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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77354 ***
+
+
+
+
+“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”--SHAKESPEARE.
+
+HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
+
+A WEEKLY JOURNAL.
+
+CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.
+
+ N^o. 330.]      SATURDAY, JULY 19, 1856.      {PRICE 2_d._
+                                               {STAMPED 3_d._
+
+
+
+
+TABLE OF CONTENTS
+
+
+ THE DIARY OF ANNE RODWAY.
+ BIRD HISTORY.
+ RHINE-LAND.
+ MILVERSTON WORTHIES.
+ SCOTCH COAST FOLK.
+ CHIP.
+ CHARLES THE FIFTH’S GLOVE.
+
+
+
+
+THE DIARY OF ANNE RODWAY.
+
+
+IN TWO CHAPTERS. CHAPTER THE FIRST.
+
+March 3rd, 1840. A long letter to-day from Robert, which surprised
+and vexed and fluttered me so, that I have been sadly behind-hand
+with my work ever since. He writes in worse spirits than last time,
+and absolutely declares that he is poorer even than when he went to
+America, and that he has made up his mind to come home to London. How
+happy I should be at this news, if he only returned to me a prosperous
+man! As it is, though I love him dearly, I cannot look forward to the
+meeting him again, disappointed and broken down and poorer than ever,
+without a feeling almost of dread for both of us. I was twenty-six
+last birthday and he was thirty-three; and there seems less chance now
+than ever of our being married. It is all I can do to keep myself by
+my needle; and his prospects, since he failed in the small stationery
+business three years ago, are worse, if possible, than mine. Not that
+I mind so much for myself; women, in all ways of life, and especially
+in my dressmaking way, learn, I think, to be more patient than men.
+What I dread is Robert’s despondency, and the hard struggle he will
+have in this cruel city to get his bread--let alone making money enough
+to marry me. So little as poor people want to set up in housekeeping
+and be happy together, it seems hard that they can’t get it when they
+are honest and hearty, and willing to work. The clergyman said in his
+sermon, last Sunday evening, that all things were ordered for the best,
+and we are all put into the stations in life that are properest for us.
+I suppose he was right, being a very clever gentleman who fills the
+church to crowding; but I think I should have understood him better
+if I had not been very hungry at the time, in consequence of my own
+station in life being nothing but Plain Needlewoman.
+
+March 4th. Mary Mallinson came down to my room to take a cup of tea
+with me. I read her bits of Robert’s letter, to show her that if she
+has her troubles, I have mine too; but I could not succeed in cheering
+her. She says she is born to misfortune, and that, as long back as
+she can remember, she has never had the least morsel of luck to be
+thankful for. I told her to go and look in my glass, and to say if
+she had nothing to be thankful for then; for Mary is a very pretty
+girl, and would look still prettier if she could be more cheerful and
+dress neater. However, my compliment did no good. She rattled her spoon
+impatiently in her tea-cup, and said, “If I was only as good a hand at
+needlework as you are, Anne, I would change faces with the ugliest girl
+in London.” “Not you!” says I, laughing. She looked at me for a moment,
+and shook her head, and was out of the room before I could get up and
+stop her. She always runs off in that way when she is going to cry,
+having a kind of pride about letting other people see her in tears.
+
+March 5th.--A fright about Mary. I had not seen her all day, as she
+does not work at the same place where I do; and in the evening she
+never came down to have tea with me, or sent me word to go to her. So
+just before I went to bed I ran up-stairs to say good-night. She did
+not answer when I knocked; and when I stepped softly into the room I
+saw her in bed, asleep, with her work not half done, lying about the
+room in the untidiest way. There was nothing remarkable in that, and I
+was just going away on tip-toe, when a tiny bottle and wine-glass on
+the chair by her bedside caught my eye. I thought she was ill and had
+been taking physic, and looked at the bottle. It was marked in large
+letters, “Laudanum--Poison.” My heart gave a jump as if it was going to
+fly out of me. I laid hold of her with both hands, and shook her with
+all my might. She was sleeping heavily, and woke slowly, as it seemed
+to me--but still she did wake. I tried to pull her out of bed, having
+heard that people ought to be always walked up and down when they have
+taken laudanum; but she resisted, and pushed me away violently.
+
+“Anne!” says she in a fright. “For gracious sake, what’s come to you!
+Are you out of your senses?”
+
+“O, Mary! Mary!” says I, holding up the bottle before her, “If I hadn’t
+come in when I did----” And I laid hold of her to shake her again.
+
+She looked puzzled at me for a moment--then smiled (the first time I
+had seen her do so for many a long day)--then put her arms round my
+neck.
+
+“Don’t be frightened about me, Anne,” she says, “I am not worth it, and
+there is no need.”
+
+“No need!” says I, out of breath. “No need, when the bottle has got
+Poison marked on it!”
+
+“Poison, dear, if you take it all,” says Mary looking at me very
+tenderly; “and a night’s rest if you only take a little.”
+
+I watch her for a moment; doubtful whether I ought to believe what she
+said, or to alarm the house. But there was no sleepiness in her eyes,
+and nothing drowsy in her voice; and she sat up in bed quite easily
+without anything to support her.
+
+“You have given me a dreadful fright, Mary,” says I, sitting down by
+her in the chair, and beginning, by this time, to feel rather faint
+after being startled so.
+
+She jumped out of bed to get me a drop of water; and kissed me, and
+said how sorry she was, and how undeserving of so much interest being
+taken in her. At the same time, she tried to possess herself of the
+laudanum-bottle which I still kept cuddled up tight in my own hands.
+
+“No,” says I. “You have got into a low-spirited despairing way. I won’t
+trust you with it.”
+
+“I am afraid I can’t do without it,” says Mary, in her usual quiet,
+hopeless voice. “What with work that I can’t get through as I ought,
+and troubles that I can’t help thinking of, sleep won’t come to me
+unless I take a few drops out of that bottle. Don’t keep it away from
+me, Anne; it’s the only thing in the world that makes me forget myself.”
+
+“Forget yourself!” says I. “You have no right to talk in that way,
+at your age. There’s something horrible in the notion of a girl of
+eighteen sleeping with a bottle of laudanum by her bedside every night.
+We all of us have our troubles. Haven’t I got mine?”
+
+“You can do twice the work I can, twice as well as me,” says Mary. “You
+are never scolded and rated at for awkwardness with your needle; and I
+always am. You can pay for your room every week; and I am three weeks
+in debt for mine.”
+
+“A little more practice,” says I, “and a little more courage, and you
+will soon do better. You have got all your life before you--”
+
+“I wish I was at the end of it,” says she, breaking in. “I’m alone in
+the world, and my life’s no good to me.”
+
+“You ought to be ashamed of yourself for saying so,” says I. “Haven’t
+you got me for a friend. Didn’t I take a fancy to you when first you
+left your stepmother, and came to lodge in this house? And haven’t I
+been sisters with you ever since? Suppose you are alone in the world,
+am I much better off? I’m an orphan, like you. I’ve almost as many
+things in pawn as you; and, if your pockets are empty, mine have only
+got nine-pence in them, to last me for all the rest of the week.”
+
+“Your father and mother were honest people,” says Mary, obstinately.
+“My mother ran away from home, and died in a hospital. My father was
+always drunk, and always beating me. My stepmother is as good as dead,
+for all she cares about me. My only brother is thousands of miles away
+in foreign parts, and never writes to me, and never helps me with a
+farthing. My sweetheart--”
+
+She stopped, and the red flew into her face. I knew, if she went on
+that way, she would only get to the saddest part of her sad story, and
+give both herself and me unnecessary pain.
+
+“My sweetheart is too poor to marry me, Mary,” I said. “So I’m not so
+much to be envied, even there. But let’s give over disputing which is
+worst off. Lie down in bed, and let me tuck you up. I’ll put a stitch
+or two into that work of yours while you go to sleep.”
+
+Instead of doing what I told her, she burst out crying (being very like
+a child in some of her ways), and hugged me so tight round the neck,
+that she quite hurt me. I let her go on, till she had worn herself out,
+and was obliged to lie down. Even then, her last few words, before she
+dropped off to sleep, were such as I was half-sorry, half-frightened,
+to hear.
+
+“I won’t plague you long, Anne,” she said. “I haven’t courage to go
+out of the world as you seem to fear I shall. But I began my life
+wretchedly, and wretchedly I am sentenced to end it.”
+
+It was of no use lecturing her again, for she closed her eyes. I tucked
+her up as neatly as I could, and put her petticoat over her; for the
+bed-clothes were scanty, and her hands felt cold. She looked so pretty
+and delicate as she fell asleep, that it quite made my heart ache
+to see her, after such talk as we had held together. I just waited
+long enough to be quite sure that she was in the land of dreams; then
+emptied the horrible laudanum-bottle into the grate, took up her
+half-done work, and, going out softly, left her for that night.
+
+March 6th. Sent off a long letter to Robert, begging and entreating
+him not to be so down-hearted, and not to leave America without
+making another effort. I told him I could bear any trial except the
+wretchedness of seeing him come back a helpless, broken-down man,
+trying uselessly to begin life again, when too old for a change. It
+was not till after I had posted my own letter, and read over parts of
+Robert’s again, that the suspicion suddenly floated across me, for the
+first time, that he might have sailed for England immediately after
+writing to me. There were expressions in the letter which seemed to
+indicate that he had some such headlong project in his mind. And
+yet, surely if it were so, I ought to have noticed them at the first
+reading. I can only hope I am wrong in my present interpretation of
+much of what he has written to me--hope it earnestly for both our sakes.
+
+This has been a doleful day for me. I have been uneasy about Robert,
+and uneasy about Mary. My mind is haunted by those last words of hers:
+“I began my life wretchedly, and wretchedly I am sentenced to end it.”
+Her usual melancholy way of talking never produced the same impression
+on me that I feel now. Perhaps the discovery of the laudanum-bottle is
+the cause of this. I would give many a hard day’s work to know what to
+do for Mary’s good. My heart warmed to her when we first met in the
+same lodging-house, two years ago; and, although I am not one of the
+over-affectionate sort myself, I feel as if I could go to the world’s
+end to serve that girl. Yet, strange to say, if I was asked why I was
+so fond of her, I don’t think I should know how to answer the question.
+
+March 7th. I am almost ashamed to write it down, even in this journal,
+which no eyes but mine ever look on; yet I must honestly confess to
+myself, that here I am, at nearly one in the morning, sitting up in
+a state of serious uneasiness, because Mary has not yet come home. I
+walked with her, this morning, to the place where she works, and tried
+to lead her into talking of the relations she has got who are still
+alive. My motive in doing this was to see if she dropped anything
+in the course of conversation which might suggest a way of helping
+her interests with those who are bound to give her all reasonable
+assistance. But the little I could get her to say to me led to nothing.
+Instead of answering my questions about her stepmother and her brother,
+she persisted at first, in the strangest way, in talking of her father,
+who was dead and gone, and of one Noah Truscott, who had been the
+worst of all the bad friends he had, and had taught him to drink and
+game. When I did get her to speak of her brother, she only knew that
+he had gone out to a place called Assam, where they grew tea. How he
+was doing, or whether he was there still, she did not seem to know,
+never having heard a word from him for years and years past. As for her
+stepmother, Mary, not unnaturally, flew into a passion the moment I
+spoke of her. She keeps an eating-house at Hammersmith, and could have
+given Mary good employment in it; but she seems always to have hated
+her, and to have made her life so wretched with abuse and ill-usage,
+that she had no refuge left but to go away from home, and do her best
+to make a living for herself. Her husband (Mary’s father) appears to
+have behaved badly to her; and, after his death, she took the wicked
+course of revenging herself on her step-daughter. I felt, after this,
+that it was impossible Mary could go back, and that it was the hard
+necessity of her position, as it is of mine, that she should struggle
+on to make a decent livelihood without assistance from any of her
+relations. I confessed as much as this to her; but I added that I would
+try to get her employment with the persons for whom I work, who pay
+higher wages, and show a little more indulgence to those under them,
+than the people to whom she is now obliged to look for support. I spoke
+much more confidently than I felt, about being able to do this; and
+left her, as I thought, in better spirits than usual. She promised to
+be back to-night to tea, at nine o’clock, and now it is nearly one in
+the morning, and she is not home yet. If it was any other girl I should
+not feel uneasy, for I should make up my mind that there was extra
+work to be done in a hurry, and that they were keeping her late, and I
+should go to bed. But Mary is so unfortunate in everything that happens
+to her, and her own melancholy talk about herself keeps hanging on my
+mind so, that I have fears on her account which would not distress me
+about any one else. It seems inexcusably silly to think such a thing,
+much more to write it down; but I have a kind of nervous dread upon me
+that some accident--
+
+What does that loud knocking at the street door mean? And those voices
+and heavy footsteps outside? Some lodger who has lost his key, I
+suppose, And yet, my heart----What a coward I have become all of a
+sudden!
+
+More knocking and louder voices. I must run to the door and see what it
+is. O, Mary! Mary! I hope I am not going to have another fright about
+you; but I feel sadly like it.
+
+March 8th.
+
+March 9th.
+
+March 10th.
+
+March 11th. O, me! all the troubles I have ever had in my life are as
+nothing to the trouble I am in now. For three days I have not been able
+to write a single line in this journal, which I have kept so regularly,
+ever since I was a girl. For three days I have not once thought of
+Robert--I, who am always thinking of him at other times. My poor, dear,
+unhappy Mary, the worst I feared for you on that night when I sat up
+alone was far below the dreadful calamity that has really happened. How
+can I write about it, with my eyes full of tears and my hand all of a
+tremble? I don’t even know why I am sitting down at my desk now, unless
+it is habit that keeps me to my old everyday task, in spite of all the
+grief and fear which seem to unfit me entirely for performing it.
+
+The people of the house were asleep and lazy on that dreadful night,
+and I was the first to open the door. Never, never, could I describe
+in writing, or even say in plain talk, though it is so much easier,
+what I felt when I saw two policemen come in, carrying between them
+what seemed to me to be a dead girl, and that girl Mary! I caught hold
+of her and gave a scream that must have alarmed the whole house; for,
+frightened people came crowding down-stairs in their night-dresses.
+There was a dreadful confusion and noise of loud talking, but I heard
+nothing, and saw nothing, till I had got her into my room, and laid on
+my bed. I stooped down, frantic-like, to kiss her, and saw an awful
+mark of a blow on her left temple, and felt, at the same time, a feeble
+flutter of her breath on my cheek. The discovery that she was not dead
+seemed to give me back my senses again. I told one of the policemen
+where the nearest doctor was to be found, and sat down by the bedside
+while he was gone, and bathed her poor head with cold water. She never
+opened her eyes, or moved, or spoke; but she breathed, and that was
+enough for me, because it was enough for life.
+
+The policeman left in the room was a big, thick-voiced, pompous man,
+with a horrible unfeeling pleasure in hearing himself talk before an
+assembly of frightened, silent people. He told us how he had found her,
+as if he had been telling a story in a taproom, and began with saying,
+“I don’t think the young woman was drunk.” Drunk! My Mary, who might
+have been a born lady for all the spirits she ever touched--drunk! I
+could have struck the man for uttering the word, with her lying, poor
+suffering angel, so white and still and helpless before him. As it
+was, I gave him a look; but he was too stupid to understand it, and
+went droning on, saying the same thing over and over again in the same
+words. And yet the story of how they found her was, like all the sad
+stories I have ever heard told in real life, so very, very short. They
+had just seen her lying along on the kerb-stone, a few streets off, and
+had taken her to the station-house. There she had been searched, and
+one of my cards, that I give to ladies who promise me employment, had
+been found in her pocket, and so they had brought her to our house.
+This was all the man really had to tell. There was nobody near her when
+she was found, and no evidence to show how the blow on her temple had
+been inflicted.
+
+What a time it was before the doctor came, and how dreadful to hear him
+say, after he had looked at her, that he was afraid all the medical men
+in the world could be of no use here! He could not get her to swallow
+anything; and the more he tried to bring her back to her senses, the
+less chance there seemed of his succeeding. He examined the blow on her
+temple, and said he thought she must have fallen down in a fit of some
+sort, and struck her head against the pavement, and so have given her
+brain what he was afraid was a fatal shake. I asked what was to be done
+if she showed any return to sense in the night. He said, “Send for me
+directly;” and stopped for a little while afterwards stroking her head
+gently with his hand, and whispering to himself, “Poor girl, so young
+and so pretty!” I had felt, some minutes before, as if I could have
+struck the policeman; and I felt now as if I could have thrown my arms
+round the doctor’s neck and kissed him. I did put out my hand, when he
+took up his hat, and he shook it in the friendliest way. “Don’t hope,
+my dear,” he said, and went out.
+
+The rest of the lodgers followed him, all silent and shocked, except
+the inhuman wretch who owns the house, and lives in idleness on the
+high rents he wrings from poor people like us. “She’s three weeks in my
+debt,” says he, with a frown and an oath. “Where the devil is my money
+to come from now?” Brute! brute!
+
+I had a long cry alone with her that seemed to ease my heart a little.
+She was not the least changed for the better when I had wiped away
+the tears, and could see her clearly again. I took up her right hand,
+which lay nearest to me. It was tight clenched. I tried to unclasp the
+fingers, and succeeded after a little time. Something dark fell out of
+the palm of her hand as I straightened it. I picked the thing up, and
+smoothed it out, and saw that it was an end of a man’s cravat.
+
+A very old, rotten, dingy strip of black silk, with thin lilac lines,
+all blurred and deadened with dirt, running across and across the stuff
+in a sort of trellis-work pattern. The small end of the cravat was
+hemmed in the usual way, but the other end was all jagged, as if the
+morsel then in my hands had been torn off violently from the rest of
+the stuff. A chill ran all over me as I looked at it; for that poor,
+stained, crumpled end of a cravat seemed to be saying to me, as though
+it had been in plain words, “If she dies, she has come to her death by
+foul means, and I am the witness of it.”
+
+I had been frightened enough before, lest she should die suddenly
+and quietly without my knowing it, while we were alone together; but
+I got into a perfect agony now for fear this last worst affliction
+should take me by surprise. I don’t suppose five minutes passed all
+that woeful night through, without my getting up and putting my cheek
+close to her mouth, to feel if the faint breaths still fluttered out
+of it. They came and went just the same as at first, though the fright
+I was in often made me fancy they were stilled for ever. Just as the
+church clocks were striking four, I was startled by seeing the room
+door open. It was only Dusty Sal (as they call her in the house) the
+maid-of-all-work. She was wrapped up in the blanket off her bed; her
+hair was all tumbled over her face; and her eyes were heavy with sleep,
+as she came up to the bedside where I was sitting.
+
+“I’ve two hours good before I begin to work,” says she, in her hoarse,
+drowsy voice, “and I’ve come to sit up and take my turn at watching
+her. You lay down and get some sleep on the rug. Here’s my blanket for
+you--I don’t mind the cold--it will keep me awake.”
+
+“You are very kind--very, very kind and thoughtful, Sally,” says I,
+“but I am too wretched in my mind to want sleep, or rest, or to do
+anything but wait where I am, and try and hope for the best.”
+
+“Then I’ll wait, too,” says Sally. “I must do something; if there’s
+nothing to do but waiting, I’ll wait.”
+
+And she sat down opposite me at the foot of the bed, and drew the
+blanket close round her with a shiver.
+
+“After working so hard as you do, I’m sure you must want all the little
+rest you can get,” says I.
+
+“Excepting only you,” says Sally, putting her heavy arm very clumsily,
+but very gently at the same time, round Mary’s feet, and looking hard
+at the pale, still face on the pillow. “Excepting you, she’s the only
+soul in this house as never swore at me, or give me a hard word that
+I can remember. When you made puddings on Sundays, and give her half,
+she always give me a bit. The rest of ’em calls me Dusty Sal. Excepting
+only you, again, she always called me Sally, as if she knowed me in a
+friendly way. I ain’t no good here, but I ain’t no harm neither; and I
+shall take my turn at the sitting up--that’s what I shall do!”
+
+She nestled her head down close at Mary’s feet as she spoke those
+words, and said no more. I once or twice thought she had fallen asleep,
+but whenever I looked at her, her heavy eyes were always wide open.
+She never changed her position an inch till the church clocks struck
+six; then she gave one little squeeze to Mary’s feet with her arm, and
+shuffled out of the room without a word. A minute or two after, I heard
+her down below, lighting the kitchen fire just as usual.
+
+A little later, the doctor stepped over before his breakfast time, to
+see if there had been any change in the night. He only shook his head
+when he looked at her, as if there was no hope. Having nobody else to
+consult that I could put trust in, I showed him the end of the cravat,
+and told him of the dreadful suspicion that had arisen in my mind, when
+I found it in her hand.
+
+“You must keep it carefully, and produce it at the inquest,” he said.
+“I don’t know though, that it is likely to lead to anything. The bit
+of stuff may have been lying on the pavement near her, and her hand
+may have unconsciously clutched it when she fell. Was she subject to
+fainting fits?”
+
+“Not more so, sir, than other young girls who are hard-worked and
+anxious, and weakly from poor living,” I answered.
+
+“I can’t say that she may not have got that blow from a fall,” the
+doctor went on, looking at her temple again. “I can’t say that it
+presents any positive appearance of having been inflicted by another
+person. It will be important, however, to ascertain what state of
+health she was in last night. Have you any idea where she was yesterday
+evening?”
+
+I told him where she was employed at work, and said I imagined she must
+have been kept there later than usual.
+
+“I shall pass the place this morning,” said the doctor, “in going
+my rounds among my patients, and I’ll just step in and make some
+inquiries.”
+
+I thanked him, and we parted. Just as he was closing the door, he
+looked in again.
+
+“Was she your sister?” he asked.
+
+“No, sir, only my dear friend.”
+
+He said nothing more; but I heard him sigh, as he shut the door softly.
+Perhaps he once had a sister of his own, and lost her? Perhaps she was
+like Mary in the face?
+
+The doctor was hours gone away. I began to feel unspeakably forlorn
+and helpless. So much so, as even to wish selfishly that Robert might
+really have sailed from America, and might get to London in time to
+assist and console me. No living creature came into the room but Sally.
+The first time she brought me some tea; the second and third times she
+only looked in to see if there was any change, and glanced her eye
+towards the bed. I had never known her so silent before; it seemed
+almost as if this dreadful accident had struck her dumb. I ought to
+have spoken to her, perhaps, but there was something in her face that
+daunted me; and, besides, the fever of anxiety I was in began to dry up
+my lips as if they would never be able to shape any words again. I was
+still tormented by that frightful apprehension of the past night, that
+she would die without my knowing it--die without saying one word to
+clear up the awful mystery of this blow, and set the suspicions at rest
+for ever which I still felt whenever my eyes fell on the end of the old
+cravat.
+
+At last the doctor came back.
+
+“I think you may safely clear your mind of any doubts to which that
+bit of stuff may have given rise,” he said. “She was, as you supposed,
+detained late by her employers, and she fainted in the work-room. They
+most unwisely and unkindly let her go home alone, without giving her
+any stimulant, as soon as she came to her senses again. Nothing is
+more probable, under these circumstances, than that she should faint
+a second time on her way here. A fall on the pavement, without any
+friendly arm to break it, might have produced even a worse injury than
+the injury we see. I believe that the only ill-usage to which the poor
+girl was exposed was the neglect she met with in the work-room.”
+
+“You speak very reasonably, I own, sir,” said I, not yet quite
+convinced. “Still, perhaps she may----”
+
+“My poor girl, I told you not to hope,” said the doctor, interrupting
+me. He went to Mary, and lifted up her eyelids, and looked at her
+eyes while he spoke, then added: “If you still doubt how she came by
+that blow, do not encourage the idea that any words of hers will ever
+enlighten you. She will never speak again.”
+
+“Not dead! O, sir, don’t say she’s dead!”
+
+“She is dead to pain and sorrow--dead to speech and recognition. There
+is more animation in the life of the feeblest insect that flies, than
+in the life that is left in her. When you look at her now, try to think
+that she is in Heaven. That is the best comfort I can give you, after
+telling the hard truth.”
+
+I did not believe him. I could not believe him. So long as she breathed
+at all, so long I was resolved to hope. Soon after the doctor was gone,
+Sally came in again, and found me listening (if I may call it so) at
+Mary’s lips. She went to where my little hand-glass hangs against the
+wall, took it down, and gave it to me.
+
+“See if the breath marks it,” she said.
+
+Yes; her breath did mark it, but very faintly. Sally cleaned the
+glass with her apron, and gave it back to me. As she did so, she half
+stretched out her hand to Mary’s face, but drew it in again suddenly,
+as if she was afraid of soiling Mary’s delicate skin with her hard,
+horny fingers. Going out, she stopped at the foot of the bed, and
+scraped away a little patch of mud that was on one of Mary’s shoes.
+
+“I always used to clean ’em for her,” said Sally, “to save her hands
+from getting blacked. May I take ’em off now, and clean ’em again?”
+
+I nodded my head, for my heart was too heavy to speak. Sally took the
+shoes off with a slow, awkward tenderness, and went out.
+
+An hour or more must have passed, when, putting the glass over her
+lips again, I saw no mark on it. I held it closer and closer. I dulled
+it accidentally with my own breath, and cleaned it. I held it over
+her again. O, Mary, Mary, the doctor was right! I ought to have only
+thought of you in Heaven!
+
+Dead, without a word, without a sign,--without even a look to tell the
+true story of the blow that killed her! I could not call to anybody, I
+could not cry, I could not so much as put the glass down and give her
+a kiss for the last time. I don’t know how long I had sat there with
+my eyes burning, and my hands deadly cold, when Sally came in with the
+shoes cleaned, and carried carefully in her apron for fear of a soil
+touching them. At the sight of that----
+
+I can write no more. My tears drop so fast on the paper that I can see
+nothing.
+
+March 12th. She died on the afternoon of the eighth. On the morning
+of the ninth, I wrote, as in duty bound, to her stepmother, at
+Hammersmith. There was no answer. I wrote again: my letter was returned
+to me this morning, unopened. For all that woman cares, Mary might be
+buried with a pauper’s funeral. But this shall never be, if I pawn
+everything about me, down to the very gown that is on my back. The bare
+thought of Mary being buried by the workhouse gave me the spirit to dry
+my eyes, and go to the undertaker’s, and tell him how I was placed. I
+said, if he would get me an estimate of all that would have to be paid,
+from first to last, for the cheapest decent funeral that could be had,
+I would undertake to raise the money. He gave me the estimate, written
+in this way, like a common bill:
+
+  A walking funeral complete       1  13  8
+  Vestry                           0   4  4
+  Rector                           0   4  4
+  Clerk                            0   1  0
+  Sexton                           0   1  0
+  Beadle                           0   1  0
+  Bell                             0   1  0
+  Six feet of ground               0   2  0
+                                  ---------
+                      Total       £2   8  4
+
+If I had the heart to give any thought to it, I should be inclined to
+wish that the Church could afford to do without so many small charges
+for burying poor people, to whose friends even shillings are of
+consequence. But it is useless to complain; the money must be raised
+at once. The charitable doctor--a poor man himself, or he would not be
+living in our neighbourhood--has subscribed ten shillings towards the
+expenses; and the coroner, when the inquest was over, added five more.
+Perhaps others may assist me. If not, I have fortunately clothes and
+furniture of my own to pawn. And I must set about parting with them
+without delay; for the funeral is to be to-morrow, the thirteenth. The
+funeral--Mary’s funeral! It is well that the straits and difficulties I
+am in, keep my mind on the stretch. If I had leisure to grieve, where
+should I find the courage to face to-morrow?
+
+Thank God, they did not want me at the inquest. The verdict given--with
+the doctor, the policeman, and two persons from the place where she
+worked, for witnesses--was Accidental Death. The end of the cravat was
+produced, and the coroner said that it was certainly enough to suggest
+suspicion; but the jury, in the absence of any positive evidence, held
+to the doctor’s notion that she had fainted and fallen down, and so
+got the blow on her temple. They reproved the people where Mary worked
+for letting her go home alone, without so much as a drop of brandy to
+support her, after she had fallen into a swoon from exhaustion before
+their eyes. The coroner added, on his own account, that he thought the
+reproof was thoroughly deserved. After that, the cravat-end was given
+back to me, by my own desire; the police saying that they could make
+no investigations with such a slight clue to guide them. They may think
+so, and the coroner, and doctor, and jury may think so; but, in spite
+of all that has passed, I am now more firmly persuaded than ever that
+there is some dreadful mystery in connection with that blow on my poor
+lost Mary’s temple which has yet to be revealed, and which may come to
+be discovered through this very fragment of a cravat that I found in
+her hand. I cannot give any good reason for why I think so; but I know
+that if I had been one of the jury at the inquest, nothing should have
+induced me to consent to such a verdict as Accidental Death.
+
+
+
+
+BIRD HISTORY.
+
+
+A certain learned physician, named Peter Belon, a native of the town
+of Le Mans, the capital of what was then the province of Maine, but is
+now the department of the river Sarthe, in France, bethought him that
+very little was known in his native country at the time he lived--the
+middle of the sixteenth century--of Natural History; and, being moved
+by the example of Aristotle (at the trifling distance of nearly
+nineteen hundred years) he resolved, having been a great traveller
+and eke a great observer (two persons not always united) to give his
+fellow-citizens and the world, the benefit of his experience and
+opportunities, and take away the reproach which lay like a shadow over
+the land.
+
+Prepared by much study for the cultivation of his favourite pursuits,
+he left France in the year fifteen hundred and forty-seven, being
+at that time twenty-nine years of age, and travelled successively
+through Germany, Bohemia, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Palestine, and Asia
+Minor, returning to Paris after three years absence with a large
+and valuable collection of plants and specimens of natural history,
+which he then occupied himself in arranging, preparatory to the
+publication of the knowledge he had acquired. The first work which
+he produced was a history of strange fishes and serpents, under the
+title “De Aquatilibus;” but, tempting as the subject is, I do not at
+present intend to examine it, having another of his productions before
+me, which (from the fact of its being a borrowed book, and liable,
+therefore, to sudden seizure by its owner, who otherwise would never
+get it back), more immediately claims my attention.
+
+This coveted volume is the celebrated History of the Nature of Birds,
+with their descriptions and lively portraits, taken from Nature, and
+written in seven books, and is, perhaps, the principal work on which
+is founded Peter Belon’s claim to be considered the father of modern
+natural history. In the preface to it he promises--and he keeps his
+word far better than might have been expected--that nothing shall
+appear in these books which is not perfectly true; there shall be no
+false descriptions or portraits of suppositious animals; nothing,
+in short, that is not to be found in nature. Appropriate to the
+publication of a work on ornithology, Peter Belon caused this volume
+to be printed, in the year fifteen hundred and fifty-five, by William
+Cavellat, in front of the college of Cambray, in Paris, at the sign
+of the Fat Hen (a sure sign that Peter Belon came from Le Mans, a
+city famous for its poultry); and that there should be no doubt of
+the latter fact, the title-page also bore the living portraiture of
+a domestic fowl in very high condition, enclosed within a circle, on
+the outer rim of which was inscribed the legend “Gallina in pingui,”
+an inscription that need not again be translated. A portrait of Peter
+Belon, as he appeared to the justly-admiring world, at the age of
+thirty-six, also embellished the volume. The learned physician appears
+to have been a man with a good, sensible, honest countenance, wearing a
+large Crimean beard, and having a cap on his head, the shape of which,
+fortunately, has not yet been adopted for the British army.
+
+Like most other old authors, Peter Belon takes some time before he can
+get fairly under weigh. There are, first, the dedication to the most
+Christian king--Henry the Second of the name--whose humble scholar the
+author declares himself to be. Then follows a homily addressed to the
+reader, chiefly for the purpose of assuring him that, in the lively
+portraits of the birds which he presents (Ah, could we but reproduce
+some of them!), he is not practising on his credulity, but that, such
+as he represents them, the fowls are themselves, and that, where he
+cannot get an authentic likeness he has refused to invent one.
+
+The royal privilege to publish, sealed with yellow wax--like a bottle
+of good old wine--comes next, and finally appear several copies of
+verses in praise of the author, by certain of his friends, which
+latter had better be skipped, that Peter Belon’s volume, which has in
+it a great deal that is worth reading, may unfold its pages for our
+gratification. It is not, however, a resumé of the work, or anything
+like it, that I intend to make, but simply a dip into it--here and
+there--extending some of the quaint fancies, curious digressions, and
+sound opinions with which it is interspersed, always desiring our
+reader to bear in mind that the author was a physician as well as a
+naturalist.
+
+A word or two, before he fairly enters on his theme, may be allowed
+him to describe the pains he was in the habit of taking to obtain
+correct information. “It was my custom,” he says, “during my sojourn
+in Padua, to go down the Brenta every Thursday evening, voyaging
+all night in order to reach Venice on Friday morning, and to remain
+there on Saturday and Sunday, as much for the convenience of seeing
+birds as well as fishes; and after having conferred with fowlers and
+fishermen, to return from thence on Sunday evening, thus losing no time
+by taking the night-boat, and being ready to continue my studies on
+Monday morning. During which time, on the aforesaid days of Friday and
+Saturday, there was not a single fowler or fisherman who did not bring
+to show me every rare creature he had been able to procure.”
+
+Commencing, then, “ab ovo,” Peter Belon discusses the properties of
+eggs; but into the processes of fecundation and hatching which he
+describes, I do not propose to enter, the gastronomic view of the
+question presenting more novelty. After apologising for the puerility
+of the subject, he tells us that in his time the French way of eating
+eggs (they have six hundred and eighty-five ways now, if the Almanach
+des Gourmands speaks sooth) was by breaking them at the small end
+and carefully replacing the shell when emptied into the platter;
+while the Germans, on the other hand--reminding us of Blefuscu and
+Lilliput--opened their eggs at the side and finished by smashing the
+shell; in which latter practice, says Belon, they followed the example
+of the ancients, who held it a thing of evil augury to leave the shells
+unbroken. Belon then proceeds to discourse on the numerous varieties
+of eggs, considering those of pigeons, ostriches, pea-hens, geese, and
+swans are ill-flavoured and indigestible,--not objecting to the eggs of
+the tortoise or turtle,--but giving the preference, like a person of
+taste, to those of the domestic fowl, which, he says, “are supposed by
+many in France to assist greatly in prolonging life;” and he instances
+the case of Pope Paul the Third, who used, with that end in view, to
+eat two new-laid eggs for breakfast every morning. As to their shape,
+he remarks that long eggs are supposed to be much better eating than
+round ones; but without insisting on this point, he has no hesitation
+in declaring that all are highly invigorating, as truffles are, and
+artichokes, and raw oysters. Artichokes, indeed, were so much esteemed
+in Belon’s time, that “no great nobleman feeling himself unwell would
+finish his dinner without them,”--eating them by way of dessert. Belon
+objects to hard boiled eggs, or such as are too much fried, “on account
+of their engendering bad humours,” but upon poached eggs (œufs pochéz)
+he looks with considerable favour. In all cases he prefers plain boiled
+eggs (time--three minutes and a quarter) to those which are roasted;
+notwithstanding the well-known proverb: “There’s wisdom in the roasting
+of eggs.” The best way of preserving eggs, he says, is to keep them in
+a cool place, bury them in salt, or dip them in brine.
+
+As the chicken issues naturally from the egg, so dining upon the one is
+the regular sequence to breakfasting on the other. The younger your
+pullet, says Belon, the easier it is of digestion, though he allows you
+occasionally to eat an elderly male bird, when prescribed medicinally
+(hormis le coq, qui est souvêt pris pour medicine). “Roasted or grilled
+fowls are generally the most savoury; those which are boiled furnish
+more humid nourishment to the body. The first are eaten hot, the last
+cold.” This rule, however, does not, he tells us, always hold good:
+“Because, if any one writing on the quality of the flesh of birds,
+happened to be in a country where the people fed on a particular
+kind not eaten elsewhere, and a male bird already old and tough were
+offered him (avenait qu’on luy presentast de quelque oyseau des-ia viel
+et endurcy), he ought not to conclude that its flesh is necessarily
+fibrous and hard.” With all respect for the opinion of honest Peter
+Belon, I should be inclined to think that a tough old cock, whatever
+his nation, was somewhat difficult of digestion. I have a very vivid
+recollection of a fowl of this sort at a certain hotel in Abbeville,
+where nothing else was to be had for dinner, which the waiter assured
+me was not to be surpassed in tenderness; a quality he might have
+displayed towards his family when alive, but which certainly did not
+belong to him after he was roasted. It is, perhaps, on the tolerant
+principle of respecting other people’s prejudices (I can account for
+Belon’s conclusion no other way), that he does not exclude even birds
+of prey from good men’s feasts. “We know by experience,” he observes
+(not his own experience, I hope), “what has taken place in Crete, where
+the young ones of the vulture which have fallen from their rocky nests
+near Voulèsmeni, have been proved at least as good eating as a fine
+capon. And although some of the inhabitants (the greater part, I should
+imagine) think that the old birds are not good to eat, because they
+feed on carrion, the fact is otherwise; for good falconers say that
+the hawk, vulture, and falcon are excellent meat, and being roasted
+or boiled, like poultry, are found to be well-tasted and tender.
+(Fancy a tender vulture!) We constantly see, if any of these birds
+kill themselves, or break a limb in hunting game, that the falconers
+do not hesitate to dress them for the table.” In Auvergne, he adds,
+the peasants of the Limagne, and in the mountains, too, eat the flesh
+of the goivan, a species of eagle; so that it may be concluded that
+birds of prey, whether old or young, are tender,--an inference which I
+presume to doubt. One saving clause Peter Belon has, which has at all
+times done good service. If people generally are not in the habit of
+eating kites, owls, and so forth, there are some who do: “tastes merely
+differ”--(les appetits des hommes ne se ressemblent en aucune manière).
+
+The transition is easy from these delicacies to other less questionable
+birds, and the manner of preparing them for the pot or spit; and
+brings Peter Belon to what he evidently likes--a good dinner in a
+general way. “You may talk,” he says, “of Spaniards, Portuguese,
+English, Flemings, Italians, Hungarians, or Germans, but none of them,
+in dinner-giving, come up to the French. The latter begin with meats
+disguised a thousand ways (mille petits desguisements de chair); and
+this first entry, as it is called, consists of what is soft and liquid,
+and ought to be sent in hot, such as soups, fricassees, hashes, and
+salads”! (Hot salads are a rarity now-a-days). The second course is
+roast and boiled, of different kinds of meat, as well of birds as of
+terrestrial animals, “it being well understood that no fish is eaten
+except on fast-days.” The dinner ends with “cold things, such as
+fruits, preparations of milk and sweets.” This is the outline of a
+dinner only; but when Peter Belon enters into a detailed bill of fare,
+the newspaper report of a Lord Mayor’s dinner pales beside it. A few
+of the names of these dishes--as well as they can be translated--are
+worth preserving. What do you think of pilgrim capons--lions--made
+of the white meat of pullets; wild boar venison with chestnuts;
+diamond-pointed jelly; goslings dressed with malvoisie; feet (whose
+feet?) with infernal sauce (pieds à la saulce d’enfer); counterfeit
+sea-hog; laurelled quails; partridges with capers; veal sausages; hop
+salad; chestnut butterflies; golden-backed woodcock pasties; ox-heel
+pasties; plumed peacocks; tipsy cake (gasteaux joyeux); little cabbages
+all hot (petits chouy tous chaulds); and, amongst other varieties,
+pomegranate salad?
+
+In treating of the uses to which birds have been applied, Peter
+Belon does not omit divination. It is pretty clear, however, that
+he has no faith in the auruspices, though he lets them down gently.
+“These soothsayers exercised their mystery in the contemplation of
+the inward parts as well of birds as of other animals, when offered
+up for sacrifice. The question must then be asked, whether, by this
+inspection, they really could foretell the things that were to come,
+and if there were any probability, what they promised turning out true?
+There can be little doubt that this system of divination had a very
+simple origin, beginning by cajoling private persons, and promising
+them what they desired (which is the greatest pleasure men can
+receive), and afterwards, by investing it with a religious character,
+and turning the same to their own profit.” The French soldiers, in
+Belon’s time, imitated the Romans so far as to carry the sacred cock
+with their baggage when they took the field; but it was for a very
+intelligible species of augury,--to know, by his crowing, when the day
+was about to break. Belon had much too good sense to credit either the
+superstitions of the Romans or those of his own day, and was probably
+only restrained by his fear of the Church, from expressing his opinions
+too plainly. Passing from divination to sorcery, he says: “Every
+contemplative man must have had reason to despise the ignorant people
+who believe that sorcerers have the power attributed to them. We have
+seen many condemned to death; but all have been either poor idiots or
+madmen. Now, of two things, one must happen: that if they do mischief,
+it must either be by the employment of some venomous drug put into
+the mouth, or otherwise applied, or by invocations. It is not often
+that one hears of people of quality being accused of sorcery--only the
+poorer sort; and to tell the truth, no man of judgment would apply
+his mind to such absurdities. To prevent the common people from doing
+so, it is the custom once a-week to prohibit them formally. It may
+easily happen that one of this sort, troubled in his wits, should
+fancy incredible things, and even acknowledge to having committed
+them; but we must set this down to the nature of their disease.” In
+this way sensible Peter Belon disposes of the lycanthropists and other
+self-created wizards. On the subject of antipathies, however, he
+entertains a belief that it is reasonable; as in the case of the fox
+and the stork, which are sworn foes, ever since the practical jokes, I
+suppose, which we all know they played on each other.
+
+Being himself a physician, Peter Belon enlarges upon the maladies of
+birds; but he tells us that, with the exception of falcons, which are
+more especially under the care of man, they are their own doctors.
+“The pelican, which builds its nest on the ground, finding its young
+stung by a serpent, weeps bitterly, and piercing its own breast, gives
+its own blood to cure them.” (This is a new reading of the old story).
+“Quails, when they are indisposed, swallow the seeds of hellebore;
+and starlings take hemlock. The herb chélidoine (celandine, from the
+Greek kelidon, a swallow) derives its name from the fact that the
+swallow administers the juice of the plant to her young. The stork
+physics himself with marjoram. Wood pigeons, ravens, blackbirds, jays
+and partridges take laurel; while turtle-doves, pigeons, and cocks
+prescribe bird-weed. Ducks and geese eat sage.” (Sage enters largely
+into the affair, in combination with onions, when ducks and geese are
+eaten). “Cranes and herons employ marsh rushes. Thrushes and many
+smaller birds swallow the seeds of the ivy--which would be hurtful
+diet for man (qui seroit viande mauvaise à l’homme).” Not much worse,
+however, than hellebore or hemlock! But it would seem that the eagle
+family are exempt from the ordinary ailments of birds; for, in speaking
+of the Chrysaëtos, or great royal eagle, Belon tells us: “Eagles never
+change their place of abode, but always return to the same nest. It has
+thus been observed that they are long-lived. But becoming old, the beak
+grows so long that it becomes bent, and prevents the bird from eating,
+so that it dies, not of any malady, or extreme old age, but simply
+because it cannot make use of its beak.” I fear this is not one of the
+facts derived from Belon’s own observation.
+
+Our fashionable ladies have passion for eider-down; but did they ever
+hear that the vulture can supply them with an article quite as soft?
+“Their skin,” says our author, “is almost as thick as that of a kid,
+and under the throat is a spot about the breadth of a palm, where the
+feathers are reddish, like the hair of a calf; and these feathers have
+no quills, any more than those on both sides of the neck and under
+the wings, where the down is so white that it shines like silk. The
+furriers, after removing the large feathers, leave the down, and curry
+the skins for mantles, which are worth a sum of money. In France they
+use them chiefly to place on the stomach (what we call bosom-friends).
+It would scarcely be believed that the vulture’s skin is so stout,
+if one had not seen it. Being in Egypt and on the plains of Arabia
+Deserta, we have noticed that the vultures are large and numerous, and
+the down from a couple of dozen of these would quite suffice for a
+large robe. At Cairo, on the Bezestein, where merchandise is exposed
+for sale, the traveller may obtain silken dresses lined with the skins
+of vultures, both black and white.”
+
+Belon was a great observer of all the birds of prey, and appears to
+have taken many notes of their habits while living near the Monts
+d’Or, in Auvergne, under the protection of M. Duprat, the Bishop of
+Clermont. It was there he learnt the fact about the peasantry eating
+the goivan, called also the boudrée, which he thus describes: “There is
+not a peasant in the Limagne (a great plain) of Auvergne who does not
+know the goivan, and how to capture him with traps baited with frogs,
+or with lime, but more commonly with snares. He is taken principally in
+the winter, when he is very good to eat, for he is so fat that no other
+bird comes near him in that respect. The peasants lard or boil him, and
+find his flesh quite as good as that of a hen. This eagle eats rats,
+mice, frogs, lizards, snails, caterpillars, and sometimes serpents.”
+
+That there may be no doubt about the last-named viand being food for
+eagles, one of Peter Belon’s lively portraitures follows the statement,
+in which a goivan is depicted in the act of dining on a serpent,
+twisted into a figure of eight (as, well he might be), and a number
+of astonished frogs and fishes scurrying away for dear life,--all
+save one philosophical member of the tadpole family, who, sitting on
+the tumultuous waves of an adjacent ditch, calmly contemplates the
+scene. It is observable throughout the plates in Belon’s work that the
+smaller quadrupeds endure the infliction of being devoured alive with
+far greater resignation than the Reptilia. I have before me at this
+moment the portrait of a rabbit, on whose back a buzzard is standing as
+if in the act of going to sing, while the long-eared animal on which
+he has pounced seems to apprehend his fate no more than if he were a
+music-stand. A mouse in the claws of a speckled magpie, puts on, in
+another plate, an air of equal indifference.
+
+Amongst the birds of prey known to the French villagers--and to their
+cost--is one called by the singular name of White John (Jan le Blanc),
+or The Bird of St. Martin,--but why the latter name was bestowed on
+it, Belon is at a loss to discover. The first is obvious enough, for
+its belly and part of its tail are of spotless white. This fellow is
+very daring, and carries off fowls and rabbits from under the eyes of
+the owners; he feeds largely, too, upon partridges and all the smaller
+birds, so that he is not a Cheap John, at all events. But Belon has
+one comfort: White John has a natural antagonist in the Hobby-hawk,
+and the way they fight in the air till they tumble entangled to the
+ground and are taken, is quite a pleasant thing to see (moult plaisant
+à voir). This combat is not depicted; but on the next page there is a
+striking delineation of the manner in which a falconer lures a bird
+of prey. He does it in this wise: a hawk having caught a partridge,
+stands on its back in the air, quietly devouring it, and the cunning
+fowler takes this opportunity of approaching with the leg of another
+bird in his hand, which he offers on his knees to the hawk, in the
+expectation, apparently, that the greedy bird of prey will give up
+the whole for a part. Of the share which the falconer’s dog has in
+the transaction, I say nothing; because, though in the foreground of
+the picture, he is not a quarter the size of the victim partridge. It
+must be confessed that Belon’s descriptions are more satisfactory than
+the artist’s illustrations. This remark, however, does not apply to
+the actual portraits of the birds, which are in most instances very
+accurate. Nothing, for instance, can be better done than the Royal
+Kite, which some in France call Huo, and others Escoufle. This bird,
+being a lover of carrion, is protected; so much so, that “in England a
+fine is imposed on those who kill him.” Belon records a pleasant piece
+of pastime which this kite affords the infidels:
+
+“The Turks who live at Constantinople take pleasure in throwing lumps
+of raw meat into the air, which the kites pounce upon so rapidly that
+they seize and carry it off before it can fall to the ground.”
+
+The Venetian nobles amuse themselves differently--not with kites,
+but cormorants. When the weather is calm, they go out on the lagoons
+in light boots, two or three dozen in company, each boat being rowed
+by six men, and pulled very swiftly. Having surrounded the cormorant
+(like French huntsmen with a fox, to prevent him from getting away and
+giving them a run), he cannot rise in the air (why not?), but dives
+under the water, and every time he shows his head above the surface,
+the noblemen let fly at him with their cross-bows, till at last he is
+thoroughly done up, is half-suffocated, and gives in. “It is a fine
+sight to behold this sport (c’est un beau spectacle de voir un tel
+deduit), and also is to see a cormorant having caught a tolerably-sized
+eel, which he tries to swallow, but has to fight a long time with
+it before he can get it down.” The cormorants themselves are, oddly
+enough, not thought good eating by the common people, who say of them
+that they are “a dish for the devil” (qui voudroit jestoyer le diable,
+il luy faudroit doñer de tels oyseaux); but Belon does not think them
+so bad as they say (toute fois ne sont si mauvais qu’on crië).
+
+The stork, unfortunately, did not, when Belon flourished, enjoy the
+same immunity; for though he admits that the Romans despised them at
+table, he says, “now they are looked upon as a royal dish.” He moreover
+tells us that the gizzard of a stork is an antidote to poison, and a
+remedy against squinting (le gesier de la cigogne est bon contre les
+venins et qui en aura mangé ne sera lousche en sa vie)! It appears also
+that even the ostrich, which can digest iron, is itself digested by
+Libyan gastronomers, who eat the flesh and sell the feathers.
+
+This tendency to discover what birds are most eatable, is manifested
+throughout the volume of Peter Belon. Arriving at the noble Alectrion
+or Rooster of the United States, he cites the following recipe, from
+Dioscorides, for the concoction of cock-broth. “Take a fine strong old
+bird, and having properly trussed him, stuff him well with roots of
+fern, the seed of chartamus (whatever that may be), salt of mercury,
+and soldanella (a purgative sea-weed), and, having sewn him up, boil
+him well down.” A potage this, which bears some resemblance to “the
+sillakickaby of the ancients,” described in Peregrine Pickle, and, I
+should think, nearly as agreeable.
+
+The majority of the birds in Belon’s book are accurately described and
+too well-known to afford much opportunity for quoting from what he says
+of their forms and habits, but now and then we meet with a rara avis.
+Such, for instance is the “Gellinote de bois” (Gelinotte) which, though
+still found in the Ardennes, and occasionally a visitor to Monsieurs
+Chevet’s shop in the Palais Royal, is rare enough to merit description
+at second-hand. What their price may be I know not, but three hundred
+years ago they cost two crowns a-piece, and were only seen at the
+banquets of princes and the wedding-feasts of great lords. “The
+feathers on the back are like those of the woodcock; the breast and
+belly white, spotted with black; the neck is like that of a pheasant;
+the head and beak resemble a partridge; the tail feathers are black
+with white tips, the large wing-feathers variegated like the owl; down
+to the feet the legs are feathered like the grouse.” If the gelinotte
+combines the flavour as well as the plumage of the birds just mentioned
+(omitting the owl) I should say it is worth the price which Monsieur
+Chevet puts upon it before he stuffs it with the truffles.
+
+The Vanneau is another bird which, common enough in the marshy
+districts of France (particularly in Bourbon Vendée) is, I believe,
+unknown in England. It is a wading-bird, and bears some resemblance to
+the peacock: hence, its name, corrupted from paonneau to vanneau; but
+the peasants call it dinhuit, on account of its cry. It is crested with
+five or six long black feathers, and is of changeable hue: in size it
+is not much larger than a plover, and is perched on very high red legs.
+There is no question about the estimation as a delicacy in which the
+vanneau is still held.
+
+Belon has a good deal to say about quails, and the various modes of
+catching them. One way is by means of an instrument made of leather
+and bone, which, set in motion, utters a sound like the voice of the
+female bird, and is called courcaillet, on hearing which the males run
+rapidly and are caught in the fowler’s net; but this device is only
+effectual during the season of courting. Every one has noticed how
+low the quail’s cages are made. Belon says, it is because they are so
+given to jumping and excitement that they would destroy themselves were
+the cages higher. Of the crested lark (in French, cochevis), he tells
+us, on the authority of several writers of antiquity, that when made
+into a broth or roasted--like punch--they cure the colic; we all know
+what capital pâtés are made of the lark uncrested. We learn that the
+woodcock--how admirable is he, too, in a pâté--though called bécasse,
+in French, on account of the length of his bill, ought to be designated
+“vvitcoc,” that being an English word, which signifies “cock of the
+wood,” and corresponds with the Greek term, “xilomita.” Some people,
+Belon says, call him Avis cœca (blind bird), because he suffers himself
+to be so easily caught, and he gives a sufficiently lively description
+of one mode of effecting his capture. It is as follows:--“He who
+desires to take the woodcock must put on a cloak and gloves, the
+colour of the dead leaves, and conceal his head and shoulders beneath
+a (brown) hat, leaving only two small holes to see through. He must
+carry in his hands two sticks covered with cloth of the same colour,
+about an inch of the ends of which must be of red cloth, and leaning
+upon crutches (rather a lame way of proceeding) must advance leisurely
+towards the woodcock, stopping when the bird becomes aware of his
+approach. When the woodcock moves on he must follow until the bird
+stops again without raising its head. The fowler must then strike the
+sticks together very quickly (moult bellement) which will so amuse and
+absorb the woodcock that its pursuer may take from his girdle a rod,
+to which a horsehair noose is attached, and throw the latter round its
+neck, for it is one of the stupidest and most foolish birds that are
+known.” I should think so, if it allowed itself to be caught by this
+tom-foolery.
+
+Of birds which are not stupid, but knavish rather, even to much theft,
+Belon relates that the magpie is called Margot (the diminutive of
+Margaret, as Charles the First called his beautiful sister, the wife
+of Henry of Navarre); and the jay (Richard), each on account of their
+cry. Being somewhat skinny, the jay is thought rather a tough morsel
+by those who desire to dine upon him; but he himself eats everything
+that comes in his way, and is particularly fond of peas--green peas
+perhaps--at a guinea a pound. The common people think that the jay is
+subject to the falling sickness, nevertheless they eat him when they
+find him on the ground. It is, perhaps, a weakness in human nature
+which cannot be remedied, the tendency to make a meal of everything
+that has animal life. But for this, how severely might we not
+animadvert on the gluttony of those who, not remembering their song in
+spring, devour thrushes in the autumn: yet, that is the best time to
+eat them, for they are then perfectly delicious as you would say, with
+me, if you had made a diligence supper on thrushes travelling through
+the Ardennes.
+
+But, I fear, if I read any more of Peter Belon’s volume, I shall write
+an article on Gastronomy, a thing I had no notion of when I began. Let
+me conclude with something more serious than eating--if anything be
+more serious: let me lament, with all the world, that so useful a man
+as Peter Belon should have been cut off sadly in the prime of his life
+and full vigour of his intellect. He was only forty-five years of age
+when he was murdered one night as he traversed the Bois de Boulogne on
+his way to Paris; whether for the sake of plunder or revenge is not
+known.
+
+
+
+
+RHINE-LAND.
+
+
+    We lean’d beneath the purple vine,
+      In Andernach, the hoary;
+    And at our elbows ran the Rhine
+      In rosy twilight glory.
+
+    Athwart the Seven-hills far seen
+      The sun had fail’d to broaden;
+    Above us stream’d in fading sheen
+      The highway he had trodden.
+
+    His farewell crimson kiss he left
+      On clouds suffused with blushes:
+    One star beam’d down the dewberry-cleft
+      Across the mirror’d flashes.
+
+    From cliffs of slate the vintage call’d
+      In muffled leafage dusky:
+    And down the river grandly wall’d,
+      The grape reel’d ripe and husky.
+
+    We reach’d entwining hands to seize
+      The clusters round us glowing:
+    Our locks were fondled by the breeze
+      From southern sandhills blowing.
+
+    The long-neck’d flask was not unbent,
+      The globed green glass unemptied;
+    The god of honest pleasure lent
+      Young Love his powers, untempted.
+
+    Home-friends we pledged; our bridal-maids;
+      Sweet wishes gaily squander’d:
+    We wander’d far in faëry glades,
+      Up golden heights we wander’d.
+
+    Like King and Queen in royal bliss,
+      We paced a realm enchanted,
+    A realm rose-vista’d, rich from this,
+      Tho’ not from this transplanted.
+
+    For this Rome’s frontier foot endear’d,
+      Her armèd heel made holy;
+    And Ages grey as Time’s own beard,
+      Wreathed it with melancholy.
+
+    Old days it has that live in gleams
+      Of suns for ever setting:
+    A moth-wing’d splendour, faint as dreams,
+      That keeps the fancy fretting.
+
+    A gorgeous tracing dash’d with gloom,
+      And delicately dusted:
+    To grasp it is to spoil its bloom;
+      ’Twas ours because we trusted.
+
+    No longer severing our embrace
+      Was Night a sword between us;
+    But richest mystery robed in grace
+      To lock us close, and screen us.
+
+    She droopt in stars; she whisper’d fair;
+      The wooded crags grew dimmer;
+    The arrow in the lassie’s hair
+      Glanced by a silver glimmer.
+
+    The ruin-rock renew’d its frown,
+      With terror less transparent,
+    Tho’ all its ghosts are hunted down,
+      And all its knights are errant.
+
+    The island in the gray expanse,
+      We watch’d with colour’d longing:
+    The mighty river’s old romance
+      Thro’ many channels thronging.
+
+    Ah, then, what voice was that which shed
+      A breathless scene before us:
+    We heard it, knowing not we heard;
+      It rose around and o’er us.
+
+    It rose around, it thrill’d with life,
+      And did infuse a spirit
+    To misty shapes of ancient strife:
+      Again I seem to hear it!
+
+    The voice is clear, the song is wild,
+      And has a quaint transition;
+    The voice is of a careless child
+      Who sings an old tradition.
+
+    He sings it witless of his power;
+      Beside the rushing eddies,
+    His singing plants the tall white tower
+      Mid shades of knights and ladies.
+
+    Against the glooming of the west
+      The grey hawk-ruins darken,
+    And hand in hand, half breast to breast,
+      Two lovers gaze and hearken.
+
+
+
+
+MILVERSTON WORTHIES.
+
+
+From his sixth year, my brother Davie manifested undeniable symptoms
+of the divine afflatus, but it was not until fifteen that he commenced
+his immortal poem, “The Vengeance of Bernardo Caspiato.” He was a
+delicate, pretty, fair boy, with a spiritual countenance, a noble brow,
+and abundance of silky brown hair; quite the poet to look at, and very
+like my dear mother, as we all daily observed. It was expected that
+he would cover the name of Cleverboots with a halo of glory: unlike
+some families, we were the first to believe in our hero, and the most
+constant in our faith in his splendid future. At the epoch referred to,
+Davie began to tie his collar with a black ribbon, to wear his white
+throat exposed, and his beautiful hair very long; his appetite did not
+fail him in private, but at our little réunions he always partook of
+dry toast and strong green tea; was very silent, abstracted, and averse
+to men’s society: the women petted him, and called him “all soul.” He
+was very kind-hearted and sweet-tempered, and rather vain, which was
+nothing more than natural, considering how he was flattered.
+
+He had a little room at the top of the house which looked over the town
+to Milverston mere, where the immortal poem was commenced. I remember
+he began it on a wet evening, and it opened dismally, with a storm; he
+had me up there with my plain sewing to listen to the first stanzas;
+and he consulted me about one or two difficult rhymes: he was not
+sure whether “horror” and “morrow” were correct. I thought not; and,
+his birthday falling three days after, I presented him with a rhyming
+dictionary. Subsequently, the poem made rapid progress.
+
+Cousin John had just gone up to London to study law, and my father
+wished Davie to be articled to Mr. Briggs, the solicitor at Milverston.
+This did not chime in with his taste at all; he stated that it was his
+wish to follow the profession of letters. We did not quite understand
+this at the time. Cousin Jack said it meant that he wanted to be
+the idle gentleman. I had my doubts on the matter. Davie brought my
+mother over to his way of thinking. “I shall be very poor, but very
+happy, mother,” he used to say; “if you put me to anything else, I
+shall be miserable and do no good.” So Davie got his own way; and, as
+a preparation for his profession of letters, he stayed at home and
+finished “Bernardo Caspiato.” It was a splendid work. I have wept over
+it often. The heroine having been executed for witchcraft, her lover,
+Bernardo, devotes his life to avenge her; and, after committing a
+catalogue of murders, ends by disappearing mysteriously in a flash
+of blue lightning to rejoin her in heaven. My mother objected to the
+morality of the conclusion; but she acknowledged herself, at the same
+time, ignorant of the laws and licence of poetry.
+
+With this great work, and some minor pieces of equal if not superior
+merit, my brother Davie went up to London on foot, with ten pounds in
+his pocket, and seventeen years of experience on his head. Cousin Jack
+had taken comfortable lodgings for him at a small baker’s shop, kept by
+a widow woman with a daughter named Lucy. The dear lad wrote us word
+that he was quite suited, and that, after a few days to look about
+him, he should carry his immortal poem to a publisher. His hopes were
+sanguine; his visions of fame magnificent.
+
+To our surprise and grief, Bernardo Caspiato was declined with thanks.
+Nobody was inclined to publish it unless the author would bear all the
+expenses. Davie would not suffer my father to do this--he would earn
+money for himself. We wondered how he could do it; but Cousin Jack
+lent him a hand, and somebody who had something to do with a newspaper
+bought his minor pieces. He lived, at all events, by his own exertions.
+At this time, Lucy began to figure in letters to me marked “private.”
+It would be impossible to give the whole story as therein developed,
+but I will epitomise it as afterwards heard from his own lips.
+
+He fell enthusiastically in love with Lucy, whose beauty he raved about
+as ethereal, heavenly, unsophisticated: before I heard of her at all he
+was evidently far gone in the tender passion; and Lucy had listened so
+often, and with such a graceful interest, to his literary struggles,
+that he fancied he had every reason to believe that his affection was
+returned. One morning, however, all these sunny hopes were rudely
+dispelled. He had seen once or twice a young man of rustic appearance
+in the shop, he had also known him to take tea in the back parlour
+with Mrs. Lawley and her daughter, without attaching any significance
+to his visits. As Davie sat at breakfast on this particular day, this
+individual drove to the door in a gig, and was pleasantly received by
+the landlady. He wore quite a festal appearance, and for the first time
+a suspicion entered Davie’s mind which changed quickly to a certainty.
+After speaking to Mrs. Lawley for a minute or two, the young man ran
+out to stop the driver of a waggon loaded with sacks of grain, and,
+while holding him in talk, the poor poet from the up-stairs window took
+an inventory, as it were, of his rival’s personal graces. He was of
+a very tall, straight, and robust figure, with a broad, comely face,
+ruddy complexion, and curly brown hair. His voice was like the roll
+of an organ, and his laugh the very heartiest of guffaws--altogether,
+a very proper man, as Davie, but for his jealousy, must have
+acknowledged. The stranger’s rollicking air of gaiety added present
+insult to previous injury; and to get out of the hearing of his rich
+“ha ha,” which seemed to pervade the whole neighbourhood, Davie
+snatched up his hat, intending to walk off his spleen: he pushed
+halfway down the stairs, but there paused--just below, in the passage
+by the back-parlour door, was the obnoxious rustic, with his arm round
+bonny Lucy’s waist, and his lips seeking a kiss; while the damsel’s
+hand was put up to shield her cheek, and her tongue was saying, in that
+pretty accent which lovers never take as truth, “Don’t, Tom; please
+don’t!” Tom caught the uplifted fingers, and held them fast till he
+had taken a dozen kisses to indemnify himself for the delay. Davie,
+greatly discomfited, retreated to his room, and made cautious surveys
+before venturing to leave it again. He quite hated Tom, who was a fine,
+single-minded young fellow, guilty of no greater sin against him than
+having won blue-eyed Lucy’s heart.
+
+When Mrs. Lawley came up-stairs to remove her lodger’s
+breakfast-things, she looked glowing with importance, and, after a
+short hesitation, confided to him the great family secret--Mr. Tom
+Burton, of Ravenscroft Farm, had offered for Lucy, and they were to be
+married that day week. “You’ll have seen him, sir, maybe?” said the
+proud mother; “he’s been here as often as twice a-week; and, when I
+told him it behoved him to stop at home and attend to his farm, he’d
+tell me that corn would grow without watching; and I soon saw what he
+meant. So, as Lucy was noways unwilling, I bade ’em have done with
+all this courting and courting, and get wed out of hand. Perhaps, Mr.
+David, you’ll be so good as go out for the day, and let us have your
+room for breakfast--or we should be proud of your company, sir.”
+
+The poor poet almost choked over his congratulations, but he got
+them out in a way. Soon after, he saw the lovers cross the street,
+arm-in-arm, spruced up for the occasion, and looking as stiff as Sunday
+clothes worn on a week-day always make rustic lovers look--everybody
+who met them might know what they were. Tom had a rather bashful and
+surprised expression; as if he were astonished to find himself part
+owner of such a fresh, modest, little daisy of a sweetheart, and were
+not quite sure that it was her cottage bonnet just below his great
+shoulder, for so long as Davie had them in sight he kept looking down
+into it to make sure Lucy was there. Davie’s feelings were almost too
+much for him, but he made a magnanimous resolve that as Lucy had been
+so good and attentive to him, he would make her a present, and, that
+he might endure the deepest pangs, that present should be the wedding
+dress and bonnet. He went off accordingly, post haste, to a great
+millinery establishment, and purchased a dove-coloured silk dress, and
+the most sweetly pretty white bonnet, with orange blossoms, that could
+be had for money. When Lucy and Tom returned from their walk, he called
+her up-stairs and presented them to her. She contemplated them with
+surprised delight, blushing and clasping her hands over them: never was
+there anything so beautiful.
+
+Davie bade her try the bonnet on, to see how it would fit, and,
+without an atom of coquetry, she put it on, tied the strings under her
+chin, and rose on tip-toe to peep at herself in the glass over the
+chimney-piece.
+
+“I must let” (Lucy was going to say “Tom,” but she substituted “mother”
+instead); “I must let mother see it!” and she ran out of the room,
+leaving the door open, with that intent. But somebody met her on the
+stairs, and stopped her for examination. Davie tried to shut his ears,
+but he could not help hearing that ominous “Don’t, Tom; please don’t;”
+though, as balm to his wounded feelings, he also caught the echo of
+a--what shall I say?--a slap? a box?--what do you call it when a pretty
+maiden brings her hand sharply in contact with her lover’s cheek? Well,
+no matter--it is a something which always is or ought to be avenged by
+six kisses on the spot; it was condignly punished in this instance,
+for Tom lacked modesty even more than French polish. Davie instantly
+slammed the door, and sat down to compose his feelings by inditing a
+sonnet on “Disappointed Love.” When it was finished--the lines being
+flowing and the rhymes musical--he felt more placid and easy in his
+mind; but, before the wedding, he withdrew himself from the house, and
+went into country lodgings to hide his griefs. In process of time he
+rhymed himself into a belief that he was the victim of a disappointed
+passion, the prey of a devouring sorrow; that his heart was a wreck,
+a ruin, dust, ashes, a stone, dwelling alone; that life was stale, an
+unfinished tale, a hopeless, joyless pageant: all because blue-eyed
+Lucy had married Tom Burton of Ravenscroft.
+
+This was the early love-romance which furnished my brother Davie
+with his cynicism, his similes of darts, flames, and wounds that are
+scattered everywhere through his verses. Some of the productions of
+his troubled muse, after he fled to Highgate, shall be quoted. What
+would have been Lucy’s astonishment could she have heard herself
+apostrophised in such burning numbers! her orbs of sunny blue would
+have dilated until she would have looked, indeed, a round-eyed Juno.
+Here is one of Davie’s effusions from a little manuscript-book, bound
+in white vellum, the confidante of his poetical woes at this mournful
+era:--
+
+    Thou hast come like a mist o’er my glorious dreaming,
+      Thy image stands up ’twixt my soul and the sun!
+    Oh! why, when youth’s noontide of gladness was beaming,
+      Hast thou darken’d all that it shone upon?
+
+    To see thee, to love thee, ay, love thee to madness,
+      To know that thou ne’er couldst be aught to me!
+    To leave thee! and read in my spirit’s lone sadness,
+      That the love was all hopeless I centred in thee!
+
+The muse appears at this junction to have been quite troublesome
+with her declarations. The following was written one evening instead
+of going to dinner like a Christian gentleman to Uncle Sampson’s on
+Christmas Day. It stands entitled, I Love Thee! and is written with a
+neatness that says little for its spontaneity:--
+
+    I love thee! O, never did summer sea
+    Greet sunshine more gladly than I greet thee!
+    Like dew to spring flowers, like stars to dusk night
+    Art thou with thy glances of liquid light!
+
+    I love thee, as only those hearts can love
+    Whose burning devotion is hard to move!
+    Life, beauty, and hope, thou art all to me,--
+    A voice and an echo of melody!
+
+It seems rather as if sense were made subordinate to sound in some of
+these lucubrations, but they are not so bad for seventeen. Davie came
+back to Milverston for a little while at this season, and cultivated
+his grief, to the great disorder of our regular household. One night he
+stayed out so late that my father went in search of him and found him
+by the mere, seeking inspiration from the stars. On this occasion he
+produced eight more lines, which seem to have been the utmost his muse
+could bring for that one time. It is called, in the vellum book into
+which it is carefully transcribed, Tell me, my Heart:--
+
+    Tell me, my heart, the reason of thy sadness,
+      Why peoplest thou thy solitude with dreams?
+    Why dost thou shun the scenes of mirth and gladness
+      To find thy echo in the lonely streams?
+
+    Alas! my heart, that thy poor love should wander,
+      Where it can meet with nought but cold disdain!
+    Sad that its treasures thus my soul should squander
+      Where it can reap but tears and griefs again!
+
+Good little Lucy would have been sorry, indeed, if she could have known
+into what a limbo of anguish Davie was thrown by her marriage; but let
+us hope, as she might have done, that the best half of the tortures
+were only fancy. I know he had at the worst an excellent appetite for
+lamb and asparagus, to which he was very partial. Dear Davie, to read
+these effusions, tender imaginations may think of him as fine porcelain
+fractured with the world’s hard usage, whereas he is stout and bald,
+and wears green spectacles. The law does not undertake to deal with
+poetry composed under false pretences, or many would be the sighing
+Strephons and doleful Delias brought up for judgment.
+
+Last summer we had Davie at home for a month, and during that time
+occurred the grand incremation of Bernardo Caspiato. I shall ever
+regard it as a most cruel sacrifice, and Cousin Jack, who instigated
+it, as an illiterate character. Davie brought it forth one evening
+when we three were together, and read parts of it aloud: Jack
+unfeelingly remarked that it was not like good wine, it did not improve
+with keeping; that, like fruit plucked immaturely, it was green and
+tasteless; it had not acquired mellowness and flavor, and if stored
+up for another twenty years it would not taste better. Davie half
+coincided with him; but I did not; so grandly majestic as was the march
+of the lines, so delicate and true the rhymes, so thrilling the noble
+catastrophe. It exasperated me to see Jack, first yawn to the full
+extent of his jaws, then snatch the manuscript from Davie, and toss it
+up to the ceiling, retreating afterwards in feigned fear lest he should
+be crushed by its leaden fall. An ignoble fate was thine,--immortal
+Bernardo! Convicted of the respectable sin of dulness--which none
+pardon--thou wert condemned to be burnt! Davie did not act with undue
+precipitation; Jack urged an immediate execution, but the poet took a
+week to consider of it, and many a pang it cost him. Those who have
+written immortal poems and destroyed them will appreciate his feelings;
+none else can. Let anybody of experience call to mind the last time
+he has read through the letters from his first love, just before she
+was married to somebody else; or the letters from that particular old
+friend, which it is of no use to keep because he is dead, or you have
+quarrelled beyond hope of reconciliation, and then some faint idea will
+be conceived of the poet’s sensations at this immolation of his first
+love, his particular friend, and his pet child--all in one.
+
+It was the summer-season, and warm,--I found it very warm; there was no
+fire in the grate, and the match-box on the writing-table was empty.
+Jack supplied the want eagerly from his smoking apparatus, and Bernardo
+Caspiato shrank into a pinch of tinder. I wept.
+
+“There!” said poor Davie, with a profound sigh, “it took two years to
+write and two seconds to destroy--just like an eternal friendship,
+an undying affection, or anything of that kind which half a dozen
+indiscreet words are at any time enough to annihilate!”
+
+“Have a cigar, old boy; never mind moralising,” said Jack, to whom a
+cigar would be consolation for the death of his grandmother; “have a
+cigar; the business can’t be helped.”
+
+“Poor Bernardo!” said Davie, as feelingly as if he spoke of a brother,
+“poor Bernardo! He gave me many an hour’s delightful occupation. I feel
+as if I had lost a friend to whom I had been in the habit of confiding
+my sentimental vagaries. I’m not sure that it was right to burn him.”
+
+“Have a cigar,” reiterated Cousin Jack. Davie accepted the offer with a
+pensive sigh, put on his green spectacles, and went out for a walk in
+mournful mood. It is a serious thing burning immortal poems. Nobody
+can tell what losses the world has had in that way--nobody!
+
+
+
+
+SCOTCH COAST FOLK.
+
+FOOTDEE IN THE LAST CENTURY.
+
+
+The aged lady whose recollections I condense, and combine with my own
+observations, says:
+
+    Remote, but still distinct, the view appears,
+    Thro’ the long vista of departed years;
+
+although, towards the conclusion of the American War, the fish town of
+Footdee was not one of those “green spots on which memory delights to
+dwell.” The town consisted of several rows of low-thatched cottages
+running from east to west, between the high-road and the harbour, or,
+as it is called, the tide. During the high spring-tides, the furthest
+waves came up to the bank of sand on which the ends of the houses were
+built. Exteriorly, these cottages appeared comfortless enough, as each
+dwelling fronted the back of its opposite neighbour, and, as in the
+narrow space between there was a line of dunghills crossed over with
+spars, upon which were hung lines, bladders, and buoys, intermixed with
+dried dog-fish and skate. Their interior was not more alluring to a
+stranger. The earthen-floor was uneven, and sometimes dirty, although
+generally sanded over of an evening, or at least every Saturday, in
+preparation for the Sabbath. Upon the wood or rafters which stretched
+across horizontally from the tops of the walls, was a ceiling of old
+oars and bits of drift-wood. The bare rough walls were not whitewashed.
+Roof, walls, and rafters were all blackened by smoke from a fire at
+one end of the cottage, placed upon the floor, and made of turf and
+sea-weed. Soot-drops--curious black glossy accumulations, formed by
+a similar process, doubtless, to that which produces stalactites and
+stalagmites--hung here and there upon the walls, rafters, and roof.
+These collections of pendulous carbon might have been deemed ornaments,
+if they had not been signs of defective cleanliness. There was a small
+window at each side of the door. Under each window was a clumsy black
+bedstead. There was but one small deal table. There were only two or
+three chairs, and as many sunkies, or low fixed seats resting upon
+stakes driven into the floor, to sit upon. Beside the wall opposite the
+door were seen the requisites of the fishing occupation--lines, creels,
+murlains, &c. Such were the principal property and furniture visible.
+There was no press or cupboard; and the only depository for keeping
+things in was a chest or locker, in which lay the precious stores and
+the Sunday clothes. The salt-backet, or box, was suspended in the
+chimney.
+
+Such were the cottages in the eighteenth century. In the first quarter
+of the nineteenth, the cottages were arranged upon the four sides
+of squares, with a large open space in the centre; and outside every
+cottage, upon the walls, hung fish-hakes or wooden triangles for drying
+haddock. Inside the cottages the walls were occasionally whitewashed;
+and there was fixed against the wall a series of wooden shelves for the
+preservation and display of delft and earthenware crockery. There were
+tea-cups in the cupboard in the corner. The little round table was of
+pine-deal, but scrubbed into a whiteness by a truly Dutch cleanliness,
+which made it rival tables covered with a fair white linen cloth. The
+cruisie, an iron lamp of simple structure, consisting of one cup or
+ladle, with a narrow lip for the whale-oil and wick, and another cup
+of broader and larger dimensions, to receive the droppings, hangs in
+the nineteenth, as in many centuries previously, near the chimney, and
+produces, Rembrandt-like, lights and shades well worthy of the study of
+an artist who should wish to rival the Dutch painters of the present
+day, in the pictures they paint to show the effects of a lamp.
+
+The costumes of the fishers were, and continue to be, peculiar. The
+elderly men wore broad blue woollen bonnets, coarse blue jackets,
+and canvass kilts or short trousers. The younger men were rather
+good-looking, had good-humoured faces, and were smarter in their dress.
+The women wore caps, the original patterns of which still abound upon
+the Continent, which did not prevent their features being injured by
+the weather, and their skins being tanned by the sun. The middle-aged
+women wore stuff gowns, with large flowered calico wrappers or short
+gowns, over them. The young girls wore stuff wrappers and petticoats,
+with their hair either drawn back with a large comb, which reached from
+ear to ear, or fastened up in a very slovenly and unbecoming manner
+with a head-dress of red worsted tape. The boys under fifteen were the
+worst clad. They ran about in tattered old garments of their fathers’,
+a world too wide, and remained in this condition until they were able
+to earn a more decent covering for themselves. The little children of
+both sexes were comfortably clad in a simple dress of white plaiding,
+called a walliecoat, which, with their fair curly heads and rosy
+cheeks, made them look very pretty, as they paddled in the pools of
+water, and played with their tiny boats.
+
+In the last century, the fishermen were mostly ignorant of everything
+unconnected with their own business. Few of them could read, and none
+of the grown-up people could write. Some of the lads could read and
+write a little; but as they went to sea in the night, and took their
+repose in the day, they were not placed in favourable circumstances for
+the development of the social faculties. No instance of intellectual
+talent--no single person displaying a tendency towards any art or
+science--occurred among them. Music and song, no doubt, contributed
+to the enjoyment of their merry meetings; but the music was confined
+to a fiddle, and their collection of songs scarcely extended beyond
+The Praise of Paul Jones, The Waefu’ Ballad of Captain Glen, and the
+Christmas carol of By Southend. As for the women--toiling, as they
+were, incessantly--they had no time for mental improvement. But as they
+grew old they gained practical knowledge and experience. Many of them
+had a knowledge of simple remedies for curing diseases, which obtained
+for their prescriptions a preference to those of medical men. Some of
+them were supposed to be invested with supernatural powers, which made
+it dangerous to offend them.
+
+I may interpose here a general remark. The superstitions which were
+sweepingly condemned by the philosophy of the eighteenth century as
+falsehood and imposture, the philosophy of the nineteenth finds to be
+true in a sense. Instead of rejecting it in a heap, the student of the
+present day shakes and washes the rubbish, and separates the grains of
+truth from it. What, I may be asked, was it true that old fish-crones
+possessed the powers of witchcraft? I have not a doubt of it. The
+word witchcraft comes from wiccian, whence witchery, wickedness. It
+means evil influence. Gifted with the power of reading characters and
+actions, of seeing consequences and calculating results, and capable
+of imparting a bias, laying a snare, adapting a temptation, planning a
+vengeance, or instilling a physical or moral poison; and years give all
+these powers to malignant intelligence.
+
+Anything may be twisted into stupid or incredible shapes. When affairs
+did not prosper among the Footdee folk, it was attributed to an evil
+foot, an “ill fit.” Prior to setting out upon any expedition or
+enterprise, they were careful and particular about the first “fit” they
+met in the morning. The Scum of the Well was an object of rivalry every
+New Year’s Day morning, Old Style. As the midnight hour approached,
+and the last moments of the year came on, the women assembled in a
+solemn group, around the large old draw-well, and scolded and scuffled
+to decide whose pan or bucket should carry off the first fraught (or
+first freight). The superstition of the first foot may afford some
+explanation of the phrase Putting his foot into it. Prior to commencing
+anything, is it not well to note carefully who may be taking the
+initiative for evil in it? Is not the first evil foot astir in it a
+serious thing for any enterprise? As for the scum of the well, is not
+the energetic housewife who obtains the first supply of the first
+necessary of life,--water--likely to surpass all rivals in providing
+for her household? I opine it is only a sort of piety due to our
+forefathers to guess they were shrewder fellows than we might suppose
+from our views of their superstition, witchcraft, and sorcery.
+
+Indeed there is something small in the minds which study superstitions
+only to find in them occasions for indulging the sudden elation of
+self-glory which Hobbes says is the cause of laughter. Our forefathers
+inherited a spirit-world of personifications; and we have inherited
+a mass of philosophical abstractions. Our forefathers inherited a
+poetical and popular nomenclature, and we express our scientific
+generalisations in crack-jaw words of Greek and Latin derivation.
+Ghosts, wraiths, witches, fairies, mermaids and water-kelpies, are
+personifications which have been covered with ridicule, and undoubtedly
+there have been an abundance of ridiculous stories told respecting
+them; but I suspect there is philosophy in them after all. The minds of
+Coast Folk are peopled from early childhood with spectres belonging to
+the land, sea, and sky; and no wonder, since, during long centuries,
+catastrophes have desolated the homes of Coast Folk which have issued
+mysteriously and terribly from land, sea, and sky. Seven miles from
+Aberdeen there is a fishing-village which was buried in a sand-storm in
+one night. Almost every soul of the inhabitants was smothered in the
+sand-drift, and for many years the spire of the village church alone
+marked the spot in the hollow treacherous sand-hills. When a boy I was
+warned by words and looks of horror from approaching the fatal locality
+where it was thought the wrath of the Almighty had displayed itself
+so awfully. Several instances have occurred in which all the men of a
+village have gone to sea, and perished in one night. A boat or a corpse
+heard of as having been cast ashore on a distant beach, was sometimes
+the only tidings ever heard of them. Mermaids have frightened many a
+brave man; and, in several of the monthly magazines published in the
+last century their existence was as seriously discussed as apparitions
+of sea-serpents have been in our own day. Andrew Brands saw one. “I
+recollect Andrew perfectly well. He was a stout man, with a broad
+good-humoured face, and dark hair, who wore his bonnet upon the back of
+his head.” Occasionally employed as a boatman or pilot, he looked more
+like a jolly sailor than a sleepy fisherman. One summer day Andrew was
+found lying insensible on the hill of Torry which faces the sea upon
+the side of the river Dee, opposite to Footdee. When roused, he spoke
+confusedly and incoherently. He was thought to be deranged. He was
+carried to the ferry and rowed home. After several weeks of delirious
+fever he became low and melancholy, and declined to give any account
+of his illness. Under medical treatment he recovered, although reduced
+to a skeleton. The fearful belief spread through the village that
+Andrew Brands had seen something. When questioned after his recovery,
+he said in substance: “I was upon the outlook lying upon my breast,
+and looking over the top of the rocks, when I saw a creature like a
+woman sitting upon a stone. She seemed to have something like a white
+sheet, or grave-clothes wrapped around her. Sometimes she combed her
+hair, and sometimes she tossed her arms in the air. All her ways were
+fearsome, and at last she rushed into the sea, and vanished beneath the
+waves. My heart lap (leapt), I grew blind, and I remember nothing more
+until I awoke with all my bones sore, and the men lifting me up.” The
+medical theory of his illness, as expounded by his doctor, was, that
+he had gone out with incipient fever upon him, had fallen asleep in
+an exposed situation, and the hallucinations of delirium had done all
+the rest. My informant who remembered him well, maintained he had been
+unwittingly the Actæon of a bathing Diana at a time when ladies rarely
+bathed in Scotland, and had been punished by the vengeance of the
+goddess. Probably, however, an accumulation of foam among the stones
+of the beach had taken the flickering form of a woman. The white scum
+would seem to rise up amidst the black stones, and Andrew Brands was
+frightened by a mermaid because he had never been taught the effects
+of perspective. Was it in some such way as this that Cytherea herself
+was seen by the poetic eyes of a fisherman of Cyprus, issuing from
+the froth of the sea until she was wafted in a shell to the shore by
+Zephyrus, where the Graces received and adorned her for presentation to
+the celestials of Olympus?
+
+Extraordinary physical phenomena generally precede extraordinary
+catastrophes. Everybody has heard of the warning blue lights. During
+the night which preceded a storm, in which seven men of a seaside
+village were lost, an aged man, I have been assured, saw seven blue
+lights passing in solemn procession from the roofs of their cottages
+towards their grave-yard. He entreated the men to stay at home, and
+not to go to sea. But they were obstinate, and went. He told some old
+and some young people, who would listen to him, what he had seen, and
+had scarcely finished his vaticination when the lightning leaped high
+into the sky, the thunder pealed, and a hurricane lashed the sea into
+furious madness. The boats were not far from the shore, but before
+they could reach it a boat capsized, and seven men were lost within
+sight of their families. A week afterwards, at the very hour of the day
+corresponding to the hour of the night of the procession of the blue
+lights, the funeral procession of the seven fishermen was seen going
+from their cottages by the very way the lights had gone; and beneath
+the very spots where the lights stood in the churchyard the corpses
+rested for evermore. The law of the elders in these villages is, that
+no boats ought to go to sea when the old men say they have seen
+the blue lights. The blue lights are possibly electrical facts. The
+traditions respecting their direction are as variable as the winds. The
+guess is not a very hazardous one, that science would agree with the
+old men in warning the fishers against going to sea when the air was
+charged with electricity after midnight, in the coldest hours of the
+twenty-four.
+
+When the Footdee fishers were found in the last century to be no more
+scrupulous than other people respecting custom-house oaths, an oath was
+framed for them, founded upon their superstitious fears, which proved
+to be far more effectual than the ordinary one. It concluded with these
+words: “If I do not speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
+the truth, may my boat be a bonnet to me.”
+
+Of course the fishers leaned to the side of the smugglers against the
+excise and customs officers. Almost everybody did, in the last century
+except the lawyers, something of a legal education being necessary
+to see the propriety of establishing what Adam Smith, while himself
+a Commissioner of the Board of Customs, denounced as the outposts of
+Pandemonium. When examined before the courts in smuggling cases, the
+fishermen contrived occasionally, under an appearance of simplicity, to
+baffle with considerable cunning the cross-examinations of the counsel
+for the Crown. Public sympathy was, in those days on the side of the
+smugglers, who called themselves free-traders, a designation which
+has since attained universal honour. The principle of obedience to
+law, the sine quâ non of civilisation, is less easily enthroned upon
+uneducated consciences than the principle of buying cheap and selling
+dear. Lairds, merchants, and workmen, therefore, all admired the cool
+duplicity with which the fishers sometimes evaded the truth when under
+cross-examinations. Some of them were once witnesses in a case of
+deforcement. The counsel for the prosecution asked a fisherman,--“While
+the men were struggling in the water, did you not hear the prisoner
+call out, ‘Drown the dogs?’”
+
+“We saw nae dogs there, sir,” was the demure and composed reply.
+
+“I do not ask you what you saw; but, on your oath, did you not hear him
+call out, ‘Drown the dogs?’”
+
+“There was nae ony dogs there, sir,” was again the obstinate answer.
+
+Although no man of distinction in science or letters has ever arisen in
+any of these villages, it cannot be doubted they have produced many men
+whom Poodle or Doodle might have safely trusted upon his legs on the
+floor of the House of Commons to answer the questions of honourable and
+independent members.
+
+A century ago the fishers, who were hardy, industrious, decorous, and
+honest, were nevertheless inveterate swearers--a fault which I did not
+observe among them in an offensive degree in the nineteenth century.
+Indeed, I have heard more swearing from two admirals in a London club
+than I ever heard in fishing villages. In the last century, however,
+the fishers would use the most tremendous oaths upon the most trivial
+occasions. Anger was not necessary to provoke them; the oaths seeming
+to be as necessary to the hauling up of a lugger, or the pushing out
+of a boat, as the cries of “Yo-hee O!” Persons unaccustomed to hear
+the strong phrases of swearing, feel their minds shocked by the ideas
+conveyed by them, being ignorant that they have ceased to convey ideas
+to the persons who use them. When a lady rebuked one of them for using
+the word deil (devil), he said,
+
+“Eh! mem, I didna think it meant ony ill. Does it mean ony ill? I
+thocht it was just a word to dad” (knock) “aboot.”
+
+The wrath of these good-natured and kind-hearted people was notoriously
+harmless. Stabs were unknown, and blows rare among them, but the
+language of their vituperation was expressive and opprobrious. My
+informant has seen a woman in a passion take up a handful of burning
+coals, and lay them down without seeming to feel pain. Ladies drilled
+in the control of their gestures, if not of their feelings, in
+boarding-schools, witnessed, with great astonishment, the violence
+with which the women expressed grief and lamentation. The boats were
+frequently in great danger in crossing the bar, and on these occasions
+the women assembled upon the beach would tear their hair, clap their
+hands, and utter piercing cries and shrieks. The simple and natural
+principles upon which their marriages were formed, the chastity and
+honour in which the married fishers lived, and the connubial and
+family happiness of their homes, may explain, in part, the violence
+of the emotions and the exuberance of the gestures of the wives when
+their husbands were in danger. A fashionable dame of London related
+sarcastically that she had known a fisherwoman of the Scotch east
+coast who required four men to keep her from throwing herself over the
+rocks when her drowned husband was carried into her cottage, become
+calm in a fortnight, recommence work in a month, and marry again in a
+twelvemonth. The poor child of nature had no sentiment!
+
+The marriages of the fishers were as natural and simple as the unions
+of Isaac with Rebekah and Boaz with Ruth. Perversions about dowries,
+pin-money, establishments, and settlements, did not interfere with the
+natural action of mutual interest and honest preference. They married
+young. The young man and young woman had probably played together in
+childhood. Running, leaping, tumbling, paddling, laughing, the children
+of the fishers are as joyous as their fathers are serious; and if their
+mothers could not match them against the children of the Tuileries’
+Gardens, or of St. James’s Park, in point of pretty costumes, they
+could challenge the world for them in regard to the healthiness of
+their respiratory organs and the glee of their animal spirits. The boys
+and girls soon become useful, the elder children being early employed
+to nurse the younger. Both boys and girls thus grow up in systematic
+training for the performance of the duties of their lives.
+
+The boy or lad went out to sea with the men, and worked at the oar
+until he got enough of money to buy a share of a boat--and a boat
+with its nets costs from a hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds.
+When he had a share of a boat, he required some one to bait his lines
+and sell his fish. Among the girls he knew, and whose tempers he had
+tested in play, he naturally selected the girl he liked best, and asked
+her first; and then, perhaps, like Kepler, the great astronomer, he
+had a list in his mind, and asked one girl after another until he was
+accepted. On the other hand, it is probable the principles of affinity
+may sometimes have been in operation for years, and the boat may have
+been a greater difficulty than the wife. As soon as they were betrothed
+by the consent and blessings of the old folks, the young woman went
+to live with her future father and mother-in-law for a week or two,
+and in the house with the young man. No doubt she had been taught by
+her own mother to search for bait, to tip and bait the lines, and do
+all manner of household work; but the fisher-people judged wisely she
+would be all the better for knowing all her mother-in-law could teach
+her; and her husband would be likely to think all the more of her for
+being as clever as his own mother could make her. A few days prior to
+the marriage, she returned to her father’s roof, and the ceremony took
+place in the house of her childhood. After the ceremony, the young
+couple went to a house of their own. They went in procession from the
+paternal to the connubial home. A fiddler playing merry strains, headed
+the procession, and he was followed by a boat-mate of the bridegroom,
+carrying the flag of the boat. When the bride arrived before the door
+of the home of her husband, his boat-mates rolled their flag around
+her. The spectators witnessed the ceremony in silence until she was
+enveloped in the folds, and then they applauded the actors in it with
+loud and long cheers. The ceremony seemed to be a public intimation
+that the young wife was henceforth placed within the sanctuary of the
+honour of the crew, who engaged themselves solemnly to protect her from
+insult and injury, as brave men defend their flag.
+
+When a young couple had not money enough to pay for the share of the
+boat, the furnishing of the house, and the expenses of the wedding,
+they had what was called a penny-wedding. There was nothing royal or
+aristocratic in a penny-wedding, to which any one might come who chose
+to pay a shilling. The significance and rationale of the penny-wedding
+was this: “We are a couple of young people who think it better to
+marry than to do worse, and we deem it foolish and wicked to begin the
+world with debt. We therefore invite you, good neighbours, to amuse
+yourselves by dancing at our marriage, and, by paying as generously
+as may be convenient for the amusement, help us to begin the world
+with a fair chance of making both ends meet.” A common argument in
+favour of the penny-wedding was: the young man wants ten pounds of
+his share of the boat, and many persons gave their money who never
+went to the dances. The canvas for the penny-wedding took place among
+the carpenters, coopers, and sailors of the port; and employers,
+shopkeepers, ship-owners, and captains had generally a half-crown to
+spare for the young couple. The dinner at a penny-wedding consisted
+of abundance of meat and Scotch broth, served in broad pewter dishes.
+After dinner, the party adjourned to the links or downs, to dance “the
+shame dance;” and then they danced until they were tired. Known bad
+characters were inexorably excluded, decorum rigorously maintained,
+and “liberties” would have been indeed dangerous in a community in
+which every woman lived under the protection of a flag and at least
+half-a-score of hard fists. A severe critic of propriety would not
+probably have approved the amount of public kissing at a penny-wedding.
+Indeed, in this respect, Footdee resembled more the Court of the Neva
+than the Courts of the Thames or of the Seine; but in regard to the
+moral essentials of the problem of life, if there be a word of truth
+in court chronicles, the courtiers and courted of all the three royal
+rivers might have learned lessons from the Coast Folk of Footdee.
+
+
+
+
+CHIP.
+
+THE CONGRESSIONAL PRIZE-RING.
+
+
+The forcible mode in which debates are conducted in the parliament of
+the United States, and the personal encounters which sometimes follow
+them, are believed by the present generation, to be novelties and only
+recently brought to a culminating point by the Honourable Preston
+S. Brooks’s life-preserver, upon the head, face, eyes, and body of
+Senator Charles Sumner. This is a mistake. Fifty years ago, exciting
+debates often ended in a regular stand-up fight in the lobby of the
+House of Representatives. The combatants stripped, a ring was formed,
+bottle-holders appointed, and the battle fought and reported quite in
+the style of Moulsey Hurst and Bell’s Life in London.
+
+In corroboration of this statement we present to our readers the
+following paragraph copied from the New York Evening Post of December
+the thirteenth, eighteen hundred and five, into the Annual Register for
+eighteen hundred and six:--
+
+ On Friday last, the well-known Leib, one of the representatives
+ of Pennsylvania, and the leader of the Duane party, and Joseph H.
+ Nicholson, one of the representatives of Maryland, met in the Congress
+ lobby about one o’clock, when Leib immediately called Nicholson
+ a liar; and, thereupon, commenced one of the best fought battles
+ recorded in the annals of congressional pugilism. The fight continued
+ till the sixty-fourth round, when Leib had received such blows as
+ deterred him from again facing his man. He protracted the fight;
+ falling after making a feeble hit. In the round which ended the fight,
+ those who backed him advised him to resign; which he did after a
+ combat of one hour and seventeen minutes. The combatants were both
+ very much beaten.
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES THE FIFTH’S GLOVE.
+
+
+There are few foreign trips, for English holiday-makers, that answer
+better than a run into Belgium. Belgium is easily got at, and easily
+left. Its features are varied and not vast. You can explore its
+interior, inspect its circumference, and take the whole of it in,
+without being tired. It is a pocket kingdom. Instead of wearing your
+patience, as France does, when you are in a hurry to get from one
+end of it to the other, you can dart across it with the ease of a
+swallow skimming over the Isle of Wight. Moreover, Belgium is rich in
+matters of interest considerably beyond the proportions of its size.
+It gives you the idea of an originally extensive country, which has
+been subjected, like an ungainly truss of hay, to hydraulic pressure.
+For its area, it feeds a very large population. The district of St.
+Nicholas, near Ghent, carries five thousand two hundred and ten
+souls per square league--the space required, in savage life, for the
+maintenance of a single individual. The large towns lie so close
+together, that, as soon as you have done with one, by entering a
+railway carriage you are landed in another in two, three, four, or five
+quarters of an hour.
+
+A lovely May morning blesses, with its lucky omen, our approach to
+the frontier. All nature smiles as we glide along. The orchards
+are bedecked in white, pink, and green. Get ready your tubs, O
+cyder-drinkers, the apple-trees promise you a plentiful supply!
+Remember, however, that there’s many a slip between the apple-blossom
+and the lip. The sower strides over the well-powdered earth with
+measured step, and with white apron heavily laden. “Take that, old
+lady,” he mentally exclaims, as each handful is scattered, “and give
+me fifty-fold back again.” The cows in the meadows lie basking in the
+sun, with their feet doubled under them. They are chewing the cud,
+to give the grass a short respite, and to allow it a little time to
+grow in peace. The homesteads are overtopped by clumps of poplars,
+whose young and maidenly leaves blush ruddy pink at the touch of
+the sunbeam. On the skirts of the forest are prudent oaks, who are
+waiting till the blackthorn winter is over, before they put on their
+summer fashions. Along the road which crosses our railway come Flemish
+wagons, like triumphal cars in the processions of Ceres, and not of
+Bacchus, but of the twin gods Baccy and Beer. And so we rush over a
+flat fertile land, till we pass Roubaix, a wilderness of bricks and
+mortar. Tourcoing also, and ditto; both very rural in their aspect for
+manufacturing towns, and with atmospheres that Bradford and Leeds might
+envy. At Mouscron, we are safely over the border. The custom-house
+officers, I suppose, are ordered to ascertain whether new arrivals are
+personally cleanly in their habits; for, as soon as they have inspected
+my oiled-silk sponge-bag, my comb, and my bit of soap (which latter
+they don’t supply you with at inns), they tell me I may lock up our
+baggage again. It is too bad that they should rumple Mademoiselle’s
+muslin-dress, with which she intends to make a sensation, into a wisp,
+and should further annoy her by calling her Madame; but they are not a
+bad set of fellows on the whole, nor wanting in a certain cordiality
+of manner. They look at my passport, enter it in their book, and then
+bid me good morning by name, as if they had known me for the last ten
+years. They are Flemings, no doubt. You may know a Flemish man or woman
+by the friendly vocatives with which they interlard their conversation.
+Mon ami or mon cher ami is ever on their lips, while addressing you.
+“What are you looking for, my friend?” asked a market-woman, whom
+I had never in my life seen before--unless, perhaps, twenty years
+ago, when she must have been a little girl. “I want half a hundred
+cauliflower plants,” I replied.--“Ah, my dear friend, you won’t find
+that for another fortnight. But you’ll come and see me again in another
+fortnight; you’ll come to me for them, won’t you, my dear friend?”
+
+Returned once more to our railway carriage, a change has come over
+the spirit of our journey. We lose the red-legged soldiery of France,
+exchanging them for others with grey and pepper-and-salt continuations.
+The military, too, are men of taller stature, with more flesh upon
+their bones. Generally, the Belgians feed better than the natives of
+the north of France, and show it in their personal appearance. Piebald
+or rusty-brown monks and nuns flutter about and read their breviaries
+in greater profusion. Belgium is still a monastic stronghold of
+brotherhoods and sisterhoods; and the clergy are struggling hard for an
+increase of power.
+
+The aspect of the country from Mouscron to Ghent is ever rich and
+highly cultivated. The crops are mostly grown in ridges, with deep
+furrows between them, indicative of a strong clayey loam, but wet. Of
+wood, as in France, little is to be seen compared with England, except
+where congregated into forests. Here and there are a few plantations of
+Scotch firs, set very thick, to spindle them up for poles and railings.
+
+Railway travelling is cheaper (by something like a third), than in
+France, and, consequently much cheaper than in England; children under
+eight years of age pay half-price; under three, and in arms, nothing;
+but certainly the article you get for your money is inferior in quality
+to that furnished by the first-named country. In France every traveller
+is allowed sixty pounds (French) of luggage gratis, independent of his
+small personalities; in Belgium none at all. Whatever you do not take
+into the carriage with you, such as a carpet-bag or basket of moderate
+weight, has to be paid for in addition to your ticket. The first-class
+carriages are handsome and comfortable, but small. The third-class
+chars-à-bancs are open at the sides, exposed to the wind, the rain, and
+the snow, which sometimes rake them fore and aft; in inclement weather,
+they are not fit to carry sheep and cattle, much less human beings.
+Dogs in Belgium pay third-class fare, but are snugly stowed away in
+a baggage-wagon. In one of these locomotive pens for men, women, and
+tender children, a fat hog might have his health seriously injured as
+the consequence of a long day’s journey.
+
+The State is the sole proprietor of nearly all the Belgian railways;
+and while it paternally confers on its subjects the benefit of cheap
+circulation and traffic, it might also modify an arrangement which is
+no other than unfeeling, and is deficient in that humanity which a
+government ought to exercise towards all under its protecting sway,
+without reference to wealth or rank. The second-class carriages are
+tolerable, with stuffed seats and a little horizontal stripe of
+stuffing to ease the back, and ladies may travel in them; but they are
+of scant dimensions, very naked inside, and unprovided with any hooks
+for hats or caps, or with receptacles for sticks and umbrellas. The
+seats are fancifully arranged with a sort of passage left between them,
+to give the means of stepping from one to the other, as if you were
+occupying a little parlour; but the result is no addition to comfort.
+The signal for starting is given, not by the whistle of the engine, but
+by a little musical flourish, a tir-ely, consisting of three notes,
+blown on his bugle by the conductor of the train. Of the officials,
+general civility and obliging behaviour is the rule. The passengers’
+luggage department would be improved by assimilation with the system
+adopted in France. But nations are often like wilful children; they
+are determined to have a way of their own, for the sake of having it.
+They refuse to attend to good advice, because it is counsel given by
+another; and they persist in some evidently inconvenient mode of doing
+things, merely to show that they are independent agents, and that they
+can and will follow their own devices.
+
+Ghent, with its hundred thousand inhabitants and its considerable
+trade, has still the air of a town half-asleep, as if you had caught
+it yawning and stretching at half-past three on a summer’s morning.
+Its extent is much exaggerated in the current printed descriptions.
+Charles the Fifth’s time-honoured pun--“I could put Paris into my Gand”
+(that is, my glove)--is apocryphal and highly improbable. If you doubt
+it, mount the tower of the beffroi. People who lose their way in a
+labyrinth of lanes, always fancy they have travelled over an enormous
+area. Now, the map of Ghent puts you in mind of a Medusa’s head, or of
+the clustered worms that are taken out into the country, on a sultry
+day, to participate in the pleasures of a fishing party. Buy a map of
+Ghent, colour the streets blue, the river Escaut yellow, the river Lys
+red, and you will have a faithful representation of the famous Gordian
+knot, if you happen never to have seen one before. I long wandered
+about the streets of Ghent, trying to find the city, and could not.
+It is a town made up of bits of west-ends, Faubourg St. Germains, and
+fashionable suburbs, with no heart or kernel to it--no Cheapside, no
+Ludgate Hill, no Rue de Rivoli, no Rue St. Honoré. There is a slight
+recovery of suspended animation in the Marché-aux-Grains and the Rue
+des Champs; but the pulse, even there, beats very feebly. The market
+tries (when it is not market-day) to manifest its vitality in an
+unhealthy, spasmodic way, by book-stalls of amatory literature, over
+which a little censorship would be no great tyranny. In the street, to
+enter a fashionable lace and embroidery shop, we had to ring at the
+glass-door, as if it had been a private house. After waiting, while the
+lady up-stairs gave a touch of arrangement to her cap and her hair,
+we were duly admitted to make our purchase, much in the style of a
+morning call. Elsewhere, in the modern quarters, you see unbroken lines
+of large, handsome, well-painted houses, hybrids between a palace and
+a ladies’ boarding-school. Business may be transacted therein, but it
+is done in the quietest possible way. You see dentelles (lace), or
+calicots (calicos), engraved on a neat brass-plate on a house-door,
+as if some private individual,--Monsieur Dentelles, or Madame Veuve
+Calicots,--were living there on their property, in great state and
+dignified retirement. The older portions of the town are decorated
+with houses built before the window-tax was born or thought of,--with
+quaint, pointed gable ends, as if a child had been trying to cut fancy
+conic sections out of a red brick wall. But in whatever direction you
+wend your way, you can’t go twenty steps without crossing a bridge. For
+the convenience at once of the land-carriage and the canal navigation,
+these are swing bridges; often you have to wait while a barge, laden
+perhaps with vegetable mould for the pot-plants in training by one of
+the Vans,--Van Houtte, Van Schaffelt, or Van Geert,--intercepts the
+passage. The time is not exactly lost, because it allows you to stare
+about you without rudeness. But soon, the bridge-swinger takes his toll
+from the barge, which he collects by means of a wooden shoe at the end
+of a string fastened to a fishing-rod; the isthmus of planks is then
+replaced, and resounds with the pattering of gros sabots. Certainly,
+the popular costume is droll, in its extremes. At top, the women wear
+a close-worked cottage hat of straw, with three dabs of blue ribbon
+stuck on behind; at foot, they are garnished with masses of hollow
+timber, which must be a serious drain on the Belgian forests. But hats
+worn by women at the same time with sabots, are, in French eyes, or
+in eyes accustomed to France, as utterly anomalous a combination as a
+fish-tailed mermaid, or a man-headed centaur are considered, on cool
+reflection, by Professor Owen. Conspicuous in the air rise the portly
+towers of St. Nicholas, St. Michel, and St. Bavon, around which, and
+the lofty houses, multitudinous swifts, whirl and scream, in delight at
+the abundance of their insect game. The canals are propitious to the
+propagation of gnats. Where is the carcase, there are the vultures; and
+where are the gnats, there flock the swifts.
+
+That the quietude of the town is more apparent than real, and that busy
+life is going on within, is plain from the Belgian fashion of sticking
+looking-glasses outside the houses, at angles (sometimes they glance
+in three directions) which allow the inmates to catch a glimpse of
+passers-by, without being seen themselves. “Au Nouveau Miroir,” (the
+new looking-glass) is occasionally used as the sign of an inn. The
+mirrors are generally on a level with the first-floor; and a smaller
+one receives the rays it reflects straight from the entrance door; so
+that Not at home is easily responded to the inquiries of a dun, or
+worse, a bore. It is not one city alone which adopts the system of
+quicksilvered peepers; nor is the custom new, but was probably first
+introduced by peculiarities of historical and political situation. In
+Belgium, it has not always been convenient to open the door to every
+new-comer.
+
+“If you please, monsieur,” we politely ask, “have the goodness to tell
+us which is the way to the Botanic Garden?”
+
+“N’entends Français,” is the reply, accompanied by a disclamatory shake
+of the head. It is a reminder that the Flemish tongue is master here,
+in actual fact, if not by legal right. Even the government is obliged
+to come to a compromise, and affix the names of the streets to their
+corners both in Flemish and in French. The railway porter, who handed
+us our luggage, was deaf and dumb as far as we were concerned, and
+signed us over to a brother medium. The coachman who drove us to our
+inn just comprehended the words “Hôtel de Flandre”--and a capital and
+recommendable hotel it is--but he comprehended no more of the further
+clever remarks addressed to him. Many of the Gantois who do speak
+French manage it so badly, and are so decidedly not at home in it, that
+you feel quite delighted at your own superiority to them, born Belgians
+though they be. But Flemish has so close a relationship to our own
+vernacular, that the names of trades over the shops, the bills, and the
+public notices, are as amusing to read as it is to hear a foreigner
+speak broken English. Drap Straet is Cloth, or Draper’s Street. One
+man sells alle soorte of wares; another offers you cart-grease under
+the name of wagen smeer; kelder te huren is cellar to hire; kamer te
+huren is chamber to hire. A koperslager is a coppersmith. Professions
+which require no interpreter are the bakker, the matte-maeker, the
+timmerman, the apotheker en drogiste, and the boekhandlaer. The three
+grand literary elements are announced for sale as pennen, inkt, en
+papier. If your family is small, you may be content with securing Een
+Huis to let; but should you be expecting a large and sudden increase,
+you had better engage Twee Huyzen, if adjacent. In the Apelmerkt, you
+could hardly mistake the fruit that is sold there. When thirsty, you
+may go and drink a glass of dobbel-bier at the hospitable sign of De
+Roose; or you may prefer to patronise the Oliphant (without a castle),
+or the Bruyn Visch,--that is to say, the Red Herring. Good little boys
+and girls punctually attend a zondagschool. Booksellers’ windows invite
+you to the perusal of Flemish novels; such as Een Zwanenzang (a swan’s
+song), by Jan Van Beers, and De Zending der Vrow (Woman’s Mission), by
+Hendrik Conscience.
+
+“How triste, how sad it is for you not to be able to speak Flemish!”
+ejaculated a dame who sold goeden drank, but who could not, though
+she would, converse with me. In such cases, it rarely strikes the
+tongue-tied Flemings belonging to the portion of society below the
+middle-class, that they are like the fox who was minus a tail. They
+are content with, and would have other people learn, a language which
+confines them, as tightly as a tether fastens a cow, to a few score
+square leagues of the earth’s vast superficies. But a striking point
+in Flemish popular manners, is the forming themselves into bands
+and societies. These little close corporations are perhaps, in some
+degree, the result of their narrowly-diffused tongue. And so the
+blue-bloused archers of one town go and shoot against the black-capped
+long-bows of another, distant a quarter-of-a-day’s pedestrian journey;
+the chorus-club of Schoutenhoul will pay a fraternal visit to the
+orpheonists of Raspenscraep. In the French army, the French Flemings
+hang together like bees at swarming-time. Here at Ghent, the workmen,
+even at leisure hours and meal-times, form themselves into companies.
+Young people, both girls and boys, run together in distinct and
+closely-grouped herds, like flocks of young lambs at the same age. One
+would think that babies in Flanders came all at once, in falls, in
+imitation of the lambing season with Southdowns and Leicesters.
+
+But the Botanic garden--where is it? Let us first look at our map,
+and then at the corner of the street, and endeavour to pilot our way
+thither. In Belgian towns, generally, if you use your eyes with the
+slightest expression of inquiring curiosity, up starts a phantom
+before you, like a most impertinent Jack-in-the-box, calling himself a
+commissionaire, but who must not be confounded with a superior being,
+the French commissionaire. Where these creatures come from, I cannot
+tell. They suddenly appear before you, as if the air had curdled itself
+into human form. Peep into a shop window, and you have one at your
+elbow; gaze up at a steeple, and, when you look down, you will find
+a commissionaire between your legs; turn the angle of a street, on a
+walk of discovery, and round the corner you knock your nose against a
+commissionaire. They start from behind doors, down staircases, out of
+cellars, from the dark mouths of narrow lanes; and I believe that, upon
+inquiry, they would be found now and then to drop from the roofs. They
+follow you about with the hungry look of a beast of prey, regarding
+you as the game on their preserve, and themselves as very forbearing
+to spare you a little while. I do not say that no respectable man
+exercises the calling of commissionaire; but, whenever such jewels are
+found, they ought to be set in sterling gold. In age, they vary from
+sixteen to sixty. They deal in cigars, and have often a select female
+acquaintance. They are mostly seedy in garment, cloudy in complexion,
+uncleanly in person, offensive in breath, jargonic in speech, forward
+in manner, and given to drink. Commissionaires attach themselves to
+every hotel, as leeches hang to the side of their vessel, ready to
+fix on anything that has blood or money to yield; and these consider
+themselves the head of their profession. But there are wandering
+commissionaires who prowl about the streets, willing to make themselves
+useful in any way--too useful, at times, many people might think.
+
+One fellow, who pleaded his large family at home, and whom I took for
+an hour or two to get over the ground more quickly, disappeared every
+time we came to anything that required more than a minute to examine.
+Each disappearance had for its object the injection of a dram into his
+weakly stomach, which relieved me from listening to his account of
+the lions. But, after a little unsteadiness, he tripped and tumbled
+on the ground, and concluded by running into an iron post with a
+violence that must have done serious damage to the post. I confess to a
+prejudice against Belgian commissionaires, and never employ them when
+I can help it. They attack you in the very churches. “You won’t leave
+the cathedral without paying the concièrge,” was the parting remark
+of a young commissionaire whose services I persisted in declining;
+and, while hunting for the Botanic garden, I can’t proceed without
+interruption, but am obliged to say to a person who continually crosses
+my path, “I have already told you three times I do not want you. Cannot
+you take an answer, and leave me to myself?”
+
+The garden, when found at last, is a painful instead of a pleasurable
+sight, and must be far from gratifying to the citizens of Ghent. It
+is a warning to avoid, and not an example to follow, as all botanic
+gardens ought to be. The hardy perennials are the only plants in good
+condition; among these is a remarkable Andromeda arborea. The enormous
+carp, rising and sinking in their pond, are a lingering remnant of
+former prosperity. In the houses, dirt, dust, thrips, scale, red
+spider, and aphis, threaten to get the upper hand, and to establish
+their dynasty on a permanent footing. A fine Doum palm, in a handsome
+but filthy cage of glass, excites pity by its wretched want of comfort.
+Other unhappy captives, lank and lean, bald and mangy, beg hard for
+some one to have compassion on them. There are many noble specimens in
+a deplorable way.
+
+Two small-leaved standard myrtles, in boxes, cannot be less than a
+hundred and fifty or two hundred years old. Their trunks measure
+thirteen or fourteen inches in circumference; it would be difficult to
+find many such in Europe. A leading English nurseryman has endeavoured
+to get them across the water; it is a pity he cannot, for they would
+be properly cared for here. There are many other far-from-every-day
+myrtles, which the head of the establishment seems trying hard to kill.
+He is the Celestine Doudet of greenhouse evergreens; his pupils do not
+thrive; his oleanders are in the last stage of suffering. The alleged
+excuse is want of sufficient accommodation and hands; but when a thing
+is to be done, it is not a bad plan to do it yourself. Had I such
+handsome orange trees, so neglected, so begrimed with soot, I would get
+up at three in the morning, and, in my shirt-sleeves, with an apron
+on, with a bucket of soapsuds and a sponge in hand, would mount an A
+ladder and work away, day after day, till the task was done. But are
+there no such things as garden engines in Ghent? A Victoria, in a tank,
+contrives to wash itself partially, though tattered and torn about the
+leaves; but it is not clear what business a pit of pine-apples has in a
+place for study, where scantiness of room is complained of. One plant,
+or two, are all right and proper, but a botanical lecturer does not
+want a crop of anything.
+
+Near the entrance of the garden stands a vase, conspicuously mounted on
+a pedestal, in which grows what the official who did the honours was
+pleased to point out as a rose-bush grafted on an oak-tree. I shook my
+head in disgust at the falsehood. “Look,” he insisted, “the stem is
+an oak-stem, the side branches are covered with oak-leaves, and the
+central twig is the rose which has been grafted in the middle. You can
+see that its leaves are rose-leaves, can’t you?--and it is full of buds
+coming into flower.”
+
+“No, no; it is only a trick,” I answered, without apologising for
+flatly contradicting him. “You have perforated the stem of the oak from
+the root to the top; through the tube thus made you have inserted the
+stem of a rooted rose-bush; but there is no union between the two, like
+the junction of a scion with the stock. It grows independently in the
+earth, as the oak-plant does, although encased within it; and you call
+that grafting a rose on an oak, which I am gardener enough to know to
+be impossible.”
+
+“Ah! you know that. You have found it out. And yet, many people, when
+they see this specimen, go away persuaded that we have succeeded in
+grafting a rose on an oak.”
+
+I made no further remark than my looks expressed; but I thought
+that botanic gardens were instituted for the teaching of accurate
+information and useful facts, and not to mislead ignorant persons and
+to propagate error. An educational establishment, subsidised partly
+by the government and partly by the town, forgets its duties when
+it blazons forth a charlatanism which would upset the principles of
+vegetable physiology and stultify the hard-earned acquirements of
+science.
+
+ On the 18th of July was published, price Five Shillings and Sixpence,
+ neatly bound in cloth,
+
+                          THE THIRTEENTH VOLUME
+                                   OF
+                             HOUSEHOLD WORDS,
+
+ Containing the Numbers issued between the Nineteenth of January and
+ the Twelfth of July, Eighteen Hundred and Fifty-six.
+
+ Complete sets of Household Words may always be had.
+
+
+_The Right of Translating Articles from_ HOUSEHOLD WORDS
+_is reserved by the Authors_.
+
+
+Published at the Office, No. 16, Wellington Street North, Strand.
+Printed by BRADBURY & EVANS, Whitefriars, London.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
+
+This is from Volume XIV of the series.
+
+New original cover art included with this eBook is granted
+to the public domain.
+
+Transcriber has generated a Table of Contents.
+
+This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text.
+
+This file uses =equal signs= to indicate boldface text.
+
+Itemized changes from the original text:
+
+ On page 1, changed “for” to “for.”,
+   near “morsel of luck to be thankful”
+ On page 1, changed “bed-side” to “bedside”,
+   near “the chair by her”
+ On page 4, changed “sweet-heart” to “sweetheart”,
+   near “with a farthing. My”
+ On page 8, changed “be” to “he”,
+   near “wrings from poor people”
+ On page 20, changed “bird” to “Bird”,
+   near “or The Bird of St. Martin”
+ On page 29, changed “melody!"” to “melody!”,
+   near “and an echo of”
+ On page 29, changed “again!"” to “again!”,
+   near “reap but tears and griefs”
+ On page 42, changed “third class” to “third-class”,
+   near “chars-à-bancs are open at the side”
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77354 ***
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+      Household Words No. 330. | Project Gutenberg
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+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77354 ***</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<div class="pre-heading">
+“<i>Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS.</i>”—<span class="smcap">Shakespeare.</span>
+</div>
+
+
+<h1>HOUSEHOLD WORDS.</h1>
+<p class="center">A WEEKLY JOURNAL.</p>
+<p class="center"><b>CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.</b></p>
+
+
+<div class="height">
+<p class="float-left"><span class="float-left">N<sup>o.</sup> 330.]</span></p>
+<p class="float-right"><span class="float-left">{<span class="smcap">Price</span> 2<i>d.</i></span><br>
+<span class="float-left">{<span class="smcap">Stamped</span> 3<i>d.</i></span></p>
+
+<p class="center">SATURDAY, JULY 19, 1856.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="TABLE_OF_CONTENTS">TABLE OF CONTENTS</h2>
+</div>
+<div class="verse indent0"><a href="#THE_DIARY_OF_ANNE_RODWAY">THE DIARY OF ANNE RODWAY.</a><br></div>
+<div class="verse indent0"><a href="#BIRD_HISTORY">BIRD HISTORY.</a><br></div>
+<div class="verse indent0"><a href="#RHINE-LAND">RHINE-LAND.</a><br></div>
+<div class="verse indent0"><a href="#MILVERSTON_WORTHIES">MILVERSTON WORTHIES.</a><br></div>
+<div class="verse indent0"><a href="#SCOTCH_COAST_FOLK">SCOTCH COAST FOLK.</a><br></div>
+<div class="verse indent0"><a href="#CHIP">CHIP.</a><br></div>
+<div class="verse indent0"><a href="#CHARLES_THE_FIFTHS_GLOVE">CHARLES THE FIFTH’S GLOVE.</a><br></div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_DIARY_OF_ANNE_RODWAY">THE DIARY OF ANNE RODWAY.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="center">IN TWO CHAPTERS. CHAPTER THE FIRST.</p>
+
+<p>March 3rd, 1840. A long letter to-day
+from Robert, which surprised and vexed and
+fluttered me so, that I have been sadly
+behind-hand with my work ever since. He
+writes in worse spirits than last time, and
+absolutely declares that he is poorer even
+than when he went to America, and that he
+has made up his mind to come home to
+London. How happy I should be at this
+news, if he only returned to me a prosperous
+man! As it is, though I love him dearly, I
+cannot look forward to the meeting him
+again, disappointed and broken down and
+poorer than ever, without a feeling almost of
+dread for both of us. I was twenty-six last
+birthday and he was thirty-three; and there
+seems less chance now than ever of our being
+married. It is all I can do to keep myself by
+my needle; and his prospects, since he failed
+in the small stationery business three years
+ago, are worse, if possible, than mine. Not
+that I mind so much for myself; women, in
+all ways of life, and especially in my dressmaking
+way, learn, I think, to be more
+patient than men. What I dread is Robert’s
+despondency, and the hard struggle he will
+have in this cruel city to get his bread—let
+alone making money enough to marry me. So
+little as poor people want to set up in housekeeping
+and be happy together, it seems hard
+that they can’t get it when they are honest
+and hearty, and willing to work. The clergyman
+said in his sermon, last Sunday evening,
+that all things were ordered for the best, and
+we are all put into the stations in life that
+are properest for us. I suppose he was right,
+being a very clever gentleman who fills the
+church to crowding; but I think I should
+have understood him better if I had not been
+very hungry at the time, in consequence of my
+own station in life being nothing but Plain
+Needlewoman.</p>
+
+<p>March 4th. Mary Mallinson came down to
+my room to take a cup of tea with me. I read
+her bits of Robert’s letter, to show her that
+if she has her troubles, I have mine too; but
+I could not succeed in cheering her. She says
+she is born to misfortune, and that, as long
+back as she can remember, she has never
+had the least morsel of luck to be
+thankful <a id="Change1"></a>for.
+I told her to go and look in my
+glass, and to say if she had nothing to be
+thankful for then; for Mary is a very pretty
+girl, and would look still prettier if she could
+be more cheerful and dress neater. However,
+my compliment did no good. She rattled her
+spoon impatiently in her tea-cup, and said,
+“If I was only as good a hand at needlework
+as you are, Anne, I would change faces with
+the ugliest girl in London.” “Not you!”
+says I, laughing. She looked at me for a moment,
+and shook her head, and was out of the
+room before I could get up and stop her. She
+always runs off in that way when she is going
+to cry, having a kind of pride about letting
+other people see her in tears.</p>
+
+<p>March 5th.—A fright about Mary. I had
+not seen her all day, as she does not work at
+the same place where I do; and in the evening
+she never came down to have tea with
+me, or sent me word to go to her. So just
+before I went to bed I ran up-stairs to say
+good-night. She did not answer when I
+knocked; and when I stepped softly into the
+room I saw her in bed, asleep, with her work
+not half done, lying about the room in the
+untidiest way. There was nothing remarkable
+in that, and I was just going away on
+tip-toe, when a tiny bottle and wine-glass
+on the chair by her <a id="Change2"></a>bedside caught my eye.
+I thought she was ill and had been taking
+physic, and looked at the bottle. It was
+marked in large letters, “Laudanum—Poison.”
+My heart gave a jump as if it was
+going to fly out of me. I laid hold of her
+with both hands, and shook her with all
+my might. She was sleeping heavily, and
+woke slowly, as it seemed to me—but still
+she did wake. I tried to pull her out of
+bed, having heard that people ought to be
+always walked up and down when they have
+taken laudanum; but she resisted, and
+pushed me away violently.</p>
+
+<p>“Anne!” says she in a fright. “For
+gracious sake, what’s come to you! Are you
+out of your senses?”</p>
+
+<p>“O, Mary! Mary!” says I, holding up
+the bottle before her, “If I hadn’t come in
+when I did——” And I laid hold of her to
+shake her again.</p>
+
+<p>She looked puzzled at me for a moment—then
+smiled (the first time I had seen her do
+so for many a long day)—then put her arms
+round my neck.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Don’t be frightened about me, Anne,”
+she says, “I am not worth it, and there is no
+need.”</p>
+
+<p>“No need!” says I, out of breath. “No
+need, when the bottle has got Poison marked
+on it!”</p>
+
+<p>“Poison, dear, if you take it all,” says
+Mary looking at me very tenderly; “and a
+night’s rest if you only take a little.”</p>
+
+<p>I watch her for a moment; doubtful
+whether I ought to believe what she said, or
+to alarm the house. But there was no sleepiness
+in her eyes, and nothing drowsy in
+her voice; and she sat up in bed quite easily
+without anything to support her.</p>
+
+<p>“You have given me a dreadful fright,
+Mary,” says I, sitting down by her in the
+chair, and beginning, by this time, to feel
+rather faint after being startled so.</p>
+
+<p>She jumped out of bed to get me a drop of
+water; and kissed me, and said how sorry she
+was, and how undeserving of so much interest
+being taken in her. At the same time, she
+tried to possess herself of the laudanum-bottle
+which I still kept cuddled up tight in
+my own hands.</p>
+
+<p>“No,” says I. “You have got into a low-spirited
+despairing way. I won’t trust you
+with it.”</p>
+
+<p>“I am afraid I can’t do without it,” says
+Mary, in her usual quiet, hopeless voice.
+“What with work that I can’t get through
+as I ought, and troubles that I can’t help
+thinking of, sleep won’t come to me unless I
+take a few drops out of that bottle. Don’t
+keep it away from me, Anne; it’s the only
+thing in the world that makes me forget
+myself.”</p>
+
+<p>“Forget yourself!” says I. “You have
+no right to talk in that way, at your age.
+There’s something horrible in the notion of a
+girl of eighteen sleeping with a bottle of
+laudanum by her bedside every night. We
+all of us have our troubles. Haven’t I got
+mine?”</p>
+
+<p>“You can do twice the work I can, twice
+as well as me,” says Mary. “You are never
+scolded and rated at for awkwardness with
+your needle; and I always am. You can
+pay for your room every week; and I am
+three weeks in debt for mine.”</p>
+
+<p>“A little more practice,” says I, “and a
+little more courage, and you will soon do
+better. You have got all your life before
+you—”</p>
+
+<p>“I wish I was at the end of it,” says she,
+breaking in. “I’m alone in the world, and
+my life’s no good to me.”</p>
+
+<p>“You ought to be ashamed of yourself for
+saying so,” says I. “Haven’t you got me for
+a friend. Didn’t I take a fancy to you when
+first you left your stepmother, and came to
+lodge in this house? And haven’t I been
+sisters with you ever since? Suppose you
+are alone in the world, am I much better off?
+I’m an orphan, like you. I’ve almost as many
+things in pawn as you; and, if your
+pockets are empty, mine have only got nine-pence
+in them, to last me for all the rest of
+the week.”</p>
+
+<p>“Your father and mother were honest
+people,” says Mary, obstinately. “My mother
+ran away from home, and died in a hospital.
+My father was always drunk, and always
+beating me. My stepmother is as good as
+dead, for all she cares about me. My only
+brother is thousands of miles away in foreign
+parts, and never writes to me, and never
+helps me with a farthing. My <a id="Change3"></a>sweetheart—”</p>
+
+<p>She stopped, and the red flew into her
+face. I knew, if she went on that way, she
+would only get to the saddest part of her sad
+story, and give both herself and me unnecessary
+pain.</p>
+
+<p>“My sweetheart is too poor to marry me,
+Mary,” I said. “So I’m not so much to be
+envied, even there. But let’s give over disputing
+which is worst off. Lie down in bed,
+and let me tuck you up. I’ll put a stitch or
+two into that work of yours while you go to
+sleep.”</p>
+
+<p>Instead of doing what I told her, she burst
+out crying (being very like a child in some of
+her ways), and hugged me so tight round
+the neck, that she quite hurt me. I let her
+go on, till she had worn herself out, and was
+obliged to lie down. Even then, her last few
+words, before she dropped off to sleep, were
+such as I was half-sorry, half-frightened, to
+hear.</p>
+
+<p>“I won’t plague you long, Anne,” she said.
+“I haven’t courage to go out of the world as
+you seem to fear I shall. But I began my
+life wretchedly, and wretchedly I am sentenced
+to end it.”</p>
+
+<p>It was of no use lecturing her again, for
+she closed her eyes. I tucked her up as
+neatly as I could, and put her petticoat over
+her; for the bed-clothes were scanty, and
+her hands felt cold. She looked so pretty
+and delicate as she fell asleep, that it quite
+made my heart ache to see her, after such
+talk as we had held together. I just waited
+long enough to be quite sure that she was in
+the land of dreams; then emptied the horrible
+laudanum-bottle into the grate, took up
+her half-done work, and, going out softly, left
+her for that night.</p>
+
+<p>March 6th. Sent off a long letter to
+Robert, begging and entreating him not to
+be so down-hearted, and not to leave America
+without making another effort. I told
+him I could bear any trial except the wretchedness
+of seeing him come back a helpless,
+broken-down man, trying uselessly to begin
+life again, when too old for a change. It was
+not till after I had posted my own letter, and
+read over parts of Robert’s again, that the
+suspicion suddenly floated across me, for the
+first time, that he might have sailed for England
+immediately after writing to me. There
+were expressions in the letter which seemed
+to indicate that he had some such headlong<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span>
+project in his mind. And yet, surely if it
+were so, I ought to have noticed them at the
+first reading. I can only hope I am wrong
+in my present interpretation of much of what
+he has written to me—hope it earnestly for
+both our sakes.</p>
+
+<p>This has been a doleful day for me. I have
+been uneasy about Robert, and uneasy about
+Mary. My mind is haunted by those last
+words of hers: “I began my life wretchedly,
+and wretchedly I am sentenced to end it.” Her
+usual melancholy way of talking never produced
+the same impression on me that I feel
+now. Perhaps the discovery of the laudanum-bottle
+is the cause of this. I would give
+many a hard day’s work to know what to do
+for Mary’s good. My heart warmed to her
+when we first met in the same lodging-house,
+two years ago; and, although I am
+not one of the over-affectionate sort myself, I
+feel as if I could go to the world’s end to
+serve that girl. Yet, strange to say, if I was
+asked why I was so fond of her, I don’t think
+I should know how to answer the question.</p>
+
+<p>March 7th. I am almost ashamed to write
+it down, even in this journal, which no eyes
+but mine ever look on; yet I must honestly
+confess to myself, that here I am, at nearly
+one in the morning, sitting up in a state of
+serious uneasiness, because Mary has not yet
+come home. I walked with her, this morning,
+to the place where she works, and tried
+to lead her into talking of the relations she
+has got who are still alive. My motive in
+doing this was to see if she dropped anything
+in the course of conversation which might
+suggest a way of helping her interests with
+those who are bound to give her all reasonable
+assistance. But the little I could get
+her to say to me led to nothing. Instead of
+answering my questions about her stepmother
+and her brother, she persisted at first, in the
+strangest way, in talking of her father, who
+was dead and gone, and of one Noah Truscott,
+who had been the worst of all the bad
+friends he had, and had taught him to drink
+and game. When I did get her to speak of
+her brother, she only knew that he had gone
+out to a place called Assam, where they
+grew tea. How he was doing, or whether
+he was there still, she did not seem to know,
+never having heard a word from him for
+years and years past. As for her stepmother,
+Mary, not unnaturally, flew into a passion
+the moment I spoke of her. She keeps an
+eating-house at Hammersmith, and could
+have given Mary good employment in it;
+but she seems always to have hated her, and
+to have made her life so wretched with
+abuse and ill-usage, that she had no refuge
+left but to go away from home, and do her
+best to make a living for herself. Her husband
+(Mary’s father) appears to have behaved
+badly to her; and, after his death, she
+took the wicked course of revenging herself
+on her step-daughter. I felt, after this, that
+it was impossible Mary could go back, and
+that it was the hard necessity of her position,
+as it is of mine, that she should struggle on
+to make a decent livelihood without assistance
+from any of her relations. I confessed
+as much as this to her; but I added that I
+would try to get her employment with the
+persons for whom I work, who pay higher
+wages, and show a little more indulgence to
+those under them, than the people to whom
+she is now obliged to look for support. I
+spoke much more confidently than I felt,
+about being able to do this; and left her, as
+I thought, in better spirits than usual. She
+promised to be back to-night to tea, at nine
+o’clock, and now it is nearly one in the morning,
+and she is not home yet. If it was any
+other girl I should not feel uneasy, for I should
+make up my mind that there was extra work
+to be done in a hurry, and that they were
+keeping her late, and I should go to bed. But
+Mary is so unfortunate in everything that
+happens to her, and her own melancholy talk
+about herself keeps hanging on my mind
+so, that I have fears on her account which
+would not distress me about any one else. It
+seems inexcusably silly to think such a thing,
+much more to write it down; but I have a
+kind of nervous dread upon me that some
+accident—</p>
+
+<p>What does that loud knocking at the street
+door mean? And those voices and heavy
+footsteps outside? Some lodger who has lost
+his key, I suppose, And yet, my heart——What
+a coward I have become all of a
+sudden!</p>
+
+<p>More knocking and louder voices. I must
+run to the door and see what it is. O, Mary!
+Mary! I hope I am not going to have
+another fright about you; but I feel sadly
+like it.</p>
+
+<p>March 8th.</p>
+
+<p>March 9th.</p>
+
+<p>March 10th.</p>
+
+<p>March 11th. O, me! all the troubles I
+have ever had in my life are as nothing to
+the trouble I am in now. For three days I
+have not been able to write a single line in
+this journal, which I have kept so regularly,
+ever since I was a girl. For three days I
+have not once thought of Robert—I, who am
+always thinking of him at other times. My
+poor, dear, unhappy Mary, the worst I feared
+for you on that night when I sat up alone
+was far below the dreadful calamity that has
+really happened. How can I write about it,
+with my eyes full of tears and my hand all
+of a tremble? I don’t even know why I am
+sitting down at my desk now, unless it is
+habit that keeps me to my old everyday task,
+in spite of all the grief and fear which seem
+to unfit me entirely for performing it.</p>
+
+<p>The people of the house were asleep and
+lazy on that dreadful night, and I was the
+first to open the door. Never, never, could I
+describe in writing, or even say in plain talk,
+though it is so much easier, what I felt when
+I saw two policemen come in, carrying<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span>
+between them what seemed to me to be a dead
+girl, and that girl Mary! I caught hold of
+her and gave a scream that must have
+alarmed the whole house; for, frightened
+people came crowding down-stairs in their
+night-dresses. There was a dreadful confusion
+and noise of loud talking, but I heard
+nothing, and saw nothing, till I had got her
+into my room, and laid on my bed. I stooped
+down, frantic-like, to kiss her, and saw an
+awful mark of a blow on her left temple, and
+felt, at the same time, a feeble flutter of her
+breath on my cheek. The discovery that she
+was not dead seemed to give me back my
+senses again. I told one of the policemen
+where the nearest doctor was to be found,
+and sat down by the bedside while he was
+gone, and bathed her poor head with cold
+water. She never opened her eyes, or moved,
+or spoke; but she breathed, and that was
+enough for me, because it was enough for
+life.</p>
+
+<p>The policeman left in the room was a big,
+thick-voiced, pompous man, with a horrible
+unfeeling pleasure in hearing himself talk
+before an assembly of frightened, silent
+people. He told us how he had found her,
+as if he had been telling a story in a taproom,
+and began with saying, “I don’t think
+the young woman was drunk.” Drunk! My
+Mary, who might have been a born lady for
+all the spirits she ever touched—drunk! I
+could have struck the man for uttering the
+word, with her lying, poor suffering angel, so
+white and still and helpless before him. As
+it was, I gave him a look; but he was too
+stupid to understand it, and went droning
+on, saying the same thing over and over
+again in the same words. And yet the story
+of how they found her was, like all the sad
+stories I have ever heard told in real life, so
+very, very short. They had just seen her
+lying along on the kerb-stone, a few streets
+off, and had taken her to the station-house.
+There she had been searched, and one of my
+cards, that I give to ladies who promise me
+employment, had been found in her pocket,
+and so they had brought her to our house.
+This was all the man really had to tell.
+There was nobody near her when she was
+found, and no evidence to show how the
+blow on her temple had been inflicted.</p>
+
+<p>What a time it was before the doctor came,
+and how dreadful to hear him say, after he
+had looked at her, that he was afraid all the
+medical men in the world could be of no use
+here! He could not get her to swallow anything;
+and the more he tried to bring her
+back to her senses, the less chance there
+seemed of his succeeding. He examined the
+blow on her temple, and said he thought she
+must have fallen down in a fit of some sort,
+and struck her head against the pavement,
+and so have given her brain what he was
+afraid was a fatal shake. I asked what was
+to be done if she showed any return to sense
+in the night. He said, “Send for me
+directly;” and stopped for a little while afterwards
+stroking her head gently with his
+hand, and whispering to himself, “Poor
+girl, so young and so pretty!” I had felt,
+some minutes before, as if I could have
+struck the policeman; and I felt now as if I
+could have thrown my arms round the
+doctor’s neck and kissed him. I did put out
+my hand, when he took up his hat, and he
+shook it in the friendliest way. “Don’t hope,
+my dear,” he said, and went out.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the lodgers followed him, all
+silent and shocked, except the inhuman
+wretch who owns the house, and lives in
+idleness on the high rents <a id="Change4"></a>he wrings from
+poor people like us. “She’s three weeks in
+my debt,” says he, with a frown and an oath.
+“Where the devil is my money to come from
+now?” Brute! brute!</p>
+
+<p>I had a long cry alone with her that seemed
+to ease my heart a little. She was not the
+least changed for the better when I had
+wiped away the tears, and could see her
+clearly again. I took up her right hand,
+which lay nearest to me. It was tight
+clenched. I tried to unclasp the fingers, and
+succeeded after a little time. Something
+dark fell out of the palm of her hand as I
+straightened it. I picked the thing up, and
+smoothed it out, and saw that it was an end
+of a man’s cravat.</p>
+
+<p>A very old, rotten, dingy strip of black
+silk, with thin lilac lines, all blurred and
+deadened with dirt, running across and across
+the stuff in a sort of trellis-work pattern.
+The small end of the cravat was hemmed in the
+usual way, but the other end was all jagged, as if
+the morsel then in my hands had been torn off
+violently from the rest of the stuff. A chill
+ran all over me as I looked at it; for that
+poor, stained, crumpled end of a cravat
+seemed to be saying to me, as though it had
+been in plain words, “If she dies, she has
+come to her death by foul means, and I am
+the witness of it.”</p>
+
+<p>I had been frightened enough before, lest
+she should die suddenly and quietly without
+my knowing it, while we were alone together;
+but I got into a perfect agony now for fear
+this last worst affliction should take me by
+surprise. I don’t suppose five minutes passed
+all that woeful night through, without my
+getting up and putting my cheek close to her
+mouth, to feel if the faint breaths still fluttered
+out of it. They came and went just
+the same as at first, though the fright I was
+in often made me fancy they were stilled for
+ever. Just as the church clocks were striking
+four, I was startled by seeing the room door
+open. It was only Dusty Sal (as they call
+her in the house) the maid-of-all-work. She
+was wrapped up in the blanket off her bed;
+her hair was all tumbled over her face; and
+her eyes were heavy with sleep, as she came
+up to the bedside where I was sitting.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve two hours good before I begin to
+work,” says she, in her hoarse, drowsy voice,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span>
+“and I’ve come to sit up and take my turn
+at watching her. You lay down and get
+some sleep on the rug. Here’s my blanket
+for you—I don’t mind the cold—it will keep
+me awake.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are very kind—very, very kind and
+thoughtful, Sally,” says I, “but I am too
+wretched in my mind to want sleep, or rest,
+or to do anything but wait where I am, and
+try and hope for the best.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then I’ll wait, too,” says Sally. “I must
+do something; if there’s nothing to do but
+waiting, I’ll wait.”</p>
+
+<p>And she sat down opposite me at the foot
+of the bed, and drew the blanket close round
+her with a shiver.</p>
+
+<p>“After working so hard as you do, I’m
+sure you must want all the little rest you
+can get,” says I.</p>
+
+<p>“Excepting only you,” says Sally, putting
+her heavy arm very clumsily, but very gently
+at the same time, round Mary’s feet, and
+looking hard at the pale, still face on the
+pillow. “Excepting you, she’s the only soul
+in this house as never swore at me, or give
+me a hard word that I can remember. When
+you made puddings on Sundays, and give her
+half, she always give me a bit. The rest of
+’em calls me Dusty Sal. Excepting only
+you, again, she always called me Sally, as if
+she knowed me in a friendly way. I ain’t no
+good here, but I ain’t no harm neither; and I
+shall take my turn at the sitting up—that’s
+what I shall do!”</p>
+
+<p>She nestled her head down close at Mary’s
+feet as she spoke those words, and said no
+more. I once or twice thought she had fallen
+asleep, but whenever I looked at her, her
+heavy eyes were always wide open. She never
+changed her position an inch till the church
+clocks struck six; then she gave one little
+squeeze to Mary’s feet with her arm, and
+shuffled out of the room without a word. A
+minute or two after, I heard her down below,
+lighting the kitchen fire just as usual.</p>
+
+<p>A little later, the doctor stepped over
+before his breakfast time, to see if there had
+been any change in the night. He only
+shook his head when he looked at her, as if
+there was no hope. Having nobody else to
+consult that I could put trust in, I showed
+him the end of the cravat, and told him of
+the dreadful suspicion that had arisen in my
+mind, when I found it in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>“You must keep it carefully, and produce
+it at the inquest,” he said. “I don’t know
+though, that it is likely to lead to anything.
+The bit of stuff may have been lying on the
+pavement near her, and her hand may have
+unconsciously clutched it when she fell. Was
+she subject to fainting fits?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not more so, sir, than other young girls
+who are hard-worked and anxious, and
+weakly from poor living,” I answered.</p>
+
+<p>“I can’t say that she may not have got
+that blow from a fall,” the doctor went on,
+looking at her temple again. “I can’t say
+that it presents any positive appearance of
+having been inflicted by another person. It
+will be important, however, to ascertain what
+state of health she was in last night. Have
+you any idea where she was yesterday
+evening?”</p>
+
+<p>I told him where she was employed at
+work, and said I imagined she must have
+been kept there later than usual.</p>
+
+<p>“I shall pass the place this morning,” said
+the doctor, “in going my rounds among my
+patients, and I’ll just step in and make some
+inquiries.”</p>
+
+<p>I thanked him, and we parted. Just as he
+was closing the door, he looked in again.</p>
+
+<p>“Was she your sister?” he asked.</p>
+
+<p>“No, sir, only my dear friend.”</p>
+
+<p>He said nothing more; but I heard him
+sigh, as he shut the door softly. Perhaps he
+once had a sister of his own, and lost her?
+Perhaps she was like Mary in the face?</p>
+
+<p>The doctor was hours gone away. I began
+to feel unspeakably forlorn and helpless. So
+much so, as even to wish selfishly that Robert
+might really have sailed from America, and
+might get to London in time to assist and
+console me. No living creature came into
+the room but Sally. The first time she
+brought me some tea; the second and third
+times she only looked in to see if there was
+any change, and glanced her eye towards the
+bed. I had never known her so silent before;
+it seemed almost as if this dreadful accident
+had struck her dumb. I ought to have
+spoken to her, perhaps, but there was something
+in her face that daunted me; and,
+besides, the fever of anxiety I was in began
+to dry up my lips as if they would never be
+able to shape any words again. I was still
+tormented by that frightful apprehension of
+the past night, that she would die without
+my knowing it—die without saying one word
+to clear up the awful mystery of this blow,
+and set the suspicions at rest for ever which
+I still felt whenever my eyes fell on the end
+of the old cravat.</p>
+
+<p>At last the doctor came back.</p>
+
+<p>“I think you may safely clear your mind
+of any doubts to which that bit of stuff may
+have given rise,” he said. “She was, as you
+supposed, detained late by her employers,
+and she fainted in the work-room. They
+most unwisely and unkindly let her go home
+alone, without giving her any stimulant, as
+soon as she came to her senses again. Nothing
+is more probable, under these circumstances,
+than that she should faint a second time on
+her way here. A fall on the pavement,
+without any friendly arm to break it, might
+have produced even a worse injury than the
+injury we see. I believe that the only ill-usage
+to which the poor girl was exposed
+was the neglect she met with in the work-room.”</p>
+
+<p>“You speak very reasonably, I own, sir,”
+said I, not yet quite convinced. “Still,
+perhaps she may——”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span></p>
+
+<p>“My poor girl, I told you not to hope,”
+said the doctor, interrupting me. He went
+to Mary, and lifted up her eyelids, and looked
+at her eyes while he spoke, then added: “If
+you still doubt how she came by that blow,
+do not encourage the idea that any words of
+hers will ever enlighten you. She will never
+speak again.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not dead! O, sir, don’t say she’s
+dead!”</p>
+
+<p>“She is dead to pain and sorrow—dead to
+speech and recognition. There is more animation
+in the life of the feeblest insect that
+flies, than in the life that is left in her.
+When you look at her now, try to think that
+she is in Heaven. That is the best comfort I
+can give you, after telling the hard truth.”</p>
+
+<p>I did not believe him. I could not believe
+him. So long as she breathed at all, so long
+I was resolved to hope. Soon after the
+doctor was gone, Sally came in again, and
+found me listening (if I may call it so) at
+Mary’s lips. She went to where my little
+hand-glass hangs against the wall, took it
+down, and gave it to me.</p>
+
+<p>“See if the breath marks it,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>Yes; her breath did mark it, but very
+faintly. Sally cleaned the glass with her
+apron, and gave it back to me. As she did
+so, she half stretched out her hand to Mary’s
+face, but drew it in again suddenly, as if she
+was afraid of soiling Mary’s delicate skin
+with her hard, horny fingers. Going out,
+she stopped at the foot of the bed, and
+scraped away a little patch of mud that was
+on one of Mary’s shoes.</p>
+
+<p>“I always used to clean ’em for her,” said
+Sally, “to save her hands from getting
+blacked. May I take ’em off now, and clean
+’em again?”</p>
+
+<p>I nodded my head, for my heart was too
+heavy to speak. Sally took the shoes off
+with a slow, awkward tenderness, and went
+out.</p>
+
+<p>An hour or more must have passed, when,
+putting the glass over her lips again, I saw
+no mark on it. I held it closer and closer.
+I dulled it accidentally with my own breath,
+and cleaned it. I held it over her again.
+O, Mary, Mary, the doctor was right! I
+ought to have only thought of you in
+Heaven!</p>
+
+<p>Dead, without a word, without a sign,—without
+even a look to tell the true story of the
+blow that killed her! I could not call to
+anybody, I could not cry, I could not so much
+as put the glass down and give her a kiss for
+the last time. I don’t know how long I had
+sat there with my eyes burning, and my
+hands deadly cold, when Sally came in with
+the shoes cleaned, and carried carefully in her
+apron for fear of a soil touching them. At
+the sight of that——</p>
+
+<p>I can write no more. My tears drop so
+fast on the paper that I can see nothing.</p>
+
+<p>March 12th. She died on the afternoon of
+the eighth. On the morning of the ninth, I
+wrote, as in duty bound, to her stepmother,
+at Hammersmith. There was no answer.
+I wrote again: my letter was returned to me
+this morning, unopened. For all that woman
+cares, Mary might be buried with a pauper’s
+funeral. But this shall never be, if I pawn
+everything about me, down to the very gown
+that is on my back. The bare thought of
+Mary being buried by the workhouse gave
+me the spirit to dry my eyes, and go to the
+undertaker’s, and tell him how I was placed.
+I said, if he would get me an estimate of all
+that would have to be paid, from first to last,
+for the cheapest decent funeral that could be
+had, I would undertake to raise the money.
+He gave me the estimate, written in this
+way, like a common bill:</p>
+
+<table class="autotable">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">A walking funeral complete</td>
+<td class="tdr">1</td>
+<td class="tdr">13</td>
+<td class="tdr">8</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Vestry</td>
+<td class="tdr">0</td>
+<td class="tdr">4</td>
+<td class="tdr">4</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Rector</td>
+<td class="tdr">0</td>
+<td class="tdr">4</td>
+<td class="tdr">4</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Clerk</td>
+<td class="tdr">0</td>
+<td class="tdr">1</td>
+<td class="tdr">0</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Sexton</td>
+<td class="tdr">0</td>
+<td class="tdr">1</td>
+<td class="tdr">0</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Beadle</td>
+<td class="tdr">0</td>
+<td class="tdr">1</td>
+<td class="tdr">0</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Bell</td>
+<td class="tdr">0</td>
+<td class="tdr">1</td>
+<td class="tdr">0</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl">Six feet of ground</td>
+<td class="tdr">0</td>
+<td class="tdr">2</td>
+<td class="tdr">0</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td></td>
+<td>---</td>
+<td>---</td>
+<td>---</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdl"><span style="margin-left: 10em;">Total</span></td>
+<td class="tdr">£2</td>
+<td class="tdr">8</td>
+<td class="tdr">4</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>If I had the heart to give any thought to
+it, I should be inclined to wish that the
+Church could afford to do without so many
+small charges for burying poor people, to
+whose friends even shillings are of consequence.
+But it is useless to complain; the
+money must be raised at once. The charitable
+doctor—a poor man himself, or he would not
+be living in our neighbourhood—has subscribed
+ten shillings towards the expenses;
+and the coroner, when the inquest was over,
+added five more. Perhaps others may assist
+me. If not, I have fortunately clothes and
+furniture of my own to pawn. And I must
+set about parting with them without delay;
+for the funeral is to be to-morrow, the
+thirteenth. The funeral—Mary’s funeral!
+It is well that the straits and difficulties I
+am in, keep my mind on the stretch. If I
+had leisure to grieve, where should I find the
+courage to face to-morrow?</p>
+
+<p>Thank God, they did not want me at the
+inquest. The verdict given—with the doctor,
+the policeman, and two persons from the
+place where she worked, for witnesses—was
+Accidental Death. The end of the cravat
+was produced, and the coroner said that it
+was certainly enough to suggest suspicion;
+but the jury, in the absence of any positive
+evidence, held to the doctor’s notion that she
+had fainted and fallen down, and so got the
+blow on her temple. They reproved the
+people where Mary worked for letting her go
+home alone, without so much as a drop of
+brandy to support her, after she had fallen
+into a swoon from exhaustion before their
+eyes. The coroner added, on his own
+account, that he thought the reproof was
+thoroughly deserved. After that, the cravat-end
+was given back to me, by my own<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span>
+desire; the police saying that they could make
+no investigations with such a slight clue to
+guide them. They may think so, and the
+coroner, and doctor, and jury may think so;
+but, in spite of all that has passed, I am now
+more firmly persuaded than ever that there
+is some dreadful mystery in connection with
+that blow on my poor lost Mary’s temple
+which has yet to be revealed, and which may
+come to be discovered through this very
+fragment of a cravat that I found in her
+hand. I cannot give any good reason for
+why I think so; but I know that if I had
+been one of the jury at the inquest, nothing
+should have induced me to consent to such a
+verdict as Accidental Death.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="BIRD_HISTORY">BIRD HISTORY.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>A certain learned physician, named Peter
+Belon, a native of the town of Le Mans, the
+capital of what was then the province of
+Maine, but is now the department of the
+river Sarthe, in France, bethought him that
+very little was known in his native country
+at the time he lived—the middle of the sixteenth
+century—of Natural History; and,
+being moved by the example of Aristotle (at
+the trifling distance of nearly nineteen hundred
+years) he resolved, having been a great
+traveller and eke a great observer (two
+persons not always united) to give his fellow-citizens
+and the world, the benefit of his
+experience and opportunities, and take away
+the reproach which lay like a shadow over
+the land.</p>
+
+<p>Prepared by much study for the cultivation
+of his favourite pursuits, he left France in the
+year fifteen hundred and forty-seven, being at
+that time twenty-nine years of age, and
+travelled successively through Germany,
+Bohemia, Italy, Greece, Egypt, Palestine, and
+Asia Minor, returning to Paris after three
+years absence with a large and valuable collection
+of plants and specimens of natural
+history, which he then occupied himself in
+arranging, preparatory to the publication of
+the knowledge he had acquired. The first
+work which he produced was a history of
+strange fishes and serpents, under the title
+“De Aquatilibus;” but, tempting as the
+subject is, I do not at present intend to
+examine it, having another of his productions
+before me, which (from the fact of its being a
+borrowed book, and liable, therefore, to sudden
+seizure by its owner, who otherwise
+would never get it back), more immediately
+claims my attention.</p>
+
+<p>This coveted volume is the celebrated
+History of the Nature of Birds, with their
+descriptions and lively portraits, taken from
+Nature, and written in seven books, and is,
+perhaps, the principal work on which is
+founded Peter Belon’s claim to be considered
+the father of modern natural history. In the
+preface to it he promises—and he keeps his
+word far better than might have been
+expected—that nothing shall appear in these
+books which is not perfectly true; there
+shall be no false descriptions or portraits of
+suppositious animals; nothing, in short, that
+is not to be found in nature. Appropriate to
+the publication of a work on ornithology, Peter
+Belon caused this volume to be printed, in the
+year fifteen hundred and fifty-five, by
+William Cavellat, in front of the college of
+Cambray, in Paris, at the sign of the Fat
+Hen (a sure sign that Peter Belon came
+from Le Mans, a city famous for its poultry);
+and that there should be no doubt of the
+latter fact, the title-page also bore the living
+portraiture of a domestic fowl in very high
+condition, enclosed within a circle, on the
+outer rim of which was inscribed the legend
+“Gallina in pingui,” an inscription that need
+not again be translated. A portrait of Peter
+Belon, as he appeared to the justly-admiring
+world, at the age of thirty-six, also embellished
+the volume. The learned physician
+appears to have been a man with a good, sensible,
+honest countenance, wearing a large
+Crimean beard, and having a cap on his head,
+the shape of which, fortunately, has not
+yet been adopted for the British army.</p>
+
+<p>Like most other old authors, Peter Belon
+takes some time before he can get fairly
+under weigh. There are, first, the dedication
+to the most Christian king—Henry the
+Second of the name—whose humble scholar
+the author declares himself to be. Then follows
+a homily addressed to the reader, chiefly
+for the purpose of assuring him that, in the
+lively portraits of the birds which he presents
+(Ah, could we but reproduce some of them!),
+he is not practising on his credulity, but that,
+such as he represents them, the fowls are
+themselves, and that, where he cannot get an
+authentic likeness he has refused to invent
+one.</p>
+
+<p>The royal privilege to publish, sealed with
+yellow wax—like a bottle of good old wine—comes
+next, and finally appear several copies
+of verses in praise of the author, by certain of
+his friends, which latter had better be
+skipped, that Peter Belon’s volume, which
+has in it a great deal that is worth reading,
+may unfold its pages for our gratification. It
+is not, however, a resumé of the work, or anything
+like it, that I intend to make, but simply
+a dip into it—here and there—extending
+some of the quaint fancies, curious digressions,
+and sound opinions with which it is interspersed,
+always desiring our reader to bear in
+mind that the author was a physician as well
+as a naturalist.</p>
+
+<p>A word or two, before he fairly enters on
+his theme, may be allowed him to describe
+the pains he was in the habit of taking to
+obtain correct information. “It was my
+custom,” he says, “during my sojourn in
+Padua, to go down the Brenta every Thursday
+evening, voyaging all night in order to reach
+Venice on Friday morning, and to remain
+there on Saturday and Sunday, as much for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span>
+the convenience of seeing birds as well as
+fishes; and after having conferred with
+fowlers and fishermen, to return from thence
+on Sunday evening, thus losing no time by
+taking the night-boat, and being ready to
+continue my studies on Monday morning.
+During which time, on the aforesaid days of
+Friday and Saturday, there was not a single
+fowler or fisherman who did not bring to
+show me every rare creature he had been
+able to procure.”</p>
+
+<p>Commencing, then, “ab ovo,” Peter Belon
+discusses the properties of eggs; but into
+the processes of fecundation and hatching
+which he describes, I do not propose to
+enter, the gastronomic view of the question
+presenting more novelty. After apologising
+for the puerility of the subject, he tells us
+that in his time the French way of eating
+eggs (they have six hundred and eighty-five
+ways now, if the Almanach des Gourmands
+speaks sooth) was by breaking them at the
+small end and carefully replacing the shell
+when emptied into the platter; while the
+Germans, on the other hand—reminding us of
+Blefuscu and Lilliput—opened their eggs at
+the side and finished by smashing the shell;
+in which latter practice, says Belon, they followed
+the example of the ancients, who held
+it a thing of evil augury to leave the shells
+unbroken. Belon then proceeds to discourse
+on the numerous varieties of eggs, considering
+those of pigeons, ostriches, pea-hens, geese, and
+swans are ill-flavoured and indigestible,—not
+objecting to the eggs of the tortoise or turtle,—but
+giving the preference, like a person of
+taste, to those of the domestic fowl, which, he
+says, “are supposed by many in France to
+assist greatly in prolonging life;” and he
+instances the case of Pope Paul the Third,
+who used, with that end in view, to eat two
+new-laid eggs for breakfast every morning.
+As to their shape, he remarks that long eggs
+are supposed to be much better eating than
+round ones; but without insisting on this
+point, he has no hesitation in declaring that
+all are highly invigorating, as truffles are,
+and artichokes, and raw oysters. Artichokes,
+indeed, were so much esteemed in Belon’s
+time, that “no great nobleman feeling himself
+unwell would finish his dinner without
+them,”—eating them by way of dessert.
+Belon objects to hard boiled eggs, or such as
+are too much fried, “on account of their engendering
+bad humours,” but upon poached
+eggs (œufs pochéz) he looks with considerable
+favour. In all cases he prefers plain boiled
+eggs (time—three minutes and a quarter) to
+those which are roasted; notwithstanding the
+well-known proverb: “There’s wisdom in
+the roasting of eggs.” The best way of preserving
+eggs, he says, is to keep them in a
+cool place, bury them in salt, or dip them in
+brine.</p>
+
+<p>As the chicken issues naturally from the
+egg, so dining upon the one is the regular
+sequence to breakfasting on the other. The
+younger your pullet, says Belon, the easier it
+is of digestion, though he allows you occasionally
+to eat an elderly male bird, when
+prescribed medicinally (hormis le coq, qui est
+souvêt pris pour medicine). “Roasted or
+grilled fowls are generally the most savoury;
+those which are boiled furnish more humid
+nourishment to the body. The first are eaten
+hot, the last cold.” This rule, however, does
+not, he tells us, always hold good: “Because,
+if any one writing on the quality of the flesh
+of birds, happened to be in a country where
+the people fed on a particular kind not eaten
+elsewhere, and a male bird already old and
+tough were offered him (avenait qu’on luy
+presentast de quelque oyseau des-ia viel et
+endurcy), he ought not to conclude that its
+flesh is necessarily fibrous and hard.” With
+all respect for the opinion of honest Peter
+Belon, I should be inclined to think that a
+tough old cock, whatever his nation, was
+somewhat difficult of digestion. I have a
+very vivid recollection of a fowl of this sort
+at a certain hotel in Abbeville, where nothing
+else was to be had for dinner, which the
+waiter assured me was not to be surpassed in
+tenderness; a quality he might have displayed
+towards his family when alive, but
+which certainly did not belong to him after
+he was roasted. It is, perhaps, on the tolerant
+principle of respecting other people’s prejudices
+(I can account for Belon’s conclusion no
+other way), that he does not exclude even
+birds of prey from good men’s feasts. “We
+know by experience,” he observes (not his
+own experience, I hope), “what has taken
+place in Crete, where the young ones of the
+vulture which have fallen from their rocky
+nests near Voulèsmeni, have been proved at
+least as good eating as a fine capon. And
+although some of the inhabitants (the greater
+part, I should imagine) think that the old
+birds are not good to eat, because they feed
+on carrion, the fact is otherwise; for good
+falconers say that the hawk, vulture, and
+falcon are excellent meat, and being roasted
+or boiled, like poultry, are found to be well-tasted
+and tender. (Fancy a tender vulture!)
+We constantly see, if any of these birds kill
+themselves, or break a limb in hunting game,
+that the falconers do not hesitate to dress
+them for the table.” In Auvergne, he adds,
+the peasants of the Limagne, and in the
+mountains, too, eat the flesh of the goivan, a
+species of eagle; so that it may be concluded
+that birds of prey, whether old or young, are
+tender,—an inference which I presume to
+doubt. One saving clause Peter Belon has,
+which has at all times done good service. If
+people generally are not in the habit of
+eating kites, owls, and so forth, there are
+some who do: “tastes merely differ”—(les
+appetits des hommes ne se ressemblent en aucune
+manière).</p>
+
+<p>The transition is easy from these delicacies
+to other less questionable birds, and the
+manner of preparing them for the pot or spit;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span>
+and brings Peter Belon to what he evidently
+likes—a good dinner in a general way. “You
+may talk,” he says, “of Spaniards, Portuguese,
+English, Flemings, Italians, Hungarians,
+or Germans, but none of them, in
+dinner-giving, come up to the French. The
+latter begin with meats disguised a thousand
+ways (mille petits desguisements de chair);
+and this first entry, as it is called, consists of
+what is soft and liquid, and ought to be sent
+in hot, such as soups, fricassees, hashes, and
+salads”! (Hot salads are a rarity now-a-days).
+The second course is roast and boiled,
+of different kinds of meat, as well of birds as
+of terrestrial animals, “it being well understood
+that no fish is eaten except on fast-days.”
+The dinner ends with “cold things,
+such as fruits, preparations of milk and
+sweets.” This is the outline of a dinner
+only; but when Peter Belon enters into a
+detailed bill of fare, the newspaper report of
+a Lord Mayor’s dinner pales beside it. A
+few of the names of these dishes—as well as
+they can be translated—are worth preserving.
+What do you think of pilgrim capons—lions—made
+of the white meat of pullets; wild
+boar venison with chestnuts; diamond-pointed
+jelly; goslings dressed with malvoisie; feet
+(whose feet?) with infernal sauce (pieds à
+la saulce d’enfer); counterfeit sea-hog;
+laurelled quails; partridges with capers;
+veal sausages; hop salad; chestnut butterflies;
+golden-backed woodcock pasties; ox-heel
+pasties; plumed peacocks; tipsy cake
+(gasteaux joyeux); little cabbages all hot
+(petits chouy tous chaulds); and, amongst
+other varieties, pomegranate salad?</p>
+
+<p>In treating of the uses to which birds have
+been applied, Peter Belon does not omit divination.
+It is pretty clear, however, that he
+has no faith in the auruspices, though he
+lets them down gently. “These soothsayers
+exercised their mystery in the contemplation
+of the inward parts as well of birds as of
+other animals, when offered up for sacrifice.
+The question must then be asked, whether,
+by this inspection, they really could foretell
+the things that were to come, and if there
+were any probability, what they promised
+turning out true? There can be little doubt
+that this system of divination had a very
+simple origin, beginning by cajoling private
+persons, and promising them what they
+desired (which is the greatest pleasure men
+can receive), and afterwards, by investing it
+with a religious character, and turning the
+same to their own profit.” The French soldiers,
+in Belon’s time, imitated the Romans
+so far as to carry the sacred cock with their
+baggage when they took the field; but it was
+for a very intelligible species of augury,—to
+know, by his crowing, when the day was
+about to break. Belon had much too good
+sense to credit either the superstitions of the
+Romans or those of his own day, and was
+probably only restrained by his fear of the
+Church, from expressing his opinions too
+plainly. Passing from divination to sorcery,
+he says: “Every contemplative man must
+have had reason to despise the ignorant
+people who believe that sorcerers have the
+power attributed to them. We have seen
+many condemned to death; but all have been
+either poor idiots or madmen. Now, of two
+things, one must happen: that if they do
+mischief, it must either be by the employment
+of some venomous drug put into the mouth,
+or otherwise applied, or by invocations. It
+is not often that one hears of people of quality
+being accused of sorcery—only the poorer
+sort; and to tell the truth, no man of judgment
+would apply his mind to such absurdities.
+To prevent the common people from
+doing so, it is the custom once a-week to prohibit
+them formally. It may easily happen
+that one of this sort, troubled in his wits,
+should fancy incredible things, and even
+acknowledge to having committed them; but
+we must set this down to the nature of their
+disease.” In this way sensible Peter Belon
+disposes of the lycanthropists and other self-created
+wizards. On the subject of antipathies,
+however, he entertains a belief that it
+is reasonable; as in the case of the fox and
+the stork, which are sworn foes, ever since
+the practical jokes, I suppose, which we all
+know they played on each other.</p>
+
+<p>Being himself a physician, Peter Belon
+enlarges upon the maladies of birds; but he
+tells us that, with the exception of falcons,
+which are more especially under the
+care of man, they are their own doctors.
+“The pelican, which builds its nest on the
+ground, finding its young stung by a serpent,
+weeps bitterly, and piercing its own breast,
+gives its own blood to cure them.” (This is
+a new reading of the old story). “Quails,
+when they are indisposed, swallow the seeds
+of hellebore; and starlings take hemlock.
+The herb chélidoine (celandine, from the
+Greek kelidon, a swallow) derives its name
+from the fact that the swallow administers
+the juice of the plant to her young. The
+stork physics himself with marjoram. Wood
+pigeons, ravens, blackbirds, jays and partridges
+take laurel; while turtle-doves, pigeons,
+and cocks prescribe bird-weed. Ducks and
+geese eat sage.” (Sage enters largely into the
+affair, in combination with onions, when
+ducks and geese are eaten). “Cranes and
+herons employ marsh rushes. Thrushes and
+many smaller birds swallow the seeds of the
+ivy—which would be hurtful diet for man
+(qui seroit viande mauvaise à l’homme).”
+Not much worse, however, than hellebore or
+hemlock! But it would seem that the eagle
+family are exempt from the ordinary ailments
+of birds; for, in speaking of the Chrysaëtos,
+or great royal eagle, Belon tells us:
+“Eagles never change their place of abode,
+but always return to the same nest. It has
+thus been observed that they are long-lived.
+But becoming old, the beak grows so long
+that it becomes bent, and prevents the bird<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span>
+from eating, so that it dies, not of any
+malady, or extreme old age, but simply
+because it cannot make use of its beak.” I
+fear this is not one of the facts derived from
+Belon’s own observation.</p>
+
+<p>Our fashionable ladies have  passion for
+eider-down; but did they ever hear that the
+vulture can supply them with an article
+quite as soft? “Their skin,” says our
+author, “is almost as thick as that of a kid,
+and under the throat is a spot about the
+breadth of a palm, where the feathers are
+reddish, like the hair of a calf; and these
+feathers have no quills, any more than those
+on both sides of the neck and under the
+wings, where the down is so white that it
+shines like silk. The furriers, after removing
+the large feathers, leave the down, and curry
+the skins for mantles, which are worth a
+sum of money. In France they use
+them chiefly to place on the stomach (what
+we call bosom-friends). It would scarcely
+be believed that the vulture’s skin is so
+stout, if one had not seen it. Being in Egypt
+and on the plains of Arabia Deserta, we have
+noticed that the vultures are large and
+numerous, and the down from a couple of
+dozen of these would quite suffice for a large
+robe. At Cairo, on the Bezestein, where
+merchandise is exposed for sale, the traveller
+may obtain silken dresses lined with the
+skins of vultures, both black and white.”</p>
+
+<p>Belon was a great observer of all the birds
+of prey, and appears to have taken many
+notes of their habits while living near the
+Monts d’Or, in Auvergne, under the protection
+of M. Duprat, the Bishop of Clermont.
+It was there he learnt the fact about
+the peasantry eating the goivan, called also
+the boudrée, which he thus describes:
+“There is not a peasant in the Limagne (a
+great plain) of Auvergne who does not know
+the goivan, and how to capture him with
+traps baited with frogs, or with lime, but
+more commonly with snares. He is taken
+principally in the winter, when he is very
+good to eat, for he is so fat that no other bird
+comes near him in that respect. The peasants
+lard or boil him, and find his flesh quite
+as good as that of a hen. This eagle eats
+rats, mice, frogs, lizards, snails, caterpillars,
+and sometimes serpents.”</p>
+
+<p>That there may be no doubt about the
+last-named viand being food for eagles, one
+of Peter Belon’s lively portraitures follows the
+statement, in which a goivan is depicted in
+the act of dining on a serpent, twisted into a
+figure of eight (as, well he might be), and a
+number of astonished frogs and fishes scurrying
+away for dear life,—all save one philosophical
+member of the tadpole family, who,
+sitting on the tumultuous waves of an adjacent
+ditch, calmly contemplates the scene.
+It is observable throughout the plates in
+Belon’s work that the smaller quadrupeds
+endure the infliction of being devoured alive
+with far greater resignation than the Reptilia.
+I have before me at this moment the portrait
+of a rabbit, on whose back a buzzard is
+standing as if in the act of going to sing,
+while the long-eared animal on which he
+has pounced seems to apprehend his fate no
+more than if he were a music-stand. A
+mouse in the claws of a speckled magpie,
+puts on, in another plate, an air of equal
+indifference.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the birds of prey known to the
+French villagers—and to their cost—is one
+called by the singular name of White John
+(Jan le Blanc), or The <a id="Change5"></a>
+Bird of St. Martin,—but
+why the latter name was bestowed on it,
+Belon is at a loss to discover. The first is
+obvious enough, for its belly and part of its
+tail are of spotless white. This fellow is
+very daring, and carries off fowls and
+rabbits from under the eyes of the owners;
+he feeds largely, too, upon partridges and all
+the smaller birds, so that he is not a Cheap
+John, at all events. But Belon has one comfort:
+White John has a natural antagonist in
+the Hobby-hawk, and the way they fight in
+the air till they tumble entangled to the
+ground and are taken, is quite a pleasant
+thing to see (moult plaisant à voir). This
+combat is not depicted; but on the next
+page there is a striking delineation of the
+manner in which a falconer lures a bird of
+prey. He does it in this wise: a hawk having
+caught a partridge, stands on its back in
+the air, quietly devouring it, and the cunning
+fowler takes this opportunity of approaching
+with the leg of another bird in his hand,
+which he offers on his knees to the hawk, in
+the expectation, apparently, that the greedy
+bird of prey will give up the whole for a
+part. Of the share which the falconer’s dog
+has in the transaction, I say nothing; because,
+though in the foreground of the
+picture, he is not a quarter the size of the
+victim partridge. It must be confessed that
+Belon’s descriptions are more satisfactory
+than the artist’s illustrations. This remark,
+however, does not apply to the actual portraits
+of the birds, which are in most instances
+very accurate. Nothing, for instance, can be
+better done than the Royal Kite, which some
+in France call Huo, and others Escoufle.
+This bird, being a lover of carrion, is protected;
+so much so, that “in England a fine
+is imposed on those who kill him.” Belon
+records a pleasant piece of pastime which this
+kite affords the infidels:</p>
+
+<p>“The Turks who live at Constantinople
+take pleasure in throwing lumps of raw meat
+into the air, which the kites pounce upon so
+rapidly that they seize and carry it off before
+it can fall to the ground.”</p>
+
+<p>The Venetian nobles amuse themselves
+differently—not with kites, but cormorants.
+When the weather is calm, they go out on
+the lagoons in light boots, two or three dozen
+in company, each boat being rowed by six
+men, and pulled very swiftly. Having surrounded
+the cormorant (like French huntsmen<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span>
+with a fox, to prevent him from getting
+away and giving them a run), he cannot rise
+in the air (why not?), but dives under the
+water, and every time he shows his head
+above the surface, the noblemen let fly at
+him with their cross-bows, till at last he is
+thoroughly done up, is half-suffocated, and
+gives in. “It is a fine sight to behold this
+sport (c’est un beau spectacle de voir un tel
+deduit), and also is to see a cormorant having
+caught a tolerably-sized eel, which he tries to
+swallow, but has to fight a long time with it
+before he can get it down.” The cormorants
+themselves are, oddly enough, not thought
+good eating by the common people, who say
+of them that they are “a dish for the devil”
+(qui voudroit jestoyer le diable, il luy faudroit
+doñer de tels oyseaux); but Belon does
+not think them so bad as they say (toute fois
+ne sont si mauvais qu’on crië).</p>
+
+<p>The stork, unfortunately, did not, when
+Belon flourished, enjoy the same immunity;
+for though he admits that the Romans
+despised them at table, he says, “now they
+are looked upon as a royal dish.” He moreover
+tells us that the gizzard of a stork is an
+antidote to poison, and a remedy against
+squinting (le gesier de la cigogne est bon
+contre les venins et qui en aura mangé ne
+sera lousche en sa vie)! It appears also
+that even the ostrich, which can digest iron,
+is itself digested by Libyan gastronomers,
+who eat the flesh and sell the feathers.</p>
+
+<p>This tendency to discover what birds are
+most eatable, is manifested throughout the
+volume of Peter Belon. Arriving at the noble
+Alectrion or Rooster of the United States, he
+cites the following recipe, from Dioscorides,
+for the concoction of cock-broth. “Take a
+fine strong old bird, and having properly
+trussed him, stuff him well with roots of fern,
+the seed of chartamus (whatever that may
+be), salt of mercury, and soldanella (a purgative
+sea-weed), and, having sewn him up, boil
+him well down.” A potage this, which bears
+some resemblance to “the sillakickaby of the
+ancients,” described in Peregrine Pickle, and,
+I should think, nearly as agreeable.</p>
+
+<p>The majority of the birds in Belon’s book
+are accurately described and too well-known
+to afford much opportunity for quoting from
+what he says of their forms and habits, but
+now and then we meet with a rara avis. Such,
+for instance is the “Gellinote de bois” (Gelinotte)
+which, though still found in the
+Ardennes, and occasionally a visitor to
+Monsieurs Chevet’s shop in the Palais Royal,
+is rare enough to merit description at second-hand.
+What their price may be I know not,
+but three hundred years ago they cost two
+crowns a-piece, and were only seen at the
+banquets of princes and the wedding-feasts of
+great lords. “The feathers on the back are
+like those of the woodcock; the breast and
+belly white, spotted with black; the neck is
+like that of a pheasant; the head and beak
+resemble a partridge; the tail feathers are
+black with white tips, the large wing-feathers
+variegated like the owl; down to the
+feet the legs are feathered like the grouse.”
+If the gelinotte combines the flavour as well
+as the plumage of the birds just mentioned
+(omitting the owl) I should say it is worth
+the price which Monsieur Chevet puts upon
+it before he stuffs it with the truffles.</p>
+
+<p>The Vanneau is another bird which, common
+enough in the marshy districts of France
+(particularly in Bourbon Vendée) is, I believe,
+unknown in England. It is a wading-bird,
+and bears some resemblance to the peacock:
+hence, its name, corrupted from paonneau to
+vanneau; but the peasants call it dinhuit, on
+account of its cry. It is crested with five or
+six long black feathers, and is of changeable
+hue: in size it is not much larger than a
+plover, and is perched on very high red
+legs. There is no question about the estimation
+as a delicacy in which the vanneau is
+still held.</p>
+
+<p>Belon has a good deal to say about quails, and
+the various modes of catching them. One way
+is by means of an instrument made of
+leather and bone, which, set in motion,
+utters a sound like the voice of the female
+bird, and is called courcaillet, on hearing
+which the males run rapidly and are caught
+in the fowler’s net; but this device is only
+effectual during the season of courting. Every
+one has noticed how low the quail’s cages are
+made. Belon says, it is because they are so
+given to jumping and excitement that they
+would destroy themselves were the cages
+higher. Of the crested lark (in French, cochevis),
+he tells us, on the authority of several
+writers of antiquity, that when made into a
+broth or roasted—like punch—they cure the
+colic; we all know what capital pâtés are
+made of the lark uncrested. We learn that
+the woodcock—how admirable is he, too, in a
+pâté—though called bécasse, in French, on
+account of the length of his bill, ought to be
+designated “vvitcoc,” that being an English
+word, which signifies “cock of the wood,” and
+corresponds with the Greek term, “xilomita.”
+Some people, Belon says, call him Avis cœca
+(blind bird), because he suffers himself to be
+so easily caught, and he gives a sufficiently
+lively description of one mode of effecting his
+capture. It is as follows:—“He who desires
+to take the woodcock must put on a cloak
+and gloves, the colour of the dead leaves, and
+conceal his head and shoulders beneath a
+(brown) hat, leaving only two small holes to
+see through. He must carry in his hands
+two sticks covered with cloth of the same
+colour, about an inch of the ends of which
+must be of red cloth, and leaning upon
+crutches (rather a lame way of proceeding)
+must advance leisurely towards the woodcock,
+stopping when the bird becomes aware of his
+approach. When the woodcock moves on he
+must follow until the bird stops again without
+raising its head. The fowler must then
+strike the sticks together very quickly (moult<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>
+bellement) which will so amuse and absorb
+the woodcock that its pursuer may take from
+his girdle a rod, to which a horsehair noose is
+attached, and throw the latter round its neck,
+for it is one of the stupidest and most foolish
+birds that are known.” I should think so, if
+it allowed itself to be caught by this tom-foolery.</p>
+
+<p>Of birds which are not stupid, but knavish
+rather, even to much theft, Belon relates that
+the magpie is called Margot (the diminutive
+of Margaret, as Charles the First called his
+beautiful sister, the wife of Henry of
+Navarre); and the jay (Richard), each on
+account of their cry. Being somewhat skinny,
+the jay is thought rather a tough morsel by
+those who desire to dine upon him; but he
+himself eats everything that comes in his way,
+and is particularly fond of peas—green peas
+perhaps—at a guinea a pound. The common
+people think that the jay is subject to the
+falling sickness, nevertheless they eat him
+when they find him on the ground. It is,
+perhaps, a weakness in human nature which
+cannot be remedied, the tendency to make a
+meal of everything that has animal life. But
+for this, how severely might we not animadvert
+on the gluttony of those who, not remembering
+their song in spring, devour thrushes
+in the autumn: yet, that is the best time to
+eat them, for they are then perfectly delicious
+as you would say, with me, if you had made
+a diligence supper on thrushes travelling
+through the Ardennes.</p>
+
+<p>But, I fear, if I read any more of Peter
+Belon’s volume, I shall write an article on
+Gastronomy, a thing I had no notion of when I
+began. Let me conclude with something more
+serious than eating—if anything be more
+serious: let me lament, with all the world, that
+so useful a man as Peter Belon should have
+been cut off sadly in the prime of his life and
+full vigour of his intellect. He was only
+forty-five years of age when he was murdered
+one night as he traversed the Bois de Boulogne
+on his way to Paris; whether for the
+sake of plunder or revenge is not known.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="RHINE-LAND">RHINE-LAND.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">We lean’d beneath the purple vine,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">In Andernach, the hoary;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And at our elbows ran the Rhine</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">In rosy twilight glory.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Athwart the Seven-hills far seen</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">The sun had fail’d to broaden;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Above us stream’d in fading sheen</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">The highway he had trodden.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">His farewell crimson kiss he left</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">On clouds suffused with blushes:</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">One star beam’d down the dewberry-cleft</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Across the mirror’d flashes.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">From cliffs of slate the vintage call’d</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">In muffled leafage dusky:</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And down the river grandly wall’d,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">The grape reel’d ripe and husky.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">We reach’d entwining hands to seize</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">The clusters round us glowing:</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Our locks were fondled by the breeze</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">From southern sandhills blowing.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">The long-neck’d flask was not unbent,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">The globed green glass unemptied;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The god of honest pleasure lent</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Young Love his powers, untempted.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Home-friends we pledged; our bridal-maids;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Sweet wishes gaily squander’d:</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">We wander’d far in faëry glades,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Up golden heights we wander’d.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Like King and Queen in royal bliss,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">We paced a realm enchanted,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">A realm rose-vista’d, rich from this,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Tho’ not from this transplanted.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">For this Rome’s frontier foot endear’d,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Her armèd heel made holy;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And Ages grey as Time’s own beard,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Wreathed it with melancholy.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Old days it has that live in gleams</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Of suns for ever setting:</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">A moth-wing’d splendour, faint as dreams,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">That keeps the fancy fretting.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">A gorgeous tracing dash’d with gloom,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">And delicately dusted:</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">To grasp it is to spoil its bloom;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">’Twas ours because we trusted.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">No longer severing our embrace</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Was Night a sword between us;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">But richest mystery robed in grace</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">To lock us close, and screen us.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">She droopt in stars; she whisper’d fair;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">The wooded crags grew dimmer;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The arrow in the lassie’s hair</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Glanced by a silver glimmer.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">The ruin-rock renew’d its frown,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">With terror less transparent,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Tho’ all its ghosts are hunted down,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">And all its knights are errant.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">The island in the gray expanse,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">We watch’d with colour’d longing:</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The mighty river’s old romance</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Thro’ many channels thronging.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Ah, then, what voice was that which shed</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">A breathless scene before us:</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">We heard it, knowing not we heard;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">It rose around and o’er us.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">It rose around, it thrill’d with life,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">And did infuse a spirit</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">To misty shapes of ancient strife:</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Again I seem to hear it!</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">The voice is clear, the song is wild,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">And has a quaint transition;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The voice is of a careless child</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Who sings an old tradition.</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">He sings it witless of his power;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Beside the rushing eddies,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">His singing plants the tall white tower</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Mid shades of knights and ladies.</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Against the glooming of the west</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">The grey hawk-ruins darken,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">And hand in hand, half breast to breast,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Two lovers gaze and hearken.</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="MILVERSTON_WORTHIES">MILVERSTON WORTHIES.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>From his sixth year, my brother Davie
+manifested undeniable symptoms of the
+divine afflatus, but it was not until fifteen
+that he commenced his immortal poem, “The
+Vengeance of Bernardo Caspiato.” He was
+a delicate, pretty, fair boy, with a spiritual
+countenance, a noble brow, and abundance of
+silky brown hair; quite the poet to look at,
+and very like my dear mother, as we all
+daily observed. It was expected that he
+would cover the name of Cleverboots with a
+halo of glory: unlike some families, we were
+the first to believe in our hero, and the most
+constant in our faith in his splendid future.
+At the epoch referred to, Davie began to tie
+his collar with a black ribbon, to wear his
+white throat exposed, and his beautiful hair
+very long; his appetite did not fail him in
+private, but at our little réunions he always
+partook of dry toast and strong green tea;
+was very silent, abstracted, and averse to
+men’s society: the women petted him, and
+called him “all soul.” He was very kind-hearted
+and sweet-tempered, and rather vain,
+which was nothing more than natural, considering
+how he was flattered.</p>
+
+<p>He had a little room at the top of the
+house which looked over the town to Milverston
+mere, where the immortal poem was
+commenced. I remember he began it on a
+wet evening, and it opened dismally, with a
+storm; he had me up there with my plain
+sewing to listen to the first stanzas; and he
+consulted me about one or two difficult
+rhymes: he was not sure whether “horror”
+and “morrow” were correct. I thought not;
+and, his birthday falling three days after, I
+presented him with a rhyming dictionary.
+Subsequently, the poem made rapid progress.</p>
+
+<p>Cousin John had just gone up to London
+to study law, and my father wished Davie to
+be articled to Mr. Briggs, the solicitor at
+Milverston. This did not chime in with his
+taste at all; he stated that it was his wish to
+follow the profession of letters. We did not
+quite understand this at the time. Cousin
+Jack said it meant that he wanted to be the
+idle gentleman. I had my doubts on the
+matter. Davie brought my mother over to
+his way of thinking. “I shall be very poor,
+but very happy, mother,” he used to say;
+“if you put me to anything else, I shall be
+miserable and do no good.” So Davie got
+his own way; and, as a preparation for his
+profession of letters, he stayed at home and
+finished “Bernardo Caspiato.” It was a
+splendid work. I have wept over it often.
+The heroine having been executed for witchcraft,
+her lover, Bernardo, devotes his life to
+avenge her; and, after committing a catalogue
+of murders, ends by disappearing mysteriously
+in a flash of blue lightning to rejoin
+her in heaven. My mother objected to the
+morality of the conclusion; but she acknowledged
+herself, at the same time, ignorant of
+the laws and licence of poetry.</p>
+
+<p>With this great work, and some minor
+pieces of equal if not superior merit, my
+brother Davie went up to London on foot,
+with ten pounds in his pocket, and seventeen
+years of experience on his head. Cousin Jack
+had taken comfortable lodgings for him at a
+small baker’s shop, kept by a widow woman
+with a daughter named Lucy. The dear lad
+wrote us word that he was quite suited, and
+that, after a few days to look about him, he
+should carry his immortal poem to a publisher.
+His hopes were sanguine; his visions
+of fame magnificent.</p>
+
+<p>To our surprise and grief, Bernardo
+Caspiato was declined with thanks. Nobody
+was inclined to publish it unless the
+author would bear all the expenses.
+Davie would not suffer my father to do
+this—he would earn money for himself.
+We wondered how he could do it; but Cousin
+Jack lent him a hand, and somebody who
+had something to do with a newspaper bought
+his minor pieces. He lived, at all events, by
+his own exertions. At this time, Lucy began
+to figure in letters to me marked “private.”
+It would be impossible to give the whole
+story as therein developed, but I will epitomise
+it as afterwards heard from his own lips.</p>
+
+<p>He fell enthusiastically in love with Lucy,
+whose beauty he raved about as ethereal,
+heavenly, unsophisticated: before I heard of
+her at all he was evidently far gone in the
+tender passion; and Lucy had listened so
+often, and with such a graceful interest, to
+his literary struggles, that he fancied he had
+every reason to believe that his affection was
+returned. One morning, however, all these
+sunny hopes were rudely dispelled. He had
+seen once or twice a young man of rustic
+appearance in the shop, he had also known
+him to take tea in the back parlour with
+Mrs. Lawley and her daughter, without attaching
+any significance to his visits. As
+Davie sat at breakfast on this particular day,
+this individual drove to the door in a gig, and
+was pleasantly received by the landlady. He
+wore quite a festal appearance, and for the
+first time a suspicion entered Davie’s mind
+which changed quickly to a certainty. After
+speaking to Mrs. Lawley for a minute or
+two, the young man ran out to stop the
+driver of a waggon loaded with sacks of
+grain, and, while holding him in talk, the
+poor poet from the up-stairs window took an
+inventory, as it were, of his rival’s personal
+graces. He was of a very tall, straight, and
+robust figure, with a broad, comely face,
+ruddy complexion, and curly brown hair.
+His voice was like the roll of an organ, and
+his laugh the very heartiest of guffaws—altogether,
+a very proper man, as Davie, but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>
+for his jealousy, must have acknowledged.
+The stranger’s rollicking air of gaiety added
+present insult to previous injury; and to get
+out of the hearing of his rich “ha ha,” which
+seemed to pervade the whole neighbourhood,
+Davie snatched up his hat, intending to walk
+off his spleen: he pushed halfway down the
+stairs, but there paused—just below, in the
+passage by the back-parlour door, was the
+obnoxious rustic, with his arm round bonny
+Lucy’s waist, and his lips seeking a kiss;
+while the damsel’s hand was put up to shield
+her cheek, and her tongue was saying, in
+that pretty accent which lovers never take as
+truth, “Don’t, Tom; please don’t!” Tom
+caught the uplifted fingers, and held them
+fast till he had taken a dozen kisses to indemnify
+himself for the delay. Davie, greatly
+discomfited, retreated to his room, and made
+cautious surveys before venturing to leave it
+again. He quite hated Tom, who was a fine,
+single-minded young fellow, guilty of no
+greater sin against him than having won
+blue-eyed Lucy’s heart.</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Lawley came up-stairs to remove
+her lodger’s breakfast-things, she looked
+glowing with importance, and, after a short
+hesitation, confided to him the great family
+secret—Mr. Tom Burton, of Ravenscroft
+Farm, had offered for Lucy, and they were to
+be married that day week. “You’ll have
+seen him, sir, maybe?” said the proud
+mother; “he’s been here as often as twice
+a-week; and, when I told him it behoved him
+to stop at home and attend to his farm, he’d
+tell me that corn would grow without watching;
+and I soon saw what he meant. So, as
+Lucy was noways unwilling, I bade ’em have
+done with all this courting and courting, and
+get wed out of hand. Perhaps, Mr. David,
+you’ll be so good as go out for the day, and
+let us have your room for breakfast—or we
+should be proud of your company, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>The poor poet almost choked over his congratulations,
+but he got them out in a way.
+Soon after, he saw the lovers cross the
+street, arm-in-arm, spruced up for the occasion,
+and looking as stiff as Sunday clothes
+worn on a week-day always make rustic
+lovers look—everybody who met them might
+know what they were. Tom had a rather
+bashful and surprised expression; as if he
+were astonished to find himself part owner
+of such a fresh, modest, little daisy of a
+sweetheart, and were not quite sure that it
+was her cottage bonnet just below his great
+shoulder, for so long as Davie had them in
+sight he kept looking down into it to make
+sure Lucy was there. Davie’s feelings were
+almost too much for him, but he made a
+magnanimous resolve that as Lucy had been
+so good and attentive to him, he would make
+her a present, and, that he might endure the
+deepest pangs, that present should be the
+wedding dress and bonnet. He went off
+accordingly, post haste, to a great millinery
+establishment, and purchased a dove-coloured
+silk dress, and the most sweetly pretty white
+bonnet, with orange blossoms, that could be
+had for money. When Lucy and Tom returned
+from their walk, he called her up-stairs
+and presented them to her. She
+contemplated them with surprised delight,
+blushing and clasping her hands over them:
+never was there anything so beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Davie bade her try the bonnet on, to see
+how it would fit, and, without an atom of
+coquetry, she put it on, tied the strings under
+her chin, and rose on tip-toe to peep at herself
+in the glass over the chimney-piece.</p>
+
+<p>“I must let” (Lucy was going to say “Tom,”
+but she substituted “mother” instead); “I
+must let mother see it!” and she ran out of
+the room, leaving the door open, with that
+intent. But somebody met her on the stairs,
+and stopped her for examination. Davie
+tried to shut his ears, but he could not help
+hearing that ominous “Don’t, Tom; please
+don’t;” though, as balm to his wounded
+feelings, he also caught the echo of a—what
+shall I say?—a slap? a box?—what do you
+call it when a pretty maiden brings her hand
+sharply in contact with her lover’s cheek?
+Well, no matter—it is a something which
+always is or ought to be avenged by six
+kisses on the spot; it was condignly punished
+in this instance, for Tom lacked modesty even
+more than French polish. Davie instantly
+slammed the door, and sat down to compose
+his feelings by inditing a sonnet on “Disappointed
+Love.” When it was finished—the
+lines being flowing and the rhymes musical—he
+felt more placid and easy in his mind;
+but, before the wedding, he withdrew himself
+from the house, and went into country
+lodgings to hide his griefs. In process of
+time he rhymed himself into a belief that
+he was the victim of a disappointed passion,
+the prey of a devouring sorrow; that his
+heart was a wreck, a ruin, dust, ashes, a
+stone, dwelling alone; that life was stale, an
+unfinished tale, a hopeless, joyless pageant:
+all because blue-eyed Lucy had married Tom
+Burton of Ravenscroft.</p>
+
+<p>This was the early love-romance which
+furnished my brother Davie with his cynicism,
+his similes of darts, flames, and wounds
+that are scattered everywhere through his
+verses. Some of the productions of his
+troubled muse, after he fled to Highgate, shall
+be quoted. What would have been Lucy’s
+astonishment could she have heard herself
+apostrophised in such burning numbers! her
+orbs of sunny blue would have dilated until
+she would have looked, indeed, a round-eyed
+Juno. Here is one of Davie’s effusions
+from a little manuscript-book, bound in
+white vellum, the confidante of his poetical
+woes at this mournful era:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Thou hast come like a mist o’er my glorious dreaming,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Thy image stands up ’twixt my soul and the sun!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Oh! why, when youth’s noontide of gladness was beaming,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Hast thou darken’d all that it shone upon?</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">To see thee, to love thee, ay, love thee to madness,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">To know that thou ne’er couldst be aught to me!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">To leave thee! and read in my spirit’s lone sadness,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">That the love was all hopeless I centred in thee!</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The muse appears at this junction to have
+been quite troublesome with her declarations.
+The following was written one evening instead
+of going to dinner like a Christian gentleman
+to Uncle Sampson’s on Christmas
+Day. It stands entitled, I Love Thee! and
+is written with a neatness that says little for
+its spontaneity:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">I love thee! O, never did summer sea</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Greet sunshine more gladly than I greet thee!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Like dew to spring flowers, like stars to dusk night</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Art thou with thy glances of liquid light!</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">I love thee, as only those hearts can love</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Whose burning devotion is hard to move!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Life, beauty, and hope, thou art all to me,—</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">A voice and an echo of <a id="Change6"></a>melody!</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>It seems rather as if sense were made subordinate
+to sound in some of these lucubrations,
+but they are not so bad for seventeen. Davie
+came back to Milverston for a little while at
+this season, and cultivated his grief, to the
+great disorder of our regular household. One
+night he stayed out so late that my father
+went in search of him and found him by the
+mere, seeking inspiration from the stars. On
+this occasion he produced eight more lines,
+which seem to have been the utmost his
+muse could bring for that one time. It
+is called, in the vellum book into which it
+is carefully transcribed, Tell me, my
+Heart:—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Tell me, my heart, the reason of thy sadness,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Why peoplest thou thy solitude with dreams?</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Why dost thou shun the scenes of mirth and gladness</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">To find thy echo in the lonely streams?</div>
+  </div>
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Alas! my heart, that thy poor love should wander,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Where it can meet with nought but cold disdain!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Sad that its treasures thus my soul should squander</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Where it can reap but tears and griefs <a id="Change7"></a>
+         again!</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Good little Lucy would have been sorry,
+indeed, if she could have known into what
+a limbo of anguish Davie was thrown by her
+marriage; but let us hope, as she might have
+done, that the best half of the tortures were
+only fancy. I know he had at the worst an
+excellent appetite for lamb and asparagus, to
+which he was very partial. Dear Davie, to
+read these effusions, tender imaginations may
+think of him as fine porcelain fractured with
+the world’s hard usage, whereas he is stout
+and bald, and wears green spectacles. The
+law does not undertake to deal with poetry
+composed under false pretences, or many
+would be the sighing Strephons and doleful
+Delias brought up for judgment.</p>
+
+<p>Last summer we had Davie at home for a
+month, and during that time occurred the
+grand incremation of Bernardo Caspiato. I
+shall ever regard it as a most cruel sacrifice, and
+Cousin Jack, who instigated it, as an illiterate
+character. Davie brought it forth one evening
+when we three were together, and read
+parts of it aloud: Jack unfeelingly remarked
+that it was not like good wine, it did not improve
+with keeping; that, like fruit plucked
+immaturely, it was green and tasteless; it had
+not acquired mellowness and flavor, and if
+stored up for another twenty years it would
+not taste better. Davie half coincided with
+him; but I did not; so grandly majestic as
+was the march of the lines, so delicate and
+true the rhymes, so thrilling the noble
+catastrophe. It exasperated me to see Jack,
+first yawn to the full extent of his jaws, then
+snatch the manuscript from Davie, and toss
+it up to the ceiling, retreating afterwards in
+feigned fear lest he should be crushed by its
+leaden fall. An ignoble fate was thine,—immortal
+Bernardo! Convicted of the
+respectable sin of dulness—which none pardon—thou
+wert condemned to be burnt!
+Davie did not act with undue precipitation;
+Jack urged an immediate execution, but the
+poet took a week to consider of it, and many
+a pang it cost him. Those who have written
+immortal poems and destroyed them will
+appreciate his feelings; none else can. Let
+anybody of experience call to mind the last
+time he has read through the letters from his
+first love, just before she was married to
+somebody else; or the letters from that particular
+old friend, which it is of no use to
+keep because he is dead, or you have
+quarrelled beyond hope of reconciliation, and
+then some faint idea will be conceived of the
+poet’s sensations at this immolation of his
+first love, his particular friend, and his pet
+child—all in one.</p>
+
+<p>It was the summer-season, and warm,—I
+found it very warm; there was no fire in the
+grate, and the match-box on the writing-table
+was empty. Jack supplied the want eagerly
+from his smoking apparatus, and Bernardo
+Caspiato shrank into a pinch of tinder. I wept.</p>
+
+<p>“There!” said poor Davie, with a profound
+sigh, “it took two years to write and
+two seconds to destroy—just like an eternal
+friendship, an undying affection, or anything
+of that kind which half a dozen indiscreet
+words are at any time enough to annihilate!”</p>
+
+<p>“Have a cigar, old boy; never mind
+moralising,” said Jack, to whom a cigar
+would be consolation for the death of his
+grandmother; “have a cigar; the business
+can’t be helped.”</p>
+
+<p>“Poor Bernardo!” said Davie, as feelingly
+as if he spoke of a brother, “poor Bernardo!
+He gave me many an hour’s delightful occupation.
+I feel as if I had lost a friend to
+whom I had been in the habit of confiding my
+sentimental vagaries. I’m not sure that it
+was right to burn him.”</p>
+
+<p>“Have a cigar,” reiterated Cousin Jack.
+Davie accepted the offer with a pensive sigh,
+put on his green spectacles, and went out for a
+walk in mournful mood. It is a serious thing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span>
+burning immortal poems. Nobody can tell
+what losses the world has had in that way—nobody!</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="SCOTCH_COAST_FOLK">SCOTCH COAST FOLK.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">FOOTDEE IN THE LAST CENTURY.</p>
+
+
+<p>The aged lady whose recollections I condense,
+and combine with my own observations,
+says:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Remote, but still distinct, the view appears,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Thro’ the long vista of departed years;</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>although, towards the conclusion of the
+American War, the fish town of Footdee was
+not one of those “green spots on which
+memory delights to dwell.” The town consisted
+of several rows of low-thatched cottages
+running from east to west, between the
+high-road and the harbour, or, as it is called,
+the tide. During the high spring-tides, the
+furthest waves came up to the bank of sand
+on which the ends of the houses were built.
+Exteriorly, these cottages appeared comfortless
+enough, as each dwelling fronted the
+back of its opposite neighbour, and, as in the
+narrow space between there was a line of
+dunghills crossed over with spars, upon
+which were hung lines, bladders, and buoys,
+intermixed with dried dog-fish and skate.
+Their interior was not more alluring to a
+stranger. The earthen-floor was uneven,
+and sometimes dirty, although generally
+sanded over of an evening, or at least every
+Saturday, in preparation for the Sabbath.
+Upon the wood or rafters which stretched
+across horizontally from the tops of the walls,
+was a ceiling of old oars and bits of drift-wood.
+The bare rough walls were not whitewashed.
+Roof, walls, and rafters were all
+blackened by smoke from a fire at one end of
+the cottage, placed upon the floor, and made
+of turf and sea-weed. Soot-drops—curious
+black glossy accumulations, formed by a
+similar process, doubtless, to that which produces
+stalactites and stalagmites—hung here
+and there upon the walls, rafters, and roof.
+These collections of pendulous carbon might
+have been deemed ornaments, if they had not
+been signs of defective cleanliness. There
+was a small window at each side of the door.
+Under each window was a clumsy black
+bedstead. There was but one small deal
+table. There were only two or three chairs,
+and as many sunkies, or low fixed seats resting
+upon stakes driven into the floor, to sit
+upon. Beside the wall opposite the door
+were seen the requisites of the fishing occupation—lines,
+creels, murlains, &amp;c. Such
+were the principal property and furniture
+visible. There was no press or cupboard;
+and the only depository for keeping things in
+was a chest or locker, in which lay the
+precious stores and the Sunday clothes. The
+salt-backet, or box, was suspended in the
+chimney.</p>
+
+<p>Such were the cottages in the eighteenth
+century. In the first quarter of the nineteenth,
+the cottages were arranged upon the
+four sides of squares, with a large open space
+in the centre; and outside every cottage,
+upon the walls, hung fish-hakes or wooden
+triangles for drying haddock. Inside the
+cottages the walls were occasionally whitewashed;
+and there was fixed against the wall
+a series of wooden shelves for the preservation
+and display of delft and earthenware crockery.
+There were tea-cups in the cupboard in the
+corner. The little round table was of pine-deal,
+but scrubbed into a whiteness by a truly
+Dutch cleanliness, which made it rival tables
+covered with a fair white linen cloth. The
+cruisie, an iron lamp of simple structure, consisting
+of one cup or ladle, with a narrow lip
+for the whale-oil and wick, and another cup
+of broader and larger dimensions, to receive
+the droppings, hangs in the nineteenth, as in
+many centuries previously, near the chimney,
+and produces, Rembrandt-like, lights and
+shades well worthy of the study of an artist
+who should wish to rival the Dutch painters
+of the present day, in the pictures they paint
+to show the effects of a lamp.</p>
+
+<p>The costumes of the fishers were, and continue
+to be, peculiar. The elderly men wore
+broad blue woollen bonnets, coarse blue
+jackets, and canvass kilts or short trousers.
+The younger men were rather good-looking,
+had good-humoured faces, and were smarter
+in their dress. The women wore caps, the
+original patterns of which still abound upon
+the Continent, which did not prevent their
+features being injured by the weather, and
+their skins being tanned by the sun. The
+middle-aged women wore stuff gowns, with
+large flowered calico wrappers or short
+gowns, over them. The young girls wore
+stuff wrappers and petticoats, with their hair
+either drawn back with a large comb, which
+reached from ear to ear, or fastened up in a
+very slovenly and unbecoming manner with
+a head-dress of red worsted tape. The boys
+under fifteen were the worst clad. They ran
+about in tattered old garments of their
+fathers’, a world too wide, and remained in
+this condition until they were able to earn a
+more decent covering for themselves. The
+little children of both sexes were comfortably
+clad in a simple dress of white plaiding,
+called a walliecoat, which, with their fair
+curly heads and rosy cheeks, made them look
+very pretty, as they paddled in the pools of
+water, and played with their tiny boats.</p>
+
+<p>In the last century, the fishermen were
+mostly ignorant of everything unconnected
+with their own business. Few of them could
+read, and none of the grown-up people could
+write. Some of the lads could read and write
+a little; but as they went to sea in the night,
+and took their repose in the day, they were
+not placed in favourable circumstances for
+the development of the social faculties. No
+instance of intellectual talent—no single
+person displaying a tendency towards any
+art or science—occurred among them. Music<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span>
+and song, no doubt, contributed to the enjoyment
+of their merry meetings; but the music
+was confined to a fiddle, and their collection
+of songs scarcely extended beyond The Praise
+of Paul Jones, The Waefu’ Ballad of Captain
+Glen, and the Christmas carol of By Southend.
+As for the women—toiling, as they
+were, incessantly—they had no time for
+mental improvement. But as they grew old
+they gained practical knowledge and experience.
+Many of them had a knowledge of
+simple remedies for curing diseases, which
+obtained for their prescriptions a preference
+to those of medical men. Some of them were
+supposed to be invested with supernatural
+powers, which made it dangerous to offend
+them.</p>
+
+<p>I may interpose here a general remark.
+The superstitions which were sweepingly condemned
+by the philosophy of the eighteenth
+century as falsehood and imposture, the philosophy
+of the nineteenth finds to be true in
+a sense. Instead of rejecting it in a heap,
+the student of the present day shakes and
+washes the rubbish, and separates the grains
+of truth from it. What, I may be asked,
+was it true that old fish-crones possessed
+the powers of witchcraft? I have not a
+doubt of it. The word witchcraft comes
+from wiccian, whence witchery, wickedness.
+It means evil influence. Gifted with the
+power of reading characters and actions, of
+seeing consequences and calculating results,
+and capable of imparting a bias, laying a
+snare, adapting a temptation, planning a vengeance,
+or instilling a physical or moral
+poison; and years give all these powers to
+malignant intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>Anything may be twisted into stupid
+or incredible shapes. When affairs did not
+prosper among the Footdee folk, it was attributed
+to an evil foot, an “ill fit.” Prior to
+setting out upon any expedition or enterprise,
+they were careful and particular about
+the first “fit” they met in the morning. The
+Scum of the Well was an object of rivalry
+every New Year’s Day morning, Old Style.
+As the midnight hour approached, and the
+last moments of the year came on, the women
+assembled in a solemn group, around the
+large old draw-well, and scolded and scuffled
+to decide whose pan or bucket should carry
+off the first fraught (or first freight). The
+superstition of the first foot may afford some
+explanation of the phrase Putting his foot
+into it. Prior to commencing anything, is it
+not well to note carefully who may be taking
+the initiative for evil in it? Is not the first
+evil foot astir in it a serious thing for any
+enterprise? As for the scum of the well,
+is not the energetic housewife who obtains
+the first supply of the first necessary of
+life,—water—likely to surpass all rivals
+in providing for her household? I opine
+it is only a sort of piety due to our forefathers
+to guess they were shrewder fellows
+than we might suppose from our
+views of their superstition, witchcraft, and
+sorcery.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed there is something small in the
+minds which study superstitions only to find
+in them occasions for indulging the sudden
+elation of self-glory which Hobbes says is
+the cause of laughter. Our forefathers inherited
+a spirit-world of personifications; and
+we have inherited a mass of philosophical
+abstractions.  Our forefathers inherited a
+poetical and popular nomenclature, and we
+express our scientific generalisations in crack-jaw
+words of Greek and Latin derivation.
+Ghosts, wraiths, witches, fairies, mermaids
+and water-kelpies, are personifications which
+have been covered with ridicule, and undoubtedly
+there have been an abundance
+of ridiculous stories told respecting them;
+but I suspect there is philosophy in them
+after all. The minds of Coast Folk are
+peopled from early childhood with spectres
+belonging to the land, sea, and sky; and no
+wonder, since, during long centuries, catastrophes
+have desolated the homes of Coast
+Folk which have issued mysteriously and
+terribly from land, sea, and sky. Seven miles
+from Aberdeen there is a fishing-village which
+was buried in a sand-storm in one night.
+Almost every soul of the inhabitants was
+smothered in the sand-drift, and for many
+years the spire of the village church alone
+marked the spot in the hollow treacherous
+sand-hills. When a boy I was warned by
+words and looks of horror from approaching
+the fatal locality where it was thought the
+wrath of the Almighty had displayed itself
+so awfully. Several instances have occurred
+in which all the men of a village have gone
+to sea, and perished in one night. A boat or
+a corpse heard of as having been cast ashore
+on a distant beach, was sometimes the only
+tidings ever heard of them. Mermaids have
+frightened many a brave man; and, in several
+of the monthly magazines published in the
+last century their existence was as seriously
+discussed as apparitions of sea-serpents have
+been in our own day. Andrew Brands saw
+one. “I recollect Andrew perfectly well. He
+was a stout man, with a broad good-humoured
+face, and dark hair, who wore his bonnet
+upon the back of his head.” Occasionally
+employed as a boatman or pilot, he looked
+more like a jolly sailor than a sleepy fisherman.
+One summer day Andrew was found
+lying insensible on the hill of Torry which
+faces the sea upon the side of the river Dee,
+opposite to Footdee. When roused, he spoke
+confusedly and incoherently. He was thought
+to be deranged. He was carried to the ferry
+and rowed home. After several weeks of
+delirious fever he became low and melancholy,
+and declined to give any account of his
+illness. Under medical treatment he recovered,
+although reduced to a skeleton. The
+fearful belief spread through the village that
+Andrew Brands had seen something. When
+questioned after his recovery, he said in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>
+substance: “I was upon the outlook lying upon
+my breast, and looking over the top of the
+rocks, when I saw a creature like a woman
+sitting upon a stone. She seemed to have
+something like a white sheet, or grave-clothes
+wrapped around her. Sometimes she combed
+her hair, and sometimes she tossed her arms
+in the air. All her ways were fearsome, and
+at last she rushed into the sea, and vanished
+beneath the waves. My heart lap (leapt), I
+grew blind, and I remember nothing more
+until I awoke with all my bones sore, and the
+men lifting me up.” The medical theory of
+his illness, as expounded by his doctor, was,
+that he had gone out with incipient fever
+upon him, had fallen asleep in an exposed
+situation, and the hallucinations of delirium
+had done all the rest. My informant who
+remembered him well, maintained he had
+been unwittingly the Actæon of a bathing
+Diana at a time when ladies rarely bathed in
+Scotland, and had been punished by the
+vengeance of the goddess. Probably, however,
+an accumulation of foam among the
+stones of the beach had taken the flickering
+form of a woman. The white scum would
+seem to rise up amidst the black stones, and
+Andrew Brands was frightened by a mermaid
+because he had never been taught the effects
+of perspective. Was it in some such way as
+this that Cytherea herself was seen by the
+poetic eyes of a fisherman of Cyprus, issuing
+from the froth of the sea until she
+was wafted in a shell to the shore by
+Zephyrus, where the Graces received and
+adorned her for presentation to the celestials
+of Olympus?</p>
+
+<p>Extraordinary physical phenomena generally
+precede extraordinary catastrophes.
+Everybody has heard of the warning blue
+lights. During the night which preceded a
+storm, in which seven men of a seaside village
+were lost, an aged man, I have been
+assured, saw seven blue lights passing in
+solemn procession from the roofs of their
+cottages towards their grave-yard. He entreated
+the men to stay at home, and not to
+go to sea. But they were obstinate, and
+went. He told some old and some young
+people, who would listen to him, what he
+had seen, and had scarcely finished his vaticination
+when the lightning leaped high into
+the sky, the thunder pealed, and a hurricane
+lashed the sea into furious madness. The
+boats were not far from the shore, but before
+they could reach it a boat capsized, and seven
+men were lost within sight of their families.
+A week afterwards, at the very hour of the
+day corresponding to the hour of the night of
+the procession of the blue lights, the funeral
+procession of the seven fishermen was seen
+going from their cottages by the very way the
+lights had gone; and beneath the very spots
+where the lights stood in the churchyard the
+corpses rested for evermore. The law of the
+elders in these villages is, that no boats ought
+to go to sea when the old men say they have
+seen the blue lights. The blue lights are
+possibly electrical facts. The traditions
+respecting their direction are as variable as
+the winds. The guess is not a very hazardous
+one, that science would agree with the old
+men in warning the fishers against going to
+sea when the air was charged with electricity
+after midnight, in the coldest hours of the
+twenty-four.</p>
+
+<p>When the Footdee fishers were found in
+the last century to be no more scrupulous
+than other people respecting custom-house
+oaths, an oath was framed for them, founded
+upon their superstitious fears, which proved
+to be far more effectual than the ordinary
+one. It concluded with these words: “If I
+do not speak the truth, the whole truth, and
+nothing but the truth, may my boat be a
+bonnet to me.”</p>
+
+<p>Of course the fishers leaned to the side of
+the smugglers against the excise and customs
+officers. Almost everybody did, in the last
+century except the lawyers, something of a
+legal education being necessary to see the
+propriety of establishing what Adam Smith,
+while himself a Commissioner of the Board
+of Customs, denounced as the outposts of
+Pandemonium. When examined before the
+courts in smuggling cases, the fishermen
+contrived occasionally, under an appearance
+of simplicity, to baffle with considerable cunning
+the cross-examinations of the counsel
+for the Crown. Public sympathy was, in
+those days on the side of the smugglers, who
+called themselves free-traders, a designation
+which has since attained universal honour.
+The principle of obedience to law, the sine
+quâ non of civilisation, is less easily enthroned
+upon uneducated consciences than the principle
+of buying cheap and selling dear.
+Lairds, merchants, and workmen, therefore,
+all admired the cool duplicity with which
+the fishers sometimes evaded the truth when
+under cross-examinations. Some of them
+were once witnesses in a case of deforcement.
+The counsel for the prosecution asked a
+fisherman,—“While the men were struggling
+in the water, did you not hear the prisoner
+call out, ‘Drown the dogs?’”</p>
+
+<p>“We saw nae dogs there, sir,” was the
+demure and composed reply.</p>
+
+<p>“I do not ask you what you saw; but, on
+your oath, did you not hear him call out,
+‘Drown the dogs?’”</p>
+
+<p>“There was nae ony dogs there, sir,” was
+again the obstinate answer.</p>
+
+<p>Although no man of distinction in science
+or letters has ever arisen in any of these
+villages, it cannot be doubted they have produced
+many men whom Poodle or Doodle
+might have safely trusted upon his legs on
+the floor of the House of Commons to answer
+the questions of honourable and independent
+members.</p>
+
+<p>A century ago the fishers, who were hardy,
+industrious, decorous, and honest, were nevertheless
+inveterate swearers—a fault which I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>
+did not observe among them in an offensive
+degree in the nineteenth century. Indeed,
+I have heard more swearing from two
+admirals in a London club than I ever
+heard in fishing villages. In the last century,
+however, the fishers would use the
+most tremendous oaths upon the most trivial
+occasions. Anger was not necessary to provoke
+them; the oaths seeming to be as
+necessary to the hauling up of a lugger, or
+the pushing out of a boat, as the cries of
+“Yo-hee O!” Persons unaccustomed to
+hear the strong phrases of swearing, feel
+their minds shocked by the ideas conveyed
+by them, being ignorant that they have
+ceased to convey ideas to the persons who use
+them. When a lady rebuked one of them
+for using the word deil (devil), he said,</p>
+
+<p>“Eh! mem, I didna think it meant ony ill.
+Does it mean ony ill? I thocht it was just a
+word to dad” (knock) “aboot.”</p>
+
+<p>The wrath of these good-natured and
+kind-hearted people was notoriously harmless.
+Stabs were unknown, and blows
+rare among them, but the language of their
+vituperation was expressive and opprobrious.
+My informant has seen a woman in a passion
+take up a handful of burning coals, and lay
+them down without seeming to feel pain.
+Ladies drilled in the control of their gestures,
+if not of their feelings, in boarding-schools,
+witnessed, with great astonishment,
+the violence with which the women expressed
+grief and lamentation. The boats
+were frequently in great danger in crossing
+the bar, and on these occasions the women
+assembled upon the beach would tear their
+hair, clap their hands, and utter piercing
+cries and shrieks. The simple and natural
+principles upon which their marriages were
+formed, the chastity and honour in which the
+married fishers lived, and the connubial and
+family happiness of their homes, may explain,
+in part, the violence of the emotions and
+the exuberance of the gestures of the wives
+when their husbands were in danger. A
+fashionable dame of London related sarcastically
+that she had known a fisherwoman of
+the Scotch east coast who required four men to
+keep her from throwing herself over the rocks
+when her drowned husband was carried into
+her cottage, become calm in a fortnight,
+recommence work in a month, and marry
+again in a twelvemonth. The poor child of
+nature had no sentiment!</p>
+
+<p>The marriages of the fishers were as natural
+and simple as the unions of Isaac with
+Rebekah and Boaz with Ruth. Perversions
+about dowries, pin-money, establishments,
+and settlements, did not interfere with the
+natural action of mutual interest and honest
+preference. They married young. The
+young man and young woman had probably
+played together in childhood. Running,
+leaping, tumbling, paddling, laughing, the
+children of the fishers are as joyous as their
+fathers are serious; and if their mothers
+could not match them against the children of
+the Tuileries’ Gardens, or of St. James’s
+Park, in point of pretty costumes, they could
+challenge the world for them in regard to
+the healthiness of their respiratory organs
+and the glee of their animal spirits. The
+boys and girls soon become useful, the elder
+children being early employed to nurse the
+younger. Both boys and girls thus grow up
+in systematic training for the performance of
+the duties of their lives.</p>
+
+<p>The boy or lad went out to sea with
+the men, and worked at the oar until he
+got enough of money to buy a share of a
+boat—and a boat with its nets costs from
+a hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds.
+When he had a share of a boat, he
+required some one to bait his lines and
+sell his fish. Among the girls he knew,
+and whose tempers he had tested in play, he
+naturally selected the girl he liked best, and
+asked her first; and then, perhaps, like
+Kepler, the great astronomer, he had a list in
+his mind, and asked one girl after another
+until he was accepted. On the other hand,
+it is probable the principles of affinity may
+sometimes have been in operation for years,
+and the boat may have been a greater difficulty
+than the wife. As soon as they were
+betrothed by the consent and blessings of the
+old folks, the young woman went to live with
+her future father and mother-in-law for a
+week or two, and in the house with the young
+man. No doubt she had been taught by her
+own mother to search for bait, to tip and bait
+the lines, and do all manner of household
+work; but the fisher-people judged wisely
+she would be all the better for knowing all
+her mother-in-law could teach her; and her
+husband would be likely to think all the
+more of her for being as clever as his own
+mother could make her. A few days prior
+to the marriage, she returned to her father’s
+roof, and the ceremony took place in the
+house of her childhood. After the ceremony,
+the young couple went to a house of their
+own. They went in procession from the paternal
+to the connubial home. A fiddler
+playing merry strains, headed the procession,
+and he was followed by a boat-mate of the
+bridegroom, carrying the flag of the boat.
+When the bride arrived before the door of
+the home of her husband, his boat-mates
+rolled their flag around her. The spectators
+witnessed the ceremony in silence until she
+was enveloped in the folds, and then they
+applauded the actors in it with loud and long
+cheers. The ceremony seemed to be a public
+intimation that the young wife was henceforth
+placed within the sanctuary of the
+honour of the crew, who engaged themselves
+solemnly to protect her from insult and injury,
+as brave men defend their flag.</p>
+
+<p>When a young couple had not money
+enough to pay for the share of the boat, the
+furnishing of the house, and the expenses of
+the wedding, they had what was called a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span>
+penny-wedding. There was nothing royal or
+aristocratic in a penny-wedding, to which
+any one might come who chose to pay a shilling.
+The significance and rationale of the
+penny-wedding was this: “We are a couple
+of young people who think it better to marry
+than to do worse, and we deem it foolish and
+wicked to begin the world with debt. We
+therefore invite you, good neighbours, to
+amuse yourselves by dancing at our marriage,
+and, by paying as generously as may be convenient
+for the amusement, help us to begin
+the world with a fair chance of making
+both ends meet.” A common argument in
+favour of the penny-wedding was: the
+young man wants ten pounds of his share
+of the boat, and many persons gave their
+money who never went to the dances. The
+canvas for the penny-wedding took place
+among the carpenters, coopers, and sailors
+of the port; and employers, shopkeepers,
+ship-owners, and captains had generally a
+half-crown to spare for the young couple.
+The dinner at a penny-wedding consisted of
+abundance of meat and Scotch broth, served
+in broad pewter dishes. After dinner, the
+party adjourned to the links or downs, to
+dance “the shame dance;” and then they
+danced until they were tired. Known bad
+characters were inexorably excluded, decorum
+rigorously maintained, and “liberties”
+would have been indeed dangerous in a community
+in which every woman lived under
+the protection of a flag and at least half-a-score
+of hard fists. A severe critic of propriety
+would not probably have approved the
+amount of public kissing at a penny-wedding.
+Indeed, in this respect, Footdee resembled
+more the Court of the Neva than the
+Courts of the Thames or of the Seine; but
+in regard to the moral essentials of the
+problem of life, if there be a word of truth
+in court chronicles, the courtiers and
+courted of all the three royal rivers might
+have learned lessons from the Coast Folk of
+Footdee.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHIP">CHIP.</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">THE CONGRESSIONAL PRIZE-RING.</p>
+
+
+<p>The forcible mode in which debates are
+conducted in the parliament of the United
+States, and the personal encounters which
+sometimes follow them, are believed by the
+present generation, to be novelties and
+only recently brought to a culminating
+point by the Honourable Preston S. Brooks’s
+life-preserver, upon the head, face, eyes, and
+body of Senator Charles Sumner. This is a
+mistake. Fifty years ago, exciting debates
+often ended in a regular stand-up fight in
+the lobby of the House of Representatives.
+The combatants stripped, a ring was formed,
+bottle-holders appointed, and the battle
+fought and reported quite in the style of
+Moulsey Hurst and Bell’s Life in London.</p>
+
+<p>In corroboration of this statement we present
+to our readers the following paragraph
+copied from the New York Evening Post of
+December the thirteenth, eighteen hundred
+and five, into the Annual Register for eighteen
+hundred and six:—</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>On Friday last, the well-known Leib, one of the
+representatives of Pennsylvania, and the leader of the
+Duane party, and Joseph H. Nicholson, one of the
+representatives of Maryland, met in the Congress
+lobby about one o’clock, when Leib immediately called
+Nicholson a liar; and, thereupon, commenced one of
+the best fought battles recorded in the annals of congressional
+pugilism. The fight continued till the sixty-fourth
+round, when Leib had received such blows as
+deterred him from again facing his man. He protracted
+the fight; falling after making a feeble hit.
+In the round which ended the fight, those who backed
+him advised him to resign; which he did after a
+combat of one hour and seventeen minutes. The
+combatants were both very much beaten.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHARLES_THE_FIFTHS_GLOVE">CHARLES THE FIFTH’S GLOVE.</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>There are few foreign trips, for English
+holiday-makers, that answer better than a
+run into Belgium. Belgium is easily got at,
+and easily left. Its features are varied and
+not vast. You can explore its interior,
+inspect its circumference, and take the whole
+of it in, without being tired. It is a pocket
+kingdom. Instead of wearing your patience,
+as France does, when you are in a hurry to
+get from one end of it to the other, you can
+dart across it with the ease of a swallow
+skimming over the Isle of Wight. Moreover,
+Belgium is rich in matters of interest considerably
+beyond the proportions of its size.
+It gives you the idea of an originally extensive
+country, which has been subjected, like
+an ungainly truss of hay, to hydraulic pressure.
+For its area, it feeds a very large
+population. The district of St. Nicholas,
+near Ghent, carries five thousand two hundred
+and ten souls per square league—the
+space required, in savage life, for the maintenance
+of a single individual. The large
+towns lie so close together, that, as soon as
+you have done with one, by entering a railway
+carriage you are landed in another in
+two, three, four, or five quarters of an
+hour.</p>
+
+<p>A lovely May morning blesses, with its
+lucky omen, our approach to the frontier.
+All nature smiles as we glide along. The
+orchards are bedecked in white, pink, and
+green. Get ready your tubs, O cyder-drinkers,
+the apple-trees promise you a plentiful
+supply! Remember, however, that there’s
+many a slip between the apple-blossom and
+the lip. The sower strides over the well-powdered
+earth with measured step, and
+with white apron heavily laden. “Take
+that, old lady,” he mentally exclaims, as
+each handful is scattered, “and give me
+fifty-fold back again.” The cows in the
+meadows lie basking in the sun, with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>
+their feet doubled under them. They are
+chewing the cud, to give the grass a short
+respite, and to allow it a little time to grow
+in peace. The homesteads are overtopped by
+clumps of poplars, whose young and maidenly
+leaves blush ruddy pink at the touch of the
+sunbeam. On the skirts of the forest are
+prudent oaks, who are waiting till the blackthorn
+winter is over, before they put on their
+summer fashions. Along the road which
+crosses our railway come Flemish wagons,
+like triumphal cars in the processions of
+Ceres, and not of Bacchus, but of the twin
+gods Baccy and Beer. And so we rush over
+a flat fertile land, till we pass Roubaix, a
+wilderness of bricks and mortar. Tourcoing
+also, and ditto; both very rural in their
+aspect for manufacturing towns, and with
+atmospheres that Bradford and Leeds might
+envy. At Mouscron, we are safely over the
+border. The custom-house officers, I suppose,
+are ordered to ascertain whether new arrivals
+are personally cleanly in their habits; for, as
+soon as they have inspected my oiled-silk
+sponge-bag, my comb, and my bit of soap
+(which latter they don’t supply you with at
+inns), they tell me I may lock up our baggage
+again. It is too bad that they should rumple
+Mademoiselle’s muslin-dress, with which she
+intends to make a sensation, into a wisp, and
+should further annoy her by calling her
+Madame; but they are not a bad set of
+fellows on the whole, nor wanting in a certain
+cordiality of manner. They look at my passport,
+enter it in their book, and then bid me
+good morning by name, as if they had known
+me for the last ten years. They are Flemings,
+no doubt. You may know a Flemish man or
+woman by the friendly vocatives with which
+they interlard their conversation. Mon ami
+or mon cher ami is ever on their lips, while
+addressing you. “What are you looking for,
+my friend?” asked a market-woman, whom
+I had never in my life seen before—unless,
+perhaps, twenty years ago, when she must
+have been a little girl. “I want half a hundred
+cauliflower plants,” I replied.—“Ah, my
+dear friend, you won’t find that for another
+fortnight. But you’ll come and see me again
+in another fortnight; you’ll come to me for
+them, won’t you, my dear friend?”</p>
+
+<p>Returned once more to our railway carriage,
+a change has come over the spirit of
+our journey. We lose the red-legged soldiery
+of France, exchanging them for others
+with grey and pepper-and-salt continuations.
+The military, too, are men of taller stature,
+with more flesh upon their bones. Generally,
+the Belgians feed better than the natives of
+the north of France, and show it in their
+personal appearance. Piebald or rusty-brown
+monks and nuns flutter about and read their
+breviaries in greater profusion. Belgium is
+still a monastic stronghold of brotherhoods
+and sisterhoods; and the clergy are struggling
+hard for an increase of power.</p>
+
+<p>The aspect of the country from Mouscron
+to Ghent is ever rich and highly cultivated.
+The crops are mostly grown in ridges, with
+deep furrows between them, indicative of a
+strong clayey loam, but wet. Of wood, as in
+France, little is to be seen compared with
+England, except where congregated into
+forests. Here and there are a few plantations
+of Scotch firs, set very thick, to spindle
+them up for poles and railings.</p>
+
+<p>Railway travelling is cheaper (by something
+like a third), than in France, and, consequently
+much cheaper than in England;
+children under eight years of age pay half-price;
+under three, and in arms, nothing;
+but certainly the article you get for your
+money is inferior in quality to that furnished
+by the first-named country. In France
+every traveller is allowed sixty pounds
+(French) of luggage gratis, independent of
+his small personalities; in Belgium none at
+all. Whatever you do not take into the
+carriage with you, such as a carpet-bag or
+basket of moderate weight, has to be paid
+for in addition to your ticket. The first-class
+carriages are handsome and comfortable, but
+small. The <a id="Change8"></a>
+third-class chars-à-bancs are
+open at the sides, exposed to the wind, the
+rain, and the snow, which sometimes rake
+them fore and aft; in inclement weather, they
+are not fit to carry sheep and cattle, much
+less human beings. Dogs in Belgium pay
+third-class fare, but are snugly stowed away
+in a baggage-wagon. In one of these locomotive
+pens for men, women, and tender
+children, a fat hog might have his health
+seriously injured as the consequence of a
+long day’s journey.</p>
+
+<p>The State is the sole proprietor of nearly
+all the Belgian railways; and while it
+paternally confers on its subjects the benefit
+of cheap circulation and traffic, it might
+also modify an arrangement which is no
+other than unfeeling, and is deficient in
+that humanity which a government ought to
+exercise towards all under its protecting
+sway, without reference to wealth or rank.
+The second-class carriages are tolerable, with
+stuffed seats and a little horizontal stripe of
+stuffing to ease the back, and ladies may
+travel in them; but they are of scant dimensions,
+very naked inside, and unprovided
+with any hooks for hats or caps, or with
+receptacles for sticks and umbrellas. The
+seats are fancifully arranged with a sort of
+passage left between them, to give the means
+of stepping from one to the other, as if you
+were occupying a little parlour; but the
+result is no addition to comfort. The signal
+for starting is given, not by the whistle of
+the engine, but by a little musical flourish,
+a tir-ely, consisting of three notes, blown on
+his bugle by the conductor of the train. Of
+the officials, general civility and obliging
+behaviour is the rule. The passengers’ luggage
+department would be improved by
+assimilation with the system adopted in
+France. But nations are often like wilful<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>
+children; they are determined to have a way
+of their own, for the sake of having it. They
+refuse to attend to good advice, because it is
+counsel given by another; and they persist
+in some evidently inconvenient mode of doing
+things, merely to show that they are independent
+agents, and that they can and will
+follow their own devices.</p>
+
+<p>Ghent, with its hundred thousand inhabitants
+and its considerable trade, has still
+the air of a town half-asleep, as if you had
+caught it yawning and stretching at half-past
+three on a summer’s morning. Its extent is
+much exaggerated in the current printed
+descriptions. Charles the Fifth’s time-honoured
+pun—“I could put Paris into my
+Gand” (that is, my glove)—is apocryphal
+and highly improbable. If you doubt it,
+mount the tower of the beffroi. People who
+lose their way in a labyrinth of lanes, always
+fancy they have travelled over an enormous
+area. Now, the map of Ghent puts you in
+mind of a Medusa’s head, or of the clustered
+worms that are taken out into the country, on
+a sultry day, to participate in the pleasures
+of a fishing party. Buy a map of Ghent,
+colour the streets blue, the river Escaut
+yellow, the river Lys red, and you will have
+a faithful representation of the famous
+Gordian knot, if you happen never to have
+seen one before. I long wandered about the
+streets of Ghent, trying to find the city, and
+could not. It is a town made up of bits of
+west-ends, Faubourg St. Germains, and
+fashionable suburbs, with no heart or kernel
+to it—no Cheapside, no Ludgate Hill, no
+Rue de Rivoli, no Rue St. Honoré. There is
+a slight recovery of suspended animation in
+the Marché-aux-Grains and the Rue des
+Champs; but the pulse, even there, beats
+very feebly. The market tries (when it is
+not market-day) to manifest its vitality in an
+unhealthy, spasmodic way, by book-stalls of
+amatory literature, over which a little censorship
+would be no great tyranny. In the
+street, to enter a fashionable lace and embroidery
+shop, we had to ring at the glass-door,
+as if it had been a private house. After
+waiting, while the lady up-stairs gave a touch
+of arrangement to her cap and her hair, we
+were duly admitted to make our purchase,
+much in the style of a morning call. Elsewhere,
+in the modern quarters, you see unbroken
+lines of large, handsome, well-painted
+houses, hybrids between a palace and a ladies’
+boarding-school. Business may be transacted
+therein, but it is done in the quietest possible
+way. You see dentelles (lace), or calicots
+(calicos), engraved on a neat brass-plate on a
+house-door, as if some private individual,—Monsieur
+Dentelles, or Madame Veuve Calicots,—were
+living there on their property, in
+great state and dignified retirement. The
+older portions of the town are decorated with
+houses built before the window-tax was born
+or thought of,—with quaint, pointed gable
+ends, as if a child had been trying to cut
+fancy conic sections out of a red brick wall.
+But in whatever direction you wend your
+way, you can’t go twenty steps without
+crossing a bridge. For the convenience at
+once of the land-carriage and the canal navigation,
+these are swing bridges; often you
+have to wait while a barge, laden perhaps
+with vegetable mould for the pot-plants in
+training by one of the Vans,—Van Houtte,
+Van Schaffelt, or Van Geert,—intercepts the
+passage. The time is not exactly lost, because
+it allows you to stare about you without
+rudeness. But soon, the bridge-swinger
+takes his toll from the barge, which he collects
+by means of a wooden shoe at the end
+of a string fastened to a fishing-rod; the
+isthmus of planks is then replaced, and resounds
+with the pattering of gros sabots.
+Certainly, the popular costume is droll, in
+its extremes. At top, the women wear a
+close-worked cottage hat of straw, with three
+dabs of blue ribbon stuck on behind; at foot,
+they are garnished with masses of hollow
+timber, which must be a serious drain on the
+Belgian forests. But hats worn by women
+at the same time with sabots, are, in French
+eyes, or in eyes accustomed to France, as
+utterly anomalous a combination as a fish-tailed
+mermaid, or a man-headed centaur are
+considered, on cool reflection, by Professor
+Owen. Conspicuous in the air rise the portly
+towers of St. Nicholas, St. Michel, and St.
+Bavon, around which, and the lofty houses,
+multitudinous swifts, whirl and scream, in
+delight at the abundance of their insect
+game. The canals are propitious to the
+propagation of gnats. Where is the carcase,
+there are the vultures; and where are the
+gnats, there flock the swifts.</p>
+
+<p>That the quietude of the town is more
+apparent than real, and that busy life is
+going on within, is plain from the Belgian
+fashion of sticking looking-glasses outside the
+houses, at angles (sometimes they glance in
+three directions) which allow the inmates to
+catch a glimpse of passers-by, without being
+seen themselves. “Au Nouveau Miroir,” (the
+new looking-glass) is occasionally used as the
+sign of an inn. The mirrors are generally
+on a level with the first-floor; and a smaller
+one receives the rays it reflects straight from
+the entrance door; so that Not at home is
+easily responded to the inquiries of a dun, or
+worse, a bore. It is not one city alone which
+adopts the system of quicksilvered peepers;
+nor is the custom new, but was probably first
+introduced by peculiarities of historical and
+political situation. In Belgium, it has not
+always been convenient to open the door to
+every new-comer.</p>
+
+<p>“If you please, monsieur,” we politely ask,
+“have the goodness to tell us which is the
+way to the Botanic Garden?”</p>
+
+<p>“N’entends Français,” is the reply, accompanied
+by a disclamatory shake of the head.
+It is a reminder that the Flemish tongue is
+master here, in actual fact, if not by legal right.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span>
+Even the government is obliged to come to a
+compromise, and affix the names of the
+streets to their corners both in Flemish and
+in French. The railway porter, who handed
+us our luggage, was deaf and dumb as far as
+we were concerned, and signed us over to a
+brother medium. The coachman who drove
+us to our inn just comprehended the words
+“Hôtel de Flandre”—and a capital and
+recommendable hotel it is—but he comprehended
+no more of the further clever remarks
+addressed to him. Many of the Gantois who
+do speak French manage it so badly, and are
+so decidedly not at home in it, that you feel
+quite delighted at your own superiority to
+them, born Belgians though they be. But
+Flemish has so close a relationship to our
+own vernacular, that the names of trades
+over the shops, the bills, and the public
+notices, are as amusing to read as it is to hear
+a foreigner speak broken English.  Drap
+Straet is Cloth, or Draper’s Street.  One
+man sells alle soorte of wares; another offers
+you cart-grease under the name of wagen
+smeer; kelder te huren is cellar to hire;
+kamer te huren is chamber to hire.  A
+koperslager is a coppersmith.  Professions
+which require no interpreter are the bakker,
+the matte-maeker, the timmerman, the
+apotheker en drogiste, and the boekhandlaer.
+The three grand literary elements are announced
+for sale as pennen, inkt, en papier.
+If your family is small, you may be content
+with securing Een Huis to let; but should
+you be expecting a large and sudden increase,
+you had better engage Twee Huyzen, if adjacent.
+In the Apelmerkt, you could hardly
+mistake the fruit that is sold there. When
+thirsty, you may go and drink a glass of
+dobbel-bier at the hospitable sign of De
+Roose; or you may prefer to patronise the
+Oliphant (without a castle), or the Bruyn
+Visch,—that is to say, the Red Herring.
+Good little boys and girls punctually attend
+a zondagschool. Booksellers’ windows
+invite you to the perusal of Flemish novels;
+such as Een Zwanenzang (a swan’s song),
+by Jan Van Beers, and De Zending der
+Vrow (Woman’s Mission), by Hendrik Conscience.</p>
+
+<p>“How triste, how sad it is for you not to
+be able to speak Flemish!” ejaculated a
+dame who sold goeden drank, but who could
+not, though she would, converse with me.
+In such cases, it rarely strikes the tongue-tied
+Flemings belonging to the portion of
+society below the middle-class, that they are
+like the fox who was minus a tail. They are
+content with, and would have other people
+learn, a language which confines them, as
+tightly as a tether fastens a cow, to a few
+score square leagues of the earth’s vast
+superficies. But a striking point in Flemish
+popular manners, is the forming themselves
+into bands and societies. These little close
+corporations are perhaps, in some degree, the
+result of their narrowly-diffused tongue.
+And so the blue-bloused archers of one town
+go and shoot against the black-capped long-bows
+of another, distant a quarter-of-a-day’s
+pedestrian journey; the chorus-club of
+Schoutenhoul will pay a fraternal visit to the
+orpheonists of Raspenscraep. In the French
+army, the French Flemings hang together
+like bees at swarming-time. Here at Ghent,
+the workmen, even at leisure hours and meal-times,
+form themselves into companies.
+Young people, both girls and boys, run
+together in distinct and closely-grouped
+herds, like flocks of young lambs at the
+same age. One would think that babies in
+Flanders came all at once, in falls, in imitation
+of the lambing season with Southdowns
+and Leicesters.</p>
+
+<p>But the Botanic garden—where is it? Let
+us first look at our map, and then at the
+corner of the street, and endeavour to pilot
+our way thither. In Belgian towns, generally,
+if you use your eyes with the slightest
+expression of inquiring curiosity, up starts a
+phantom before you, like a most impertinent
+Jack-in-the-box, calling himself a commissionaire,
+but who must not be confounded
+with a superior being, the French commissionaire.
+Where these creatures come from,
+I cannot tell. They suddenly appear before
+you, as if the air had curdled itself into
+human form. Peep into a shop window, and
+you have one at your elbow; gaze up at a
+steeple, and, when you look down, you will
+find a commissionaire between your legs;
+turn the angle of a street, on a walk of discovery,
+and round the corner you knock your
+nose against a commissionaire. They start
+from behind doors, down staircases, out of
+cellars, from the dark mouths of narrow
+lanes; and I believe that, upon inquiry, they
+would be found now and then to drop from
+the roofs. They follow you about with the
+hungry look of a beast of prey, regarding you
+as the game on their preserve, and themselves
+as very forbearing to spare you a little
+while. I do not say that no respectable man
+exercises the calling of commissionaire; but,
+whenever such jewels are found, they ought
+to be set in sterling gold. In age, they vary
+from sixteen to sixty. They deal in cigars,
+and have often a select female acquaintance.
+They are mostly seedy in garment, cloudy in
+complexion, uncleanly in person, offensive in
+breath, jargonic in speech, forward in manner,
+and given to drink. Commissionaires attach
+themselves to every hotel, as leeches hang to
+the side of their vessel, ready to fix on anything
+that has blood or money to yield; and
+these consider themselves the head of their
+profession. But there are wandering commissionaires
+who prowl about the streets,
+willing to make themselves useful in any
+way—too useful, at times, many people might
+think.</p>
+
+<p>One fellow, who pleaded his large family
+at home, and whom I took for an hour or
+two to get over the ground more quickly,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>
+disappeared every time we came to anything
+that required more than a minute to examine.
+Each disappearance had for its object the
+injection of a dram into his weakly stomach,
+which relieved me from listening to his
+account of the lions. But, after a little unsteadiness,
+he tripped and tumbled on the
+ground, and concluded by running into an
+iron post with a violence that must have
+done serious damage to the post. I confess
+to a prejudice against Belgian commissionaires,
+and never employ them when I can
+help it. They attack you in the very churches.
+“You won’t leave the cathedral without
+paying the concièrge,” was the parting remark
+of a young commissionaire whose services
+I persisted in declining; and, while
+hunting for the Botanic garden, I can’t proceed
+without interruption, but am obliged to
+say to a person who continually crosses my
+path, “I have already told you three times I
+do not want you. Cannot you take an answer,
+and leave me to myself?”</p>
+
+<p>The garden, when found at last, is a painful
+instead of a pleasurable sight, and must be
+far from gratifying to the citizens of Ghent.
+It is a warning to avoid, and not an example
+to follow, as all botanic gardens ought to be.
+The hardy perennials are the only plants in
+good condition; among these is a remarkable
+Andromeda arborea. The enormous carp,
+rising and sinking in their pond, are a lingering
+remnant of former prosperity. In the
+houses, dirt, dust, thrips, scale, red spider,
+and aphis, threaten to get the upper hand,
+and to establish their dynasty on a permanent
+footing. A fine Doum palm, in a handsome
+but filthy cage of glass, excites pity by its
+wretched want of comfort. Other unhappy
+captives, lank and lean, bald and mangy, beg
+hard for some one to have compassion on
+them. There are many noble specimens in a
+deplorable way.</p>
+
+<p>Two small-leaved standard myrtles, in
+boxes, cannot be less than a hundred and fifty
+or two hundred years old. Their trunks
+measure thirteen or fourteen inches in circumference;
+it would be difficult to find
+many such in Europe. A leading English
+nurseryman has endeavoured to get them
+across the water; it is a pity he cannot, for
+they would be properly cared for here. There
+are many other far-from-every-day myrtles,
+which the head of the establishment seems trying
+hard to kill. He is the Celestine Doudet
+of greenhouse evergreens; his pupils do not
+thrive; his oleanders are in the last stage of
+suffering. The alleged excuse is want of sufficient
+accommodation and hands; but when
+a thing is to be done, it is not a bad plan to
+do it yourself. Had I such handsome orange
+trees, so neglected, so begrimed with soot, I
+would get up at three in the morning, and,
+in my shirt-sleeves, with an apron on, with a
+bucket of soapsuds and a sponge in hand,
+would mount an A ladder and work away,
+day after day, till the task was done. But
+are there no such things as garden engines in
+Ghent? A Victoria, in a tank, contrives to
+wash itself partially, though tattered and
+torn about the leaves; but it is not clear
+what business a pit of pine-apples has in a
+place for study, where scantiness of room is
+complained of. One plant, or two, are all
+right and proper, but a botanical lecturer
+does not want a crop of anything.</p>
+
+<p>Near the entrance of the garden stands a
+vase, conspicuously mounted on a pedestal,
+in which grows what the official who did the
+honours was pleased to point out as a rose-bush
+grafted on an oak-tree. I shook my
+head in disgust at the falsehood. “Look,”
+he insisted, “the stem is an oak-stem, the
+side branches are covered with oak-leaves,
+and the central twig is the rose which has
+been grafted in the middle. You can see
+that its leaves are rose-leaves, can’t you?—and
+it is full of buds coming into flower.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, no; it is only a trick,” I answered,
+without apologising for flatly contradicting
+him. “You have perforated the stem of the
+oak from the root to the top; through the
+tube thus made you have inserted the stem
+of a rooted rose-bush; but there is no union
+between the two, like the junction of a scion
+with the stock. It grows independently in
+the earth, as the oak-plant does, although
+encased within it; and you call that grafting
+a rose on an oak, which I am gardener enough
+to know to be impossible.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah! you know that. You have found it
+out. And yet, many people, when they see
+this specimen, go away persuaded that we
+have succeeded in grafting a rose on an
+oak.”</p>
+
+<p>I made no further remark than my looks
+expressed; but I thought that botanic gardens
+were instituted for the teaching of accurate
+information and useful facts, and not to
+mislead ignorant persons and to propagate
+error. An educational establishment, subsidised
+partly by the government and partly
+by the town, forgets its duties when it blazons
+forth a charlatanism which would upset the
+principles of vegetable physiology and stultify
+the hard-earned acquirements of science.</p>
+
+<hr class="full"> 
+
+
+<p class="center">On the 18th of July was published, price Five
+Shillings and Sixpence, neatly bound in cloth,</p>
+
+<h2>THE THIRTEENTH VOLUME</h2>
+<p class="center">OF</p>
+<p class="center"><b>HOUSEHOLD WORDS</b>,</p>
+
+<p class="center">Containing the Numbers issued between the Nineteenth
+of January and the Twelfth of July, Eighteen Hundred
+and Fifty-six.</p>
+
+
+<p class="center">Complete sets of Household Words may always be had.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="full">
+<p class="center"><i>The Right of Translating Articles from</i> <span class="smcap">Household Words</span> <i>is reserved by the Authors</i>.</p>
+
+<p class="center">Published at the Office, No. 16, Wellington Street North, Strand. Printed by <span class="smcap">Bradbury &amp; Evans</span>, Whitefriars, London.
+</p>
+
+<div class="transnote">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="TRANSCRIBERS_NOTES">TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES</h2>
+
+<p>This is from Volume XIV of the series.</p>
+
+<p>New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.</p>
+
+<p>Transcriber has generated a Table of Contents.</p>
+
+<p>Itemized changes from the original text:</p>
+ <ul>
+    <li><a href="#Change1">On page 1</a>, changed “for” to “for.”, near “morsel of luck to be thankful”
+    </li>
+    <li><a href="#Change2">On page 1</a>, changed “bed-side” to “bedside”, near “the chair by her”
+    </li>
+    <li><a href="#Change3">On page 4</a>, changed “sweet-heart” to “sweetheart”, near “with a farthing. My”
+    </li>
+    <li><a href="#Change4">On page 8</a>, changed “be” to “he”, near “wrings from poor people”
+    </li>
+    <li><a href="#Change5">On page 20</a>, changed “bird” to “Bird”, near “or The Bird of St. Martin”
+    </li>
+    <li><a href="#Change6">On page 29</a>, changed “melody!"” to “melody!”, near “and an echo of”
+    </li>
+    <li><a href="#Change7">On page 29</a>, changed “again!"” to “again!”, near “reap but tears and griefs”
+    </li>
+    <li><a href="#Change8">On page 42</a>, changed “third class” to “third-class”, near “chars-à-bancs are open at the side”
+    </li>
+  </ul>
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77354 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>                
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #77354
+(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77354)