Title: Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 111, Vol. III, February 13, 1886
Author: Various
Language: English
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LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART, FIFTH SERIES, NO. 111, VOL. III, FEBRUARY
13, 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. 111.—VOL. III.      SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1886.      PRICE 1½_d._]



LIFE’S GOLDEN AGE.


All the world has shrunk since the Golden Age of our childhood. Time
was longer, and people were taller then. A wet day was the depth of
despair and the end of all things; the hours also were longer, and a
year from January to December lapsed slowly by, like the prehistoric
ages. The future seemed to be bringing a measureless succession of such
years until the gigantic height of grown-up people would be reached;
but life was so long, it was hardly worth while to think about the
mystery of growing to their height at last. Our old home has shrunk
since those days; the rooms are smaller and darker; the streets, once
familiar, would be narrower if we could see them now; the garden has
shrunk too; the trees have been growing down; and the church spire is
stumpy, as if Time had pushed its top lower, like a shutting telescope.
Beyond the home circle who were part of our existence, the grown-up
people of the Golden Age were a mysterious race. They cared no more
for games or playthings; though we refused to believe that any length
of years would make us cease to care for hide-and-seek among the
gorse and the billows of fern, and for the mustering of tin armies or
the acquisition of new toys. Not only were the grown-up people in a
dried-up state of indifference to games and plays, but they actually
laughed at things that were not in the least funny. They never cried;
they never ran; they did not ask for pudding twice, though they might
have it; they had learned all possible lessons long ago, and had
managed to remember them for the rest of their lives, and they knew all
about everything always.

But oh, the green world of those days! Have the green lanes since
wound on through golden light and moving leaf-shadows? Have the
cornfields been so broad beyond the hedges, such a sea of warm and
breeze-swept yellow ripeness, flecked all along near the hedge-path
with sparkling blue, and with blazing red poppies? Have the skies
been so far away since, where the lark sang out of sight, and where,
with our head on the grass, we made upward voyages among the towering
white clouds in the clearness of breezy summer days? Have the summers
burned the dusty roads so white? And has the milk been so sweet within
sight of the sheds at a doorway under thatched eaves? Is the noontide
stillness of the hot country, the siesta of the birds, as deep as it
was then? Is the scent of the honeysuckle as strong, and the smell
of the hay? Are there bright beetles in the hayfield yet, and are
butterflies becoming extinct, compared with their old numbers? Is it
possible to have hay-battles, now that there seem to be so many painful
stubble-fields to traverse in this world of ours? Who will give us
back the heart-thrill of our first sight of the mountains? Who will
remind us of the actual refreshment of wading in the shallow sunny
brook, or swinging over it from ropes tied to white-blossomed trees?
Who will send us another song like our first hearing of the noise
of the great unresting sea, or another sight like the first vision
of its foam-fringed, sky-bounded, sun-dazzled waters? When the moon
shone on the water then, one longed to look all night; when the winter
stars were out, there was no pageant like the heaven of heavens. In
that Golden Age the world might have been created and called good but
yesterday, so new a world it was. We saw

      The earth and every common sight
      Apparelled in celestial light,
    The glory and the freshness of a dream.

But the glory and the freshness were in ourselves. Wordsworth calls
it the hour ‘of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower.’ Not
all the splendour has departed; the sun of those days and the light of
our first love are still lingering in the sunlight of to-day. George
Eliot tells us how a forest of young golden-brown oak branches with the
light gleaming through, and with ground-ivy and blue speedwell and
white star-flowers below, is more beautiful to the heart than all the
grandeur of tropical forests, because it holds ‘the subtle inextricable
associations the fleeting hours of our childhood had left behind them.
Our delight in the sunshine or the deep-bladed grass might be no more
than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the
sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and
transform our perception into love.’

A yearning for that Golden Age of life has come in earnest moments to
half the world; the poets have sighed for it; and one of the sweetest
songs that tell of saddest thought became a favourite long ago because
it told how, in gathering shells on the beach,

    A dream came o’er me like a spell—
      I thought I was again a child.

How, why is childhood called the happiest time of life? And if it be
life’s Golden Age, why cannot we keep the gold?

The reasons why that period is envied seem to be these: First, and
most subtly underlying all envy of childhood, is the knowledge that
it is the time when we have our whole life before us. Often it is not
the return of the state itself that is desired, but its anticipation
of a life which we feel to be swift and short, and of a past which is
irrevocable. Not to be children again, but to have our chance again,
is the wish underlying most of the yearning. Apart from this, there
are many other reasons. We may place as the second, the freedom of
childhood from responsibility and care; and next, its freshness and
its habitual joy; and last, but very far from least, the atmosphere of
loving service, kindness, and tenderness which surrounds that helpless
period. Of course, we are speaking of childhood under favourable
circumstances; no one, except, perhaps, a dying man, would envy the
beginning of life in extreme poverty or in loveless hardship.

Other reasons there are for looking back tenderly to that Golden Age:
it was the time when we possessed unconsciously all the spiritual
beauty that we recognise now as the inner charm of little children.
They walk in the paradise of an unfallen world; their simplicity is
their greatest attraction; their faith and trust in those that care for
and provide for them is absolutely perfect; without any words, they
know that the home-love will last; without taking thought, they expect
to-morrow to be cared for like to-day. Lastly, they love much, and from
the first love they receive, their life takes vigour and colour. They
are like young plants straining to the light, and enriched according to
their share of warmth and sunshine.

But there is to the Golden Age another side. It is not perfection;
it is not entirely happy. How imperfect it is, all of us know, and
the flaws on the surface are not the saddest; in fact, without some
of these, we should hardly recognise our human fellow-mortals, or we
should doubt that we knew them well. A great educator in his day was
wont to say that he dreaded receiving a boy whom the parents presented
with pride as faultless; he dreaded that the faults were within, ready
to break out as childhood disappeared. But all lovers of children will
acknowledge the manifold imperfection that is a part of their being;
and perhaps we should not love them so well if it was not craving our
sympathetic care. Again, this Golden Age is not an entirely happy time.
It is true that the outbursts of sobbing are forgotten sooner than we
can forget our sorrows; but the sobs were real while they lasted. As
George Eliot says, this anguish appears very trivial to weather-worn
mortals, who have to think about Christmas bills, dead loves, and
broken friendships; but it may be not less bitter, perhaps it is
even more bitter, than later troubles. ‘We can no longer recall the
poignancy of that moment and weep over it, as we do over the remembered
sorrows of five or ten years ago. Surely, if we could recall that
early bitterness and the dim guesses, the strangely perspectiveless
conception of life that gave the bitterness its intensity, we should
not pooh-pooh the griefs of children.’

So we have decided that the Golden Age is not perfect—anything but it!
And it is far from being entirely happy. There is another consideration
to be taken into account—what happiness we possessed in childhood we
did not understand or value. We had that ‘strangely perspectiveless
view of life’ which prevented us from enjoying our happiness as we
enjoy it now, when we know its value better, through experience and
through a wider view of the world. The want of a perspective to their
world gives to children’s grief its intensity; they cannot look beyond;
they cannot understand its passing away. But it also gives to joys
their shallowness; and there are manifold meanings in the saying,
that unless we have suffered we cannot rejoice. Therefore, in sighing
for life’s Golden Age again, the sigh means a wish, not for childhood
as childhood is, but for childhood with the added consciousness and
experience of after-years. To have freedom from care, and to know what
a burden care can be; to have freshness, and to know what _ennui_
means; to have habitual joyousness, after learning how anxiety can wear
the spirit out of life; to have love and wisdom watching over one,
as if one was what a child is to a mother’s heart, ‘the unconscious
centre and poise of the universe;’ and at the same time to know
the worth of such wisdom and love; to have our life all before us,
conscious of what life is and how short are the years; to find again
the Eden garden, innocent of evil, after having seen how evil fills
the world with misery; to be simple, after having found out the charm
and the wisdom of simplicity; to have—in a word—not childhood as it
is, but as it would be, if we with our present knowledge could begin
again:—this is what is wished for. This, too, is the secret of the
sympathetic touch in Gray’s well-known welcome of the breeze from the
school of his boyhood, that breeze that came from the happy hills, the
fields beloved in vain:

    I feel the gales that from ye blow
    A momentary bliss bestow,
    As waving fresh their gladsome wing,
      My weary soul they seem to soothe,
      And, redolent of joy and youth,
    To breathe a second spring.

That second spring would be boyhood with manhood’s knowledge—an
impossible existence, a Golden Age that never was. It was because of
the grim troop of passions and diseases waiting ‘in the vale below,’
that Gray envied the boyhood that had not yet advanced to meet the
strife and miseries of the world. We call that Golden Age ‘the happiest
time,’ merely by contrast; we forget its small capacity for happiness,
its shallow understanding of the worth of those good things that we
envy; and we apostrophise it in poetry and prose, because we are
condemning the after-time as unhappy, without remembering our increased
capacity for happiness.

But if it be impossible to carry back to a new start in life the
experience life has given us, while we are thinking with a sad
fascination of that Golden Age, and feeling the ‘momentary bliss’
of recollection, we shall not find it impossible to reverse our
aspirations, and to combine with later life some part, and perhaps the
best part, of our young life’s treasures. We yearn for those two things
together—the happiness of the beginning, and the light upon it from the
experience of the end. We cannot go back; but why should we not gather
again and bring forward with us all that can be brought from the Golden
Age? Then, to some extent, our aspirations will be satisfied.

Out of that Golden Age all the best things can be picked up and carried
along with us still. Surely this is some comfort to us wayfarers who
must ‘move on!’ We cannot have life over again; but it can be made to
lengthen in worth by intensity of purpose, and of working, of loving.
These, and not time, are the true measure of life. We envy freedom from
responsibility; the child has his tasks as we have ours; his lesson may
be as hard as our duty, and harder; he is happily resigned to tasks
in obedience to the will of others; our buckling down to duty will
bring us our playtime too. Freshness comes next. Wordsworth, after
mourning that the glory and the dream were gone, acknowledged that he
could receive from the meanest flower thoughts too deep for tears; so
we strongly suspect that the glory and the dream were remaining, and
that he saw till the last the earth ‘apparelled in celestial light.’
The love of the open-air world of beauty is a great key to lifelong
freshness of soul. Another key to freshness is the custom of being
easily pleased. The smallest gift pleases a child; in later life, we
look more at the love of the giver than at the gift; but why should
not the manifold growth of small kindnesses refresh us? And how shall
we get habitual joy? It is a precious treasure; the home is rich where
there is one member of the household brimful of sunshine. A merry word
at home is magic for brightening life; and it is some encouragement to
know that of all social virtues, the habit of joyousness is the one
that grows fastest by patient effort. It fosters another childlike
treasure—the sense of delight in a home atmosphere of love. Let us not
fear to express our tenderness in word and deed for those who share
life’s burdens with us, and the glow of the Golden Age will be round
the hearth again. As for simplicity, it is already the lifelong dower
of many of the most gifted minds; it is almost a characteristic of the
intellectual men of noblest life. Why should we use long words when
short ones are kinder; why go roundabout ways when we only need openly
do our best? Wonderful as it may seem, simplicity is the most imitable
part of childhood. The absence of self-consciousness is the grand key
to it. If we cease thinking about the effect produced upon others, who
are supposed to have concentrated their attention upon our puny selves,
we shall escape much heart-burning, and gradually begin to brighten our
path with something of childhood’s brightness. As for faith and trust,
if they look higher than the roof of home, why should they not be as
the child’s huge trust? We should have fewer careworn looks, and the
habit of joy would be easier.

There is another quality that must crown this development of the
childlike character—it is sympathy—that wide and warm sympathy which
knows no growing old, and which is the fruition of our childhood’s
eager freshness. Best of all, in picking up those old treasures that we
carelessly dropped by the way when the Golden Age was ending, we may
yet be, all unconsciously, very near the paradise-garden where once we
walked, not knowing our good-fortune, and but half able to enjoy it.



IN ALL SHADES.


CHAPTER VIII.

For a few minutes, they stood looking blankly at one another in mute
astonishment, turning over and comparing the two telegrams together
with undecided minds; then at last Nora broke the silence. ‘I tell you
what it is,’ she said, with an air of profound wisdom; ‘they must have
got an epidemic of yellow fever over in Trinidad—they’re always having
it, you know, and nobody minds it, unless of course they die of it, and
even then I daresay they don’t think much about it. But papa and Mr
Hawthorn must be afraid that if we come out now, fresh from England, we
may all of us get it.’

Edward looked once more at the telegrams very dubiously. ‘I don’t think
that’ll do, Miss Dupuy,’ he said, after re-reading them with a legal
scrutiny. ‘You see, your father says: “On no account go on board the
_Severn_.” Evidently, it’s this particular ship he has an objection to;
and perhaps my father’s objection may be exactly the same. It’s very
singular—very mysterious!’

‘Do you think,’ Marian suggested, ‘there can be anything wrong with the
vessel or the machinery? You know, they _do_ say, Edward, that some
ship-owners send ships to sea that aren’t at all safe or seaworthy. I
read such a dreadful article about it a little while ago in one of the
papers. Perhaps they think the _Severn_ may go to the bottom.’

‘Or else that there’s dynamite on board,’ Nora put in; ‘or a clockwork
thing like the one somebody was going to blow up that steamer with at
Hamburg, once, you remember! Oh, my dear, the bare idea of it makes me
quite shudder! Fancy being blown out of your berth, at dead of night,
into the nasty cold stormy water, and having a shark bite you in two
across the waist before you were really well awake, and had begun
properly to realise the situation!’

‘Not very likely, either of them,’ Edward said. ‘This is a new ship,
one of the very best on the line, and perfectly safe, except of course
in a hurricane, when anything on earth is liable to go down; so that
can’t possibly be Mr Dupuy’s objection to the _Severn_.—And as to
the clockwork, you know, Nora, the people who put those things on
board steamers, if there are any, don’t telegraph out to give warning
beforehand to the friends of passengers on the other side of the
Atlantic. No; for my part, I can’t at all understand it. It’s a perfect
mystery to me, and I give it up entirely.’

‘Well, what do you mean to do, dear?’ Marian asked anxiously. ‘Go back
at once, or go on in spite of it?’

‘I don’t think there’s any choice left us now, darling. The ship’s
fairly under weigh, you see; and nothing on earth would induce them to
stop her, once she’s started, till we get to Trinidad, or at least to
St Thomas.’

‘You don’t mean to say, Mr Hawthorn,’ Nora cried piteously, ‘they’ll
carry us on now to the end of the journey, whether we want to stop or
whether we don’t?’

‘Yes, I do, Miss Dupuy. They will, most certainly. I suspect they’ve
got no voice themselves in the matter. A mail-steamer is under contract
to sail from a given port on a given day, and not to stop for anything
on earth, except fire or stress of weather, till she lands the mails
safely on the other side, according to agreement.’

‘Well, that’s a blessing anyhow!’ Nora said resignedly; ‘because, if
so, it saves us the trouble of thinking anything more about the matter;
and papa can’t be angry with me for having sailed, if the captain
refuses to send us back, now we’ve once fairly started. Indeed, for my
part, I’m very glad of it, to tell you the truth, because it would have
been such a horrid nuisance to have to go on shore again and unpack all
one’s things just for a fortnight, after all the fuss and hurry we’ve
had already about getting them finished. What a pity the bothering old
telegrams came at all to keep us in suspense the whole way over!’

‘But suppose there _is_ some dynamite on board,’ Marian suggested
timidly. ‘Don’t you think, Edward, you’d better go and ask the captain?’

‘I’ll go and ask the captain, by all means, if that’s any relief to
you,’ Edward answered; ‘but I don’t think it likely he can throw any
particular light of his own upon the reason of the telegrams.’

The captain, being shortly found on the bridge, came down at his
leisure and inspected the messages; hummed and hawed a little
dubiously; smiled to himself with much good-humour; said it was a
confoundedly odd coincidence; and looked somehow as though he saw the
meaning of the two telegrams at once, but wasn’t anxious to impart
his knowledge to any inquiring third party. ‘Yellow fever!’ he said,
shrugging his shoulders sailor-wise, when Edward mentioned Nora’s first
suggestion. ‘No, no; don’t you believe it. ’Tain’t yellow fever. Why,
nobody who lives in the West Indies ever thinks anything of that, bless
you. Besides, _you_ wouldn’t get it; don’t you trouble your head about
it. You ain’t the sort or the build to get it. Men of your temperament
never do ketch yellow fever—it don’t affect ’em. No, no; it ain’t that,
you take my word for it.’

Marian gently hinted at unseaworthiness; but at this the good captain
laughed quite unceremoniously. ‘Go down!’ he cried—‘go down, indeed!
I’d like to see the hurricane that’d send the _Severn_ spinning to the
bottom. No, no; we may get hurricanes, of course—though this isn’t
the month for them. The rhyme says: “June—too soon; July—stand by;
Au-gust—you must; September—remember; October—all over.” Still, in
the course of nature we’re likely enough to have some ugly weather—a
capful of wind or so, I mean—nothing to speak of, for a ship of her
tonnage. But I’ll bet you a bottle of champagne the hurricane’s not
alive that’ll ever send the _Severn_ to the bottom, and I’ll pay it
you (if I lose) at the first port the lifeboat puts into after the
accident.—Dynamite! clockwork! that’s all gammon, my dear ma’am, that
is! The ship’s as good a ship as ever sailed the Bay o’ Biscay, and
there’s nothing aboard her more explosive than the bottle of champagne
I hope you’ll drink this evening for dinner.’

‘Then we can’t be put out?’ Nora asked, with her most beseeching smile.

‘My dear lady, not if I knew you were the Queen of England. Once we’re
off, we’re off in earnest, and nothing on earth can ever stop us till
we get safely across to St Thomas—the hand of God, the perils of the
sea, and the Queen’s enemies alone excepted,’ the captain added,
quoting with a smile the stereotyped formula of the bills of lading.

‘What do you think the telegram means, then?’ Nora asked again, a
little relieved by this confident assurance.

The captain once more hummed and hawed, and bit his nails, and looked
very awkward. ‘Well,’ he said slowly, after a minute’s internal debate,
‘perhaps—perhaps the niggers over yonder may be getting troublesome,
you know; and your family may think it an inopportune time for you
or Mr and Mrs Hawthorn to visit the colony.—All right, Jones, I’m
coming in a minute.—You must excuse me, ladies. In sight of land,
a cap’n ought always to be at his post on the bridge. See you at
dinner.—Good-morning, good-morning.’

‘It seems to me, Edward,’ Marian said, as he retreated opportunely,
‘the captain knows a good deal more about it than he wants to tell us.
He was trying to hide something from us; I’m quite sure he was.—Aren’t
you, Nora? I do hope there’s nothing wrong with the steamer or the
machinery!’

‘I didn’t notice anything peculiar about him myself,’ Edward answered,
with a little hesitation. ‘However, it’s certainly very singular. But
as we’ve got to go on, we may as well go on as confidently as possible,
and think as little as we can about it. The mystery will all be cleared
up as soon as we get across to Trinidad.’

‘If we ever get there!’ Nora said, half-jesting, and half in earnest.

As she spoke, Dr Whitaker the mulatto passed close by, pacing up
and down the quarter-deck for exercise, to get his sea-legs; and as
he passed her, he turned his eyes once more mutely upon her with
that rapid, timid, quickly shifting glance, the exact opposite of a
stare, which yet speaks more certainly than anything else can do an
instinctive admiration. Nora’s face flushed again, at least as much
with annoyance as with self-consciousness. ‘That horrid man!’ she cried
petulantly, with a little angry dash of her hand, almost before he was
well out of earshot. ‘How on earth can he have the impertinence to go
and look at me in that way, I wonder!’

‘Oh, don’t, dear!’ Marian whispered, genuinely alarmed lest the mulatto
should overhear her. ‘You oughtn’t to speak like that, you know.
Of course one feels at once a sort of natural shrinking from black
people—one can’t help that, I know—it seems to be innate in one. But
one oughtn’t to let them see it themselves at any rate. Respect their
feelings, Nora, do, dear, for my sake, I beg of you.’

‘Oh, it’s all very well for you, Marian,’ Nora answered, quite aloud,
and strumming on the deck with her parasol; ‘but for my part, you know,
if there’s anything on earth that I can’t endure, it’s a brown man.’


CHAPTER IX.

All the way across to St Thomas, endless speculations as to the
meaning of the two mysterious telegrams afforded the three passengers
chiefly concerned an unusual fund of conversation and plot-interest
for an entire voyage. Still, after a while the subject palled a
little; and on the second evening out, in calm and beautiful summer
twilight weather, they were all sitting in their own folding-chairs on
the after-deck, positively free from any doubts or guesses upon the
important question, and solely engaged in making the acquaintance of
their fellow-passengers. By-and-by, as the shades began to close in,
there was a little sound of persuasive language—as when one asks a
young lady to sing—at the stern end of the swiftly moving vessel; and
then, in a few minutes, somebody in the dusk took a small violin out of
a wooden case and began to play a piece of Spohr’s. The ladies turned
around their chairs to face the musician, and listened carelessly as
he went through the preliminary scraping and twanging which seems to
be inseparable from the very nature of the violin as an instrument.
Presently, having tightened the pegs to his own perfect satisfaction,
the player began to draw his bow rapidly and surely across the strings
with the unerring confidence of a practised performer. In two minutes,
the hum of conversation had ceased on deck, and all the little world
of the _Severn_ was bending forward its head eagerly to catch the
liquid notes that floated with such delicious clearness upon the quiet
breathless evening air. Instinctively everybody recognised at once the
obvious fact that the man in the stern to whom they were all listening
was an accomplished and admirable violin-player.

Just at first, the thing that Marian and Nora noticed most in the
stranger’s playing was his extraordinary brilliancy and certainty
of execution. He was a perfect master of the _technique_ of his
instrument, that was evident. But after a few minutes more, they began
to perceive that he was something much more than merely that; he played
not only with consummate skill, but also with infinite grace, insight,
and tenderness. As they listened, they could feel the man outpouring
his whole soul in the exquisite modulations of his passionate music:
it was not any cold, well-drilled, mechanical accuracy of touch alone;
it was the loving hand of a born musician, wholly in harmony with
the master he interpreted, the work he realised, and the strings on
which he gave it vocal utterance. As he finished the piece, Edward
whispered in a hushed voice to Nora: ‘He plays beautifully.’ And
Nora answered, with a sudden burst of womanly enthusiasm: ‘More than
beautifully—exquisitely, divinely.’

‘You’ll sing us something, won’t you?’—‘Oh, do sing us something!’—‘Monsieur
will not refuse us!’—‘Ah, señor, it is such a great pleasure.’ So a
little babel of two or three languages urged at once upon the unknown
figure silhouetted dark at the stern of the steamer against the
paling sunset; and after a short pause, the unknown figure complied
graciously, bowing its acknowledgments to the surrounding company, and
burst out into a song in a glorious rich tenor voice, almost the finest
Nora and Marian had ever listened to.

‘English!’ Nora whispered in a soft tone, as the first few words fell
upon their ears distinctly, uttered without any mouthing in a plain
unmistakable native tone. ‘I’m quite surprised at it! I made up my
mind, from the intense sort of way he played the violin, that he must
be a Spaniard or an Italian, or at least a South American. English
people seldom play with all that depth and earnestness and fervour.’

‘Hush, hush!’ Marian answered under her breath. ‘Don’t talk while he’s
singing, please, Nora—it’s too delicious.’

They listened till the song was quite finished, and the last echo of
that magnificent voice had died away upon the surface of the still,
moonlit waters; and then Nora said eagerly to Edward: ‘Oh, do find
out who he is, Mr Hawthorn! Do go and get to know him! I want so to
be introduced to him! What a glorious singer! and what a splendid
violinist! I never in my life heard anything lovelier, even at the
opera.’

Edward smiled, and dived at once into the little crowd at the end of
the quarter-deck, in search of the unknown and nameless musician. Nora
waited impatiently in her seat to see who the mysterious personage
could be. In a few seconds, Edward came back again, bringing with him
the admired performer. ‘Miss Dupuy was so very anxious to make your
acquaintance,’ he said, as he drew the supposed stranger forward,
‘on the strength of your beautiful playing and singing.—You see,
Miss Dupuy, it’s a fellow-passenger to whom we’ve already introduced
ourselves—Dr Whitaker!’

Nora drew back almost imperceptibly at this sudden revelation. In
the dusk and from a little distance, she had not recognised their
acquaintance of yesterday. But it was indeed the mulatto doctor.
However, now she was fairly trapped; and having thus let herself in
for the young man’s society for that particular evening, she had
good sense and good feeling enough not to let him see, at least too
obtrusively, that she did not desire the pleasure of his further
acquaintance. To be sure, she spoke as little and as coldly as she
could to him, in such ordinary phrases of polite admiration as she
felt were called for under these painful circumstances; but she tried
to temper her enthusiasm down to the proper point of chilliness for
a clever and well-taught mulatto fiddler.—He had been a ‘marvellous
violinist’ in her own mind five minutes before; but as he turned out to
be of brown blood, she felt now that ‘clever fiddler’ was quite good
enough for the altered occasion.

Dr Whitaker, however, remained in happy unconsciousness of Nora’s
sudden change of attitude. He drew over a camp-stool from near the
gunwale and seated himself upon it just in front of the little group
in their folding ship-chairs. ‘I’m so glad you liked my playing, Miss
Dupuy,’ he said quietly, turning towards Nora. ‘Music always sounds at
its best on the water in the evening. And that’s such a lovely piece—my
pet piece—so much feeling and pathos and delicate melody in it. Not
like most of Spohr: a very unusual work for him; he’s so often wanting,
you know, in the sense of melody.’

‘You play charmingly,’ Nora answered, in a languid chilly voice.
‘Your song and your playing have given us a great treat, I’m sure, Dr
Whitaker.’

‘Where have you studied?’ Marian asked hastily, feeling that Nora
was not showing so deep an interest in the subject as was naturally
expected of her. ‘Have you taken lessons in Germany or Italy?’

‘A few,’ the mulatto doctor replied with a little sigh, ‘though not so
many as I could have wished. My great ambition would have been to study
regularly at the Conservatoire. But I never could gratify my wish in
that respect, and I learned most of my fiddling by myself at Edinburgh.’

‘You’re an Edinburgh University man, I suppose?’ Edward put in.

‘Yes, an Edinburgh University man. The medical course there, you know,
attracts so many men who would like better, in other respects, to go to
one of the English universities.—You’re Cambridge yourself, I think, Mr
Hawthorn, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, Cambridge.’

The mulatto sighed again. ‘A lovely place!’ he said—‘a most delicious
place, Cambridge. I spent a charming week there once myself. The calm
repose of those grand old avenues behind John’s and Trinity delighted
me immensely.—A place to sit in and compose symphonies, Mrs Hawthorn.
Nothing that I’ve seen in England so greatly impressed me with the idea
of the grand antiquity of the country—the vast historical background
of civilisation, century behind century, and generation behind
generation—as that beautiful mingled picture of venerable elms, and
mouldering architecture, and close-cropped greensward at the backs of
the colleges. The very grass had a wonderful look of antique culture.
I asked the gardener in one of the courts of Trinity how they ever got
such velvety carpets for their smooth quadrangles, and the answer the
fellow gave me was itself redolent of the traditions of the place. “We
rolls ’em and mows ’em, sir,” he said, “and we mows ’em and rolls ’em,
for a thousand years.”’

‘What a pity you couldn’t have stopped there and composed symphonies,
as you liked it so much,’ Nora remarked, with hardly concealed
sarcasm—‘only then, of course, we shouldn’t have had the pleasure
of hearing you play your violin so beautifully on the _Severn_ this
evening.’

Dr Whitaker looked up at her quickly with a piercing look. ‘Yes,’ he
replied; ‘it _is_ a pity, for I should have dearly loved it. I’m bound
up in music, almost; it’s one of my two great passions. But I had more
than one reason for feeling that I ought, if possible, to go back to
Trinidad. The first is, that I think every West Indian, and especially
every man of my colour’—he said it out quite naturally, simply, and
unaffectedly, without pausing or hesitating—‘who has been to Europe for
his education, owes it to his country to come back again, and do his
best in raising its social, intellectual, and artistic level.’

‘I’m very glad to hear you say so,’ Edward replied. ‘I think so myself
too, and I’m pleased to find you agree with me in the matter.—And your
second reason?’

‘Well, I thought my colour might stand in my way in practice in
England—very naturally, I’m not surprised at it; while in Trinidad I
might be able to do a great deal of good and find a great many patients
amongst my own people.’

‘But I’m afraid they won’t be able to pay you, you know,’ Nora
interposed. ‘The poor black people always expect to be doctored for
nothing.’

Dr Whitaker turned upon her a puzzled pair of simple, honest, open
eyes, whose curious glance of mute inquiry could be easily observed
even in the dim moonlight. ‘I don’t think of practising for money,’ he
said simply, as if it were the most ordinary statement in the world.
‘My father has happily means enough to enable me to live without the
necessity for earning a livelihood. I want to be of some use in my
generation, and to help my own people, if possible, to rise a little in
the scale of humanity. I shall practise gratuitously among the poorest
negroes, and do what I can to raise and better their unhappy condition.’



‘UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER’ GRANT.


The 27th of April 1822 was a great day in Point Pleasant, a little
pioneer settlement on the banks of the Ohio; for Jesse Grant’s wife
presented him that day with a boy, and newcomers were rare in the
little place. Every detail about the latest arrival was eagerly and
quickly circulated; and if the men of the little town had learned in
some mysterious way what Jesse Grant’s boy was afterwards to become,
they could hardly have made more stir about him. But Jesse and his
wife could not hit upon a name for their firstborn, and six weeks
after his birth his only name was ‘Baby.’ A family council was held to
settle the knotty question, and it was decided to ballot for a name!
Each person present wrote the name he or she favoured on a slip of
paper, and the slips were shaken up in a hat. The first drawn slip was
to name the boy, and as it bore the name Ulysses, Ulysses was fixed
on. But the ballot was not allowed to rule supreme, for the name of
an honoured ancestor was added to the choice of the ballot; and the
future President of the United States, and general of its armies, was
christened as Hiram Ulysses Grant, a name that he lost by an accident
in after-years.

Jesse Grant was a man of many parts, and not only conducted a tannery,
but also—to quote Mr Thayer’s description of him in the interesting
life of General Grant, to which we are indebted for the following
incidents of his career (_From Tanyard to White House_, by W. M.
Thayer. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1885)—‘In addition to tanning,
he ran a slaughter-house, did something at teaming, and occasionally
erected a building for other parties.’ In a house where so many irons
were in the fire, it will readily be understood there were no idlers,
and Ulysses had early to take his share of the work. A passionate love
of horses, that time only strengthened, was the outcome of his early
acquaintance with them. At school he was famed only for a wonderful
gift for mathematics, and a stern obstinacy that often carried him
through a task in which a cleverer boy failed. One day a schoolmate
declared of Grant, when a peculiarly difficult problem was under
discussion: ‘His forte is in arithmetic, and he will dig away until
he has got it; but I can’t do it!’—‘_Can’t!_ can’t!’ responded Grant
quizzically. ‘What does that mean?’ And away he rushed to the teacher’s
desk to examine the dictionary. The boys looked on silently, awaiting
to see what was afoot. ‘Can’t!’ exclaimed Ulysses; ‘there’s no such
word in the dictionary,’ as he closed the volume. ‘It _can_ be done.’

There was little in this obstinate determined youngster to foreshadow
his great future, and it was with no small astonishment that his
neighbours heard a phrenologist’s verdict on the lad. Let Mr Thayer
tell the story: ‘After the lecturer had been blindfolded, a gentleman
set Ulysses in the chair. The lecturer proceeded to examine his
head, and continued so long without saying a word, that a citizen
inquired “Do you discover any special ability for mathematics in that
boy’s head?”—“Mathematics!” retorted the lecturer, as if that kind
of ability did not cover the case. “You need not be surprised if
this boy is President of the United States some day!”’ How far this
judgment accorded with that of the audience, we may gather from Mr
Thayer’s naive comment, that ‘it did not increase the reputation of the
phrenologist in Mount Pleasant.’

Young Grant’s love of horses was a great hindrance to his progress at
school. Ever more ready to go afield with the teams than to take his
place in class, it is little wonder that, with the many opportunities
for indulging his propensities which his father’s business afforded
him, he did not achieve any marked success. As a child of seven
he harnessed a young colt that had never before been harnessed,
though, from his diminutive stature, he had to stand on an inverted
corn-measure to fix the bridle. At nine, he astonished his father by
asking if he might buy a horse—to be his own. He had saved enough money
to buy a colt, and was anxious to have one. ‘But there is risk in
buying a horse,’ his father reminded him. ‘And I am willing to take the
risk, father.’ And he did—and from that day was never without a horse.
This willingness to take risks was a keynote of Grant’s character, and
many of his after-successes were due to it.

Schooldays over, Ulysses served for a while in his father’s tanyard;
but he took a violent aversion to the business, and an equally strong
craving for ‘an education.’ It was probably this desire for education,
rather than any keen thirst for military life or glory, that caused
him to seek admission to West Point—the Sandhurst of the United
States—where a good general education was added to the necessary
military course at little or no cost to the student. Each Congressional
district was entitled to one student in the college, and application
for the vacant cadetship of their district was made to their member
by Jesse Grant on behalf of his son. The busy man made inquiries, and
then, without referring to the father’s letter, claimed the appointment
for ‘Ulysses Simpson Grant;’ and in this name Ulysses entered, and thus
lost by accident the name he had gained by ballot.

On entering West Point, each student was required to deposit sixty
dollars to guarantee the expenses of his return home, in the event
of his failing to pass the entrance examination. Ulysses broke his
journey to spend a short time with some relatives in Philadelphia
before proceeding to West Point. City life so charmed him that when
his visit came to an end and he was due at the college, nearly all his
money—including his sixty dollars—was gone. Nothing daunted, Ulysses
presented himself for admission, and met the demand for his deposit
with the calm reply: ‘I intend to pass the examination!’ He was allowed
to sit, and passed easily, and in due course was graduated as second
lieutenant in 1843.

His first appointment was at Jefferson Barracks, near St Louis. Here it
was that he met his future wife, wooed and, in spite of the opposition
of her parents, who thought their daughter might look higher than the
poor second lieutenant, won her. The Mexican war gave Lieutenant Grant
his first taste of warfare. Several times he was mentioned in the
despatches for distinguished services; and for bravery he was appointed
First Lieutenant. Congress proposed to confirm the temporary rank, but
he declined, preferring, he said, ‘to reach the position by regular
gradations of service.’

In 1848, Grant, now Captain, and an honoured hero of the Mexican war,
married. Six happy years were spent with his regiment, and then, in
1854, he resigned his position, to take to farming. ‘Whoever hears of
me in ten years’ time,’ he told a comrade, ‘will hear of a well-to-do
old Missouri farmer.’ But in ten years’ time he was Commander-in-chief
of the United States armies! The farming did not pay; a partnership
in a land agency that succeeded it, did little better; and then the
Captain joined his brothers in a leather business at Galena, Illinois.
It was here that the news of the assault on his country’s flag by the
rebels reached him.

The Confederates had attacked Fort Sumner on April 12, 1861, and from
end to end of the land, the heart of the loyal States was stirred by
the tidings. Grant was no politician; indeed, he disliked and shunned
party strife; but he felt in this news of his country’s danger, the
call of duty. ‘I left the army expecting never to return,’ he said. ‘I
am no seeker for position; but the country which educated me is in sore
peril, and as a man of honour, I feel bound to offer my services for
whatever they are worth.’ Accordingly, he volunteered; but in the crowd
of place-hunters at the State capital, the retiring, self-distrustful
Captain was passed by. All the Illinois regiments were provided with
commanders, and in despair of obtaining any appointment, Grant had
actually left the capital to visit his father, when he received a
telegram from the governor of the State: ‘You are this day appointed
Colonel of the Twenty-first Illinois Volunteers, and requested to
take command at once.’ The former commander of the regiment had been
dismissed for incompetency, and the governor had asked one of Grant’s
friends, ‘What kind of man is this Captain Grant? Though anxious to
serve, he seems reluctant to take any high position. He even declined
my offer to recommend him to Washington for a brigadier-generalship,
saying he didn’t want office till he had earned it. What _does_ he
want?’ ‘The way to deal with him,’ was the reply, ‘is to ask him no
questions, but simply order him to duty. He will promptly obey.’ This
man knew Grant!

Well might governor Yates exclaim, as he is reported to have done in
after-years: ‘It was the most glorious day of my life when I signed
Grant’s commission.’ For, as Mr Thayer well puts it, ‘Grant had found
his place. From that he would go forth “from conquering to conquer.”’
Two months later, he was Brigadier-general—this time he felt he had
_earned_ the post—and from this point his advance was rapid. Before
the end of the war, the disused ranks of Lieutenant-general, and
General, of the United States army were revived and conferred on him.
Through the mazes of that long struggle we need not follow him, but
incident after incident of that awful war show the grand simplicity and
true nobility of his nature. As a commander, determined to the point
of obstinacy, resolute of purpose, and daring in action—in private,
modest, retiring almost to a fault, and living a sober, upright life,
against which inveterate foes could bring no charge but the most
groundless tissue of calumnies—all this was ‘Unconditional Surrender’
Grant.

The very title was characteristic of the man—‘Unconditional Surrender’
Grant! It arose from the closing scene of the attack on Fort Donelson.
The Confederate General Buckner asked for terms, and Grant thus replied
to the demand: ‘Yours of this date proposing armistice, and appointment
of Commissioners to settle terms of capitulation, is just received. No
terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.
I propose to move immediately on your works.’ Buckner surrendered.

This stern determination, though perhaps the ruling feature of Grant’s
character, did not shut out other noble qualities. Before Vicksburg,
he found that his men faltered in the spade-work under the heavy fire.
The General took a seat near them amid a very hail of shot, and quickly
reassured them by calmly whittling a stick through it all! At another
time, when a battle was in progress, the General sent one of his staff
on some errand; the officer asked Grant where he should find him on his
return. The answer showed the stuff the general was made of: ‘Probably
at headquarters. If you don’t, come to the front, wherever you hear the
heaviest firing!’

‘When do you expect to take Vicksburg?’ a rebel woman tauntingly
asked the General. ‘I can’t tell exactly,’ was the calm reply; ‘but I
shall stay until I do, if it takes thirty years.’ And take it he did,
as all the world knows. There is a singular likeness in this reply
to the ‘unconditional surrender’ of Fort Donelson, and to the still
more famous declaration before Richmond, after six consecutive days’
fighting, unparalleled in modern times: ‘I propose to fight it out on
this line, if it takes all summer.’

Yet, in spite of his deep-rooted determination to crush the rebellion,
Grant could show a consideration for the feelings of his vanquished
foes that with a man of smaller calibre would have been impossible.
‘After the surrender of General Lee,’ Mr Thayer tells us, ‘the Union
army began to salute Grant by firing cannon. He directed the firing to
cease at once, saying: “It will wound the feelings of our prisoners,
who have become our countrymen again.”’ It was this spirit of
consideration and conciliation that, in no small degree, served to make
union possible again between North and South.

Of course, Grant did not escape calumny—what great man ever did?—but
he bore the unfounded charges brought against him without a murmur,
silencing not a few by the contempt with which he treated them. ‘When
I have done the best I can,’ he said once, ‘I leave it.’ But the
calumnies brought against him were as nothing to the tide of honours
that burst upon him as soon as the value of his services became
apparent. Even before the war was ended, he was, or might have been,
the best fêted man in the Union. But his whole nature revolted at the
idea. When he was appointed Lieutenant-general, he was ordered to
repair to Washington to receive his commission from the President. Mrs
Lincoln proposed to give a grand military dinner in his honour. But
Grant pleaded that his presence was needed on the field, and begged to
be excused. ‘I do not see how we _can_ excuse you,’ Mrs Lincoln urged;
‘it would be Hamlet with the Prince left out.’ The reply shows the man
in all the rugged simplicity of his grand nature: ‘I appreciate fully
all the honour Mrs Lincoln would do me; but time is precious; and
really, Mr President, I have had enough of the show business!’

But the ‘show business’ was only beginning; and no sooner was the war
at an end, than honours fell thick and fast on the hero of the long
struggle. Office, wealth, and power were all within his grasp, and
at the nation’s call he took them up, and right wisely did he use
them. Twice he served in the highest and proudest office an American
citizen can hold; and at the expiration of his second term of office
in 1876, he set out on a long-desired trip round the world. How he
was received with more than kingly honour the wide-world over, is
within the memory of all. His entry to a city was the signal for a
burst of enthusiastic welcome, and everywhere he was fêted to the
utmost of the people’s power. On every hand he was met by the call for
speeches, and speech-making he thoroughly detested; yet the few clear,
concise sentences, bristling with shrewd common-sense, and overflowing
with genuine feeling, to which he confined his remarks, will long be
remembered by those who heard them.

‘Although a soldier by education and profession,’ he told the citizens
of London, ‘I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have
never advocated it except as a means of peace.’ And again, to Prince
Bismarck he made a somewhat similar remark: ‘I never went into the army
without regret, and never retired without pleasure!’

Through Europe, and home by India, Siam, China, and Japan, went the
General and his party, welcomed and fêted everywhere. The long tour
came to an end at San Francisco, on September 20, 1879, and the journey
thence to the Eastern States was one long triumphal progress. The
General took up his residence in New York, and though an abortive
attempt was made to secure his return for a third time to the White
House in 1880, he took little or no further share of public life. His
fortune he invested in a business in which his son was partner with a
man named Ward, and in the downfall of this concern, the General lost
his all. With unflinching courage, he faced the situation, conscious
though he was of the formation of that dread cancer in the throat that
in the end proved too strong for him. Magazines were willing to pay
large prices for articles from his pen, and publishers eager to issue
his autobiography. So, with a brave heart, the General set himself to
fight his last battle.

The news of his terrible position soon became known, and a public
subscription was proposed, that would quickly have restored Grant to
more than his former wealth; but he would have none of it. Congress,
greatly to his delight, placed him on the retired list of the army.
‘They have brought us back our old commander,’ said Mrs Grant when she
heard the news. But it was not for long. On the 23d of July 1885, the
battle came to an end, and ‘Unconditional Surrender Grant’ gave in at
last to the great conqueror of all.



A GOLDEN ARGOSY.

_A NOVELETTE._


CHAPTER XII.

Imagine a man paying forty thousand pounds into the Bank of England,
and learning to-morrow that that stupendous financial concern had
stopped payment! Imagine Lady Clara Vere de Vere discovering her
wonderful _parure_, with its European renown, to be paste! Imagine the
feelings of Thomas Carlyle when the carelessness of John Stuart Mill
destroyed the labour of years! Imagine poor Euclid’s state of mind when
his wife burnt his books! In short, imagine, each of you, the greatest
calamity you can think of, and you will have some faint notion of
the feelings of the quartet in Mr Carver’s office at Mr Bates’s
disconcerting discovery.

For a few minutes, silence reigned supreme, and then Edgar commenced
to whistle. It was not a particularly cheerful air, but it sufficed to
arouse the others from their stupefaction.

‘If I had not been an infatuated old idiot,’ said Mr Carver, hurling
the unfortunate volume of romance with unnecessary violence across the
room, ‘I should have foreseen this;’ and murmuring something about
strait-waistcoats and the thick-headedness of society in general, he
lapsed into gloomy silence.

Mr Bates regarded his chief in mild disapproval. Such an ebullition of
feeling by no means accorded with his views of professional etiquette;
besides, he had a feeling that his discovery had not been treated
in a proper and business-like manner. ‘Hem!’ said that gentleman,
clearing his throat gently—‘hem! If I may be allowed to make a
remark—apologising to you, sir’—Mr Carver nodded with dark meaning—‘and
taking upon myself to make a suggestion: might it not be possible that
where the money is, a will may be concealed also?’

The party ceased to contemplate space, and a ray of hope quivered on
the gloomy horizon for a moment. Mr Carver, however, eyed his clerk
with an air of indignation blended with resigned sorrow. ‘I suppose,
Bates, every man has moments of incipient insanity,’ he said in accents
of the most scathing sarcasm. ‘You, I perceive, are only mortal. I
should be sorry to imagine you to have arrived at the worst stage; but
I may be allowed, I think, to point out to you one little fact. Do
you for one moment suppose that a man who is idiot enough to bury his
treasure in this manner, has enough sense remaining to make a will?’
and Mr Carver looked at his subordinate with the air of a man who has
made his great point and confounded his adversary.

‘I do not agree with you, sir,’ retorted Bates mildly. ‘A gentleman who
has brains enough to carry out such a scheme as this, was not likely
to forget a vital part. You are generally sharp enough to see a point
like this. What with romances and games of marbles, hem! and such other
frivolities, business seems quite forgotten!’

It was curious to note with what eagerness the parties most interested
hung upon the clerk’s words.

‘Bates, Bates! I never thought it would come to this,’ returned the
pseudo-justice, shaking his head in more sorrow than anger. ‘A man
still in the prime of life and to talk like this! Poor fellow, poor
fellow!’

‘Well, sir, you may doubt, and of course you have a right to your own
opinion; but we shall see.’

‘See, Bates! how can we see?’ exclaimed the lawyer. ‘Is not this
treasure buried upon Miss Wakefield’s property, and are we likely to
get an order to search that property?—O yes, of course’—returning to
the sarcastic mode—‘Miss Wakefield is so gentle, so amiable, so sweet,
and unsuspecting!—Bates, I am ashamed of you!’

The imperturbable Bates shrugged his shoulders slightly and resumed
his writing. So far as he was concerned, the matter was done with;
but he knew the character of his superior sufficiently to know that
the words he had said would take root, for, sooth to say, Mr Carver
laid considerable weight upon his junior’s acumen, though, between the
twain, such an idea was tacitly ignored.

During the above interesting duologue, Mr Slimm had been eyeing the
antagonists with a smile of placid amusement. That wily gentleman
was rather taken with Bates’s argument. ‘Seems to me,’ he said, ‘the
advantage is not all on one side. The honoured mistress of Eastwood,
the lady whom our friend’—pointing to Mr Carver—‘has spoken of in such
eulogistic terms, is no better off than we are. She has the property
where the money is concealed, and, as far as we know now, it belongs
to her. Any movement on our side will be sufficient to arouse her
suspicions. Providing the money is found, as I have before said, as far
as we know, it belongs to her. It is scarcely worth while going to the
trouble and expense of unearthing this wealth for her. So far, she has
the bulge on us. On the other hand, we know where the money is. She
does not, and there we have the bulge on her.’

‘And what is your proposition?’ Mr Carver inquired.

‘Arbitration,’ replied the American. ‘There is only one thing to do,
and that is compromise. Even supposing our friends only get half,
surely that is better than nothing. It’s the easiest thing in the
world. All you have to do is to say to the lady: “Miss Wakefield, Mr
Morton left you his money. You cannot find the money. Mrs Seaton knows
where it is. The money, we admit, is yours, though in justice it should
belong to her. In a word, my dear lady, divide;”’ and Mr Slimm leant
back in his chair whistling a little air from _Princess Ida_, as if the
whole thing was settled to the satisfaction of all parties.

Mr Carver looked at him as a connoisseur eyes a bad copy of an old
master. ‘Mr Slimm, I presume you have never seen the lady?’

Mr Slimm shook his head.

‘I thought not,’ continued Mr Carver. ‘You have been all over the
world, and in the course of your rambles I presume you have seen the
Sphinx?—Very good. Now, I do not suppose it ever struck you as a good
idea to interview that curiosity, or to sit down before its stony
charms with a view to learning its past history and the date of its
birth.—No? The idea is too absurd; but I may venture to say, without
exceeding the bounds of professional caution, that you are just as
likely to get any display of emotion from Miss Wakefield—and indeed,
the wonderful stone is much the more pleasant object’——

‘But she is not so very awful, Mr Carver,’ Eleanor interposed.

‘My dear, I know she is not endowed with venomous fangs, though she has
the wisdom of the serpent. I am prepared to do anything for you in any
shape or form, but I do draw the line at Miss Wakefield. As regards
interviewing her upon such a subject, I must respectfully but firmly
decline.’

‘Surely you don’t object to such a course being taken?’ Edgar asked
eagerly. ‘There is no particular harm in it.’

‘On the contrary, I think it is the right course to adopt; but I do
_not_ propose to be the victim,’ said Mr Carver drily. ‘If any one in
this select company has some evil to atone for, and wants a peculiarly
torturing penance, let him undertake the task.’

Felix looked at Mr Bates; Edgar looked at his wife, and each waited
politely and considerately for the others to speak. It is not often
one meets such pure disregard of self in this grasping world. However,
the task must be done; and as Mr Carver disclaimed it, and Bates had
no interest in the affair, moreover, Eleanor not being expected to
volunteer, manifestly the work lay before the American, Edgar, or Felix.

The American, like another Curtius, was prepared to fling himself into
the gulf. With characteristic and national modesty, he merely waited,
willing to yield the van of battle; but the delicacy of the others left
him no alternative. He volunteered to go.

‘I am a man of few words,’ he said, ‘and I guess I am about calculated
to fill the vacancy. I am alone in the world, and if I fail to return,
there will be no dear one to mourn the loss. I have one little favour
to ask before I go, and that is, in case the worst happens, to spare me
an epitaph. You will think of me sometimes; and when you sit round your
winter firesides and the wind is howling in the naked trees’—— Here he
waved his hands deprecatingly towards the company, as if praying them
to spare his emotions.

Mr Carver’s eyes twinkled at this tirade. ‘Well, that is settled then,’
he said. ‘The sooner you go the better. Shall we say to-morrow?—Very
good. The address is 34 Cedar Road, Hampstead.’

‘It is well,’ said the victim to friendship. ‘Before I quit you once
and for ever, I should like to break the bread of joviality once more;
for the last time, I should like to look upon the wine when it is red.
To drop the language of metaphor, I invite you all to lunch with me at
the _Holborn_.’

It was left, then, in Mr Slimm’s hands to consummate what he
denominated as ‘working the oracle.’

‘What do you think of my dream, now?’ Eleanor asked her husband as they
walked home together.

‘Your “Argosy with golden sails?”’ queried Edgar. ‘Well, I am beginning
to think it may come into port after all.’

       *       *       *       *       *

Like the ‘condemned man’ of the penny-a-liner, Mr Slimm passed a good
night, and the thought of the task he had undertaken did not deter him
from making a hearty and substantial breakfast. Without so much as a
tremor, he ordered a cab, and sped away northwards on his diplomatic
errand.

Cedar Road may, without any great stretch of imagination, be termed
dingy. It is not the dinginess of the typical London street, but a
jaunty kind of griminess, a griminess which knows itself to be grimy,
but swaggers with a pretension of spick-and-span cleanliness; a sort of
place which makes one think of that cheap gentility which wears gaudy
apparel and unclean linen, or no linen at all. I may better explain
my meaning by saying that the majority of the houses were black with
smoke, and yet, singularly enough, the facings of light stone at the
corners had preserved their natural colour, and each house was adorned
by a veranda painted a staring green, which stood out in ghastly
contrast to the fog-stained fronts. Every house had a little grass
plot—called, by a stretch of courtesy, the lawn—fronting it. It was
presumedly of grass, because it was vegetation of some kind, but about
as much like the genuine article as London milk resembles the original
lacteal fluid. In the centre of each ‘lawn’ was an oval flower-bed,
tenanted by some hardy annuals, bearing infinitesimal blooms of a
neutral tint. Each house was approached by a flight of steps rising
from the road, which gentle ascent served to keep the prying gaze of
the vulgar from peering too closely into the genteel seclusion of
the dining-rooms. Every house was the counterpart of its neighbour,
each having the same sad-coloured curtains and wire-blinds on the
ground-floor, the same cheap muslins at the drawing-room windows, and
the same drawn blinds, surmounted with brass rods, to the bedrooms. A
canary likewise hung in a painted cage in every drawing-room window;
No. 34 boasting in addition a stagnant-looking aquarium, containing
three torpid goldfish in extremely dirty water.

After three peals of the bell, each outrivalling its predecessor in
volume, which is not saying much for the bell-metal at No. 34, Mr Slimm
was answered. Through the fragile door he had distinctly heard the
sounds of revelry within, and acquired the information that some mystic
Melissa was ‘tidying,’ and therefore ’Tilda must transform herself for
the nonce into the slave of the bell. By the petulant expression on
’Tilda’s face, the errand was not particularly pleasant to her.

In answer to his query, the misanthropic ’Tilda vouchsafed the
information that Miss Wakefield was in, adding, that he had better come
this way; which siren summons he lost no time in obeying, and was thus
introduced into the seclusion of Miss Wakefield’s chamber. Inquiring
his name with a snap, and having obtained the desired information,
the bewitching ’Tilda disappeared, and apparently appeared to be
singing some sort of ditty in a crescendo voice at the foot of the
stairs; the fact of the case being that Miss Wakefield was summoned
_vivâ voce_; her part of the conversation being inaudible, and the
voice of the charmer being perfectly distinct to the visitor, the
song running something after this fashion: ‘Miss Wakefield’—um, um,
‘wanted, mum’—um, um. ‘A man, please’—um, um, um. ‘Rather tall’ (very
distinctly)—um. ‘No; he is not a gentleman’—um, um, um.—‘All right,
miss.’ And then she reappeared with the information that Miss Wakefield
would be down at once.

The space of time mentioned having resolved itself into a quarter of
an hour, Mr Slimm was enabled to complete his plan of campaign, not
that he anticipated any resistance—in which deduction he was decidedly
wrong—but because he thought it best to be quite prepared with his
story, and in a position to receive the enemy in good and compact
order. By the time he had done this, and taken a mental inventory of
all the furniture in the room—not a violent effort of memory—the door
opened, and Miss Wakefield entered.



A FEW WORDS ON SALMON ANGLING.


Salmon anglers as a class are shrewd and observant; many of them are
men of education; not a few are men of distinction in literature,
science, and art; and certainly few follow the business of their lives
with such an ardent zeal, watching and calculating all the chances of
success; yet, strangely enough, the anglers of to-day know little more
than was known generations ago as to the habits of the fish, and how or
when they are most likely to succeed in capturing them. It is asserted
that the salmon fly is essentially the same lure as was used two
centuries ago; and despite the great increase of anglers and the ready
reward that awaits any improvement that an inventor might produce, no
lure has been devised at all equal to the so-called fly; for, be it
remembered, there is no consensus of opinion amongst anglers as to
what this lure appears to be, to the eye of the salmon. All are agreed
that it resembles no living insect, though some hold that it must be
taken for an insect, from the opening and shutting of the wings caused
by the play of the rod; others argue that its appearance is that of
the shrimp as it moves in the water; while some maintain that it is an
unmistakable minnow in appearance, and particularly in its movements.
Against the minnow theory it is said: ‘Why do not salmon prefer the
natural or the artificial minnow, the latter of which even, is so much
more like the real fish?’ To this it is argued that the motion of the
fly is much more minnow-like than either of these lures, while the
wings are closely held in minnow-like shape in the heavy currents where
salmon are commonly found, let the rod be played as it may. In some
rivers, few salmon can be induced to take any lure, and in many rivers
the majority of those fish never rise to a fly; but we doubt if any man
yet knows the cause thereof.

On the other hand, there are frequent examples of salmon rising most
determinedly several times in rapid succession, and each time giving
a tug at the fly; and there are cases, as we know personally, in
which both fly and worm hooks have been struck into the fish’s mouth,
the line broken, and the same fish caught by the same angler a few
minutes later with a similar lure, and brought to bank with the two
severed hooks in its mouth. Such an example shows that some salmon feed
greedily at times. It also seems to disprove another theory advanced by
many men—namely, that salmon feed so rarely in fresh waters, that it is
only an idle freak when they rise to a glittering moving lure. Whether
there are different breeds of salmon in our British rivers, we do not
know; but certainly there are decided variations, some being markedly
short and deep compared with others, and some reddening and becoming
more spotted in fresh water; but whether some kinds of fish are more
‘taking’ than others, we know nothing.

Salmon flies are much more carefully and artistically ‘dressed’ now
than they were in former times. The gayest and the grayest of birds
are hunted down to supply feathers for this purpose—gold and silver
pheasants, the bustards and jungle-cocks of India, the ostrich of
Africa, the wood-ducks of North America, the great owls and hawks of
equatorial and arctic regions, peacocks, guinea-fowls, chanticleers and
drakes of the poultry-yard, and above all turkeys, brown, gray, and
white, often carefully bred to colour for this particular purpose—all
are made subservient to the salmon angler’s thirst for fine feathers.
The cost of materials seems of small account, two or three guineas
being frequently given for a fine skin of the golden pheasant.

Hooks, though finer made and of better steel, are not very different
in shape from those in use some two thousand years ago, as may be
seen in those got from Pompeii, now in the museum at Naples. But in
variety of fine feathers, in silks and wools of wondrous dyes, in gold
and silver tinsels, and in the great manipulating skill now devoted
to the production of salmon flies, there must have been advances.
Many of these lures are jewel-like enough to be worn as bonnet and
dress ornaments by ladies of fashion; and looking into a well-stocked
angling book, one cannot but conclude that any salmon knowing a good
thing could not fail to jump at some of the dazzling beauties got up
for the delectation of its kind. Certainly many anglers, doting over
their favourites, feel that if they were salmon, this or that ‘grand
fly’ would be irresistible. We have heard an old enthusiast assert, as
he hurried into a favourite pool, that he had on ‘a hook this morning
that a fish canna lie below.’ And yet the fastidiousness of the fish
seems to keep pace with the advances of the angler’s art and knowledge.
Salmon see more hooks and lines, and possibly get to know them better;
and so all the fine rods, reels, lines, and lures do not insure even
the raising of a salmon, be the day and the river never so promising
and the angler charming never so wisely.

To an outsider, it must often be a huge joke to see a party of
salmon anglers mounted cap-à-pie with such a wealth of fishing
paraphernalia—silver-mounted rods and reels, creels of vast dimensions,
waterproof coats, wading boots and ‘breeks,’ luncheon-bags and
landing-nets equally capacious, and great telescopic-mounted gaffs
of glittering steel and brass, formidable-looking enough to grapple
a seal—marching down the glen with their gillies in the morning;
and marching back again at night without having turned a scale on a
salmon’s back, though the fish were tumbling about the pools like
porpoises, and so plentiful, that had Donald only thrown in the big
gaff, he could hardly have failed to hook a thumper in hauling it back
again.

Many anglers are prone to speak with confidence as to what conditions
of water and weather are favourable for salmon rising, and what
sorts of flies are most suitable for these varying conditions; but
experienced anglers are least likely to speak with assurance on such
points. It is amusing enough to hear with what perceptions fish are
credited as to coming changes of weather, and the like; and one is
apt to wonder how they in the river know so much more of the outer
atmosphere, and ‘what fools these mortals be’ who live in it and can
tell so little. There are points on which there is some agreement;
but if laid down as rules, it must be stated that these have so many
exceptions, that it is about as difficult for the average man to draw
reliable conclusions from them as from ‘the weather-glass.’ Salmon rise
best to the fly when there is a little colour in the water; when skies
are clouded; when the air is clear rather than muggy; when weather
is cold rather than warm; in a falling rather than a rising river;
where waters flow sharply; and in comparatively shallow pools or parts
thereof, rather than in deep water. When to this it is added that the
more coloured or the rougher the water and the larger the river, the
larger and brighter the fly that should be used, most of what is really
known is summed up, leaving a wide field for further investigation, a
field that has been long and all but fruitlessly cultivated.

At times, for days together, not a salmon can be induced to rise;
another day comes in which salmon are got ‘all along the line;’ and not
an angler can assign any reliable reason for this change, though many
of them may profess to do so. Anglers may fish a salmon pool for hours
without getting a rise; yet at some other hour, several salmon may be
caught; but whether the cause lies in the state of the atmosphere, the
light, or the moving of fish in the pool, all the combined wisdom of
anglers is nought but foolishness there anent. Again, a salmon may be
got by a less skilled angler fishing immediately behind a redoubtable
fisherman; but whether it was the particular hook that caught the eye
of the fish, its particular movement at the moment, the accidental
proximity of the fish, or all these temptations combined, what man
can tell? It seems certain that salmon often follow a hook or watch
it from their ‘lie’ without rising to it; and undoubtedly at times
their decision ‘to fight or flee’ is determined by the motion of the
lure at the critical moment. Anglers often observe that their hook is
suddenly seized when the motion of the rod was stopped, or when, after
hanging still for a few seconds, it was moved. The fly is frequently
taken when it sinks deeply from a slack line; sometimes when in the act
of sinking, and sometimes when it is being raised slowly, as by the
winding of the reel; and at other times when the angler, stumbling over
rough stones, accidentally jerks about his hook. A salmon frequently
rushes to the surface after a fly that is being quickly drawn up for a
fresh cast, and others take a fly when being dragged slowly up stream
by the angler walking along the bank. Some salmon take the fly with a
grand rush. We have seen a large fish dash half-way across a pool, with
its dorsal cutting the water for several yards ere it seized the swift
retreating fly. Others take it slowly, as by suction.

Anglers are untiring in the discussion of the merits of their various
flies—Parsons, Silver Doctors, Sweeps, Durbar Rangers, Jock Scotts,
&c. Yet salmon are frequently caught by what most anglers would call
very unlikely flies, after declining to grapple the gayest and best.
So great is this uncertainty, that many anglers maintain it is of
little consequence what the fly is, if it is only well presented to a
salmon when in a rising mood. Salmon have been caught in all kinds of
weather—in calm and in thunderstorm; in rain and in brilliant sunshine;
under white and under black clouds; with winds blowing from all points
of the compass—though south and west seem best; even at times in
sharp frosty mornings. They have been often caught with small hooks
in turbid waters, and vice versâ. We have seen a twenty-pounder rise
to a number two trout fly so small that one might suppose such a mite
could never be tasted in such a mouth, and yet the salmon rose to it
like a porpoise, though in a very small crystal-clear river and under
a dazzling noonday sun. As to the play of the rod in salmon angling,
fish are taken under all fashions—fast and slow, short or long lifting;
while some successful fishermen trust more to the current making the
play, and move their rods very slightly. We have seen an angler kill
two large salmon and lose a third in quick succession by standing in
one spot and holding his rod quite still. One piece of reliable good
advice we can give to those who have not already learned it. Though an
angler in a general way can form a notion as to what are the likely
parts of a river, it is only by repeated observations that some of the
best ‘lies’ are found out; and as there are favourite ‘lies’ occupied
all the year round, and year after year, by the finest river-trout,
sea-trout, and salmon, it is best to observe where the anglers who have
long frequented a river, fish most persistently, as there the fish will
certainly be found.

Salmon anglers—unlike trout anglers—should make few casts, should cast
the line lightly, playing the fly quietly and persistently over the
best parts of the pools only, and not wasting time over unknown water.
Nothing so certainly diminishes his chances of a ‘rise,’ as recklessly
wading where he may be seen by the fish, or casting his line heavily,
and lifting it often and hurriedly.



BUTTERINE.


Professor Sheldon, at the great show of the British Dairy Farmers’
Association, tried to comfort some of those present by telling them
that there was a great future for dairy-farming in this country. Whilst
corn-growing was doomed in England, the consumption of fresh milk was
increasing—it had trebled in London within the last twenty years. Both
cheese and butter ought to be consumed in much greater quantities, for
there was no article of food so cheap as cheese. He had no objection to
butterine; only, let it be sold as such.

At the annual meeting of the same society, presided over by Lord
Vernon, Canon Bagot introduced the subject of butterine, the extended
use and manufacture of which is already pressing heavily on the
dairy-farmer. He said he did not want to stop the sale of butterine;
but he wanted the law so altered, that persons should be imprisoned,
instead of being fined, for selling butterine as butter. He gave a bit
of personal experience. He said he had disguised some of the Dublin
dairymaids and sent them to purchase butter in eight shops. In every
case, a receipt was given to the effect that the butter was pure;
but on being analysed, it was found that there was not a particle of
butter in any of the samples. One of these tradesmen had been fined
five times for selling butterine as butter! A motion which he moved was
carried—‘That the Council be requested to take into consideration the
best means of prohibiting the sale of butterine as butter, and that
they immediately take such steps as were desirable.’

Lord Vernon added his testimony as to the unfairness of retailing
butterine for butter and selling it at one-and-sixpence a pound. He had
seen enormous quantities of butterine in Paris, but there it was sold
as such. About a month previously, he had been asked by a man to turn
his dairy-farm into a butterine factory, by which he hoped to make ten
thousand pounds a year.

Under the title of ‘Sham Butter,’ in _Chambers’s Journal_ for May 15,
1880, the discovery and manufacture of butterine were briefly related.
An ingenious Frenchman, M. Mège, patented a process by which beef-suet
can be converted into butterine, and since then the manufacture has
spread till we have factories at work in France, England, Holland,
Germany, and America. In a Report laid before the House of Commons, it
was declared that the substances so produced were harmless, and that
good butterine was more wholesome than bad butter. In considering the
subject, it must be remembered that there is good and bad butterine, as
well as good and bad butter.

Oleo-margarine is the raw material from which butterine is made. It is
procured in this way: From the freshly slaughtered carcasses of cattle
in the abattoirs of large towns, the superfluous portions of suet are
taken to the butterine factories. The finest, cleanest, and sweetest
portions only are selected for making oleo-margarine. This prepared oil
is largely exported from America to Holland, whence it comes over to us
as butterine.

A scientific periodical describes the process of manufacture as
follows. At the factory, the beef-suet is thrown into tanks containing
tepid water; and after standing a short time it is washed repeatedly
in cold water, and disintegrated and separated from fibre by passing
it through a ‘meat-hasher,’ worked by steam, after which it is forced
through a fine sieve. It is then melted by surrounding the tanks
with water at a temperature of about one hundred and twenty degrees
Fahrenheit. Great care is taken not to exceed this point; otherwise,
the fat would begin to decompose and acquire a flavour of tallow. After
being well stirred, the adipose membrane subsides to the bottom of
the tank, and is separated under the name of ‘scrap,’ whilst a clear
yellow oil is left above, together with a film of white oily substance.
This film is removed by skimming, and the yellow oil is drawn off
and allowed to solidify. The ‘refined fat,’ as the substance is now
termed, is then taken to the pressroom—which is kept at a temperature
of about ninety degrees Fahrenheit—packed in cotton cloths, and placed
in galvanised iron plates in a press. On being subjected to pressure,
oil flows away. The cakes of stearine which remain are sent to the
candle-makers. The oil—which is now known as oleo-margarine—is filled
into barrels for sale or export, or directly made into butterine by
adding to it ten per cent. of milk and churning the mixture. It is now
coloured with annatto and rolled with ice, to set it; salt is added;
the process is finished, and it is ready for packing.

Holland has taken the lead in the manufacture of butterine; there are
now forty-five factories in the country, most of which are in North
Brabant, where the farms are small, and maintain but one or two cows.
As the farmers there can only make a small quantity of butter, which
is apt to spoil before it can be collected for market, they readily
make contracts with the butterine-makers. The factories at Oss, in
Holland, alone, send an average of one hundred and fifty tons per week
of oleo-margarine butter to England. There are also several firms in
this country engaged in its manufacture; one firm in London can turn
out from ten to twenty tons per week.

Professor Mayer in 1883 made some experiments as to the digestibility
and wholesomeness of butterine as compared with dairy butter. The
experiments were made on two healthy male subjects; and the conclusion
arrived at was, that there is not much difference between the
digestibility of butterine and that of dairy butter. As to eggs or
germs existing in butterine, whereby disease may be spread, there is as
yet, happily, no instance on record. As far as nutritive qualities go,
it stands on very nearly the same level as butter.

We learn that an Act was passed, April 24, 1884, by the Senate of
New York prohibiting the fabrication of any article out of margarine
substances, intended to replace butter and cheese. A fine of one
hundred dollars is attached to the breaking of the Act. In the
preliminary inquiry made by a Committee, it is stated that twenty
out of the thirty samples bought as dairy butter were proved to be
butterine. The quantity of butterine manufactured and sent into the
State of New York was estimated at forty million pounds annually. The
ordinary butter, except the very best grades, was spoken of as rapidly
disappearing from the market. One witness testified that something
between one hundred and fifty and two hundred thousand packages of
butterine, of fifty-five pounds each, were shipped at New York in 1882;
and between two hundred and two hundred and fifty thousand packages
in 1883. Another witness said that the gross receipts of the genuine
butter-trade in New York are fifty per cent. less than what they would
be but for the sale of butterine as butter.

The passing of this Act is virtually a granting of protection for
the American dairy industry, and gives effect to the voice of so far
interested parties. Butterine has fared much better at the hands of
scientific men. Sir Lyon Playfair, Sir Frederick J. Bramwell, Sir F.
Abel, Dr James Bell, and others, none of whom are in any way interested
in its manufacture, have given a favourable verdict regarding
butterine, looking upon it as a boon to the working population. Dr
James Bell, in a paper read at the International Health Exhibition,
said that butterine and oleo-margarine are, in the opinion of high
authorities, legitimate articles of commerce, when honestly sold, and
if made in a cleanly manner from sound fats, as they afford the poor a
cheap and useful substitute for butter, especially during the winter
months, when good butter is both scarce and dear.

Professor Odling, who presided at a meeting of the London Society of
Arts, when a paper was read by Mr Anton Jurgens, in December 1884, on
this subject, is of the same opinion. Mr Jurgens said that the total
exports from Holland alone, in 1883, amounted to about forty thousand
tons, valued at about three million pounds sterling. The greatest care
was taken in its manufacture to promote cleanliness and excellence.
No tainted fat could possibly be used: the smallest portion of bad
fat would contaminate the whole mass. The _Lancet_ has said that
butterine is better and cheaper than much of the common butter sold.
Mr Jurgens is of the same opinion; and he also said that, owing to
its composition, butterine does not become rancid, but retains its
sweetness longer than butter. This was owing to the absence of butyrin,
which gives the aroma to fresh butter, but causes it soon to become
rank.

Dr Mouton says that the Dutch manufacturers strongly desire to have
this product imported under its own name, and he questions whether a
single package is introduced under a false one. Dutch butterine, when
made from the best materials, cannot easily be distinguished from dairy
butter; but when made from bad materials, it is easily discerned, and
no consumer could be imposed upon by it. He says further, that the
English market is the most particular one with which they have to deal.
Denmark is the only European state where particular regulations are in
force with regard to the manufacture, sale, and import of butterine. In
France, a bill for this purpose has been drafted; in the other European
states, the import of margarine and butterine seems to be considered as
a public boon.

Time, which tests all things, will also test butterine. Professor
Odling, speaking as a physician, says that a cheap and inexpensive fat
is a great want with many young children, and that butterine supplies
this want. We find that butterine can be sold at a profit, for the
different qualities, at from eightpence to one-and-fourpence per pound.
When, as we have already seen, it is made from good materials, it is
wholesome and nourishing; and considering the demands of our vast
population in this respect—our imports of butter and butterine last
year amounting in value to twelve and a half millions sterling—who
shall say that butterine may not have a useful future before it? Let
it, however, be _called_ butterine, and honestly sold as such.



THAT FATAL DIAMOND.

A THIEF’S CONFESSION.


I am the most unhappy man that ever occupied a prison cell. I say this
advisedly, knowing that hundreds are at this moment bewailing their
fate, which in many cases may seem harder than mine; but it is not,
if they still retain the self-respect which I have lost. That’s what
tortures me; my _prestige_ is gone; I am degraded in my own eyes; I
despise myself as heartily as the most virtuous man in the world could.
That I, to whom half the thieves in London have looked for guidance,
should myself have laid a plot for myself and walked into it! It is
too humiliating! To fall a victim to a too powerful combination of
adverse circumstances is no disgrace; to be outwitted by the superior
finesse of the police is hard, but endurable; but to fall into a snare
which should not have misled a boy who had never stolen so much as a
handkerchief in his life—this, this is shame!

It was that diamond ring that did it. I really think some special
ill-luck must have attached to the trinket, for it brought no good to
its previous possessor. It was hardly in the regular way of business
that it came into my hands—just as it has escaped from them in a most
unbusiness-like fashion. That young man must have been in great straits
before he united himself to me in the business of stealing his uncle’s
cash-box, in order to obtain funds to pay his gambling debts. It was
a very easy matter for me. He was to mix a few drops of an opiate I
gave him with his relative’s brandy-and-water one evening, and leave
the hall-door open; I had only to walk in and take up the booty he had
collected and placed ready for me. It was a very fair collection of
plate that awaited me as well as the coveted cash-box; but I am fond
of jewellery, and the house was so beautifully asleep, that I could
not resist creeping up to the master’s bedroom to see if there was not
in it a trifle worth picking up. There was—the diamond ring, and a
rather good set of studs. I took them, and slipped out of the room so
quietly that I should not have disturbed their owner, even if my young
friend had not, by way of making sure, doubled the prescribed dose of
the opiate, and thereby plunged his uncle into, not sleep, but death.
Poor young fellow! the knowledge that he had killed a relation who had
always treated him with kindness, if also with severity, was too much
for his mind, which doubtless was never strong. Those debts of honour
were never paid; he never came to claim his share of that night’s
spoil; and I have heard that the distant cousin who, failing him,
inherited the old man’s property, grumbles greatly at having to pay for
his being kept in a lunatic asylum.

This is cowardice on my part. I have condemned myself, as the fitting
punishment of my folly, to set down in black and white the way in which
I entrapped myself, and I am postponing the task to maunder over an
irrelevant incident.

The ring had not been long in my possession when I paid the unlucky
visit to Paris which began my misfortunes. The London police were very
active just then, and business was in consequence dull and risky,
so, being in funds, I thought I might take a holiday and enjoy a
fortnight in the city of pleasure. I was pretty well known at home;
but I had not, so far as I knew, a single enemy in France, and I did
not intend to make any. For a fortnight I would be a mere innocent
pleasure-seeker, taking the day’s amusements as they came, and making
no effort after either my own gain or others’ loss. Such was my
intention; but alas! what intention, especially if it be a good one,
can withstand the force of the habits of a lifetime? Mine gave way, and
speedily.

One evening, a pleasant April evening, I formed one of the crowd
that surrounded the platform at an open-air concert. By my side
was standing a stout and elderly man, whom, from a score of tiny
indications, I guessed to be a British holiday-maker. ‘There’s from
fifteen to twenty pounds in his coat-pocket, I’ll be bound,’ thought
I. ‘He is far too cautious to leave his money at his hotel, where
Frenchmen, whom he regards as all thieves, may lay hands on it, so he
carries it about with him, thinking that on his person it cannot fail
to be safe.’ The idea of undeceiving him in this particular was too
tempting; I found myself smiling in anticipation at the bewildered
and horror-struck expression his face would wear when he discovered
his loss. It was the humour of the thing that touched me. That fatal
gift of humour, which has ruined so many honest men, led me to my
destruction. Deep in my soul, beneath the outer garb of the man of
the world I was wearing, dwelt the instincts of the professional
pickpocket. Almost unconsciously I inserted my left hand (we are
all ambidexter in our profession) in his pocket and gently drew out
a pocket-book—the very sort of pocket-book I knew he would carry.
I edged away from my victim as soon as the little operation was
over, and disentangling myself from the interested auditors who were
listening to a gaily-dressed damsel shrieking with the remains of a
once powerful voice, I soon found myself walking along the brightly
lighted boulevard. I had not gone far before I noticed that the diamond
ring which I constantly wore on the third finger of my left hand, was
missing. It was a little too large for me; but I had not thought it
advisable to have the size altered just yet; and the result was that it
had slipped from my finger. I knew that I wore it when I left my hotel;
but I could not recollect noticing its presence at any subsequent time;
so I went to every place I had visited since I came out, the café where
I had dined, the shop where I had bought some cigars, the streets I
had traversed, looking everywhere for some trace of my lost jewel, and
inquiring of every one to whom I had previously spoken if they had seen
anything of it. I felt a dreary conviction that my treasured ornament
was gone for ever, when, as a last resource, I went to a _bureau de
police_, and gave a description of the lost ring to the officer there.
The officer was polite, but gave me small hope of ever seeing my
diamond again. I gave it up as gone for ever.

I was sitting in my hotel dull and depressed, angry at my own
carelessness, and inclined to give up any further holiday, and forget
my annoyance by a speedy return to my professional duties in London,
when my friend of the police-office entered.

‘I am happy,’ he said, bowing politely and smiling with, as I thought,
anticipation of a handsome reward—‘I am happy to inform monsieur
that we hope soon to place his ring in his hands. One answering to
the description you gave was brought to our office by the finder,
a countryman of your own. The ring being rather an uncommon one, I
felt assured that it could be no other than the one you had lost. You
described it, I think, as consisting of five diamonds set in the shape
of a violet, with a smaller brilliant in the centre—a very curious and
valuable jewel.’

‘Yes, that’s it,’ I replied curtly, wondering why he could not give me
back my property without so many words.

‘Then I may safely assume that this is the ring in question?’ He
brought out my ring from his pocket and showed it to me.

‘It is,’ I said, stretching out my hand; but he did not restore the
jewel, only stood there, holding it and smiling more than ever. I
supposed that he wanted to see some sign of the reward he expected
to receive before parting with the trinket. I took out my purse, and
opening it, made some remark about showing my appreciation of his
honesty; but he shook his head, smiling, if possible, more broadly than
before.

‘Do you not wish to know, monsieur, how your ring was found?’ he asked,
with a leer which I thought was disagreeable.

‘Well, how was it found?’ I said tartly.

My policeman drew himself up to deliver his great effect. ‘Monsieur,
your ring was found in another man’s pocket!’ I stared at him in
bewilderment, mingled with an indefinite fear, while he continued
his narrative in a less courteous and more confidential tone than he
had hitherto assumed. ‘Ah! _mon ami_, one may be too clever; one’s
dexterity may lead one astray if it be not balanced by discretion.
You had not long left the office, when another Englishman came
in complaining that he had lost a pocket-book containing all his
money. He had put his hand in his pocket to bring it out, meaning
to pay for something, but found it gone, and in its place a diamond
ring—your ring. For my own part, I do not doubt your honesty—even your
generosity. You believed, doubtless, that exchange is not robbery, and
that, in leaving your ring in exchange for his _porte-monnaie_, you
would at once obtain a memento of a compatriot and do him a practical
benefit. That is the interpretation I should wish to put on the affair;
but the owner of the pocket-book will not see it in that light—he lacks
imagination, as so many English do. Of course, your coming to ask us
to try to recover your lost ring tends to give colour to his version
of the matter, which is, that while you were robbing him of his money,
the ring slipped from your hand, and remained in his pocket; and with
a lack of sympathy for a countryman, which I grieve to recount, he
demands that you should be arrested, a duty which I am reluctantly
compelled to fulfil.’

I was absolutely dumb with surprise and anger. Had I had my wits about
me, I might—though circumstances were against me—have brought some
counter-charge of theft against my accuser; but I was so stupefied
by the strange turn events had taken, that I submitted meekly to be
searched, to have the fateful pocket-book taken from me, and to be led
away to prison. Somehow, too, I was unable to secure possession of the
ring that was the cause of my undoing, and I have not seen it since my
arrest.

So here I sit in my cell, depressed and weary, a victim to the
bitterest self-reproach. I could almost wish to be condemned to
lifelong imprisonment, for what is freedom worth to me? After such a
piece of suicidal folly as I have been guilty of, I shall never dare to
lift up my head among my professional brethren, and I fear that nothing
will be left for me but to take to honesty when my term expires.



FISH-CULTURE.


Elaborate arrangements have been made at the establishments of the
National Fish-culture Association for hatching the ova of all kinds
of fish this year. For some time past, agents have been employed in
spawning fish and collecting the eggs from various rivers and streams,
and a considerable number have already been deposited in the Hatchery
at South Kensington for incubation. The American government have
intimated their intention to forward very large consignments of ova
from the various species of salmonidæ abounding in the waters of the
United States, including the white-fish (_Coregonus albus_), which,
owing to the success attending their propagation in this country
during 1885, will be hatched out in large numbers. As soon as the fry
are in a fit condition, they will be located in the waters at the
Delaford Park Establishment, belonging to the Association, whence
they will be distributed in Scottish and other lakes. It is intended
by the Association to increase the range of their operations, and
bestow further attention upon the culture of ‘coarse’ fish, which will
necessitate an extension of the Fishery at Delaford. In 1885 numerous
presentations of salmonidæ were made to public waters in the United
Kingdom, but only those fish were selected that are desirable for
the purposes of replenishing depleted _locales_. The various fish,
both American and English, reared at the beginning of last year by
the Association are thriving well, and it can be fairly said that
great success has crowned all the endeavours put forward to increase
the numerical proportions of our fish and improve their multifarious
species.



TWO SONNETS.

KEATS.


    O purblind world! Not seldom in the years
      You find your hero in some man despised,
      Some martyr whom you slew, too lightly prized,
    And bathe the corse in vain unheeded tears.
    Too late your wisdom; for the lost one hears
      No longer or contumely or praise:
      On kinder death in weariness he lays
    His head, forgetting all that life endears.
    And this one, on whose lips the altar coal
    Of inspiration burned; within whose soul
    The fire of the eternal lived, and wrought
    Your baser dross to bars of golden thought;
    Oh, how you scorned him! Now, in reverent wise,
    The weakest murmur of his lips you prize.

    And thou, strong soul in a weak body pent,
      Spirit of Keats! It was not thine to know
      In thy brief span the joy, the generous glow
    Of common praise and common wonderment.
    But wearying until the clarion breath,
      The voice of fame, should fix thy name among
      Immortals, came the murmur soft as song,
    As sad as thine—the summoning of death.
    O sorrow that the deaf world would not hear
      Such music, the enchantment of all time,
      Until the singer, leaving the sublime,
    The orphic song half sung, had fled its sphere!
      Too late, too late, our tardy honours now,
      Wreathing vain laurel on thy calm dead brow.

            GEORGE L. MOORE.

       *       *       *       *       *

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. 111, Vol. III, February 13, 1886" ***

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