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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #65985 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/65985)
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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature,
-Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 31, Vol. I, August 2, 1884, by Various
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art,
- Fifth Series, No. 31, Vol. I, August 2, 1884
-
-Author: Various
-
-Release Date: August 3, 2021 [eBook #65985]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-Produced by: Susan Skinner, Eric Hutton and the Online Distributed
- Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
- produced from images generously made available by The Internet
- Archive)
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL OF POPULAR
-LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART, FIFTH SERIES, NO. 31, VOL. I, AUGUST 2,
-1884 ***
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration:
-
-CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
-
-OF
-
-POPULAR
-
-LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART
-
-Fifth Series
-
-ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832
-
-CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)
-
-NO. 31.—VOL. I. SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 1884. PRICE 1½_d._]
-
-
-
-
-BIRD MIGRATION.
-
-
-The migration of birds is a subject that has excited the attention of
-naturalists of all nations from very early times, and many theories
-have been advanced to account for the mysterious periodical movements
-that take place among the feathered tribes, although it can hardly be
-said there is one which fully explains these movements. Some writers
-affirm that they are entirely due to temperature; others, that they are
-caused by a want of food; while others, again, assert that they are
-traceable, within certain limits, to a hereditary impulse which guides
-birds in following lines of flight over seas where at one time all was
-land.
-
-There can be no doubt that originally, birds, like other animals, were
-actuated to a great extent in their periodical shiftings by the main
-considerations of food and temperature. As familiar examples of this,
-we have only to remember that species which are reared within the
-Arctic Circle are compelled to quit their birthplaces as soon as the
-brief summer is past—their haunts becoming wrapped in snow, and their
-feeding-grounds converted into a dreary expanse of ice; while in our
-own country, every one knows that swallows and other soft-billed birds
-are obliged to leave us at the close of autumn, and repair to climes
-where there is not only greater warmth but abundance of insect life, on
-which their subsistence depends.
-
-Another theory, however, may be adverted to, as showing the phenomena
-in a more suggestive and poetical light—namely, that put forward
-by the aged Swedish poet Runeberg, who believes that birds, in
-undertaking their vast and toilsome journeys, are solely influenced
-by their longing for light. When the days become shorter in the
-north, birds make up their minds to go southwards; but as soon as
-the long northern days of summer set in, ‘with all their luminous
-and long-drawn hours,’ the winged hosts return to their old haunts.
-There is evidently something in this theory, because, in the case of
-the insectivorous birds, there is little diminution of food in their
-southern hunting-grounds to compel them to seek a change; and even with
-regard to marine birds, it seems quite possible that fishes and other
-migratory creatures in the sea on which they prey are influenced to a
-great extent by some such impulse as this theory indicates. The longing
-after light, moreover, is well exemplified in imprisoned plants, which,
-though firmly rooted in the ground, instinctively strain towards the
-light, and spread upwards in search of an outlet from the surrounding
-darkness. The Swedish poet, therefore, may, after all, be nearer the
-truth than some naturalists are willing to allow.
-
-But whatever may be the true theory, it is certain that at the
-close of each summer, whether it be within the Arctic Circle or in
-the temperate region of Britain, where observations are now being
-made, vast flights of birds are seen passing southwards, and again
-in early spring proceeding northwards, with unvarying regularity;
-and it has consequently become a matter of considerable interest to
-ornithologists, as well as to naturalists at large, to record such
-observations as may help to throw light upon the question as to what
-species share in the general migration and how their movements appear
-to be influenced.
-
-In _Chambers’s Journal_ for December 1876, a suggestion was made that
-the light-keepers of our lighthouses might be enlisted in the cause
-of science by making notes of their observations concerning birds
-and other animals, as by that means new facts would certainly be
-added to our stores of knowledge; and Messrs J. A. Harvie Brown and
-John Cordeaux—two well-known ornithologists—subsequently undertook
-of their own accord the circulation of carefully prepared schedules
-among the keepers of lighthouses and lightships situated on the
-English and Scottish coasts, with a view to investigate the migratory
-movements of birds. The results, which were both interesting and
-valuable, were published in the _Zoologist_ for 1880, but were
-immediately thereafter reprinted in a convenient form for reference.
-Subsequently, it was found that the scheme was somewhat beyond the
-limits of private enterprise, and application for aid was therefore
-made to the British Association at its meeting at Swansea, in the
-autumn of the same year. This led to the appointment of a Committee
-of Naturalists, whose Report, issued in 1881 (London: Sonnenschein
-and Allen), was so encouraging, that when the Association again met
-at York, a larger Committee was appointed, and a wider interest given
-to the investigations by their extension to the coasts of Ireland.
-A subsequent Report on the migration of birds, containing a mass of
-interesting information on the points referred to, has recently been
-issued as the work of this Committee; and judging from its contents, it
-may reasonably be expected that the results of such investigations will
-become more and more important as the work proceeds.
-
-From the returns given by the light-keepers, it would appear that
-birds, prior to crossing the ocean, follow closely the coast-line in
-their journeyings, and that during the two periods named, a continuous
-stream passes to and from their summer quarters, broken, it may be,
-by a sudden change of wind or other vicissitude of weather, and thus
-causing ‘throbs’ or ‘rushes,’ as they have been termed, but steady as a
-rule—the hereditary impulse being too powerful to admit of anything but
-a temporary deviation or delay on these great highways of migration.
-
-It seems strange that while such movements are taking place, persons
-resident but a few miles inland may be unaware of the winged multitudes
-that in this way pass within a short distance of their homes. Yet a
-great deal of information may be gathered by close observers who are
-willing to visit the seacoast at daybreak about the time the birds
-are on the move. The present writer well remembers seeing large
-flights of birds of different species arriving in early spring on
-the shores of East Lothian for a succession of years. Among these,
-the swallows were conspicuous even at some distance out at sea, the
-main body passing northwards in undeviating flight, while numerous
-detachments left it and came landwards, to people the haunts in the
-country which they had occupied the previous year. The same was
-observed in the case of wheatears, redstarts, and golden-crested
-wrens—the last-named being particularly interesting from their tiny
-size. Occasionally goldcrests would come in great numbers, and
-immediately on alighting, would flutter in the morning sunlight among
-the rocks and walls near high-water mark in search of insect prey,
-paying no heed to the presence of any one watching their motions.
-Again, in the autumn months, buzzards, owls, and woodcock would arrive
-simultaneously, and pitch upon the rocks at low water, as if glad to
-touch the nearest land; and even wood-pigeons (supposed by the country
-folks to come from Norway), which delight only in dense woods and
-fertile fields, and which suddenly appear in vast numbers in severe
-British winters, settled in crowds upon the stony beach without any
-preliminary survey of the ground. Observations like these can be made
-on almost any part of the east of Scotland, and it is gratifying to
-find them verified in a remarkable degree by the returns from the
-light-keepers, which not only show the closeness with which birds
-follow the coast-line, but also indicate the points of land from which
-they speed seawards in their adventurous flight. Thus, it is found
-that arrivals and departures take place at Spurn Point and on the
-coast of Forfarshire—the inference being, if the theory of a former
-land-communication be true, that an ancient coast-line must have
-extended east or north-eastward probably from Holderness to Southern
-Scandinavia and the mouth of the Baltic. There is also reason to
-believe that similar points of arrival and departure exist in the
-north-east of Aberdeenshire, judging from the occurrence of so many
-rare birds, whose presence there at the migration season can hardly
-otherwise be accounted for.
-
-Among other interesting facts brought to light by the present series
-of investigations we find that, with very rare exceptions, young birds
-of the year migrate some weeks _in advance_ of the parent birds, and
-that the appearance on our coasts in autumn of many species, such as
-the wheatear, fieldfare, redwing, hooded crow, goldcrest, and woodcock,
-may almost be predicted to a day. The punctuality, indeed, with which
-certain birds return to us in the fall of the year is remarkable—one
-species regularly taking precedence of another according to the time
-required for their self-dependence. Shore-birds apparently reach this
-stage earlier than land-birds, as it has been observed that the young
-of the knot, gray plover, godwit, and sanderling—birds which nest in
-very high latitudes, and are the last of the migrants to leave in
-spring—are amongst the first to come to our shores.
-
-The most interesting of all the stations from which returns have been
-sent is the small rocky island of Heligoland, situated in the North
-Sea, about forty miles from the mouth of the Elbe. Here the tired
-wing of many a feathered wanderer finds a resting-place. Lying almost
-directly in the line of migration, the island has been periodically
-visited by birds in incredible numbers, many of them belonging to
-species of extraordinary interest. Attracted by the lighthouse, which
-occupies the highest point of the island, and throws out on dark nights
-a blaze of light ‘like a star of supreme brightness,’ many thousands
-of birds of all kinds pitch upon its treeless surface, where they have
-scarcely any shelter from the weather, and where they become at once a
-prey to the wants of the islanders, who capture them in vast numbers,
-and use them as food. Mr Cordeaux, in an interesting communication to
-the _Ibis_ for 1875, states, that on the evening of the 6th of November
-1868, three thousand four hundred larks were captured on the lantern of
-the lighthouse before half-past nine o’clock; and on the same evening,
-subsequent to that hour, eleven thousand six hundred others were
-taken—making a total of fifteen thousand. For this holocaust of these
-charming songsters, no words of deprecation are strong enough, though
-their capture was probably regarded as a lawful addition to the larder
-of the captors, and probably such visitations had been so regarded
-ever since the lighthouse had begun to lure the poor creatures to an
-untimely fate! In this way also, no doubt, many a feathered rarity was
-consumed.
-
-Fortunately for science, however, this little island has numbered
-amongst its resident population an observer of rare intelligence, Mr
-H. Gätke, whose leisure hours have been employed for nearly thirty
-years in registering the occurrence of the birds which have either
-made the rock a temporary resting-place or been seen crossing it in
-their migratory flight. Mr Gätke first visited Heligoland as an artist;
-but having secured an official appointment there, he afterwards made
-the island his permanent home. During the interval, he has collected
-and preserved with his own hands upwards of four hundred species—a
-collection containing examples of the avi-fauna of the four quarters
-of the globe. Strange as it may appear, birds have touched here whose
-proper homes are wide as the poles asunder—birds from the burning
-plains of India and the arctic lands of desolation. The Far West, too,
-has contributed its land and water birds; and from the barren steppes
-of Siberia, tiny warblers have joined the moving throng. As instances
-of the abundance of what are called ‘British birds,’ mention may be
-made of flights of buzzards numbering thousands which passed over the
-island on September 22, 1881; while flocks of equal numbers rested
-on the cliffs, and a ‘great flight’ of hooded crows, which crossed
-in the same direction. As for the starling—a bird which has become
-extraordinarily plentiful in this country during the last thirty
-years—it is referred to as making its appearance in a ‘great rush,’
-which no doubt accounts for a flock, recorded some time afterwards
-as coming from the east, by a light-keeper on the English coast,
-‘estimated to contain a million starlings, making a noise like thunder,
-darkening the air.’ All these birds were doubtless of Scandinavian
-origin, and had in the case of each species travelled in a compact body
-along the coast-line until they reached North Germany, where they had
-to some extent become broken up, many of the birds being induced to
-alter their flight westwards in the direction of the British coasts.
-As a natural consequence, the earliest observers of their arrival in
-this country would be the light-keepers at Spurn Head on the Yorkshire
-coast; and the records from this station show that the buzzards and
-hooded crows at least, reached us from Heligoland in somewhat less than
-twenty-four hours.
-
-Another important post of observation is the lighthouse on the Isle
-of May, in the Firth of Forth,[1] from which one of the reporters
-has obtained records of species of more than ordinary interest,
-the intelligent keeper there having sent him no fewer than seven
-closely filled schedules, principally referring to autumn migrations.
-Seventy-five species have already been identified from this station;
-but in addition to these, numerous entries refer to ‘small birds’ of
-various descriptions, regarding which and other accidental visitors,
-more will be known as the investigations proceed, arrangements having
-been made for the preservation and transmission to the mainland of
-all the species that occur at the station. The occurrence of the
-blue-throated warbler here—a very rare bird in Britain—suggests the
-possibility of other interesting forms being sent from this locality.
-
-In summarising the material received, the compilers of the Report
-confess that the migrations of seagulls are most erratic and difficult
-to tabulate. In certain years, however, these are unquestionably
-regulated by the movements of the fish upon which they feed. The late
-Professor MacGillivray has recorded that, in the winter of 1837, a
-flock of seagulls computed to contain not short of a million birds
-made its appearance in the Firth of Forth; and it must be within the
-recollection of at least one of the reporters that in 1872-3 similar
-if not even greater numbers visited the firth, the most common species
-being the kittiwake and lesser black-backed gull. In this memorable
-invasion, unusual numbers of glaucous and Iceland gulls made their
-appearance, birds of such note among ornithologists as to be marked
-objects when they do occur; and the entire assemblage was suggestive
-of a migration controlled by the movements of fishes—the waters of
-the firth being at that time swarming with sprats. The ‘catches’ of
-the local fishermen were so heavy as to necessitate their sale at a
-trifling sum per cartload to the neighbouring farmers, for the purpose
-of manuring their fields.
-
-There is not much, we apprehend, to be gathered from the appearance of
-skuas, petrels, long-tailed or ice ducks (_Harelda glacialis_), and
-other species whose haunts are exclusively marine, as their occurrence
-inshore signifies in nearly all cases continued rough weather at some
-distance from land. There are no seafaring creatures, indeed, that
-delight more in storms than ice-ducks and petrels; for them, the huge
-green waves or churned masses of foam have no terrors; they are for the
-time being at home amid the wildest waters—the petrels on the one hand
-flitting silently over the turbulent billows, rising as they advance,
-and falling in their wake with contemptuous ease; the ducks, on the
-other hand, careering aloft during a sudden blast, and sounding their
-bagpipe-like notes, as if deriding the war of elements. Very different
-is the experience of the tender songsters that traverse the dreary
-waste of waters; sorely tried in their powers of flight, they are not
-unfrequently caught by adverse gales and driven hundreds of miles out
-of their course, to be finally swallowed by the pitiless waves.
-
-In connection with this subject, and as bearing upon the question of
-former land-communications, reference may be made to an extremely
-interesting paper on the Migration and Habits of the Norwegian Lemming,
-read before the Linnæan Society of London by Mr W. D. Crotch in 1876.
-In this communication, Mr Crotch shows that the lemming, which is
-a small rat-like animal, occurring in abundance in many parts of
-Norway, assembles periodically, although at irregular intervals,
-in incredible numbers, and travels westwards until the seacoast is
-reached; after which, on the first calm day, the vast multitude
-plunges into the Atlantic Ocean, ‘and perishes, with its front still
-pointing westwards.’ Such a voluntary destruction in the case of a
-single species is perhaps nowhere else to be found in the history
-of migratory animals, and it seems difficult to understand how the
-annihilation of so many migratory hordes through a ‘suicidal routine’
-should not ultimately lead to their extinction. Mr Crotch tells us
-that no survivor returns to the mountains; indeed, so formidable is the
-migration and its effects upon the poor fugitives, that we are told by
-Mr Collett—a Norwegian naturalist—of a ship sailing for fifteen hours
-through ‘a swarm of lemmings which extended as far over the Trondhjems
-fiord as the eye could reach.’
-
-Mr Crotch rightly, we think, concludes that land existed in the North
-Atlantic Ocean at no very remote date, and that when dry land connected
-Norway with Greenland, the lemmings ‘acquired the habit of migrating
-westwards for the same reasons which govern more familiar migrations.’
-The inherited tendencies, therefore, of this little creature are
-opposed to the so-called instinct which impels quadrupeds as well as
-birds to change their quarters in quest of food and warmth, unless
-we conclude, with Mr Crotch, that in the case of the lemming, such
-instinct has persistently failed in its only rational purpose.
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-[1] See article ‘The Isle of May and its Birds,’ in _Chambers’s
-Journal_ for September 22, 1883.
-
-
-
-
-BY MEAD AND STREAM.
-
-BY CHARLES GIBBON.
-
-
-CHAPTER XL.—MADGE’S MISSION.
-
-The glow of happiness on Madge’s face seemed to brighten even the
-gloomy atmosphere outside. She had done something for Philip—something
-that would not only give him pleasure in the highest degree, but which
-he would regard as an important practical service. For she had no doubt
-that she would be able to convince Mr Beecham of the groundlessness of
-all his charges against Mr Hadleigh. Then the two men would meet; they
-would shake hands; all the errors and suspicions which had separated
-them would be cleared up, forgiven, and soon forgotten in the amity
-which would follow. How glad Philip would be. She was impatient to
-complete her good work.
-
-Miss Hadleigh entered the room hurriedly.
-
-‘Goodness gracious, dear, what charm have you used with papa that you
-have kept him so long with you? I never knew him stay so long with
-anybody before.’
-
-‘The only charm used was that the subjects we had to talk about were of
-great interest to us both,’ Madge answered, smiling.
-
-‘Oh, how nice.—They concerned Philip? What does he say?’
-
-‘That we are not to pay attention to the rumours until we have definite
-information from Philip himself.’
-
-‘Was that all?’ Miss Hadleigh was disappointed, and her expression of
-curiosity indicated that she was quite sure it was not all.
-
-‘No,’ said Madge softly, wishful that her answer might have been more
-satisfactory to Miss Hadleigh.
-
-The latter did not endeavour to conceal her surprise; but she did
-successfully conceal her feeling of pique that Madge should have been
-taken into the confidence of her father about matters of grave moment:
-she was sure they were so, for she had passed him on his way to the
-library. _She_ had never been so honoured.
-
-‘I suppose I must not ask you what the other subjects were, dear?’ she
-said, with one of her most gracious smiles. She meant: ‘You certainly
-_ought_ to tell _me_.’
-
-Madge was spared the necessity of making a reply; for Mr Hadleigh,
-instead of sending the promised packet, had brought it himself. When
-he appeared, his daughter was silent. That was generally the case; but
-on the present occasion the silence had an additional significance.
-She was struck by a peculiar change in his expression, his walk, and
-manner. As she afterwards told her betrothed, it quite took her breath
-away to see him coming into the room looking as mild as if there had
-never been a frown on his face. The dreamy, seeking look had vanished
-from his eyes, which were now fixed steadily on Madge.
-
-‘I have brought you the memorandum, Miss Heathcote, and you are free to
-make what use of it you may think best.’
-
-‘I hope to make good use of it,’ was her answer as she received a long
-blue envelope which was carefully sealed.
-
-‘Of course you understand that you are at liberty to open this
-yourself, or in the presence of others whom you think the contents may
-affect.’
-
-‘I shall first find one or two of the other letters,’ said Madge, after
-a moment’s reflection, ‘and then I shall place them with this packet,
-sealed as it is, in the hands of the gentleman it most concerns.’
-
-‘I am satisfied. What I am most anxious about is that you yourself
-should be convinced. Do not forget that.’
-
-‘I am already convinced.’ No one could doubt it who saw the bright
-confidence in her eyes.
-
-‘That is all I desire; but of course it will be a pleasure to me if you
-succeed in convincing others. I have told them to have the carriage
-ready, as I thought you might be in a hurry to get home.’
-
-‘Indeed I am; and thank you.’
-
-Amazement as much as courtesy kept Miss Hadleigh mute until the
-leave-taking compelled her to utter the usual formalities. Mr Hadleigh
-saw Madge to the carriage, and there was a note of tenderness in his
-‘Good-bye’—as if he were a father seeing his daughter start on a long
-journey from which she might never return.
-
-What was the mysterious influence the girl exercised over this man?
-Under it he had been always different from what he appeared to be at
-other times; and under it he had consented to do that to which no one
-else, except Philip, had ever dreamt he could be persuaded.
-
-‘I shall be glad when they are married,’ he repeated to himself as,
-when the carriage had disappeared, he walked slowly back to the library.
-
-Aunt Hessy was somewhat startled when she saw the Ringsford carriage
-and Madge come out of it alone.
-
-‘Is anything wrong at the Manor?’ she asked; but before she had
-finished the question she was reassured by the face of her niece.
-
-‘No, aunt; but Mr Hadleigh thought I should have the carriage, as I was
-in a hurry. I have had a long talk with him. He has made me very happy,
-and has given me the power to make others happy.’
-
-They were in the parlour now, and Aunt Hessy smiled at the excitement
-of the usually calm Madge.
-
-‘Is it extra blankets and coals for the poor folk, or a Christmas feast
-for the children?’
-
-‘No, no, aunt: it is something of very great importance to Philip and
-to me. Philip’s uncle has all these years believed that it was Mr
-Hadleigh who spread the false report about him; and that is why he will
-not agree to have anything to say to him. Now, Philip has set his heart
-upon making them friends, and I can do it!’
-
-There was a brightness in the girl’s voice and manner which Aunt Hessy
-was glad to see after those days of pained thoughtful looks.
-
-‘How are you to do that, child?’
-
-‘By showing Philip’s uncle who the real traitor was. His name was
-Richard Towers, and Mr Hadleigh says you knew him.’
-
-‘Richard Towers,’ echoed the dame gravely, and looking back to the
-troubled time calmly enough now. ‘We did know him, and we did not like
-him. He was one of the worst lads about the place, although come of
-decent people. He borrowed money from my father, and thought he could
-pay it back by wedding his daughter. He would not take “no” for an
-answer for a long time. But at last he came to see that there was no
-chance for him, and he spoke vile words. I do believe he was the kind
-of man that would take pleasure in such evil work.’
-
-‘He did do it. I have the proof.’
-
-‘The wonder is we never thought of it before,’ continued the dame
-thoughtfully; ‘but he has been gone away this many a year and is dead
-now. He went to California, and was shot in some drunken quarrel.
-Neighbour Hopkin’s lad, who was out there too, says he was lynched for
-robbing a comrade and trying to murder him. But these are not pleasant
-things to talk about. God forgive the poor man all his sins; although,
-if what thou ’rt saying be true, he brought sorrow enough to our door.’
-
-That was the worst word the good woman had for the man. Then Madge,
-without betraying the confidence of Beecham, gave her a brief outline
-of her conversation with Mr Hadleigh. Aunt Hessy naturally concluded
-that it was Philip who had suggested that she should speak to his
-father, and asked no questions. With her mind full of wonder at the
-way in which the wicked are found out sooner or later, she went to the
-dairy whilst Madge wrote a hasty note to Mr Beecham. She asked simply
-what was the earliest hour at which she could see him.
-
-She gave the note to young Jerry Mogridge with strict injunctions that
-he was to bring back an answer, no matter how long he might have to
-wait. Jerry promised faithful obedience, and privately hoped that he
-might have to wait a long time, for the taproom at the _King’s Head_
-was a pleasant place in which to spend a few hours.
-
-Then Madge went to the garret, which had been a storehouse of wonders
-to her in childhood, for there the lumber of several generations
-was stowed. It was a large place, occupying nearly the whole length
-and breadth of the house, with a small window at each end, and one
-skylight. She knew exactly where to find the oaken box she wanted, for
-she herself had pushed it away under the sloping roof near one of the
-windows. It was not a large box, and she had no difficulty in dragging
-it forward, so that she had the full benefit of the light. She had the
-key ready; but as it had not been used for years, she found it was
-not easy to get it to act. At length she succeeded, and raising the
-lid, disclosed a mass of old letters neatly tied in bundles, and old
-account-books ranged in order beside them.
-
-The letters were not only neatly tied but duly docketed, so that, as
-Madge rapidly took out bundle after bundle, she had only to lift the
-tops to see from whom they had come and when. The light was failing
-her fast, and Aunt Hessy would on no account permit a lighted lamp
-or candle to be brought into the garret. She strained her eyes, and
-endeavoured to quicken her search. At length she found two letters,
-both dated in the same year—the year of her mother’s marriage—and
-bearing the name Richard Towers. With a breath of satisfaction she drew
-them out from the bundle. What their contents might be did not matter:
-all she wanted was to secure fair specimens of the man’s handwriting.
-
-After relocking the box and thrusting it back into its place, she
-descended to the oak parlour. The lamp was on the table, and she lit it
-at once. Her first impulse was to open those letters and read them. But
-that would be to no purpose, as it was not in her power to compare the
-writing with the memorandum in the blue envelope she had received from
-Mr Hadleigh. Of course she was at perfect liberty to open that too,
-and it was natural that she should feel an inclination to do so. This
-feeling, however, was brief. She had decided to deliver the undoubted
-letters of Richard Towers and the packet with its seals unbroken.
-So she secured them all in one cover, which she addressed to Austin
-Shield. It was not to pass from her own hand except into that of the
-person for whom it was intended.
-
-She had not recovered from the sense of hurry in which she had been
-acting, when young Jerry returned, and after fumbling in his pockets,
-produced a note.
-
-‘You saw Mr Beecham, then?’ she said gladly.
-
-‘Didn’t see him at all, missy; and I thought maybe as I’d better bring
-that back.’ The note he gave her was her own.
-
-‘But I told you to wait.’
-
-‘Weren’t no sort ov use, missy. Gentleman’s gone away bag and baggage;
-and they say at the _King’s Head_ he ain’t a-coming back no more.’
-
-‘Did he leave no address?’
-
-‘No what, missy?’
-
-‘The name of any place where letters could be sent to him.’
-
-‘O yes. I saw father: he drove him to the station, and the gentleman’s
-gone to London.’
-
-This was all the information young Jerry had been able to obtain, and
-he regarded it as quite satisfactory. To Madge, it was disappointing;
-but only in so far that it delayed the completion of her mission for
-a few days. It was certainly strange that Mr Beecham should take his
-departure so suddenly without leaving any message for her; but she had
-no doubt that the post would bring her one.
-
-So, now, she settled herself down to wait for Philip, and to make him
-glad when he came, with her news that his father had given his consent
-to the reconciliation.
-
-But Philip did not visit Willowmere that night.
-
-
-
-
-ANCIENT ROCK-HEWN EDICTS.
-
-
-Having had the good fortune, some years ago, to find myself in the
-grand old Indian land, in company of friends so exceptional as still to
-take keen interest in all matters relating to native customs and Indian
-antiquities, I hailed with delight their proposal that we should devote
-some weeks to leisurely wandering among the chief points of interest
-along the line of railway, and thus with ease and comfort see more of
-the country than many old Indians have explored in their long years
-of exile. One of the chief cities where we made a prolonged halt was
-Allahabad—that is, ‘the City of God’—now the point of junction for the
-railway from Bombay and from Calcutta, but dear to the natives of India
-as the meeting-place of the sacred rivers the Jumna and the Ganges,
-and consequently a very favourite place of pilgrimage, where countless
-multitudes annually assemble from every part of Hindustan.
-
-Immediately above the junction of the sacred rivers stands the old
-fort of Allahabad, a grand mass of red sandstone, built by the great
-Emperor Akbar. It now contains a very large English armoury—great guns
-and little guns, and cannon and mortars, and all manner of weapons.
-Here it was that the English found refuge during the Mutiny; and our
-friends showed us the balcony, over-hanging the river, to which they
-thankfully hauled up any morsels of food or firewood brought to them by
-the faithful old servants, whom, however, they had been compelled to
-dismiss, with the rest of the native attendants, from within the walls
-of the fort. The mutiny in this city was very quickly crushed by the
-timely arrival of General Neill with his ‘Madras Lambs;’ not, however,
-till after one awful night, when, the doors of the jails having been
-broken open, three thousand miscreants were turned loose to lend their
-aid in burning and plundering the city. Upwards of fifty Europeans were
-massacred that night, including eight young cadets who had only just
-arrived from home. In the centre of the fort stands a very remarkable
-monolith, surmounted by a lion. It bears an inscription in the ancient
-Pali character, and is known as the Lat or Stone of Asoka, a mighty
-emperor who lived about 250 B.C., and who, having embraced the tenets
-of Buddha, inscribed his decrees on sundry great pillars which he
-erected in divers cities. One of these is at the Buddhist caves of
-Karli, and is called the Lion-pillar. It is a sixteen-sided monolith,
-surmounted by four lions. Another exists at Delhi, in the ruined fort
-of Togluck, though it is called after Feroze, a very modern emperor,
-whereas Asoka was, as we have seen, a mighty prince of pre-Christian
-ages. His pillars are sometimes surmounted by lions, sometimes by human
-figures, overshadowed by the seven-headed cobra, or some other emblem
-of power, such as the mystic umbrella—symbolical of Buddha—of which
-sufficient trace remains to be recognised, though time and weather have
-in the course of two thousand long years worn away the distinct form.
-Very similar pillars are at the present day erected in Nepaul, whereon
-are placed statues of kings, sometimes shaded by an umbrella made of
-metal—and in one instance, by the serpent hood.
-
-From the reign of Asoka, the stone architecture of India dates its
-origin. He is said to have left eighty-four thousand buildings of
-various sorts, as the marks of his footprints on Time’s sands. To him
-is attributed the great tope at Sanchi, that mighty relic-shrine, whose
-huge stone portals are to this day a marvel of mythological sculpture,
-the details of which have now been made so familiar to us all by
-casts, photographs, and description (see Fergusson’s _Tree and Serpent
-Worship_, and also the great plaster casts at the South Kensington
-Museum)—sculptures representing the primeval worship of sacred serpents
-and holy trees, and displaying wheels, umbrellas, and other symbols
-more particularly suggestive of the new faith—that of Buddha—which
-Asoka established as the religion of the state. This mighty despot
-having determined that the new maxims which had become binding on his
-own conscience should henceforth be law to his subjects, proceeded
-to inscribe them on stone in every corner of his dominions, that the
-wayfarer might read them for himself.
-
-Thus it is that, besides finding his edicts engraven on his buildings
-and pillars, they are also found inscribed—as on imperishable
-tablets—on great rocks scattered over the country from Orissa to
-Peshawur. One of these huge boulders, twenty feet in height and
-twenty-three in circumference, lies in the lonely jungle in the
-district of Kathiawad in Western India. Here the emperor states, that
-being convinced of the iniquity of slaying living creatures, he will
-henceforth desist from the pleasures of the chase. Henceforth, no
-animal must be put to death either for meat or sacrifice; and this
-law, which the emperor appoints for himself, is to apply to all his
-subjects, who are in future to feed only on vegetables. His protection
-of the brute creation applies, not only to their lives; medical care is
-to be provided for all living creatures, man and beast, throughout the
-whole empire, as far south as Ceylon. Wells were to be dug, and trees
-planted, that men and beasts might have shade and drink. The emperor
-forbids all convivial meetings, as displeasing to the gods or injurious
-to the reveller. He declares that he will himself set the example of
-abstaining from all save religious festivals. On this huge ‘Junagadh
-Rock,’ as it is called, allusion is also made to four contemporary
-Greek kings. The date thus obtained is proved to be about 250 B.C.,
-which just corresponds with that of Asoka himself.
-
-The edicts go into various other matters. They inculcate the practice
-of a moral law of exceeding purity; they enjoin universal charity;
-and bid all men strive to propagate the true creed. To this end,
-special missionaries were to be sent forth to the uttermost parts of
-the earth, to preach to rich and poor, learned and ignorant, that
-they might bring those ‘which were bound in the fetters of sin to
-a righteousness passing knowledge.’ Nevertheless, a liberal margin
-was to be allowed for diversity of opinion, and nothing savouring
-of religious persecution was to be tolerated. At the same time, the
-domestic life of the people was subject to the strictest censorship,
-overseers being appointed to report on every act in the life of every
-subject. These domestic inspectors attracted the particular attention
-of the Greeks who visited India in the train of Alexander the Great,
-who first turned the attention of Europeans to the then unknown
-Indian land, and pursued his career of conquest as far as the banks
-of the Sutlej, making himself master of the Punjab, and establishing
-Greek colonies at various places. These Greeks described the domestic
-monitors as ‘Episcopi,’ and asserted that their duty was to report,
-either to the king or the magistrates, everything that happened in
-town and country—an office which they seem to have filled wisely and
-with discretion. We may here observe that there must be some confusion
-in this chronicle of ancient days, inasmuch as Alexander the Great is
-stated to have died at Babylon in the year 323 B.C., a hundred years
-before the date usually assigned to the death of Asoka.
-
-But Asoka’s pillar has been to us as a talisman, transporting us
-backward for twenty centuries, to those remote days, which we now hear
-of as a dream of the past, when Buddhism first arose, and, like a
-mighty wave, for a while overspread the whole land. Hinduism is now,
-however, the chief religion of this north-west province.
-
-The pillar is not the sole representative of diversity of creed
-that exists within the huge Mohammedan fort, a fort now held by
-Christians, who have fitted up one of Akbar’s buildings as a military
-chapel, where, we believe, service is held daily. Half-way between
-this Christian church and the Buddhist pillar there still exists
-a Hindu temple of exceeding sanctity, though how the Mohammedans
-came to tolerate its existence within their fort is a marvel quite
-beyond comprehension. It is a foul temple of darkness, extending far
-underground, and roofed with low arches. We descended by a flight of
-dark dirty steps, dimly revealed by a couple of tallow candles; and we
-followed the old soldier who acted as our guide, and who led us along
-dark passages, and did the honours of various disgusting idols, stuck
-in niches, some as large as life, others quite small, but all alike
-hideous, and all adorned with flowers, and wet with the libations of
-holy Ganges water, poured upon them by the faithful. The flowers are
-the invariable large African marigold and China roses.
-
-Each image is generally smeared with scarlet paint, to symbolise
-the atonement of blood that should be offered daily, but which most
-of the worshippers are too poor to afford. This substitute for the
-sacrifice of blood is common all over India, where a daub of red paint
-administered to the village god is at all times an acceptable act of
-atonement. These village gods, however, are generally placed beneath
-some fine old tree, with the blue sky overhead; but this disgusting
-temple was one which you could not enter without a shuddering
-impression of earthly and sensual demon-worship.
-
-Here we were also shown a budding tree, supposed to be of extraordinary
-antiquity; a fiction by no means shaken, though the Brahmins frequently
-substitute a new tree. So holy is this temple, that when, at one
-time, all natives were excluded from the fort, one rich Hindu pilgrim
-arrived, and offered twenty thousand rupees for permission to worship
-here. The commandant, however, had no authority to admit any one, so
-was compelled to refuse his prayer, in spite of so tempting a bait. It
-was with a feeling of thankful relief that we emerged from that noxious
-and oppressive darkness into the balmy air and blessed sunlight.
-
-We spent some pleasant hours in one of the balconies overhanging the
-river, while in the cool room within, fair women with musical voices
-accompanied themselves on the piano, in Akbar’s old quarters; and so we
-idled away the heat of the day till the red sun sank into the water,
-behind the great dark railway bridge, a bridge which the Brahmins
-declared the gods would never tolerate on so sacred a river as the
-Jumna, but which nevertheless spans the stream in perfect security.
-It was a vast undertaking, as, owing to the great extent of country
-subject to inundation during the rains, it was necessary to construct a
-bridge well-nigh two miles in length. The Indian railway has certainly
-necessitated an amazing amount of work, on a scale so vast as to test
-engineering skill to the uttermost, and in no respect more strikingly
-than in the construction of these monster bridges, one of which, across
-the Soane, is about a mile and a quarter in length, while that on
-the Sutlej, between Jellunder and Loodiana, is about two and a half
-miles. On the sandbanks just below the fort, huge mud-turtles lay
-basking, and the gentlemen amused themselves by taking long shots at
-them from the balconies, whereupon the creatures rose and waddled into
-the water with a sudden flop. These sandbanks are favourite haunts of
-crocodiles—_muggers_, as they are called—which, however, declined to
-show on this occasion.
-
-Perhaps the pleasantest of our afternoons at Allahabad was one spent
-in watching the evolutions of the native cavalry, Probyn’s Horse, a
-beautiful regiment, whose graceful dress, and still more graceful
-riding, were always attractive. On this occasion they were playing
-the game of Naza Bazi, or the Game of the Spear, when, riding past
-us singly at full gallop, they with their long spear split a wooden
-tent-peg driven hard into the ground. Then they picked a series of
-rings off different poles; afterwards, with unerring sword, cleaving
-a succession of oranges, stuck on posts, as though they were foemen’s
-skulls. Next followed some very pretty tilting with spear against
-sword. We had only one fault to find—their strokes were so unerring
-that they never allowed us the excitement of a doubt! Altogether, it
-was the prettiest riding imaginable, and a beautiful game, though the
-practice of suddenly pulling up short, when at full speed, on reaching
-the last peg, thereby showing off splendid horsemanship, must often
-injure the good steed. As we watched this beautiful sport, we all
-agreed in wishing we could see it introduced into England. That wish
-has since then been fulfilled, and I learn with pleasure that many of
-our own cavalry have attained such perfection in this game of skill as
-to be no whit behind the most accomplished of Indian horsemen.
-
-
-
-
-A RUN FOR LIFE.
-
-
-A prisoner had escaped from Dartmoor Prison. During a dense fog, which
-had suddenly enveloped a working convict-gang, one of them—a man
-notorious for being perhaps the most desperate character amongst the
-many desperate ones there—had contrived to escape, and, for the present
-at all events, had eluded capture.
-
-It was not a particularly pleasant piece of news for us to hear,
-considering that we had, attracted by a very tempting advertisement,
-taken a small house for the summer months not very far distant from the
-famous prison itself. We were tired of seaside places; it seemed as if
-we should enjoy a change from our every-day life in London more, if we
-were in some quiet secluded spot, far from uncompromising landladies,
-crowds of over-dressed people, and bands of music. Every day we
-scanned the papers, with a view to discovering something to suit us;
-and our patience was at last rewarded by coming across the following
-advertisement, to which I promptly replied: ‘To be let for the summer
-months, a charming Cottage, beautifully situated on the borders of
-Dartmoor, containing ample accommodation for a small family, with every
-convenience; a good garden and tennis-lawn; also the use of a pony and
-trap, if required; and some choice poultry. Terms, to a careful tenant,
-most moderate. Apply to A. B., Post-office, &c.’
-
-The answer to my inquiries arrived in due time; and everything seemed
-so thoroughly satisfactory, that I induced my husband to settle upon
-taking the place for three months, without a personal inspection of it
-previously. The terms were two pounds ten shillings a week, and that
-was to include the use of the pony-trap, the poultry, and several other
-advantages not set forth in the advertisement. The only drawback—rather
-a serious one—was that Mr Challacombe, to whom the place belonged, had
-informed me that it was about three miles from a station. However, with
-the pony-trap always at hand, even that did not seem an insuperable
-objection. He expatiated upon the beauty of the scenery; the perfect
-air from the heather-clad moors; and lastly, requested an early
-decision from us, as several other applicants for the Cottage were
-already in the field.
-
-To be brief, we agreed to take it; and on a scorching day in July, our
-party—consisting of two maid-servants, my husband, and myself, and
-our only olive branch, a most precious little maiden of three years
-old—started from Paddington Station _en route_ for Exeter, where we
-were to branch off for our final destination, Morleigh Cottage. The
-pony-trap was to meet us; and Mr Challacombe had promised that we
-should find everything as comfortable as he could possibly arrange; and
-as sundry hampers had preceded us, I had no fears as to settling down
-cosily as soon as we should arrive.
-
-The journey to Exeter by an express train was by no means tedious; we
-rather enjoyed it. As our branch train slowly steamed into the wayside
-station, we seemed to be the only passengers who wished to alight; and
-presently we found ourselves, with the exception of a solitary porter,
-the sole occupants of the platform. At one end of it lay a goodly pile
-of our luggage, which the said porter had in a very leisurely manner
-extracted from the van.
-
-The pony-trap was to meet us; and as Mr Challacombe had assured us it
-would not only hold four grown-up people and a child, but a fair amount
-of _impedimenta_, we were under no anxiety as to how we were to reach
-Morleigh Cottage.
-
-‘Is there anything here for us?’ my husband inquired of the porter.
-
-‘No, sir; not that I knows of.’
-
-‘From Morleigh Cottage?’ Jack explained.
-
-‘No, sir,’ he repeated. ‘But chance it may come yet.’
-
-‘Chance, indeed,’ I echoed in a low tone. ‘It will be too disgraceful,
-Jack, if Mr Challacombe has forgotten to desire the carriage to be
-sent.’
-
-We both proceeded to the other side of the station, and gazed through
-the fast-falling twilight up a narrow road, down which the porter
-informed us the pony-trap was sure to come, if it was coming at
-all—which did not seem probable, after a dreary half-hour’s hopeless
-waiting for it.
-
-In the meanwhile, we beguiled the time by asking the porter some
-leading questions with regard to the surroundings, &c., of Morleigh
-Cottage; all of which he answered with a broad grin on his sunburnt,
-healthy face.
-
-‘How far is the Cottage from here?’ Jack inquired.
-
-‘Better than six miles.’
-
-‘Six miles!’ I exclaimed!—‘O Jack, Mr Challacombe said it was about
-three.’
-
-‘It’s a good step more than that,’ observed the porter, with a decided
-nod of his head.
-
-‘It is a very pretty place?’ I said interrogatively.
-
-‘It isn’t bad, for them as likes it,’ was the guarded and somewhat
-depressing response.
-
-I felt my spirits sink to zero. I had persuaded Jack to take it; he had
-suggested that we should go to see it first; but the advertisement had
-been so tempting, and the idea of the other longing applicants had made
-me so keen to secure it, that I felt whatever it was like, I must make
-the best of it, and contrive that Jack at least should not repent of
-having been beguiled by me into, as he expressed it, taking ‘a pig in a
-poke.’
-
-‘The pony-carriage is sure to come,’ I said in a confident way, once
-more straining my eyes up the deserted road. As I uttered the word
-‘pony-carriage,’ I detected a distinct grin for the second time on the
-man’s face, which was presently fully accounted for by the appearance
-of our equipage coming jolting down the deeply rutted road. Imagine a
-tax-cart of the shabbiest, dirtiest description, with bare boards for
-seats, and the bottom strewn with straw; the pony, an aged specimen,
-shambling along, with a harness in which coarse pieces of rope
-predominated. It was a pony-_trap_, with a vengeance.
-
-I could almost have cried when it drew up, and I saw Jack’s critical
-eye running over all its shortcomings. And it was all my fault.
-
-It was too late to recede from our bargain now; all that we could do
-was to bundle into the horrible machine, and endure as we best could
-an hour’s martyrdom driving to Morleigh Cottage.
-
-Our groom was a civil boy of about fifteen, clad in ordinary
-working-clothes. He managed to sit on the shaft or somewhere, and to
-drive us back, as Jack of course had no idea of the direction; and,
-judging from the solitariness of the scene, we should not have been
-wise to depend upon chance passers-by to direct us.
-
-Arrived at last, we found the Cottage was just two shades better
-than the trap. It was a tiny abode, as desolately situated as it was
-possible to conceive; the only redeeming point about it being that it
-was clean.
-
-The next morning, which happened to be a very wet misty one, we
-surveyed our garden and domain generally. The tennis-lawn was spacious
-enough, and the garden, to do Mr Challacombe justice, was well stocked;
-but the place itself was like the city of the dead—so silent, so quiet,
-so lonely.
-
-But as the weather improved, we got out most of the day, which rendered
-us very independent of the small low-roofed rooms. Jack and I took long
-walks, and occasionally we utilised the pony-trap, taking with us our
-little Rose and her nurse.
-
-We began to think soon of asking some of our relations to visit us;
-and the first to whom I sent an invitation was an elderly cousin, who
-resided in London, and who was in rather delicate health. I candidly
-explained the out-of-the-way nature of the place we were in, but
-descanted upon the great pleasure it would be to have her, and my
-entire conviction that the air would do her an immense amount of good.
-She came; and it was very fortunate for me that she did so, as about
-three days after, a telegram had reached us requesting my husband
-to lose no time in returning to town, in consequence of one of his
-partners being taken ill. It was raining when he left us; and I watched
-the wretched shandrydan disappear down the road with feelings I could
-scarcely repress—a sense of foreboding evil seemed to oppress me. I
-tried in vain to shake it off, but only partly succeeded in doing so.
-Cousin Susan endeavoured to console me by reminding me constantly that
-Jack had promised to return in a day or two.
-
-Jack had just been gone for one week, when Rose’s nurse, a pleasant
-girl of about twenty, came to my room and informed me of the occurrence
-I have already alluded to—‘A prisoner had escaped.’
-
-Nothing could have frightened me more, and I was afraid it might alarm
-Cousin Susan, so I charged Margaret on no account to let it reach her
-ears. Very likely, even now the man was captured; it was rare, indeed,
-that a convict ever escaped; but I had heard stories of their eluding
-capture, until, driven by sheer starvation, they often surrendered
-themselves to any stray passer-by, to whom the reward might or might
-not be of some consequence.
-
-That very morning, we had arranged to drive to rather a distant spot to
-get some ferns. I would fain have deferred the expedition; but Cousin
-Susan was already preparing for it, so I could only have postponed
-it by giving my reasons; and the chance of encountering the convict
-seemed too small to risk terrifying her by telling her of it at all.
-
-It was a lovely morning when we started, and Cousin Susan became quite
-enthusiastic over the ‘frowning tors and wind-swept moors.’
-
-‘Don’t you admire them, Helen?’ she said.
-
-‘They are very grand,’ I admitted.
-
-‘Oh, so lovely, so wild!’ said Susan.
-
-I was glad she liked them.
-
-The ferns were to be found in a sort of ravine, which was reached
-by a narrow lane; on one side was almost a precipice, overhanging
-a streamlet, now nearly dry, but one which the winter rains soon
-transformed into a torrent; on the other side was a wood, composed
-principally of stunted oak-trees, with hardly any foliage, and
-singularly small; but all around the trees was a thick sort of
-underwood.
-
-We had left Tom the stable-boy with the trap by the roadside, and I
-had privately resolved not to let my cousin penetrate farther into the
-ravine than I could help; but she was so charmed with its wealth of
-rare ferns, that she skipped from one point to another with an amount
-of dexterity and nimbleness I had never before given her credit for.
-
-‘I do think we might collect quite a hamperful, Helen!’ she said,
-kneeling down as she spoke to dig up a root most energetically.
-
-‘We had better come another day, then,’ I responded. ‘I don’t want
-to be late of getting back, so, if you don’t mind just taking a few
-specimens—when Jack is with us, we can come again.’
-
-‘Now or never!’ gaily rejoined my cousin, little imagining how soon her
-own words were to be applicable to ourselves. She pounced joyfully upon
-her ferns, and had collected quite a small heap, when I suggested that
-we had better tell Tom to tie the pony to a gate, and come up to carry
-them down for her.
-
-‘O no!’ said Cousin Susan. ‘I will carry them myself. Do help me here
-just a minute, Helen.’
-
-By this time we were some distance up the ravine; the walk was narrow
-and winding; we had gone farther than even I had intended. I bent
-down to give her the assistance she wanted in raising up some lovely
-lichen from the trunk of a dead tree. As I did so, my eyes wandered
-some distance from where we were standing towards a fallen tree. I
-fancied—perhaps it was only fancy—I knew I was in a very nervous state,
-and apt to imagine, but I fancied I saw a movement just beyond the
-tree—it was within twenty paces of us. I felt my face grow icy cold;
-my veins seemed chilling; for a moment I feared I was going to faint.
-Death must be something like what I felt on that sunny day in August
-when I stood in the Devonshire ravine with my unconscious cousin. I
-looked again. There it was more distinctly visible than ever—a line
-of drab-coloured clothing, and presently a side-view of the most
-villainous-looking countenance it was ever my fortune to behold. If I
-could, without alarming her, get my cousin to retrace her steps about
-ten yards, we should have turned a corner, and then I could tell her
-enough to hurry her onwards. I knew she was nervous—more so, perhaps,
-than myself; but I knew we were in imminent peril while in such
-close proximity to this desperate and, from his very escape, doubly
-desperate man.
-
-‘Susan,’ I said—my voice seemed so hard and dry and strange!—‘you have
-passed all the best ferns here.’
-
-‘O no; I haven’t,’ said Susan joyously, approaching two steps nearer
-the crouching convict.
-
-‘Am I to throw these away?’ I continued, holding out one of her best
-specimens, and, as carelessly and indifferently as I could, moving one,
-two, three steps nearer the corner.
-
-‘No; of course not,’ she exclaimed, hurrying towards me now. ‘Why,
-Helen, what are you thinking of?’
-
-I moved a few more steps on; and in a few more, Susan and I would both
-be out of sight of that fallen tree.
-
-‘There is a much better one here,’ I said, keeping my face well
-averted, for I felt if she looked at me she would see its ashy paleness.
-
-‘Where?’ she asked. ‘Wait a minute, and I’ll come for it.’ To my
-horror, she retraced her steps towards her heap of ferns, and carefully
-counted them, whilst I waited in a state of terror words cannot
-describe. But she came at last, and I tottered with her round the
-fateful corner.
-
-‘Don’t be frightened,’ I said; ‘but come quickly; ask no questions. Do
-as I tell you, Susan.’
-
-She paused, affrighted. ‘Good gracious, Helen, have you seen a wild
-beast?’
-
-‘Worse,’ I murmured. ‘Do not run, but lose no time.’
-
-I ventured to glance behind. Nothing was visible; but every moment was
-precious; we must reach the pony-trap and Tom. Once all together, the
-convict would surely not venture to attack us, and I knew that being
-on the high-road, alone would in itself insure our safety. But we had
-not reached it yet; a long rough narrow path had to be traversed. If
-the man suspected we had seen him, nothing would be easier than for him
-to overtake us and make short work of us. I thought of Jack, of Rose,
-of my happy life. Everything seemed to float through my mind as I half
-led, half dragged Susan after me. We had gone perhaps a shade more
-than half-way, when I once more turned round, in the distance, on the
-path over which we had just passed. To my unutterable consternation, I
-beheld the convict hurrying towards us.
-
-‘Run, Susan!’ I panted—‘run for your life!’
-
-Another twist in the road hid us momentarily from his sight; but I knew
-he was after us, running now as fast as, or perhaps a good deal faster
-than we were, though we were now both of us flying along at a pace
-which only the peril we were in could have enabled us to sustain.
-
-‘For your life!’ I repeated. ‘Run, Susan!’
-
-I held her hand. Narrow as was the path, we managed to struggle onwards
-together and to keep ahead of our pursuer. Mercifully, we had had a
-good start; and it had only been on second thoughts, some minutes after
-we had disappeared, that the man had elected to follow us. I felt if
-I once let Susan’s hand go, she would be lost. Ever and anon, she
-stumbled; once she nearly fell; but she recovered herself well, and
-though panting terribly, showed no signs of succumbing.
-
-But he was overtaking us; I heard him coming faster and faster, nearer
-and nearer. I heard him breathing behind us, and I felt another instant
-and he must be upon us.
-
-‘Help!’ I shrieked.
-
-‘Help!’ echoed poor exhausted Susan, in a still shriller treble.
-
-I heard an oath, awful in its profanity, hurled at us; but the steps
-seemed to pause.
-
-‘Help! help!’ I shrieked again.
-
-We plunged forwards. I heard as in the distance the sound of horses’
-feet galloping towards us. Another moment and we were on the high-road;
-Susan speechless, her dress half torn off her with our terrible race,
-her hat gone, and otherwise in a dishevelled condition; I feeling faint
-and sick—but safe—thank God! both of us quite safe—with not only Tom,
-seated in the shandrydan, staring in mute amazement at us, but with
-three stalwart mounted warders, who were even then in quest of the
-convict.
-
-They captured him an hour afterwards, after a terrific struggle, which
-was made all the more terrible from the fact of his having possessed
-himself of a knife, with which he attempted to stab the warders.
-
-Jack came back the next day; and as his partner’s illness had assumed
-rather a serious aspect, he told me he must give up Morleigh Cottage,
-and we could finish our holiday at Eastbourne or some place nearer
-town. ‘I never could leave you here again, my darling,’ he said;
-‘after such an escape, I can’t risk another.’ So we all, Cousin Susan
-included, returned to our cosy house in Seymour Street, and afterwards
-proceeded to the seaside, where in due time Susan and I both fully
-recovered from the shock we had received in that Devonshire ravine.
-
-
-
-
-FAMILIAR SKETCHES OF ENGLISH LAW.
-
-
-III. MASTER AND SERVANT.
-
-The relation of master and servant depends entirely upon a contract
-of hiring and service. If the contract is not to be fully performed
-within the period of one year, it is void if not in writing; and this
-necessity for a written contract is not confined to cases where the
-service is intended to be for more than one year. If a servant be
-hired on Monday for the term of one year, to commence on the following
-Saturday, the contract ought to be in writing, as a verbal contract
-would be void on the ground indicated above—namely, that it was not
-intended to be fully performed within one year from the date on which
-it was entered into. If, however, the service was to commence on the
-Monday on which the verbal contract of hiring was entered into, no such
-objection would arise.
-
-Assuming that a valid contract is entered into, there are still some
-peculiarities attached to certain kinds of service, which do not affect
-others. Thus, in England, both domestic servants and agricultural
-labourers are usually engaged for a year; but the former class may put
-an end to the engagement at any time by giving one month’s notice;
-while the latter are irrevocably bound for the entire year, unless the
-hiring be determined by mutual consent. This difference is founded
-upon universal custom, which has the force of law. Probably the custom
-had its origin in early ages, and was founded upon considerations of
-convenience. The work of an agricultural labourer is distributed very
-unequally over the year, being much more heavy at some seasons than at
-others; and therefore it is reasonable that a man who receives wages by
-the year should not be allowed to take his money for the light season,
-and leave his situation when the work is heavier. Domestic servants,
-on the other hand, have their work more evenly distributed over the
-entire year, although they also have sometimes to do more work than at
-other times, but not to the same extent as agricultural labourers; and
-being brought into more immediate contact with their master’s family
-(especially the mistress), it might in many cases be very unpleasant
-to be obliged to carry into full effect the hiring for a whole year.
-Hence, either master or mistress on the one hand, or domestic servant
-on the other, may at any time give ‘a month’s warning,’ and so dissolve
-the engagement. In Scotland, domestic servants are generally hired
-for a month or for ‘the term,’ which is half a year, but agricultural
-labourers for a year, as in England.
-
-The more highly paid class of servants, such as managers, cashiers,
-clerks above the grade of copyists, &c., are generally engaged for an
-indefinite term, subject to three months’ notice. Such an engagement
-as this, although it may possibly continue for several years, need not
-be in writing, because it may be dissolved within the year; and it is
-only when a contract which is entire and indivisible cannot be fully
-performed within that time, that writing is necessary. It is, however,
-desirable that the terms of the engagement should be in writing,
-for the sake of certainty and in order to avoid misunderstanding.
-Copying-clerks, journeymen, and persons occupying positions of a
-similar kind, are usually subject to one month’s notice. In all
-cases, the obligation as to notice is reciprocal, and equally binding
-on both parties, mutuality being essential to the agreement. There
-is, however, one distinction which has a substantial reason for its
-existence: a master may pay his clerk or manager three months’ salary,
-or his journeyman or copying-clerk one month’s salary, and dismiss him
-immediately; but the servant must give the proper notice, and cannot
-throw up his engagement by sacrificing salary in lieu of notice.
-The reason for this is obvious: if a clerk gets his salary without
-working for it, instead of working out his notice, he is not in any
-way injured, but may be benefited by the prompt dismissal; for he may
-obtain an engagement elsewhere before the time when the notice would
-have expired. But it would be difficult to estimate the loss which
-might be sustained by a master in consequence of the sudden withdrawal
-of a confidential clerk or manager. For any breach of contract an
-action of damages will lie at the instance of either party, and the
-measure of damages will be the probable loss to the servant before he
-can find a new situation, or to the master before he can find a new
-servant.
-
-Whenever a person is hired without any stipulation as to notice,
-the engagement will be subject to any custom which may exist in the
-particular trade or business for which he was engaged. In some
-branches of business, commercial travellers claim to be engaged
-absolutely by the year, and this custom has been proved and allowed in
-court; a traveller obtaining a verdict for the balance of his year’s
-salary, when he had been dismissed in the middle of the year. Ordinary
-labourers, engaged by the week, are only entitled to one week’s notice;
-but miners are by custom required to give, and are entitled to receive,
-fourteen days’ notice.
-
-Gross misconduct on the part of the servant is in all cases a
-sufficient reason for dismissal without notice; and generally, if the
-misconduct be sufficient to justify this extreme course, the wages
-actually earned by the offender are forfeited, and he or she cannot
-recover the same by legal proceedings. A manager who imparts his
-master’s secrets to a rival in business; a cashier who cannot account
-for the cash intrusted to his care; a journeyman who recklessly
-destroys any of his master’s goods—may all be summarily dismissed. So
-also may any kind of servant who persistently disobeys his master’s
-orders, or frequently absents himself without leave. A female domestic
-servant who without reasonable cause stays out all night, or who is
-known to be guilty of immorality, is within the same category. It is
-scarcely necessary to add that any dishonest act by a servant, such
-as misappropriating his or her master’s money or goods, ought to be
-followed on detection by immediate dismissal, even though it may not be
-thought necessary or desirable to prosecute the servant.
-
-In the absence of any special agreement on the subject, a servant
-cannot be compelled to make good the loss occasioned by accidental
-breakages; and any deduction from the salary or wages earned in respect
-of such breakages would be illegal, unless the master were to establish
-a claim for reparation in respect of fault or gross negligence; just as
-in the case of a lawyer or a doctor who has bungled the duty intrusted
-to him through want of skill or due care.
-
-The death of the master terminates the contract. In England, the
-servant may be paid wages up to the time of his master’s death, if
-the executors do not retain his services, which would amount to a new
-hiring so far as relates to notice; but in Scotland he is entitled to
-be paid wages and board-wages up to the end of his engagement, unless
-a new situation should in the meantime be procured for him either by
-himself or the executors. He is at anyrate entitled to be kept free
-from loss, because he was ready to fulfil his part of the contract.
-
-On the bankruptcy of the master, each clerk or servant, labourer or
-workman—if the assets be sufficient—is entitled to be paid in full
-the salary or wages due to him in respect of services rendered to the
-bankrupt during four months before the date of the receiving order,
-if the amount do not exceed fifty pounds, before any dividend is paid
-to ordinary creditors. For any excess, the servant must rank against
-his master’s estate as an ordinary creditor, with whom he will rank
-for dividend thereon. This right of priority is, however, subject to
-the right of the landlord to distrain for the rent due, not exceeding
-a twelvemonth, and is shared with the collectors of rates and taxes
-within certain specified limits. If the net amount of assets in hand,
-after paying expenses, should be insufficient to cover the preferential
-payments, the money must be divided among the parties entitled, by way
-of preferential dividend. In Scotland, the farm-servant’s claim for
-wages is preferable to the landlord’s claim for rent.
-
-A master is liable for any damage done to the property of strangers
-by his servant in the course of his ordinary employment, but not
-otherwise. For example: a groom who is sent out by his master with a
-horse and carriage, and drives so negligently as to injure another
-person’s horse or carriage, renders his master liable to an action for
-damages. An engine-driver who disregards a danger-signal, and causes a
-collision, involves the Railway Company in a liability for reparation
-to every passenger who may be injured. But a master is not liable if
-the servant act beyond the scope of his employment; if, for example,
-the groom were accidentally to wound a passer-by with the gamekeeper’s
-gun, or even if the gamekeeper himself were voluntarily to wound a
-poacher, unless it were proved that he was actually ordered by his
-master to do it.
-
-Before January 1, 1881, a master was not liable to an action for
-damages in respect of any injury sustained by any person employed by
-him through the negligence of a fellow-servant; though he might be held
-responsible if the accident which caused the injury were caused by his
-own negligence. But the law has been altered, and a workman is now
-entitled to compensation for accidental injury sustained by reason of
-the negligence of any foreman or superintendent in the service of his
-employer; or of any person whose orders the workman was bound to obey;
-or by reason of anything done in compliance with the rules or bylaws
-of the employer, or in obedience to particular instructions given by
-any person duly authorised for that purpose: or in the case of railway
-servants, by reason of the negligence of any signalman, pointsman,
-engine-driver, &c. But the right to compensation is not to arise in
-case the workman knew of the negligence which caused the injury, and
-failed to give notice to the employer or some person superior to
-himself in the service of the employer; nor if the rules or bylaws
-from the observance of which the accident arose had been approved by
-the proper department of the government; neither would a workman who
-by his own negligence had contributed to the accident be entitled to
-compensation: the common-law rule as to contributory negligence being
-applicable. In case of any accident which is within the provisions of
-the Act, notice of the injury must be given to the employer within six
-weeks, and any action must be commenced within six months after the
-occurrence of the accident; or in case of death, proceedings must be
-taken within twelve months from the date of death. The compensation
-must not exceed in amount three years’ earnings; and the action must
-in England be brought in the County Court; in Scotland in the Sheriff
-Court; and in Ireland in the Civil Bill Court; the proceedings in
-each case being removable into a superior court at the instance of
-either party. The benefits of the Act do not extend to domestic or
-menial servants, but are available for railway servants, labourers
-agricultural and general, journeymen, artificers, handicraftsmen, and
-persons otherwise engaged in manual labour.
-
-In case of the illness of a servant—unless such illness be caused by
-his or her own misconduct—the master cannot legally refuse to pay the
-wages which may accrue during the time of such illness; but the service
-may be terminated by notice in the usual way; the principle being that
-no man can be held accountable for what is beyond his own control. The
-servant being willing to do his duty, but rendered unable to do so by
-circumstances beyond his own control, he must not be punished for such
-inability by being deprived of his wages. A master is only liable to
-pay his servant’s medical attendant when the master has employed him,
-but not when the doctor is employed by the servant himself.
-
-A master may bring an action against a stranger for any injury done to
-his servant, whereby he (the master) suffers loss or inconvenience, or
-for enticing his servant away, and inducing him to neglect or refuse to
-fulfil his engagement.
-
-When a servant applies to any person for a new engagement, it is usual
-for him to refer to his previous master for a character, as it would
-be objectionable for a stranger to be employed without some means
-of knowing whether he was competent and respectable. In answering
-inquiries as to character and ability, it is necessary to be very
-careful to say neither more nor less than the exact truth. If an
-undeserved bad character be given, the servant may recover damages,
-on establishing malice and want of probable cause, in an action for
-libel or slander, according to the mode in which the character was
-given, in writing or verbally. On the other hand, suppression of
-unfavourable facts may have still more serious consequences. If a
-servant be known to be dishonest, and his master ventures to recommend
-him as trustworthy, he will render himself liable to make good any loss
-occasioned by subsequent acts of dishonesty which may be committed by
-the servant in his new situation, and which without such recommendation
-could not have been committed. When nothing favourable can be said, the
-safest way is to decline to answer any inquiries on the subject. But
-it would be unfair to adopt this course without adequate cause, for
-such refusal would inevitably be construed as equivalent to giving the
-servant a bad character, and would frequently prove an obstacle to his
-obtaining another situation.
-
-
-
-
-HEROINES.
-
-
-Most of us have heard of a certain thoughtful little girl who took Time
-by the forelock, and decided that if women must have some profession
-to turn to, she would be a Professional Beauty. There are thousands
-of girls, older and wiser, who yearn to be heroines, and have quite
-as vague notions about it. There are countless women, with characters
-still fresh and plastic, who find existence but a dull level. Life
-is a narrow lane to them. They would like mountaineering. They want
-adventure. They sigh to be heroines.
-
-What are heroines, after all? Let us look for the reality, and not for
-a dream, or we shall go mountaineering, and be lost among shadows
-when the darkness of age begins to fall. In the real life we are all
-living, how does one get to be a heroine? Are there any, and where are
-they? Who shall tell us? Can the novelists? For the most part, no. The
-ordinary sort of fiction is full of ambitious flecks and flaws; how
-can it know and describe the most delicate and intricate, the most
-minutely beautiful of human characters? There is a novel in which the
-hero exclaims pathetically that he was ‘a Pariah’ until he married.
-Could the inventor of the Pariah invent anything but a heroine to match
-him? The fiction that excels in the highest qualities falls short here.
-The best describer of life, even if his conception of this character
-be perfectly just, must be content with merely hinting it, for his
-space has limits. Instead of describing in half a page the colour of
-eyes, hair, and dress, and afterwards ten adventures and two dozen
-conversations, he could hardly be expected to write for one character
-a whole shelf of detailed volumes, and to gather his notes with the
-minuteness of a census-taker.
-
-Let us look elsewhere. Several women have passed the old turnstile to
-public life, and got in somehow on men’s tickets. Their insignificant
-sisters peep over the wall, and observe that men who outside
-were the soul of chivalry, begin to elbow the ladies within, and
-ungallantly assert in self-defence that the ladies have elbows too.
-The insignificant sisters will not enter; but if they tried to reason
-about it, they would be ‘stumped out’ in a moment by the others on the
-platforms inside. ‘When I hear a woman use intellectual arguments, I
-am dismayed,’ says a wise thinker from beyond the Atlantic; and the
-insignificant crowd aforesaid and the majority of the world agree with
-him in this; and those outside the wall find out all at once that a
-woman’s unreasoning nature is no insignificant charm. ‘Her best reason,
-as it is the world’s best, is the inspiration of a pure and believing
-heart. She is happiest when she devotes herself, obedient to her
-patient and unselfish nature, to some loved being or high cause; and
-glory itself, says Madame de Staël, would be for her only a splendid
-mourning-suit for happiness denied.’
-
-Shall we turn from the platforms, and look to intellectual culture? We
-see at the outset that it cannot be necessary to heroism; for all human
-nature’s highest prizes are open to all, and great intellectual culture
-belongs to the few. Besides, there can be such a thing as learning too
-much, and knowing nothing worth knowing. In America, where life is
-lived double-quick, and where every product from a continent downwards
-is of the largest size, there are crops of overtaught girlhood ripe
-already for our inspection. Women of the middle classes there can
-discuss the nebular hypothesis or the binomial theory, as ours talk
-of lacework and the baby. Mr Hudson, in his recent _Scamper through
-America_, declares that to converse in the railway cars with ladies
-returning from Conventions and Conferences was a genuine pleasure, an
-intellectual treat. But he adds, that though one could revere them,
-almost worship them, to love them was out of the question. ‘Practical
-passionless creatures, they seemed to constitute a third sex. Where
-were the girls? We never saw them. We did meet with young ladies of
-twelve and thirteen, with jewel-laden fingers, and with vocabularies of
-ponderous dictionary words; but, like their mothers and elder sisters,
-they were such superior beings, that one longed for a lassie that was
-not so very clever—one who had something yet unlearned that she could
-ask a fellow to tell her about.’
-
-We have failed in the novels, on the platforms, and at the learned
-Conferences. Shall we carry our search to the haunts of human suffering
-next? There are hundreds of women, banded together or working singly,
-to whom every form of sorrow and helplessness is an attraction. They
-do not deal in dry statistical philanthropy, but in loving compassion.
-They are not ‘women with a mission,’ because the woman with a mission
-flaunts it before the world, and gets more or less in everybody’s way;
-but these desire to remain unknown, never counting the debt humanity
-owes to them. The wounded soldier on the battlefield knows them well
-enough; and the criminal in prison; and the sick, the poor, the aged,
-the young children. Sacrificing a whole life to the common good,
-they are heroines; it is beyond doubt. But not the heroines we seek,
-whose sphere is to be something more homely, easy, and attainable for
-all. However, these women, whose lives are compassion, have given
-a light upon the track. It dawns upon us, that in womanly heroism,
-self-sacrifice is the essence, and hiddenness marks it genuine.
-
-Far different is the typical woman with a mission, whose type,
-dashed off with a few strokes by the pen of Dickens, flits across
-our memory from _Bleak House_, and provokes a sigh and a smile.
-Again, Mrs Jellyby, with her dress laced anyhow like the lattice
-of a summer-house, is writing in a room full of disorder, with her
-philanthropic eye fixed upon the savages of Borrioboola, South Africa,
-while her own little boy is outside, kicking and howling, with his head
-stuck between the area railings. Again, Mr Jellyby employs his evenings
-in leaning his head feebly against the wall; and when poor Caddy is
-married, we hear him giving her all he has to give—the beseeching
-advice: ‘My dear, never have a mission!’
-
-Even Mrs Jellyby may help us in our search, by sending us flying in the
-opposite direction. We have had light on our path—hiddenness is the
-seal, and unselfishness is the essence, and we are searching for the
-heroines of home. Their distinction does not depend, as in fiction,
-upon adventures, lovers, or beauty. If it did, they could be heroines
-only till the end of youth and volume three; but in the real world they
-shall be heroines not only till the time of gray hairs and careworn
-brow, but for ever and a day.
-
-There is nothing in creation more beautiful than a true heroine, and
-nothing so hard to find. Not that they are scarce. They crowd the world
-as daisies dot the summer fields. But they are hidden, and hidden
-precisely where a thing wanted is most unlikely to be found—too close
-to us, just straight before our eyes. Not in the world of romance,
-or in the crush of public life, or in the clear cold air of science;
-but in the narrow lane where we started, in the monotonous routine of
-common daily life, that seems to be hedged in from all interest—there
-are the heroines to be found. Their heroism is made up of trivial
-details, the shabby atoms of uneventful life. If it be objected that
-the heroic means something greatly above the ordinary level, we would
-answer, that their whole life is above the level; that the essence of
-heroism—sacrifice—has become to them an unconsciously acting second
-nature, and that all that is life-long is surely great. But sometimes
-trivial incidents can become in themselves heroic. Whoever heard in a
-novel of heroism with a crushed thumb? All the finest things are true.
-It is told of the late Viscountess Beaconsfield, that on the night of
-an important speech by her husband, then Mr Disraeli, when they were
-seated in the carriage together to drive to the House of Commons, the
-servant closing the door, crushed her thumb. She uttered no cry, left
-the bruise untouched, and acted and spoke as if she was at ease. Hours
-after, when she descended from the Ladies’ Gallery, he discovered the
-agony she had been enduring, in order not to spoil his speech; and in
-after-years, when the Viscountess was dead, he still told the touching
-little story in her praise.
-
-But to return to our heroines of commonplace life. Their greatness
-does not even need striking incidents. Their worth makes precious
-those trivial atoms of which life is composed, and what began as an
-unpretending patchwork, ends as a complete and precious picture, like
-the splendid mosaics of Venice or Rome. This is why one might defy the
-first of novelists to describe the loveliness of such a life; its daily
-parts are positively too small to pick up.
-
-For each one of us there is some face enshrined in memory, whose
-influence is lofty as an inspiration, whose power is a living power,
-whose love has been stronger than death, and will light an upward path
-for us even to life’s end. Why is all this but because she whom we
-loved was a heroine? And what were her characteristics? One answer will
-serve for all—Tenderness, gentleness, self-forgetfulness, suffering.
-The last characteristic may not be universal, like the rest. But the
-highest love can only exist where suffering has touched the object
-loved. It is one of the compensations for the manifold sorrow of this
-world of ours. The fire of trial seems to light up every beauty and
-attraction. The life that not only loved much but suffered much has a
-royal right of influence as long as memory lasts—an influence which
-cannot belong to any life which suffering has not crowned.
-
-Now we have sketched our heroine, easily recognisable, but herself
-never dreaming or caring to think that she is one, or her glory would
-be frail as a bubble. The poorest woman knitting on her cottage
-threshold can have this glory for her own; for there is no true-hearted
-woman, rich or poor, who cannot walk her simple life lovingly enough
-to leave enshrined for others, as a living influence, such a memory as
-we have described. And what sceptre has so sweet a power as that—an
-immortal influence through the hearts we have loved most? Compared with
-this, what is fame but an echo, and what is the heroism of romance but
-an unreal shadow!
-
-
-
-
-ARMY SCHOOLS.
-
-
-The valuable advantages these institutions offer to soldiers and their
-children will, we trust, be evident from the perusal of the following
-short account of their organisation. With regard to children, these
-schools will soon have little to do; for the new system of short
-service promises to do away almost entirely with the married soldier.
-A soldier is not allowed to marry till he has served seven years,
-subject to certain qualifications of good conduct; but as the great
-majority of men are passed into the Reserve before they reach that
-length of service, the proportion of married soldiers is very small,
-and rapidly becoming more and more reduced in number. It is rather with
-the men themselves, therefore, that the military schoolmaster and his
-assistants have now principally to deal.
-
-Every regiment or depôt has its school. The schoolmasters are trained
-at Chelsea; and though non-combatants, they are subject to the usual
-army regulations. They now rank as warrant-officers, and, on the
-whole, are an able and estimable body of men. Occasionally, educated
-and promising young soldiers are selected from the ranks and sent to
-the training college to qualify as schoolmasters. Their number is,
-however, very limited; the great majority of the schoolmasters enter
-the army through the college, joining it as civilians; consequently, a
-schoolmaster cannot be reduced to the ranks. If he misconduct himself
-seriously, he is liable to be tried by court-martial and dismissed.
-Such cases are very rare. The army schoolmaster retires with a
-pension on attaining twenty-one years’ service, though, under certain
-conditions, it is possible for him to prolong his engagement. If of
-more than ordinary ability, he is often promoted to the higher rank and
-more important position of Sub-inspector of Army Schools.
-
-Assistants are allowed in these schools according to the numbers in
-attendance at them. There is usually one school-assistant to about
-every twenty men or children attending. In depôts, where the soldiers
-are mostly recruits, the attendance is often very large, with a
-correspondingly increased number of assistants. The latter are picked
-out from among the better-educated men in a regiment; they receive
-extra pay, and are exempt from the ordinary drill and duty of the rank
-and file, giving their time and attention to the working of the school
-and the details connected with it. Many well-educated men, who are not
-otherwise well suited for non-commissioned officers, are employed in
-this way in imparting instruction to their more illiterate comrades.
-
-Every recruit on joining a depôt has to attend school until he
-satisfies an examiner—sub-inspector—of his familiarity with certain
-elementary subjects. Examinations for this purpose are held at
-intervals. There are four classes of certificates granted to candidates
-on passing the necessary examinations. Supposing a man to be competent
-to pass the fourth or lowest standard, he becomes exempt from further
-school attendance. But if ambitious of being made a non-commissioned
-officer, or of securing one of the other good berths, of which there
-are many open to intelligent men, it is advisable for him to hold on
-till he gains a higher certificate. For example, to be promoted to the
-rank of corporal, the aspirant must be in possession of a third-class
-certificate; to attain to a sergeant’s position, he must have one of
-the second class. Thus, a considerable proportion of the men in a
-regiment are kept under instruction; and as soon as one batch has been
-passed out of the school, other candidates appear. A few unfortunates,
-entirely destitute of education when they enlist, are often long in
-obtaining the desired certificates. After a year or two’s attendance,
-they are probably dismissed from school as ‘useless.’ Such hopeless
-ignoramuses—happily not so numerous now as formerly—are a bugbear to
-the school staff: they soon cease to make any attempt to learn, and
-are simply in the way of the more intelligent or persevering men. Of
-course, to such, the school-work is a species of punishment. But let us
-glance at the quantity and quality of the learning implied in obtaining
-the certificates.
-
-To satisfy the examiner, the entirely uncultured youth has in the
-first place to set himself resolutely to learn to read. Then he must
-be able to write to the extent of transcribing a few lines from a
-book. With the mysteries of the four elementary rules of arithmetic he
-must display a tolerably intimate acquaintance. To men who can already
-read and write, the latter does not prove an insuperable obstacle.
-Having furnished a moderately good ‘paper’ on these not very exacting
-subjects, he in a few days receives his fourth-class certificate,
-and leaves the school in triumph. But if he aspires to a third-class
-certificate, a man of this kind has yet much to do. As a matter of
-fact, very few attempt more from mere love of self-improvement; an eye
-to advancement in the ranks acts as the stimulus to further study.
-Writing fairly well to dictation is a part of this next higher step,
-and often proves a serious difficulty. Arithmetic will include the
-compound rules and reduction; and on a man passing this standard, a
-third-class certificate is granted. The possession of this qualifies
-the holder for the rank of corporal. But to the corporal, further
-promotion is necessary. No corporal would go to so much trouble,
-besides having to perform the ordinary duty attached to his rank in
-regimental affairs, except as a step towards the coveted chevrons of
-the sergeant. To attain sergeant’s rank may be taken as the aim and
-ambition of all corporals; and the latter are the men who, as we have
-seen, try to get the third-class certificates. But a sergeant must, by
-the regulations, have a second-class certificate. To the comparatively
-untutored corporal, this object entails his continued use of the
-school, and an increased demand of the schoolmaster’s instruction. In
-short, to a man whose education has been more or less neglected in
-early youth, this second-class test is a pretty stiff one; it requires
-a considerable amount of application for a time before he can present
-himself for examination with a reasonable chance of passing. He
-must be able to write fluently and correctly a moderately difficult
-passage to dictation; and take down military orders with due care to
-arrangement and spelling. A long list of terms connected with military
-matters—such as ‘commissariat,’ ‘aide-de-camp,’ ‘manœuvre’—has to be
-written and spelt correctly. The arithmetical part of the examination
-consists of the ordinary rules as far as and including decimals.
-Besides, he must be able to work out a debt and credit account, a
-military savings-bank account, and a mess account. Withal, he must read
-with fluency, and write a good legible hand. Such is the necessary
-scholastic attainment of the modern sergeant. The ordeal would probably
-have terrified his predecessors of a quarter of a century ago.
-
-There remains still the certificate of the First class. This is
-obtained by a comparatively small number of men. It enters into
-details which would be, to many, insurmountable difficulties; and as
-the possession of it is not compulsory for any non-commissioned rank,
-it is not much sought after. A few of the originally better-educated
-men do, however, go in for it. As a passport to the higher grades of
-clerkships, or even to eventual commissions, it is desirable. The
-examination includes an extra subject, such as a language, or geometry;
-the whole of arithmetic; and a searching test as to spelling and
-composition.
-
-The reader will see that, from the above description, the second-class
-certificate is the important one to possess. Men having got it, are
-available for all the higher kinds of non-commissioned officers, as
-colour-sergeants, sergeant-majors, &c. The work of preparing men for
-this is perhaps a very important part of the business of the school,
-and is generally undertaken mainly by the schoolmaster himself.
-
-In an army school the men are divided into classes according to their
-several abilities or stages of advancement. A special class is usually
-composed of men preparing themselves for the next examination for
-sergeants; another lot looking forward to being made corporals are
-engaged in the necessary work for third-class certificates. Then there
-are still more elementary classes for men trying to get themselves
-exempted from school attendance by passing the fourth class; and
-lastly, are the complete ‘ignoramuses’ who are labouring at the
-alphabet or assiduously making pot-hooks. The duration of the daily
-attendance is from an hour to an hour and a half; but other duties
-frequently break in upon this, and men are not able to be present every
-successive day. As attendance is compulsory, the men are paraded and
-marched to school as for any other duty; but the room is open in the
-evening for those anxious to push on with their work—the latter being,
-so to speak, volunteers, and nearly all non-commissioned officers.
-From this it will be seen that men really desirous of picking up a
-serviceable education have ample opportunity of doing so, especially
-when we consider the large share of spare time which the soldier has in
-ordinary circumstances on his hands.
-
-All the schools are furnished with maps, books, and everything
-essential for carrying on their work. Where there are children, they
-are supplied with these requisites. Children, however, from being at
-one time the more important, have now become a secondary element in
-army schools. The present writer was connected with a school having an
-average attendance of two hundred men, but no children. This was in
-a depôt, and the men were almost without exception recruits. A small
-number of children in barracks were sent out to the Board School,
-leaving the school staff to devote its whole attention to the adults.
-At one time several regiments would have been required to furnish such
-a numerously attended school as the above, when recruits came in at the
-rate of perhaps about twenty annually. But short service has filled
-regiments up with recruits, or at least with very young soldiers,
-which, together with other circumstances, has given more ample
-employment to the schoolmaster. If we compare the number of recruits
-who join a regiment with that of the certificates of education granted
-in the same corps, we speedily find that the school department has not
-been asleep; and especially is this the case when we consider what is
-the educational standard of most men who enlist. We hear a good deal
-from time to time concerning the superior class of men that now seek to
-enter the army; but, practically, from an educational point of view,
-recruits are not so very different from what we have seen for many
-years past. It will yet be long before the army schools are abolished.
-
-Among some statistics, we lately noticed some figures relating to
-the standard of education of soldiers. In this statement, a large
-percentage—fifty-seven per cent. of the whole rank and file—was set
-down as of ‘superior education.’ This probably referred to the men in
-possession of the two highest kinds of certificates, as holders of the
-third class could hardly be included under such a heading. The reader
-may perhaps be inclined to smile at the use of such a high-sounding
-term; though that such a large proportion of the ranks are educated
-even to this degree appears on the whole to be very creditable indeed.
-It certainly offers a marked contrast to the state of affairs at no
-very remote period.
-
-
-
-
-LIGHTING COLLIERIES BY ELECTRICITY.
-
-
-This interesting and important experiment has just been tried with
-great success at the Park Pit Ocean Collieries, South Wales. The
-arrangement consists of a number of Swan incandescent lamps distributed
-throughout the workings, both under and above ground, in the workshops
-and engine-houses. The bottom of the mine is thus admirably lighted,
-and the whole of the workings as far as the main engine roads. The
-power is supplied by a six horse-power Marshall engine, fitted with
-Hartnell’s patent automatic expansion gear, driving a Crompton-Bürgin
-self-regulating dynamo.
-
-We believe we are correct in stating that this is the first attempt
-to illuminate the whole of the interior of a colliery pit, and its
-workings and offices, by this useful medium; and it is impossible
-to over-estimate the value of an incandescent light, and yet one of
-extraordinary brilliancy, in such a place as a coal-mine, subject
-to the escape of gases which are liable at any moment, on coming in
-contact with an unprotected flame, to occasion an explosion involving
-terrible and deplorable consequences. Now, this is one source of
-danger which the use of this system of lighting prevents; and if this
-is found to succeed, it is to be hoped that it may be adopted in all
-underground works, where the advantage of a brilliant light to work
-by is recognised; a marvellous contrast to the safe but gloomy and
-light-obstructing ‘Davy.’ There can really be no reason why this plan
-should not be universally applied to mines, unless the objection may be
-on the score of expense, for when once the necessary driving-machinery
-is built, the rest is simple enough, and the advantages almost untold.
-
-
-
-
-A LAST ‘GOOD-NIGHT.’
-
-
- Love, I see thee lowly kneeling,
- Claspèd hands and drooping head,
- While the moonbeams pale are stealing
- Sadly round my dying bed.
- Dearest, hush thy bitter weeping;
- Lay thy tearful cheek to mine,
- While the stars, their death-watch keeping,
- Softly through the lattice shine.
- Through the trees, low winds are sighing,
- And my hand, so worn and white,
- On thy clustering hair is lying.
- Love, my only love, good-night!
-
- Ah! I hear thy broken sobbing.
- Faint and low, thy voice hath grown;
- And I feel thy fond heart throbbing,
- Oh, how wildly, ’gainst mine own!
- Dear, my spirit still delaying,
- Loves to hover near thee now,
- Like the moonbeams fondly straying
- O’er thy pallid cheek and brow.
- Yes, my soul, to share thy sorrow,
- Pauses in its heavenward flight,
- And will comfort thee to-morrow.
- Love, my dearest love, good-night!
-
- Now, for one sweet moment only,
- Fold me closely to thy breast.
- When thy life seems dark and lonely,
- Oh, remember I am blest!
- Though thy voice with grief be broken,
- Smile once more, and call me fair.
- Darling, as my last love-token,
- Take this little lock of hair.
- Feeling these, thy last caresses,
- Tears must dim my failing sight.
- Kiss once more my wandering tresses,
- Then a long, a last good-night!
-
- Shades of death are round me closing;
- Tears and shadows hide thy face;
- Still I fear not, thus reposing,
- In thy faithful, fond embrace.
- Though thou lingerest broken-hearted,
- All thy thoughts to me shall soar;
- We shall seem but to be parted;
- I’ll be near thee evermore.
- Brightly on my soul’s awaking,
- See, yon gleam of heavenly light!
- Now, behold the morn is breaking.
- Love, my faithful love, good-night!
-
- FANNY FORRESTER.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON,
-and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH.
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-<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 31, Vol. I, August 2, 1884, by Various</div>
-
-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
-of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
-at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
-are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
-country where you are located before using this eBook.
-</div>
-
-<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 31, Vol. I, August 2, 1884</p>
-
-<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Various</div>
-
-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: August 3, 2021 [eBook #65985]</div>
-
-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
-
-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
-
-<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Susan Skinner, Eric Hutton and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)</div>
-
-<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART, FIFTH SERIES, NO. 31, VOL. I, AUGUST 2, 1884 ***</div>
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_481">{481}</span></p>
-
-<h1>CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL<br />
-OF<br />
-POPULAR<br />
-LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.</h1>
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2>
-</div>
-
-<p class='center'>
-
-
-<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
-
-<a href="#BIRD_MIGRATION">BIRD MIGRATION.</a><br />
-<a href="#BY_MEAD_AND_STREAM">BY MEAD AND STREAM.</a><br />
-<a href="#ANCIENT_ROCK-HEWN_EDICTS">ANCIENT ROCK-HEWN EDICTS.</a><br />
-<a href="#A_RUN_FOR_LIFE">A RUN FOR LIFE.</a><br />
-<a href="#FAMILIAR_SKETCHES_OF_ENGLISH_LAW">FAMILIAR SKETCHES OF ENGLISH LAW.</a><br />
-<a href="#HEROINES">HEROINES.</a><br />
-<a href="#ARMY_SCHOOLS">ARMY SCHOOLS.</a><br />
-<a href="#LIGHTING_COLLIERIES_BY_ELECTRICITY">LIGHTING COLLIERIES BY ELECTRICITY.</a><br />
-<a href="#A_LAST_GOOD-NIGHT">A LAST ‘GOOD-NIGHT.’</a><br />
-
-<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
-
-</p>
-
-
-<hr class="full" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<div class="figcenter w100" id="header" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
- <img class="w100" src="images/header.jpg" alt="Chambers’s Journal of Popular Literature, Science,
-and Art. Fifth Series. Established by William and Robert Chambers, 1832. Conducted by R. Chambers (Secundus)." />
-</div>
-
-
-<hr class="full" />
-<div class="center">
-<div class="header">
-<p class="floatl"><span class="smcap">No. 31.—Vol. I.</span></p>
-<p class="floatr"><span class="smcap">Price</span> 1½<em>d.</em></p>
-<p class="floatc">SATURDAY, AUGUST 2, 1884.</p>
-</div></div></div>
-
-<hr class="full" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="BIRD_MIGRATION">BIRD MIGRATION.</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">The</span> migration of birds is a subject that has
-excited the attention of naturalists of all nations
-from very early times, and many theories have
-been advanced to account for the mysterious
-periodical movements that take place among the
-feathered tribes, although it can hardly be said
-there is one which fully explains these movements.
-Some writers affirm that they are
-entirely due to temperature; others, that they
-are caused by a want of food; while others, again,
-assert that they are traceable, within certain
-limits, to a hereditary impulse which guides birds
-in following lines of flight over seas where at one
-time all was land.</p>
-
-<p>There can be no doubt that originally, birds,
-like other animals, were actuated to a great
-extent in their periodical shiftings by the main
-considerations of food and temperature. As
-familiar examples of this, we have only to
-remember that species which are reared within
-the Arctic Circle are compelled to quit their
-birthplaces as soon as the brief summer is past—their
-haunts becoming wrapped in snow, and
-their feeding-grounds converted into a dreary
-expanse of ice; while in our own country, every
-one knows that swallows and other soft-billed
-birds are obliged to leave us at the close of
-autumn, and repair to climes where there is
-not only greater warmth but abundance of insect
-life, on which their subsistence depends.</p>
-
-<p>Another theory, however, may be adverted to,
-as showing the phenomena in a more suggestive
-and poetical light—namely, that put forward by
-the aged Swedish poet Runeberg, who believes
-that birds, in undertaking their vast and toilsome
-journeys, are solely influenced by their longing for
-light. When the days become shorter in the
-north, birds make up their minds to go southwards;
-but as soon as the long northern days
-of summer set in, ‘with all their luminous and
-long-drawn hours,’ the winged hosts return to their
-old haunts. There is evidently something in this
-theory, because, in the case of the insectivorous
-birds, there is little diminution of food in their
-southern hunting-grounds to compel them to
-seek a change; and even with regard to marine
-birds, it seems quite possible that fishes and
-other migratory creatures in the sea on which
-they prey are influenced to a great extent by
-some such impulse as this theory indicates. The
-longing after light, moreover, is well exemplified
-in imprisoned plants, which, though firmly rooted
-in the ground, instinctively strain towards
-the light, and spread upwards in search of an
-outlet from the surrounding darkness. The
-Swedish poet, therefore, may, after all, be nearer
-the truth than some naturalists are willing to
-allow.</p>
-
-<p>But whatever may be the true theory, it is
-certain that at the close of each summer, whether
-it be within the Arctic Circle or in the temperate
-region of Britain, where observations are now
-being made, vast flights of birds are seen passing
-southwards, and again in early spring proceeding
-northwards, with unvarying regularity; and it
-has consequently become a matter of considerable
-interest to ornithologists, as well as to naturalists
-at large, to record such observations as may help
-to throw light upon the question as to what
-species share in the general migration and how
-their movements appear to be influenced.</p>
-
-<p>In <i>Chambers’s Journal</i> for December 1876, a
-suggestion was made that the light-keepers of
-our lighthouses might be enlisted in the cause
-of science by making notes of their observations
-concerning birds and other animals, as by that
-means new facts would certainly be added to our
-stores of knowledge; and Messrs J. A. Harvie
-Brown and John Cordeaux—two well-known
-ornithologists—subsequently undertook of their
-own accord the circulation of carefully prepared
-schedules among the keepers of lighthouses
-and lightships situated on the English and
-Scottish coasts, with a view to investigate the
-migratory movements of birds. The results,
-which were both interesting and valuable, were
-published in the <i>Zoologist</i> for 1880, but were
-immediately thereafter reprinted in a convenient<span class="pagenum" id="Page_482">{482}</span>
-form for reference. Subsequently, it was found
-that the scheme was somewhat beyond the limits
-of private enterprise, and application for aid was
-therefore made to the British Association at its
-meeting at Swansea, in the autumn of the same
-year. This led to the appointment of a Committee
-of Naturalists, whose Report, issued in
-1881 (London: Sonnenschein and Allen), was
-so encouraging, that when the Association again
-met at York, a larger Committee was appointed,
-and a wider interest given to the investigations
-by their extension to the coasts of Ireland. A
-subsequent Report on the migration of birds,
-containing a mass of interesting information on
-the points referred to, has recently been issued
-as the work of this Committee; and judging
-from its contents, it may reasonably be expected
-that the results of such investigations will
-become more and more important as the work
-proceeds.</p>
-
-<p>From the returns given by the light-keepers,
-it would appear that birds, prior to crossing
-the ocean, follow closely the coast-line in their
-journeyings, and that during the two periods
-named, a continuous stream passes to and from
-their summer quarters, broken, it may be, by
-a sudden change of wind or other vicissitude
-of weather, and thus causing ‘throbs’ or
-‘rushes,’ as they have been termed, but steady
-as a rule—the hereditary impulse being too
-powerful to admit of anything but a temporary
-deviation or delay on these great highways of
-migration.</p>
-
-<p>It seems strange that while such movements
-are taking place, persons resident but a few miles
-inland may be unaware of the winged multitudes
-that in this way pass within a short distance of
-their homes. Yet a great deal of information
-may be gathered by close observers who are
-willing to visit the seacoast at daybreak about
-the time the birds are on the move. The present
-writer well remembers seeing large flights of birds
-of different species arriving in early spring on the
-shores of East Lothian for a succession of years.
-Among these, the swallows were conspicuous even
-at some distance out at sea, the main body passing
-northwards in undeviating flight, while numerous
-detachments left it and came landwards, to
-people the haunts in the country which they
-had occupied the previous year. The same was
-observed in the case of wheatears, redstarts, and
-golden-crested wrens—the last-named being particularly
-interesting from their tiny size. Occasionally
-goldcrests would come in great numbers,
-and immediately on alighting, would flutter in
-the morning sunlight among the rocks and walls
-near high-water mark in search of insect prey,
-paying no heed to the presence of any one
-watching their motions. Again, in the autumn
-months, buzzards, owls, and woodcock would
-arrive simultaneously, and pitch upon the rocks
-at low water, as if glad to touch the nearest
-land; and even wood-pigeons (supposed by the
-country folks to come from Norway), which
-delight only in dense woods and fertile fields,
-and which suddenly appear in vast numbers
-in severe British winters, settled in crowds upon
-the stony beach without any preliminary survey
-of the ground. Observations like these can be
-made on almost any part of the east of Scotland,
-and it is gratifying to find them verified
-in a remarkable degree by the returns from
-the light-keepers, which not only show the closeness
-with which birds follow the coast-line, but
-also indicate the points of land from which they
-speed seawards in their adventurous flight. Thus,
-it is found that arrivals and departures take
-place at Spurn Point and on the coast of Forfarshire—the
-inference being, if the theory of
-a former land-communication be true, that an
-ancient coast-line must have extended east or
-north-eastward probably from Holderness to
-Southern Scandinavia and the mouth of the
-Baltic. There is also reason to believe that
-similar points of arrival and departure exist in
-the north-east of Aberdeenshire, judging from the
-occurrence of so many rare birds, whose presence
-there at the migration season can hardly
-otherwise be accounted for.</p>
-
-<p>Among other interesting facts brought to light
-by the present series of investigations we find
-that, with very rare exceptions, young birds of
-the year migrate some weeks <i>in advance</i> of
-the parent birds, and that the appearance on
-our coasts in autumn of many species, such as
-the wheatear, fieldfare, redwing, hooded crow,
-goldcrest, and woodcock, may almost be predicted
-to a day. The punctuality, indeed, with which
-certain birds return to us in the fall of the year
-is remarkable—one species regularly taking
-precedence of another according to the time
-required for their self-dependence. Shore-birds
-apparently reach this stage earlier than land-birds,
-as it has been observed that the young of the
-knot, gray plover, godwit, and sanderling—birds
-which nest in very high latitudes, and are the
-last of the migrants to leave in spring—are
-amongst the first to come to our shores.</p>
-
-<p>The most interesting of all the stations from
-which returns have been sent is the small rocky
-island of Heligoland, situated in the North Sea,
-about forty miles from the mouth of the Elbe.
-Here the tired wing of many a feathered wanderer
-finds a resting-place. Lying almost directly
-in the line of migration, the island has been periodically
-visited by birds in incredible numbers,
-many of them belonging to species of extraordinary
-interest. Attracted by the lighthouse, which
-occupies the highest point of the island, and
-throws out on dark nights a blaze of light ‘like
-a star of supreme brightness,’ many thousands of
-birds of all kinds pitch upon its treeless surface,
-where they have scarcely any shelter from the
-weather, and where they become at once a prey
-to the wants of the islanders, who capture them
-in vast numbers, and use them as food. Mr Cordeaux,
-in an interesting communication to the <i>Ibis</i>
-for 1875, states, that on the evening of the 6th
-of November 1868, three thousand four hundred
-larks were captured on the lantern of the lighthouse
-before half-past nine o’clock; and on the
-same evening, subsequent to that hour, eleven
-thousand six hundred others were taken—making
-a total of fifteen thousand. For this holocaust
-of these charming songsters, no words of deprecation
-are strong enough, though their capture
-was probably regarded as a lawful addition to
-the larder of the captors, and probably such
-visitations had been so regarded ever since the
-lighthouse had begun to lure the poor creatures
-to an untimely fate! In this way also, no doubt,
-many a feathered rarity was consumed.</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_483">{483}</span></p>
-
-<p>Fortunately for science, however, this little
-island has numbered amongst its resident population
-an observer of rare intelligence, Mr H. Gätke,
-whose leisure hours have been employed for nearly
-thirty years in registering the occurrence of the
-birds which have either made the rock a temporary
-resting-place or been seen crossing it in their
-migratory flight. Mr Gätke first visited Heligoland
-as an artist; but having secured an official
-appointment there, he afterwards made the island
-his permanent home. During the interval, he
-has collected and preserved with his own hands
-upwards of four hundred species—a collection
-containing examples of the avi-fauna of the four
-quarters of the globe. Strange as it may appear,
-birds have touched here whose proper homes are
-wide as the poles asunder—birds from the burning
-plains of India and the arctic lands of desolation.
-The Far West, too, has contributed its land and
-water birds; and from the barren steppes of
-Siberia, tiny warblers have joined the moving
-throng. As instances of the abundance of what
-are called ‘British birds,’ mention may be made
-of flights of buzzards numbering thousands which
-passed over the island on September 22, 1881;
-while flocks of equal numbers rested on the cliffs,
-and a ‘great flight’ of hooded crows, which crossed
-in the same direction. As for the starling—a bird
-which has become extraordinarily plentiful in this
-country during the last thirty years—it is referred
-to as making its appearance in a ‘great rush,’
-which no doubt accounts for a flock, recorded
-some time afterwards as coming from the east, by
-a light-keeper on the English coast, ‘estimated to
-contain a million starlings, making a noise like
-thunder, darkening the air.’ All these birds were
-doubtless of Scandinavian origin, and had in the
-case of each species travelled in a compact body
-along the coast-line until they reached North
-Germany, where they had to some extent become
-broken up, many of the birds being induced to
-alter their flight westwards in the direction of
-the British coasts. As a natural consequence, the
-earliest observers of their arrival in this country
-would be the light-keepers at Spurn Head on
-the Yorkshire coast; and the records from this
-station show that the buzzards and hooded crows
-at least, reached us from Heligoland in somewhat
-less than twenty-four hours.</p>
-
-<p>Another important post of observation is the
-lighthouse on the Isle of May, in the Firth of
-Forth,<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> from which one of the reporters has
-obtained records of species of more than ordinary
-interest, the intelligent keeper there having
-sent him no fewer than seven closely filled schedules,
-principally referring to autumn migrations.
-Seventy-five species have already been identified
-from this station; but in addition to these,
-numerous entries refer to ‘small birds’ of various
-descriptions, regarding which and other accidental
-visitors, more will be known as the investigations
-proceed, arrangements having been made for the
-preservation and transmission to the mainland of
-all the species that occur at the station. The
-occurrence of the blue-throated warbler here—a
-very rare bird in Britain—suggests the possibility
-of other interesting forms being sent from
-this locality.</p>
-
-<p>In summarising the material received, the compilers
-of the Report confess that the migrations
-of seagulls are most erratic and difficult to
-tabulate. In certain years, however, these are
-unquestionably regulated by the movements of
-the fish upon which they feed. The late Professor
-MacGillivray has recorded that, in the
-winter of 1837, a flock of seagulls computed
-to contain not short of a million birds made
-its appearance in the Firth of Forth; and it
-must be within the recollection of at least one
-of the reporters that in 1872-3 similar if not
-even greater numbers visited the firth, the most
-common species being the kittiwake and lesser
-black-backed gull. In this memorable invasion,
-unusual numbers of glaucous and Iceland
-gulls made their appearance, birds of such note
-among ornithologists as to be marked objects when
-they do occur; and the entire assemblage was
-suggestive of a migration controlled by the movements
-of fishes—the waters of the firth being at
-that time swarming with sprats. The ‘catches’
-of the local fishermen were so heavy as to necessitate
-their sale at a trifling sum per cartload
-to the neighbouring farmers, for the purpose of
-manuring their fields.</p>
-
-<p>There is not much, we apprehend, to be gathered
-from the appearance of skuas, petrels, long-tailed
-or ice ducks (<i>Harelda glacialis</i>), and other species
-whose haunts are exclusively marine, as their
-occurrence inshore signifies in nearly all cases
-continued rough weather at some distance from
-land. There are no seafaring creatures, indeed,
-that delight more in storms than ice-ducks and
-petrels; for them, the huge green waves or
-churned masses of foam have no terrors; they
-are for the time being at home amid the wildest
-waters—the petrels on the one hand flitting
-silently over the turbulent billows, rising as they
-advance, and falling in their wake with contemptuous
-ease; the ducks, on the other hand,
-careering aloft during a sudden blast, and sounding
-their bagpipe-like notes, as if deriding the
-war of elements. Very different is the experience
-of the tender songsters that traverse the dreary
-waste of waters; sorely tried in their powers
-of flight, they are not unfrequently caught by
-adverse gales and driven hundreds of miles out
-of their course, to be finally swallowed by the
-pitiless waves.</p>
-
-<p>In connection with this subject, and as bearing
-upon the question of former land-communications,
-reference may be made to an extremely
-interesting paper on the Migration and Habits of
-the Norwegian Lemming, read before the Linnæan
-Society of London by Mr W. D. Crotch
-in 1876. In this communication, Mr Crotch
-shows that the lemming, which is a small
-rat-like animal, occurring in abundance in
-many parts of Norway, assembles periodically,
-although at irregular intervals, in incredible
-numbers, and travels westwards until the seacoast
-is reached; after which, on the first calm
-day, the vast multitude plunges into the Atlantic
-Ocean, ‘and perishes, with its front still pointing
-westwards.’ Such a voluntary destruction in
-the case of a single species is perhaps nowhere
-else to be found in the history of migratory
-animals, and it seems difficult to understand
-how the annihilation of so many migratory
-hordes through a ‘suicidal routine’ should not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_484">{484}</span>
-ultimately lead to their extinction. Mr Crotch
-tells us that no survivor returns to the mountains;
-indeed, so formidable is the migration
-and its effects upon the poor fugitives, that
-we are told by Mr Collett—a Norwegian naturalist—of
-a ship sailing for fifteen hours through
-‘a swarm of lemmings which extended as far
-over the Trondhjems fiord as the eye could
-reach.’</p>
-
-<p>Mr Crotch rightly, we think, concludes that
-land existed in the North Atlantic Ocean at no
-very remote date, and that when dry land connected
-Norway with Greenland, the lemmings
-‘acquired the habit of migrating westwards for
-the same reasons which govern more familiar
-migrations.’ The inherited tendencies, therefore,
-of this little creature are opposed to the so-called
-instinct which impels quadrupeds as well as birds
-to change their quarters in quest of food and
-warmth, unless we conclude, with Mr Crotch,
-that in the case of the lemming, such instinct
-has persistently failed in its only rational purpose.</p>
-
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 class="nobreak x-ebookmaker-important" id="BY_MEAD_AND_STREAM">BY MEAD AND STREAM.</h2>
-</div>
-<p class="ph3">BY CHARLES GIBBON.</p>
-
-
-<h3>CHAPTER XL.—MADGE’S MISSION.</h3>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">The</span> glow of happiness on Madge’s face seemed
-to brighten even the gloomy atmosphere outside.
-She had done something for Philip—something
-that would not only give him pleasure in the
-highest degree, but which he would regard as
-an important practical service. For she had no
-doubt that she would be able to convince Mr
-Beecham of the groundlessness of all his charges
-against Mr Hadleigh. Then the two men would
-meet; they would shake hands; all the errors
-and suspicions which had separated them would
-be cleared up, forgiven, and soon forgotten in
-the amity which would follow. How glad Philip
-would be. She was impatient to complete her
-good work.</p>
-
-<p>Miss Hadleigh entered the room hurriedly.</p>
-
-<p>‘Goodness gracious, dear, what charm have
-you used with papa that you have kept him
-so long with you? I never knew him stay so
-long with anybody before.’</p>
-
-<p>‘The only charm used was that the subjects
-we had to talk about were of great interest to
-us both,’ Madge answered, smiling.</p>
-
-<p>‘Oh, how nice.—They concerned Philip? What
-does he say?’</p>
-
-<p>‘That we are not to pay attention to the
-rumours until we have definite information from
-Philip himself.’</p>
-
-<p>‘Was that all?’ Miss Hadleigh was disappointed,
-and her expression of curiosity indicated
-that she was quite sure it was not all.</p>
-
-<p>‘No,’ said Madge softly, wishful that her
-answer might have been more satisfactory to Miss
-Hadleigh.</p>
-
-<p>The latter did not endeavour to conceal her
-surprise; but she did successfully conceal her
-feeling of pique that Madge should have been
-taken into the confidence of her father about
-matters of grave moment: she was sure they
-were so, for she had passed him on his way to
-the library. <i>She</i> had never been so honoured.</p>
-
-<p>‘I suppose I must not ask you what the other
-subjects were, dear?’ she said, with one of her
-most gracious smiles. She meant: ‘You certainly
-<i>ought</i> to tell <i>me</i>.’</p>
-
-<p>Madge was spared the necessity of making a
-reply; for Mr Hadleigh, instead of sending the
-promised packet, had brought it himself. When
-he appeared, his daughter was silent. That was
-generally the case; but on the present occasion
-the silence had an additional significance. She
-was struck by a peculiar change in his expression,
-his walk, and manner. As she afterwards
-told her betrothed, it quite took her breath away
-to see him coming into the room looking as mild
-as if there had never been a frown on his face.
-The dreamy, seeking look had vanished from
-his eyes, which were now fixed steadily on
-Madge.</p>
-
-<p>‘I have brought you the memorandum, Miss
-Heathcote, and you are free to make what use
-of it you may think best.’</p>
-
-<p>‘I hope to make good use of it,’ was her answer
-as she received a long blue envelope which was
-carefully sealed.</p>
-
-<p>‘Of course you understand that you are at
-liberty to open this yourself, or in the presence
-of others whom you think the contents
-may affect.’</p>
-
-<p>‘I shall first find one or two of the other
-letters,’ said Madge, after a moment’s reflection,
-‘and then I shall place them with this packet,
-sealed as it is, in the hands of the gentleman it
-most concerns.’</p>
-
-<p>‘I am satisfied. What I am most anxious
-about is that you yourself should be convinced.
-Do not forget that.’</p>
-
-<p>‘I am already convinced.’ No one could doubt
-it who saw the bright confidence in her eyes.</p>
-
-<p>‘That is all I desire; but of course it will be
-a pleasure to me if you succeed in convincing
-others. I have told them to have the carriage
-ready, as I thought you might be in a hurry to
-get home.’</p>
-
-<p>‘Indeed I am; and thank you.’</p>
-
-<p>Amazement as much as courtesy kept Miss
-Hadleigh mute until the leave-taking compelled
-her to utter the usual formalities. Mr Hadleigh
-saw Madge to the carriage, and there was a note
-of tenderness in his ‘Good-bye’—as if he were
-a father seeing his daughter start on a long
-journey from which she might never return.</p>
-
-<p>What was the mysterious influence the girl
-exercised over this man? Under it he had been
-always different from what he appeared to be
-at other times; and under it he had consented
-to do that to which no one else, except Philip,
-had ever dreamt he could be persuaded.</p>
-
-<p>‘I shall be glad when they are married,’ he
-repeated to himself as, when the carriage had
-disappeared, he walked slowly back to the
-library.</p>
-
-<p>Aunt Hessy was somewhat startled when she
-saw the Ringsford carriage and Madge come out
-of it alone.</p>
-
-<p>‘Is anything wrong at the Manor?’ she
-asked; but before she had finished the question
-she was reassured by the face of her niece.</p>
-
-<p>‘No, aunt; but Mr Hadleigh thought I should
-have the carriage, as I was in a hurry. I have
-had a long talk with him. He has made me
-very happy, and has given me the power to
-make others happy.’</p>
-
-<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_485">{485}</span></p>
-
-<p>They were in the parlour now, and Aunt
-Hessy smiled at the excitement of the usually
-calm Madge.</p>
-
-<p>‘Is it extra blankets and coals for the poor folk,
-or a Christmas feast for the children?’</p>
-
-<p>‘No, no, aunt: it is something of very great
-importance to Philip and to me. Philip’s uncle
-has all these years believed that it was Mr
-Hadleigh who spread the false report about him;
-and that is why he will not agree to have anything
-to say to him. Now, Philip has set his
-heart upon making them friends, and I can do
-it!’</p>
-
-<p>There was a brightness in the girl’s voice and
-manner which Aunt Hessy was glad to see after
-those days of pained thoughtful looks.</p>
-
-<p>‘How are you to do that, child?’</p>
-
-<p>‘By showing Philip’s uncle who the real traitor
-was. His name was Richard Towers, and Mr
-Hadleigh says you knew him.’</p>
-
-<p>‘Richard Towers,’ echoed the dame gravely,
-and looking back to the troubled time calmly
-enough now. ‘We did know him, and we did not
-like him. He was one of the worst lads about
-the place, although come of decent people. He
-borrowed money from my father, and thought
-he could pay it back by wedding his daughter.
-He would not take “no” for an answer for a long
-time. But at last he came to see that there was
-no chance for him, and he spoke vile words. I
-do believe he was the kind of man that would
-take pleasure in such evil work.’</p>
-
-<p>‘He did do it. I have the proof.’</p>
-
-<p>‘The wonder is we never thought of it before,’
-continued the dame thoughtfully; ‘but he has
-been gone away this many a year and is dead
-now. He went to California, and was shot in some
-drunken quarrel. Neighbour Hopkin’s lad, who
-was out there too, says he was lynched for robbing
-a comrade and trying to murder him. But these
-are not pleasant things to talk about. God forgive
-the poor man all his sins; although, if what
-thou ’rt saying be true, he brought sorrow enough
-to our door.’</p>
-
-<p>That was the worst word the good woman had
-for the man. Then Madge, without betraying
-the confidence of Beecham, gave her a brief outline
-of her conversation with Mr Hadleigh. Aunt
-Hessy naturally concluded that it was Philip who
-had suggested that she should speak to his father,
-and asked no questions. With her mind full
-of wonder at the way in which the wicked are
-found out sooner or later, she went to the dairy
-whilst Madge wrote a hasty note to Mr Beecham.
-She asked simply what was the earliest hour at
-which she could see him.</p>
-
-<p>She gave the note to young Jerry Mogridge
-with strict injunctions that he was to bring back
-an answer, no matter how long he might have
-to wait. Jerry promised faithful obedience, and
-privately hoped that he might have to wait a
-long time, for the taproom at the <i>King’s Head</i>
-was a pleasant place in which to spend a few
-hours.</p>
-
-<p>Then Madge went to the garret, which had
-been a storehouse of wonders to her in childhood,
-for there the lumber of several generations was
-stowed. It was a large place, occupying nearly
-the whole length and breadth of the house, with
-a small window at each end, and one skylight.
-She knew exactly where to find the oaken box
-she wanted, for she herself had pushed it away
-under the sloping roof near one of the windows.
-It was not a large box, and she had no difficulty
-in dragging it forward, so that she had the full
-benefit of the light. She had the key ready;
-but as it had not been used for years, she found
-it was not easy to get it to act. At length she
-succeeded, and raising the lid, disclosed a mass
-of old letters neatly tied in bundles, and old
-account-books ranged in order beside them.</p>
-
-<p>The letters were not only neatly tied but duly
-docketed, so that, as Madge rapidly took out
-bundle after bundle, she had only to lift the tops
-to see from whom they had come and when.
-The light was failing her fast, and Aunt Hessy
-would on no account permit a lighted lamp or
-candle to be brought into the garret. She
-strained her eyes, and endeavoured to quicken
-her search. At length she found two letters,
-both dated in the same year—the year of her
-mother’s marriage—and bearing the name Richard
-Towers. With a breath of satisfaction she drew
-them out from the bundle. What their contents
-might be did not matter: all she wanted was
-to secure fair specimens of the man’s handwriting.</p>
-
-<p>After relocking the box and thrusting it back
-into its place, she descended to the oak parlour.
-The lamp was on the table, and she lit it at once.
-Her first impulse was to open those letters and
-read them. But that would be to no purpose, as
-it was not in her power to compare the writing
-with the memorandum in the blue envelope she
-had received from Mr Hadleigh. Of course she
-was at perfect liberty to open that too, and it
-was natural that she should feel an inclination
-to do so. This feeling, however, was brief. She
-had decided to deliver the undoubted letters of
-Richard Towers and the packet with its seals
-unbroken. So she secured them all in one cover,
-which she addressed to Austin Shield. It was
-not to pass from her own hand except into that
-of the person for whom it was intended.</p>
-
-<p>She had not recovered from the sense of hurry
-in which she had been acting, when young Jerry
-returned, and after fumbling in his pockets, produced
-a note.</p>
-
-<p>‘You saw Mr Beecham, then?’ she said gladly.</p>
-
-<p>‘Didn’t see him at all, missy; and I thought
-maybe as I’d better bring that back.’ The note
-he gave her was her own.</p>
-
-<p>‘But I told you to wait.’</p>
-
-<p>‘Weren’t no sort ov use, missy. Gentleman’s
-gone away bag and baggage; and they say at the
-<i>King’s Head</i> he ain’t a-coming back no more.’</p>
-
-<p>‘Did he leave no address?’</p>
-
-<p>‘No what, missy?’</p>
-
-<p>‘The name of any place where letters could
-be sent to him.’</p>
-
-<p>‘O yes. I saw father: he drove him to the
-station, and the gentleman’s gone to London.’</p>
-
-<p>This was all the information young Jerry had
-been able to obtain, and he regarded it as quite
-satisfactory. To Madge, it was disappointing;
-but only in so far that it delayed the completion
-of her mission for a few days. It was certainly
-strange that Mr Beecham should take his departure
-so suddenly without leaving any message
-for her; but she had no doubt that the post
-would bring her one.</p>
-
-<p>So, now, she settled herself down to wait for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_486">{486}</span>
-Philip, and to make him glad when he came,
-with her news that his father had given his
-consent to the reconciliation.</p>
-
-<p>But Philip did not visit Willowmere that
-night.</p>
-
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="ANCIENT_ROCK-HEWN_EDICTS">ANCIENT ROCK-HEWN EDICTS.</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Having</span> had the good fortune, some years ago,
-to find myself in the grand old Indian land, in
-company of friends so exceptional as still to
-take keen interest in all matters relating to native
-customs and Indian antiquities, I hailed with
-delight their proposal that we should devote some
-weeks to leisurely wandering among the chief
-points of interest along the line of railway, and
-thus with ease and comfort see more of the
-country than many old Indians have explored
-in their long years of exile. One of the chief
-cities where we made a prolonged halt was
-Allahabad—that is, ‘the City of God’—now the
-point of junction for the railway from Bombay
-and from Calcutta, but dear to the natives of
-India as the meeting-place of the sacred rivers
-the Jumna and the Ganges, and consequently
-a very favourite place of pilgrimage, where
-countless multitudes annually assemble from
-every part of Hindustan.</p>
-
-<p>Immediately above the junction of the sacred
-rivers stands the old fort of Allahabad, a grand
-mass of red sandstone, built by the great Emperor
-Akbar. It now contains a very large English
-armoury—great guns and little guns, and cannon
-and mortars, and all manner of weapons. Here it
-was that the English found refuge during the
-Mutiny; and our friends showed us the balcony,
-over-hanging the river, to which they thankfully
-hauled up any morsels of food or firewood
-brought to them by the faithful old servants,
-whom, however, they had been compelled to
-dismiss, with the rest of the native attendants,
-from within the walls of the fort. The mutiny
-in this city was very quickly crushed by the
-timely arrival of General Neill with his ‘Madras
-Lambs;’ not, however, till after one awful night,
-when, the doors of the jails having been broken
-open, three thousand miscreants were turned
-loose to lend their aid in burning and plundering
-the city. Upwards of fifty Europeans were
-massacred that night, including eight young
-cadets who had only just arrived from home.
-In the centre of the fort stands a very remarkable
-monolith, surmounted by a lion. It bears
-an inscription in the ancient Pali character, and is
-known as the Lat or Stone of Asoka, a mighty emperor
-who lived about 250 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, and who, having
-embraced the tenets of Buddha, inscribed his
-decrees on sundry great pillars which he erected
-in divers cities. One of these is at the Buddhist
-caves of Karli, and is called the Lion-pillar. It
-is a sixteen-sided monolith, surmounted by four
-lions. Another exists at Delhi, in the ruined
-fort of Togluck, though it is called after Feroze,
-a very modern emperor, whereas Asoka was, as
-we have seen, a mighty prince of pre-Christian
-ages. His pillars are sometimes surmounted by
-lions, sometimes by human figures, overshadowed
-by the seven-headed cobra, or some other emblem
-of power, such as the mystic umbrella—symbolical
-of Buddha—of which sufficient trace remains
-to be recognised, though time and weather
-have in the course of two thousand long years
-worn away the distinct form. Very similar pillars
-are at the present day erected in Nepaul, whereon
-are placed statues of kings, sometimes shaded by
-an umbrella made of metal—and in one instance,
-by the serpent hood.</p>
-
-<p>From the reign of Asoka, the stone architecture
-of India dates its origin. He is said to have left
-eighty-four thousand buildings of various sorts,
-as the marks of his footprints on Time’s sands.
-To him is attributed the great tope at Sanchi,
-that mighty relic-shrine, whose huge stone portals
-are to this day a marvel of mythological sculpture,
-the details of which have now been made
-so familiar to us all by casts, photographs, and
-description (see Fergusson’s <i>Tree and Serpent
-Worship</i>, and also the great plaster casts at the
-South Kensington Museum)—sculptures representing
-the primeval worship of sacred serpents
-and holy trees, and displaying wheels, umbrellas,
-and other symbols more particularly suggestive
-of the new faith—that of Buddha—which Asoka
-established as the religion of the state. This
-mighty despot having determined that the new
-maxims which had become binding on his own
-conscience should henceforth be law to his subjects,
-proceeded to inscribe them on stone in every
-corner of his dominions, that the wayfarer might
-read them for himself.</p>
-
-<p>Thus it is that, besides finding his edicts
-engraven on his buildings and pillars, they are
-also found inscribed—as on imperishable tablets—on
-great rocks scattered over the country
-from Orissa to Peshawur. One of these huge
-boulders, twenty feet in height and twenty-three
-in circumference, lies in the lonely jungle in
-the district of Kathiawad in Western India.
-Here the emperor states, that being convinced
-of the iniquity of slaying living creatures, he
-will henceforth desist from the pleasures of the
-chase. Henceforth, no animal must be put to
-death either for meat or sacrifice; and this law,
-which the emperor appoints for himself, is to
-apply to all his subjects, who are in future to
-feed only on vegetables. His protection of the
-brute creation applies, not only to their lives;
-medical care is to be provided for all living
-creatures, man and beast, throughout the whole
-empire, as far south as Ceylon. Wells were to
-be dug, and trees planted, that men and beasts
-might have shade and drink. The emperor forbids
-all convivial meetings, as displeasing to the gods
-or injurious to the reveller. He declares that
-he will himself set the example of abstaining
-from all save religious festivals. On this huge
-‘Junagadh Rock,’ as it is called, allusion is also
-made to four contemporary Greek kings. The
-date thus obtained is proved to be about 250
-<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, which just corresponds with that of Asoka
-himself.</p>
-
-<p>The edicts go into various other matters. They
-inculcate the practice of a moral law of exceeding
-purity; they enjoin universal charity; and bid
-all men strive to propagate the true creed. To<span class="pagenum" id="Page_487">{487}</span>
-this end, special missionaries were to be sent
-forth to the uttermost parts of the earth, to preach
-to rich and poor, learned and ignorant, that they
-might bring those ‘which were bound in the fetters
-of sin to a righteousness passing knowledge.’
-Nevertheless, a liberal margin was to be allowed
-for diversity of opinion, and nothing savouring
-of religious persecution was to be tolerated. At
-the same time, the domestic life of the people was
-subject to the strictest censorship, overseers being
-appointed to report on every act in the life of
-every subject. These domestic inspectors attracted
-the particular attention of the Greeks who visited
-India in the train of Alexander the Great, who
-first turned the attention of Europeans to the
-then unknown Indian land, and pursued his
-career of conquest as far as the banks of the
-Sutlej, making himself master of the Punjab, and
-establishing Greek colonies at various places.
-These Greeks described the domestic monitors
-as ‘Episcopi,’ and asserted that their duty was
-to report, either to the king or the magistrates,
-everything that happened in town and country—an
-office which they seem to have filled wisely
-and with discretion. We may here observe that
-there must be some confusion in this chronicle of
-ancient days, inasmuch as Alexander the Great
-is stated to have died at Babylon in the year 323
-<span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, a hundred years before the date usually
-assigned to the death of Asoka.</p>
-
-<p>But Asoka’s pillar has been to us as a talisman,
-transporting us backward for twenty centuries,
-to those remote days, which we now hear of as
-a dream of the past, when Buddhism first arose,
-and, like a mighty wave, for a while overspread
-the whole land. Hinduism is now, however, the
-chief religion of this north-west province.</p>
-
-<p>The pillar is not the sole representative of
-diversity of creed that exists within the huge
-Mohammedan fort, a fort now held by Christians,
-who have fitted up one of Akbar’s buildings as a
-military chapel, where, we believe, service is held
-daily. Half-way between this Christian church
-and the Buddhist pillar there still exists a Hindu
-temple of exceeding sanctity, though how the
-Mohammedans came to tolerate its existence
-within their fort is a marvel quite beyond comprehension.
-It is a foul temple of darkness,
-extending far underground, and roofed with low
-arches. We descended by a flight of dark dirty
-steps, dimly revealed by a couple of tallow
-candles; and we followed the old soldier who
-acted as our guide, and who led us along dark
-passages, and did the honours of various disgusting
-idols, stuck in niches, some as large as
-life, others quite small, but all alike hideous,
-and all adorned with flowers, and wet with the
-libations of holy Ganges water, poured upon them
-by the faithful. The flowers are the invariable
-large African marigold and China roses.</p>
-
-<p>Each image is generally smeared with scarlet
-paint, to symbolise the atonement of blood that
-should be offered daily, but which most of the
-worshippers are too poor to afford. This substitute
-for the sacrifice of blood is common all
-over India, where a daub of red paint administered
-to the village god is at all times an
-acceptable act of atonement. These village gods,
-however, are generally placed beneath some fine
-old tree, with the blue sky overhead; but this
-disgusting temple was one which you could not
-enter without a shuddering impression of earthly
-and sensual demon-worship.</p>
-
-<p>Here we were also shown a budding tree, supposed
-to be of extraordinary antiquity; a fiction
-by no means shaken, though the Brahmins frequently
-substitute a new tree. So holy is this
-temple, that when, at one time, all natives were
-excluded from the fort, one rich Hindu pilgrim
-arrived, and offered twenty thousand rupees for
-permission to worship here. The commandant,
-however, had no authority to admit any one, so
-was compelled to refuse his prayer, in spite of so
-tempting a bait. It was with a feeling of
-thankful relief that we emerged from that noxious
-and oppressive darkness into the balmy air and
-blessed sunlight.</p>
-
-<p>We spent some pleasant hours in one of the
-balconies overhanging the river, while in the
-cool room within, fair women with musical voices
-accompanied themselves on the piano, in Akbar’s
-old quarters; and so we idled away the heat of
-the day till the red sun sank into the water,
-behind the great dark railway bridge, a bridge
-which the Brahmins declared the gods would
-never tolerate on so sacred a river as the Jumna,
-but which nevertheless spans the stream in perfect
-security. It was a vast undertaking, as, owing
-to the great extent of country subject to inundation
-during the rains, it was necessary to construct
-a bridge well-nigh two miles in length. The
-Indian railway has certainly necessitated an
-amazing amount of work, on a scale so vast as
-to test engineering skill to the uttermost, and in
-no respect more strikingly than in the construction
-of these monster bridges, one of which, across
-the Soane, is about a mile and a quarter in length,
-while that on the Sutlej, between Jellunder and
-Loodiana, is about two and a half miles. On
-the sandbanks just below the fort, huge mud-turtles
-lay basking, and the gentlemen amused
-themselves by taking long shots at them from
-the balconies, whereupon the creatures rose and
-waddled into the water with a sudden flop.
-These sandbanks are favourite haunts of crocodiles—<i>muggers</i>,
-as they are called—which, however,
-declined to show on this occasion.</p>
-
-<p>Perhaps the pleasantest of our afternoons at
-Allahabad was one spent in watching the evolutions
-of the native cavalry, Probyn’s Horse, a
-beautiful regiment, whose graceful dress, and still
-more graceful riding, were always attractive. On
-this occasion they were playing the game of
-Naza Bazi, or the Game of the Spear, when,
-riding past us singly at full gallop, they with
-their long spear split a wooden tent-peg driven
-hard into the ground. Then they picked a series
-of rings off different poles; afterwards, with
-unerring sword, cleaving a succession of oranges,
-stuck on posts, as though they were foemen’s
-skulls. Next followed some very pretty tilting
-with spear against sword. We had only one fault
-to find—their strokes were so unerring that they
-never allowed us the excitement of a doubt!
-Altogether, it was the prettiest riding imaginable,
-and a beautiful game, though the practice of
-suddenly pulling up short, when at full speed, on
-reaching the last peg, thereby showing off splendid
-horsemanship, must often injure the good steed.
-As we watched this beautiful sport, we all agreed
-in wishing we could see it introduced into
-England. That wish has since then been fulfilled,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_488">{488}</span>
-and I learn with pleasure that many of our own
-cavalry have attained such perfection in this
-game of skill as to be no whit behind the most
-accomplished of Indian horsemen.</p>
-
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_RUN_FOR_LIFE">A RUN FOR LIFE.</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">A prisoner</span> had escaped from Dartmoor Prison.
-During a dense fog, which had suddenly enveloped
-a working convict-gang, one of them—a man notorious
-for being perhaps the most desperate character
-amongst the many desperate ones there—had
-contrived to escape, and, for the present at all
-events, had eluded capture.</p>
-
-<p>It was not a particularly pleasant piece of news
-for us to hear, considering that we had, attracted
-by a very tempting advertisement, taken a small
-house for the summer months not very far distant
-from the famous prison itself. We were
-tired of seaside places; it seemed as if we should
-enjoy a change from our every-day life in London
-more, if we were in some quiet secluded spot,
-far from uncompromising landladies, crowds of
-over-dressed people, and bands of music. Every
-day we scanned the papers, with a view to discovering
-something to suit us; and our patience
-was at last rewarded by coming across the following
-advertisement, to which I promptly replied:
-‘To be let for the summer months, a charming
-Cottage, beautifully situated on the borders of
-Dartmoor, containing ample accommodation for
-a small family, with every convenience; a good
-garden and tennis-lawn; also the use of a pony
-and trap, if required; and some choice poultry.
-Terms, to a careful tenant, most moderate. Apply
-to A. B., Post-office, &amp;c.’</p>
-
-<p>The answer to my inquiries arrived in due
-time; and everything seemed so thoroughly satisfactory,
-that I induced my husband to settle upon
-taking the place for three months, without a
-personal inspection of it previously. The terms
-were two pounds ten shillings a week, and that
-was to include the use of the pony-trap, the
-poultry, and several other advantages not set forth
-in the advertisement. The only drawback—rather
-a serious one—was that Mr Challacombe,
-to whom the place belonged, had informed me
-that it was about three miles from a station.
-However, with the pony-trap always at hand,
-even that did not seem an insuperable objection.
-He expatiated upon the beauty of the scenery;
-the perfect air from the heather-clad moors; and
-lastly, requested an early decision from us, as
-several other applicants for the Cottage were
-already in the field.</p>
-
-<p>To be brief, we agreed to take it; and on a
-scorching day in July, our party—consisting of
-two maid-servants, my husband, and myself, and
-our only olive branch, a most precious little
-maiden of three years old—started from Paddington
-Station <i>en route</i> for Exeter, where we were
-to branch off for our final destination, Morleigh
-Cottage. The pony-trap was to meet us; and
-Mr Challacombe had promised that we should
-find everything as comfortable as he could possibly
-arrange; and as sundry hampers had preceded
-us, I had no fears as to settling down
-cosily as soon as we should arrive.</p>
-
-<p>The journey to Exeter by an express train was
-by no means tedious; we rather enjoyed it. As
-our branch train slowly steamed into the wayside
-station, we seemed to be the only passengers who
-wished to alight; and presently we found ourselves,
-with the exception of a solitary porter,
-the sole occupants of the platform. At one end
-of it lay a goodly pile of our luggage, which
-the said porter had in a very leisurely manner
-extracted from the van.</p>
-
-<p>The pony-trap was to meet us; and as Mr
-Challacombe had assured us it would not only
-hold four grown-up people and a child, but a fair
-amount of <i>impedimenta</i>, we were under no anxiety
-as to how we were to reach Morleigh Cottage.</p>
-
-<p>‘Is there anything here for us?’ my husband
-inquired of the porter.</p>
-
-<p>‘No, sir; not that I knows of.’</p>
-
-<p>‘From Morleigh Cottage?’ Jack explained.</p>
-
-<p>‘No, sir,’ he repeated. ‘But chance it may
-come yet.’</p>
-
-<p>‘Chance, indeed,’ I echoed in a low tone. ‘It
-will be too disgraceful, Jack, if Mr Challacombe
-has forgotten to desire the carriage to be sent.’</p>
-
-<p>We both proceeded to the other side of the
-station, and gazed through the fast-falling twilight
-up a narrow road, down which the porter informed
-us the pony-trap was sure to come, if it was coming
-at all—which did not seem probable, after a dreary
-half-hour’s hopeless waiting for it.</p>
-
-<p>In the meanwhile, we beguiled the time by asking
-the porter some leading questions with regard
-to the surroundings, &amp;c., of Morleigh Cottage;
-all of which he answered with a broad grin on
-his sunburnt, healthy face.</p>
-
-<p>‘How far is the Cottage from here?’ Jack
-inquired.</p>
-
-<p>‘Better than six miles.’</p>
-
-<p>‘Six miles!’ I exclaimed!—‘O Jack, Mr
-Challacombe said it was about three.’</p>
-
-<p>‘It’s a good step more than that,’ observed the
-porter, with a decided nod of his head.</p>
-
-<p>‘It is a very pretty place?’ I said interrogatively.</p>
-
-<p>‘It isn’t bad, for them as likes it,’ was the
-guarded and somewhat depressing response.</p>
-
-<p>I felt my spirits sink to zero. I had persuaded
-Jack to take it; he had suggested that we should
-go to see it first; but the advertisement had been
-so tempting, and the idea of the other longing
-applicants had made me so keen to secure it, that
-I felt whatever it was like, I must make the best
-of it, and contrive that Jack at least should not
-repent of having been beguiled by me into, as he
-expressed it, taking ‘a pig in a poke.’</p>
-
-<p>‘The pony-carriage is sure to come,’ I said in
-a confident way, once more straining my eyes up
-the deserted road. As I uttered the word ‘pony-carriage,’
-I detected a distinct grin for the second
-time on the man’s face, which was presently fully
-accounted for by the appearance of our equipage
-coming jolting down the deeply rutted road.
-Imagine a tax-cart of the shabbiest, dirtiest description,
-with bare boards for seats, and the
-bottom strewn with straw; the pony, an aged
-specimen, shambling along, with a harness in
-which coarse pieces of rope predominated. It
-was a pony-<i>trap</i>, with a vengeance.</p>
-
-<p>I could almost have cried when it drew up, and
-I saw Jack’s critical eye running over all its shortcomings.
-And it was all my fault.</p>
-
-<p>It was too late to recede from our bargain
-now; all that we could do was to bundle into<span class="pagenum" id="Page_489">{489}</span>
-the horrible machine, and endure as we best
-could an hour’s martyrdom driving to Morleigh
-Cottage.</p>
-
-<p>Our groom was a civil boy of about fifteen, clad
-in ordinary working-clothes. He managed to
-sit on the shaft or somewhere, and to drive us
-back, as Jack of course had no idea of the direction;
-and, judging from the solitariness of the
-scene, we should not have been wise to depend
-upon chance passers-by to direct us.</p>
-
-<p>Arrived at last, we found the Cottage was just
-two shades better than the trap. It was a tiny
-abode, as desolately situated as it was possible to
-conceive; the only redeeming point about it
-being that it was clean.</p>
-
-<p>The next morning, which happened to be a
-very wet misty one, we surveyed our garden and
-domain generally. The tennis-lawn was spacious
-enough, and the garden, to do Mr Challacombe
-justice, was well stocked; but the place itself was
-like the city of the dead—so silent, so quiet, so
-lonely.</p>
-
-<p>But as the weather improved, we got out
-most of the day, which rendered us very independent
-of the small low-roofed rooms. Jack
-and I took long walks, and occasionally we
-utilised the pony-trap, taking with us our little
-Rose and her nurse.</p>
-
-<p>We began to think soon of asking some of our
-relations to visit us; and the first to whom I sent
-an invitation was an elderly cousin, who resided
-in London, and who was in rather delicate health.
-I candidly explained the out-of-the-way nature
-of the place we were in, but descanted upon the
-great pleasure it would be to have her, and my
-entire conviction that the air would do her an
-immense amount of good. She came; and it
-was very fortunate for me that she did so, as
-about three days after, a telegram had reached
-us requesting my husband to lose no time in
-returning to town, in consequence of one of his
-partners being taken ill. It was raining when he
-left us; and I watched the wretched shandrydan
-disappear down the road with feelings I could
-scarcely repress—a sense of foreboding evil seemed
-to oppress me. I tried in vain to shake it off,
-but only partly succeeded in doing so. Cousin
-Susan endeavoured to console me by reminding
-me constantly that Jack had promised to return
-in a day or two.</p>
-
-<p>Jack had just been gone for one week, when
-Rose’s nurse, a pleasant girl of about twenty,
-came to my room and informed me of the occurrence
-I have already alluded to—‘A prisoner had
-escaped.’</p>
-
-<p>Nothing could have frightened me more, and
-I was afraid it might alarm Cousin Susan,
-so I charged Margaret on no account to let
-it reach her ears. Very likely, even now the
-man was captured; it was rare, indeed, that a
-convict ever escaped; but I had heard stories
-of their eluding capture, until, driven by sheer
-starvation, they often surrendered themselves to
-any stray passer-by, to whom the reward might
-or might not be of some consequence.</p>
-
-<p>That very morning, we had arranged to drive
-to rather a distant spot to get some ferns. I
-would fain have deferred the expedition; but
-Cousin Susan was already preparing for it, so I
-could only have postponed it by giving my
-reasons; and the chance of encountering the convict
-seemed too small to risk terrifying her by
-telling her of it at all.</p>
-
-<p>It was a lovely morning when we started,
-and Cousin Susan became quite enthusiastic over
-the ‘frowning tors and wind-swept moors.’</p>
-
-<p>‘Don’t you admire them, Helen?’ she said.</p>
-
-<p>‘They are very grand,’ I admitted.</p>
-
-<p>‘Oh, so lovely, so wild!’ said Susan.</p>
-
-<p>I was glad she liked them.</p>
-
-<p>The ferns were to be found in a sort of ravine,
-which was reached by a narrow lane; on one
-side was almost a precipice, overhanging a
-streamlet, now nearly dry, but one which the
-winter rains soon transformed into a torrent;
-on the other side was a wood, composed principally
-of stunted oak-trees, with hardly any
-foliage, and singularly small; but all around the
-trees was a thick sort of underwood.</p>
-
-<p>We had left Tom the stable-boy with the trap
-by the roadside, and I had privately resolved
-not to let my cousin penetrate farther into the
-ravine than I could help; but she was so charmed
-with its wealth of rare ferns, that she skipped
-from one point to another with an amount of
-dexterity and nimbleness I had never before
-given her credit for.</p>
-
-<p>‘I do think we might collect quite a hamperful,
-Helen!’ she said, kneeling down as she spoke to
-dig up a root most energetically.</p>
-
-<p>‘We had better come another day, then,’ I
-responded. ‘I don’t want to be late of getting
-back, so, if you don’t mind just taking a few
-specimens—when Jack is with us, we can come
-again.’</p>
-
-<p>‘Now or never!’ gaily rejoined my cousin, little
-imagining how soon her own words were to be
-applicable to ourselves. She pounced joyfully
-upon her ferns, and had collected quite a small
-heap, when I suggested that we had better tell
-Tom to tie the pony to a gate, and come up to
-carry them down for her.</p>
-
-<p>‘O no!’ said Cousin Susan. ‘I will carry
-them myself. Do help me here just a minute,
-Helen.’</p>
-
-<p>By this time we were some distance up the
-ravine; the walk was narrow and winding; we
-had gone farther than even I had intended. I
-bent down to give her the assistance she wanted
-in raising up some lovely lichen from the trunk
-of a dead tree. As I did so, my eyes wandered
-some distance from where we were standing
-towards a fallen tree. I fancied—perhaps it was
-only fancy—I knew I was in a very nervous state,
-and apt to imagine, but I fancied I saw a movement
-just beyond the tree—it was within twenty
-paces of us. I felt my face grow icy cold; my
-veins seemed chilling; for a moment I feared I
-was going to faint. Death must be something like
-what I felt on that sunny day in August when I
-stood in the Devonshire ravine with my unconscious
-cousin. I looked again. There it was more distinctly
-visible than ever—a line of drab-coloured
-clothing, and presently a side-view of the most
-villainous-looking countenance it was ever my
-fortune to behold. If I could, without alarming
-her, get my cousin to retrace her steps about ten
-yards, we should have turned a corner, and then
-I could tell her enough to hurry her onwards.
-I knew she was nervous—more so, perhaps, than
-myself; but I knew we were in imminent peril
-while in such close proximity to this desperate<span class="pagenum" id="Page_490">{490}</span>
-and, from his very escape, doubly desperate
-man.</p>
-
-<p>‘Susan,’ I said—my voice seemed so hard and
-dry and strange!—‘you have passed all the best
-ferns here.’</p>
-
-<p>‘O no; I haven’t,’ said Susan joyously, approaching
-two steps nearer the crouching convict.</p>
-
-<p>‘Am I to throw these away?’ I continued,
-holding out one of her best specimens, and, as
-carelessly and indifferently as I could, moving
-one, two, three steps nearer the corner.</p>
-
-<p>‘No; of course not,’ she exclaimed, hurrying
-towards me now. ‘Why, Helen, what are you
-thinking of?’</p>
-
-<p>I moved a few more steps on; and in a few
-more, Susan and I would both be out of sight
-of that fallen tree.</p>
-
-<p>‘There is a much better one here,’ I said,
-keeping my face well averted, for I felt if she
-looked at me she would see its ashy paleness.</p>
-
-<p>‘Where?’ she asked. ‘Wait a minute, and
-I’ll come for it.’ To my horror, she retraced
-her steps towards her heap of ferns, and carefully
-counted them, whilst I waited in a state
-of terror words cannot describe. But she came
-at last, and I tottered with her round the fateful
-corner.</p>
-
-<p>‘Don’t be frightened,’ I said; ‘but come
-quickly; ask no questions. Do as I tell you,
-Susan.’</p>
-
-<p>She paused, affrighted. ‘Good gracious, Helen,
-have you seen a wild beast?’</p>
-
-<p>‘Worse,’ I murmured. ‘Do not run, but lose
-no time.’</p>
-
-<p>I ventured to glance behind. Nothing was
-visible; but every moment was precious; we must
-reach the pony-trap and Tom. Once all together,
-the convict would surely not venture to attack us,
-and I knew that being on the high-road, alone
-would in itself insure our safety. But we had not
-reached it yet; a long rough narrow path had
-to be traversed. If the man suspected we had
-seen him, nothing would be easier than for
-him to overtake us and make short work of
-us. I thought of Jack, of Rose, of my happy
-life. Everything seemed to float through my
-mind as I half led, half dragged Susan after
-me. We had gone perhaps a shade more than
-half-way, when I once more turned round, in the
-distance, on the path over which we had just
-passed. To my unutterable consternation, I beheld
-the convict hurrying towards us.</p>
-
-<p>‘Run, Susan!’ I panted—‘run for your life!’</p>
-
-<p>Another twist in the road hid us momentarily
-from his sight; but I knew he was after us,
-running now as fast as, or perhaps a good deal
-faster than we were, though we were now both
-of us flying along at a pace which only the
-peril we were in could have enabled us to
-sustain.</p>
-
-<p>‘For your life!’ I repeated. ‘Run, Susan!’</p>
-
-<p>I held her hand. Narrow as was the path,
-we managed to struggle onwards together and to
-keep ahead of our pursuer. Mercifully, we had
-had a good start; and it had only been on second
-thoughts, some minutes after we had disappeared,
-that the man had elected to follow us. I felt if
-I once let Susan’s hand go, she would be lost.
-Ever and anon, she stumbled; once she nearly fell;
-but she recovered herself well, and though panting
-terribly, showed no signs of succumbing.</p>
-
-<p>But he was overtaking us; I heard him coming
-faster and faster, nearer and nearer. I heard him
-breathing behind us, and I felt another instant
-and he must be upon us.</p>
-
-<p>‘Help!’ I shrieked.</p>
-
-<p>‘Help!’ echoed poor exhausted Susan, in a still
-shriller treble.</p>
-
-<p>I heard an oath, awful in its profanity, hurled
-at us; but the steps seemed to pause.</p>
-
-<p>‘Help! help!’ I shrieked again.</p>
-
-<p>We plunged forwards. I heard as in the distance
-the sound of horses’ feet galloping towards
-us. Another moment and we were on the high-road;
-Susan speechless, her dress half torn off
-her with our terrible race, her hat gone, and otherwise
-in a dishevelled condition; I feeling faint and
-sick—but safe—thank God! both of us quite safe—with
-not only Tom, seated in the shandrydan,
-staring in mute amazement at us, but with three
-stalwart mounted warders, who were even then in
-quest of the convict.</p>
-
-<p>They captured him an hour afterwards, after
-a terrific struggle, which was made all the more
-terrible from the fact of his having possessed himself
-of a knife, with which he attempted to stab the
-warders.</p>
-
-<p>Jack came back the next day; and as his
-partner’s illness had assumed rather a serious
-aspect, he told me he must give up Morleigh
-Cottage, and we could finish our holiday at
-Eastbourne or some place nearer town. ‘I never
-could leave you here again, my darling,’ he said;
-‘after such an escape, I can’t risk another.’ So
-we all, Cousin Susan included, returned to our
-cosy house in Seymour Street, and afterwards
-proceeded to the seaside, where in due time Susan
-and I both fully recovered from the shock we had
-received in that Devonshire ravine.</p>
-
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="FAMILIAR_SKETCHES_OF_ENGLISH_LAW">FAMILIAR SKETCHES OF ENGLISH LAW.</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<h3>III. MASTER AND SERVANT.</h3>
-
-<p><span class="smcap">The</span> relation of master and servant depends
-entirely upon a contract of hiring and service.
-If the contract is not to be fully performed within
-the period of one year, it is void if not in writing;
-and this necessity for a written contract is not
-confined to cases where the service is intended
-to be for more than one year. If a servant be
-hired on Monday for the term of one year, to
-commence on the following Saturday, the contract
-ought to be in writing, as a verbal contract would
-be void on the ground indicated above—namely,
-that it was not intended to be fully performed
-within one year from the date on which it was
-entered into. If, however, the service was to
-commence on the Monday on which the verbal
-contract of hiring was entered into, no such objection
-would arise.</p>
-
-<p>Assuming that a valid contract is entered into,
-there are still some peculiarities attached to certain
-kinds of service, which do not affect others. Thus,
-in England, both domestic servants and agricultural
-labourers are usually engaged for a year;
-but the former class may put an end to the
-engagement at any time by giving one month’s
-notice; while the latter are irrevocably bound
-for the entire year, unless the hiring be determined
-by mutual consent. This difference is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_491">{491}</span>
-founded upon universal custom, which has the
-force of law. Probably the custom had its origin
-in early ages, and was founded upon considerations
-of convenience. The work of an agricultural
-labourer is distributed very unequally over
-the year, being much more heavy at some seasons
-than at others; and therefore it is reasonable that
-a man who receives wages by the year should not
-be allowed to take his money for the light season,
-and leave his situation when the work is heavier.
-Domestic servants, on the other hand, have their
-work more evenly distributed over the entire
-year, although they also have sometimes to do
-more work than at other times, but not to the
-same extent as agricultural labourers; and being
-brought into more immediate contact with their
-master’s family (especially the mistress), it might
-in many cases be very unpleasant to be obliged
-to carry into full effect the hiring for a whole
-year. Hence, either master or mistress on the
-one hand, or domestic servant on the other, may
-at any time give ‘a month’s warning,’ and so dissolve
-the engagement. In Scotland, domestic
-servants are generally hired for a month or for
-‘the term,’ which is half a year, but agricultural
-labourers for a year, as in England.</p>
-
-<p>The more highly paid class of servants, such as
-managers, cashiers, clerks above the grade of
-copyists, &amp;c., are generally engaged for an indefinite
-term, subject to three months’ notice. Such
-an engagement as this, although it may possibly
-continue for several years, need not be in writing,
-because it may be dissolved within the year; and
-it is only when a contract which is entire and
-indivisible cannot be fully performed within
-that time, that writing is necessary. It is, however,
-desirable that the terms of the engagement
-should be in writing, for the sake of certainty
-and in order to avoid misunderstanding. Copying-clerks,
-journeymen, and persons occupying positions
-of a similar kind, are usually subject to one
-month’s notice. In all cases, the obligation as
-to notice is reciprocal, and equally binding on
-both parties, mutuality being essential to the
-agreement. There is, however, one distinction
-which has a substantial reason for its existence:
-a master may pay his clerk or manager three
-months’ salary, or his journeyman or copying-clerk
-one month’s salary, and dismiss him immediately;
-but the servant must give the proper
-notice, and cannot throw up his engagement by
-sacrificing salary in lieu of notice. The reason
-for this is obvious: if a clerk gets his salary
-without working for it, instead of working out
-his notice, he is not in any way injured, but may
-be benefited by the prompt dismissal; for he
-may obtain an engagement elsewhere before the
-time when the notice would have expired. But
-it would be difficult to estimate the loss which
-might be sustained by a master in consequence
-of the sudden withdrawal of a confidential clerk
-or manager. For any breach of contract an action
-of damages will lie at the instance of either party,
-and the measure of damages will be the probable
-loss to the servant before he can find a new
-situation, or to the master before he can find a
-new servant.</p>
-
-<p>Whenever a person is hired without any
-stipulation as to notice, the engagement will be
-subject to any custom which may exist in the
-particular trade or business for which he was
-engaged. In some branches of business, commercial
-travellers claim to be engaged absolutely
-by the year, and this custom has been proved and
-allowed in court; a traveller obtaining a verdict
-for the balance of his year’s salary, when he had
-been dismissed in the middle of the year. Ordinary
-labourers, engaged by the week, are only
-entitled to one week’s notice; but miners are
-by custom required to give, and are entitled to
-receive, fourteen days’ notice.</p>
-
-<p>Gross misconduct on the part of the servant is
-in all cases a sufficient reason for dismissal
-without notice; and generally, if the misconduct
-be sufficient to justify this extreme course, the
-wages actually earned by the offender are forfeited,
-and he or she cannot recover the same by
-legal proceedings. A manager who imparts his
-master’s secrets to a rival in business; a cashier
-who cannot account for the cash intrusted to his
-care; a journeyman who recklessly destroys any
-of his master’s goods—may all be summarily dismissed.
-So also may any kind of servant who
-persistently disobeys his master’s orders, or frequently
-absents himself without leave. A female
-domestic servant who without reasonable cause
-stays out all night, or who is known to be guilty
-of immorality, is within the same category. It
-is scarcely necessary to add that any dishonest
-act by a servant, such as misappropriating his or
-her master’s money or goods, ought to be followed
-on detection by immediate dismissal, even though
-it may not be thought necessary or desirable to
-prosecute the servant.</p>
-
-<p>In the absence of any special agreement on
-the subject, a servant cannot be compelled to
-make good the loss occasioned by accidental
-breakages; and any deduction from the salary or
-wages earned in respect of such breakages would
-be illegal, unless the master were to establish a
-claim for reparation in respect of fault or gross
-negligence; just as in the case of a lawyer or a
-doctor who has bungled the duty intrusted to
-him through want of skill or due care.</p>
-
-<p>The death of the master terminates the contract.
-In England, the servant may be paid wages up
-to the time of his master’s death, if the executors
-do not retain his services, which would amount
-to a new hiring so far as relates to notice; but
-in Scotland he is entitled to be paid wages and
-board-wages up to the end of his engagement,
-unless a new situation should in the meantime
-be procured for him either by himself or the
-executors. He is at anyrate entitled to be kept
-free from loss, because he was ready to fulfil his
-part of the contract.</p>
-
-<p>On the bankruptcy of the master, each clerk
-or servant, labourer or workman—if the assets
-be sufficient—is entitled to be paid in full the
-salary or wages due to him in respect of services
-rendered to the bankrupt during four months
-before the date of the receiving order, if the
-amount do not exceed fifty pounds, before any
-dividend is paid to ordinary creditors. For
-any excess, the servant must rank against
-his master’s estate as an ordinary creditor,
-with whom he will rank for dividend thereon.
-This right of priority is, however, subject to the
-right of the landlord to distrain for the rent due,
-not exceeding a twelvemonth, and is shared with
-the collectors of rates and taxes within certain
-specified limits. If the net amount of assets in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_492">{492}</span>
-hand, after paying expenses, should be insufficient
-to cover the preferential payments, the money
-must be divided among the parties entitled, by
-way of preferential dividend. In Scotland, the
-farm-servant’s claim for wages is preferable to the
-landlord’s claim for rent.</p>
-
-<p>A master is liable for any damage done to the
-property of strangers by his servant in the course
-of his ordinary employment, but not otherwise.
-For example: a groom who is sent out by his
-master with a horse and carriage, and drives so
-negligently as to injure another person’s horse
-or carriage, renders his master liable to an action
-for damages. An engine-driver who disregards
-a danger-signal, and causes a collision, involves
-the Railway Company in a liability for reparation
-to every passenger who may be injured. But a
-master is not liable if the servant act beyond the
-scope of his employment; if, for example, the
-groom were accidentally to wound a passer-by
-with the gamekeeper’s gun, or even if the gamekeeper
-himself were voluntarily to wound a
-poacher, unless it were proved that he was actually
-ordered by his master to do it.</p>
-
-<p>Before January 1, 1881, a master was not
-liable to an action for damages in respect of any
-injury sustained by any person employed by
-him through the negligence of a fellow-servant;
-though he might be held responsible if the
-accident which caused the injury were caused
-by his own negligence. But the law has been
-altered, and a workman is now entitled to compensation
-for accidental injury sustained by
-reason of the negligence of any foreman or
-superintendent in the service of his employer;
-or of any person whose orders the workman was
-bound to obey; or by reason of anything done in
-compliance with the rules or bylaws of the
-employer, or in obedience to particular instructions
-given by any person duly authorised for
-that purpose: or in the case of railway servants,
-by reason of the negligence of any signalman,
-pointsman, engine-driver, &amp;c. But the right to
-compensation is not to arise in case the workman
-knew of the negligence which caused the injury,
-and failed to give notice to the employer or some
-person superior to himself in the service of the
-employer; nor if the rules or bylaws from the
-observance of which the accident arose had been
-approved by the proper department of the
-government; neither would a workman who by
-his own negligence had contributed to the accident
-be entitled to compensation: the common-law
-rule as to contributory negligence being
-applicable. In case of any accident which is
-within the provisions of the Act, notice of the
-injury must be given to the employer within
-six weeks, and any action must be commenced
-within six months after the occurrence of the
-accident; or in case of death, proceedings must
-be taken within twelve months from the date
-of death. The compensation must not exceed in
-amount three years’ earnings; and the action
-must in England be brought in the County
-Court; in Scotland in the Sheriff Court; and in
-Ireland in the Civil Bill Court; the proceedings
-in each case being removable into a superior
-court at the instance of either party. The benefits
-of the Act do not extend to domestic or menial
-servants, but are available for railway servants,
-labourers agricultural and general, journeymen,
-artificers, handicraftsmen, and persons otherwise
-engaged in manual labour.</p>
-
-<p>In case of the illness of a servant—unless such
-illness be caused by his or her own misconduct—the
-master cannot legally refuse to pay the wages
-which may accrue during the time of such illness;
-but the service may be terminated by notice in
-the usual way; the principle being that no man
-can be held accountable for what is beyond his
-own control. The servant being willing to do his
-duty, but rendered unable to do so by circumstances
-beyond his own control, he must not be
-punished for such inability by being deprived
-of his wages. A master is only liable to pay his
-servant’s medical attendant when the master has
-employed him, but not when the doctor is
-employed by the servant himself.</p>
-
-<p>A master may bring an action against a stranger
-for any injury done to his servant, whereby he
-(the master) suffers loss or inconvenience, or for
-enticing his servant away, and inducing him to
-neglect or refuse to fulfil his engagement.</p>
-
-<p>When a servant applies to any person for a
-new engagement, it is usual for him to refer to
-his previous master for a character, as it would
-be objectionable for a stranger to be employed
-without some means of knowing whether he was
-competent and respectable. In answering inquiries
-as to character and ability, it is necessary
-to be very careful to say neither more nor less
-than the exact truth. If an undeserved bad
-character be given, the servant may recover
-damages, on establishing malice and want of probable
-cause, in an action for libel or slander,
-according to the mode in which the character
-was given, in writing or verbally. On the other
-hand, suppression of unfavourable facts may have
-still more serious consequences. If a servant be
-known to be dishonest, and his master ventures
-to recommend him as trustworthy, he will render
-himself liable to make good any loss occasioned by
-subsequent acts of dishonesty which may be committed
-by the servant in his new situation, and
-which without such recommendation could not
-have been committed. When nothing favourable
-can be said, the safest way is to decline to answer
-any inquiries on the subject. But it would be
-unfair to adopt this course without adequate
-cause, for such refusal would inevitably be construed
-as equivalent to giving the servant a bad
-character, and would frequently prove an obstacle
-to his obtaining another situation.</p>
-
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="HEROINES">HEROINES.</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">Most</span> of us have heard of a certain thoughtful
-little girl who took Time by the forelock, and
-decided that if women must have some profession
-to turn to, she would be a Professional Beauty.
-There are thousands of girls, older and wiser,
-who yearn to be heroines, and have quite as
-vague notions about it. There are countless
-women, with characters still fresh and plastic,
-who find existence but a dull level. Life is a
-narrow lane to them. They would like mountaineering.
-They want adventure. They sigh to
-be heroines.</p>
-
-<p>What are heroines, after all? Let us look for
-the reality, and not for a dream, or we shall go<span class="pagenum" id="Page_493">{493}</span>
-mountaineering, and be lost among shadows when
-the darkness of age begins to fall. In the real
-life we are all living, how does one get to be a
-heroine? Are there any, and where are they?
-Who shall tell us? Can the novelists? For the
-most part, no. The ordinary sort of fiction is
-full of ambitious flecks and flaws; how can it
-know and describe the most delicate and intricate,
-the most minutely beautiful of human characters?
-There is a novel in which the hero exclaims
-pathetically that he was ‘a Pariah’ until he
-married. Could the inventor of the Pariah
-invent anything but a heroine to match him?
-The fiction that excels in the highest qualities
-falls short here. The best describer of life,
-even if his conception of this character be
-perfectly just, must be content with merely
-hinting it, for his space has limits. Instead
-of describing in half a page the colour of eyes,
-hair, and dress, and afterwards ten adventures
-and two dozen conversations, he could hardly
-be expected to write for one character a whole
-shelf of detailed volumes, and to gather his notes
-with the minuteness of a census-taker.</p>
-
-<p>Let us look elsewhere. Several women have
-passed the old turnstile to public life, and got in
-somehow on men’s tickets. Their insignificant
-sisters peep over the wall, and observe that men
-who outside were the soul of chivalry, begin to
-elbow the ladies within, and ungallantly assert in
-self-defence that the ladies have elbows too. The
-insignificant sisters will not enter; but if they
-tried to reason about it, they would be ‘stumped
-out’ in a moment by the others on the platforms
-inside. ‘When I hear a woman use intellectual
-arguments, I am dismayed,’ says a wise thinker
-from beyond the Atlantic; and the insignificant
-crowd aforesaid and the majority of the world
-agree with him in this; and those outside the
-wall find out all at once that a woman’s unreasoning
-nature is no insignificant charm. ‘Her best
-reason, as it is the world’s best, is the inspiration
-of a pure and believing heart. She is happiest
-when she devotes herself, obedient to her patient
-and unselfish nature, to some loved being or high
-cause; and glory itself, says Madame de Staël,
-would be for her only a splendid mourning-suit
-for happiness denied.’</p>
-
-<p>Shall we turn from the platforms, and look to
-intellectual culture? We see at the outset that it
-cannot be necessary to heroism; for all human
-nature’s highest prizes are open to all, and great
-intellectual culture belongs to the few. Besides,
-there can be such a thing as learning too much,
-and knowing nothing worth knowing. In America,
-where life is lived double-quick, and where
-every product from a continent downwards is
-of the largest size, there are crops of overtaught
-girlhood ripe already for our inspection. Women
-of the middle classes there can discuss the nebular
-hypothesis or the binomial theory, as ours talk
-of lacework and the baby. Mr Hudson, in his
-recent <i>Scamper through America</i>, declares that to
-converse in the railway cars with ladies returning
-from Conventions and Conferences was a genuine
-pleasure, an intellectual treat. But he adds, that
-though one could revere them, almost worship
-them, to love them was out of the question.
-‘Practical passionless creatures, they seemed to
-constitute a third sex. Where were the girls?
-We never saw them. We did meet with young
-ladies of twelve and thirteen, with jewel-laden
-fingers, and with vocabularies of ponderous dictionary
-words; but, like their mothers and elder
-sisters, they were such superior beings, that one
-longed for a lassie that was not so very clever—one
-who had something yet unlearned that she
-could ask a fellow to tell her about.’</p>
-
-<p>We have failed in the novels, on the platforms,
-and at the learned Conferences. Shall we carry
-our search to the haunts of human suffering
-next? There are hundreds of women, banded
-together or working singly, to whom every form
-of sorrow and helplessness is an attraction. They
-do not deal in dry statistical philanthropy, but in
-loving compassion. They are not ‘women with
-a mission,’ because the woman with a mission
-flaunts it before the world, and gets more or less
-in everybody’s way; but these desire to remain
-unknown, never counting the debt humanity owes
-to them. The wounded soldier on the battlefield
-knows them well enough; and the criminal in
-prison; and the sick, the poor, the aged, the
-young children. Sacrificing a whole life to
-the common good, they are heroines; it is
-beyond doubt. But not the heroines we seek,
-whose sphere is to be something more homely,
-easy, and attainable for all. However, these
-women, whose lives are compassion, have given
-a light upon the track. It dawns upon us, that
-in womanly heroism, self-sacrifice is the essence,
-and hiddenness marks it genuine.</p>
-
-<p>Far different is the typical woman with a
-mission, whose type, dashed off with a few strokes
-by the pen of Dickens, flits across our memory
-from <i>Bleak House</i>, and provokes a sigh and a
-smile. Again, Mrs Jellyby, with her dress laced
-anyhow like the lattice of a summer-house, is
-writing in a room full of disorder, with her
-philanthropic eye fixed upon the savages of
-Borrioboola, South Africa, while her own little
-boy is outside, kicking and howling, with his
-head stuck between the area railings. Again,
-Mr Jellyby employs his evenings in leaning his
-head feebly against the wall; and when poor
-Caddy is married, we hear him giving her all
-he has to give—the beseeching advice: ‘My
-dear, never have a mission!’</p>
-
-<p>Even Mrs Jellyby may help us in our search,
-by sending us flying in the opposite direction.
-We have had light on our path—hiddenness is
-the seal, and unselfishness is the essence, and we
-are searching for the heroines of home. Their
-distinction does not depend, as in fiction, upon
-adventures, lovers, or beauty. If it did, they
-could be heroines only till the end of youth and
-volume three; but in the real world they shall
-be heroines not only till the time of gray hairs
-and careworn brow, but for ever and a day.</p>
-
-<p>There is nothing in creation more beautiful
-than a true heroine, and nothing so hard to find.
-Not that they are scarce. They crowd the world
-as daisies dot the summer fields. But they are
-hidden, and hidden precisely where a thing
-wanted is most unlikely to be found—too close<span class="pagenum" id="Page_494">{494}</span>
-to us, just straight before our eyes. Not in the
-world of romance, or in the crush of public
-life, or in the clear cold air of science; but
-in the narrow lane where we started, in the
-monotonous routine of common daily life, that
-seems to be hedged in from all interest—there
-are the heroines to be found. Their
-heroism is made up of trivial details, the shabby
-atoms of uneventful life. If it be objected
-that the heroic means something greatly above
-the ordinary level, we would answer, that their
-whole life is above the level; that the essence
-of heroism—sacrifice—has become to them an
-unconsciously acting second nature, and that
-all that is life-long is surely great. But sometimes
-trivial incidents can become in themselves
-heroic. Whoever heard in a novel of heroism
-with a crushed thumb? All the finest things
-are true. It is told of the late Viscountess
-Beaconsfield, that on the night of an important
-speech by her husband, then Mr Disraeli, when
-they were seated in the carriage together to drive
-to the House of Commons, the servant closing
-the door, crushed her thumb. She uttered no
-cry, left the bruise untouched, and acted and
-spoke as if she was at ease. Hours after, when
-she descended from the Ladies’ Gallery, he discovered
-the agony she had been enduring, in
-order not to spoil his speech; and in after-years,
-when the Viscountess was dead, he still
-told the touching little story in her praise.</p>
-
-<p>But to return to our heroines of commonplace
-life. Their greatness does not even need striking
-incidents. Their worth makes precious those
-trivial atoms of which life is composed, and what
-began as an unpretending patchwork, ends as a
-complete and precious picture, like the splendid
-mosaics of Venice or Rome. This is why one
-might defy the first of novelists to describe the
-loveliness of such a life; its daily parts are positively
-too small to pick up.</p>
-
-<p>For each one of us there is some face enshrined
-in memory, whose influence is lofty as an
-inspiration, whose power is a living power,
-whose love has been stronger than death, and
-will light an upward path for us even to life’s
-end. Why is all this but because she whom
-we loved was a heroine? And what were her
-characteristics? One answer will serve for all—Tenderness,
-gentleness, self-forgetfulness, suffering.
-The last characteristic may not be universal,
-like the rest. But the highest love can
-only exist where suffering has touched the object
-loved. It is one of the compensations for the
-manifold sorrow of this world of ours. The fire
-of trial seems to light up every beauty and attraction.
-The life that not only loved much but
-suffered much has a royal right of influence as
-long as memory lasts—an influence which cannot
-belong to any life which suffering has not
-crowned.</p>
-
-<p>Now we have sketched our heroine, easily
-recognisable, but herself never dreaming or caring
-to think that she is one, or her glory would be
-frail as a bubble. The poorest woman knitting
-on her cottage threshold can have this glory for
-her own; for there is no true-hearted woman,
-rich or poor, who cannot walk her simple life
-lovingly enough to leave enshrined for others,
-as a living influence, such a memory as we have
-described. And what sceptre has so sweet a
-power as that—an immortal influence through
-the hearts we have loved most? Compared with
-this, what is fame but an echo, and what is the
-heroism of romance but an unreal shadow!</p>
-
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="ARMY_SCHOOLS">ARMY SCHOOLS.</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<p><span class="smcap">The</span> valuable advantages these institutions offer
-to soldiers and their children will, we trust, be
-evident from the perusal of the following short
-account of their organisation. With regard to
-children, these schools will soon have little to do;
-for the new system of short service promises to
-do away almost entirely with the married soldier.
-A soldier is not allowed to marry till he has
-served seven years, subject to certain qualifications
-of good conduct; but as the great majority
-of men are passed into the Reserve before
-they reach that length of service, the proportion
-of married soldiers is very small, and rapidly
-becoming more and more reduced in number.
-It is rather with the men themselves, therefore,
-that the military schoolmaster and his assistants
-have now principally to deal.</p>
-
-<p>Every regiment or depôt has its school. The
-schoolmasters are trained at Chelsea; and though
-non-combatants, they are subject to the usual
-army regulations. They now rank as warrant-officers,
-and, on the whole, are an able and estimable
-body of men. Occasionally, educated and
-promising young soldiers are selected from the
-ranks and sent to the training college to qualify
-as schoolmasters. Their number is, however, very
-limited; the great majority of the schoolmasters
-enter the army through the college, joining it as
-civilians; consequently, a schoolmaster cannot be
-reduced to the ranks. If he misconduct himself
-seriously, he is liable to be tried by court-martial
-and dismissed. Such cases are very rare. The
-army schoolmaster retires with a pension on
-attaining twenty-one years’ service, though, under
-certain conditions, it is possible for him to prolong
-his engagement. If of more than ordinary
-ability, he is often promoted to the higher rank
-and more important position of Sub-inspector of
-Army Schools.</p>
-
-<p>Assistants are allowed in these schools according
-to the numbers in attendance at them. There
-is usually one school-assistant to about every
-twenty men or children attending. In depôts,
-where the soldiers are mostly recruits, the
-attendance is often very large, with a correspondingly
-increased number of assistants. The
-latter are picked out from among the better-educated
-men in a regiment; they receive extra
-pay, and are exempt from the ordinary drill
-and duty of the rank and file, giving their time
-and attention to the working of the school and
-the details connected with it. Many well-educated
-men, who are not otherwise well suited
-for non-commissioned officers, are employed in
-this way in imparting instruction to their more
-illiterate comrades.</p>
-
-<p>Every recruit on joining a depôt has to attend
-school until he satisfies an examiner—sub-inspector—of
-his familiarity with certain elementary
-subjects. Examinations for this purpose are held
-at intervals. There are four classes of certificates
-granted to candidates on passing the necessary
-examinations. Supposing a man to be competent
-to pass the fourth or lowest standard,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_495">{495}</span>
-he becomes exempt from further school attendance.
-But if ambitious of being made a non-commissioned
-officer, or of securing one of the
-other good berths, of which there are many open
-to intelligent men, it is advisable for him to
-hold on till he gains a higher certificate. For
-example, to be promoted to the rank of corporal,
-the aspirant must be in possession of a third-class
-certificate; to attain to a sergeant’s position, he
-must have one of the second class. Thus, a considerable
-proportion of the men in a regiment
-are kept under instruction; and as soon as one
-batch has been passed out of the school, other
-candidates appear. A few unfortunates, entirely
-destitute of education when they enlist, are often
-long in obtaining the desired certificates. After a
-year or two’s attendance, they are probably dismissed
-from school as ‘useless.’ Such hopeless
-ignoramuses—happily not so numerous now as
-formerly—are a bugbear to the school staff:
-they soon cease to make any attempt to learn,
-and are simply in the way of the more intelligent
-or persevering men. Of course, to such,
-the school-work is a species of punishment. But
-let us glance at the quantity and quality of the
-learning implied in obtaining the certificates.</p>
-
-<p>To satisfy the examiner, the entirely uncultured
-youth has in the first place to set himself
-resolutely to learn to read. Then he must be
-able to write to the extent of transcribing a few
-lines from a book. With the mysteries of the
-four elementary rules of arithmetic he must
-display a tolerably intimate acquaintance. To
-men who can already read and write, the latter
-does not prove an insuperable obstacle. Having
-furnished a moderately good ‘paper’ on these
-not very exacting subjects, he in a few days
-receives his fourth-class certificate, and leaves
-the school in triumph. But if he aspires to a
-third-class certificate, a man of this kind has
-yet much to do. As a matter of fact, very
-few attempt more from mere love of self-improvement;
-an eye to advancement in the
-ranks acts as the stimulus to further study.
-Writing fairly well to dictation is a part of this
-next higher step, and often proves a serious difficulty.
-Arithmetic will include the compound
-rules and reduction; and on a man passing this
-standard, a third-class certificate is granted. The
-possession of this qualifies the holder for the
-rank of corporal. But to the corporal, further
-promotion is necessary. No corporal would go
-to so much trouble, besides having to perform
-the ordinary duty attached to his rank in
-regimental affairs, except as a step towards
-the coveted chevrons of the sergeant. To
-attain sergeant’s rank may be taken as the
-aim and ambition of all corporals; and the
-latter are the men who, as we have seen,
-try to get the third-class certificates. But a
-sergeant must, by the regulations, have a
-second-class certificate. To the comparatively
-untutored corporal, this object entails his continued
-use of the school, and an increased
-demand of the schoolmaster’s instruction. In
-short, to a man whose education has been more
-or less neglected in early youth, this second-class
-test is a pretty stiff one; it requires a
-considerable amount of application for a time
-before he can present himself for examination
-with a reasonable chance of passing. He must
-be able to write fluently and correctly a moderately
-difficult passage to dictation; and take
-down military orders with due care to arrangement
-and spelling. A long list of terms connected
-with military matters—such as ‘commissariat,’
-‘aide-de-camp,’ ‘manœuvre’—has to be
-written and spelt correctly. The arithmetical
-part of the examination consists of the ordinary
-rules as far as and including decimals. Besides,
-he must be able to work out a debt and
-credit account, a military savings-bank account,
-and a mess account. Withal, he must read
-with fluency, and write a good legible hand.
-Such is the necessary scholastic attainment of
-the modern sergeant. The ordeal would probably
-have terrified his predecessors of a quarter of
-a century ago.</p>
-
-<p>There remains still the certificate of the First
-class. This is obtained by a comparatively
-small number of men. It enters into details
-which would be, to many, insurmountable
-difficulties; and as the possession of it is not
-compulsory for any non-commissioned rank, it
-is not much sought after. A few of the originally
-better-educated men do, however, go in for
-it. As a passport to the higher grades of clerkships,
-or even to eventual commissions, it is
-desirable. The examination includes an extra
-subject, such as a language, or geometry; the
-whole of arithmetic; and a searching test as to
-spelling and composition.</p>
-
-<p>The reader will see that, from the above
-description, the second-class certificate is the
-important one to possess. Men having got it,
-are available for all the higher kinds of non-commissioned
-officers, as colour-sergeants, sergeant-majors,
-&amp;c. The work of preparing men
-for this is perhaps a very important part of the
-business of the school, and is generally undertaken
-mainly by the schoolmaster himself.</p>
-
-<p>In an army school the men are divided into
-classes according to their several abilities or stages
-of advancement. A special class is usually composed
-of men preparing themselves for the next
-examination for sergeants; another lot looking
-forward to being made corporals are engaged
-in the necessary work for third-class certificates.
-Then there are still more elementary classes for
-men trying to get themselves exempted from
-school attendance by passing the fourth class;
-and lastly, are the complete ‘ignoramuses’ who
-are labouring at the alphabet or assiduously
-making pot-hooks. The duration of the daily
-attendance is from an hour to an hour and
-a half; but other duties frequently break in
-upon this, and men are not able to be present
-every successive day. As attendance is compulsory,
-the men are paraded and marched
-to school as for any other duty; but the
-room is open in the evening for those anxious
-to push on with their work—the latter being,
-so to speak, volunteers, and nearly all non-commissioned
-officers. From this it will be seen
-that men really desirous of picking up a serviceable
-education have ample opportunity of doing
-so, especially when we consider the large share
-of spare time which the soldier has in ordinary
-circumstances on his hands.</p>
-
-<p>All the schools are furnished with maps,
-books, and everything essential for carrying on
-their work. Where there are children, they are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_496">{496}</span>
-supplied with these requisites. Children, however,
-from being at one time the more important,
-have now become a secondary element in army
-schools. The present writer was connected with
-a school having an average attendance of two
-hundred men, but no children. This was in a
-depôt, and the men were almost without exception
-recruits. A small number of children in barracks
-were sent out to the Board School, leaving
-the school staff to devote its whole attention
-to the adults. At one time several regiments
-would have been required to furnish such a
-numerously attended school as the above, when
-recruits came in at the rate of perhaps about
-twenty annually. But short service has filled
-regiments up with recruits, or at least with
-very young soldiers, which, together with other
-circumstances, has given more ample employment
-to the schoolmaster. If we compare the number
-of recruits who join a regiment with that of
-the certificates of education granted in the same
-corps, we speedily find that the school department
-has not been asleep; and especially is this
-the case when we consider what is the educational
-standard of most men who enlist. We
-hear a good deal from time to time concerning
-the superior class of men that now seek to
-enter the army; but, practically, from an
-educational point of view, recruits are not so
-very different from what we have seen for
-many years past. It will yet be long before
-the army schools are abolished.</p>
-
-<p>Among some statistics, we lately noticed some
-figures relating to the standard of education of
-soldiers. In this statement, a large percentage—fifty-seven
-per cent. of the whole rank and
-file—was set down as of ‘superior education.’
-This probably referred to the men in possession
-of the two highest kinds of certificates, as
-holders of the third class could hardly be
-included under such a heading. The reader
-may perhaps be inclined to smile at the use
-of such a high-sounding term; though that
-such a large proportion of the ranks are educated
-even to this degree appears on the whole
-to be very creditable indeed. It certainly offers
-a marked contrast to the state of affairs at no
-very remote period.</p>
-
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="LIGHTING_COLLIERIES_BY_ELECTRICITY">LIGHTING COLLIERIES BY ELECTRICITY.</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<p>This interesting and important experiment has
-just been tried with great success at the Park
-Pit Ocean Collieries, South Wales. The arrangement
-consists of a number of Swan incandescent
-lamps distributed throughout the workings, both
-under and above ground, in the workshops and
-engine-houses. The bottom of the mine is thus
-admirably lighted, and the whole of the workings
-as far as the main engine roads. The power is
-supplied by a six horse-power Marshall engine,
-fitted with Hartnell’s patent automatic expansion
-gear, driving a Crompton-Bürgin self-regulating
-dynamo.</p>
-
-<p>We believe we are correct in stating that this
-is the first attempt to illuminate the whole of
-the interior of a colliery pit, and its workings
-and offices, by this useful medium; and it is
-impossible to over-estimate the value of an incandescent
-light, and yet one of extraordinary brilliancy,
-in such a place as a coal-mine, subject
-to the escape of gases which are liable at any
-moment, on coming in contact with an unprotected
-flame, to occasion an explosion involving
-terrible and deplorable consequences. Now, this
-is one source of danger which the use of
-this system of lighting prevents; and if this is
-found to succeed, it is to be hoped that it may
-be adopted in all underground works, where the
-advantage of a brilliant light to work by is
-recognised; a marvellous contrast to the safe
-but gloomy and light-obstructing ‘Davy.’ There
-can really be no reason why this plan should
-not be universally applied to mines, unless the
-objection may be on the score of expense, for
-when once the necessary driving-machinery is
-built, the rest is simple enough, and the advantages
-almost untold.</p>
-
-
-<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
-
-<div class="chapter">
-<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_LAST_GOOD-NIGHT">A LAST ‘GOOD-NIGHT.’</h2>
-</div>
-
-
-<div class="poetry-container">
-<div class="poetry">
- <div class="stanza">
- <div class="verse indent0"><span class="smcap">Love</span>, I see thee lowly kneeling,</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">Claspèd hands and drooping head,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">While the moonbeams pale are stealing</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">Sadly round my dying bed.</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Dearest, hush thy bitter weeping;</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">Lay thy tearful cheek to mine,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">While the stars, their death-watch keeping,</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">Softly through the lattice shine.</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Through the trees, low winds are sighing,</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">And my hand, so worn and white,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">On thy clustering hair is lying.</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">Love, my only love, good-night!</div>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <div class="verse indent0">Ah! I hear thy broken sobbing.</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">Faint and low, thy voice hath grown;</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">And I feel thy fond heart throbbing,</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">Oh, how wildly, ’gainst mine own!</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Dear, my spirit still delaying,</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">Loves to hover near thee now,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Like the moonbeams fondly straying</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">O’er thy pallid cheek and brow.</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Yes, my soul, to share thy sorrow,</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">Pauses in its heavenward flight,</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">And will comfort thee to-morrow.</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">Love, my dearest love, good-night!</div>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <div class="verse indent0">Now, for one sweet moment only,</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">Fold me closely to thy breast.</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">When thy life seems dark and lonely,</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">Oh, remember I am blest!</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Though thy voice with grief be broken,</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">Smile once more, and call me fair.</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Darling, as my last love-token,</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">Take this little lock of hair.</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Feeling these, thy last caresses,</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">Tears must dim my failing sight.</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Kiss once more my wandering tresses,</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">Then a long, a last good-night!</div>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <div class="verse indent0">Shades of death are round me closing;</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">Tears and shadows hide thy face;</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Still I fear not, thus reposing,</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">In thy faithful, fond embrace.</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Though thou lingerest broken-hearted,</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">All thy thoughts to me shall soar;</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">We shall seem but to be parted;</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">I’ll be near thee evermore.</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Brightly on my soul’s awaking,</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">See, yon gleam of heavenly light!</div>
- <div class="verse indent0">Now, behold the morn is breaking.</div>
- <div class="verse indent2">Love, my faithful love, good-night!</div>
- </div>
- <div class="stanza">
- <div class="verse right"><span class="smcap">Fanny Forrester.</span></div>
- </div>
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="full" />
-
-<p class="center">Printed and Published by <span class="smcap">W. &amp; R. Chambers</span>, 47 Paternoster
-Row, <span class="smcap">London</span>, and 339 High Street, <span class="smcap">Edinburgh</span>.</p>
-
-<hr class="full" />
-
-<p class="center"><i>All Rights Reserved.</i></p>
-
-<hr class="full" />
-
-<div class="footnotes"><p class="ph3">FOOTNOTES:</p>
-
-<div class="footnote">
-
-<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> See article ‘The Isle of May and its Birds,’ in
-<i>Chambers’s Journal</i> for September 22, 1883.</p>
-
-</div>
-</div>
-
-<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART, FIFTH SERIES, NO. 31, VOL. I, AUGUST 2, 1884 ***</div>
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