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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78194 ***
+
+
+     “_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+
+
+                            HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
+                           A WEEKLY JOURNAL.
+
+
+                     CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.
+
+
+    N^{o.} 24.]      SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1850.      [PRICE 2_d._
+
+
+
+
+                      ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHEAPNESS.
+
+
+                             THE STEEL PEN.
+
+We remember (early remembrances are more durable than recent) an epithet
+employed by Mary Wollstonecraft, which then seemed as happy as it was
+original:—“The _iron_ pen of Time.” Had the vindicatress of the “Rights
+of Women” lived in these days (fifty years later), when the iron pen is
+the almost universal instrument of writing, she would have bestowed upon
+Time a less common material for recording his doings.
+
+Whilst we are remembering, let us look back for a moment upon our
+earliest schooldays—the days of large text and round hand. Twenty
+urchins sit at a long desk, each intent upon making his _copy_. A nicely
+mended pen has been given to each. Our own labour goes on successfully,
+till, in school-boy phrase, the pen begins to splutter. A bold effort
+must be made. We leave the form, and timidly address the writing-master
+with—“Please, sir, mend my pen.” A slight frown subsides as he sees that
+the quill is very bad—too soft or too hard—used to the stump. He dashes
+it away, and snatching a feather from a bundle—a poor thin feather, such
+as green geese drop on a common—shapes it into a pen. This mending and
+making process occupies all his leisure—occupies, indeed, many of the
+minutes that ought to be devoted to instruction. He has a perpetual
+battle to wage with his bad quills. They are the meanest produce of the
+plucked goose.
+
+And is this process still going on in the many thousand schools of our
+land, where, with all drawbacks of imperfect education, both as to
+numbers educated and gifts imparted, there are about two millions and a
+half of children under daily instruction? In remote rural districts,
+probably; in the towns certainly not. The steam-engine is now the
+pen-maker. Hecatombs of geese are consumed at Michaelmas and Christmas;
+but not all the geese in the world would meet the demand of England for
+pens. The supply of _patés de foie gras_ will be kept up—that of quills,
+whether known as _primes_, _seconds_, or _pinions_, must be wholly
+inadequate to the wants of a _writing_ people. Wherever geese are bred
+in these islands, so assuredly, in each succeeding March, will every
+full-fledged victim be robbed of his quills; and then turned forth on
+the common, a very waddling and impotent goose, quite unworthy of the
+name of bird. The country schoolmaster, at the same springtime, will
+continue to buy the smallest quills, at a low price, clarify them after
+his own rude fashion, make them into pens, and sorely spite the boy who
+splits them up too rapidly. The better quills will still be collected,
+and find their way to the quill dealer, who will exercise his empirical
+arts before they pass to the stationer. He will plunge them into heated
+sand, to make the external skin peel off, and the external membrane
+shrivel up; or he will saturate them with water, and alternately
+contract and swell them before a charcoal fire; or he will dip them in
+nitric acid, and make them of a gaudy brilliancy but a treacherous
+endurance. They will be sorted according to the quality of the barrels,
+with the utmost nicety. The experienced buyer will know their value by
+looking at their feathery ends, tapering to a point; the uninitiated
+will regard only the quill portion. There is no article of commerce in
+which the market value is so difficult to be determined with exactness.
+For the finest and largest quills no price seems unreasonable; for those
+of the second quality too exorbitant a charge is often made. The foreign
+supply is large, and probably exceeds the home supply of the superior
+article. What the exact amount is we know not. There is no duty now on
+quills. The tariff of 1845—one of the most lasting monuments of the
+wisdom of our great commercial minister—abolished the duty of
+half-a-crown a thousand. In 1832 the duty amounted to four thousand two
+hundred pounds, which would show an annual importation of thirty-three
+millions one hundred thousand quills; enough, perhaps, for the
+commercial clerks of England, together with the quills of home
+growth;—but how to serve a letter-writing population?
+
+The ancient reign of the quill pen was first seriously disturbed about
+twenty-five years ago. An abortive imitation of the _form_ of a pen was
+produced before that time; a clumsy, inelastic, metal tube fastened in a
+bone or ivory handle, and sold for half-a-crown. A man might make his
+mark with one—but as to writing, it was a mere delusion. In due course
+came more carefully finished inventions for the luxurious, under the
+tempting names of ruby pen, or diamond pen—with the plain gold pen, and
+the rhodium pen, for those who were sceptical as to the jewellery of the
+inkstand. The economical use of the quill received also the attention of
+science. A machine was invented to divide the barrel lengthwise into two
+halves; and, by the same mechanical means, these halves were subdivided
+into small pieces, cut pen shape, slit, and nibbed. But the pressure
+upon the quill supply grew more and more intense. A new power had risen
+up in our world—a new seed sown—the source of all good, or the dragon’s
+teeth of Cadmus. In 1818 there were only one hundred and sixty-five
+thousand scholars in the monitorial schools—the new schools, which were
+being established under the auspices of the National Society, and the
+British and Foreign School Society. Fifteen years afterwards, in 1833,
+there were three hundred and ninety thousand. Ten years later, the
+numbers exceeded a million. Even a quarter of a century ago two-thirds
+of the male population of England, and one-half of the female, were
+learning to write; for in the Report of the Registrar-General for 1846,
+we find this passage:—“Persons when they are married are required to
+sign the marriage-register; if they cannot write their names, they sign
+with a mark: the result has hitherto been, that nearly one man in three,
+and one woman in two, married, sign with marks.” This remark applies to
+the period between 1839 and 1845. Taking the average age of men at
+marriage as twenty-seven years, and the average age of boys during their
+education as ten years, the marriage-register is an educational test of
+male instruction for the years 1824–28. But the gross number of the
+population of England and Wales was rapidly advancing. In 1821 it was
+twelve millions; in 1831, fourteen millions; in 1841, sixteen millions;
+in 1851, taking the rate of increase at fourteen per cent., it will be
+eighteen millions and a half. The extension of education was proceeding
+in a much quicker ratio; and we may therefore fairly assume that the
+proportion of those who make their marks in the marriage-register has
+greatly diminished since 1844.
+
+But, during the last ten years, the natural desire to learn to write, of
+that part of the youthful population which education can reach, has
+received a great moral impulse by a wondrous development of the most
+useful and pleasurable exercise of that power. The uniform penny postage
+has been established. In the year 1838, the whole number of letters
+delivered in the United Kingdom was seventy-six millions; in this year
+that annual delivery has reached the prodigious number of three hundred
+and thirty-seven millions. In 1838, a Committee of the House of Commons
+thus denounced, amongst the great commercial evils of the high rates of
+postage, their injurious effects upon the great bulk of the
+people:—“They either act as a grievous tax on the poor, causing them to
+sacrifice their little earnings to the pleasure and advantage of
+corresponding with their distant friends, or compel them to forego such
+intercourse altogether; thus subtracting from the small amount of their
+enjoyments, and obstructing the growth and maintenance of their best
+affections.” Honoured be the man who broke down these barriers! Praised
+be the Government that, _for once_, stepping out of its fiscal tram-way,
+dared boldly to legislate for the domestic happiness, the educational
+progress, and the moral elevation of the masses! The steel pen, sold at
+the rate of a penny a dozen, is the creation, in a considerable degree,
+of the Penny Postage stamp; as the Penny Postage stamp was a
+representative, if not a creation, of the new educational power. Without
+the steel pen, it may reasonably be doubted whether there were
+mechanical means within the reach of the great bulk of the population
+for writing the three hundred and thirty-seven millions of letters that
+now annually pass through the Post Office.
+
+Othello’s sword had “the ice-brook’s temper;” but not all the real or
+imaginary virtues of the stream that gave its value to the true Spanish
+blade could create the elasticity of a steel pen. Flexible, indeed, is
+the Toledo. If thrust against a wall, it will bend into an arc that
+describes three-fourths of a circle. The problem to be solved in the
+steel pen, is to convert the iron of Dannemora into a substance as thin
+as the quill of a dove’s pinion, but as strong as the proudest feather
+of an eagle’s wing. The furnaces and hammers of the old armourers could
+never have solved this problem. The steel pen belongs to our age of
+mighty machinery. It could not have existed in any other age. The demand
+for the instrument, and the means of supplying it, came together.
+
+The commercial importance of the steel pen was first manifested to our
+senses a year or two ago at Sheffield. We had witnessed all the curious
+processes of _converting_ iron into steel, by saturating it with carbon
+in the converting furnace;—of _tilting_ the bars so converted into a
+harder substance, under the thousand hammers that shake the waters of
+the Sheaf and the Don; of _casting_ the steel thus converted and tilted
+into ingots of higher purity; and, finally, of _milling_, by which the
+most perfect development of the material is acquired under enormous
+rollers. About two miles from the metropolis of steel, over whose head
+hangs a canopy of smoke through which the broad moors of the distance
+sometimes reveal themselves, there is a solitary mill where the tilting
+and rolling processes are carried to great perfection. The din of the
+large tilts is heard half a mile off. Our ears tingle, our legs tremble,
+when we stand close to their operation of beating bars of steel into the
+greatest possible density; for the whole building vibrates as the
+workmen swing before them in suspended baskets, and shift the bar at
+every movement of these hammers of the Titans. We pass onward to the
+more quiet _rolling_ department. The bar that has been tilted into the
+most perfect compactness has now to acquire the utmost possible tenuity.
+A large area is occupied by furnaces and rollers. The bar of steel is
+dragged out of the furnace at almost a white heat. There are two men at
+each roller. It is passed through the first pair, and its squareness is
+instantly elongated and widened into flatness;—rapidly through a second
+pair,—and a third,—and a fourth,—and a fifth.—The bar is becoming a
+sheet of steel. Thinner and thinner it becomes, until it would seem that
+the workmen can scarcely manage the fragile substance. It has spread
+out, like a morsel of gold under the beater’s hammer, into an enormous
+leaf. The least attenuated sheet is only the hundredth part of an inch
+in thickness; some sheets are made as thin as the two-hundredth part of
+an inch. And for what purpose is this result of the labours of so many
+workmen, of such vast and complicated machinery, destined?—what the
+final application of a material employing so much capital in every step,
+from the Swedish mine to its transport by railroad to some other seat of
+British industry? _The whole is prepared for one Steel-pen Manufactory
+at Birmingham._
+
+There is nothing very remarkable in a steel pen manufactory, as regards
+ingenuity of contrivance or factory organisation. Upon a large scale of
+production the extent of labour engaged in producing so minute an
+article is necessarily striking. But the process is just as curious and
+interesting, if conducted in a small shop as in a large. The pure steel,
+as it comes from the rolling mill, is cut up into strips about two
+inches and a half in width. These are further cut into the proper size
+for the pen. The pieces are then annealed and cleansed. The maker’s name
+is neatly impressed on the metal; and a cutting-tool forms the slit,
+although imperfectly in this stage. The pen shape is given by a convex
+punch pressing the plate into a concave die. The pen is formed when the
+slit is perfected. It has now to be hardened, and finally cleansed and
+polished, by the simple agency of friction in a cylinder. All the
+varieties of form of the steel pen are produced by the punch; all the
+contrivances of slits and apertures above the nib, by the cutting-tool.
+Every improvement has had for its object to overcome the rigidity of the
+steel,—to imitate the elasticity of the quill, whilst bestowing upon the
+pen a superior durability.
+
+The perfection that may reasonably be demanded in a steel pen has yet to
+be reached. But the improvement in the manufacture is most decided.
+Twenty years ago, to one who might choose, regardless of expense,
+between the quill pen and the steel, the best Birmingham and London
+production was an abomination. But we can trace the gradual acquiescence
+of most men in the writing implement of the multitude. Few of us, in an
+age when the small economies are carefully observed, and even paraded,
+desire to use quill pens at ten or twelve shillings a hundred, as
+Treasury Clerks once luxuriated in their use—an hour’s work, and then a
+new one. To mend a pen, is troublesome to the old and even the
+middle-aged man who once acquired the art; the young, for the most part,
+have not learnt it. The most painstaking and penurious author would
+never dream of imitating the wondrous man who translated Pliny with “one
+grey goose quill.” Steel pens are so cheap, that if one scratches or
+splutters, it may be thrown away, and another may be tried. But when a
+really good one is found, we cling to it, as worldly men cling to their
+friends; we use it till it breaks down, or grows rusty. We can do no
+more; we handle it as Isaak Walton handled the frog upon his hook, “as
+if we loved him.” We could almost fancy some analogy between the gradual
+and decided improvement of the steel pen—one of the new instruments of
+education—and the effects of education itself upon the mass of the
+people. An instructed nation ought to present the same gradually
+perfecting combination of strength with elasticity. The favourites of
+fortune are like the quill, ready made for social purposes, with a
+little scraping and polishing. The bulk of the community have to be
+formed out of ruder and tougher materials—to be converted, welded, and
+tempered into pliancy. The _manners_ of the great British family have
+decidedly improved under culture—“_emollit mores_:” may the sturdy
+self-respect of the race never be impaired!
+
+
+
+
+                  TWO CHAPTERS ON BANK NOTE FORGERIES.
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I.
+
+Viotti’s division of violin-playing into two great classes—good playing
+and bad playing—is applicable to Bank note making. The processes
+employed in manufacturing good Bank notes we have already described: we
+shall now cover a few pages with a faint outline of the various arts,
+stratagems, and contrivances employed in concocting bad Bank notes. The
+picture cannot be drawn with very distinct or strong markings. The
+tableaux from which it is copied are so intertwisted and complicated
+with clever, slippery, ingenious scoundrelism, that a finished chart of
+it would be worse than morally displeasing:—it would be tedious.
+
+All arts require time and experience for their development. When
+anything great is to be done, first attempts are nearly always failures.
+The first Bank note forgery was no exception to this rule, and its story
+has a spice of romance in it. The affair has never been circumstantially
+told; but some research enables us to detail it:—
+
+In the month of August, 1757, a gentleman living in the neighbourhood of
+Lincoln’s Inn Fields named Bliss, advertised for a clerk. There were, as
+was usual even at that time, many applicants; but the successful one was
+a young man of twenty-six, named Richard William Vaughan. His manners
+were so winning and his demeanour so much that of a gentleman (he
+belonged indeed to a good county family in Staffordshire, and had been a
+student at Pembroke Hall, Oxford), that Mr. Bliss at once engaged him.
+Nor had he occasion, during the time the new clerk served him, to repent
+the step. Vaughan was so diligent, intelligent, and steady, that not
+even when it transpired that he was, commercially speaking, “under a
+cloud,” did his master lessen confidence in him. Some enquiry into his
+antecedents showed that he had, while at College, been extravagant; that
+his friends had removed him thence; set him up in Stafford as a
+wholesale linen draper, with a branch establishment in Aldersgate
+Street, London; that he had failed, and that there was some difficulty
+about his certificate. But so well did he excuse his early failings and
+account for his misfortunes, that his employer did not check the regard
+he felt growing towards him. Their intercourse was not merely that of
+master and servant. Vaughan was a frequent guest at Bliss’s table;
+by-and-by a daily visitor to his wife, and—to his ward.
+
+Miss Bliss was a young lady of some attractions, not the smallest of
+which was a handsome fortune. Young Vaughan made the most of his
+opportunities. He was well-looking, well-informed, dressed well, and
+evidently made love well, for he won the young lady’s heart. The
+guardian was not flinty hearted, and acted like a sensible man of the
+world. “It was not,” he said on a subsequent and painful occasion, “till
+I learned from the servants and observed by the girl’s behaviour that
+she greatly approved Richard Vaughan, that I consented; but on condition
+that he should make it appear that he could maintain her. I had no doubt
+of his character as a servant, and I knew his family were respectable.
+His brother is an eminent attorney.” Vaughan boasted that his mother
+(his father was dead), was willing to re-instate him in business with a
+thousand pounds; five hundred of which was to be settled upon Miss Bliss
+for her separate use.
+
+So far all went on prosperously. Providing Richard Vaughan could attain
+a position satisfactory to the Blisses, the marriage was to take place
+on the Easter Monday following, which the Calendar tells us happened
+early in April, 1758. With this understanding, he left Mr. Bliss’s
+service, to push his fortune.
+
+Months passed on, and Vaughan appears to have made no way in the world.
+He had not even obtained his bankrupt’s certificate. His visits to his
+affianced were frequent, and his protestations passionate; but he had
+effected nothing substantial towards a happy union. Miss Bliss’s
+guardian grew impatient; and, although there is no evidence to prove
+that the young lady’s affection for Vaughan was otherwise than deep and
+sincere, yet even she began to lose confidence in him. His excuses were
+evidently evasive, and not always true. The time fixed for the wedding
+was fast approaching; and Vaughan saw that something must be done to
+restore the young lady’s confidence.
+
+About three weeks before the appointed Easter Tuesday, Vaughan went to
+his mistress in high spirits. All was right: his certificate was to be
+granted in a day or two; his family had come forward with the money, and
+he was to continue the Aldersgate business he had previously carried on
+as a branch of the Stafford trade. The capital he had waited so long
+for, was at length forthcoming. In fact, here were two hundred and forty
+pounds of the five hundred he was to settle on his beloved. Vaughan then
+produced twelve twenty-pound notes; Miss Bliss could scarcely believe
+her eyes. She examined them. The paper she remarked seemed rather
+thicker than usual. “Oh,” said Bliss, “all Bank bills are not alike.”
+The girl was naturally much pleased. She would hasten to apprise
+Mistress Bliss of the good news.
+
+Not for the world! So far from letting any living soul know he had
+placed so much money in her hands, Vaughan exacted an oath of secresy
+from her, and sealed the notes up in a parcel with his own seal; making
+her swear that she would on no account open it till after their
+marriage.
+
+Some days after, that is, “on the twenty-second of March,” (1758) we are
+describing the scene in Mr. Bliss’s own words—“I was sitting with my
+wife by the fireside. The prisoner and the girl were sitting in the same
+room—which was a small one—and although they whispered, I could
+distinguish that Vaughan was very urgent to have something returned
+which he had previously given to her. She refused, and Vaughan went away
+in an angry mood. I then studied the girl’s face, and saw that it
+expressed much dissatisfaction. Presently a tear broke out. I then
+spoke, and insisted on knowing the dispute. She refused to tell, and I
+told her that until she did, I would not see her. The next day I asked
+the same question of Vaughan; he hesitated. ‘Oh!’ I said, ‘I dare say it
+is some ten or twelve pound matter—something to buy a wedding bauble
+with.’ He answered that it was much more than that, it was near three
+hundred pounds! ‘But why all this secresy,’ I said; and he answered it
+was not proper for people to know he had so much money till his
+certificate was signed. I then asked him to what intent he had left the
+notes with the young lady? He said, as I had of late suspected him, he
+designed to give her a proof of his affection and truth. I said, ‘You
+have demanded them in such a way that it must be construed as an
+abatement of your affection towards her.’” Vaughan was again exceedingly
+urgent in asking back the packet; but Bliss remembering his many
+evasions, and supposing that this was a trick, declined advising his
+niece to restore the parcel without proper consideration. The very next
+day it was discovered that the notes were counterfeits.
+
+This occasioned stricter enquiries into Vaughan’s previous career. It
+turned out that he bore the character in his native place of a
+dissipated and not very scrupulous person. The intention of his mother
+to assist him was an entire fabrication, and he had given Miss Bliss the
+forged notes solely for the purpose of deceiving her on that matter.
+Meanwhile the forgeries became known to the authorities, and he was
+arrested. By what means, does not clearly appear. The “Annual Register”
+says that one of the engravers gave information; but we find nothing in
+the newspapers of the time to support that statement; neither was it
+corroborated at Vaughan’s trial.
+
+When Vaughan was arrested he thrust a piece of paper into his mouth, and
+began to chew it violently. It was, however, rescued, and proved to be
+one of the forged notes; fourteen of them were found on his person, and
+when his lodgings were searched twenty more were discovered.
+
+Vaughan was tried at the Old Bailey on the seventh of April, before Lord
+Mansfield. The manner of the forgery was detailed minutely at the
+trial:—On the first of March (about a week before he gave the twelve
+notes to the young lady) Vaughan called on Mr. John Corbould, an
+engraver, and gave an order for a promissory note to be engraved with
+these words:—
+
+  “No. ——.
+
+      “I promise to pay to ——, or Bearer, ——, London ——.”
+
+There was to be a Britannia in the corner. When it was done, Mr. Sneed
+(for that was the _alias_ Vaughan adopted) came again, but objected to
+the execution of the work. The Britannia was not good, and the words “I
+promise” were too near the edge of the plate. Another was in consequence
+engraved, and on the fourth of March Vaughan took it away. He
+immediately repaired to a printer, and had forty-eight impressions taken
+on thin paper, provided by himself. Meanwhile, he had ordered, on the
+same morning, of Mr. Charles Fourdrinier, another engraver, a second
+plate, with what he called “a direction,” in the words, “For the
+Governor and Company of the Bank of England.” This was done, and about a
+week later he brought some paper, each sheet “folded up,” said the
+witness, “very curiously, so that I could not see what was in them. I
+was going to take the papers from him, but he said he must go upstairs
+with me, and see them worked off himself. I took him upstairs; he would
+not let me have them out of his hands. I took a sponge and wetted them,
+and put them one by one on the plate in order for printing them. After
+my boy had done two or three of them, I went downstairs, and my boy
+worked the rest off, and the prisoner came down and paid me.”
+
+Here the Court pertinently asked, “What imagination had you when a man
+thus came to you to print on secret paper, ‘the Governor and Company of
+the Bank of England?’”
+
+The engraver’s reply was:—“I then did not suspect anything. But I shall
+take care for the future.” As this was the first Bank of England note
+forgery that was ever perpetrated, the engraver was held excused.
+
+It may be mentioned as an evidence of the delicacy of the reporters
+that, in their account of the trial, Miss Bliss’s name is not mentioned.
+Her designation is “a young lady.” We subjoin the notes of her
+evidence:—
+
+“A young lady (sworn). The prisoner delivered me some bills; these are
+the same (producing twelve counterfeit Bank notes sealed up in a cover,
+for twenty pounds each), said they were Bank bills. I said they were
+thicker paper—he said all bills are not alike. I was to keep them till
+after we were married. He put them into my hands to show he put
+confidence in me, and desired me not to show them to any body; sealed
+them up with his own seal, and obliged me by an oath not to discover
+them to any body. And I did not till he had discovered them himself. He
+was to settle so much in Stock on me.”
+
+Vaughan urged in his defence that his sole object was to deceive his
+affianced, and that he intended to destroy all the notes after his
+marriage. But it had been proved that the prisoner had asked one John
+Ballingar to change first one, and then twenty of the notes; but which
+that person was unable to do. Besides, had his sole object been to
+dazzle Miss Bliss with his fictitious wealth, he would most probably
+have entrusted more, if not all the notes, to her keeping.
+
+He was found guilty, and passed the day that had been fixed for his
+wedding, as a condemned criminal.
+
+On the 11th May, 1758, Richard William Vaughan was executed at Tyburn.
+By his side, on the same gallows, there was another forger: William
+Boodgere, a military officer, who had forged a draught on an army agent
+named Calcroft, and expiated the offence with the first forger of Bank
+of England notes.
+
+The gallows may seem hard measure to have meted out to Vaughan, when it
+is considered that none of his notes were negotiated and no person
+suffered by his fraud. Not one of the forty-eight notes, except the
+twelve delivered to Miss Bliss, had been out of his possession; indeed
+the imitation must have been very clumsily executed, and detection would
+have instantly followed any attempt to pass the counterfeits. There was
+no endeavour to copy the style of engraving on a real Bank note. That
+was left to the engraver; and as each sheet passed through the press
+twice, the words added at the second printing, “For the Governor and
+Company of the Bank of England,” could have fallen into their proper
+place on any one of the sheets, only by a miracle. But what would have
+made the forgery clear to even a superficial observer was the singular
+omission of the second “n” in the word England.[1]
+
+Footnote 1:
+
+  Bad orthography was by no means uncommon in the most important
+  documents at that period; the days of the week, in the day-books of
+  the Bank of England itself, are spelt in a variety of ways.
+
+The criticism on Vaughan’s note of a Bank clerk examined on the trial
+was:—“There is some resemblance, to be sure; but this mote” (that upon
+which the prisoner was tried) “is numbered thirteen thousand eight
+hundred and forty, and we never reach so high a number.” Besides there
+was no water-mark in the paper. The note of which a fac-simile appeared
+in our eighteenth number, and dated so early as 1699, has a regular
+design in the texture of the paper; showing that the water-mark is as
+old as the Bank notes themselves.
+
+Vaughan was greatly commiserated. But despite the unskilfulness of the
+forgery, and the insignificant consequences which followed it, the crime
+was considered of too dangerous a character not to be marked, from its
+very novelty, with exemplary punishment. Hanging created at that time no
+remorse in the public mind, and it was thought necessary to set up
+Vaughan as a warning to all future Bank note forgers. The crime was too
+dangerous not to be marked with the severest penalties. Forgery differs
+from other crimes not less in the magnitude of the spoil it may obtain,
+and of the injury it inflicts, than in the facilities attending its
+accomplishment. The common thief finds a limit to his depredations in
+the bulkiness of his booty, which is generally confined to such property
+as he can carry about his person; the swindler raises insuperable and
+defeating obstacles to his frauds if the amount he seeks to obtain is so
+considerable as to awaken close vigilance or enquiry. To carry their
+projects to any very profitable extent, these criminals are reduced to
+the hazardous necessity of acting in concert, and thus infinitely
+increasing the risks of detection. But the forger need have no
+accomplice; he is burdened with no bulky and suspicious property; he
+needs no receiver to assist his contrivances. The skill of his own
+individual right hand can command thousands; often with the certainty of
+not being detected, and oftener with such rapidity as to enable him to
+baffle the pursuit of justice.
+
+It was a long time before Vaughan’s rude attempt was improved upon: but
+in the same year, (1758), another department of the crime was commenced
+with perfect success;—namely, an ingenious alteration, for fraudulent
+purposes, of real Bank notes. A few months after Vaughan’s execution,
+one of the northern mails was stopped and robbed by a highwayman;
+several Bank notes were comprised in the spoil, and the robber, setting
+up with these as a gentleman, went boldly to the Hatfield Post office,
+ordered a chaise and four, rattled away down the road, and changed a
+note at every change of horses. The robbery was, of course, soon made
+known, and the numbers and dates of the stolen notes were advertised as
+having been stopped at the Bank. To the genius of a highwayman this
+offered but a small obstacle, and the gentleman-thief changed all the
+figures “1” he could find into “4’s.” These notes passed currently
+enough; but, on reaching the Bank, the alteration was detected, and the
+last holder was refused payment. As that person had given a valuable
+consideration for the note, he brought an action for the recovery of the
+amount; and at the trial it was ruled by the Lord Chief Justice, that
+“any person paying a valuable consideration for a Bank note, payable to
+bearer, in a fair course of business, has an understood right to receive
+the money of the Bank.”
+
+It took a quarter of a century to bring the art of forging Bank notes to
+perfection. In 1779, this was nearly attained by an ingenious gentleman
+named Mathison, a watchmaker, from the matrimonial village of Gretna
+Green. Having learnt the arts of engraving and of simulating signatures,
+he tried his hand at the notes of the Darlington Bank; but, with the
+confidence of skill, was not cautious in passing them, was suspected,
+and absconded to Edinburgh. Scorning to let his talent be wasted, he
+favoured the Scottish public with many spurious Royal Bank of Scotland
+notes, and regularly forged his way by their aid to London. At the end
+of February he took handsome lodgings in the Strand, opposite Arundel
+Street. His industry was remarkable; for, by the 12th of March, he had
+planed and polished rough pieces of copper, engraved them, forged the
+water-mark, printed and negotiated several impressions. His plan was to
+travel and to purchase articles in shops. He bought a pair of
+shoe-buckles at Coventry with a forged note, which was eventually
+detected at the Bank of England. He had got so bold that he paid such
+frequent visits in Threadneedle Street that the Bank clerks became
+familiar with his person. He was continually changing notes of one, for
+another denomination. These were his originals, which he procured to
+make spurious copies of. One day seven thousand pounds came in from the
+Stamp Office. There was a dispute about one of the notes. Mathison, who
+was present, though at some distance, declared, oracularly, that the
+note was a good one. How could he know so well? A dawn of suspicion
+arose in the minds of the clerks; one trail led into another, and
+Mathison was finally apprehended. So well were his notes forged that, on
+the trial, an experienced Bank clerk declared he could not tell whether
+the note handed him to examine was forged or not. Mathison offered to
+reveal his secret of forging the water-mark, if mercy were shown to him;
+this was refused, and he suffered the penalty of his crime.
+
+Mathison was a genius in his criminal way, but a greater than he
+appeared in 1786. In that year perfection seemed to have been reached.
+So considerable was the circulation of spurious paper-money that it
+appeared as if some unknown power had set up a bank of its own. Notes
+were issued from it, and readily passed current, in hundreds and
+thousands. They were not to be distinguished from the genuine paper of
+Threadneedle Street. Indeed, when one was presented there, in due
+course, so complete were all its parts; so masterly the engraving; so
+correct the signatures; so skilful the water-mark, that it was promptly
+paid; and only discovered to be a forgery when it reached a particular
+department. From that period forged paper continued to be presented,
+especially at the time of lottery drawing. Consultations were held with
+the police. Plans were laid to help detection. Every effort was made to
+trace the forger. Clarke, the best detective of his day, went, like a
+sluth-hound, on the track; for in those days the expressive word
+“blood-money” was known. Up to a certain point there was little
+difficulty; but beyond that, consummate art defied the ingenuity of the
+officer. In whatever way the notes came, the train of discovery always
+paused at the lottery-offices. Advertisements offering large rewards
+were circulated; but the unknown forger baffled detection.
+
+While this base paper was in full currency, there appeared an
+advertisement in the Daily Advertiser for a servant. The successful
+applicant was a young man, in the employment of a musical-instrument
+maker; who, some time after, was called upon by a coachman, and informed
+that the advertiser was waiting in a coach to see him. The young man was
+desired to enter the conveyance, where he beheld a person with something
+of the appearance of a foreigner, sixty or seventy years old, apparently
+troubled with the gout. A camlet surtout was buttoned round his mouth; a
+large patch was placed over his left eye; and nearly every part of his
+face was concealed. He affected much infirmity. He had a faint hectic
+cough; and invariably presented the patched side to the view of the
+servant. After some conversation—in the course of which he represented
+himself as guardian to a young nobleman of great fortune—the interview
+concluded with the engagement of the applicant; and the new servant was
+directed to call on Mr. Brank, at 29, Titchfield Street, Oxford Street.
+At this interview Brank inveighed against his whimsical ward for his
+love of speculating in lottery-tickets; and told the servant that his
+principal duty would be to purchase them. After one or two meetings, at
+each of which Brank kept his face muffled, he handed a forty and twenty
+pound Bank note; told the servant to be very careful not to lose them;
+and directed him to buy lottery-tickets at separate offices. The young
+man fulfilled his instructions, and at the moment he was returning, was
+suddenly called by his employer from the other side of the street,
+congratulated on his rapidity, and then told to go to various other
+offices in the neighbourhood of the Royal Exchange, and to purchase more
+shares. Four hundred pounds in Bank of England Notes were handed him,
+and the wishes of the mysterious Mr. Brank were satisfactorily effected.
+These scenes were continually enacted. Notes to a large amount were thus
+circulated; lottery-tickets purchased; and Mr. Brank—always in a coach,
+with his face studiously concealed—was ever ready on the spot to receive
+them. The surprise of the servant was somewhat excited; but had he known
+that from the period he left his master to purchase the tickets, one
+female figure accompanied all his movements; that when he entered the
+offices, it waited at the door, peered cautiously in at the window,
+hovered around him like a second shadow, watched him carefully, and
+never left him until once more he was in the Company of his
+employer—that surprise would have been greatly increased.[2] Again and
+again were these extraordinary scenes rehearsed. At last the Bank
+obtained a clue, and the servant was taken into custody. The directors
+imagined that they had secured the actor of so many parts; that the
+flood of forged notes which had inundated that establishment would at
+length be dammed up at his source. Their hopes proved fallacious, and it
+was found that “Old Patch,” (as the mysterious forger was, from the
+servant’s description, nick-named) had been sufficiently clever to
+baffle the Bank directors. The house in Titchfield Street was searched;
+but Mr. Brank had deserted it, and not a trace of a single implement of
+forgery was to be seen.
+
+Footnote 2:
+
+  Francis’s History of the Bank of England.
+
+All that could be obtained was some little knowledge of “Old Patch’s”
+proceedings. It appeared that he carried on his paper coining entirely
+by himself. His only confidant was his mistress. He was his own
+engraver. He even made his own ink. He manufactured his own paper. With
+a private press he worked his own notes; and counterfeited the
+signatures of the cashiers, completely. But these discoveries had no
+effect; for it became evident that Mr. Patch had set up a press
+elsewhere. Although his secret continued as impenetrable, his notes
+became as plentiful as ever. Five years of unbounded prosperity ought to
+have satisfied him; but it did not. Success seemed to pall him. His
+genius was of that insatiable order which demands new excitements, and a
+constant succession of new flights. The following paragraph from a
+newspaper of 1786 relates to the same individual:—
+
+“On the 17th of December, ten pounds was paid into the Bank, for which
+the clerk, as usual, gave a ticket to receive a Bank note of equal
+value. This ticket ought to have been carried immediately to the
+cashier, instead of which the bearer took it home, and curiously added
+an 0 to the original sum, and returning, presented it so altered to the
+cashier, for which he received a note of one hundred pounds. In the
+evening, the clerks found a deficiency in the accounts; and on examining
+the tickets of the day, not only that but two others were discovered to
+have been obtained in the same manner. In the one, the figure 1 was
+altered to 4, and in another to 5, by which the artist received, upon
+the whole, nearly one thousand pounds.”
+
+To that princely felony, Old Patch, as will be seen in the sequel, added
+smaller misdemeanors which one would think were far beneath his notice;
+except to convince himself and his mistress of the unbounded facility of
+his genius for fraud.
+
+At that period the affluent public were saddled with a tax on plate; and
+many experiments were made to evade it. Among others, one was invented
+by a Mr. Charles Price, a stock-jobber and lottery-office keeper, which,
+for a time, puzzled the tax-gatherer. Mr. Charles Price lived in great
+style, gave splendid dinners, and did everything on the grandest scale.
+Yet Mr. Charles Price had no plate! The authorities could not find so
+much as a silver tooth-pick on his magnificent premises. In truth, what
+he was too cunning to possess, he borrowed. For one of his sumptuous
+entertainments, he hired the plate of a silversmith in Cornhill, and
+left the value in bank notes as security for its safe return. One of
+these notes having proved a forgery, was traced to Mr. Charles Price;
+and Mr. Charles Price was not to be found at that particular juncture.
+Although this excited no surprise—for he was often an absentee from his
+office for short periods—yet in due course and as a formal matter of
+business, an officer was set to find him, and to ask his explanation
+regarding the false note. After tracing a man who he had a strong notion
+was Mr. Charles Price through countless lodgings and innumerable
+disguises, the officer (to use his own expression) “nabbed” Mr. Charles
+Price. But, as Mr. Clarke observed, his prisoner and his prisoner’s lady
+were even then “too many” for him; for although he lost not a moment in
+trying to secure the forging implements, after he had discovered that
+Mr. Charles Price, and Mr. Brank, and Old Patch, were all concentrated
+in the person of his prisoner, he found the lady had destroyed every
+trace of evidence. Not a vestige of the forging factory was left. Not
+the point of a graver, nor a single spot of ink, nor a shred of silver
+paper, nor a scrap of anybody’s handwriting, was to be met with.
+Despite, however, this paucity of evidence to convict him, Mr. Charles
+Price had not the courage to face a jury, and eventually he saved the
+judicature and the Tyburn executive much trouble and expense, by hanging
+himself in Bridewell.
+
+The success of Mr. Charles Price has never been surpassed; and even
+after the darkest era in the history of Bank forgeries—which dates from
+the suspension of cash payments, in February, 1797, and which will be
+treated of in a succeeding paper—“Old Patch” was still remembered as the
+Cæsar of Forgers.
+
+
+
+
+                      THE TWO GUIDES OF THE CHILD.
+
+
+A spirit near me said, “Look forth upon the Land of Life. What do you
+see?”
+
+“Steep mountains, covered by a mighty plain, a table-land of
+many-coloured beauty. Beauty, nay, it seems all beautiful at first, but
+now I see that there are some parts barren.”
+
+“Are they quite barren?—look more closely still!”
+
+“No, in the wildest deserts, now, I see some gum-dropping acacias, and
+the crimson blossom of the cactus. But there are regions that rejoice
+abundantly in flower and fruit; and now, O Spirit, I see men and women
+moving to and fro.”
+
+“Observe them, mortal.”
+
+“I behold a world of love; the men have women’s arms entwined about
+them; some upon the verge of precipices—friends are running to the
+rescue. There are many wandering like strangers, who know not their
+road, and they look upward. Spirit, how many, many eyes are looking up
+as if to God! Ah, now I see some strike their neighbours down into the
+dust; I see some wallowing like swine; I see that there are men and
+women brutal.”
+
+“Are they quite brutal?—look more closely still.”
+
+“No, I see prickly sorrow growing out of crime, and penitence awakened
+by a look of love. I see good gifts bestowed out of the hand of murder,
+and see truth issue out of lying lips. But in this plain, O Spirit, I
+see regions—wide, bright regions,—yielding fruit and flower, while
+others seem perpetually veiled with fogs, and in them no fruit ripens. I
+see pleasant regions where the rock is full of clefts, and people fall
+into them. The men who dwell beneath the fog deal lovingly, and yet they
+have small enjoyment in the world around them, which they scarcely see.
+But whither are these women going?”
+
+“Follow them.”
+
+“I have followed down the mountains to a haven in the vale below. All
+that is lovely in the world of flowers makes a fragrant bed for the dear
+children; birds singing, they breathe upon the pleasant air; the
+butterflies play with them. Their limbs shine white among the blossoms,
+and their mothers come down full of joy to share their innocent delight.
+They pelt each other with the lilies of the valley. They call up at will
+fantastic masques, grim giants play to make them merry, a thousand
+grotesque loving phantoms kiss them; to each the mother is the one thing
+real, the highest bliss—the next bliss is the dream of all the world
+beside. Some that are motherless, all mother’s love. Every gesture,
+every look, every odour, every song, adds to the charm of love which
+fills the valley. Some little figures fall and die, and on the valley’s
+soil they crumble into violets and lilies, with love-tears to hang in
+them like dew.
+
+“Who dares to come down with a frown into this happy valley? A severe
+man seizes an unhappy, shrieking child, and leads it to the roughest
+ascent of the mountain. He will lead it over steep rocks to the plain of
+the mature. On ugly needle-points he makes the child sit down, and
+teaches it its duty in the world above.”
+
+“Its duty, mortal! do you listen to the teacher?”
+
+“Spirit, I hear now. The child is informed about two languages spoken by
+nations extinct centuries ago, and something also, O Spirit, about the
+base of a hypothenuse.”
+
+“Does the child attend?”
+
+“Not much; but it is beaten sorely, and its knees are bruised against
+the rocks, till it is hauled up, woe-begone and weary, to the upper
+plain. It looks about bewildered; all is strange,—it knows not how to
+act. Fogs crown the barren mountain paths. Spirit, I am unhappy; there
+are many children thus hauled up, and as young men upon the plain; they
+walk in fog, or among brambles; some fall into pits; and many, getting
+into flower-paths, lie down and learn. Some become active, seeking
+right, but ignorant of what right is; they wander among men out of their
+fog-land, preaching folly. Let me go back among the children.”
+
+“Have they no better guide?”
+
+“Yes, now there comes one with a smiling face, and rolls upon the
+flowers with the little ones, and they are drawn to him. And he has
+magic spells to conjure up glorious spectacles of fairy land. He frolics
+with them and might be first cousin to the butterflies. He wreathes
+their little heads with flower garlands, and with his fairy land upon
+his lips he walks toward the mountains; eagerly they follow. He seeks
+the smoothest upward path, and that is but a rough one, yet they run up
+merrily, guide and children, butterflies pursuing still the flowers as
+they nod over a host of laughing faces. They talk of the delightful
+fairy world, and resting in the shady places learn of the yet more
+delightful world of God. They learn to love the Maker of the Flowers, to
+know how great the Father of the Stars must be, how good must be the
+Father of the Beetle. They listen to the story of the race they go to
+labour with upon the plain, and love it for the labour it has done. They
+learn old languages of men, to understand the past—more eagerly they
+learn the voices of the men of their own day, that they may take part
+with the present. And in their study when they flag, they fall back upon
+thoughts of the Child Valley they are leaving. Sports and fancies are
+the rod and spur that bring them with new vigour to the lessons. When
+they reach the plain they cry, ‘We know you, men and women; we know to
+what you have aspired for centuries; we know the love there is in you;
+we know the love there is in God; we come prepared to labour with you,
+dear, good friends. We will not call you clumsy when we see you tumble,
+we will try to pick you up; when we fall, you shall pick us up. We have
+been trained to love, and therefore we can aid you heartily, for love is
+labour!’”
+
+The Spirit whispered, “You have seen and you have heard. Go now, and
+speak unto your fellow-men: ask justice for the child.”
+
+To-day should love To-morrow, for it is a thing of hope; let the young
+Future not be nursed by Care. God gave not fancy to the child that men
+should stamp its blossoms down into the loose soil of intellect. The
+child’s heart was not made full to the brim of love, that men should
+pour its love away, and bruise instead of kiss the trusting innocent.
+Love and fancy are the stems on which we may graft knowledge readily.
+What is called by some dry folks a solid foundation may be a thing not
+desirable. To cut down all the trees and root up all the flowers in a
+garden, to cover walks and flower-beds alike with a hard crust of
+well-rolled gravel, that would be to lay down your solid foundation
+after a plan which some think good in a child’s mind, though not quite
+worth adopting in a garden. O, teacher, love the child and learn of it;
+so let it love and learn of you.
+
+
+
+
+                                 CHIPS.
+
+
+                    EASY SPELLING AND HARD READING.
+
+An interesting case of educational destitution presents itself in the
+following letter. It is written by the son of a poor, but honest,
+brickmaker of Hammersmith, who emigrated to Sidney, and is now a
+shepherd at Bathurst. While the facts it contains are clearly stated,
+and the sentiments expressed are highly creditable to the writer—showing
+that his moral training had not been neglected by his parents—the
+orthography is such as, we may safely affirm, would not have emanated
+from any human being with similar abilities, and in a similar station,
+than an Englishman.
+
+England stands pre-eminent in this respect. The parents of this
+letter-writer were too poor to _pay_ to have their child taught, and
+consequently with the best will in the world to be an ordinary scholar,
+he is unable to spell. The clever manner in which such letters are
+selected as represent the sounds he is in the habit of giving to each
+word, shows an aptitude which would assuredly have made with the
+commonest cultivation a literate and useful citizen. More amusing
+orthography we have no where met; but the information it conveys is of
+the most useful kind. The reader will perceive that the points touched
+upon are precisely those respecting which he would wish to be informed;
+were he about to emigrate.
+
+The epistle not only gives a truthful picture of an Australian
+shepherd’s condition, but is in itself a lesson and a censure on that
+want of national means of education from which at least one-third of the
+adult population of England suffer, and of which the writer is an
+especial victim and example:—
+
+  “Deer mother and father and sisters i root thes few lines hooping to
+  find you All well for I arr in gudd halth my self and i wood root
+  befor onley i wos very un setled and now i have root i houp you will
+  rite back as soon as you can and send how you all arr and likwise our
+  frends and i am hired my self for a sheeprd 12 munts for 19 pound and
+  my keep too for it wos to soun for our work when i arive in the cuntry
+  it is a plesent and a helthay cuntry and most peple dows well in it as
+  liks onley it is a grait cuntry for durnkerds and you do not Xpket for
+  them to do well no weer i have not got any folt to find of the cuntry
+  for after few theres man can bee is own master if hee liks for the
+  wagers is higher then tha arr at hom and the previshen is seeper and
+  peple do not work so hard as thay do at tom and if any wne wish to com
+  com at wonce and don with it same as i did and take no feer oof the
+  see whot ever for i did not see any danger whot ever and it is a
+  cuntry that puur peapole can get a gud living in hoostlue wich thay
+  can not at tom i arr vrey well plesed off the cuntry and i should bee
+  very happy if i had som relishon over with mee and i am 230 miles up
+  the cuntry and wee had a very plesent voyge over in deed and likwise
+  luckey and vrey litle sickenss and no deths deer mother and father i
+  houp you will lett our frends no how i am geeting on and der frends
+  you take no heed what pepole says about horstler take and past your
+  own thouths about it and if any body wishes to com i wood swade them
+  to com con pepole can geet a gud living there wer tha cant at tome and
+  pepole beter com and geet a belly full then to stop at tome and work
+  day and night then onely get haf a bely ful and i am shuur that no
+  body can not find any folt off the cuntry eXcep tis pepole do not now
+  when tha arr doing well [price of pervison] tee lb 1_s_ to 3_s_ suuger
+  lb 2_d_ to 6_d_ coofe lb 8_d_ to 1_s_ bred lb 1_d_ to 2_d_ beef lb
+  1_d_ to 2_d_ mutten ditto baken lb 6_d_ to 1_s._ poork lb 2_d_ to 4_d_
+  butter lb _6_d to 1_s_ chees lb 4_d_ to 8_d_ pertos price as tome sope
+  lb 4_d_ to 6_d_ starch and blue and sooder home price candles lb 4_d_
+  to 6_d_ rice lb 2_d_ to 4_d_ hags hom price trekle lb 4_d_ to 5_d_
+  solt lb 1_d_ peper nounc 2_d_ tabaker lb 1_s_ to 6_s_ beer 4_d_ pot at
+  sednay and up in the pool 1_s_ spirts hom price frut happles pars
+  horengs lemns peshes gusbryes curneth cheerys cokelnut storbyes
+  rasberys nuts of all sorts vegtbles of all sorts price of cloths much
+  the same as tome stok very resneble sheep 2_s_ 6_d_ heed wait about 80
+  pounds fat bullket about 1000 wit 3_l_ pour hors from 2_l_ to 10_l_
+  ther is wonderful grait many black in the cuntry but tha will not hurt
+  any one if you will let them aolne.
+
+                         traitment on bord ship,
+
+  wee arive in the 7 febery and sailed to graveshend then wee stop ther
+  2 days then wee sailed from ther to plymeth and wee stop ther 9 days
+  and took in loot more emigrant then wee sailed from ther to seednay we
+  arive to seednay 8 of June wee had it vry ruf in the bay of biskey and
+  three mor places beside but i did not see any dainger of sinking not
+  the lest for wee had a vry plesent voyges over in deed the pervison on
+  bord ship Monday pork haf pound pea haf pint butter 6 ounces weekly
+  tea 1 ounce per week 9 ounces daily biscuit Tusday beef haf pound rice
+  4 ounces flour 1 pound per week Wendesday pork haf pound peas haf pint
+  raisins haf pound per week cooffee 1 ounce and haf per week Thursday
+  preserved meet haf pound Friday pork haf pound peas haf pint Sadurday
+  beef haf pound rice 4 ounces sugar three Quarter pound per week Sunday
+  preserved meat haf pound fresh woter three Quarrts daily vinegar haf
+  pint per week Mustard haf ounce per week salt tow ounces per week lime
+  Juse haf pint per week my der sisters i houp you will keep your selvs
+  from all bad company for it is a disgrace to all frends and likwise
+  worse for you own sellvs o rember that opinted day to com at last tis
+  behoups that wee shal bee free from all dets o whot a glorious tirm it
+  will bee then wee shal feel no more pains nor gref nor sorows nor
+  sickness nor truble of any cind o whot a glorious term it will bee
+  then o seeners kip your selvs out off the mire for feer you shuld sink
+  to the bootem the sarvents wagars of houstler tha geets ges haf as
+  much mour as tha gets at tome and my sister Maryaan shee kood geet 16
+  punds a year and Sarah get 20 pound and Marther get 8 or 9 pound and
+  tha arr not so sharp to the servents as tha arr at tome i houp you
+  will send word wot the yungest child name is and how it is geeting on
+  and send the date when it wos born and i houp this will find you all
+  weel and cumfortble to. J. R.”
+
+
+
+
+                          A VERY OLD SOLDIER.
+
+
+The following is a chip from a block whence we have already taken a few
+shavings:—“Kohl’s Travels in the Netherlands.” It describes the National
+Hospital for the Aged at Brussels. Some of the inmates whom he found in
+it, though still alive, belong to history. It must have been with a sort
+of archaic emotion that our inquisitive friend found himself speaking to
+a man who had escorted Marie Antoinette from Vienna to Paris, on the
+occasion of her marriage!
+
+“The magnitude of the _Hospice des Vieillards_ in Brussels,” says Mr.
+Kohl, “fully realises the idea of a National establishment. The building
+itself fulfils all the required conditions of extent, solidity, and
+convenience. The gardens, court-yards, and apartments are spacious and
+well arranged. The sleeping and eating rooms are large, and well
+furnished; and it is pleasing to observe, here and there, the walls
+adorned with pictures painted in oil-colours. The inmates of this
+_Hospice_ pass their latter days in the enjoyment of a degree of
+happiness and comfort which would be unattainable in their own homes.
+The chapel is situated only at the distance of a few paces from the main
+building, and is connected with it by means of a roofed corridor; thus
+obviating the difficulties which prevent old people from attending
+places of public worship when, as it frequently happens, they are
+situated at long and inaccessible distances from their dwellings. In
+winter the Chapel of the _Hospice_ is carefully warmed and secured
+against damp.
+
+“At the time of my visit to the _Hospice des Vieillards_ in Brussels,
+the establishment contained about seven hundred inmates, of both sexes,
+between the ages of seventy and eighty. Of this number six hundred and
+fifteen were maintained at the charge of the establishment, and
+seventy-five, being in competent circumstances, defrayed their own
+expenses. That the number of those able to maintain themselves should
+bear so considerable a relative proportion to the rest, is a fact which
+bears strong testimony in favour of the merits of the establishment.
+Those who support themselves live in a style more or less costly,
+according to the amount of their respective payments. Some of the
+apartments into which I was conducted certainly presented such an air of
+comfort that persons, even of a superior condition of life, could
+scarcely have desired better.
+
+“I learned from the Governor of the _Hospice_ that the average cost of
+the maintenance of each individual was about seventy-five centimes per
+day, making a total diurnal expenditure of six hundred francs, or of two
+hundred thousand francs per annum. But as this estimate includes the
+wages of attendants and the expenses consequent on repairs of the
+building, it may fairly be calculated that each individual costs about
+three hundred francs per annum. The _Hospice_ frequently receives
+liberal donations and bequests from opulent private persons.
+
+“For such of the pensioners as are able to work, employment is provided:
+others are appointed to fill official posts in the veteran Republic. Now
+and then a little task-work is imposed; but the _Hospice_ being rich,
+this duty is not exacted with the precision requisite in establishments
+for the young, where the inmates having a long worldly career before
+them, it is desirable that they should be trained in habits of
+regularity and industry. The pensioners of the Brussels _Hospice des
+Vieillards_, enjoy much freedom; and they are even allowed some
+amusements and indulgences, which it might not be proper to concede to
+young persons. For example, they are permitted to play at cards; but it
+will scarcely be said there is anything objectionable in such an
+indulgence to old persons who have run out their worldly course; for
+even were they fated once more to enter into society, their example
+could neither be very useful nor very dangerous. Here and there I
+observed groups of the pensioners, male and female, seated at cards,
+staking their pocket-money, of which each has a small allowance, on the
+hazard of the game. The penalties assigned for misdemeanours are very
+mild, consisting merely in the offending party being prohibited from
+going out, or, as it is called, _la privée de la sortie_. In extreme
+cases the delinquent is confined to his or her own apartment.
+
+“It has seldom been my lot to visit a charitable institution, which
+created in my mind so many pleasing impressions as those I experienced
+in the Hospital for the Old in Brussels. It was gratifying to observe in
+the spacious court-yards the cheerful and happy groups of grey-haired
+men and women, sunning themselves in the open air. Some were playing at
+cards, whilst here and there the females were seated at work, and men
+sauntering about smoking their pipes and gossiping. Every now and then I
+met an old man whistling or singing whilst he paced to and fro. More
+than one of these veterans had been eye-witnesses of interesting
+historical events, which now belong to a past age. Several of them had
+served as soldiers during the Austrian dominion in Belgium. Of these the
+porter of the Hospital was one.
+
+“The most remarkable character in the whole establishment was an old
+Dutchman, named Jan Hermann Jankens, who was born at Leyden in the year
+1735. At the time when I saw him, he was one hundred and nine years of
+age; or, to quote his own description of himself, he was ‘_leste,
+vaillant, et sain_.’”
+
+                 “Il nous rapelle en vain
+                 Apres un siècle de séjour,
+                 Ses plaisirs ainsi que ses amertumes.”
+
+“These lines were inscribed beneath his portrait, which hung in his own
+apartment. I remarked that the painter had not flattered him. ‘You are
+right, Sir,’ replied he; ‘the fact is, I am much younger than my
+portrait,’ and to prove that he was making no vain boast, he sprang up,
+and cut several capers, with surprising agility. His faculties were
+unimpaired, and he was a remarkable example of that vigorous
+organisation which sometimes manifests itself in the human frame; and
+which excites our wonder when we find that such delicate structures as
+the nerves of sight and hearing may be used for the space of a century
+without wearing out. Until within two years of the time when I saw
+Jankens, he had been able to work well and actively. His hand was firm
+and steady, and he frequently wrote letters to his distant friends. When
+in his one hundred and seventh year, he thought, very reasonably, that
+he might give up work. ‘And what do you do now?’ I enquired. ‘I enjoy my
+life,’ replied he; ‘I saunter about the whole day long, singing,
+smoking, and amusing myself. I spend my time very gaily!’
+
+“‘Yes, Sir; he dances, drinks, and sings all day long!’ exclaimed, in a
+half-jeering, half-envious tone, another veteran, named Watermans, who
+had joined us, and who, though _only_ ninety years of age, was much more
+feeble than Jankens.
+
+“I learned from the latter that he had had fifteen children; but that of
+all his large family, only one survived, though most of them had lived
+to a goodly age. His memory was stored with recollections of events
+connected with the marriage of Louis the Sixteenth; for, when a soldier
+in the Austrian service, he had formed one of the military escort which
+conducted Marie Antoinette into France. He sang me an old song, which
+had been composed in honour of the Royal nuptials, and which he said was
+very popular at the time. It was in the usual style of such effusions; a
+mere string of hyperbolic compliments, in praise of the ‘beauteous
+Princess,’ and the ‘illustrious Prince.’ It sounded like an echo from
+the grave of old French loyalty. Jankens sang this song in a remarkably
+clear, strong voice; but nevertheless, the performance did not give
+satisfaction to old Watermans, who, thrusting his fingers into his ears,
+said peevishly, ‘What a croaking noise!’
+
+“Heedless of this discouraging remark, the venerable centenarian was
+preparing to favour me with another specimen of his vocal ability, when
+the great bell in the court-yard rang for supper. ‘Pardon, Sir,’ said
+Jankens, with an apologetic bow, ‘but—supper.’ Whereupon he hurried off
+in the direction of the refectory, with that sort of eager yearning with
+which it might be imagined he turned to his mother’s breast one hundred
+and nine years before.
+
+“‘It is amazing that that old fellow should have so sharp an appetite,’
+observed the petulant Watermans, hobbling after him in a way which
+showed that he too was not altogether unprepared to do honour to the
+evening meal.”
+
+This Hospital for the Aged is a sort of National Almshouse not solely
+peculiar to Belgium. Private munificence does in England what is done
+abroad by Governments; but it is to be deplored that a more general
+provision for the superannuated does not exist in this country.
+Workhouses are indeed asylums for the old; but for those who are also
+decayed in worldly circumstances, they cannot afford those comforts
+which old age requires. Except Greenwich Hospital for sailors, and
+Chelsea Hospital for soldiers, we have no national institution for old
+people.
+
+
+
+
+                         THE HOUSEHOLD JEWELS.
+
+
+               A Traveller, from journeying
+                 In countries far away,
+               Re-passed his threshold at the close
+                 Of one calm Sabbath day;
+               A voice of love, a comely face,
+                 A kiss of chaste delight,
+               Were the first things to welcome him
+                 On that blest Sabbath night.
+
+               He stretched his limbs upon the hearth,
+                 Before its friendly blaze,
+               And conjured up mixed memories
+                 Of gay and gloomy days;
+               And felt that none of gentle soul,
+                 However far he roam,
+               Can e’er forego, can e’er forget,
+                 The quiet joys of home.
+
+               “Bring me my children!” cried the sire,
+                 With eager, earnest tone;
+               “I long to press them, and to mark
+                 How lovely they have grown;
+               Twelve weary months have passed away
+                 Since I went o’er the sea,
+               To feel how sad and lone I was
+                 Without my babes and thee.”
+
+               “Refresh thee, as ’tis needful,” said
+                 The fair and faithful wife,
+               The while her pensive features paled,
+                 And stirred with inward strife;
+               “Refresh thee, husband of my heart,
+                 I ask it as a boon;
+               Our children are reposing, love;
+                 Thou shalt behold them soon.”
+
+               She spread the meal, she filled the cup,
+                 She pressed him to partake;
+               He sat down blithely at the board,
+                 And all for her sweet sake;
+               But when the frugal feast was done,
+                 The thankful prayer preferred,
+               Again affection’s fountain flowed;
+                 Again its voice was heard.
+
+               “Bring me my children, darling wife,
+                 I’m in an ardent mood;
+               My soul lacks purer aliment,
+                 I long for other food;
+               Bring forth my children to my gaze,
+                 Or ere I rage or weep,
+               I yearn to kiss their happy eyes
+                 Before the hour of sleep.”
+
+               “I have a question yet to ask;
+                 Be patient, husband dear.
+               A stranger, one auspicious morn,
+                 Did send some jewels here;
+               Until to take them from my care,
+                 But yesterday he came,
+               And I restored them with a sigh:
+                 —Dost thou approve, or blame?”
+
+               “I marvel much, sweet wife, that thou
+                 Shouldst breathe such words to me;
+               Restore to man, resign to God,
+                 Whate’er is lent to thee;
+               Restore it with a willing heart,
+                 Be grateful for the trust;
+               Whate’er may tempt or try us, wife,
+                 Let us be ever just.”
+
+               She took him by the passive hand,
+                 And up the moonlit stair,
+               She led him to their bridal bed,
+                 With mute and mournful air;
+               She turned the cover down, and there,
+                 In grave-like garments dressed,
+               Lay the twin children of their love,
+                 In death’s serenest rest.
+
+               “These were the jewels lent to me,
+                 Which God has deigned to own;
+               The precious caskets still remain,
+                 But, ah, the _gems_ are flown;
+               But thou didst teach me to resign
+                 What God alone can claim;
+               He giveth and he takes away,
+                 Blest be His holy name!”
+
+               The father gazed upon his babes,
+                 The mother drooped apart,
+               Whilst all the woman’s sorrow gushed
+                 From her o’erburdened heart;
+               And with the striving of her grief,
+                 Which wrung the tears she shed,
+               Were mingled low and loving words
+                 To the unconscious dead.
+
+               When the sad sire had looked his fill.
+                 He veiled each breathless face,
+               And down in self-abasement bowed,
+                 For comfort and for grace;
+               With the deep eloquence of woe,
+                 Poured forth his secret soul,
+               Rose up, and stood erect and calm,
+                 In spirit healed and whole.
+
+               “Restrain thy tears, poor wife,” he said,
+                 “I learn this lesson still,
+               God gives, and God can take away,
+                 Blest be His holy will!
+               Blest are my children, for they _live_
+                 From sin and sorrow free,
+               And I am not all joyless, wife,
+                 With faith, hope, love, and thee.”
+
+
+
+
+                      THE LABORATORY IN THE CHEST.
+
+
+The mind of Mr. Bagges was decidedly affected—beneficially—by the
+lecture on the Chemistry of a Candle, which, as set forth in a previous
+number of this journal, had been delivered to him by his youthful
+nephew. That learned discourse inspired him with a new feeling; an
+interest in matters of science. He began to frequent the Polytechnic
+Institution, nearly as much as his club. He also took to lounging at the
+British Museum; where he was often to be seen, with his left arm under
+his coat-tails, examining the wonderful works of nature and antiquity,
+through his eye-glass. Moreover, he procured himself to be elected a
+member of the Royal Institution, which became a regular house of call to
+him, so that in a short time he grew to be one of the ordinary phenomena
+of the place.
+
+Mr. Bagges likewise adopted a custom of giving _conversaziones_, which,
+however, were always very private and select—generally confined to his
+sister’s family. Three courses were first discussed; then dessert; after
+which, surrounded by an apparatus of glasses and decanters, Master Harry
+Wilkinson was called upon, as a sort of juvenile Davy, to amuse his
+uncle by the elucidation of some chemical or other physical mystery.
+Master Wilkinson had now attained to the ability of making experiments;
+most of which, involving combustion, were strongly deprecated by the
+young gentleman’s mamma; but her opposition was overruled by Mr. Bagges,
+who argued that it was much better that a young dog should burn
+phosphorus before your face than let off gunpowder behind your back, to
+say nothing of occasionally pinning a cracker to your skirts. He
+maintained that playing with fire and water, throwing stones, and such
+like boys’ tricks, as they are commonly called, are the first
+expressions of a scientific tendency—endeavours and efforts of the
+infant mind to acquaint itself with the powers of Nature.
+
+His own favourite toys, he remembered, were squibs, suckers, squirts,
+and slings; and he was persuaded that, by his having been denied them at
+school, a natural philosopher had been nipped in the bud.
+
+Blowing bubbles was an example—by-the-bye, a rather notable one—by which
+Mr. Bagges, on one of his scientific evenings, was instancing the
+affinity of child’s play to philosophical experiments, when he bethought
+him Harry had said on a former occasion that the human breath consists
+chiefly of carbonic acid, which is heavier than common air. How then, it
+occurred to his inquiring, though elderly mind, was it that
+soap-bladders, blown from a tobacco-pipe, rose instead of sinking? He
+asked his nephew this.
+
+“Oh, uncle!” answered Harry, “in the first place, the air you blow
+bubbles with mostly comes in at the nose and goes out at the mouth,
+without having been breathed at all. Then it is warmed by the mouth, and
+warmth, you know, makes a measure of air get larger, and so lighter in
+proportion. A soap-bubble rises for the same reason that a fire-balloon
+rises—that is, because the air inside of it has been heated, and weighs
+less than the same sized bubbleful of cold air.”
+
+“What, hot breath does!” said Mr. Bagges. “Well, now, it’s a curious
+thing, when you come to think of it, that the breath should be
+hot—indeed, the warmth of the body generally seems a puzzle. It is
+wonderful, too, how the bodily heat can be kept up so long as it is.
+Here, now, is this tumbler of hot grog—a mixture of boiling water, and
+what d’ye call it, you scientific geniuses?”
+
+“Alcohol, uncle.”
+
+“Alcohol—well—or, as we used to say, brandy. Now, if I leave this
+tumbler of brandy-and-water alone——”
+
+“_If_ you do, uncle,” interposed his nephew, archly.
+
+“Get along, you idle rogue! If I let that tumbler stand there, in a few
+minutes the brandy-and water—eh?—I beg pardon—the alcohol-and-water—gets
+cold. Now, why—why the deuce—if the brandy—the alcohol-and-water cools;
+why—how—how is it we don’t cool in the same way, I want to know? eh?”
+demanded Mr. Bagges, with the air of a man who feels satisfied that he
+has propounded a “regular poser.”
+
+“Why,” replied Harry, “for the same reason that the room keeps warm so
+long as there is a fire in the grate.”
+
+“You don’t mean to say that I have a fire in my body?”
+
+“I do, though.”
+
+“Eh, now? That’s good,” said Mr. Bagges. “That reminds me of the man in
+love crying, ‘Fire! fire!’ and the lady said, ‘Where, where?’ And he
+called out, ‘Here! here!’ with his hand upon his heart. Eh?—but now I
+think of it—you said, the other day, that breathing was a sort of
+burning. Do you mean to tell me that I—eh?—have fire, fire, as the lover
+said, here, here—in short, that my chest is a grate or an Arnott’s
+stove?”
+
+“Not exactly so, uncle. But I do mean to tell you that you have a sort
+of fire burning partly in your chest; but also, more or less, throughout
+your whole body.”
+
+“Oh, Henry!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilkinson, “How can you say such horrid
+things!”
+
+“Because they’re quite true, mamma—but you needn’t be frightened. The
+fire of one’s body is not hotter than from ninety degrees to one hundred
+and four degrees or so. Still it is fire, and will burn some things, as
+you would find, uncle, if, in using phosphorus, you were to let a little
+bit of it get under your nail.”
+
+“I’ll take your word for the fact, my boy,” said Mr. Bagges. “But, if I
+have a fire burning throughout my person—which I was not aware of, the
+only inflammation I am ever troubled with being in the great toe—I say,
+if my body is burning continually—how is it I don’t smoke—eh? Come,
+now!”
+
+“Perhaps you consume your own smoke,” suggested Mr. Wilkinson, senior,
+“like every well-regulated furnace.”
+
+“You smoke nothing but your pipe, uncle, because you burn all your
+carbon,” said Harry. “But, if your body doesn’t smoke, it steams.
+Breathe against a looking-glass, or look at your breath on a cold
+morning. Observe how a horse reeks when it perspires. Besides—as you
+just now said you recollected my telling you the other day—you breathe
+out carbonic acid, and that, and the steam of the breath together, are
+exactly the same things, you know, that a candle turns into in burning.”
+
+“But if I burn like a candle—why don’t I burn _out_ like a candle?”
+demanded Mr. Bagges. “How do you get over that?”
+
+“Because,” replied Harry, “your fuel is renewed as fast as burnt. So
+perhaps you resemble a lamp rather than a candle. A lamp requires to be
+fed; so does the body—as, possibly, uncle, you may be aware.”
+
+“Eh?—well—I have always entertained an idea of that sort,” answered Mr.
+Bagges, helping himself to some biscuits. “But the lamp feeds on
+train-oil.”
+
+“So does the Laplander. And you couldn’t feed the lamp on turtle or
+mulligatawny, of course, uncle. But mulligatawny or turtle can be
+changed into fat—they are so, sometimes, I think—when they are eaten in
+large quantities, and fat will burn fast enough. And most of what you
+eat turns into something which burns at last, and is consumed in the
+fire that warms you all over.”
+
+“Wonderful, to be sure,” exclaimed Mr. Bagges. “Well, now, and how does
+this extraordinary process take place?”
+
+“First, you know, uncle, your food is digested—”
+
+“Not always, I am sorry to say, my boy,” Mr. Bagges observed, “but go
+on.”
+
+“Well; when it _is_ digested, it becomes a sort of fluid, and mixes
+gradually with the blood, and turns into blood, and so goes over the
+whole body, to nourish it. Now, if the body is always being nourished,
+why doesn’t it keep getting bigger and bigger, like the ghost in the
+Castle of Otranto?”
+
+“Eh? Why, because it loses as well as gains, I suppose. By
+perspiration—eh—for instance?”
+
+“Yes, and by breathing; in short, by the burning I mentioned just now.
+Respiration, or breathing, uncle, is a perpetual combustion.”
+
+“But if my system,” said Mr. Bagges, “is burning throughout, what keeps
+up the fire in my little finger—putting gout out of the question?”
+
+“You burn all over, because you breathe all over, to the very tips of
+your fingers’ ends,” replied Harry.
+
+“Oh, don’t talk nonsense to your uncle!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilkinson.
+
+“It isn’t nonsense,” said Harry. “The air that you draw into the lungs
+goes more or less over all the body, and penetrates into every fibre of
+it, which is breathing. Perhaps you would like to hear a little more
+about the chemistry of breathing, or respiration, uncle?”
+
+“I should, certainly.”
+
+“Well, then; first you ought to have some idea of the breathing
+apparatus. The laboratory that contains this, is the chest, you know.
+The chest, you also know, has in it the heart and lungs, which, with
+other things in it, fill it quite out, so as to leave no hollow space
+between themselves and it. The lungs are a sort of air-sponges, and when
+you enlarge your chest to draw breath, they swell out with it and suck
+the air in. On the other hand you narrow your chest and squeeze the
+lungs and press the air from them;—that is breathing out. The lungs are
+made up of a lot of little cells. A small pipe—a little branch of the
+windpipe—opens into each cell. Two blood-vessels, a little tiny artery,
+and a vein to match, run into it also. The arteries bring into the
+little cells dark-coloured blood, which _has been_ all over the body.
+The veins carry out of the little cells bright scarlet-coloured blood,
+which _is to go_ all over the body. So all the blood passes through the
+lungs, and in so doing, is changed from dark to bright scarlet.”
+
+“Black blood, didn’t you say, in the arteries, and scarlet in the veins?
+I thought it was just the reverse,” interrupted Mr. Bagges.
+
+“So it is,” replied Harry, “with all the other arteries and veins,
+except those that circulate the blood through the lung-cells. The heart
+has two sides, with a partition between them that keeps the blood on the
+right side separate from the blood on the left; both sides being hollow,
+mind. The blood on the right side of the heart comes there from all over
+the body, by a couple of large veins, dark, before it goes to the lungs.
+From the right side of the heart, it goes on to the lungs, dark still,
+through an artery. It comes back to the left side of the heart from the
+lungs, bright scarlet, through four veins. Then it goes all over the
+rest of the body from the left side of the heart, through an artery that
+branches into smaller arteries, all carrying bright scarlet blood. So
+the arteries and veins of the lungs on one hand, and of the rest of the
+body on the other, do exactly opposite work, you understand.”
+
+“I hope so.”
+
+“Now,” continued Harry, “it requires a strong magnifying glass to see
+the lung-cells plainly, they are so small. But you can fancy them as big
+as you please. Picture any one of them to yourself of the size of an
+orange, say, for convenience in thinking about it; that one cell, with
+whatever takes place in it, will be a specimen of the rest. Then you
+have to imagine an artery carrying blood of one colour into it, and a
+vein taking away blood of another colour from it, and the blood changing
+its colour in the cell.”
+
+“Aye, but what makes the blood change its colour?”
+
+“Recollect, uncle, you have a little branch from the windpipe opening
+into the cell which lets in the air. Then the blood and the air are
+brought together, and the blood alters in colour. The reason, I suppose
+you would guess, is that it is somehow altered by the air.”
+
+“No very unreasonable conjecture, I should think,” said Mr. Bagges.
+
+“Well; if the air alters the blood, most likely, we should think, it
+gives something to the blood. So first let us see what is the difference
+between the air we breathe _in_, and the air we breathe _out_. You know
+that neither we nor animals can keep breathing the same air over and
+over again. You don’t want me to remind you of the Black Hole of
+Calcutta, to convince you of that; and I dare say you will believe what
+I tell you, without waiting till I can catch a mouse and shut it up in
+an air-tight jar, and show you how soon the unlucky creature will get
+uncomfortable, and begin to gasp, and that it will by-and-by die. But if
+we were to try this experiment—not having the fear of the Society for
+the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, nor the fear of doing wrong,
+before our eyes—we should find that the poor mouse, before he died, had
+changed the air of his prison considerably. But it would be just as
+satisfactory, and much more humane, if you or I were to breathe in and
+out of a silk bag or a bladder till we could stand it no longer, and
+then collect the air which we had been breathing in and out. We should
+find that a jar of such air would put out a candle. If we shook some
+lime-water up with it, the lime-water would turn milky. In short, uncle,
+we should find that a great part of the air was carbonic acid, and the
+rest mostly nitrogen. The air we inhale is nitrogen and oxygen; the air
+we exhale has lost most of its oxygen, and consists of little more than
+nitrogen and carbonic acid. Together with this, we breathe out the
+vapour of water, as I said before. Therefore in breathing, we give off
+exactly what a candle does in burning, only not so fast, after the rate.
+The carbonic acid we breathe out, shows that carbon is consumed within
+our bodies. The watery vapour of the breath is a proof that hydrogen is
+so too. We take in oxygen with the air, and the oxygen unites with
+carbon, and makes carbonic acid, and with hydrogen, forms water.”
+
+“Then don’t the hydrogen and carbon combine with the oxygen—that is,
+burn—in the lungs, and isn’t the chest the fireplace, after all?” asked
+Mr. Bagges.
+
+“Not altogether, according to those who are supposed to know better.
+They are of opinion, that some of the oxygen unites with the carbon and
+hydrogen of the blood in the lungs; but that most of it is merely
+absorbed by the blood, and dissolved in it in the first instance.”
+
+“Oxygen absorbed by the blood? That seems odd,” remarked Mr. Bagges,
+“How can that be?”
+
+“We only know the fact that there are some things that will absorb
+gases—suck them in—make them disappear. Charcoal will, for instance. It
+is thought that the iron which the blood contains gives it the curious
+property of absorbing oxygen. Well; the oxygen going into the blood
+makes it change from dark to bright scarlet; and then this blood
+containing oxygen is conveyed all over the system by the arteries, and
+yields up the oxygen to combine with hydrogen and carbon as it goes
+along. The carbon and hydrogen are part of the substance of the body.
+The bright scarlet blood mixes oxygen with them, which burns them, in
+fact; that is, makes them into carbonic acid and water. Of course, the
+body would soon be consumed if this were all that the blood does. But
+while it mixes oxygen with the old substance of the body, to burn it up,
+it lays down fresh material to replace the loss. So our bodies are
+continually changing throughout, though they seem to us always the same;
+but then, you know, a river appears the same from year’s end to year’s
+end, although the water in it is different every day.”
+
+“Eh, then,” said Mr. Bagges, “if the body is always on the change in
+this way, we must have had several bodies in the course of our lives, by
+the time we are old.”
+
+“Yes, uncle; therefore, how foolish it is to spend money upon funerals.
+What becomes of all the bodies we use up during our lifetimes? If we are
+none the worse for their flying away in carbonic acid and other things
+without ceremony, what good can we expect from having a fuss made about
+the body we leave behind us, which is put into the earth? However, you
+are wanting to know what becomes of the water and carbonic acid which
+have been made by the oxygen of the blood burning up the old materials
+of our frame. The dark blood of the veins absorbs this carbonic acid and
+water, as the blood of the arteries does oxygen,—only, they say, it does
+so by means of a salt in it, called phosphate of soda. Then the dark
+blood goes back to the lungs, and in them it parts with its carbonic
+acid and water, which escapes as breath. As fast as we breathe out,
+carbonic acid and water leave the blood; as fast as we breathe in,
+oxygen enters it. The oxygen is sent out in the arteries to make the
+rubbish of the body into gas and vapour, so that the veins may bring it
+back and get rid of it. The burning of rubbish by oxygen throughout our
+frames is the fire by which our animal heat is kept up. At least this is
+what most philosophers think; though doctors differ a little on this
+point, as on most others, I hear. Professor Liebig says, that our carbon
+is mostly prepared for burning by being first extracted from the blood
+sent to it—(which contains much of the rubbish of the system
+dissolved)—in the form of bile, and is then re-absorbed into the blood,
+and burnt. He reckons that a grown-up man consumes about fourteen ounces
+of carbon a day. Fourteen ounces of charcoal a day, or eight pounds two
+ounces a week, would keep up a tolerable fire.”
+
+“I had no idea we were such extensive charcoal-burners,” said Mr.
+Bagges. “They say we each eat our peck of dirt before we die—but we must
+burn bushels of charcoal.”
+
+“And so,” continued Harry, “the Professor calculates that we burn quite
+enough fuel to account for our heat. I should rather think, myself, it
+had something to do with it—shouldn’t you?”
+
+“Eh?” said Mr. Bagges; “it makes one rather nervous to think that one is
+burning all over—throughout one’s very blood—in this kind of way.”
+
+“It is very awful!” said Mrs. Wilkinson.
+
+“If true. But in that case, shouldn’t we be liable to inflame
+occasionally?” objected her husband.
+
+“It is said,” answered Harry, “that spontaneous combustion does happen
+sometimes; particularly in great spirit drinkers. I don’t see why it
+should not, if the system were to become too inflammable. Drinking
+alcohol would be likely to load the constitution with carbon, which
+would be fuel for the fire, at any rate.”
+
+“The deuce!” exclaimed Mr. Bagges, pushing his brandy-and-water from
+him. “We had better take care how we indulge in combustibles.”
+
+“At all events,” said Harry, “it must be bad to have too much fuel in
+us. It must choke the fire I should think, if it did not cause
+inflammation; which Dr. Truepenny says it does, meaning, by
+inflammation, gout, and so on, you know, uncle.”
+
+“Ahem!” coughed Mr. Bagges.
+
+“Taking in too much fuel, I dare say you know, uncle, means eating and
+drinking to excess,” continued Harry. “The best remedy, the doctor says,
+for overstuffing is exercise. A person who uses great bodily exertion,
+can eat and drink more without suffering from it than one who leads an
+inactive life; a foxhunter, for instance, in comparison with an
+alderman. Want of exercise and too much nourishment must make a man
+either fat or ill. If the extra hydrogen and carbon are not burnt out,
+or otherwise got rid of, they turn to blubber, or cause some disturbance
+in the system, intended by Nature to throw them off, which is called a
+disease. Walking, riding, running, increase the breathing—as well as the
+perspiration—and make us burn away our carbon and hydrogen in
+proportion. Dr. Truepenny declares that if people would only take in as
+much fuel as is requisite to keep up a good fire, his profession would
+be ruined.”
+
+“The good old advice—Baillie’s, eh?—or Abernethy’s—live upon sixpence a
+day, and earn it,” Mr. Bagges observed.
+
+“Well, and then, uncle, in hot weather the appetite is naturally weaker
+than it is in cold—less heat is required, and therefore less food. So in
+hot climates; and the chief reason, says the doctor, why people ruin
+their health in India is their spurring and goading their stomachs to
+crave what is not good for them, by spices and the like. Fruits and
+vegetables are the proper things to eat in such countries, because they
+contain little carbon compared to flesh, and they are the diet of the
+natives of those parts of the world. Whereas food with much carbon in
+it, meat, or even mere fat or oil, which is hardly anything else than
+carbon and hydrogen, are proper in very cold regions, where heat from
+within is required to supply the want of it without. That is why the
+Laplander is able, as I said he does, to devour train-oil. And Dr.
+Truepenny says that it may be all very well for Mr. M‘Gregor to drink
+raw whiskey at deer-stalking in the Highlands, but if Major Campbell
+combines that beverage with the diversion of tiger-hunting in the East
+Indies, habitually, the chances are that the Major will come home with a
+diseased liver.”
+
+“Upon my word, sir, the whole art of preserving health appears to
+consist in keeping up a moderate fire within us,” observed Mr. Bagges.
+
+“Just so, uncle, according to my friend the Doctor. ‘Adjust the fuel,’
+he says, ‘to the draught—he means the oxygen; keep the bellows properly
+at work, by exercise, and your fire will seldom want poking.’ The
+Doctor’s pokers, you know, are pills, mixtures, leeches, blisters,
+lancets, and things of that sort.”
+
+“Indeed? Well, then, my heart-burn, I suppose, depends upon bad
+management of my fire?” surmised Mr. Bagges.
+
+“I should say that was more than probable, uncle. Well, now, I think you
+see that animal heat can be accounted for, in very great part at least,
+by the combustion of the body. And then there are several facts that—as
+I remember Shakespeare says—
+
+                     “‘help to thicken other proofs,
+                   That do demonstrate thinly.’
+
+“Birds that breathe a great deal are very hot creatures; snakes and
+lizards, and frogs and fishes, that breathe but little, are so cold that
+they are called cold-blooded animals. Bears and dormice, that sleep all
+the winter, are cold during their sleep, whilst their breathing and
+circulation almost entirely stop. We increase our heat by walking fast,
+running, jumping, or working hard; which sets us breathing faster, and
+then we get warmer. By these means we blow up our own fire, if we have
+no other, to warm ourselves on a cold day. And how is it that we don’t
+go on continually getting hotter and hotter?”
+
+“Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Bagges, “I suppose that is one of Nature’s
+mysteries.”
+
+“Why, what happens, uncle, when we take violent exercise? We break out
+into a perspiration; as you complain you always do, if you only run a
+few yards. Perspiration is mostly water, and the extra heat of the body
+goes into the water, and flies away with it in steam. Just for the same
+reason, you can’t boil water so as to make it hotter than two hundred
+and twelve degrees; because all the heat that passes into it beyond
+that, unites with some of it and becomes steam, and so escapes. Hot
+weather causes you to perspire even when you sit still; and so your heat
+is cooled in summer. If you were to heat a man in an oven, the heat of
+his body generally wouldn’t increase very much till he became exhausted
+and died. Stories are told of mountebanks sitting in ovens, and meat
+being cooked by the side of them. Philosophers have done much the same
+thing—Dr. Fordyce and others, who found they could bear a heat of two
+hundred and sixty degrees. Perspiration is our animal fire-escape. Heat
+goes out from the lungs, as well as the skin, in water; so the lungs are
+concerned in cooling us as well as heating us, like a sort of regulating
+furnace. Ah, uncle, the body is a wonderful factory, and I wish I were
+man enough to take you over it. I have only tried to show you something
+of the contrivances for warming it, and I hope you understand a little
+about that!”
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Bagges, “breathing, I understand you to say, is the
+chief source of animal heat, by occasioning the combination of carbon
+and hydrogen with oxygen, in a sort of gentle combustion, throughout our
+frame. The lungs and heart are an apparatus for generating heat, and
+distributing it over the body by means of a kind of warming pipes,
+called blood-vessels. Eh?—and the carbon and hydrogen we have in our
+systems we get from our food. Now, you see, here is a slice of cake, and
+there is a glass of wine—Eh?—now see whether you can get any carbon and
+oxygen out of that.”
+
+The young philosopher, having finished his lecture, applied himself
+immediately to the performance of the proposed experiment, which he
+performed with cleverness and dispatch.
+
+
+
+
+                  THE HOME OF WOODRUFFE THE GARDENER.
+
+
+                IN EIGHT CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.
+
+It was observed by Woodruffe’s family, during one week of spring of the
+next year, that he was very absent. He was not in low spirits, but
+absorbed in thought, and much devoted to making calculations with pencil
+and paper. At last, out it came, one morning at breakfast.
+
+“I wonder how we should all like to have Harry Hardiman to work with us
+again?”
+
+Every one looked up. Harry! where was Harry? Was he here? Was he coming?
+
+“Why, I will tell you what I have been thinking,” said their father. “I
+have thought long and carefully, and I believe I have made up my mind to
+send for Harry, to come and work for us as he used to do. We have not
+labour enough on the ground. Two stout men to the acre is the smallest
+allowance for trying what could be made of the place.”
+
+“That is what Taylor and Brown are employing now on the best part of
+their land,” said Allan; “that is, when they can get the labour. There
+is such difference between that and one man to four or five acres, as
+there was before, that they can’t always get the labour.”
+
+“Just so; and therefore,” continued Woodruffe, “I am thinking of sending
+for Harry. Our old neighbourhood was not prosperous when we left it, and
+I fancy it cannot have improved since; and Harry might be glad to follow
+his master to a thriving neighbourhood; and he is such a careful fellow
+that I dare say he has money for the journey,—even if he has a wife by
+this time, as I suppose he has.”
+
+Moss looked most pleased, where all were pleased, at the idea of seeing
+Harry again. His remembrance of Harry was of a tall young man, who used
+to carry him on his shoulders, and wheel him in the empty water-barrel,
+and sometimes offer to dip him in it when it was full, and show him how
+to dig in the sand-heap with his little wooden spade.
+
+“Your rent, to be sure, is much lower than in the old place,” observed
+Abby.
+
+“Why, we must not build upon that,” replied the father; “rent is rising
+here, and will rise. My landlord was considerate in lowering mine to
+3_l._ per acre, when he saw how impossible it was to make it answer; and
+he says he shall not ask more yet, on account of the labour I laid out
+at the time of the drainage. But when I have partly repaid myself, the
+rent will rise to 5_l._; and, in fact, I have made my calculations, in
+regard to Harry’s coming, at a higher rent than that.”
+
+“Higher than that?”
+
+“Yes: I should not be surprised if I found myself paying, as
+market-gardeners near London do, ten pounds per acre, before I die.”
+
+“Or rather, to let the ground to me, for that, father,” said Allan,
+“when it is your own property, and you are tired of work, and disposed
+to turn it over to me. I will pay you ten pounds per acre then, and let
+you have all the cabbages you can eat, besides. It is capital land, and
+that is the truth. Come—shall that be a bargain?”
+
+Woodruffe smiled, and said he owed a duty to Allan. He did not like to
+see him so hard worked as to be unable to take due care of his own
+corner of the garden;—unable to enter fairly into the competition for
+the prizes at the Horticultural Show in the summer. Becky now, too,
+ought to be spared from all but occasional help in the garden. Above
+all, the ground was now in such an improving state that it would be
+waste not to bestow due labour upon it. Put in the spade where you
+would, the soil was loose and well-aired as needs be: the manure
+penetrated it thoroughly; the frost and heat pulverised, instead of
+binding it; and the crops were succeeding each other so fast, that the
+year would be a very profitable one.
+
+“Where will Harry live, if he comes?” asked Abby.
+
+“We must get another cottage added to the new row. Easily done! Cottages
+so healthy as these new ones pay well. Good rents are offered for
+them,—to save doctors’ bills and loss of time from sickness;—and, when
+once a system of house-drainage is set agoing, it costs scarcely more,
+in adding a cottage to a group, to make it all right, than to run it up
+upon solid clay as used to be the way here. Well, I have good mind to
+write to Harry to-day. What do you think,—all of you?”
+
+Fortified by the opinion of all his children, Mr. Woodruffe wrote to
+Harry. Meantime, Allan and Becky went to cut the vegetables that were
+for sale that day; and Moss delighted himself in running after and
+catching the pony in the meadow below. The pony was not very easily
+caught, for it was full of spirit. Instead of the woolly insipid grass
+that it used to crop, and which seemed to give it only fever and no
+nourishment, it now fed on sweet fresh grass, which had no sour stagnant
+water soaking its roots. The pony was so full of play this morning that
+Moss could not get hold of it. Though much stronger than a year ago, he
+was not yet anything like so robust as a boy of his age should be; and
+he was growing heated, and perhaps a little angry, as the pony galloped
+off towards some distant trees, when a boy started up behind a bush,
+caught the halter, brought the pony round with a twitch, and led him to
+Moss. Moss fancied he had seen the boy before, and then his white teeth
+reminded Moss of one thing after another.
+
+“I came for some marsh plants,” said the boy. “You and I got plenty
+once, somewhere hereabouts: but I cannot find them now.”
+
+“You will not find any now. We have no marsh now.”
+
+The stranger said he dared not go back without them: mother wanted them
+badly. She would not believe him if he said he could not find any. There
+were plenty about two miles off, along the railway, among the clay-pits,
+he was told; but none nearer. The boy wanted to know where the clay-pits
+hereabouts were. He could not find one of them.
+
+“I will show you one of them,” said Moss; “the one where you and I used
+to hunt rats.” And, leading the pony, he showed his old gipsy playfellow
+all the improvements, beginning with the great ditch,—now invisible from
+being covered in. While it was open, he said, it used to get choked, and
+the sides were plastered after rain, and soon became grass-grown, so
+that it was found worth while to cover it in; and now it would want
+little looking to for years to come. As for the clay-pit, where the rats
+used to pop in and out,—it was now a manure-pit, covered in. There was a
+drain into it from the pony’s stable and from the pig-styes; and it was
+near enough to the garden to receive the refuse and sweepings. A heavy
+lid, with a ring in the middle, covered the pit, so that nobody could
+fall in, in the dark, and no smell could get out. Moss begged the boy to
+come a little further, and he would show him his own flower-bed; and
+when the boy was there, he was shown everything else: what a cartload of
+vegetables lay cut for sale; and what an arbour had been made of the
+pent-house under which Moss used to take shelter, when he could do
+nothing better than keep off the birds; and how fine the ducks were,—the
+five ducks that were so serviceable in eating off the slugs; and what a
+comfortable nest had been made for them to lay their eggs in, beside the
+water-tank in the corner; and what a variety of scarecrows the family
+had invented,—each having one, to try which would frighten the sparrows
+most. While Moss was telling how difficult it was to deal with the
+sparrows, because they could not be frightened for more than three days
+by any kind of scarecrow, he heard Allan calling him, in a tone of
+vexation, at being kept waiting so long. In an instant the stranger boy
+was off,—leaping the gate, and flying along the meadow till he was
+hidden behind a hedge.
+
+Two or three days after this one of the ducks was missing. The last time
+that the five had been seen together was when Moss was showing them to
+his visitor. The morning after Moss finally gave up hope, the glass of
+Allan’s hotbed was found broken, and in the midst of the bed itself was
+a deep foot-track, crushing the cucumber plants, and, with them, Allan’s
+hopes of a cucumber prize at the Horticultural Exhibition in the summer.
+On more examination, more mischief was discovered, some cabbages had
+been stolen, and another duck was missing. In the midst of the general
+concern, Woodruffe burst out a-laughing. It struck him that the chief of
+the scarecrows had changed his hat; and so he had. The old straw hat
+which used to flap in the wind so serviceably was gone, and in its stead
+appeared a helmet,—a saucepan full of holes, battered and split, but
+still fit to be a helmet to a scarecrow.
+
+“I could swear to the old hat,” observed Woodruffe, “if I should have
+the luck to see it on anybody’s head.”
+
+“And so could I,” said Becky, “for I mended it,—bound it with black
+behind, and green before, because I had not green ribbon enough. But
+nobody would wear it before our eyes.”
+
+“That is why I suspect there are strangers hovering about. We must
+watch.”
+
+Now Moss, for the first time, bethought himself of the boy he had
+brought in from the meadow; and now, for the first time, he told his
+family of that encounter.
+
+“I never saw such a simpleton,” his father declared. “There, go along
+and work! Now, don’t cry, but hold up like a man and work.”
+
+Moss did cry; he could not help it; but he worked too. He would fain
+have been one of the watchers, moreover; but his father said he was too
+young. For two nights he was ordered to bed, when Allan took his dark
+lantern, and went down to the pent-house; the first night accompanied by
+his father, and the next by Harry Hardiman, who had come on the first
+summons. By the third evening, Moss was so miserable that his sisters
+interceded for him, and he was allowed to go down with his old friend
+Harry.
+
+It was a starlight night, without a moon. The low country lay dim, but
+unobscured by mist. After a single remark on the fineness of the night,
+Harry was silent. Silence was their first business. They stole round the
+fence as if they had been thieves themselves, listened for some time
+before they let themselves in at the gate, passed quickly in, and locked
+the gate (the lock of which had been well oiled), went behind every
+screen, and along every path, to be sure that no one was there, and
+finally, perceiving that the remaining ducks were safe, settled
+themselves in the darkness of the pent-house.
+
+There they sat, hour after hour, listening. If there had been no sound,
+perhaps they could not have borne the effort: but the sense was relieved
+by the bark of a dog at a distance; and then by the hoot of the owl that
+was known to have done them good service in mousing, many a time; and
+once, by the passage of a train on the railway above. When these were
+all over, poor Moss had much ado to keep awake, and at last his head
+sank on Harry’s shoulder, and he forgot where he was, and everything
+else in the world. He was awakened by Harry’s moving, and then
+whispering quite into his ear:—
+
+“Sit you still. I hear somebody yonder. No—sit you still. I won’t go
+far—not out of call: but I must get between them and the gate.”
+
+With his lantern under his coat, Harry stole forth, and Moss stood up,
+all alone in the darkness and stillness. He could hear his heart beat,
+but nothing else, till footsteps on the path came nearer and nearer.
+They came quite up; they came in, actually into the arbour; and then the
+ducks were certainly fluttering. In an instant more, there was a gleam
+of light upon the white plumage of the ducks, and then light enough to
+show that this was the gipsy boy, with a dark lantern hung round his
+neck, and, at the same moment, to show the gipsy boy that Moss was
+there. The two boys stood, face to face, motionless from utter
+amazement, and the ducks had scuttled and waddled away before they
+recovered themselves. Then, Moss flew at him in a glorious passion, at
+once of rage and fear.
+
+“Leave him to me, Moss,” cried Harry, casting light upon the scene from
+his lantern, while he collared the thief with the other hand. “Let go, I
+say, Moss. There, now we’ll go round and be sure whether there is any
+one else in the garden, and then we’ll lodge this young rogue where he
+will be safe.”
+
+Nobody was there, and they went home in the dawn, locked up the thief in
+the shed, and slept through what remained of the night.
+
+It was about Mr. Nelson’s usual time for coming down the line; and it
+was observed that he now always stopped at this station till the next
+train passed,—probably because it was a pleasure to him to look upon the
+improvement of the place. It was no surprise therefore to Woodruffe to
+see him standing on the embankment after breakfast; and it was natural
+that Mr. Nelson should be immediately told that the gipsies were here
+again, and how one of them was caught thieving.
+
+“Thieving! So you found some of your property upon him, did you!”
+
+“Why, no. I thought myself that it was a pity that Moss did not let him
+alone till he had laid hold of a duck or something.”
+
+“Pho! pho! don’t tell me you can punish the boy for theft, when you
+can’t prove that he stole anything. Give him a whipping, and let him
+go.”
+
+“With all my heart. It will save me much trouble to finish off the
+matter so.”
+
+Mr. Nelson seemed to have some curiosity about the business; for he
+accompanied Woodruffe to the shed. The boy seemed to feel no awe of the
+great man whom he supposed to be a magistrate, and when asked whether he
+felt none, he giggled and said “No;” he had seen the gentleman more
+afraid of his mother than anybody ever was of him, he fancied. On this,
+a thought struck Mr. Nelson. He would now have his advantage of the
+gipsy woman, and might enjoy, at the same time, an opportunity of
+studying human nature under stress—a thing he liked, when the stress was
+not too severe. So he passed a decree on the spot that, it being now
+nine o’clock, the boy should remain shut up without food till noon, when
+he should be severely flogged, and driven from the neighbourhood: and
+with this pleasant prospect before him, the young rogue remained,
+whistling ostentatiously, while his enemies locked the door upon him.
+
+“Did you hear him shoot the bolt?” asked Woodruffe. “If he holds to
+that, I don’t know how I shall get at him at noon.”
+
+“There, now, what fools people are! Why did you not take out the bolt? A
+pretty constable you would make! Come—come this way. I am going to find
+the gipsy-tent again. You are wondering that I am not afraid of the
+woman, I see: but, you observe, I have a hold over her this time. What
+do you mean by allowing those children to gather about your door? You
+ought not to permit it.”
+
+“They are only the scholars. Don’t you see them going in? My daughter
+keeps a little school, you know, since her husband’s death.”
+
+“Ah, poor thing! poor thing!” said Mr. Nelson, as Abby appeared on the
+threshold, calling the children in.
+
+Mr. Nelson always contrived to see some one or more of the family when
+he visited the station; but it so happened, that he had never entered
+the door of their dwelling. Perhaps he was not himself fully conscious
+of the reason. It was, that he could not bear to see Abby’s young face
+within the widow’s cap, and to be thus reminded that hers was a case of
+cruel wrong; that if the most ordinary thought and care had been used in
+preparing the place for human habitation, her husband might be living
+now, and she the happy creature that she would never be again.
+
+On his way to the gipsies, Mr. Nelson saw some things that pleased him
+in his heart, though he found fault with them all. What business had
+Woodruffe with an additional man in his garden? It could not possibly
+answer. If it did not, the fellow must be sent away again. He must not
+burden the parish. The occupiers here seemed all alike. Such a fancy for
+new labour! One, two, six men at work on the land within sight at that
+moment, over and above what there used to be! It must be looked to.
+Humph! he could get to the alders dryshod now; but that was owing solely
+to the warmth of the spring. It was nonsense to attribute everything to
+drainage. Drainage was a good thing; but fine weather was better.
+
+The gipsy-tent was found behind the alders as before, but no longer in a
+swamp. The woman was sitting on the ground at the entrance as before,
+but not now with a fevered child laid across her knees. She was weaving
+a basket.
+
+“Oh, I see,” said Woodruffe, “This is the way our osiers go.”
+
+“You have not many to lose, now-a-days,” said the woman.
+
+“You are welcome to all the rushes you can find,” said Woodruffe; “but
+where is your son?”
+
+Some change of countenance was seen in the woman; but she answered
+carelessly that the children were playing yonder.
+
+“The one I mean is not there,” said Woodruffe. “We have him safe—caught
+him stealing my ducks.”
+
+She called the boy a villain—disowned him, and so forth; but when she
+found the case a hopeless one, she did not, and therefore, probably
+could not, scold—that is, anybody but herself and her husband. She
+cursed herself for coming into this silly place, where now no good was
+to be got. When she was brought to the right point of perplexity about
+what to do, seeing that it would not do to stay, and being unable to go
+while her boy was in durance, she was told that his punishment should be
+summary, though severe, if she would answer frankly certain questions.
+When she had once begun giving her confidence, she seemed to enjoy the
+license. When her husband came up, he looked as if he only waited for
+the departure of his visitors to give his wife the same amount of
+thrashing that her son was awaiting elsewhere. She vowed that they would
+never pitch their tent here again. It used to be the best station in
+their whole round—the fogs were so thick! From sunset to long after
+sunrise, it had been as good as a winter night, for going where they
+pleased without fear of prying eyes. There was not a poultry-yard or
+pig-stye within a couple of miles round, where they could not creep up
+through the fog. And they escaped the blame, too; for the swamp and
+ditches used to harbour so much vermin, that the gipsies were not always
+suspected, as they were now. Till lately, people shut themselves into
+their homes, or the men went to the public-house in the chill evenings;
+and there was little fear of meeting any one. But now that the fogs were
+gone, people were out in their gardens, on these fine evenings, and
+there were men in the meadows, returning from fishing; for they could
+angle now, when their work was done, without the fear of catching an
+ague in the marsh as they went home.
+
+Mr. Nelson used vigorously his last opportunity of lecturing these
+people. He had it all his own way, for the humility of the gipsies was
+edifying. Woodruffe fancied he saw some finger-talk passing, the while,
+though the gipsies never looked at each other, or raised their eyes from
+the ground. Woodruffe had to remind the Director that the whistle of the
+next train would soon be heard; and this brought the lecture to an
+abrupt conclusion. On his finishing off with, “I expect, therefore, that
+you will remember my advice, and never show your faces here again, and
+that you will take to a proper course of life in future, and bring up
+your son to honest industry;” the woman, with a countenance of grief,
+seized one hand and covered it with kisses, and the husband took the
+other hand and pressed it to his breast.
+
+“We must make haste,” observed Mr. Nelson, as he led the way quickly
+back; “but I think I have made some impression upon them. You see now
+the right way to treat these people. I don’t think you will see them
+here again.”
+
+“I don’t think we shall.”
+
+As he reached the steps the whistle was heard, and Mr. Nelson could only
+wave his hand to Woodruffe, rush up the embankment, and throw himself
+panting into a carriage. Only just in time!
+
+By an evening train, he re-appeared. When thirty miles off, he had
+wanted his purse, and it was gone. It had no doubt paid for the gipsies’
+final gratitude.
+
+Of course, a sufficient force was immediately sent to the alder clump;
+but there was nothing there but some charred sticks, and some clean pork
+bones, this time, instead of feathers of fowls, and a cabbage leaf or
+two. The boy had had his whipping at noon, after a conference with his
+little brother at the keyhole, which had caused him to withdraw the
+bolt, and offer no resistance. Considering his cries and groans, he had
+run off with surprising agility, and was now, no doubt, far away.
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII.
+
+The gipsies came no more. The fogs came no more. The fever came no more;
+at least, in such a form as to threaten the general safety. Where it
+still lingered, it was about those only who deserved it,—in any small
+farm-house, where the dung-yard was too near the house; and in some
+cottage where the slatternly inmates did not mind a green puddle or
+choked ditch within reach of their noses. More dwellings arose, as the
+fertility of the land increased, and invited a higher kind of tillage;
+and among the prettiest of them was one which stood in the corner,—the
+most sunny corner,—of Woodruffe’s paddock. Harry Hardiman and his wife
+and child lived there, and the cottage was Woodruffe’s property.
+
+Yet Woodruffe’s rent had been raised; and pretty rapidly. He was now
+paying eight pounds per acre for his garden-ground, and half that for
+what was out of the limits of the garden. He did not complain of it; for
+he was making money fast. His skill and industry deserved this; but
+skill and industry could not have availed without opportunity. His
+ground once allowed to show what it was worth, he treated it well; and
+it answered well to the treatment. By the railway, he obtained what
+manure he wanted from the town; and he sent it back by the railway to
+town in the form of crisp celery and salads, wholesome potatoes and
+greens, luscious strawberries, and sweet and early peas. He knew that a
+Surrey gardener had made his ground yield a profit of two hundred and
+twenty pounds per acre. He thought that, with his inferior market, he
+should do well to make his yield one hundred and fifty pounds per acre;
+and this, by close perseverance, he attained. He could have done it more
+easily if he had enjoyed good health; but he never enjoyed good health
+again. His rheumatism had fixed itself too firmly to be entirely
+removed; and, for many days in the year, he was compelled to remain
+within doors, or to saunter about in the sun, seeing his boys and Harry
+at work, but unable to help them.
+
+From the time that Allan’s work became worth wages, in addition to his
+subsistence, his father let him rent half a rood of the garden-ground
+for three years, saying—
+
+“I limit it to three years, my boy, because that term is long enough for
+you to show what you can do. After three years, I shall not be able to
+spare the ground, at any rent. If you fail, you have no business to rent
+ground. If you succeed, you will have money in your pocket wherewith to
+hire land elsewhere. Now you have to show us what you can do.”
+
+“Yes, father,” was Allan’s short but sufficient reply.
+
+It was observed by the family that, from this time forward, Allan’s eye
+was on every plot of ground in the neighbourhood which could, by
+possibility, ever be offered for hire: yet did his attention never
+wander from that which was already under his hand. And that which was so
+great an object to him became a sort of pursuit to the whole family.
+Moss guarded Allan’s frames, and made more and more prodigious
+scarecrows. Their father gave his very best advice. Becky, who was no
+longer allowed, as a regular thing, to work in the garden, found many a
+spare half-hour for hoeing and weeding, and trimming and tying up, in
+Allan’s beds; and Abby found, as she sat in her little school, that she
+could make nets for his fruit trees. It was thus no wonder that, when a
+certain July day in the second year arrived, the whole household was in
+a state of excitement, because it was a sort of crisis in Allan’s
+affairs.
+
+Though breakfast was early that morning, Becky and Allan and Moss were
+spruce in their best clothes. A hamper stood at the door, and Allan was
+packing in another, which had no lid, two or three flower-pots, which
+presented a glorious show of blossom. Abby was putting a new ribbon on
+her sister’s straw bonnet; and Harry was in waiting to carry up the
+hampers to the station. It was the day of the Horticultural Show at the
+town. Woodruffe had been too unwell to think of going till this morning;
+but now the sight of the preparations, and the prospect of a warm day,
+inspired him, and he thought he would go. At last he went, and they were
+gone. Abby never went up to the station: nobody ever asked her to go
+there; not even her own child, who perhaps had not thought of the
+possibility of it. But when the train was starting, she stood at the
+upper window with her child, and held him so that he might lean out, and
+see the last carriage disappear, as it swept round the curve. After that
+the day seemed long, though Harry came up at his dinner-hour to say what
+he thought of the great gooseberry in particular, and of everything else
+that Allan had carried with him. It was holiday time, and there was no
+school to fill up the day. Before the evening, the child became
+restless, and Abby fell into low spirits, as she was apt to do when left
+long alone; so that Harry stopped suddenly at the door when he was
+rushing in to announce that the train was within sight.
+
+“Shall I take the child, Miss?” said Harry. (He always called her
+“Miss.”) “I will carry him——But, sure, here they come! Here comes
+Moss,—ready to roll down the steps! My opinion is that there’s a prize.”
+
+Moss was called back by a voice which everybody obeyed. Allan should
+himself tell his sister the fortune of the day, their father said.
+
+There were two prizes, one of which was for the wonderful plate of
+gooseberries; and at this news Harry nodded, and declared himself
+anything but surprised. If that gooseberry had not carried the day,
+there would have been partiality in the judges, that was all; and nobody
+could suppose such a thing as that. Yet Harry could have told, if put
+upon his honour, that he was rather disappointed that everything that
+Allan carried had not gained a prize. When he mentioned one or two, his
+master told him he was unreasonable; and he supposed he was.
+
+Allan laid down on the table, for his sister’s full assurance, his
+sovereign, and his half-sovereign, and his tickets. She turned away
+rather abruptly, and seemed to be looking whether the kettle was near
+boiling for tea. Her father went up to her; and on his first whispered
+words, the sob broke forth which made all look round.
+
+“I was thinking of one, too, my dear, that I wish was here at this
+moment. I can feel for you, my dear.”
+
+“But you don’t know—you don’t know—you never knew——.” She could not go
+on.
+
+“What don’t I know, my dear?”
+
+“That he constantly blamed himself for saying anything to bring you
+here. He said you had never prospered from the hour you came, and now——”
+
+And now Woodruffe could not speak, as the past came fresh upon him. In a
+few moments, however, he rallied, saying,
+
+“But we must consider Allan. He must not think that his success makes us
+sad.”
+
+Allan declared that it was not about gaining the prizes that he was
+chiefly glad. It was because it was now proved what a fair field he had
+before him. There was nothing that might not be done with such a soil as
+they had to deal with now.
+
+Harry was quite of this opinion. There were more and more people set to
+work upon the soil all about them; and the more it was worked the more
+it yielded. He never saw a place of so much promise. And if it had a bad
+name in regard to healthiness, he was sure that was unfair,—or no longer
+fair. He and his were full of health and happiness, as they hoped to see
+everybody else in time; and, for his part, if he had all England before
+him, or the whole world, to choose a place to live in, he would choose
+the very place he was in, and the very cottage; and the very ground to
+work on that had produced such a gooseberry and such strawberries as he
+had seen that day.
+
+
+
+
+                              THE SINGER.
+
+
+              Unto the loud acclaim that rose
+                To greet her as she came,
+              She bent with lowly grace that seemed
+                Such tribute to disclaim;
+              With arms meek folded on her breast
+                And drooping head, she stood;
+              Then raised a glance that seemed to plead
+                For youth and womanhood;
+                A soft, beseeching smile, a look,
+                As if all silently
+              The kindness to her heart she took,
+                And put the homage by.
+
+              She stood dejected then, methought,
+                A Captive, though a Queen,
+              Before the throng, when sudden passed
+                A change across her mien.
+              Unto her full, dilating eye,
+                Unto her slender hand,
+              There came a light of sovereignty,
+                A gesture of command:
+              And, to her lip, an eager flow
+                Of song, that seemed to bear
+              Her soul away on rushing wings
+                Unto its native air;
+              Her eye was fixed; her cheek flushed bright
+                With power; she seemed to call
+              On spirits that around her flocked,
+                The radiant Queen of all;
+              There was no pride upon her brow,
+                No tumult in her breast;
+              Her soaring soul had won its home,
+                And smiled there as at rest;
+              She felt no more those countless eyes
+                Upon her; she had gained
+              A region where they troubled not
+                The joy she had attained!
+              Now, now, she spoke her native speech,
+                An utterance fraught with spells
+              To wake the echoes of the heart
+                Within their slumber-cells;
+              For at her wild and gushing strain,
+                The spirit was led back
+              By windings of a silver chain,
+                On many a long-lost track;
+              And many a quick unbidden sigh,
+                And starting tear, revealed
+              How surely at her touch the springs
+                Of feeling were unsealed;
+              They who were always loved, seemed now
+                Yet more than ever dear;
+              Yet closer to the heart they came,
+                That ever were so near:
+              And, trembling to the silent lips,
+                As if they ne’er had changed
+              Their names, returned in kindness back
+                The severed and estranged;
+              And in the strain, like those that fall
+                On wanderers as they roam,
+              The Exiled Spirit found once more
+                Its country and its home!
+
+              She ceased, yet on her parted lips
+                A happy smile abode,
+              As if the sweetness of her song
+                Yet lingered whence it flowed;
+              But, for a while, her bosom heaved,
+                She was the same no more,
+              The light and spirit fled; she stood
+                As she had stood before;
+              Unheard, unheeded to her ear
+                The shouts of rapture came,
+              A voice had once more power to thrill,
+                That only spoke her name.
+              Unseen, unheeded at her feet,
+                Fell many a bright bouquet;
+              A single flower, in silence given,
+                Was once more sweet than they;
+              _Her_ heart had with her song returned
+                To days for ever gone,
+              Ere Woman’s gift of Fame was her’s,
+                The Many for the One.
+
+              E’en thus; O, Earth, before thee
+                Thy Poet Singers stand,
+              And bear the soul upon their songs
+                Unto its native land.
+              And even thus, with loud acclaim,
+                The praise of skill, of art,
+              Is dealt to those who only speak
+                The language of the heart!
+              While they who love and listen best,
+                Can little guess or know
+              The wounds that from the Singer’s breast
+                Have bid such sweetness flow;
+              They know not mastership must spring
+                From conflict and from strife.
+              “These, these are but the songs they sing;”
+                They are the Singer’s life!
+
+
+
+
+                       A LITTLE PLACE IN NORFOLK.
+
+
+Theodore Hook’s hero, Jack Bragg, boasted of his “little place in
+Surrey.” The Guardians of the Guiltcross poor have good reason to be
+proud of _their_ little place in Norfolk. When the Guiltcross Union was
+formed, Mr. Thomas Rackham, master of the “house,” set aside a small
+estate for the purpose of teaching the Workhouse children how to
+cultivate land. This pauper’s patrimony consisted of exactly one acre
+one rood and thirty-five poles of very rough “country.” A certain number
+of the boys worked upon it so diligently, that it was soon found
+expedient to enlarge the domain, by joining to it three acres of “hills
+and holes,” which in that state were quite useless for agricultural
+purposes. Two dozen spades were purchased at the outset to commence
+digging the land with, and six wheel-barrows were made by a pauper, who
+was a wheelwright; pickaxes and other tools were also fashioned with the
+assistance of the porter, who was a blacksmith. By means of these tools,
+and the labour of some fourteen sturdy boys, the whole of this barren
+territory was levelled, the top sward being carefully kept uppermost. We
+copy these and the other details from Mr. Rackham’s report to the
+Guardians, for the information and encouragement of other Workhouse
+masters, who may have the will and the power to “go and do likewise.”
+
+It appears then, that by the autumn of 1846 one acre of the new land was
+planted with wheat, and two roods twenty three poles of the home
+land—the one acre one rood and thirty-five poles mentioned above—was
+also planted with wheat, making in all one acre two roods and twenty
+three poles under wheat for 1847. This land produced eighteen coombs
+three pecks beyond a sufficient quantity reserved for seed for the wheat
+crop of 1848. The remainder of the land was planted with Scotch kale,
+cabbages, potatoes, &c., &c., which began coming into use in March,
+1847. The entire domain is now under fruitful cultivation.
+
+“The quantity of vegetables actually consumed by the paupers according
+to the dietary tables only,” says Mr. Rackham, “is charged in the
+provision accounts. Persons acquainted with domestic management and the
+produce of land are aware that, where vegetables are purchased, a great
+deal is paid for that which is useless for cooking purposes. In the
+present case this refuse is carefully preserved and used for feeding
+pigs, which were first kept in April 1848. This accounts for the large
+amount of pork fatted, as compared with the small quantity of corn and
+pollard used for the pigs. The leaves, &c., not eaten by the pigs,
+become valuable manure. If the Guardians would consent to keep cows,
+different roots and vegetables might be grown to feed them with; and
+these would produce an increased quantity of manure, whilst an increased
+quantity of manure would afford the means of raising a larger amount of
+roots and green crops, and secure a more extended routine in cropping
+the land. This would add to the profit of the land account, and give
+much additional comfort to the aged people and the young children in the
+workhouse.” But Mr. Rackham is ambitious of a dairy, chiefly for the
+training of dairy-maids: who would become doubly acceptable as farm
+servants.
+
+Besides other advantages, the experiment presents one dear to the minds
+of rate-payers—it tends to reduce the rates. The average profit per
+annum on each of the acres has been fifteen pounds. Here are the
+sums:—The profit of the first year was sixty pounds two shillings and
+fourpence farthing; second year, fifty-one pounds seventeen shillings
+and sixpence; to Christmas, 1849, three-quarters of a year, sixty-seven
+pounds two shillings and one penny farthing; total, one hundred and
+seventy-nine pounds one shilling and elevenpence halfpenny.
+
+As at the Swinton and other pauper schools, a variety of industrial arts
+are taught in the Guiltcross Union house, and the fact that sixty of the
+boys and girls who have been trained in it are now earning their own
+living, is some evidence of the success of the system pursued there.
+
+Of one of the cultivators of this “little place in Norfolk” (not we
+believe an inmate of the Union), an agreeable account was published in a
+letter from Miss Martineau lately in the Morning Chronicle. It shows to
+what good account a knowledge of small farming may be turned. That lady
+having two acres of land, at Ambleside, in Westmoreland, which she
+wished to cultivate, sent to Mr. Rackham to recommend her a farm
+servant. The man arrived, and his Guiltcross experience in cultivating
+small “estates” proved of essential service. He has managed to keep two
+cows and a pig, besides himself and a wife, on these narrow confines;
+for Miss Martineau calculates that the produce in milk, butter,
+vegetables, &c., obtained from his skill and economy for herself and
+household, quite pays his wages. This is her account of him:—
+
+“He is a man of extraordinary industry and cleverness, as well as rigid
+honesty. His ambition is roused; for he knows that the success of the
+experiment mainly depends on himself. He is living in comfort, and
+laying by a little money, and he looks so happy that it would truly
+grieve me to have to give up; though I have no doubt that he would
+immediately find work at good wages in the neighbourhood. His wife and
+he had saved enough to pay their journey hither out of Norfolk. I gave
+him twelve shillings a week all the year round. His wife earns something
+by occasionally helping in the house, by assisting in my washing, and by
+taking in washing when she can get it. I built them an excellent cottage
+of the stone of the district, for which they pay one shilling and
+sixpence per week. They know that they could not get such another off
+the premises for five pounds a year.”
+
+This is all very interesting and gratifying, but there are two sides to
+every account. Supposing the system of agricultural and other industrial
+training were pursued in all Unions in the country (and if it be a good
+system, it ought to be so followed), then, instead of boys and girls
+being turned out every three years in sixties, there would be accessions
+of farmers, tailors, carpenters, dairy-maids, and domestic servants
+every year to be reckoned by thousands. Supposing that every fourteen of
+the agricultural section of the community had been earning fifteen
+pounds a year profit per acre, we should then have a large amount of
+produce brought into the market in competition with that of the
+independent labourer. When, again, the multitude of boys had passed
+their probation, themselves would be thrown in the labour market (as the
+sixty Guiltcross boys already have been), so that their older and weaker
+competitors would, in their turn, be obliged to retire to the Workhouse,
+not only to their own ruin, but to the exceeding mortification of the
+entire body of parochial rate-payers. The axiom, that when there is a
+glut in a market any additional supply of the same commodity is an evil,
+applies most emphatically to labour. In this view, the adoption of the
+industrial training system for paupers and criminals would be an evil;
+and an evil of the very description it is meant to cure—a pauperising
+evil.
+
+The easy and natural remedy is a combination of colonisation, with the
+industrial training system. In all our colonies ordinary, merely animal
+labour is eagerly coveted, and skilled labour is at a high premium.
+There a competition _for_, instead of against, all sorts of labour is
+keenly active. Yet great as is the demand, it is curious that no
+comprehensive system for the supply of skilled labour has yet been
+adopted. Except the excellent farm school of the Philanthropic Society
+at Red Hill, no attempt is made to _teach_ colonisation. The majority of
+even voluntary colonists are persons utterly ignorant of colonial wants.
+They have never learned to dig or to delve. Many clever artists have
+emigrated to Australia, where pictures are not wanted; not a few
+emigrant ladies, of undoubted talents in Berlin work and crochet, have
+always trembled at the approach of a cow, and never made so much as a
+pat of butter in their lives. Still they succeed in the end; but only
+after much misery and mortification, which would have been saved them if
+they had been better prepared for colonial exigencies. The same thing
+happens with the humbler classes. Boys, and even men, have been sent out
+to Canada and the Southern Colonies (especially from the Irish Unions),
+utterly unfitted for their new sphere of life and labour.
+
+If, therefore, the small beginnings at Guiltcross be imitated in other
+Unions (and it is much to be wished that they should be), they will be
+made to grow into large results. But these results must be applied not
+to clog and glut the labour market at home; but to supply the labour
+market abroad.
+
+If to every Union were attached an agricultural training school, upon a
+plan that would offer legitimate inducements for the pupils to emigrate
+when old enough and skilled enough to obtain their own livelihood, this
+country would, we are assured, at no distant date be de-pauperised.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+
+
+
+                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
+
+
+ Page           Changed from                      Changed to
+
+  565 the deuce—if the brand—the       the deuce—if the brandy—the
+      alcohol-and-water                alcohol-and-water
+
+ ● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
+ ● Renumbered footnotes.
+ ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
+ ● The caret (^) is used to indicate superscript, whether applied to a
+     single character (as in 2^d) or to an entire expression (as in
+     1^{st}).
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78194 ***