Title: Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 109, Vol. III, January 30, 1886
Author: William Chambers, - To be updated
Language: English
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LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART, FIFTH SERIES, NO. 109, VOL. III, JANUARY 30,
1886 ***



[Illustration:

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART

Fifth Series

ESTABLISHED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS, 1832

CONDUCTED BY R. CHAMBERS (SECUNDUS)

NO. 109.—VOL. III.      SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 1886.      PRICE 1½_d._]



LITERARY ENDEAVOUR.


A recent writer remarks that ‘the practice of letters is miserably
harassing to the mind. To find the right word is so doubtful a success,
and lies so near to failure, that there is no satisfaction in a year
of it.’ A cynical warning, indeed; but there is, we think, no danger
of a scarcity of literary effort in the immediate future, whatever
the appreciable results of it may be. There will always be a host of
aspirants for literary honours, and the reason of this may perhaps lie,
to a certain extent, in that very uncertainty which attends the pursuit
of letters as an avocation; the brilliant rewards which have been
earned and the underlying risk of failure, present together the very
conditions of enterprise most powerfully attractive to many minds. For
it must be remembered that there is no fixedness in the canon either
of public opinion or of criticism in literature; that which fails to
win attention to-day, may attract to-morrow; and success, especially
that form of it which results from passing popularity, is in many cases
very much dependent on the proverbial fickleness of the reading public.
It would be difficult, we think, on other grounds than that of this
attractiveness of the chances and prizes of the literary occupation,
to account for the active competition which is so observable in the
profession. That the pure literary faculty, as a stimulus, does not
form a distinguishing characteristic of all aspirants, is plain enough.
No doubt, a great impetus has been given to literary endeavour by the
periodical press, which, by popularising ephemeral literature among the
masses, and by its own requirements of supply, has thus increased its
production. And the same is true of the newspaper press also, with its
opportunities for the contribution of correspondence, which, though
frequently a humble enough opening for talent, has often sufficed to
originate and foster the habit of more ambitious composition.

The canon of literary criticism is, we have said, not an unvarying one.
But undoubtedly there is, for all perfect, and still more for all
enduring work in the world of letters a certain measure and standard
of excellence in the mode of expression, which even the most brilliant
genius cannot afford wholly to disregard, but which is as incapable of
exact definition as it is difficult of attainment. It is much more,
certainly, than ‘the finding of the right word,’ even granting that the
right idea be behind it. A literary composition may be characterised
by the most perfect accuracy of expression, may be faultless in every
detail, and yet be after all a very mediocre piece of work at the best,
though it may be difficult exactly to indicate in what respect it is
defective. We can only in a case of this kind point to acknowledged
merit as possessing what the attempt in question lacks.

It has also to be noted that excellence in literary workmanship
is properly independent both of the nature of its subject and the
scale on which it is executed. An instance of this may be found
in Thackeray’s _Roundabout Papers_. In these apparently careless
sketches, a designedly trivial subject is chosen; the treatment of it
is everything, and the artistic finish is of the highest; the subject
is dwarfed in the handling, and yet the very handling interests the
reader abnormally in the subject. Perhaps, however, this subordination
of the subject to the treatment—as in the inimitable narrative of
the schoolboy purchasing, from his companion, the pencil-case with
the movable calendar atop—is as a whole inferior to that method by
which the incidents of the subject are brought out in relief, as it
were, by the simplicity of the description, so much so, that the art
of that simplicity is concealed. Nathaniel Hawthorne in his _House
of the Seven Gables_ and several of the _Twice-told Tales_ has some
exquisitely pellucid specimens of this complete literary facility.
In such masterpieces we see the results only, without any indication
of the labour involved in its execution. The statue is there in all
its finished loveliness, but the chips of the marble have been swept
away. ‘How clear and flowing your melody is,’ was once remarked
to an eminent musical composer; ‘how easily you must write!’ ‘Ah!’
replied he, ‘you little know with what hard work that ease you speak
of has been purchased.’ When the late Charles Mathews was playing
in Melbourne, fifteen years ago, he received what he considered the
highest compliment of his professional career. A little girl in the
audience was asked by her friends at the conclusion of the performance
how she was pleased, to which she replied: ‘I didn’t care for Mr
Mathews’ acting a bit; he just walked up and down the stage as papa
walks up and down the dining-room at home.’ It is the fact of this
appearance of perfect spontaneity in the highest art, being really
the outcome of the most assiduous care, that renders it so truly
inimitable, and the counterfeit so easy of detection. The ‘round O of
Giotto’ was only a perfect circle, but it needed the master-hand to
execute it with a simple sweep of the crayon. Ruskin tells us in one
of his treatises on Landscape Painting, that in some of the greatest
works of genius, an effect which is almost magical at the proper focal
distance, is conveyed by what appears, to the uninstructed eye and
viewed close at hand, to be a mere dash of loaded colour, but which in
reality could not be added to or diminished by the smallest particle
without detracting from the effect.

If it be true that literary excellence is only to be attained by the
patient bestowal of ‘infinite pains,’ that there is no easy method
of reaching it, it is no less the fact that, as a general rule, the
time is wasted—perhaps worse than wasted—which is devoted by the young
writer to a laborious imitation of the style of any distinguished
author. Such an imitation is generally an unsuccessful one, and results
in a reproduction of the faults and defects of the original without
its graces. The advice Dr Johnson gave to those ‘desirous of attaining
the English style,’ to ‘give their days and nights to the volumes of
Addison,’ must be taken with reserve. Such a style, though eminently
beautiful in itself, would practically nowadays be out of date, even if
faithfully reproduced, while at the same time it is most likely that
the student would overlook that deficiency of force with which the
manner of Addison is fairly chargeable. The best model for style is not
that of any particular or favourite writer, but rather the excellency
of the best writers generally—the highest qualities of the highest
types.

We have hitherto spoken of that perfect mastery of our language in
writing which has been the possession of those famous in the history
of English letters, and it may be inquired if such a high standard
should in all cases be necessarily aimed at, seeing that for many
purposes of everyday life a lesser degree of cultivation might be
found as practically useful. To this it is sufficient to reply that
much positive good must result from an endeavour to follow the
best examples in the practice of any art, and further, that such an
endeavour will be found the surest way by which to avoid all faulty and
careless work, which can under no possible conditions be praiseworthy
or even tolerable. No young writer can afford to write carelessly,
till such time, at all events, as he has become fully versed in his
art, when he will probably find that to write with the effect of
carelessness is beyond his power. At the same time, young writers
should be careful not to adopt for imitation a style of too great
elevation, for by so doing they may find that they have contracted that
worst of all literary diseases—bombast.

In estimating the amount of labour bestowed on the production of
literary work, care must be taken to include the original mental
processes involved in the conception of the ideas, as well as
the subsequent elaboration of them in detail; the higher sort of
composition includes both; and it is evident that when the question
comes to be one of the labour of origination, we find ourselves in
a region where estimate is all but impossible. ‘The workshop of the
imagination’ will reveal no record of its toil. Edgar Allan Poe,
indeed, in his _Philosophy of Composition_ introduces us to what
he would have us believe to be the very beginnings of invention,
endeavouring to portray the very earliest growth of his marvellous
constructive faculty exemplified in his poem of _The Raven_. But his
explanation reads more like an intellectual pastime than a reality,
even if it were beyond question that the central idea of the poem
was original, and not borrowed from an eastern source. In the case
of Auguste Comte, however, we have an instance of the amount of
intellectual travail which may often precede the birth of a great work,
the mental preparation before the committal of the thoughts to paper.
To quote M. Littré’s account of Comte’s method: ‘Here is the way in
which he composed each of the six volumes of the Positive philosophy.
He thought the subject over without writing a word; from the whole
he passed to the secondary groups, from the secondary groups to the
details. Then, when this elaboration, first total, then partial, was
completed, he said that his volume was done.’



IN ALL SHADES.


CHAPTER VI.

The three weeks’ difference in practical time between England and the
West Indies, due to the mail, made the day that Edward and Marian
spent at Southampton exactly coincide with the one when Mr Dupuy and
his nephew Tom went up to view old Mr Hawthorn’s cattle at Agualta
Estate, Trinidad. On that very same evening, while Nora and Harry were
walking together among the fields behind the battery, Mr Tom Dupuy was
strolling leisurely by himself in the cool dusk, four thousand miles
away, on one of the innumerable shady bridle-paths that thread the
endless tangled hills above Pimento Valley.

Mr Tom was smoking a very big Manila cheroot, and was accompanied
upon his rounds by a huge and ferocious-looking Cuban bloodhound,
the hungry corners of whose great greedy slobbering mouth hung
down hideously on either side in loose folds of skin of the most
bloodthirsty and sinister aspect. As he went along, Tom Dupuy kept
patting affectionately from time to time his four-footed favourite, to
whom, nevertheless, every now and again he applied, as it seemed out
of pure wantonness, the knotted lash of the cruel dog-whip which he
carried jauntily in his right hand. The dog, however, formidable as he
was, so far from resenting this unkindly treatment, appeared to find in
it something exceedingly congenial to his own proper barbarous nature;
for after each such savage cut upon his bare flanks from the knotted
hide, he only cowered for a second, and then fawned the more closely
and slavishly than ever upon his smiling master, looking up into his
face with a strange approving glance from his dull eyes, that seemed
to say: ‘Exactly the sort of thing I should do myself, if you were the
dog, and I were the whip-holder.’

At a bend of the path, where the road turned suddenly aside to cross
the dry bed of a winter torrent, Tom Dupuy came upon a clump of tall
cabbage palms, hard by a low mud-built negro hut, overshadowed in front
by two or three huge flowering bushes of crimson hibiscus. A tall,
spare, gray-headed negro, in a coarse sack by way of a shirt, with
his bare and sinewy arms thrust loosely through the long slits which
alone did duty in the place of sleeve-holes, was leaning as he passed
upon a wooden post. The bloodhound, breaking away suddenly from his
master, at sight and smell of the black skin, its natural prey, rushed
up fiercely towards the old labourer, and leapt upon him with a savage
snarl of his big teeth, and with ominous glittering eyes. But the
negro, stronger and more muscular than he looked, instead of flinching,
caught the huge brute in his long lean arms, and flung him from him by
main force with an angry oath, dashing his great form heavily against
the rough pathway. Quick as lightning, the dog, leaping up again at
once with diabolical energy in its big flabby mouth, was just about to
spring once more upon his scowling opponent, when Tom Dupuy, catching
him angrily by his leather collar, threw him down and held him back,
growling fiercely, and showing his huge tearing teeth in a ferocious
grin, after the wonted manner of his deadly kind. ‘Quiet, Slot,
quiet!’ the master said, patting his hollow forehead with affectionate
admiration. ‘Quiet, sir; down this minute! Down, I tell you!—He’s death
on niggers, Delgado—death on niggers. You should stand out of the way,
you know, when you see him coming. Of course, these dogs never can
abide the scent of you black fellows. The _bookay d’Afreek_ always
drives a bloodhound frantic.’

The old negro drew himself up haughtily and sternly, and stared back in
the insolent face of the slouching young white man with a proud air of
native dignity. ‘Buckra gentleman hab no right, den, to go about wid
dem dog,’ he answered angrily, fixing his piercing fiery eye on the
bloodhound’s face. ‘Dem dog always spring at a black man wherebber dey
find him. If you want to keep dem, you should keep dem tied up at de
house, so as to do for watchdog against tievin’ naygur. But you doan’t
got no right to bring dem about de ro-ads, loose dat way, jumpin’ up at
people’s troats, when dem standin’ peaceable beside dem own hut here.’

Tom Dupuy laughed carelessly. ‘It’s their nature, you see, Delgado,’
he answered with a pleasant smile, still holding the dog and caressing
it lovingly. ‘They and their fathers were trained long ago in slavery
days to hunt runaway niggers up in the mountains and track them to
their hiding-places, and drag them back, alive or dead, to their lawful
masters; and of course that makes them run naturally after the smell of
a nigger, as a terrier runs after the smell of a rat. When the rat sees
the terrier coming, he scuttles off as hard as his legs can carry him
into his hole; and when you see Slot’s nose turning round the corner,
you ought to scuttle off into your hut as quick as lightning, if you
want to keep your black skin whole upon your body. Slot never can abide
the smell of a nigger.—Can you, Slot, eh, old fellow?’

The negro looked at him with unconcealed aversion. ‘I is not rat,
Mistah Dupuy,’ he said haughtily. ‘I is gentleman myself, same as you
is, sah, when I come here over from Africa.’

Tom Dupuy sneered openly in his very face. ‘That’s the way with all
you Africans,’ he answered with a laugh, as he flipped the ash idly
from his big cheroot. ‘I never knew an imported nigger yet, since I was
born, that wasn’t a king in his own country. Seems to me, they must all
be kings over yonder in Congo, with never a solitary subject to divide
between them.—But I say, my friend, what’s going on over this way
to-night, that so many niggers are going up all the time to the Methody
chapel? Are you going to preach ’em a missionary sermon?’

Delgado glanced at him a trifle suspiciously. ‘Dar is a prayer-meetin’,
sah,’ he said with a cold look in his angry eye, ‘up at Gilead. De
bredderin gwine to meet dis ebenin’.’

‘Ho, ho; so that’s it! A prayer-meeting, is it? Well, if I go up there,
will you let me attend it?’

Delgado’s thick lip curled contemptuously, as he answered with a frown:
‘When cockroach gib dance, him no ax fowl!’

‘Ah, I see. The fowl would eat the cockroaches, would he? Well, then,
Louis Delgado, I give you fair warning; if you don’t want a white man
to go and look on at your nigger meetings, depend upon it, it’s because
you’re brewing some mischief or other up there against the constituted
authorities. I shall tell my uncle to set his police to look well after
you. You were always a bad-blooded, discontented, disaffected fellow,
and I believe now you’re up to some of your African devilry or other.
No obeah,[1] mind you, Delgado—no obeah! Prayer-meetings, my good
friend, as much as you like; but whatever you do, no obeah.’

‘You tink I do obeah because I doan’t will let you go to
prayer-meetin’! Dat just like white-man argument. Him tink de naygur
can nebber be in de right. Old-time folk has little proverb: “Mountain
sheep always guilty when jungle tiger sit to judge him.”’

Tom Dupuy laughed and nodded. ‘Well, good-night.—Down, Slot, down, good
fellow; down, down, down, I tell you!—Good-night, Louis Delgado, and
mind, whatever you do, no obeah!’

The negro watched him slowly round the corner, with a suspicious eye
kept well fixed upon the reluctant stealthy retreat of the Cuban
bloodhound; and as soon as Dupuy had got safely beyond earshot, he sat
down in the soft dust that formed the bare platform outside his hut,
and mumbled to himself, as negroes will do, a loud dramatic soliloquy,
in every deep and varying tone of passion and hatred. ‘Ha, ha, Mistah
Tom Dupuy,’ he began quietly, ‘so you go about always wid de Cuban
bloodhound, an’ you laugh to see him spring at de troat ob de black
man! You tink dat frighten him from come steal your cane an’ your
mangoes! You tink de black man afraid ob de dog, yarra! yarra! Ha, dat
frighten Trinidad naygur, perhaps, but it doan’t frighten salt-water
naygur from Africa! I hab charms, I hab potion, I hab draught to quiet
him! I doan’t afraid ob fifty bloodhound. But it doan’t good for buckra
gentleman to walk about wid dog dat spring at de black man. Black man
laugh to-day, perhaps, but press him heart tight widin him. De time
come when black man will find him heart break out, an’ de hate in it
flow over an’ make blood run, like dry ribber in de rainy season. Den
him sweep away buckra, an’ bloodhound, an’ all before him; an’ seize
de country, colour for colour. De land is black, an’ de land for de
black man. When de black man burst him heart like ribber burst him
bank in de rainy season, white man’s house snap off before him like
bamboo hut when de flood catch it!’ As he spoke, he pushed his hands
out expansively before him, and gurgled in his throat with fierce
inarticulate African gutturals, that seemed to recall in some strange
fashion the hollow eddying roar and gurgle of the mountain torrents in
the rainy season.

‘Chicken doan’t nebber lub jackal, yarra,’ he went on after a short
pause of expectant triumph; ‘an’ naygur doan’t nebber lub buckra, dat
certain. But ob all de buckra in de island ob Trinidad, dem Dupuy is
de very worst an’ de very contemptfullest. Some day, black man will
rise, an’ get rid ob dem all for good an’ ebber. If I like, I can kill
dem all to-day; but I gwine to wait. De great an’ terrible day ob de
Lard is not come yet. Missy Dupuy ober in England, where de buckra
come from. England is de white man’s Africa; de missy dar to learn him
catechism. I wait till Missy Dupuy come back before I kill de whole
family. When de great an’ terrible day ob de Lard arrive, I doan’t
leave a single Dupuy a libbin soul in de island ob Trinidad. I slay dem
all, an’ de missy wid dem, yarra, yarra!’

The last two almost inarticulate words were uttered with a yell of
triumph. Hearing footsteps now approaching, he broke out into a loud
soliloquy of exultation in his own native African language. It was a
deep, savage-sounding West Coast dialect, full of harsh and barbaric
clicks or gutturals; for Louis Delgado, as Tom Dupuy had rightly said,
was ‘an imported African’—a Coromantyn, sold as a slave some thirty
years before to a Cuban slave-trader trying to break the blockade on
the coast, and captured with all her living cargo by an English cruiser
off Sombrero Island. The liberated slaves had been landed, according
to custom, at the first British port where the cutter touched; and
thus Louis Delgado—as he learned to call himself—a wild African born,
from the Coromantyn seaboard, partially Anglicised and outwardly
Christianised, was now a common West Indian plantation hand on the
two estates of Orange Grove and Pimento Valley. There are dozens of
such semi-civilised imported negroes still to be found under similar
circumstances in every one of the West India islands.

As the steps gradually approached nearer, it became plain, from the
soft footfall in the dust of the bridle-path, that it was a shoeless
black person who was coming towards him. In a minute more, the
new-comer had turned the corner, and displayed herself as a young and
comely negress—pretty with the round, good-humoured African prettiness
of smooth black skin, plump cheeks, clear eyes, and regular, even
pearl-white teeth. The girl was dressed in a loose Manchester cotton
print, brightly coloured, and not unbecoming, with a tidy red bandana
bound turban-wise around her shapely head, but barefooted, barelimbed,
and bare of neck and shoulder. Her figure was good, as the figure of
most negresses usually is; and she held herself erect and upright with
the peculiar lithe gracefulness said to be induced by the universal
practice of carrying pails of water and other burdens on the top of the
head from the very earliest days of negro childhood. As she approached
Delgado, she first smiled and showed all her pretty teeth, as she
uttered the customary polite salutation of ‘Marnin’! sah, marnin’!’ and
then dropped a profound courtesy with an unmistakable air of awe and
reverence.

Louis Delgado affected not to observe the girl for a moment, and went
on jabbering loudly and fiercely to himself in his swift and fluent
African jargon. But it was evident that his hearer was deeply impressed
at once by this rapt and prophetic inattention of the strange negro,
who spoke with tongues to vacant space in such an awful and intensely
realistic fashion. She paused for a while and looked at him intently;
then, when he stopped for a second to take breath in the midst of one
of his passionate incoherent outbursts, she came a step nearer to him
and courtesied again, at the same time that she muttered in a rather
injured querulous treble: ‘Mistah Delgado, you no hear me, sah? You no
listen to me? I tellin’ you marnin’.’

The old man broke off suddenly, as if recalled to himself and common
earth by some disenchanting touch, and answered dreamily: ‘Marnin’,
Missy Rosina. Marnin’, le-ady. You gwine up to Gilead now to de
prayer-meetin’?’

Rosina, glancing down at the Bible and hymn-book in her plump black
hand, answered demurely: ‘Yes, sah, I gwine dar.’

Delgado shook himself vigorously, as if in the endeavour to recover
from some unearthly trance, and went on in his more natural manner: ‘I
gwine up too, to pray wid de bredderin. You want me for someting? You
callin’ to me for help you?’

Rosina dropped her voice a little as she replied in her shrill tone:
‘You is African, Mistah Delgado. Naygur from Africa know plenty spell
for bring back le-ady’s lubber.’

Delgado nodded. ‘Dat is true,’ he answered. ‘Creole[2] naygur doan’t
can make spell same as African. Coromantyn naygur hab plenty oracle. De
oracles ob Aaron descend in right line to de chiefs ob de Coromantyn.’

‘Dem say you is great chief in your own country.’

The old man drew himself up with a haughty air. ‘Me fader,’ he answered
with evident pride, ‘hab twelve wives, all princess, an’ I is de eldest
son ob de eldest. King Blay fight him, an’ take me prisoner, an’ sell
me slabe, an’ dat is how I come to work now ober here on Mistah Dupuy
plantation.’

After a pause, he asked quickly: ‘Who dis sweetheart dat you want spell
for?’

‘Isaac Pourtalès.’

‘Pourtalès! Him mulatto! What for pretty naygur girl like you want
to go an’ lub mulatto? Mulatto bad man. Old-time folk say, mulatto
always hate him fader an’ despise him mudder. Him fader de white man,
an’ mulatto hate white; him mudder de black girl, an’ mulatto despise
black.’

Rosina hung her head down slightly on one side, and put the little
finger of her left hand with artless coyness into the corner of her
mouth. ‘I doan’t know, sah,’ she said sheepishly after a short pause;
‘but I feel somehow as if I lub Isaac Pourtalès.’

Delgado grinned a sinister grin. ‘Very well, Missy Rosy,’ he said
shortly, ‘I gain him lub for you. Wait here one, two, tree minute,
le-ady, while I run in find me Bible.’

In a few minutes, he came out again, dressed in his black coat for
meeting, with a Bible and hymn-book in one hand, and a curious volume
in the other, written in strange, twisted, twirligig characters, such
as Rosina had never before in her life set eyes on. ‘See here!’ he
cried, opening it wide before her; ‘dat is book ob spells. Dat is
African spell for gain lubber. I explain him to you’—and his hand
turned rapidly over several of the brown and well-thumbed pages: ‘Isaac
Pourtalès, mulatto; Rosina Fleming, black le-ady; dat is de page.
Hear what de spell say.’ And he ran his finger line by line along
the strange characters, as if translating them into his own negro
English as he went. ‘“Take toot’ ob alligator,” same as dis one’—and
he produced a few alligators’ teeth from his capacious pocket; ‘“tie
him up for a week in bag wid Savannah flower an’ branch of calalue;
soak him well in shark’s blood”—I gib de blood to you—“den write de
name, Isaac Pourtalès, in big letter on slip ob white paper; drop it in
de bag; an’ burn it all togedder on a Friday ebenin’, when it doan’t
no moon, wid fire ob manchineel wood.” Dat will gain de lub ob your
lubber, as sure as de gospel.’

The girl listened carefully to the directions, and made Delgado repeat
them three times over to her. When she had learned them thoroughly, she
said once more: ‘How much I got to pay you for dis, eh, sah?’

‘Nuffin.’

‘Nuffin?’

‘No, nuffin. But you must do me favour. You is house-serbant at Orange
Grove; you must come see me now an’ den, an’ tell me what go on ober in
de house dar.’

‘What far, sah?’

‘Doan’t you ax what far; but listen to me, le-ady. De great an’
terrible day ob de Lard will come before long, when de wicked will
be cut off from de face ob de eart’, an’ we shall see de end ob de
evil-doer. You read de Prophets?’

‘I read dem some time.’

‘You read de Prophet Jeremiah, what him say? Hear de tex’. I read him
to you. “Deliber up deir children to de famine, an’ pour out deir blood
by de sword.” Dat de Lard’s word for all de Dupuys; an’ when de missy
come from England, de word ob de prophecy comin’ true.’

The girl shuddered, and opened wide her big eyes with their great ring
of white setting. ‘How you know it de Dupuys?’ she asked, hesitating.
‘How you know it dem de prophet ’ludin’ to?’

‘How I know, Rosina Fleming? How I know it? Because I can expound
an’ interpret de Scripture; for when de understandin’ ob de man is
enlightened, de mout’ speaketh forth wonderful tings. Listen here; I
tellin’ you de trut’. Before de missy lib a year in Trinidad, de Lard
will sweep away de whole house ob de Dupuys out ob de land for ebber
an’ ebber.’

‘But not de missy!’ Rosina cried eagerly.

‘Ah, de missy! You tink when de black man rise like tiger in him wrath,
him spare de missy! No, me fren’. Him doan’t gwine to spare her. De
Dupuys is great people now; puffed up wid pride; look down on de black
man. But dem will drop dem bluster bime-by, as soon as deir pride is
taken out ob dem wid adversity.’

Rosina turned away with a look of terror. ‘You comin’ to
prayer-meetin’?’ she asked hastily. ‘De bredderin will all be waitin’.’

Delgado, recalled once more to his alternative character, pushed away
the strange volume through the door of his hut, took up his Bible
and hymn-book with the gravest solemnity, drew himself up to his
full height, and was soon walking along soberly by Rosina’s side, as
respectable and decorous a native Methodist class-leader as one could
wish to see in the whole green island of Trinidad.

Those who judge superficially of men and minds, would say at once that
Delgado was a hypocrite. Those who know what religion really means
to inferior races—a strange but sincere jumble of phrases, emotions,
superstitions, and melodies, permeating and consecrating all their
acts and all their passions, however evil, violent, or licentious—will
recognise at once that in his own mind Louis Delgado was not conscious
to himself in the faintest degree of any hypocrisy, craft, or even
inconsistency.

(_To be continued._)


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Obeah, a form of African magic or witchcraft.

[2] The word _Creole_ is much misunderstood by most English people. In
its universal West Indian sense it is applied to any person, white,
black, or mulatto, born in the West Indies, as opposed to outsiders,
European, American, or African.



SOME AMERICANISMS.


A very erroneous impression generally exists in this country as to the
manner in which the English language is spoken in the United States.
This has arisen in some degree from the circumstance that travellers
have dwelt upon and exaggerated such peculiarities of language as have
come under their observation in various parts of the Union; but also
in greater measure from the fact that in English novels and dramas in
which an American figures—no matter whether the character depicted
be represented as a man of good social position and, presumably,
fair education, or not—he is made to express himself in a dialect
happily combining the peculiarities of speech of every section of the
country from Maine to Texas. With the exception of the late Mr Anthony
Trollope’s _American Senator_, I cannot recall to mind a single work
of fiction in which this is not the case. Take, for instance, those
portions of _Martin Chuzzlewit_ the scenes of which are laid in the
United States; Richard Fairfield, in Bulwer’s _My Novel_; the Colonel
in Lever’s _One of Them_; Fullalove, in Charles Reade’s _Very Hard
Cash_; the younger Fenton in Yates’s _Black Sheep_; or the American
traveller in _Mugby Junction_—in each and every instance the result is
to convey a most erroneous idea as to the manner in which our common
tongue is ordinarily spoken in the United States.

It is the same on the stage. The dialect in which Americans are usually
made to express themselves in English dramas is as incorrect and absurd
as was the language put into the mouths of their Irish characters by
the playwrights of the early part of the eighteenth century.

As a matter of fact, the speech of educated Americans differs but
little from that of the same class in Great Britain; whilst, as regards
the great bulk of the people of the United States, there can be no
question but that they speak purer and more idiomatic English than
do the masses here. In every State of the Union the language of the
inhabitants can be understood without the slightest difficulty. This is
more than can be said of the dialects of the peasantry in various parts
of England, these being in many instances perfectly unintelligible to
a stranger. Again, the fluency of expression and command of language
possessed by Americans even in the humbler ranks of life forms a marked
contrast to the poverty of speech of the same class in this country,
where, as an eminent philologist has declared, a very considerable
proportion of the agricultural population habitually make use of a
vocabulary not exceeding three hundred words.

But to return to the subject of this paper. Some words which have
become obsolete in this country, or now convey a totally different
meaning from that primarily attaching to them, are still current in
America in the sense in which they were originally employed. _Prink_,
to ornament or adorn, which is found in Spenser and other writers of
the Elizabethan age, is at the present day a common term in the Eastern
States. One Yankee girl will say to another, who has been some time
at her toilet, ‘Oh, you have been prinking;’ or, ‘What a long while it
has taken you to prink.’ In fact the verb is used in all its moods and
tenses. _Muss_, a confused encounter or scramble, is generally supposed
to be a purely American idiom. On the contrary, it is good Shakspearean
English. In _Antony and Cleopatra_, Antony says:

              ‘Of late when I cry’d ho!
    Like boys unto a muss, kings would start forth.’

_Lamm_, to beat, to maltreat, is an American word of English parentage.
In a north-country ballad of the time of Edward VI., one line runs,
‘They lammed him and bammed him;’ and the word may also be found in
Marlowe. _Sick_ is an expression universally used in the United States
in the sense of indisposition. A man will say, ‘I am sick,’ never, ‘I
am ill.’ It scarcely need be said that the phrase was perfectly good
English two centuries and a half ago, the word ‘ill,’ with the meaning
now attaching to it, not once occurring in the translation of the Bible.

_Bug_, again, employed in America as a generic term for every species
of insect, was used in England, formerly, in the same sense. ‘A bug
hath buzzed it in mine ears,’ says Bacon in one of his letters. At
the present day, the word has in England so limited an application,
that when an edition of the works of Edgar Allan Poe was published in
London, the editor altered the title of one story, _The Golden Bug_, to
_The Golden Beetle_, in order not to give offence to ‘ears polite.’

_Fearful_, which now signifies to inspire terror or awe, has still in
the United States the meaning it bore in Shakspeare’s time, when it was
invariably used in the sense of timid or afraid. In _Romeo and Juliet_,
when Romeo, after slaying Tybalt, is lying hidden in Friar Lawrence’s
cell, the Friar says:

    ‘Romeo, come forth, come forth, thou fearful man;’

and again, in _The Tempest_, in that scene in which Prospero threatens
Ferdinand, Miranda exclaims:

    ‘O dear father,
    Make not too rash a trial of him, for
    He’s gentle and not fearful.’

So obsolete, however, is now the word in the sense in which it is
employed by the poet, that in most editions of Shakspeare, a footnote
is appended to it, giving the definition as ‘timorous.’ In America, the
expression, ‘He is a fearful man,’ or, ‘She is a fearful woman,’ is
frequently applied to an individual of timid disposition, the meaning
intended to be conveyed being precisely the opposite to that which in
this country would attach to the phrase.

Some common English words have in the United States completely lost
their original signification, wherefore, it would not be easy to say.
_Ugly_, for instance, means ill-natured; _smart_, clever; _clever_, of
an amiable disposition; and _lovely_—although this last locution is not
perhaps so common as the others—lovable.

I was, when resident in New York, present during a conversation in
the course of which a rather curious equivoque occurred, owing to
the peculiar sense in which the words in question are used on the
other side of the Atlantic. On the occasion referred to, an American
lady and an Englishwoman—who had only been a short time in the United
States—were speaking of an old gentleman with whom they both were
acquainted. The former was warm in his praises.

‘Mr R——,’ she declared, ‘is quite lovely.’

‘Why,’ was the surprised reply, ‘how can you think so? I consider him
decidedly ugly.’

‘Ugly!’ indignantly retorted the first speaker. ‘He is not at all ugly.
On the contrary, he is real clever.’

‘That Mr R—— is a man of talent, I admit,’ was the response; ‘but he is
certainly anything but good-looking.’

‘Well, I do not deny that he is homely, and I never said that he was
not,’ rejoined the other lady.

‘But,’ exclaimed the puzzled Englishwoman, ‘you have just asserted that
he was not ugly.’

‘No more he is!’ was the quick retort.

When the dialogue had reached this point, it being obvious not only
that the two ladies were at cross-purposes, but that they were, in
consequence, becoming a little heated, I deemed it advisable to
interpose, and explain how their mutual misapprehension had arisen.

In connection with the phrase, ‘A man of talent,’ made use of by my
countrywoman in the course of the above conversation, I may observe
that ‘talent’ or ‘talented’ is an expression seldom heard from the lips
of a native of New England. Lord Macaulay asserts that these words owe
their origin to the ‘Parable of the Talents’ in the New Testament, and
on one occasion he challenged Lady Holland to cite a single instance of
their being employed by any English writer prior to the latter part of
the seventeenth century. To the circumstance, therefore, that at the
period when the Puritans left their native land to seek new homes in
the New World, the words in question had not been incorporated into the
language, may, I conceive, be attributed the fact that to this day they
seldom have a place in the vocabulary of the inhabitants of the Eastern
States.

When a word is already in existence which is fully adequate to express
the idea it is employed to convey, it seems not a little curious that
the use of it should be superseded by another, not, indeed, coined
for the purpose, but by one divorced from its original meaning. Yet
this has been the case in various instances in the United States.
A place where goods are sold at retail is called a ‘store,’ not a
shop, the use of the latter word being exclusively confined to those
establishments in which some manufacturing or other mechanical industry
is carried on. When ‘corn’ is spoken of, maize or Indian corn is
always meant; all the other cereals being invariably designated by
their respective names, as wheat, oats, barley, &c. Railway in America
becomes ‘railroad;’ station, ‘depôt;’ line, ‘track;’ carriage, ‘car;’
whilst for tram, the phrase employed is ‘horse-car.’ A timber building
is a ‘frame-building;’ a row of houses is a ‘block’ of houses. For
poorhouse or workhouse, the expression used is ‘almshouse.’ When the
idea intended to be conveyed is that which an Englishman attaches to
the latter phrase, the word ‘asylum’ or ‘home’ is used by an American.

In fact, a list which should comprise all the words employed by our
transatlantic cousins in a different sense from ourselves would be
a tolerably long one. But the desultory examples I have given will
suffice to illustrate the fact—to which I have already adverted—that in
numerous instances, and without any apparent cause, many common English
words have acquired in the United States a totally different meaning
from that which they bear in this country.



A GOLDEN ARGOSY.

_A NOVELETTE._


CHAPTER IX.

It was nearly ten o’clock on the following morning before Edgar reached
the _Bedford_, Covent Garden. He found the American in his private room
waiting his arrival, and clad in a loose dressing-gown, which made him
look extra tall and thin—a wonderful garment, embracing every known
hue and colour, and strongly resembling, save as to its garishness, a
Canadian wood in the fall. Mr Slimm laid aside a disreputable brier he
was smoking, as soon as he perceived his visitor. ‘Morning!’ he said
briskly. ‘Tolerably punctual. Hope you don’t object to the smell of
tobacco so early?’

‘I don’t know,’ Edgar replied, throwing himself down in a chair. ‘Like
most well-regulated Britons, I cannot say I am partial to the smell of
tobacco before breakfast.’

‘Do you know,’ Mr Slimm responded dryly, ‘I have seen the time when I
never smoked before breakfast. I don’t allude to any great outbreak of
virtue on my part; but the fact is, when a man can’t get a breakfast,
he can’t be accused of smoking before it—no, sir.’ Having administered
this crushing piece of logic with characteristic force, Mr Slimm rang
the bell and proceeded to order ‘the fixings,’ which was his term for
the matutinal repast.

‘You Britishers have got some sound notions on the subject of dinners
and promiscuous refreshment; but your imagination don’t soar to
breakfast. There’s nothing substantial about it,’ said Mr Slimm,
after finishing a pound or so of steak. ‘The Francatelli who rules
the kitchen here is fairly good; and I flatter myself if I stay here
much longer he will know what a breakfast is. I stayed for a week at
a little place off the Strand once; but I was almost starved. Ham and
eggs, chops and steaks, was the programme, with a sole, by way of a
treat, on Sundays.’

‘Very sad,’ replied Edgar, with considerable gravity. ‘You must have
suffered. You don’t seem, however, particularly short here.’

‘Well, no,’ Mr Slimm admitted, at the same time helping himself to
fish; ‘I can manage here.’

‘I hope last night’s little scrimmage has not injured your appetite
this morning?’ Edgar asked politely.

‘Not much. Æneas Slimm generally can pick up his crumbs tolerably. This
little village is a fine place to sharpen the appetite.’

‘How long do you propose to stay here?’

‘I don’t know; it all depends. I am doing London, you see, and when I
do a place, I do it well. You’ve got some fine old landmarks here—very
fine,’ said Mr Slimm with proverbial American reverence for the
antique. ‘I guess we should be proud of the Tower over to New York—yes,
sir.’

‘I have never been over it,’ Edgar said carelessly.

‘Do, tell. Man, I guess you’re funning. Seems to me kind o’ incredible
for an Englishman to live in London and not see the Tower.’

‘Really, Mr Slimm, I have never seen the Tower.’

‘Wall, if this don’t beat snakes! Never seen the Tower!’ exclaimed
the American, chipping his third egg. ‘Maybe you never heard of a
picturesque pile known to the inquiring stranger as the British
Museum?—Now, _have_ you ever heard of Westminster Abbey?’

‘Well,’ said Edgar laughingly, ‘I believe I have; but I must confess
that I have never been inside either of the places you mention.’

‘Wonderful! Mr Seaton, you’re born to make a name. The man who can pass
these places without emotion, ain’t no common shake. I guess you’re the
kind of matter they make genius out of.’

‘You seem to be astonished. Surely, in New York, you have buildings and
churches quite as fine as anything in London?’

‘You think so, do you? Wall, if it’s any consolation to you, keep
on thinking so; it won’t hurt any one.—Mr Seaton,’ continued Slimm,
lowering his voice reverently, ‘when I get pottering about down at
Westminster, and look at the Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, strike
me if I don’t wish I was a Britisher myself!’

‘That is high praise indeed; and I think it is due to your native
patriotism to say your approval does you credit. But candidly, it
always struck me that our Houses of Parliament are particularly
mean-looking for their position.’

‘Maybe, maybe,’ Mr Slimm replied meditatively; ‘but there’s something
about them that makes me feel chockful of poetry. When I wander into
the Abbey among these silent stones and listen to that grand organ, I
feel it does me good.’

‘You do not look like a man who took any particular delight in music.’

‘I don’t, and that’s a fact. I don’t know F sharp from a bull’s foot;
but I can feel it. When the artist presiding at the instrument pulls
out that wonderful stop like a human voice, I feel real mean, and
that’s a fact—yes, sir.’

‘It is wonderful what an effect music has on the human understanding,’
Edgar replied. ‘“Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast.” My
wife always says’——

‘Your wife! I didn’t know you were married.’

‘Considering I never told you that interesting fact, I do not see
very well how you could know,’ Edgar replied with a smile; which was,
however, not so cordially received by Mr Slimm.

‘Um,’ he said doubtfully.—‘Now, look here, my young friend; I’m a rough
chap, and I’ve just got to say my mind, if I die for it. Don’t you
think a young married man has no business in such a place as we met
last night?’

‘But, you see, I had business there,’ Edgar said, still smiling. ‘It
was stern business, and nothing else, which took me to that place.’

‘You’ve got the bulge of me, and that’s a fact.’

‘You mean, you don’t understand. Well, I am what is usually known—or
rather, in my case, unknown—as a literary man. I am working up a series
of articles on gambling-houses.’

‘Why don’t you get on a more respectable line?’

Edgar tapped his pocket and nodded significantly.

‘Hard up,’ said Mr Slimm. ‘Case of needs must when what’s-his-name
drives. You don’t look as if you were dragged up to this sort of thing
neither?’

‘To be candid with you, I was not,’ Edgar replied, urged by some
strange impulse to confide in the American. ‘I am a university man
without money. My history is a common one. Educated at a public school,
and afterwards at Cambridge, I am expected to get a living in some
mysterious way. All my little money was spent upon my education, and
then I had to shift for myself. Much good my second-class honours have
done me.’

‘Then, to prove your wisdom, you got married?’

‘Of course. But now comes the most remarkable part of my story. My wife
was her uncle’s heiress—not that her money was any inducement to me—and
I was engaged to her with his approval. It was arranged I was to manage
his property, and we were to live with him. Then a relative of his—a
lady—came to stay, and everything went wrong from that time. Finally,
acting under the lady’s wonderful fascination, my wife’s uncle forbade
our marriage, and ordered her to marry a nephew of the lady’s. This, of
course, she refused to do, and was consequently disinherited.’

‘What sort of a seraph was the lady?’ asked Mr Slimm, with considerable
interest.

‘Don’t mention her, pray. She had the evil-eye, if ever woman had.—But
to continue. After our wedding, we came to London, and at different
times tried to bring about a reconciliation; but to no effect. Then the
old gentleman died.’

‘A common story enough; but considerable rough on you and your wife,’
said Mr Slimm.

‘After that, a most remarkable occurrence happened. When the will was
proved, not a sixpence of the old gentleman’s money could be found—that
is, excepting the few hundreds in the local bank for household
expenses. It is four years ago now, and to this day not one farthing
has turned up.’

‘Penny plain, and twopence coloured,’ the American said sententiously—‘to
be continued in our next. There’s the making of a sound family romance
about this.—Anything more?’

‘A little. An old companion of my wife’s turned up the other day—or
I should say my wife found her accidentally in London. She was
standing in the rain on Waterloo Bridge, looking into the water.—You
comprehend, don’t you?’

‘“One more unfortunate, weary of breath,”’ quoted Mr Slimm with a
tender inflection which surprised Edgar. ‘Go on.’

‘It was a wonderful coincidence, if nothing more. It appeared that my
wife’s uncle on his dying bed gave her a paper for my wife; and he
charged her most solemnly to find her and deliver it, which has been
done.’

‘And it was some secret cipher, bet my boots.’

‘On the contrary, it is only a letter—a valedictory letter, containing
no clue whatever.’

‘Stranger, you take this matter sort of calm,’ said Slimm solemnly. ‘I
should like to see that letter. Mark me; providence has a hand in this,
and I want you not to forget it. Such a meeting as that between your
wife and her old companion didn’t happen for nothing. Listen, and I’ll
tell you what once happened to me in Australia. I shall never forget
it. I’m a rich man now, for my wants; but I was poor then; in fact, it
was just at the time when fortune had turned. I had, at the time I am
speaking of, nearly a thousand ounces of dust buried in my tent. As
far as I could tell, not a soul in the camp knew what I had, as I had
kept it quiet. Well, one night, I started out to visit an old chum in
a neighbouring claim. It was nearly dark when I started, and I had no
companion but my dog. I had not gone very far when he began to act in
a ridiculous manner, barking and snapping at my horse’s heels, till I
thought he was stark mad. Then he turned towards home, stopping every
now and then to whine, and finally he struck off home in a bee-line.
I rode on, never thinking anything about it till suddenly my horse
stumbled and nearly threw me. He had never done such a thing before,
and I hadn’t got twenty yards before he did it again. Stranger! I
want you to believe I was scared, and I don’t scare easy either. Then
I thought of the tales I had read about dogs and their cunning, and,
urged by something I can’t understand, I turned back. You’d better
believe I’m glad I did. When I got back to my tent, I stole in quietly,
and there were three of the biggest scoundrels in the camp digging away
exactly over the gold. I didn’t give them much time for meditation, I
reckon. It was a tough fight; but I saved my gold. I got this valentine
to remember it by; darn their ugly pictures;’ and Mr Slimm bared his
huge chest, and displayed a livid gash seamed and lined thereon.

‘And the robbers—what became of them?’

‘Suffocation,’ Slimm replied laconically. ‘The quality of mercy is
strained pretty considerable in a mining camp.’

‘And the dog?’

‘Dead!—killed by these scoundrels. I ain’t powerful in the water-cart
line; but I don’t mind saying I snivelled then. I can’t think of that
faithful insect without a kind of lumpiness in my throat—And now, my
friend, don’t you tell me there’s no such thing as fate. You mind if
your affair don’t turn out trumps yet.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Edgar replied dubiously. ‘It is all forgotten now,
though it was a nine days’ wonder in Somersetshire at the time.’

‘Somersetshire? Now, that’s strange. I’m going to Somersetshire in a
few days to see a man I haven’t set eyes on for years. He is a very
different man from me—a quiet, scholarly gentleman, a little older
than myself. He is a bookish sort of man; and I met him in the mines.
We kind of froze to each other; and when we parted, it was understood
that whenever I came to England, I was to go and see him. What part of
Somersetshire do you hail from?’

‘The name of my wife’s old home is Eastwood.’

‘Eastwood? Tell me quickly, is it possible that your wife’s uncle is Mr
Charles Morton?’

‘The same,’ Edgar gasped.—‘What do you know of him?’

‘What do I know of him? Why, he was the man I was going to visit; and
he’s dead, poor old fellow! You see, I always liked him, and once I
saved his life. It’s a curious thing, but when you do a man a favour,
or save his life, or any trifle of that kind, you always get to like
him some way. Poor old Morton! Well, if this don’t beat snakes! And
your wife is the little Nelly he was always raving about? Dear, dear!’

‘There must be something more than meets the eye here,’ Edgar said,
with a little quaver in his voice. ‘Taking all the circumstances into
consideration, it looks as if some inscrutable providence has a hand in
it.’

‘You bet. I’m not particularly learned, nor no scholar; but I do
remember some lines of your immortal poet which tells us “There’s a
divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.” The more I
think of life, the more it puzzles me, and that’s a fact. To think of
you and I—two people in five millions—meeting by such chance! And to
think of your wife being the niece of my old friend!’

‘Did he speak much of her to you?’ Edgar asked.

‘A few. “Speak” is no word for it: he raved about her. If ever a man
loved a girl, it was your uncle. You must not judge him harshly.’

‘I do not; I never did. That there has been collusion, or something
more, I have always been convinced. He was so fond of me till his
half-sister came; and as to Nelly, he worshipped her.’

‘He just did, I know. I should like to see that letter.’

‘So you shall; but really, I can see nothing in it.’

‘Try and describe it to me.’

‘That is soon done. It is a commonplace epistle, saying he wished to be
remembered as a friend, asking me to forgive him, and hinting that if
he had his life to live over again, how different things would be.’

‘That is only a blind, perhaps.—Describe the letter.’

‘It is written on part of a sheet of foolscap; and from the beginning
of the first line to the finish, the paper is covered with writing.’

‘No heading or superscription, no signature?’ queried Mr Slimm.

‘No; it is not signed; but is precisely like a letter without heading
or signature trimmed close up to the writing with a pair of scissors.’

‘And is it folded, or are there any lines about it?’

‘It is folded like an ordinary note, and there are various horizontal
and perpendicular lines upon it. The lines are dotted. Can you make
anything of it?’

‘Yes,’ said the American quietly. ‘I can make fortune of it. Show me
that letter for five minutes, and I will show you something you would
give ten thousand pounds to see.’

And so, arranging for an early meeting, they parted for the day.

       *       *       *       *       *

Next morning, Eleanor told her husband of a curious dream she had had
during the night. She thought she stood on a strange shore, with the
sea spread out before her to the utmost horizon. It was sunrise, and
coming towards her over the quiet waters, was a great ship—an ‘Argosy
with golden sails’—and somehow she thought it brought golden treasure
for her. Three times she dreamed the dream, and saw the stately ship.
She asked Edgar what he thought of it. He said that dreams went by
contraries.

(_To be concluded next month._)



LEGAL ANECDOTES.


The writer remembers hearing of a gentleman who, not wishing to pay the
legal and recognised fee for a consultation with his lawyer, devised
an expedient whereby he expected to gain the information he required
without the usual cost. He accordingly invited the man ‘learned in the
law’ to dine at his house on a particular evening, as a friend and
an old acquaintance. The lawyer gladly accepted the invitation, and
attended at the house of his friend and client prompt to the minute.
The conversation for some time was very general and agreeable, and
by-and-by the shrewd client, by hinting and suggesting, at last drew
the lawyer out into a learned and explicit dissertation upon the
subject the host wished to be informed upon. The client was pleased,
satisfied, and smiling, chuckled in his sleeve, thinking how nicely he
had wormed out the advice desired and pumped his lawyer, free of cost!

The feast over, the lawyer departed, equally pleased, and both being
satisfied, all went as merry as a marriage bell. But a few days
afterwards, the client received a letter from his lawyer informing
him that the charge for professional consultation and advice was
thirteen shillings and fourpence, and would he ‘kindly attend to the
payment of same at his earliest convenience, and oblige.’ The client
was wild—caught in his own trap. But being determined to outwit the
lawyer and gain his own ends, he forwarded to the latter a bill for
‘dinner, wines, and accessories supplied’ on the 16th inst., amounting
to thirteen shillings and fourpence, saying that if he would settle the
inclosed bill, he should only be too pleased and happy to settle the
lawyer’s little bill. The lawyer retorted by threatening to commence
an action against mine host for selling wines without a license, unless
his, the lawyer’s, bill was immediately paid. Do I need to say that the
lawyer was victorious?

When I was a boy, I heard of a lawyer who was called up in the middle
of a cold winter’s night to draw out the will of an old farmer who
lived some three miles away, and who was dying. The messenger had
brought a cart to convey the lawyer to the farm; and the latter in
due time arrived at his destination. When he entered the house, he
was immediately ushered into the sickroom, and he then requested to
be supplied with pen, ink, and paper. There were none in the house!
The lawyer had not brought any himself, and what was he to do? Any
lead-pencil? he inquired. No; they had none. The farmer was sinking
fast, though quite conscious. At last, the legal gentleman saw chalked
up on the back of the bedroom door column upon column of figures in
chalk. These were milk ‘scores’ or ‘shots.’ He immediately asked for a
piece of chalk, and then, kneeling on the floor, he wrote out concisely
upon the smooth hearthstone the last will and testament of the dying
man! The farmer subsequently died. The hearthstone will was sent to
the principal registry in London with special affidavits, and was duly
proved, the will being deposited in the archives of the registry. I may
mention that the law does not state upon what substance or with what
instrument a will must be written.

It is stated that a lawyer was some time ago cross-examining a witness
in a local court, when he asked: ‘Now, then, Patrick, listen to me.
Did the defendant in this case strike the plaintiff with malice?’—‘No,
sor, sure,’ replied Pat gravely; ‘he struck him wid the poker, bedad.’
Again he inquired of the same witness: ‘Did the plaintiff stand on the
defensive during the affray?’—‘Divil a diffinsive, yer honour; he stood
on the table.’

A celebrity noted for being ‘a bit of a poet’ was brought up before
a bench of local magistrates for an assault, when the following
conversation took place:

_Magistrate._ Is your name John Fray?

_Prisoner._ It is, your honour; so the people say.

_Mag._ Was it you who struck this man and caused the alarm?

_Pris._ Sure it was, your honour; but I thought there was no harm.

_Mag._ Now, stop that! Did you come here to make rhymes?

_Pris._ No, your honour; but it will happen sometimes.

The magistrate, laughing at the fellow’s ready wit, said: ‘Go away, you
rascal, get out of my sight!’

_Pris._ (_smiling_). Thank ye, your honour; an’ a very good-night.

There was once a plain out-spoken judge, who, addressing the jury,
said: ‘Gentlemen of the jury, in this case the counsel on both sides
are unintelligible; the witnesses on both sides are incredible; and the
plaintiff and defendant are both such bad characters, that to me it is
indifferent which way you give your verdict.’

It was once reported to the notorious Judge Jeffries that the Prince of
Orange was on the point of entering into the country, and that he was
already preparing a manifesto as to his inducements and objects in so
doing. ‘Pray, my Lord Chief Justice,’ said a gentleman present, ‘what
do you think will be the heads of this manifesto?’—‘Mine will be one,’
he grimly replied.

An undoubted alibi was some time ago successfully proved in an American
court as follows:

‘And you say that you are innocent of the charge of stealing this
rooster from Mr Jones?’ queried the judge.

‘Yes, sir, I am innocent—as innocent as a child.’

‘You are confident you did _not_ steal the rooster from Mr Jones?’

‘Yes, sir; and I can prove it.’

‘How can you prove it?’

‘I can prove that I didn’t steal Mr Jones’ rooster, judge, because I
stole two hens from Mr Graston same night, and Jones lives five miles
from Graston’s.’

‘The proof is conclusive,’ said the judge; ‘discharge the prisoner.’

It is said that the other day a client received the following bill from
his lawyer: ‘Attending and asking you how you did, 6s. 8d. Attending
you on the pier, when you desired me to look through a piece of smoked
glass, 6s. 8d. Looking through the same, 6s. 8d. Rubbing my eye,
which watered, 13s. 4d. Attending at luncheon, when you praised the
sandwiches and asked me to partake thereof, 6s. 8d. Consulting and
asking my opinion thereon, when I said they were very good, 6s. 8d.’
Most probably the client treated this as a joke; or perhaps it drove
him to extremities.

‘Gentlemen of the jury,’ said a counsel in a suit about a herd of hogs,
‘there were just thirty-six hogs in that drove; please to remember that
fact—thirty-six hogs; just exactly three times as many as there are in
that jury box, gentlemen.’ We are informed that that counsel did not
win his case. The jury were not so pig-headed.

Judge Kent, the well-known jurist, presided in a case in which a man
was indicted for burglary, and the evidence at the trial showed that
the burglary consisted in cutting a hole through a tent in which
several persons were sleeping, and then projecting his head and arm
through the hole and abstracting various articles of value. It was
claimed by his counsel that inasmuch as he never entered into the tent
with his whole body, he had not committed the offence charged, and
must therefore be set at liberty. In reply to this plea, the judge
told the jury that if they were not satisfied that the whole man was
involved in the crime, they might bring in a verdict of guilty against
so much of him as was involved. The jury, after a brief consultation,
found the right arm, the right shoulder, and the head of the prisoner
guilty of the offence of burglary. The judge accordingly sentenced the
right arm, the right shoulder, and the head to imprisonment with hard
labour in the State prison for two years, remarking, that as to the
rest of the man’s body, he might do with it what he pleased.

Lord Justice-clerk Braxfield was a man of few words and of strong
business habits, and consequently when he courted his second wife,
he said to her: ‘Lizzie, I’m looking out for a wife, and I thought
you just the person to suit me. Let me have your answer on or off
to-morrow, and nae mair aboot it.’ The lady, next day, replied in
the affirmative. Shortly after the marriage, Lord Braxfield’s butler
came to him to give up his situation because he could not bear her
ladyship’s continual scolding. ‘Man,’ Braxfield exclaimed, ‘ye’ve
little to complain of; ye may be thankfu’ ye’re no’ married to her.’

During the time that Brougham was rising in his profession, he had a
friend, a brother-counsel, who had contracted the habit of commencing
the examination of a witness in these words: ‘Now, sir, I am about
to put a question to you, and I don’t care which way you answer it.’
Brougham, with others, had begun to grow tired of this eternal formula,
and consequently one morning he met his brother-lawyer near the temple
and addressed him thus: ‘Now, Jones, I am about to put a question to
you, and I don’t care which way you answer it.—How do you do?’

The celebrated lawyer Butt was one night going home very late, when he
was accosted by a desperate-looking villain in one of the suburbs of
Dublin, and asked what he was going ‘to stand.’ ‘Well,’ replied Butt
meekly, ‘I’m very sorry that I can’t give you much, my friend, but what
I have we will share. Here,’ he continued, drawing a revolver from his
pocket, ‘is a weapon which has six chambers; I will give you three,
and’—— But the lawyer immediately found himself alone.

‘Mr Robinson,’ said counsel, ‘you say you once officiated in a pulpit.
Do you mean that you preached?’—‘No, sir; I held the candle for the man
who did.’ ‘Ah, the court understood you differently; they supposed that
the discourse came from you.’—‘No, sir; I only throwed a light on it.’

‘Gentlemen of the jury,’ said an Irish barrister, ‘it will be for you
to say whether this defendant shall be allowed to come into court with
unblushing footsteps, with the cloak of hypocrisy in his mouth, and
draw three bullocks out of my client’s pocket with impunity.’

We have heard of several cases of female ingenuity in aiding the
escape of prisoners. Here is one. The criminals were handcuffed, and
with their escort were awaiting the train which would convey them
to the county jail. Suddenly a woman rushed through the crowd of
spectators, and with a shower of tears, cried out: ‘Kiss me; good-bye,
Ned.’ The escort good-naturedly allowed the process of osculation
to be performed, and the sheriff smiled feelingly. The woman passed
a key from her own to the prisoner’s mouth, with which he undid the
‘bracelets,’ and escaped whilst the train was in motion.

There is a girl who seems to have peculiar notions of breach of promise
cases, for she threatens to sue her own father for breach of promise!
She explains that the old gentleman first gave his consent to her
marriage with her lover, and then withdrew it, and that in consequence
her beau got tired of waiting, and has gone off with another girl.

‘Prisoner at the bar,’ said the judge to a man on his trial for murder,
‘is there anything you wish to say before sentence is passed upon
you?’—‘Judge,’ replied the prisoner, ‘there has been altogether too
much said already. I knew all along somebody would get hurt, if these
people didn’t keep their mouths shut. It might as well be me, perhaps,
as anybody else. Drive on, judge, and give me as little sentiment as
you can get along on. I can stand hanging, but I hate gush.’



THE MONTH:

SCIENCE AND ARTS.


The annexation of Upper Burmah to the British Empire represents the
most important addition to our possessions which has been made for
very many years. Lying between India and China, the two most populous
countries in the world, Burmah is favourably situated as a highway,
along which a vast trade can be conducted. As to the country itself, it
presents many valuable features. It has a plentiful rainfall, a healthy
climate, and a luxuriant vegetation. The principal crops are rice,
oil-seed, cotton, and tobacco. Sixty-one varieties of rice are known
to cultivators, and half of these are of the hard kind familiar to us.
The remainder have a soft glutinous grain, which is preferred by the
natives of Burmah. The revenue and population of the country have both
increased enormously during the past ten years.

In Mr Hallett’s interesting paper addressed to the members of the
Scottish Geographical Society, entitled ‘A Survey for Railway
Connections between India, Siam, and China,’ he showed that there is
now no political hindrance to prevent our driving the locomotive up to
the gates of China and opening up a vast trade with that prosperous
empire. Mr Hallett has personally explored and surveyed Burmah, Siam,
and the Shan States, and he points out how a railway can be made to
join the Brahmapootra valley with the valley of the Irrawadi, and that
such a railway could join the line which already finds a terminus at
the seaport of Rangoon. This short line of railway, only one hundred
and sixty-two miles in length, pays a good dividend, although it finds
a formidable rival in the admirable flotilla of steamers which ply on
the Irrawadi River hard by.

At a recent meeting of the Russian Geographical Society, M. Grjimaïlo
gave an interesting description of the Pamir region, which we may
remind our readers is a high tableland of Asia on the western limit
of Little Tibet. His tour through this little-known region covered
a period of eighteen months, during which time he was able to make
extensive observations of its flora and fauna, as well as of the
condition of its inhabitants. During the long winter, the people have
to seek the shelter of their tents, and seem in the spring to wake up
from a kind of lethargy with the joy and light-heartedness of children.
The women do most of the work, which is of a pastoral kind. The country
is intersected with enormous glaciers, and is situated at such a great
elevation that the natives call it by a name which signifies ‘Roof of
the World.’

The Cleopatra’s Needle which adorns Central Park, New York, has
suffered much from transatlantic cold, and a mass of scales and chips
has been removed from it by atmospheric influences, as thoroughly as
if a number of masons had been set to work to achieve the same result.
This gradual disintegration of the noble Egyptian obelisk has, however,
been stopped by coating the monument with paraffin, which coating has
given a slightly darker colour to the stone. Those who have charge
of public buildings in Britain which have been built of perishable
stone—and there are unfortunately many such—would do well to make a
note of this employment of paraffin as a successful preservative.

A new artificial fireproof stone or plaster has recently been invented.
Its principal constituent is asbestine, a mineral which is plentiful
in certain localities in the State of New York, U.S.A. This asbestine,
which is a silicate of magnesium, is mixed with powdered flint and
caustic potash, and is then mingled with sufficient water-glass
(silicate of soda) to make it into an adhesive plaster. In this
condition it is prepared for transport, and is mixed with sand before
use. This plaster is not only fireproof, but it adheres with wonderful
tenacity to perfectly smooth surfaces. It does not, therefore, require
a roughened surface before attachment, such as a wall composed of
nailed laths, as is the usual case. A common mode of applying it is
to line a room with sheet-iron, protected from rust by a coating of
asphaltum, and to spread upon this metal basis a thickness of the new
plaster. Besides being unaffected by heat, it will not crack if water
is thrown upon it when in a heated state.

Mr Hannay, of Glasgow, has invented a new form of lamp which will prove
very useful for various industrial purposes, where the more intense
rays of the electric arc are not readily available. The lamp consists
of a cylindrical vessel containing about thirty gallons of any heavy
hydrocarbon oil, such as creosote. At one side of this vessel is an
entry-pipe for air, which must be under pressure of about fifteen
pounds on the square inch. The air thus admitted forces the oil up a
vertical pipe which springs from the bottom of the vessel, and ends
in a burner which extends for some feet outside the oil receptacle.
Another pipe surrounds the oil-tube, and through this, part of the air
is carried, so that at the point where both tubes terminate, there
rushes forth a blast of mingled air and creosote in fine particles.
This is turned into a flame of great brightness when a match is applied
to it, a flame, too, which is unaffected by wind or rain. The quantity
of oil given above will supply a light for about twenty hours, which
will be effective at two hundred yards from the lamp. This contrivance
has already been used with success at the Forth Bridge works. It is now
being introduced for various purposes by Mr James Sinclair, 64 Queen
Victoria Street, London.

A plan for rendering paper so tough that it can be used for various
purposes for which formerly it was considered there was ‘nothing like
leather,’ has recently been published. The process is of continental
origin. The paper pulp during manufacture is mixed with chloride of
zinc in solution, and the more concentrated this solution is, the
tougher is the finished paper. It is said that the new material has
been successfully used in boxmaking, combmaking, and has actually
taken the place of leather in bootmaking. This last application of
the material is perhaps not quite so much of a novelty as it seems to
be; for in the cheaper kinds of boots and shoes, the soles, instead
of being of solid leather, are often made of a compound of which
brown-paper pulp seems to be the chief constituent. The adulteration
is not apparent to the wearer until wet weather makes it very evident
indeed.

In the building operations of man he uses hair to bind the particles of
lime together in forming a plaster wall. In the work of nature, much
the same end is achieved by binding loose particles of soil together
with the rootlets of various plants. The continually slipping particles
of a newly made embankment have to be rendered secure by this means;
but such grasses as have hitherto been used for the purpose need
several months for their development. M. Cambier, of the French railway
service, has recently pointed out that the double poppy is a valuable
plant for this purpose. Its germination is rapid, and in a week or two
its rootlets are sufficiently strong to give some support to the soil.
But at the end of three or four months, the roots attain a length of
twelve inches, and form a far stronger network to hold the soil in
place than any grass known. The plant is an annual, but it sows itself
after the first year.

We are glad to notice that a ‘Plumage League’ is being established for
the purpose of discountenancing the inhuman fashion now in vogue of
introducing the dead bodies of birds as ornaments on ladies’ bonnets,
hats, and dresses. Lady Mount-Temple, in advocating the establishment
of this League, the members of which will bind themselves to discourage
in every way the use of plumage in dress, writes thus: ‘A milliner
told me she had put twelve birds on one (dress). Another told us of
a ball-dress covered with canaries.’ We should rejoice to see the
Princess of Wales or some other member of the Royal Family setting her
veto upon the cruel practice of adorning female dress with the bodies
of our feathered songsters.

The Crematorium at Woking Cemetery has just been used for the third
time under the auspices of the Cremation Society. In France, the
Prefecture of the Seine is about to spend three thousand pounds
on the erection of a similar building in the well-known cemetery,
Père-la-Chaise. Sanitary reformers will rejoice that cremation is
making some progress in both countries, although that progress is slow.

The fastest time ever made by a steam-vessel has recently been
made by the Falke torpedo boat, built by Messrs Yarrow for the
Austrian government. The mean speed of her six runs over the
measured mile—during which time she was fully fitted and in fighting
trim—reached the wonderful figure of 22.263 knots per hour. She then
ran, according to contract with the Austrian government, for an hour
at full speed, when she covered just twenty-two and a quarter miles.
It is said that the vessel answered her helm well throughout these
trials, and that there was very little vibration from the engines even
when going at the highest speed. Messrs Yarrow are building twenty-four
torpedo boats for the British government, besides several others for
foreign customers.

Every poison is supposed to have its antidote, and the establishment of
the torpedo system has necessitated the introduction of an antidote in
the shape of torpedo catchers. The first vessel of this type which has
been constructed has lately been tried at Portsmouth with satisfactory
results, not only with regard to speed, but also with regard to
manœuvring power. The vessel was fitted with an inner and an outer
rudder on the system of Mr J. S. White, and known as the ‘turn-about’
method. This vessel is built of thin steel; it possesses a conning
tower on deck, from which it is steered, and it is one hundred and
fifty feet in length.

Some interesting gunnery experiments have just been concluded at
Portland Bill. Their object was to test the value of the Moncrieff or
‘disappearing’ principle of mounting guns for coast-defence, a system
which, like most others, has its detractors as well as its advocates.
At Portland, a dummy gun only was used, so that the ship firing upon
it from the sea had not the disadvantage of attacking a foe who could
hit back. The gun was placed in a pit, and was so arranged that it
remained hidden for two and a half minutes; then it appeared for half
a minute, delivered its imaginary fire—which was represented by a puff
of gunpowder to aid the foe in sighting it—and again disappeared. The
ship _Hercules_ failed to make any impression upon the gun at all,
although it was only made of wood and canvas. We may therefore conclude
that the Moncrieff or ‘disappearing’ system of mounting guns is the
most effectual which has ever been brought forward, and we may look for
its great extension in our coast-defences.

Professor Germain Sée, of Paris, during a course of lectures on
dietetics, has recently pointed out the importance of water in
connection with food, that fluid being the only one which can dissolve
the salts taken with the food into the body, and eliminate them from
the system. He also remarked that it was quite impossible for man,
an omnivorous being, to exist entirely on vegetable foods. So-called
vegetarians are forced to make up for the want of solid meat by
consuming eggs, milk, and butter. A healthy man must for his food draw
upon the elements furnished by the three kingdoms of nature.

A new kind of turning-lathe, which seems really to possess the merit
of novelty, is described by the _Scientific American_. It is intended
for turning such articles as balusters for staircases, when such
articles are required in quantities, and when they are wanted to be
square or octagonal, instead of round. The lathe consists of a kind of
skeleton cylinder, upon the surface of which the square rods which are
ultimately to form balusters are readily clamped by levers working at
each end. An ordinary T-rest supports the tool in cutting the required
ornamentation on the rods as the lathe revolves. When one side of the
rods has thus been treated, they are unclamped, turned over, and once
more fixed in place. In this way the four sides of the square rods are
operated upon one after the other. This lathe, which has been patented,
will finish with clean, sharp edges about fifty balusters or other
pieces of wood an hour.

The _Lancet_ alludes to an alleged discovery which has been made in
Columbia, which, if it should be confirmed, will be a valuable aid in
surgery. It is reported that a certain shrub which is called ‘aliza’
exudes a juice which has the property of stopping hemorrhage, so that
if a surgeon’s operating knife were only smeared with this juice, his
work could be done with little or no loss of blood.

A meteorological station twenty thousand feet above the sea-level
is being established by the Mexican government among their highest
mountains. Those who remember the hardships which were encountered by
Mr Wragge in his constant visits to the instruments on Ben Nevis before
the observatory building was established there, will be prepared to
understand the difficulties of dealing with a station at so much higher
an altitude. For this reason, the instruments are being constructed to
work automatically, to be self-recording, and, as far as possible, to
require no attention for twelve months, if need be.

The Chinese alphabet consists in its integrity of about forty
thousand pictorial symbols, and it is this alphabet which with some
modifications has been used from time immemorial by their clever and
more advanced neighbours in Japan. But the adoption of Western ways
which has since 1868 been so rapid among the Japanese, has made them
discontented with a system so elaborate and bewildering. They have
therefore formed a Society called the Roman Alphabet Association,
by which they seek to replace the cumbrous Chinese alphabet by the
twenty-two letters of the Roman alphabet which are found sufficient
to express all the sounds found in the Japanese language. The change
is a necessary one, and marks a new and important phase of Japanese
progress. It is somewhat akin to the movement which has for some time
been in progress in Germany, by which Roman characters are being
substituted for the old Gothic ones.

At a late meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society, it was announced
that M. M. Henry had photographed part of the Milky-way. The exposure
required was an hour, but the star discs were perfectly round and
sharp. This wonderful result shows that the driving clock for keeping
the telescope in motion, so as to counteract the motion of the earth,
must have been of the most perfect kind.

From Germany, we learn that in that country during the last ten years
the leather manufacture has shown a most extraordinary development.
Large factories have been established, which produce goods of the
highest quality, and compare favourably with those of foreign make. No
expenses have been spared to import the best machines; the sons of the
most prominent manufacturers are sent to America, England, and France,
to learn the manufacture of the leather trade in all its details. The
largest firms study principally the American methods of manufacturing,
and the consequence is that many German factories are managed after the
American system. German manufacturers are anxious to raise their goods
to the highest perfection, and look forward to the time when German
machine-made ladies’ boots will be found in the West End of London.

We learn from a South African newspaper that Natal is at last going
to cultivate tea in earnest. The aroma of the samples produced is
described as excellent; it has a taste by no means unpleasant, which is
not characteristic of China teas, but it is one which would be readily
acquired and appreciated. It is anticipated that fifty thousand pounds
will be grown this season.

A large German lithographic firm doing a considerable trade in England,
it is said has entirely left off printing from stone, and uses zinc
plates only. The saving is said to be very considerable, and may
partly explain how they are able to print more cheaply than our own
lithographers. A Chicago trade journal estimates that if a work is
to be printed in ten colours, requiring five double-sized stones of
twenty-eight by forty-two inches, the cost of each stone would be about
twelve pounds, while a first-class zinc plate costs eight shillings.

Mr H. T. Crewe, 17 Sunning Hill Road, Lewisham, London, S.E., has
recently patented a system by which conservatories, the various
structures of the horticulturist, and other buildings, can be fitted
with glass roofs and walls without the use of putty. The system is an
extremely simple one. Panes of glass are laid upon parallel rafters or
beams. They are not placed flatly one beside the other, but the upper
panes are made to slightly overlap the lower panes. They are fixed
together by means of little metal clips, which receive screws, that
afterwards pass through holes in the panes and into the rafters or
beams. Among the advantages claimed for the new system of glazing are,
that it causes the roof to remain perfectly rain-proof, and that the
greatest facility and despatch are attained in detaching and replacing
panes. Condensation is carried away from the inside of the glass by the
grooves which are cut in the rafters or beams.



OCCASIONAL NOTES.


SAFETY IN RAILWAY TRAVELLING.

Mr Edward Harford, general secretary to the Amalgamated Society of
Railway Servants, replying to a request forwarded by peers, members of
the House of Commons, and others for information as to the causes of
railway accidents, and the means which, in the opinion of the Society,
ought to be adopted for the safety of the general public and of railway
servants, has issued a list of twenty-three proposals which set forth
the necessary requirements. The principal are the following:

‘All railways ought to be worked on the absolute block-system, strictly
carried out, so that no two trains shall ever be in one section at the
same time.

The blocks and interlocking systems should be electrically combined and
controlled, so that the safety of a block-section shall be under the
control of two signalmen.

Junction block-working should be adopted at all junctions, so that no
two trains which can foul each other at the points and crossings shall
ever be allowed to approach a junction at one and the same time. All
sidings and goods-lines should be provided with properly interlocked
safety-points.

One code of block-system regulations and one pattern of signals should
be adopted throughout the kingdom. A red light should be the only
danger-signal. The practice of using purple or other lights is highly
dangerous.

Facing-points ought to be avoided as far as possible. All
facing-points, and points leading to main-lines, ought to be provided
with a locking-bar and bolts, and properly interlocked with the signals
and with the electric apparatus.

All passenger-trains ought to be provided with an efficient automatic
continuous brake, having brake-blocks upon the wheels of the engine,
tender, and every vehicle throughout the train, and fulfilling the
five conditions laid down by the Board of Trade, August 30, 1877, and
highly approved by the Society. To avoid the present dangerous practice
of brake-power being cut off and rendered useless by the introduction
of an unfitted vehicle, it ought to be the law that the Company should
not be allowed to send vehicles over the line of another Company unless
each vehicle is provided with the same form of continuous brake as that
used by such foreign Company.

All goods-engines should be fitted with brakes upon their wheels,
and those required occasionally for passenger-traffic should have
continuous brakes.

All passenger-trains should be fitted with efficient means of
communication with the driver and guards. Passengers should be able to
reach it without putting their hands outside the window. The present
cord-system is unreliable, and the plan of having no communication on
trains which stop every twenty miles is very risky to the public.

All passenger-platforms should be raised to the standard height, and
all carriages fitted with a high continuous footboard, to prevent
persons falling between platforms and trains.

The crank or driving-axles of locomotive engines should be taken out
after they have run a certain mileage. What the mileage limit should be
ought to be at once decided by the Companies and the Board of Trade.

Overwork on railways is highly dangerous, and ought to be abolished.’


HOW CHILDREN GROW.

During the International Medical Conference held in Copenhagen in the
summer of 1884, a paper read by the Rev. Mailing Hansen, Principal
of the Danish Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, was listened to
with marked attention and interest. It gave the results of the daily
weighing and measurements of height which he had carried on for nearly
three years on the one hundred and thirty pupils—seventy-two boys and
fifty-eight girls—of the Institution, and demonstrated facts as to
the development of the human body during the period of childhood that
perfectly startled and astonished the assembled medical authorities,
opening an entirely new field for investigation and reflection. Since
then, Mr Hansen has continued his observations; and though he has yet a
tremendous amount of work before him, he believes himself able to state
now the outlines of the results he has obtained.

The children are weighed four times daily in batches of twenty—in the
morning, before dinner, after dinner, and at bedtime, and each child is
measured once a day. The common impression is, no doubt, that increase
in bulk and height of the human body during the years of growth
progresses evenly all through the year. This is not so. Three distinct
periods are marked out, and within them some thirty lesser waverings
have been observed. As for bulk, the maximum period extends from August
until December; the period of equipoise lasts from December until about
the middle of April; and then follows the minimum period until August.
The lasting increase of bulk or weight is all accumulated during the
first stage; the period of equipoise adds to the body about a fourth of
that increase, but this gain is almost entirely spent or lost again in
the last period.

The increase in height of the children shows the same division into
periods, only in a different order. The maximum period of growth in
height corresponds to the minimum period of increase in bulk, and _vice
versâ_. In September and October a child grows only a fifth of what it
did in June and July. In other words, during a part of the year—autumn
and beginning of winter—the child accumulates bulk, but the height is
stationary. In the early summer the bulk remains nearly unchanged, but
the vital force and the nourishment are expended to the benefit of
height. While the body works for bulk there is rest for the growth,
and when the period of growth comes, the working for bulk is suspended.
The human body has, consequently, the same distinctly marked periods of
development as plants.


A CHESS-CLOCK.

An ingenious clock has recently been patented by Messrs Frisch and
Schierwater, 29 Church Street, Liverpool. It not only shows the
ordinary time, but registers on separate dials—marked respectively
‘black’ and ‘white’—the period occupied by the players in a game of
chess. It also indicates the number of moves in a game and whose turn
it is to play. Another feature is the index upon the dial. This can
be set for any time agreed upon—from one to fifteen minutes—during
which a move must be made. The expiration of that time is shown by
an indicator and by the ringing of a bell. By pressing a knob at the
top of the clock, it is possible to temporarily check the progress of
the mechanism. This would of course become necessary upon the players
requiring a rest, or upon any other interruption taking place. The
invention is, we believe, the first clock that has been constructed
with a view to recording the movements in chess-playing. It may of
course be utilised for other purposes. Being a travelling clock, it
may be employed for indicating the times of different countries. The
index and call-bell may be used, too, for public meetings, allowing
so much time for each speaker; for a telephone Company, regulating an
allowance of time; or for the testing of any machinery. The movement
can be fitted to any existing clock. As a result of practical trial,
the ‘Schierwater’s’ Patent Chess-Clock has been commended by many
well-known chess-players.


NOVEL PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPERIMENTS.

The sinking of the caissons of the Forth Bridge has afforded
opportunity for testing whether it was possible to obtain photographs
below water in compressed air by the aid of electric light. To the
novel conditions under which these attempts—the first, we believe, in
this country—were made, their chief interest is due, rather than to any
particular success hitherto achieved. We have recently described the
method of founding by compressed air, and depicted the interior of a
caisson, so that our readers are conversant with the surroundings under
which the attempts were made.

A trial was made on shore by electric light at night to determine the
length of exposure necessary for the plates; but subsequent experience
proved the data thus obtained to be of little value in the air-chamber.
Various trials were then made in the air-chamber with different classes
of plates and gradually increasing lighting-power; eventually, five
arc-lamps—each equivalent to twelve hundred candles—and plates of
exceptional rapidity, were employed; and these, with an exposure of two
minutes, gave the best results obtained.

The roof and sides of the air-chamber were whitewashed, to render them
conspicuous and to diffuse the light. The formation of moisture on the
lens threatened at first to give trouble; but after a little time
the glass became warmed, and the difficulty ceased. The haze in the
air-chamber, which any sudden expansion of the air—such as that due to
its escape when the air-locks were opened—greatly intensified, proved
a formidable obstacle, and must always render the highest results
unattainable. The only course was to seize the most favourable moment
when the haze was at its minimum. White objects and light clothing gave
the best results; whilst the eyes of a group—presumably from their
glistening properties—are remarkable for definition and sharpness.

So far as could be ascertained, no injury resulted to the dry plates
either from air-pressure or moisture.



AN OLD ‘CHUBB.’


    Last night I found an old forgotten key
      Deep in an unused drawer; and quick tears fell
    As in my hand I took it tenderly—
      For ah! I knew the story it would tell

    Of a familiar door, a ‘vanished hand,’
      A cheery ‘click’ by eager children heard—
    ‘Papa is home!’—Ah, little loyal band!
      How oft your hearts grew sick with hope deferred

    In the time after! for ‘Papa’ went forth
      And came not back. Then dawned some darksome days:
    The cottage home was sold; and we came north
      To a gray city street, to flowerless ways.

    On the bright steel, great spots of rust had grown—
      ‘It would not turn so easily as then’
    (I thought), ‘and “Rosebank” is no more my own—
      I have no claim to enter it again.

    ‘Maybe its door has now a different lock—
      And oh, if even I could venture there,
    What should I find? my misery to mock—
      Ghosts of the dead—strangers’ careless stare.’

    I took the key and laid it out of sight:
      ‘Since thou canst no more ope the door for me
    Of that dear home, thou needst not see the light,
      For only doors of tears are oped by thee.’

            KATE.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Conductor of CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL begs to direct the attention of
CONTRIBUTORS to the following notice:

_1st._ All communications should be addressed to the ‘Editor, 339
    High Street, Edinburgh.’

_2d._ For its return in case of ineligibility, postage-stamps
    should accompany every manuscript.

_3d._ To secure their safe return if ineligible, ALL MANUSCRIPTS,
    whether accompanied by a letter of advice or otherwise, _should
    have the writer’s Name and Address written upon them_ IN FULL.

_4th._ Offerings of Verse should invariably be accompanied by a
    stamped and directed envelope.

_If the above rules are complied with, the Editor will do his best to
insure the safe return of ineligible papers._

       *       *       *       *       *

Printed and Published by W. & R. CHAMBERS, 47 Paternoster Row, LONDON,
and 339 High Street, EDINBURGH.

       *       *       *       *       *

_All Rights Reserved._




*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 109, Vol. III, January 30, 1886" ***

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