picture to myself, in my
+after-knowledge of the bookselling trade, any enterprise more futile in
+its inception or more feeble in its execution; but to my youthful
+ambition the actual commission to write a novel, with an advance payment
+of fifty shillings to show good faith on the part of my Yorkshire
+speculator, seemed like the opening of that pen-and-ink paradise which I
+had sighed for ever since I could hold a pen. I had, previously to this
+date, found a M�cenas in Beverley, in the person of a learned gentleman
+who volunteered to foster my love of the Muses by buying the copyright
+of a volume of poems and publishing the same at his own expense--which
+he did, poor man, without stint, and by which noble patronage of Poet's
+Corner verse, he must have lost money. He had, however, the privilege of
+dictating the subject of the principal poem, which was to sing--however
+feebly--Garibaldi's Sicilian campaign.
+
+[Illustration: THE EVENING ROOM.]
+
+The Beverley printer suggested that my Warwick Lane serial should
+combine, as far as my powers allowed, the human interest and genial
+humour of Dickens with the plot-weaving of G. W. R. Reynolds; and,
+furnished with these broad instructions, I filled my ink bottle, spread
+out my foolscap, and, on a hopelessly wet afternoon, began my first
+novel--now known as "The Trail of the Serpent"--but published in Warwick
+Lane, and later in the stirring High Street of Beverley, as "Three Times
+Dead." In "Three Times Dead" I gave loose to all my leanings to the
+violent in melodrama. Death stalked in ghastliest form across my pages;
+and villainy reigned triumphant till the Nemesis of the last chapter. I
+wrote with all the freedom of one who feared not the face of a critic;
+and, indeed, thanks to the obscurity of its original production, and its
+re-issue as the ordinary two-shilling railway novel, this first novel of
+mine has almost entirely escaped the critical lash, and has pursued its
+way as a chartered libertine. People buy it and read it, and its faults
+and follies are forgiven as the exuberances of a pen unchastened by
+experience; but faster and more facile at that initial stage than it
+ever became after long practice.
+
+[Illustration: THE SMOKING-ROOM.]
+
+I dashed headlong at my work, conjured up my images of horror or of
+mirth, and boldly built the framework of my story, and set my puppets
+moving. To me, at least, they were living creatures, who seemed to
+follow impulses of their own, to be impelled by their own passions, to
+love and hate, and plot and scheme of their own accord. There was
+unalloyed pleasure in the composition of that first story, and the
+knowledge that it was to be actually printed and published, and not to
+be declined with thanks by adamantine magazine editors, like a certain
+short story which I had lately written, and which contained the germ of
+"Lady Audley's Secret." Indeed, at this period of my life, the postman's
+knock had become associated in my mind with the sharp sound of a
+rejected MS. dropping through the open letter-box on to the floor of the
+hall, while my heart seemed to drop in sympathy with that
+book-post packet.
+
+[Illustration: THE LIBRARY.]
+
+Short of never being printed at all, my Beverley-born novel could have
+hardly entered upon the world of books in a more profound obscurity.
+That one living creature ever bought a number of "Three Times Dead" I
+greatly doubt. I can recall the thrill of emotion with which I tore open
+the envelope that contained my complimentary copy of the first number,
+folded across, and in aspect inferior to a gratis pamphlet about a
+patent medicine. The miserable little wood block which illustrated that
+first number would have disgraced a baker's whitey-brown bag, would have
+been unworthy to illustrate a penny bun. My spirits were certainly
+dashed at the technical shortcomings of that first serial, and I was
+hardly surprised when I was informed a few weeks later, that although my
+admirers at Beverley were deeply interested in the story, it was not a
+financial success, and that it would be only obliging on my part, and in
+accordance with my known kindness of heart, if I were to restrict the
+development of the romance to half its intended length, and to accept
+five pounds in lieu of ten as my reward. Having no desire that the rash
+Beverley printer should squander his own or his children's fortune in
+the obscurity of Warwick Lane, I immediately acceded to his request,
+shortened sail, and went on with my story, perhaps with a shade less
+enthusiasm, having seen the shabby figure it was to make in the book
+world. I may add that the Beverley publisher's payments began and ended
+with his noble advance of fifty shillings. The balance was never paid;
+and it was rather hard lines that, on his becoming bankrupt in his poor
+little way a few years later, a judge in the Bankruptcy Court remarked
+that, as Miss Braddon was now making a good deal of money by her pen,
+she ought to "come to the relief" of her first publisher.
+
+[Illustration: MISS BRADDON'S FAVOURITE MARE.]
+
+And now my volume of verses being well under weigh, I went with my
+mother to farm-house lodgings in the neighbourhood of that very
+Beverley, where I spent, perhaps, the happiest half-year of my
+life--half a year of tranquil, studious days, far from the madding
+crowd, with the mother whose society was always all sufficient for
+me--half a year among level pastures, with unlimited books from the
+library in Hull, an old farm-horse to ride about the green lanes, the
+breath of summer, with all its sweet odours of flower and herb, around
+and about us: half a year of unalloyed bliss, had it not been for one
+dark shadow, the heroic figure of Garibaldi, the sailor soldier, looming
+large upon the foreground of my literary labours, as the hero of a
+lengthy narrative poem in the Spenserian metre.
+
+My chief business at Beverley was to complete the volume of verse
+commissioned by my Yorkshire M�cenas, at that time a very rich man, who
+paid me a much better price for my literary work than his townsman, the
+enterprising printer, and who had the first claim on my thought
+and time.
+
+[Illustration: THE ORANGERY.]
+
+With the business-like punctuality of a salaried clerk, I went every
+morning to my file of the _Times_, and pored and puzzled over Neapolitan
+revolution and Sicilian campaign, and I can only say that if Emile Zola
+has suffered as much over Sedan as I suffered in the freshness of my
+youth, when flowery meadows and the old chestnut mare invited to summer
+idlesse, over the fighting in Sicily, his dogged perseverance in
+uncongenial labour should place him among the Immortal Forty. How I
+hated the great Joseph G. and the Spenserian metre, with its exacting
+demands upon the rhyming faculty. How I hated my own ignorance of modern
+Italian history, and my own eyes for never having looked upon Italian
+landscape, whereby historical allusion and local colour were both
+wanting to that dry-as-dust record of heroic endeavour. I had only the
+_Times_ correspondent; where he was picturesque I could be
+picturesque--allowing always for the Spenserian straining--where he was
+rich in local colour I did my utmost to reproduce his colouring,
+stretched always on the Spenserian rack, and lengthened out by the
+bitter necessity of finding triple rhymes. Next to Guiseppe Garibaldi I
+hated Edmund Spenser, and it may be from a vengeful remembrance of those
+early struggles with a difficult form of versification, that, although
+throughout my literary life I have been a lover of England's earlier
+poet, and have delighted in the quaintness and _na�vet�_ of Chaucer, I
+have refrained from reading more than a casual stanza or two of the
+"Fa�ry Queen." When I lived at Beverley, Spenser was to me but a name,
+and Byron's "Childe Harold" was my only model for that exacting verse. I
+should add that the Beverley M�cenas, when commissioning this volume of
+verse, was less superb in his ideas than the literary patron of the
+past. He looked at the matter from a purely commercial standpoint, and
+believed that a volume of verse, such as I could produce, would pay--a
+delusion on his part which I honestly strove to combat before accepting
+his handsome offer of remuneration for my time and labour. It was with
+this idea in his mind that he chose and insisted upon the Sicilian
+Campaign as a subject for my muse, and thus started me heavily
+handicapped on the racecourse of Parnassus.
+
+[Illustration: MISS BRADDON'S COTTAGE AT LYNDHURST.]
+
+The weekly number of "Three Times Dead" was "thrown off" in brief
+intervals of rest from my _magnum opus_, and it was an infinite relief
+to turn from Garibaldi and his brothers in arms to the angels and the
+monsters which my own brain had engendered, and which to me seemed more
+alive than the good great man whose arms I so laboriously sang. My
+rustic pipe far better loved to sing of melodramatic poisoners and
+ubiquitous detectives; of fine houses in the West of London, and dark
+dens in the East. So the weekly chapter of my first novel ran merrily
+off my pen while the printer's boy waited in the farm-house kitchen.
+
+Happy, happy days, so near to memory, and yet so far. In that peaceful
+summer I finished my first novel, knocked Garibaldi on the head with a
+closing rhapsody, saw the York spring and summer races in hopelessly wet
+weather, learnt to love the Yorkshire people, and left Yorkshire almost
+broken-heartedly on a dull gray October morning, to travel Londonwards
+through a landscape that was mostly under water.
+
+And, behold, since that October morning I have written fifty-three
+novels; I have lost dear old friends and found new friends, who are also
+dear, but I have never looked on a Yorkshire landscape since I turned my
+reluctant eyes from those level meadows and green lanes where the old
+chestnut mare used to carry me ploddingly to and fro between tall,
+tangled hedges of eglantine and honeysuckle.
+
+[Illustration: MISS BRADDON'S INKSTAND.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+NOVEL NOTES.
+
+BY JEROME K. JEROME.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. G�LICH AND J. GREIG,
+
+PART X.
+
+
+[Illustration: "DISCUSSION AT OUR LAST MEETING."]
+
+The final question discussed at our last meeting had been: What shall
+our hero be? MacShaugnassy had suggested an author, with a critic for
+the villain. Brown's fancy was an artist. My idea was a stockbroker,
+with an undercurrent of romance in his nature. Said Jephson, who has a
+practical mind, approaching at times the commercial: "The question is
+not what we like, but what the female novel-reader likes."
+
+"That is so," agreed MacShaugnassy. "I propose that we collect feminine
+opinion upon this point. I will write to my aunt, and get from her the
+old lady's view. You," he said, turning to me, "can put the case to your
+wife, and get the young lady's ideal. Let Brown write to his sister at
+Newnham, and find out whom the intellectual maiden favours, while
+Jephson can learn from Miss Medbury what is most attractive to the
+common-sensed girl."
+
+This plan we had adopted, and the result was now under consideration.
+MacShaugnassy opened the proceedings by reading his aunt's letter. Wrote
+the old lady:
+
+    "I think, if I were you, my dear boy, I should choose a
+    soldier. You know your poor grandfather, who ran away to
+    America with that _wicked_ Mrs. Featherly, the banker's wife,
+    was a soldier, and so was your poor cousin Robert, who lost
+    eight thousand pounds at Monte Carlo. I have always felt
+    singularly drawn towards soldiers, even as a girl; though your
+    poor dear uncle could not bear them. You will find many
+    allusions to soldiers and men of war in the Old Testament (see
+    Jer. 48,14). Of course one does not like to think of their
+    fighting and killing each other, but then they do not seem to
+    do much of that sort of thing nowadays."
+
+"So much for the old lady," said MacShaugnassy, as he folded up the
+letter and returned it to his pocket. "What says culture?"
+
+[Illustration: BROWN READ AS FOLLOWS.]
+
+Brown produced from his cigar-case a letter addressed in a bold round
+hand, and read as follows:
+
+    "What a curious coincidence! A few of us were discussing this
+    very subject last night in Millicent Hightopper's rooms, and I
+    may tell you at once that our decision was unanimous in favour
+    of soldiers. You see, my dear Selkirk, in human nature the
+    attraction is towards the opposite. To a milliner's apprentice
+    a poet would no doubt be satisfying; to a woman of intelligence
+    he would be an unutterable bore. The man of brain is not for
+    the woman of brain. What the intellectual woman requires in man
+    is not something to argue with, but something to look at. To an
+    empty-headed woman I can imagine the soldier type proving vapid
+    and uninteresting; to the woman of mind he represents her ideal
+    of man--a creature strong, handsome, well-dressed, and not
+    too clever."
+
+"That gives us two votes for the army," remarked MacShaugnassy, as Brown
+tore his sister's letter in two, and threw the pieces into the
+waste-paper basket. "What says the common-sensed girl?"
+
+"First catch your common-sensed girl," muttered Jephson, a little
+grumpily, as it seemed to me. "Where do you propose finding her?"
+
+"Well," returned MacShaugnassy, "I looked to find her in Miss Medbury."
+
+As a rule, the mention of Miss Medbury's name brings a flush of joy to
+Jephson's face; but now his features wore an expression distinctly
+approaching a scowl.
+
+"Oh!" he replied, "did you? Well, then, the common-sensed girl loves the
+military, also."
+
+"By Jove!" exclaimed MacShaugnassy, "what an extraordinary thing. What
+reason does she give?"
+
+"That they look so nice when they're dressed, and that they dance so
+divinely," answered Jephson, shortly.
+
+"Well, you do surprise me," murmured MacShaugnassy, "I am astonished."
+
+Then to me he said: "And what does the young married woman say? The
+same?"
+
+"Yes," I replied, "precisely the same."
+
+"Does _she_ give a reason?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, yes," I explained; "because you can't help liking them."
+
+There was silence for the next few minutes, while we smoked and thought.
+I fancy we were all wishing we had never started this enquiry.
+
+That four distinctly different types of educated womanhood should, with
+promptness and unanimity quite unfeminine, have selected the soldier as
+their ideal, was certainly discouraging to the civilian heart. Had they
+been nursemaids or servant girls, I should have expected it. The worship
+of Mars by the Venus of the white cap is one of the few vital religions
+left to this devoutless age. A year or two ago I lodged near a barracks,
+and the sight to be seen round its huge iron gates on Sunday afternoons
+I shall never forget. The girls began to assemble about twelve o'clock.
+By two, at which hour the army, with its hair nicely oiled and a cane in
+its hand, was ready for a stroll, there would be some four or five
+hundred of them waiting in a line. Formerly they had collected in a wild
+mob, and as the soldiers were let out to them two at a time, had fought
+for them, as lions for early Christians. This, however, had led to
+scenes of such disorder and brutality, that the police had been obliged
+to interfere; and the girls were now marshalled in _queue_, two abreast,
+and compelled, by a force of constables specially told off for the
+purpose, to keep their places and wait their proper turn.
+
+At three o'clock the sentry on duty would come down to the wicket and
+close it. "They're all gone, my dears," he would shout out to the girls
+still left; "it's no good your stopping, we've no more for you to-day."
+
+"Oh, not one!" some poor child would murmur pleadingly, while the tears
+welled up into her big round eyes, "not even a little one. I've been
+waiting _such_ a long time."
+
+"Can't help that," the honest fellow would reply, gruffly, but not
+unkindly, turning aside to hide his emotion; "you've had 'em all between
+you. We don't make 'em, you know: you can't have 'em if we haven't got
+'em, can you? Come earlier next time."
+
+[Illustration: "NOW THEN, PASS ALONG."]
+
+Then he would hurry away to escape further importunity; and the police,
+who appeared to have been waiting for this moment with gloating
+anticipation, would jeeringly hustle away the weeping remnant. "Now
+then, pass along, you girls, pass along," they would say, in that
+irritatingly unsympathetic voice of theirs. "You've had your chance.
+Can't have the roadway blocked up all the afternoon with this 'ere
+demonstration of the unloved. You'll have to put up with your ordinary
+young men for to-day. Pass along."
+
+In connection with this same barracks, our charwoman told Amenda, who
+told Ethelbertha, who told me a story, which I now told the boys.
+
+Into a certain house, in a certain street in the neighbourhood, there
+moved one day a certain family. Their servant had left them--most of
+their servants did at the end of a week--and the day after the moving-in
+an advertisement was drawn up and sent to the _Chronicle_ for a
+domestic. It ran thus:
+
+    WANTED GENERAL SERVANT, in small family of eleven. Wages, �6;
+    no beer money. Must be early riser and hard worker. Washing
+    done at home. Must be good cook, and not object to
+    window-cleaning. Unitarian preferred.--Apply, with references,
+    to A. B., &C.
+
+That advertisement was sent off on Wednesday afternoon. At seven o'clock
+on Thursday morning the whole family were awakened by continuous ringing
+of the street door bell. The husband, looking out of window, was
+surprised to see a crowd of about fifty girls surrounding the house. He
+slipped on his dressing-gown and went down to see what was the matter.
+The moment he opened the door, fifteen of them charged tumultuously into
+the passage, sweeping him completely off his legs. Once inside, these
+fifteen faced round, fought the other thirty-five or so back on to the
+door-step, and slammed the door in their faces. Then they picked up the
+master of the house, and asked him politely to conduct them to "A. B."
+
+[Illustration: "SURPRISED TO SEE ABOUT FIFTY GIRLS."]
+
+At first, owing to the clamour of the mob outside, who were hammering at
+the door and shouting curses through the keyhole on those inside, he was
+too confused to understand anything, but by dint of great exertion they
+succeeded at length in explaining to him that they were domestic
+servants come in answer to his wife's advertisement. The man went and
+told his wife, and his wife said she would see them, one at a time.
+
+Which one should have audience first was a delicate question to decide.
+The man, on being appealed to, said he would prefer to leave it to them.
+They accordingly discussed the matter among themselves. At the end of a
+quarter of an hour, the victor, having borrowed a packet of pins and a
+looking-glass from our charwoman, who had slept in the house, went
+upstairs, while the remaining fourteen sat down in the hall, and fanned
+themselves with their bonnets.
+
+"A. B." was a good deal astonished when the first applicant presented
+herself. She was a tall, genteel-looking, well-dressed girl. Up to
+yesterday she had been head housemaid at Lady Stanton's, and before that
+she had been under-cook for two years to the Duchess of York.
+
+"And why did you leave Lady Stanton?" asked "A. B."
+
+"To come here, mum," replied the girl.
+
+The lady was puzzled.
+
+"And you'll be satisfied with six pounds a year?" she asked.
+
+"Certainly, mum, I think it ample."
+
+"And you don't mind hard work?"
+
+"I love it, mum."
+
+"And you're an early riser?"
+
+"Oh yes, mum, it upsets me stopping in bed after half-past five."
+
+"You know we do the washing at home?"
+
+"Yes, mum. I think it so much better to do it at home. Those laundries
+ruin good clothes. They're so careless."
+
+"Are you a Unitarian?" continued the lady.
+
+"Not yet, mum," replied the girl, "but I should like to be one."
+
+The lady took her reference, and said she would write her.
+
+"I do hope you will give me a trial, mum," pleaded the girl, as she rose
+to go; "I would try so hard to give you satisfaction."
+
+The next applicant offered to come for three pounds--thought six pounds
+too much. She also expressed her willingness to sleep in the back
+kitchen: a shakedown under the sink was all she wanted. She likewise had
+yearnings towards Unitarianism.
+
+The third girl did not require any wages at all--could not understand
+what servants wanted with wages--thought wages only encouraged a love of
+foolish finery--thought a comfortable home in a Unitarian family ought
+to be sufficient wages for any girl.
+
+This girl said there was one stipulation she should like to make, and
+that was that she should be allowed to pay for all breakages caused by
+her own carelessness or neglect. She objected to holidays and evenings
+out on principle; she held that they distracted a girl from her work.
+
+[Illustration: "MET THE NEXT DOOR LADY ON THE DOOR-STEP."]
+
+The fourth candidate offered a premium of five pounds for the place; and
+then "A.B." began to get frightened, and refused to see any more of the
+girls, convinced that they must be lunatics from some neighbouring
+asylum out for a walk.
+
+Later in the day, meeting the next door lady on the door-step, she
+related her morning's experiences.
+
+"Oh, that's nothing extraordinary," said the next door lady; "none of us
+on this side of the street pay wages; and we get the pick of all the
+best servants in London. Why, girls will come from the other end of the
+kingdom to get into one of these houses. It's the dream of their lives.
+They save up for years, so as to be able to come here for nothing."
+
+"What's the attraction?" asked "A. B.," more amazed than ever.
+
+"Why, don't you see," explained the next door lady, "our back windows
+open upon the barrack yard. A girl living in one of these houses is
+always close to soldiers. By looking out of window she can always see
+soldiers; and sometimes a soldier will nod to her, or even call up to
+her. They never dream of asking for wages. They'll work eighteen hours a
+day, and put up with anything just to be allowed to stop."
+
+"A.B." profited by this information, and engaged the girl who offered
+the five pounds premium. She found her a perfect treasure of a servant.
+She was invariably willing and respectful, slept on a sofa in the
+kitchen, and was always contented with an egg for her dinner.
+
+[Illustration: "A SOLDIER'S ARM ROUND THE WAIST."]
+
+The truth of this story I cannot vouch for. Myself, I can believe it.
+Brown and MacShaugnassy made no attempt to do so, which seemed
+unfriendly. Jephson excused himself on the plea of a headache. I admit
+there are points in it presenting difficulties to the average intellect.
+As I explained at the commencement, it was told to me by Ethelbertha,
+who had it from Amenda, who got it from the charwoman, and exaggerations
+may have crept into it. The following, however, were incidents that came
+under my own personal observation. They afforded a still stronger
+example of the influence exercised by Tommy Atkins upon the British
+domestic, and I therefore thought it right to relate them also to
+the boys.
+
+"The heroine of them," I said, "is our Amenda. Now, you would call her a
+tolerably well-behaved, orderly young woman, would you not?"
+
+"She is my ideal of unostentatious respectability," answered
+MacShaugnassy.
+
+"That was my opinion also," I replied. "You can, therefore, imagine my
+feelings on passing her one evening in the Folkestone High Street with a
+Panama hat upon her head (my Panama hat), and a soldier's arm round her
+waist. She was one of a mob, composed of all the unoccupied riff-raff of
+Folkestone, who were following the band of the Third Berkshire Infantry,
+then in camp at Sandgate. There was an ecstatic, far-away look in her
+eyes. She was dancing rather than walking, and with her left hand she
+beat time to the music."
+
+"I should say you were suffering from a mild attack of D.T. when you saw
+all that," said MacShaugnassy.
+
+"So I might have thought myself," I said; "but Ethelbertha was with me
+at the time, and she saw it too. We stared after the procession until it
+had turned the corner, and then we stared at each other.
+
+"'Oh, it's impossible,' said Ethelbertha to me.
+
+"'But that was my hat,' I said to Ethelbertha.
+
+"The moment we reached home Ethelbertha looked for Amenda, and I looked
+for my hat. Neither were to be found.
+
+[Illustration: "AND HUNG MY HAT UP."]
+
+"Nine o'clock struck, ten o'clock struck. At half-past ten, we went down
+and got our own supper, and had it in the kitchen. At a quarter-past
+eleven, Amenda returned. She walked into the kitchen without a word,
+hung my hat up behind the door, and commenced clearing away the
+supper things.
+
+"Ethelbertha rose, calm but severe.
+
+"'Where have you been, Amenda?' she enquired.
+
+"'Gadding half over the county with a lot of low soldiers,' answered
+Amenda, continuing her work.
+
+"'You had on my hat,' I added, somewhat gloomily. It was not the right
+view to take of the case, I know, but, personally, that fact grieved me
+more than all the other incidents in the proceeding put together, sad
+though I felt these to be. It was an expensive hat, and Ethelbertha said
+it suited me (there are not many that do). After seeing it that night on
+Amenda's head, my pride in it was gone.
+
+"'Yes, sir,' replied Amenda, still continuing her work, 'it was the
+first thing that came to hand. What I'm thankful for is that it wasn't
+missis's best bonnet.'
+
+"Whether Ethelbertha was mollified by the proper spirit displayed in
+this last remark, I cannot say, but I think it probable. At all events,
+it was in a voice more of sorrow than of anger that she resumed her
+examination.
+
+"'You were walking with a soldier's arm around your waist when we passed
+you, Amenda?' she observed interrogatively.
+
+"'I know, mum,' admitted Amenda, 'I found it there myself when the music
+stopped.'
+
+"Ethelbertha looked her enquiries. Amenda filled a saucepan with water,
+and then replied to them.
+
+"'I'm a disgrace to a decent household,' she said; 'no mistress who
+respected herself would keep me a moment. I ought to be put out on the
+doorstep with my box and a month's wages.'
+
+"'But why did you do it then?' said Ethelbertha, with natural
+astonishment.
+
+"'Because I'm a helpless ninny, mum.' There was no trace of bitterness
+or passion in Amenda's tones. She spoke in the calm, even voice of a
+person stating facts.
+
+"'I can't help myself,' she went on; 'if I see soldiers I'm bound to
+follow them. It runs in our family. My poor cousin Emma was just such
+another fool. She was engaged to be married to a quiet, respectable
+young fellow with a shop of his own, and three days before the wedding
+she ran off with a regiment of marines and married the colour-sergeant.
+That's what I shall end by doing. I've been all the way to Sandgate with
+that lot you saw me with, and I've kissed four of them--the nasty
+wretches. I'm a nice sort of girl to be walking out with a
+respectable milkman.'
+
+"She was so deeply disgusted with herself that it seemed superfluous for
+anybody else to be indignant with her; and Ethelbertha changed her tone
+and tried to comfort her.
+
+"'Oh, you'll get over all that nonsense, Amenda,' she said, laughingly;
+'you see yourself how silly it is. You must tell Mr. Bowles to keep you
+away from soldiers.'
+
+"'Ah, I can't look at it in the same light way that you do, mum,'
+returned Amenda, somewhat reprovingly; 'a girl that can't see a bit of
+red marching down the street without wanting to rush out and follow it
+ain't fit to be anybody's wife. Why I should be leaving the shop with
+nobody in it about twice a week, and he'd have to go the round of all
+the barracks in London, looking for me. I shall save up and get myself
+into a lunatic asylum, that's what I shall do.'
+
+"Ethelbertha began to grow quite troubled. 'But surely this is something
+altogether new, Amenda,' she said; 'you must have often met soldiers
+when you've been out in London?'
+
+"'Oh, yes, one or two at a time, walking about anyhow, I can stand that
+all right. It's when there's a lot of them all together with a band that
+I lose my head.'
+
+[Illustration: "'WHEN THERE'S A LOT OF THEM WITH A BAND, I LOSE MY
+HEAD.'"]
+
+"'You don't know what it's like, mum,' she added, noticing Ethelbertha's
+puzzled expression; 'you've never had it. I only hope you never may.'
+
+"We kept a careful watch over Amenda during the remainder of our stay at
+Folkestone, and an anxious time we had of it. Every day some regiment or
+other would march through the town, and at the first sound of its music
+Amenda would become restless and excited. The Pied Piper's reed could
+not have stirred the Hamelin children deeper than did those Sandgate
+bands the heart of our domestic. Fortunately, they generally passed
+early in the morning when we were indoors, but one day, returning home
+to lunch, we heard distant strains dying away upon the Hythe Road. We
+hurried in. Ethelbertha ran down into the kitchen; it was empty!--up
+into Amenda's bedroom; it was vacant! We called. There was no answer.
+
+"'That miserable girl has gone off again,' said Ethelbertha. 'What a
+terrible misfortune it is for her. It's quite a disease.'
+
+"Ethelbertha wanted me to go to Sandgate camp and enquire for her. I was
+sorry for the girl myself, but the picture of a young and
+innocent-looking man wandering about a complicated camp, enquiring for a
+lost domestic, presenting itself to my mind, I said that I'd rather not.
+
+"Ethelbertha thought me heartless, and said that if I would not go she
+would go herself. I replied that I thought one female member of my
+household was enough in that camp at a time, and requested her not to.
+Ethelbertha expressed her sense of my inhuman behaviour by haughtily
+declining to eat any lunch, and I expressed my sense of her
+unreasonableness by sweeping the whole meal into the grate, after which
+Ethelbertha suddenly developed exuberant affection for the cat (who
+didn't want anybody's love, but wanted to get under the grate after the
+lunch), and I became supernaturally absorbed in the day-before-
+yesterday's newspaper.
+
+[Illustration: "'WHO LOCKED YOU IN THERE?'"]
+
+"In the afternoon, strolling out into the garden, I heard the faint cry
+of a female in distress. I listened attentively, and the cry was
+repeated. I thought it sounded like Amenda's voice, but where it came
+from I could not conceive. It drew nearer, however, as I approached the
+bottom of the garden, and at last I located it in a small wooden shed,
+used by the proprietor of the house as a dark room for developing
+photographs.
+
+"The door was locked. 'Is that you, Amenda?' I cried through the
+keyhole.
+
+"'Yes, sir,' came back the muffled answer. 'Will you please let me out;
+you'll find the key on the ground near the door.'
+
+"I discovered it on the grass about a yard away, and released her. 'Who
+locked you in there?' I asked.
+
+"'I did, sir,' she replied; 'I locked myself in, and pushed the key out
+under the door. I had to do it, or I should have gone off with those
+beastly soldiers.'
+
+"'I hope I haven't inconvenienced you, sir,' she added, stepping out; 'I
+left the lunch all laid.'"
+
+Amenda's passion for soldiers was her one tribute to sentiment. Towards
+all others of the male sex she maintained an attitude of callous
+unsusceptibility, and her engagements with them (which were numerous)
+were entered into or abandoned on grounds so sordid as to seriously
+shock Ethelbertha.
+
+When she came to us she was engaged to a pork butcher--with a milkman in
+reserve. For Amenda's sake we dealt with the man, but we never liked
+him, and we liked his pork still less. When, therefore, Amenda announced
+to us that her engagement with him was "off," and intimated that her
+feelings would in no way suffer by our going elsewhere for our bacon, we
+secretly rejoiced.
+
+[Illustration: "HER ENGAGEMENT WAS 'OFF.'"]
+
+"I am confident you have done right, Amenda," said Ethelbertha; "you
+would never have been happy with that man."
+
+"No, mum, I don't think I ever should," replied Amenda. "I don't see how
+any girl could as hadn't got the digestion of an ostrich."
+
+Ethelbertha looked puzzled. "But what has digestion got to do with it?"
+she asked.
+
+"A pretty good deal, mum," answered Amenda, "when you're thinking of
+marrying a man as can't make a sausage fit to eat."
+
+"But, surely," exclaimed Ethelbertha, "you don't mean to say you're
+breaking off the match because you don't like his sausages!"
+
+"Well, I suppose that's what it comes to," agreed Amenda, unconcernedly.
+
+"What an awful idea!" sighed poor Ethelbertha, after a long pause. "Do
+you think you ever really loved him?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Amenda, "I loved him right enough, but it's no good
+loving a man that wants you to live on sausages that keep you awake
+all night."
+
+"But does he want you to live on sausages?" persisted Ethelbertha.
+
+"Oh, he doesn't say anything about it," explained Amenda; "but you know
+what it is, mum, when you marry a pork butcher: you're expected to eat
+what's left over. That's the mistake my poor cousin Eliza made. She
+married a muffin man. Of course, what he didn't sell they had to finish
+up themselves. Why, one winter, when he had a run of bad luck, they
+lived for two months on nothing but muffins. I never saw a girl so
+changed in all my life. One has to think of these things, you know."
+
+Later on, she engaged herself to a solicitor's messenger. She did
+this--as she frankly avowed to Ethelbertha--to assist her family, who
+were prosecuting some petty law case at the time. He was a smart, steady
+man, a great favourite with his employers, and, out of kindly feeling
+towards him, they did the business for Amenda's father, charging only
+"out-of-pockets."
+
+[Illustration: "GAVE HER A COCOANUT."]
+
+Six months after the case was ended, she broke off the match. She said
+that, on reflection, she could not help seeing what an advantage he
+would have over her--he being in a solicitor's office, with the law at
+his fingers' ends--should she ever find it necessary to summons him.
+
+"But, my good girl," said Ethelbertha, quite distressed, "one doesn't
+marry a man with the idea of subsequently summonsing him!"
+
+"No, mum," said Amenda, "one always hopes one will never need to, I'm
+sure, but it's just as well to be prepared. I knew a girl, when I was in
+service at Hastings, that loved a printer, and they were both going to
+commit suicide because her parents didn't want 'em to marry; and now he
+costs her four shillings a month regular in summonses. It's no good
+shutting one's eyes to things, mum."
+
+But the most shamefully mercenary engagement that I think Amenda ever
+entered into was one with a 'bus conductor. We were living in the North
+of London then, and she had a young man, a cheesemonger, who kept a shop
+in Lupus Street, Chelsea. He could not come up to her because of the
+shop, so once a week she used to go down to him. One did not ride ten
+miles for a penny in those days, and she found the fare from Holloway to
+Victoria and back a severe tax upon her purse. The same 'bus that took
+her down at six brought her back at ten. During the first journey the
+'bus conductor stared at Amenda; during the second he talked to her,
+during the third he gave her a cocoanut, during the fourth he proposed
+to her, and was promptly accepted. After that, Amenda was enabled to
+visit her cheesemonger without expense.
+
+[Illustration: "'I DESIRE SHARING CROSS.'"]
+
+He was a quaint character himself, was this 'bus conductor. I often rode
+with him to Fleet Street. He knew me quite well (I suppose Amenda must
+have pointed me out to him), and would always ask me after her--aloud,
+before all the other passengers, which was trying--and give me messages
+to take back to her. Where women were concerned he had what is called "a
+way" with him, and from the extent and variety of his female
+acquaintance, and the evident tenderness with which the majority of them
+regarded him, I am inclined to hope that Amenda's desertion of him
+(which happened contemporaneously with her jilting of the cheesemonger)
+caused him less prolonged suffering than might otherwise have been
+the case.
+
+He was a man from whom I derived a good deal of amusement one way and
+another. Thinking of him brings back to my mind a somewhat odd incident.
+
+One afternoon, I jumped upon his 'bus in the Seven Sisters Road. An
+elderly Frenchman was the only other occupant of the vehicle. "You vil
+not forget me," the Frenchman was saying as I entered, "I desire
+Sharing Cross."
+
+"I won't forget yer," answered the conductor, "you shall 'ave yer
+Sharing Cross. Don't make a fuss about it."
+
+"That's the third time 'ee's arst me not to forget 'im," he remarked to
+me in a stentorian aside; "'ee don't giv' yer much chance of doin' it,
+does 'ee?"
+
+At the corner of the Holloway Road we drew up, and our conductor began
+to shout after the manner of his species: "Charing Cross--Charing
+Cross--'ere yer are--Come along, lady--Charing Cross."
+
+The little Frenchman jumped up, and prepared to exit; the conductor
+pushed him back.
+
+"Sit down and don't be silly," he said; "this ain't Charing Cross."
+
+The Frenchman looked puzzled, but collapsed meekly. We picked up a few
+passengers, and proceeded on our way. Half a mile up the Liverpool Road
+a lady stood on the kerb regarding us as we passed with that pathetic
+mingling of desire and distrust which is the average woman's attitude
+towards conveyances of all kinds. Our conductor stopped.
+
+"Where d'yer want to go to?" he asked her severely--omnibus conductors
+have a manner of addressing all pedestrians as though they were lost
+children or suspicious loiterers--"Strand--Charing Cross?"
+
+[Illustration: "THE CONDUCTOR COLLARED HIM."]
+
+The Frenchman did not hear or did not understand the first part of the
+speech, but he caught the words "Charing Cross," and bounced up and out
+on to the step. The conductor collared him as he was getting off, and
+jerked him back savagely.
+
+"Carnt yer keep still a minute," he cried indignantly; "blessed if you
+don't want lookin' after like a bloomin' kid."
+
+"I vont to be put down at Sharing Cross," answered the little Frenchman,
+humbly.
+
+"You vont to be put down at Sharing Cross," repeated the other bitterly,
+as he led him back to his seat. "I shall put yer down in the middle of
+the road if I 'ave much more of yer. You stop there till I come and
+sling yer out. I ain't likely to let yer go much past yer Sharing Cross,
+I shall be too jolly glad to get rid o' yer."
+
+The poor Frenchman subsided, and we jolted on. At "The Angel" we, of
+course, stopped. "Charing Cross," shouted the conductor, and up sprang
+the Frenchman.
+
+"Oh, my Gawd," said the conductor, taking him by the shoulders and
+forcing him down into the corner seat, "wot am I to do? Carnt somebody
+sit on 'im?"
+
+[Illustration: "'BLESSED IF I DIDN'T RUN HIM ON TO VICTORIA.'"]
+
+He held him firmly down until the 'bus started, and then released him.
+At the top of Chancery Lane the same scene took place, and the poor
+little Frenchman became exasperated.
+
+"He keep on saying Sharing Cross, Sharing Cross," he exclaimed, turning
+to the other passengers; "and it is _not_ Sharing Cross. He is fool."
+
+"Carnt yer understand," retorted the conductor, equally indignant; "of
+course I say Sharing Cross--I mean Charing Cross, but that don't mean
+that it _is_ Charing Cross. That means that--" and then perceiving from
+the blank look in the Frenchman's face the utter impossibility of ever
+making the matter clear to him, he turned to us with an appealing
+gesture, and asked:
+
+"Does any gentleman know the French for 'bloomin' idiot'?"
+
+A day or two afterwards, I happened to enter his omnibus again.
+
+"Well," I asked him, "did you get your French friend to Charing Cross
+all right?"
+
+"No, sir," he replied, "you'll 'ardly believe it, but I 'ad a bit of a
+row with a policeman just before I got to the corner, and it put 'im
+clean out o' my 'ead. Blessed if I didn't run 'im on to Victoria."
+
+(_To be continued_.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THE SKATER.
+
+BY WILLIAM CANTON. ILLUSTRATED BY A. L. BOWLEY.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+      O'er glassy levels of the mere
+        She glides on slanting skate;
+      She loves in fairy curves to veer
+        And weave her figure eight.
+    Bright flower in fur, I would thy feet
+    Could weave my heart and thine, my sweet,
+    Thus into one glad life complete!
+      Harsh winter, rage thy rudest:
+        Freeze, freeze, thou churlish sky;
+      Blow, arctic wind, thy shrewdest--
+        What care my heart and I!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+MY SERVANT ANDREAS
+
+BY ARCHIBALD FORBES.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY FREDERIC VILLIERS.
+
+
+[Illustration: "ANDREAS."]
+
+I think it quite likely that some of my young American friends, about
+ten months ago, were burning to have an opportunity of accompanying
+General Miles down the Pacific coast, and of describing in glowing
+sentences to their countrymen at home how Uncle Sam's young man turned
+to flight the Chilian insurrectionists, who were breathing out
+threatening and slaughter against the great Northern Republic. There is
+an undoubted fascination in the picturesque and adventurous life of the
+war correspondent. One must, of course, have a distinct bent for the
+avocation, and if he is to succeed he must possess certain salient
+attributes. He must expose himself to rather greater risks than fall to
+the lot of the average fighting man, without enjoying any of the
+happiness of retaliation which stirs the blood of the latter; the
+correspondent must sit quietly on his horse in the fire, and, while
+watching every turn in the battle, must wear the aspect as if he rather
+enjoyed the storm of missiles than otherwise. When the fighting is over,
+the soldier, if not killed, generally can eat and sleep; ere the echoes
+of it are silent, the correspondent of energy--and if he has not energy
+he is not worth his salt--must already be galloping his hardest towards
+the nearest telegraph wire, which, as like as not, is a hundred miles
+distant. He must "get there," by hook or by crook, in a minimum of time;
+and as soon as his message is on the wires, he must be hurrying back to
+the army, else he may chance to miss the great battle of the war. The
+correspondent must be most things to all men; he must have the sweet,
+angelic temper of a woman, be as affable as if he were running for
+office, and at the same time be big and ugly enough to impress the
+conviction that it would be extremely unwise to take any liberties
+with him.
+
+The career, no doubt, has some incidental drawbacks. No fewer than five
+British correspondents were killed in the recent campaigns in the
+Soudan. General Sherman threatened to hang all the correspondents found
+in his camp after a certain day, and General Sherman was the kind of man
+to fulfil any threat he made. I suppose there was no correspondent
+taking part in the Franco-German and Russo-Turkish wars who was not in
+custody over and over again on suspicion of being a spy. I have been a
+prisoner myself in France, Spain, Servia, Germany, Austria, Hungary,
+Russia, Roumania and Bulgaria; and I may perhaps venture to remark in
+passing that I cannot recommend any of these countries from this point
+of view. But the casual confinements, half irritating, half comic, to
+which he may be subjected, do not bother the war correspondent of the
+old world nearly as much as do the foreign languages which, if he is not
+a good linguist, hamper him every hour of every day. He really should
+possess the gift of tongues--be conversant with all European languages,
+a neat assortment of the Asiatic languages, and a few of the African
+tongues, such as Abyssinian, Ashantee, Zulu, and Soudanese. But how few
+in the nature of things can approximate this polyglot versatility. Often
+in Eastern Europe, and in Afghanistan, I have envied Messrs. Swinton,
+Smalley, Whitelaw Reed, and the other notable war correspondents of the
+American Civil War, in that they had not the difficulties of outlandish
+tongues to contend with. I own myself to be a poor linguist, and have
+many and many a time suffered for my dullness of what the Scotch call
+"up-take." It is true that I was fairly conversant with French and
+German, and could express my wants in Russian, Roumanian, Bulgarian,
+Spanish, Turkish, Hindustanee, Pushtoo, and Burmese, every word of which
+smatterings I have long since forgotten. But the truth is that the
+poorest peoples in the world in acquiring foreign languages are the
+English and the French; the readiest are the Russians and Americans. It
+was, after a fashion, a liberal education to listen to the fluency in
+some half-dozen languages of Poor McGahan, the "Ohio boy," who graduated
+from the plough to be perhaps the most brilliant war correspondent of
+modern times. His compatriot and colleague, Frank Millet, who has fallen
+away from glory as a war correspondent, and has taken to the inferior
+trade of painting, seemed to pick up a language by the mere accident of
+finding himself on the soil where it was spoken. In the first three
+days, after crossing the Danube into Bulgaria, Millet went about with
+book in hand, gathering in the names of things at which he pointed, and
+jotting down each acquisition in the book. On the fourth day he could
+swear in Bulgarian, copiously, fervently, and with a measure of
+intelligibility. Within a week he had conquered the uncouth tongue. As
+he voyaged lately down the Danube from source to mouth, charmingly
+describing the scenic panorama of the great river in the pages of
+_Harper_, those of you who have read those sketches will not have failed
+to notice how Millet talked to German, Hungarian, Servian, Bulgarian,
+Roumanian, and Turkish, each in his own tongue, those diverse languages
+having been acquired by him during the few months of the
+Russo-Turkish war.
+
+[Illustration: "MACGAHAN AND FRANK MILLET."]
+
+By this time, you may be wondering just where "Andreas" comes in.
+Perhaps I have been over long in getting to my specific subject; but I
+will not be discursive any more. It was at the _table d'hote_ in the
+Serbische Krone Hotel, in Belgrade, where I first set eyes on Andreas.
+In the year 1876, Servia had thought proper to throw off the yoke of her
+Turkish suzerain, and to attempt to assert her independence by force of
+arms. But for very irregularly paid tribute she was virtually
+independent already, and probably in all Servia there were not two
+hundred Turks. But she ambitiously desired to have the name of as well
+as the actuality of being independent; the Russians helped her with
+arms, officers, and volunteer soldiers; and when I reached Belgrade, in
+May of the year named, there had already been fighting, in which the
+Servians had by no means got the worst. No word of the Servian tongue
+had I, and it was the reverse of pleasant for a war correspondent in
+such plight to learn that outside of Belgrade nobody, or at least hardly
+anybody, knew a word of any other language than the native Servian. As I
+ate, I was being attended by a very assiduous waiter, whose alertness
+and anxiety to please were very conspicuous. He was smart with quite
+un-Oriental smartness; he whisked about the tables with deftness; he
+spoke to me in German, to the Russian officers over against me in what I
+assumed was Russian, to the Servians dining behind me in what I took to
+be Servian. I liked the look of the man; there was intelligence in his
+aspect. One could not call him handsome, but there was character in the
+keen black eye, the high features and the pronounced chin, fringed on
+either side by bushy black whiskers.
+
+[Illustration: "ANDREAS AS A FORAGER."]
+
+I had brought no servant with me; the average British servant is worse
+than useless in a foreign country, and the dubiously-polyglot courier is
+a snare and a deception on campaign. I had my eye on Andreas for a
+couple of days, during which he was of immense service to me. He seemed
+to know and stand well with everyone in Belgrade; it was he, indeed, who
+presented me in the restaurant to the Prime Minister and the Minister
+for War, who got together for me my field necessaries, who helped me to
+buy my horses, and who narrated to me the progress of the campaign so
+far as it had gone. On the third day I had him in my room and asked
+whether he would like to come with me into the field as my servant. He
+accepted the offer with effusion; we struck hands on the compact; he
+tendered me credentials which I ascertained to be extremely
+satisfactory; and then he gave me a little sketch of himself. It was
+somewhat mixed, as indeed was his origin. Primarily he was a Servian,
+but his maternal grandmother had been a Bosniak, an earlier ancestress
+had been in a Turkish harem, there was a strain in his blood of the
+Hungarian zinganee--the gipsy of Eastern Europe, and one could not look
+at his profile without a suspicion that there was a Jewish element in
+his pedigree. "A pure mongrel," was what a gentleman of the British
+Legation termed Andreas, and this self-contradictory epithet was
+scarcely out of place.
+
+Andreas turned out well. He was as hardy as a hill-goat, careless how
+and when he ate, or where he slept, which, indeed, was mostly in the
+open. It seemed to me that he had cousins all over Servia, chiefly of
+the female persuasion, and I am morally certain that the Turkish strain
+in his blood had in Andreas its natural development in a species of
+_fin-de-si�cle_ polygamy. Sherman's prize "bummer" was not in it with
+Andreas as a forager. At first, indeed, I suspected him of actual
+plundering, so copiously did he bring in supplies, and so little had I
+to pay for them; but I was not long in discovering that all kinds of
+produce were dirt cheap in Servia, and that as I could myself buy a lamb
+for a quarter, it was not surprising that Andreas, to the manner born,
+could easily obtain one for half the money. He was an excellent
+horsemaster, and the stern vigour with which he chastised the occasional
+neglect of the cousin whom he had brought into my service as groom, was
+borne in upon me by the frequent howls which were audible from the rear
+of my tent. There was not a road in all Servia with whose every winding
+Andreas was not conversant, and this "extensive and peculiar" knowledge
+of his was often of great service to me. He was a light-weight and an
+excellent rider; I have sent him off to Belgrade with a telegram at
+dusk, and he was back again by breakfast time next morning, after a
+gallop of quite a hundred miles.
+
+No exertion fatigued him; I never saw the man out of humour; there was
+but one matter in regard to which I ever had to chide him, and in that I
+had perforce to let him have his own way, because I do not believe that
+he could restrain himself. He had served the term in the army which is,
+or was then, obligatory on all Servians; and on the road or in camp he
+was rather more of a "peace at any price" man than ever was the late Mr.
+John Bright himself. When the first fight occurred, Andreas claimed to
+be allowed to witness it along with me. I demurred; he might get hit;
+and if anything should happen to him, what should I do for a servant? At
+length I gave him the firm order to remain in camp, and started myself
+with the groom behind me on my second horse. The fighting occurred eight
+miles from camp, and in the course of it, leaving the groom in the rear,
+I had accompanied the Russian General Dochtouroff into a most
+unpleasantly hot place, where a storm of Turkish shells were falling in
+the effort to hinder the withdrawal of a disabled Servian battery. I
+happened to glance over my shoulder, and lo! Andreas on foot was at my
+horse's tail, obviously in a state of ecstatic enjoyment of the
+situation. I peremptorily ordered him back, and he departed sullenly,
+calmly strolling along the line of Turkish fire. Just then, Tchernaieff,
+the Servian Commander-in-Chief, had, it seemed, ordered a detachment of
+infantry to take in flank the Turkish guns. From where we stood I could
+discern the Servian soldiers hurrying forward close under the fringe of
+a wood near the line of retirement along which Andreas was sulking.
+Andreas saw them too, and retreated no step further, but cut across to
+them, snatching up a gun as he ran, and the last I saw of him was while
+he was waving on the militiamen with his billycock, and loosing off an
+occasional bullet, while he emitted yells of defiance against the Turks,
+which might well have struck terror into their very marrow. Andreas came
+into camp at night very streaky with powder stains, minus the lobe of
+one ear, uneasy as he caught my eye, yet with a certain elateness of
+mien. I sacked him that night, and he said he didn't care, and that he
+was not ashamed of himself. Next morning, as I was rising, he rushed
+into the tent, knelt down, clasped my knees, and bedewed my ankles with
+his tears. Of course I reinstated him; I couldn't do without him, and I
+think he knew it.
+
+[Illustration: "SNATCHING UP A GUN AS HE RAN."]
+
+But I had yielded too easily. Andreas had established a precedent. He
+insisted, in a quiet, positive manner, on accompanying me to every
+subsequent battle; and I had to consent, always taking his pledge that
+he would obey the injunctions I might lay upon him. And, as a matter of
+course, he punctually and invariably violated that pledge when the
+crisis of the fighting was drawing to a head, and just when this "peace
+at any price" man could not control the bloodthirst that was
+parching him.
+
+One never knows how events are to fall out. It happened that this
+resolution on the part of Andreas to accompany me into the fights once
+assuredly saved my life. It was on the day of Djunis, the last battle
+fought by the Servians. In the early part of the day there was a good
+deal of scattered woodland fighting in front of the entrenched line,
+which they abandoned when the Turks came on in earnest. Andreas and I
+were among the trees trying to find a position from which something was
+to be seen, when all of a sudden I, who was in advance, plumped right
+into the centre of a small scouting party of Turks. They tore me out of
+the saddle, and I had given myself up for lost--for the Turks took no
+prisoners, their cheerful practice being to slaughter first and then
+abominably to mutilate--when suddenly Andreas dashed in among my
+captors, shouting aloud in a language which I took to be Turkish, since
+he bellowed "Effendi" as he pointed to me. He had thrown away his
+billycock and substituted a fez, which he afterwards told me he always
+carried in case of accidents, and in one hand he waved a dingy piece of
+parchment with a seal dangling from it, which I assumed was some
+obsolete firman. The result was truly amazing, and the scene had some
+real humour in it. With profound salaams, the Turks unhanded me, helped
+me to mount, and, as I rode off at a tangent with Andreas at my horse's
+head, called after me what sounded like friendly farewells. When we were
+back among the Russians--I don't remember seeing much of the Servians
+later on that day--Andreas explained that he had passed himself for the
+Turkish dragoman of a British correspondent whom the Padishah delighted
+to honour, and that, after expressing a burning desire to defile the
+graves of their collective female ancestry, he had assured my captors
+that they might count themselves as dead men if they did not immediately
+release me. To his ready-witted conduct I undoubtedly owe the ability to
+write now this record of a man of curiously complicated nature.
+
+When the campaign ended with the Servian defeat at Djunis, Andreas went
+back to his headwaitership at the Serbische Krone in Belgrade. Before
+leaving that capital I had the honour of being present at his nuptials,
+a ceremony the amenity of which was somewhat disturbed by the violent
+incursion into the sacred edifice of sundry ladies all claiming to have
+prior claims on the bridegroom of the hour. They were, however,
+placated, and subsequently joined the marriage feast in the great arbour
+behind the Krone. Andreas faithfully promised to come to me to the ends
+of the earth on receipt of a telegram, if I should require his services,
+and he were alive.
+
+[Illustration: "ANDREAS DASHED IN AMONG MY CAPTORS."]
+
+Next spring the Russo-Turkish war broke out, and I hurried eastward in
+time to see the first Cossack cross the Pruth. I had telegraphed to
+Andreas from England to meet me at Bazias on the Danube below Belgrade.
+Bazias is the place where the railway used to end, and where we took
+steamer for the Lower Danube. Andreas was duly on hand, ready and
+serviceable as of old, a little fatter, and a trifle more consequential
+than when we had last parted. He was, if possible, rather more at home
+in Bucharest than he had been in Belgrade, and recommended me to
+Brofft's Hotel, in comparison with which the charges of the Brunswick in
+New York are infinitesimal. He bought my wagon and team, he found riding
+horses when they were said to be unprocurable, he constructed a most
+ingenious tent, of which the wagon was, so to speak, the roof-tree, he
+laid in stores, arranged for relays of couriers, and furnished me with a
+coachman in the person of a Roumanian Jew who he one day owned was a
+distant connection, and whose leading attribute was, that he could
+survive more sleep than any other human being I have ever known. We took
+the field auspiciously, Mr. Frederic Villiers, the war artist of the
+London _Graphic_, being my campaigning comrade. Thus early I discerned a
+slight rift in the lute. Andreas did not like Villiers, which showed his
+bad taste, or rather, perhaps, the narrowness of his capacity of
+affection; and I fear Villiers did not much like Andreas, whom he
+thought too familiar. This was true, and it was my fault; but really it
+was with difficulty that I could bring myself to treat Andreas as a
+servant. He was more, in my estimation, in the nature of the
+confidential major-domo, and to me he was simply invaluable. Villiers
+had to chew his moustache, and glower discontentedly at Andreas.
+
+I had some good couriers for the conveyance of despatches back across
+the Danube to Bucharest, whence everything was telegraphed to London;
+but they were essentially fair-weather men. The casual courier may be
+alert, loyal, and trustworthy; he may be relied on to try his honest
+best, but it is not to be expected of him that he will greatly dare and
+count his life but as dross when his incentive to enterprise is merely
+filthy lucre. But I could trust Andreas to dare and to endure--to
+overcome obstacles, and, if man could, to "get there," where, in the
+base-quarters in Bucharest, the amanuenses were waiting to copy out in
+round hand for the foreign telegraphist the rapid script of the
+correspondent scribbling for life in the saddle or the cleft of a
+commanding tree while the shells were whistling past. We missed him
+dreadfully when he was gone--even Villiers, who liked good cooking,
+owned to thinking long for his return. For, in addition to his other
+virtues, Andreas was a capital cook. It is true that his courses had a
+habit of arriving at long and uncertain intervals. After a dish of
+pungent stew, no other viands appearing to loom in the near future,
+Villiers and myself would betake ourselves to smoking, and perhaps on a
+quiet day would lapse into slumber. From this we would be aroused by
+Andreas to partake of a second course of roast chicken, the bird having
+been alive and unconscious of its impending fate when the first course
+had been served. No man is perfect, and as regarded Andreas there were
+some petty spots on the sun. He had, for instance, a mania for the
+purchase of irrelevant poultry, and for accommodating the fowls in our
+wagon, tied by the legs, against the day of starvation, which he always,
+but causelessly, apprehended. I do not suppose any reader has ever had
+any experience of domestic poultry as bedfellows, and I may caution him
+earnestly against making any such experiment.
+
+I do not know whether it is a detraction from Andreas's worth to mention
+that another characteristic of his was the habit of awaking us in the
+still watches of the night, for the purpose of imparting his views on
+recondite phases of the great Eastern question. But how trivial were
+such peccadilloes in a man who was so resolute not to be beaten in
+getting my despatch to the telegraph wire, that once, when three
+pontoons of the bridge across the Danube were sunk, he crossed the gap
+hand over hand by the hand-rope, sloshing down with the current as the
+slack of the rope gave to his weight! Andreas became quite an
+institution in the Russian camp. When Ignatieff, the Tsar's intimate,
+the great diplomatist who has now curiously fizzled out, would honour us
+by partaking sometimes of afternoon tea in our tent, he would call
+Andreas by his name and call him "Molodetz"--the Russian for "brave
+fellow." In the Servian campaign Dochtouroff had got him the Takova
+cross, which Andreas sported with great pride, and Ignatieff used to
+tell him that the Tsar was seriously thinking of conferring on him the
+Cross of St. George, badinage which Andreas took as dead earnest.
+MacGahan used gravely to entreat him to take greater care of his
+invaluable life, and hint that if any calamity occurred to him, the
+campaign would _ipso facto_ come to an end. Andreas knew that MacGahan
+was quizzing him, but it was exceedingly droll how he purred and bridled
+under the light touch of that genial humourist, whose merits his own
+countrymen, to my thinking, have never adequately recognised. The old
+story of a prophet having scant honour in his own country.
+
+[Illustration: "CROSSED THE GAP HAND OVER HAND."]
+
+After the long strain of the desperate but futile attack made by the
+Russians on Plevna in the early part of the September of the war, I fell
+a victim to the malarial fever of the Lower Danube, and had to be
+invalided back to Bucharest. The illness grew upon me, and my condition
+became very serious. Worthy Andreas nursed me with great tenderness and
+assiduity in the lodgings to which I had been brought, since they would
+not accept a fever patient at Brofft's. After some days of wretchedness
+I became delirious, and, of course, lost consciousness; my last
+recollection was of Andreas wetting my parched lips with lemonade. When
+I recovered my senses, and looked out feebly, there was nobody in the
+room. How long I had been unconscious I had no idea. I lay there in a
+half stupor till evening, unable from weakness to summon any assistance.
+In the dusk came the English doctor who had been attending me. "Where is
+Andreas?" he asked. I could not tell him. "He was here last night," he
+said; "you have been delirious for seven days." The woman of the house
+was summoned. She had not seen Andreas since the previous night, but,
+busy about her own domestic affairs, had no suspicion until she entered
+the room that Andreas was not with me still.
+
+Andreas never returned. It appeared that he had taken away all his
+belongings. One day, when gradually mending, I put my hand under the
+pillow with intent to find my watch, which was an heirloom, and wind it
+up. I could find no watch. No more could I find the bag of ducats which
+was alongside the watch before I lost my senses. Search was made
+throughout the room without success, and, with whatever reluctance to
+believe a thing so utterly unlikely, I could not refrain from the
+conviction that Andreas must have carried off both money and watch.
+The thought caused a relapse, but at length I attained convalescence,
+and was able to drive out. But the doctor was firm that during the now
+imminent winter I was not to return to the field. Fortunately, my able
+colleagues, MacGahan and Millet, were there; and I was therefore the
+less distressed by Dr. ----'s peremptory sentence on me. I was
+condemned to return to England as soon as I should be strong enough to
+travel.
+
+When I had to leave the Plevna front, my colleagues temporarily took
+charge of my field equipment. But I had brought back to Bucharest my
+best riding horse, and during my illness he had been standing at livery
+in the stables of the English Tramway Company. Determining now on the
+melancholy necessity of selling an animal which had on many a hard day
+and many a long night-ride served me staunchly, I drove to the stables,
+and instructed the manager to sell my horse. "Your horse!" he exclaimed,
+in evident surprise; "your horse was sold weeks ago! Your man, Andreas,
+came here with a message that we were to dispose of it; and I sold it
+next day to General Todleben on his way through Bucharest to take the
+command before Plevna. It fetched a good price, 105 ducats, more than
+you gave for it; Andreas called for the money, and, of course, I gave
+it to him."
+
+So Andreas was thief and rogue--deliberate thief and rogue. I was angry,
+but I was yet more heart-sorry that so fine and true a native should
+have thus fallen. Just as I was leaving Bucharest for England, a letter
+came to me from a friend in Galatz, a commercial city of Roumania, near
+the mouth of the Danube. Its P.S. only is worth quoting. "So you have
+parted with your man, Andreas. I thought from what you had told me that
+you would retain him for life. He is here now, I saw him drunk in the
+street yesterday. He told Kennedy that he believed you were dead."
+
+[Illustration: "ANDREAS DROPPED ON HIS KNEES."]
+
+I went straight to Galatz, a long half-day's journey. Andreas was not
+hard to find; he was smoking in the "Concordia" saloon. I saw him before
+he saw me; he had a furtive air, he was pallid and his lips twitched; he
+looked to me on the verge of _delirium tremens_. I approached him from
+behind, and uttered the one word, "Andreas!" At the word, he started as
+if he had been shot, spun round, dropped on his knees, with his hands
+raised beseechingly, and cried in a broken voice, "Before God, master, I
+thought you were dead, else I should never have done it! I have not had
+a happy moment since I threw away my good name--I could not go home!
+Kill me, send me to prison, punish me how you choose. I shall rejoice to
+suffer!" And the poor wretch grovelled before me on his stomach.
+
+I had meant to punish him; but he was too broken for chastisement. I
+could not send to prison the man who had saved my life among the
+pine-trees of Djunis. I wonder if he really thought me dead--not that,
+if so, his act was thereby materially palliated. And I thought of two
+little sentences which my mother taught me when I was a child: "Judge
+not that ye be not judged," and "Lead us not into temptation." I pulled
+the man on to his feet and grasped his hand, then with the words, "Give
+me my father's watch--good-bye, Andreas. I shall remember all the good
+in you, and forget those last bad days." I turned from him, and quitted
+the "Concordia" with a lump in my throat that I could not swallow down.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+TOLD BY THE COLONEL.
+
+X.
+
+A MATRIMONIAL ROMANCE.
+
+BY W. L. ALDEN.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY R. JACK.
+
+
+"And by the way," continued the Colonel, "a curious thing about this
+Josiah Wilson was that he was married for fifteen years and never had
+any wife whatever."
+
+The Colonel had begun a story concerning one Josiah Wilson, which
+promised to be interesting, but his incidental allusion to Mr. Wilson's
+matrimonial experience awakened our curiosity, and we begged him to
+interrupt his narrative long enough to tell us how it came to pass that
+Josiah was a married man who never had a wife.
+
+[Illustration: "HOWLED FOR HELP."]
+
+"The marriage laws in the United States," said the Colonel, giving his
+chair an increased tilt backwards, which was his usual way of beginning
+a fresh anecdote, "are as peculiar in their way as are the divorce laws.
+You would think to look at them that they would permit anybody to marry
+anybody else in any way that either of them might choose, but for all
+that they sometimes make it impossible for a man or a woman to get
+married. There was a couple who intended to be married in a balloon,
+which is a style of lunacy that is quite fashionable in some parts of
+the country, though I can't see why a man should want to risk his neck
+in a balloon on his wedding day unless it is that it takes so much
+courage to be married at all that a man forgets all about such minor
+dangers as are connected with ballooning. The bride, the minister, and
+two witnesses of assorted sexes went up in the balloon at the appointed
+time, and, naturally, the bridegroom intended to go with them, but he
+accidentally caught his foot in a neglected guy-rope, and went up head
+downwards about twenty feet below the car. The party in the balloon
+could not haul him up because they could not get hold of the rope, and
+the bride would not consent to give up the trip, because the groom had
+always been a little shy, and she was afraid that, if she let him go
+this time, she might not be able to land him again. So the parson went
+on with the ceremony, and the groom made most of his responses in bad
+language, and howled for help when he wasn't swearing. When the ceremony
+was over, the aeronaut managed to land the balloon without seriously
+damaging the bridegroom, but when, a year or two afterwards, the bride
+wanted to get her divorce, the court held that there had never been any
+marriage, for the reason that both the groom and the bride had not
+appeared together in the presence of the officiating minister, and that,
+furthermore, there was no provision in the law which would permit a man
+to be married upside down.
+
+[Illustration: "SMITH'S BULL-DOG."]
+
+"But to get back to Josiah Wilson. He lived in Indiana, close to the
+boundary line between that State and Illinois, and he courted Melinda
+Smith, a young woman who lived a little way up the mountain side with
+her father and three brothers. The girl was anxious to be married, but
+her family was dead against it. You see Josiah was a Republican and a
+Methodist, while the Smiths were Democrats and Baptists, and, naturally,
+they hated each other like poison, and one night as old man Smith and
+Josiah met on their way to rival prayer meetings, they exchanged
+revolver shots, without, however, doing any harm. Then once Josiah had
+most of the calf of his leg taken off by the Smiths' bull-dog, and twice
+the Smith boys came into the sitting-room where Josiah was calling on
+Melinda, and suggested to him with their shot-guns that he had better go
+home. Gradually Josiah and Melinda came to the conclusion that her
+family was resolved to discourage the match, so they determined to elope
+and be married without the knowledge or consent of anybody.
+
+"One dark night Josiah carried a ladder and planted it under Melinda's
+window. He had advised her to walk out of the front door, which was
+always left unlocked at night, but she refused, saying that if she was
+going to elope she should do it in the proper way, and that if Josiah
+had no respect for her, she had some little respect for herself. She
+climbed down the ladder with a good deal of difficulty, because she
+insisted that Josiah should help her, and also that he should stand
+forty yards away, for reasons connected with her ankles, and he found it
+rather trying to follow out these contradictory orders. However, Melinda
+reached the ground at last, and the pair started in a carriage that had
+been waiting just around a bend in the road, in company with the
+Methodist minister. Their plan was to drive to the next town and there
+to be married, but it happened that one of the Smith boys, being
+restless, got up in the night, and, looking out of the window, saw the
+ladder standing at Melinda's window. In about twenty minutes after the
+young people had started, the whole Smith family and their shot-guns
+were following the runaways in a waggon, and gaining on them fast.
+
+"The Methodist minister, whose hearing was unusually good, heard the
+sound of hoofs before Josiah noticed it, and told the young people that
+there was not the least doubt that they were pursued, and would be
+overtaken in a very few minutes. 'And then, you know,' he added, 'the
+chances are that, being Baptists, they will shoot first, and ask for
+explanations afterwards. The only thing for us to do is to get the
+marriage ceremony over before they come up. Then they will see that
+opposition is of no use, and will listen to reason.'
+
+[Illustration: "THEY WERE MARRIED."]
+
+"Josiah and Melinda at once consented, and the parson, noticing a little
+clearing in the woods on the left hand side of the road, and a flat sort
+of tombstone standing in the middle of it, said that he would stand on
+that stone and marry his young friends so quick that it would make their
+hair curl. He was particularly glad to meet with a handy tombstone, for
+he said that a tombstone was the next thing to a church, and that to be
+married by the side of a tomb would be almost as solemn as to be married
+in a minister's study. So the party hastily descended; the parson
+mounted the stone; Josiah and Melinda joined hands in front of him, and
+they were married, and the parson had kissed the bride and pocketed his
+fee just as the Smiths' waggon drove up and the Smith boys cocked their
+guns and covered the party. But the parson was wide awake. He had his
+revolver out and old man Smith covered before anybody had taken aim at
+him, but, instead of shooting, he remarked that he was a minister of the
+blessed gospel of peace; that there was no necessity for bloodshed, and
+that he would blow a hole through old Smith unless the Smith boys
+lowered their weapons and consented to argue the matter. 'The fact is,
+Colonel Smith,' said the parson, 'you're too late. The young people are
+legally married, and the sooner you accept the situation the better. I
+married them not two minutes ago, standing on that identical tombstone.'
+
+[Illustration: "'YOU'LL COME STRAIGHT HOME WITH ME.'"]
+
+"Colonel Smith was a lawyer, and the sharpest one in that part of the
+country. He saw the force of the minister's remarks, so he told the boys
+to put up their guns, and he shook hands with the minister. Then he
+inquired, in a careless sort of way, where Josiah and Melinda had stood
+while they were being married. The parson showed the footprints of the
+bride and groom, and then Colonel Smith turned to Melinda and said,
+'You'll come straight home with me. There hasn't been any marriage yet.
+That stone is the boundary mark between Indiana and Illinois, and you
+were standing in Indiana and that other idiot was standing in Illinois
+when the parson tried to marry you. Nobody can marry in two States at
+the same time, and I shan't recognise the pretended marriage till a
+court of law compels me to do so, which will be never. I hope this will
+teach you the folly of fooling with Methodism. When you want to get
+married next time try a Baptist minister, who will know the difference
+between a tombstone and a boundary mark.' There were too many Smiths,
+and they were too well armed to be reasoned with successfully, so the
+upshot was that Melinda went home with her family, and Josiah and the
+parson went to see a lawyer.
+
+"The next day Josiah brought a suit for divorce against Melinda. It was
+a friendly suit, you understand, and his only object was to test the
+question of the validity of his marriage, for, of course, no man can get
+a divorce unless he first proves that he is married. Old man Smith
+conducted the case on his side, and a lawyer named Starkweather, who is
+now a member of the Illinois Legislature, appeared for Josiah Wilson.
+Colonel Smith argued that while the parson who conducted the alleged
+marriage ceremony could undoubtedly have married a couple in the State
+of Indiana, he could not marry a woman in Indiana to a man in Illinois,
+for the reason that the man and the woman could not be in the same place
+while they were in two different commonwealths, and that hence Josiah
+and Melinda had not legally appeared together before the officiating
+minister. Furthermore, he argued that the minister at the time of the
+pretended marriage was standing neither in Indiana nor in Illinois, but
+on the boundary line; that the statute defined the boundary line as 'an
+imaginary line' running from such and such a point to such and such a
+point, and that a minister who stands in a purely imaginative locality
+stands virtually nowhere, and hence cannot perform any function of
+his calling.
+
+"On the other hand, Josiah's lawyer claimed that the minister had
+married Melinda Smith in the State of Indiana; that consequently she
+must have been married to somebody, and that that somebody was
+unquestionably Josiah Wilson. As to the point that the minister stood in
+an imaginary locality because, as was alleged, he stood on the boundary
+line, the lawyer maintained that it was a physical impossibility that a
+minister weighing two hundred and fifty pounds could stand in a purely
+imaginative place. Moreover, he was prepared to prove that, while
+performing the ceremony, at least one of the minister's feet was in the
+State of Indiana, which was sufficient to make him legally present in
+that State.
+
+"The arguments lasted three days, and the court before which it was
+tried, consisting of three judges, took all the third day to deliver its
+verdict. It decided that Melinda Smith was legally married to some
+person unknown, though not to Josiah Wilson, and that Josiah Wilson was
+also married to some unknown woman, who was not Melinda Smith, whoever
+else she might be; that no marriage between the plaintiff and the
+defendant had ever taken place, and that no divorce could be granted,
+but that if either of them married anyone else, he or she would be
+guilty of bigamy.
+
+[Illustration: "SHE WAS A GOOD DEAL CAST DOWN."]
+
+"The Smiths, with the exception of Melinda, were delighted with the
+decision, for it made it reasonably certain that Josiah could never be
+recognised as her husband. She was a good deal cast down about it, for,
+like every other Indiana girl, she had looked forward to being married
+and divorced as the natural lot of woman. Now it appeared that she was
+married, but in such an unsatisfactory way, that she could never have a
+husband, and never be divorced from anyone. As for Josiah, he was
+furious, but there was no help for it, the law was against him, and, as
+a law-abiding man, he was obliged to respect it, especially as he could
+not hope to kill off all four of the Smiths, if he decided to make a
+family feud of it; he himself having no family whatever, and no one to
+help him to keep up his end of the feud.
+
+"For the next fifteen years Josiah lived a single man except in name,
+and Melinda mourned her hard fate and kept house for her father and
+brothers; but one day Josiah's lawyer, who was by this time in the
+Legislature, came to him and offered to have his marriage to Melinda
+made legal in all respects for five hundred dollars. The lawyer was so
+certain that he could do this that he was willing to wait for his pay
+until after he had gained a verdict, and Josiah, after a little
+bargaining such as every self-respecting man would have made, in his
+place, consented to the lawyer's terms. It seems that the lawyer had
+accidentally discovered that there had been a mistake in the survey of
+part of the boundary line between Indiana and Illinois, and at the very
+place where Josiah and Melinda were married, A rectification of this
+mistake would move the line ten feet west, and so place the spot where
+the pair stood during their wedding entirely within the state of
+Indiana. The proper steps to obtain the rectification of the boundary
+were taken, and it was rectified. Then Melinda in her turn began a suit
+for divorce against Josiah, and had no difficulty in proving the
+marriage and in obtaining a decree. Josiah paid the lawyer his five
+hundred dollars, and was overjoyed at being finally able to call his
+Melinda his own. But he met with a little disappointment. Now that
+Melinda had obtained her divorce she thought she might as well live up
+to it, and marry a fresh husband. So she married the Methodist minister,
+who had just lost his third wife, and lived happily ever afterwards.
+
+[Illustration: "OFFERED TO HAVE HIS MARRIAGE MADE LEGAL."]
+
+"It was just after this that Josiah, being perhaps made a little
+reckless by his disappointment, became involved in the affair that I was
+going to tell you about when you interrupted me, and wanted to hear
+about his marriage. Matrimony is a mighty curious thing, and you can
+never tell precisely how it is going to turn out. That is one reason why
+I was never married but once, though I spent ten years of my life in
+Chicago, and had friends at bar who stood ready to obtain divorces for
+me at any moment and without a dollar of expense."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: IDLERS.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+"LIONS IN THEIR DENS."
+
+No. II.--GEORGE GROSSMITH AND THE HUMOUR OF HIM.
+
+BY RAYMOND BLATHWAYT.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEO. HUTCHINSON.
+
+(_Photographs by Messrs. Fraddle and Young and Alfred Ellis._)
+
+
+[Illustration: MR. GEORGE GROSSMITH.]
+
+A little, slight man, with a thin, clever, mobile, clean-shaven face, a
+sharp inquisitive nose surmounted by a perpetual pair of _pince-nez_,
+and a rather sarcastic mouth, from which wit and humour as light and
+airy as the cigarette smoke which accompanied each remark
+continually flowed.
+
+Mr. George Grossmith, the well-known actor and society clown.
+
+He stands on the hearthrug of his own special sanctum in his handsome
+house in Dorset Square, with his back to the fire, cigarette in his
+mouth, his hands now in his pockets, now waving in the air, as he
+vivaciously tells me the story of his busy, energetic and wonderfully
+interesting life.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. GEORGE GROSSMITH.]
+
+"I was born," said he, "in 1847. I come of a family of actors and
+reciters. My father, whose portrait you see there on the wall, was a
+well-known lecturer and entertainer. Sixty or seventy years ago my uncle
+created a great sensation as a child actor, and he was commonly known as
+the 'celebrated infant Roscius.' Come out into the hall," continued the
+lively little entertainer, "and I will show you some old engravings
+which represent him in his favourite characters. Then my brother Weedon,
+as you know, is, of course, a well-known actor, as well as a clever
+artist, and part author with myself of several sketches which have
+appeared in _Punch_. My eldest son now begins to display the family
+tendency to a most alarming extent. For my own part, I started my career
+as a reporter at Bow Street Police Court, a training which I have found
+invaluable in many respects ever since. My subsequent history as actor
+and society clown is so well known that I need not trouble you with it
+any further."
+
+"I suppose you find the taste of your audiences has gone up considerably
+within the last twenty years, do you not?"
+
+"Why, yes," he replied. "They wouldn't stand to-day what they used to
+roar at then. My music is quite elaborate compared with the two or three
+chords which easily satisfied people in the sixties and early seventies.
+Listen to this," continued my host, as he sat down to the _piano_ and
+struck a couple of very simple chords. Then he glided softly into what
+he termed a modern accompaniment. It was all the difference between "Ten
+Little Niggers" and a slumber song of Schubert.
+
+[Illustration: MR. GROSSMITH'S HOUSE.]
+
+"And do you find the public very critical?"
+
+"Well," he replied, with a smile, "they are very kind. It is your
+professional critic who is severe, though I can honestly say they
+invariably treat me well. Criticism up to a certain point is good
+enough. Beyond that point it is absolutely disabling to me. My father
+was a very severe critic. When we went out together he used to take the
+first half-hour, and then go to the back of the hall and criticise me.
+But it so hampered me by causing me to think of and consider every pose
+that I had to beg of him to desist. And then again, as regards
+criticism, I always think--it may be very conceited on my part--that I
+know a great deal more what the public want than my critics do. I
+declare to you I should have to take everything out of my sketches if I
+attempted to carry out all the suggestions that are made to me. I can
+absolutely feel the public pulse after so many years upon the platform.
+I am almost always right. When I first started 'See me Dance the Polka'
+it fell quite flat. I gave it up, although I felt sure it ought to go.
+The public then demanded it, and it went with a swing. The public had
+changed its mind. Not I."
+
+[Illustration: THE DINING ROOM.]
+
+"And how do you prepare your sketches?" said I, as Mr. Grossmith lit
+another cigarette, and took up his position on the hearthrug again.
+
+"Anyhow and anywhere the idea comes to me for a sketch. I am seated in a
+railway train, and I think of a sea-side sketch. I close my eyes and try
+to recall every single feature of interest on a crowded fashionable
+beach in the height of the season. Nothing is too unimportant. The way
+in which an old lady settles herself comfortably into her chair, the
+manner in which a man, especially a shy man, walks into the room, all
+these things, slightly exaggerated, but still true to nature, are
+immensely appreciated. First I have the idea, then I elaborate,
+sometimes for months, then I produce on the stage, and the people say,
+'How remarkable it is you should invent all this on the spur of the
+moment!' That, of course, is a great compliment. The song-writing is
+always amusing," continued Mr. Grossmith, as he placed in my hand a
+little notebook in which were suggestions and elaborations innumerable.
+One thing I noticed, which he himself had condemned, but which was
+decidedly amusing, although it has never been allowed to see the
+light of day:
+
+[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM.]
+
+    "I've been engaged to many,
+    Quite a score of times at least;
+    I don't think I with safety _can say_
+    Where I met my first _fianc�e_.
+    Oh! 'tis better to have loved and lost
+    Than never to have loved at all;
+    So I may say I have loved and _lost a lot_,
+    And my fickleness has _cost a lot_."
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Grossmith, as he leaned over me and saw what I was
+reading; "my better judgment told me that was not good enough for
+the public."
+
+Then came a pencilled note in this little book, "You can take a horse to
+water, but can't make him drink." "That gave me an idea," cried Mr.
+Grossmith, as he sprang to his feet. "You can take a boy to the piano,
+but you can't make him play.' Thought I to myself, that would make a
+capital sketch. And here is how I set about it," continued he, as he
+proceeded to illustrate his remarks. "Imagine a little fellow in the
+corner there. I then begin in dumb show to encourage him to come to the
+piano. 'Come on, my boy; you know you can play that pretty piece you
+played yesterday. Come on, there's a good fellow!' Wonderful what you
+can do with persuasion! He refuses. I attempt to lead him to the piano.
+He won't budge an inch. I carry him under my arm and seat him in front
+of the instrument, the audience roaring all the time. At last his
+mistakes are so many and so ridiculous, I lose all patience and catch
+him a mighty box upon the ears! Tableau!! Of course there is no boy on
+the platform at all, I am quite alone, but I have so thoroughly lost
+myself in my imagination that people have declared years after, 'Oh! but
+I am quite sure you had a boy with you; why, don't you remember how you
+boxed his ears?'"
+
+[Illustration: "I ENCOURAGE HIM."]
+[Illustration: "I ATTEMPT TO LEAD HIM."]
+[Illustration: "I CARRY HIM."]
+[Illustration: "I LOSE ALL PATIENCE."]
+
+No less marvellous than his power of acting is his power of mimicry. "I
+will show you how I do Irving," said he, and in a moment the little man
+had ruffled his hair, had assumed to the life not only Irving's peculiar
+gait, but, even more remarkable still, had managed to secure almost
+exactly the very expression of the great tragedian's face.
+
+[Illustration: "HOW I DO IRVING."]
+
+"Then again, I find it a good idea to take up some craze or topic of the
+moment. 'The Drama on Crutches' I wrote when the craze first arose
+amongst the aristocracy for going on the stage. One of the sketches
+which you will find outlined in that little notebook is entitled, 'Is
+Music a Failure?' and I endeavoured to answer the question by showing
+how popular it is among all classes of the community." I will quote
+pretty freely from this outlined sketch, as it will give my readers an
+idea, better than anything else would do, of the manner in which Mr.
+Grossmith prepares his delightful sketches.
+
+"I am not going to treat the subject seriously," he writes, "but in my
+own particular, impertinent way. The question often arises--are we a
+musical nation? The foreigners think we are not. But where in the wide,
+wide world is there a country where you will hear so many organs and
+German bands? Where is the country, excepting ours, that can appreciate
+the concertina? Where, except in England, can you hear that delightful
+combination of harp and cornet outside a house of refreshment? The
+prejudice of other nations is distressing; and as for their ignorance,
+why, I don't suppose Italy and Germany have even heard of the ocarino
+and the Jew's harp."
+
+And so the sketch runs on, until, in speaking of the universal manner in
+which music is appreciated in England by all classes, Mr. Grossmith goes
+on to say: "We have made rapid strides, so have our servants. They don't
+know how to dust the piano, but they can play it. Everybody plays the
+piano, from the Peerage to the School Board. Then look how music has
+crept into our homes and social circles. Besides the piano, the mother
+and daughters play the banjo, the son plays the first fiddle, and the
+father the second fiddle--as usual. I know of a Lord Mayor who plays the
+trombone, a clergyman who plays the big drum--that's a nice
+unpretentious, giddy instrument!--and I know of any number of members of
+Parliament who blow their own trumpets!!" And so the notes go brightly
+on through many pages.
+
+[Illustration: THE STUDY.]
+[Illustration: MR. WEEDON GROSSMITH.]
+
+"This," explained my host, "is a fair specimen of the method I employ in
+preparing a drawing-room sketch. As a rule, my audiences of that class
+are capital. I always love a well-dressed audience, it is so cheerful.
+You mayn't perhaps get as much applause as you do from the sixpenny
+gallery, but then applause often spoils your point. Once, however, I
+remember singing at a private house in the country to an odd assortment
+of people. I was informed that the party followed a wedding which had
+taken place in the morning. If it had followed a funeral it could not
+have been more gloomy and depressed than it was. I played the piano and
+the fool for three-quarters of an hour, and anything more dismal than
+the result it would be impossible to conceive. A temptation seized me
+suddenly, and I said: 'Ladies and gentlemen,--I am going to reveal to
+you a secret. Pray don't let it go any further. This is supposed to be a
+comic entertainment. I don't expect you to laugh at it in the least; but
+if, during the next sketch, you would only once oblige me with a society
+smile, it would give me a great deal of encouragement.' The audience for
+a moment were dumbfounded. They first began to titter, then to laugh,
+and actually to roar, and for a time I could not proceed with the
+sketch. They were transformed into a capital and enthusiastic audience,
+and the hostess told me that both her guests and herself were most
+grateful to me. I am sometimes amused with the little eccentricities of
+people who wish to secure my services for their parties. A gentleman
+once wrote to me to entertain some friends of his, and, added he, 'I
+trust that your sketches are strictly _comme il faut_, as I have several
+young daughters.' I was so immensely tickled by this that, rightly or
+wrongly, I replied that my entertainments _were_ as they should be, for
+I was recently married, and hoped myself to have several young
+daughters. He wrote thanking me for this assurance, and I was to
+consider myself accordingly engaged. There is a story I tell in my book
+which will bear repetition: A young gentleman once called upon me. He
+explained that he was acting as a sort of ambassador for a friend of
+his, Mrs. ----, of Mayfair, who wished me to dine at her house. I
+replied that I had not the honour of the lady's acquaintance, and,
+though appreciating her kind invitation, I did not see how I could very
+well avail myself of it. He said that Prince Somebody or other and La
+Comtesse de So-and-so would be dining there, and Mrs. ---- would be so
+pleased if I would join the party, and sing a little song after dinner.
+'Oh,' I said, 'if Mrs. ---- wishes to engage me professionally, that is
+another matter, and if I am at liberty, I will come with much pleasure.'
+'Well,' said the ambassador, 'I fancy Mrs. ---- is under the impression
+that if she includes you in her dinner party it is an understood thing
+that you sing afterwards.' 'I am afraid I do not understand that,' I
+said. 'It would not pay me to do so. I only consume about ten shillings
+worth of food and wine, and my terms are more than that.' There," said
+Mr. Grossmith, "could you have believed that anyone would have been so
+inconceivably mean and caddish?"
+
+[Illustration: OLD ENGRAVINGS.]
+[Illustration: MR. GEORGE GROSSMITH.]
+[Illustration: MR. GEO. GROSSMITH, JUN.]
+
+"I have had some curious experiences on tour," he went on. "That is hard
+work, if you like. I have gone a four months' tour without missing a
+night. It takes it out of one terribly. But it is very paying work. In
+the South of England I have made as much as �300 a week. My friends
+tried to frighten me as to the apathy of my Scotch audiences; as a
+matter of fact, I have no better audiences anywhere. I like performing
+to country audiences. I am never nervous as I am apt to be at St.
+James's, where there are a number of my friends. And it is on my country
+tours that I have many curious experiences. Amateurs invariably call at
+the hotel to see me, and to ask my advice as to their powers of
+recitation. Some are quite hopeless, and I haven't the heart to condemn
+them utterly, or to go beyond 'I tell you quite candidly, since you ask
+me, that I have heard better.' As a rule they are very quiet and modest,
+but now and again one encounters some fearful specimens. I remember once
+at a country town, which we will call Mudborough, a flashy young cad, in
+a very loud suit, called to see me with a parcel under his arm. He had
+come, he told me, to learn my opinion of his singing. He further
+informed me that he was known as 'the Mudborough Grossmith.' He didn't
+have the courtesy to take off his hat; he walked up and down my room,
+whistling, singing, and handing me over now and again specimens of his
+powers as a water-colour painter. I looked at them. At last, tired of
+the idiot and his airs, I said, 'I hope your musical sketches are better
+than you water-colour sketches.' Nothing, however, could snub this
+fellow. He proceeded straightway to sing me an improved version of 'See
+me Dance the Polka.' 'Do your audience like it?' I asked. 'I should
+think they did,' he replied; 'I will let you have that last verse if you
+like.' I thanked him sarcastically, and at last he withdrew. I have,
+however, come across some real talent in this way. For instance, that
+admirable actor and entertainer, Eric Lewis, is a _prot�g�_ of mine, and
+you could not have a better man than he. Another amusing incident
+occurred at Southsea. My secretary was in a shop one day, and he
+overheard three ladies discussing the respective merits of Corney Grain
+and myself. Two of them were for Corney Grain and one was for me.
+Finding at last that the odds were too strong for her, she departed with
+this final shot: 'Well, never mind, Mr. Corney Grain can't jump on to a
+piano,' referring to my imitation of Minnie Palmer."
+
+[Illustration: "A FLASHY YOUNG CAD, IN A VERY LOUD SUIT."]
+
+Replying to a question I put to him as to his theatrical experiences,
+Mr. Grossmith told me that it was in the November of 1877 that he
+received the following letter:--
+
+"Beefsteak Club,
+
+"King William Street,
+
+"Tuesday Night.
+
+"Dear Mr. Grossmith,--Are you inclined to go on the stage for a time?
+There is a part in the new piece I am doing with Gilbert which I think
+you would play admirably. I can't find a good man for it. Let me have a
+line, or come to Albert Mansions to-morrow, after 4; or Thursday,
+before 2.30.
+
+"Yours sincerely,
+
+"ARTHUR SULLIVAN."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"This was a great moment in my life, although at the time my father,
+whose good judgment I valued much, was of opinion that I was not very
+successful as an actor. Sullivan, however, who had heard me give a
+musical sketch at a dinner party, was of the contrary opinion, and felt
+sure that I should suit him. It appears he and Arthur Cecil were both
+writing letters at the Beefsteak, when the former said, 'I can't find a
+fellow for this opera.' Cecil said, 'I wonder if Grossmith--' Before he
+had finished the sentence, Arthur Sullivan said, 'The very man!' And so
+I was engaged. I am much indebted to these two Arthurs," continued the
+bright little man with a laugh. "I reverence the very name of Arthur. I
+remember when Gilbert wanted to engage me for the part of _John
+Wellington Wells_, though I saw the part would suit me to perfection, I
+said to him, 'I should have thought you required a fine man with a fine
+voice for the part of a magician.' I can still see Gilbert's humorous
+expression as he replied, 'That is just what we _don't_ want.' I played
+_Sir Joseph Porter_ in 'Pinafore' every night for nearly two years. Long
+runs don't affect the nerves of the actors nearly as much as they affect
+the performance. Constant repetition begets mechanism, and that is a
+terrible enemy to contend against. I make a point of playing my best to
+a bad house; for it is a monstrous thing to slur through one's work
+because the stalls are empty, and thereby punish those who _have_ come
+for the fault of those who _have not_. Still, I repeat it, constant
+repetition is a dreadful thing. Fancy playing 'Pinafore,' as I did, for
+700 nights without missing a single performance!"
+
+[Illustration]
+[Illustration]
+
+As he said this Mr. Grossmith led the way out of the room in which we
+had been talking, and which he told me was his own special sanctum,
+"into which no one is ever allowed to come except my wife, for anyone
+rushing in here when I was composing or thinking out a sketch would
+inevitably drive every single idea from my head," and we went upstairs
+together. Here in the drawing-room he set himself down to a spinet which
+bore the date of 1770, and he struck a few exceedingly sweet-sounding,
+if slightly tinkling, chords from it. "And this," said he, "is the
+oldest _Broadwood_ in England. You can see for yourself the date--1795."
+Downstairs he showed me a beautiful model of a steam engine, upon which
+he was enabled to ride, and which he could drive himself. "I thoroughly
+understand locomotives," said he, as he pointed to a shelf full of all
+the works upon the subject which he had been able to discover.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+A BLIND BEGGARMAN
+
+BY FRANK MATHEW.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. PEGRAM.
+
+
+    "Left dark among mine enemies."
+
+Long ago, the Fairies often stole children; they chose the prettiest,
+and carried them to Fairyland--the Kingdom of Tyrnanoge,--leaving
+hideous Changelings instead. In those days no man had call to be ashamed
+of his offspring, since it a baby was deformed or idiotic it was known
+to be a Changeling.
+
+[Illustration: "THE PIG WAS A FRIENDLY ANIMAL."]
+
+It is sixty years now since old Mike Lonergan, who lived in a hovel in
+Moher Village, was robbed of his child. It was his wife first found out
+the theft, for she had seen her unborn son in a dream, and he was
+beautiful; so when she saw the sickly and ugly baby, she knew that he
+was not hers, and that the Fairies had stolen the child of her dream.
+Many advised her to roast the Changeling on the turf-fire, but the White
+Witch of Moher said it would be safer to leave him alone. So the child
+Andy grew up as a stranger in his father's hovel and had a dreary time
+of it, he got little food and no kindness. The Lonergans gave him
+neither offence nor welcome, hoping that he might see fit to go home to
+Tyrnanoge and yet bear them no grudge. He grew up an odd wizened little
+wretch, and everyone shunned him. The children loathed him because they
+were afraid of him, so they hooted him from a distance, or stoned him
+from behind walls.
+
+Indeed, at this time his only ally was the pig that lived in one corner
+of the hovel. The pig was a friendly animal, his front half was a dull
+white and the other half black, and this gave him a homely look as if he
+was sitting in his shirt-sleeves. Andy would shrink into the corner, and
+sit cuddled there with one arm round the pig's neck. Old Mike Lonergan
+took to drink, and spent every evening at the Shebeen--small blame to
+him--for how could a man be expected to stay at home with a Changeling
+sitting in a corner and staring at him?
+
+When the pig was driven to the Fair at Ennistimon, Andy was left
+friendless, and then--in all winds and weather--was to be found on the
+Cliffs of Moher. Sometimes he stopped out all night, till hunger would
+bring him back when the Lonergans were rejoicing at his disappearance.
+He knew every inch of the Cliffs, and spent half his time lying on the
+edge of the grey precipice, looking down at the sea, six hundred feet
+below, or watching the clouds of sea-birds; he found new paths down the
+cliff-side and clambered like a goat; he knew where the gulls nested,
+but never robbed them, and the caves where the seals lived, and the
+seals shouldered their way through the water close by him, looking at
+him with soft eyes.
+
+When he was about fourteen, the Famine Year came; fever and "The Hunger"
+swept Clare. The fever took Lonergan and his wife, and they were buried
+in the dead-pit at Liscannor; it left Andy, but it left him blind. Then
+the neighbours began to have their doubts whether he was a Changeling
+after all; for the Fairies are faithful, and who ever heard of a
+Changeling being left blind and penniless? If he was only mortal he had
+been cruelly treated, so to make amends they gave him the fiddle that
+had belonged to the "Dark" Man--that is the blind man--of St. Bridget's
+Well, who had lately starved. There was still a feeling that he was
+unfit for a Holy Well, so he took up a post at the Liscannor
+Cross-roads, and there levied a toll on passers with the professional
+heart-broken cry:
+
+"Remember the Dark Man! For God's sake, remember the Dark Man!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For nearly twenty years Andy haunted the Cross-roads, he came to be
+honoured as one of the institutions of Moher, though the folk considered
+there was much that was uncanny about him, he was so silent, and he
+hated the smell of whisky. Now those were the times when Cornelius
+Desmond ruled Moher in the old open-handed haphazard way, never
+troubling penniless tenants. But "Corney" died and the daisies grew over
+him, so the estate was managed by an agent who made short work of
+paupers, and evicted "Dark" Andy from his ancestral hovel. Andy did not
+seem to know his misfortune. He spent the day of the eviction, as usual,
+at the Cross-roads, and came back at night to a ruin. His neighbour,
+Larry Ronan the blacksmith, was grieved to see that he took the change
+as a matter of course, and that after groping in the four corners of the
+cabin he sat on the window-ledge as if unaware that nothing was left of
+his home but the walls.
+
+Next day it was rumoured that Bridget McCaura, of Moher Farm, had
+sheltered Dark Andy. Bridget was a warm woman, a "woman of three cows,"
+a masterful old maid, who in her time had refused many a pretty fellow,
+perhaps because she suspected them of hankering after her live stock,
+her poultry, and her sixty acres of rocks. Then the old parish priest,
+Father Peter Flannery, rode over to see her. Bridget was called out of
+her house to speak to him; he was afraid to dismount. She stood in the
+narrow gateway in front of her farm, with her arms akimbo, ready to
+defend her home against all comers. Peter's heart trembled; he has a
+great dread of angry women.
+
+"Is it thrue?" he asked--and was so frightened that he looked even
+sterner than usual--"is it thrue what I'm afther hearing, Bridget
+McCaura, that ye've taken the Dark Man, Lonergan, to live with ye--to
+live in the Farm?"
+
+"Is it thrue? 'Tis so," said Bridget.
+
+"But ye're not going to keep him, are ye now?"
+
+"Keep him? I am that," said Bridget.
+
+Peter screwed up his courage and told her warily, that though it was
+well-meant of her, and "'tis you have the kind warm heart, Bridget me
+dear," still, that propriety forbade it.
+
+He was afraid to look at her as he spoke. Bridget was purple.
+
+"What! a misfortnit ould omadhaun the likes of that?" she cried.
+
+"I know, I know," said Peter (this is a pet phrase of his and usually
+means that he does not know). "I know, I know, but 'tis because ye're a
+lone woman, tell me now are ye listening to me? If ye'd been married
+now, 'twould have been another thing."
+
+"Married!" cried Bridget with infinite scorn--"Married! If that's all,
+I'll marry the craythur to-morrow!"
+
+And so Dark Andy was married to the richest woman in Moher. He seemed
+indifferent; as for Bridget, she had made up her mind to shelter him,
+and there was an end of it, she took pleasure in astounding her
+neighbours.
+
+[Illustration: "I'LL MARRY THE CRAYTHUR TO-MORROW!"]
+
+There was never such excitement in Clare as when those banns were read.
+Everyone saw that poor Bridget McCaura--"dacint woman"--had been
+bewitched. All the old stories about Dark Andy came to life, there was
+no room for doubt now, and the bravest unbelievers trembled before him.
+There was many a woman would never hear his name without crossing
+herself, and he got the credit of every misfortune between Kilkee and
+Kinvarra, though some doubted whether a blind man could have the Evil
+Eye. It was felt that he should be asked to give up his post by the
+Cross-roads, since it was inconvenient for the neighbours to have to
+climb two stone walls to avoid passing him. However, no one could be
+found to suggest this to him, so he still sat there daily, for he liked
+to feel that he was earning his own livelihood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One rough afternoon during my first visit to Clare I was caught in a
+storm of rain, and took refuge at the Liscannor Cross-roads under a
+thick clump of trees that are stunted and bent eastward by cowering from
+the sea-wind. As I reached them I heard a shrill cry, "Remember the Dark
+Man!" Then I saw the blind beggarman sitting huddled in a ragged
+great-coat so much too big for him that till he stood up I did not see
+how tiny he was. He had a doleful peaked face, set in a shock of grey
+hair. By him sat a little brown dog--the queerest of mongrels--with a
+tin can tied round his neck.
+
+Andy was friendly that day, and talked eagerly in a shrill, stammering
+voice. I found later that he was wretched in still weather, and loved
+the malicious rush of the rain; he was happiest when the wind rattled in
+his ears and the rain whipped his face. "Call that rain?" he said, "sure
+th' air is flooded, an' ye might as well swim as walk."
+
+Many times after that I went out of my way on my long solitary walks to
+pass the Cross-roads, but as often as not he was glum and silent, and
+then Bonaparte, sharing his mood, would growl like a small thunderstorm.
+The seat was well chosen, for the cowering trees are like a shed over
+it, and there is a pleasant landscape in front (though that mattered
+little to Andy), a landscape of dim green moors--with brown stains on
+them where sedge grows and black shadows where bushes huddle in
+clefts--chequered by a grey net of low walls, dotted with the white
+gables of cabins, and framed by a wavering line of hills.
+
+Sometimes I found him playing his fiddle to keep himself company, but he
+stopped when he heard me, and, to tell the truth, I was glad of it, for
+his playing was uncanny. Sometimes I met him shambling along the brink
+of the Cliffs--a grotesque little figure, with his old shapeless hat,
+his huge coat flapping behind him, and the mighty blackthorn he
+carried--he knew the ground so well that he walked as if he could see
+(indeed, he saw more than I could, for while to me the breakers were
+only streaks of light, he spoke as if he was close to them on the wet
+weedy rocks), or I came on him lying by the edge, listening to the
+grumbling of the breakers and the cries of the gulls.
+
+[Illustration: "LISTENING TO THE GRUMBLING OF THE BREAKERS AND THE CRIES
+OF THE GULLS."]
+
+Mostly he was unsociable, he shrank from his neighbours because they had
+been cruel to him when they were children, and the dislike was more than
+returned; yet I think that, but for the loneliness of his whole life, he
+would have been friendly enough. No one knew more of folklore--I think
+he half believed that he was a Changeling, and found comfort in the
+thought of that former life when he was one of the merry "Little Good
+People"--and sure old Mike Lonergan and his wife ought to have known
+best. He knew the ways of every ghost in the county, and it was even
+said that he was on speaking terms with the Headless Man who haunted
+Liscannor. Of course he knew all about Fairies. When the fallen leaves
+scurried past his feet he knew that the "Little Good People" were
+playing football, when the wind whispered in the leaves overhead he
+heard them chatting, and when it whined in the creaking bare branches,
+heard the poor little folk crying with cold and bewailing the days when
+they found shelter by snug firesides and sat there unseen but not
+unwelcome. Once, before the world grew hard, they gathered in the
+cabins, and the roughest fare grew pleasanter, the saddest hearts
+lighter, from their good wishes; but no one cares for them now, and they
+cannot rest in unfriendly houses.
+
+[Illustration: "HE WAS ON SPEAKING TERMS WITH THE HEADLESS MAN OF
+LISCANNOR."]
+
+As he grew older, he talked more of them, grew more moody and restless,
+could not sit quiet while the wind was up, and spent night after night
+out of doors. My friend Father Peter Flannery, who is my chief authority
+for this history, told me that often, riding on his sick calls in stormy
+weather, he met Andy staggering along the rough roads.
+
+Last year on November Eve--the night when the Fairies have power, and
+the dead wake and dance reels with them--the blind beggarman started out
+from the Farm. An Atlantic gale was shattering seas against the Cliffs,
+the air was salt with foam, and throbbed with the pulse of the breakers.
+Bridget tried in vain to stop him; he said the "Little Good People" were
+calling him. She watched him disappear into the darkness, the whimpering
+of his fiddle died into the shrieks of the wind. "'Tis a quare divil, he
+is," she said, "God help him!"
+
+Once in the night she thought she heard a snatch of the "Fairies' Reel";
+but Andy never came back. Next morning they found Bonaparte whining on
+the edge of the Cliffs; there was no sign of his master. He must have
+gone over the Cliffs in the darkness, but the waves gave no token.
+
+Some folk in Moher believe that the Fairies took back their child, and
+that the old blind fiddler lives now in the Kingdom of Tyrnanoge, and
+makes music for their dances in that enchanted country where the old
+grow young and the blind see. Some say that he still haunts the
+Cross-roads, and only a week ago, Larry Ronan, coming back at night from
+Ennistimon Fair, saw a black shadowy figure under the black trees, and
+heard a heart-broken voice cry "Remember the Dark Man!" Larry's natural
+surprise at this accounted for his being found next morning asleep in
+the ditch. But it is agreed in Moher that Andy left life on November
+Eve, whether he became the playfellow of the Fairies or the plaything of
+the waves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+CHURCH AND STAGE.
+
+A REVIEW OF HENRY IRVING,
+
+BY THE REV. DR. JOSEPH PARKER.
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM F. BARNARD AND J. BERNARD PARTRIDGE.
+
+
+[Illustration: MR. IRVING AS "HAMLET."
+(_From the Portrait by EDWIN LONG._)]
+
+[Illustration: MR. IRVING AS "DIGBY GRANT" IN "TWO ROSES."]
+
+The innumerable reviews of Mr. Irving by literary and artistic experts
+have left room enough for an amateur estimate by a man who is accustomed
+to regard human life mainly from a religious standpoint. A complete
+review of the Stage by the Pulpit could hardly be the work of a single
+pen; for my own part, therefore, I can only make a very small
+contribution to such a review by indicating a few points which have
+occurred to me in the study of one particular actor. At once, however,
+the question arises, Is Mr. Irving a man who can be thus summarily
+characterised? In a dramatic sense, are there not many Mr. Irvings? When
+a man can act "The Two Roses" and "The Dead Heart" with equal effect,
+when he can at will be as vulgar as _Robert Macaire_, or as dignified as
+_Cardinal Wolsey;_ when he can be either as young as Hamlet or as old as
+Lear, the inquiry as to his plurality becomes natural and pertinent. For
+my part, I rank Mr. Irving the comedian above Mr. Irving the tragedian,
+just as I rank Nature above Art: each may be highest in its own way, yet
+the one may have a charm which the other cannot boast. Mr. Irving's
+tragedy sometimes requires working up, but his comedy is spontaneous and
+immediate. The needful working up of tragedy is no fault of the actor.
+Tragedy should hardly ever begin at once. The murder may come too soon.
+Premature rage is followed by untimely laughter. _Digby Grant_ begins at
+once, and can be his best self in the very first sentence, but _Macbeth_
+must move towards his passion by finely-graded ascents. In Mr. Irving's
+exquisite representation, _Macbeth's_ anxieties and perturbations, his
+rapid alternations of courage and cowardice, make delicate but obvious
+record of themselves in deepening the grey of his hair, and ploughing
+more deeply the lines of his face. A comedy may be judged scene by
+scene, almost sentence by sentence, but a tragedy can be truly estimated
+only when viewed in final perspective.
+
+[Illustration: "A LITTLE CHEQUE."
+(MR. IRVING AS "DIGBY GRANT" IN "TWO ROSES.")]
+
+Judged by this test, I have no hesitation in regarding Mr. Irving's
+_King Lear_ as the finest creation of his genius. This is an instance in
+which the actor creates the piece. Shakespeare is, as a poet and
+playwright, at his worst in "King Lear." Yet his accessories are
+wonderful in variety and suggestiveness. Only Shakespeare could have
+created the heath, and have so ordered the old King's passion, as to
+make his madness part of the very thunder and lightning. That was
+Shakespeare's magnificent conception, and Mr. Irving's rendering is
+worthy of its tempestuous grandeur. How to talk up to the storm, how to
+pierce the tumult with the cries of human distress, how to escape the
+ridiculous and the incongruous, how to be a King on the desolate heath,
+and to make the royalty gleam through the angry darkness, were the
+problems, and Mr. Irving solved them one and all, even with redundance
+of faculty and skill. At the end of the heath scene the man is more
+remembered than the storm. It has been objected that in the first scene
+Mr. Irving's _Lear_ is too old and feeble. I venture to think otherwise.
+I further venture to think that the King's age and the King's imbecility
+have both been accurately appreciated. A man at eighty, a man athirst
+for flattery, a man who would pay a kingdom in exchange for adulation,
+must have outlived all that is best and strongest in human nature. He
+comes upon the stage as a wreck. His vanity has eaten up his sagacity,
+so that she, _Goneril_ or _Regan_, who can flatter most, can lie most,
+and can play the devil best, shall fare most lavishly at his hands. Is
+it not well partly to excuse these excesses of self-valuation by such
+mitigations as can be found in the infirmity of old age? Even in an
+elderly man they would have been treated with contempt; they could only
+be endured in one whose eighty years had been doubled by the hardness of
+his life lot.
+
+In "Henry VIII." Mr. Irving had little to do. In that play the labour
+and the glory fell upon another, to the infinite delight of the public.
+In "Lear," Mr. Irving has everything to do. From beginning to end there
+is only one character. Even the fascinating _Cordelia_ is but a silver
+cloud on the far horizon. "The King is coming" is the cry of the play.
+His madness is more, as to display and effect, than the sense of all the
+others. The scene is stiff and cold until his wild hair is observed to
+approach the front, and then the whole spectacle is alight with feeling
+and purpose. The other actors are not to blame that, to a large extent,
+they are thrown into the shade; indeed, they are to be warmly
+congratulated upon their self-suppression and their passive sympathy. It
+is a hard task to play the part of two heartless and treacherous
+daughters, and a pitiful fate to have to represent the villainy of
+_Edmund_, yet all this was admirably done. It cannot be an easy thing to
+come forward to play the villain well, for the better the dramatic
+villain is played the more is the actor compelled to recognise in his
+execration the exact degree of his success. So admirably can Mr. Irving
+himself play the villain, that it is difficult to believe that any
+godparents ever, on his unconscious behalf, renounced the pomps and
+vanities of this wicked world.
+
+In many minor parts--or along the subsidiary lines of great parts--Mr.
+Irving's subtlest power comes into effective play. Who, for example, can
+be more gentle or more graceful with a little child? Who could hug the
+"fool" more fondly than old _King Lear_? Then recall his wonderful
+recognitions of old friends. When, in "The Dead Heart," he is liberated
+from the Bastille, how old times slowly but surely dawn into
+consciousness, and how quickly the dawn hastens into the noontide of the
+tenderest fellowship and highest festival of joy. It is verily a
+resurrection. After eighteen years' entombment this political Lazarus
+comes forth to liberty, to leadership, to dominance.
+
+In "Lear," there are two wonderful instances of recognition, the
+recognition of _Gloster_ and of _Cordelia_. _Gloster_ is blind and
+bandaged. _Cordelia_ has been long out of sight--if not in actual days
+yet in depth of feeling--and the King himself is demented. Little by
+little things shape themselves in the memory and fancy of the King.
+There is something confusedly familiar in the voice of _Gloster_ which,
+tone by tone, settles into recognition. In the case of _Cordelia_ the
+father gradually subdues the King, and instinct takes the place of
+reason; then, in a fine strain, comes the identification:
+
+            "Do not laugh at me,
+    For, as I am a man, I think this lady
+    To be my child Cordelia."
+
+The utterance of these words by Mr. Irving is simply thrilling. The
+tones, the glances, the approach, the embrace, lift up the words into
+new light, keen and tender as the brightness of a summer morning. The
+words themselves are by no means striking, are, indeed, the merest
+commonplace, but, uttered with the natural pathos of a consummate actor,
+they carry the play to its most subduing climax. The humanity and the
+genius satisfy expectation in its most eager and jealous temper. Failure
+at that point would have ruined the play. Which was better, _Lear_ or
+_Cordelia_, in that critical action? We must first settle, Which is
+better, the star of morning or the morning star?
+
+[Illustration: MR. IRVING AS "KING LEAR." (FROM THE LYCEUM SOUVENIR.)]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As I opened this brief review with a reference to the religious
+standpoint, it may be well now to ask how the Church is to regard the
+Stage as an educational institution? The Stage cannot be put down. It
+responds to an instinct which is ineradicable, and which need not be
+ignoble. The parables of the New Testament are the sublimest recognition
+of that instinct. The drama is older than the theatre. Much of the
+greatest preaching has been dramatic, by which I mean that it has
+touched human life through the medium of story and parable, coloured and
+toned by a living fancy. Sometimes, too truly, the dramatic in preaching
+has degenerated into impossible anecdotes, most of them originating in
+the Far West of America, yet even such anecdotes testify to the
+overpowering force of the dramatic instincts when limited to their most
+vulgar conditions. My submission is, that a properly-conducted stage
+might be the most powerful ally of the pulpit. I advance upon this
+submission, and contend that the function of the preacher is infinitely
+superior to the function of the actor. Whatever the preacher has to say
+that is distinctive he can trace to what he believes to be a Divine and
+authoritative origin. I hold the great preacher to be a spiritual
+medium. In his next evolution he will simply tell the people whatever
+may have been given him in the same hour to say. This does not mean that
+indolence will supersede industry. Through the indolent man God sends no
+messages. The true prophet will always be preparing himself. By
+learning, by meditation, by self-discipline, the true prophet will
+prepare his heart for the incoming of the Eternal Spirit, and the glory
+of Heaven will be as a fire on the altar of the honest heart. Art
+preachers we have had in too great abundance. Mechanical talkers have
+brought upon the pulpit the disrepute of dulness. The age now waits for
+the messenger in whose loving heart there is the glow and the radiance
+of divinest sympathy. The great actor himself would be the first to
+admit that the preacher cannot trace his own public secondariness to the
+poverty of his themes. Where the preacher falls behind the actor, it is
+because the preacher does not realise the majesty and the tenderness,
+the vehemence and the urgency, of his own message.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THAT BEAST BEAUTY.
+
+BY KIRBY HARE.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY ERNEST M. JESSOP.
+
+
+I was a man born to misfortune. In fact, my first misfortune, the death
+of my father, happened three months before I came into the world. When I
+did duly appear, and was giving a proper howl of disgust, a fresh
+misfortune fell upon me; my mother departed to join my father, leaving
+me in the lurch in a vale of unavailing tears. I should have preferred
+going with my family to that blessed Utopia where there are neither
+births, deaths, marriages, divorces, breaches of promise, nor return
+tickets; only, unfortunately, I was not invited. So I became a
+posthumous orphan, soothed by Daffy's elixir and the skim-milk of human
+kindness. The milk was none too sweet, human kindness did not spare the
+rod, and I firmly believe it was Daffy's elixir that turned my hair red.
+However, I grew up at length into stand-up collars and tail coats, and
+at the age of seventeen springs was adopted (on trial) by a maiden aunt
+of seven-and-forty autumns. Like a gleam of sunshine hope flashed into
+my loveless life, lighting up my path to fortune. But it was only the
+glimmer of an _ignis fatuus_, which led me into a quicksand and snuffed
+itself out in a fog.
+
+[Illustration: A PROPER HOWL OF DISGUST.]
+
+[Illustration: HIS MAIDEN AUNT.]
+
+My relative had plenty of money, and plenty of other equally good
+qualities in the long run, no doubt; but the period of my adoption was
+too short to make sure of either the one or the other. If the wealthy
+maiden was really a worthy soul she did not let her nephew know it.
+Corporeally she was angular and iron-grey, with a summary tongue and
+wintry temper, chastened by a fondness for feline favourites. Unluckily,
+I was always falling foul of the latter, and my aunt continually fell
+foul of me in consequence. Crabbed age and youth could not live together
+in our case on account of cats. Age, as represented by the mature
+virgin, adored the brutes; youth, in the shape of a sprouting
+hobbledehoy, abhorred them altogether, and one evil minded black Tom in
+particular. My aunt called him Beauty, in happy ignorance that all her
+household called him a Beast. I admire beauty in the abstract; I also
+like it in the concrete; and in the concreted form of youthful feminine
+humanity I love it. But that feline black Beauty was the most outrageous
+misnomer unhanged. I had tried to hang him several times, down in the
+cellar in the dead of night; but his patent cast-iron neck set
+suspensory science at defiance, and Beauty triumphantly refused to give
+up the ghost. At first, he kicked and fought against it lustily, and
+yelled murder with all his might; but after a little practice the
+malefactor acted more philosophically, regarding the performance quite
+as part of his nocturnal programme. He never allowed it to make him late
+for breakfast, nor take away his appetite. Each morning, after
+execution, the moment the bell rang for prayers, in marched Beauty with
+a swollen head well on one side, growling anathemas from somewhere round
+the corner all prayer-time; after which the escaped convict devoured
+breakfast with the voracity of a stiffnecked cannibal.
+
+[Illustration: ONE EVIL-MINDED BLACK TOM.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Finding the beast utterly unhangable, I determined to try drowning. My
+nature is by no means a cruel one, quite the reverse; but Beauty's cup
+of iniquity had long been full to the brim, and running over into the
+saucer. He had gulped down my canaries like pills, poached my pigeons,
+fricasseed my rabbits, and made himself an abominable beast generally;
+and had now committed a crime that capped everything.
+
+My cock bantam, which had won first prize at the Slocum-Pogis poultry
+show, mysteriously disappeared. Jim, the gardener's boy, and I hunted
+everywhere without finding any trace till we sighted Beauty. The beast
+was seated on my verbena bed, with fearfully distended stomach, waving
+my poor little bantam's tail feathers from between his teeth. Had I been
+an ancient Egyptian high priest, and Beauty at the top of the tree of
+holy cats, his diabolical godship should have been made into a mummy
+instanter. As things were, he had to be drowned forthwith.
+
+[Illustration: AT A CABINET COUNCIL IN THE COAL CELLAR.]
+
+At a cabinet council in the coal cellar, composed of the cook, footman,
+Jim, and myself, all the executive details were arranged; my aunt being,
+of course, kept in happy ignorance of our intentions. As soon as my
+respected relative uttered the preliminary snore of her afternoon
+siesta, Beauty made an involuntary exit out of the house, all the lower
+doors and windows having been carefully fastened. Then commenced a
+silent cat-hunt, a serio-comic drama in dumb show, with a crowded
+audience breathlessly gazing from the windows. The scenery was a series
+of dissolving views, beginning on a flower-decked lawn, and ending at a
+mill-pool a mile or so away from the audience. Beauty played leading
+actor with considerable activity, notwithstanding the drawback of being
+handicapped with an undigested bantam. He flew over dozens of
+flower-beds, through all the outhouses, over the stable, out into the
+park, up and down all the tallest trees, and all over the country, till
+he took refuge in the deserted old mill. There we wriggled him into an
+ancient sack, and tied him up in the harmonious company of a couple of
+brickbats. Then we committed the body to the deep. The burial service
+was short, but hearty. "One--two--three, and away!" sung out in unison,
+was the special form for the occasion, accompanied by Beauty's farewell
+blessing as we "awayed" him into the silent depths of the mill-dam.
+There was a splash, a shrill cry from a frightened moorhen, a short
+jubilate from Jim, to which I piously added "amen," and all was over.
+Jim ran home with half-a-sovereign in his pocket, while I walked back to
+dress for dinner. On the stairs I met my aunt, already in evening array,
+and looking hungry. I knew the sign, and stealthily tried to
+vanish, vainly.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE DESERTED OLD MILL.]
+
+"Late again, Samuel!" she remarked, with a freezing spectacle-gleam that
+fixed me to the stair-carpet--my right foot two steps above the left.
+"You have just come in, I suppose. Have you seen Beauty?"
+
+[Illustration: "LATE AGAIN, SAMUEL!"]
+
+Horror! Could she suspect anything? I felt my face growing the colour of
+my hair, and my tongue frozen solid.
+
+"Can't you answer?" she went on wrathfully. "And can't you stand up
+straight?"
+
+I pulled my legs together and commenced to stammer.
+
+"I--I saw Beauty out--outside, aunt, in the garden," I managed to mutter.
+
+"Which way was he going?"
+
+"Why, I think he was running towards the house, aunt."
+
+[Illustration: THIRTY MILES AN HOUR.]
+
+And then the remembrance of how he _was_ running--thirty miles an hour,
+with tail on end and ears flat to his head, with Jim and my long-legged
+self racing in rear--made me choke with laughter I was forced to
+swallow. But my aunt's eyes were on me, and her gold-rimmed barnacles
+blazed through me, so I suffocated in silence.
+
+"Don't stand making faces like an idiot. Go and dress, and be quick,"
+snapped my loving relative, as she marched away downstairs and I flew to
+the region above.
+
+My bedroom door was partly open, and I dashed in hastily, pulling off my
+things as I went.
+
+[Illustration: DRESSING FOR DINNER.]
+
+My evening clothes were laid out ready on the bed, and--what was that on
+my shirt?--a black mass of--something moving!--some animal! Why, heavens
+and earth, it was the ghost of--that beast Beauty! It was Beauty
+himself! I ran for the poker; Beauty rushed out of the door. Confound
+that rotten old sack!
+
+I was late for dinner, and found Beauty seated in my chair, sleek and
+dry, with a ravenously whetted appetite. My aunt was so pleased with her
+favourite's improved appearance that she became quite affable, even to
+me. I was informed that as I had not been looking well lately I might go
+for a few days' change to the seaside; the salubrious air of
+Muddiford-on-the-Ooze would just suit me. What a blessing! To have
+escaped from those ice-gleaming spectacles and from that resuscitated
+beast Beauty I would gladly have gone to Jericho, much more to
+Muddiford-on-the-Ooze. Then my aunt continued her course of
+instructions, with the nearest approach to a smile I had ever seen
+on her face.
+
+[Illustration: A SHOW AT MUDDIFORD-ON-THE-OOZE.]
+
+"You will enjoy yourself, I am sure, Samuel, and you will also be able
+to show what pains you can take to please me," she said, sipping her
+first glass of Burgundy with approving relish. "There is to be a show at
+Muddiford the day after to-morrow, at which I intend exhibiting, and you
+will be able to manage everything for me; so mind you are careful to do
+your best."
+
+"I shall be most delighted," I declared gushingly. "What show is it? And
+what can I have the pleasure of taking charge of for you, my dear aunt?"
+
+"It's the Grand All-England Cat Show, and you will take Beauty; and I
+shall be greatly disappointed if you do not bring me back the first
+prize. So be on your best behaviour, Samuel, or perhaps you may live to
+regret it."
+
+My jaw dropped, and I thought I should have slid under the table. Good
+heavens! It was that beast Beauty who was to go for a holiday, while I
+was to act as the infernal fiend's keeper! O my prophetic soul--my aunt!
+But there was no help for it; I was bound in bonds of gold.
+
+On the following day, Beauty and I were duly driven to the station, the
+former being luxuriously nested in a small hamper specially furnished
+for the occasion. About half-way on the road, just as we had mounted a
+long, steep hill, the cat managed to roll his residence from the stern
+of the dog-cart and trundle himself half-way home again. Luckily, he
+screeched blue murder at the tip-top of his voice, or we might not have
+missed the beast. As it was, his cyclical retrogression made us just too
+late for the train, and we had to wait two hours for the next. So I
+seated myself on the hamper--like Patience on the proverbial
+monument--and beheld the coachman depart homewards, with a sympathetic
+hat-touching salute, leaving me with a gloomy conviction of coming
+misfortune. The train, when it did arrive, was tolerably empty, and I
+secured a vacant first-class. For a time all went happily; then the cat
+commenced groaning.
+
+[Illustration: SEATED MYSELF ON THE HAMPER.]
+
+My aunt having solemnly ordered me to give the brute dinner, I now
+prepared to stop his mouth with cold chicken. While I was cautiously
+unfastening the hamper lid, Beauty remained quiet as a dormouse; and
+then he proceeded personally to assist the unfastening, with a
+vengeance. There was a bouncing volcanic eruption, a blood-curdling
+howl, a mixed-up whirling round the carriage, and then--smash!--bang
+through the window went Beauty!--leaving me doubled up on the seat,
+holding out half a chicken. It was a forty-feline-power hurricane, while
+it lasted; and drops of perspiration trickled down my nose on to the
+chicken, at which I sat stupidly staring. After a dazed pause I
+staggered to the broken window and looked out. There was Beauty, with a
+perpendicular tail like a young fir-tree, going like great guns in
+exactly the wrong direction. We had just come through a long tunnel, and
+the last I saw of my aunt's pet demon was as he dived headlong into its
+Hades-like mouth. And I had to take home first prize for him from the
+Grand All-England Cat Show!
+
+[Illustration: LEAVING THE RAILWAY CARRIAGE.]
+
+[Illustration: INTO ITS HADES-LIKE MOUTH.]
+
+[Illustration: INCIPIENT CATALEPSY.]
+
+When the 4.40 down express arrived at Muddiford-on-the-Ooze station, an
+auburn-haired youth limply emerged from a first-class carriage. In his
+arms he bore a basket, and his grey-green eyes gleamed with incipient
+catalepsy. Yes, such would undoubtedly have been my description had I
+posed as the momentary hero of a penny novelette. I forgot all about my
+luggage, imbecilely clinging to the late habitation of the lost beast
+Beauty, wandering I knew not why nor whither. Outside the station, round
+a quiet corner, my steps were arrested by the surprising sight
+of--Beauty!--the very identical devil himself! There stood the
+unhangable, undrownable, hurricane-creating beast, looking as serene as
+a newly-born black cherub, washing his fiendish face! I approached on
+tiptoe, breathlessly, with the basket behind my back and the half
+chicken extended as a peaceable card of introduction. He scented it
+instantly--my aunt always keeping Beauty's tit-bits until sufficiently
+gamey to suit his highly epicurean taste.
+
+[Illustration: WASHING HIS FIENDISH FACE!]
+
+With a finishing toe-touch to his whiskers, he amicably trotted up to me
+and--yes!--actually rubbed against my new trousers! What could have
+happened to him! Had his run through the tunnel turned him out virtuous?
+And how could he possibly have got here? Experience has shown that a
+leopard can change his spots, and a negro can grow spotted; but could a
+diabolical cat become even as a sucking dove and fly over twelve miles
+all in the space of twenty minutes? Impossible! So I put on a pair of
+folder-glasses and scrutinised this new arrival doubtingly. No; it was
+_not_ Beauty--not nearly ugly enough. It was a twin, but larger,
+blacker, sleeker, a million times more amiable, and very much fatter.
+Ah!--ha, ha!--hurrah!--happy thought! Why not? I would. And, thereupon,
+I instantly did it.
+
+Placing the basket gently on the ground, I opened the lid and put in the
+cold chicken, when lo! in jumped the amiable twin. Half an hour later
+that basket, that heaven-descended twin, and that successful chicken,
+were safely deposited in custody of the cat-show steward, with the
+errant Beauty's entry ticket affixed. If the steward had never seen the
+real original he would never discover the difference; and if he did
+happen to be acquainted with the genuine article he could but think that
+the beast was surprisingly improved, and might even award it first prize
+for having turned over such a notable new leaf. And for the same reason,
+my aunt ought to be highly delighted at her favourite's favourable
+transformation. My heart was lightened of its oppressive troubles, as my
+hands were free from their feline load. With a hearty appetite I ate an
+excellent dinner at the hotel, went to the theatre, and turned into bed
+thankful for all fortune's favours.
+
+[Illustration: I ATE AN EXCELLENT DINNER.]
+
+During the two following days, carefully steering clear of the cat-show,
+I enjoyed my freedom gaily, and had--what our three-thousand-miles-
+removed cousins would call--real good time. On the third morning a
+letter arrived from my aunt, with an enclosure which for the first
+moment I took to be a big cheque--a grateful offering, as I hoped, for
+services skilfully performed. However, it proved to be merely a second
+letter, in writing that was strange to me, and which with some curiosity
+I proceeded to peruse. As I unfolded the sheet, a vision suddenly
+crossed my mind of that savage beast Beauty; a chilly shiver shot
+through my marrow, and I sent the waiter for soda and brandy. It was an
+awful thought of what that unkillable cat might do! There he was,
+rampaging over a civilised country populated with children and lambs,
+and other unprotected innocents, half mad, perhaps, with hunger, where
+neither canaries nor pigeons, rabbits or cold chicken were grabbable.
+What desperate murders he might commit! And should I be held
+responsible? Here the timely arrival of the waiter helped to raise my
+spirits by a strong dose of B. and S., and I began the enclosed letter.
+
+[Illustration: WHAT DESPERATE MURDERS HE MIGHT COMMIT!]
+
+It was headed from the cat-show secretary's office. Why, of course, that
+charming twin had got first prize, no doubt. Let us see. "Dear Madam,"
+so ran the official note, "I beg to call your attention to what I
+imagine must, in some way, have been an oversight. Your cat, described
+on the entrance form as 'a black male, named Beauty,' which was, on the
+evening of its arrival, placed in the class pertaining to the
+descriptive form, was found this morning to have presented us with four
+remarkably fine kittens. This, of course, necessitated the family's
+removal from the male cat class. I have much pleasure in being able to
+inform you that both mother and kittens are in the best of health, and
+will be carefully attended upon. If you will kindly forward your
+instructions respecting their disposal, I shall be greatly obliged."
+That was the note, and wildly did the letters dance before my eyes.
+
+[Illustration: FOUR REMARKABLY FINE KITTENS.]
+
+[Illustration: GASPING FOR BREATH.]
+
+Having saved myself from fainting by finishing the B. and S., I sat for
+some minutes gasping for breath. Then I rubbed my eyes and reread that
+awful epistle. Yes--it was so--in solemn, sober black ink! Beauty's twin
+had got four fine kittens! Great Jehoshaphat! How could I ever get over
+those confounded kittens! It was too late to murder them. And my
+aunt--but stop! Let me read her letter; it might suggest something--some
+feline legerdemain method of conjuring four fine kittens into a first
+prize black male cat. So here goes. And this is how it went: "I always
+considered you to be a fool, Samuel, but nothing worse, until now.
+Unless the enclosed letter is immediately fully explained, and the
+matter set right, I shall plainly let you know what I do think of you
+now, and act accordingly. See the secretary, and telegraph me the result
+at once." Not much hope in that, worse luck; only a limited respite.
+
+[Illustration: WENT FISHING.]
+
+Away I went to the show, saw the secretary--from a safe distance--and
+immediately telegraphed: "Have seen the secretary. Hard at work setting
+matters right. Awfully sorry." Then I hired a boat, and went fishing for
+the rest of the day. In the evening I wired: "Beauty must have got
+changed. Cats now all going home. Found clue and am following up. All
+right shortly." But my aunt's patience had expired. Next morning came a
+curt note saying she would at once join me, and either rescue Beauty or
+settle that secretary. How could I ever face those searching spectacles!
+I fled. From a lonely spot on the wilds of Dartmoor I wired: "Am
+following clue sharp. Getting close up. Good news next time." Back came
+an answer: "Shall be with you to-morrow at noon." At noon next day, I
+boarded the mail packet Tongariro, bound from Plymouth to New Zealand.
+
+[Illustration: OFF TO NEW ZEALAND.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+PEOPLE I HAVE NEVER MET
+
+BY SCOTT RANKIN.
+
+MRS. HUMPHRY WARD.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+    "You can do nothing by despising the past and its products; you
+    also can do nothing by being too much afraid of them.... Be
+    content to be a new 'sect,' 'conventicle,' or what not, so long
+    as you feel that you are _something_, with a life and purpose
+    of its own, in this tangle of a world."--_Robert Elsmere_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THE IDLERS CLUB
+
+Is Love a Practical Reality or a Pleasing Fiction?
+
+
+[Sidenote: Mrs. Lynn Linton thinks there is no doubt as to Love's
+reality.]
+
+Of the desperate reality of the passion there is no doubt; of the
+intrinsic value of the thing beloved there may be many. The passion for
+which men and women have died stands like a tower four-square to all the
+winds of heaven; but how far that tower has been self-created by fancy,
+and how much is objectively real, who is the wise man that can
+determine? What is Love? We know nothing of its source. Sense and sex
+cannot wholly explain its mystery, else would there be no friendship
+left among us; and elective affinity is but a dainty carving on the
+chancel stalls. The loveliness which makes that special person the
+veritable Rose of the World to us exists but in our imagination. It is
+no rose that we adore--only at the best a bedeguar, of which the origin
+is a disagreeable little insect. We believe in the exquisite harmony of
+those atoms which have arranged themselves to form the thing we love.
+And we marry our human ideal, expecting the unbroken continuance of that
+harmony. But the discord comes; colours clash; the jarring note spoils
+the chord; the idol once accepted as of gold and precious stones, proves
+to be only common clay, thinly gilt. The diamonds are paste; the pearls
+are beads of glass filled with shining fishes' scales; and the love
+which we thought would be a practical reality for life, is nothing but a
+pleasing fiction, good for its day, and now dead and done with. The
+lover sees nothing as it is. Life is distorted between jealousy and
+admiration, and the plain teaching of common-sense is as little
+understood as the conditions of the fourth dimension or the poetic
+aspirations of the Simian tongue. The adored is not a real person; the
+happiness anticipated is not practical nor practicable. Both are on
+all-fours with the substantiality of a cloud and the serviceable roadway
+of a rainbow. Custom, familiarity, daily habits are the sole tests by
+which the reality of the thing beloved can be tried--the reality of the
+thing beloved and consequent validity of love. Before these tests are
+applied, the whole affair is as a fairy dream born of the perfume and
+the mystery of night. With the clear cold breath of morning the dream
+vanishes, but--what is left? The sigh of the vanishing god?--a tear on
+the cheek of Psyche?--the loathing of the man who finds M�lusine a
+serpent rather than a woman?--or the peaceful joy of the child who
+dreams of angels and wakes in its mother's arms?--of those who sleeping
+on the ocean wake to find themselves safe in port?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: "Rita" thinks Love is beautiful and wise.]
+
+At one period of life, love is simply an emotion--the outcome of
+attraction, or the effect of that vague mystery which surrounds sex. In
+this emotional stage the _feeling_ may be real enough, but the passion
+is an illusion. A girl is often more in love with Love than with an
+actual lover. The youth who beholds his ideal in the First Woman is in
+love with the woman herself who for the time (usually very brief)
+embodies that ideal. But to the girl and the youth comes an hour when
+they are humiliatingly conscious of study wasted on a prettily-bound
+work of fiction that for all use and purpose in life is quite valueless.
+The edifice of romance is constructed much on the same plan as a child's
+castle of cards, and deservedly shares the same fate. That is to say,
+the topmost card overbalances the whole structure. It is usually the
+hand of Reason that topples over Love's romantic tenement by crowning it
+with the card of Common Sense. When we find Love has become a practical
+reality, the discovery is often very unpleasant. We would rather not be
+unhappy if we had the choice. Unfortunately, we haven't, and find
+ourselves in that condition without exactly knowing how we drifted into
+it. Drifters often discover Love to be a very practical reality, because
+of unpleasant consequences. It is decidedly humiliating to find
+ourselves in the toils of a siren the very reverse of our high ideal of
+the personage who is to have the honour and glory of subjugating us.
+This is one of Love's amusing little ways of proving that ideals are
+really not important. The best and safest test of the reality of Love is
+to ask yourself how much you have suffered on account of it. I don't
+speak of such trifles as tears, heartaches, sleepless nights, fevers of
+jealousy and despair, sacrifices, or discomforts, but of _real_ genuine
+self-torment and mental torture which only this passion is capable of
+inflicting on its victims. The most sceptical will acknowledge that its
+powers in this line are only excelled by its apparent animosity. To
+discover the life that completes and contents our own is not given to
+many of us poor mortals. Here and there some fortunate individuals have
+made that discovery--but they are rare--and not given to boasting on the
+subject; yet though worldly wise folk scoff at love as a myth, I
+question whether they could name any other passion of the heart which
+has occupied so important a place in the world's history, which has
+given life to all that is great and divine in art, or inspired such
+deeds of heroism, self-sacrifice, and martyrdom. Before its patient
+strength men have stood mute and wondering, and proud heads have bent in
+reverence, and stern eyes grown dim. For Love is beautiful, despite
+faults, and wise, despite follies. It alone of all human emotions can
+lift our souls heavenwards, and make even life's thorny path a thing
+of beauty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: John Strange Winter's opinions.]
+
+Love may be classed under several heads. The first, the great, the
+unattainable, the one-sided, and the worn-out. They are all real! What
+can be more real than the perhaps not very practical passion which first
+makes young hearts ache? What agony it is to _her_ when _he_ dances
+three times running with that horrid, stuck-up London girl, with her
+fashionable jargon, her languorous movements, just a turn or two, and
+then stop for as many minutes! First love is not often last love. _He_
+thinks _her_ unreasonable to mind those dances, yet when a great love
+comes into her life, making her think of him as "just a boy," he suffers
+all, or nearly all, the pangs of a great passion. Unavailing pain! _She_
+has cast the die of her life, and past loves are shadows compared with
+the absorbing power that now grips her heart like a vice. Much may
+happen to the great love, but it is very real! A great love may merge
+into matrimony, and life may run on oiled wheels, and Darby and Joan may
+pass through the world, loving faithfully, and without digression, to
+the end. Or something may come between, and the great love may become
+the unattainable! It will not be the less real for that.
+
+[Sidenote: The Unattainable.]
+
+The unattainable has more in it of pathos than despair. Romance sweetens
+it, and the romance never dies. The tenderness of "what might have been"
+gives balm to many a suffering soul! The wife may be unhappy, neglected,
+heartsick, she may even loathe him whose name she bears, but she is
+often upholden by the thought that _he_ would have been wholly
+different! A husband may know that he has married the wrong woman, yet
+he bears what is, because he cannot have _her_ who would have made life
+all sunshine. Few pity the one-sided love, helpless, hopeless, and
+without justification as it is; yet it is very real to the lonely soul.
+The worn-out love is the very essence of sadness! It is heart-breaking
+to watch the efforts of a foolish heart to keep a love dying or already
+dead, to see love, which would once have made a paradise, poured out at
+the feet of one who is only bored and not even touched by it. Nothing is
+so dead as a dead love--yet, even _that_ is real!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Miss May Crommelin takes a professional view]
+
+Can any sensible novelist hesitate? Does a shoe-maker depreciate
+leather? Would you saw off the tree-branch you sit on? Now, on this
+subject, anybody's opinion (full-grown) is as good as another's. Let the
+footman bring down word that love is the drawing-room topic, and the
+cook will cry out, "What do they know more about it than _us_?" Is it
+not a human feeling, call it instinct or no? Surely old Sally Jones has
+simpler feelings than the Dowager Countess; as much experience in this.
+Love is just as real as a rainbow on a wet day; as--as influenza. The
+first may be a "pleysing payne": the latter must be a very displeasing
+one. But there is little fiction about either to the victims. Well,
+suppose love a mere brain-fantasm; an odd survival when sensible folk
+have swept away beliefs in witchcraft, fairies, and the virtue of fire
+and faggot for the wicked ones who don't say their prayers the same way
+we do. _Still, was it not worth while to have invented it?_ However the
+idea was evoluted, just consider the glamour it throws over thorns and
+thistles, as we dig through life's long day of toil. As Trollope's stout
+widow says, when choosing her second: "It's a whiff of the rocks and the
+valleys." (So she had her marriage settlements tightly drawn up, to
+enjoy her romance comfortably.) Consider this epitaph--a real one--
+
+    "Poorly lived, and poorly died;
+    Poorly buried, and _nobody cried_."
+
+Broach this subject of love to a circle after dinner, round a good fire.
+Everybody laughs! The young men and maidens look conscious. What they
+feel is as real to them as pleasure in music they hear; in the taste of
+wine. Yes, and far more--while it lasts. Some elders profess scorn,
+because their minds are so choked with years' dust of daily cares they
+have forgotten how they, too, once believed love real--while it lasted!
+Ay! there's the rub. You are told--truthfully--that love is strong as
+death: inconstant as every breeze. Some declare, for them--
+
+    "In the whole wide world there was but one."
+
+Other as honest souls confess their hearts have known, since first love,
+"many other lodgers." This seems clear, love is real to those who _give
+it_! Only they who care more to _get it_, call it moonshine and naughty
+names. Like figures on an Egyptian monument, each follows one who looks
+at another. Never one scorned, but has rejected a third.
+
+    "As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the satyr,
+    The satyr Lyda--and so the three went weeping."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Quiller Couch wishes Love were a pleasing fiction.]
+
+"Pleasing fiction," forsooth; would that it were! It is a very real
+game, and the rules thereof are practical. I know it, for verily I
+myself have suffered. Let it not be understood, however, that it is _as_
+a "practical, real lover" that I have suffered. Not at all. It is that
+this order of beings walks abroad, and I am not of it, and I meet it,
+and I am pained, and I feel sorry. Could Love be but a pleasing fiction,
+how comfortable to sit aside and contemplate it--a trifle to talk of, a
+dainty to dally with, a joy to the juvenescent, a blessing to the
+book-writer, yet never an inconvenience. But it is a practical reality,
+and it has great effects. Why, I have seen good, healthy people, quite
+nice-tempered people, brought to a shadow by it and churned into so many
+pounds of incompetent irritability; _so_ exacting about trifles, so
+fidgetty about catching the mail, and so careless of the health of the
+uninteresting majority. There was one man I knew down in a village, and
+he fell in love with a pretty girl--they mostly do that--but she would
+have nothing to say to him; and after every rejected proposal he went
+straight home and made a three-legged stool (he was a carpenter by
+trade, or perhaps it might have affected him differently). He was what
+one might call an importunate man, for he proposed nineteen times in
+all, and nineteen three-legged stools stood as silent witnesses of his
+importunity. He changed houses after the twelfth, for he found a sad joy
+in contemplating his handiwork as he sat at his lonely meals, and his
+first sitting-room was only twelve feet by eight. Finally, either
+because of his importunity, or because she disliked the thought that the
+wordless witnesses might fall into unsympathetic hands, the girl married
+the man, and scrubbed the stools nicely with soap and sand, and grew
+quite fond of them. And only once did she regret her surrender; and that
+was when it flashed across her one day that twenty would have been a
+prettier number: but she stifled that pain as years went on, and grew
+happy. Then there was Dante's love for Beatrice, which caused him to sit
+down and write such a lot. Most remarkable persons seem to have produced
+something rather excellent as the outcome of their love. I know a
+naturally lazy and slightly dingy boy who endured a nice clean collar
+every day, and it cut his neck, and his soul abhorred it, for he told me
+so; and he spent from seventy-five to ninety minutes over his toilet
+every morning, while he loved, and he knew he could dress in four
+minutes and a quarter, for he had done it often. Love was a great
+beautifier. In this case I must admit that the lover suffered more than
+we outsiders, except that he became irritable in his cleanliness. Love
+should not be scorned, even if it is real and sometimes uncomfortably
+practical. It is very beautiful, and lovers make a pretty sight. What I
+protest is, that all creatures should be lovers--or _none_. It is the
+half-and-half state of the world which is irksome.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Morley Roberts hopes Love will some day be a pleasing
+reality]
+
+Ah, my gentle cocksure friends, how well you all know Love, and how
+ready you are to say what it is, to cut it up, to carve it, to classify
+it, and generally to spread it out. We live in a world of lies, and
+conventions, the dead leavings of an ignorant past, bind us still. Some
+day, perhaps, when men and women are free, Love will be a pleasing
+reality. It can never be so in the majority of cases so long as we play
+at make-believe, and teach nothing that we have learned. The good man
+won't teach his sons; he leaves them to learn in the gutter. The good
+woman keeps her daughters ignorant. As it stands it is an evil to love
+anyone over-much. And when we love we love over-much, for Love has been
+repressed till it has got savage in the race. "La privation radicale
+d'une chose cr�e l�xe�s." All the trouble comes from this--that we men
+have partially created women. But Nature had something to do with her
+compounding. That is, perhaps, a pity from the social point of view. For
+Nature can't be nice and comfortable. She is only kind when we go her
+way. Let us remember that Love is the foundation of the world. The very
+protoplasmic cells from which we sprang could love. The time will come,
+perhaps, when, having chipped away the lies and faced the truth, we
+shall find reality a thousand times more pleasing than any fiction. Love
+is something real and wonderful, and in a natural world we shall have
+passed through the blood-splashed gates of Passion and be calm. Now Love
+is tortured, for we love ignorantly. We are like shipwrecked folk on
+some strange land--we know not the fruits of the trees of it. We learn
+the poisons by experiment, and we let others learn. This is Love the
+Fiction. But some day when we awake we shall know what we now dream, and
+Love will be always the most precious flower that grows in the garden of
+the soul. It has the subtle fragrance of the heaven that is our own if
+we walk bravely in the world, desiring truth. Under its influence we
+discover ourselves. We build ships for new voyages, and burst into
+unknown waters with our Viking shields of victory ablaze in the morning
+sun. The air is sharp and keen, not foetid with poisonous lies; the
+waters are blue and beautiful; there are shining shores about us, and
+marvels of a new nature on every hand. We who were in the night, and of
+it, become vivid with the sun. Our atheism banishes the worshipped gods
+of evil that are no more extant in our dogmatic creed of joy. For Truth
+and Beauty have guided us hand in hand, and all they ask of us is to
+throw away the Law of Lies and to acknowledge that the two are one.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Zangwill reviews the evidence.]
+
+The traces left by Love in life are so numerous and diverse that I am
+almost tempted to the hypothesis that it really exists. There seems to
+be no other way of accounting for the facts. When you start learning a
+new language you always find yourself confronted with the verb "to
+love"--invariably the normal type of the first conjugation. In every
+language on earth the student may be heard declaring, with more zeal
+than discretion, that he and you and they and every other person,
+singular or plural, have loved, and do love, and will love. "To love" is
+the model verb; expressing the archetype of activity. Once you can love
+grammatically there is a world of things you may do without stumbling.
+For, strange to say, "to love," which in real life is associated with so
+much that is bizarre and violent, is always "regular" in grammar, and
+this without barring accidence of any kind. For ancient and modern
+tongues tell the same tale--from Hebrew to street-Arabic, from Greek to
+the elephantine language that was "made in Germany." Not only is "to
+love" deficient in no language (as _home_ is deficient in French, and
+_Geist_ in English), but it is never even "defective." No mood or tense
+is ever wanting--a proof of how it has been conjugated in every mood and
+tense of life, in association with every variety of proper and improper
+noun, and every pronoun at all personal. Not merely have people loved
+unconditionally in every language, but there is none in which they would
+not have loved, or might not have loved, had circumstances permitted;
+none in which they have not been loved, or (for hope springs eternal in
+the human breast) have been about to be loved. Even woman has an Active
+Voice in the matter; indeed, "to love" is so perfect that, compared with
+it, "to marry" is quite irregular. For, while "to love" is sufficient
+for both sexes, directly you get to marriage you find in some languages
+that division has crept in, and that there is one word for the use of
+ladies and another for gentlemen only. Turning from the evidence
+enshrined in language to the records of history, the same truth meets us
+at any date we appoint. Everywhere "'Tis love that makes the world go
+round," though more especially in ball-rooms. It is awful to think what
+would have happened if Eve had not accepted Adam. What could have
+attracted her if it was not love? Surely not his money, nor his family.
+For these she couldn't have cared a fig-leaf. Unfortunately, the
+daughters of Eve have not always taken after their mother. The
+statistics of crime and insanity testify eloquently to the reality of
+love, arithmetic teaching the same lesson as history and grammar.
+Consider, too, the piles of love at Mudie's! A million story-tellers in
+all periods and at all places cannot have told all stories, though they
+have all, alas! told the same story. They must have had mole-hills for
+their mountains, if not straw for their bricks. There are those who,
+with Bacon, consider love a variety of insanity; but it is more often
+merely a form of misunderstanding. When the misunderstanding is mutual,
+it may even lead to marriage. As a rule Beauty begets man's love, Power
+woman's. At least, so women tell me. But then, I am not beautiful. It
+must be said for the man that every lover is a species of Platonist--he
+identifies the Beautiful with the Good and the True. The woman's
+admiration has less of the ethical quality; she is dazzled, and too
+often feels, "If he be but true to me, what care I how false he be." The
+Romantic Love of the poets and novelists was of late birth; the savage
+and many civilisations knew it not, and philosophers explain that it
+could not be developed till Roman Law had developed the conception of
+Marriage as a Contract. Even to this day it is as rare as large paper
+editions of the books about it. Roughly speaking, I should say it would
+spring up here and there among all classes of the population, except
+poets and novelists. Romantic Love is the rose Evolution has grown on
+earthly soil. _Floreat!_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Burgin thinks it all depends on the people who love.]
+
+One morning the average man gets up, lights his pipe, roams round his
+rooms in all the ease of unshaven countenance and dressing-gown-clad
+form. Then he goes out, and meets _her_. There may be a hundred women in
+the room, or park, or tennis ground, wherever the tragedy (Love is a
+tragedy) commences. When the lights are low he comes back, and is low
+also. Wonders how men can be such brutes as to want dinner; thinks his
+life has been misspent; that he is unworthy to touch her hand; that he
+has wallowed in the fleshpots, and here is a way out of them. And if the
+man's nature be noble and sweet and true; if he has hitherto drifted
+adown the stream of circumstance because his fellows have also drifted;
+then, with the deepening tides of his passion, the old spirit of
+knight-errantry descends upon him with its mystic mantle of white
+samite. And slowly out of this deepening torrent of bewildered impulse
+and devotion is born a new man--a man with a soul--a man who can dare
+all things, do all things, endure all things, for the sake of the woman
+he loves. At the baptism of her touch he becomes whole, and shapes his
+life to noble ends. Even if he can't marry her, he is the better for his
+passion. Such a love endures until the leaves of the Judgment Book
+unroll; for it laughs to scorn the pitiful fools who boast of
+infidelity, the "male hogs in armour," as Kingsley calls them, who look
+upon women as toys, the sport of an idle moment, rather than the
+spiritual force which leavens the world, and makes it an endurable and
+joyous dwelling-place.
+
+[Sidenote: And on the woman loved.]
+
+Of course, I was speaking of good women. I once heard a story about a
+bad woman--a woman of the world, who was very much amused at being taken
+seriously by a boy who loved her. "Tell me all about it," she would say
+to him. "Explain what you feel, why you love me, why you believe in me.
+Don't you see I'm courted and admired--a social force--that men flock
+round me everywhere I go?" "Oh, yes," said the boy, "I see all that. But
+you're an angel of goodness, and can't help men liking you. If I lost
+faith in you, I'd kill myself." "Ah," she rejoined, "that's what you all
+say. You would doubt me, and live on." Then, one afternoon, he had good
+cause to doubt, inasmuch as her engagement to another man was announced.
+That evening she received a note from him: "Good-bye. If I lived on, I
+might doubt; it's better to die and--believe!" They told her of the--the
+accident that night, and she wrote a touching little paragraph about it
+for the Society papers before dining out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Gribble generaliseth confidently.]
+
+In a sense, of course, Love is necessarily a fiction, whether pleasing
+or otherwise; for illusion is of the essence of it. The lover, in fact,
+is like the artist who sees things through a temperament, and, by
+eliminating the irrelevant, builds up the ideal on the foundation of the
+real. Tityrus sees more in Amaryllis than his brother shepherds see,
+just as Mr. Whistler sees more in a November fog than is visible to the
+eye of the casual wayfarer who gets lost in it, and mingles profanity
+with his coughs, yet, granting this, the reality and completeness of the
+illusion does not admit of doubt. On no alternative hypothesis can the
+great majority of marriages be explained. If commonplace people saw each
+other as others see them, surely they would remain single all their
+lives. Yet most people are commonplace, and most people marry. The
+reality--the controlling over-mastering reality--of Love has to be
+assumed to make their behaviour intelligible.
+
+[Sidenote: Having hasted from a wedding for the purpose.]
+
+This point struck me forcibly the last time I was present at a wedding.
+It was a Jewish wedding, celebrated at the little synagogue behind the
+Haymarket. I had no acquaintance with anyone concerned in the ceremony,
+but had dropped in quite casually, having heard that Jewish weddings
+were picturesque. The one thing that impressed me more than anything
+else was the decided undesirability of both the bridegroom and the
+bride. That the bride was not comely goes for little. But her forehead
+indicated a limited range and low ideals; the corners of her mouth spoke
+of an irritable temper; her bearing was vulgar; her voice had a twang
+that made one long to take her by the shoulders and shake her violently.
+She was also escorted by gaudy female relatives, by looking at whom one
+could anticipate the awful possibilities of her maturity. As for the
+bridegroom, he was a Hebrew of the florid type. His waistcoat was
+protuberant; he had a red face with red whiskers sprawling all over it;
+he wore flash jewellery; his hair shone with pomatum; there was that in
+his bearing which indicated that he followed some sordid calling, such
+as pawnbroking, or the backing of horses on commission. Yet one could
+see that these two unattractive persons were really attracted by each
+other. A great and beautiful miracle had been performed; and the power
+which had performed it was that Love in which some profess to
+disbelieve.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Frank Mathew displays his Ignorance.]
+
+Ignorance--says some wiseacre--is the mother of eloquence, and I take it
+that the less one knows of Love the easier it is to write of it. I side
+with those who hold that the Love described by poets and other wordy
+people is mainly fanciful, a flattering picture, that the best school
+for such writing is an unhappy affection, and that no man can want
+better luck than to have his heart broken, and so be made proof against
+lovesickness. An unrequited love runs no risk of being dulled by the
+prose of life. A man so fortunate as to be jilted or rejected finds his
+Beloved remaining beautiful and young to him when her husband sees her
+an unwieldy and wearisome old woman. And when at times he grows
+sentimental--a bachelor's privilege--he can feel again the old hopes
+that he never found false, and see the old perfections that were never
+disproved. He has a life-companion who comes only when she is wanted,
+and then with a "smile on her face and a rose in her hair," whose voice
+is always gentle, to whom wrinkles are not necessary and bills are
+not known.
+
+[Sidenote: And praises ugliness.]
+
+I am one of those who prefer the luckless adorers in novels to the
+conquering heroes; and hold that the quality an ideal lover needs most
+is ugliness, so that he may honour beauty the more. Once I knew a boy
+who was uglier than sin, and who wrote a story--in a sprawling hand and
+on ruled paper--a wonderful story, telling how an unlovely but admirable
+Knight, worshipping a Princess, rode out to win her by great deeds, and
+how when he came back triumphant, the sight of her brought his
+unworthiness home to him so that he dared not claim her. And I knew
+another boy who was good-looking, and wrote a story (during study-time,
+of course, and by stealth) about a handsome hero who went to Court in
+fine clothes, and was worshipped by all the girls. I think now that he
+was the manlier, but that the first would have made the more devout
+lover. But the drawback of luckless adorers is that their constancy has
+not been tried by the ordeal of success. Many a fellow who lived loyal
+and heart-broken would have made an unfaithful husband.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: 'Q.' is surprised at his sister.]
+
+Love, no doubt, is a subject of popular interest, but a man is always
+staggered to find his sister holding an opinion upon it. If I remember
+rightly, in the days when Lilian Quiller Couch (then aged seven) did me
+the honour of playing Juliet to my Romeo, the interest was mainly
+acrobatic, Romeo descending the gardener's ladder head-foremost, while
+Juliet tilted her body as far over the nursery window-sill as she could
+manage without breaking her neck. We "cut" the love speeches. Two years
+later, indeed, my sister schemed to marry me to our common governess.
+There was no love on my side; so she turned over the Prayer-book, hoping
+to find "A man may not marry his governess" in the table of Forbidden
+Degrees. Such a prohibition (she well knew) would be a trumpet-call to
+my native spirit of disobedience. But I am convinced that even then the
+nature of true affection did not enter into her calculations. She merely
+counted on my marital influence to end or mend the French irregular
+verbs. I am delighted that, in these later days, she sees Love to be a
+"practical reality." For my part, I want a definition. Popular custom
+bestows the name of Love on a green sickness which is in fact a part of
+Nature's wise economy. I will expound. Almost all young men, say between
+the ages of nineteen and twenty-five, incline to consume much meat and
+do next to no work. Were there no corrective, it is clear that in a few
+years the face of the earth would be eaten bare as by locusts. But at
+this season Nature by the simplest stroke--the flush of a commonplace
+cheek, the warm touch of a commonplace hand--in a twinkling redresses
+the balance. Forthwith the ideal devourer of crops and herbs not only
+loses his appetite, but arising, smacks the earth with a hoe till the
+clods fly and the fields laugh with harvest. Thereon he mops his
+steaming brow, bedecks him with a bunch of white ribbons, and jogs
+jovially to church arm in arm with the pretty cause of all this
+beneficent disturbance. And the spectacle is mighty taking and
+commendable; but you'll excuse me for holding that it is not Love. It
+bears about the same relation to Love that Bumble-puppy bears to good
+whist. Among the eccentricities that make up the Average Man I find none
+more diverting than his complacent belief that he is, or has been, or
+will certainly some day be, in love. As a matter of fact, the capacity
+to love belongs to one man or woman in ten thousand. Listen to
+Matthew Arnold:
+
+    "But in the world I learnt, what there
+      Thou wilt too surely one day prove,
+    That will, that energy, though rare,
+      Are yet far, far less rare than love."
+
+I go further and believe it rarer even than Genius. Indeed, the capacity
+to love, is a specialised form of genius. You understand that I am not
+commending it. Its possessors are often disreputable and almost always
+unhappy. Their recompense is that they, and they only, have seen the
+splendours of the passion, and vibrated to the shaking inner music of
+the sheep-boy's pipe.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII.,
+February 1893, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IDLER, NO. 13 ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII.,
+February 1893, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893
+       An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: May 1, 2004 [EBook #12223]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE IDLER, NO. 13 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+THE IDLER MAGAZINE.
+AN ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY.
+
+EDITED BY JEROME K. JEROME & ROBERT BARR.
+
+
+VOL. III. FEBRUARY TO JULY, 1893.
+
+XIII. FEB. 1893.
+
+
+LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS, 214, PICCADILLY. 1893.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHEATING THE GALLOWS.
+    BY I. ZANGWILL.
+
+MY FIRST NOVEL.--THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT.
+    BY MISS M. E. BRADDON.
+
+NOVEL NOTES.
+    BY JEROME K. JEROME.
+
+THE SKATER.
+    BY WILLIAM CANTON.
+
+MY SERVANT ANDREAS.
+    BY ARCHIBALD FORBES.
+
+TOLD BY THE COLONEL.--
+    X. A MATRIMONIAL ROMANCE.
+    BY W. L. ALDEN.
+
+"LIONS IN THEIR DENS."--
+    II. GEORGE GROSSMITH AND THE HUMOUR OF HIM.
+    BY RAYMOND BLATHWAYT.
+
+A BLIND BEGGARMAN.
+    BY FRANK MATHEW.
+
+CHURCH AND STAGE.--A REVIEW OF HENRY IRVING.
+    BY THE REV. DR. JOSEPH PARKER.
+
+THAT BEAST BEAUTY.
+    BY KIRBY HARE.
+
+PEOPLE I HAVE NEVER MET.--MRS. HUMPHRY WARD.
+    BY SCOTT RANKIN.
+
+THE IDLERS CLUB
+    Is Love a Practical Reality or a Pleasing Fiction?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+CHEATING THE GALLOWS.
+
+BY I. ZANGWILL.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEO. HUTCHINSON.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+CURIOUS COUPLE.
+
+
+[Illustration: THE CORPSE WASHED UP BY THE RIVER.]
+
+They say that a union of opposites makes the happiest marriage, and
+perhaps it is on the same principle that men who chum are always so
+oddly assorted. You shall find a man of letters sharing diggings with an
+auctioneer, and a medical student pigging with a stockbroker's clerk.
+Perhaps each thus escapes the temptation to talk "shop" in his hours of
+leisure, while he supplements his own experiences of life by his
+companion's.
+
+[Illustration: TOM PETERS.]
+[Illustration: EVERARD G. ROXDAL.]
+
+There could not be an odder couple than Tom Peters and Everard G.
+Roxdal--the contrast began with their names, and ran through the entire
+chapter. They had a bedroom and a sitting-room in common, but it would
+not be easy to find what else. To his landlady, worthy Mrs. Seacon, Tom
+Peters's profession was a little vague, but everybody knew that Roxdal
+was the manager of the City and Suburban Bank, and it puzzled her to
+think why a bank manager should live with such a seedy-looking person,
+who smoked clay pipes and sipped whiskey and water all the evening when
+he was at home. For Roxdal was as spruce and erect as his fellow-lodger
+was round-shouldered and shabby; he never smoked, and he confined
+himself to a small glass of claret at dinner.
+
+It is possible to live with a man and see very little of him. Where each
+of the partners lives his own life in his own way, with his own circle
+of friends and external amusements, days may go by without the men
+having five minutes together. Perhaps this explains why these
+partnerships jog along so much more peaceably than marriages, where the
+chain is drawn so much tighter, and galls the partners rather than links
+them. Diverse, however, as were the hours and habits of the chums, they
+often breakfasted together, and they agreed in one thing--they never
+stayed out at night. For the rest Peters sought his diversions in the
+company of journalists, and frequented debating rooms, where he
+propounded the most iconoclastic views; while Roxdal had highly
+respectable houses open to him in the suburbs, and was, in fact, engaged
+to be married to Clara Newell, the charming daughter of a retired corn
+merchant, a widower with no other child.
+
+[Illustration: ASKED TWENTY-FIVE PER CENT. MORE.]
+
+Clara naturally took up a good deal of Roxdal's time, and he often
+dressed to go to the play with her, while Peters stayed at home in a
+faded dressing-gown and loose slippers. Mrs. Seacon liked to see
+gentlemen about the house in evening dress, and made comparisons not
+favourable to Peters. And this in spite of the fact that he gave her
+infinitely less trouble than the younger man. It was Peters who first
+took the apartments, and it was characteristic of his easy-going
+temperament that he was so openly and naively delighted with the view of
+the Thames obtainable from the bedroom window, that Mrs. Seacon was
+emboldened to ask twenty-five per cent. more than she had intended. She
+soon returned to her normal terms, however, when his friend Roxdal
+called the next day to inspect the rooms, and overwhelmed her with a
+demonstration of their numerous shortcomings. He pointed out that their
+being on the ground floor was not an advantage, but a disadvantage,
+since they were nearer the noises of the street--in fact, the house
+being a corner one, the noises of two streets. Roxdal continued to
+exhibit the same finicking temperament in the petty details of the
+_menage_. His shirt fronts were never sufficiently starched, nor his
+boots sufficiently polished. Tom Peters, having no regard for rigid
+linen, was always good-tempered and satisfied, and never acquired the
+respect of his landlady. He wore blue check shirts and loose ties even
+on Sundays. It is true he did not go to church, but slept on till Roxdal
+returned from morning service, and even then it was difficult to get him
+out of bed, or to make him hurry up his toilette operations. Often the
+mid-day meal would be smoking on the table while Peters would smoke in
+the bed, and Roxdal, with his head thrust through the folding doors that
+separated the bedroom from the sitting-room, would be adjuring the
+sluggard to arise and shake off his slumbers, and threatening to sit
+down without him, lest the dinner be spoilt. In revenge, Tom was usually
+up first on week-days, sometimes at such unearthly hours that Polly had
+not yet removed the boots from outside the bedroom door, and would bawl
+down to the kitchen for his shaving water. For Tom, lazy and indolent as
+he was, shaved with the unfailing regularity of a man to whom shaving
+has become an instinct. If he had not kept fairly regular hours, Mrs.
+Seacon would have set him down as an actor, so clean shaven was he.
+Roxdal did not shave. He wore a full beard, and, being a fine figure of
+a man to boot, no uneasy investor could look upon him without being
+reassured as to the stability of the bank he managed so successfully.
+And thus the two men lived in an economical comradeship, all the firmer,
+perhaps, for their mutual incongruities.
+
+[Illustration: FOR HIS SHAVING WATER.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+A WOMAN'S INSTINCT.
+
+
+[Illustration: "TOM SHAMBLED FROM THE SITTING-ROOM."]
+
+It was on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of October, ten days after
+Roxdal had settled in his new rooms, that Clara Newell paid her first
+visit to him there. She enjoyed a good deal of liberty, and did not mind
+accepting his invitation to tea. The corn merchant, himself
+indifferently educated, had an exaggerated sense of the value of
+culture, and so Clara, who had artistic tastes without much actual
+talent, had gone in for painting, and might be seen, in pretty
+toilettes, copying pictures in the Museum. At one time it looked as if
+she might be reduced to working seriously at her art, for Satan, who
+finds mischief still for idle hands to do, had persuaded her father to
+embark the fruits of years of toil in bubble companies. However, things
+turned out not so bad as they might have been, a little was saved from
+the wreck, and the appearance of a suitor, in the person of Everard G.
+Roxdal, ensured her a future of competence, if not of the luxury she had
+been entitled to expect. She had a good deal of affection for Everard,
+who was unmistakably a clever man, as well as a good-looking one. The
+prospect seemed fair and cloudless. Nothing presaged the terrible storm
+that was about to break over these two lives. Nothing had ever for a
+moment come to vex their mutual contentment, till this Sunday afternoon.
+The October sky, blue and sunny, with an Indian summer sultriness,
+seemed an exact image of her life, with its aftermath of a happiness
+that had once seemed blighted.
+
+Everard had always been so attentive, so solicitous, that she was as
+much surprised as chagrined to find that he had apparently forgotten the
+appointment. Hearing her astonished interrogation of Polly in the
+passage, Tom shambled from the sitting-room in his loose slippers and
+his blue check shirt, with his eternal clay pipe in his mouth, and
+informed her that Roxdal had gone out suddenly earlier in the afternoon.
+
+"G-g-one out," stammered poor Clara; all confused. "But he asked me to
+come to tea."
+
+"Oh, you're Miss Newell, I suppose," said Tom.
+
+"Yes, I am Miss Newell."
+
+"He has told me a great deal about you, but I wasn't able honestly to
+congratulate him on his choice till now."
+
+Clara blushed uneasily under the compliment, and under the ardour of his
+admiring gaze. Instinctively she distrusted the man. The very first
+tones of his deep bass voice gave her a peculiar shudder. And then his
+impoliteness in smoking that vile clay was so gratuitous.
+
+"Oh, then you must be Mr. Peters," she said in return. "He has often
+spoken to me of you."
+
+"Ah!" said Tom, laughingly, "I suppose he's told you all my vices. That
+accounts for your not being surprised at my Sunday attire."
+
+She smiled a little, showing a row of pearly teeth. "Everard ascribes to
+you all the virtues," she said.
+
+"Now that's what I call a friend!" he cried, ecstatically. "But won't
+you come in? He must be back in a moment. He surely would not break an
+appointment with _you_." The admiration latent in the accentuation of
+the last pronoun was almost offensive.
+
+She shook her head. She had a just grievance against Everard, and would
+punish him by going away indignantly.
+
+"Do let _me_ give you a cup of tea," Tom pleaded. "You must be awfully
+thirsty this sultry weather. There! I will make a bargain with you! If
+you will come in now, I promise to clear out the moment Everard returns,
+and not spoil your _tete-a-tete_." But Clara was obstinate; she did not
+at all relish this man's society, and besides, she was not going to
+throw away her grievance against Everard. "I know Everard will slang me
+dreadfully when he comes in if I let you go," Tom urged. "Tell me at
+least where he can find you."
+
+"I am going to take the 'bus at Charing Cross, and I'm going straight
+home," Clara announced determinedly. She put up her parasol in a pet,
+and went up the street into the Strand. A cold shadow seemed to have
+fallen over all things. But just as she was getting into the 'bus, a
+hansom dashed down Trafalgar Square, and a well-known voice hailed her.
+The hansom stopped, and Everard got out and held out his hand.
+
+"I'm so glad you're a bit late," he said. "I was called out
+unexpectedly, and have been trying to rush back in time. You wouldn't
+have found me if you had been punctual. But I thought," he added,
+laughing, "I could rely on you as a woman."
+
+"I _was_ punctual," Clara said angrily. "I was not getting out of this
+'bus, as you seem to imagine, but into it, and was going home."
+
+"My darling!" he cried remorsefully. "A thousand apologies." The regret
+on his handsome face soothed her. He took the rose he was wearing in the
+button-hole of his fashionably-cut coat and gave it to her.
+
+"Why were you so cruel?" he murmured, as she nestled against him in the
+hansom. "Think of my despair if I had come home to hear you had come and
+gone. Why didn't you wait a moment?"
+
+[Illustration: "SHE NESTLED AGAINST HIM."]
+
+A shudder traversed her frame. "Not with that man, Peters!" she
+murmured.
+
+"Not with that man, Peters!" he echoed sharply. "What is the matter with
+Peters?"
+
+"I don't know," she said. "I don't like him."
+
+"Clara," he said, half sternly, half cajolingly, "I thought you were
+above these feminine weaknesses; you are punctual, strive also to be
+reasonable. Tom is my best friend. From boyhood we have been always
+together. There is nothing Tom would not do for me, or I for Tom. You
+must like him, Clara; you must, if only for my sake."
+
+"I'll try," Clara promised, and then he kissed her in gratitude and
+broad daylight.
+
+"You'll be very nice to him at tea, won't you?" he said anxiously. "I
+shouldn't like you two to be bad friends."
+
+"I don't want to be bad friends," Clara protested; "only the moment I
+saw him a strange repulsion and mistrust came over me."
+
+"You are quite wrong about him--quite wrong," he assured her earnestly.
+"When you know him better, you'll find him the best of fellows. Oh, I
+know," he said suddenly, "I suppose he was very untidy, and you women go
+so much by appearances!"
+
+"Not at all," Clara retorted. "'Tis you men who go by appearances."
+
+"Yes, you do. That's why you care for me," he said, smiling.
+
+She assured him it wasn't, and she didn't care for him so much as he
+plumed himself, but he smiled on. His smile died away, however, when he
+entered his rooms and found Tom nowhere.
+
+"I daresay you've made him run about hunting for me," he grumbled.
+
+"Perhaps he knew I'd come back, and went away to leave us together," she
+answered. "He said he would when you came."
+
+"And yet you say you don't like him!"
+
+She smiled reassuringly. Inwardly, however, she felt pleased at the
+man's absence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+POLLY RECEIVES A PROPOSAL.
+
+
+[Illustration: "CARRYING ON WITH POLLY."]
+
+If Clara Newell could have seen Tom Peters carrying on with Polly in the
+passage, she might have felt justified in her prejudice against him. It
+must be confessed, though, that Everard also carried on with Polly.
+Alas! it is to be feared that men are much of a muchness where women are
+concerned; shabby men and smart men, bank managers and journalists,
+bachelors and semi-detached bachelors. Perhaps it was a mistake after
+all to say the chums had nothing patently in common. Everard, I am
+afraid, kissed Polly rather more often than Clara, and although it was
+because he respected her less, the reason would perhaps not have been
+sufficiently consoling to his affianced wife. For Polly was pretty,
+especially on alternate Sunday afternoons, and when at ten p.m. she
+returned from her outings, she was generally met in the passage by one
+or other of the men. Polly liked to receive the homage of real
+gentlemen, and set her white cap at all indifferently. Thus, just before
+Clara knocked on that memorable Sunday afternoon, Polly, being confined
+to the house by the unwritten code regulating the lives of servants, was
+amusing herself by flirting with Peters.
+
+"You _are_ fond of me a little bit," the graceless Tom whispered,
+"aren't you?"
+
+"You know I am, sir," Polly replied.
+
+"You don't care for anyone else in the house?"
+
+"Oh no, sir, and never let anyone kiss me but you. I wonder how it is,
+sir?" Polly replied ingenuously.
+
+"Give me another," Tom answered.
+
+She gave him another, and tripped to the door to answer Clara's knock.
+
+[Illustration: POLLY AND ROXDAL.]
+
+And that very evening, when Clara was gone and Tom still out, Polly
+turned without the faintest atom of scrupulosity, or even jealousy, to
+the more fascinating Roxdal, and accepted his amorous advances. If it
+would seem at first sight that Everard had less excuse for such
+frivolity than his friend, perhaps the seriousness he showed in this
+interview may throw a different light upon the complex character of
+the man.
+
+"You're quite sure you don't care for anyone but me?" he asked
+earnestly.
+
+"Of course not, sir!" Polly replied indignantly. "How could I?"
+
+"But you care for that soldier I saw you out with last Sunday?"
+
+"Oh no, sir, he's only my young man," she said apologetically.
+
+"Would you give him up?" he hissed suddenly.
+
+Polly's pretty face took a look of terror. "I couldn't, sir! He'd kill
+me. He's such a jealous brute, you've no idea."
+
+"Yes, but suppose I took you away from here?" he whispered eagerly.
+"Somewhere where he couldn't find you--South America, Africa, somewhere
+thousands of miles across the seas."
+
+"Oh, sir, you frighten me!" whispered Polly, cowering before his ardent
+eyes, which shone in the dimly-lit passage.
+
+"Would you come with me?" he hissed. She did not answer; she shook
+herself free and ran into the kitchen, trembling with a vague fear.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE CRASH.
+
+
+One morning, earlier than his earliest hour of demanding his shaving
+water, Tom rang the bell violently and asked the alarmed Polly what had
+become of Mr. Roxdal.
+
+"How should I know, sir?" she gasped. "Ain't he been in, sir?"
+
+"Apparently not," Tom answered anxiously. "He never remains out. We have
+been here three weeks now, and I can't recall a single night he hasn't
+been home before twelve. I can't make it out." All enquiries proved
+futile. Mrs. Seacon reminded him of the thick fog that had come on
+suddenly the night before.
+
+"What fog?" asked Tom.
+
+"Lord! didn't you notice it, sir?"
+
+"No, I came in early, smoked, read, and went to bed about eleven. I
+never thought of looking out of the window."
+
+"It began about ten," said Mrs. Seacon, "and got thicker and thicker. I
+couldn't see the lights of the river from my bedroom. The poor gentleman
+has been and gone and walked into the water." She began to whimper.
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense," said Tom, though his expression belied his words.
+"At the worst I should think he couldn't find his way home, and couldn't
+get a cab, so put up for the night at some hotel. I daresay it will be
+all right." He began to whistle as if in restored cheerfulness. At eight
+o'clock there came a letter for Roxdal, marked "immediate," but as he
+did not turn up for breakfast, Tom went round personally to the City and
+Suburban Bank. He waited half-an-hour there, but the manager did not
+make his appearance. Then he left the letter with the cashier and went
+away with anxious countenance.
+
+That afternoon it was all over London that the manager of the City and
+Suburban had disappeared, and that many thousand pounds of gold and
+notes had disappeared with him.
+
+[Illustration: "SCOTLAND YARD OPENED THE LETTER."]
+
+Scotland Yard opened the letter marked "immediate," and noted that there
+had been a delay in its delivery, for the address had been obscure, and
+an official alteration had been made. It was written in a feminine hand
+and said: "On second thoughts I cannot accompany you. Do not try to see
+me again. Forget me. I shall never forget you."
+
+There was no signature.
+
+Clara Newell, distracted, disclaimed all knowledge of this letter. Polly
+deposed that the fugitive had proposed flight to her, and the routes to
+Africa and South America were especially watched. Some months passed
+without result. Tom Peters went about overwhelmed with grief and
+astonishment. The police took possession of all the missing man's
+effects. Gradually the hue and cry dwindled, died.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+FAITH AND UNFAITH.
+
+
+"At last we meet!" cried Tom Peters, while his face lit up in joy. "How
+_are_ you, dear Miss Newell?" Clara greeted him coldly. Her face had an
+abiding pallor now. Her lover's flight and shame had prostrated her for
+weeks. Her soul was the arena of contending instincts. Alone of all the
+world she still believed in Everard's innocence, felt that there was
+something more than met the eye, divined some devilish mystery behind it
+all. And yet that damning letter from the anonymous lady shook her
+sadly. Then, too, there was the deposition of Polly. When she heard
+Peters's voice accosting her all her old repugnance resurged. It flashed
+upon her that this man--Roxdal's boon companion--must know far more than
+he had told to the police. She remembered how Everard had spoken of him,
+with what affection and confidence! Was it likely he was utterly
+ignorant of Everard's movements? Mastering her repugnance, she held out
+her hand. It might be well to keep in touch with him; he was possibly
+the clue to the mystery. She noticed he was dressed a shade more trimly,
+and was smoking a meerschaum. He walked along at her side, making no
+offer to put his pipe out.
+
+"You have not heard from Everard?" he asked. She flushed. "Do you think
+I'm an accessory after the fact?" she cried.
+
+"No, no," he said soothingly. "Pardon me, I was thinking he might have
+written--giving no exact address, of course. Men do sometimes dare to
+write thus to women. But, of course, he knows you too well--you would
+have put the police on his track."
+
+"Certainly," she exclaimed, indignantly. "Even if he is innocent he must
+face the charge."
+
+"Do you still entertain the possibility of his innocence?"
+
+"I do," she said boldly, and looked him full in the face. His eyelids
+drooped with a quiver. "Don't you?"
+
+"I have hoped against hope," he replied, in a voice faltering with
+emotion. "Poor old Everard! But I am afraid there is no room for doubt.
+Oh, this wicked curse of money--tempting the noblest and the best
+of us."
+
+[Illustration: "SHE DID NOT REPULSE HIM."]
+
+The weeks rolled on. Gradually she found herself seeing more and more of
+Tom Peters, and gradually, strange to say, he grew less repulsive. From
+the talks they had together, she began to see that there was really no
+reason to put faith in Everard; his criminality, his faithlessness, were
+too flagrant. Gradually she grew ashamed of her early mistrust of
+Peters; remorse bred esteem, and esteem ultimately ripened into feelings
+so warm, that when Tom gave freer vent to the love that had been visible
+to Clara from the first, she did not repulse him.
+
+It is only in books that love lives for ever. Clara, so her father
+thought, showed herself a sensible girl in plucking out an unworthy
+affection and casting it from her heart. He invited the new lover to his
+house, and took to him at once. Roxdal's somewhat supercilious manner
+had always jarred upon the unsophisticated corn merchant. With Tom the
+old man got on much better. While evidently quite as well informed and
+cultured as his whilom friend, Tom knew how to impart his superior
+knowledge with the accent on the knowledge rather than on the
+superiority, while he had the air of gaining much information in return.
+Those who are most conscious of defects of early education are most
+resentful of other people sharing their consciousness Moreover, Tom's
+_bonhomie_ was far more to the old fellow's liking than the studied
+politeness of his predecessor, so that on the whole Tom made more of a
+conquest of the father than of the daughter. Nevertheless, Clara was by
+no means unresponsive to Tom's affection, and when, after one of his
+visits to the house, the old man kissed her fondly and spoke of the
+happy turn things had taken, and how, for the second time in their
+lives, things had mended when they seemed at their blackest, her heart
+swelled with a gush of gratitude and joy and tenderness, and she fell
+sobbing into her father's arms.
+
+[Illustration: "WITH TOM THE OLD MAN GOT ON MUCH BETTER."]
+
+Tom calculated that he made a clear five hundred a year by occasional
+journalism, besides possessing some profitable investments which he had
+inherited from his mother, so that there was no reason for delaying the
+marriage. It was fixed for May-day, and the honeymoon was to be spent
+in Italy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE DREAM AND THE AWAKENING
+
+
+But Clara was not destined to happiness. From the moment she had
+promised herself to her first love's friend old memories began to rise
+up and reproach her. Strange thoughts stirred in the depths of her soul,
+and in the silent watches of the night she seemed to hear Everard's
+accents, charged with grief and upbraiding. Her uneasiness increased as
+her wedding-day drew near. One night, after a pleasant afternoon spent
+in being rowed by Tom among the upper reaches of the Thames, she retired
+to rest full of vague forebodings. And she dreamt a terrible dream. The
+dripping form of Everard stood by her bedside, staring at her with
+ghastly eyes. Had he been drowned on the passage to his land of exile?
+Frozen with horror, she put the question.
+
+"I have never left England!" the vision answered.
+
+Her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth.
+
+"Never left England?" she repeated, in tones which did not seem to be
+hers.
+
+The wraith's stony eyes stared on, but there was silence.
+
+"Where have you been then?" she asked in her dream.
+
+"Very near you," came the answer.
+
+"There has been foul play then!" she shrieked.
+
+The phantom shook its head in doleful assent.
+
+"I knew it!" she shrieked. "Tom Peters--Tom Peters has done away with
+you. Is it not he? Speak!"
+
+"Yes, it is he--Tom Peters--whom I loved more than all the world."
+
+Even in the terrible oppression of the dream she could not resist
+saying, woman-like:
+
+"Did I not warn you against him?"
+
+The phantom stared on silently and made no reply.
+
+"But what was his motive?" she asked at length.
+
+"Love of gold--and you. And you are giving yourself to him," it said
+sternly.
+
+"No, no, Everard! I will not! I will not! I swear it! Forgive me!"
+
+The spirit shook its head sceptically.
+
+"You love him. Women are false--as false as men."
+
+She strove to protest again, but her tongue refused its office.
+
+"If you marry him, I shall always be with you! Beware!"
+
+The dripping figure vanished as suddenly as it came, and Clara awoke in
+a cold perspiration. Oh, it was horrible! The man she had learnt to
+love, the murderer of the man she had learnt to forget! How her original
+prejudice had been justified! Distracted, shaken to her depths, she
+would not take counsel even of her father, but informed the police of
+her suspicions. A raid was made on Tom's rooms, and lo! the stolen notes
+were discovered in a huge bundle. It was found that he had several
+banking accounts, with a large, recently-paid amount in each bank. Tom
+was arrested. Attention was now concentrated on the corpses washed up by
+the river. It was not long before the body of Roxdal came to shore, the
+face distorted almost beyond recognition by long immersion, but the
+clothes patently his, and a pocket-book in the breast-pocket removing
+the last doubt. Mrs. Seacon and Polly and Clara Newell all identified
+the body. Both juries returned a verdict of murder against Tom Peters,
+the recital of Clara's dream producing a unique impression in the court
+and throughout the country. The theory of the prosecution was that
+Roxdal had brought home the money, whether to fly alone or to divide it,
+or whether even for some innocent purpose, as Clara believed, was
+immaterial. That Peters determined to have it all, that he had gone out
+for a walk with the deceased, and, taking advantage of the fog, had
+pushed him into the river, and that he was further impelled to the crime
+by love for Clara Newell, as was evident from his subsequent relations
+with her. The judge put on the black cap. Tom Peters was duly hung by
+the neck till he was dead.
+
+[Illustration: "IDENTIFIED THE BODY."]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+BRIEF RESUME OF THE CULPRIT'S CONFESSION.
+
+
+When you all read this I shall be dead and laughing at you. I have been
+hung for my own murder. I am Everard G. Roxdal. I am also Tom Peters. We
+two were one. When I was a young man my moustache and beard wouldn't
+come. I bought false ones to improve my appearance. One day, after I had
+become manager of the City and Suburban Bank, I took off my beard and
+moustache at home, and then the thought crossed my mind that nobody
+would know me without them. I was another man. Instantly it flashed upon
+me that if I ran away from the Bank, that other man could be left in
+London, while the police were scouring the world for a non-existent
+fugitive. But this was only the crude germ of the idea. Slowly I matured
+my plan. The man who was going to be left in London must be known to a
+circle of acquaintance beforehand. It would be easy enough to masquerade
+in the evenings in my beardless condition, with other disguises of dress
+and voice. But this was not brilliant enough. I conceived the idea of
+living with him. It was Box and Cox reversed. We shared rooms at Mrs.
+Seacon's. It was a great strain, but it was only for a few weeks. I had
+trick clothes in my bedroom like those of quick-change artistes; in a
+moment I could pass from Roxdal to Peters and from Peters to Roxdal.
+Polly had to clean two pairs of boots a morning, cook two dinners, &c.,
+&c. She and Mrs. Seacon saw one or the other of us every moment; it
+never dawned upon them they never saw us _both together_. At meals I
+would not be interrupted, ate off two plates, and conversed with my
+friend in loud tones. At other times we dined at different hours. On
+Sundays he was supposed to be asleep when I was in church. There is no
+landlady in the world to whom the idea would have occurred that one man
+was troubling himself to be two (and to pay for two, including washing).
+I worked up the idea of Roxdal's flight, asked Polly to go with me,
+manufactured that feminine letter that arrived on the morning of my
+disappearance. As Tom Peters I mixed with a journalistic set. I had
+another room where I kept the gold and notes till I mistakenly thought
+the thing had blown over. Unfortunately, returning from here on the
+night of my disappearance, with Roxdal's clothes in a bundle I intended
+to drop into the river, it was stolen from me in the fog, and the man
+into whose possession it ultimately came appears to have committed
+suicide. What, perhaps, ruined me was my desire to keep Clara's love,
+and to transfer it to the survivor. Everard told her I was the best of
+fellows. Once married to her, I would not have had much fear. Even if
+she had discovered the trick, a wife cannot give evidence against her
+husband, and often does not want to. I made none of the usual slips, but
+no man can guard against a girl's nightmare after a day up the river and
+a supper at the Star and Garter. I might have told the judge he was an
+ass, but then I should have had penal servitude for bank robbery, and
+that is worse than death. The only thing that puzzles me, though, is
+whether the law has committed murder or I suicide.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+My First Novel.
+
+THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT.
+
+BY MISS M. E. BRADDON.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY MISS F. L. FULLER.
+
+
+My first novel! Far back in the distinctness of childish memories I see
+a little girl who has lately learnt to write, who has lately been given
+a beautiful brand new mahogany desk, with a red velvet slope, and a
+glass ink bottle, such a desk as might now be bought for three and
+sixpence, but which in the forties cost at least half-a-guinea. Very
+proud is the little girl, with the Kenwigs pigtails, and the Kenwigs
+frills, of that mahogany desk, and its infinite capacities for literary
+labour, above all, gem of gems, its stick of variegated sealing-wax,
+brown, speckled with gold, and its little glass seal with an intaglio
+representing two doves--Pliny's doves perhaps, famous in mosaic, only
+the little girl had never heard of Pliny, or his Laurentine Villa.
+
+[Illustration: LICHFIELD HOUSE, RICHMOND.]
+
+Armed with that desk and its supply of stationery, Mary Elizabeth
+Braddon--very fond of writing her name at full-length, and her address
+also at full-length, though the word "Middlesex" offered
+difficulties--began that pilgrimage on the broad high road of fiction,
+which was destined to be a longish one. So much for the little girl of
+eight years old, in the third person, and now to become strictly
+autobiographical.
+
+My first story was based on those fairy tales which first opened to me
+the world of imaginative literature. My first attempt in fiction, and in
+round-hand, on carefully pencilled double lines, was a story of two
+sisters, a good sister and a wicked, and I fear adhered more faithfully
+to the lines of the archetypal story than the writer's pen kept to the
+double fence which should have ensured neatness.
+
+[Illustration: THE HALL.]
+
+The interval between the ages of eight and twelve was a prolific period,
+fertile in unfinished MSS., among which I can now trace a historical
+novel on the Siege of Calais--an Eastern story, suggested by a
+passionate love of Miss Pardoe's Turkish tales, and Byron's "Bride of
+Abydos," which my mother, a devoted Byron worshipper, allowed me to read
+aloud to her--and doubtless murder in the reading--a story of the Hartz
+Mountains, with audacious flights in German diablerie; and lastly, very
+seriously undertaken, and very perseveringly worked upon, a domestic
+story, the outline of which was suggested by the same dear and
+sympathetic mother.
+
+Now it is a curious fact, which may or may not be common to other
+story-spinners, that I have never been able to take kindly to a plot--or
+the suggestion of a plot--offered to me by anybody else. The moment a
+friend tells me that he or she is desirous of imparting a series of
+facts--strictly true--as if truth in fiction mattered one jot!--which in
+his or her opinion would make the ground plan of an admirable,
+startling, and altogether original three-volume novel, I know in advance
+that my imagination will never grapple with those startling
+circumstances--that my thoughts will begin to wander before my friend
+has got half through the remarkable chain of events, and that if the
+obliging purveyor of romantic incidents were to examine me at the end of
+the story, I should be spun ignominiously. For the most part, such
+subjects as have been proposed to me by friends have been hopelessly
+unfit for the circulating library; or, where not immoral, have been
+utterly dull; but it is, I believe, a fixed idea in the novel-reader's
+mind that any combination of events out of the beaten way of life will
+make an admirable subject for the novelist's art.
+
+[Illustration: THE STAIRCASE.]
+
+My dear mother, taking into consideration my tender years, and perhaps
+influenced in somewise by her own love of picking up odd bits of
+Sheraton or Chippendale furniture in the storehouses of the less
+ambitious second-hand dealers of those simpler days, offered me the
+following _scenario_ for a domestic story. It was an incident which, I
+doubt not, she had often read at the tail of a newspaper column, and
+which certainly savours of the gigantic gooseberry, the sea-serpent, and
+the agricultural labourer who unexpectedly inherits half-a-million. It
+was eminently a Simple Story, and far more worthy of that title than
+Mrs. Inchbald's long and involved romance.
+
+An honest couple, in humble circumstances, possess among their small
+household gear a good old easy chair, which has been the pride of a
+former generation, and is the choicest of their household gods. A
+comfortable cushioned chair, snug and restful, albeit the chintz
+covering, though clean and tidy, as virtuous people's furniture always
+is in fiction, is worn thin by long service, while the dear chair itself
+is no longer the chair it once was as to legs and framework.
+
+Evil days come upon the praiseworthy couple and their dependent brood,
+among whom I faintly remember the love interest of the story to have
+lain; and that direful day arrives when the average landlord of juvenile
+fiction, whose heart is of adamant and brain of brass, distrains for the
+rent. The rude broker swoops upon the humble dovecot; a cart or
+hand-barrow waits on the carefully hearth-stoned door-step for the
+household gods; the family gather round the cherished chair, on which
+the rude broker has already laid his grimy fingers; they hang over the
+back and fondle the padded arms; and the old grandmother, with clasped
+hands, entreats that, if able to raise the money in a few days, they may
+be allowed to buy back that loved heirloom.
+
+[Illustration: THE DINING ROOM.]
+
+The broker laughs the plea to scorn; they might have their chair, and
+cheap enough, he had no doubt. The cover was darned and patched--as only
+the virtuous poor of fiction do darn and do patch--and he made no doubt
+the stuffing was nothing better than brown wool; and with that coarse
+taunt the coarser broker dug his clasp-knife into the cushion against
+which grandfatherly backs had leaned in happier days, and lo! an
+avalanche of banknotes fell out of the much-maligned horse-hair, and the
+family was lifted from penury to wealth. Nothing more simple--or more
+natural. A prudent but eccentric ancestor had chosen this mode of
+putting by his savings, assured that, whenever discovered, the money
+would be useful to--somebody.
+
+So ran the _scenario_: but I fancy my juvenile pen hardly held on to the
+climax. My brief experience of boarding school occurred at this time,
+and I well remember writing "The Old Arm Chair" in a penny account book,
+in the schoolroom of Cresswell Lodge, and that I was both surprised and
+offended at the laughter of the kindly music-teacher who, coming into
+the room to summon a pupil, and seeing me gravely occupied, enquired
+what I was doing, and was intensely amused at my stolid method of
+composition, plodding on undisturbed by the voices and occupations of
+the older girls around me. "The Old Arm Chair" was certainly my first
+serious, painstaking effort in fiction; but as it was abandoned
+unfinished before my eleventh birthday, and as no line thereof ever
+achieved the distinction of type, it can hardly rank as my first novel.
+
+[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM.]
+
+There came a very few years later the sentimental period, in which my
+unfinished novels assumed a more ambitious form, and were modelled
+chiefly upon Jane Eyre, with occasional tentative imitations of
+Thackeray. Stories of gentle hearts that loved in vain, always ending in
+renunciation. One romance there was, I well remember, begun with
+resolute purpose, after the first reading of Esmond, and in the
+endeavour to give life and local colour to a story of the Restoration
+period, a brilliantly wicked interval in the social history of England,
+which, after the lapse of thirty years, I am still as bent upon taking
+for the background of a love story as I was when I began "Master
+Anthony's Record" in Esmondese, and made my girlish acquaintance with
+the Reading-room of the British Museum, where I went in quest of local
+colour, and where much kindness was shown to my youth and inexperience
+of the book world. Poring over a folio edition of the State Trials at my
+uncle's quiet rectory in sleepy Sandwich, I had discovered the
+passionate romantic story of Lord Grey's elopement with his
+sister-in-law, next in sequence to the trial of Lawrence Braddon and
+Hugh Speke for conspiracy. At the risk of seeming disloyal to my own
+race, I must add that it seemed to me a very tinpot order of plot to
+which these two learned gentlemen bent their legal minds, and which cost
+the Braddon family a heavy fine in land near Camelford--confiscation
+which I have heard my father complain of as especially unfair--Lawrence
+being a younger son. The romantic story of Lord Grey was to be the
+subject of "Master Anthony's Record," but Master Anthony's sentimental
+autobiography went the way of all my earlier efforts. It was but a year
+or so after the collapse of Master Anthony, that a blindly-enterprising
+printer of Beverley, who had seen my poor little verses in the _Beverley
+Recorder_, made me the spirited offer of ten pounds for a serial story,
+to be set up and printed at Beverley, and published on commission by a
+London firm in Warwick Lane. I cannot picture to myself, in my
+after-knowledge of the bookselling trade, any enterprise more futile in
+its inception or more feeble in its execution; but to my youthful
+ambition the actual commission to write a novel, with an advance payment
+of fifty shillings to show good faith on the part of my Yorkshire
+speculator, seemed like the opening of that pen-and-ink paradise which I
+had sighed for ever since I could hold a pen. I had, previously to this
+date, found a Maecenas in Beverley, in the person of a learned gentleman
+who volunteered to foster my love of the Muses by buying the copyright
+of a volume of poems and publishing the same at his own expense--which
+he did, poor man, without stint, and by which noble patronage of Poet's
+Corner verse, he must have lost money. He had, however, the privilege of
+dictating the subject of the principal poem, which was to sing--however
+feebly--Garibaldi's Sicilian campaign.
+
+[Illustration: THE EVENING ROOM.]
+
+The Beverley printer suggested that my Warwick Lane serial should
+combine, as far as my powers allowed, the human interest and genial
+humour of Dickens with the plot-weaving of G. W. R. Reynolds; and,
+furnished with these broad instructions, I filled my ink bottle, spread
+out my foolscap, and, on a hopelessly wet afternoon, began my first
+novel--now known as "The Trail of the Serpent"--but published in Warwick
+Lane, and later in the stirring High Street of Beverley, as "Three Times
+Dead." In "Three Times Dead" I gave loose to all my leanings to the
+violent in melodrama. Death stalked in ghastliest form across my pages;
+and villainy reigned triumphant till the Nemesis of the last chapter. I
+wrote with all the freedom of one who feared not the face of a critic;
+and, indeed, thanks to the obscurity of its original production, and its
+re-issue as the ordinary two-shilling railway novel, this first novel of
+mine has almost entirely escaped the critical lash, and has pursued its
+way as a chartered libertine. People buy it and read it, and its faults
+and follies are forgiven as the exuberances of a pen unchastened by
+experience; but faster and more facile at that initial stage than it
+ever became after long practice.
+
+[Illustration: THE SMOKING-ROOM.]
+
+I dashed headlong at my work, conjured up my images of horror or of
+mirth, and boldly built the framework of my story, and set my puppets
+moving. To me, at least, they were living creatures, who seemed to
+follow impulses of their own, to be impelled by their own passions, to
+love and hate, and plot and scheme of their own accord. There was
+unalloyed pleasure in the composition of that first story, and the
+knowledge that it was to be actually printed and published, and not to
+be declined with thanks by adamantine magazine editors, like a certain
+short story which I had lately written, and which contained the germ of
+"Lady Audley's Secret." Indeed, at this period of my life, the postman's
+knock had become associated in my mind with the sharp sound of a
+rejected MS. dropping through the open letter-box on to the floor of the
+hall, while my heart seemed to drop in sympathy with that
+book-post packet.
+
+[Illustration: THE LIBRARY.]
+
+Short of never being printed at all, my Beverley-born novel could have
+hardly entered upon the world of books in a more profound obscurity.
+That one living creature ever bought a number of "Three Times Dead" I
+greatly doubt. I can recall the thrill of emotion with which I tore open
+the envelope that contained my complimentary copy of the first number,
+folded across, and in aspect inferior to a gratis pamphlet about a
+patent medicine. The miserable little wood block which illustrated that
+first number would have disgraced a baker's whitey-brown bag, would have
+been unworthy to illustrate a penny bun. My spirits were certainly
+dashed at the technical shortcomings of that first serial, and I was
+hardly surprised when I was informed a few weeks later, that although my
+admirers at Beverley were deeply interested in the story, it was not a
+financial success, and that it would be only obliging on my part, and in
+accordance with my known kindness of heart, if I were to restrict the
+development of the romance to half its intended length, and to accept
+five pounds in lieu of ten as my reward. Having no desire that the rash
+Beverley printer should squander his own or his children's fortune in
+the obscurity of Warwick Lane, I immediately acceded to his request,
+shortened sail, and went on with my story, perhaps with a shade less
+enthusiasm, having seen the shabby figure it was to make in the book
+world. I may add that the Beverley publisher's payments began and ended
+with his noble advance of fifty shillings. The balance was never paid;
+and it was rather hard lines that, on his becoming bankrupt in his poor
+little way a few years later, a judge in the Bankruptcy Court remarked
+that, as Miss Braddon was now making a good deal of money by her pen,
+she ought to "come to the relief" of her first publisher.
+
+[Illustration: MISS BRADDON'S FAVOURITE MARE.]
+
+And now my volume of verses being well under weigh, I went with my
+mother to farm-house lodgings in the neighbourhood of that very
+Beverley, where I spent, perhaps, the happiest half-year of my
+life--half a year of tranquil, studious days, far from the madding
+crowd, with the mother whose society was always all sufficient for
+me--half a year among level pastures, with unlimited books from the
+library in Hull, an old farm-horse to ride about the green lanes, the
+breath of summer, with all its sweet odours of flower and herb, around
+and about us: half a year of unalloyed bliss, had it not been for one
+dark shadow, the heroic figure of Garibaldi, the sailor soldier, looming
+large upon the foreground of my literary labours, as the hero of a
+lengthy narrative poem in the Spenserian metre.
+
+My chief business at Beverley was to complete the volume of verse
+commissioned by my Yorkshire Maecenas, at that time a very rich man, who
+paid me a much better price for my literary work than his townsman, the
+enterprising printer, and who had the first claim on my thought
+and time.
+
+[Illustration: THE ORANGERY.]
+
+With the business-like punctuality of a salaried clerk, I went every
+morning to my file of the _Times_, and pored and puzzled over Neapolitan
+revolution and Sicilian campaign, and I can only say that if Emile Zola
+has suffered as much over Sedan as I suffered in the freshness of my
+youth, when flowery meadows and the old chestnut mare invited to summer
+idlesse, over the fighting in Sicily, his dogged perseverance in
+uncongenial labour should place him among the Immortal Forty. How I
+hated the great Joseph G. and the Spenserian metre, with its exacting
+demands upon the rhyming faculty. How I hated my own ignorance of modern
+Italian history, and my own eyes for never having looked upon Italian
+landscape, whereby historical allusion and local colour were both
+wanting to that dry-as-dust record of heroic endeavour. I had only the
+_Times_ correspondent; where he was picturesque I could be
+picturesque--allowing always for the Spenserian straining--where he was
+rich in local colour I did my utmost to reproduce his colouring,
+stretched always on the Spenserian rack, and lengthened out by the
+bitter necessity of finding triple rhymes. Next to Guiseppe Garibaldi I
+hated Edmund Spenser, and it may be from a vengeful remembrance of those
+early struggles with a difficult form of versification, that, although
+throughout my literary life I have been a lover of England's earlier
+poet, and have delighted in the quaintness and _naivete_ of Chaucer, I
+have refrained from reading more than a casual stanza or two of the
+"Faery Queen." When I lived at Beverley, Spenser was to me but a name,
+and Byron's "Childe Harold" was my only model for that exacting verse. I
+should add that the Beverley Maecenas, when commissioning this volume of
+verse, was less superb in his ideas than the literary patron of the
+past. He looked at the matter from a purely commercial standpoint, and
+believed that a volume of verse, such as I could produce, would pay--a
+delusion on his part which I honestly strove to combat before accepting
+his handsome offer of remuneration for my time and labour. It was with
+this idea in his mind that he chose and insisted upon the Sicilian
+Campaign as a subject for my muse, and thus started me heavily
+handicapped on the racecourse of Parnassus.
+
+[Illustration: MISS BRADDON'S COTTAGE AT LYNDHURST.]
+
+The weekly number of "Three Times Dead" was "thrown off" in brief
+intervals of rest from my _magnum opus_, and it was an infinite relief
+to turn from Garibaldi and his brothers in arms to the angels and the
+monsters which my own brain had engendered, and which to me seemed more
+alive than the good great man whose arms I so laboriously sang. My
+rustic pipe far better loved to sing of melodramatic poisoners and
+ubiquitous detectives; of fine houses in the West of London, and dark
+dens in the East. So the weekly chapter of my first novel ran merrily
+off my pen while the printer's boy waited in the farm-house kitchen.
+
+Happy, happy days, so near to memory, and yet so far. In that peaceful
+summer I finished my first novel, knocked Garibaldi on the head with a
+closing rhapsody, saw the York spring and summer races in hopelessly wet
+weather, learnt to love the Yorkshire people, and left Yorkshire almost
+broken-heartedly on a dull gray October morning, to travel Londonwards
+through a landscape that was mostly under water.
+
+And, behold, since that October morning I have written fifty-three
+novels; I have lost dear old friends and found new friends, who are also
+dear, but I have never looked on a Yorkshire landscape since I turned my
+reluctant eyes from those level meadows and green lanes where the old
+chestnut mare used to carry me ploddingly to and fro between tall,
+tangled hedges of eglantine and honeysuckle.
+
+[Illustration: MISS BRADDON'S INKSTAND.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+NOVEL NOTES.
+
+BY JEROME K. JEROME.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. GUeLICH AND J. GREIG,
+
+PART X.
+
+
+[Illustration: "DISCUSSION AT OUR LAST MEETING."]
+
+The final question discussed at our last meeting had been: What shall
+our hero be? MacShaugnassy had suggested an author, with a critic for
+the villain. Brown's fancy was an artist. My idea was a stockbroker,
+with an undercurrent of romance in his nature. Said Jephson, who has a
+practical mind, approaching at times the commercial: "The question is
+not what we like, but what the female novel-reader likes."
+
+"That is so," agreed MacShaugnassy. "I propose that we collect feminine
+opinion upon this point. I will write to my aunt, and get from her the
+old lady's view. You," he said, turning to me, "can put the case to your
+wife, and get the young lady's ideal. Let Brown write to his sister at
+Newnham, and find out whom the intellectual maiden favours, while
+Jephson can learn from Miss Medbury what is most attractive to the
+common-sensed girl."
+
+This plan we had adopted, and the result was now under consideration.
+MacShaugnassy opened the proceedings by reading his aunt's letter. Wrote
+the old lady:
+
+    "I think, if I were you, my dear boy, I should choose a
+    soldier. You know your poor grandfather, who ran away to
+    America with that _wicked_ Mrs. Featherly, the banker's wife,
+    was a soldier, and so was your poor cousin Robert, who lost
+    eight thousand pounds at Monte Carlo. I have always felt
+    singularly drawn towards soldiers, even as a girl; though your
+    poor dear uncle could not bear them. You will find many
+    allusions to soldiers and men of war in the Old Testament (see
+    Jer. 48,14). Of course one does not like to think of their
+    fighting and killing each other, but then they do not seem to
+    do much of that sort of thing nowadays."
+
+"So much for the old lady," said MacShaugnassy, as he folded up the
+letter and returned it to his pocket. "What says culture?"
+
+[Illustration: BROWN READ AS FOLLOWS.]
+
+Brown produced from his cigar-case a letter addressed in a bold round
+hand, and read as follows:
+
+    "What a curious coincidence! A few of us were discussing this
+    very subject last night in Millicent Hightopper's rooms, and I
+    may tell you at once that our decision was unanimous in favour
+    of soldiers. You see, my dear Selkirk, in human nature the
+    attraction is towards the opposite. To a milliner's apprentice
+    a poet would no doubt be satisfying; to a woman of intelligence
+    he would be an unutterable bore. The man of brain is not for
+    the woman of brain. What the intellectual woman requires in man
+    is not something to argue with, but something to look at. To an
+    empty-headed woman I can imagine the soldier type proving vapid
+    and uninteresting; to the woman of mind he represents her ideal
+    of man--a creature strong, handsome, well-dressed, and not
+    too clever."
+
+"That gives us two votes for the army," remarked MacShaugnassy, as Brown
+tore his sister's letter in two, and threw the pieces into the
+waste-paper basket. "What says the common-sensed girl?"
+
+"First catch your common-sensed girl," muttered Jephson, a little
+grumpily, as it seemed to me. "Where do you propose finding her?"
+
+"Well," returned MacShaugnassy, "I looked to find her in Miss Medbury."
+
+As a rule, the mention of Miss Medbury's name brings a flush of joy to
+Jephson's face; but now his features wore an expression distinctly
+approaching a scowl.
+
+"Oh!" he replied, "did you? Well, then, the common-sensed girl loves the
+military, also."
+
+"By Jove!" exclaimed MacShaugnassy, "what an extraordinary thing. What
+reason does she give?"
+
+"That they look so nice when they're dressed, and that they dance so
+divinely," answered Jephson, shortly.
+
+"Well, you do surprise me," murmured MacShaugnassy, "I am astonished."
+
+Then to me he said: "And what does the young married woman say? The
+same?"
+
+"Yes," I replied, "precisely the same."
+
+"Does _she_ give a reason?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, yes," I explained; "because you can't help liking them."
+
+There was silence for the next few minutes, while we smoked and thought.
+I fancy we were all wishing we had never started this enquiry.
+
+That four distinctly different types of educated womanhood should, with
+promptness and unanimity quite unfeminine, have selected the soldier as
+their ideal, was certainly discouraging to the civilian heart. Had they
+been nursemaids or servant girls, I should have expected it. The worship
+of Mars by the Venus of the white cap is one of the few vital religions
+left to this devoutless age. A year or two ago I lodged near a barracks,
+and the sight to be seen round its huge iron gates on Sunday afternoons
+I shall never forget. The girls began to assemble about twelve o'clock.
+By two, at which hour the army, with its hair nicely oiled and a cane in
+its hand, was ready for a stroll, there would be some four or five
+hundred of them waiting in a line. Formerly they had collected in a wild
+mob, and as the soldiers were let out to them two at a time, had fought
+for them, as lions for early Christians. This, however, had led to
+scenes of such disorder and brutality, that the police had been obliged
+to interfere; and the girls were now marshalled in _queue_, two abreast,
+and compelled, by a force of constables specially told off for the
+purpose, to keep their places and wait their proper turn.
+
+At three o'clock the sentry on duty would come down to the wicket and
+close it. "They're all gone, my dears," he would shout out to the girls
+still left; "it's no good your stopping, we've no more for you to-day."
+
+"Oh, not one!" some poor child would murmur pleadingly, while the tears
+welled up into her big round eyes, "not even a little one. I've been
+waiting _such_ a long time."
+
+"Can't help that," the honest fellow would reply, gruffly, but not
+unkindly, turning aside to hide his emotion; "you've had 'em all between
+you. We don't make 'em, you know: you can't have 'em if we haven't got
+'em, can you? Come earlier next time."
+
+[Illustration: "NOW THEN, PASS ALONG."]
+
+Then he would hurry away to escape further importunity; and the police,
+who appeared to have been waiting for this moment with gloating
+anticipation, would jeeringly hustle away the weeping remnant. "Now
+then, pass along, you girls, pass along," they would say, in that
+irritatingly unsympathetic voice of theirs. "You've had your chance.
+Can't have the roadway blocked up all the afternoon with this 'ere
+demonstration of the unloved. You'll have to put up with your ordinary
+young men for to-day. Pass along."
+
+In connection with this same barracks, our charwoman told Amenda, who
+told Ethelbertha, who told me a story, which I now told the boys.
+
+Into a certain house, in a certain street in the neighbourhood, there
+moved one day a certain family. Their servant had left them--most of
+their servants did at the end of a week--and the day after the moving-in
+an advertisement was drawn up and sent to the _Chronicle_ for a
+domestic. It ran thus:
+
+    WANTED GENERAL SERVANT, in small family of eleven. Wages, L6;
+    no beer money. Must be early riser and hard worker. Washing
+    done at home. Must be good cook, and not object to
+    window-cleaning. Unitarian preferred.--Apply, with references,
+    to A. B., &C.
+
+That advertisement was sent off on Wednesday afternoon. At seven o'clock
+on Thursday morning the whole family were awakened by continuous ringing
+of the street door bell. The husband, looking out of window, was
+surprised to see a crowd of about fifty girls surrounding the house. He
+slipped on his dressing-gown and went down to see what was the matter.
+The moment he opened the door, fifteen of them charged tumultuously into
+the passage, sweeping him completely off his legs. Once inside, these
+fifteen faced round, fought the other thirty-five or so back on to the
+door-step, and slammed the door in their faces. Then they picked up the
+master of the house, and asked him politely to conduct them to "A. B."
+
+[Illustration: "SURPRISED TO SEE ABOUT FIFTY GIRLS."]
+
+At first, owing to the clamour of the mob outside, who were hammering at
+the door and shouting curses through the keyhole on those inside, he was
+too confused to understand anything, but by dint of great exertion they
+succeeded at length in explaining to him that they were domestic
+servants come in answer to his wife's advertisement. The man went and
+told his wife, and his wife said she would see them, one at a time.
+
+Which one should have audience first was a delicate question to decide.
+The man, on being appealed to, said he would prefer to leave it to them.
+They accordingly discussed the matter among themselves. At the end of a
+quarter of an hour, the victor, having borrowed a packet of pins and a
+looking-glass from our charwoman, who had slept in the house, went
+upstairs, while the remaining fourteen sat down in the hall, and fanned
+themselves with their bonnets.
+
+"A. B." was a good deal astonished when the first applicant presented
+herself. She was a tall, genteel-looking, well-dressed girl. Up to
+yesterday she had been head housemaid at Lady Stanton's, and before that
+she had been under-cook for two years to the Duchess of York.
+
+"And why did you leave Lady Stanton?" asked "A. B."
+
+"To come here, mum," replied the girl.
+
+The lady was puzzled.
+
+"And you'll be satisfied with six pounds a year?" she asked.
+
+"Certainly, mum, I think it ample."
+
+"And you don't mind hard work?"
+
+"I love it, mum."
+
+"And you're an early riser?"
+
+"Oh yes, mum, it upsets me stopping in bed after half-past five."
+
+"You know we do the washing at home?"
+
+"Yes, mum. I think it so much better to do it at home. Those laundries
+ruin good clothes. They're so careless."
+
+"Are you a Unitarian?" continued the lady.
+
+"Not yet, mum," replied the girl, "but I should like to be one."
+
+The lady took her reference, and said she would write her.
+
+"I do hope you will give me a trial, mum," pleaded the girl, as she rose
+to go; "I would try so hard to give you satisfaction."
+
+The next applicant offered to come for three pounds--thought six pounds
+too much. She also expressed her willingness to sleep in the back
+kitchen: a shakedown under the sink was all she wanted. She likewise had
+yearnings towards Unitarianism.
+
+The third girl did not require any wages at all--could not understand
+what servants wanted with wages--thought wages only encouraged a love of
+foolish finery--thought a comfortable home in a Unitarian family ought
+to be sufficient wages for any girl.
+
+This girl said there was one stipulation she should like to make, and
+that was that she should be allowed to pay for all breakages caused by
+her own carelessness or neglect. She objected to holidays and evenings
+out on principle; she held that they distracted a girl from her work.
+
+[Illustration: "MET THE NEXT DOOR LADY ON THE DOOR-STEP."]
+
+The fourth candidate offered a premium of five pounds for the place; and
+then "A.B." began to get frightened, and refused to see any more of the
+girls, convinced that they must be lunatics from some neighbouring
+asylum out for a walk.
+
+Later in the day, meeting the next door lady on the door-step, she
+related her morning's experiences.
+
+"Oh, that's nothing extraordinary," said the next door lady; "none of us
+on this side of the street pay wages; and we get the pick of all the
+best servants in London. Why, girls will come from the other end of the
+kingdom to get into one of these houses. It's the dream of their lives.
+They save up for years, so as to be able to come here for nothing."
+
+"What's the attraction?" asked "A. B.," more amazed than ever.
+
+"Why, don't you see," explained the next door lady, "our back windows
+open upon the barrack yard. A girl living in one of these houses is
+always close to soldiers. By looking out of window she can always see
+soldiers; and sometimes a soldier will nod to her, or even call up to
+her. They never dream of asking for wages. They'll work eighteen hours a
+day, and put up with anything just to be allowed to stop."
+
+"A.B." profited by this information, and engaged the girl who offered
+the five pounds premium. She found her a perfect treasure of a servant.
+She was invariably willing and respectful, slept on a sofa in the
+kitchen, and was always contented with an egg for her dinner.
+
+[Illustration: "A SOLDIER'S ARM ROUND THE WAIST."]
+
+The truth of this story I cannot vouch for. Myself, I can believe it.
+Brown and MacShaugnassy made no attempt to do so, which seemed
+unfriendly. Jephson excused himself on the plea of a headache. I admit
+there are points in it presenting difficulties to the average intellect.
+As I explained at the commencement, it was told to me by Ethelbertha,
+who had it from Amenda, who got it from the charwoman, and exaggerations
+may have crept into it. The following, however, were incidents that came
+under my own personal observation. They afforded a still stronger
+example of the influence exercised by Tommy Atkins upon the British
+domestic, and I therefore thought it right to relate them also to
+the boys.
+
+"The heroine of them," I said, "is our Amenda. Now, you would call her a
+tolerably well-behaved, orderly young woman, would you not?"
+
+"She is my ideal of unostentatious respectability," answered
+MacShaugnassy.
+
+"That was my opinion also," I replied. "You can, therefore, imagine my
+feelings on passing her one evening in the Folkestone High Street with a
+Panama hat upon her head (my Panama hat), and a soldier's arm round her
+waist. She was one of a mob, composed of all the unoccupied riff-raff of
+Folkestone, who were following the band of the Third Berkshire Infantry,
+then in camp at Sandgate. There was an ecstatic, far-away look in her
+eyes. She was dancing rather than walking, and with her left hand she
+beat time to the music."
+
+"I should say you were suffering from a mild attack of D.T. when you saw
+all that," said MacShaugnassy.
+
+"So I might have thought myself," I said; "but Ethelbertha was with me
+at the time, and she saw it too. We stared after the procession until it
+had turned the corner, and then we stared at each other.
+
+"'Oh, it's impossible,' said Ethelbertha to me.
+
+"'But that was my hat,' I said to Ethelbertha.
+
+"The moment we reached home Ethelbertha looked for Amenda, and I looked
+for my hat. Neither were to be found.
+
+[Illustration: "AND HUNG MY HAT UP."]
+
+"Nine o'clock struck, ten o'clock struck. At half-past ten, we went down
+and got our own supper, and had it in the kitchen. At a quarter-past
+eleven, Amenda returned. She walked into the kitchen without a word,
+hung my hat up behind the door, and commenced clearing away the
+supper things.
+
+"Ethelbertha rose, calm but severe.
+
+"'Where have you been, Amenda?' she enquired.
+
+"'Gadding half over the county with a lot of low soldiers,' answered
+Amenda, continuing her work.
+
+"'You had on my hat,' I added, somewhat gloomily. It was not the right
+view to take of the case, I know, but, personally, that fact grieved me
+more than all the other incidents in the proceeding put together, sad
+though I felt these to be. It was an expensive hat, and Ethelbertha said
+it suited me (there are not many that do). After seeing it that night on
+Amenda's head, my pride in it was gone.
+
+"'Yes, sir,' replied Amenda, still continuing her work, 'it was the
+first thing that came to hand. What I'm thankful for is that it wasn't
+missis's best bonnet.'
+
+"Whether Ethelbertha was mollified by the proper spirit displayed in
+this last remark, I cannot say, but I think it probable. At all events,
+it was in a voice more of sorrow than of anger that she resumed her
+examination.
+
+"'You were walking with a soldier's arm around your waist when we passed
+you, Amenda?' she observed interrogatively.
+
+"'I know, mum,' admitted Amenda, 'I found it there myself when the music
+stopped.'
+
+"Ethelbertha looked her enquiries. Amenda filled a saucepan with water,
+and then replied to them.
+
+"'I'm a disgrace to a decent household,' she said; 'no mistress who
+respected herself would keep me a moment. I ought to be put out on the
+doorstep with my box and a month's wages.'
+
+"'But why did you do it then?' said Ethelbertha, with natural
+astonishment.
+
+"'Because I'm a helpless ninny, mum.' There was no trace of bitterness
+or passion in Amenda's tones. She spoke in the calm, even voice of a
+person stating facts.
+
+"'I can't help myself,' she went on; 'if I see soldiers I'm bound to
+follow them. It runs in our family. My poor cousin Emma was just such
+another fool. She was engaged to be married to a quiet, respectable
+young fellow with a shop of his own, and three days before the wedding
+she ran off with a regiment of marines and married the colour-sergeant.
+That's what I shall end by doing. I've been all the way to Sandgate with
+that lot you saw me with, and I've kissed four of them--the nasty
+wretches. I'm a nice sort of girl to be walking out with a
+respectable milkman.'
+
+"She was so deeply disgusted with herself that it seemed superfluous for
+anybody else to be indignant with her; and Ethelbertha changed her tone
+and tried to comfort her.
+
+"'Oh, you'll get over all that nonsense, Amenda,' she said, laughingly;
+'you see yourself how silly it is. You must tell Mr. Bowles to keep you
+away from soldiers.'
+
+"'Ah, I can't look at it in the same light way that you do, mum,'
+returned Amenda, somewhat reprovingly; 'a girl that can't see a bit of
+red marching down the street without wanting to rush out and follow it
+ain't fit to be anybody's wife. Why I should be leaving the shop with
+nobody in it about twice a week, and he'd have to go the round of all
+the barracks in London, looking for me. I shall save up and get myself
+into a lunatic asylum, that's what I shall do.'
+
+"Ethelbertha began to grow quite troubled. 'But surely this is something
+altogether new, Amenda,' she said; 'you must have often met soldiers
+when you've been out in London?'
+
+"'Oh, yes, one or two at a time, walking about anyhow, I can stand that
+all right. It's when there's a lot of them all together with a band that
+I lose my head.'
+
+[Illustration: "'WHEN THERE'S A LOT OF THEM WITH A BAND, I LOSE MY
+HEAD.'"]
+
+"'You don't know what it's like, mum,' she added, noticing Ethelbertha's
+puzzled expression; 'you've never had it. I only hope you never may.'
+
+"We kept a careful watch over Amenda during the remainder of our stay at
+Folkestone, and an anxious time we had of it. Every day some regiment or
+other would march through the town, and at the first sound of its music
+Amenda would become restless and excited. The Pied Piper's reed could
+not have stirred the Hamelin children deeper than did those Sandgate
+bands the heart of our domestic. Fortunately, they generally passed
+early in the morning when we were indoors, but one day, returning home
+to lunch, we heard distant strains dying away upon the Hythe Road. We
+hurried in. Ethelbertha ran down into the kitchen; it was empty!--up
+into Amenda's bedroom; it was vacant! We called. There was no answer.
+
+"'That miserable girl has gone off again,' said Ethelbertha. 'What a
+terrible misfortune it is for her. It's quite a disease.'
+
+"Ethelbertha wanted me to go to Sandgate camp and enquire for her. I was
+sorry for the girl myself, but the picture of a young and
+innocent-looking man wandering about a complicated camp, enquiring for a
+lost domestic, presenting itself to my mind, I said that I'd rather not.
+
+"Ethelbertha thought me heartless, and said that if I would not go she
+would go herself. I replied that I thought one female member of my
+household was enough in that camp at a time, and requested her not to.
+Ethelbertha expressed her sense of my inhuman behaviour by haughtily
+declining to eat any lunch, and I expressed my sense of her
+unreasonableness by sweeping the whole meal into the grate, after which
+Ethelbertha suddenly developed exuberant affection for the cat (who
+didn't want anybody's love, but wanted to get under the grate after the
+lunch), and I became supernaturally absorbed in the day-before-
+yesterday's newspaper.
+
+[Illustration: "'WHO LOCKED YOU IN THERE?'"]
+
+"In the afternoon, strolling out into the garden, I heard the faint cry
+of a female in distress. I listened attentively, and the cry was
+repeated. I thought it sounded like Amenda's voice, but where it came
+from I could not conceive. It drew nearer, however, as I approached the
+bottom of the garden, and at last I located it in a small wooden shed,
+used by the proprietor of the house as a dark room for developing
+photographs.
+
+"The door was locked. 'Is that you, Amenda?' I cried through the
+keyhole.
+
+"'Yes, sir,' came back the muffled answer. 'Will you please let me out;
+you'll find the key on the ground near the door.'
+
+"I discovered it on the grass about a yard away, and released her. 'Who
+locked you in there?' I asked.
+
+"'I did, sir,' she replied; 'I locked myself in, and pushed the key out
+under the door. I had to do it, or I should have gone off with those
+beastly soldiers.'
+
+"'I hope I haven't inconvenienced you, sir,' she added, stepping out; 'I
+left the lunch all laid.'"
+
+Amenda's passion for soldiers was her one tribute to sentiment. Towards
+all others of the male sex she maintained an attitude of callous
+unsusceptibility, and her engagements with them (which were numerous)
+were entered into or abandoned on grounds so sordid as to seriously
+shock Ethelbertha.
+
+When she came to us she was engaged to a pork butcher--with a milkman in
+reserve. For Amenda's sake we dealt with the man, but we never liked
+him, and we liked his pork still less. When, therefore, Amenda announced
+to us that her engagement with him was "off," and intimated that her
+feelings would in no way suffer by our going elsewhere for our bacon, we
+secretly rejoiced.
+
+[Illustration: "HER ENGAGEMENT WAS 'OFF.'"]
+
+"I am confident you have done right, Amenda," said Ethelbertha; "you
+would never have been happy with that man."
+
+"No, mum, I don't think I ever should," replied Amenda. "I don't see how
+any girl could as hadn't got the digestion of an ostrich."
+
+Ethelbertha looked puzzled. "But what has digestion got to do with it?"
+she asked.
+
+"A pretty good deal, mum," answered Amenda, "when you're thinking of
+marrying a man as can't make a sausage fit to eat."
+
+"But, surely," exclaimed Ethelbertha, "you don't mean to say you're
+breaking off the match because you don't like his sausages!"
+
+"Well, I suppose that's what it comes to," agreed Amenda, unconcernedly.
+
+"What an awful idea!" sighed poor Ethelbertha, after a long pause. "Do
+you think you ever really loved him?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said Amenda, "I loved him right enough, but it's no good
+loving a man that wants you to live on sausages that keep you awake
+all night."
+
+"But does he want you to live on sausages?" persisted Ethelbertha.
+
+"Oh, he doesn't say anything about it," explained Amenda; "but you know
+what it is, mum, when you marry a pork butcher: you're expected to eat
+what's left over. That's the mistake my poor cousin Eliza made. She
+married a muffin man. Of course, what he didn't sell they had to finish
+up themselves. Why, one winter, when he had a run of bad luck, they
+lived for two months on nothing but muffins. I never saw a girl so
+changed in all my life. One has to think of these things, you know."
+
+Later on, she engaged herself to a solicitor's messenger. She did
+this--as she frankly avowed to Ethelbertha--to assist her family, who
+were prosecuting some petty law case at the time. He was a smart, steady
+man, a great favourite with his employers, and, out of kindly feeling
+towards him, they did the business for Amenda's father, charging only
+"out-of-pockets."
+
+[Illustration: "GAVE HER A COCOANUT."]
+
+Six months after the case was ended, she broke off the match. She said
+that, on reflection, she could not help seeing what an advantage he
+would have over her--he being in a solicitor's office, with the law at
+his fingers' ends--should she ever find it necessary to summons him.
+
+"But, my good girl," said Ethelbertha, quite distressed, "one doesn't
+marry a man with the idea of subsequently summonsing him!"
+
+"No, mum," said Amenda, "one always hopes one will never need to, I'm
+sure, but it's just as well to be prepared. I knew a girl, when I was in
+service at Hastings, that loved a printer, and they were both going to
+commit suicide because her parents didn't want 'em to marry; and now he
+costs her four shillings a month regular in summonses. It's no good
+shutting one's eyes to things, mum."
+
+But the most shamefully mercenary engagement that I think Amenda ever
+entered into was one with a 'bus conductor. We were living in the North
+of London then, and she had a young man, a cheesemonger, who kept a shop
+in Lupus Street, Chelsea. He could not come up to her because of the
+shop, so once a week she used to go down to him. One did not ride ten
+miles for a penny in those days, and she found the fare from Holloway to
+Victoria and back a severe tax upon her purse. The same 'bus that took
+her down at six brought her back at ten. During the first journey the
+'bus conductor stared at Amenda; during the second he talked to her,
+during the third he gave her a cocoanut, during the fourth he proposed
+to her, and was promptly accepted. After that, Amenda was enabled to
+visit her cheesemonger without expense.
+
+[Illustration: "'I DESIRE SHARING CROSS.'"]
+
+He was a quaint character himself, was this 'bus conductor. I often rode
+with him to Fleet Street. He knew me quite well (I suppose Amenda must
+have pointed me out to him), and would always ask me after her--aloud,
+before all the other passengers, which was trying--and give me messages
+to take back to her. Where women were concerned he had what is called "a
+way" with him, and from the extent and variety of his female
+acquaintance, and the evident tenderness with which the majority of them
+regarded him, I am inclined to hope that Amenda's desertion of him
+(which happened contemporaneously with her jilting of the cheesemonger)
+caused him less prolonged suffering than might otherwise have been
+the case.
+
+He was a man from whom I derived a good deal of amusement one way and
+another. Thinking of him brings back to my mind a somewhat odd incident.
+
+One afternoon, I jumped upon his 'bus in the Seven Sisters Road. An
+elderly Frenchman was the only other occupant of the vehicle. "You vil
+not forget me," the Frenchman was saying as I entered, "I desire
+Sharing Cross."
+
+"I won't forget yer," answered the conductor, "you shall 'ave yer
+Sharing Cross. Don't make a fuss about it."
+
+"That's the third time 'ee's arst me not to forget 'im," he remarked to
+me in a stentorian aside; "'ee don't giv' yer much chance of doin' it,
+does 'ee?"
+
+At the corner of the Holloway Road we drew up, and our conductor began
+to shout after the manner of his species: "Charing Cross--Charing
+Cross--'ere yer are--Come along, lady--Charing Cross."
+
+The little Frenchman jumped up, and prepared to exit; the conductor
+pushed him back.
+
+"Sit down and don't be silly," he said; "this ain't Charing Cross."
+
+The Frenchman looked puzzled, but collapsed meekly. We picked up a few
+passengers, and proceeded on our way. Half a mile up the Liverpool Road
+a lady stood on the kerb regarding us as we passed with that pathetic
+mingling of desire and distrust which is the average woman's attitude
+towards conveyances of all kinds. Our conductor stopped.
+
+"Where d'yer want to go to?" he asked her severely--omnibus conductors
+have a manner of addressing all pedestrians as though they were lost
+children or suspicious loiterers--"Strand--Charing Cross?"
+
+[Illustration: "THE CONDUCTOR COLLARED HIM."]
+
+The Frenchman did not hear or did not understand the first part of the
+speech, but he caught the words "Charing Cross," and bounced up and out
+on to the step. The conductor collared him as he was getting off, and
+jerked him back savagely.
+
+"Carnt yer keep still a minute," he cried indignantly; "blessed if you
+don't want lookin' after like a bloomin' kid."
+
+"I vont to be put down at Sharing Cross," answered the little Frenchman,
+humbly.
+
+"You vont to be put down at Sharing Cross," repeated the other bitterly,
+as he led him back to his seat. "I shall put yer down in the middle of
+the road if I 'ave much more of yer. You stop there till I come and
+sling yer out. I ain't likely to let yer go much past yer Sharing Cross,
+I shall be too jolly glad to get rid o' yer."
+
+The poor Frenchman subsided, and we jolted on. At "The Angel" we, of
+course, stopped. "Charing Cross," shouted the conductor, and up sprang
+the Frenchman.
+
+"Oh, my Gawd," said the conductor, taking him by the shoulders and
+forcing him down into the corner seat, "wot am I to do? Carnt somebody
+sit on 'im?"
+
+[Illustration: "'BLESSED IF I DIDN'T RUN HIM ON TO VICTORIA.'"]
+
+He held him firmly down until the 'bus started, and then released him.
+At the top of Chancery Lane the same scene took place, and the poor
+little Frenchman became exasperated.
+
+"He keep on saying Sharing Cross, Sharing Cross," he exclaimed, turning
+to the other passengers; "and it is _not_ Sharing Cross. He is fool."
+
+"Carnt yer understand," retorted the conductor, equally indignant; "of
+course I say Sharing Cross--I mean Charing Cross, but that don't mean
+that it _is_ Charing Cross. That means that--" and then perceiving from
+the blank look in the Frenchman's face the utter impossibility of ever
+making the matter clear to him, he turned to us with an appealing
+gesture, and asked:
+
+"Does any gentleman know the French for 'bloomin' idiot'?"
+
+A day or two afterwards, I happened to enter his omnibus again.
+
+"Well," I asked him, "did you get your French friend to Charing Cross
+all right?"
+
+"No, sir," he replied, "you'll 'ardly believe it, but I 'ad a bit of a
+row with a policeman just before I got to the corner, and it put 'im
+clean out o' my 'ead. Blessed if I didn't run 'im on to Victoria."
+
+(_To be continued_.)
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THE SKATER.
+
+BY WILLIAM CANTON. ILLUSTRATED BY A. L. BOWLEY.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+      O'er glassy levels of the mere
+        She glides on slanting skate;
+      She loves in fairy curves to veer
+        And weave her figure eight.
+    Bright flower in fur, I would thy feet
+    Could weave my heart and thine, my sweet,
+    Thus into one glad life complete!
+      Harsh winter, rage thy rudest:
+        Freeze, freeze, thou churlish sky;
+      Blow, arctic wind, thy shrewdest--
+        What care my heart and I!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+MY SERVANT ANDREAS
+
+BY ARCHIBALD FORBES.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY FREDERIC VILLIERS.
+
+
+[Illustration: "ANDREAS."]
+
+I think it quite likely that some of my young American friends, about
+ten months ago, were burning to have an opportunity of accompanying
+General Miles down the Pacific coast, and of describing in glowing
+sentences to their countrymen at home how Uncle Sam's young man turned
+to flight the Chilian insurrectionists, who were breathing out
+threatening and slaughter against the great Northern Republic. There is
+an undoubted fascination in the picturesque and adventurous life of the
+war correspondent. One must, of course, have a distinct bent for the
+avocation, and if he is to succeed he must possess certain salient
+attributes. He must expose himself to rather greater risks than fall to
+the lot of the average fighting man, without enjoying any of the
+happiness of retaliation which stirs the blood of the latter; the
+correspondent must sit quietly on his horse in the fire, and, while
+watching every turn in the battle, must wear the aspect as if he rather
+enjoyed the storm of missiles than otherwise. When the fighting is over,
+the soldier, if not killed, generally can eat and sleep; ere the echoes
+of it are silent, the correspondent of energy--and if he has not energy
+he is not worth his salt--must already be galloping his hardest towards
+the nearest telegraph wire, which, as like as not, is a hundred miles
+distant. He must "get there," by hook or by crook, in a minimum of time;
+and as soon as his message is on the wires, he must be hurrying back to
+the army, else he may chance to miss the great battle of the war. The
+correspondent must be most things to all men; he must have the sweet,
+angelic temper of a woman, be as affable as if he were running for
+office, and at the same time be big and ugly enough to impress the
+conviction that it would be extremely unwise to take any liberties
+with him.
+
+The career, no doubt, has some incidental drawbacks. No fewer than five
+British correspondents were killed in the recent campaigns in the
+Soudan. General Sherman threatened to hang all the correspondents found
+in his camp after a certain day, and General Sherman was the kind of man
+to fulfil any threat he made. I suppose there was no correspondent
+taking part in the Franco-German and Russo-Turkish wars who was not in
+custody over and over again on suspicion of being a spy. I have been a
+prisoner myself in France, Spain, Servia, Germany, Austria, Hungary,
+Russia, Roumania and Bulgaria; and I may perhaps venture to remark in
+passing that I cannot recommend any of these countries from this point
+of view. But the casual confinements, half irritating, half comic, to
+which he may be subjected, do not bother the war correspondent of the
+old world nearly as much as do the foreign languages which, if he is not
+a good linguist, hamper him every hour of every day. He really should
+possess the gift of tongues--be conversant with all European languages,
+a neat assortment of the Asiatic languages, and a few of the African
+tongues, such as Abyssinian, Ashantee, Zulu, and Soudanese. But how few
+in the nature of things can approximate this polyglot versatility. Often
+in Eastern Europe, and in Afghanistan, I have envied Messrs. Swinton,
+Smalley, Whitelaw Reed, and the other notable war correspondents of the
+American Civil War, in that they had not the difficulties of outlandish
+tongues to contend with. I own myself to be a poor linguist, and have
+many and many a time suffered for my dullness of what the Scotch call
+"up-take." It is true that I was fairly conversant with French and
+German, and could express my wants in Russian, Roumanian, Bulgarian,
+Spanish, Turkish, Hindustanee, Pushtoo, and Burmese, every word of which
+smatterings I have long since forgotten. But the truth is that the
+poorest peoples in the world in acquiring foreign languages are the
+English and the French; the readiest are the Russians and Americans. It
+was, after a fashion, a liberal education to listen to the fluency in
+some half-dozen languages of Poor McGahan, the "Ohio boy," who graduated
+from the plough to be perhaps the most brilliant war correspondent of
+modern times. His compatriot and colleague, Frank Millet, who has fallen
+away from glory as a war correspondent, and has taken to the inferior
+trade of painting, seemed to pick up a language by the mere accident of
+finding himself on the soil where it was spoken. In the first three
+days, after crossing the Danube into Bulgaria, Millet went about with
+book in hand, gathering in the names of things at which he pointed, and
+jotting down each acquisition in the book. On the fourth day he could
+swear in Bulgarian, copiously, fervently, and with a measure of
+intelligibility. Within a week he had conquered the uncouth tongue. As
+he voyaged lately down the Danube from source to mouth, charmingly
+describing the scenic panorama of the great river in the pages of
+_Harper_, those of you who have read those sketches will not have failed
+to notice how Millet talked to German, Hungarian, Servian, Bulgarian,
+Roumanian, and Turkish, each in his own tongue, those diverse languages
+having been acquired by him during the few months of the
+Russo-Turkish war.
+
+[Illustration: "MACGAHAN AND FRANK MILLET."]
+
+By this time, you may be wondering just where "Andreas" comes in.
+Perhaps I have been over long in getting to my specific subject; but I
+will not be discursive any more. It was at the _table d'hote_ in the
+Serbische Krone Hotel, in Belgrade, where I first set eyes on Andreas.
+In the year 1876, Servia had thought proper to throw off the yoke of her
+Turkish suzerain, and to attempt to assert her independence by force of
+arms. But for very irregularly paid tribute she was virtually
+independent already, and probably in all Servia there were not two
+hundred Turks. But she ambitiously desired to have the name of as well
+as the actuality of being independent; the Russians helped her with
+arms, officers, and volunteer soldiers; and when I reached Belgrade, in
+May of the year named, there had already been fighting, in which the
+Servians had by no means got the worst. No word of the Servian tongue
+had I, and it was the reverse of pleasant for a war correspondent in
+such plight to learn that outside of Belgrade nobody, or at least hardly
+anybody, knew a word of any other language than the native Servian. As I
+ate, I was being attended by a very assiduous waiter, whose alertness
+and anxiety to please were very conspicuous. He was smart with quite
+un-Oriental smartness; he whisked about the tables with deftness; he
+spoke to me in German, to the Russian officers over against me in what I
+assumed was Russian, to the Servians dining behind me in what I took to
+be Servian. I liked the look of the man; there was intelligence in his
+aspect. One could not call him handsome, but there was character in the
+keen black eye, the high features and the pronounced chin, fringed on
+either side by bushy black whiskers.
+
+[Illustration: "ANDREAS AS A FORAGER."]
+
+I had brought no servant with me; the average British servant is worse
+than useless in a foreign country, and the dubiously-polyglot courier is
+a snare and a deception on campaign. I had my eye on Andreas for a
+couple of days, during which he was of immense service to me. He seemed
+to know and stand well with everyone in Belgrade; it was he, indeed, who
+presented me in the restaurant to the Prime Minister and the Minister
+for War, who got together for me my field necessaries, who helped me to
+buy my horses, and who narrated to me the progress of the campaign so
+far as it had gone. On the third day I had him in my room and asked
+whether he would like to come with me into the field as my servant. He
+accepted the offer with effusion; we struck hands on the compact; he
+tendered me credentials which I ascertained to be extremely
+satisfactory; and then he gave me a little sketch of himself. It was
+somewhat mixed, as indeed was his origin. Primarily he was a Servian,
+but his maternal grandmother had been a Bosniak, an earlier ancestress
+had been in a Turkish harem, there was a strain in his blood of the
+Hungarian zinganee--the gipsy of Eastern Europe, and one could not look
+at his profile without a suspicion that there was a Jewish element in
+his pedigree. "A pure mongrel," was what a gentleman of the British
+Legation termed Andreas, and this self-contradictory epithet was
+scarcely out of place.
+
+Andreas turned out well. He was as hardy as a hill-goat, careless how
+and when he ate, or where he slept, which, indeed, was mostly in the
+open. It seemed to me that he had cousins all over Servia, chiefly of
+the female persuasion, and I am morally certain that the Turkish strain
+in his blood had in Andreas its natural development in a species of
+_fin-de-siecle_ polygamy. Sherman's prize "bummer" was not in it with
+Andreas as a forager. At first, indeed, I suspected him of actual
+plundering, so copiously did he bring in supplies, and so little had I
+to pay for them; but I was not long in discovering that all kinds of
+produce were dirt cheap in Servia, and that as I could myself buy a lamb
+for a quarter, it was not surprising that Andreas, to the manner born,
+could easily obtain one for half the money. He was an excellent
+horsemaster, and the stern vigour with which he chastised the occasional
+neglect of the cousin whom he had brought into my service as groom, was
+borne in upon me by the frequent howls which were audible from the rear
+of my tent. There was not a road in all Servia with whose every winding
+Andreas was not conversant, and this "extensive and peculiar" knowledge
+of his was often of great service to me. He was a light-weight and an
+excellent rider; I have sent him off to Belgrade with a telegram at
+dusk, and he was back again by breakfast time next morning, after a
+gallop of quite a hundred miles.
+
+No exertion fatigued him; I never saw the man out of humour; there was
+but one matter in regard to which I ever had to chide him, and in that I
+had perforce to let him have his own way, because I do not believe that
+he could restrain himself. He had served the term in the army which is,
+or was then, obligatory on all Servians; and on the road or in camp he
+was rather more of a "peace at any price" man than ever was the late Mr.
+John Bright himself. When the first fight occurred, Andreas claimed to
+be allowed to witness it along with me. I demurred; he might get hit;
+and if anything should happen to him, what should I do for a servant? At
+length I gave him the firm order to remain in camp, and started myself
+with the groom behind me on my second horse. The fighting occurred eight
+miles from camp, and in the course of it, leaving the groom in the rear,
+I had accompanied the Russian General Dochtouroff into a most
+unpleasantly hot place, where a storm of Turkish shells were falling in
+the effort to hinder the withdrawal of a disabled Servian battery. I
+happened to glance over my shoulder, and lo! Andreas on foot was at my
+horse's tail, obviously in a state of ecstatic enjoyment of the
+situation. I peremptorily ordered him back, and he departed sullenly,
+calmly strolling along the line of Turkish fire. Just then, Tchernaieff,
+the Servian Commander-in-Chief, had, it seemed, ordered a detachment of
+infantry to take in flank the Turkish guns. From where we stood I could
+discern the Servian soldiers hurrying forward close under the fringe of
+a wood near the line of retirement along which Andreas was sulking.
+Andreas saw them too, and retreated no step further, but cut across to
+them, snatching up a gun as he ran, and the last I saw of him was while
+he was waving on the militiamen with his billycock, and loosing off an
+occasional bullet, while he emitted yells of defiance against the Turks,
+which might well have struck terror into their very marrow. Andreas came
+into camp at night very streaky with powder stains, minus the lobe of
+one ear, uneasy as he caught my eye, yet with a certain elateness of
+mien. I sacked him that night, and he said he didn't care, and that he
+was not ashamed of himself. Next morning, as I was rising, he rushed
+into the tent, knelt down, clasped my knees, and bedewed my ankles with
+his tears. Of course I reinstated him; I couldn't do without him, and I
+think he knew it.
+
+[Illustration: "SNATCHING UP A GUN AS HE RAN."]
+
+But I had yielded too easily. Andreas had established a precedent. He
+insisted, in a quiet, positive manner, on accompanying me to every
+subsequent battle; and I had to consent, always taking his pledge that
+he would obey the injunctions I might lay upon him. And, as a matter of
+course, he punctually and invariably violated that pledge when the
+crisis of the fighting was drawing to a head, and just when this "peace
+at any price" man could not control the bloodthirst that was
+parching him.
+
+One never knows how events are to fall out. It happened that this
+resolution on the part of Andreas to accompany me into the fights once
+assuredly saved my life. It was on the day of Djunis, the last battle
+fought by the Servians. In the early part of the day there was a good
+deal of scattered woodland fighting in front of the entrenched line,
+which they abandoned when the Turks came on in earnest. Andreas and I
+were among the trees trying to find a position from which something was
+to be seen, when all of a sudden I, who was in advance, plumped right
+into the centre of a small scouting party of Turks. They tore me out of
+the saddle, and I had given myself up for lost--for the Turks took no
+prisoners, their cheerful practice being to slaughter first and then
+abominably to mutilate--when suddenly Andreas dashed in among my
+captors, shouting aloud in a language which I took to be Turkish, since
+he bellowed "Effendi" as he pointed to me. He had thrown away his
+billycock and substituted a fez, which he afterwards told me he always
+carried in case of accidents, and in one hand he waved a dingy piece of
+parchment with a seal dangling from it, which I assumed was some
+obsolete firman. The result was truly amazing, and the scene had some
+real humour in it. With profound salaams, the Turks unhanded me, helped
+me to mount, and, as I rode off at a tangent with Andreas at my horse's
+head, called after me what sounded like friendly farewells. When we were
+back among the Russians--I don't remember seeing much of the Servians
+later on that day--Andreas explained that he had passed himself for the
+Turkish dragoman of a British correspondent whom the Padishah delighted
+to honour, and that, after expressing a burning desire to defile the
+graves of their collective female ancestry, he had assured my captors
+that they might count themselves as dead men if they did not immediately
+release me. To his ready-witted conduct I undoubtedly owe the ability to
+write now this record of a man of curiously complicated nature.
+
+When the campaign ended with the Servian defeat at Djunis, Andreas went
+back to his headwaitership at the Serbische Krone in Belgrade. Before
+leaving that capital I had the honour of being present at his nuptials,
+a ceremony the amenity of which was somewhat disturbed by the violent
+incursion into the sacred edifice of sundry ladies all claiming to have
+prior claims on the bridegroom of the hour. They were, however,
+placated, and subsequently joined the marriage feast in the great arbour
+behind the Krone. Andreas faithfully promised to come to me to the ends
+of the earth on receipt of a telegram, if I should require his services,
+and he were alive.
+
+[Illustration: "ANDREAS DASHED IN AMONG MY CAPTORS."]
+
+Next spring the Russo-Turkish war broke out, and I hurried eastward in
+time to see the first Cossack cross the Pruth. I had telegraphed to
+Andreas from England to meet me at Bazias on the Danube below Belgrade.
+Bazias is the place where the railway used to end, and where we took
+steamer for the Lower Danube. Andreas was duly on hand, ready and
+serviceable as of old, a little fatter, and a trifle more consequential
+than when we had last parted. He was, if possible, rather more at home
+in Bucharest than he had been in Belgrade, and recommended me to
+Brofft's Hotel, in comparison with which the charges of the Brunswick in
+New York are infinitesimal. He bought my wagon and team, he found riding
+horses when they were said to be unprocurable, he constructed a most
+ingenious tent, of which the wagon was, so to speak, the roof-tree, he
+laid in stores, arranged for relays of couriers, and furnished me with a
+coachman in the person of a Roumanian Jew who he one day owned was a
+distant connection, and whose leading attribute was, that he could
+survive more sleep than any other human being I have ever known. We took
+the field auspiciously, Mr. Frederic Villiers, the war artist of the
+London _Graphic_, being my campaigning comrade. Thus early I discerned a
+slight rift in the lute. Andreas did not like Villiers, which showed his
+bad taste, or rather, perhaps, the narrowness of his capacity of
+affection; and I fear Villiers did not much like Andreas, whom he
+thought too familiar. This was true, and it was my fault; but really it
+was with difficulty that I could bring myself to treat Andreas as a
+servant. He was more, in my estimation, in the nature of the
+confidential major-domo, and to me he was simply invaluable. Villiers
+had to chew his moustache, and glower discontentedly at Andreas.
+
+I had some good couriers for the conveyance of despatches back across
+the Danube to Bucharest, whence everything was telegraphed to London;
+but they were essentially fair-weather men. The casual courier may be
+alert, loyal, and trustworthy; he may be relied on to try his honest
+best, but it is not to be expected of him that he will greatly dare and
+count his life but as dross when his incentive to enterprise is merely
+filthy lucre. But I could trust Andreas to dare and to endure--to
+overcome obstacles, and, if man could, to "get there," where, in the
+base-quarters in Bucharest, the amanuenses were waiting to copy out in
+round hand for the foreign telegraphist the rapid script of the
+correspondent scribbling for life in the saddle or the cleft of a
+commanding tree while the shells were whistling past. We missed him
+dreadfully when he was gone--even Villiers, who liked good cooking,
+owned to thinking long for his return. For, in addition to his other
+virtues, Andreas was a capital cook. It is true that his courses had a
+habit of arriving at long and uncertain intervals. After a dish of
+pungent stew, no other viands appearing to loom in the near future,
+Villiers and myself would betake ourselves to smoking, and perhaps on a
+quiet day would lapse into slumber. From this we would be aroused by
+Andreas to partake of a second course of roast chicken, the bird having
+been alive and unconscious of its impending fate when the first course
+had been served. No man is perfect, and as regarded Andreas there were
+some petty spots on the sun. He had, for instance, a mania for the
+purchase of irrelevant poultry, and for accommodating the fowls in our
+wagon, tied by the legs, against the day of starvation, which he always,
+but causelessly, apprehended. I do not suppose any reader has ever had
+any experience of domestic poultry as bedfellows, and I may caution him
+earnestly against making any such experiment.
+
+I do not know whether it is a detraction from Andreas's worth to mention
+that another characteristic of his was the habit of awaking us in the
+still watches of the night, for the purpose of imparting his views on
+recondite phases of the great Eastern question. But how trivial were
+such peccadilloes in a man who was so resolute not to be beaten in
+getting my despatch to the telegraph wire, that once, when three
+pontoons of the bridge across the Danube were sunk, he crossed the gap
+hand over hand by the hand-rope, sloshing down with the current as the
+slack of the rope gave to his weight! Andreas became quite an
+institution in the Russian camp. When Ignatieff, the Tsar's intimate,
+the great diplomatist who has now curiously fizzled out, would honour us
+by partaking sometimes of afternoon tea in our tent, he would call
+Andreas by his name and call him "Molodetz"--the Russian for "brave
+fellow." In the Servian campaign Dochtouroff had got him the Takova
+cross, which Andreas sported with great pride, and Ignatieff used to
+tell him that the Tsar was seriously thinking of conferring on him the
+Cross of St. George, badinage which Andreas took as dead earnest.
+MacGahan used gravely to entreat him to take greater care of his
+invaluable life, and hint that if any calamity occurred to him, the
+campaign would _ipso facto_ come to an end. Andreas knew that MacGahan
+was quizzing him, but it was exceedingly droll how he purred and bridled
+under the light touch of that genial humourist, whose merits his own
+countrymen, to my thinking, have never adequately recognised. The old
+story of a prophet having scant honour in his own country.
+
+[Illustration: "CROSSED THE GAP HAND OVER HAND."]
+
+After the long strain of the desperate but futile attack made by the
+Russians on Plevna in the early part of the September of the war, I fell
+a victim to the malarial fever of the Lower Danube, and had to be
+invalided back to Bucharest. The illness grew upon me, and my condition
+became very serious. Worthy Andreas nursed me with great tenderness and
+assiduity in the lodgings to which I had been brought, since they would
+not accept a fever patient at Brofft's. After some days of wretchedness
+I became delirious, and, of course, lost consciousness; my last
+recollection was of Andreas wetting my parched lips with lemonade. When
+I recovered my senses, and looked out feebly, there was nobody in the
+room. How long I had been unconscious I had no idea. I lay there in a
+half stupor till evening, unable from weakness to summon any assistance.
+In the dusk came the English doctor who had been attending me. "Where is
+Andreas?" he asked. I could not tell him. "He was here last night," he
+said; "you have been delirious for seven days." The woman of the house
+was summoned. She had not seen Andreas since the previous night, but,
+busy about her own domestic affairs, had no suspicion until she entered
+the room that Andreas was not with me still.
+
+Andreas never returned. It appeared that he had taken away all his
+belongings. One day, when gradually mending, I put my hand under the
+pillow with intent to find my watch, which was an heirloom, and wind it
+up. I could find no watch. No more could I find the bag of ducats which
+was alongside the watch before I lost my senses. Search was made
+throughout the room without success, and, with whatever reluctance to
+believe a thing so utterly unlikely, I could not refrain from the
+conviction that Andreas must have carried off both money and watch.
+The thought caused a relapse, but at length I attained convalescence,
+and was able to drive out. But the doctor was firm that during the now
+imminent winter I was not to return to the field. Fortunately, my able
+colleagues, MacGahan and Millet, were there; and I was therefore the
+less distressed by Dr. ----'s peremptory sentence on me. I was
+condemned to return to England as soon as I should be strong enough to
+travel.
+
+When I had to leave the Plevna front, my colleagues temporarily took
+charge of my field equipment. But I had brought back to Bucharest my
+best riding horse, and during my illness he had been standing at livery
+in the stables of the English Tramway Company. Determining now on the
+melancholy necessity of selling an animal which had on many a hard day
+and many a long night-ride served me staunchly, I drove to the stables,
+and instructed the manager to sell my horse. "Your horse!" he exclaimed,
+in evident surprise; "your horse was sold weeks ago! Your man, Andreas,
+came here with a message that we were to dispose of it; and I sold it
+next day to General Todleben on his way through Bucharest to take the
+command before Plevna. It fetched a good price, 105 ducats, more than
+you gave for it; Andreas called for the money, and, of course, I gave
+it to him."
+
+So Andreas was thief and rogue--deliberate thief and rogue. I was angry,
+but I was yet more heart-sorry that so fine and true a native should
+have thus fallen. Just as I was leaving Bucharest for England, a letter
+came to me from a friend in Galatz, a commercial city of Roumania, near
+the mouth of the Danube. Its P.S. only is worth quoting. "So you have
+parted with your man, Andreas. I thought from what you had told me that
+you would retain him for life. He is here now, I saw him drunk in the
+street yesterday. He told Kennedy that he believed you were dead."
+
+[Illustration: "ANDREAS DROPPED ON HIS KNEES."]
+
+I went straight to Galatz, a long half-day's journey. Andreas was not
+hard to find; he was smoking in the "Concordia" saloon. I saw him before
+he saw me; he had a furtive air, he was pallid and his lips twitched; he
+looked to me on the verge of _delirium tremens_. I approached him from
+behind, and uttered the one word, "Andreas!" At the word, he started as
+if he had been shot, spun round, dropped on his knees, with his hands
+raised beseechingly, and cried in a broken voice, "Before God, master, I
+thought you were dead, else I should never have done it! I have not had
+a happy moment since I threw away my good name--I could not go home!
+Kill me, send me to prison, punish me how you choose. I shall rejoice to
+suffer!" And the poor wretch grovelled before me on his stomach.
+
+I had meant to punish him; but he was too broken for chastisement. I
+could not send to prison the man who had saved my life among the
+pine-trees of Djunis. I wonder if he really thought me dead--not that,
+if so, his act was thereby materially palliated. And I thought of two
+little sentences which my mother taught me when I was a child: "Judge
+not that ye be not judged," and "Lead us not into temptation." I pulled
+the man on to his feet and grasped his hand, then with the words, "Give
+me my father's watch--good-bye, Andreas. I shall remember all the good
+in you, and forget those last bad days." I turned from him, and quitted
+the "Concordia" with a lump in my throat that I could not swallow down.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+TOLD BY THE COLONEL.
+
+X.
+
+A MATRIMONIAL ROMANCE.
+
+BY W. L. ALDEN.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY R. JACK.
+
+
+"And by the way," continued the Colonel, "a curious thing about this
+Josiah Wilson was that he was married for fifteen years and never had
+any wife whatever."
+
+The Colonel had begun a story concerning one Josiah Wilson, which
+promised to be interesting, but his incidental allusion to Mr. Wilson's
+matrimonial experience awakened our curiosity, and we begged him to
+interrupt his narrative long enough to tell us how it came to pass that
+Josiah was a married man who never had a wife.
+
+[Illustration: "HOWLED FOR HELP."]
+
+"The marriage laws in the United States," said the Colonel, giving his
+chair an increased tilt backwards, which was his usual way of beginning
+a fresh anecdote, "are as peculiar in their way as are the divorce laws.
+You would think to look at them that they would permit anybody to marry
+anybody else in any way that either of them might choose, but for all
+that they sometimes make it impossible for a man or a woman to get
+married. There was a couple who intended to be married in a balloon,
+which is a style of lunacy that is quite fashionable in some parts of
+the country, though I can't see why a man should want to risk his neck
+in a balloon on his wedding day unless it is that it takes so much
+courage to be married at all that a man forgets all about such minor
+dangers as are connected with ballooning. The bride, the minister, and
+two witnesses of assorted sexes went up in the balloon at the appointed
+time, and, naturally, the bridegroom intended to go with them, but he
+accidentally caught his foot in a neglected guy-rope, and went up head
+downwards about twenty feet below the car. The party in the balloon
+could not haul him up because they could not get hold of the rope, and
+the bride would not consent to give up the trip, because the groom had
+always been a little shy, and she was afraid that, if she let him go
+this time, she might not be able to land him again. So the parson went
+on with the ceremony, and the groom made most of his responses in bad
+language, and howled for help when he wasn't swearing. When the ceremony
+was over, the aeronaut managed to land the balloon without seriously
+damaging the bridegroom, but when, a year or two afterwards, the bride
+wanted to get her divorce, the court held that there had never been any
+marriage, for the reason that both the groom and the bride had not
+appeared together in the presence of the officiating minister, and that,
+furthermore, there was no provision in the law which would permit a man
+to be married upside down.
+
+[Illustration: "SMITH'S BULL-DOG."]
+
+"But to get back to Josiah Wilson. He lived in Indiana, close to the
+boundary line between that State and Illinois, and he courted Melinda
+Smith, a young woman who lived a little way up the mountain side with
+her father and three brothers. The girl was anxious to be married, but
+her family was dead against it. You see Josiah was a Republican and a
+Methodist, while the Smiths were Democrats and Baptists, and, naturally,
+they hated each other like poison, and one night as old man Smith and
+Josiah met on their way to rival prayer meetings, they exchanged
+revolver shots, without, however, doing any harm. Then once Josiah had
+most of the calf of his leg taken off by the Smiths' bull-dog, and twice
+the Smith boys came into the sitting-room where Josiah was calling on
+Melinda, and suggested to him with their shot-guns that he had better go
+home. Gradually Josiah and Melinda came to the conclusion that her
+family was resolved to discourage the match, so they determined to elope
+and be married without the knowledge or consent of anybody.
+
+"One dark night Josiah carried a ladder and planted it under Melinda's
+window. He had advised her to walk out of the front door, which was
+always left unlocked at night, but she refused, saying that if she was
+going to elope she should do it in the proper way, and that if Josiah
+had no respect for her, she had some little respect for herself. She
+climbed down the ladder with a good deal of difficulty, because she
+insisted that Josiah should help her, and also that he should stand
+forty yards away, for reasons connected with her ankles, and he found it
+rather trying to follow out these contradictory orders. However, Melinda
+reached the ground at last, and the pair started in a carriage that had
+been waiting just around a bend in the road, in company with the
+Methodist minister. Their plan was to drive to the next town and there
+to be married, but it happened that one of the Smith boys, being
+restless, got up in the night, and, looking out of the window, saw the
+ladder standing at Melinda's window. In about twenty minutes after the
+young people had started, the whole Smith family and their shot-guns
+were following the runaways in a waggon, and gaining on them fast.
+
+"The Methodist minister, whose hearing was unusually good, heard the
+sound of hoofs before Josiah noticed it, and told the young people that
+there was not the least doubt that they were pursued, and would be
+overtaken in a very few minutes. 'And then, you know,' he added, 'the
+chances are that, being Baptists, they will shoot first, and ask for
+explanations afterwards. The only thing for us to do is to get the
+marriage ceremony over before they come up. Then they will see that
+opposition is of no use, and will listen to reason.'
+
+[Illustration: "THEY WERE MARRIED."]
+
+"Josiah and Melinda at once consented, and the parson, noticing a little
+clearing in the woods on the left hand side of the road, and a flat sort
+of tombstone standing in the middle of it, said that he would stand on
+that stone and marry his young friends so quick that it would make their
+hair curl. He was particularly glad to meet with a handy tombstone, for
+he said that a tombstone was the next thing to a church, and that to be
+married by the side of a tomb would be almost as solemn as to be married
+in a minister's study. So the party hastily descended; the parson
+mounted the stone; Josiah and Melinda joined hands in front of him, and
+they were married, and the parson had kissed the bride and pocketed his
+fee just as the Smiths' waggon drove up and the Smith boys cocked their
+guns and covered the party. But the parson was wide awake. He had his
+revolver out and old man Smith covered before anybody had taken aim at
+him, but, instead of shooting, he remarked that he was a minister of the
+blessed gospel of peace; that there was no necessity for bloodshed, and
+that he would blow a hole through old Smith unless the Smith boys
+lowered their weapons and consented to argue the matter. 'The fact is,
+Colonel Smith,' said the parson, 'you're too late. The young people are
+legally married, and the sooner you accept the situation the better. I
+married them not two minutes ago, standing on that identical tombstone.'
+
+[Illustration: "'YOU'LL COME STRAIGHT HOME WITH ME.'"]
+
+"Colonel Smith was a lawyer, and the sharpest one in that part of the
+country. He saw the force of the minister's remarks, so he told the boys
+to put up their guns, and he shook hands with the minister. Then he
+inquired, in a careless sort of way, where Josiah and Melinda had stood
+while they were being married. The parson showed the footprints of the
+bride and groom, and then Colonel Smith turned to Melinda and said,
+'You'll come straight home with me. There hasn't been any marriage yet.
+That stone is the boundary mark between Indiana and Illinois, and you
+were standing in Indiana and that other idiot was standing in Illinois
+when the parson tried to marry you. Nobody can marry in two States at
+the same time, and I shan't recognise the pretended marriage till a
+court of law compels me to do so, which will be never. I hope this will
+teach you the folly of fooling with Methodism. When you want to get
+married next time try a Baptist minister, who will know the difference
+between a tombstone and a boundary mark.' There were too many Smiths,
+and they were too well armed to be reasoned with successfully, so the
+upshot was that Melinda went home with her family, and Josiah and the
+parson went to see a lawyer.
+
+"The next day Josiah brought a suit for divorce against Melinda. It was
+a friendly suit, you understand, and his only object was to test the
+question of the validity of his marriage, for, of course, no man can get
+a divorce unless he first proves that he is married. Old man Smith
+conducted the case on his side, and a lawyer named Starkweather, who is
+now a member of the Illinois Legislature, appeared for Josiah Wilson.
+Colonel Smith argued that while the parson who conducted the alleged
+marriage ceremony could undoubtedly have married a couple in the State
+of Indiana, he could not marry a woman in Indiana to a man in Illinois,
+for the reason that the man and the woman could not be in the same place
+while they were in two different commonwealths, and that hence Josiah
+and Melinda had not legally appeared together before the officiating
+minister. Furthermore, he argued that the minister at the time of the
+pretended marriage was standing neither in Indiana nor in Illinois, but
+on the boundary line; that the statute defined the boundary line as 'an
+imaginary line' running from such and such a point to such and such a
+point, and that a minister who stands in a purely imaginative locality
+stands virtually nowhere, and hence cannot perform any function of
+his calling.
+
+"On the other hand, Josiah's lawyer claimed that the minister had
+married Melinda Smith in the State of Indiana; that consequently she
+must have been married to somebody, and that that somebody was
+unquestionably Josiah Wilson. As to the point that the minister stood in
+an imaginary locality because, as was alleged, he stood on the boundary
+line, the lawyer maintained that it was a physical impossibility that a
+minister weighing two hundred and fifty pounds could stand in a purely
+imaginative place. Moreover, he was prepared to prove that, while
+performing the ceremony, at least one of the minister's feet was in the
+State of Indiana, which was sufficient to make him legally present in
+that State.
+
+"The arguments lasted three days, and the court before which it was
+tried, consisting of three judges, took all the third day to deliver its
+verdict. It decided that Melinda Smith was legally married to some
+person unknown, though not to Josiah Wilson, and that Josiah Wilson was
+also married to some unknown woman, who was not Melinda Smith, whoever
+else she might be; that no marriage between the plaintiff and the
+defendant had ever taken place, and that no divorce could be granted,
+but that if either of them married anyone else, he or she would be
+guilty of bigamy.
+
+[Illustration: "SHE WAS A GOOD DEAL CAST DOWN."]
+
+"The Smiths, with the exception of Melinda, were delighted with the
+decision, for it made it reasonably certain that Josiah could never be
+recognised as her husband. She was a good deal cast down about it, for,
+like every other Indiana girl, she had looked forward to being married
+and divorced as the natural lot of woman. Now it appeared that she was
+married, but in such an unsatisfactory way, that she could never have a
+husband, and never be divorced from anyone. As for Josiah, he was
+furious, but there was no help for it, the law was against him, and, as
+a law-abiding man, he was obliged to respect it, especially as he could
+not hope to kill off all four of the Smiths, if he decided to make a
+family feud of it; he himself having no family whatever, and no one to
+help him to keep up his end of the feud.
+
+"For the next fifteen years Josiah lived a single man except in name,
+and Melinda mourned her hard fate and kept house for her father and
+brothers; but one day Josiah's lawyer, who was by this time in the
+Legislature, came to him and offered to have his marriage to Melinda
+made legal in all respects for five hundred dollars. The lawyer was so
+certain that he could do this that he was willing to wait for his pay
+until after he had gained a verdict, and Josiah, after a little
+bargaining such as every self-respecting man would have made, in his
+place, consented to the lawyer's terms. It seems that the lawyer had
+accidentally discovered that there had been a mistake in the survey of
+part of the boundary line between Indiana and Illinois, and at the very
+place where Josiah and Melinda were married, A rectification of this
+mistake would move the line ten feet west, and so place the spot where
+the pair stood during their wedding entirely within the state of
+Indiana. The proper steps to obtain the rectification of the boundary
+were taken, and it was rectified. Then Melinda in her turn began a suit
+for divorce against Josiah, and had no difficulty in proving the
+marriage and in obtaining a decree. Josiah paid the lawyer his five
+hundred dollars, and was overjoyed at being finally able to call his
+Melinda his own. But he met with a little disappointment. Now that
+Melinda had obtained her divorce she thought she might as well live up
+to it, and marry a fresh husband. So she married the Methodist minister,
+who had just lost his third wife, and lived happily ever afterwards.
+
+[Illustration: "OFFERED TO HAVE HIS MARRIAGE MADE LEGAL."]
+
+"It was just after this that Josiah, being perhaps made a little
+reckless by his disappointment, became involved in the affair that I was
+going to tell you about when you interrupted me, and wanted to hear
+about his marriage. Matrimony is a mighty curious thing, and you can
+never tell precisely how it is going to turn out. That is one reason why
+I was never married but once, though I spent ten years of my life in
+Chicago, and had friends at bar who stood ready to obtain divorces for
+me at any moment and without a dollar of expense."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: IDLERS.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+"LIONS IN THEIR DENS."
+
+No. II.--GEORGE GROSSMITH AND THE HUMOUR OF HIM.
+
+BY RAYMOND BLATHWAYT.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEO. HUTCHINSON.
+
+(_Photographs by Messrs. Fraddle and Young and Alfred Ellis._)
+
+
+[Illustration: MR. GEORGE GROSSMITH.]
+
+A little, slight man, with a thin, clever, mobile, clean-shaven face, a
+sharp inquisitive nose surmounted by a perpetual pair of _pince-nez_,
+and a rather sarcastic mouth, from which wit and humour as light and
+airy as the cigarette smoke which accompanied each remark
+continually flowed.
+
+Mr. George Grossmith, the well-known actor and society clown.
+
+He stands on the hearthrug of his own special sanctum in his handsome
+house in Dorset Square, with his back to the fire, cigarette in his
+mouth, his hands now in his pockets, now waving in the air, as he
+vivaciously tells me the story of his busy, energetic and wonderfully
+interesting life.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. GEORGE GROSSMITH.]
+
+"I was born," said he, "in 1847. I come of a family of actors and
+reciters. My father, whose portrait you see there on the wall, was a
+well-known lecturer and entertainer. Sixty or seventy years ago my uncle
+created a great sensation as a child actor, and he was commonly known as
+the 'celebrated infant Roscius.' Come out into the hall," continued the
+lively little entertainer, "and I will show you some old engravings
+which represent him in his favourite characters. Then my brother Weedon,
+as you know, is, of course, a well-known actor, as well as a clever
+artist, and part author with myself of several sketches which have
+appeared in _Punch_. My eldest son now begins to display the family
+tendency to a most alarming extent. For my own part, I started my career
+as a reporter at Bow Street Police Court, a training which I have found
+invaluable in many respects ever since. My subsequent history as actor
+and society clown is so well known that I need not trouble you with it
+any further."
+
+"I suppose you find the taste of your audiences has gone up considerably
+within the last twenty years, do you not?"
+
+"Why, yes," he replied. "They wouldn't stand to-day what they used to
+roar at then. My music is quite elaborate compared with the two or three
+chords which easily satisfied people in the sixties and early seventies.
+Listen to this," continued my host, as he sat down to the _piano_ and
+struck a couple of very simple chords. Then he glided softly into what
+he termed a modern accompaniment. It was all the difference between "Ten
+Little Niggers" and a slumber song of Schubert.
+
+[Illustration: MR. GROSSMITH'S HOUSE.]
+
+"And do you find the public very critical?"
+
+"Well," he replied, with a smile, "they are very kind. It is your
+professional critic who is severe, though I can honestly say they
+invariably treat me well. Criticism up to a certain point is good
+enough. Beyond that point it is absolutely disabling to me. My father
+was a very severe critic. When we went out together he used to take the
+first half-hour, and then go to the back of the hall and criticise me.
+But it so hampered me by causing me to think of and consider every pose
+that I had to beg of him to desist. And then again, as regards
+criticism, I always think--it may be very conceited on my part--that I
+know a great deal more what the public want than my critics do. I
+declare to you I should have to take everything out of my sketches if I
+attempted to carry out all the suggestions that are made to me. I can
+absolutely feel the public pulse after so many years upon the platform.
+I am almost always right. When I first started 'See me Dance the Polka'
+it fell quite flat. I gave it up, although I felt sure it ought to go.
+The public then demanded it, and it went with a swing. The public had
+changed its mind. Not I."
+
+[Illustration: THE DINING ROOM.]
+
+"And how do you prepare your sketches?" said I, as Mr. Grossmith lit
+another cigarette, and took up his position on the hearthrug again.
+
+"Anyhow and anywhere the idea comes to me for a sketch. I am seated in a
+railway train, and I think of a sea-side sketch. I close my eyes and try
+to recall every single feature of interest on a crowded fashionable
+beach in the height of the season. Nothing is too unimportant. The way
+in which an old lady settles herself comfortably into her chair, the
+manner in which a man, especially a shy man, walks into the room, all
+these things, slightly exaggerated, but still true to nature, are
+immensely appreciated. First I have the idea, then I elaborate,
+sometimes for months, then I produce on the stage, and the people say,
+'How remarkable it is you should invent all this on the spur of the
+moment!' That, of course, is a great compliment. The song-writing is
+always amusing," continued Mr. Grossmith, as he placed in my hand a
+little notebook in which were suggestions and elaborations innumerable.
+One thing I noticed, which he himself had condemned, but which was
+decidedly amusing, although it has never been allowed to see the
+light of day:
+
+[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM.]
+
+    "I've been engaged to many,
+    Quite a score of times at least;
+    I don't think I with safety _can say_
+    Where I met my first _fiancee_.
+    Oh! 'tis better to have loved and lost
+    Than never to have loved at all;
+    So I may say I have loved and _lost a lot_,
+    And my fickleness has _cost a lot_."
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Grossmith, as he leaned over me and saw what I was
+reading; "my better judgment told me that was not good enough for
+the public."
+
+Then came a pencilled note in this little book, "You can take a horse to
+water, but can't make him drink." "That gave me an idea," cried Mr.
+Grossmith, as he sprang to his feet. "You can take a boy to the piano,
+but you can't make him play.' Thought I to myself, that would make a
+capital sketch. And here is how I set about it," continued he, as he
+proceeded to illustrate his remarks. "Imagine a little fellow in the
+corner there. I then begin in dumb show to encourage him to come to the
+piano. 'Come on, my boy; you know you can play that pretty piece you
+played yesterday. Come on, there's a good fellow!' Wonderful what you
+can do with persuasion! He refuses. I attempt to lead him to the piano.
+He won't budge an inch. I carry him under my arm and seat him in front
+of the instrument, the audience roaring all the time. At last his
+mistakes are so many and so ridiculous, I lose all patience and catch
+him a mighty box upon the ears! Tableau!! Of course there is no boy on
+the platform at all, I am quite alone, but I have so thoroughly lost
+myself in my imagination that people have declared years after, 'Oh! but
+I am quite sure you had a boy with you; why, don't you remember how you
+boxed his ears?'"
+
+[Illustration: "I ENCOURAGE HIM."]
+[Illustration: "I ATTEMPT TO LEAD HIM."]
+[Illustration: "I CARRY HIM."]
+[Illustration: "I LOSE ALL PATIENCE."]
+
+No less marvellous than his power of acting is his power of mimicry. "I
+will show you how I do Irving," said he, and in a moment the little man
+had ruffled his hair, had assumed to the life not only Irving's peculiar
+gait, but, even more remarkable still, had managed to secure almost
+exactly the very expression of the great tragedian's face.
+
+[Illustration: "HOW I DO IRVING."]
+
+"Then again, I find it a good idea to take up some craze or topic of the
+moment. 'The Drama on Crutches' I wrote when the craze first arose
+amongst the aristocracy for going on the stage. One of the sketches
+which you will find outlined in that little notebook is entitled, 'Is
+Music a Failure?' and I endeavoured to answer the question by showing
+how popular it is among all classes of the community." I will quote
+pretty freely from this outlined sketch, as it will give my readers an
+idea, better than anything else would do, of the manner in which Mr.
+Grossmith prepares his delightful sketches.
+
+"I am not going to treat the subject seriously," he writes, "but in my
+own particular, impertinent way. The question often arises--are we a
+musical nation? The foreigners think we are not. But where in the wide,
+wide world is there a country where you will hear so many organs and
+German bands? Where is the country, excepting ours, that can appreciate
+the concertina? Where, except in England, can you hear that delightful
+combination of harp and cornet outside a house of refreshment? The
+prejudice of other nations is distressing; and as for their ignorance,
+why, I don't suppose Italy and Germany have even heard of the ocarino
+and the Jew's harp."
+
+And so the sketch runs on, until, in speaking of the universal manner in
+which music is appreciated in England by all classes, Mr. Grossmith goes
+on to say: "We have made rapid strides, so have our servants. They don't
+know how to dust the piano, but they can play it. Everybody plays the
+piano, from the Peerage to the School Board. Then look how music has
+crept into our homes and social circles. Besides the piano, the mother
+and daughters play the banjo, the son plays the first fiddle, and the
+father the second fiddle--as usual. I know of a Lord Mayor who plays the
+trombone, a clergyman who plays the big drum--that's a nice
+unpretentious, giddy instrument!--and I know of any number of members of
+Parliament who blow their own trumpets!!" And so the notes go brightly
+on through many pages.
+
+[Illustration: THE STUDY.]
+[Illustration: MR. WEEDON GROSSMITH.]
+
+"This," explained my host, "is a fair specimen of the method I employ in
+preparing a drawing-room sketch. As a rule, my audiences of that class
+are capital. I always love a well-dressed audience, it is so cheerful.
+You mayn't perhaps get as much applause as you do from the sixpenny
+gallery, but then applause often spoils your point. Once, however, I
+remember singing at a private house in the country to an odd assortment
+of people. I was informed that the party followed a wedding which had
+taken place in the morning. If it had followed a funeral it could not
+have been more gloomy and depressed than it was. I played the piano and
+the fool for three-quarters of an hour, and anything more dismal than
+the result it would be impossible to conceive. A temptation seized me
+suddenly, and I said: 'Ladies and gentlemen,--I am going to reveal to
+you a secret. Pray don't let it go any further. This is supposed to be a
+comic entertainment. I don't expect you to laugh at it in the least; but
+if, during the next sketch, you would only once oblige me with a society
+smile, it would give me a great deal of encouragement.' The audience for
+a moment were dumbfounded. They first began to titter, then to laugh,
+and actually to roar, and for a time I could not proceed with the
+sketch. They were transformed into a capital and enthusiastic audience,
+and the hostess told me that both her guests and herself were most
+grateful to me. I am sometimes amused with the little eccentricities of
+people who wish to secure my services for their parties. A gentleman
+once wrote to me to entertain some friends of his, and, added he, 'I
+trust that your sketches are strictly _comme il faut_, as I have several
+young daughters.' I was so immensely tickled by this that, rightly or
+wrongly, I replied that my entertainments _were_ as they should be, for
+I was recently married, and hoped myself to have several young
+daughters. He wrote thanking me for this assurance, and I was to
+consider myself accordingly engaged. There is a story I tell in my book
+which will bear repetition: A young gentleman once called upon me. He
+explained that he was acting as a sort of ambassador for a friend of
+his, Mrs. ----, of Mayfair, who wished me to dine at her house. I
+replied that I had not the honour of the lady's acquaintance, and,
+though appreciating her kind invitation, I did not see how I could very
+well avail myself of it. He said that Prince Somebody or other and La
+Comtesse de So-and-so would be dining there, and Mrs. ---- would be so
+pleased if I would join the party, and sing a little song after dinner.
+'Oh,' I said, 'if Mrs. ---- wishes to engage me professionally, that is
+another matter, and if I am at liberty, I will come with much pleasure.'
+'Well,' said the ambassador, 'I fancy Mrs. ---- is under the impression
+that if she includes you in her dinner party it is an understood thing
+that you sing afterwards.' 'I am afraid I do not understand that,' I
+said. 'It would not pay me to do so. I only consume about ten shillings
+worth of food and wine, and my terms are more than that.' There," said
+Mr. Grossmith, "could you have believed that anyone would have been so
+inconceivably mean and caddish?"
+
+[Illustration: OLD ENGRAVINGS.]
+[Illustration: MR. GEORGE GROSSMITH.]
+[Illustration: MR. GEO. GROSSMITH, JUN.]
+
+"I have had some curious experiences on tour," he went on. "That is hard
+work, if you like. I have gone a four months' tour without missing a
+night. It takes it out of one terribly. But it is very paying work. In
+the South of England I have made as much as L300 a week. My friends
+tried to frighten me as to the apathy of my Scotch audiences; as a
+matter of fact, I have no better audiences anywhere. I like performing
+to country audiences. I am never nervous as I am apt to be at St.
+James's, where there are a number of my friends. And it is on my country
+tours that I have many curious experiences. Amateurs invariably call at
+the hotel to see me, and to ask my advice as to their powers of
+recitation. Some are quite hopeless, and I haven't the heart to condemn
+them utterly, or to go beyond 'I tell you quite candidly, since you ask
+me, that I have heard better.' As a rule they are very quiet and modest,
+but now and again one encounters some fearful specimens. I remember once
+at a country town, which we will call Mudborough, a flashy young cad, in
+a very loud suit, called to see me with a parcel under his arm. He had
+come, he told me, to learn my opinion of his singing. He further
+informed me that he was known as 'the Mudborough Grossmith.' He didn't
+have the courtesy to take off his hat; he walked up and down my room,
+whistling, singing, and handing me over now and again specimens of his
+powers as a water-colour painter. I looked at them. At last, tired of
+the idiot and his airs, I said, 'I hope your musical sketches are better
+than you water-colour sketches.' Nothing, however, could snub this
+fellow. He proceeded straightway to sing me an improved version of 'See
+me Dance the Polka.' 'Do your audience like it?' I asked. 'I should
+think they did,' he replied; 'I will let you have that last verse if you
+like.' I thanked him sarcastically, and at last he withdrew. I have,
+however, come across some real talent in this way. For instance, that
+admirable actor and entertainer, Eric Lewis, is a _protege_ of mine, and
+you could not have a better man than he. Another amusing incident
+occurred at Southsea. My secretary was in a shop one day, and he
+overheard three ladies discussing the respective merits of Corney Grain
+and myself. Two of them were for Corney Grain and one was for me.
+Finding at last that the odds were too strong for her, she departed with
+this final shot: 'Well, never mind, Mr. Corney Grain can't jump on to a
+piano,' referring to my imitation of Minnie Palmer."
+
+[Illustration: "A FLASHY YOUNG CAD, IN A VERY LOUD SUIT."]
+
+Replying to a question I put to him as to his theatrical experiences,
+Mr. Grossmith told me that it was in the November of 1877 that he
+received the following letter:--
+
+"Beefsteak Club,
+
+"King William Street,
+
+"Tuesday Night.
+
+"Dear Mr. Grossmith,--Are you inclined to go on the stage for a time?
+There is a part in the new piece I am doing with Gilbert which I think
+you would play admirably. I can't find a good man for it. Let me have a
+line, or come to Albert Mansions to-morrow, after 4; or Thursday,
+before 2.30.
+
+"Yours sincerely,
+
+"ARTHUR SULLIVAN."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+"This was a great moment in my life, although at the time my father,
+whose good judgment I valued much, was of opinion that I was not very
+successful as an actor. Sullivan, however, who had heard me give a
+musical sketch at a dinner party, was of the contrary opinion, and felt
+sure that I should suit him. It appears he and Arthur Cecil were both
+writing letters at the Beefsteak, when the former said, 'I can't find a
+fellow for this opera.' Cecil said, 'I wonder if Grossmith--' Before he
+had finished the sentence, Arthur Sullivan said, 'The very man!' And so
+I was engaged. I am much indebted to these two Arthurs," continued the
+bright little man with a laugh. "I reverence the very name of Arthur. I
+remember when Gilbert wanted to engage me for the part of _John
+Wellington Wells_, though I saw the part would suit me to perfection, I
+said to him, 'I should have thought you required a fine man with a fine
+voice for the part of a magician.' I can still see Gilbert's humorous
+expression as he replied, 'That is just what we _don't_ want.' I played
+_Sir Joseph Porter_ in 'Pinafore' every night for nearly two years. Long
+runs don't affect the nerves of the actors nearly as much as they affect
+the performance. Constant repetition begets mechanism, and that is a
+terrible enemy to contend against. I make a point of playing my best to
+a bad house; for it is a monstrous thing to slur through one's work
+because the stalls are empty, and thereby punish those who _have_ come
+for the fault of those who _have not_. Still, I repeat it, constant
+repetition is a dreadful thing. Fancy playing 'Pinafore,' as I did, for
+700 nights without missing a single performance!"
+
+[Illustration]
+[Illustration]
+
+As he said this Mr. Grossmith led the way out of the room in which we
+had been talking, and which he told me was his own special sanctum,
+"into which no one is ever allowed to come except my wife, for anyone
+rushing in here when I was composing or thinking out a sketch would
+inevitably drive every single idea from my head," and we went upstairs
+together. Here in the drawing-room he set himself down to a spinet which
+bore the date of 1770, and he struck a few exceedingly sweet-sounding,
+if slightly tinkling, chords from it. "And this," said he, "is the
+oldest _Broadwood_ in England. You can see for yourself the date--1795."
+Downstairs he showed me a beautiful model of a steam engine, upon which
+he was enabled to ride, and which he could drive himself. "I thoroughly
+understand locomotives," said he, as he pointed to a shelf full of all
+the works upon the subject which he had been able to discover.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+A BLIND BEGGARMAN
+
+BY FRANK MATHEW.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. PEGRAM.
+
+
+    "Left dark among mine enemies."
+
+Long ago, the Fairies often stole children; they chose the prettiest,
+and carried them to Fairyland--the Kingdom of Tyrnanoge,--leaving
+hideous Changelings instead. In those days no man had call to be ashamed
+of his offspring, since it a baby was deformed or idiotic it was known
+to be a Changeling.
+
+[Illustration: "THE PIG WAS A FRIENDLY ANIMAL."]
+
+It is sixty years now since old Mike Lonergan, who lived in a hovel in
+Moher Village, was robbed of his child. It was his wife first found out
+the theft, for she had seen her unborn son in a dream, and he was
+beautiful; so when she saw the sickly and ugly baby, she knew that he
+was not hers, and that the Fairies had stolen the child of her dream.
+Many advised her to roast the Changeling on the turf-fire, but the White
+Witch of Moher said it would be safer to leave him alone. So the child
+Andy grew up as a stranger in his father's hovel and had a dreary time
+of it, he got little food and no kindness. The Lonergans gave him
+neither offence nor welcome, hoping that he might see fit to go home to
+Tyrnanoge and yet bear them no grudge. He grew up an odd wizened little
+wretch, and everyone shunned him. The children loathed him because they
+were afraid of him, so they hooted him from a distance, or stoned him
+from behind walls.
+
+Indeed, at this time his only ally was the pig that lived in one corner
+of the hovel. The pig was a friendly animal, his front half was a dull
+white and the other half black, and this gave him a homely look as if he
+was sitting in his shirt-sleeves. Andy would shrink into the corner, and
+sit cuddled there with one arm round the pig's neck. Old Mike Lonergan
+took to drink, and spent every evening at the Shebeen--small blame to
+him--for how could a man be expected to stay at home with a Changeling
+sitting in a corner and staring at him?
+
+When the pig was driven to the Fair at Ennistimon, Andy was left
+friendless, and then--in all winds and weather--was to be found on the
+Cliffs of Moher. Sometimes he stopped out all night, till hunger would
+bring him back when the Lonergans were rejoicing at his disappearance.
+He knew every inch of the Cliffs, and spent half his time lying on the
+edge of the grey precipice, looking down at the sea, six hundred feet
+below, or watching the clouds of sea-birds; he found new paths down the
+cliff-side and clambered like a goat; he knew where the gulls nested,
+but never robbed them, and the caves where the seals lived, and the
+seals shouldered their way through the water close by him, looking at
+him with soft eyes.
+
+When he was about fourteen, the Famine Year came; fever and "The Hunger"
+swept Clare. The fever took Lonergan and his wife, and they were buried
+in the dead-pit at Liscannor; it left Andy, but it left him blind. Then
+the neighbours began to have their doubts whether he was a Changeling
+after all; for the Fairies are faithful, and who ever heard of a
+Changeling being left blind and penniless? If he was only mortal he had
+been cruelly treated, so to make amends they gave him the fiddle that
+had belonged to the "Dark" Man--that is the blind man--of St. Bridget's
+Well, who had lately starved. There was still a feeling that he was
+unfit for a Holy Well, so he took up a post at the Liscannor
+Cross-roads, and there levied a toll on passers with the professional
+heart-broken cry:
+
+"Remember the Dark Man! For God's sake, remember the Dark Man!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For nearly twenty years Andy haunted the Cross-roads, he came to be
+honoured as one of the institutions of Moher, though the folk considered
+there was much that was uncanny about him, he was so silent, and he
+hated the smell of whisky. Now those were the times when Cornelius
+Desmond ruled Moher in the old open-handed haphazard way, never
+troubling penniless tenants. But "Corney" died and the daisies grew over
+him, so the estate was managed by an agent who made short work of
+paupers, and evicted "Dark" Andy from his ancestral hovel. Andy did not
+seem to know his misfortune. He spent the day of the eviction, as usual,
+at the Cross-roads, and came back at night to a ruin. His neighbour,
+Larry Ronan the blacksmith, was grieved to see that he took the change
+as a matter of course, and that after groping in the four corners of the
+cabin he sat on the window-ledge as if unaware that nothing was left of
+his home but the walls.
+
+Next day it was rumoured that Bridget McCaura, of Moher Farm, had
+sheltered Dark Andy. Bridget was a warm woman, a "woman of three cows,"
+a masterful old maid, who in her time had refused many a pretty fellow,
+perhaps because she suspected them of hankering after her live stock,
+her poultry, and her sixty acres of rocks. Then the old parish priest,
+Father Peter Flannery, rode over to see her. Bridget was called out of
+her house to speak to him; he was afraid to dismount. She stood in the
+narrow gateway in front of her farm, with her arms akimbo, ready to
+defend her home against all comers. Peter's heart trembled; he has a
+great dread of angry women.
+
+"Is it thrue?" he asked--and was so frightened that he looked even
+sterner than usual--"is it thrue what I'm afther hearing, Bridget
+McCaura, that ye've taken the Dark Man, Lonergan, to live with ye--to
+live in the Farm?"
+
+"Is it thrue? 'Tis so," said Bridget.
+
+"But ye're not going to keep him, are ye now?"
+
+"Keep him? I am that," said Bridget.
+
+Peter screwed up his courage and told her warily, that though it was
+well-meant of her, and "'tis you have the kind warm heart, Bridget me
+dear," still, that propriety forbade it.
+
+He was afraid to look at her as he spoke. Bridget was purple.
+
+"What! a misfortnit ould omadhaun the likes of that?" she cried.
+
+"I know, I know," said Peter (this is a pet phrase of his and usually
+means that he does not know). "I know, I know, but 'tis because ye're a
+lone woman, tell me now are ye listening to me? If ye'd been married
+now, 'twould have been another thing."
+
+"Married!" cried Bridget with infinite scorn--"Married! If that's all,
+I'll marry the craythur to-morrow!"
+
+And so Dark Andy was married to the richest woman in Moher. He seemed
+indifferent; as for Bridget, she had made up her mind to shelter him,
+and there was an end of it, she took pleasure in astounding her
+neighbours.
+
+[Illustration: "I'LL MARRY THE CRAYTHUR TO-MORROW!"]
+
+There was never such excitement in Clare as when those banns were read.
+Everyone saw that poor Bridget McCaura--"dacint woman"--had been
+bewitched. All the old stories about Dark Andy came to life, there was
+no room for doubt now, and the bravest unbelievers trembled before him.
+There was many a woman would never hear his name without crossing
+herself, and he got the credit of every misfortune between Kilkee and
+Kinvarra, though some doubted whether a blind man could have the Evil
+Eye. It was felt that he should be asked to give up his post by the
+Cross-roads, since it was inconvenient for the neighbours to have to
+climb two stone walls to avoid passing him. However, no one could be
+found to suggest this to him, so he still sat there daily, for he liked
+to feel that he was earning his own livelihood.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One rough afternoon during my first visit to Clare I was caught in a
+storm of rain, and took refuge at the Liscannor Cross-roads under a
+thick clump of trees that are stunted and bent eastward by cowering from
+the sea-wind. As I reached them I heard a shrill cry, "Remember the Dark
+Man!" Then I saw the blind beggarman sitting huddled in a ragged
+great-coat so much too big for him that till he stood up I did not see
+how tiny he was. He had a doleful peaked face, set in a shock of grey
+hair. By him sat a little brown dog--the queerest of mongrels--with a
+tin can tied round his neck.
+
+Andy was friendly that day, and talked eagerly in a shrill, stammering
+voice. I found later that he was wretched in still weather, and loved
+the malicious rush of the rain; he was happiest when the wind rattled in
+his ears and the rain whipped his face. "Call that rain?" he said, "sure
+th' air is flooded, an' ye might as well swim as walk."
+
+Many times after that I went out of my way on my long solitary walks to
+pass the Cross-roads, but as often as not he was glum and silent, and
+then Bonaparte, sharing his mood, would growl like a small thunderstorm.
+The seat was well chosen, for the cowering trees are like a shed over
+it, and there is a pleasant landscape in front (though that mattered
+little to Andy), a landscape of dim green moors--with brown stains on
+them where sedge grows and black shadows where bushes huddle in
+clefts--chequered by a grey net of low walls, dotted with the white
+gables of cabins, and framed by a wavering line of hills.
+
+Sometimes I found him playing his fiddle to keep himself company, but he
+stopped when he heard me, and, to tell the truth, I was glad of it, for
+his playing was uncanny. Sometimes I met him shambling along the brink
+of the Cliffs--a grotesque little figure, with his old shapeless hat,
+his huge coat flapping behind him, and the mighty blackthorn he
+carried--he knew the ground so well that he walked as if he could see
+(indeed, he saw more than I could, for while to me the breakers were
+only streaks of light, he spoke as if he was close to them on the wet
+weedy rocks), or I came on him lying by the edge, listening to the
+grumbling of the breakers and the cries of the gulls.
+
+[Illustration: "LISTENING TO THE GRUMBLING OF THE BREAKERS AND THE CRIES
+OF THE GULLS."]
+
+Mostly he was unsociable, he shrank from his neighbours because they had
+been cruel to him when they were children, and the dislike was more than
+returned; yet I think that, but for the loneliness of his whole life, he
+would have been friendly enough. No one knew more of folklore--I think
+he half believed that he was a Changeling, and found comfort in the
+thought of that former life when he was one of the merry "Little Good
+People"--and sure old Mike Lonergan and his wife ought to have known
+best. He knew the ways of every ghost in the county, and it was even
+said that he was on speaking terms with the Headless Man who haunted
+Liscannor. Of course he knew all about Fairies. When the fallen leaves
+scurried past his feet he knew that the "Little Good People" were
+playing football, when the wind whispered in the leaves overhead he
+heard them chatting, and when it whined in the creaking bare branches,
+heard the poor little folk crying with cold and bewailing the days when
+they found shelter by snug firesides and sat there unseen but not
+unwelcome. Once, before the world grew hard, they gathered in the
+cabins, and the roughest fare grew pleasanter, the saddest hearts
+lighter, from their good wishes; but no one cares for them now, and they
+cannot rest in unfriendly houses.
+
+[Illustration: "HE WAS ON SPEAKING TERMS WITH THE HEADLESS MAN OF
+LISCANNOR."]
+
+As he grew older, he talked more of them, grew more moody and restless,
+could not sit quiet while the wind was up, and spent night after night
+out of doors. My friend Father Peter Flannery, who is my chief authority
+for this history, told me that often, riding on his sick calls in stormy
+weather, he met Andy staggering along the rough roads.
+
+Last year on November Eve--the night when the Fairies have power, and
+the dead wake and dance reels with them--the blind beggarman started out
+from the Farm. An Atlantic gale was shattering seas against the Cliffs,
+the air was salt with foam, and throbbed with the pulse of the breakers.
+Bridget tried in vain to stop him; he said the "Little Good People" were
+calling him. She watched him disappear into the darkness, the whimpering
+of his fiddle died into the shrieks of the wind. "'Tis a quare divil, he
+is," she said, "God help him!"
+
+Once in the night she thought she heard a snatch of the "Fairies' Reel";
+but Andy never came back. Next morning they found Bonaparte whining on
+the edge of the Cliffs; there was no sign of his master. He must have
+gone over the Cliffs in the darkness, but the waves gave no token.
+
+Some folk in Moher believe that the Fairies took back their child, and
+that the old blind fiddler lives now in the Kingdom of Tyrnanoge, and
+makes music for their dances in that enchanted country where the old
+grow young and the blind see. Some say that he still haunts the
+Cross-roads, and only a week ago, Larry Ronan, coming back at night from
+Ennistimon Fair, saw a black shadowy figure under the black trees, and
+heard a heart-broken voice cry "Remember the Dark Man!" Larry's natural
+surprise at this accounted for his being found next morning asleep in
+the ditch. But it is agreed in Moher that Andy left life on November
+Eve, whether he became the playfellow of the Fairies or the plaything of
+the waves.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+CHURCH AND STAGE.
+
+A REVIEW OF HENRY IRVING,
+
+BY THE REV. DR. JOSEPH PARKER.
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM F. BARNARD AND J. BERNARD PARTRIDGE.
+
+
+[Illustration: MR. IRVING AS "HAMLET."
+(_From the Portrait by EDWIN LONG._)]
+
+[Illustration: MR. IRVING AS "DIGBY GRANT" IN "TWO ROSES."]
+
+The innumerable reviews of Mr. Irving by literary and artistic experts
+have left room enough for an amateur estimate by a man who is accustomed
+to regard human life mainly from a religious standpoint. A complete
+review of the Stage by the Pulpit could hardly be the work of a single
+pen; for my own part, therefore, I can only make a very small
+contribution to such a review by indicating a few points which have
+occurred to me in the study of one particular actor. At once, however,
+the question arises, Is Mr. Irving a man who can be thus summarily
+characterised? In a dramatic sense, are there not many Mr. Irvings? When
+a man can act "The Two Roses" and "The Dead Heart" with equal effect,
+when he can at will be as vulgar as _Robert Macaire_, or as dignified as
+_Cardinal Wolsey;_ when he can be either as young as Hamlet or as old as
+Lear, the inquiry as to his plurality becomes natural and pertinent. For
+my part, I rank Mr. Irving the comedian above Mr. Irving the tragedian,
+just as I rank Nature above Art: each may be highest in its own way, yet
+the one may have a charm which the other cannot boast. Mr. Irving's
+tragedy sometimes requires working up, but his comedy is spontaneous and
+immediate. The needful working up of tragedy is no fault of the actor.
+Tragedy should hardly ever begin at once. The murder may come too soon.
+Premature rage is followed by untimely laughter. _Digby Grant_ begins at
+once, and can be his best self in the very first sentence, but _Macbeth_
+must move towards his passion by finely-graded ascents. In Mr. Irving's
+exquisite representation, _Macbeth's_ anxieties and perturbations, his
+rapid alternations of courage and cowardice, make delicate but obvious
+record of themselves in deepening the grey of his hair, and ploughing
+more deeply the lines of his face. A comedy may be judged scene by
+scene, almost sentence by sentence, but a tragedy can be truly estimated
+only when viewed in final perspective.
+
+[Illustration: "A LITTLE CHEQUE."
+(MR. IRVING AS "DIGBY GRANT" IN "TWO ROSES.")]
+
+Judged by this test, I have no hesitation in regarding Mr. Irving's
+_King Lear_ as the finest creation of his genius. This is an instance in
+which the actor creates the piece. Shakespeare is, as a poet and
+playwright, at his worst in "King Lear." Yet his accessories are
+wonderful in variety and suggestiveness. Only Shakespeare could have
+created the heath, and have so ordered the old King's passion, as to
+make his madness part of the very thunder and lightning. That was
+Shakespeare's magnificent conception, and Mr. Irving's rendering is
+worthy of its tempestuous grandeur. How to talk up to the storm, how to
+pierce the tumult with the cries of human distress, how to escape the
+ridiculous and the incongruous, how to be a King on the desolate heath,
+and to make the royalty gleam through the angry darkness, were the
+problems, and Mr. Irving solved them one and all, even with redundance
+of faculty and skill. At the end of the heath scene the man is more
+remembered than the storm. It has been objected that in the first scene
+Mr. Irving's _Lear_ is too old and feeble. I venture to think otherwise.
+I further venture to think that the King's age and the King's imbecility
+have both been accurately appreciated. A man at eighty, a man athirst
+for flattery, a man who would pay a kingdom in exchange for adulation,
+must have outlived all that is best and strongest in human nature. He
+comes upon the stage as a wreck. His vanity has eaten up his sagacity,
+so that she, _Goneril_ or _Regan_, who can flatter most, can lie most,
+and can play the devil best, shall fare most lavishly at his hands. Is
+it not well partly to excuse these excesses of self-valuation by such
+mitigations as can be found in the infirmity of old age? Even in an
+elderly man they would have been treated with contempt; they could only
+be endured in one whose eighty years had been doubled by the hardness of
+his life lot.
+
+In "Henry VIII." Mr. Irving had little to do. In that play the labour
+and the glory fell upon another, to the infinite delight of the public.
+In "Lear," Mr. Irving has everything to do. From beginning to end there
+is only one character. Even the fascinating _Cordelia_ is but a silver
+cloud on the far horizon. "The King is coming" is the cry of the play.
+His madness is more, as to display and effect, than the sense of all the
+others. The scene is stiff and cold until his wild hair is observed to
+approach the front, and then the whole spectacle is alight with feeling
+and purpose. The other actors are not to blame that, to a large extent,
+they are thrown into the shade; indeed, they are to be warmly
+congratulated upon their self-suppression and their passive sympathy. It
+is a hard task to play the part of two heartless and treacherous
+daughters, and a pitiful fate to have to represent the villainy of
+_Edmund_, yet all this was admirably done. It cannot be an easy thing to
+come forward to play the villain well, for the better the dramatic
+villain is played the more is the actor compelled to recognise in his
+execration the exact degree of his success. So admirably can Mr. Irving
+himself play the villain, that it is difficult to believe that any
+godparents ever, on his unconscious behalf, renounced the pomps and
+vanities of this wicked world.
+
+In many minor parts--or along the subsidiary lines of great parts--Mr.
+Irving's subtlest power comes into effective play. Who, for example, can
+be more gentle or more graceful with a little child? Who could hug the
+"fool" more fondly than old _King Lear_? Then recall his wonderful
+recognitions of old friends. When, in "The Dead Heart," he is liberated
+from the Bastille, how old times slowly but surely dawn into
+consciousness, and how quickly the dawn hastens into the noontide of the
+tenderest fellowship and highest festival of joy. It is verily a
+resurrection. After eighteen years' entombment this political Lazarus
+comes forth to liberty, to leadership, to dominance.
+
+In "Lear," there are two wonderful instances of recognition, the
+recognition of _Gloster_ and of _Cordelia_. _Gloster_ is blind and
+bandaged. _Cordelia_ has been long out of sight--if not in actual days
+yet in depth of feeling--and the King himself is demented. Little by
+little things shape themselves in the memory and fancy of the King.
+There is something confusedly familiar in the voice of _Gloster_ which,
+tone by tone, settles into recognition. In the case of _Cordelia_ the
+father gradually subdues the King, and instinct takes the place of
+reason; then, in a fine strain, comes the identification:
+
+            "Do not laugh at me,
+    For, as I am a man, I think this lady
+    To be my child Cordelia."
+
+The utterance of these words by Mr. Irving is simply thrilling. The
+tones, the glances, the approach, the embrace, lift up the words into
+new light, keen and tender as the brightness of a summer morning. The
+words themselves are by no means striking, are, indeed, the merest
+commonplace, but, uttered with the natural pathos of a consummate actor,
+they carry the play to its most subduing climax. The humanity and the
+genius satisfy expectation in its most eager and jealous temper. Failure
+at that point would have ruined the play. Which was better, _Lear_ or
+_Cordelia_, in that critical action? We must first settle, Which is
+better, the star of morning or the morning star?
+
+[Illustration: MR. IRVING AS "KING LEAR." (FROM THE LYCEUM SOUVENIR.)]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As I opened this brief review with a reference to the religious
+standpoint, it may be well now to ask how the Church is to regard the
+Stage as an educational institution? The Stage cannot be put down. It
+responds to an instinct which is ineradicable, and which need not be
+ignoble. The parables of the New Testament are the sublimest recognition
+of that instinct. The drama is older than the theatre. Much of the
+greatest preaching has been dramatic, by which I mean that it has
+touched human life through the medium of story and parable, coloured and
+toned by a living fancy. Sometimes, too truly, the dramatic in preaching
+has degenerated into impossible anecdotes, most of them originating in
+the Far West of America, yet even such anecdotes testify to the
+overpowering force of the dramatic instincts when limited to their most
+vulgar conditions. My submission is, that a properly-conducted stage
+might be the most powerful ally of the pulpit. I advance upon this
+submission, and contend that the function of the preacher is infinitely
+superior to the function of the actor. Whatever the preacher has to say
+that is distinctive he can trace to what he believes to be a Divine and
+authoritative origin. I hold the great preacher to be a spiritual
+medium. In his next evolution he will simply tell the people whatever
+may have been given him in the same hour to say. This does not mean that
+indolence will supersede industry. Through the indolent man God sends no
+messages. The true prophet will always be preparing himself. By
+learning, by meditation, by self-discipline, the true prophet will
+prepare his heart for the incoming of the Eternal Spirit, and the glory
+of Heaven will be as a fire on the altar of the honest heart. Art
+preachers we have had in too great abundance. Mechanical talkers have
+brought upon the pulpit the disrepute of dulness. The age now waits for
+the messenger in whose loving heart there is the glow and the radiance
+of divinest sympathy. The great actor himself would be the first to
+admit that the preacher cannot trace his own public secondariness to the
+poverty of his themes. Where the preacher falls behind the actor, it is
+because the preacher does not realise the majesty and the tenderness,
+the vehemence and the urgency, of his own message.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THAT BEAST BEAUTY.
+
+BY KIRBY HARE.
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS BY ERNEST M. JESSOP.
+
+
+I was a man born to misfortune. In fact, my first misfortune, the death
+of my father, happened three months before I came into the world. When I
+did duly appear, and was giving a proper howl of disgust, a fresh
+misfortune fell upon me; my mother departed to join my father, leaving
+me in the lurch in a vale of unavailing tears. I should have preferred
+going with my family to that blessed Utopia where there are neither
+births, deaths, marriages, divorces, breaches of promise, nor return
+tickets; only, unfortunately, I was not invited. So I became a
+posthumous orphan, soothed by Daffy's elixir and the skim-milk of human
+kindness. The milk was none too sweet, human kindness did not spare the
+rod, and I firmly believe it was Daffy's elixir that turned my hair red.
+However, I grew up at length into stand-up collars and tail coats, and
+at the age of seventeen springs was adopted (on trial) by a maiden aunt
+of seven-and-forty autumns. Like a gleam of sunshine hope flashed into
+my loveless life, lighting up my path to fortune. But it was only the
+glimmer of an _ignis fatuus_, which led me into a quicksand and snuffed
+itself out in a fog.
+
+[Illustration: A PROPER HOWL OF DISGUST.]
+
+[Illustration: HIS MAIDEN AUNT.]
+
+My relative had plenty of money, and plenty of other equally good
+qualities in the long run, no doubt; but the period of my adoption was
+too short to make sure of either the one or the other. If the wealthy
+maiden was really a worthy soul she did not let her nephew know it.
+Corporeally she was angular and iron-grey, with a summary tongue and
+wintry temper, chastened by a fondness for feline favourites. Unluckily,
+I was always falling foul of the latter, and my aunt continually fell
+foul of me in consequence. Crabbed age and youth could not live together
+in our case on account of cats. Age, as represented by the mature
+virgin, adored the brutes; youth, in the shape of a sprouting
+hobbledehoy, abhorred them altogether, and one evil minded black Tom in
+particular. My aunt called him Beauty, in happy ignorance that all her
+household called him a Beast. I admire beauty in the abstract; I also
+like it in the concrete; and in the concreted form of youthful feminine
+humanity I love it. But that feline black Beauty was the most outrageous
+misnomer unhanged. I had tried to hang him several times, down in the
+cellar in the dead of night; but his patent cast-iron neck set
+suspensory science at defiance, and Beauty triumphantly refused to give
+up the ghost. At first, he kicked and fought against it lustily, and
+yelled murder with all his might; but after a little practice the
+malefactor acted more philosophically, regarding the performance quite
+as part of his nocturnal programme. He never allowed it to make him late
+for breakfast, nor take away his appetite. Each morning, after
+execution, the moment the bell rang for prayers, in marched Beauty with
+a swollen head well on one side, growling anathemas from somewhere round
+the corner all prayer-time; after which the escaped convict devoured
+breakfast with the voracity of a stiffnecked cannibal.
+
+[Illustration: ONE EVIL-MINDED BLACK TOM.]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Finding the beast utterly unhangable, I determined to try drowning. My
+nature is by no means a cruel one, quite the reverse; but Beauty's cup
+of iniquity had long been full to the brim, and running over into the
+saucer. He had gulped down my canaries like pills, poached my pigeons,
+fricasseed my rabbits, and made himself an abominable beast generally;
+and had now committed a crime that capped everything.
+
+My cock bantam, which had won first prize at the Slocum-Pogis poultry
+show, mysteriously disappeared. Jim, the gardener's boy, and I hunted
+everywhere without finding any trace till we sighted Beauty. The beast
+was seated on my verbena bed, with fearfully distended stomach, waving
+my poor little bantam's tail feathers from between his teeth. Had I been
+an ancient Egyptian high priest, and Beauty at the top of the tree of
+holy cats, his diabolical godship should have been made into a mummy
+instanter. As things were, he had to be drowned forthwith.
+
+[Illustration: AT A CABINET COUNCIL IN THE COAL CELLAR.]
+
+At a cabinet council in the coal cellar, composed of the cook, footman,
+Jim, and myself, all the executive details were arranged; my aunt being,
+of course, kept in happy ignorance of our intentions. As soon as my
+respected relative uttered the preliminary snore of her afternoon
+siesta, Beauty made an involuntary exit out of the house, all the lower
+doors and windows having been carefully fastened. Then commenced a
+silent cat-hunt, a serio-comic drama in dumb show, with a crowded
+audience breathlessly gazing from the windows. The scenery was a series
+of dissolving views, beginning on a flower-decked lawn, and ending at a
+mill-pool a mile or so away from the audience. Beauty played leading
+actor with considerable activity, notwithstanding the drawback of being
+handicapped with an undigested bantam. He flew over dozens of
+flower-beds, through all the outhouses, over the stable, out into the
+park, up and down all the tallest trees, and all over the country, till
+he took refuge in the deserted old mill. There we wriggled him into an
+ancient sack, and tied him up in the harmonious company of a couple of
+brickbats. Then we committed the body to the deep. The burial service
+was short, but hearty. "One--two--three, and away!" sung out in unison,
+was the special form for the occasion, accompanied by Beauty's farewell
+blessing as we "awayed" him into the silent depths of the mill-dam.
+There was a splash, a shrill cry from a frightened moorhen, a short
+jubilate from Jim, to which I piously added "amen," and all was over.
+Jim ran home with half-a-sovereign in his pocket, while I walked back to
+dress for dinner. On the stairs I met my aunt, already in evening array,
+and looking hungry. I knew the sign, and stealthily tried to
+vanish, vainly.
+
+[Illustration: IN THE DESERTED OLD MILL.]
+
+"Late again, Samuel!" she remarked, with a freezing spectacle-gleam that
+fixed me to the stair-carpet--my right foot two steps above the left.
+"You have just come in, I suppose. Have you seen Beauty?"
+
+[Illustration: "LATE AGAIN, SAMUEL!"]
+
+Horror! Could she suspect anything? I felt my face growing the colour of
+my hair, and my tongue frozen solid.
+
+"Can't you answer?" she went on wrathfully. "And can't you stand up
+straight?"
+
+I pulled my legs together and commenced to stammer.
+
+"I--I saw Beauty out--outside, aunt, in the garden," I managed to mutter.
+
+"Which way was he going?"
+
+"Why, I think he was running towards the house, aunt."
+
+[Illustration: THIRTY MILES AN HOUR.]
+
+And then the remembrance of how he _was_ running--thirty miles an hour,
+with tail on end and ears flat to his head, with Jim and my long-legged
+self racing in rear--made me choke with laughter I was forced to
+swallow. But my aunt's eyes were on me, and her gold-rimmed barnacles
+blazed through me, so I suffocated in silence.
+
+"Don't stand making faces like an idiot. Go and dress, and be quick,"
+snapped my loving relative, as she marched away downstairs and I flew to
+the region above.
+
+My bedroom door was partly open, and I dashed in hastily, pulling off my
+things as I went.
+
+[Illustration: DRESSING FOR DINNER.]
+
+My evening clothes were laid out ready on the bed, and--what was that on
+my shirt?--a black mass of--something moving!--some animal! Why, heavens
+and earth, it was the ghost of--that beast Beauty! It was Beauty
+himself! I ran for the poker; Beauty rushed out of the door. Confound
+that rotten old sack!
+
+I was late for dinner, and found Beauty seated in my chair, sleek and
+dry, with a ravenously whetted appetite. My aunt was so pleased with her
+favourite's improved appearance that she became quite affable, even to
+me. I was informed that as I had not been looking well lately I might go
+for a few days' change to the seaside; the salubrious air of
+Muddiford-on-the-Ooze would just suit me. What a blessing! To have
+escaped from those ice-gleaming spectacles and from that resuscitated
+beast Beauty I would gladly have gone to Jericho, much more to
+Muddiford-on-the-Ooze. Then my aunt continued her course of
+instructions, with the nearest approach to a smile I had ever seen
+on her face.
+
+[Illustration: A SHOW AT MUDDIFORD-ON-THE-OOZE.]
+
+"You will enjoy yourself, I am sure, Samuel, and you will also be able
+to show what pains you can take to please me," she said, sipping her
+first glass of Burgundy with approving relish. "There is to be a show at
+Muddiford the day after to-morrow, at which I intend exhibiting, and you
+will be able to manage everything for me; so mind you are careful to do
+your best."
+
+"I shall be most delighted," I declared gushingly. "What show is it? And
+what can I have the pleasure of taking charge of for you, my dear aunt?"
+
+"It's the Grand All-England Cat Show, and you will take Beauty; and I
+shall be greatly disappointed if you do not bring me back the first
+prize. So be on your best behaviour, Samuel, or perhaps you may live to
+regret it."
+
+My jaw dropped, and I thought I should have slid under the table. Good
+heavens! It was that beast Beauty who was to go for a holiday, while I
+was to act as the infernal fiend's keeper! O my prophetic soul--my aunt!
+But there was no help for it; I was bound in bonds of gold.
+
+On the following day, Beauty and I were duly driven to the station, the
+former being luxuriously nested in a small hamper specially furnished
+for the occasion. About half-way on the road, just as we had mounted a
+long, steep hill, the cat managed to roll his residence from the stern
+of the dog-cart and trundle himself half-way home again. Luckily, he
+screeched blue murder at the tip-top of his voice, or we might not have
+missed the beast. As it was, his cyclical retrogression made us just too
+late for the train, and we had to wait two hours for the next. So I
+seated myself on the hamper--like Patience on the proverbial
+monument--and beheld the coachman depart homewards, with a sympathetic
+hat-touching salute, leaving me with a gloomy conviction of coming
+misfortune. The train, when it did arrive, was tolerably empty, and I
+secured a vacant first-class. For a time all went happily; then the cat
+commenced groaning.
+
+[Illustration: SEATED MYSELF ON THE HAMPER.]
+
+My aunt having solemnly ordered me to give the brute dinner, I now
+prepared to stop his mouth with cold chicken. While I was cautiously
+unfastening the hamper lid, Beauty remained quiet as a dormouse; and
+then he proceeded personally to assist the unfastening, with a
+vengeance. There was a bouncing volcanic eruption, a blood-curdling
+howl, a mixed-up whirling round the carriage, and then--smash!--bang
+through the window went Beauty!--leaving me doubled up on the seat,
+holding out half a chicken. It was a forty-feline-power hurricane, while
+it lasted; and drops of perspiration trickled down my nose on to the
+chicken, at which I sat stupidly staring. After a dazed pause I
+staggered to the broken window and looked out. There was Beauty, with a
+perpendicular tail like a young fir-tree, going like great guns in
+exactly the wrong direction. We had just come through a long tunnel, and
+the last I saw of my aunt's pet demon was as he dived headlong into its
+Hades-like mouth. And I had to take home first prize for him from the
+Grand All-England Cat Show!
+
+[Illustration: LEAVING THE RAILWAY CARRIAGE.]
+
+[Illustration: INTO ITS HADES-LIKE MOUTH.]
+
+[Illustration: INCIPIENT CATALEPSY.]
+
+When the 4.40 down express arrived at Muddiford-on-the-Ooze station, an
+auburn-haired youth limply emerged from a first-class carriage. In his
+arms he bore a basket, and his grey-green eyes gleamed with incipient
+catalepsy. Yes, such would undoubtedly have been my description had I
+posed as the momentary hero of a penny novelette. I forgot all about my
+luggage, imbecilely clinging to the late habitation of the lost beast
+Beauty, wandering I knew not why nor whither. Outside the station, round
+a quiet corner, my steps were arrested by the surprising sight
+of--Beauty!--the very identical devil himself! There stood the
+unhangable, undrownable, hurricane-creating beast, looking as serene as
+a newly-born black cherub, washing his fiendish face! I approached on
+tiptoe, breathlessly, with the basket behind my back and the half
+chicken extended as a peaceable card of introduction. He scented it
+instantly--my aunt always keeping Beauty's tit-bits until sufficiently
+gamey to suit his highly epicurean taste.
+
+[Illustration: WASHING HIS FIENDISH FACE!]
+
+With a finishing toe-touch to his whiskers, he amicably trotted up to me
+and--yes!--actually rubbed against my new trousers! What could have
+happened to him! Had his run through the tunnel turned him out virtuous?
+And how could he possibly have got here? Experience has shown that a
+leopard can change his spots, and a negro can grow spotted; but could a
+diabolical cat become even as a sucking dove and fly over twelve miles
+all in the space of twenty minutes? Impossible! So I put on a pair of
+folder-glasses and scrutinised this new arrival doubtingly. No; it was
+_not_ Beauty--not nearly ugly enough. It was a twin, but larger,
+blacker, sleeker, a million times more amiable, and very much fatter.
+Ah!--ha, ha!--hurrah!--happy thought! Why not? I would. And, thereupon,
+I instantly did it.
+
+Placing the basket gently on the ground, I opened the lid and put in the
+cold chicken, when lo! in jumped the amiable twin. Half an hour later
+that basket, that heaven-descended twin, and that successful chicken,
+were safely deposited in custody of the cat-show steward, with the
+errant Beauty's entry ticket affixed. If the steward had never seen the
+real original he would never discover the difference; and if he did
+happen to be acquainted with the genuine article he could but think that
+the beast was surprisingly improved, and might even award it first prize
+for having turned over such a notable new leaf. And for the same reason,
+my aunt ought to be highly delighted at her favourite's favourable
+transformation. My heart was lightened of its oppressive troubles, as my
+hands were free from their feline load. With a hearty appetite I ate an
+excellent dinner at the hotel, went to the theatre, and turned into bed
+thankful for all fortune's favours.
+
+[Illustration: I ATE AN EXCELLENT DINNER.]
+
+During the two following days, carefully steering clear of the cat-show,
+I enjoyed my freedom gaily, and had--what our three-thousand-miles-
+removed cousins would call--real good time. On the third morning a
+letter arrived from my aunt, with an enclosure which for the first
+moment I took to be a big cheque--a grateful offering, as I hoped, for
+services skilfully performed. However, it proved to be merely a second
+letter, in writing that was strange to me, and which with some curiosity
+I proceeded to peruse. As I unfolded the sheet, a vision suddenly
+crossed my mind of that savage beast Beauty; a chilly shiver shot
+through my marrow, and I sent the waiter for soda and brandy. It was an
+awful thought of what that unkillable cat might do! There he was,
+rampaging over a civilised country populated with children and lambs,
+and other unprotected innocents, half mad, perhaps, with hunger, where
+neither canaries nor pigeons, rabbits or cold chicken were grabbable.
+What desperate murders he might commit! And should I be held
+responsible? Here the timely arrival of the waiter helped to raise my
+spirits by a strong dose of B. and S., and I began the enclosed letter.
+
+[Illustration: WHAT DESPERATE MURDERS HE MIGHT COMMIT!]
+
+It was headed from the cat-show secretary's office. Why, of course, that
+charming twin had got first prize, no doubt. Let us see. "Dear Madam,"
+so ran the official note, "I beg to call your attention to what I
+imagine must, in some way, have been an oversight. Your cat, described
+on the entrance form as 'a black male, named Beauty,' which was, on the
+evening of its arrival, placed in the class pertaining to the
+descriptive form, was found this morning to have presented us with four
+remarkably fine kittens. This, of course, necessitated the family's
+removal from the male cat class. I have much pleasure in being able to
+inform you that both mother and kittens are in the best of health, and
+will be carefully attended upon. If you will kindly forward your
+instructions respecting their disposal, I shall be greatly obliged."
+That was the note, and wildly did the letters dance before my eyes.
+
+[Illustration: FOUR REMARKABLY FINE KITTENS.]
+
+[Illustration: GASPING FOR BREATH.]
+
+Having saved myself from fainting by finishing the B. and S., I sat for
+some minutes gasping for breath. Then I rubbed my eyes and reread that
+awful epistle. Yes--it was so--in solemn, sober black ink! Beauty's twin
+had got four fine kittens! Great Jehoshaphat! How could I ever get over
+those confounded kittens! It was too late to murder them. And my
+aunt--but stop! Let me read her letter; it might suggest something--some
+feline legerdemain method of conjuring four fine kittens into a first
+prize black male cat. So here goes. And this is how it went: "I always
+considered you to be a fool, Samuel, but nothing worse, until now.
+Unless the enclosed letter is immediately fully explained, and the
+matter set right, I shall plainly let you know what I do think of you
+now, and act accordingly. See the secretary, and telegraph me the result
+at once." Not much hope in that, worse luck; only a limited respite.
+
+[Illustration: WENT FISHING.]
+
+Away I went to the show, saw the secretary--from a safe distance--and
+immediately telegraphed: "Have seen the secretary. Hard at work setting
+matters right. Awfully sorry." Then I hired a boat, and went fishing for
+the rest of the day. In the evening I wired: "Beauty must have got
+changed. Cats now all going home. Found clue and am following up. All
+right shortly." But my aunt's patience had expired. Next morning came a
+curt note saying she would at once join me, and either rescue Beauty or
+settle that secretary. How could I ever face those searching spectacles!
+I fled. From a lonely spot on the wilds of Dartmoor I wired: "Am
+following clue sharp. Getting close up. Good news next time." Back came
+an answer: "Shall be with you to-morrow at noon." At noon next day, I
+boarded the mail packet Tongariro, bound from Plymouth to New Zealand.
+
+[Illustration: OFF TO NEW ZEALAND.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+PEOPLE I HAVE NEVER MET
+
+BY SCOTT RANKIN.
+
+MRS. HUMPHRY WARD.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+    "You can do nothing by despising the past and its products; you
+    also can do nothing by being too much afraid of them.... Be
+    content to be a new 'sect,' 'conventicle,' or what not, so long
+    as you feel that you are _something_, with a life and purpose
+    of its own, in this tangle of a world."--_Robert Elsmere_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+THE IDLERS CLUB
+
+Is Love a Practical Reality or a Pleasing Fiction?
+
+
+[Sidenote: Mrs. Lynn Linton thinks there is no doubt as to Love's
+reality.]
+
+Of the desperate reality of the passion there is no doubt; of the
+intrinsic value of the thing beloved there may be many. The passion for
+which men and women have died stands like a tower four-square to all the
+winds of heaven; but how far that tower has been self-created by fancy,
+and how much is objectively real, who is the wise man that can
+determine? What is Love? We know nothing of its source. Sense and sex
+cannot wholly explain its mystery, else would there be no friendship
+left among us; and elective affinity is but a dainty carving on the
+chancel stalls. The loveliness which makes that special person the
+veritable Rose of the World to us exists but in our imagination. It is
+no rose that we adore--only at the best a bedeguar, of which the origin
+is a disagreeable little insect. We believe in the exquisite harmony of
+those atoms which have arranged themselves to form the thing we love.
+And we marry our human ideal, expecting the unbroken continuance of that
+harmony. But the discord comes; colours clash; the jarring note spoils
+the chord; the idol once accepted as of gold and precious stones, proves
+to be only common clay, thinly gilt. The diamonds are paste; the pearls
+are beads of glass filled with shining fishes' scales; and the love
+which we thought would be a practical reality for life, is nothing but a
+pleasing fiction, good for its day, and now dead and done with. The
+lover sees nothing as it is. Life is distorted between jealousy and
+admiration, and the plain teaching of common-sense is as little
+understood as the conditions of the fourth dimension or the poetic
+aspirations of the Simian tongue. The adored is not a real person; the
+happiness anticipated is not practical nor practicable. Both are on
+all-fours with the substantiality of a cloud and the serviceable roadway
+of a rainbow. Custom, familiarity, daily habits are the sole tests by
+which the reality of the thing beloved can be tried--the reality of the
+thing beloved and consequent validity of love. Before these tests are
+applied, the whole affair is as a fairy dream born of the perfume and
+the mystery of night. With the clear cold breath of morning the dream
+vanishes, but--what is left? The sigh of the vanishing god?--a tear on
+the cheek of Psyche?--the loathing of the man who finds Melusine a
+serpent rather than a woman?--or the peaceful joy of the child who
+dreams of angels and wakes in its mother's arms?--of those who sleeping
+on the ocean wake to find themselves safe in port?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: "Rita" thinks Love is beautiful and wise.]
+
+At one period of life, love is simply an emotion--the outcome of
+attraction, or the effect of that vague mystery which surrounds sex. In
+this emotional stage the _feeling_ may be real enough, but the passion
+is an illusion. A girl is often more in love with Love than with an
+actual lover. The youth who beholds his ideal in the First Woman is in
+love with the woman herself who for the time (usually very brief)
+embodies that ideal. But to the girl and the youth comes an hour when
+they are humiliatingly conscious of study wasted on a prettily-bound
+work of fiction that for all use and purpose in life is quite valueless.
+The edifice of romance is constructed much on the same plan as a child's
+castle of cards, and deservedly shares the same fate. That is to say,
+the topmost card overbalances the whole structure. It is usually the
+hand of Reason that topples over Love's romantic tenement by crowning it
+with the card of Common Sense. When we find Love has become a practical
+reality, the discovery is often very unpleasant. We would rather not be
+unhappy if we had the choice. Unfortunately, we haven't, and find
+ourselves in that condition without exactly knowing how we drifted into
+it. Drifters often discover Love to be a very practical reality, because
+of unpleasant consequences. It is decidedly humiliating to find
+ourselves in the toils of a siren the very reverse of our high ideal of
+the personage who is to have the honour and glory of subjugating us.
+This is one of Love's amusing little ways of proving that ideals are
+really not important. The best and safest test of the reality of Love is
+to ask yourself how much you have suffered on account of it. I don't
+speak of such trifles as tears, heartaches, sleepless nights, fevers of
+jealousy and despair, sacrifices, or discomforts, but of _real_ genuine
+self-torment and mental torture which only this passion is capable of
+inflicting on its victims. The most sceptical will acknowledge that its
+powers in this line are only excelled by its apparent animosity. To
+discover the life that completes and contents our own is not given to
+many of us poor mortals. Here and there some fortunate individuals have
+made that discovery--but they are rare--and not given to boasting on the
+subject; yet though worldly wise folk scoff at love as a myth, I
+question whether they could name any other passion of the heart which
+has occupied so important a place in the world's history, which has
+given life to all that is great and divine in art, or inspired such
+deeds of heroism, self-sacrifice, and martyrdom. Before its patient
+strength men have stood mute and wondering, and proud heads have bent in
+reverence, and stern eyes grown dim. For Love is beautiful, despite
+faults, and wise, despite follies. It alone of all human emotions can
+lift our souls heavenwards, and make even life's thorny path a thing
+of beauty.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: John Strange Winter's opinions.]
+
+Love may be classed under several heads. The first, the great, the
+unattainable, the one-sided, and the worn-out. They are all real! What
+can be more real than the perhaps not very practical passion which first
+makes young hearts ache? What agony it is to _her_ when _he_ dances
+three times running with that horrid, stuck-up London girl, with her
+fashionable jargon, her languorous movements, just a turn or two, and
+then stop for as many minutes! First love is not often last love. _He_
+thinks _her_ unreasonable to mind those dances, yet when a great love
+comes into her life, making her think of him as "just a boy," he suffers
+all, or nearly all, the pangs of a great passion. Unavailing pain! _She_
+has cast the die of her life, and past loves are shadows compared with
+the absorbing power that now grips her heart like a vice. Much may
+happen to the great love, but it is very real! A great love may merge
+into matrimony, and life may run on oiled wheels, and Darby and Joan may
+pass through the world, loving faithfully, and without digression, to
+the end. Or something may come between, and the great love may become
+the unattainable! It will not be the less real for that.
+
+[Sidenote: The Unattainable.]
+
+The unattainable has more in it of pathos than despair. Romance sweetens
+it, and the romance never dies. The tenderness of "what might have been"
+gives balm to many a suffering soul! The wife may be unhappy, neglected,
+heartsick, she may even loathe him whose name she bears, but she is
+often upholden by the thought that _he_ would have been wholly
+different! A husband may know that he has married the wrong woman, yet
+he bears what is, because he cannot have _her_ who would have made life
+all sunshine. Few pity the one-sided love, helpless, hopeless, and
+without justification as it is; yet it is very real to the lonely soul.
+The worn-out love is the very essence of sadness! It is heart-breaking
+to watch the efforts of a foolish heart to keep a love dying or already
+dead, to see love, which would once have made a paradise, poured out at
+the feet of one who is only bored and not even touched by it. Nothing is
+so dead as a dead love--yet, even _that_ is real!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Miss May Crommelin takes a professional view]
+
+Can any sensible novelist hesitate? Does a shoe-maker depreciate
+leather? Would you saw off the tree-branch you sit on? Now, on this
+subject, anybody's opinion (full-grown) is as good as another's. Let the
+footman bring down word that love is the drawing-room topic, and the
+cook will cry out, "What do they know more about it than _us_?" Is it
+not a human feeling, call it instinct or no? Surely old Sally Jones has
+simpler feelings than the Dowager Countess; as much experience in this.
+Love is just as real as a rainbow on a wet day; as--as influenza. The
+first may be a "pleysing payne": the latter must be a very displeasing
+one. But there is little fiction about either to the victims. Well,
+suppose love a mere brain-fantasm; an odd survival when sensible folk
+have swept away beliefs in witchcraft, fairies, and the virtue of fire
+and faggot for the wicked ones who don't say their prayers the same way
+we do. _Still, was it not worth while to have invented it?_ However the
+idea was evoluted, just consider the glamour it throws over thorns and
+thistles, as we dig through life's long day of toil. As Trollope's stout
+widow says, when choosing her second: "It's a whiff of the rocks and the
+valleys." (So she had her marriage settlements tightly drawn up, to
+enjoy her romance comfortably.) Consider this epitaph--a real one--
+
+    "Poorly lived, and poorly died;
+    Poorly buried, and _nobody cried_."
+
+Broach this subject of love to a circle after dinner, round a good fire.
+Everybody laughs! The young men and maidens look conscious. What they
+feel is as real to them as pleasure in music they hear; in the taste of
+wine. Yes, and far more--while it lasts. Some elders profess scorn,
+because their minds are so choked with years' dust of daily cares they
+have forgotten how they, too, once believed love real--while it lasted!
+Ay! there's the rub. You are told--truthfully--that love is strong as
+death: inconstant as every breeze. Some declare, for them--
+
+    "In the whole wide world there was but one."
+
+Other as honest souls confess their hearts have known, since first love,
+"many other lodgers." This seems clear, love is real to those who _give
+it_! Only they who care more to _get it_, call it moonshine and naughty
+names. Like figures on an Egyptian monument, each follows one who looks
+at another. Never one scorned, but has rejected a third.
+
+    "As Pan loved Echo, Echo loved the satyr,
+    The satyr Lyda--and so the three went weeping."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Miss Quiller Couch wishes Love were a pleasing fiction.]
+
+"Pleasing fiction," forsooth; would that it were! It is a very real
+game, and the rules thereof are practical. I know it, for verily I
+myself have suffered. Let it not be understood, however, that it is _as_
+a "practical, real lover" that I have suffered. Not at all. It is that
+this order of beings walks abroad, and I am not of it, and I meet it,
+and I am pained, and I feel sorry. Could Love be but a pleasing fiction,
+how comfortable to sit aside and contemplate it--a trifle to talk of, a
+dainty to dally with, a joy to the juvenescent, a blessing to the
+book-writer, yet never an inconvenience. But it is a practical reality,
+and it has great effects. Why, I have seen good, healthy people, quite
+nice-tempered people, brought to a shadow by it and churned into so many
+pounds of incompetent irritability; _so_ exacting about trifles, so
+fidgetty about catching the mail, and so careless of the health of the
+uninteresting majority. There was one man I knew down in a village, and
+he fell in love with a pretty girl--they mostly do that--but she would
+have nothing to say to him; and after every rejected proposal he went
+straight home and made a three-legged stool (he was a carpenter by
+trade, or perhaps it might have affected him differently). He was what
+one might call an importunate man, for he proposed nineteen times in
+all, and nineteen three-legged stools stood as silent witnesses of his
+importunity. He changed houses after the twelfth, for he found a sad joy
+in contemplating his handiwork as he sat at his lonely meals, and his
+first sitting-room was only twelve feet by eight. Finally, either
+because of his importunity, or because she disliked the thought that the
+wordless witnesses might fall into unsympathetic hands, the girl married
+the man, and scrubbed the stools nicely with soap and sand, and grew
+quite fond of them. And only once did she regret her surrender; and that
+was when it flashed across her one day that twenty would have been a
+prettier number: but she stifled that pain as years went on, and grew
+happy. Then there was Dante's love for Beatrice, which caused him to sit
+down and write such a lot. Most remarkable persons seem to have produced
+something rather excellent as the outcome of their love. I know a
+naturally lazy and slightly dingy boy who endured a nice clean collar
+every day, and it cut his neck, and his soul abhorred it, for he told me
+so; and he spent from seventy-five to ninety minutes over his toilet
+every morning, while he loved, and he knew he could dress in four
+minutes and a quarter, for he had done it often. Love was a great
+beautifier. In this case I must admit that the lover suffered more than
+we outsiders, except that he became irritable in his cleanliness. Love
+should not be scorned, even if it is real and sometimes uncomfortably
+practical. It is very beautiful, and lovers make a pretty sight. What I
+protest is, that all creatures should be lovers--or _none_. It is the
+half-and-half state of the world which is irksome.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Morley Roberts hopes Love will some day be a pleasing
+reality]
+
+Ah, my gentle cocksure friends, how well you all know Love, and how
+ready you are to say what it is, to cut it up, to carve it, to classify
+it, and generally to spread it out. We live in a world of lies, and
+conventions, the dead leavings of an ignorant past, bind us still. Some
+day, perhaps, when men and women are free, Love will be a pleasing
+reality. It can never be so in the majority of cases so long as we play
+at make-believe, and teach nothing that we have learned. The good man
+won't teach his sons; he leaves them to learn in the gutter. The good
+woman keeps her daughters ignorant. As it stands it is an evil to love
+anyone over-much. And when we love we love over-much, for Love has been
+repressed till it has got savage in the race. "La privation radicale
+d'une chose cree lexees." All the trouble comes from this--that we men
+have partially created women. But Nature had something to do with her
+compounding. That is, perhaps, a pity from the social point of view. For
+Nature can't be nice and comfortable. She is only kind when we go her
+way. Let us remember that Love is the foundation of the world. The very
+protoplasmic cells from which we sprang could love. The time will come,
+perhaps, when, having chipped away the lies and faced the truth, we
+shall find reality a thousand times more pleasing than any fiction. Love
+is something real and wonderful, and in a natural world we shall have
+passed through the blood-splashed gates of Passion and be calm. Now Love
+is tortured, for we love ignorantly. We are like shipwrecked folk on
+some strange land--we know not the fruits of the trees of it. We learn
+the poisons by experiment, and we let others learn. This is Love the
+Fiction. But some day when we awake we shall know what we now dream, and
+Love will be always the most precious flower that grows in the garden of
+the soul. It has the subtle fragrance of the heaven that is our own if
+we walk bravely in the world, desiring truth. Under its influence we
+discover ourselves. We build ships for new voyages, and burst into
+unknown waters with our Viking shields of victory ablaze in the morning
+sun. The air is sharp and keen, not foetid with poisonous lies; the
+waters are blue and beautiful; there are shining shores about us, and
+marvels of a new nature on every hand. We who were in the night, and of
+it, become vivid with the sun. Our atheism banishes the worshipped gods
+of evil that are no more extant in our dogmatic creed of joy. For Truth
+and Beauty have guided us hand in hand, and all they ask of us is to
+throw away the Law of Lies and to acknowledge that the two are one.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Zangwill reviews the evidence.]
+
+The traces left by Love in life are so numerous and diverse that I am
+almost tempted to the hypothesis that it really exists. There seems to
+be no other way of accounting for the facts. When you start learning a
+new language you always find yourself confronted with the verb "to
+love"--invariably the normal type of the first conjugation. In every
+language on earth the student may be heard declaring, with more zeal
+than discretion, that he and you and they and every other person,
+singular or plural, have loved, and do love, and will love. "To love" is
+the model verb; expressing the archetype of activity. Once you can love
+grammatically there is a world of things you may do without stumbling.
+For, strange to say, "to love," which in real life is associated with so
+much that is bizarre and violent, is always "regular" in grammar, and
+this without barring accidence of any kind. For ancient and modern
+tongues tell the same tale--from Hebrew to street-Arabic, from Greek to
+the elephantine language that was "made in Germany." Not only is "to
+love" deficient in no language (as _home_ is deficient in French, and
+_Geist_ in English), but it is never even "defective." No mood or tense
+is ever wanting--a proof of how it has been conjugated in every mood and
+tense of life, in association with every variety of proper and improper
+noun, and every pronoun at all personal. Not merely have people loved
+unconditionally in every language, but there is none in which they would
+not have loved, or might not have loved, had circumstances permitted;
+none in which they have not been loved, or (for hope springs eternal in
+the human breast) have been about to be loved. Even woman has an Active
+Voice in the matter; indeed, "to love" is so perfect that, compared with
+it, "to marry" is quite irregular. For, while "to love" is sufficient
+for both sexes, directly you get to marriage you find in some languages
+that division has crept in, and that there is one word for the use of
+ladies and another for gentlemen only. Turning from the evidence
+enshrined in language to the records of history, the same truth meets us
+at any date we appoint. Everywhere "'Tis love that makes the world go
+round," though more especially in ball-rooms. It is awful to think what
+would have happened if Eve had not accepted Adam. What could have
+attracted her if it was not love? Surely not his money, nor his family.
+For these she couldn't have cared a fig-leaf. Unfortunately, the
+daughters of Eve have not always taken after their mother. The
+statistics of crime and insanity testify eloquently to the reality of
+love, arithmetic teaching the same lesson as history and grammar.
+Consider, too, the piles of love at Mudie's! A million story-tellers in
+all periods and at all places cannot have told all stories, though they
+have all, alas! told the same story. They must have had mole-hills for
+their mountains, if not straw for their bricks. There are those who,
+with Bacon, consider love a variety of insanity; but it is more often
+merely a form of misunderstanding. When the misunderstanding is mutual,
+it may even lead to marriage. As a rule Beauty begets man's love, Power
+woman's. At least, so women tell me. But then, I am not beautiful. It
+must be said for the man that every lover is a species of Platonist--he
+identifies the Beautiful with the Good and the True. The woman's
+admiration has less of the ethical quality; she is dazzled, and too
+often feels, "If he be but true to me, what care I how false he be." The
+Romantic Love of the poets and novelists was of late birth; the savage
+and many civilisations knew it not, and philosophers explain that it
+could not be developed till Roman Law had developed the conception of
+Marriage as a Contract. Even to this day it is as rare as large paper
+editions of the books about it. Roughly speaking, I should say it would
+spring up here and there among all classes of the population, except
+poets and novelists. Romantic Love is the rose Evolution has grown on
+earthly soil. _Floreat!_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Burgin thinks it all depends on the people who love.]
+
+One morning the average man gets up, lights his pipe, roams round his
+rooms in all the ease of unshaven countenance and dressing-gown-clad
+form. Then he goes out, and meets _her_. There may be a hundred women in
+the room, or park, or tennis ground, wherever the tragedy (Love is a
+tragedy) commences. When the lights are low he comes back, and is low
+also. Wonders how men can be such brutes as to want dinner; thinks his
+life has been misspent; that he is unworthy to touch her hand; that he
+has wallowed in the fleshpots, and here is a way out of them. And if the
+man's nature be noble and sweet and true; if he has hitherto drifted
+adown the stream of circumstance because his fellows have also drifted;
+then, with the deepening tides of his passion, the old spirit of
+knight-errantry descends upon him with its mystic mantle of white
+samite. And slowly out of this deepening torrent of bewildered impulse
+and devotion is born a new man--a man with a soul--a man who can dare
+all things, do all things, endure all things, for the sake of the woman
+he loves. At the baptism of her touch he becomes whole, and shapes his
+life to noble ends. Even if he can't marry her, he is the better for his
+passion. Such a love endures until the leaves of the Judgment Book
+unroll; for it laughs to scorn the pitiful fools who boast of
+infidelity, the "male hogs in armour," as Kingsley calls them, who look
+upon women as toys, the sport of an idle moment, rather than the
+spiritual force which leavens the world, and makes it an endurable and
+joyous dwelling-place.
+
+[Sidenote: And on the woman loved.]
+
+Of course, I was speaking of good women. I once heard a story about a
+bad woman--a woman of the world, who was very much amused at being taken
+seriously by a boy who loved her. "Tell me all about it," she would say
+to him. "Explain what you feel, why you love me, why you believe in me.
+Don't you see I'm courted and admired--a social force--that men flock
+round me everywhere I go?" "Oh, yes," said the boy, "I see all that. But
+you're an angel of goodness, and can't help men liking you. If I lost
+faith in you, I'd kill myself." "Ah," she rejoined, "that's what you all
+say. You would doubt me, and live on." Then, one afternoon, he had good
+cause to doubt, inasmuch as her engagement to another man was announced.
+That evening she received a note from him: "Good-bye. If I lived on, I
+might doubt; it's better to die and--believe!" They told her of the--the
+accident that night, and she wrote a touching little paragraph about it
+for the Society papers before dining out.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Gribble generaliseth confidently.]
+
+In a sense, of course, Love is necessarily a fiction, whether pleasing
+or otherwise; for illusion is of the essence of it. The lover, in fact,
+is like the artist who sees things through a temperament, and, by
+eliminating the irrelevant, builds up the ideal on the foundation of the
+real. Tityrus sees more in Amaryllis than his brother shepherds see,
+just as Mr. Whistler sees more in a November fog than is visible to the
+eye of the casual wayfarer who gets lost in it, and mingles profanity
+with his coughs, yet, granting this, the reality and completeness of the
+illusion does not admit of doubt. On no alternative hypothesis can the
+great majority of marriages be explained. If commonplace people saw each
+other as others see them, surely they would remain single all their
+lives. Yet most people are commonplace, and most people marry. The
+reality--the controlling over-mastering reality--of Love has to be
+assumed to make their behaviour intelligible.
+
+[Sidenote: Having hasted from a wedding for the purpose.]
+
+This point struck me forcibly the last time I was present at a wedding.
+It was a Jewish wedding, celebrated at the little synagogue behind the
+Haymarket. I had no acquaintance with anyone concerned in the ceremony,
+but had dropped in quite casually, having heard that Jewish weddings
+were picturesque. The one thing that impressed me more than anything
+else was the decided undesirability of both the bridegroom and the
+bride. That the bride was not comely goes for little. But her forehead
+indicated a limited range and low ideals; the corners of her mouth spoke
+of an irritable temper; her bearing was vulgar; her voice had a twang
+that made one long to take her by the shoulders and shake her violently.
+She was also escorted by gaudy female relatives, by looking at whom one
+could anticipate the awful possibilities of her maturity. As for the
+bridegroom, he was a Hebrew of the florid type. His waistcoat was
+protuberant; he had a red face with red whiskers sprawling all over it;
+he wore flash jewellery; his hair shone with pomatum; there was that in
+his bearing which indicated that he followed some sordid calling, such
+as pawnbroking, or the backing of horses on commission. Yet one could
+see that these two unattractive persons were really attracted by each
+other. A great and beautiful miracle had been performed; and the power
+which had performed it was that Love in which some profess to
+disbelieve.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: Frank Mathew displays his Ignorance.]
+
+Ignorance--says some wiseacre--is the mother of eloquence, and I take it
+that the less one knows of Love the easier it is to write of it. I side
+with those who hold that the Love described by poets and other wordy
+people is mainly fanciful, a flattering picture, that the best school
+for such writing is an unhappy affection, and that no man can want
+better luck than to have his heart broken, and so be made proof against
+lovesickness. An unrequited love runs no risk of being dulled by the
+prose of life. A man so fortunate as to be jilted or rejected finds his
+Beloved remaining beautiful and young to him when her husband sees her
+an unwieldy and wearisome old woman. And when at times he grows
+sentimental--a bachelor's privilege--he can feel again the old hopes
+that he never found false, and see the old perfections that were never
+disproved. He has a life-companion who comes only when she is wanted,
+and then with a "smile on her face and a rose in her hair," whose voice
+is always gentle, to whom wrinkles are not necessary and bills are
+not known.
+
+[Sidenote: And praises ugliness.]
+
+I am one of those who prefer the luckless adorers in novels to the
+conquering heroes; and hold that the quality an ideal lover needs most
+is ugliness, so that he may honour beauty the more. Once I knew a boy
+who was uglier than sin, and who wrote a story--in a sprawling hand and
+on ruled paper--a wonderful story, telling how an unlovely but admirable
+Knight, worshipping a Princess, rode out to win her by great deeds, and
+how when he came back triumphant, the sight of her brought his
+unworthiness home to him so that he dared not claim her. And I knew
+another boy who was good-looking, and wrote a story (during study-time,
+of course, and by stealth) about a handsome hero who went to Court in
+fine clothes, and was worshipped by all the girls. I think now that he
+was the manlier, but that the first would have made the more devout
+lover. But the drawback of luckless adorers is that their constancy has
+not been tried by the ordeal of success. Many a fellow who lived loyal
+and heart-broken would have made an unfaithful husband.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Sidenote: 'Q.' is surprised at his sister.]
+
+Love, no doubt, is a subject of popular interest, but a man is always
+staggered to find his sister holding an opinion upon it. If I remember
+rightly, in the days when Lilian Quiller Couch (then aged seven) did me
+the honour of playing Juliet to my Romeo, the interest was mainly
+acrobatic, Romeo descending the gardener's ladder head-foremost, while
+Juliet tilted her body as far over the nursery window-sill as she could
+manage without breaking her neck. We "cut" the love speeches. Two years
+later, indeed, my sister schemed to marry me to our common governess.
+There was no love on my side; so she turned over the Prayer-book, hoping
+to find "A man may not marry his governess" in the table of Forbidden
+Degrees. Such a prohibition (she well knew) would be a trumpet-call to
+my native spirit of disobedience. But I am convinced that even then the
+nature of true affection did not enter into her calculations. She merely
+counted on my marital influence to end or mend the French irregular
+verbs. I am delighted that, in these later days, she sees Love to be a
+"practical reality." For my part, I want a definition. Popular custom
+bestows the name of Love on a green sickness which is in fact a part of
+Nature's wise economy. I will expound. Almost all young men, say between
+the ages of nineteen and twenty-five, incline to consume much meat and
+do next to no work. Were there no corrective, it is clear that in a few
+years the face of the earth would be eaten bare as by locusts. But at
+this season Nature by the simplest stroke--the flush of a commonplace
+cheek, the warm touch of a commonplace hand--in a twinkling redresses
+the balance. Forthwith the ideal devourer of crops and herbs not only
+loses his appetite, but arising, smacks the earth with a hoe till the
+clods fly and the fields laugh with harvest. Thereon he mops his
+steaming brow, bedecks him with a bunch of white ribbons, and jogs
+jovially to church arm in arm with the pretty cause of all this
+beneficent disturbance. And the spectacle is mighty taking and
+commendable; but you'll excuse me for holding that it is not Love. It
+bears about the same relation to Love that Bumble-puppy bears to good
+whist. Among the eccentricities that make up the Average Man I find none
+more diverting than his complacent belief that he is, or has been, or
+will certainly some day be, in love. As a matter of fact, the capacity
+to love belongs to one man or woman in ten thousand. Listen to
+Matthew Arnold:
+
+    "But in the world I learnt, what there
+      Thou wilt too surely one day prove,
+    That will, that energy, though rare,
+      Are yet far, far less rare than love."
+
+I go further and believe it rarer even than Genius. Indeed, the capacity
+to love, is a specialised form of genius. You understand that I am not
+commending it. Its possessors are often disreputable and almost always
+unhappy. Their recompense is that they, and they only, have seen the
+splendours of the passion, and vibrated to the shaking inner music of
+the sheep-boy's pipe.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII.,
+February 1893, by Various
+
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+
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+
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