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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899,
+No. 2, 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 Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: August 17, 2009 [EBook #29716]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HARMSWORTH MAGAZINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jonathan Ingram and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "WILL HE COME?"
+
+_From the Painting by Marcus Stone, R.A._
+
+_By Permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., London, W._]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The
+HARMSWORTH
+
+MONTHLY PICTORIAL
+
+MAGAZINE.
+
+
+VOLUME 1, 1898-9. No 2.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My travelling companion
+
+A COMPLETE STORY
+
+BY CATHERINE CHILDAR.
+
+_Illustrated by Fred. Pegram._
+
+
+It was a miserable day in November--the sort of day when, according to
+the French, splenetic Englishmen flock in such crowds to the Thames, in
+order to drown themselves, that there is not standing room on the
+bridges. I was sitting over the fire in our dingy dining-room; for
+personally I find that element more cheering than water under depressing
+circumstances.
+
+My eldest sister burst upon me with a letter in her hand: "Here, Tommy,
+is an invitation for you," she cried.
+
+My name is Charlotte; but I am generally called Tommy by my
+unappreciative family, who mendaciously declare it is derived from the
+expression "tom-boy."
+
+"Oh, bother invitations," was my polite answer. "I don't want to go
+anywhere. Why, it's a letter from Mysie Sutherland! How came you to open
+it?"
+
+"If she will address it to Miss Cornwall, of course I shall open it.
+I've read it, too--it's very nice for you."
+
+"Awfully jolly," put in Dick, who had followed my sister Lucy into the
+room.
+
+"Oh, I don't want to go a bit."
+
+"Well, then, you'll just have to. It's disgraceful of you, Tom; why, you
+may never get such a chance again. You'll meet lots of people in a big
+country house like that, and perhaps--who knows?--marry a rich
+Scotchman."
+
+"I declare, Lucy, you are quite disgusting with your perpetual talk
+about marrying! Why, I shan't have the time to get fond of anyone!"
+
+"You're asked for a month; and if that isn't time enough, I don't know
+what is."
+
+"Time enough to be married and divorced again," cried Dick.
+
+"But I shan't come to that; and besides, I have no clothes fit to be
+seen."
+
+"Oh, never mind; I'll lend you my white silk for evenings." And my
+sister, who was always good-natured, carried me off to ransack her
+wardrobe.
+
+There was no help for it; remonstrances were useless; I had to go. The
+invitation was from a schoolfellow of mine, Mysie Sutherland by name.
+She lived near Inverness, and asked me to go and stay a month with her.
+The idea filled me with apprehension. She was the only daughter, and
+lived in style in a large house: I was one of a numerous family herded
+together in a small house in Harley Street. Her father was a wealthy
+landed proprietor: mine was a struggling doctor. Altogether I was shy
+and nervous, and would much have preferred to remain at home; but Lucy
+and Dick had decided I should go, and I knew there was no appeal.
+
+A few days afterwards I was at Euston Station, on my way to the North.
+My mother and sister had come to see me off, and stood at the carriage
+door, passing remarks upon the people.
+
+A knot of young men standing by the bookstall attracted our attention,
+from their constant bursts of laughter. There was evidently a good joke
+amongst them, and they were enjoying it to the full. The time was up,
+and the train was just about to start, when one of them rushed forward
+and jumped into my carriage. The guard slammed the door, his friends
+threw some papers after him in at the window, and we were off.
+
+For some time we sat silent, then a question about the window or the
+weather opened a conversation. My companion was a good-looking young
+man, with thick, curly brown hair. He had neither moustache, beard, nor
+whiskers, which gave him a boyish appearance, and made me think he might
+be an actor. His eyes were peculiar--they were kind eyes, honest eyes,
+laughing eyes, but there was something about them that I could not make
+out. As he sat nearly opposite to me I had every opportunity of studying
+them, but not till we had travelled at least a hundred miles did I
+discover what it was. They were not quite alike. There was no cast--not
+the slightest suspicion of a squint--no, nothing of that kind; only they
+were not a pair--one eye was hazel, the other grey; and yet the
+difference in colour varied so much that sometimes I thought I must be
+mistaken. At one moment, in the sunlight, the difference was striking;
+but when next I saw them, in shadow, the difference was hardly
+perceptible. Yet there it was, and it gave a peculiar but agreeable
+expression to the face.
+
+He was extremely kind and pleasant, and I must own that when an old
+gentleman got in at Rugby I was sorry our _tete-a-tete_ should be
+interrupted. We had been talking over all sorts of subjects, from
+pitch-and-toss to manslaughter, exclusive--for those two subjects had
+not yet been discussed. (I know it is a very vulgar expression, and I
+ought not to use it, only I am always with the boys and I am a "Tommy"
+myself.)
+
+The old gentleman, however, did not trouble us long, for he had made a
+mistake and had got into the wrong train. He hobbled out much quicker
+than he got in, and my friend the actor was most polite in helping him
+and handing out his parcels.
+
+When that was over we settled down again comfortably. By the time we got
+to Crewe we were like old friends, and chatted together over my
+sandwiches, or at least while I ate them, for he had his lunch at
+Preston, as Bradshaw informed us the passengers were expected to do.
+
+I fully expected we should get an influx of companions here, for the
+platform was crowded, but my carriage door was locked and I noticed the
+guard hovering near; he seemed particularly anxious to direct people
+elsewhere. Perhaps he thought that as I was an unprotected female I
+should prefer to be quite alone, and I was busy concocting a little
+speech about "a gentleman coming back," in case he should refuse to let
+my actor come into the carriage. It was quite unnecessary, however, as
+directly he caught sight of him in the distance he opened the door with
+an obsequious bow. I began to wonder if he knew him. Perhaps he was a
+celebrated actor, and when actors are celebrated nowadays they are
+celebrated indeed. I felt quite elated at having anything to do with a
+member of such a fashionable profession, and looked at him with more
+interest than ever.
+
+I was dreadfully sorry when we reached Carlisle, for there my journey
+ended--for that day at least. I was to spend the night with a maiden
+aunt, living near Carlisle, and go on to Inverness the next morning. The
+station came in sight only too soon. My companion had been telling me
+some mountaineering experiences which had been called to his mind by the
+scenery we had been passing through, and the train pulled up in the
+middle of a most exciting story. I had to leave him clinging to a bare
+wall of rock in a blinding snowstorm, while I went off to spend the
+night with my Aunt Maria. There was no help for it. My aunt, a thin,
+quaint old lady, stood waiting on the platform. She wore a huge
+coalscuttle bonnet, which in these days of smaller head coverings looked
+strange and out of proportion, a short imitation sealskin jacket, and a
+perfectly plain skirt, which exposed her slender build in the most
+uncompromising (or perhaps I ought to say compromising) fashion.
+
+I recognised her at once, and felt secretly ashamed of my poor relation.
+It was horrid of me, and I hated myself for it; but at that moment I
+really did feel ashamed of her appearance, and actually comforted myself
+with the thought that my companion had seen my fashionable and befrilled
+sister at Euston.
+
+I was pleased to find that he was as sorry to part as I was. He broke
+off his story with an exclamation of disgust. "I thought you said you
+were going to Scotland," he cried.
+
+"So I am," I answered; "but not till to-morrow."
+
+Here Aunt Maria came forward. I had to get out and be folded in the
+embrace of two bony arms. My companion (I had not found out his name)
+had, in the meantime, put my bag and my bundles upon the platform, and
+was standing, cap in hand, bowing a farewell.
+
+He looked so pleasant, and Aunt Maria so forbidding, that my heart sank
+at the thought that he was going away, and that in all probability I
+should never see him again. Involuntarily I stretched out my hand to bid
+him a more friendly good-bye. Perhaps it was forward of me--Lucy always
+says I have such queer manners--but really I could not help it; I felt
+so sorry that our pleasant acquaintance should come to an end so soon.
+
+[Illustration: "PERHAPS IT WAS FORWARD OF ME."]
+
+Mysie Sutherland met me at Inverness. A pompous-looking footman came
+forward and condescended to carry my bag; one porter took my box to a
+cart in waiting, another put my rugs into the carriage, and Mysie and I
+went off at the rate of ten miles an hour. The pleasure of meeting her,
+the speed of the motion, the comfort of the well-stuffed cushions, quite
+raised my spirits. How different from trudging along with cross Aunt
+Maria!
+
+We soon arrived at Strathnasheen House, and a very fine place it looked
+as we drove through the park. I began to get a little nervous again at
+the thought of meeting strangers; but Mysie comforted me, saying that
+her mother was just an angel, and her father very nice when you got used
+to him. As I had never been intimate with angels, and hardly expected to
+be there long enough to get used to an old man's peculiarities, I still
+trembled.
+
+[Illustration: "I WALKED IN TO DINNER ON SIR ALEXANDER'S ARM."]
+
+We had reached the porch. The pompous footman got down and executed a
+fantasia with elaborate "froisture" upon the knocker. The butler, who
+must have been waiting in the hall in a stunned condition till the
+performance was over, flung open the door, and I entered Strathnasheen
+House. The pompous one clung to my bag as a dainty trifle he could
+carry without loss of dignity. The butler stood motionless, content with
+"existing beautifully," the more so as a second footman, with powdered
+hair, plush breeches, and unimpeachable calves, rushed forward to our
+assistance. He was such a magnificent and unexpected apparition that I
+gazed in wonder, and eventually in horror.
+
+[Illustration: THE NEW FOOTMAN SPILT THE GRAVY OVER MY WHITE SILK
+DRESS.]
+
+It was my travelling companion of the day before!
+
+I never knew how I got through the dreaded introduction to Sir Alexander
+and Lady Sutherland. I have a faint recollection of going up to a tall
+old man in spectacles, and answering his polite inquiries in a dazed,
+bewildered way. I recollect, also, that Lady Sutherland made an
+impression of softness and warmth, and that she said something about
+"changing my feet," which I looked upon as a mysterious and
+uncomplimentary suggestion.
+
+Then Mysie carried me off to show me my room. There was a blazing fire,
+which was very inviting, and I was glad to plead fatigue and sit down
+till dinner.
+
+Tired I certainly was, but that was nothing to my mental condition. My
+hero a footman! What would Lucy say to me? And Dick? Well, they always
+said I had low tastes, and they turned out to be right.
+
+Then I tried to persuade myself that I had been mistaken--that this was
+another man; but I soon gave that up, for I knew all the while it was a
+mere subterfuge. I had recognised him at once--his eyes alone were
+sufficient; but, in fact, I knew all his features perfectly. Had I not
+sat opposite them all day in the railway carriage, and thought of them
+half the night, as I tossed upon Aunt Maria's hard, uncomfortable bed? I
+grew hot from head to foot as I remembered it.
+
+It is all very well to say class distinctions are rubbish and that all
+men are equal, but I could not feel flattered to find my Admirable
+Crichton in plush breeches. The more I thought of it the more wonderful
+it appeared. When I got over the first shock my brain began to steady
+itself. I was sure of two things: first and foremost, that the footman
+was the man I had travelled with; secondly, that the man I had
+travelled with was a gentleman; but how to reconcile the two facts I did
+not know.
+
+When I went down into the drawing-room I found a large party assembled
+for dinner: a number of men, mostly young, standing about in groups.
+These were some neighbours whom Sir Alexander had invited to shoot and
+dine. Lady Sutherland, Mysie, and myself were the only ladies.
+
+After a painful indecision upstairs I had come to the conclusion that I
+must in some way acknowledge the existence of my travelling companion.
+After our friendly intercourse yesterday it would be snobbish to pretend
+I had never seen him before. And yet I was in agony to know how to do
+it. Young, shy, staying for the first time in a large country house,
+among people higher than myself in the social scale, it was not
+agreeable to flaunt an acquaintance with one of the men-servants. Still,
+it had to be done, if only for the sake of my own self-respect.
+
+And this was the man before whom I had blushed for poor Aunt Maria
+yesterday! Only yesterday? It seemed a week ago!
+
+So as I walked in to dinner on Sir Alexander's arm and passed close to
+my footman, I gave him a slight--a very slight--inclination of the head,
+it could hardly be called a bow.
+
+I devoutly hoped nobody behind detected it, but I could see it was not
+lost upon my footman. He was equal to the occasion. The only
+acknowledgment he made was to put a still more respectful deference into
+the curve of his respectful, deferential back. I breathed more freely as
+I sat down in my place on Sir Alexander's right.
+
+[Illustration: "'ARE ALL YOUR FOOTMEN CALLED PETER?' I ASKED."]
+
+We were eleven to dinner, and a little discussion ensued as to who
+should sit near my friend Mysie. I noticed a good deal of man[oe]uvring
+on the part of a dark, middle-aged man to sit there. Mysie saw it too,
+and seemed pleased when he succeeded. As he drew in his chair to the
+table he gave her a glance which spoke volumes. I was quite excited. I
+wondered if anyone else had noticed it. I was certain there was
+something between those two.
+
+This was the only interest I had. My host was absorbed in the carving
+and in the details of the day's sport; my other neighbour was evidently
+too hungry to waste his time in talking to a chit of a girl like myself.
+It was a dull and tedious meal. Lady Sutherland was gentle and polite,
+but not talkative. Mysie was too absorbed in her neighbour. As they were
+on the opposite side of the table I could catch a word now and then,
+though they spoke in an undertone.
+
+The number of courses, the number of strangers, the number of servants,
+all confused and bewildered me; the only thing I had grasped was that my
+footman friend was called Peter. It was an ugly name and most
+unsuitable. Indeed, he appeared to think so himself, for he seldom
+answered to it. I cannot say my friend shone as a waiter; he was far
+more in his element relating mountaineering adventures. I suddenly
+recollected his story of having spent the night on a ledge of rock in a
+snowstorm. How did a footman get into such a predicament? One can only
+picture him carrying a picnic basket in the tamest of scenery.
+
+The only other people that interested me besides my travelling companion
+were Mysie and her friend. I did not wish to act the spy, but a sort of
+fascination compelled me to look and listen. The gentleman was immensely
+_empresse_, yet nobody seemed to notice it but myself.
+
+"Have you heard from your cousin Fred?" I heard him say.
+
+"Oh, no, we never hear anything of him now. I'm afraid he'll never do
+any good. A rolling stone, you know----"
+
+"I thought he was such a favourite of yours," said Mysie's dark admirer,
+with a world of meaning in his eyes and voice.
+
+She was conscious of it, and blushed deeply as she replied, "You always
+made that mistake. I liked him when we were children; he was my cousin
+and I saw a good deal of him, but now----"
+
+Here my attention was suddenly called to myself, and I heard no more. A
+pint of rich brown gravy was trickling down over my white silk dress!
+_Mine_, do I say? Far worse--_Lucy's_ white silk dress!
+
+[Illustration: "PETER CAME FORWARD WITH THE COLONEL'S GREATCOAT IN HIS
+HAND."]
+
+My dismay was too great for words. Besides, all words were idle, and I
+knew the culprit was my friend the new footman, who would be scolded
+enough as it was. Sir Alexander glared furiously at him and rapped out
+an oath, while I mopped up the thick greasy fluid with my table-napkin
+and murmured sweetly that it did not signify in the least.
+
+I was glad when the dinner, with its innumerable courses and
+interminable dessert, came at last to an end and we ladies were alone in
+the drawing-room.
+
+"What do you think of the new importation, mamma?" said Mysie.
+
+I blushed scarlet. For one brief moment I actually thought she was
+alluding to me, but I soon found out it was Peter she was talking about.
+That did not make me feel any cooler; if possible, I grew redder and
+redder.
+
+Lady Sutherland considered a few minutes in a fat, comfortable sort of
+way. Then she said, slowly, "Well, dear, he puzzles me a good deal. I
+cannot think he has been well trained. He does not wait so cleverly as
+the last Peter. Didn't he spill something on your dress, my dear?"
+turning to me.
+
+"Oh, that's nothing," I replied, eagerly, twisting my skirt still more
+out of shape to hide the huge brown spot. To change the conversation I
+went on, "Are all your footmen called Peter?"
+
+[Illustration: "COLONEL WITHERINGTON WITH HIS HAND ON PETERS SHOULDER,
+THE PAIR SHAKING WITH LAUGHTER."]
+
+"Yes, at least the second one is." It was Lucy who answered me. "Our
+first footman is always called Charles and the second one Peter. Papa
+made that arrangement because he got so mixed when we changed servants.
+After all, mamma, the new Peter may improve. He can hardly have got over
+his journey yet."
+
+I racked my brain for a change of subject. I was so afraid it should
+come out that we had travelled together. I was too young to see the
+amusing side of it, and was in terror lest Peter himself should reveal
+it to the kitchen. With more abruptness than was polite I turned to
+Mysie.
+
+"Who was that dark man who sat by you at dinner?" I asked.
+
+She looked a little embarrassed as she replied, "A near neighbour of
+ours, Colonel Witherington. We have known him for years and are great
+friends; I always like to talk to him, he has so much to say."
+
+"Methinks the lady doth explain too much," was my inward comment. An owl
+could see that she was in love with him. (It is true that the owl is the
+bird of wisdom.)
+
+After a short interval the gentlemen joined us. They were all evidently
+anxious to get home, and ordered their dogcarts (or whatever they had)
+as soon as they decently could. Colonel Witherington was the last to go.
+He had lingered so long that the butler and the pompous Charles had
+retired, leaving only Peter standing in the hall.
+
+"Now don't come out of the warm room, Sir Alexander," said Colonel
+Witherington; "I shall manage very well--your man is out here."
+
+Peter now came forward with the Colonel's greatcoat in his hand; and the
+drawing-room door was shut.
+
+Suddenly a peal of laughter was heard, long, loud, and irresistible.
+Then another voice joined in--the merriment seemed uncontrollable. The
+Sutherland family looked at each other in angry astonishment. Could it
+be the new footman indulging in this unseemly mirth? Impossible!
+
+Sir Alexander opened the door into the hall; we followed him with one
+accord. What a sight met our eyes! There stood Colonel Witherington,
+with his hand on Peter's shoulder, the pair of them shaking with
+laughter.
+
+"Go back, my dears," said Sir Alexander, with a wave of his hand towards
+us. With the true instinct of the British pater-familias, he was eager
+to send his women-kind away from anything unusual or improper; but
+Mysie's curiosity was too great--besides, Colonel Witherington was now
+dragging the footman forward.
+
+[Illustration: "'COME AND EXPLAIN YOURSELF, YOU RASCAL.'"]
+
+"Come and explain yourself, you rascal. Why, Mysie"--the name slipped
+out unawares--"don't you see who it is? It's your cousin Fred."
+
+An explosion of dynamite would have less upset the worthy baronet than
+this announcement. He stood speechless and staring; Lady Sutherland
+looked annoyed and incredulous. As for me, I cannot describe my
+feelings; I was in a perfect whirl. Mysie was the first to recover from
+her astonishment. She joined in the laughter of the two men.
+
+"How like you, Fred, to do a thing like that! Do come and tell us all
+about it. I thought you were at the Cape. Still, that loud guffaw
+sounded familiar. But how different you look without your moustache--and
+your hair, too! Well, I should never have known you!"
+
+"The want of a moustache made me recognise him," said Colonel
+Witherington. "He was just such a beardless boy when he joined the
+regiment. I noticed the likeness at dinner; and when I got a chance of
+looking into his eyes I was sure----"
+
+"I call it most ungentlemanlike--most unpardonable," began Sir
+Alexander, who had now recovered his speech.
+
+"I did it for a lark," said the supposed footman, in a hearty, cheerful
+voice. "I wondered what you really thought of the good-for-nothing
+nephew, and how you would receive him if he returned like the prodigal
+son in the parable."
+
+"It was hardly fair on us, Fred," said Lady Sutherland's gentle voice.
+
+"Perhaps not, dear Aunt Margaret; but _you_ would never be found
+wanting." Mysie stepped back a few paces and took hold of my arm; her
+cousin went on: "Talk of Her Majesty's uniform, these togs beat all. I
+never was so gorgeously attired in my life."
+
+Sir Alexander was too angry to endure this any longer. He marched off
+to the smoking-room, and tried to soothe his nerves with the fragrant
+weed. The rest of us went back into the drawing-room.
+
+"Do lock the door," whispered Mysie to Colonel Witherington; "the
+servants will be coming in."
+
+Fred Sutherland (to give him his right name) then explained his strange
+conduct. He had been obliged to leave his regiment, and had, as they
+knew, gone to the Cape. Here he fell in with an old school-fellow who
+was going to the diamond fields. They joined forces, bought a claim for
+a mere song, and set to work. To the surprise of the whole camp they
+were successful. In the claim, which had been abandoned months before as
+"no go," they came upon one of the largest stones that had ever been
+turned up in South Africa.
+
+Fred Sutherland turned his share into cash directly and started for
+home. "I'm quite a millionaire, I assure you," cried the footman,
+slapping his plush breeches.
+
+It looked so impudent and familiar of him to be sitting among us dressed
+like that, that his aunt could not bear it.
+
+"Do go and take off those dreadful clothes," she said; "I can't think
+what made you do such a thing."
+
+"I haven't done it in vain; I've learned what I wanted to know," he
+said, with a light laugh and a look at Mysie and Colonel Witherington.
+
+A wave of depression came over me. Of course he was in love with his
+cousin and came to see how the land lay.
+
+Poor fellow! Still, he seemed to bear up.
+
+He turned towards me as if expecting an introduction. He did not show
+the slightest sign of ever having met me before. I never was so puzzled
+in my life. What ought I to do?
+
+"This is my school-fellow--Miss Cornwall--but she will prefer to make
+your acquaintance in other attire; won't you, Lofty?"
+
+"I have done so before," said I, summoning up courage and holding out my
+hand. "We travelled together from Euston."
+
+Everything was so astonishing that nobody seemed surprised. I was
+pleased to see the expression which beamed on the footman's face, and to
+feel the cordial grip as we shook hands.
+
+"Now," said Colonel Witherington, "you had better come home with me.
+Nobody need know anything about it. You must manage your father with
+regard to Fred," he whispered to Mysie, "and I will call early again
+to-morrow."
+
+And so ended my little adventure--or rather it did not end here, for
+Fred came back with me when I returned to London. And--well, my
+travelling companion has promised never to leave my side.
+
+[Illustration: "FRED SUTHERLAND THEN EXPLAINED HIS STRANGE CONDUCT."]
+
+[Illustration: VIEW OF THE "COUNTRY" THROUGH WHICH THE RAILWAY RUNS.]
+
+
+
+
+A L10,000 TOY.
+
+COMPLETE WORKING RAILWAY IN A ROOM.
+
+BY ROBERT MACHRAY.
+
+
+The seven beautiful illustrations which appear in this article are taken
+from photographs of what is without doubt one of the mechanical marvels
+of the day. They clearly set forth the most complete, and, at the same
+time, the most costly miniature model railway system in the world.
+
+So perfect, indeed, is this line and its equipment that the first
+cursory glance at these pictures of it will certainly cause the beholder
+to imagine that he is looking at presentments of some portions of the
+London and North-Western Railway or of some other well-known, full-grown
+railway. But his eye, on gazing a little longer at these views, will
+take note of the curious circumstance that the entire system appears to
+be embraced within the four walls of a single room. Having discovered
+this, he will look still more closely, and then he will see other things
+which will immediately excite his interest, and he will forthwith "want
+to know" all about it.
+
+This wonderful railway is owned, controlled, and operated by Mr. Percy
+H. Leigh of Brentwood, Worsley, one of the suburbs of Manchester. This
+gentleman has no professional connection with railroading, but for
+some years past he has amused himself with models of locomotives and
+their practical working. "Some men spend their money on racehorses,
+others on yachts, and so on," says Mr. Leigh, "but this railroad of mine
+is more to my fancy."
+
+I am not permitted to state how much exactly this hobby of Mr. Leigh's
+has cost him, but I am not betraying any confidence when I say that in
+one way and another a sum not far short of ten thousand pounds has been
+spent on his Liliputian line. This large amount may be accounted for by
+the fact that Mr. Leigh was not to be satisfied with anything short of
+perfection in every detail. His instructions to the contractors who
+built and equipped the "road" were that there were to be no "dummies,"
+and that everything was to be made accurately to scale. How faithfully
+and thoroughly Messrs Lucas and Davies, of Farringdon Road, have carried
+out his commands will be evident from the following statement with which
+they have been kind enough to supply me.
+
+The country, if I may so term it, within which the railway runs, is a
+great, oblong, single-storied building, consisting of one chamber,
+ninety feet in length by thirty feet in breadth. It has been added on to
+Mr. Leigh's residence, and was specially constructed with a view to
+giving the line a sufficient range for its successful operation, and
+also to afford it protection from damp and other undesirable effects of
+the weather. The room is provided with a double floor--a wooden one, on
+which stand the trestles supporting the track itself, and, two or three
+feet below it, another of concrete. An even temperature all the year
+round is secured by means of two rows of hot-water pipes. When these
+precautions are considered, it will be seen that this railway system
+probably enjoys the most perfect climate in existence.
+
+The line has not yet been given any comprehensive name. Perhaps it is
+almost too soon for that, for it is hardly more than finished; indeed,
+the goods-engine remains to be delivered by the builders. But it might
+be christened, from the names of the two stations on it, the Oakgreen
+and Beechvale Railway.
+
+First of all, to describe the track. The road-bed is made of pitch pine,
+mounted on sixty-five trestles, three feet from the floor, and the track
+extends to 276 feet, of a double line of rails. Of the rails all
+together there are 1,200 feet; and some idea of what this means may be
+understood from the fact that when they came from Sheffield, where they
+were specially rolled for Mr. Leigh, they formed two solid heaps of
+metal, each as high as a man. The rails are of mild steel; they are
+double-headed, and about an inch in height; some of them are nearly
+twelve feet long. They are fastened down to 2,000 pitch pine sleepers by
+4,000 malleable cast-iron chairs, held in place with hard-wood wedges
+and 16,000 screws. All the fish plates, bolts, and nuts used in joining
+the rails together are exact miniatures of those to be seen on an
+ordinary railway. The track is ballasted with nine hundredweight of
+limestone chips, and the gauge is six inches.
+
+Details which involve a large number of figures are apt to be rather dry
+and tiresome; but in the present case, if frequent reference be made
+from the letterpress to the illustrations, it will be seen with what
+extreme care, and with what extraordinarily minute and even loving
+faithfulness, all the features of a first-class modern railway have been
+reproduced in miniature.
+
+[Illustration: OAKGREEN STATION, WHERE THE LINE STARTS.]
+
+The line starts from Oakgreen, the principal station, where are located
+the offices of the management. In front of the buildings is a platform
+twenty-four feet long, provided with the usual seats and other
+conveniences for passengers, of whom a few may be noticed waiting for
+the express to convey them to their destination. The platform is
+sheltered from the elements by a glass roof, while the gates admitting
+to it are of the regular palisade type. At the further end is a
+passenger foot-bridge of trellis-work covered over; it stands high above
+the line, and is reached by two staircases, and everybody is warned not
+to venture to cross the railway by any other means. At the same time
+there are level crossings for the greatly daring.
+
+[Illustration: BEECHVALE STATION, SHOWING TUNNEL IN THE DISTANCE.]
+
+Behind the station proper is the goods station and siding, forty feet
+long, the goods shed itself being four feet long.
+
+Both of these stations, and indeed the other station and the whole line,
+are beautifully lighted up, when necessary, by electric lamps fitted
+with reflectors. There are in all fifty-eight of these soft, lovely
+lights; and a particularly tall one will be observed in the goods
+station for the purpose of affording sufficient light to that very busy
+portion of the company's undertakings. The lamps are supplied from
+storage batteries placed under the track, and their illuminating
+capacity is enough to light up the whole room without bringing the gas,
+with which it is also fitted up, into requisition.
+
+The electric lamps also serve the purpose of lighting up both the signal
+cabins and the signal posts along the line. There are three of the
+former mounted at the side of the track, and they contain no less than
+twenty-six levers, from which stretch flexible wires and runners to the
+signal posts. The last-named, which are twelve in number, are three feet
+in height, and are fully equipped with semaphores, lamps showing red,
+green, and white, platforms and ladders. Besides these, there are also
+worked from the signal cabins sixteen sets of points, by means of rod
+connections and levers. Every particular with regard to the signalling
+and the shunting has been thought out and executed with the most
+laudable and painstaking thoroughness and accuracy. And these
+arrangements decidedly add a somewhat picturesque element to the line,
+while they also strengthen the effect of reality which is the chief
+impression given by this marvellous railway.
+
+It is, of course, impossible to enumerate every matter of interest
+connected with the line itself, but it must be stated that there have
+been provided two turntables to take the locomotive and tender, and that
+the turntables have four levers for the points, and also that they have
+been furnished with spring buffers; and, further, that a tank, into
+which the boiler can be emptied, has been let into the track.
+
+In the course of the length of the line, the train passes through a long
+cutting, forty feet in extent, and two feet deep. To heighten the
+illusion, the sides of the cutting are covered with grass, and on the
+top of both sides there is a dwarf hedge. This portion of the road
+supplies it with its chief scenic attraction. Some distance from the
+cutting there is a road bridge across the railway, three feet long by
+two feet wide. Before reaching the second station, Beechvale, a long and
+fearsome tunnel has to be negotiated--its actual length is eighteen
+feet. The station-house, platform, and other accessories of Beechvale
+are very similar to those at Oakgreen.
+
+[Illustration: TURNTABLE FOR THE ENGINE AND TENDER.]
+
+The locomotive, with its tender, is five feet long and about eighteen
+inches in height. It is of six-inch gauge, and is an exact duplicate on
+a small scale of an express of the London and North-Western Railway. It
+is a real working locomotive, most exquisitely made. The only points in
+which it differs from its model are such as come from its comparatively
+diminutive size. Thus, its boiler has not the usual number of tubes, it
+has no injector, and steam is got up in it by a charcoal fire, the
+charcoal being kept at a great heat by a "blast."
+
+[Illustration: SNAP-SHOT OF THE TRAIN EN ROUTE.]
+
+The cost of the engine and tender was L320 or a little more, and it was
+made entirely by Mr. Lucas, of Lucas and Davies. It took him nearly nine
+months to complete it, but from this period there would have to be
+deducted a good many hours when he was called away to attend to some
+other piece of business for his firm. And here I may remark that it
+took eighteen months to build the line, five months of which were
+occupied in fitting up the large room already mentioned.
+
+The speed of the train on the straight portions of the line is six miles
+an hour, but it is considerably less on the curves at either end, which
+are twenty-six feet in diameter. The contractors experienced a great
+deal of difficulty in getting the curves exactly right, as the six-inch
+gauge of the railway, no other line being of any assistance in this
+particular, introduced an entirely new problem in railroad construction.
+The engine can travel six times round the entire length of the system
+without its being necessary to renew the charcoal fire.
+
+[Illustration: DEEP CUTTING, FORTY FEET LONG.]
+
+There are both a passenger train and a goods train. The former consists
+of three carriages and a guard's van. One carriage is a first-class
+corridor, a second is a third-class corridor, and the third is a
+composite first-class and third-class carriage. Each of them is fitted
+with the usual upholstered seats found in compartments belonging to
+their classification; there are hat racks and blinds, mirrors and
+lavatories and so forth in every carriage; there are carpets, too, on
+the floors of the first-class. The guard's van has not been neglected,
+but in its dog-boxes and other appointments is a facsimile of the vans
+that go out daily from Euston. As a matter of fact, the whole train is
+panelled and painted throughout in the familiar colours of the London
+and North-Western Railway. The carriages are mounted on bogies, and have
+been completely equipped with carriage springs, grease boxes for the
+axles, spring buffers, draw-bars and screw couplings right and left. The
+two corridor carriages have the proper extending covered ways.
+
+The goods train is quite as remarkable in its way as every other part of
+this railway. It is composed of ten trucks and vans, and has besides a
+guard's brake-van fitted with a screw-down brake of the usual sort.
+There are two high-side trucks, four medium, and two low; two covered-in
+vans and two cattle trucks, and, if a glance be taken at the
+illustration which exhibits the goods train most completely, it will be
+noticed that all of these trucks and vans are loaded with appropriate
+articles of freight--logs of wood, slates, casks of beer, marble, and
+other things, while the two bullock wagons are filled with animals.
+
+All these trucks and vans are fitted with hand lever brakes,
+tarpaulins, chains, hooks, stanchions, and everything necessary for the
+handling of the no doubt enormous goods traffic of the road. They are
+all mounted on carriage springs, and have grease boxes, spring buffers,
+and every other device in use on the London and North-Western
+Railway--from which they have been copied, like everything else on this
+Liliputian line. The greatest railway in the world took a friendly
+interest in the smallest, and supplied it with the drawings and models
+from which it and its rolling stock have been imitated.
+
+[Illustration: THE HEAVY GOODS TRAIN--THE TRUCKS LOADED WITH
+MERCHANDISE.]
+
+One tiny detail I think I must mention in conclusion, and it is that the
+management have thoughtfully provided fourteen hand lamps for the
+service of the line.
+
+In acknowledging my indebtedness to Mr. Leigh, I should like to say that
+he has found in his miniature railway not only a source of continual
+amusement, but also a means of doing good to others, for he has on more
+than one occasion shown it in operation to large gatherings of people,
+who have flocked to see it both on account of the interest naturally
+excited by it, and also for the sake of "sweet charity," the proceeds
+realised from these exhibitions being devoted to some worthy object.
+
+For the photographs which accompany this article we are indebted to Mr.
+J. Ambler, of Manchester.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration: THE VERY SHORT MEMORY of MR. JOSEPH SCORER]
+
+
+
+
+A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE AT THE SEASIDE
+
+BY JOHN OXENHAM.
+
+_Illustrated by H. M. Brock._
+
+
+Could it, after all, be called unique? Hardly, perhaps, in the strict
+sense of the word, since others shared in it. But to us it was, and I
+trust ever will be, a unique experience.
+
+We have generally spent our August holiday at the seaside in apartments,
+and suffered many things in consequence--an uninterrupted succession of
+mixed odours of cooking from early morning till late at night; fleas and
+other insect pests, which seemed to thrive mightily on the powders put
+down for their extermination; landladies afflicted with spasms and
+inordinate thirst, and landladies' cats with unappeasable appetites;
+cramped quarters, of course, which did not afflict one on fine days, but
+on rainy ones became pandemonium; terrible attempts at amateurish
+cooking and service--in which the dining-room's vegetables and tarts got
+mixed up with the drawing-room's vegetables and pies--and slatternly
+maids of all work, who killed on the spot even one's seaside appetite,
+the moment they appeared to set the table.
+
+And so, after mature consideration of ways and means, we decided this
+time to attain to the dignity of a small furnished house--or a cottage,
+at all events--if by any chance such could be found within the limits of
+a moderate purse.
+
+Further consideration fixed on Eastnor as the place where our holiday
+was to be spent.
+
+We had, in the course of twelve years' wanderings, tried most of the
+South and East Coast watering-places, and found most of them a-wanting.
+If the atmosphere was bracing, the beach was shingle. If the beach was
+sandy, the atmosphere was enervating.
+
+Somewhere in our family history a strain of Israelitish blood must have
+got mixed with all the other strains. It probably dates right away back
+to the forty years' wanderers, or even, maybe, as far back as Noah--in
+whose family one can conceive, at one period of its history, almost as
+strong a craving for sand as had again out-cropped in this present
+rising generation of mine.
+
+[Illustration: "'WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU, SIR?'"]
+
+The one thing my youngsters insist on is sand--wet sand with pools, for
+amateur canal-engineering; dry sand for houses and forts, and Canutish,
+wave-repelling castles. Sand, and plenty of it, is their one demand, and
+no holiday is complete without it. When they were very young,
+Broadstairs was all right for a time, and satisfied their inordinate
+cravings; but it became too crowded, and to our family connoisseurs the
+quality of the sand has deteriorated somewhat, and has got too much
+mixed up with mud and buns and paper bags, and other people's babies,
+and so we had to try further afield.
+
+[Illustration: "THE DOOR OPENED, AND A SMALL LAME MAN LOOKED AT ME."]
+
+The Great Sahara would have been just about the very thing for us, but
+on inquiry I found the journey to be a long and trying one, and a trifle
+beyond our means, and the accommodation for visitors somewhat defective.
+
+Eastnor was named to us; we had never tried Eastnor. Was there
+sand?--Yes, any amount. So to Eastnor I journeyed, with a
+Saturday-to-Monday ticket and stringent orders from headquarters to
+first try the sand--as to quality, quantity, texture, depth and
+pools--and if up to standard measurement, I was authorised to pick up a
+small house for August on the most reasonable terms obtainable.
+
+The requirements were at least one sitting-room and three bedrooms and a
+kitchen--if an extra room or two without extra charge, so much the
+better. I was to come back fully informed as to what was left in the
+house in the way of furnishings and utensils, and what we would be
+expected to take with us.
+
+I found Eastnor all right as regards sand; the very streets were full of
+it, and as I stood on the Esplanade at low tide, and leaned up against a
+strong south-west breeze, and saw the dry sand sweeping like smoke along
+the flats and piling knee-deep to windward of the groins, and got my
+mouth and eyes and ears full of it, I decided, from the taste and smell
+and feel of it, that--from a sand point of view, at all events--Eastnor
+would do.
+
+Now to find a lodgment for the night, and then to prowl round for a
+house.
+
+I struck a neat little confectioner's for tea, and, following a plan
+which had acted well on previous occasions, asked, as I was paying for
+it, if they could accommodate me for the night.
+
+Well, they had rooms, but they were let for the following week--being
+regatta week--and, yes, said the stout lady behind the counter, she
+thought she had better not take me; but the "Balaclava Inn," next door,
+put up beds--I had better try there.
+
+Yes, at the "Balaclava" they put up beds, and they showed me to a room.
+"But if I should get a good let to-morrow--lots of folks come down on
+Sunday to stop for regatta," said the hostess--"I shall have to turn you
+out; but maybe I can find you a bedroom nigh handy."
+
+This just to show the extreme independence of the aborigines.
+
+Then I turned out to find the desirable seaside residence with the
+maximum of accommodation and comfort at the minimum of cost.
+
+I rooted round till I struck the chief estate agent--who was also the
+chief grocer--of the town.
+
+His shop was full, and trade was evidently booming.
+
+I stood behind a triple row of clamorous lady visitors, who were
+ordering everything under the sun in the grocery line, and complaining
+vehemently to the badgered shop-men that their last orders had all been
+very inadequately fulfilled. I waited patiently till the mob, having
+apparently bought up the whole shop, thinned out, and a dapper
+London-trained young shopman smoothed down his ruffled front hair and
+leaned over the counter and asked, "And what can I do for you, sir?"
+
+"I want a small furnished house," I said, meekly.
+
+"Ah," he said, with a grin, "I'm afraid we are out of them at present;
+I'll ask Mr. Wilson."
+
+"Small furnished house for August?" echoed Mr. Wilson, in aggrieved
+amazement. "Not such a thing to be had in Eastnor. All let a month ago.
+You should come in May or June to get a house for August."
+
+I thanked him, and left depressed. I wandered through the town, and
+found myself back on the Esplanade. I walked the whole length of it, and
+then along the sea bank into the uninhabited region beyond.
+
+Not quite uninhabited, as it proved, for, about half a mile from the
+Esplanade, I came suddenly on a cottage with nothing between it and the
+sandy beach but a tiny garden plot, with a bit of grass and some
+nasturtiums and pinks mixed up with cabbages and potatoes and a row of
+scarlet-runners. It looked very clean and inviting, and I said to
+myself, "Now, if only that were to let, it's just exactly what I want."
+
+There could be no harm in asking, so I went up to the door and knocked.
+No one came. I knocked again. Still no answer. I waited. It seemed to me
+there was some movement in the side room, the sliding window of which
+was partly open, but was covered with a white curtain.
+
+I knocked again, and the door opened suddenly, and disclosed the small
+brown face of a small lame man, looking up at me with a pair of small
+but very sharp brown eyes, with, as I now remember, a slightly startled
+look in them, as of one caught in the act.
+
+"Yes?" he said, in a sharp voice.
+
+"Oh, I wanted to ask if this cottage is by any chance to let any time in
+August."
+
+He hesitated, and then snapped, "How long for?"
+
+"Two, three, or four weeks."
+
+"When d'you want it?"
+
+"About the seventh or eighth."
+
+He pondered the matter, and barked, "Come in."
+
+I went in. It was charming. Nicely, though plainly, furnished, and as
+clean as a new pin. I went all over it. Two sitting, four bedrooms,
+kitchen, scullery, wire spring mattresses, wool beds, two blankets to
+each bed, blankets very white and almost new.
+
+"And the rent?" I asked, wondering how much above my limit I would not
+go to possess all this for a month.
+
+"Well," he said, slowly, "three guineas a week is what we generally get,
+but if you could wait till the twelfth I'd let it go for two and a half,
+if you'll buy the stuff in the garden. I reckon there's a good pound's
+worth between the potatoes and cabbages and beans, and they'll be just
+about ready by the time you come in. I've made a good let for the three
+weeks before you come, and they don't want to go out till the eleventh,
+and" (dropping his voice to a confidential whisper) "my missus, she's
+expecting to be laid up very soon, and she wants to go to her folks at
+Wilborough, else I wouldn't let it go so cheap."
+
+[Illustration: "I GAVE A DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF MY ADVENTURES TO MY
+RECEPTIVE FAMILY CIRCLE."]
+
+Diplomatically veiling my satisfaction, I closed the bargain on the
+spot, and sat down then and there and wrote out a couple of agreements,
+by which Joseph Scorer agreed to let, and John Oxenham agreed to take,
+for one month, from August 12th, the cottage known as Sandybank Cottage
+in the town of Eastnor, with the furniture, etc., named in the
+inventory attached, for the sum of ten guineas, whereof the receipt of
+one pound was hereby acknowledged.
+
+"What about the inventory?" I asked.
+
+"I've got one ready for the other folks. If you like to check it I'll
+make you a copy and send it on."
+
+It was a strange and wonderful document, that inventory, but with Mr.
+Scorer's assistance I succeeded in checking the main points of it. Many
+of the items were strange; the spelling was phonetic and curious, and at
+times stumped us both, and then Mr. Scorer would scratch his head and
+opine that it must mean so-and-so.
+
+"One cundler" in the kitchen brought us to a dead-lock for full five
+minutes. At last Mr. Scorer pointed to a battered implement with its
+bottom full of holes, hanging on the wall, and said, triumphantly,
+"That's it."
+
+"What in heaven's name is it?" I asked, gazing suspiciously at the
+shapeless object.
+
+"Why, you squeedge your cabbages through it," he said.
+
+"Oh, I see, a colander."
+
+The humours of that inventory come upon me still in the dark night
+watches at times, and I laugh internally till my wife wakes up and
+advises me to get up and take a dose of camphor if I feel as bad as all
+that.
+
+The larger articles, such as bedsteads and chairs and washstands, we
+easily identified, and these we triumphantly ticked off first, and then
+gradually worried out the smaller ones.
+
+"One indimat" caused us some trouble in the best bedroom, but finally a
+strip of straw matting, two feet by one, was hauled out from its
+lurking-place under the washstand, whither it had crept for concealment,
+and reluctantly answered to its name.
+
+The crockery was heterogeneous, and was slumped under colour-headings.
+
+"Three cupps pink; one sosir pink; three cupps blew; four sosirs blew
+(one crack)," and so on.
+
+That searching inventory went right to the root of things, and by its
+_fiat-justitia-ruat-c[oe]lum_ candour impressed me most favourably with
+the stark, staring, straight-forward honesty of Mr. Joseph Scorer.
+
+"One bird in glass case, bird's leg broke--four orments, all crack--one
+ormlu clock (won't go)"--could transparent honesty go further than this?
+
+Moreover Mr. Scorer asked me casually, "Did you know Mr. William Henry
+Sawyer, Esquire, of the 'Ome Office?"
+
+I did not. My acquaintance does not as a rule extend to the Home Office.
+
+"A nice gentleman, 'e is. Been 'ere in this 'ouse every year for the
+last five years. 'E comes early, about May, and sometimes again in
+October."
+
+"It is good to be Mr. William Henry Sawyer, Esquire, of the Home
+Office," I said. I am a fairly truthful man as men go, and I never spoke
+a truer word than that, but that knowledge only came to me later.
+
+I was delighted with Mr. Joseph Scorer, and with his receipt in my
+pocket and my two pounds in his, I went home on the Monday morning
+triumphant, and on the Monday evening whistled myself into the bosom of
+my family to the tune of "See, the conquering hero comes."
+
+[Illustration: "I WAS SURPRISED TO SEE A HEAP OF LUGGAGE."]
+
+I gave a detailed description of my adventures to my receptive family
+circle, and when my wife heard Mr. Scorer's last message, "I will come
+over the day before you are coming in, and have the place put in order,
+and will have a fire on in the kitchen for you," she labelled him
+"treasure," and vowed we would keep on going there every year.
+
+"I wish I had remembered to ask you to tell him to get in some coals,
+and milk, and bread," she said, regretfully.
+
+"I did," I answered, triumphantly. "He suggested we would want them, and
+I paid him for them, and for oil for the lamps too, so that's all
+right."
+
+"You have done well," said my wife, and I thought so myself.
+
+August 12th found us duly landed at Eastnor station, and furtively
+raking out our belongings from the piles of other people's. At last they
+were all collected, and I chartered a carriage and a porter's cart to
+convey us and our luggage to Sandybank Cottage.
+
+Mr. Joseph Scorer met us at the door, and we forthwith took possession.
+The kitchen fire was lighted, the coal was there, and the milk, and the
+bread, and oil.
+
+Everything was as nice as it could be.
+
+The luggage was carried in, and we settled down to a month's solid
+enjoyment and undisputed possession of our new abode.
+
+Mr. Scorer was solicitous of our comfort. He altered the inventory in
+one or two minor points, in respect of articles broken by our
+predecessors. He dug enough potatoes for next week's dinners, and cut
+two plump cabbages. He collected his L4 15s., half the balance of the
+rent, and departed, followed by the blessings of the entire family, save
+those members who were already knee deep in the ocean just the other
+side of the garden patch.
+
+"This is simply splendid," said my wife, beaming at me in the way I
+like; "it seems almost too good to be true."
+
+She was right.
+
+Next morning was magnificent. My wife went out to buy up the town. All
+the rest of us plunged into the sea, except the servant, Amelia Blatt,
+who was rapidly converting herself into a negress over the intricacies
+of the strange little range in the kitchen.
+
+One of the advantages of Sandybank Cottage was that from its proximity
+to the beach you could use your bedroom as a bathing machine, assume
+your marine costume therein, skip across the lawn, and be into the water
+with a hop and a jump.
+
+It was simply delightful, really almost too good to be true, as my wife
+had said.
+
+We all had a glorious bathe and a scamper on the sands, and then trooped
+up to the cottage to dress. As we came up over the lawn I was surprised
+to see a great heap of luggage, and two bicycles, lying around,
+evidently all just discharged from a couple of retreating carriages.
+
+[Illustration: "IT WAS LUDICROUS STANDING THERE IN A BATHING SUIT."]
+
+I am an unusually modest man, and it was rather over-facing. There were
+several ladies in the party and an elderly gentleman. They all turned
+and watched our advent. The ladies looked put out at something. I feared
+it might be at myself in my bathing costume. However, my foot was on my
+native heath, so to speak, which was more than could be said of theirs,
+so I put on as bold a face as could legitimately be expected of a modest
+man in nothing but a bathing costume, and went forward. The old
+gentleman also seemed disturbed, but he disguised his feelings to the
+best of his power, and addressed me suavely.
+
+"Been enjoying a last bathe?" he asked.
+
+There was just a hint of "What the deuce do you mean by it, sir?" in his
+tone.
+
+"I beg your pardon?" I said.
+
+"Couldn't refrain from one more dip, I suppose?" he said again, with a
+forced smile. "Might I ask what time you are leaving? We understood--"
+
+"Leaving?" I said, with some force. "Why, we only got here yesterday."
+
+He gazed at me in blank astonishment, the ladies also.
+
+"Oh," he said, soothingly, "there must be some mistake."
+
+"I am not aware of any," I answered, somewhat brusquely.
+
+It was ludicrous, standing there in a bathing suit, discussing the
+matter under the gaze of three pairs of outraged female eyes, and a
+blazing sun.
+
+"But, my good sir," said the old gentleman, "I have taken this
+cottage--it is Sandybank Cottage, is it not?" he asked.
+
+"It is."
+
+"Mr. Joseph Scorer's?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+[Illustration: "A PARTY OF THREE OLD MAIDEN LADIES, WITH THREE DOGS AND
+TWO CANARIES."]
+
+I was getting angry and the sun was blistering my neck.
+
+"Well, I have taken it for four weeks from August 13, and have paid a
+deposit on it."
+
+"And I have taken it for four weeks from August 12, and have paid a
+deposit and half the rent," I said. "We came in yesterday, and we go out
+September 9."
+
+"And you have an agreement with Mr. Scorer?"
+
+"Certainly I have, but I have not got it on me."
+
+"Well, I'll be hanged," said the old gentleman, very red in the face,
+and turned to his women folk.
+
+"My dears, there is evidently some mistake. An infernal nuisance, but
+this gentleman is evidently not to blame. Would you mind my seeing your
+agreement?" he asked, turning again to me.
+
+"Certainly I would mind. My agreement has nothing to do with you, sir,
+and I am not in the habit of having my word doubted. Now perhaps you
+will permit me to go in and dress, before my neck is absolutely raw."
+
+They hung around for a time, talking unpleasantly among themselves, and
+finally the old gentleman stalked off to the town, and came back with a
+cart for their belongings. They were loaded up, and the party
+disappeared in a cloud of dust on the way to Eastnor.
+
+"That is rather a curious thing," said my wife, when I detailed the
+experiences of the morning to her on her return from her shopping. "I
+hope--"
+
+"Oh, we're all right," I said, lightly. "They can't put us out.
+Possession, you know--"
+
+"Yes, I know. I wasn't thinking of that," she said, with a far-away look
+in her eyes.
+
+By evening the raw edge of the annoyance of the morning had worn off. We
+sat in the porch enjoying the evening breeze, and counted ourselves for
+the time being among the fortunate ones of the earth. Our charity even
+extended at odd moments to the disappointed would-be occupants of our
+shoes--and bedrooms, and we devoutly hoped they had found rooms
+somewhere, and were not occupying airy apartments in bathing machines.
+
+"It was a stupid mistake of Mr. Joseph Scorer's," we said, "and he ought
+to be more careful."
+
+"I shall write when I have time," I said, "and tell him so."
+
+But I never had time. I was much too fully occupied with other things.
+
+Next day, after a morning bathe and paddle on the sands and early
+dinner, we started for a long afternoon's ramble round Eastnor, to get
+some idea of the place, leaving the two youngest children with the
+servant, with strict injunctions not to get drowned, and to get their
+tea whenever they felt like it.
+
+We did Eastnor thoroughly, and then, noticing that there was a concert
+on the pier that night, my wife suggested tea at a confectioner's, and
+an adjournment to the pier afterwards for the concert. This was carried
+with acclaim. We enjoyed the tea, the concert, and the stroll home, and
+arrived at Sandybank Cottage about ten o'clock, fully satisfied with our
+day's outing.
+
+Amelia met us at the door. She was in a state of extreme nervous
+excitement.
+
+"Thank goodness you come 'ome!" she burst out.
+
+She was unfortunate in the place of her birth and up-bringing, was
+Amelia. To judge from her accent she must have been born right up in the
+steeple of Bow Church. Otherwise she was a sterling girl. I will tone
+down her vernacular: it does not spell easily.
+
+"Sich a dye I never had. Seems to me we'd better git away 'ome's quick's
+we can," she began.
+
+"Why, Amelia, what's the matter?" asked her mistress.
+
+"Matter?" said Amelia, with rising inflection. "Well, there's been a
+party of three old maiden ladies, with three dawgs, and two kinaries,
+and a parrick in a cage, all a-settin' cryin' on their boxes outside
+here all day long since half an hour after you left, a-waitin' for you
+to come back and go out of this 'ouse and let 'em come in. They say they
+took it from August 14 for a month, and paid a dee-posit, and they was
+to come in to-day. And the kitching fire was to be ready lighted, an'--"
+
+"And there was to be coal, and bread, and milk in the house, and oil for
+the lamps, and they'd paid for them," said I.
+
+"My! Did you hear 'em?"
+
+"No," I said, "I didn't."
+
+"And what did you do, Amelia?" asked my wife, anxiously.
+
+"I just told 'em straight that we was 'ere for a month, and there must
+be some mistake, seein' as we wasn't a-goin' out till our time was up,
+and then they just set down and cried, and the parrick swore awful till
+they covered him up. He belonged to a nevew what was a sailor man, they
+said, when he begun to swear, and I told the children to run inside lest
+they'd catch it. Then they was so misrable settin' there, dabbin' of
+their poor little red noses, that I made 'em some tea, and they could
+'ave kissed me, and they wanted me to take pay for it, but I wouldn't."
+
+"You're a good girl, Amelia, and you did quite right," said her
+mistress, and turning to me--
+
+"This is really very trying and very uncomfortable. What do you suppose
+is the meaning of it?"
+
+She looked a little bit as though she thought it was my fault.
+
+"I don't know what's the meaning of it," I said, feeling angry. "I'm
+afraid Mr. Joseph Scorer has a very short memory. If I had him here I'd
+try if screwing his neck round would lengthen it."
+
+Next day being Sunday we had a genuine day of rest, and enjoyed it with
+quite a novel sense of freedom from the cares and worries of life.
+
+On Monday, by the morning train and the station omnibus, arrived a
+family much like our own--father, mother, four children, servant, and
+innumerable boxes.
+
+I had had my bathe, and was sitting in the porch armed with a pipe and
+my stamped agreement with Mr. Scorer, prepared to repel all intruders.
+So, before the grinning omnibus-man had time to dump down the baggage, I
+took the father on one side, showed him my agreement, and explained the
+situation, telling him his was the third party I had had to turn empty
+away.
+
+[Illustration: "I TOOK THE FATHER ASIDE AND SHOWED HIM MY AGREEMENT."]
+
+He was very wroth, and swore, I should say, as lustily as the old maids'
+nephew's parrot could have done. He was a lawyer, too, and wanted to go
+into the legal aspects of the case. I assured him that they did not
+interest me, unless I had some ground of action against Mr. Joseph
+Scorer for the disturbance of my peaceful possession of his much-let
+habitation.
+
+He was a good fellow on the whole, and he left me his name and business
+address, and made me promise to let him know if I ever found out where
+Mr. Scorer had gone to, and also to refer to him any of the outraged
+claimants to the cottage who wished to take legal action in the matter.
+
+His wife and the youngsters had been peering out anxiously at us from
+the back windows of the bus while this colloquy was taking place. The
+father explained the matter to them, and, with a wave of his hand to me,
+they drove crestfallen back to Eastnor.
+
+On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, variously-composed parties
+arrived with their baggage, and I turned them all away, and sent them to
+find lodgings in Eastnor, suffering much in the doing of it from their
+unnatural ill-humours and chagrin.
+
+On Saturday there arrived a rollicking reading-party of students from
+Oxford with a coach. I explained my painful situation and experiences,
+and informed them that they made the eighth party I had had to repulse.
+
+They were merry, good-humoured fellows, and they lay flat on my patch of
+lawn and fairly screamed with delight at the cuteness of Mr. Joseph
+Scorer. "He was born an Oxford gyp," they averred.
+
+[Illustration: "THEY SCREAMED WITH DELIGHT AT THE CUTENESS OF MR.
+SCORER."]
+
+They enjoyed the affair so much that I could hardly get rid of them. My
+wife gave them tea and cakes, and they sat and smoked, and laughed, and
+joked, till the stars were up, and then they got a carriage and drove
+off to the hotel, after promising to come up every day about noon to
+assist me in my hateful task of holding the fort against all comers.
+
+And they did it, too, and enjoyed it immensely.
+
+On the pier, on Sunday morning after church, we met at intervals all the
+families who ought to have been stopping in Sandybank Cottage.
+
+The irate first old gentleman stopped me to ask, "Well, how are you
+getting on? Say, that was the nastiest trick I ever was served. If I
+could find Mr. Scorer I would jolly well like to wring his nasty little
+neck."
+
+I said I felt that way myself, but I feared there was not much chance of
+laying hands on it.
+
+I told him I had now had to send away eight different parties who all
+claimed the cottage, and at that he felt very much better.
+
+My lawyer friend was just passing, and I introduced him to the old
+gentleman, and, catching sight of my young friends from Oxford, I
+introduced them all to one another, and they all had a very lively time
+together, and enjoyed themselves extremely.
+
+On Monday I bethought me to go to the station, and acquaint the cabmen
+with the true state of matters, and beg them not to bring any more
+parties to Sandybank Cottage. They listened with broad grins to all I
+had to say, but absolutely refused to comply with my wishes. It all
+meant double fares for them, and all was grist that came to their mills,
+and it wasn't in human nature to refuse a fare when it was offered, and
+in fact any such refusal might invalidate their licences, and would
+certainly lose them their places. So, much as they regretted the
+annoyance it caused me, they felt in duty bound to go on dumping
+would-be tenants and their baggage on my front lawn as fast as they came
+along.
+
+I could find no arguments to advance against all this, and so the game
+went merrily on.
+
+That day two separate parties arrived within ten minutes of one another.
+The Oxford contingent was sitting on the lawn, and revelled in the
+disgust of the heads of the families when they were made acquainted with
+the state of affairs.
+
+Paterfamilias number two, who I think from his manner must have been a
+performing Strong Man, threatened to pitch me and my belongings bodily
+into the sea. Young Oxford, however, came to the rescue, and Mr. Strong
+Man and family eventually retired amid the hootings of the crowd.
+
+For the curious situation of matters at Sandybank Cottage could no
+longer be hidden under a bushel. The news had got abroad, and numbers
+of people came up each day now, and sat round our house to enjoy the
+fun. In fact we had become one of the centres of attraction of Eastnor,
+and the folks travelled up to Sandybank Cottage as at other places they
+would have gone to a switchback or a nigger minstrel show.
+
+[Illustration: "THREATENED TO PITCH ME AND MY BELONGINGS BODILY INTO THE
+SEA."]
+
+Perhaps the funniest thing was to see the three old maiden ladies come
+straggling up every day in single file, each with a wheezy waddling pug
+dog in a lead, which was fastened round its body lest undue pressure on
+its neck should induce the inevitable apoplectic fit a day sooner than
+was assigned for it. They came panting up, and gazed mournfully at the
+cottage, and reproachfully at me whenever I appeared, and they looked
+sadly at the gradually disappearing supply of potatoes and cabbages for
+which they had paid, and which I was eating. For Mr. Joseph Scorer had
+sold and been paid for that garden produce no less than sixteen times
+over. It needs a genius of that kind to run a garden profitably.
+
+In the natural course of things the local paper gave a humorous account
+of the affair, which was copied into one of the London dailies, and this
+it was that eventually brought about the climax.
+
+Among the would-be occupants this week was a well-known actress, who
+came with her maid and a companion and a white poodle. We had rejoiced
+in her exceedingly, at a distance, for many a year, and both my wife and
+myself were delighted to make her more intimate acquaintance--much more
+delighted, in fact, than, under the circumstances, she was to make ours.
+We invited her in, and gave her tea, and apologised for the annoyance
+she was being put to through no fault of ours, and did our best to make
+her comfortable.
+
+When young Oxford saw her they were with difficulty restrained from
+chairing her to an hotel, and on the whole I think, when the first
+annoyance had passed off, she rather enjoyed herself.
+
+By Saturday night we had repelled sixteen different attempts on our
+tenancy of Sandybank Cottage and, by this time, if a single day, except
+Sunday, had passed without the arrival of one or more claimants we would
+have begun to suspect something had gone wrong.
+
+There was one thing, however, that puzzled me exceedingly, and no amount
+of thoughtful consideration of the subject cast any light upon it. What
+on earth had made Mr. Joseph Scorer act in this way? If he had let the
+cottage in the usual manner he could have made at least L22 or L23 all
+told in the two months. As it was I reckoned he had made about L37 by
+his monstrous duplicity, and it was the utter inadequacy of the plunder
+which puzzled me so much.
+
+Why would a man want to hang sixteen indictments for fraud around his
+neck for such a very small reward? It seemed inconceivable, especially
+in such a smart and far-seeing man as Mr. Joseph Scorer. It was the
+action of a fool; and whatever else he was, Mr. Joseph Scorer could
+hardly be called a fool, except in this one point of utter inadequacy of
+motive.
+
+[Illustration: "WE FOUND A GENTLEMAN SITTING ON THE BENCH."]
+
+However, my eyes were to be opened, and in a somewhat unpleasant
+fashion--the process is not, as a rule, an enjoyable one.
+
+On Sunday the 29th, being the third Sunday of our visit, when we
+returned from church and the usual augmented Sabbath meeting of
+malcontents on the pier, we found a gentleman sitting on the bench in
+the porch awaiting our arrival.
+
+Sunday had hitherto been an off day with us, and we rather resented this
+infraction of the rules of the game.
+
+I went up to him and addressed him somewhat curtly.
+
+"Well, sir, and what can I do for you?"
+
+He looked at me whimsically, and said--
+
+"Your name is Oxenham?"
+
+"It is."
+
+"Mine is Sawyer."
+
+"Not Mr. William Henry Sawyer, Esquire, of the Home Office?"
+
+"Yes," he said, smiling at the evidently recognised formula.
+
+"I understood you only came down in May and October."
+
+"So I do generally; but, seeing that the cottage is mine, I suppose I
+have the privilege of coming whenever I choose."
+
+"The cottage is yours?" I said, in surprise.
+
+"Undoubtedly. I bought it and its contents five years ago, and I run
+down whenever the spirit moves me."
+
+I sat silent, looking at him.
+
+[Illustration: "I CALLED HER AND PUT THE QUESTION."]
+
+"But if the cottage is yours," I said, at last, "how came that little
+scoundrel----"
+
+"That's just what I have come down to find out," he said. "Now, tell me,
+Mr. Oxenham, from whom did you take the cottage?"
+
+"From Mr. Joseph Scorer."
+
+"William, you mean; but that is a detail."
+
+"Joseph," said I. "Stay! I'll show you my agreement," and I went inside
+and got it.
+
+"Joseph?" he said, with knitted brow, as he perused the document; and,
+after a pause, "Then what the deuce has become of William? What kind of
+a man was he?"
+
+"Small, sharp, brown man, with one club foot."
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Which foot?" he asked.
+
+I had to cast back my thoughts.
+
+"Left," I said, at last.
+
+"No, right," said he.
+
+"Left; I am quite sure of it."
+
+He tapped the folded paper against his hand, and said--
+
+"One of us is wrong. Scorer has been in my service for fifteen years,
+and I ought to know."
+
+"Suppose we ask my wife if she remembers?"
+
+I called her and put the question.
+
+"His left foot was the lame one," she said, after a thoughtful pause. "I
+can see him standing there"--she said it so decidedly that we
+involuntarily turned to look, but he was not there, except in her
+memory--"and it was his right shoulder that humped up. Yes, I am quite
+sure of it."
+
+"This is very curious," said Mr. Sawyer. "I am afraid there is something
+wrong. Besides, Scorer never could have done such a thing. He was as
+honest as the day."
+
+"And yet he let this cottage sixteen times over to sixteen different
+parties, and I have had the privilege, such as it is, of holding the
+fort against them all."
+
+"I can't believe William Scorer would do such a thing," he said, looking
+at us with eyes full of puzzled suspicion, as though he were not quite
+sure whether I had told him all I knew of the matter.
+
+"Joseph," said I.
+
+He tapped his foot impatiently, and we lapsed into silence. An idea
+struck me suddenly.
+
+"Is there a Joseph Scorer as well as a William?" I asked.
+
+He looked at me abstractedly.
+
+"There was a brother," he said at last, "and, if I remember rightly, a
+twin brother, but I have not heard of him for years. I do not think I
+ever saw him. I have an idea he went to the bad." Our eyes met and held
+one another, and my thought crossed his.
+
+"What do you suspect, Mr. Oxenham?" he asked.
+
+"I suspect that I met Joseph and you know William," I said.
+
+"But I left William in charge here."
+
+"And I found Joseph."
+
+"Then where is William?"
+
+"William is the missing link. Find him, and we get to the bottom of the
+matter."
+
+"Yes, that sounds common sense. Now, where is William?"
+
+That was by no means an easy question to answer. Mr. Joseph Scorer could
+probably have told us, but as the discovery of William was but the first
+step towards the discovery of Joseph, that fact did not advance us.
+
+The puzzle, however, solved itself in the simplest manner possible, and
+without any assistance from us.
+
+As there was a spare bedroom in the cottage, the least we could do was
+to put it at Mr. Sawyer's disposal if he cared to make use of it. So we
+invited Mr. Sawyer to occupy it for a day or two, and he consented to do
+so, and turned out to be a very pleasant and genial companion.
+
+The tide next morning did not serve well for bathing till about an hour
+after breakfast. Then Sawyer and I and some of the youngsters went in.
+
+It was one of those absolutely still mornings when the water is as
+smooth as oil, and you can hear the beat of the steamers' paddles miles
+away, and when you shout it is like shouting inside a bell.
+
+We were all swimming and paddling about, enjoying ourselves immensely,
+when I saw the three little fat pugs and the three old ladies coming
+along the beach path to take their regular wistful morning look at the
+cottage, where they ought to have been living, and were not.
+
+Then from behind the cottage came a great tumult--the noise of many
+voices, mingled with groans and laughter, and there swept round the side
+of it a mob of people, who came to a stand on the little green plot in
+front.
+
+We were still wondering what was the meaning of it, when Amelia Blatt,
+our servant, came tearing down the sands towards us, holding on to her
+square inch of cap with one hand, and to her flying skirts with the
+other.
+
+"They want you up there," she panted.
+
+"Who are they, and what do they want?"
+
+"It's all them folks he let the house to, and they've got 'im----"
+
+And as we made for the shore, Amelia, who was a very modest girl, fled
+precipitately up the slope.
+
+"Hey, Milly!" I shouted, "bring us down a couple of those big bath
+towels."
+
+[Illustration: "'THEY WANT YOU UP THERE,' SHE PANTED."]
+
+Amelia made no answer, but presently the big bath-towels met us under
+the arms of a small boy. We twisted our ordinary towels apron-wise over
+our dripping bathing-suits, and draped the big bath-towels gracefully
+over our shoulders, and then stalked as majestically as circumstances
+permitted towards the noisy crowd, which resolved itself into its
+component elements as we drew near.
+
+The outer fringe consisted of excited and irrepressible small boys of
+the town, who scampered round and round, shouting and dancing, and
+cuffing one another, in sheer enjoyment of living and the knowledge that
+something unusual was on foot. Inside them stood a number of the town
+loafers, all facing in towards the centre of the ring, and laughing and
+making jocular remarks to one another. Closer in still, came an excited
+circle of our friends who, like the old ladies, ought to have been
+living in the cottage, but were not. The irascible old gentleman was
+there, purple in the face and swearing frightfully; the solicitor was
+there, with a slightly anticipatory look in his face; the Strong Man was
+there, and looked as if he wanted to break something; and closer in than
+all these, forming a solid bodyguard of white flannels and laughing
+faces and briar pipes, were our young friends from Oxford.
+
+The three little old ladies, with their pugs in their arms, crept round
+the revolving outskirts of the crowd, and joined my wife, who stood
+wondering in the doorway, and began timidly questioning her as to the
+meaning of the uproar.
+
+Mr. Sawyer and I elbowed our way through the crowd, and the bodyguard
+opened to let us into the circle.
+
+In the centre stood a little, trembling meek, brown-eyed, crooked man.
+
+"Scorer!" said I, "by all that's wonderful!"
+
+[Illustration: "WE STALKED AS MAJESTICALLY AS OUR CIRCUMSTANCES
+PERMITTED TOWARDS THE NOISY CROWD."]
+
+"William!" said Sawyer.
+
+"Jos---! No, by Jove! it is the other leg!"
+
+"Now, William," said Mr. Sawyer, "what is the meaning of all this?"
+
+The crooked little man's eyes brightened when he saw Mr. Sawyer.
+
+"Mr. Sawyer, sir, I know no more than a babe unborn. I come in by the
+10.30, and no sooner hadn't my foot touched the ground than these young
+gentlemen they gathered round me and began a arskin' what I meant by it,
+and then all them others came along. I dunno what's matter wi' em. Seems
+to me they're all gone crazy."
+
+"Where's Joseph?"
+
+"Why, ain't he 'ere? I left him 'ere when I went into h--orspital; and
+'e said 'e'd keep things all shipshape till I come out."
+
+"Where did you find him? I thought he was away."
+
+"He come to see me just when I were sickening, Mr. Sawyer, sir, and he
+promised to keep things all straight and shipshape till I were right
+again. So I sent off the wife to her folks--for her trouble--you know,
+and then Joe he took me along to the h--orspital, and he said he'd keep
+things all--"
+
+"I see," said Mr. Sawyer; "and how's the wife?"
+
+"She's A1, Mr. Sawyer, sir."
+
+"And the baby?"
+
+"He's a reg'lar little ripper, sir, and as straight as a lath."
+
+There was more ingenuous pride packed into those last five words than
+any five words ever held before; but the meek brown eyes shone suddenly
+moist.
+
+One of the Oxford boys started, "Three cheers for the baby! Hip, hip,
+hurrah!--rah!!--rah!!!" And then they fell naturally into "He's a jolly
+good fellow!" and yelled it at top of their voices, while they all
+joined hands and danced round us till their faces were all on fire, and
+all their pipes were out for want of breath to keep them going, and
+William Scorer's eyes were like to fall out of his head. They did not
+quite understand matters, but they saw there had been some mistake, and
+they were all very healthy and very happy. They could not forget Joseph,
+but they heartily forgave William for his brother's sins, and they vowed
+they would not have missed the fun for three times the amount of
+Joseph's little peculations.
+
+"What's it all mean, Mr. Sawyer, sir?" asked the bewildered William.
+
+"It means this, William, that that scamp of a brother of yours has let
+this house of mine some sixteen times over to sixteen different people,
+and all for about the same date, and that most of them have paid him a
+deposit. Hence----" and he waved his hand comprehensively over the
+throng.
+
+"Nay,--sure--ly!" said the little man, and it seemed to me that his
+stricken wonder was not absolutely untinged with admiration.
+
+There was nothing more to be said or done. Everybody recognised that
+fact. Joseph was not to be found, and William was not to blame.
+
+The stout little gentleman vowed he'd be something'd if he'd ever heard
+of such a something'd queer business before. The Strong Man looked
+regretfully at William, and wished he was Joseph just for five minutes
+or so. The solicitor recognised the fact that a case would not lie
+against little "Dot-and-carry-one," as he called him, so he put it in
+his pipe and smoked it, and by degrees the crowd thinned away, and left
+us in peaceable possession. The last to go were the three little old
+ladies, and from their manner I should say they were by no means
+convinced of the existence of William's brother Joseph.
+
+The Oxford boys, by the way, insisted on chairing little William to the
+"Blue Pig," down the Wilborough Road, and tried to induce him to enjoy
+himself, but as he declined to touch anything stronger than gingerbeer,
+there was no great harm done.
+
+Mr. Sawyer stayed a couple of days with us, and offered us the cottage
+free for next August, to make up for the annoyances we had suffered;
+and, unless we hear that William Scorer has been taken ill again, and
+that his brother Joseph has come to nurse him, we shall accept the
+invitation.
+
+[Illustration: "'THREE CHEERS FOR THE BABY! HIP, HIP, HURRAH!'"]
+
+[Illustration: "TWO'S COMPANY."]
+
+
+
+
+THE MEDICAL DETECTIVE AND HIS WORK.
+
+CRIMINALS CONVICTED BY THE MICROSCOPE.
+
+BY T. F. MANNING.
+
+
+Owing to the fact that they often flatly contradict one another, medical
+experts do not stand very high in popular repute; nevertheless, it is a
+positive fact that a single medical expert is worth half Scotland Yard
+in the detection and prevention of crime. Thousands of rivals in love,
+disagreeable husbands, dangerous political agitators, harsh masters and
+mistresses, rich uncles, and people of that sort, would be popped off
+with a few grains of arsenic, or a drop of prussic acid, only that it is
+well known the doctor has the eyes of a hawk for poison. And, on the
+other hand, many and many a family is saved from the suspicion attaching
+to the sudden death of a member, and even many an innocent man from the
+scaffold, by the proof of natural death which the doctor supplies.
+
+Although great poisoning, shooting, stabbing, and other homicidal trials
+have a wonderful fascination for all newspaper readers, very few fully
+appreciate the medical evidence, which is usually the most important
+link in the chain. The evidence is of three kinds--that of the ordinary
+medical man, who sees the patient dying, perhaps, and performs the
+post-mortem; that of the chemist, who, in his quiet laboratory, traces
+the poison or identifies the blood stain; and that of the expert, who
+gives his inference from the facts stated by the first two. It is these
+experts who often differ from one another.
+
+In a large number of cases the _post-mortem_ examination is the first
+step in unravelling a mystery.
+
+The man who performs it is not to be envied, for the smallest scratch on
+his hand may admit a dose of deadly poison.
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD STYLE DETECTIVE--EXAMINING SCENE OF MURDER.]
+
+Many medical men, indeed, wear rubber gloves, and those less careful
+generally cover their hands with a layer of sticky ointment. It takes
+from two to four hours to do the job thoroughly.
+
+But it is not all cutting up, as most people think. The first thing done
+is to notice the position of the body, and whether there are any
+weapons, bottles, or glasses near.
+
+Then it is examined from head to toe for scratches, cuts, bruises,
+moles, tattoo marks. Everything about the hair, eyes, teeth, nose, ears,
+and other parts, is written down. The height, the age, the muscular
+development, are all noted.
+
+Of course, this inspection alone often reveals the cause of death.
+Suppose, however, that no external injury is found and no organ is
+diseased, the suspicion of poisoning naturally arises. In that case, the
+doctor looks for certain marks that the commonest poisons make, and then
+he places the stomach and other parts in glass jars, which are securely
+covered, sealed, labelled, and handed to the analyst.
+
+Poisoning is not much favoured by the Briton as a means of killing
+either himself or anybody else. He generally does the deed in a more
+open, if more brutal, way. But it is to be feared that a great many more
+people get rid of undesirable contemporaries in this manner than is
+popularly supposed.
+
+[Illustration: THE DETECTIVE--NEW STYLE--IN THE LABORATORY.]
+
+Probably, in most cases, the ordinary medical attendant is able to tell
+whether a person is dying a natural death or is being carried off by
+some deadly drug. His position, however, is not a pleasant one. It is
+impossible to be certain; and, in order to make a full investigation, he
+must suggest either that the victim is committing suicide, or that
+someone else, perhaps his wife or son, is committing murder. And, after
+all, the signs in the living are very obscure. Of course, if a person is
+foolish enough (as many are) to drink sulphuric or nitric acid, his
+mouth and throat are burned as if he swallowed coals of fire, the
+former leaving black and the latter yellow stains; but when the poison
+is arsenic, or opium, or strychnine, the symptoms are very like those of
+certain diseases.
+
+When the cholera was last in London, a father, mother, son, and daughter
+dined together. Immediately after dinner, all, except the son, became
+suddenly ill, and died in a few hours, with the symptoms of arsenic
+poisoning.
+
+The son, who was always quarrelling with the rest of the family, was
+arrested on the doctor's report and charged with murder. But a
+_post-mortem_ examination showed that cholera was the real cause of
+death.
+
+Apoplexy, in the same way, is very like opium poisoning; and
+hydrophobia, lock-jaw, and even some cases of hysteria, closely resemble
+poisoning by strychnine.
+
+Still, when a healthy man grows suddenly ill soon after a meal, the
+doctor keeps his eyes open, and if death follows he has a pretty shrewd
+idea of what caused it.
+
+At all events, he feels perfectly justified in assuming that the case is
+not a normal one. He therefore hands over to the analyst the jars and
+other receptacles containing the portions of the subject's body likely
+to bear traces of the poison, knowing full well that if any poison is
+there the analyst will infallibly detect it.
+
+The analyst begins by making a series of what may be called "brews,"
+mincing, pounding, boiling, cooling, filtering, decanting, and
+distilling, over and over again. In these operations various solvents
+are used in succession, plain water separating out one class of poisons,
+alcohol dissolving out another group, benzol taking up a third, naphtha
+a fourth, ammonia a fifth, and so on. This preliminary work takes, not
+hours, but days to perform. At an early stage in it the operator
+discovers such volatile poisons as prussic acid, chloroform, carbolic
+acid, and phosphorus, if any of them be present. Later on he comes
+across the alkaloids, such as strychnine, digitalin, cantharidin, and
+other terrible poisons of that class.
+
+Finally, the residue of the animal matter with which we have supposed
+the medical detective to be experimenting is mixed with hydrochloric
+acid, and distilled once again, after which it can contain no poison
+except one of the metals.
+
+Thus, in the course of his examination, the analyst has made a number of
+decoctions, in one of which the poison is certain to be. In each
+decoction there may be any one of several groups of poisons.
+
+In which is it, and what is it? After all this patient labour the
+solution is still far off. It may be a ptomaine from poisonous fish or
+decayed meat, a deadly berry, or leaf, or root, a small quantity of
+morphia, or phosphorus, or lead, or arsenic, or antimony.
+
+Each brew is tested in turn. But, as illustrating the general procedure,
+take the last, which contains whatever metal may have had the fatal
+result. First, the chemist tests with "group reagents." He knows that if
+he puts into the glass containing the last brew certain bodies in
+succession, some metals, if they are there, cannot be kept from rushing
+into the arms of one, others will as passionately embrace another,
+others still will unite with a third, while some will always repudiate
+any alliance. There are in all cases signs of the union, when it takes
+place, such as a blue or white or red colour, or a powder falling to the
+bottom, or a fizzing of escaping gas.
+
+In practice the analyst puts a little of the brew in a small glass
+test-tube, pours in some distilled water, and carefully drops in some
+hydrochloric acid. Now, if there is either silver, mercury, or lead, in
+the brew, down goes a white powder; if none of these things is there, no
+change follows.
+
+Next he adds some sulphuretted hydrogen water, a sort of aerated water
+smelling of rotten eggs. If tin, platinum, bismuth, cadmium, arsenic, or
+one of several other metals, is in the brew, a coloured powder falls to
+the bottom. Should nothing occur, he adds other things, until he has
+tested for five groups of metals.
+
+When he finds a poison belonging to a certain group, he has still to
+ascertain which of five or six bodies it is.
+
+For instance, after adding the first two test-liquors, if he sees a
+yellow coloration or precipitate, he knows that he has either arsenic or
+tin or cadmium. He then adds some strong ammonia, after boiling the
+liquid till the smell of rotten eggs has disappeared. If the powder
+dissolves, and the colour goes, he is quite sure he has found arsenic.
+
+In this business-like way the murderer is convicted.
+
+But now arises the necessity for making doubly sure, and another kind of
+test altogether is employed. Life and death hanging on the result, the
+test must be beyond all doubt. But arsenic is one of those
+self-assertive things about whose presence there cannot be the most
+infinitesimal doubt. Give a man a particle the size of a mustard-seed,
+and let him swallow it. When he dies bury him, and let him lie under the
+earth for a quarter of a century. Then gather the few remnants, give
+them to a chemist, and he will return you a considerable portion of the
+poison in the same state as that in which it was administered.
+
+[Illustration: ARSENIC CRYSTALS.]
+
+Probably the most famous special test for arsenic is Marsh's, the
+invention of a Woolwich chemist, and equally famous is Reinsch's, which
+is performed as follows: The suspected liquid is put in a little glass
+test-tube with some hydrochloric acid. Then a small bit of bright copper
+is dropped in, and the test-tube is held over a flame.
+
+Now, arsenic has the wildest love for copper, and every trace of it in
+the tube flies to the slip of copper and covers it with a grey coat.
+Another metal does the same, certainly, but they can be distinguished
+subsequently.
+
+Presently the copper is removed, washed, dried, and placed in a tough
+glass tube, very narrow at one end. This is held over a flame and
+carefully heated, and then a phenomenon, not unknown, either, in the
+loves of mortals, occurs. The arsenic abandons the copper, and clings in
+crystals to the sides of the glass tube, where it can be recognised by
+the aid of a magnifying-glass or microscope; and if the crystals are
+heated with a bit of acetate of potash the odour drives the chemist from
+the room.
+
+To this curious fact, that arsenic loves copper when it is wet with warm
+hydrochloric acid, and hates it when it is hot and dry, is due the
+discovery of many a crime.
+
+It is already plain to the reader that the analyst's task is not an easy
+one. Sometimes the analytical examination is of vast extent; sometimes
+it is greatly narrowed by hints from the family doctor. These hints are
+interesting, and show that the doctor is, when he knows his business, a
+real and a very skilful detective.
+
+The doctor's eye is a wonderful one. When he enters a room, he not only
+measures the patient from head to toe, notes the colour of his face, the
+posture of his body, the signs of pain, stupor, or perhaps sham; but
+observes the manner of the other people present, and sees every bottle,
+glass, and cup in the place.
+
+Now, although sudden death is usually from natural causes, when it
+occurs soon after food there is always suspicion, as we have said. So,
+if the doctor perceives great pain and nausea, he thinks of arsenic,
+antimony, tinned meats, mushrooms, toadstools, and other things; if the
+pupil of the eye is as small as a pin-head, and the sick man is drowsy,
+he thinks of opium; if something seems to have caught hold of the
+patient's heart, and to be squeezing it like a sponge, he thinks of
+digitalis; if the poor victim is being worked like a puppet, and his
+pupils are large with fear, he thinks of strychnine; if there is great
+thirst, colic, and cramps in the legs, he thinks of lead.
+
+[Illustration: IS IT ARSENIC, OR NOT?]
+
+He knows that prussic acid kills like a bullet in the brain--a glass of
+cold water taken while hot from exercise may do the same--and he smells
+for it. He can also tell if it is phosphorus or carbolic acid, by the
+smell.
+
+He knows that relatives usually kill each other by means of particular
+poisons; that other poisons are used for suicidal purposes; that the
+photographer takes cyanide of potassium, the medical man and chemist
+prussic acid or morphia, the poor man vermin-killer or oxalic acid, or
+carbolic acid, or some such agonising destroyer of life. And thus,
+though all poisons lead to the same end--stoppage of the breathing and
+blood circulation--yet each has its own particular way of sending the
+soul to eternity. He can therefore often tell the analyst detective how
+to take a short cut.
+
+[Illustration: THE SPECTROSCOPE--AN INSTRUMENT THAT HAS BEEN FATAL TO
+MANY CRIMINALS.]
+
+By the way, there is no such thing as a slow poison--that is, a poison
+which, taken to-day, does not show its effects for weeks. This is a
+fiction of the novelists. On the other hand, there is--except in the
+case of prussic acid and nicotine--no death straight away after taking
+poison, as one sees it on the stage, Shakespeare notwithstanding.
+
+An actual case will show that the discovery of murder by the doctor and
+analyst is not always plain sailing.
+
+A good many years ago, a Mr. Sprague was tried for the murder of the
+Walker family by means of the well-known poison of the deadly
+nightshade. The medical evidence showed clearly that they all died from
+belladonna poisoning, and belladonna was found in the rabbit-pie they
+had for dinner. A common-sense jury, however, acquitted the prisoner;
+and only recently have medical men solved the mystery by discovering
+that rabbits can eat any quantity of this plant without suffering harm,
+while their flesh becomes fatally poisonous.
+
+A second case shows what wonders the chemists can work. A surgeon's wife
+died from corrosive sublimate, given in a draught by her husband. He
+said that, in making up the draught, he mistook a bottle of mixture,
+which he had prepared for a sailor, for the water-bottle, and had poured
+some of it into his wife's draught. The sailor's mixture was analysed,
+and it certainly contained corrosive sublimate; but, not content with
+finding the poison, the analyst measured the quantity present, and,
+while the sailor's mixture contained only ten grains to an ounce of
+liquid, the wife's draught contained fifteen grains, showing that the
+surgeon's ingenious explanation was a lie!
+
+Blood is so characteristic a fluid that it might be supposed a skilful
+analyst could never have any difficulty in recognising it. Of course, if
+he were given, say, a cupful in its ordinary state, he could not make a
+mistake. But he never gets a chance of earning his fee so easily.
+
+When the police seek his assistance they give him, perhaps, a suit of
+dirty clothes, which may be stained by two or three small dark spots
+that might be anything.
+
+Or perhaps he is given a rusty knife, or a perfectly clean hatchet, and
+is asked to say if there is blood on it. And when he comes into court he
+is expected to tell the jury whether the blood is human or animal, how
+old it is, was it spilled from a living blood vessel, and in what part
+of the body was this blood vessel.
+
+Take an actual case. Years ago a celebrated murder was committed in
+Eltham, and in the report of Dr. Letheby, the analyst, is the following
+note:--
+
+"On the evening of May 3rd I received from Mr. Mulvaney" (of the police)
+"a brown paper parcel containing a pair of dark trousers, a man's shirt,
+and a man's wide-awake hat. On the following evening I received from Mr.
+Mulvaney a brown paper parcel containing a lock of hair, a pair of men's
+boots, and a plasterer's hammer."
+
+These were all very dirty, but that did not prevent the analyst from
+finding a number of blood stains and hairs, and giving valuable and
+decisive evidence at the trial.
+
+What the analyst first does, when he receives such an article as a pair
+of trousers, is to scrutinise every inch of its surface with a
+magnifying glass. If he finds a little lump of dark-coloured stuff he
+scrapes it off and puts it into a watch glass. If he discovers merely a
+dark stain, he cuts out the piece of cloth and puts it into a small
+quantity of distilled water.
+
+[Illustration: HUMAN BLOOD MAGNIFIED 400 TIMES.]
+
+Now he has to find out whether the suspicious-looking thing is really
+blood, or whether it is merely red paint, or logwood, or cochineal, or
+madder, or iron-mould. There are three ways of doing this, and he nearly
+always utilises them all.
+
+[Illustration: PIG'S BLOOD MAGNIFIED MANY TIMES.]
+
+First, there is the marvellous spectroscope test. This test will reveal
+the presence of the minutest trace of blood, and it is practically
+infallible. It depends on the curious property, possessed by nearly all
+bodies, of absorbing certain parts of the light that passes through
+them. Sunlight passing through a prism is split up into the familiar
+seven colours of the rainbow. But if a little blood dissolved in water
+is placed in a glass tube, and if the light is made to pass through it
+on its way to the prism, the blood takes something out of it; for now
+among the seven bright colours are seen two dark bands near the middle
+of the yellow ray. Nothing but blood gives these two bands in that
+particular place, with the exception of two or three substances that are
+not likely to be found on criminals' clothes. These are cochineal, mixed
+with certain chemicals, hot purpurin sulphuric acid, and the red dye of
+the banana-eater.
+
+Blood, however, changes after it is shed. In stains a few weeks old the
+colouring matter changes from what is technically called haemoglobin to
+methaemoglobin, and, later still, to haematin. All of these give different
+spectra. The analyst has standard spectra already mounted, and he
+invariably looks at the mounted or standard specimen and the suspected
+liquid at the same time, placing them side by side, so that a mistake is
+impossible. All the red colours in the world, in fact, have been tried,
+and, with the exceptions named above, none of them gives a spectrum like
+the colouring matter of blood in any of its forms.
+
+But though the spectroscope is a certain discoverer of blood, it can
+draw no distinction between human and animal blood. That duty remains to
+the microscope.
+
+[Illustration: LITTLE LINKS IN THE CHAIN OF EVIDENCE.--THE CORPUSCLES IN
+THE BLOOD OF DIFFERENT CREATURES.
+
+  Man.   Mouse.   Horse.   Camel.
+  Toad.   Pike.   Pheasant.   Pigeon.]
+
+With the microscope can be seen those red corpuscles which, in some
+mysterious manner, seize on the oxygen of the air as it passes into the
+lungs, shoulder it, so to speak, and rush away with it, like so many
+ants, to the remotest parts of the body. Unfortunately, they can only be
+seen in blood that has not been very long shed--that is to say, some
+weeks or months. To see these, the analyst scrapes the little clot from
+the piece of cloth, or wood, or iron, and places it on a slip of glass;
+over this he carefully lays the little film called a cover-glass; and
+then he gently places, at the edge of the latter, the tiniest possible
+drop of water. This gradually insinuates itself, and soon dissolves the
+blood clot; and, when the mixture is placed under a microscope
+magnifying from 300 to 500 diameters, he sees one of several pictures.
+The various shapes and arrangements taken by these little bodies are
+illustrated on the following page. Small as they are--it would take
+12-1/4 millions to cover a square inch--they have the most peculiar way
+of behaving, and only the practised eye of the microscopist can
+recognise them in all their disguises.
+
+[Illustration: HUMAN BLOOD CORPUSCLES UNDER THE MICROSCOPE.]
+
+Individually, the blood corpuscle is just like a tiny round biscuit, and
+measures 1/3200 to 1/4000 of an inch across its face. It is these two
+factors, the shape and measurement, which enable the medical man to say
+whether the blood is human. The picture above shows how a corpuscle
+looks under the microscope. Looking at its face, it is like a
+thick-edged biscuit, with a dark depression in the centre. Some are
+turned sideways in our illustration. These exist in blood and nothing
+but blood, so that, when the spectroscope fails, the microscope
+succeeds.
+
+But it is not always that the analyst can get sufficient blood to place
+under the microscope. Perhaps he gets a piece of cloth saturated with a
+trifle of red fluid which he cannot scrape off, or perhaps he gets a
+stain some months or years old (Dr. Tidy identified a blood stain one
+hundred and one years old), in which the corpuscles are destroyed. Or
+perhaps he gets a garment which has been carefully washed, on which
+there is only the faintest trace of colouring matter. Even then the
+microscope tells whether the stain is blood.
+
+Our detective mixes the particle of blood-stained wood, or earth, or
+dust, or cloth fibres, with water and caustic potash, and filters it.
+Then he takes a drop of the liquid and places it in the useful
+watch-glass. Into this he puts some glacial acetic acid and a crystal of
+ordinary table salt. He heats the mixture and lets it cool. And, if it
+is blood, he gets peculiar crystals visible under the microscope. These,
+by the way, differ to some extent in different animals.
+
+Another test is so new that it has not yet been given a fair trial. It
+is as follows:--If a fairly large quantity of blood can be got, it is
+burned, and the ash is analysed. Now, there are two salts always in
+blood--sodium and potassium salts. But, while the quantity of the former
+in human blood is usually twice that of the latter, it is six times as
+great in the sheep's blood, eight times as great in the cow's blood, and
+sixteen times as great in the blood of a fowl. Very important results
+are expected from this principle.
+
+Reliable as are the microscope and spectroscope, the analyst always uses
+the third means at his disposal--the chemical test. For instance, he
+gets a knife covered with dark red stains. Are they blood, or are they
+only the rust formed by vinegar or the juice of a lemon that has
+deceived so many people? Assuming that he has removed the stain, he
+places the matter in any kind of tiny vessel, and drops in some tincture
+of galls. If the thing is only rust, he has some excellent blue ink; if
+it is blood, he finds that a reddish powder makes its appearance.
+
+[Illustration: BURNING CLOTH IN THE LABORATORY.]
+
+Perhaps he gets a handkerchief with a red stain. If the cloth is white
+he can apply a test direct to it, but as a rule he prefers to dissolve
+the stain out. Now, a handkerchief may be stained with a number of
+different reddish things--Condy's fluid, jam, cochineal log-wood, or red
+paint. He puts a drop of ordinary ammonia on the cloth. If the stain is
+caused by currant, gooseberry, or other fruit juice it turns blue or
+green; if it is Condy's fluid it becomes blue; if it is cochineal it
+becomes crimson, and so on. But if it is blood, it does not change in
+the least. Other tests might be described, but we have not the space.
+
+Probably the most interesting of all his duties to the analyst is that
+of judging from what animal the blood stains came. This can be done only
+in some cases; that is, when the blood is not quite so old that the red
+corpuscles have entirely lost their shape.
+
+Of course this is a matter of the greatest importance when a man is on
+his trial; for, in the first place, every spot of blood found on his
+belongings is supposed to have come from his victim, although it may be
+nothing more than the blood of a fish; and, in the second place, the
+stock explanation of blood stains on his clothing offered by a prisoner
+is that they came from some animal he killed. The plan is to ask him
+what animal. Five times out of six he will say a domestic fowl or some
+kind of bird especially if he is a poacher who has killed a
+gamekeeper--and then he is done for.
+
+Look at the pictures on page 149 and you have the whole thing in a
+nutshell. It will be seen that the red corpuscles of the blood of birds,
+reptiles, and fishes (with the exception of the cyclostomata) are oval,
+while those of mammalian blood are round. Here is, at once, a sure way
+of differentiating mammalian blood from that of the other three great
+classes of animals. The only difficulty is that blood corpuscles get out
+of shape, under certain circumstances, and are no longer either oval or
+round. But there is another difference. A mammalian corpuscle is of
+uniform substance throughout: that of a fish, bird, or reptile has a
+small, dense spot near the centre, called a nucleus. Snails, slugs,
+worms, and other low forms of animal life do not come into the question
+at all, for their blood is generally colourless, and, if not, it is
+blue-green, violet, brown, being scarcely ever red, and then not from
+the presence of corpuscles.
+
+All that remains for the analyst, therefore, supposing he finds a round
+corpuscle, is to say to what mammalian animal it belongs. (The llama,
+alpaca, camel, and their kin, by the way, have oval corpuscles.)
+
+How are the corpuscles of different mammalia to be distinguished under
+the microscope? Merely by their size. They have all been measured with
+the greatest care, a specially small unit of length, called a micron,
+having been invented for the purpose. It is only 1/25000 of an inch
+long, and, expressed in tenths of a micron, the average diameter of a
+human blood corpuscle is 77; of a dog, 73; of a rabbit, 69; of a cat,
+65; of a sheep, 50; of a goat, 41; and of an elephant, 94. But these are
+average measurements, and some corpuscles are smaller, some larger.
+
+[Illustration: MORE TINY CLUES.--HUMAN HAIR CONTRASTED WITH ANIMALS'
+HAIR, WOOL, AND FIBRE.
+
+  Cat's Hair.   Bat's Hair.   Berlin Wool.   Reindeer's Hair.   Woody Fibre.
+  Human Hair.   Fox Hair.   Hare's Hair.   Squirrel's Hair.   Human Hair Bulb.]
+
+Therefore, when it is a question of whether the blood is that of a dog,
+pig, hare, rabbit, or man, he would be a daring man that would give a
+decided opinion. But it is certainly possible to come to a safe
+conclusion as to whether it is that of a human being or a sheep, goat,
+or elephant.
+
+Owing to the influence of disease on the blood, however, it is never
+really safe to say absolutely "This is human blood," and, in fact, all
+that is generally stated in evidence is whether it is mammalian.
+
+There is one other important piece of work the medical detective can
+perform in his laboratory, in the way of tracking criminals; that is to
+distinguish hairs from vegetable fibres, and human hairs from animals'.
+Our illustrations show how it is done. He simply places the thing to be
+tested under the microscope, and--as he is acquainted with every
+description of hair, cotton, wool, silk and other fibre--he can tell at
+a glance what it is.
+
+Hair is more like wool than anything else, but wool is irregular and
+hair is pretty regular in breadth. The hair of an adult, also, has a
+streak in the middle.
+
+[Illustration: AN IMPORTANT CLUE--MEASURING FOOTSTEPS.]
+
+We append accurate illustrations, from microscopic photographs, of the
+hairs of many animals. Obviously, there is no difficulty to the
+practised eye in distinguishing them. In fact, most animals' hairs can
+be known by the naked eye, or with a small magnifying glass; but that of
+skye terriers and spaniels is wonderfully like human hair.
+
+On all these little things hinges, very often, the terrible issue of
+"guilty" or "not guilty"!
+
+Some years ago, a woman was found dead with a knife lying loosely in her
+hand. This fact might mislead people into thinking it was a case of
+suicide; but the fact that the knife was not held tight made the doctor
+suspicious. He examined the blood on the knife, and found woollen fibres
+which resembled those of the husband's clothes. This discovery so acted
+on the husband that he confessed his guilt.
+
+On another occasion a Taunton man was seen last in company with a man
+subsequently found dead. In the Taunton man's possession was a knife
+with a slight film of blood on the blade. He said he had been cutting
+raw beef. The analyst easily showed, however, that the blood on the
+knife came from a living animal; and, further, he found on it some
+little scales from the lining of the human gullet. The Taunton man was
+convicted.
+
+A remarkable instance of the analyst's power was given in a Cornwall
+murder case. A man was found with his head broken. On a hammer belonging
+to a suspect were a couple of grey hairs. This hammer, however, had been
+used for beating goat-skins, and, in fact, it was found in a hedge on
+which a goat-skin was spread out to dry.
+
+But the medical witness swore that the two hairs came from somebody's
+eyebrow, and, on comparing them with the dead man's eyebrow, they
+corresponded!
+
+In one case a man was very near being hanged--and in the old days,
+doubtless, he would have been hanged--mainly because a knife with red
+stains was found in his possession. The medical witness found that they
+were rust caused by an acid fruit; and then it was found that the
+prisoner had actually used a knife for cutting a lemon. But, curiously,
+this stain is so very like blood that the naked eye of even the most
+skilful medical jurist would be deceived by it.
+
+[Illustration: FOOTPRINTS.--(1) WHEN RUNNING. (2) STANDING. (3) WALKING.]
+
+Footprints are usually left to the police to interpret. But, very
+probably, the result is often a miscarriage of justice. When the police
+are working up a case they would not be human if they did not view
+evidence with a certain amount of bias. The scientific witness, on the
+other hand, has no personal interest one way or the other. And,
+moreover, the comparison of a naked foot with its supposed print on the
+ground, or the fitting of a boot to a boot-mark, is a process requiring
+not only the most exact measurements, but consideration of the kind of
+mark made on different kinds of soil, and in the various positions taken
+by the foot in standing, walking, and running. In running we press
+mainly on the toes, and in walking the greater part of the foot comes
+down, and the longer the foot rests on the ground the deeper is the
+impress. In fact, an expert can make a pretty shrewd guess as to the
+rate at which the owner of the foot was travelling, by considering the
+size and depth of the footprint.
+
+In order to make a comparison a cast has to be taken, if the mark is on
+soft ground. This is done by heating the footprint with a hot iron, and
+filling it in with paraffin. From this a plaster cast is taken, and it
+can be preserved for comparison until someone is arrested.
+
+When the footprint is found in snow, gelatine is used to take the form
+of it, and from this also a plaster cast is made.
+
+Of course, these operations have to be carried out with the greatest
+care, for footprints are frequently the strongest pillars of an
+indictment. In order to compare the foot of the suspected person, he is
+made to walk, stand, and run, over a surface similar to that on which
+the incriminating print has been found. There is one case in which the
+scientific detective is certain--when the person has stood still on
+soft, but firm and tenacious, soil.
+
+The footprints represented in our sketch are those of course of naked
+feet, which give the clearest impression. But a corresponding variation
+occurs in all footprints made by persons wearing boots, so that the
+attitude or action of the wearer is easily told.
+
+Now and again some deformity, such as the possession of six or of only
+four toes, leaves no room for doubt. When the mark has been made by
+boots, rather than with the naked foot, it is frequently easy to
+identify it by the arrangement and number of the nails, by a missing
+nail, or a patch, or a hole, or a heel worn on one side.
+
+Nevertheless, footprints are, to the medical man, exceedingly doubtful
+evidence, although from this view the police, and probably the jury,
+differ.
+
+Taking him altogether, the medical detective does his work with a skill,
+certainty, and absence of prejudice, worthy of emulation by all engaged
+in hunting down the criminal. The story of modern medical detective work
+is one of the most romantic of our times.
+
+[Illustration: MURDER OR SUICIDE--WHICH?]
+
+
+
+
+THE ONLY WHITE "ZOO" IN EXISTENCE.
+
+LORD ALINGTON'S QUAINT HOBBY.
+
+BY ALFRED ARKAS.
+
+
+The subject of eccentric hobbies is always fascinating, more especially
+when the hobby-rider need spare neither time nor expense in humouring
+his particular fancy.
+
+From time to time we hope to give our readers some account of the many
+curious and interesting hobbies pursued by those who are distinguished
+in this direction, although it is doubtful if a more interesting example
+than the Crichel White Farm is to be found.
+
+The White Farm belongs to Lord Alington, whose name is better known in
+connection with Turf matters. It was he who bred the immortal Common,
+one of the grandest horses that ever won the Derby. Common was sold for
+L15,000. The same week two other of Lord Alington's horses changed
+hands, the three together making a record price of L39,000. These facts
+are of peculiar interest in this connection, since the White Farm and
+the Racing Stud Farm are practically the same, one being part and parcel
+of the other.
+
+Near the entrance to the White Farm there appears a long low building,
+over which three flags are flying. This is one of the racehorse stables;
+and the flags, which are of yellow silk, bear the names of three of
+Crichel's winners.
+
+Mr. Bartlett, Lord Alington's trainer, is 74 years of age, and one of
+the most successful men the turf has ever known. In spite of his age he
+is as sprightly as a young man; and I should say many another "good 'un"
+is to be expected from his hands.
+
+Common's stable overlooks a portion of the White Farm, and is that seen
+in the illustration of the white mule.
+
+Crichel is situated six miles from Wimborne, in Dorsetshire. It is on
+the edge of the New Forest.
+
+On nearing the farm one gets the impression that there is something
+unusual about the place. The long low stable buildings, the tall white
+masts and bright yellow flags, numberless white-painted cages, aviaries,
+outhouses, and the spotless white of the fencings and gateways, all lend
+it a pleasing individuality.
+
+On turning into the big White Farm gate one encounters the spectacle of
+a teeming population of bird and animal life. All are pure white,
+spotlessly clean, and you couldn't find a dark hair or feather if you
+tried to do so.
+
+[Illustration: "ALL ARE PURE WHITE, SPOTLESSLY CLEAN."]
+
+The only thing that seems to be missing at a first glance is a white
+elephant; but the farm is that itself in a sense, as one may readily
+imagine, when the difficulty of keeping it stocked is considered.
+
+Although one could hardly conceive a more complete collection of white
+birds and beasts, it is by no means so large or varied as in the past.
+The mortality among what may be termed the "hot-house" species--the
+birds and animals from tropical countries--was very great, and the
+difficulty and expense of constantly replacing them was so considerable
+that Lord Alington decided to dispense with them altogether.
+
+[Illustration: "FANNY," THE WHITE DEER.]
+
+The most striking creatures on the estate--and well they know it--are
+the white peafowl. The many-coloured peacock with which we are familiar
+is a beautiful bird, but I never saw anything in my life as perfect as
+the white specimen at Crichel.
+
+We were fortunate enough, by the exercise of the patience of Job, to
+stalk one of these birds, and snap him in full war paint.
+
+[Illustration: THE WHITE PEACOCK--THE KING OF THE WHITE FARM.]
+
+The photograph will give some idea of the beauty of the bird, but it
+cannot convey any adequate notion of the rich silken texture of the
+plumage, or the aristocratic stateliness of this beauty among beauties.
+Built into the hedge close to the place where our snapshot of the white
+peacock was taken, are several white cages devoted to some of the rarer
+breeds of white pigeons and guinea pigs. At the extreme end are the
+white rats and mice.
+
+[Illustration: A PICTURESQUE CORNER OF THE FARM.]
+
+One of the rarest and most interesting members of the white family is
+the mule--which is really much more like a pony in appearance--shown in
+another illustration.
+
+The poor brute has experienced many social vicissitudes; originally he
+was the property of the "Shadow of God upon Earth," as the Sultan of
+Turkey modestly styles himself.
+
+When Lord Alington was visiting Constantinople, the Sultan, who had
+heard of his hobby, presented the animal to him. The mule had not long
+been installed at the White Farm, when a gentleman who drove a
+four-in-hand of these animals was ordered abroad. He had a white mule in
+his team which he sold to Lord Alington, and so the farm became
+possessed of a pair.
+
+[Illustration: WHERE THE SHAGGY GUINEA-PIGS LIVE.]
+
+They were regularly used in harness till the death of the last-mentioned
+purchase. Then, as the survivor threatened to die of inactivity and
+crass laziness, he was given to the local baker, who uses him for the
+work of distributing bread round the country-side.
+
+From the Yildiz Kiosk to a country cart! How are the mighty fallen!
+
+[Illustration: A PRESENT FROM THE SULTAN TO LORD ALINGTON.]
+
+In a little paddock on the left-hand side of the entrance, a small but
+most interesting collection of white animals attracts the attention of
+the visitor. It consists of four superb Angora sheep and a pigmy bull.
+
+[Illustration: THE PIGMY BULL--NOT LARGER THAN A NEWFOUNDLAND DOG--AND
+THE WHITE ANGORA SHEEP.]
+
+The pigmy bull has no history of any particular interest. But if he
+lacks history, he has a temper--a temper with which it is useless to
+argue. The photographer, with courage worthy of a better cause, leapt
+light-heartedly into the paddock, with the trigger of his hand camera at
+half cock. With a lightning movement he took aim, but the pigmy was too
+quick for him. He charged our harmless snapshotter, who, "retiring in
+confusion," as the war correspondents say, made for the fence and fell
+over it, camera and all, only half a second before the infuriated
+animal's head rammed furiously into the iron railings. A moment's
+hesitation and these photographs had never seen publication. The
+photograph of the bull we reproduce was taken immediately after the
+adventure. Tiny as the animal is, it is not a creature to be trifled
+with. As a matter of fact the brute had a bad fit of tantrums during
+the rest of the day, and the last sound we heard as we wended our way
+through the quiet lanes that evening was the angry bellowing of offended
+majesty.
+
+[Illustration: FEEDING TIME OF THE PIGEONS, FOWLS, AND TURKEYS]
+
+In endeavouring to get a snapshot of Fanny, the white deer, we had quite
+a different experience. With the modesty and timidity characteristic of
+the breed, she was strongly opposed to the idea of being photographed.
+She literally flew round the paddock for some time after our entrance,
+and I was very much afraid we should have to give her up as a hopeless
+job.
+
+However, by the exercise of great patience we were enabled to get a
+snapshot as she stood nervously surveying us from a dark corner. Fanny
+is one of the beauties of the farm; she is on the most friendly terms
+with her keeper, and follows him about like a dog. Needless to say, she
+has not a dark hair in her coat.
+
+An even greater expenditure of time and ingenuity was necessary in
+photographing the smaller denizens of Lord Alington's Zoo.
+
+Your ordinary guinea pig is a nervous fellow at best; the white variety
+suffers from hyper-sensitiveness. Over and over again, by frequent
+offerings of the most tempting dainties, were the shaggy bright-eyed
+little creatures lured from their haunts. But no matter how stealthily
+stalked by the camera fiend, they were off like greased lightning long
+before he was near enough; which circumstance explains why only two of
+these interesting little pets appear in the vicinity of the runs. At one
+time during my visit I saw the small paddock devoted to their use simply
+alive with them.
+
+The White Farm guinea pigs are much larger than the ordinary cavies kept
+by most of us in boyhood days, and the coat is long and shaggy. Save for
+the head they are more like pigmy Angora sheep than anything.
+
+For much the same reason we were unable to photograph more than a small
+corner of the rabbit run. It literally teems with pure white rabbits,
+but they are not used to visitors, and their native modesty makes them
+shun the camera like the plague. Only three or four braved the ordeal,
+but as they are much like their companions, one has only to multiply
+them indefinitely to obtain some idea of what the run looks like when in
+full swing.
+
+The title "King of the White Farm" undoubtedly belongs to the peacock.
+You have only to glance at him to realise that he is equally certain of
+his position.
+
+But there is another gentleman--the white turkey cock--on the estate who
+obviously does not share this view, and, were it not for the fact that
+his consummate vanity renders him blissfully unconscious of his
+colleague's pretensions, I imagine there would be war. Certainly the
+turkey cock is a beautiful and stately creature. He was purchased by
+Lord Alington for L10.
+
+Needless to say, all the ducks and fowls are of the prevailing colour,
+and very fine birds they are. Even the pigs must turn grey or get
+themselves bleached if they wish to take up permanent quarters at
+Crichel.
+
+The pigeons interested me more than anything else in the place, possibly
+on account of their number, and intelligence. The whole farm is alive
+with them, and the sight of the colony whirling in mid-air above their
+cotes is one not readily forgotten.
+
+[Illustration: SOME HUMBLE MEMBERS OF THE GREAT WHITE FAMILY.]
+
+They cross the sun like a white cloud, and when they swoop downwards to
+the ground the air vibrates with the hum of whirling wings. They have a
+trick of sitting along the coping tiles of the roof in single file like
+a company of soldiers drawn up in line, and on one occasion I saw some
+hundreds resting so closely together in this fashion that there was not
+room for a sparrow between them the whole length of the roof.
+
+They are perfectly tame, and are the most knowing-looking rascals I have
+ever seen. Feeding time is a great institution, and, to my mind, is the
+most fascinating sight on the farm.
+
+They know their dinner hour to the second, and some time before it is
+due the air is white with returning stragglers.
+
+The ceremony is interesting enough to justify several illustrations, but
+we can find room for only one. Preparatory to the all-important
+function, the birds collect in their hundreds on the roofs of the
+adjoining buildings. A few seconds later the more impatient spirits
+among them fly to the ground and move restlessly about near the door
+from which they know the attendant will emerge.
+
+Directly the man appears they swarm round him as he makes his way into
+the middle of the grass plot where the food is scattered.
+
+There is not a single feather in any one of the birds which is not of
+the purest white. A dark feather seals the doom of its unfortunate
+owner. However, this is a rare event. Possibly the birds conspire to
+preserve uniformity of colour by plucking alien shades from each other's
+plumage before they are noticed by the keeper.
+
+If space would permit, one might illustrate many other interesting
+features of the White Farm, but enough has been said to give a general
+notion of the charm and interest of Lord Alington's fascinating hobby.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE CHOLERA SHIP]
+
+
+A COMPLETE SHORT STORY[1]
+
+BY CUTCLIFFE HYNE. _Illustrated by Richard Jack._
+
+
+She was not the regular Portuguese mail. She was an ancient seven-knot
+tramp, which had come across from Brazil to Loando, and had been lucky
+enough to pick up half a cargo of coffee there for Lisbon. She called in
+at Banana, the station on the mangrove-spit at the mouth of the Congo,
+where the river pilots live (and on occasion die), and where the Dutch
+factory used to bring trade till the Free State killed it with duties;
+and at Banana she had further fortune. There were two hundred and thirty
+negroes there, Accra men and Kroo-boys mostly, a gang that had made
+their fifteen or twenty pounds apiece on the railway, and were waiting
+to go home.
+
+The passenger-boys had collected their chattels, and were gathering in a
+howling chattering mob by the surf-boats ready to go on board, when the
+first notion came to me of joining her. It was the Danish harbour-master
+who gave it. He came up, under his old white umbrella with the green
+lining, to the house where I was staying, and told me that the tramp was
+going to call in at San Thome and the Bonny River.
+
+"Now, we don't hanker to get rid of you here, Mr. Calvert," he said,
+"but if you want to climb that mountain in Fernando Po, you're not
+likely to get so good a chance for the next three months to come. Your
+place is on the road between San Thome and Bonny, though of course
+you'll have to make it worth the skipper's while to stop. But that's
+your palaver."
+
+"Can you put a figure on it?" I asked.
+
+"I should take it," said the harbour-master, "that you could hustle the
+man into Fernando Po for ten sovereigns. He's only a Portugee. Come
+aboard now in my gig and see him."
+
+The tramp's interior was not inviting. We went into the chart-house and
+drank the inevitable sweet champagne with the captain; and whilst the
+bargain was being made, a thousand cockroaches crawled thoughtfully over
+the yellow-white paint.
+
+"I tell you straight," said the harbour-master in English, "she's a
+dirty ship, and the chop'll be bad enough to poison a spotted dog. But
+if you will go to these Portugee and Spanish places to sweat up
+mountains, that's part of the palaver."
+
+"Oh, if the grub's good enough for them, it won't kill me."
+
+"Then if you will go, I'll send my boy off in the boat for your boxes
+one-time, because the Old Man's in a hurry to be off. He's got a bishop
+on board below, very sick with fever, and he wants to be out of this
+stew and get to sea again as quick as it can be done. Thinks it'll give
+the ship bad luck, I suppose, if the bishop pegs out."
+
+The harbour-master's boy was speedy, and the harbour-master himself
+piloted us out into the wide gulf of the river's mouth. The
+beer-coloured stream gave up its scent of crushed marigolds strongly
+enough to pierce through the smells of the ship and the smells of the
+crowded chattering negroes on the fore-deck, and the old steamer began
+to groan and creak as she lifted to the South Atlantic swell. The sun
+went down, and night followed like the turning out of a lamp. The
+lighthouse flickered out on the Portuguese shore away on the port bow,
+and above it hung the Southern Cross, a pale faint thing, shaped like an
+ill-made kite.
+
+[Footnote 1: Copyrighted in the U.S.A. by Cutcliffe Hyne, 1898.]
+
+[Illustration: "CAME DOWN OFF THE UPPER BRIDGE."]
+
+The bumping engines stopped, and the Dane came down off the upper
+bridge. He stood with me for a minute on the brown, greasy deck planks,
+and then went down the ladder into his boat.
+
+"Oscar-strasse, tretten, Kjobnhavn!" he shouted, as the gig dropped
+astern. "Mind you come. I shall be home in another nine months."
+
+"Wanderers' Club, London; don't forget; sorry I haven't a card left," I
+hailed back, and wondered in my mind whether in any of the world's
+turnings I should ever meet that good fellow again. But the steamer was
+once more under way, mumbling and complaining, and the store-keeper at
+that moment was beginning to open the case of dried fish--baccalhao, as
+they call it on the coast--to which we traced back the hideous plague
+which in the next few days swept away her people like the fire from a
+battery of guns.
+
+There were only two other passengers beside the bishop and myself--a
+pair of yellow-faced, yellow-fingered Portuguese from down the coast,
+traders both, with livers like Strasbourg geese. The Skipper was a
+decent, weak little chap from Lisbon, who might have been good-looking
+if he had sometimes washed; the Chief Engineer was a Swede, who spoke
+English and quoted Ibsen; and the other officers I never came specially
+across. There was only one of my own countrymen on board, a fireman from
+Hull, one of the strongest men I ever met, and certainly the most
+truculent ruffian. His name was Tordoff on the ship's books, but that
+was a "purser's name." He spoke pure English when he forgot himself, and
+certainly had once been a gentleman.
+
+[Illustration: "LIFTED THE BODY AS THOUGH IT HAD BEEN RED-HOT."]
+
+It was baking hot down below, and the place was alive with rats and
+cockroaches. I rigged a wind-scoop through the port in my room, got
+into pyjamas, and lay down on the top of the bunk. But I can't say I did
+much business with sleep; the menagerie held cheerful meetings all
+round, and the perspiration tickled as it ran off my body in little
+streams; and these things keep a man awake. My room was to starboard,
+and when through the porthole I saw day blaze up from behind the low
+line of African hills, I turned out, rolled a cigarette, and went on
+deck. I was just in time to see the first funeral.
+
+Four very frightened-looking men and a profane mate were fitting a
+couple of biscuit sacks over a twisted figure which lay on the grimy
+greasy deck planks. They pulled one over the head and another over the
+heels, and then with a palm and needle made them fast about the figure's
+middle. Afterwards they lashed a fire-bar along the shins, and then,
+with faces screwed up and turned away, they lifted the body as though it
+had been red-hot, and toppled it over the rail.
+
+The dead man dived through the swell alongside almost without a splash;
+but, as though his coming had been a signal, a dozen streaks of foam
+started up from various points, each with a black triangular fin in the
+middle of it; and I did not feel any the happier from knowing precisely
+what that convoy meant.
+
+However, the sharks and the body drifted away into the wake astern, and
+I rolled another cigarette and got a chair and sat on the break of the
+bridge deck. From there I saw the mate and his four hands fetch one by
+one five other bodies out of the forecastle, and prepare them for
+burial. Three they covered with canvas; and then the supply of biscuit
+sacks seemed to run out, because the last two they put over the side
+with the fire-bar attachment only.
+
+The fifth man had to be content with four participators in his funeral.
+The remaining sailor held strangely aloof; his face turning through a
+prism of curious colours; his body swaying in uncouth jerks. As the
+fifth corpse toppled over the rail, this fellow threw himself down on
+the hatch cover, and lay there writhing and screaming in a torment of
+cramps.
+
+At that moment a man in a white serge cassock, which reached to his
+heels, came out of one of the forecastle doors and walked rapidly across
+to the new victim. He was a long lean man with a hawk's nose, and bright
+large eyes. The skin of his face was like baggy yellow leather, and it
+was dry with fever. As he knelt beside the writhing sailor, I saw the
+metal crucifix nearly fall from his thin hands through sheer weakness.
+He was the Portuguese bishop from down-coast of course, and when I
+remembered that he had just been through black-water fever (which is own
+brother to yellow jack) I judged that from a human point of view he was
+behaving with exquisite foolishness in meddling with first-crop cholera
+patients. But I respected him a good deal for all that, and went and got
+opium and acetate of lead and gave the man on the hatch a swingeing
+dose. It was a useless thing to do, because the chap had got to die, and
+one incurred one's own risks by going near him; but if that bishop was a
+fool, I had got to be a fool too, and there was an end of it.
+
+[Illustration: "HE KNELT BESIDE THE WRITHING SAILOR."]
+
+Mark you, I wasn't feeling a bit frightened then. I'd been through
+cholera-cramp in India, and knew what my chances were, and was ready to
+face them without whimpering; though of course I'd freely have given
+every farthing I was worth to have been snugly back in the Congo again.
+But the thing had got to be seen through, and I intended to keep my end
+up somehow. I couldn't afford to die like a rat in a squalid hole like
+that.
+
+I had breakfast all to myself that morning, because no one else turned
+up; and afterwards the captain did me the honour to call me into
+consultation. My Portuguese is off colour, but I speak enough to get
+along with.
+
+"You English know so much about these things," he said.
+
+[Illustration: "'WE NO FIT FOR STOKE, SAR. WE GENTLEMEN WID MONEY,
+SAR.'"]
+
+"We keep clean ships," I answered, "and when anything goes wrong on them
+we do not lose our heads. Also we try to trace our way back to the root
+of evils. How did this plague start?"
+
+"You must have brought it on board at Banana. We had not in the ship
+before you came."
+
+"We did not bring it. There is no cholera in the Congo now. And,
+moreover, your passenger-boys are none of them sick. We must try back
+further."
+
+We did that together laboriously; and at last traced the mischief to
+that fatal case of baccalhao which had been shipped at Bahia, an
+infected port; and had this essence of pest promptly thrown to the
+sharks. Next we went into the question of hands.
+
+"I have not enough firemen and trimmers left to man a single watch,"
+said the captain. "The cholera hit the stoke-hold first. The fellows who
+are working there now have stood three watches on end, and they are
+hardly making enough steam to give her steerage way."
+
+"If you let your old beast of a tramp stop and drift about here like a
+potato-chip in a frying-pan it won't improve matters. Those of us who
+don't peg out with cholera will start murdering one another. The niggers
+will begin."
+
+"Yes, I know. I wanted some of them to serve as firemen for good pay.
+But they will not listen to me. I do not think they understood. Will you
+come and translate?"
+
+We took revolvers, holding them ostentatiously in our pockets. I crossed
+the dizzy sunshine of the lower main deck. The negroes on the forecastle
+head were chattering together like a fair of monkeys, but they ceased
+when we came up, and stared at us with faces working with excitement.
+
+"Which be head-man?" I asked.
+
+A big fellow stood forward, hat in hand. "I fit for head-man, sar."
+
+I told him hands were wanted for the stoke-hold, and that the gorgeous
+pay of four shillings English per diem was offered.
+
+"We no fit for stoke, sar," said he. "We gentlemen wid money, sar. We
+passenger-boys, sar."
+
+"Very well, daddy," said I. "But stoke you've got to. And if you won't
+do it civilly you'll do it the other way. Now my frien', pick me out
+twelve good strong boys. If you don't do it, I'll shoot you dead
+one-time; if they won't work, I'll shoot them. You quite savvy?"
+
+We got the men and they went off to the stokehold, frightened and
+raging. Poor wretches, eight of them toppled over in the next
+twenty-four hours, and half-a-day later the engines stopped for the last
+time. I was smoking industriously under the alley-way, and Tordoff came
+and loafed near me.
+
+"I'm a bally fine chief-engineer, aren't I?" said he.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, I'm the best man that's left of all our crowd, that's all.
+They're every sinner of them dead, black men, white men, and Portuguese.
+Where are we now?"
+
+"Slap bang under the equator. That mountain-top sticking out of the
+water is San Thome."
+
+"Then I'm off there," said Tordoff. "This bloomin' steamer's played out.
+She can't steam, and she wouldn't sail if there was any wind, which
+there isn't. I shall take one of the boats and skip. You'd better come
+too."
+
+"No."
+
+"What for? Why not?"
+
+"Because there are only two boats and they aren't enough for all hands."
+
+"The boats will hold all the white men, or them that call themselves
+white. But if you are one of the missionary crowd that hold niggers as
+good----"
+
+"I'm not. I know what niggers are, and therefore I'm not an Exeter Hall
+fool about them. I'll make free to tell you this boat-game's been
+thought of before; but that bishop says he won't leave the niggers to
+peg out alone; and if he's going to be idiot enough to stay, I am going
+to be another idiot. That's the size of it."
+
+"Well," said Tordoff, "I've got no use for that kind of foolishness
+myself, and if you're left, you needn't come and haunt me afterwards.
+You've had the straight, square tip. And you'll do no good by spreading
+this palaver about. If anyone tries to stop us there'll be a lot of men
+killed. We aren't the kind of crowd that'll stick at trifles if we're
+meddled with. So long!"
+
+[Illustration: "'THIS STEAMER IS PLAYED OUT. I SHALL TAKE ONE OF THE
+BOATS AND SKIP.'"]
+
+He slouched off, and I went to the deck of the bridge and looked down on
+a curious scene. The main deck was a shambles. There were a score of
+corpses there, pitching about stiffly to the roll of the ship, with no
+one offering to touch them. There were a score more of sick, shrieking
+and knotting themselves in their agony. The survivors were in two sorts
+of panic--the comatose, and the madly violent. A crowd of yelling
+dancing negroes, most of them stark naked, had set up a ju-ju on a
+barrel of the fore-deck winch, and were sacrificing to it a hen which
+they had stolen from one of the coops. The little wooden god I knew: it
+was one that I had picked up in the Kasai country, and I was taking it
+home as a curiosity. It had been lifted from my own state-room by some
+prowling negro, and was now receiving fresh daubs of red blood amid the
+clamour of frantic worshippers. It was quite a reasonable thing to
+expect under the circumstances. But what threw the action of these
+savages into grotesque relief was the sight of another man crouched in
+prayer beside the bulwarks. It was the bishop. His tottering hands were
+pinning the crucifix to his hollow chest; his hips were swaying under
+him with weakness; his dry cracked lips moved noiselessly; and the
+molten sunlight beat upon him as it pleased.
+
+[Illustration: "I WAS FIGHTING FOR MY LIFE AMONGST A CROWD OF FURIES."]
+
+The sight of that man gave me a bad feeling. Before I knew quite how it
+happened, I was down on the frizzling main-deck, and the ju-ju had been
+plucked from the winch barrel and flung over the side, together with the
+tortured hen, and I was fighting for my life amongst a crowd of furies.
+Tordoff was there too (though I'm sure I don't know how he came), and
+thanks to him I got back again on to the bridge deck; but the bishop did
+not come with us. He stayed down there amongst those sullen animal
+blacks, imploring them, praying with them, soothing them. He was a
+braver man than I, that Portuguese.
+
+Another night came down, and the steamer wallowed in inky blackness. In
+the morning we were still more helpless. The mates, the few remaining
+sailors, the stewards and cooks, and the two yellow traders had gone;
+the captain lay in the alley-way with a knife between his
+shoulder-blades; the bishop and I and Tordoff were the only white men
+remaining on board. Yes, Tordoff. I went into the pantry smoking a
+cigarette, and found him there, eating biscuits and raisins.
+
+"You here?" I said, "Why, man, I thought you cleared out with the rest."
+
+"No," he said, "I thought it would be so fine to stay behind and be able
+to scoff the cabin grub just as I pleased. I just stayed for the grub,
+it's worth it."
+
+"You're rather a decent sort of liar," I said; "do you mind shaking
+hands?"
+
+"I don't see the need," he said; "and besides, I'm using my hands to eat
+these raisins; but you may kick me if you like. There isn't a redder
+fool than me in both Atlantics. By the way, how's the padre?"
+
+"Very sick. I looked into his room and found him lying in his bunk. He
+couldn't talk."
+
+"I put him there. Found the old fool preaching to those beasts on all
+fours this morning, and looked on till he dropped; then I lugged him
+under cover."
+
+"Any more dead?"
+
+"Five pegged out during the night. They were lying pleasantly in and
+amongst the others, and there were seven more sick. I told the head-man
+when I went down with the padre to have them put over the side or I'd
+kill him. And when I came back I found he'd shoved over the whole dozen.
+The man-and-a-brother's a tolerable brute when he comes to handling his
+own kind, Mr. Calvert."
+
+We went out then and set the passenger-boys to washing down decks. We
+could not give them the hose because there was no donkey working; but
+they drew water in buckets and holystoned and scraped and scrubbed till
+they cleaned the infection out of the decks, and sweated it out of
+themselves. The cholera seemed to have exhausted itself. There were
+three other cases, it is true, but they were mild, and none died. In
+their fright the boys would have chucked their friends overboard as soon
+as they were taken sick, but I promised the head-man to shoot him most
+punctually if any one went over the side who was not a pukka corpse, and
+if niggers were addicted to gratitude (which they are not), there are
+gentlemen now living on the Kroos coast who might remember me
+favourably. For we did get in. A B. and A. boat picked us up three weary
+days later, and towed us at the end of an extremely long hawser into the
+very place to which I wanted to go.
+
+Of course Fernando Po, being Spanish, kept us very much at arm's length;
+and we did a thirty days' most rigid quarantine, which made (after the
+last case had recovered) a matter of forty days in all. But we had no
+more deaths, and the bishop pulled up into fine form. He was not a man
+that I could ever bring myself to like, and as Tordoff was for the most
+part sullen and unwishful for talk, the time that we swung to our anchor
+off Port Clarence was not exhilarating.
+
+Still it was pleasant to think that one was alive, and to realise that
+one had got respectably out of a very tight corner--yes, one of the
+tightest. The tramp's two boats never turned up again. I suppose they
+carried cholera away with them, and drifted about in the belt of
+equatorial calms, full of sun-dried corpses, till some tornado came and
+swamped them. So that we three were the only Europeans left out of
+thirty-four, and of the two hundred and thirty negroes who left Banana
+in the Congo, only seventy-four came to Fernando Po. It was a tolerable
+thinning out, but when it came to climbing the peak, that made up for
+all which had gone before. Indeed it is a wonderful mountain.
+
+I saw Tordoff again just as I was going away from the island, and tried
+to put it to him delicately that I was not badly off, and would like to
+give him a lift if the thing could be managed.
+
+"No, Mr. Calvert," he said, "thanks. I prefer to go to the devil my own
+gait. I don't suppose you'd ever know who I am; but if anybody describes
+me and asks, just say you haven't seen me."
+
+[Illustration: "'THERE ISN'T A REDDER FOOL THAN ME IN BOTH ATLANTICS.'"]
+
+And that is the last I have seen or heard of him. It is extraordinary
+how one drifts away from men. But, on the other hand, I should not be in
+the least surprised at stumbling across Tordoff again, in purple and
+fine linen for choice on the next occasion.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+IN A DISAPPEARING CHESHIRE TOWN.
+
+THE STRANGE STORY OF NORTHWICH.
+
+BY PERCY L. PARKER.
+
+
+The town of Northwich is subject to fits, and the reason is that people
+like salt. The existence of the fits is proved by a glance at the photos
+here given, and a few words will explain their cause.
+
+A stranger who knows nothing of the town may well be alarmed as he walks
+down its streets, for on all sides he sees walls and houses standing at
+every possible angle. Houses lean against each other in a way suggestive
+of intoxication; doorways are all awry, and pavements and roads roll
+like a sea-serpent.
+
+[Illustration: _May & Co. photo._] [_Northwich._
+
+CASTLE CHAMBERS, WHICH FELL OVER WHOLE IN THE NIGHT.]
+
+It is not certain that you will find your horse or cow in its stall next
+morning even if you lock the door at night, for a great gulf may have
+swallowed it alive. Most people like to see their fireplaces standing
+above the level of the floor, but such prejudices cannot be tolerated at
+Northwich, and if your fireplace goes beneath the floor, well, such is
+one of the privileges of living in the place. It may happen that your
+house falls over in the night, or that its roof may come crashing down
+on your head. Even churches are not safe. Two at least have suffered
+demolition, and one is now closed as unsafe. The town bridge leads a
+vagrant life, and makes constant settlements, which impede the traffic
+on the river. Northwich cannot boast a town hall, for it also was a
+victim of the "moving" spirit of the place.
+
+The details of this state of things are little known even in England,
+but a graphic description recently appeared in a German newspaper. It
+declared that so serious was the condition of Northwich that the
+inhabitants had fled to the neighbouring mountains, and all that could
+be seen on the site of the ancient town was the funnel of a passing
+steamer.
+
+Some worthy people at Bradford evidently had a similar idea, for after a
+certain bank of that town had lent the Northwich authorities L5,000 they
+heard such alarming things about the place that they sent two directors
+to see if there was any chance of anything being left of Northwich when
+the repayment of the loan was due.
+
+It is true that boats have been seen in the streets of Northwich, for
+every now and then they get flooded. The case of Northwich is serious
+enough, but there is still dry land, the people have not fled to the
+mountains, and the bank is pretty certain to be paid. What then is the
+matter?
+
+[Illustration: _T. Birtles, photo._] [_Warrington._
+
+ONE OF THE MOST COMMON SIGHTS IN NORTHWICH.]
+
+Northwich has the misfortune to be built on the top of a pie-crust. If
+you cover some fruit in a pie-dish with a crust and then pump out the
+juice and fruit through a hole in the crust and place a heavy weight on
+it, you naturally expect the crust to break and the weight to fall into
+the dish. The pie under Northwich is made of rock salt, and on the top
+of the salt is a large amount of juice (or brine), and over it is the
+earth's crust. But a good many Jack Homers have been at this pie and
+have pumped the brine away. The heavy buildings on the crust have then
+broken through it, and in this way Northwich is subject to "fits."
+Locally they are called "subsidences."
+
+The classic event at Northwich was the upsetting of a house called
+"Castle Chambers," occupied at the time by a solicitor. At 3 o'clock one
+morning in May, this house fell back into a large hole which suddenly
+opened at the rear of it. But not a single brick was moved nor a pane of
+glass broken, though the chimney was not proof against such antics and
+fell to the floor. This was due to the way in which the house was built.
+
+[Illustration: _May & Co., photo._] [_Northwich._
+
+WHERE A HORSE WAS SWALLOWED UP.]
+
+For so universal and expected are these subsidences, that the houses are
+now all built in wooden frames with massive timber beams screwed tightly
+together. This has revived a style of building common enough more than a
+hundred years ago, specimens of which are often seen in country places.
+If the house subsides it falls as a whole and does not necessarily
+collapse. All you have to do is to use a screw-jack to raise the house,
+fill in the hole, remove the jack, and sleep as before till another
+subsidence, when the same operation is gone through. Castle Chambers,
+however, were taken down and the ground made "sound." Twelve months
+after another subsidence took place, and the result is shown in the
+above photograph.
+
+[Illustration: _May & Co., photo._] [_Northwich._
+
+THE SECOND SUBSIDENCE ON THE SITE OF CASTLE CHAMBERS.]
+
+Just opposite Castle Chambers stood the old "Wheat Sheaf Inn." It was
+built with timber to resist the dreaded subsidence, but to no purpose.
+Money was frequently spent in making good the damage done. One year it
+had to be raised no less than nine feet! A year after part of the
+building disappeared, then the cellars went, and as a climax a horse
+which was in the stable was swallowed up.
+
+One Sunday morning a neighbouring farmer put his horse--worth L30 with
+its harness--into the stable, and when he returned after doing his
+business, he found that the beast had gone down a hole 15 ft. in
+diameter which had suddenly opened. The house was then pulled down and
+built further up the street. This shows how owners in Northwich stand to
+lose both buildings and the sites of them.
+
+Next to the "Wheat Sheaf" was a butcher's shop, which was robbed one day
+of a sausage machine by the gaping earth. When it is mentioned that a
+second horse disappeared, and that a minister had a narrow escape from
+being swallowed, the fun of the following story will be appreciated. The
+minister one day in a funny mood was making some remarks at a public
+meeting about the strange disappearance of the horses and the sausage
+machine. He suggested that when the people below received the first
+horse they naturally wanted a sausage machine, and hence the
+disappearance of that useful article. Then so much did they enjoy the
+produce of the machine that they wanted a second horse, and hence the
+second disappearance. At this point the chairman of the meeting rose and
+gravely asked whether on one occasion they did not also want a minister
+(referring to the funny man's escape), and the story-teller meekly ended
+his tale.
+
+Another extraordinary subsidence was that which took place in a house in
+Tabley Street. The family were quietly seated in a room when they heard
+a tremendous crash, which soon brought the neighbours out to see what
+was the matter. An adjoining room was found to be minus its fireplace;
+instead there was a big hole reaching to the cellar beneath. The marble
+mantel-piece was smashed, and the tiled floor or hearth had fallen to
+the cellar. The cellar wall of the next house had given way, and there
+was great danger that the chimney would come smashing down. Soon after
+the walls cracked and the floors were drawn apart, making the house more
+breezy than comfortable. This was a peculiarly hard case, for the
+proprietor had recently spent a good deal of money in putting the
+property in order. In the end, the house and site were worth nothing.
+
+[Illustration: _T. Birtles, photo._] [_Warrington._
+
+A CHASM IN A ROADWAY.]
+
+The house of a linen draper in the town sank one-fifth of its height
+between the years 1881 and 1891, and in the seven years since it has
+sunk nearly another fifth. One kitchen window looks out on the river,
+and the water is now but a few inches below the window sill. When I saw
+it the moon was shining on the water, making the scene singularly
+effective. At one time the kitchens were lofty rooms, now one can hardly
+stand upright in them, for the floors and the walls have not kept pace.
+
+Another house I saw had eight steps of one foot each down to the front
+door. Not many years ago the doorstep was on the road level. An
+ironmonger's shop floor has sunk six feet in a similar way. One side of
+the floor is describing a semicircle, and the walls have long been
+cracked.
+
+The "Crown and Anchor," the chief hotel in the place, had to be rebuilt,
+for to walk its floors was "like being at sea in a heavy gale." The
+floor of the dining-room had sunk so much that it was several feet below
+the level of the roadway, and the windows afforded a beautiful view of
+passing feet.
+
+[Illustration: _T. Birtles photo._] [_Warrington._
+
+BRINE PUMPING SHAFT IN A FIT.]
+
+A jeweller had the novel experience of seeing his fireplace sink below
+the level of the floor and his mantel-piece half buried. Even the police
+station was not safe. It was built at a cost of L2,000, repairs to the
+extent of L300 were soon needed, but it became so bad that it had to be
+abandoned.
+
+There are several streets in Northwich where the houses are simply
+tobogganing into each other, and all over the place are houses which
+have been condemned and now are closed. One street became suddenly
+several feet wider than it used to be, for one side was sliding away. It
+was afterwards found that the houses on that side had moved three feet
+from their foundations, which were discovered under the kerb stones of
+the pavement! The Marston Road sank 15 feet in forty years, and at last
+had to be abandoned owing to a huge chasm many feet in width which
+formed across it.
+
+It is only fair that even the buildings of the salt works in the town
+are not exempt from these subsidences, which, indeed, are due to their
+activity. One photograph is given which shows a pumping shaft in a
+serious epileptic fit, which ended in its total collapse. Some time ago
+the curious sight might have been seen of a large wall travelling from
+three to four feet away from the building of which it was once a part.
+And in several of the salt works I found the walls parting in all
+directions, the floors in the shape of an S, and whole blocks of
+buildings waiting for the house-breaker.
+
+One of the most remarkable features of these subsidences is that no loss
+of human life has occurred. A girl with a child was passing the "Wheat
+Sheaf Inn" on the occasion of a subsidence and was nearly swallowed up,
+but not quite. The only loss of life was that of the two horses already
+mentioned and a cow. A man was driving a cow through the streets and
+turned to speak to a friend. On looking round he found that his cow had
+been swallowed up. He was assured that the animal would be pumped up
+with the brine at some point, but the beast was never seen again!
+
+The subsidences already mentioned are almost invariably caused by the
+pumping away of the brine. Other subsidences are caused by the falling
+in of old and disused salt mines which have not been properly worked, or
+worked too near the surface. The result of these subsidences is
+generally seen in the formation of huge lakes of water called "flashes."
+One of these covers 100 acres, and is 40 to 50 feet deep. They cover
+what were formerly fields, and the ensuing loss was very great.
+
+One gentleman had to make a new road to his property because 100 acres
+were under water, and other areas were badly damaged by subsidences;
+another built a house costing L6,000, and the largest offer he could get
+for it was L1,500--it had been so much injured by subsidence.
+
+The area over which these subsidences take place is about two square
+miles. Some years ago the property in Northwich was valued at L311,885,
+but the depreciation on it was valued at one _third_, or L102,945--the
+annual loss being L5,147. When the matter was brought before the House
+of Commons it was stated that damage had been done to no less than 892
+buildings. But the number to-day, if it could be estimated, would be
+infinitely larger. These 892 buildings comprised five public buildings,
+15 manufacturing works, 21 slaughter-houses and stables, 34 ware-houses
+and workshops, 41 public-houses, 140 shops, and 636 houses and cottages.
+
+In ten years the pumping up of brine had excavated from beneath beneath
+Northwich a space large enough to form a ship canal from Northwich to
+Warrington 150 feet wide and 30 feet deep. And a well-known authority
+declares that the subsidences during the present century form an
+excavation very much more extensive than was required for the Manchester
+and Liverpool Ship Canal. For the subsidences correspond with the amount
+of salt taken from the earth.
+
+[Illustration: _May & co._] [_Northwich._
+
+ANOTHER VIEW OF CASTLE CHAMBERS ON ITS BACK.]
+
+Every ton of white salt consumes one ton of rock salt, and a ton of rock
+salt represents a solid cubic yard. As 1,200,000 tons of white salt are
+made every year at Northwich it follows that at least 1,200,000 cubic
+yards of solid foundation are removed from beneath Northwich each year.
+This is equal to an annual uniform subsidence of 248 acres one yard
+thick. No wonder that Northwich has fits!
+
+Taking the fits as proved, we will now look more closely beneath the
+pie-crust of Northwich. The best way to do so is to get into a big tub
+which will just hold two people and go down the shaft of a salt mine,
+lowered by a windlass. First of all you pass through 32 feet of soil
+and drift, and then about 92 feet of what would commonly be called rock.
+Then below these 124 feet you come to the first bed of rock salt, which
+averages about 75 feet in thickness. Passing through this you come to 30
+feet more of rock, and below again is found another bed of rock salt,
+which averages in thickness about 90 feet. It is the lower bed of rock
+salt which is mined. The bottom of the mine down which I went was 330
+feet below the surface, but the atmosphere was delightful, being cool
+and dry and not in the least oppressive. A magnificent chamber, 25 feet
+high and 17 acres in extent, had been dug out of the salt, and its
+extent could easily be gauged by the help of the candles which had been
+lit all round the mine. Massive pillars of salt of 10 or 12 feet square
+are left at intervals of 25 yards to support the roof.
+
+The rock is got largely by blasting. A hole is drilled, and into the
+bottom of the hole a small powder ball is put. Loose powder is placed in
+a piece of straw and the straw is lighted. In a few seconds it burns
+down to the powder ball, and the rock salt which has lain so quietly in
+its bed for aeons breaks up, and in process of time may find itself in
+any quarter of the globe.
+
+[Illustration: _T. Birtles, photo._] [_Warrington._
+
+A FLOOD IN THE STREETS OF NORTHWICH.]
+
+No damage is done to the surface by the mining of this lower bed of rock
+salt. It is too deep for that. The subsidences are all connected with
+the upper bed of salt. These upper beds used to be worked because the
+lower beds were not known, and when they were neglected they fell in,
+and in this way the large sheets of water of which I have spoken were
+formed above the earth's crust.
+
+[Illustration: _T. Birtles, photo._] [_Warrington._
+
+HOUSES WHICH COLLAPSED OWING TO A SUBSIDENCE.]
+
+But the mining of the upper bed of salt by man does not account for the
+subsidences here recorded. The name of the dangerous miner is "water."
+When water reaches the upper bed of salt it dissolves it as water does
+snow. Water can take in 26 degrees of salt and no more, and then it is
+called brine. Underneath Northwich is a sea of brine which lies on the
+top of the upper bed of salt rock. From this brine white salt is made by
+a process of evaporation, and that is why all over Northwich you see
+numbers of pumping stations which pump up the brine as fast almost as it
+is made. As the brine is taken out fresh water flows in and takes up its
+26 degrees of salt. In this way the great cavities under Northwich which
+cause all the subsidences are made; they will grow bigger and bigger as
+long as the pumping up of brine is continued.
+
+Truly Northwich lives and moves and has its being in salt, and promises
+to be buried in it too.
+
+Brine pumping is the source of a terrible injustice. A man may buy a
+piece of land large enough to erect a pumping station, and if on that
+spot he can tap the brine there is nothing to prevent him from drawing
+brine from any part of Northwich. And though his neighbour's house is
+engulfed in the process, and though he is ruined thereby, he can secure
+no compensation. If you were to mine salt or coal under your neighbour's
+house you could be brought to book, but not if you take water, salt or
+fresh.
+
+Such was the law till a few months ago. But after a tremendous fight a
+bill has been passed which gives a Compensation Board power to levy not
+more than three-pence a ton on all brine pumped at Northwich. This levy
+is to go to the compensation of those whose houses and property have
+suffered. But at present not a penny has been paid and in no case will a
+penny ever be paid for all the damage done before the passing of the
+Act. Such is the tragedy of salt getting.
+
+Illustration: OUR ARTIST'S WAKING DREAM OF A STREET IN NORTHWICH.]
+
+Northwich has been called the salt metropolis of the world, and as
+becomes a metropolis it is unique. It has a Salt Museum, the only one in
+existence, which contains the finest collection of Indian and American
+salts in the country. It also contains some very interesting exhibits.
+Among them are a pair of boots and an old broom-head which were left in
+an old salt mine for fifteen years. They had not much beauty when they
+were left, but Nature has made them exquisitely beautiful, for they are
+encased in salt crystals which were formed upon them in those fifteen
+years.
+
+No one can go down a salt mine without asking, How did this salt come
+here? And no one can fail to be impressed by the answer. AEons before the
+footfall of man was heard upon the earth there stretched across Cheshire
+a great salt lake; and under the hot sun of a semi-tropical age the salt
+crystallised out of the water and rested at the bottom of the lake. How
+many years it is since the first layer was deposited can hardly be
+imagined, for it was formed under deep waters, while now it is over 300
+feet beneath the earth's crust. But there are few finer fields for the
+exercise of the imagination than in trying to conceive the vastness of
+time and change which have elapsed since then. And when one does realise
+something of the eternity of that time one ceases to wonder that
+Northwich has fits when its heart of salt is taken from it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+THAT FIVE HUNDRED POUND PRIZE.
+
+THE STORY OF A GENIUS.
+
+BY RICHARD MARSH.
+
+_Illustrated by John H. Bacon._
+
+
+To him, the idea, from all points of view, suggested nothing but
+objections. He told her so.
+
+"You know, Philippa, I don't believe, as the cant of the day has it,
+that a woman ought to earn for herself her daily bread; and that a woman
+should earn her husband's daily bread as well--to me, the mere idea of
+such a thing is nauseous. There may be men who are content to take the
+good which their wives provide. Thank goodness, I am not one of them. In
+this matter I am old-fashioned in my notions. I look at woman from a
+point of view which is, perhaps, my own. To me, the woman who, urged
+even by necessity, works for money, soils her womanhood, falls away from
+her high estate. I pity her, but--not _that_ woman, if you please, for
+me. Necessity, Philippa, surely does not urge you. Am I not always at
+your side? Believe me, my day will come--come shortly! Only wait!"
+Putting his arm about her waist, he looked up into her face, with, in
+his eyes, a certain light of laughter. "Besides, in the great army of
+the workers, what work do you think there is for you? Do you think that
+in you there is the making of a woman of letters, Philippa?"
+
+So he kissed her, and she said nothing. She could say nothing. She could
+only let him fondle her, as though they still were sweethearts. For she
+loved him, and he loved her. But though she loved him, in her heart
+there was a hot remonstrance, which she allowed to remain unspoken,
+because she loved him. It was easy to say that there was no necessity to
+prick her with a spur. But there were the tradesmen's bills unpaid, the
+rent in arrear, and the children wanted things--not to speak of herself
+and of him. And there was a drawer full of his unaccepted manuscripts.
+They went hither and thither, from editor to editor, and then for the
+most part they seemed to settle in the drawer.
+
+She understood well enough what he meant when he asked if she thought
+that she had in herself the making of a woman of letters. She had been a
+nothing and a nobody. She had not even been very pretty. Certainly no
+superfluity of money had been thrown away upon her education. It was not
+at all as it is in the story books, but, quite by chance, he met her.
+Before he knew it, he was wooing her. And, when things came to the worst
+at home, he married her--she having nothing which she could call her own
+except the things which she was wearing. And he had very little more. It
+was not strange that he should doubt if in her there was the making of a
+woman of letters--she, who, save in the way of love letters, had
+scarcely ever written a line.
+
+Geoffrey Ford was a genius. He had given her to understand that from the
+very first--in the days when, in her ignorance, she scarcely understood
+what a genius was. He gave her to understand it still, almost every day.
+With him, to write was to live. To be a great writer was the dream of
+his life. He strove to realise his dream with that dogged pertinacity
+which is only to be seen in the case of a master passion. When they
+first were married, he was struggling to be a dramatist. He was quite
+conscious that, in the trade of the writer, wealth was only to be
+achieved by the successful playwright. He believed that his was
+essentially the playwright's instinct. Although his plays met with
+abundance of good words, they did not attain production. It seemed as if
+they never would. When they began to be actually starving, she
+suggested that he should put aside playwriting for a time, and try to
+earn money by other products of his pen. He had acted on her suggestion.
+He had become that curiosity of modern civilisation--a writer for the
+magazines. And, in a way, he had been successful. He was earning,
+perhaps, an irregular hundred and fifty pounds a year. But what are an
+irregular, a very irregular, hundred and fifty pounds a year, when there
+are three babies? And yet he said that there was no spur of necessity to
+urge her on.
+
+The worst of it was, she was beginning to be a doubter. She would not
+own it, even to herself, but she was beginning to fear that he might be
+mistaking the desire to be, for the power to be. What he considered his
+best work invariably came back. He said that this was because editors
+were unable to appreciate strikingly original ideas when they were
+presented to them by a wholly unknown man. What they desired was a
+commonplace, and when he said this, she--well, she said nothing. From
+the first she had insisted on his reading aloud to her everything he
+wrote. Unconsciously to herself she had become a critic. She was
+beginning to fear that he was only at home in the lower levels. When he
+soared, he floundered. It was only among the hacks that he held his own.
+Even then, at times, he lagged behind. So far from hinting to him her
+fears, she would almost rather have died than have allowed him to know
+she had them. Their love for each other had never faltered, even when
+their cupboard was emptiest. It had seemed to grow stronger with the
+coming of each child. And, what is more, it appeared to her that, but
+for him, she would have dropped into a ditch.
+
+Lately there had been growing up within her a desire to add to the
+family income. And, oddly enough, it had seemed to her that the best way
+to do this would be by writing. She had hinted something of this desire
+to Geoffrey. She had suggested, playfully, that she should join her pen
+to his--that they should collaborate. He had received her playful
+suggestion in such a way that she had not ventured to repeat it in
+earnest. She knew him, through and through. She knew that he desired to
+succeed, not only for himself, but, first of all, for her. He loved his
+work for the work's sake. He cared nothing for fame in the sense of
+popularity, or its equivalent, notoriety. In that respect he was a
+clear-sighted man--he knew what the thing was worth. For himself he
+cared nothing for the material products of success. His own tastes were
+of the simplest kind. He desired to achieve success simply that he might
+pour the fruits of success into her lap. He wished her to owe nothing to
+anyone but to himself, to owe nothing even to her own self. He wanted to
+be all in all to her, to have his love her beginning, and her end.
+
+She knew this. Yet--the rent was overdue. Of late his manuscripts
+seemed coming back worse than ever. He seemed to be out of the vein. And
+the children wanted things so badly. And so----
+
+Well, one day he came to her with an expression of countenance which she
+knew so well. It meant that a new idea, some fresh project, either was
+germinating, or else had germinated, in his mind. In his hand he held a
+newspaper.
+
+[Illustration: "'I AM GOING IN FOR A PRIZE COMPETITION.'"]
+
+"Philippa, I am going to do what I have told you I thought that I should
+never do--I am going in for a prize competition. See here." He opened
+the paper out in front of her. "The _North British Telegraph_ is
+offering L500 for the best story, L250 for the second best, and L100 for
+the third best. I am going to win one of those prizes--mark my words,
+and see if I don't."
+
+[Illustration: "SHE BEGAN ATTENTIVELY TO STUDY THE ANNOUNCEMENT."]
+
+He was kneeling at the table by her chair. She had her hand upon his
+shoulder. She smiled as he spoke. She knew his tone so well. He was
+always going to do this, that, or the other. But somehow, after all, he
+seldom did it.
+
+"Are you? The money would be very useful."
+
+"Useful! I should think it would. Why, to us, it would be a fortune. But
+that's not the only thing. You know how ideas come to me in an instant.
+Directly I saw that announcement I saw _the_ story which will be the
+very thing."
+
+"Did you?" Her heart grew faint. She was beginning to be a little afraid
+of his sudden flashes of inspiration. "How long is the story to be?"
+
+"It does not say exactly, but it says that it should not exceed a
+hundred and fifty thousand words. It will give me elbow room. I shall
+have a chance to let myself go--to get into my stride. I am sick of
+dancing in fetters, with a limit of four thousand words or so."
+
+"But it will take you a long time to write, won't it?"
+
+"Oh, about six weeks. It will take me no time, when I am once well into
+the story. You know how I do travel, when I once have got my grip. It is
+half mapped out in my head already. Every line of it will practically be
+written before I begin. There will only be the pen work to do." Putting
+both his hands upon her shoulders, he stooped his eager face to hers.
+"Philippa, you see if I don't do the trick this time."
+
+"Geoffrey, if I were you, I wouldn't be so sanguine. You know how
+disappointed you have been before."
+
+Thrusting his hands into his trousers pockets, he began to stride about
+the room.
+
+"Yes, I know that is so, and I won't be sanguine. But, somehow, I feel
+quite certain that, this time, I have the thing--however, I'll say
+nothing. But don't you tell me not to be sanguine, or you'll put me
+clean off--you know how funny I am, that way. You keep the children
+quiet, and don't let me hear a sound, and you'll see--well, you'll see
+what you will see." He laughed, and she laughed too. "Don't you laugh at
+me! If I don't get the first prize, it'll be hard lines if I don't get
+one of the three--even a hundred pounds is not to be despised."
+
+"But, Geoffrey, what will become of your other work during those six
+weeks? And you know, when you have finished a long story, you never feel
+inclined to start again at once."
+
+"Don't talk to me like that, or you'll drive me off my head. Philippa,
+I've set my heart upon doing this thing--do let me do it. You don't want
+me to be a penny-a-liner all my life, sweetheart, do you? By the way, I
+saw _The Leviathan_ at the library. There's a first-rate story in it, by
+a new man--Philip Ayre. I know good work when I see it, and that is good
+work. And, do you know, it might almost be a story about us--you should
+read it. It is called 'Two in One.'" Wandering hither and thither about
+the room, he did not notice that his wife's face had suddenly been bent
+low over her mending, and that her cheeks had paled. "Another thing, I
+met old Briggs." Mr. Briggs was their landlord. "I assure you, when I
+saw him coming, I was half inclined, Dick Swiveller fashion, to dodge
+down some side street. I made sure he was going to dun, and that I
+should have to shuffle. But, to my surprise, he was quite friendly. He
+asked how you were, and how the children were, and never said a word
+about the rent. So, of course, I said nothing either. I'm just going for
+a stroll, and a smoke, and a think. Mind, when you go to the library,
+that you don't forget to read that thing in _The Leviathan_."
+
+When he had gone, spreading out the paper which he had brought in front
+of her she began attentively to study the announcement of the _North
+British Telegraph_ prize story competition. Putting down the
+figures--150,000--upon a scrap of paper, she began to divide and to
+sub-divide them, as if she were trying to find out exactly what they
+meant. When she had finished her calculations, she continued to sit in a
+brown study, quite oblivious of the heap of mending which still lay
+unfinished on her knee.
+
+"If I could only help him to win it--if I only could! Poor Geoff! The
+day on which he gave me five hundred pounds, as the product of his own
+work, would be the happiest day that he had ever known. My own, own
+Geoff!
+
+"I wonder if he will win it? Oh, if he only would! But supposing that he
+does not win it, it would be just as well that--that someone else should
+win it--someone in--in his own home. Oh, what a wicked wretch I am!
+What's that? It's baby! I do hope she won't wake up. There's all this
+mending, and I've only milk enough for one more bottle. There! She is
+waking up! You naughty, naughty, _darling_ child!"
+
+[Illustration: "UPSTAIRS THE WIFE SAT WITH THE CHILDREN."]
+
+The next day Geoffrey Ford began his story. He began to pour it out upon
+the paper, white-hot from the furnace of his brain. Seldom had he seen
+his way so clearly. It had come, as he said, in an instant. It possessed
+him, as it were, body and soul and mind, as his work was wont to possess
+him when, as he thought, he saw his way. His ideas would come to him
+with the force of a mighty rushing river. He could not dam them back. He
+felt that he was obliged to give them instant utterance or they would
+overflow the banks, and so be lost. He worked best, or he thought that
+he worked best, at high pressure. He believed in striking the iron when
+the force of the fire had almost made it liquid. Not for him was the
+journeyman labour of hammering out tediously, and with infinite care,
+cold iron.
+
+The story was to be called "The Beggar." He had even got the title! It
+was one of those half-psychological, half-transcendental stories, in the
+turnings and twistings of which he liked to give his fancy scope. His
+fault was not too little imagination, but too much. The task of keeping
+it within due bounds was not only a task which he hated, but possibly it
+was a task which was beyond his strength. There are impressionists in
+painting. He was an impressionist in literature. He was fond of large
+effects--effects which were dashed in by a single movement of the brush.
+To descend to details was, he thought, a descent indeed. He was
+conscious that there was a public which would read a volume which, from
+first to last, only dealt with the minutest particularity, with a couple
+of days in the life of a single individual. That was a public he
+despised. He preferred to deal with a whole life in the course of a
+couple of pages.
+
+He was, in short, a genius. And when I say a genius, I mean, in this
+connection, a wholly unmanageable person. As you read his work, you felt
+that you were in the presence of an exceptional mind--in the presence of
+a man who saw things, great things, things worth seeing, which were
+hidden from other men--who saw them, as it were, by flashes of
+lightning. That was just how he did see them--by flashes of lightning.
+He saw them for an instant, then no more. Partially, and not the whole.
+In a lurid light, which almost blinded the beholder. So, when you read a
+work of his, you were startled, first by the light, then by the
+darkness. It seemed strange that a man who one moment could be so light,
+the next could be so dull. Soon you began to be irritated. Then you were
+bored. When you reached the end--if you ever reached the end--you
+wondered if the man was mad, or if he was merely stupid. But he was
+neither mad nor stupid. He was a genius, who, so far, declined to allow
+himself to be managed. When he became manageable, he would cease to be a
+genius--in the sense in which the word is here being used. Then, if he
+wrote at all, he would write what the plainest of plain men could
+plainly read.
+
+The idea of his story was not an unattractive one--to a certain sort of
+writer. It was to be the story of a beggar, of a man who asked for alms
+in the streets, and who, by the exercise of certain arts, which verged
+upon the marvellous, amassed a fortune. Geoffrey Ford proposed to follow
+the beggar, as he amassed his fortune, and to show what he did with his
+fortune, when he once had gained it. And in the little room upstairs,
+the wife sat with the children, watching over their every movement to
+see that they made no unnecessary sound. They were good children. When
+papa was writing, even the baby seemed to do her best to keep the peace.
+The little ones seemed willing to give up the birthright of the
+child--the right to enter into the heritage of life with a rush of happy
+noise. And, below, the husband, and the father, wrote, and wrote, and
+wrote, and rushed about the room, chasing his dreams, so that he might
+imprison them, with ink, on paper.
+
+[Illustration: "HE FELT THAT SHE WAS TREMBLING."]
+
+The days went by, and the story grew. And so wrapped up was the writer
+in its growth, that he failed to notice that about his wife there was
+something unusual, and even a little strange. She was interested in his
+work, there could be no doubt of that. But she did not, as he was
+inclined to think that she was apt to do, worry him with continual
+questions as to how it was getting on, and inquiries into this, or that.
+She let him go his own way, without making so much as even one
+suggestion. She was wont to be a little too free with her suggestions,
+he sometimes fancied. For her suggestions hampered him. And--but this he
+did not notice--she went her own way too. Rather an odd way it seemed to
+be. For one thing, she seemed to be unusually busy. She did not come
+into the room in which he was working even after the children had gone
+to bed. She seemed to have something on her mind. She became distinctly
+paler. It might have been illness, or it might have been anxiety, or it
+might have been overwork. A queer look came into her eyes. Sometimes it
+was almost like a look of apprehension. Then there would come a timidity
+in all her movements, as if she were even afraid of him. Then it would
+be like a look of vacancy, as if her thoughts were far away. When that
+vacant look was there, she seemed to be unconscious of her husband's
+presence--just as he had a trick, in his meditative moods, when he was
+thinking of his work, of becoming unconscious of her. Then again, as one
+looked into her eyes, one would have thought that she was possessed by
+some mastering excitement--a flaming fire which glowed within.
+
+One afternoon her husband came in from his daily visit to the Library
+Reading Room. He was not in his happiest mood. He was a man of moods.
+When the black mood was upon him, all the world was black.
+
+"On my word, I do not know what things are coming to. There's Graham, of
+_The Leviathan_, sends back everything I send him. That MS. which came
+back this morning, he has had two months, and it's a first-rate thing.
+Then he goes and fills his pages with stuff which I wouldn't put my name
+to. The new number's out, and there's another story in it by that man
+Philip Ayre. I never read such rubbish in my life."
+
+His wife had looked up at him, as he came in, with a smile of welcome.
+When he began to speak of _The Leviathan_, her face dropped again. It
+went paler than even it was wont to do. There was a tremor in her voice.
+
+"I thought you said that that other story of his was rather good."
+
+"It was good enough--of its kind. But it's a kind I hate. There's a
+craze about for sickly pathos, which, to me, is simply disgusting. In
+that man Ayre there's the making of a popular writer. Mark my words, and
+see if he doesn't make a hit. In a few months he will be all the
+rage--you see. And it is to make room for such men as Ayre that I shall
+be condemned to eat my heart out till I die."
+
+Putting down her work, his wife came to him from the other side of the
+table.
+
+"Geoffrey, don't say that!"
+
+Tears were actually in her eyes.
+
+"Philippa, what's the matter?" As he put his arms about her and drew her
+on to his knee, he felt that she was trembling. "Sweetheart, what is
+wrong?"
+
+"Don't speak like that of Philip Ayre!"
+
+"Not speak like that of Philip Ayre! Why, lady, do you hold a brief for
+him? You silly child! It's only a foolish way I have. But if you could
+only realise how I long, and long, and strive, and strive, to stand up
+with the best of them, you would understand how it galls me to find how
+I am thrust aside by men whose work seems to me to be so poor a thing.
+For their work's sake, I almost begin to hate the man."
+
+"Geoffrey! Geoffrey! Not that! not that!"
+
+Flinging both her arms about his neck, she burst into an hysterical
+flood of weeping--she who never cried.
+
+"Dear heart!--tell me!--what is wrong!--Philippa! Philippa!--my wife."
+
+She did not tell him what was wrong. It seemed as if she could not tell
+him what was wrong. Perhaps, as he told himself, it was because, after
+all, there was nothing wrong. She was only out of sorts that
+day-unusually out of sorts for Philippa.
+
+After a while he began upon another theme.
+
+[Illustration: "HIS WIFE WENT WHITE TO THE LIPS."]
+
+"Sweetheart, if something doesn't come in soon--and I don't know where
+it's going to come from--I can't see what we shall do for money. I don't
+know if you are acquainted with the state of the family finances. What
+we must owe the people I am afraid to think. Why they don't worry us
+more than they do is a mystery to me. I see you've been getting new
+boots for the children. They wanted them. But they'll have to be paid
+for, I suppose. Never mind! All things come to those who wait, and luck
+will come to me. I'm sure I've waited. Let's hope that an unexpected
+cheque will come along. Anyhow, wait until the 'The Beggar' is finished.
+It'll be a splendid thing-you see! I'm putting some of the best work
+into it I ever did. If it doesn't win the first prize, it's bound to win
+the third. Why, Philippa, your eyes are red. The idea of your crying
+because I was pushed against the wall to make room for an unknown ass
+like Mr. Philip Ayre!"
+
+"The Beggar" was finished. It was sent in. Then came the weeks of
+waiting. Geoffrey Ford did scarcely any work. The larger proportion of
+the work he did came back again. He seemed to be in a curious frame of
+mind--as though he took it for granted that that five hundred pounds was
+already on its way to him.
+
+"If I get that five hundred pounds," he would say, "I will do this, or
+that."
+
+His wife grew sick at heart.
+
+"Geoffrey, I wish you wouldn't think of it so much. You make me think
+about it, too. And then, if you don't get it, you know what a bitter
+disappointment it will be."
+
+"I suppose you take it for granted that I shan't get it?"
+
+"I don't take anything for granted. I never do. I wish you wouldn't
+either."
+
+"There's one thing, I don't believe that these competitions are ever
+conducted fairly. I don't see how they can be. I don't see how any man,
+or any set of men, can wade through a cartload of MSS. in such a manner
+as to be able to judge, with critical nicety, which is the best one in
+the truckful. But I'm sure of this, I don't believe that any man sent in
+a better story than 'The Beggar'--a more original one, I mean. I know
+the sort of people who enter for these competitions-a lot of wretched
+amateurs."
+
+She said nothing in reply. What could she say? She knew that it was not
+only conceit which prompted him to talk like that. She understood quite
+well the almost anguished longing which filled his heart. Her own heart
+throbbed pulse for pulse with his.
+
+Returned MSS. seemed to annoy him more than usual. He was case-hardened,
+as a rule. When they reappeared, he simply packed them up again, and
+sent them off upon another journey. Especially was he irritated by the
+return of a MS. which he had sent to _The Monthly Magazine_.
+
+"I knew that would come back. I see that Philip Ayre has something in
+this month's number. I don't know who he is. So far as I know, he is the
+very last discovery. But I believe that that man is destined to be my
+evil star."
+
+His wife went white to the lips.
+
+"Geoffrey! I wish you wouldn't talk like that. It doesn't sound like you
+at all."
+
+"I suppose they're quite right in preferring his work to mine, only--"
+He shrugged his shoulders. "Philippa, I sometimes wish that you were a
+writer. Then you would understand me better. You would understand what I
+feel when I see the dream of my life growing dimmer and dimmer, and more
+dream-like, every day."
+
+Philippa was still.
+
+The day approached on which the conductors of the _North British Herald_
+had stated that they would announce the winners in their competition for
+stories. Geoffrey Ford's anxiety increased to fever heat. His heart
+stood still every time he heard the postman's knock. His wife knew that
+it was so, although he did his best to hide how it was with him.
+
+"To-morrow," he said, "I shall know if I have won."
+
+"Or," his wife suggested faintly, "if you have lost."
+
+[Illustration: "HE BEGAN TO UNFASTEN IT WITH HANDS WHICH TREMBLED."]
+
+"Or, as you say, if I have lost. But we won't speak of losing. I have
+never put my heart into anything as I have put it into this. I am sure
+that 'The Beggar' is the best work I have ever done--I am sure of it. I
+will go further, and say I believe it is as good work as I shall ever
+do. Upon my honour, Philippa, something tells me I shall win--it does!
+Oh, if I could only win!"
+
+He had arranged that a copy of the issue of the paper containing the
+announcement should be sent to him by post. That morning the postman
+brought him two enclosures. One was a bulky parcel. When he saw it, his
+heart, all at once, ceased beating. He had to gasp for breath. Without a
+word, he began to unfasten it, with hands which trembled. Philippa
+bustled about the breakfast table, as if her own heart was not working
+like a wheezy pair of bellows.
+
+[Illustration: "'BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SAY! I AM PHILIP AYRE.'"]
+
+"Philippa! it's 'The Beggar'! the manuscript--come back again!"
+
+"Never mind." How she tried to speak in the most commonplace of voices.
+"You can send it somewhere else. It's sure to get accepted."
+
+"Send it somewhere else?" She saw that his lips were twitching, that
+his face seemed bloodless. "But--I don't understand. Not a word of
+explanation is enclosed. I don't know what it means. Perhaps there's
+some mistake. Let's--let's see who's won."
+
+The other enclosure which had come for him was obviously a copy of the
+paper. He tore it open-still with hands which trembled. He searched its
+columns for the announcement.
+
+"My God!"
+
+"Geoffrey! what's the matter? Who has won? Oh, Geoffrey, have you won?"
+
+"Me! me!" He rose to his feet, as it were, inch by inch. "It's Philip
+Ayre!"
+
+"Philip Ayre!"
+
+Falling on her knees beside the table, Mrs. Ford covered her face with
+her hands.
+
+"It's Philip Ayre! Didn't I tell you he was destined to be my evil star?
+Curse----"
+
+Mrs. Ford rose up in front of him.
+
+"Geoffrey, be careful what you say! I am Philip Ayre."
+
+"You? What do you mean?"
+
+She advanced to him, on tottering feet, with outstretched hands.
+
+"Geoffrey, I am Philip Ayre!"
+
+"You are Philip Ayre? What on earth do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, Geoffrey, don't you understand? Philippa--Philip Ayre!"
+
+There was a moment's pause--a pause which, probably, neither of them
+ever would forget.
+
+"You--you are Philip Ayre! How dull I must have been not to have seen
+the pretty play upon your name before. Philippa--Philip Ayre. Of course!
+So you have been my rival. My wife--the mother of my children--the woman
+I loved better than all the world."
+
+"Geoffrey, don't say that I have been your rival!"
+
+"No? Not my rival? What then?"
+
+"I did it all for you!"
+
+"For me? I see. I am beginning, for the first time, to understand the
+meaning of words. You did it for me? This is not a foreign language
+which you are speaking--I suppose it is English?"
+
+"Geoffrey, will you listen to me for a moment?"
+
+"Certainly; and I shall understand that I am listening to you, to your
+own self, for the first time. It is someone else I have listened to
+before. Proceed, Mr. Philip Ayre."
+
+She seemed to find some difficulty in proceeding. Very soon she was to
+give another child unto the world. Perhaps it was that which made her
+seem so weak. She never had been very pretty. She had not grown prettier
+with the passage of the years. Now, as she stood trembling so that she
+had to clutch at the table to keep her stand, she seemed an
+insignificant, pale-faced, ill-shaped woman--not a thing of beauty to
+the eye. She seemed, also, to be in mortal terror.
+
+"Geoffrey, I would have told you all along, only I was afraid."
+
+"Afraid to tell me that you had set up as a rival in the business? I
+see. Go on."
+
+"I wouldn't have done it at all if we hadn't been so short of money."
+
+"Which was because you had a blundering fool for a husband. That is
+clear. Well?"
+
+"The children wanted things, and--and there were the bills, and--and the
+rent."
+
+"Which you paid. Now I understand Mr. Briggs' civility, the tradesmen's
+reticence. I have been living on my wife. What a blind worm a man who
+has the use of his eyes can be!"
+
+"I--I never meant to be your rival--never, Geoffrey, never."
+
+"Mr. Philip Ayre----"
+
+"Don't call me Mr. Philip Ayre!"
+
+"Why not? Aren't you Mr. Philip Ayre?"
+
+"Oh, Geoffrey! Geoffrey!"
+
+She knelt down before him, so that her hands fell on his knees as he was
+seated on his chair. He moved her hands and rose.
+
+"Let us understand each other, quietly. Philippa, I told you, before we
+were married, that I objected to a woman who worked for money. I had no
+objection to _women_ who worked for money. That was no affair of mine. I
+simply objected to make such an one my wife. I imagined, when you became
+my wife, that you would make my hopes and my ambitions yours. Indeed,
+you told me that you would. I was poor, and you were poor. You knew that
+I would work for you with all my strength. And so I have done. When, a
+little time ago, you suggested that you, too, should become a labourer
+for hire, I told you, with such courtesy as I could command, that, to
+me, the idea was nauseous. Perhaps I should have told you then, what,
+indeed, I had told you before, and what I tell you now again, that
+rather than have a wife who worked for money, I would have no wife. You
+were perfectly aware of this. You were well acquainted with what I
+thought and felt upon the matter. I do not say that my thoughts and
+feelings were correct. Still, they were mine. You said you loved me. You
+swore it every day. I never dreamed that, to you, my wishes were
+nothing, and less than nothing. And that you should deliberately set
+yourself to cheat me out of the fruits of what you well knew was the
+labour and the longing of my life--"
+
+"Not cheat you, Geoffrey--no, not cheat you!"
+
+"Yes, cheat me! cheat me! I suppose that you sat upstairs and pretended
+to keep the children quiet, while I sat down here and wrote. And for
+every page I wrote, you wrote another, the object of which was to rob me
+of the life-blood with which I had written mine. But far be it from me
+to reproach you, Mr. Philip Ayre. You have won, and I--poor devil!--I
+have lost. It is the fortune of war. I am without a penny. You have your
+five hundred pounds. And, as it is quite impossible that I can consent
+to be the recipient of charity from the woman who calls herself my wife,
+I have the pleasure, Mr. Philip Ayre, of wishing you good day."
+
+She sprang between the door and him.
+
+"Geoffrey! What are you going to do?"
+
+"I am going to live my own life. I am going to earn my own living under
+the shelter of a roof for which I myself have paid. I am going to meet
+you with the gloves off, in fair and open fight, not behind a hedgerow,
+with a gun in my hand, Mr. Philip Ayre."
+
+"Geoffrey, any--any hour I may be taken ill."
+
+"What do you wish me to do? I will stay here until you are well, but
+only until then, on the understanding that not a penny of your money is
+to be used for me."
+
+"The children are upstairs. Won't you--won't you let them in?"
+
+"Let them stay upstairs. Philippa! What is the matter?"
+
+Her time was come--that was the matter. By noon their fourth child was
+born.
+
+When the nurse came to the sitting-room door, she found Geoffrey pacing
+round and round like some wild creature in a cage.
+
+"Mr. Ford, sir?"
+
+He looked round with a start.
+
+"Yes, nurse."
+
+"Mrs. Ford would like to see you, sir."
+
+"To see me? Oh! Is she well enough?"
+
+"Well, sir, she's not so well as she might be. But she says that it
+would do her good to see you. Only you musn't let her talk too much, nor
+yet you musn't stay too long."
+
+"I won't stay too long."
+
+He went upstairs. He paused for a moment outside the bedroom door. Then
+he entered the room.
+
+"_Geoff, I'm going to die!_"
+
+Her words so frightened him that, in the suddenness of his fear, he
+staggered backwards.
+
+"To die!"
+
+"All along I knew that I should. I knew it when I was writing that
+wicked book--the book which has won the prize, I mean. Perhaps that was
+why I wrote it. It is the best way out of the trouble. I should never
+have been the same wife to you again. I know you so well. But, Geoffrey,
+you won't refuse to accept a legacy from me when I am dead. It is the
+only thing I have ever had to give you. For the children's sake, and the
+little baby's sake, and mine."
+
+He sat on a chair by the bedside, trying to hold himself in, as it were,
+with every muscle of his body.
+
+"Philippa, you musn't talk like that."
+
+"If you'll forgive me, Geoff, I'll be content--only promise that you'll
+accept my legacy."
+
+"Not if you die, I won't."
+
+"Geoff!"
+
+"I'll accept it if you live."
+
+Holding the baby in his arms, he knelt beside the bed. She turned to
+him. They were face to face. As he began to perceive how she had wasted
+to a shadow, it did not seem as if he could read enough of the story
+which was told upon her face. She, in her turn, did not seem as if she
+could gaze long enough at him.
+
+"Geoffrey, do you really mean that if I live, and get well, really and
+truly well, you will take me for your wife again--that I shall be to you
+the same wife that I have always been?"
+
+"Philippa, if one of us is to die for the other, let me be the one to
+die."
+
+"Geoff, I do believe that if there is anything which must be done, you
+must be the one to do it. Can't you understand, that if you love to do
+great things for me, I, also, love to do great things for you. I can't
+help it. It was that which made me Philip Ayre."
+
+"Be Philippa--or Philip Ayre. Only--stay with baby and with me."
+
+She was silent for some moments as she lay and looked at him with a
+singular intensity of gaze.
+
+"I think, Geoffrey, I shall live."
+
+[Illustration: "'BE PHILIPPA--OR PHILIP AYRE. ONLY--STAY WITH BABY AND
+WITH ME.'"]
+
+
+
+
+THE MOST CRUEL SPORT IN THE WORLD.
+
+THE HORRORS OF THE BULL-FIGHT.
+
+_By Sidney Gowing._
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Do not believe it when you are told that bull-fighting is near its end.
+The great sport is as popular and deeply rooted in Spain as cricket is
+in Britain, and will last as long. To attempt to stop bull-fighting by
+law would cause a bigger revolution among the Spaniards than the most
+fearful disasters at home or abroad.
+
+The great home of bull-fighting is Seville, and when the Seville fights
+are in their glory even Madrid takes second place. The Seville bull-ring
+is a little larger than that of Madrid, though it is not quite so
+gorgeously designed. Still, it holds over 14,000 people.
+
+Nearly every Sunday throughout the year there is a bull-fight of sorts
+to be seen.
+
+About 300,000 people go to the bull-fight every week in Spain, on an
+average. One must also count in an infinite number of little amateur
+fights in outlying villages of the provinces.
+
+[Illustration: THE PROCESSION SALUTING THE PRESIDENT.]
+
+[Illustration: THE GORGEOUSLY DRESSED MATADORS ENTERING THE ARENA.]
+
+But at a _pukka_ bull-fight in Seville, six of the finest bulls and at
+least forty horses are provided, to say nothing of the _cortege_ of
+gold-clad operators drawing terrific salaries. Fashion and the masses
+turn out together to hoot and whistle and shout, and nothing on earth
+short of Armageddon could stop a fight half-way.
+
+[Illustration: THE CRUELLEST PART OF THE PERFORMANCE.]
+
+Half-past two in the afternoon is the usual time for commencement. Seats
+in the sun cost between eighteenpence and two shillings, and in the
+shade anything from three shillings to five pounds. The bulk of the
+seats are merely stone steps, like the face of a pyramid, and above them
+a double row of chairs fenced in by a balcony. It is only these last
+that are covered from the sky. Half the ring is protected by its own
+height from the heat of the sun, and the other half is open to its
+glare.
+
+When the amphitheatre is full of sun-hatted Spaniards, with a sprinkling
+of girls wearing white mantillas (only at bull-fights are white
+mantillas the thing), the president takes his place in a little box by
+the side of the big white platform that is set apart for special
+visitors.
+
+Then the door at the far end of the arena opens, and the suite comes
+forth. There are a couple of sombre-looking cloaked horsemen mounted on
+rather sorry nags, and these amble forward, salute the president, and
+request the key of the _Toril_, the great stable where the bulls wait to
+die. Then come the matadors--they who do the killing--from two to four
+of them, dressed in knickerbocker attire, with short jackets, after the
+fashion of an Eton coat. These are generally of light pink or blue silk,
+hung with infinite short tassels of spun gold or silver. The cloak,
+which is as fine a piece of embroidery as one could find anywhere, is
+lapped round the back and held tight in front. The hats are not of the
+inverted saucepan-lid type that are always depicted in bull-fight
+pictures, but big black furry structures, bulging at the sides. The men
+are short, but well made, and carry themselves with a lithe swing that
+at times savours distinctly of swagger.
+
+In a double row the banderilleros come next--they whose duty it is to
+place the papered darts--and behind them a few chulos, who are in the
+first stages of the art, and whose duties are confined to agile
+exercises with the red cloak.
+
+In the rear ride the picadors--heavily clad lancers--gaily dressed
+somewhat after the Mexican fashion, and carrying long wooden lances that
+bear nothing more hurtful than a short blade, the size of a flattened
+tea-spoon, at the end. These lancers would look still more impressive
+but for the fact that their steeds are aged and weary carriage hacks,
+such as would in Britain be sent to the knacker's yard.
+
+Six picadors complete the _cortege_, with a hanger-on or two behind to
+help direct the horses. They, poor brutes, are bandaged over one
+eye--the eye that is to be nearest the bull.
+
+The suite salutes the president, who is a Town Magnate of high degree,
+and he bows his stateliest in reply. The gorgeous cloaks are only for
+show, and they are thrown over the barrier into the little corridor that
+separates the ring from the tiers of seats, and held by an official. In
+return, the fighters receive their working cloaks--scarlet,
+blood-stained, and ragged--and range themselves round the walls of the
+ring. And here let us get rid of the word "toreador"--it is never used
+in Spain. All other nations seem to take kindly to it, but _torero_ is
+the Spanish for bull-fighter.
+
+The heralds at the far end of the arena lead off with a flourish of
+trumpets, and the great door with the iron bull's head over the top
+swings open and shows a gloomy cavity beyond. There is nothing to see
+for about ten seconds. There is a hush all round the tiers of waiting
+people, and presently a blurred shadow looms through the dark.
+
+[Illustration: "FLINGING HORSE AND RIDER LIKE STUFFED MUSEUM
+SPECIMENS."]
+
+The bull trots out nimbly to the rim of the arena, glares aggressively
+at the empty space ahead of him, shakes his mighty head, and every line
+of his lithe frame says "Ready!" He is not like our British bulls, heavy
+and ponderous, but spry and agile as a terrier, twisting on his own axis
+like a small rater in stays. He was not goaded or tortured before the
+entry, to make him savage, as the historians of bull-fights would have
+us believe--there is no necessity. It is almost the finest part of the
+spectacle, this first entry, and those who cannot bring themselves to
+sit out the drama of blood and steel that comes later should witness it
+and then go. So the bull trots in and looks round for something to slay.
+This is a chance for a young and agile torero to show his skill.
+
+[Illustration: "THE AWFUL DRIVE HOME OF THE GREAT HORN INTO THE HORSE'S
+BODY."]
+
+The seeker of fame runs out to about the centre of the sandy arena and
+stands with his arms folded. His Majesty the bull waits for nothing
+farther, but puts all four hoofs to the ground and thunders towards the
+youngster at full gallop. Just as the great horns lash upwards for the
+toss, the boy twists himself round, and at that moment the space between
+the two is to be counted by inches. The bull usually puts so much
+vicious power into this first effort, that at the attempted toss he
+flings his forequarters clear of the ground, and his forefeet come down
+with a sounding crack on the hard floor. There is nothing left for the
+fighter to do but run, and he vaults the barrier into the corridor
+beyond. The bull frequently gathers so much impetus in following at the
+runner's heels, that he too must leap the fence--a goodly jump for a
+bull--about five feet. Then follows a wild scramble of corpulent
+policemen, sweetmeat-sellers, water-carriers, and so forth, and they
+scuffle heavily over the barrier into the deserted ring. But a door is
+soon opened, the bull turned back into the arena, and the herd of
+onlookers climb feverishly back into safety.
+
+There are three picadors on their sorry mounts standing round the fence,
+but before these come a little knot of chulos, men with cloaks, inviting
+the bull to a species of game of "touch." The chances are largely in
+favour of the men here, for the cloaks are large, and can be fluttered
+in the bull's face while the holder is two or three yards away. Besides,
+a bull charges with closed eyes, and always attacks the cloak, not the
+man. There are exceptions to this, but such exceptions give a new turn
+to the fight, and moreover give work to the little surgeon in the
+whitewashed room beyond the stables, and to the priest who attends
+without for the peace of soul of those that may need him before the
+sixth bull is slain.
+
+Here, again, a matador, he who kills, will often take a cloak and show
+the audience three or four artistic passes with it, as distinct from the
+go-as-you-please way in which cloaks are wielded by the chulo. These
+passes only allow the cloaker to miss the bull by a short breadth, and
+are well defined and recognised by all connoisseurs. The bull has now
+given up those wild rushes from a distance, and fences warily, evidently
+much annoyed at the fruitlessness of his charges, and the impossibility
+of driving his horns home in solid flesh. So out comes the picador on
+his halting steed, and plants himself well away from the barrier, so
+that he may not be thrown against it in the fall. His legs are cased
+beneath the yellow leggings with sheet iron, for he cannot shield them
+from the enemy's rush. Horsemanship is absent--there is no need for it.
+To plant his lance, and fall without hurting himself, is the whole art
+of a picador, and this part is the greatest blot on the performance. It
+is merely an act of deliberate slaughter, for the horse is intended to
+be killed, and will be kept there till it is killed.
+
+[Illustration: "IT IS ONE OF THE MOST PERILOUS FEATS, THIS PLACING OF
+DARTS."]
+
+The horse always seems vaguely conscious of something wrong, though it
+is not generally unmanageable. The other horses, while their comrade is
+being done to death, often grow restive and frightened, though they are
+unable to see what goes on. The bull seldom appears anxious to attack
+the horse, but it is pushed forward under his nose, and the big picador
+on top poises his lance aggressively. Then comes the short, plunging
+charge, the shock of the short lance-point in the bull's shoulder, and
+the awful home drive of the great horn into the tottering horse's body.
+In such a case the forequarters of the mount are lifted clear from the
+ground, and I have even seen a strong eight-year-old bull fling horse
+and rider over his back, as if they had been lightly stuffed museum
+specimens, instead of weighty flesh and blood. The breed of bulls called
+Miura--one of the most dangerous to fighters--generally strike home
+about the horse's chest, and thus death is rapid and sudden; but the
+famed Muruve bulls usually attack the flanks, and the scenes that follow
+this are too shudderingly horrid to put down on clean paper. Even then,
+if the wounds allow of the horse standing at all, the stricken beast is
+mounted again and led forward for another fall, though the populace
+resent this by whistles, as a rule. Whistling, by the way, is the
+Spanish method of expressing disapproval.
+
+A bull that takes the stab of the lance without flinching is usually
+esteemed and applauded; but a young animal may be turned by the first
+chilling pain of the raw steel. If the horse is overthrown, the picador
+falls with a crash, and wriggles aside as best he can that the poor
+beast may not roll on him. In the nick of time a chulo flaunts his
+crimson rag in the bull's face and draws him away from the helpless
+lancer, who is hoisted to his feet by the assistants and given a lift on
+to his steed's back again--if the latter is still capable of bearing a
+man. If not, the dagger-man--"cachetero" he is called--arrives with a
+short arrow-headed knife, and severs the doomed beast's backbone at the
+neck with one short stab. There is no quicker death. The horse wilts
+like a rent air-balloon, and is dead without a quiver.
+
+[Illustration: "A SERIES OF PASSES WITH THE SCARLET FLAG."]
+
+He is happier than the long line of his fellows that wait in the gloomy
+stables beyond.
+
+On an average about three horses fall to a bull, but a single bull has
+often killed twenty. Some cattle seem to have a leaning towards
+horse-slaughter, but the majority appear not to relish it. They stand
+before the picador, and gaze as if considering whether it would be
+sportsmanlike to rend such a tottering beast. Still, three corpses
+usually lie about the sand, with the dark, raw pools around them, before
+the second trumpet-blare sounds.
+
+This is the signal for the withdrawal of the horses. A bull must be
+allowed to kill as many as he likes, and then the banderilleros are rung
+on. One comes forward--dressed like the rest, but without any cloak as a
+protection--carrying a pair of gaily-papered wooden darts, pointed with
+a large iron barb at one end. He walks into the centre, places his feet
+together, and defies the bull by a rapid poise of the twin sticks, one
+in each hand.
+
+If the bull charges at once it is touch and go with the holder, and he
+must plant his barbs exactly parallel either in the nape of the bull's
+neck or behind the shoulders--always well on top and within an inch or
+two of each other. A slight clumsiness is loudly hooted and whistled at
+by the audience, who are as keen critics of everything that transpires
+as our own crowds are of cricket.
+
+It takes years to make a good banderillero. Three, or even four pairs of
+banderillas are planted in the shoulder of the bull, and they mislike
+him much. He tosses his head and roars angrily when the first pair are
+placed, but the pain of the inch-long barb, as it falls over and grips
+the flesh, generally bewilders the bull for a second, and allows the
+banderillero time to slip aside and run for the barriers.
+
+It is one of the most perilous feats, this placing of darts, for they
+are never thrown, except in the accounts of bull-fights that occur in
+novels or newspapers, but thrust into the enemy's neck by hand.
+
+Possibly the bull refuses to charge until the fighter runs towards him
+from an obtuse angle, and this is the easiest plan for the man. On the
+other hand, a daring matador will sometimes take a pair of darts and sit
+on a chair before his prey.
+
+On the charge the slayer slips aside, plants the darts neatly, and the
+chair often flies twenty feet into the air. This is seldom practised,
+except at the great Easter fights during Holy Week.
+
+[Illustration: "NOW ONE OR THE OTHER HAS TO DIE."]
+
+The darts are about two feet six inches long, and merely round pieces of
+deal, more or less straight, with a wrought-iron semi-arrow at the
+extremity. The barb is thus single, like a fish-hook. There is not room
+on a bull for more than four pairs, if they are placed properly; so the
+banderilleros are rung out, and the trumpets sound the entry for the
+last act of the red drama.
+
+The matador comes forward. He walks up to the bedizened and top-hatted
+president, doffs his cap, and makes a speech. He holds a red cloth in
+one hand, about four feet square, and in the other a straight Toledo
+sword with a slightly rounded end. There is a ceremony to go through
+here, and ceremony is the breath of life in the nostrils of a Spaniard.
+He dedicates the bull to the president, or to the chief lady visitor,
+and waves the sword and the sable cap impressively the while. Then, with
+a majestic sweep, he flings the cap to the audience to hold for him--a
+coveted honour--and walks out to face the bull.
+
+[Illustration: "ONE SHORT STAB OF HIS DAGGER BEHIND THE SKULL."]
+
+This latter, by loss of blood and much chasing, is glum of aspect and
+foot-weary. The nerve-tearing barbs rattle their wooden holders about
+his back as he moves. He seems to recognise that the last part of the
+fight has come, for all the teasing chulos have withdrawn, and he is
+alone with one small, wiry man with a bright sword. The time for wild
+rushes is past; the bull plants himself gloomily and waits his chance.
+There is the _faena_ to go through first--a series of passes with the
+scarlet flag. There may be a dozen or so to show, each well recognised
+by the schools of bull-fighting, and each with its own value and
+technique. _Alto_, _de pecho_, _derecho_, and so forth--they are too
+numerous and intricate to explain here; but when the bull has bravely
+charged the last of them, and passed under the flag into space again on
+the other side, then comes the preparation for the death-stroke. No
+other beast in the world would have fought so long. Tiger, wild boar,
+any of the most blood-thirsty tropical brutes, steeped in vicious
+savagery--none of them will stand up to the enemy after such bitter dole
+as is the portion of a bull in the arena, and fight to the end without
+once turning tail.
+
+So the matador arranges the cloak in his left hand and the sword in his
+right. Teasing has been the form so far, but now one or the other has to
+die, and it is not as invariably the bull as most people suppose. There
+are many ways of making the last stroke.
+
+A short aim, a wave of the flag, and with the last blind, lunging charge
+the swordsman slips aside, and his blade runs up to the hilt behind the
+bull's shoulder. The hammered steel feels the great tired heart within,
+and the enemy falls--the pluckiest beast of his day.
+
+[Illustration: "REMOVING THE BODY OF THE BULL."]
+
+This is what should happen, and with a first-rate swordsman it does. But
+often half-a-dozen lunges are made, till at last the red, tottering
+brute kneels down peacefully from sheer inability to stand, and the
+puntillero comes up behind and writes the end with one short stab of his
+iron dagger behind the skull. The matador walks round the barriers
+bowing to the cheers of the people, and behind him stalks a chulo, who
+picks up for him the showers of cigars, hats, and so forth that are
+showered into the ring.
+
+A big folding gate swings back, and two teams of gaily-ribboned mules
+canter in with smart teamsters running beside them. One is hitched to
+the bull, and with a shout and a long sweep round the reddened sand the
+bull is hauled out at full gallop, one horn drawing a wavy line in the
+yellow floor, and one stiff fore-leg wagging grimly to the long lope of
+the jingling mules. The dead horses are drawn out in the same way, with
+the same ringing whoop, and as the gates close on the slain the _Toril_
+looms open afresh, and the second bull comes forward to his death.
+
+There are variations. Instead of receiving the charge upon the sword the
+matador may achieve the "volapie" (half-volley), by running towards the
+bull and driving the sword home as the two meet. Or, a favourite method,
+but a difficult one, is to sever the spinal cord behind the skull with
+the point of the sword as the great head goes down to toss. Yet another
+variation that I have seen more than once is the tinkling of the sword
+upon sand, a rapid leap, as it seems, of three feet into the air, by the
+matador, and his writhing collapse upon the floor. Then a hurried flash
+of red cloaks in the bull's face, to draw him from the fallen man. The
+fighters are vastly plucky about their mishaps, and generally manage to
+run out rather than be carried. Few of them, if they have seen much
+bull-fighting, but are scarred freely with old wounds. The horn
+generally enters the stomach or groin, and a terrible wound it makes.
+The photograph illustrating the "death-stroke" on this page shows
+Espartero, who was the most famous and most utterly reckless of toreros
+during his life. His sword is up to the hilt in the bull's left
+shoulder, the flag just passing over its forehead, and its right horn
+shaving the matador's right knee by a few inches, The upward toss, if
+the bull were just a little nearer, would bury the horn in Espartero's
+waist, but those four inches were the rim between life and death, and a
+second later the bull was stretched upon the sand.
+
+Espartero was killed in the Madrid arena in July 1894. As he
+administered the death-stroke, the bull, a fierce and very hardy Miura
+called Perdigon, drove its horn home, and the two died together.
+Espartero was accorded by far the finest funeral that was ever seen in
+Spain, easily eclipsing that of any statesman or royal personage that
+ever died there. His loss was made almost a cause for recognised
+national mourning. He was an esparto-grass weaver by trade ere he took
+to the arena, and before his death was wont to receive between L300 and
+L500 for a single afternoon's work in the ring.
+
+[Illustration: ESPARTERO, THE FAMOUS BULL-FIGHTER, WHO WAS KILLED IN THE
+MADRID ARENA IN JULY 1894.]
+
+Bull-fighters begin as chulos, drawing about L3 a week, and when
+qualified as banderilleros they make from L5 to L30 a week. A
+first-class matador, such as Guerrita, draws about L300 or more for a
+single fight, and generally there are two first-class matadors in a good
+Seville or Madrid fight.
+
+A really good bull-fight costs from L1,500 to L2,000 and more. Good
+bulls are worth between L30 and L50 apiece if full-grown and from the
+best flocks. The cattle are perfectly wild during their lifetime, and
+are allowed to run at large among the plains and marshes as they please.
+
+The horses, poor beasts, are worn-out carriage-hacks, and cost about L2
+apiece.
+
+Without question bull-fighting is a truly loathsome sport, and the
+British traveller whose curiosity leads him to witness a performance is
+rarely tempted to repeat the experiment.
+
+
+
+
+THE DESCENT OF REGINALD HAMPTON.
+
+BY HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE.
+
+_Illustrated by W. Rainey, R.I._
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Reginald Hampton, the distinguished aeronaut, was at the mercy of any
+wind that chose to do him an ill turn. He had entirely lost control of
+his balloon--of which he was the only occupant--and, so far as he could
+see, the odds were fairly even as to whether he would find a watery
+grave in the English Channel, or a rocky one on the Kentish mainland.
+First came a kind of gentlemen-at-large breeze, which took him seawards;
+then a rival gust drove him back; finally the balloon stopped for a
+couple of minutes to think out the situation. Reginald Hampton, being by
+nature a fatalist and by training an aeronaut, awaited the decision
+without any appearance of impatience or anxiety; when his vehicle was
+ready to move on, he would try to fall on his feet if possible, but not
+for the world would he wish to hasten the departure.
+
+[Illustration: "IN THE HAMMOCK REPOSED A MAIDEN."]
+
+The balloon, after profound meditation, decided in favour of land, and
+in no long time she began to settle quietly down, with the gentleness of
+a snow-flake, and finally sank gracefully into the arms of a huge pear
+tree, white with blossom; whereupon the aeronaut grappled her to the
+tree, filled and lit a comfortable-looking pipe, and leaned carelessly
+over the edge of the car, to spy out the nakedness of this foster land.
+It was against his principles to seem otherwise than dispassioned on
+these occasions.
+
+[Illustration: "HE TOOK A CONTENTED SURVEY OF HIS FRUIT TREES."]
+
+Below him he saw a big garden, full of yews, box, fruit trees, and
+spring flowers, all hobnobbing with one another in the cheeriest manner
+imaginable. At the far end of the garden stood a house, of ruddy
+complexion, prosperous bulk, and Queen Anne architecture. Immediately
+beneath him--the branches diverged considerately, so as to allow his
+vision free play--a hammock was swinging gently from side to side, and
+in the hammock reposed a maiden. Now the prospect of a speedy demise did
+not excite Reginald Hampton, but a suggestion of feminine beauty had
+never been known to fail in this. He nearly fell out of the car in his
+eagerness to distinguish the details of the girl's appearance. A girl in
+a hammock, he reflected, ought always to be pretty, and artistic
+propriety demanded that she should be a veritable Peri when he had taken
+the trouble to save his neck by falling into the very tree to which her
+hammock was attached.
+
+So eager was he, indeed, that his teeth lost their hold of the big
+briar, which cannoned from branch to branch, and dropped, somewhat
+forcibly, into the girl's hand. The prospective Peri was naturally a
+little startled, and more than a little angry, because the pipe had hurt
+her considerably. She slipped out of the hammock and stood looking about
+her with an air of enraged bewilderment. And from the clouds there came,
+as it were, a voice independent of any human tabernacle, a _vox et
+preterea nihil_.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry--upon my word, most careless of me--may I come down
+and make my apologies in proper form?"
+
+"Please, where are you?" demanded the girl. The tree was so constructed
+that Hampton could more easily see her than she him; and moreover it is
+one of the most difficult things in the world to locate an unexpected
+sound.
+
+"I'm tree'd," laughed the voice, "straight above your head."
+
+"That sounds odd," returned the other, beginning to enter into the
+spirit of the situation; "how on earth did you get there, and who are
+you?"
+
+"An aeronaut. If you will leave the shelter of this particularly fine
+tree and look up above, you will see a balloon; attached to the balloon
+is a car, and attached to the car is myself."
+
+"And do you propose to stay up there indefinitely? It isn't very
+amusing, is it?"
+
+"Not particularly. If you can suggest a method of escape, I shall be
+only too happy to descend."
+
+"Climb out of the car, and then down the tree-trunk. Nothing could be
+simpler."
+
+"Pardon me, but have you ever tried that particular form of gymnastic
+exercise? Directly I begin to get out of the car, she will topple over,
+and I wouldn't for the world give you the trouble of collecting my
+fragments at the bottom."
+
+"Please don't. It would be like making one of those wretched toy-houses
+out of bricks, and I know I should never fit in the pieces properly.
+Still, you can't stay up there for ever, can you, now?"
+
+"Not possibly. For one thing, I have not tasted food for twelve hours,
+and I shall expire if I don't get some presently."
+
+"I might bring you a sandwich, if you have got a piece of string you can
+let down," said the girl, with the easy _badinage_ of an old friend. It
+is not every day that one is privileged to encounter a tree'd
+balloonist, and she felt that the proprieties were not particularly at
+home in such an _al fresco_ environment.
+
+"Thanks," responded the aerial voice, "but I prefer to reach firm
+ground, if it can any way be managed. I say, could you get me a ladder?"
+
+"Yes. I'll hunt up the gardener, and tell him to bring one. You think
+you can get down that way?"
+
+[Illustration: "'WHAT THE MISCHIEF ARE YOU DOING IN MY PEAR TREE?'"]
+
+"I think so. If the gardener holds the ladder tight against my car, it
+should fix it pretty firmly, and then I can climb on to the ladder. By
+the way, you are awfully good to take all this trouble on behalf of an
+entire stranger. I forgot to make the observation earlier, because, you
+see, we grow accustomed to finding ourselves uninvited guests. I once
+dropped into the middle of a Royal Garden Party."
+
+"Did you, really? Tell me all about it," said the girl, forgetting her
+errand of mercy.
+
+"Oh, they thought at first I was a Nihilist or a Fenian or something,
+come to blow up the whole Royal Family. I escaped finally by explaining
+that the Prince of Wales--who was fortunately absent--had hired me to
+make the descent by way of affording a little relief to the tedium of
+the gathering. Incidentally, may I ask into what particular garden I
+have had the good luck to fall?"
+
+"This is Caviare Court, Fullerton, Kent."
+
+"_No?_ You don't mean it?"
+
+"Why, yes. Why shouldn't I mean it?"
+
+"That really is odd. Then your father is Colonel Currie?"
+
+"Yes. How ever do you come to know that?"
+
+"Because he happens to be my mother's brother. My name is
+Hampton--Reginald Hampton."
+
+There was silence for some time; then--
+
+"You should have told me that before," said the girl, in an aggrieved
+tone.
+
+"I don't see that _we_ are responsible for parental quarrels," responded
+the other, warmly. "My mother married the wrong man, from Colonel
+Currie's point of view, and they have sworn eternal enmity. But how
+should that affect us? By Jove, we're cousins! To think that I have to
+thank the friskiness of my balloon for getting to know you."
+
+Another silence.
+
+"I hope father won't come home while you're here," cried the girl,
+suddenly. "He's never seen you, but you may be like the family, and it
+is not a likeness one can easily mistake. Have you a peculiar little
+dent in the middle of an otherwise straight nose?"
+
+The query was advanced with an eagerness ludicrously at variance with
+the difference of their respective situations. It seemed--as Charles
+Lamb said of humorous letters to distant lands--as though eagerness must
+grow so stale before it reached the summit of this big pear tree.
+
+"Yes, I have," answered Hampton, laughing.
+
+"Then your fate is sealed. Father may return at any moment, and you
+really musn't come down into the garden."
+
+"But I'm awfully hungry," said Mr. Hampton, plaintively.
+
+"I'll send you up something to eat, as I suggested at first."
+
+"I have no string, or rope, or anything I can let down."
+
+This was scarcely accurate, but Reginald Hampton saw too many
+capabilities in the situation, to let it go readily. Finally, he
+overcame the girl's scruples, and she departed in quest of a ladder.
+
+As his daughter disappeared at the rear of the house, Colonel Currie
+came round the front. He was smoking a cheroot, the slowly curling smoke
+from which, as also his whole gait and mien, was suggestive of peaceful
+proprietorship. He paused to examine his bed of spring wallflowers,
+stooped to uproot an impertinent dandelion which had taken root in his
+otherwise irreproachable turf, gathered a fine auricula and placed it in
+his button-hole. Then he took a contented survey of his fruit trees,
+until his eyes finally rested upon the white-robed bower of the balloon.
+A change came o'er the spirit of the Colonel's pastoral dream. His ruddy
+gills assumed a purplish hue, his grizzled hair stood up in fighting
+attitude. He advanced to the foot of the tree and peered upwards. His
+inability to see the occupant of the balloon called to battle the last
+drop of the plentiful supply of choler wherewith Indian heats had
+endowed him.
+
+"What the mischief are you doing in my pear tree?" thundered the
+Colonel.
+
+His voice was suggestive of heavy artillery at short range; but
+masculine anger was not one of the things that ruffled the balloonist's
+equanimity.
+
+"I'm sitting tight until your gardener is kind enough to bring me a
+ladder," he responded, imperturbably.
+
+"Eh? What? Well, upon my soul, sir! Do you know that this is my very
+finest pear-tree--jargonelles, sir, I tell you, jargonelles? You and
+your impudent machine have ruined the crop. It's just the spirit of this
+confounded age--anarchy, disruption, red riot--no man's house safe--his
+garden a refuge for any air-climbing rascal who cares to take up his
+quarters in it."
+
+The Colonel, from this point onwards, seemed to imagine that he was
+talking _at_ a coolie; coolie intercourse cultivates the faculty of
+expression wonderfully, and Reginald Hampton's host entertained that
+amused aeronaut for fully ten minutes with a wealth of epithet--very old
+in bottle, and of a fine tawny flavour. Hampton took advantage of the
+panting calm that followed the outburst to put in a plea for himself.
+
+[Illustration: "'THERE IS A GENTLEMAN AT THE VERY TOP OF THE TREE DYING
+FOR WANT OF FOOD.'"]
+
+"I can only say, sir, that I regret this _contretemps_ as much as
+yourself. The fact is, I had no choice in the matter; the wind got the
+better of me, and took me just where it pleased."
+
+"P--r--r--rh--Humph, humph!" sputtered the old gentleman. "Serves you
+right for getting inside such a flimsy contrivance. Can't understand how
+any man can be fool enough to want to career through the air when heaven
+has blessed him with a pair of sound legs. Perhaps you have no legs,
+though, for I'm hanged if I can see you," he concluded, irately,
+returning to his pet grievance.
+
+"Yes, I have legs--rather long ones," returned the aeronaut, genially.
+"As to ballooning, it is a matter of personal taste, of course. We
+needn't quarrel about that, need we, Colonel Currie?"
+
+"Eh, eh? How do you come to know my name?"
+
+Reginald Hampton, in the privacy of his retreat, smiled beautifully to
+himself. He had watched the old gentleman's progress through the garden,
+and had guessed that he was tremendously proud of his flowers, his
+trees, his lawn; and an inspiration had come to this light-hearted
+trifler with another man's pear blossom.
+
+"I guessed it, sir," he responded, very suavely. "I knew I had dropped
+somewhere in Kent, and a glance at that well-kept grass of yours, at the
+rare profusion of early flowers, at the extreme
+fulness--er--profligacy--of your fruit-blossom, told me in a moment that
+the garden could belong to only one man in the county. Do you suppose I
+have been a horticultural enthusiast all these years without knowing
+Colonel Currie by name? Why, the--the dahlias you exhibit are alone
+sufficient to make your name cling to one's memory. Sir, I am deeply
+sorry that I have injured your crop of jargonelles, but I cannot regret
+that I have been privileged to meet you."
+
+Reginald Hampton had a cheery way of emerging with safety from any
+embarrassment in which he happened to find himself. His haphazard
+assumption of enthusiasm for the one subject on earth of which he knew
+least might so easily have led him astray; yet in the very nick of time
+that word _dahlia_ crept into his consciousness and won the day. It
+chanced that dahlia-cultivation was the Colonel's most absorbing hobby.
+The old gentleman's anger had already begun to cool, under the influence
+of his enemy's persistent politeness, and this liberal application of
+the flattery-trowel at once set up a counter-current of positive
+cordiality.
+
+"I apologise, sir, I apologise for the--ah--breadth of my language.
+These little accidents will happen, of course--do happen, doubtless,
+every day--and I had no idea that you were a grower of dahlias. Now,
+what soil do you consider the most suitable for the Cactus varieties?"
+Thus the Colonel, in tones of peace.
+
+[Illustration: "WHY, WHATEVER IS THE MATTER?' SHE CRIED."]
+
+There was stillness in the flowery region just above the Colonel's head.
+A perplexed balloonist was at one and the same time suppressing an
+outburst of hysterical laughter, and encouraging coy soil-theories to
+evolve themselves from the blank chambers of his brain.
+
+"It is difficult to say off-hand," he began. "Every grower, you see, has
+his own views."
+
+"So he has, so he has--and he likes to hear other people's views, if
+only for the sake of abusing them. What is your own candid opinion on
+the subject?"
+
+"Well, as you ask me, I should say--use pretty much the same soil as you
+would for the other varieties. Er--ah--a suspicion of loam, not too dry,
+and fairly well matured, sprinkled over the surface, is not
+inadvisable."
+
+"You don't say so? For my part, I stick to the old-established methods,
+but no doubt modern enterprise has done something in the way of
+development. Loam, you say, sprinkled over the surface? I must try it."
+
+"But be careful that it just hits the happy mean in the matter of
+moisture. If you keep it too dry, the plant runs to leaf instead of
+flower; if too wet, the colour is apt to--to run a little."
+
+The balloonist, having fairly spread the wings of his imagination, was
+by this time quite prepared to fly into fresh difficulties. He was
+enjoying himself tremendously, and had even forgotten that his
+prospective rescuer was rather late in coming to his aid.
+
+"But," objected the Colonel, omitting to notice a slight horticultural
+mistake of the aeronaut's, "but how do you manage about the watering?
+The loam must be wet at some times and comparatively dry at others."
+
+"My dear sir, you mistake; the latest method is to carefully remove the
+surface loam before watering, and then to replace it, moistened to the
+proper degree."
+
+"This is all very interesting," quoth the Colonel. "How it does one good
+to talk with a genuine enthusiast on these delightful subjects! You are
+trying for the blue dahlia, of course?"
+
+"I've got it, sir," responded the balloonist, with triumphant emphasis.
+He was now prepared to go any lengths, trusting that Fate would see the
+thing through satisfactorily.
+
+The Colonel skipped about in the wildest excitement.
+
+"_Got the blue dahlia?_ Why, I have only got half way to it, and I
+thought I was farther than most men. You know, of course, that there is
+a prize of a thousand pounds offered for that unique production? Have
+you claimed it?"
+
+"I didn't care to," said Hampton, carelessly. "Frankly, there are so
+many poor men trying for the prize--praiseworthy toilers who finish a
+hard day's work by an evening's tending of some cottage garden--that I
+could not bear to step in and take the prize. I have quite enough money,
+too; I should scarcely know what to do with more."
+
+The airy invisibility of the stranger, the unwontedness of the scene,
+must have played havoc with the Colonel's credulity. He absorbed
+everything, as a dry sponge sucks up water. The aeronaut's car was
+shaking visibly.
+
+"But that is not all," said the latter recklessly. "I promptly set to
+work on a new colour, and I produced----"
+
+"Yes, yes--you produced----"
+
+"_A pea-green dahlia, twelve inches in diameter._"
+
+"My dear, my very dear sir," cried the Colonel, well-nigh hysterical
+with wonder and delight, "I insist on your coming down _at once_ from
+that tree and partaking of luncheon with me. I have some excellent '49
+port, and we'll discuss the two subjects together. Really, it is very
+remiss of me not to have suggested your coming down sooner; the
+situation is not well adapted to conversation, and doubtless you are far
+from comfortable."
+
+"No apology necessary, I assure you. I took the liberty, some time ago,
+of requesting your daugh--your gardener to bring me a ladder. He will
+appear presently, I have no doubt--in fact, I see him coming at this
+moment."
+
+Now Miss Currie, though apparently she had forgotten the very existence
+of Reginald Hampton, had in point of fact followed his fortunes with an
+interest bordering on trepidation. Having run the gardener to earth, she
+was informed by that functionary that there was not a ladder about the
+place sufficiently long to reach to the top of the pear tree; the
+Colonel's longest ladder had been broken a week ago, and of the others
+not one was half the necessary size.
+
+"But you _must_ find one somewhere," insisted the girl, with the pretty
+imperiousness of feminine youth; "there is a gentleman at the very top
+of the tree, and he is at this moment dying for want of food. What a
+pity the pears are not ripe! Can't you think of someone who would lend
+you a ladder?"
+
+The gardener scratched his head and pondered. There _was_ one at
+Langbridge Farm, a good mile away, but it was a powerful hot morning to
+walk a mile with a heavy ladder on one's shoulder. Still, Missy seemed
+anxious, and Missy had had a right to have her own way ever since she
+was as high as one of his dwarf rose trees.
+
+[Illustration: "THE COLONEL GREW PURPLE, THEN WHITE, AND BEAT UPON THE
+TABLE WITH HIS FINGERS."]
+
+So the gardener had departed to Langbridge Farm, and Miss Currie had
+peeped round the corner of the house, to see how it was faring with the
+balloonist. She found her worst fears confirmed; her father was standing
+under the pear tree and abusing the poor man like a pickpocket. The
+girl, realising how futile it would be for her to put in an appearance
+and add to the already deafening hurly-burly, quietly secreted herself
+in a lilac-bush, and listened to what was going on. She began to laugh
+as the aeronaut unwound his imaginative threads; then she grew angry
+with him for his recklessness; then she laughed again at the astounding
+coolness of the man, and the skilful manner in which he avoided all
+difficulties in his path. Finally, at the end of what seemed to her an
+eternity and a half, the gardener appeared with his borrowed ladder, and
+proceeded in the direction of the pear tree. Miss Currie watched the old
+man place the ladder against the tree, under the combined directions of
+her father and the unconcerned occupant of the balloon-car, and then she
+thought the time was ripe for her to stroll up in a negligent manner.
+
+"Why, whatever is the matter?" she cried, with innocent surprise.
+
+"Nothing, my dear, nothing," responded the Colonel, beamingly. "A very
+worthy gentleman and a magnificent florist has, by good fortune, become
+my guest, and he is coming down in order to partake of luncheon."
+
+"But where is he, and how did he come there?" she went on, deeming it
+highly prudent to disown any previous knowledge of the matter.
+
+The old gardener looked at her with an intelligent grin, inwardly
+remarking that Missy was a deep one, she was. The aeronaut laughed with
+incontinent heartiness. The Colonel explained to her how the accident
+had occurred. After which Reginald Hampton climbed out of his nest,
+reached _terra firma_, and found himself entirely satisfied with the
+slim beauty of his rescuer.
+
+The moment might have been an embarrassing one for the average man; it
+was, however, precisely the kind of situation that Reginald Hampton most
+enjoyed.
+
+"Delighted to make your acquaintance at closer quarters," he remarked,
+first raising his cap to the Colonel, and then extending his hand. "Your
+daughter, I presume?" he added, turning to Violet Currie. "I am glad, by
+the way, she did not happen to be occupying the hammock there, or my
+abrupt descent might have startled her somewhat."
+
+"So it might, so it might," responded his host, urbanely. "Now, let us
+go indoors; you must be positively famishing, and that port of mine is
+itching, I know, to see the light of day."
+
+"What a time you are going to have!" whispered the girl, as they took
+their places at table.
+
+He and she managed to stave off the evil day until lunch was half over;
+but procrastination was not nearly as wholesale a thief of time as they
+wished him to be.
+
+"Now, about those two unique dahlias of yours," began the Colonel; "you
+really must allow me to come and see them."
+
+"Delighted, sir. Any time that may be convenient to you. Come and spend
+a week with me."
+
+"You are very kind. I should say to-morrow if, literally, any time would
+do," laughed the Colonel; "but I think even you cannot induce dahlias to
+flower before July."
+
+"Well, no. Of course, my 'anytime' presupposed these natural limits,"
+said the aeronaut, aloud.
+
+"I fancied they were spring flowers," said the aeronaut in a
+stage-aside. "So I can go scot-free until July. I must marry her before
+then."
+
+Colonel Currie was on the point of launching well out into his favourite
+waters--in which case the Providence of so fatuous a trifler as Reginald
+Hampton must surely have deserted him--when a certain peculiarity in his
+guest's face arrested his attention. He gazed fixedly at him for a few
+moments, then frowned ominously.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir, but you have the family nose. I have never seen
+that peculiar dent in the middle in any but a Currie nose. Is it
+possible--"
+
+"I also beg your pardon, Colonel," responded the balloonist, following a
+sudden inspiration; "but before answering your question, may I ask if
+you are really as devoted to flowers as you seem to be?"
+
+"I am indeed. They are the passion of my life," said Colonel Currie,
+still gazing perplexedly at his companion's nasal hallmark.
+
+"For my part, I can never forgive a florist--a true florist--who can
+find it in his heart to put other--other considerations first. If a man
+told me that he possessed a blue dahlia, for instance, I would go and
+see that man in the teeth of gatling guns."
+
+"So would I. Grape-shot is a matter of no consequence by comparison."
+
+"If the man had relations in the house whom it made my head ache to
+meet, I would still go. Nothing in the world, sir, ought to stand in the
+way of a blue dahlia."
+
+"Nothing," responded the Colonel, forgetting everything else in a sudden
+fervour of sympathetic enthusiasm.
+
+"You are quite convinced of that?"
+
+"Quite. How can you doubt me?"
+
+The aeronaut paused, and then planted this shot squarely in the
+Colonel's astonished person.
+
+"Then, uncle, you won't mind my saying that I am Reginald Hampton, and
+that it will be necessary for you to see the blue dahlia _and_ your
+sister in conjunction."
+
+The Colonel grew purple, then white; he stammered, and beat upon the
+table with his fingers, and talked in strange languages. But he had the
+good sense to see that he was cornered. Besides, what had his nephew
+ever done to him, and how could he help being proud of so unique an
+horticulturist?
+
+Finally, the Colonel reached out his hand across the table.
+
+"Confound you, boy, you've conquered me! I must see that dahlia!" he
+cried.
+
+"How to arrange matters floral when the merry month of July comes round,
+I can't guess," mused Reginald Hampton, as he lit a Manilla. "But
+sufficient for the day is the evil thereof, and my bounden duty is to
+marry the little girl in June."
+
+Which he did.
+
+
+
+
+THE MODERN MINIATURE CRAZE
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY CHARMING EXAMPLES.
+
+BY H. M. TINDALL.
+
+
+A painter once made a miniature of King Charles II. which was more or
+less of a caricature. "Is that like me?" said the King when he saw it.
+"Then, odd's fish, I'm an ugly fellow!"
+
+The remark recalls another made to our own Queen when she said to
+Chalon, the miniaturist, that photography would ruin his profession.
+
+"Ah! non, madame; photographie cannot flattere," was the confident
+reply.
+
+[Illustration: [_By M. Josephine Gibson._
+
+"KATHLEEN".]
+
+These comments seem to imply that miniatures make either "ugly fellows"
+or flattered dames, which is by no means true. But in selecting those
+which accompany this article, we sought for pretty faces, and decided to
+admit no "fellows" of any sort except one--no less than a Lord Chief
+Justice.
+
+The very marked attention which the miniatures in the Royal Academy
+attracted this year is one of many things which show how great a revival
+there has been in the taste for miniatures--a revival which is one of
+the most significant features in the history of modern art.
+
+When photography appeared, it had no difficulty for a time in sweeping
+miniatures out of the field, for many people preferred the novelty of an
+exact portrait to a "work of art."
+
+[Illustration: [_By M. Josephine Gibson._
+
+"MA BELLE."]
+
+But the pendulum of taste has again swung back. We no longer accept a
+coloured photograph as a substitute for a genuine miniature, but realise
+that the two things are quite distinct. At the same time, there are
+to-day a number of so-called miniaturists who content themselves with
+copying photographs. But all those whose work is here represented
+condemn the practice, and do their work from the life. This involves, of
+course, several sittings for the person to be painted--a fact sometimes
+resented. Two famous miniaturists wanted to paint King Charles II., so
+to save time he made them paint him at the same sitting.
+
+Mr. Cecil Rhodes is a man who thinks sittings are superfluous. He gave a
+commission to Miss Carlisle--a clever portrait painter and
+miniaturist--to paint his portrait, but nothing could induce him to give
+a sitting. Miss Carlisle therefore had to dodge him in all sorts of ways
+to see what manner of man he was.
+
+He used to pass her studio on his way to the Park in the morning, so
+Miss Carlisle was always on the watch for him and on many other
+occasions, about which he knew nothing.
+
+[Illustration: [_By Edith Maas._
+
+"DELIA."]
+
+Miss Carlisle was born in South Africa, where her grandfather, General
+Sir John Bisset, was well known. Curiously enough, when Miss Carlisle
+was quite a young girl she came over to England on the same boat as Mr.
+Cecil Rhodes. He was then, she says, "a long and lanky youth, who spent
+all his time in reading books." He was coming to Oxford to keep his
+terms.
+
+By the way, there was a famous lady miniaturist in the days of Charles
+I. named Carlisle, and to show his appreciation of her work the King
+presented her with L500 worth of ultramarine!
+
+To paint a miniature is as arduous a task as to paint a large picture in
+oils, and requires quite as much skill. Miss Coleridge--whose miniature
+of her uncle, Chief Justice Coleridge, attracted so much attention in
+the Academy this year, and is reproduced on p. 202--says: "I find the
+work, though I love it, even harder than painting large portraits; it
+requires quite as much thought and care. It is only by working straight
+from the life, studying your model's expression and character, that you
+can hope to be even the most humble disciple of the art as it was in the
+last century.
+
+"The great difficulty I experience is in getting people to understand
+that they must sit to me. They all say, 'Miss or Mr. So-and-So paints
+from photos--why can't you?' No doubt these artists do a very charming
+lightly-stippled coloured photo for them, but there can never be any
+life in these things, nor can they be anything else than coloured
+photographs, however pleasant to the eye of their owners."
+
+The portrait of Miss Wilson, one of the beauties of the season, is also
+by Miss Coleridge, who works a great deal in pastels.
+
+[Illustration: [_By Maud Coleridge._
+
+MISS MURIAL WILSON.]
+
+Many amusing stories are told by artists about their sitters, but as a
+rule the stories are told with this absurd restriction: "but you mustn't
+publish that"--which, of course, takes the point absolutely away.
+
+[Illustration: [_By Annie G. Fletcher._
+
+"SWEET GENEVIEVE."]
+
+Mr. Alyn Williams, the President of the Society of Miniature Painters,
+to whom the Society owes its origin and prosperity, tells a good story
+which he does not claim to be original. He tells it rather to show the
+difficulties which an artist is sometimes made to overcome by his
+client.
+
+A man who distinctly came from the provinces once went to an artist who
+had painted a celebrated picture of David, and said that he wanted him
+to paint a picture of his father.
+
+The artist consented, and suggested that it would be necessary for the
+subject to come to his studio. That, however, the son declared to be
+impossible, and at last the fact came out that he was dead.
+
+"Have you a photograph?" asked the artist.
+
+No; a photograph had never been taken.
+
+"Then I cannot paint him," declared the artist.
+
+"But you painted David," retorted the man, "and he has been dead much
+longer than my father!"
+
+This was irresistible, and so the artist consented to do his best.
+
+When the fancy picture of the father was finished, the faithful son came
+to see it, and liked it very much.
+
+"It is very good," he said. "But," he added, after a little reflection,
+"how he has changed!"
+
+[Illustration: [_By Mabel E. Hankin._
+
+A PORTRAIT.]
+
+[Illustration: _By A. R. Merrylees._]
+
+A BONNIE BAIRN.]
+
+[Illustration: [_By Alyn Williams._
+
+A "GAINSBOROUGH" PORTRAIT.]
+
+Miss Merrylees, whose miniatures, seven in number, make a fine show at
+the Academy, once had to paint a miniature of a clergyman; but the only
+way of getting his right expression was to make him recite long poems
+and dramatic scenes from Shakespeare. While he was doing this, Miss
+Merrylees "went on painting madly."
+
+Another time she was painting a little boy, who was sitting very still
+and silent.
+
+Suddenly he convulsed his painter by propounding this tremendous query:
+"Do you like your groom to sit _so_, or _so_?" And he indicated two
+varieties of the akimbo manner.
+
+A charming portrait of a pretty child indicates Miss Merrylees' style of
+work. This was exhibited both in the Royal Academy and the Paris Salon.
+
+Holbein, who was a great miniaturist, had a very summary method of
+dealing with people who troubled him while he was painting miniatures. A
+nobleman once came into his studio while he was painting a lady, and was
+promptly thrown downstairs, like Daddy Longlegs of immortal fame.
+
+The King, Henry VIII., heard of it, but sympathised with the painter.
+"Of seven peasants I can make as many lords, but not one Holbein," he
+said.
+
+King Henry had a special reason for this sympathy. When he heard of a
+pretty woman he sent Holbein to paint her, with a view to making her his
+wife. On one occasion, at least, a flattering miniature led its unhappy
+subject into trouble--Anne of Cleves.
+
+[Illustration: MRS. C. L. SHAND. _By Edith Maas._]
+
+A word should be said about the origin of the miniature. In the first
+instance the word had nothing to do with the size of a painting. It
+comes from the Latin word _minium_, or red lead. In old days the
+capitals of illuminated missals were painted with this by great artists,
+while the less important work was done by minor ones. Thus the
+_miniatura_ meant the picture painted by the great artist. The word
+miniature, in its present sense, was born in the 18th century, which was
+the best period of British miniature painting.
+
+The material on which miniatures have been painted has varied from time
+to time. To-day ivory cut very thin is almost invariably used.
+
+The elephant is not a graceful or artistic beast, and no particularly
+sentimental thoughts at first sight attach to him. But artists to-day
+would be at a loss without his tusks, and much sentiment is lavished on
+them in the form of lovers' portraits.
+
+While love lasts the miniature will always be in vogue, for artists
+frankly admit that it is so convenient to carry in the pocket. It
+represents so much in so little. Miniature painting is especially
+therefore "the lovers' art." Some say that it makes the subject
+"beautiful for ever," and what more could Romeo want?
+
+Ivory, however, is of comparatively modern use in the art world and the
+studio. Vellum, gold, silver, and enamel were the things on which
+miniatures were painted before the days of ivory.
+
+The prices of these dainty pictures vary enormously. As much as L3,000
+was paid for one in the Hamilton collection, while another in a diamond
+setting sold at Christie's for L2,000. Nowadays, L5 to L100 is easily
+obtained, according to the skill of the painter.
+
+Her Majesty the Queen is a great collector of miniatures. Her collection
+at Windsor is of great historic as well as financial value. She has
+greatly encouraged the art, and has been repeatedly painted in
+miniature. She frequently gives these miniatures of herself away as
+special presents.
+
+Miss Carlisle painted one of the Queen with which she was very pleased.
+She gave it to the Prince of Wales, who said that it was the best of his
+mother which had been painted for many years.
+
+[Illustration: MISS PAMELA PLOWDEN. _By Winifred Hope Thomson._]
+
+To deal in detail with the miniatures on these pages. Mr. Alyn Williams
+is the painter of the charming portrait of a lady in the Gainsborough
+style.
+
+Miss Kuessner, who is represented by a miniature of Lady Dudley, has
+already painted an enormous number of ivories. She arrived in New York
+in 1893 an unknown girl, with a letter of introduction to a lady of
+social influence, but "very exclusive."
+
+[Illustration: THE PRIDE OF ENGLAND. _By Esme Collings_]
+
+In much fear and trembling the letter was presented. The lady was too
+unwell to see the artist, but she sent word down that she would see the
+miniature she had with her.
+
+"This was almost more than she could bear, and she sat waiting the
+maid's return in sadness that was near despair. But when she did come,
+how the little miniaturist's sinking heart leaped; for the maid brought
+an invitation--the lady would see her in her own room." So a friend
+tells the tale.
+
+Since then Miss Kuessner has pained many of the English aristocracy, and
+gets L100 a miniature.
+
+This is how Miss Kuessner works. First comes the study of her sitter, and
+perhaps one entire sitting will be devoted to this. Then follows the
+sketching of the face on the ivory--a transcript of the form and spirit.
+Lastly comes the actual painting, with infinitesimally small brushes,
+each stroke made under a powerful magnifying glass.
+
+Lady Dudley's marriage was quite a romance. She was the daughter of Mr.
+Gurney, of Norfolk, whose business reverses caused him to resign his
+partnership in the well-known Gurney Bank and surrender his possessions
+for the benefit of his creditors.
+
+His wife came to London and opened a milliner's shop, and in this her
+two daughters served. But it was not a success, and so the daughters
+entered the employ of a well-known West End _modiste_. But the Duchess
+of Bedford and Lady Henry Somerset became interested in them; and it was
+as the adopted daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Bedford that Rachel
+Gurney married Lord Dudley.
+
+Miss Winifred Hope Thomson, whose miniature of Miss Pamela Plowden we
+give, had the place of honour in the miniature room of the Academy this
+year. Simplicity of style is the feature of Miss Thomson's work, and
+probably the reason why her miniatures are considered like those of the
+great Cosway.
+
+[Illustration: "DAFFODIL." _By E. J. Harding_.]
+
+[Illustration: HON. MRS. BENYON. _By Edith Maas_.]
+
+Miss Edith Maas is another lady whose miniatures are very greatly
+admired for their beauty and style. Her portrait of Delia, the daughter
+of the Rev. and Hon. Ed. Lyttelton, Head Master of Haileybury College,
+has been exhibited in the New Gallery. The other miniatures we give are
+of Mrs. Shand, wife of His Honour Judge Shand, and the Hon. Mrs.
+Benyon, daughter of Lord North. The latter was exhibited in the '93
+Academy.
+
+[Illustration: LADY DUDLEY. _By Miss Kuessner._]
+
+The number of ladies well known as clever miniature painters is quite
+extraordinary, and with but few exceptions all the portraits on these
+pages were painted by ladies.
+
+Miss M. Josephine Gibson sends us two charming pictures which she calls
+"Ma Belle" and "Kathleen." These are exquisite, both in conception and
+execution. Mrs. Lee Hankey, who, with Miss Gibson, is on the Council of
+the Society of Miniature Painters, is represented by one strong picture.
+"Daffodil" is by Mrs. E. W. Andrews, also known as "E. J. Harding." All
+these ladies have miniatures in this year's Academy.
+
+From the studios of Mr. Esme Collings, of Bond Street, comes the
+charming miniature of two girls' heads, originally painted in black and
+white. This gentleman has published a very dainty little brochure on
+"The Revival of Miniature Art," which gives some romantic stories about
+miniatures and their painters.
+
+One tells how the Comte de Guiche, being in love with a daughter of
+Charles I., wore her portrait, mounted on a snuff box, over his heart,
+and owed his life to this circumstance, for the box turned aside a
+bullet which struck him in battle--a hint which all soldiers should
+take. This box is now in the possession of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts.
+
+Other stories tell of Richard Gibson and Miss Biffin, both gifted
+miniaturists. But the first was a dwarf, 3 feet 10 inches high, who
+married another dwarf of his own height who lived till she was
+ninety-seven, and became the mother of nine children. As for Miss
+Biffin, she was limbless, but managed her paint-brush and pencil with
+her mouth.
+
+Of course there are miniatures _and_ miniatures. But Shakespeare, by a
+miniature in words, has given us an exquisite conception of what a
+miniature in art should be--at least when it is "Fair Portia's
+counterfeit."
+
+          "... Here in her hair
+  The painter plays the spider, and hath woven
+  A golden mesh to entrap the hearts of men
+  Faster than gnats in cobwebs; but her eyes--
+  How could he see to do them? having made one,
+  Methinks it should have power to steal both his,
+  And leave itself unfurnished."
+
+But Bassanio was not an art critic--merely a lover! The miniaturist,
+however, who can weave on ivory "a golden mesh to entrap the hearts of
+men" may surely find content.
+
+[Illustration: THE LATE LORD COLERIDGE. _By Maud Coleridge._]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: HIS LORDSHIP & MISS O'CALLAGHAN]
+
+A COMEDY BY CHARLES KENNETT BURROW.
+
+_Illustrated by Edmund J. Sullivan._
+
+
+After my engagement to Lucy Vivian I took to working very hard--a man
+always does that or nothing at all--and the work suited me better than
+the idleness. I suppose we had been engaged five months, and I was
+beginning to grow accustomed to it, when one afternoon the amiable peer
+who had been of such service to me in the affair strolled into my
+studio. Directly I set eyes on him I knew he had something in the wind,
+his manner was so absolutely uninterested.
+
+He nodded to me without speaking, crossed over to the fire (it was
+bitterly cold outside), and stood with his back to it. Then he pulled
+off his gloves slowly and invited me to come and shake hands.
+
+"You lazy beggar!" I said; "you come here! Can't you see I'm working?"
+
+"Working! you're always working. What's come over you?"
+
+"You forget----"
+
+"Oh, it's Lucy, is it?" he asked. "Well, well! she's a dear child, Phil,
+I admit."
+
+"Lord St. Alleyne," I said, "you never spoke a truer word."
+
+"Why will you always be throwing that confounded title in my face? I'm
+only an Irish peer; that title has been a great drawback to me."
+
+"How?" I asked.
+
+"It makes people take twice as long as they should to find out I'm a
+decent chap."
+
+"It didn't take me long," I said.
+
+"You're different, Phil; it's the women it troubles."
+
+I shrugged my shoulders.
+
+"Well, what do you want?" I asked.
+
+"A cigar," he said.
+
+"You know where they are, don't you?" I replied.
+
+He went to my cigar cabinet and selected one thoughtfully. Then he lit
+it and drew his favourite armchair up to the hearth. His profile was
+towards me, and I remarked, as I had done a hundred times before, what a
+beautiful face it was. The lines were as clear and round as a woman's;
+the mouth sensitively delicate, but firmly set; the nose straight, with
+only the slightest indentation below the brows. It was a face of
+singular purity and candour. After a time he bent forward towards the
+blaze and looked hard into the fire's heart.
+
+"I believe I'm done for, Phil," he said.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I won't tell you till you put down those brushes. You know you can't
+see."
+
+"All right," I said. "If you come here to make me neglect my duty, I
+suppose I must put up with it."
+
+"Pooh!" he said; "sit down then and don't be an ass."
+
+"I'll sit down, but perhaps I can't help being an ass."
+
+"I daresay you can't, poor dear," he said. Then he lay back in his chair
+and laughed. "To think of me," he chuckled, "falling in love."
+
+I sat down at the other side of the fire and lit a pipe.
+
+"But you've been in love ever since I knew you."
+
+"The others didn't count; this does."
+
+I begged him to explain.
+
+"Well, it's like this. When I saw her often I wasn't quite sure about
+it, but now that I can't see her at all the thing's dead certain."
+
+I again begged him to be more explicit. "You talk in the dark," I said.
+
+"Then why don't you light a lamp?"
+
+I did as he suggested and sat down again.
+
+"Is there anything else I can do for you?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," he said, "you're coming over to Ireland with me to-morrow."
+
+"I'll see you hanged first," I said.
+
+[Illustration: "HE LIT IT, AND DREW HIS FAVOURITE ARMCHAIR UP TO THE
+HEARTH."]
+
+"The train leaves Euston at 8.45 p.m."
+
+"It can leave when it likes. I shan't be there."
+
+"By eleven o'clock on Thursday we shall be in Stromore."
+
+"Well?" I said, weakly.
+
+"I knew you'd come!" he said.
+
+"But I won't," I said.
+
+He smiled tenderly upon me.
+
+"And yet," he said, "I endured that dragon Mrs. Vivian for your sake for
+full ten minutes."
+
+"If you'll explain what it's all about," I said, "I'll do anything I can
+to help you, but as to--"
+
+He tapped me on the knee with the poker.
+
+"Listen!" he said. "In my opinion, my cousin, Mrs. O'Callaghan, is mad."
+
+"I'm not surprised to hear it," I said.
+
+He tapped me again with the poker.
+
+"My cousin, Mrs. O'Callaghan, has a daughter, and in any decent man's
+home," he added, "there'd be something to drink Norah's health in."
+
+I got up wearily and produced what was required, and we drank solemnly
+to Norah O'Callaghan.
+
+"That's better," said St. Alleyne. "Now Mrs. O'Callaghan has her heart
+set on Norah's going into a convent, and Norah, poor child, thinks she
+has a leaning towards the religious life, and that before she has seen
+any other life at all. When I heard of this folly I went over, but never
+a sight of the girl could I get except with her mother. The old woman
+never lets her outside the grounds, and there they walk up and down for
+an hour every day."
+
+I was becoming seriously interested, and St. Alleyne saw it.
+
+"Does Miss O'Callaghan know you care for her?" I asked.
+
+"I suppose any girl knows," he said.
+
+"Did you ever speak to her about it?"
+
+"Not seriously," he said.
+
+"Isn't it possible she thinks you were playing with her and may be
+playing still; and, granted she cares for you, mayn't that be driving
+her into the convent?"
+
+His face was suddenly flushed with a kind of pitying shame.
+
+"By Jove!" he said. "It may be so, Phil; I never meant to play with her,
+I swear that."
+
+"I believe you," I said, "but it looks as though there might be
+something in what I suggest."
+
+"It does," he answered.
+
+"Have you written to her?"
+
+He tapped me once more with the poker.
+
+"No, and if I did she'd never get the letter. I know my cousin, Mrs.
+O'Callaghan. She thinks all the St. Alleynes are a bad lot, because, I
+suppose, my grandfather was a wild devil once. That's where I have to
+suffer for my name."
+
+"But you could convince her otherwise, I suppose?"
+
+"I'd undertake to do it, if I were sure of Norah."
+
+I knocked the ashes from my pipe and stood up. The situation interested
+me; my own happiness was so near that I was prepared to do a great deal
+for my friend.
+
+"Well," I said, "suppose I go over with you, how am I to help?"
+
+He rose and stood by my side, putting his right arm round my shoulder.
+He was quite his old cheerful self again.
+
+"We'll think of that when we get there," he said. "You must draw Mrs.
+O'Callaghan off while I talk to the girl somehow. If I have a sure
+friend at hand the thing can be managed. I knew you'd come, old man. My
+cousin, Mrs. O'Callaghan," he added, "has burnt her own boats; if she
+hadn't played me this trick I might never have discovered that I wanted
+Norah."
+
+[Illustration: "MY FRIEND WAS CONSUMING LARGE CIGARS."]
+
+"Oh, yes, you would," I said.
+
+"You know, of course," he said, pinching my ear.
+
+When I awoke the next morning I confess that our project did not look
+particularly hopeful, but I had undoubted faith in St. Alleyne's
+ingenuity, and it was a great satisfaction to me to see Lucy, and let
+her into the secret of our expedition. Her eagerness, indeed, was much
+greater than mine, and she made me promise to send her a telegram
+directly there was any good news to communicate.
+
+It was a bitterly cold night in January when St. Alleyne and I crossed,
+and I am not a particularly good sailor. I remained on deck for the sake
+of the air, the saloon being hopeless, and made what efforts I could to
+keep myself warm. Every now and then I looked into the smoking-room,
+where my friend was consuming large cigars; I envied him his occupation,
+but rejected all his invitations to join him. After a time he came out
+and wrapped me up in half a dozen rugs on a seat. By the time we reached
+Dublin I was numb to the heart, and knew I was in for a violent cold.
+
+However, we made no delay, but caught the mail for the south. The
+carriage was warmer than the boat, and by a judicious arrangement of
+rugs I managed to bring back some heat into my blood, and with it came a
+revived interest in our expedition. St. Alleyne had said nothing about
+his plan since starting, but as I looked across at him I could see that
+he was thinking hard. He caught my eye and smiled.
+
+"Feel better?" he asked.
+
+"Much," I said.
+
+"You look a poor starved rat of a man, even now."
+
+"I'm sorry," I said, "that I haven't your terrific constitution."
+
+"It hasn't been much good to me so far," he said, "and I'll thank you,
+Mr. Mildmay, for one of those excellent cigars of yours."
+
+"I think I could manage one myself," said I, sitting up.
+
+"Bravo! Now we can talk seriously.... I've been thinking, Phil."
+
+"I could see that!"
+
+"You could, could you? Well, I've hit on a plan--a beautiful plan."
+
+"Capital!" I said.
+
+"But the carrying through depends upon you."
+
+"Am I in fit condition?" I asked.
+
+"Faith, you'll be in too good condition presently. It depends on your
+sickness."
+
+It was always necessary to beg St. Alleyne to explain: I did this
+forcibly, and he brought his head close to mine.
+
+"I told you, I think," he said, "that in my opinion my cousin, Mrs.
+O'Callaghan, is mad?"
+
+"You did."
+
+"Well," he said, "she's not so mad, neither. She has some idea of true
+charity. Now Norah is a great hand with the sick; she has a way with
+her, as we say over here, and Mrs. O'Callaghan encourages her to visit
+them; it's all part of the convent scheme."
+
+"I begin to see," I said; "I'm to be sick."
+
+"And who," said he, "would you rather see in your suffering than an
+angel like Norah?"
+
+"I'd rather see Lucy," I said.
+
+"Well, well, you're a constant creature. I have a little place over here
+near Stromore, as you know; but you mustn't be ill there; you must go to
+the hotel." He paused and looked at me.
+
+"Go on," I said.
+
+"And being very low," he continued, very slowly, "you'll speak to Biddy
+about it."
+
+"Who's Biddy?" I asked.
+
+"Mahony's daughter; he runs the hotel. And you'll say that you'd like to
+see someone--a woman for choice--as you have something weighing on your
+mind; and then you might drop Miss O'Callaghan's name. Now Biddy was
+Norah's maid for a time, and what more natural than that she should
+suggest bringing her old mistress to the poor sick guest?"
+
+"You're a rogue," I said.
+
+"Then Norah will come to you," he went on, "and I shall be in the next
+room, and after a time you'll speak of me, and then--"
+
+"We must wait for the rest," I said, "But what will your cousin, Mrs.
+O'Callaghan, be doing all the time?"
+
+"She'll be talking to Mahony about the price of oats downstairs."
+
+"This is a very charming plan," I said, "but will it work? And do you
+think me humbug enough to mix myself up in such an affair?"
+
+"You're humbug enough for anything," he said, "but have you the nerve?"
+
+"It doesn't need much nerve," I said.
+
+"You haven't seen Norah," he replied.
+
+"Well, I'll risk it; I came over here to help you, and I may as well do
+it, little as the job suits me."
+
+"Oh," he laughed, "it'll be grand to see my cousin Mrs. O'Callaghan's
+face!"
+
+It was important to our plan that St. Alleyne and I should not seem to
+be together, so he gave me final instructions before we reached Stromore
+Station. "You must get the bedroom over the door," he said, "because
+there's a sitting-room next to it, and we must have them both."
+
+"Suppose it's already occupied?" I said.
+
+[Illustration: "WE SWUNG UP THE ROAD FROM THE STATION."]
+
+"You don't know Stromore in the winter," he said; "there won't be a soul
+in the place, and Mahony will kneel at your feet."
+
+"I hope he won't," I said, "because I might feel inclined to kick him."
+
+"Kick Mahony!" he cried, "the man's six feet two, and as strong as an
+ox. You'd better begin to be sick almost at once, hadn't you?"
+
+"I feel bad enough," I said.
+
+We shook hands in the carriage as the train pulled up at Stromore; on
+the platform we did not know each other.
+
+I secured a car at once, and told the man to drive to the St. Alleyne
+Arms, and as we swung up the road from the station I looked back and saw
+his lordship coming slowly down the steps.
+
+"Do ye know," asked my driver, "how long his lordship's come for?"
+
+"His lordship!--whose lordship?"
+
+"Lord St. Alleyne," he said, looking at me incredulously.
+
+"What do I know about the man?" I asked. "Where is he?"
+
+"He's there, sure, comin' down the shteps."
+
+"Indeed," I said, and told the man to hurry, as I was cold.
+
+I had no difficulty in securing the two rooms I wanted, and as I took
+possession of them I felt some of the pangs of a conspirator. I was
+also, as a matter of fact, quite sufficiently unwell to see things
+rather gloomily, and as I sat by my window after lunch, and looked out
+into the grey street, I confess that I wished myself engaged in a less
+dubious enterprise.
+
+[Illustration: "THE GIRL GLANCED UP AT THE INN."]
+
+And then, as I sat there, I heard the brisk sound of wheels, and a
+carriage drove by, and in it there sat a lady of a rather severe aspect
+and a girl. The girl glanced up at the inn as she passed; from out of a
+nest of white fur, there looked a face that made me come nearer to
+forgetting Lucy than anything I could have imagined. "That," said I to
+myself, "is Norah, and the other is Mrs. O'Callaghan. My dear St.
+Alleyne, I'll begin my part of the game this minute if it's to help you
+to win that child."
+
+And indeed there was no time to be lost, for we had arranged that St.
+Alleyne was to call at eleven o'clock the next morning to see how things
+were getting on. I accordingly looked for a bell-rope, but, being unable
+to find one, I opened the door and called downstairs. Biddy came up
+light as a bird, and with a merry engaging smile on her face.
+
+"Biddy," I said, "I feel ill, and I think I'll go to bed. I've caught a
+bad cold, and it may turn to fever with me."
+
+"Lord save us!" she cried, "will I send for the docther?"
+
+"No, I'll see how I am later. And, Biddy, at six o'clock, I might try to
+eat some dinner."
+
+"To be sure, sorr," she said. "Can I do anythin' for ye now?"
+
+"No," said I, pressing my hand against my forehead, "but if I want
+anything I'll ring."
+
+"There's no bell," she said, "so you must just knock on the flure, an'
+I'll hear ye."
+
+With that she departed, and I made up the fire and got slowly into bed.
+My head did ache a little, but not enough to make me unhappy, and it
+seemed to me, as I lay in the midst of that apparently dead Irish town,
+that I was coming perilously near to playing the fool. But my confidence
+in St. Alleyne was unbounded, and under all his lightness of manner it
+was plain that he was in deadly earnest; so presently, thinking of him
+and of the face I had seen, and being horribly tired after the previous
+night, I fell comfortably asleep.
+
+When I awoke it was dark outside and there was only the red glow of
+firelight in the room. I got up to light a candle, and felt rather
+lightheaded and feverish; it gave me some satisfaction to realise that I
+should not have to altogether act my part. I looked at my watch and
+found that it was a quarter to six. I lay down again and listened;
+beyond the slight movement in the house there was not a sound to be
+heard; I might have been in a lodge in the wilderness.
+
+Presently I heard Biddy's light step on the stairs, and there was a
+tentative knock at the door.
+
+"Come in," I cried, and she entered with dinner and a lamp.
+
+"Are you betther, sorr?" she asked.
+
+"No," said I, "but worse."
+
+"Will I send for Docther Nolan now?"
+
+"No, Biddy, I'll try to eat some dinner."
+
+"Do, poor soul!" she said. She drew a little table to the bedside, and,
+having set the food on it, left me. It was not a good dinner; a healthy
+appetite and an easy conscience might have been satisfied with it, but
+neither of these was mine at the moment, so I did no more than just play
+with it. Then I knocked on the floor for Biddy, who came up at once. She
+was always smiling; she had one of those faces to which only laughter or
+tears seem natural.
+
+"Have ye done, sorr?" she asked, in undisguised surprise.
+
+"Yes," I said, "I can't eat."
+
+She suggested Doctor Nolan again.
+
+"No, I'm afraid a doctor could do no good until I've got something off
+my mind."
+
+"Will I sind for a priest, thin?" she asked.
+
+"At present, Biddy, it's not a matter for a priest, but if you knew of
+some good woman, not a nun, but still in the world--" I paused from
+sheer inability to go on; I was so unused to this kind of thing that any
+sign of suspicion on Biddy's part would have meant disaster. But Biddy
+had a kind heart, and instantly scented a romance.
+
+"Ah," she said, "I see how it is wid ye."
+
+I said nothing, but lay still, watching her face. I tried once or twice
+to mention Miss O'Callaghan's name, but my lips refused to approach it
+without a weakness that might have betrayed me. And then, all at once,
+Biddy did it for me.
+
+"I might ast Miss O'Callaghan to see ye," she said.
+
+My face burned. "And who's Miss O'Callaghan?" I asked.
+
+"A dear, dear heart," said Biddy, "an' just the lady to help ye if it's
+love you're throubled about. She's had throuble herself," she added,
+"an' may his lordship be made to pay for it!"
+
+"What do you mean about Miss O'Callaghan and his lordship?"
+
+"Was I her maid for three years and not know her secrets?"
+
+I begged Biddy to explain, which she refused to do; but I gathered
+enough from her to judge that my surmise had been correct, and that
+Norah was wholly his lordship's if he could get fair speech with her.
+
+"Biddy," said I, "you're a good girl, and if you can bring Miss
+O'Callaghan to see me at half-past eleven to-morrow I'll dance at your
+wedding."
+
+"I'll go to her now," she said; "rest quiet, now, till I come back."
+
+When Biddy had gone I was almost sorry that I had not taken her
+completely into my confidence, but her interest seemed so deeply engaged
+on my behalf that I felt sure she would work strongly on Miss
+O'Callaghan's feelings; and so it proved, for she returned in an hour to
+say that the lady would come on the following morning. After this piece
+of news I calmly went to sleep again, and only awoke to find Biddy once
+more at my bedside with breakfast.
+
+I assured her that I felt somewhat better, and would be ready for Miss
+O'Callaghan when she came. Just as I had finished breakfast I heard St.
+Alleyne's voice below. Presently Biddy came up with curiosity shining
+from her face.
+
+"Why didn't ye tell me," she said, "that ye knew his lordship?"
+
+"Biddy, can I trust you?" I asked.
+
+She tossed her head. "Thrust me," she said, "an' why not, sure?"
+
+[Illustration: "BIDDY, I FEEL ILL, AND I THINK I'LL GO TO BED."]
+
+"I knew I could. Well, you'll show Lord St. Alleyne up, and he won't go
+down again until after Miss O'Callaghan has seen me."
+
+"Lord save us!" cried Biddy.
+
+"I know," I went on, "that you have your late mistress's happiness at
+heart, and this will make it safe. It depends upon you whether there is
+to be a great wedding at Stromore, or the convent for Miss O'Callaghan."
+
+[Illustration: "'MISS O'CALLAGHAN TO SEE YE, SORR.'"]
+
+"Lord save us!" Biddy cried again, between laughter and tears.
+
+"Mrs. O'Callaghan," I said, "is a strange woman, I understand."
+
+"She is that!" Biddy interjected.
+
+"And therefore this interview must be arranged as best it can. On your
+life, don't say a word to either of them about his lordship being here!"
+
+Biddy's hesitation was only momentary; she promised, and fled from the
+room.
+
+When St. Alleyne came in I saw he had not had much sleep and that his
+nerves were on the rack, but his manner was as unperturbed as ever. He
+sat down on the side of my bed and looked at me curiously.
+
+"How are you?" he asked.
+
+"Perfectly well," I answered; "don't I look it?"
+
+"You look a bit flushed, that's all."
+
+"And with good cause. Miss O'Callaghan will be here in half an hour."
+
+"Thank God!" he said, and walked to the window. He stood silently with
+his back to me for some time, looking down into the street. Then he
+said, "How are you going to manage the interview?"
+
+"I don't know; if you worry me I shall make a mess of it."
+
+"I'm not going to worry you, old chap," he said; "you must just do it
+your own way."
+
+"I saw her yesterday."
+
+He swung round and faced me.
+
+"What did you think of her?" he asked.
+
+"I think," said I, "that you must have been born for each other."
+
+His face lit up with a sudden, boyish smile.
+
+"Thanks," he said, and turned to the window again. A moment later he
+stepped back quickly.
+
+"There she is," he said, "and my cousin, Mrs. O'Callaghan, with her."
+
+"It was just like you," I cried, "to stand there where the whole street
+could see you."
+
+"Don't be angry, Phil," he said, humbly, "she didn't look up."
+
+"For heaven's sake get into the next room and shut the door."
+
+He came over to me swiftly and rested his hands on my shoulders.
+
+"Play up, Phil," he whispered, "for the sake of old times." Then he left
+me, and the door of the sitting-room closed softly behind him.
+
+When I heard footsteps on the stairs and realised that the game had
+really commenced, the ambiguity of my position overwhelmed me; I wished
+myself, for a moment, well out of the affair at any price. But the
+thought of the greater strain upon St. Alleyne, and what it meant to
+him, restored my composure, and I waited with closed eyes. The door
+opened, and I heard Biddy's voice say, "Here's Miss O'Callaghan to see
+ye, sorr." When I looked up, a vision of loveliness greeted my eyes.
+
+Miss O'Callaghan came towards me with a face full of the tenderest
+solicitude. She was wearing a tailor-made dress that fitted her to
+perfection, and on her head she had a large hat, from under which tiny
+tendrils of dark hair had escaped; her skin was of the whiteness of rose
+petals except where the blood flushed, her eyes had the look of wet
+violets in spring. My lips murmured incoherent thanks and welcome. I
+could not force my mind away from the waiting figure in the next room.
+
+"You wished to see me," she said, in a soft voice that had an under-note
+of sadness. "If I can help you, please be quite free with me. It's to be
+my life's work to help those who are in trouble."
+
+"Your life's work?" I repeated.
+
+"Yes," she said, "I'm to go into a convent."
+
+"My trouble will seem very small to you, but to me it seems great, and
+it has to do with so worldly a thing as love."
+
+Her face flushed and paled again before she answered--
+
+"True love can never be small--it is always beautiful."
+
+"That is my thought of it, too," I said; "but however much one wants to
+do the right thing, it is sometimes terribly hard to decide."
+
+"I know," she said, "I know."
+
+"Now suppose," I said, "that I loved a girl with all my heart--as I do,"
+I added, thinking of Lucy, "but had never told her so; and suppose that
+her friends, for some foolish reason, did not like me, and wished her to
+devote her life to a calling which she herself had some leaning to----"
+
+"Yes," she said, breathlessly, and I could see she was applying the case
+to herself.
+
+"And suppose," I went on, "I had been blind in the past, and perhaps
+unknowingly allowed the time to go by when I should have spoken: would I
+be justified in coming into her life again, drawing her away from the
+peace that this calling might already have given her, and asking her to
+come back with me into the world where love is?"
+
+For an instant she turned her head aside, and I saw the tears heavy
+under her eyelids.
+
+"It would be for her to decide," she said; "you should tell her."
+
+"That's just what my friend Lord St. Alleyne thinks," I said.
+
+"You know him?" she cried. The look in her eyes at that moment was
+certainly not for me.
+
+"He is my very dear friend," I said, "and I have often heard him speak
+of you. I know him for one of the best men alive."
+
+She slipped down on her knees by the bed, and if I had not already known
+all about the matter her eyes would have told me.
+
+"I believe he is, I believe he is," she said. "Tell me about him. Is he
+well? When did you see him last?"
+
+"No longer ago than this morning," I said.
+
+[Illustration: "SHE SPRANG TO HER FEET, AND RAN TO HIM WITH A JOYFUL
+CRY."]
+
+She hid her face and was silent for a time; I could see that she loved
+him beyond the ordinary love of women, and the sight sent such a wave
+of content through me that I believe I laughed softly. At any rate she
+looked up and I could not bear to see her unhappy any longer.
+
+"My dear Miss O'Callaghan," I said, taking into my hand the warm little
+gloved fingers that lay on the coverlid, "will you forgive me for being
+a conspirator and a humbug? Remember I did it for the sake of my friend,
+and I knew he was worth it. I spoke of him and not of myself."
+
+"What do you mean?" she cried. And then, with a hand at her bosom, "Oh,
+tell me, tell me!"
+
+"St. Alleyne," I said, "loves you, and he's here to tell you himself."
+And with that I raised my voice and called his name. The door opened
+instantly--he must have had his hand on the latch the whole time--and
+there he stood, with his arms stretched out to her and the name,
+"Norah," on his lips. She sprang to her feet and ran to him with so
+joyful a cry that I knew my part in the comedy was over, and just as
+they embraced I turned away and closed my eyes.
+
+Ten minutes later they came back; she was leaning on his shoulder and he
+had an arm about her waist.
+
+"This conspiracy has been so successful," I said, "that I shall never
+engage in another. It would never do to spoil my record."
+
+"You have two friends now instead of one," Miss O'Callaghan said.
+
+"Phil," said St. Alleyne, "get up, you old dear, while Norah and I go
+downstairs to see my cousin, Mrs. O'Callaghan."
+
+They left me once more, and as I dressed I felt so absurdly
+light-hearted that I had to sing to myself; I forget what the song was,
+but I know, there was something about lovers' meetings in it. As I
+reached the foot of the stairs I heard voices in the dining-room; one of
+them was rather high-pitched and hard, but it sounded pleasant enough as
+it said, "Well, St. Alleyne, you've beaten me this time, and I suppose I
+must give in, but it will take you long years to make me believe in your
+family."
+
+And I concluded it was the voice of his lordship's cousin, Mrs.
+O'Callaghan.
+
+
+
+
+TO KEEP THE DOGS DOWNSTAIRS.
+
+
+Here is an interesting photograph of a pair of "dog gates" which may be
+seen at Slyfield Manor, near Leatherhead, in Surrey.
+
+[Illustration: "DOG GATES,"
+
+Slyfield Manor, Leatherhead, Surrey.]
+
+These gates were very common in country houses in the days of Queen
+Elizabeth, but there are not many to be seen to-day. Dogs know how to
+behave now, and there is no need for them.
+
+As their name implies, the gates were used to keep the dogs of the house
+from wandering upstairs into bedrooms and other places where they had no
+right.
+
+But many people like to hear their dogs scratching at the door in the
+morning.
+
+The gates shown in our photograph are in excellent condition. They were
+photographed by Mr. S. H. Wrightson, of Aldershot.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: CRICKET & CRICKETERS]
+
+_Pictures by Mr. "Rip."_
+
+_Words by M. Randall Roberts_
+
+
+Why is it, in these days of up-to-date cricket reporting, no one has
+noticed the most striking characteristic of Ranjitsinhji's play? The
+pose of W. G. Grace's tip-tilted foot as he stands at the wicket, Abel's
+serio-comic expression as he cocks his eye and ambles from the pavilion,
+and Mr. Key's rotundity, are as familiar as Mr. Chamberlain's eye-glass
+even to the non-cricketing public; but the ballooning of Prince
+Ranjitsinhji's silk shirt has hitherto been allowed to lie in obscurity.
+
+About the silk shirt itself there is no particular mystery; dozens of
+other cricketers wear one exactly like it; but none of these garments
+"balloon" with the same unvarying persistence as Ranji's. Whether half a
+gale is blowing on the Hove ground, or there is not enough wind to move
+the flag at Lord's, the Indian prince's cricket shirt always presents
+the appearance of the mainsail of a six-tonner on a breezy day in the
+Solent. Anyone can satisfy himself as to the truth of this assertion by
+glancing at the first illustration on page 213. The batsman's face is
+concealed by his arm, and his attitude in playing the ball is almost
+identical with that of hundreds of other cricketers. Yet there is no
+mistaking the player. It's Ranji as plainly as if his name was printed
+all over it; the curve in his shirt gives him away at once. Unkind
+critics, indeed, declared that the secret of his success in Australia
+was that, while the rest of Mr. Stoddart's team were panting for a
+breath of fresh air with the thermometer at 100 deg. in the shade, some
+mysterious Indian deity was perpetually blowing on Ranji with a thousand
+cooling zephyrs. Nowadays, Ranjitsinhji's critics are becoming more
+sane; but when first he burst into splendour, many of his weird strokes
+were attributed to some supernatural agency. Ranji's most telling
+stroke, as every cricketer knows, is what is technically known as the
+"hook" stroke. Most fine batsmen are content to stop short straight
+balls on a fast wicket. Ranji is more ambitious. When he sees a ball of
+this kind coming, he stands directly in front of his wicket, and at the
+moment when the ball is apparently on the point of going through his
+body, he "hooks" it round to leg.
+
+How hazardous this proceeding is may be gathered from the obvious fact
+that if the batsman fails to get his bat exactly in the proper place in
+exactly the proper fraction of a second, he will infallibly have to
+retire either with a fractured skull or "leg before wicket."
+
+[Illustration: RANJI FIELDING.]
+
+While the cricket scribes used to regard Ranjitsinhji's good fortune in
+escaping a violent end while playing this speciality of his as a
+supernatural gift, practical cricketers consider the stroke bad form.
+"That leg stroke of yours," said an old player to him in the pavilion
+at Lord's, "is all very well now and then, but it's not cricket; it's
+far too risky. If you miss the ball, you're bound to be out leg before."
+"Quite so," replied Ranji; "but one would be out pretty frequently,
+clean bowled, if one missed the ball--every time a straight ball came,
+in fact."
+
+Ranjitsinhji's batting has been variously described as satanic,
+electric, and elusive. "Serpentine" would be far more accurate. Anyone
+in the least familiar with the famous Indian's style will at once see
+the point of the epithet.
+
+The line of beauty, we all know, is a curve; and the real secret of the
+attractiveness of Ranji's batting (from the spectators' point of view)
+is that every position he assumes seems to be laid out in a curve.
+
+In the illustration on page 215 "Rip" has but very slightly exaggerated
+the effect of the sinuous curves into which Ranji's body resolves itself
+before he makes a stroke. That he can unbend faster than any other
+cricketer past or present is an incontestable fact. The yarn of how in a
+match at Cambridge he once brought off a catch with such amazing
+rapidity that the batsman, under the impression that the ball had
+travelled near the boundary, continued running till Ranji extracted the
+ball from his pocket, is most likely apocryphal; but to anyone who has
+seen him fielding slip the feat ascribed to him won't seem impossible.
+
+[Illustration: RANJI BATTING--A STUDY IN GRACEFUL POSE.]
+
+By the way, it's an odd thing that while Ranjitsinhji's batting owes its
+attractiveness to the "curves" of the batsman, an equally graceful
+player--to wit, the lengthy William Gunn--is built on uncompromisingly
+straight lines. Somebody said that if Gunn were to model his style on
+Ranji's the result would be a sea-serpent--six and a half feet of
+curves.
+
+Briggs has so many attitudes and antics of his own that he can't be said
+to have any characteristic pose. In everything he does he's "Johnny."
+Briggs may be said to have just missed greatness by a lack of
+seriousness. According to George Giffen, if he had only taken batting
+more seriously Briggs would have been, after W. G. Grace, the second
+best all-round cricketer in England. There's a deadly earnestness about
+his bowling and fielding, but as a batsman he always seems more anxious
+to amuse the spectators than to improve his average. Like other famous
+men, Johnny Briggs may be often misunderstood, but at any rate this is
+the impression he creates. About six years ago, in the middle of the
+cricket season, Briggs appeared to have suddenly gone "stale," and the
+Lancashire Committee suggested to him that he should take a week's
+holiday. Briggs selected a remote village in Wiltshire; but, as luck
+would have it, the villagers were particularly keen cricketers, and when
+the news got about that the great Briggs was in their midst, the captain
+of the local team at once waited on him to ask what would be his terms
+for playing in a match against a neighbouring town.
+
+[Illustration: JOHNNY BRIGGS MEANS BUSINESS.]
+
+"I asked," says Briggs, "what I thought were absolutely prohibitive
+terms, namely, L10; but the terms were accepted, so of course I had to
+play. My side lost the toss, and I had to begin the bowling. My first
+ball was hit out of the ground for six, and in a short time 100 went up
+with no wicket down. I suggested to the captain that he had better let
+someone else bowl, but he said that if he took me off, the spectators
+who kept pouring into the ground would want their money back, and would
+see that they got it, too. Finally, I had two wickets for about 120
+runs. The crowd looked a trifle nasty, but what finished them was when I
+went in to bat and was bowled second ball.
+
+[Illustration: A RARE CATCH.]
+
+"As I left the ground I heard, 'That's him. 'E's no blooming Briggs,
+'e's a blooming fraud. Let's give him a jolly hiding.' Only the railway
+station and a couple of stalwart policemen saved me from the jolly good
+hiding, and I have never tried village cricket since."
+
+[Illustration: AND TAKES A WICKET FIRST BALL.]
+
+[Illustration: MAKES THE CROWD LAUGH.]
+
+A. G. Steel declares that the secret of Dr. Grace's phenomenal success
+against young batsmen is the terror inspired by the sight of his beard.
+Batsmen meeting the champion for the first time see an enormous man,
+with a great black beard waving in the breeze, rushing up to the
+wickets. They expect something quite different from the gently lobbed-up
+ball which this black-bearded giant delivers; before they can recover
+from the shock of surprise they find themselves clean bowled.
+
+But W. G.'s beard does something more than frighten young cricketers. As
+Maurice Read says, "it talks to you." Other human beings wag their
+heads; Grace wags his beard when things are going wrong. It is even said
+that, with a team that knows him, he can indicate to the fieldsmen to
+change their positions by merely moving his beard.
+
+[Illustration: WAITING FOR ANOTHER.]
+
+There are dozens of persons all over the country who pose as cricket
+authorities on the strength of having once watched the champion
+practising at the nets. At a cricket match in a small Welsh town one of
+these gentlemen was acting as umpire, and could not agree with his
+fellow umpire as to whether a certain batsman was run out.
+
+The argument waxed very fierce, until the umpire of the visiting team
+called out--
+
+"What do you know about cricket? You 'aven't shook 'ands with Lord
+Hawke, 'ave yer?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, I 'ave," triumphantly declared the other, as the crowd dispersed.
+
+And the batsman was declared out.
+
+[Illustration: "Ranji" A STUDY IN CURVES.]
+
+[Illustrations]
+
+
+
+
+FAMOUS LONDON DOOR-KNOCKERS
+
+
+What souvenir of a great man can compete with the knocker of his door? A
+door-knocker is to a man's house what a sign is to a shop or tavern; but
+it is also something more. Take, for instance, the knocker on the door
+of the official residence of the Prime Minister, No. 10, Downing Street.
+No less a person than Lord Beaconsfield once described to a friend this
+particular knocker as having a marked resemblance to the features of his
+political opponent, Mr. Gladstone. There is no knocker in existence, we
+may fairly state, that has been handled by so many distinguished people
+as this one. If only the friends of Mr. Gladstone were enumerated, they
+would make up a long list of illustrious names, and many Prime Ministers
+have resided at the unpretentious, old-fashioned mansion so conveniently
+situated for the Houses of Parliament.
+
+[Illustration: THE PRIME MINISTER'S (10, Downing Street, Westminster.)]
+
+[Illustration: THOMAS CARLYLE'S. (Cheyne Row, Chelsea.)]
+
+The knocker on the door of Carlyle's house, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, a house
+which was occupied by him for half a century, is another very
+interesting specimen. Scarcely was the young ex-schoolmaster and author
+of "Sartor Resartus" well settled in his new abode than he began to
+receive callers, who, if not very famous then, have since achieved
+considerable renown.
+
+Among them was young Mr. Charles Dickens, then the blushing "Boz," who,
+with Mrs. Dickens, stepped out of a gorgeous green hackney coach to
+administer a knock on the door, having driven all the way from Doughty
+Street, Brunswick Square, to pay a call. Forster, Serjeant Talfourd,
+Maclise, Macready, Landor, Leigh Hunt, and Thackeray were frequent
+knockers during the first decade.
+
+[Illustration: MR. ALMA TADEMA'S. (St. John's Wood.)]
+
+It is not difficult to imagine some youthful admirer of Carlyle giving a
+timid knock at the door, and then wishing that he had the courage to run
+away from the house before being ushered into the presence of the
+irascible Philosopher. Mr. Alma Tadema's knocker is forbidding enough
+in appearance, and holds out but little promise of the beauties of that
+wonderful house where the artist resides in St. John's Wood. No doubt it
+is, like everything else about his home, from a design by the great
+painter himself.
+
+[Illustration: THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE'S. (Piccadilly.)]
+
+The most beautiful knocker in this collection, if not the most beautiful
+in London, is that of the Duke of Devonshire, at No. 80, Piccadilly. It
+represents a head of classic contour set in a circular disc, chiselled
+with an exquisite border. Not a few among the Duke's guests have so far
+expressed their admiration of this work of art as to desire duplicates
+for themselves, but it is not known if any exist, it having been done by
+the Duke's own command from his own designs.
+
+It is to be wished that the Duke would follow up his artistic success in
+this particular by designing a wall for Devonshire House to replace the
+existing hideous structure.
+
+[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS'. (17, Doughty Street.)]
+
+Dickens' door-knocker recalls the residence of the happy couple who
+removed to Doughty Street from Furnival's Inn shortly after their
+marriage. It was here that Charles Dickens the younger was born, and
+where the author of "Pickwick" first became on terms of friendship with
+many of the brilliant men of letters of his day. The knocker is held in
+its place by a fleur-de-lis of the same metal, and it was Serjeant
+Talfourd who humorously rallied Dickens on his supposed predilection for
+the French, who at that time were in the midst of preparing that series
+of more or less revolutionary movements which preceded the downfall of
+Louis Philippe and the ascendency of the third Napoleon.
+
+[Illustration: DR. JOHNSON'S. (Bolt Court, Fleet Street.)]
+
+But an older and more characteristic door-knocker may be found well
+within a mile of Doughty Street, still on the door of a house once
+inhabited by the great sage Dr. Samuel Johnson himself. Surely if any
+knocker is characteristic of its owner this one is. It represents a
+sturdy fist clenching a baton from which depends a bulky wreath of
+laurel fastened in the middle by a lion's head. The worthy doctor, as we
+are told by Boswell, carried no key, nor did he permit any member of his
+oddly-selected household to possess one. At all times and seasons the
+house in Bolt Court was inhabited, and unquestionably the burly knocker
+resounded in the ears of the inhabitants of the court often enough, and
+at unseemly hours, for the sage was not at all scrupulous as to what
+hours he kept, and many a time would talk irregularly on at the club
+until some of his neighbours had serious thoughts of rising.
+
+[Illustration: CRUIKSHANK'S. (Hampstead Road, N.W.)]
+
+The contemporaries of the great caricaturist George Cruikshank during a
+fruitful period of his life will gaze not without feelings of emotion on
+the accompanying representation of the familiar knocker on his house in
+the Hampstead Road.
+
+It was Clarkson Stanfield who, calling upon his friend Cruikshank one
+day, had much ado in making the artist's aged servant aware that a
+visitor awaited at the portals; again and again he knocked, but in vain;
+the servant's deafness was proof against the onslaughts of a vigorous if
+not wholly artistic door implement. At last, losing all patience, he
+picked up the foot-scraper and was about to impetuously hammer away at
+the panels, when the caricaturist, hastily throwing up an upper window
+sash, recognised and appeased his indignant visitor.
+
+"You should," remarked Stanfield, "get a younger servant, or a heavier
+knocker, or else build your house in Turkish fashion--that is, without
+doors."
+
+[Illustration: THE KNOCKER THAT SUGGESTED SCROOGE IN DICKENS' "CHRISTMAS
+CAROL." (8, Craven Street, Strand.)]
+
+In every article which deals with the curiosities of London, the name of
+Dickens must figure very largely. The last knocker of our collection is
+the most remarkable one of all, inasmuch as Dickens derived his idea of
+Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol" from its hideous lineaments. Look at our
+photograph and then read Dickens' own description of the unamiable
+Scrooge:
+
+"Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge; a
+squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old
+Sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out
+generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.
+The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose,
+shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait.... He carried his own low
+temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days;
+and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas."
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+OUR MONTHLY GALLERY OF BEAUTIFUL AND INTERESTING PAINTINGS.
+
+
+[Illustration: A CUBAN BELLE.
+
+_From the Painting by Gabriel Ferrier._
+
+_By Permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., London, W._]
+
+[Illustration: SUMMER.
+
+_From the Painting by W. Reynolds Stephens._
+
+_By permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., London, W._]
+
+[Illustration: MAKING A MARRIAGE IN THE OLDEN TIME.
+
+_From the Painting by A. T. Vernon._
+
+_By permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., London, W._]
+
+[Illustration: THE WATER CARRIER.
+
+_From the Painting by J. W. Godward._
+
+[_By Permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., London, W._]
+
+[Illustration: WHICH WINS?
+
+_From the Painting by Arthur J. Elsley._
+
+_By Permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., London, W._]
+
+[Illustration: A BURDEN OF LOVE.
+
+_From the Painting by N. Sichel._
+
+_By Permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., London, W._]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1,
+1898-1899, No. 2, by Various
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