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+Project Gutenberg's A Holiday in Bed and Other Sketches, by J. M. Barrie
+
+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: A Holiday in Bed and Other Sketches
+
+Author: J. M. Barrie
+
+Release Date: April 27, 2012 [EBook #39543]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOLIDAY IN BED, OTHER SKETCHES ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A HOLIDAY IN BED
+
+And other Sketches.
+
+BY
+
+J. M. BARRIE,
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+The Little Minister. A Window in Thrums.
+Auld Licht Idylls, etc.
+
+WITH A SHORT BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR
+
+NEW YORK PUBLISHING COMPANY,
+NEW YORK.
+
+
+[Illustration: J. M. Barrie.]
+
+
+COPYRIGHTED 1892,
+NEW YORK PUBLISHING CO.
+
+PRESS AND BINDERY OF
+HISTORICAL PUBLISHING CO.,
+PHILADELPHIA, PA.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+                                      PAGE.
+JAMES MATTHEW BARRIE,                    15
+
+A HOLIDAY IN BED,                        23
+
+LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE,                 37
+
+LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE--A WEDDING IN
+  A SMIDDY,                              49
+
+A POWERFUL DRUG,                         61
+
+EVERY MAN HIS OWN DOCTOR,                73
+
+GRETNA GREEN REVISITED,                  87
+
+MY FAVORITE AUTHORESS,                  111
+
+THE CAPTAIN OF THE SCHOOL,              121
+
+THOUGHTFUL BOYS MAKE THOUGHTFUL MEN,    131
+
+IT,                                     145
+
+TO THE INFLUENZA,                       153
+
+FOUR-IN-HAND NOVELISTS,                 161
+
+RULES ON CARVING,                       173
+
+ON RUNNING AFTER A HAT,                 179
+
+
+
+
+JAMES MATTHEW BARRIE.
+
+
+James Matthew Barrie was born at Kirriemuir, Forfarshire, on May 9,
+1860. Kirriemuir, as soberly stated by the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, is
+"a borough of barony and a market town of Forfarshire, Scotland,
+beautifully situated on an eminence above the glen through which the
+Gairie flows. It lies about five miles northwest of Forfar, and about
+sixty-two miles north of Edinburgh. The special industry of the town is
+linen weaving, for which large power-loom factories have recently been
+built." Mr. Barrie has made his birthplace famous as Thrums, after
+hesitating for a little between that name and Whins, which is the word
+used in the earliest Auld Licht sketches.
+
+Only a part of Mr. Barrie's boyhood was spent in Kirriemuir. At an early
+age he went to Dumfries, where his brother was inspector of schools. He
+was a pupil in the Dumfries Academy. At that time Thomas Carlyle was a
+not unfrequent visitor to the town, where his sister, Mrs. Aitken, and
+his friend, the venerable poet editor Thomas Aird, were then living.
+
+Carlyle is the only author by whom Mr. Barrie thinks he has been
+influenced. The Carlyle fever did not last very long, but was acute for
+a time. He fervently defended his master against the innumerable critics
+called into activity by Mr. Froude's biography. Apart from this,
+Dumfries seems to have left no very definite mark on his mind. The only
+one of his teachers who impressed him was Dr. Cranstoun, the
+accomplished translator from the Latin poets, and he rather indirectly
+than directly. In the Dumfries papers Mr. Barrie inaugurated his
+literary career by contributing accounts of cricket matches and letters,
+signed "Paterfamilias," urging the desirability of pupils having longer
+holidays. He was the idlest of schoolboys, and seldom opened his books
+except to draw pictures on them.
+
+At the age of eighteen, Mr. Barrie entered Edinburgh University. His
+brother had studied in Aberdeen with another famous native of
+Kirriemuir, Dr. Alexander Whyte, of Free St. George's, Edinburgh. At
+Aberdeen you could live much more cheaply, also it was easier there to
+get a bursary, enough to keep soul and body together till an income
+could be earned. The struggles and triumphs of Aberdeen students greatly
+impressed Mr. Barrie, who has often repeated the story thus told in the
+_Nottingham Journal_:--
+
+"I knew three undergraduates who lodged together in a dreary house at
+the top of a dreary street, two of whom used to study until two in the
+morning, while the third slept. When they shut up their books they woke
+number three, who arose, dressed, and studied till breakfast time. Among
+the many advantages of this arrangement, the chief was that, as they
+were dreadfully poor, one bed did for the three. Two of them occupied it
+at one time, and the third at another. Terrible privations? Frightful
+destitution? Not a bit of it. The Millennium was in those days. If life
+was at the top of a hundred steps, if students occasionally died of
+hunger and hard work combined, if the midnight oil only burned to show a
+ghastly face 'weary and worn,' if lodgings were cheap and dirty, and
+dinners few and far between, life was still real and earnest, in many
+cases it did not turn out an empty dream."
+
+In 1882 he graduated, and was for some months in Edinburgh doing
+nothing in particular. In the meantime he saw an advertisement asking
+for a leader writer to an English provincial paper. The salary offered
+was three guineas a week. He made application for this, and found
+himself, in February, 1883, installed as leader writer to the
+_Nottingham Journal_. He was not editor, the work of arranging the paper
+being in other hands; but he was allowed to write as much as he pleased,
+and practically what he pleased.
+
+During the last months of his stay in Nottingham, Mr. Barrie had begun
+to send articles to the London papers. The first of these was published
+by Mr. Stead, then editing the _Pall Mall Gazette_.
+
+In March, 1888, a much more important book, "Auld Licht Idyls," was
+published. When Mr. Barrie came up to London he had letters of
+introduction from Professor Masson to an eminent publisher, and to Mr.
+John Morley. He took his "Auld Licht Idyls" to the publisher, and was
+told that, although they were pleasant reading, they would never be
+successful as a book. Mr. Morley, then editor of _Macmillan_, asked him
+to send a list of subjects on which he was willing to write. The
+request was complied with, but the subjects were returned by Mr. Morley
+with the singularly uncharacteristic comment that they were not
+sufficiently up to date. Mr. Morley, who has since read with great
+admiration all Mr. Barrie's works, was much astonished at having this
+brought to his remembrance the other day.
+
+"When a Man's Single" was published in September, 1888, dedicated to W.
+Robertson Nicoll. The story was originally published in _The British
+Weekly_, but, as his manner is, Mr. Barrie made great changes in
+revising it for publication. It was well received, and was pronounced by
+the _Daily News_ as "Perhaps the best single volume novel of the year."
+It is not at all autobiographical, though it gives the author's
+impressions of journalistic life in Nottingham and London. Perhaps the
+best parts of it are those devoted to Thrums, of which George Meredith
+expressed special admiration.
+
+Mr. Barrie's greatest book, however, was yet to come. "A Window in
+Thrums" was published in May, 1889. It contained articles contributed to
+the _National Observer_, _The British Weekly_, and the _St. James's
+Gazette_, along with new matter. It is not too much to say that it was
+received with one burst of acclamation. It has been the most popular of
+the author's works, and it is hard to conceive how he can surpass
+certain parts of it. It has found admirers among all classes.
+
+"My Lady Nicotine," reprinted from the _St. James's Gazette_, was
+published in April, 1890, and a second edition appeared in September,
+1890, and although issued later than "A Window in Thrums," it is really
+in point of time almost the first of the author's books.
+
+In January, 1891, Mr. Barrie commenced a story in _Good Words_, entitled
+"The Little Minister," which has since been issued in book form, and is
+acknowledged to be his best book.
+
+
+
+
+A HOLIDAY IN BED.
+
+
+Now is the time for a real holiday. Take it in bed, if you are wise.
+
+People have tried a holiday in bed before now, and found it a failure,
+but that was because they were ignorant of the rules. They went to bed
+with the open intention of staying there, say, three days, and found to
+their surprise that each morning they wanted to get up. This was a novel
+experience to them, they flung about restlessly, and probably shortened
+their holiday. The proper thing is to take your holiday in bed with a
+vague intention of getting up in another quarter of an hour. The real
+pleasure of lying in bed after you are awake is largely due to the
+feeling that you ought to get up. To take another quarter of an hour
+then becomes a luxury. You are, in short, in the position of the man who
+dined on larks. Had he seen the hundreds that were ready for him, all
+set out on one monster dish, they would have turned his stomach; but
+getting them two at a time, he went on eating till all the larks were
+exhausted. His feeling of uncertainty as to whether these might not be
+his last two larks is your feeling that, perhaps, you will have to get
+up in a quarter of an hour. Deceive yourself in this way, and your
+holiday in bed will pass only too quickly.
+
+Sympathy is what all the world is craving for, and sympathy is what the
+ordinary holiday-maker never gets. How can we be expected to sympathize
+with you when we know you are off to Perthshire to fish? No; we say we
+wish we were you, and forget that your holiday is sure to be a hollow
+mockery; that your child will jam her finger in the railway carriage,
+and scream to the end of the journey; that you will lose your luggage;
+that the guard will notice your dog beneath the seat, and insist on its
+being paid for; that you will be caught in a Scotch mist on the top of a
+mountain, and be put on gruel for a fortnight; that your wife will fret
+herself into a fever about the way the servant, who has been left at
+home, is carrying on with her cousins, the milkman and the policeman;
+and that you will be had up for trespassing. Yet, when you tell us you
+are off to-morrow, we have never the sympathy to say, "Poor fellow, I
+hope you'll pull through somehow." If it is an exhibition you go to
+gape at, we never picture you dragging your weary legs from one
+department to another, and wondering why your back is so sore. Should it
+be the seaside, we talk heartlessly to you about the "briny," though we
+must know, if we would stop to think, that if there is one holiday more
+miserable than all the others, it is that spent at the seaside, when you
+wander the weary beach and fling pebbles at the sea, and wonder how long
+it will be till dinner time. Were we to come down to see you, we would
+probably find you, not on the beach, but moving slowly through the
+village, looking in at the one milliner's window, or laboriously reading
+what the one grocer's labels say on the subject of pale ale, compressed
+beef, or vinegar. There was never an object that called aloud for
+sympathy more than you do, but you get not a jot of it. You should take
+the first train home and go to bed for three days.
+
+To enjoy your holiday in bed to the full, you should let it be vaguely
+understood that there is something amiss with you. Don't go into
+details, for they are not necessary; and, besides, you want to be dreamy
+more or less, and the dreamy state is not consistent with a definite
+ailment. The moment one takes to bed he gets sympathy. He may be
+suffering from a tearing headache or a tooth that makes him cry out; but
+if he goes about his business, or even flops in a chair, true sympathy
+is denied him. Let him take to bed with one of those illnesses of which
+he can say with accuracy that he is not quite certain what is the matter
+with him, and his wife, for instance, will want to bathe his brow. She
+must not be made too anxious. That would not only be cruel to her, but
+it would wake you from the dreamy state. She must simply see that you
+are "not yourself." Women have an idea that unless men are "not
+themselves" they will not take to bed, and as a consequence your wife is
+tenderly thoughtful of you. Every little while she will ask you if you
+are feeling any better now, and you can reply, with the old regard for
+truth, that you are "much about it." You may even (for your own
+pleasure) talk of getting up now, when she will earnestly urge you to
+stay in bed until you feel easier. You consent; indeed, you are ready to
+do anything to please her.
+
+The ideal holiday in bed does not require the presence of a ministering
+angel in the room all day. You frequently prefer to be alone, and point
+out to your wife that you cannot have her trifling with her health for
+your sake, and so she must go out for a walk. She is reluctant, but
+finally goes, protesting that you are the most unselfish of men, and
+only too good for her. This leaves a pleasant aroma behind it, for even
+when lying in bed, we like to feel that we are uncommonly fine fellows.
+After she has gone you get up cautiously, and, walking stealthily to the
+wardrobe, produce from the pocket of your great coat a good novel. A
+holiday in bed must be arranged for beforehand. With a gleam in your eye
+you slip back to bed, double your pillow to make it higher, and begin to
+read. You have only got to the fourth page, when you make a horrible
+discovery--namely, that the book is not cut. An experienced
+holiday-maker would have had it cut the night before, but this is your
+first real holiday, or perhaps you have been thoughtless. In any case
+you have now matter to think of. You are torn in two different ways.
+There is your coat on the floor with a knife in it, but you cannot reach
+the coat without getting up again. Ought you to get the knife or to give
+up reading? Perhaps it takes a quarter of an hour to decide this
+question, and you decide it by discovering a third course. Being a sort
+of an invalid, you have certain privileges which would be denied you if
+you were merely sitting in a chair in the agonies of neuralgia. One of
+the glorious privileges of a holiday in bed is that you are entitled to
+cut books with your fingers. So you cut the novel in this way, and read
+on.
+
+Those who have never tried it may fancy that there is a lack of incident
+in a holiday in bed. There could not be a more monstrous mistake. You
+are in the middle of a chapter, when suddenly you hear a step upon the
+stair. Your loving ears tell you that your wife has returned, and is
+hastening to you. Now, what happens? The book disappears beneath the
+pillow, and when she enters the room softly you are lying there with
+your eyes shut. This is not merely incident; it is drama.
+
+What happens next depends on circumstances. She says in a low voice--
+
+"Are you feeling any easier now, John?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Oh, I believe he is sleeping."
+
+Then she steals from the room, and you begin to read again.
+
+During a holiday in bed one never thinks, of course, of analyzing his
+actions. If you had done so in this instance, you would have seen that
+you pretended sleep because you had got to an exciting passage. You love
+your wife, but, wife or no wife, you must see how the passage ends.
+
+Possibly the little scene plays differently, as thus--
+
+"John, are you feeling any easier now?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"Are you asleep?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"What a pity! I don't want to waken him, and yet the fowl will be
+spoilt."
+
+"Is that you back, Marion?"
+
+"Yes, dear; I thought you were asleep."
+
+"No, only thinking."
+
+"You think too much, dear. I have cooked a chicken for you."
+
+"I have no appetite."
+
+"I'm so sorry, but I can give it to the children."
+
+"Oh, as it's cooked, you may as well bring it up."
+
+In that case the reason of your change of action is obvious. But why do
+you not let your wife know that you have been reading? This is another
+matter that you never reason about. Perhaps, it is because of your
+craving for sympathy, and you fear that if you were seen enjoying a
+novel the sympathy would go. Or, perhaps, it is that a holiday in bed is
+never perfect without a secret. Monotony must be guarded against, and so
+long as you keep the book to yourself your holiday in bed is a healthy
+excitement. A stolen book (as we may call it) is like stolen fruit,
+sweeter than what you can devour openly. The boy enjoys his stolen
+apple, because at any moment he may have to slip it down the leg of his
+trousers, and pretend that he has merely climbed the tree to enjoy the
+scenery. You enjoy your book doubly because you feel that it is a
+forbidden pleasure. Or, do you conceal the book from your wife lest she
+should think that you are over-exerting yourself? She must not be made
+anxious on your account. Ah, that is it.
+
+People who pretend (for it must be pretence) that they enjoy their
+holiday in the country, explain that the hills or the sea gave them such
+an appetite. I could never myself feel the delight of being able to
+manage an extra herring for breakfast, but it should be pointed out that
+neither mountains nor oceans give you such an appetite as a holiday in
+bed. What makes people eat more anywhere is that they have nothing else
+to do, and in bed you have lots of time for meals. As for the quality of
+the food supplied, there is no comparison. In the Highlands it is ham
+and eggs all day till you sicken. At the seaside it is fish till the
+bones stick in your mouth. But in bed--oh, there you get something worth
+eating. You don't take three big meals a day, but twelve little ones,
+and each time it is something different from the last. There are
+delicacies for breakfast, for your four luncheons and your five dinners.
+You explain to your wife that you have lost your appetite, and she
+believes you, but at the same time she has the sense to hurry on your
+dinner. At the clatter of dishes (for which you have been lying
+listening) you raise your poor head, and say faintly:
+
+"Really, Marion, I can't touch food."
+
+"But this is nothing," she says, "only the wing of a partridge."
+
+You take a side glance at it, and see that there is also the other wing
+and the body and two legs. Your alarm thus dispelled, you say--
+
+"I really can't."
+
+"But, dear, it is so beautifully cooked."
+
+"Yes; but I have no appetite."
+
+"But try to take it, John, for my sake."
+
+Then for her sake you say she can leave it on the chair, and perhaps you
+will just taste it. As soon as she has gone you devour that partridge,
+and when she comes back she has the sense to say--
+
+"Why, you have scarcely eaten anything. What could you take for supper?"
+
+You say you can take nothing, but if she likes she can cook a large
+sole, only you won't be able to touch it.
+
+"Poor dear!" she says, "your appetite has completely gone," and then she
+rushes to the kitchen to cook the sole with her own hands. In
+half-an-hour she steals into your room with it, and then you (who have
+been wondering why she is such a time) start up protesting,
+
+"I hope, Marion, this is nothing for me."
+
+"Only the least little bit of a sole, dear."
+
+"But I told you I could eat nothing."
+
+"Well, this is nothing, it is so small."
+
+You look again, and see with relief that it is a large sole.
+
+"I would much rather that you took it away."
+
+"But, dear----"
+
+"I tell you I have no appetite."
+
+"Of course I know that; but how can you hope to preserve your strength
+if you eat so little? You have had nothing all day."
+
+You glance at her face to see if she is in earnest, for you can remember
+three breakfasts, four luncheons, two dinners, and sandwiches between;
+but evidently she is not jesting. Then you yield.
+
+"Oh, well, to keep my health up I may just put a fork into it."
+
+"Do, dear; it will do you good, though you have no caring for it."
+
+Take a holiday in bed, if only to discover what an angel your wife is.
+
+There is only one thing to guard against. Never call it a holiday.
+Continue not to feel sure what is wrong with you, and to talk vaguely of
+getting up presently. Your wife will suggest calling in the doctor, but
+pooh-pooh him. Be firm on that point. The chances are that he won't
+understand your case.
+
+
+
+
+LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE.
+
+
+Up here among the heather (or nearly so) we are, in the opinion of
+tourists, a mere hamlet, though to ourselves we are at least a village.
+Englishmen call us a "clachan"--though, truth to tell, we are not sure
+what that is. Just as Gulliver could not see the Liliputians without
+stooping, these tourists may be looking for the clachan when they are in
+the middle of it, and knocking at one of its doors to ask how far they
+have yet to go till they reach it. To be honest, we are only five houses
+in a row (including the smiddy), with a Free Church Manse and a few
+farms here and there on the hillsides.
+
+So far as the rest of the world is concerned, we are blotted out with
+the first fall of snow. I suppose tourists scarcely give us a thought,
+save when they are here. I have heard them admiring our glen in August,
+and adding:
+
+"But what a place it must be in winter!"
+
+To this their friends reply, shivering:
+
+"A hard life, indeed!"
+
+And the conversation ends with the comment:
+
+"Don't call it life; it is merely existence."
+
+Well, it would be dull, no doubt, for tourists up here in January, say,
+but I find the winter a pleasant change from summer. I am the minister,
+and though my heart sank when I was "called," I rather enjoy the life
+now. I am the man whom the tourists pity most.
+
+"The others drawl through their lives," these tourists say, "to the
+manner born; but think of an educated man who has seen life spending his
+winters in such a place!"
+
+"He can have no society."
+
+"Let us hope the poor fellow is married."
+
+"Oh, he is sure to be. But married or single, I am certain I would go
+mad if I were in his shoes."
+
+Their comparison is thrown away. I am strong and hale. I enjoy the
+biting air, and I seldom carry an umbrella. I should perhaps go mad if I
+were in the Englishmen's shoes, glued to a stool all day, and feeling my
+road home through fog at night. And there is many an educated man who
+envies me. Did not three times as many probationers apply for a hearing
+when the church was vacant as could possibly be heard?
+
+But how did I occupy my time? the English gentlemen would say, if they
+had not forgotten me. What do the people do in winter?
+
+No, I don't lie long in the mornings and doze on a sofa in the
+afternoon, and go to bed at 9 o'clock. When I was at college, where
+there is so much "life," I breakfasted frequently at ten; but here,
+where time must (they say) hang heavy on my hands, I am up at seven.
+Though I am not a married man, no one has said openly that I am insane.
+Janet, my housekeeper and servant, has my breakfast of porridge and tea
+and ham ready by half-past seven sharp. You see the mornings are keen,
+and so, as I have no bed-room fire nor hot water, I dress much more
+quickly than I dressed at college. Six minutes I give myself, then Janet
+and I have prayers, and then follows my breakfast. What an appetite I
+have! I am amazed to recall the student days, when I "could not look at
+porridge," and thought a half-penny roll sufficient for two of us.
+
+Dreary pleasure, you say, breakfasting alone in a half-furnished house,
+with the snow lying some feet deep outside and still monotonously
+falling. Do I forget the sound of my own voice between Monday and
+Saturday? I should think not. Nor do I forget Janet's voice. I have read
+somewhere that the Scotch are a very taciturn race, but Janet is far
+more Scotch than the haggis that is passed around at some London
+dinners, and Janet is not a silent woman. The difficulty with some
+servants is to get them to answer your summons, but my difficulty with
+Janet is to get her back to the kitchen. Her favorite position is at the
+door, which she keeps half open. One of her feet she twists round it,
+and there she stands, half out of the room and half in it. She has a
+good deal of gossip to tell me about those five houses that lie low, two
+hundred yards from the manse, and it must be admitted that I listen. Why
+not? If one is interested in people he must gossip about them. You, in
+London, may not care in the least who your next door neighbor is, but
+you gossip about your brothers and sisters and aunts. Well, my people
+are as familiar to me as your brothers are to you, and, therefore, I
+say, "Ah, indeed," when told that the smith is busy with the wheel of a
+certain farmer's cart, and "Dear me, is that so?" when Janet explains
+that William, the ploughman, has got Meggy, his wife, to cut his hair.
+Meggy has cut my own hair. She puts a bowl on my head and clips away
+everything that it does not cover. So I would miss Janet if she were
+gone, and her tongue is as enlivening as a strong ticking clock. No
+doubt there are times when, if I were not a minister, I might fling
+something soft at her. She shows to least advantage when I have
+visitors, and even in winter I have a man to dinner now and again. Then
+I realize that Janet does not know her place. While we are dining she
+hovers in the vicinity. If she is not pretending to put the room to
+rights, she is in her fortified position at the door; and if she is not
+at the door she is immediately behind it. Her passion is to help in the
+conversation. As she brings in the potatoes she answers the last remark
+my guest addressed to me, and if I am too quick for her she explains
+away my answer, or modifies it, or signifies her approval of it. Then I
+try to be dignified and to show Janet her place. If I catch her eye I
+frown, but such opportunities are rare, for it is the guest on whom she
+concentrates herself. She even tells him, in my presence, little things
+about myself which I would prefer to keep to myself. The impression
+conveyed by her is that I confide everything to her. When my guest
+remarks that I am becoming a hardened bachelor, and I hint that it is
+because the ladies do not give me a chance, Janet breaks in with--
+
+"Oh, deed it's a wonder he wasn't married long since, but the one he
+wanted wouldn't have him, and the ones that want him he won't take. He's
+an ill man to please."
+
+"Ah, Janet," the guest may say (for he enjoys her interference more than
+I do), "you make him so comfortable that you spoil him."
+
+"Maybe," says Janet, "but it took me years to learn how to manage him."
+
+"Does he need to be managed?"
+
+"I never knew a man that didna."
+
+Then they get Janet to tell them all my little "tantrums" (as she calls
+them), and she holds forth on my habit of mislaying my hat and then
+blaming her, or on how I hate rice pudding, or on the way I have worn
+the carpet by walking up and down the floor when I would be more
+comfortable in a chair. Now and again I have wound myself up to the
+point of reproving Janet when the guest had gone, but the result is that
+she tells her select friends how "quick in the temper" I am. So Janet
+must remain as she has grown and it is gratifying to me (though don't
+let on) to know that she turns up her nose at every other minister who
+preaches in my church. Janet is always afraid when I go off for a
+holiday that the congregations in the big towns will "snap me up." It is
+pleasant to feel that she has this opinion of me, though I know that the
+large congregations do not share it.
+
+Who are my winter visitors? The chief of them is the doctor. We have no
+doctor, of course, up here, and this one has to come twelve miles to us.
+He is rather melancholy when we send for him; but he wastes no time in
+coming, though he may not have had his clothes off for twenty-four
+hours, and is well aware that we cannot pay big fees. Several times he
+has had to remain with me all night, and once he was snowed up here for
+a week. At times, too, he drives so far on his way to us and then has to
+turn back because the gig sticks on the heavy roads. He is only a doctor
+in a small country town, but I am elated when I see him, for he can tell
+me whether the Government is still in power. Then I have the school
+inspector once a year. The school inspector is always threatening to
+change the date of inspection to summer, but he takes the town from
+which the doctor comes in early spring, and finds it convenient to come
+from there to here. Early spring is often winter with us, so that the
+school inspector comes when there is usually snow on the ground or
+threatening. The school is a mile away at another "clachan," but the
+inspector dines with me, and so does the schoolmaster. On these
+occasions the schoolmaster is not such good company as at other times,
+for he is anxious about his passes, and explains (as I think) more than
+is necessary that regular attendance is out of the question in a place
+like this. The inspector's visit is the time of my great annual
+political debate, for the doctor calls politics "fudge." The inspector
+and I are on different sides, however, and we go at each other hammer
+and tongs, while the schoolmaster signs to me with his foot not to anger
+the inspector.
+
+Of course, outsiders will look incredulous when I assure them that a
+good deal of time is passed in preparing my sermons. I have only one
+Sabbath service, but two sermons, the one beginning as soon as the
+other is finished. In such a little church, you will say they must be
+easily pleased; but they are not. Some of them tramp long distances to
+church in weather that would keep you, reader, in the house, though your
+church is round the corner and there is pavement all the way to it. I
+can preach old sermons? Indeed I cannot. Many of my hearers adjourn to
+one of the five houses when the service is over, and there I am picked
+pretty clean. They would detect an old sermon at once, and resent it. I
+do not "talk" to them from the pulpit. I write my sermons in the manse,
+and though I use "paper," the less I use it the better they are pleased.
+
+The visits of the doctor are pleasant to me in one sense, but painful in
+others, for I need not say that when he is called I am required too. To
+wade through miles of snow is no great hardship to those who are
+accustomed to it; but the heavy heart comes when one of my people is
+seriously ill. Up here we have few slight illnesses. The doctor cannot
+be summoned to attend them, and we usually "fight away" until the malady
+has a heavy hold. Then the doctor comes, and though we are so scattered,
+his judgment is soon known all through the glens. When the tourists
+come back in summer they will not see all the "natives" of the year
+before.
+
+It is said by those who know nothing of our lives that we have no social
+events worth speaking of, and no amusements. This is what ignorance
+brings outsiders to. I had a marriage last week that was probably more
+exciting than many of your grand affairs in London. And as for
+amusements, you should see us gathered together in the smiddy, and
+sometimes in the school-house. But I must break off here for the reason
+that I have used up all my spare sermon paper--a serious matter. I shall
+send the editor something about our social gatherings presently, for he
+says he wants it. Janet, I may add, has discovered that this is not a
+sermon and is very curious about it.
+
+
+
+
+LIFE IN A COUNTRY MANSE.
+
+A WEDDING IN A SMIDDY.
+
+
+I promised to take the world at large into my confidence on the subject
+of our wedding at the smiddy. You in London, no doubt, dress more
+gorgeously for marriages than we do--though we can present a fine show
+of color--and you do not make your own wedding-cake, as Lizzie did. But
+what is your excitement to ours? I suppose you have many scores of
+marriages for our one, but you only know of those from the newspapers.
+"At so-and-so, by the Rev. Mr. Such-a-one, John to Elizabeth, eldest
+daughter of Thomas." That is all you know of the couple who were married
+round the corner, and therefore, I say, a hundred such weddings are less
+eventful in your community than one wedding in ours.
+
+Lizzie is off to Southampton with her husband. As the carriage drove off
+behind two horses that could with difficulty pull it through the snow,
+Janet suddenly appeared at my elbow and remarked:
+
+"Well, well, she has him now, and may she have her joy of him."
+
+"Ah, Janet," I said, "you see you were wrong. You said he would never
+come for her."
+
+"No, no," answered Janet. "I just said Lizzie made too sure about him,
+seeing as he was at the other side of the world. These sailors are
+scarce to be trusted."
+
+"But you see this one has turned up a trump."
+
+"That remains to be seen. Anybody that's single can marry a woman, but
+it's no so easy to keep her comfortable."
+
+I suppose Janet is really glad that the sailor did turn up and claim
+Lizzie, but she is annoyed in a way too. The fact is that Janet was
+skeptical about the sailor. I never saw Janet reading anything but the
+_Free Church Monthly_, yet she must have obtained her wide knowledge of
+sailors from books. She considers them very bad characters, but is too
+shrewd to give her reasons.
+
+"We all ken what sailors are," is her dark way of denouncing those who
+go down to the sea in ships, and then she shakes her head and purses up
+her mouth as if she could tell things about sailors that would make our
+hair rise.
+
+I think it was in Glasgow that Lizzie met the sailor--three years ago.
+She had gone there to be a servant, but the size of the place (according
+to her father) frightened her, and in a few months she was back at the
+clachan. We were all quite excited to see her again in the church, and
+the general impression was that Glasgow had "made her a deal more
+lady-like." In Janet's opinion she was just a little too lady-like to be
+natural.
+
+In a week's time there was a wild rumor through the glen that Lizzie was
+to be married.
+
+"Not she," said Janet, uneasily.
+
+Soon, however, Janet had to admit that there was truth in the story, for
+"the way Lizzie wandered up the road looking for the post showed she had
+a man on her mind."
+
+Lizzie, I think, wanted to keep her wonderful secret to herself, but
+that could not be done.
+
+"I canna sleep at nights for wondering who Lizzie is to get," Janet
+admitted to me. So in order to preserve her health Janet studied the
+affair, reflected on the kind of people Lizzie was likely to meet in
+Glasgow, asked Lizzie to the manse to tea (with no result), and then
+asked Lizzie's mother (victory). Lizzie was to be married to a sailor.
+
+"I'm cheated," said Janet, "if she ever sets eyes on him again. Oh, we
+all ken what sailors are."
+
+You must not think Janet too spiteful. Marriages were always too much
+for her, but after the wedding is over she becomes good-natured again.
+She is a strange mixture, and, I rather think, very romantic, despite
+her cynical talk.
+
+Well, I confess now, that for a time I was somewhat afraid of Lizzie's
+sailor myself. His letters became few in number, and often I saw Lizzie
+with red eyes after the post had passed. She had too much work to do to
+allow her to mope, but she became unhappy and showed a want of spirit
+that alarmed her father, who liked to shout at his relatives and have
+them shout back at him.
+
+"I wish she had never set eyes on that sailor," he said to me one day
+when Lizzie was troubling him.
+
+"She could have had William Simpson," her mother said to Janet.
+
+"I question that," said Janet, in repeating the remark to me.
+
+But though all the clachan shook its head at the sailor, and repeated
+Janet's aphorism about sailors as a class, Lizzie refused to believe
+her lover untrue.
+
+"The only way to get her to flare up at me," her father said, "is to say
+a word against her lad. She will not stand that."
+
+And, after all, we were wrong and Lizzie was right. In the beginning of
+the winter Janet walked into my study and parlor (she never knocks) and
+said:
+
+"He's come!"
+
+"Who?" I asked.
+
+"The sailor. Lizzie's sailor. It's a perfect disgrace."
+
+"Hoots, Janet, it's the very reverse. I'm delighted; and so, I suppose,
+are you in your heart."
+
+"I'm not grudging her the man if she wants him," said Janet, flinging up
+her head, "but the disgrace is in the public way he marched past me with
+his arm round her. It affronted me."
+
+Janet gave me the details. She had been to a farm for the milk and
+passed Lizzie, who had wandered out to meet the post as usual.
+
+"I've no letter for ye, Lizzie," the post said, and Lizzie sighed.
+
+"No, my lass," the post continued, "but I've something better."
+
+Lizzie was wondering what it could be, when a man jumped out from
+behind a hedge, at the sight of whom Lizzie screamed with joy. It was
+her sailor.
+
+"I would never have let on I was so fond of him," said Janet.
+
+"But did he not seem fond of her?" I asked.
+
+"That was the disgrace," said Janet. "He marched off to her father's
+house with his arm around her; yes, passed me and a wheen other folk,
+and looked as if he neither kent nor cared how public he was making
+himself. She did not care either."
+
+I addressed some remarks to Janet on the subject of meddling with other
+people's affairs, pointing out that she was now half an hour late with
+my tea; but I, too, was interested to see the sailor. I shall never
+forget what a change had come over Lizzie when I saw her next. The life
+was back in her face, she bustled about the house as busy as a bee, and
+her walk was springy.
+
+"This is him," she said to me, and then the sailor came forward and
+grinned. He was usually grinning when I saw him, but he had an honest,
+open face, if a very youthful one.
+
+The sailor stayed on at the clachan till the marriage, and continued to
+scandalize Janet by strutting "past the very manse gate" with his arm
+round the happy Lizzie.
+
+"He has no notion of the solemnity of marriage," Janet informed me, "or
+he would look less jolly. I would not like a man that joked about his
+marriage."
+
+The sailor undoubtedly did joke. He seemed to look on the coming event
+as the most comical affair in the world's history, and when he spoke of
+it he slapped his knees and roared. But there was daily fresh evidence
+that he was devoted to Lizzie.
+
+The wedding took place in the smiddy, because it is a big place, and all
+the glen was invited. Lizzie would have had the company comparatively
+select, but the sailor asked every one to come whom he fell in with, and
+he had few refusals. He was wonderfully "flush" of money, too, and had
+not Lizzie taken control of it, would have given it all away before the
+marriage took place.
+
+"It's a mercy Lizzie kens the worth of a bawbee," her mother said, "for
+he would scatter his siller among the very bairns as if it was corn and
+he was feeding hens."
+
+All the chairs in the five houses were not sufficient to seat the
+guests, but the smith is a handy man, and he made forms by crossing
+planks on tubs. The smiddy was an amazing sight, lit up with two big
+lamps, and the bride, let me inform those who tend to scoff, was dressed
+in white. As for the sailor, we have perhaps never had so showily
+dressed a gentleman in our parts. For this occasion he discarded his
+seafaring "rig out" (as he called it), and appeared resplendent in a
+black frock coat (tight at the neck), a light blue waistcoat (richly
+ornamented), and gray trousers with a green stripe. His boots were new
+and so genteel that as the evening wore on he had to kick them off and
+dance in his stocking soles.
+
+Janet tells me that Lizzie had gone through the ceremony in private with
+her sailor a number of times, so that he might make no mistake. The
+smith, asked to take my place at these rehearsals, declined on the
+ground that he forgot how the knot was tied: but his wife had a better
+memory, and I understand that she even mimicked me--for which I must
+take her to task one of these days.
+
+However, despite all these precautions, the sailor was a little
+demonstrative during the ceremony, and slipped his arm around the bride
+"to steady her." Janet wonders that Lizzie did not fling his arm from
+her, but Lizzie was too nervous now to know what her swain was about.
+
+Then came the supper and the songs and the speeches. The tourists who
+picture us shivering, silent and depressed all through the winter should
+have been in the smiddy that night.
+
+I proposed the health of the young couple, and when I called Lizzie by
+her new name, "Mrs. Fairweather," the sailor flung back his head and
+roared with glee till he choked, and Lizzie's first duty as a wife was
+to hit him hard between the shoulder blades. When he was sufficiently
+composed to reply, he rose to his feet and grinned round the room.
+
+"Mrs. Fairweather," he cried in an ecstacy of delight, and again choked.
+
+The smith induced him to make another attempt, and this time he got as
+far as "Ladies and gentlemen, me and my wife----" when the speech ended
+prematurely in resounding chuckles. The last we saw of him, when the
+carriage drove away, he was still grinning; but that, as he explained,
+was because "he had got Lizzie at last." "You'll be a good husband to
+her, I hope," I said.
+
+"Will I not," he cried, and his arm went round his wife again.
+
+
+
+
+A POWERFUL DRUG.
+
+(NO HOUSEHOLD SHOULD BE WITHOUT IT.)
+
+
+All respectable chemists, Montgomery assures me, keep the cio-root. That
+is the name of the drug, and Montgomery is the man who ought to write
+its testimonials. This is a testimonial to the efficacy of the cio-root,
+and I write it the more willingly, because, until the case of Montgomery
+cropped up, I had no faith in patent medicines. Seeing, however, is,
+they say, believing; and I have seen what the cio-root did for
+Montgomery. I can well believe now that it can do anything, from
+removing grease-spots to making your child cry out in the night.
+
+Montgomery, who was married years ago, is subject to headaches, and
+formerly his only way of treating them was to lie in bed and read a
+light novel. By the time the novel was finished, so, as a rule, was the
+headache. This treatment rather interfered with his work, however, and
+he tried various medicines which were guaranteed to cure rapidly. None
+of them had the least result, until one day, some two months ago, good
+fortune made him run against an old friend in Chambers street.
+Montgomery having a headache, mentioned it, and his friend asked him if
+he had tried the cio-root. The name even was unfamiliar to Montgomery,
+but his friend spoke so enthusiastically of it that the headachy man
+took a note of it. He was told that it had never been known to fail, and
+the particular merit of it was that it drove the headache away in five
+minutes. The proper dose to take was half an inch of the root, which was
+to be sucked and eventually swallowed. Montgomery tried several chemists
+in vain, for they had not heard of it, but at last he got it on George
+IV. Bridge. He had so often carried home in triumph a "certain cure,"
+which was subsequently flung out at the window in disgust, that his wife
+shook her head at the cio-root, and advised him not to be too hopeful.
+However, the cio-root surpassed the fondest expectations. It completely
+cured Montgomery in less than the five minutes. Several times he tried
+it, and always with the same triumphant result. Having at last got a
+drug to make an idol of, it is not perhaps to be wondered at that
+Montgomery was full of gratitude. He kept a three pound tin of the
+cio-root on his library-table, and the moment he felt a headache coming
+on he said, "Excuse me for one moment," and bit off half an inch of
+cio-root.
+
+The headaches never had a chance. It was, therefore, natural, though
+none the less annoying, that his one topic of conversation should become
+the properties of this remarkable drug. You would drop in on him,
+glowing over the prospect of a delightful two hours' wrangle over the
+crofter question, but he pushed the subject away with a wave of his
+hand, and begged to introduce to our notice the cio-root. Sitting there
+smoking, his somewhat dull countenance would suddenly light up as his
+eyes came to rest on the three-pound tin. He was always advising us to
+try the cio-root, and when we said we did not have a headache he got
+sulky. The first thing he asked us when we met was whether we had a
+headache, and often he clipped off an inch or two of the cio-root and
+gave it us in a piece of paper, so that a headache might not take us
+unawares. I believe he rather enjoyed waking with a headache, for he
+knew that it would not have a chance. If his wife had been a jealous
+woman, she would not have liked the way he talked of the cio-root.
+
+Some of us did try the drug, either to please him or because we were
+really curious about it. Whatever the reason, none of us, I think, were
+prejudiced. We tested it on its merits, and came unanimously to the
+conclusion that they were negative. The cio-root did us no harm. The
+taste was what one may imagine to be the taste of the root of any rotten
+tree dipped in tar, which was subsequently allowed to dry. As we were
+all of one mind on the subject, we insisted with Montgomery that the
+cio-root was a fraud. Frequently we had such altercations with him on
+the subject that we parted in sneers, and ultimately we said that it
+would be best not to goad him too far; so we arranged merely to chaff
+him about his faith in the root, and never went farther than insisting,
+in a pleasant way, that he was cured, not by the cio-root, but by his
+believing in it. Montgomery rejected this theory with indignation, but
+we stuck to it and never doubted it. Events, nevertheless, will show you
+that Montgomery was right and that we were wrong.
+
+The triumph of cio-root came as recently as yesterday. Montgomery, his
+wife, and myself, had arranged to go into Glasgow for the day. I called
+for them in the forenoon and had to wait, as Montgomery had gone along
+to the office to see if there were any letters. He arrived soon after
+me, saying that he had a headache, but saying it in a cheery way, for he
+knew that the root was in the next room. He disappeared into the library
+to nibble half an inch of the cio-root, and shortly afterwards we set
+off. The headache had been dispelled as usual. In the train he and I had
+another argument about the one great drug, and he ridiculed my notion
+about its being faith that drove his headache away. I may hurry over the
+next two hours, up to the time when we wandered into Buchanan street.
+There Montgomery met a friend, to whom he introduced me. The gentleman
+was in a hurry, so we only spoke for a moment, but after he had left us
+he turned back.
+
+"Montgomery," he said, "do you remember that day I met you in Chambers
+street, Edinburgh?"
+
+"I have good reason for remembering the occasion," said Montgomery,
+meaning to begin the story of his wonderful cure; but his friend who had
+to catch a 'bus, cut him short.
+
+"I told you at that time," he said, "about a new drug called the
+cio-root, which had a great reputation for curing headaches."
+
+"Yes," said Montgomery; "I always wanted to thank you----"
+
+His friend, however, broke in again--
+
+"I have been troubled in my mind since then," he said, "because I was
+told afterwards that I had made a mistake about the proper dose. If you
+try the cio-root, don't take half an inch, as I recommended, but quarter
+of an inch. Don't forget. It is of vital importance."
+
+Then he jumped into his 'bus, but I called after him, "What would be the
+effect of half an inch?"
+
+"Certain death!" he shouted back, and was gone. I turned to look at
+Montgomery and his wife. She let her umbrella fall and he had turned
+white. "Of course, there is nothing to be alarmed about," I said, in a
+reassuring way. "Montgomery has taken half an inch scores of times; you
+say it always cured you."
+
+"Yes, yes," Montgomery answered; but his voice sounded hollow.
+
+Up to this point the snow had kept off, but now it began to fall in a
+soaking drizzle. If you are superstitious you can take this as an omen.
+For the rest of the day, certainly, we had a miserable time of it. I had
+to do all the talking, and while I laughed and jested, I noticed that
+Mrs. Montgomery was looking anxiously from time to time at her husband.
+She was afraid to ask him if he felt unwell, and he kept up, not wanting
+to alarm her. But he walked like a man who knew that he had come to his
+last page. At my suggestion we went to the Enoch's Station Hotel to have
+dinner. I had dinner, Mrs. Montgomery pretended to have dinner, but
+Montgomery himself did not even make the pretense. He sat with his
+elbows on the table and his face buried in his hands. At last he said
+with a groan that he was feeling very ill. He looked so doleful that his
+wife began to cry.
+
+Montgomery admitted that he blamed the cio-root for his sufferings. He
+had taken an overdose of it, he said, tragically, and must abide the
+consequences. I could have shaken him, for reasoning was quite flung
+away on him. Of course, I repeated what I had said previously about an
+overdose having done him no harm before, but he only shook his head
+sadly. I said that his behavior now proved my contention that he only
+believed in the cio-root because he was told that it had wonderful
+properties; otherwise he would have laughed at what his friend had just
+told him. Undoubtedly, I said, his sufferings to-day were purely
+imaginary. Montgomery did not have sufficient spirits to argue with me,
+but he murmured in a die-away voice that he had felt strange symptoms
+ever since we set out from Edinburgh. Now, this was as absurd as
+anything in Euclid, for he had been boasting of the wonderful cure the
+drug had effected again most of the way between Edinburgh and Glasgow.
+He insisted that he had a splitting headache, and that he was very sick.
+In the end, as his wife was now in a frenzy, I sent out for a doctor.
+The doctor came, said "yes" and "quite so" to himself, and pronounced
+Montgomery feverish. That he was feverish by this time, I do not
+question. He had worked himself into a fever. There was some talk of
+putting him to bed in the hotel, but he insisted on going home. Though
+he did not put it so plainly, he gave us to understand that he wanted to
+die in his own bed.
+
+Never was there a more miserable trio than we in a railway carriage. We
+got a compartment to ourselves, for though several passengers opened
+the door to come in, they shrank back as soon as they saw Montgomery's
+ghastly face. He lay in a corner of the carriage, with his head done up
+in flannel, procured at the hotel. He had the rugs and my great coat
+over his legs, but he shivered despite them, and when he spoke at all,
+except to say that he was feeling worse every minute, it was to talk of
+men cut off in their prime and widows left destitute. At Mrs.
+Montgomery's wish, I telegraphed from a station at which the train
+stopped to the family doctor in Edinburgh, asking him to meet us at the
+house. He did so; indeed, he was on the steps to help Montgomery up
+them. We took an arm of the invalid apiece, and dragged him into the
+library.
+
+It was a fortunate thing that we went into the library, for the first
+thing Montgomery saw on the table was the half inch of cio-root which he
+thought had killed him. He had forgotten to take it.
+
+In ten minutes he was all right. Just as we were sitting down to supper,
+we heard a cat squalling outside. Montgomery flung a three-pound tin of
+the cio-root at it.
+
+
+
+
+EVERY MAN HIS OWN DOCTOR.
+
+
+Statistics showing the number of persons who yearly meet their death in
+our great cities by the fall of telegraph wires are published from time
+to time. As our cities grow, and the need of telegraphic communication
+is more generally felt, this danger will become even more conspicuous.
+Persons who value their lives are earnestly advised not to walk under
+telegraph wires.
+
+Is it generally realized that every day at least one fatal accident
+occurs in our streets? So many of these take place at crossings that we
+would strongly urge the public never to venture across a busy street
+until all the vehicles have passed.
+
+We find prevalent among our readers an impression that country life is
+comparatively safe. This mistake has cost Great Britain many lives. The
+country is so full of hidden dangers that one may be said to risk his
+health every time he ventures into it.
+
+We feel it our duty to remind holiday-makers that when in the country
+in the open air, they should never sit down. Many a man, aye, and woman
+too, has been done to death by neglecting this simple precaution. The
+recklessness of the public, indeed, in such matters is incomprehensible.
+The day is hot, they see an inviting grassy bank, and down they sit.
+Need we repeat that despite the sun (which is ever treacherous) they
+should continue walking at a smart pace? Yes, bitter experience has
+taught us that we must repeat such warnings.
+
+When walking in the country holiday-makers should avoid over-heating
+themselves. Nothing is so conducive to disease. We have no hesitation in
+saying that nine-tenths of the colds that prove fatal are caught through
+neglect of this simple rule.
+
+Beware of walking on grass. Though it may be dry to the touch, damp is
+ever present, and cold caught in this way is always difficult to cure.
+
+Avoid high roads in the country. They are, for the most part,
+unsheltered, and on hot days the sun beats upon them unmercifully. The
+perspiration that ensues is the beginning of many a troublesome illness.
+
+Country lanes are stuffy and unhealthy, owing to the sun not getting
+free ingress into them. They should, therefore, be avoided by all who
+value their health.
+
+In a magazine we observe an article extolling the pleasures of walking
+in a wood. That walking in a wood may be pleasant we do not deny, but
+for our own part we avoid woods. More draughty places could not well be
+imagined and many a person who has walked in a wood has had cause to
+repent it for the rest of his life.
+
+It is every doctor's experience that there is a large public which
+breaks down in health simply because it does not take sufficient
+exercise in the open air. Once more we would remind our readers that
+every man, woman or child who does not spend at least two hours daily in
+the open air is slowly committing suicide.
+
+How pitiful it is to hear a business man say, as business men so often
+say, "Really I cannot take a holiday this summer; my business ties me so
+to my desk, and, besides, I am feeling quite well. No, I shall send my
+wife and children to the seaside, and content myself with a
+Saturday-to-Monday now and again." We solemnly warn all such foolish
+persons that they are digging their own graves. Change is absolutely
+essential to health.
+
+Asked the other day why coughs were so prevalent in the autumn, we
+replied without hesitation, "Because during the past month or two so
+many persons have changed their beds." City people rush to the seaside
+in their thousands, and here is the result. A change of beds is
+dangerous to all, but perhaps chiefly to persons of middle age. We have
+so often warned the public of this that we can only add now, "If they
+continue to disregard our warning, their blood be on their own heads."
+This we say not in anger, but in sorrow.
+
+A case has come to our knowledge of a penny causing death. It had passed
+through the hands of a person suffering from infectious fever into those
+of a child, who got it as change from a shop. The child took the fever
+and died in about a fortnight. We would not have mentioned this case had
+we not known it to be but an instance of what is happening daily.
+Infection is frequently spread by money, and we would strongly urge no
+one to take change (especially coppers), from another without seeing it
+first dipped in warm water. Who can tell where the penny he gets in
+change from the newspaper-boy has come from?
+
+If ladies, who are ever purchasing new clothes, were aware that disease
+often lurks in these, they would be less anxious to enter dressmakers'
+shops. The saleswoman who "fits" them may come daily from a home where
+her sister lies sick of a fever, or the dress may have been made in some
+East End den, where infection is rampant. Cases of the kind frequently
+come to our knowledge, and we would warn the public against this danger
+that is ever present among us.
+
+Must we again enter a protest against insufficient clothing? We never
+take a walk along any of our fashionable thoroughfares without seeing
+scores of persons, especially ladies, insufficiently clad. The same
+spectacle, alas! may be witnessed in the East End, but for a different
+reason. Fashionable ladies have a horror of seeming stout, and to retain
+a slim appearance they will suffer agonies of cold. The world would be
+appalled if it knew how many of these women die before their fortieth
+year.
+
+We dress far too heavily. The fact is, that we would be a much healthier
+people if we wore less clothing. Ladies especially wrap themselves up
+too much, with the result that their blood does not circulate freely.
+Coats, ulsters, and other wraps, cause far more colds than they prevent.
+
+Why have our ladies not the smattering of scientific knowledge that
+would tell them to vary the thickness of their clothing with the
+weather? New garments, indeed, they do don for winter, but how many of
+them put on extra flannels?
+
+We are far too frightened of the weather, treating it as our enemy when
+it is ready to be our friend. With the first appearance of frost we fly
+to extra flannel, and thus dangerously overheat ourselves.
+
+Though there has been a great improvement in this matter in recent
+years, it would be idle to pretend that we are yet a cleanly nation. To
+speak bluntly, we do not change our undergarments with sufficient
+frequency. This may be owing to various reasons, but none of them is an
+excuse. Frequent change of underclothing is a necessity for the
+preservation of health, and woe to those who neglect this simple
+precaution.
+
+Owing to the carelessness of servants and others it is not going too far
+to say that four times in five undergarments are put on in a state of
+semi-dampness. What a fearful danger is here. We do not hesitate to say
+that every time a person changes his linen he does it at his peril.
+
+This is such an age of bustle that comparatively few persons take time
+to digest their food. They swallow it, and run. Yet they complain of not
+being in good health. The wonder rather is that they do not fall dead in
+the street, as, indeed, many of them do.
+
+How often have doctors been called in to patients whom they find
+crouching by the fireside and complaining of indigestion! Too many
+medical men pamper such patients, though it is their plain duty to tell
+the truth. And what is the truth? Why, simply this, that after dinner
+the patient is in the habit of spending his evening in an arm-chair,
+when he ought to be out in the open air, walking off the effects of his
+heavy meal.
+
+Those who work hard ought to eat plentifully, or they will find that
+they are burning the candle at both ends. Surely no science is required
+to prove this. Work is, so to speak, a furnace, and the brighter the
+fire the more coals it ought to be fed with, or it will go out. Yet we
+are a people who let our systems go down by disregarding this most
+elementary and obvious rule of health.
+
+If doctors could afford to be outspoken, they would twenty times a day
+tell patients that they are simply suffering from over-eating
+themselves. Every foreigner who visits this country is struck by this
+propensity of ours to eat too much.
+
+Very heart-breaking are the statistics now to hand from America about
+the increase in smoking. That this fatal habit is also growing in favor
+in this country every man who uses his eyes must see. What will be the
+end of it we shudder to think, but we warn those in high places that if
+tobacco smoking is not checked, it will sap the very vitals of this
+country. Why is it that nearly every young man one meets in the streets
+is haggard and pale? No one will deny that it is due to tobacco. As for
+the miserable wretch himself, his troubles will soon be over.
+
+We have felt it our duty from time to time to protest against what is
+known as the anti-tobacco campaign. We are, we believe, under the mark
+in saying that nine doctors in every ten smoke, which is sufficient
+disproof of the absurd theory that the medical profession, as a whole,
+are against smoking. As a disinfectant, we are aware that tobacco has
+saved many lives. In these days of wear and tear, it is specially
+useful as a sedative; indeed, many times a day, as we pass pale young
+men in the streets, whose pallor is obviously due to over-excitement
+about their businesses, we have thought of stopping them, and ordering a
+pipe as the medicine they chiefly require.
+
+Even were it not a destroyer of health, smoking could be condemned for
+the good and sufficient reason that it makes man selfish. It takes away
+from his interest in conversation, gives him a liking for solitude, and
+deprives the family circle of his presence.
+
+Not only is smoking excellent for the health, but it makes the smoker a
+better man. It ties him down more to the domestic circle, and loosens
+his tongue. In short, it makes him less selfish.
+
+No one will deny that smoking and drinking go together. The one provokes
+a taste for the other, and many a man who has died a drunkard had
+tobacco to thank for giving him the taste for drink.
+
+Every one is aware that heavy smokers are seldom heavy drinkers. When
+asked, as we often are, for a cure for the drink madness, we have never
+any hesitation in advising the application of tobacco in larger
+quantities.
+
+Finally, smoking stupefies the intellect.
+
+In conclusion, we would remind our readers that our deepest thinkers
+have almost invariably been heavy smokers. Some of them have gone so far
+as to say that they owe their intellects to their pipes.
+
+The clerical profession is so poorly paid that we would not advise any
+parent to send his son into it. Poverty means insufficiency in many
+ways, and that means physical disease.
+
+Not only is the medical profession overstocked (like all the others),
+but medical work is terribly trying to the constitution. Doctors are a
+short-lived race.
+
+The law is such a sedentary calling, that parents who care for their
+sons' health should advise them against it.
+
+Most literary people die of starvation.
+
+Trades are very trying to the young; indeed, every one of them has its
+dangers. Painters die from blood poisoning, for instance, and masons
+from the inclemency of the weather. The commercial life on 'Change is so
+exciting that for a man without a specially strong heart to venture into
+it is to court death.
+
+There is, perhaps, no such enemy to health as want of occupation. We
+would entreat all young men, therefore, whether of private means or not,
+to attach themselves to some healthy calling.
+
+
+
+
+GRETNA GREEN REVISITED.
+
+
+The one bumpy street of Springfield, despite its sparse crop of grass,
+presents to this day a depressed appearance, a relic of the time when it
+doubled up under a weight of thundering chariots. At the
+well-remembered, notorious Queen's Head I stood in the gathering
+gloaming, watching the road run yellow, until the last draggled hen had
+spluttered through the pools to roost, and the mean row of whitewashed,
+shrunken houses across the way had sunk into the sloppy ground, as they
+have been doing slowly for half a century, or were carried away in a
+rush of rain. Soaking weeds hung in lifeless bunches over the hedges of
+spears that line the roads from Gretna; on sodden Canobie Lea, where
+Lochinvar's steed would to-day have had to wade through yielding slush,
+dirty piles of congealed snow were still reluctant to be gone; and
+gnarled tree trunks, equally with palings that would have come out of
+the ground with a sloppy gluck, showed a dank and cheerless green.
+Yesterday the rooks dinned the air, and the parish of Gretna witnessed
+such a marrying and giving in marriage as might have flung it back fifty
+years. Elsewhere such a solemn cawing round the pulpit on the tree tops
+would denote a court of justice, but in the vicinity of Springfield, it
+may be presumed, the thoughts of the very rooks run on matrimony.
+
+A little while ago Willum Lang, a postman's empty letter-bag on his
+back, and a glittering drop trembling from his nose, picked his way
+through the puddles, his lips pursed into a portentous frown, and his
+grey head bowed professionally in contemplation of a pair of
+knock-knee'd but serviceable shanks. A noteworthy man Willum, son of
+Simon, son of David, grandson by marriage of Joseph Paisley, all famous
+"blacksmiths" of Gretna Green. For nigh a century Springfield has marked
+time by the Langs, and still finds "In David Lang's days" as forcible as
+"when Plancus was consul." Willum's predecessors in office reserved
+themselves for carriage runaways, and would shake the lids from their
+coffins if they knew that Willum had to marry the once despised
+"pedestrians." "Even Elliot," David Lang would say, "could join couples
+who came on foot," and that, of course, was very hard on the poor
+pedestrian, for greater contempt no man ever had for rival than David
+for Elliot, unless, indeed, it was Elliot's for David. But those were
+the great clattering days, when there were four famous marrying shops:
+the two rival inns of Springfield, that washed their hands of each other
+across the street, Mr. Linton's aristocratic quarters at Gretna Hall,
+and the toll-bar on the right side of the Sark. A gentleman who had
+requisitioned the services of the toll-keeper many years ago recently
+made a journey across the border to shake his fist at the bar, and no
+one in Gretna Green can at all guess why. Far-seeing Murray, the
+sometime priest of Gretna Hall, informed me, succeeded Beattie at the
+toll-house in 1843, and mighty convenient friends in need they both
+proved for the couples who dashed across the border with foaming fathers
+at their coaches' wheels. The stone bridge flashed fire to rushing
+hoofs, the exulting pursuers, knowing that a half-mile brae still barred
+the way to Springfield, saw themselves tearing romantic maidens from
+adventurers' arms, when Beattie's lamp gleamed in the night, the horses
+stopped as if an invisible sword had cleft them in twain, the maid was
+whisked like a bundle of stolen goods into the toll-bar, and her father
+flung himself in at the door in time to be introduced to his son-in-law.
+Oh, Beattie knew how to do his work expeditiously, and fat he waxed on
+the proceeds. In his later days marrying became the passion of his life,
+and he never saw a man and a maid together without creeping up behind
+them and beginning the marriage service. In Springfield there still are
+men and women who have fled from him for their celibacy, marriage in
+Scotland being such an easy matter that you never know when they may not
+have you. In joining couples for the mere pleasure of the thing, Simon
+brought high fees into disrepute, and was no favorite with the rest of
+the priesthood. That half-mile nearer the border, Jardine admits, gave
+the toll-bar a big advantage, but for runaways who could risk another
+ten minutes, Gretna Hall was the place to be married at.
+
+Willum Lang's puckered face means business. He has been sent for by a
+millworker from Langholm, who, having an hour to spare, thinks he may as
+well drop in at the priest's and get spliced; or by an innocent visitor
+wandering through the village in search of the mythical smithy; or by a
+lawyer who shakes his finger threateningly at Willum (and might as well
+have stayed at home with his mother). From the most distant shores
+letters reach him regarding Gretna marriages, and if Willum dislikes
+monotony he must be getting rather sick of the stereotyped beginning "I
+think your charges very extortionate." The stereotyped ending "but the
+sum you asked for is enclosed," is another matter. It is generally about
+midnight that the rustics of the county rattle Willum's door off its
+snib and, bending over his bed, tell him to arise and marry them. His
+hand is crossed with silver coin, for gone are the bridegrooms whose
+gold dribbled in a glittering cascade from fat purses to a horny palm;
+and then, with a sleepy neighbor, a cold hearth, and a rattling cynic of
+a window for witnesses, he does the deed. Elsewhere I have used these
+words to describe the scene:--"The room in which the Gretna Green
+marriages have been celebrated for many years is a large rude kitchen,
+but dimly lighted by a small 'bole' window of lumpy glass that faces an
+ill-fitting back door. The draught generated between the two cuts the
+spot where the couples stand, and must prove a godsend to flushed and
+flurried bridegrooms. A bed--wooden and solid, ornamented with divers
+shaped and divers colored clothes dependent from its woodwork like linen
+hung on a line to dry--fills a lordly space. The monster fireplace
+retreats bashfully before it into the opposite wall, and a grimy cracked
+ceiling looks on a bumpy stone floor, from which a cleanly man could eat
+his porridge. One shabby wall is happily hid by the drawers in which
+Lang keeps his books; and against the head of the bed an apoplectic Mrs.
+Langtry in a blue dress and yellow stockings, reminding the public that
+Simon Lang's teas are the best, shudders at her reflection in the
+looking-glass that dangles opposite her from a string." The signboard
+over a snuffy tavern that attempted to enter into rivalry with the
+Queen's Head depicts the priest on his knees going through the church
+marriage services, but the Langs have always kept their method of
+performing the ceremony a secret between themselves and the interested
+persons, and the artist in this case was doubtless drawing on his
+imagination. The picture is discredited by the scene of the wedding
+being made in a smithy, when it is notorious that the "blacksmith" has
+cut the tobacco plug, and caught fish in the Solway, and worked at the
+loom, the last, and the toll-bar, but never wielded Vulcan's hammer. The
+popular term is thus a mystery, though a witness once explained, in a
+trial, to Brougham, that Gretna marriages were a welding of heat. Now
+the welding of heat is part of a blacksmith's functions.
+
+It is not for Willum Lang to censure the Langholm millworkers, without
+whose patronage he would be as a priest superannuated, but if they could
+be got to remember whom they are married to, it would greatly relieve
+his mind. When standing before him they are given to wabbling unsteadily
+on their feet, and to taking his inquiry whether the maiden on their
+right is goodly in their sight for an offer of another "mutchkin:" and
+next morning they sometimes mistake somebody else's maiden for their
+own. When one of the youth of the neighborhood takes to him a helpmate
+at Springfield his friend often whiles away the time by courting
+another, and when they return to Langholm things are sometimes a littled
+mixed up. The priest, knowing what is expected of him, is generally able
+when appealed to, to "assign to each bridegroom his own;" but one
+shudders to think what complications may arise when Willum's eyes and
+memory go. These weddings are, of course, as legal as though Lang were
+Archbishop of Canterbury, but the clergymen shake their heads, and
+sometimes--as indeed was the case even in the great days--a second
+marriage by a minister is not thought amiss.
+
+About the year 1826, the high road to Scotland ran away from
+Springfield. Weeds soon afterwards sprouted in the street, and though
+the place's reputation died hard, its back had been broken. Runaways
+skurried by oblivious of its existence, and at a convenient point on the
+new road shrewd John Linton dropped Gretna Hall. Springfield's
+convenient situation had been its sole recommendation, and when it lost
+that it was stranded. The first entry in the Langs' books dates back to
+1771, when Joseph Paisley represented the priesthood, but the impetus to
+Gretna marriages had been given by the passing of Lord Hardwicke's act,
+a score of years before. Legend speaks of a Solway fisherman who taught
+tobacconist Paisley the business. Prior to 1754, when the law put its
+foot down on all unions not celebrated by ministers of the Church of
+England, there had been no need to resort to Scotland, for the chaplains
+of the fleet were anticipating the priests of Gretna Green, and doing a
+roaring trade. Broadly speaking, it was as easy between the Reformation
+and 1745 to get married in the one country as in the other. The Marriage
+Act changed all that. It did a real injustice to non-members of the
+Established Church, and only cured the disease in one place to let it
+break out in another. Lord Hardwicke might have been a local member of
+Parliament, pushing a bill through the House "for the promotion of
+Larceny and Rowdyism at Gretna Green." For the greater part of a
+century, there was a whirling of coaches and a clattering of horses
+across the border, after which came marriage in England before a
+registrar, and an amendment of the Scotch law that required residence
+north of the Sark, on the part of one of the parties, for twenty-one
+days before the ceremony took place. After that the romance of Gretna
+Green was as a tale that was told. The latter half of the last century,
+and the first twenty years of this, were thus the palmy days of
+Springfield, for after Gretna Hall hung out its signboard, the Langs
+were oftener seen at the "big house" than in the double-windowed parlor
+of the Queen's Head.
+
+The present landlord of this hostelry, a lightsome host, troubled with
+corns, who passes much of his time with a knife in one hand and his big
+toe in the other, is nephew of that Beattie who saw his way to bed by
+the gleam of post-boy's lamps, and spent his days unsnibbing the Queen's
+Head door to let runaways in, and barring it to keep their pursuers out.
+Much depends on habit, and Beattie slept most soundly to the drone of
+the priest in his parlor, and the rub-a-dub of baffled parents on his
+window-sills. His nephew, also a Beattie, brings his knife with him into
+the immortal room, where peers of the realm have mated with country
+wenches, and fine ladies have promised to obey their father's
+stable-boys, and two lord chancellors of England with a hundred others
+have blossomed into husbands, and one wedding was celebrated of which
+neither Beattie nor the world takes any account. There are half a dozen
+tongues in the inn--itself a corpse now that wearily awaits
+interment--to show you where Lord Erskine gambolled in a tablecloth,
+while David Lang united him in the bonds of matrimony with his
+housekeeper, Sarah Buck. There is the table at which he composed some
+Latin doggerel in honor of the event, and the doubtful signature on a
+cracked pane of glass. A strange group they must have made--the gaping
+landlord at the door, Mrs. Buck, the superstitious, with all her
+children in her arms, David Lang rebuking the lord chancellor for posing
+in the lady's bonnet, Erskine in his tablecloth skipping around the
+low-roofed room in answer, and Christina Johnstone, the female witness,
+thinking sadly that his lordship might have known better. Here, too,
+Lord Eldon galloped one day with his "beloved Bessy;" and it is not
+uninteresting to note that though he came into the world eighteen months
+after Lord Erskine, he paid Gretna Green a business visit nearly fifty
+years before him. Lang's books are a veritable magic-lantern, and the
+Queen's Head the sheet on which he casts his figures. The slides change.
+Joseph Paisley sees his shrewd assistant, David Lang, marry his
+granddaughter, and dies characteristically across the way. David has his
+day, and Simon, his son, succeeds him; and in the meantime many a
+memorable figure glides shadow-like across the screen. The youth with
+his heart in his mouth is Lord George Lambton. It is an Earl of
+Westmoreland that plants his shoulders against the door, and tells the
+priest to hurry. The foot that drums on the floor is Lady Alicia
+Parson's. A son of Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough makes way for his own
+son; a daughter follows in the very footsteps of her father, only a few
+hours between them. A daughter of Archdeacon Philpot arrives at four
+o'clock in the morning, and her companion forgets to grease the
+landlord's hand. The Hon. Charles Law just misses Lord Deerhurst. There
+are ghosts in cocked hats, and naval and military uniform, in muslin,
+broadcloth, tweed and velvet, gold lace and pigskin; swords flash,
+pistols smoke, steaming horses bear bleeding riders out of sight, and a
+thousand forms flit weird and shadowy through the stifling room.
+
+The dinner of the only surviving priest of Gretna Hall frizzled under
+the deft knife of his spouse as he rubbed his hands recently over the
+reminiscences of his youth. Willum Lang never officiated at the Hall.
+Intelligent Jardine, full of years and honors, now enjoys his ease, not
+without a priestly dignity, on a kitchen sofa, in his pocket edition of
+a home at Springfield, and it is perhaps out of respect to his visitor
+that he crowns his hoary head with a still whiter hat. His arms
+outstretched to the fire, he looks, by the flashes of light, in his
+ingle-nook a Shakespearian spirit crouching over an unholy pot, but his
+genial laugh betrays him, and his comely wife does not scruple to recall
+him to himself when he threatens to go off in an eternal chuckle. A
+stalwart border-woman she, in short petticoats and delightful cap, such
+as in the killing times of the past bred the Johnny Armstrongs and the
+terrible moss-troopers of the border. A storehouse of old ballads, and a
+Scotchwoman after Scott's own heart.
+
+The day that Gretna Hall became an inn, its landlord felt himself called
+to the priesthood, and as long as he and his son remained above ground,
+marriage was the heaviest item in their bills. But when Gretna knew them
+no more, Jardine's chance had come. Even at Springfield the line has
+always been drawn at female priests, and from the "big house" used to
+come frequent messages to the shoemaker with its mistress's compliments
+and would he step up at once. The old gentleman is a bit of a dandy in
+his way, and it is pleasant to know that Nature herself gave him on
+those occasions a hint when it was time to dress. The rush for him down
+dark fields and across the Headless Cross was in a flurry of haste, but
+in the still night the rumble of a distant coach had been borne to him
+over the howes and meadows, and Jardine knew what that meant as well as
+the marriage service. Sometimes the coaches came round by Springfield,
+when the hall was full, and there was a tumbling out and in again by
+trembling runaways at the rival inns. Even the taverns have run couples,
+and up and down the sleety street horses pranced and panted in search of
+an idle priest. Jardine remembers one such nightmare time when the
+clatter of a pursuing vehicle came nearer and nearer, and a sweet young
+lady in the Queen's Head flung up her hands to heaven. Crash went her
+true lovers' fist through a pane of glass to awaken the street (which
+always slept with one eye open) with the hoarse wail, "A hundred pounds
+to the man that marries me!" But big as was the bribe, the speed of the
+pursuers was greater, and the maiden's father looking in at the inn at
+an inconvenient moment called her away to fulfill another engagement.
+The Solway lies white from Gretna Hall like a sheet of mourning paper,
+between edges of black trees and hills. The famous long, low room still
+looks out on an ageing park, but they are only ghosts that join hands
+in it now, and it is a clinging to old days that makes the curious moon
+peep beneath the blind. The priest and the unbidden witness still are,
+but brides and bridegrooms come no more. To the days of his youth
+Jardine had to fling back his memory to recall the gravel springing from
+the wheels of Wakefield's flying chariot. The story is told in
+Hutchinson's _Chronicles of Gretna Green_, the first volume of which
+leads up to but does not broach the subject, and is common property at
+Springfield. The adventurer's dupe was an affectionate school-girl on
+whose feelings he worked by representing himself as the one friend who
+could save her father from ruin and disgrace. The supposed bankrupt was
+said to have taken flight to Scotland, and the girl of fifteen, jumping
+into Wakefield's coach at Liverpool, started with him in pursuit. A more
+graceless rascal never was, for at Carlisle the adventurer swore that he
+had talked with Miss Turner's father in an hotel where he was lying
+hidden from the sheriff's officers, and that the fugitive's wish was
+that she should, without delay, accept Mr. Wakefield's hand. The poor
+lassie, frantic with anxiety, was completely gulled, and on the eighth
+of March, 1826, Wakefield's coach drew up at Gretna Hall. Too late came
+the pursuit to stop the marriage, but the runaways were traced to
+France, and the law soon had the husband of a week by the heels. He had
+trusted, like all his brotherhood, to the lady's father making the best
+of it; and so, perhaps, he did; for the adventurer's address for the
+next three years was--Newgate, London.
+
+Spiders of both sexes kept their nets at Gretna Green, but a tragedy was
+only enacted at the hall between a score of comedies; and they were
+generally love-sick youths and maidens who interrupted the priest to ask
+if that was not the "so--sound of wh--wheels on the gravel walk?" A
+couple whom it would almost have been a satisfaction to marry without a
+fee (for the mere example of the thing) was that which raced from the
+south of England with the lady's father. When they reached the top of a
+hill his arms were gesticulating at the bottom, and they never turned
+one corner without seeing his steaming horse take another. Poor was the
+fond lover (dark his prospects at Gretna Green in consequence) but brave
+the maid, to whom her friends would insist on leaving money, which was
+the cause of the whole to-do. The father, looking on the swain with
+suspicious eye, took to dreaming of postillions, high-roads, blacksmiths
+and Gretna Green. He would not suffer his daughter to move from his
+sight, and even to dances he escorted her in his private carriage,
+returning for her (for he was a busy man) at night. Quick of invention
+were the infuriated lovers. Threading the mazes of a dance, the girl was
+one evening snatched from her partner's arms by the announcement that
+her father's carriage barred the way below. A hurried explanation of why
+he had come so soon, a tripping down the stairs with trembling limbs
+into a close coach, a maiden in white in her lover's arms, and hey-ho
+for Gretna Green. Jardine is mellowed with a gentle cynicism, and
+sometimes he breaks off in his reminiscences to wonder what people want
+to be married for. The Springfield priest, he chuckles, is a blacksmith
+at whom love cannot afford to laugh. Ay, friend Jardine, but what about
+the blacksmith who laughs at love?
+
+Half a century ago Mr. McDiarmid, a Scotch journalist of repute,
+loosened the tongue of a Springfield priest with a bowl of toddy. The
+result was as if the sluice had been lifted bodily from a dam, and
+stories (like the whisky) flowed like water. One over-curious
+_paterfamilias_ there was who excused his visit to the village of
+weddings on the ground that he wished to introduce to the priest a
+daughter who might one day require his services. "And sure enough," old
+Elliot, who entered into partnership with Simon Lang, crowed to his
+toddy-ladle, "I had her back with a younger man in the matter of three
+months!" There lives, too, in Springfield's memory the tale of the
+father who bolted with an elderly spinster, and returning to England
+passed his daughter and her lover on the way. Dark and wintry was the
+night, the two coaches rattled by, and next morning four persons who had
+gone wrong opened the eyes of astonishment.
+
+When David Lang was asked during Wakefield's trial how much he had been
+paid for discharging the duties of priest, he replied pleasantly, "L20
+or L30, or perhaps L40; I cannot say to a few pounds." This was pretty
+well, but there are authenticated cases in which L100 was paid. The
+priests had no fixed fee, and charged according to circumstances. If
+business was slack and the bridegroom not pressing, they lowered their
+charges, but where the bribed post-boys told them of high rank, hot
+pursuit, and heavy purses, they squeezed their dupes remorselessly. It
+is told of Joseph Paisley that when on his death-bed he heard the
+familiar rumble of coaches into the village, he shook death from him,
+ordered the runaways to approach his presence, married three couples
+from his bed, and gave up the ghost with three hundred pounds in his
+palsied hands. Beattie at the toll-bar, on the other hand, did not scorn
+silver fees, and as occasion warranted the priests have doubtless ranged
+in their charges from half-a-crown and a glass of whisky to a hundred
+pounds.
+
+Though the toll-bar only at rare intervals got wealthy pairs into its
+clutches, Murray had not been long installed in office when pockets
+crammed with fees made him waddle as heavily as a duck. Fifty marriages
+a month was no uncommon occurrence at Gretna at that time, and it was
+then that the mansion was built which still stands about a hundred yards
+on the English side of the Sark. The toll-keeper, to whom it owes its
+existence, erected it for a hotel that would rival Gretna Hall, and
+prove irresistible to the couples who, on getting married on the Scotch
+side, would have to pass it on their return journey. But the
+alterations in the Marriage Laws marred the new hotel's chances, and
+Murray found that he had over-reached himself. Perhaps one reason why he
+no longer prospered was because he pursued a niggardly policy with the
+postillions, ostlers, and other rapscallions who demanded a share of the
+booty. The Langs knew what they were about far too well to quarrel with
+the post-boys, and stories are still current in Springfield of these
+faithful youths tumbling their employers into the road rather than take
+them to a "blacksmith" with whom they did not deal.
+
+There is no hope for Gretna. Springfield was and is the great glory of
+its inhabitants. Here ran the great wall of Adrian, the scene of many a
+tough fight in the days of stone weapons and skin-clad Picts. The
+Debatable Land, sung by Trouvere and Troubadour, is to-day but a sodden
+moss, in which no King Arthur strides fearfully away from the "grim
+lady" of the bogs; and moss-troopers, grim and gaunt and terrible, no
+longer whirl with lighted firebrands into England. With a thousand stars
+the placid moon lies long drawn out and drowned at the bottom of the
+Solway, without a lovesick maid to shed a tear; the chariots that once
+rattled and flashed along the now silent road were turned into firewood
+decades ago, and the runaways, from a Prince of Capua to a beggar-maid,
+are rotten and forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+MY FAVORITE AUTHORESS.
+
+
+Just out of the four-mile radius--to give the cabby his chance--is a
+sleepy lane, lent by the country to the town, and we have only to open a
+little gate off it to find ourselves in an old-fashioned garden. The
+house, with its many quaint windows, across which evergreens spread
+their open fingers as a child makes believe to shroud his eyes, has a
+literary look--at least, so it seems to me, but perhaps this is because
+I know the authoress who is at this moment advancing down the walk to
+meet me.
+
+She has hastily laid aside her hoop, and crosses the grass with the
+dignity that becomes a woman of letters. Her hair falls over her
+forehead in an attractive way, and she is just the proper height for an
+authoress. The face, so open that one can watch the process of thinking
+out a new novel in it, from start to finish, is at times a little
+careworn, as if it found the world weighty, but at present there is a
+gracious smile on it, and she greets me heartily with one hand, while
+the other strays to her neck, to make sure that her lace collar is lying
+nicely. It would be idle to pretend that she is much more than eight
+years old, "but then Maurice is only six."
+
+Like most literary people who put their friends into books, she is very
+modest, and it never seems to strike her that I would come all this way
+to see her.
+
+"Mamma is out," she says simply, "but she will be back soon; and papa is
+at a meeting, but he will be back soon, too."
+
+I know what meeting her papa is at. He is crazed with admiration for
+Stanley, and can speak of nothing but the Emin Relief Expedition. While
+he is away proposing that Stanley should get the freedom of Hampstead,
+now is my opportunity to interview the authoress.
+
+"Won't you come into the house?"
+
+I accompany the authoress to the house, while we chat pleasantly on
+literary topics.
+
+"Oh, there is Maurice, silly boy!"
+
+Maurice is too busy shooting arrows into the next garden to pay much
+attention to me; and the authoress smiles at him good-naturedly.
+
+"I hope you'll stay to dinner," he says to me, "because then we'll have
+two kinds of pudding."
+
+The authoress and I give each other a look which means that children
+will be children, and then we go indoors.
+
+"Are you not going to play any more?" cries Maurice to the authoress.
+
+She blushes a little.
+
+"I was playing with him," she explains, "to keep him out of mischief
+till mamma comes back."
+
+In the drawing-room we talk for a time of ordinary matters--of the
+allowances one must make for a child like Maurice, for instance--and
+gradually we drift to the subject of literature. I know literary people
+sufficiently well to be aware that they will talk freely--almost too
+freely--of their work if approached in the proper spirit.
+
+"Are you busy just now?" I ask, with assumed carelessness, and as if I
+had not been preparing the question since I heard papa was out.
+
+She looks at me, suspiciously, as authors usually do when asked such a
+question. They are not certain whether you are really sympathetic.
+However, she reads honesty in my eyes.
+
+"Oh, well, I am doing a little thing." (They always say this.)
+
+"A story or an article?"
+
+"A story."
+
+"I hope it will be good."
+
+"I don't know. I don't like it much." (This is another thing they say,
+and then they wait for you to express incredulity.)
+
+"I have no doubt it will be a fine thing. Have you given it a name?"
+
+"Oh, yes; I always write the name. Sometimes I don't write any more."
+
+As she was in a confidential mood this seemed an excellent chance for
+getting her views on some of the vexed literary questions of the day.
+For instance, everybody seems to be more interested in hearing during
+what hours of the day an author writes than in reading his book.
+
+"Do you work best in the early part of the day or at night?"
+
+"I write my stories just before tea."
+
+"That surprises me. Most writers, I have been told, get through a good
+deal of work in the morning."
+
+"Oh, but I go to school as soon as breakfast is over."
+
+"And you don't write at night?"
+
+"No; nurse always turns the gas down."
+
+I had read somewhere that among the novelist's greatest difficulties is
+that of sustaining his own interest in a novel day by day until it is
+finished.
+
+"Until your new work is completed do you fling your whole heart and soul
+into it? I mean, do you work straight on at it, so to speak, until you
+have finished the last chapter?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+The novelists were lately reproved in a review for working too quickly,
+and it was said that one wrote a whole novel in two months.
+
+"How long does it take you to write a novel?"
+
+"Do you mean a long novel?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"It takes me nearly an hour."
+
+"For a really long novel?"
+
+"Yes, in three volumes. I write in three exercise-books--a volume in
+each."
+
+"You write very quickly."
+
+"Of course, a volume doesn't fill a whole exercise-book. They are penny
+exercise-books. I have a great many three-volume stories in the three
+exercise-books."
+
+"But are they really three-volume novels?"
+
+"Yes, for they are in chapters, and one of them has twenty chapters."
+
+"And how many chapters are there in a page?"
+
+"Not very many."
+
+Some authors admit that they take their characters from real life, while
+others declare that they draw entirely upon their imagination.
+
+"Do you put real people into your novels?"
+
+"Yes, Maurice and other people, but generally Maurice."
+
+"I have heard that some people are angry with authors for putting them
+into books."
+
+"Sometimes Maurice is angry, but I can't always make him an
+engine-driver, can I?"
+
+"No. I think it is quite unreasonable on his part to expect it. I
+suppose he likes to be made an engine-driver?"
+
+"He is to be an engine-driver when he grows up, he says. He is a silly
+boy, but I love him."
+
+"What else do you make him in your books?"
+
+"To-day I made him like Stanley, because I think that is what papa would
+like him to be; and yesterday he was papa, and I was his coachman."
+
+"He would like that?"
+
+"No, he wanted me to be papa and him the coachman. Sometimes I make him
+a pirate, and he likes that, and once I made him a girl."
+
+"He would be proud?"
+
+"That was the day he hit me. He is awfully angry if I make him a girl,
+silly boy. Of course he doesn't understand."
+
+"Obviously not. But did you not punish him for being so cruel as to hit
+you?"
+
+"Yes, I turned him into a cat, but he said he would rather be a cat than
+a girl. You see he's not much more than a baby--though I was writing
+books at his age."
+
+"Were you ever charged with plagiarism? I mean with copying your books
+out of other people's books."
+
+"Yes, often."
+
+"I suppose that is the fate of all authors. I am told that literary
+people write best in an old coat----."
+
+"Oh, I like to be nicely dressed when I am writing. Here is papa, and I
+do believe he has another portrait of Stanley in his hand. Mamma will be
+so annoyed."
+
+
+
+
+THE CAPTAIN OF THE SCHOOL.
+
+
+When Peterkin, who is twelve, wrote to us that there was a possibility
+("but don't count on it," he said) of his bringing the captain of the
+school home with him for a holiday, we had little conception what it
+meant. The captain we only knew by report as the "man" who lifted
+leg-balls over the pavilion and was said to have made a joke to the
+head-master's wife. By-and-by we understood the distinction that was to
+be conferred on us. Peterkin instructed his mother to send the captain a
+formal invitation addressed "J. Rawlins, Esq." This was done, but in
+such a way that Peterkin feared we might lose our distinguished visitor.
+"You shouldn't have asked him for all the holidays," Peterkin wrote, "as
+he has promised a heap of fellows." Then came a condescending note from
+the captain, saying that if he could manage it he would give us a few
+days. In this letter he referred to Peterkin as his young friend.
+Peterkin wrote shortly afterwards asking his sister Grizel to send him
+her photograph. "If you haven't one," he added, "what is the color of
+your eyes?" Grizel is eighteen, which is also, I believe, the age of J.
+Rawlins. We concluded that the captain had been sounding Peterkin about
+the attractions that our home could offer him; but Grizel neither sent
+her brother a photograph nor any account of her personal appearance. "It
+doesn't matter," Peterkin wrote back; "I told him you were dark." Grizel
+is rather fair, but Peterkin had not noticed that.
+
+Up to the very last he was in an agony lest the captain should
+disappoint him. "Don't tell anybody he is coming," he advised us, "for,
+of course, there is no saying what may turn up." Nevertheless the
+captain came and we sent the dog-cart to the station to meet him and
+Peterkin. On all previous occasions one of us had gone to the station
+with the cart; but Peterkin wrote asking us not to do so this time.
+"Rawlins hates any fuss," he said.
+
+Somewhat to our relief, we found the captain more modest than it would
+have been reasonable to expect. "This is Rawlins," was Peterkin's simple
+introduction; but it could not have been done with more pride had the
+guest been Mr. W. G. Grace himself. One thing I liked in Rawlins from
+the first: his consideration for others. When Peterkin's mother and
+sister embraced that boy on the doorstep, Rawlins pretended not to see.
+Peterkin frowned, however, at this show of affection, and with a red
+face looked at the captain to see how he took it. With much good taste,
+Peterkin said nothing about this "fuss" on the doorstep, and I concluded
+that he would let it slide. It has so far been a characteristic of that
+boy that he can let anything which is disagreeable escape his memory.
+This time, however, as I subsequently learned he had only bottled up his
+wrath to pour it out upon his sister. Finding her alone in the course of
+the day, he opened his mind by remarking that this was a nice sort of
+thing she had done, making a fool of him before another fellow. Asked
+boldly--for Grizel can be freezing on occasion not only to her own
+brother, but to other people's brothers--what he meant, Peterkin
+inquired hotly if she was going to pretend that she had not kissed him
+in Rawlins' presence. Grizel replied that if Rawlins thought anything of
+that he was a nasty boy; at which Peterkin echoed "boy" with a grim
+laugh, and said he only hoped she would see the captain some day when
+the ground suited his style of bowling. Grizel replied contemptuously
+that the time would come when both Peterkin and his disagreeable friend
+would be glad to be kissed; upon which her brother flung out of the
+room, warmly protesting that she had no right to bring such charges
+against fellows.
+
+Though Grizel was thus a little prejudiced against the captain, he had
+not been a day in the house when we began to feel the honor that his
+visit conferred on us. He was modest almost to the verge of shyness; but
+it was the modesty that is worn by a man who knows he can afford it.
+While Peterkin was there Rawlins had no need to boast, for Peterkin did
+the boasting for him. When, however, the captain exerted himself to
+talk, Peterkin was contented to retire into the shade and gaze at him.
+He would look at all of us from his seat in the background, and note how
+Rawlins was striking us. Peterkin's face as he gazed upon that of the
+captain went far beyond the rapture of a lover singing to his mistress's
+eyebrow. He fetched and carried for him, anticipated his wants as if
+Rawlins were an invalid, and bore his rebukes meekly. When Rawlins
+thought that Peterkin was speaking too much, he had merely to tell him
+to shut up, when Peterkin instantly collapsed. We noticed one great
+change in Peterkin. Formerly, when he came home for the holidays he had
+strongly objected to making what he called drawing-room calls, but all
+that was changed. Now he went from house to house, showing the captain
+off. "This is Rawlins," remained his favorite form of introduction. He
+is a boy who can never feel comfortable in a drawing-room, and so the
+visits were generally of short duration. They had to go because they
+were due in another house in a quarter of an hour, or he had promised to
+let Jemmy Clinker, who is our local cobbler and a great cricketer, see
+Rawlins. When a lady engaged the captain in conversation, Peterkin did
+not scruple to sign to her not to bother him too much; and if they were
+asked to call again, Peterkin said he couldn't promise. There was a
+remarkable thing the captain could do to a walking stick, which Peterkin
+wanted him to do everywhere. It consisted in lying flat on the floor and
+then raising yourself in an extraordinary way by means of the stick. I
+believe it is a very difficult feat, and the only time I saw our guest
+prevailed upon to perform it he looked rather apoplectic. Sometimes he
+would not do it, apparently because he was not certain whether it was a
+dignified proceeding. He found it very hard, nevertheless, to resist the
+temptation, and it was the glory of Peterkin to see him yield to it.
+From certain noises heard in Peterkin's bedroom it is believed that he
+is practicing the feat himself.
+
+Peterkin, you must be told, is an affectionate boy, and almost
+demonstrative to his relatives if no one is looking. He was consequently
+very anxious to know what the captain thought of us all, and brought us
+our testimonials as proudly as if they were medals awarded for saving
+life at sea. It is pleasant to me to know that I am the kind of governor
+Rawlins would have liked himself, had he required one. Peterkin's
+mother, however, is the captain's favorite. She pretended to take the
+young man's preference as a joke when her son informed her of it, but in
+reality I am sure she felt greatly relieved. If Rawlins had objected to
+us it would have put Peterkin in a very awkward position. As for Grizel,
+the captain thinks her a very nice little girl, but "for choice," he
+says (according to Peterkin) "give him a bigger woman." Grizel was
+greatly annoyed when he told her this, which much surprised him, for he
+thought it quite as much as she had any right to expect. On the whole,
+we were perhaps rather glad when Rawlins left, for it was somewhat
+trying to live up to him. Peterkin's mother, too, has discovered that
+her boy has become round-shouldered. It is believed that this is the
+result of a habit he acquired when in Rawlins's company of leaning
+forward to catch what people were saying about the captain.
+
+
+
+
+THOUGHTFUL BOYS MAKE THOUGHTFUL MEN.
+
+
+Urquhart is a boy who lives in fear that his friends and relations will
+send him the wrong birthday presents. Before his birthday came round
+this year, he dropped them pretty broad hints as to the kind of gift he
+would prefer, supposing they meant to remember the occasion. He worked
+his people differently, according to the relationship that existed
+between him and them. Thus to his mother he simply wrote, "A fishing-rod
+is what I want;" but to an uncle, from whom there was only the
+possibility of the present, he said, "By the way, next Monday week is my
+birthday, and my mother is going to send me a fishing-rod. Wouldn't it
+be jolly rot if any other body sent me a fishing-rod?--Your affectionate
+and studious nephew, Thomas Urquhart." To an elderly lady, with whom he
+had once spent part of his summer holiday, he wrote, "By-the-bye" (he
+always came to the point with by-the-bye), "next Monday week is my
+birthday. I am wondering if anybody will send me a cake like the ones
+you bake so beautifully."
+
+That lady should, of course, figuratively have punched Urquhart's head,
+but his communication charmed her. She did not, however, send him a
+cake. He had a letter from her in a few days, in which, without
+referring to his insinuating remarks about his birthday and her cakes,
+she expressed a hope that he was working hard. Urquhart thought this
+very promising, and sent a reply that undid him. "I am sweating," he
+said, "no end; and I think there is no pleasure like perusing books.
+When the other chaps go away to play, I stay at the school and peruse
+books." After that Urquhart counted the old lady among his certainties,
+and so she was, after a manner. On his birthday he received a gift from
+her, and also a letter, in which she said that her original intention
+had been to send him a cake. "But your nice letter," she went on, "in
+which you say you are fond of reading, reminds me that you are getting
+to be a big boy, so I send you a book instead," Urquhart anxiously undid
+the brown paper in which the book was wrapped. It was a volume of mild
+biographies, entitled, "Thoughtful Boys Make Thoughtful Men."
+
+From its first appearance among us, this book caused a certain amount of
+ill-feeling. I learned by accident that Urquhart, on the strength of the
+lady's letter, had stated for a fact to his comrades that she was going
+to send him a cake. He had also taken Fleming Secundus to a
+pastry-cook's in the vicinity of the school, and asked him to turn his
+eyes upon a cake which had the place of honor in the centre of the
+window. Secundus admitted with a sigh that it was a beauty. Without
+comment Urquhart led him to our local confectioner's, and pointed out
+another cake. Secundus again passed favorable criticism, the words he
+used, I have reason to believe, being "Oh, Crikey!" By this time
+Urquhart had exhausted the shops of an interesting kind in our
+neighborhood, and he and his companion returned to the school. For a
+time Urquhart said nothing, but at last he broke the silence. "You saw
+yon two cakes?" he asked Secundus, who replied, with a smack of the
+lips, in the affirmative. "Then let me tell you," said Urquhart,
+solemnly, "that the two of them rolled together don't come within five
+miles of the cake I'm to get on my birthday." Tremendous news like this
+spreads through a school like smoke, and Urquhart was courted as he had
+never been before. One of the most pitiful cases of toadyism known to me
+was witnessed that very day in the foot-ball field. I was playing in a
+school match on the same side as Urquhart and a boy called Cocky Jones
+by his associates because of his sublime impertinence to his master.
+While Urquhart was playing his shoelace became loosened, and he stooped
+to tie it. "I say, Urquhart," cried Cocky, "let me do that for you!" It
+will thus be seen, taking one thing with another, that Urquhart's
+confidence in the old lady had raised high hopes. "Is this the day
+Urquhart gets his cake?" the "fellows" asked each other. Consider their
+indignation when he got, instead, "Thoughtful Boys Make Thoughtful Men."
+Secundus refused to speak to him; Williamson, Green, Robbins, Tosh and
+others scowled as if he had stolen their cake; Cocky Jones kicked him
+and bolted.
+
+The boy who felt the disappointment most was, however, Urquhart himself.
+He has never been a shining light in his classes, but that day he
+stumbled over the Latin grammar at every step. From nine to ten he was
+quiet and sullen, like one felled by the blow. It is, I believe,
+notorious that in a fair fight Cocky Jones could not stand up before
+Urquhart for a moment; yet, when Cocky kicked, Urquhart did not pursue
+him. Between ten and eleven, Urquhart had a cynical countenance, which
+implied that his faith in humanity was gone. By twelve he looked fierce,
+as if he meant to write his benefactress, and give her a piece of his
+mind. I saw him during the dinner-hour in hot controversy with Green and
+Tosh, who were evidently saying that he had deceived them. From this
+time he was pugnacious, like one determined to have it out with
+somebody, and as he can use his fists, this mood made his companions
+more respectful. Fleming Secundus is his particular chum, and after the
+first bitterness of disappointment, Secundus returned to his allegiance.
+He offered to mark Cocky Jones' face, I fancy, for I saw him in full
+pursuit of Cocky in the playground. Having made it up, he and Urquhart
+then discussed the matter calmly in a corner. They had several schemes
+before them. One was to send the book back, saying that Urquhart had
+already a copy of it.
+
+"But, I haven't," said Urquhart.
+
+"Williamson has read it, though," said Secundus, as if that was much
+the same thing.
+
+"But though we did send it back," Urquhart remonstrated, "the chances
+are that she would send me another book in its place."
+
+His faith, you see, had quite gone.
+
+"You could tell her you had got such a lot of books that you would
+prefer a cake for a change?"
+
+Urquhart said that would be putting it too plain.
+
+"Well, then," said Secundus, "even though she did send you another book,
+it would perhaps be a better one than that. Tell her to send 'The Boy
+Crusoes.' I haven't read it."
+
+"I have, though," said Urquhart.
+
+"Well, she could send 'The Prairie Hunters.'"
+
+"She's not the kind," said Urquhart. "It's always these improving books
+she buys."
+
+Ultimately the two boys agreed upon a line of action which was hardly
+what the reader might expect. Urquhart wrote letters of thanks to all
+those who had remembered his birthday, and to the old lady the letter
+which passed through my hands read as follows:
+
+
+     "DEAR MISS ----:
+
+     I sit down to thank you very faithfully for your favor, namely, the
+     book entitled 'Thoughtful Boys Make Thoughtful Men.' It is a jolly
+     book, and I like it no end better than a cake, which would soon be
+     ate up, and then nothing to show for it. I am reading your
+     beautiful present regular, and hoping it will make me a thoughtful
+     boy so as I may be a thoughtful man, no more at present,
+
+     I am, Dear Miss ----,
+     Your very sincere friend,
+
+     THOMAS URQUHART."
+
+
+Our boys generally end up their letters in some such way as that, it
+being a method of making their epistles cover a little more paper. As I
+feared, Urquhart's letter was merely diplomatic. He had not come round
+to the opinion that after all a book was better than the cake, but he
+had seen the point of Fleming's sudden suggestion, that the best plan
+would be to "keep in" with his benefactress. Secundus had shown that if
+Miss M---- was bothered about this year's present, she would be less
+likely to send anything next year, and this sank into Urquhart's mind.
+Hence the tone of his letter of thanks.
+
+It remains to follow the inglorious career of this copy of "Thoughtful
+Boys make Thoughtful Men." First, Urquhart was openly contemptuous of
+it, and there seemed a probability of its only being used as a missile.
+Soon, however, he dropped hints that it was a deeply interesting story,
+following these hints up with the remark that he was open to offers. He
+and Fleming Secundus had quite a tiff about it, though they are again
+good friends. Secundus, it appears, had gone the length of saying that
+it was worth a shilling, and had taken it to his bed to make sure of
+this. Urquhart considered it as good as bought, but Secundus returned it
+to him next day. Examination of the book roused the suspicions of
+Urquhart, who charged Secundus with having read it by peeping between
+the pages, which, to enhance its commercial value, had remained uncut.
+This Secundus denied, but he had left the mark of his thumb on it.
+Eventually the book was purchased by Cocky Jones, but not without a row.
+Cocky went up to Urquhart one day and held out a shilling, saying that
+he would give it for "Thoughtful Boys Make Thoughtful Men." The owner
+wanted to take the shilling at once, and give up the book later in the
+day, but Cocky insisted on its being put into his hands immediately.
+That Jones should be anxious to become the possessor of an improving
+book surprised Urquhart, but in his haste to make sure of the shilling,
+he handed over "Thoughtful Boys Make Thoughtful Men." Within an hour of
+the striking of this bargain a rumor reached Urquhart's ears that Cocky
+had resold the work for one and sixpence. Inquiries were instituted,
+which led to a discovery. At our school there is a youth called Dicky
+Jenkinson, who, though not exactly a thoughtful boy, has occasional
+aspirations in that direction. Being for the moment wealthy, Jenkinson
+had remarked, in the presence of Cocky, that one and sixpence would not
+be too much to give for Urquhart's copy of "Thoughtful Boys Make
+Thoughtful Men." Feeling his way cautiously, Cocky asked whether he
+meant that the book would be cheap at one and sixpence to anybody who
+wanted it, or whether he (Dicky) was willing and able to expend that sum
+on it. Thus brought to bay, Jenkinson solemnly declared that he meant to
+make Urquhart an offer that very day. Cocky made off to think this
+matter over, for he was aware that the book had been already offered to
+Fleming Secundus for a shilling. He saw that by taking prompt action he
+might clear sixpence before bedtime. Unfortunately, he was not able to
+buy the book from Urquhart, for he was destitute of means, and he knew
+it would be mere folly to ask Urquhart for credit. In these painful
+circumstances he took Robbins into his confidence. At first he merely
+asked Robbins to lend him a shilling, and Robbins merely replied that he
+would do no such thing. To show that the money would be returned
+promptly, Cocky then made a clean breast of it, after which Robbins was
+ready to lend him an ear. Robbins, however, stipulated that he should
+get half of the spoils.
+
+Cocky, as has been seen, got the book from Urquhart, but when it came to
+the point, Jenkinson was reluctant to part with the one and sixpence. In
+this extremity Cocky appealed to Robbins, who at once got hold of Dicky
+and threatened to slaughter him if he did not keep to his bargain. Thus
+frightened, Jenkinson bought the book.
+
+On hearing of this, Urquhart considered that he had been swindled, and
+set off in quest of Cocky. That boy was not to be found, however, until
+his threepence had disappeared in tarts. I got to know of this affair
+through Robbins' backing up of Cocky, and telling Urquhart that nobody
+was afraid of him. A ring was immediately formed round Urquhart and
+Robbins, which I had the pleasure of breaking up.
+
+Since I sat down to write the adventures of "Thoughtful Boys Make
+Thoughtful Men," I have looked through the book. Jenkinson read several
+chapters of it, and then offered it for next to nothing to anybody who
+had a fancy for being thoughtful. As no bidder was forthcoming, he in
+the end lost heart and presented it to the school library. A gentleman
+who visited us lately, and looked through the library, picked it up, and
+said that he was delighted to observe that the boys kept their books so
+clean. Yet not so long ago he was a boy at our school himself.
+
+
+
+
+IT.
+
+
+As they were my friends, I don't care to say how it came about that I
+had this strange and, I believe unique, experience. They considered it a
+practical joke, though it nearly unhinged my reason. Suffice it that
+last Wednesday, when I called on them at their new house, I was taken up
+stairs and shown into a large room with a pictorial wall paper. There
+was a pop-gun on the table and a horse with three legs on the floor. In
+a moment it flashed through my mind that I must be in a nursery. I
+started back, and then, with a sinking at the heart, I heard the key
+turn in the lock. From the corner came a strange uncanny moan. Slowly I
+forced my head round and looked, and a lump rose in my throat, and I
+realized that I was alone with It.
+
+I cannot say how long I stood there motionless. As soon as I came to
+myself I realized that my only chance was to keep quiet. I tried to
+think. The probability was that they were not far away, and if they
+heard nothing for a quarter of an hour or so they might open the door
+and let me out. So I stood still, with my eyes riveted on the thing
+where It lay. It did not cry out again, and I hoped against hope that It
+had not seen me. As I became accustomed to the room I heard It breathing
+quite like a human being. This reassured me to some extent, for I saw
+that It must be asleep. The question was--Might not the sleep be
+disturbed at any moment, and in that case, what should I do? I
+remembered the story of the man who met a wild beast in the jungle and
+subjugated it by the power of the human eye. I thought I would try that.
+All the time I kept glaring at It's lair (for I could not distinguish
+itself), and the two things mixed themselves up in my mind till I
+thought I was trying the experiment at that moment. Next it struck me
+that the whole thing was perhaps a mistake. The servant had merely shown
+me into the wrong room. Yes; but why had the door been locked? After
+all, was I sure that it was locked? I crept closer to the door, and with
+my eyes still fixed on the corner, put my hand gently--oh, so
+gently!--on the handle. Softly I turned it round. I felt like a burglar.
+The door would not open. Losing all self-control, I shook it; and then
+again came that unnatural cry. I stood as if turned to stone, still
+clutching the door handle, lest it should squeak if I let it go. Then I
+listened for the breathing. In a few moments I heard It. Before It had
+horrified me; now It was like sweet music, and I resumed breathing
+myself. I kept close to the wall, ready for anything; and then I had a
+strange notion. As It was asleep, why should I not creep forward and
+have a look at It? I yielded to this impulse.
+
+Of course I had often seen Them before, but always with some responsible
+person present, and never such a young one. I thought It would be done
+up in clothes, but no, It lay loose, and without much on. I saw Its
+hands and arms, and It had hair. It was sound asleep to all appearances,
+but there was a queer smile upon Its face that I did not like. It
+crossed my mind that It might be only shamming, so I looked away and
+then turned sharply around to catch It. The smile was still there, but
+It moved one of Its hands in a suspicious way. The more I looked the
+more uncomfortable did that smile make me. There was something saturnine
+about It, and It kept it up too long. I felt in my pocket hurriedly for
+my watch, in case It should wake; but, with my usual ill-luck, I had
+left it at the watchmaker's. If It had been older I should not have
+minded so much, for I would have kept on asking what Its name was. But
+this was such a very young one that It could not even have a name yet.
+Presently I began to feel that It was lying too quietly. It is not Their
+nature to be quiet for any length of time, and, for aught I knew, this
+one might be ill. I believe I should have felt relieved if It had cried
+out again. After thinking it over for some time I touched It to see if
+It would move. It drew up one leg and pushed out a hand. Then I bit my
+lips at my folly, for there was no saying what It might do next. I got
+behind the curtain, and watched It anxiously through a chink. Except
+that the smile became wickeder than ever, nothing happened. I was
+wondering whether I should not risk pinching It, so as to make It scream
+and bring somebody, when I heard an awful sound. Though I am only
+twenty, I have had considerable experience of life, and I can safely say
+that I never heard such a chuckle. It had wakened up and was laughing.
+
+I gazed at It from behind the curtain; Its eyes were wide open, and you
+could see quite well that It was reflecting what It ought to do next. As
+long as It did not come out I felt safe, for It could not see me.
+Something funny seemed to strike It, and It laughed heartily. After a
+time It tried to sit up. Fortunately Its head was so heavy that It
+always lost its balance just as It seemed on the point of succeeding.
+When It saw that It could not rise, It reflected again, and then all of
+a sudden It put Its fist into Its mouth. I gazed in horror; soon only
+the wrist was to be seen, and I saw that It would choke in another
+minute. Just for a second I thought that I would let It do as It liked.
+Then I cried out, "Don't do that!" and came out from behind the curtain.
+Slowly It moved Its fist and there we were, looking at each other.
+
+I retreated to the door, but It followed me with Its eyes. It had not
+had time to scream yet, and I glared at It to imply that I would stand
+no nonsense. But, difficult though this may be to believe, It didn't
+scream when It had the chance. It chuckled instead and made signs for me
+to come nearer. This was even more alarming than my worst fears. I shook
+my head and then my fist at It, but It only laughed the more. In the end
+I got so fearful that I went down on my hands and knees, to get out of
+Its sight. Then It began to scream. However, I did not get up. When they
+opened the door they say I was beneath the table, and no wonder. But I
+certainly was astonished to discover that I had only been alone with It
+for seven minutes.
+
+
+
+
+TO THE INFLUENZA.
+
+
+The time has come for you to leave this house. Seventeen days ago you
+foisted yourself upon me, and since then we have been together night and
+day. You were unwelcome and uninvited, and you made yourself intensely
+disagreeable. We wrestled, you and I, but you attacked me unawares in
+the back, and you threw me. Then, like the ungenerous foe that you are,
+you struck me while I was down. However, your designs have failed. I
+struggle to my feet and order you to withdraw. Nay, withdraw is too
+polite a word. Your cab is at the door; get out. But, stop, a word with
+you before you go.
+
+Most of your hosts, I fancy, run you out of their houses without first
+saying what they think of you. Their one desire is to be rid of you.
+Perhaps they are afraid to denounce you to your face. I want, however,
+to tell you that I have been looking forward to this moment ever since
+you put me to bed. I said little while I was there, but I thought a
+good deal, and most of my thoughts were of you. You fancied yourself
+invisible, but I saw you glaring at me, and I clenched my fists beneath
+the blankets. I could paint your portrait. You are very tall and stout,
+with a black beard, and a cruel, unsteady eye, and you have a way of
+crackling your fingers while you exult in your power. I used to lie
+watching you as you lolled in my cane-chair. At first it was empty, but
+I felt that you were in it, and gradually you took shape. I could hear
+your fingers crackling, and the chair creak as you moved in it. If I sat
+up in fear, you disappeared, but as soon as I lay back, there you were
+again. I know now that in a sense you were a creature of my imagination.
+I have discovered something more. I know why you seemed tall and stout
+and bearded, and why I heard your fingers crackling.
+
+Fever--one of your dastard weapons--was no doubt what set me drawing
+portraits, but why did I see you a big man with a black beard? Because
+long ago, when the world was young, I had a schoolmaster of that
+appearance. He crackled his fingers too. I had forgotten him utterly. He
+had gone from me with the love of climbing for crows' nests--which I
+once thought would never die--but during some of these seventeen days
+of thirty-six hours each I suppose I have been a boy again. Yet I had
+many schoolmasters, all sure at first that they could make something of
+me, all doleful when they found that I had conscientious scruples
+against learning. Why do I merge you into him of the crackling fingers?
+I know. It is because in mediaeval times I hated him as I hate you. No
+others have I loathed with any intensity, but he alone of my masters
+refused to be reconciled to my favorite method of study, which
+consisted, I remember (without shame) in glancing at my tasks, as I
+hopped and skipped to school. Sometimes I hopped and skipped, but did
+not arrive at school in time to take solid part in lessons, and this
+grieved the soul of him who wanted to be my instructor. So we differed,
+as Gladstonian and Conservative on the result of the Parnell Commission,
+and my teacher, being in office, troubled me not a little. I confess I
+hated him, and while I sat glumly in his room, whence the better boys
+had retired, much solace I found in wondering how I would slay him,
+supposing I had a loaded pistol, a sword, and a hatchet, and he had only
+one life. I schemed to be a dark, morose pirate of fourteen, so that I
+might capture him, even at his black-board, and make him walk the plank.
+I was Judge Lynch, and he was the man at the end of the rope. I charged
+upon him on horseback, and cut him down. I challenged him to single
+combat, and then I was Ivanhoe. I even found pleasure in conceiving
+myself shouting "Crackle-fingers" after him, and then bolting round a
+corner. You must see now why I pictured you heavy, and dark, and
+bearded. You are the schoolmaster of my later years. I lay in bed and
+gloried in the thought that presently I would be up, and fall upon you
+like a body of cavalry.
+
+What did you think of my doctor? You need not answer, for I know that
+you disliked him. You and I were foes, and I was getting the worst of it
+when he walked in and separated the combatants. His entrance was
+pleasant to me. He showed a contempt for you that perhaps he did not
+feel, and he used to take your chair. There were days when I wondered at
+his audacity in doing that, but I liked it, too, and by and by I may
+tell him why I often asked him to sit there. He was your doctor as well
+as mine, and every time he said that I was a little better, I knew he
+meant that you were a little weaker. You knew it, too, for I saw you
+scowling after he had gone. My doctor is also my friend, and so, when I
+am well, I say things against him behind his back. Then I see his
+weaknesses and smile comfortably at them with his other friends--whom I
+also discuss with him. But while you had me down he was another man. He
+became, as it were, a foot taller, and I felt that he alone of men had
+anything to say that was worth listening to. Other friends came to look
+curiously at me and talk of politics, or Stanley, or on other frivolous
+topics, but he spoke of my case, which was the great affair. I was not,
+in my own mind, a patient for whom he was merely doing his best; I was
+entirely in his hands. I was a business, and it rested with him whether
+I was to be wound up or carried on as usual. I daresay I tried to be
+pleasant to him--which is not my way--took his prescriptions as if I
+rather enjoyed them, and held his thermometer in my mouth as though it
+were a new kind of pipe. This was diplomacy. I have no real pleasure in
+being fed with a spoon, nor do I intend in the future to smoke
+thermometers. But I knew that I must pander to my doctor's weakness if
+he was to take my side against you. Now that I am able to snap my
+fingers at you I am looking forward to sneering once more at him. Just
+at this moment, however, I would prefer to lay a sword flat upon his
+shoulders, and say gratefully, "Arise, Sir James." He has altered the
+faces of the various visitors who whispered to each other in my
+presence, and nodded at me and said aloud that I would soon be right
+again, and then said something else on the other side of the door. He
+has opened my windows and set the sparrows a-chirping again, and he has
+turned on the sunshine. Lastly, he has enabled me to call your cab. I am
+done. Get out.
+
+
+
+
+FOUR-IN-HAND NOVELISTS.
+
+
+The following is a word-puzzle. It narrates the adventures of a
+four-in-hand novelist while trying to lose his reputation. Competitors
+do not require to be told that a four-in-hand novelist is a writer of
+fiction who keeps four serial tales running abreast in the magazines.
+The names of specimen four-in-hand novelists will recur readily to every
+one. The puzzle is to discover who this particular novelist is; the
+description, as will be observed, answering to quite a number of them.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A few years ago, if any one in Fleet street had said that the day would
+come when I would devote my time to trying to lose my reputation, I
+would have smiled incredulously. That was before I had a reputation. To
+be as statistical as time will allow--for before I go to bed I have
+seven and a half yards of fiction to write--it took me fifteen years'
+hard work to acquire a reputation. For two years after that I worked as
+diligently to retain it, not being quite certain whether it was really
+there, and for the last five years I have done my best to get rid of it.
+Mr. R. L. Stevenson has a story of a dynamiter who tried in vain to
+leave an infernal machine anywhere. It was always returned to him as
+soon as he dropped it, or just as he was making off. My reputation is as
+difficult to lose. I have not given up the attempt yet, but I am already
+of opinion that it is even harder to lose a reputation in letters than
+to make one. My colleagues will bear me out in this.
+
+If I recollect aright--for I have published so much that my works are
+now rather mixed up in my mind, and I have no time to verify
+anything--the first place I thought to leave my reputation in was a
+volume of pot-boilers, which I wrote many years ago for an obscure
+publication. At that time I was working hard for a reputation elsewhere,
+and these short stories were only scribbled off for a livelihood. My
+publisher heard of them recently, and offered me a hundred pounds for
+liberty to republish them in book form. I pointed out to him that they
+were very poor stuff, but he said that that had nothing to do with it; I
+had a reputation now, and they would sell. With certain misgivings--for
+I was not hardened yet--I accepted my publisher's terms, and the book
+was soon out. The first book I published, which was much the best thing
+I ever wrote, was only reviewed by three journals, of which two were
+provincial weeklies. They said it showed signs of haste, though every
+sentence in it was a labor. I sent copies of it to six or seven
+distinguished literary men--some of whom are four-in-hand now--and two
+of them acknowledged receipt of it, though neither said he had read it.
+My pot-boilers, however, had not been out many weeks before the first
+edition was exhausted. The book was reviewed everywhere, and, in nine
+cases out of ten, enthusiastically lauded. It showed a distinct advance
+on all my previous efforts. They were model stories of their kind. They
+showed a mature hand. The wit was sparkling. There were pages in the
+book that no one could read without emotion. In the old days I was paid
+for these stories at the rate of five shillings the thousand words; but
+they would make a reputation in themselves now. It has been thus all
+along. I drop my reputation into every book I write now, but there is no
+getting rid of it. The critics and the public return it to me,
+remarking that it grows bigger.
+
+I tried to lose my reputation in several other books of the same kind,
+and always with the same result. Barnacles are nothing to a literary
+reputation. Then I tried driving four-in-hand. There are now only five
+or six of us who are four-in-hand novelists, but there are also
+four-in-hand essayists, four-in-hand critics, etc., and we all work on
+the same principle. Every one of us is trying to shake himself free of
+his reputation. We novelists have, perhaps, the best chance, for there
+are so few writers of fiction who have a reputation to lose that all the
+magazine editors come to us for a serial tale. Next year I expect to be
+six-in-hand, for the provincial weeklies want me as well as the
+magazines. Any mere outsider would say I was safe to get rid of my
+reputation this year, for I am almost beating the record in the effort.
+A novelist of repute, who did not want to lose his reputation, would not
+think of writing more than one story at a time, and he would take twelve
+months, at least, to do it. That is not my way. Hitherto, though I have
+been a member of the literary four-in-hand club, I have always been some
+way ahead with at least two of my tales before they begin to appear in
+serial form. You may give up the attempt to lose your reputation,
+however, if you do not set about it more thoroughly than that; and the
+four novels which I began in January in two English magazines, one
+American magazine, and an illustrated paper, were all commenced in the
+second week of December. (I had finished two novels in the last week of
+November.) My original plan was to take them day about, doing about four
+chapters of each a month; but to give my reputation a still better
+chance of absconding, I now write them at any time. Now-a-days I would
+never think of working out my plot beforehand. My thinking begins when I
+take up my pen to write, and ends when I lay it down, or even before
+that. In one of my stories this year I made my hero save the heroine
+from a burning house. Had I done that in the old days they would have
+ridiculed me, but now they say I reveal fresh talent in the delightful
+way in which I re-tell a story that has no doubt been told before. The
+beaten tracks, it is remarked, are the best to tread when the public has
+such a charming guide as myself. My second novel opens with a shipwreck,
+and I am nearly three chapters in getting my principal characters into
+the boats. In my first books I used to guard carefully against the
+introduction of material that did not advance the story, yet at that
+time I was charged with "padding." In this story of the shipwreck there
+is so much padding that I could blush--if I had not given all that
+up--to think of it. Instead of confining myself to my own characters, I
+describe all the passengers in the vessel--telling what they were like
+in appearance, and what was their occupation, and what they were doing
+there. Then, when the shipwreck comes, I drown them one by one. By one
+means or another, I contrive to get six chapters out of that shipwreck,
+which is followed by two chapters of agony in an open boat, which I
+treat as if it were a novelty in fiction, and that, again, leads up to a
+chapter on the uncertainty of life. Most flagrant padding of all is the
+conversation. It always takes my characters at least two pages to say
+anything. They approach the point in this fashion:
+
+Tom walked excitedly into the room, in which Peter was awaiting him. The
+two men looked at each other.
+
+"You wanted to see me," Tom said at last.
+
+"Yes," said Peter slowly, "I wanted to see you."
+
+Tom looked at the other uneasily.
+
+"Why did you want to see me?" he asked after a pause.
+
+"I shall tell you," replied Peter, pointing to a chair.
+
+Tom sat down, and seemed about to speak. But he changed his mind. Peter
+looked at him curiously.
+
+"Perhaps," Peter said at last, "you know my reasons for requesting an
+interview with you here?"
+
+"I cannot say that I do," answered Tom.
+
+There was another pause, during which the ticking of the clock could be
+distinctly heard.
+
+"You have no idea?" inquired Peter.
+
+"I have no idea," replied Tom.
+
+"Do you remember," asked the older man, a little nervously, "that when
+old John Vansittart disappeared so suddenly from the Grange there were
+some persons who believed that he had been foully murdered?"
+
+Tom passed his hand through his hair. "John Vansittart," he muttered to
+himself.
+
+"The affair," continued Peter, "was never cleared up."
+
+"It was never cleared up," said Tom. "But why," he added, "do you return
+to this subject?"
+
+"You may well ask," said Peter, "why I return to it."
+
+And so on. There is so much of this kind of thing in my recent novels
+that if all the lines of it were placed on end I daresay they would
+reach round the world. Yet I am never charged with padding now. My
+writing is said to be beautifully lucid. My shipwreck has made several
+intelligent critics ask if I have ever been a sailor, though I don't
+mind saying here, that like Douglas Jerrold, I only dote upon the sea
+from the beach. I have been to Dover, but no further, and you will find
+my shipwreck told (more briefly) in Marryatt. I dashed it off less than
+two months ago, but for the life of me I could not say whether my ship
+was scuttled, or went on fire, or sprang a leak. Henceforth I shall only
+refer to it as the shipwreck, and my memory will do all that is required
+of it if it prevents my mistaking the novel that contains the shipwreck.
+Even if I did that, however, I know from experience that my reputation
+would be as safe as the lives of my leading characters. I began my
+third novel, meaning to make my hero something of a coward, but though I
+worked him out after that patter for a time, I have changed my plan. He
+is to be peculiarly heroic henceforth. This will not lose me my
+reputation. It will be said of my hero that he is drawn with no ordinary
+skill, and that the author sees the two-sideness of every man's
+character. As for the fourth story, it is the second one over again,
+with the shipwreck omitted. One night when I did not have a chapter to
+write--a rare thing with me--I read over the first part of this fourth
+tale--another rare thing--and found it so slip-shod as to be
+ungrammatical. The second chapter is entirely taken up with a
+disquisition on bald heads, but the humor of it will be said to increase
+my reputation. Sometimes when I become despondent of ever losing my
+reputation, I think of taking a whole year to write one novel in, just
+to see what I really could do. I wonder whether the indulgent public
+would notice any difference? Perhaps I could not write carefully now if
+I tried. The small section of the public that guesses which of the
+four-in-hand writers I am may think for a moment that this story of how
+I tried in vain to lose my reputation will help me toward the goal.
+They are wrong, however. The public will stand anything from us now--or
+they would get something better.
+
+
+
+
+RULES FOR CARVING.
+
+
+_Rule I._--_It is not good form to climb onto the table._ There is no
+doubt a great temptation to this. When you are struggling with a duck,
+and he wobbles over just as you think you have him, you forget yourself.
+The common plan is not to leap upon the table all at once. This is the
+more usual process: The carver begins to carve sitting. By-and-by he is
+on his feet, and his brow is contracted. His face approaches the fowl,
+as if he wanted to inquire within about everything except that the duck
+is reluctant to yield any of its portions. One of his feet climbs onto
+his chair, then the other. His knees are now resting against the table,
+and, in his excitement, he, so to speak, flings himself upon the fowl.
+This brings us to
+
+_Rule II._--_Carving should not be made a matter of brute force._ It
+ought from the outset to be kept in mind that you and the duck are not
+pitted against each other in mortal combat. Never wrestle with any dish
+whatever; in other words, keep your head, and if you find yourself
+becoming excited, stop and count a hundred. This will calm you, when you
+can begin again.
+
+_Rule III._--_It will not assist you to call the fowl names._ This rule
+is most frequently broken by a gentleman carving for his own family
+circle. If there are other persons present, he generally manages to
+preserve a comparatively calm exterior, just as the felon on the
+scaffold does; but in privacy he breaks out in a storm of invective. If
+of a sarcastic turn of mind, he says that he has seen many a duck in his
+day, but never a duck like this. It is double-jointed. It is so tough
+that it might have come over to England with the Conqueror.
+
+_Rule IV._--_Don't boast when it is all over._ You must not call the
+attention of the company to the fact that you have succeeded. Don't
+exclaim exultingly, "I knew I would manage it," or "I never yet knew a
+duck that I couldn't conquer somehow." Don't exclaim in a loud gratified
+voice how you did it, nor demonstrate your way of doing it by pointing
+to the _debris_ with the carving knife. Don't even be mock-modest, and
+tell everybody that carving is the simplest thing in the world. Don't
+wipe your face repeatedly with your napkin, as if you were in a state
+of perspiration, nor talk excitedly, as if your success had gone to your
+head. Don't ask your neighbors what they think of your carving. Your
+great object is to convince them that you look upon carving as the
+merest bagatelle, as something that you do every day and rather enjoy.
+
+
+
+
+ON RUNNING AFTER A HAT.
+
+
+Some don't run. They pretend to smile when they see their hat borne
+along on the breeze, and glance at the laughing faces around in a way
+implying, "Yes, it is funny, and I enjoy the joke, although the hat is
+mine." Nobody believes you, but if this does you good, you should do it.
+You don't attempt to catch your hat as it were on the wing. You walk
+after it, smiling, as if you liked the joke the more you think of it,
+and confident that the hat will come to rest presently. You are not the
+sort of man to make a fuss over a hat. You won't give the hat the
+satisfaction of thinking that it can annoy you. Strange though it may
+seem, there are idiots who will join you in pursuit of the hat. One will
+hook it with a stick, and almost get it, only not quite. Another will
+manage to hit it hard with an umbrella. A third will get his foot into
+it or on it. This does not improve the hat, but it shows that there is a
+good deal of the milk of human kindness flowing in the street as well
+as water, and is perhaps pleasant to think of afterwards. Several times
+you almost have the hat in your possession. It lies motionless, just
+where it has dropped after coming in contact with a hansom. Were you to
+make a sudden rush at it you could have it, but we have agreed that you
+are not that sort of man. You walk forward, stoop, and----. One reads
+how the explorer thinks he has shot a buffalo dead, and advances to put
+his foot proudly on the carcass, how the buffalo then rises, and how the
+explorer then rises also. I have never seen an explorer running after
+his hat (though I should like to), but your experience is similar to his
+with the buffalo. As your hand approaches the hat, the latter turns over
+like a giant refreshed, and waddles out of your reach. Once more your
+hand is within an inch of it, when it makes off again. There are ringing
+cheers from the audience on the pavement, some of them meant for the
+hat, and the others as an encouragement to you. Before you get your hat
+you have begun to realize what deer-stalking is, and how important a
+factor is the wind.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Holiday in Bed and Other Sketches, by
+J. M. Barrie
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+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOLIDAY IN BED, OTHER SKETCHES ***
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