A. NCE's . º: º | Aſ TUR - IX PENCE Alex M.Thompson DANCLE T. E. Loºp on CLARION NEWSPAPER C2 lº 72 FLEET ST EC - WALTER SCOTT LTP ERNOSTER Y SQUARE. E.C.- pair - QUITE NEW AND QUITE TRUE. # NEWAGE IIHNET, Supply the very BEST VALUE IN CLOTHING ever offered to the public. - suits, TRouseRs, coats & VESTs, OVERCOATS, COVERT COATS, &c. In all the NEWIEST STYLES of Garments. is All the Goods are Up to Date and beyond, so to speak. N0 SWEATERS I NO MIDDLEMEN I AND NO PIECE WORK I Clean, Healthy Workrooms, 48 hours per week, and Good Wages. SEND FOR PATTERNS AND SELF-MEASURE FORM. POST FREE. SIMPLE TO FILL UP AND RELIABLE. Perfect Fit, Style, and Quality guaranteed, or your Money returned in full. from the fact that you give the Sweater and the Middleman a wide berth by so doing. Here are a few – 1. –They do not Moult early in the Season. 2.—No one has ever fallen off a Bicycle in one of our Suits. 3.—No one has ever been run-in with one on. 4.—No one ever tried for a Divorce since he has worn them. 5.—No man was ever run-in with one of our Suits on. 6. –No man has ever been Hung in a pair of our Trousers. And, look you ! by a timely application of the Stomach Pump, we have been able to extract the following:— Bang the trombone, blow the drum, Hold tight on, the Millennium has come; Good-bye, sorrow farewell, pain Old-age notions all are vain. Spread the tidings far and wide, Disport yourselves, we have arrived; You're free from Madam Grundy’s stricture, With a “New Age” Suit, and “Dangle's Mixture.” –By THE ERRAND Boy’s MoTHER. There are a Thousand reasons why you should Wear our Goods, apart Send for Patterns and Measure Form, while there is yet time, to the NEW AGE GLOTHING CO., ***...” DANGLE's MIxt URE. * G \ * - Ave a From a photo by Arthur Weston, 84, Newgate Street, London, • º a sºlº DANGLES MIXTURE. BY A. LEX. M. THOM PSON. Some of the Sketches here collected were originally printed in the Clarion and the Liverpool Weekly Post, to which journals their author is a regular contributor. They have been revised for publication in this form, and are now affectionately dedicated to the author’s “Young Friend,” HARRY BESWICK. 1896. LONT)ON : - “CLARION' OFFICE, 72, Fleet Street, E.C.; WALTER Scott, LTD., Paternoster Buildings, E.C. CONTIENTS. PAGE The Prussian's Gift: a Story of Christmas, 1871 . . . . . . . . . . 5 A Confidential Chat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 How I was Wooed and Wom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 The Woman who Snored . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Christmas Presents .............................-- - - - - - - - - 31 The Prince and the Telephone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Amusements of Paris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Learning to Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 A. Cycling Hopscotch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Phrenology and Bumptiousness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 A London Sketch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 The New Woman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Cats and Cuckoos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 |O (-|->|-> THE PRUSSIAN'S GIFT. A S TO R Y O F C H R IST M A. S., 1871. T was Christmas Eve –season of peace #| || upon earth and good- will toward men. A det a c h m ent of National Guards, muffled in greatcoats, clambered up the steep and woody village lane, where dainty blue-and- white cottages coquet- tishly glanced through the darkness of spacious orchards. Fire and light, music, mirth, and festive faring should have brightened these cosy homes to-night. It was Christmas Eve— season of peace upon earth and goodwill toward men. From a score of forts, and batteries, and redoubts, fire and slaughter belched out Christ’s birth was hallowed by with dreadful roar. the Christian nations with the thunder and shrieking of the most furious cannonade the world had ever 6 Dangle's Mixture. heard. As the citizen soldiers clambered up the country lane the ground trembled under their feet. - “Mon Dieu,” sighed big Jacques Grévin to his stiff-set little neighbour, Henri Ferdu, “last Christmas I ate goose-flesh. Sacrés gredins de Prussiens !” ºf \º - Corporal Ferdu stumbles on, as if he heard nothing. “There were sausages,” meditatively continues Jacques. “Wom de Trochu, how I love sausages! And the kitchen fire! Ah! it was heavenly, like— like l'enſer. Say, old 'un, don’t you know it’s Christmas P” - “I was thinking of it,” mutters Corporal Ferdu, and grinds his teeth. - “Then, dame / you should be jovial. A man who grinds his teeth when he thinks of Christmas and the little Jesus and fat geese stuffed with sausages is a danger to the public morals. Maudits cochons de Prus- siens !” he continues, as a shell shrilly whistles past; “they don’t know the convenances of Christianity. There won’t be much space to spare for dancing at the devil’s Christmas party if my bayonet reaches the scoundrels to-night. In the meantime, Henri, it is our duty to recollect the pious ordinances of the Church: did you ever eat goose—a goose yely fat, n'est ce pas ? with sausages, heir 2" A. “Many a time,” growls Corporal Ferdu. “What a man' Who would think such virtues lay concealed in him ‘Many a time,’ sacre bleu, and all fat! Since Mass in these accursed days is a joy denied to us poor sinners, tell me, Henri, about the geese you have eaten. Start at the beginning, and describe each one. Not forgetting the sausages.” “Leave me alone, Jacques. I have no words to- might.” “I have observed it, Henri, with a regret which I scrupled to express in rebuke. Yet, it is a defect in you. A man who has no conversation when the subject is goose and sausages, is in danger of breeding a The Prussian's Gift. 7 atheism. Now, if I had spoken of horse, or cat, or rat, which are beasts unclean and dishonest, utterly unsusceptible to the refining influence of sausage, your lack of irreverence would not so much have shocked me. But, nom de mom, celestial goose!” “Don’t you understand, Jacques, that I have no hunger to-night but for those execrated Prussians. I am weary of lying in trenches to be shot at by them. I want their black blood–sals gredins 1–in great pools, do you know? That is the Christmas feast that tempted me to-night.” “It’s a droll of a taste! Now, for me, if I want a little glass to make the Christmas amusing, I prefer absinthe. It is a taste very disagreeable that you have there, my comrade.” “Peste / how can you jest about such things? Do you not hear how they strangle our children —how, up at the Bourget there, they toss babies upon their bayonets! And our women, ah! do you then hear nothing that you can be so tranquil?” “Mais out, I hear; though since I worked in Bavaria, and saw these Prussian cannibals in their own homes amongst their own children, I am become a little hard of hearing when one tells me these histories so terrible.” “Ah! you excuse them always, the assassins! If I did not know you, Jacques, 1–" Crash Bang! Before he had time to finish his sentence, the metallic rattle and crackle of guns burst upon the ears of the startled Frenchmen, the flash of the fusillade exposed to their eyes a strong Bavarian ambuscade, and Corporal Ferdu, oblivious of the cause, lay stunned and bleeding at the bottom of a ditch. “Forward, lads!” shouts the lieutenant in charge of the party, “and fix bayonets.” For a quarter of an hour on that Christmas Eve the contending bands of Christian soldiers enacted there such an orgie of murderous frenzy as must have made malignant imps of hell to gnash their teeth with envy at the sight of it. Hand to throat in the darkness they fought, slashing º, 8 Dangle's Mixture. and hacking with their sabres, ripping each other with their bayonets, still clutching and tearing as they rolled and splashed in their death agonies through the bloody mire of the ditch. - - Jacques Grévin always declared, in describing it afterwards, that it was all over in three seconds; but this was an exaggeration. “There was a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder,” he explained to a wondering little girl who sat on his knee on the following Christmas Eve; “then I felt a pain, and ran away.” “With a wound in your leg and a man on your back,” adds the little girl’s father, gravely smiling. “Yes, my dear, I was almost forgetting him,” con- tinues Jacques. “There was a silly little man there, who—only fancy!—lay down amidst all the noise and pother to have a sleep in the bottom of the ditch. Now, wasn’t that a silly little man?” “Yes, he was,” chuckles little Jeannette. “And is he sleeping yet?” “He would never have woke again,” answers Jeannette’s father, with a tremulous voice, “if old Jacques had not picked him up, and carried him away.” Jeannette's mother, her flushed face curiously twitching, creeps quietly behind Jacques' armchair, draws Jeannette’s fat little arms around Jacques' neck, and for a moment holds them there. Jeannette opens her dark little eyes wide, and looks wonderingly from one to the other. Then, seeing a tear trickle down Jacques’ weather-beaten cheek, she tightens her grasp of his neck, and presses her soft lips against his. “Poor old Jacques!” she says. “The nasty man was so heavy, he made old Jacques cry.” “No,” says Jacques, “he was only a little whipper- snapper of a chap, scarce worth picking up. But I wanted some little thing to give to a little girl of my acquaintance for a Christmas box. So I put him in my waistcoat pocket, and carried him off.” “Oh, just like Tom Thumb" exclaims Jeannette, The Prussian's Gift. 9 clapping her hands. “And did you give him to the little girl?” “Yes, thank God!” says Jeannette’s mother, with a sob, and, stooping down, she kisses old Jacques. “Come, come, this won’t do,” cries Jacques. “Henri, old fellow, there will be mischief here if you let your wife kiss every handsome man who visits you. Ah, but see, how furious papa looks! Is your queer appetite for cold Prussians come back to you, Henri P” “No, never again,” answers Corporal Ferdu, with a shudder; “that night's feast cured me. Tell her, Jacques, about the Prussian’s Christmas gift.” “Yes, Jeannette, only fancy, it was a Prussian that saved your—my little manikin’s life. It was cold that night—mon Dieu, how it was cold! Thousands of Frenchmen were frozen to death that dreadful Christmas Eve. And my little manikin was so stiff, I feared he never would thaw again. I carried him as far as the church at Bobigny, thinking there to get some brandy——” “What a funny church to sell brandy!” exclaims Jeannette. - “Well, they didn’t give it, that’s a fact,” resumes Jacques; “hence the trouble. For unless he could get a drop of brandy, the little man wouldn’t wake any more; so Jacques laid him down on the stone floor in the dark, and went groping about amongst other men who had been hurt in the fight, to beg and search for brandy. But though he got plenty of groans and cries, and even curses, Jacques couldn’t find a drop of cognac anywhere. There was a man came in, a Frenchman, he called himself, who offered to get some brandy if I would give him twenty francs; but though I told him I had no money, though I intreated him on my knees to get me a drop to save the life of a brave soldier who had an angel of a wife and a cherub of a child waiting for him at home in Paris, the brigand laughed in my face, and when I IO - Dangle's Mixture. threatened him, rushed out, banging the church door noisily after him, and swearing that he would fetch the Prussians to kill me.” - “And did they?” asks Jeannette, with flushed and eager face. “No, my dear, the Prussians would not have been so pitiless, though some of us then, being deceived by the lies of scoundrels like him who would not give me the brandy, traitors who found their profit in setting brothers against brothers, had been led to believe that the Prussians were all ogres, cannibals, and wild beasts. Is it not so, Henriº” - Jeannette's father, for only answer, gloomily shakes his head. - “Well,” continued Jacques, “when I went back to my little man I was furious with rage. I cried aloud to God and all the saints in heaven to witness this cruel iniquity, and—shame on me!—I cursed the good Christmas and the good little Noël who brings so many gifts to them that don’t need them, whilst refusing me the gift of this insignificant little man for the little girl I knew in Paris. “As I raved, I felt something twitching at my tunic. I jumped round, and seeing for the first time that a Prussian soldier lay there beside my dying friend, I thought in my mad rage that he meant to kill us, and, snatching up a gun that lay under my feet, raised it— God forgive me!—to murder the man. Happily, just in the nick of time, a gleam of moonshine burst through the bomb-battered roof of the old church, and I saw—I saw that this Prussian’s face, bloody, drawn, and pale as it appeared in his agony—for he was terribly wounded, my dear—was well known to me. It was the face of a man with whom I had lived when I worked in Bavaria in '67—a kind, tender man, who had taught me a great deal about the kinship of peoples and—and a great deal that you won’t under- stand, my dear. And now that I looked, I noticed, too, that his outstretched hand clasped a little spirit The Prussian's Gift. II flask, which he feebly pointed in my unconscious friend’s direction. “His blue lips moved, and, stooping to them, I heard him gasp: “Save him For his wife! For his child I? - “‘But you, Lendorff,” I cried; ‘can I do nothing for you?” “‘Nothing,” he muttered, as his bloodshot eyes closed; “tell my wife, my child, in Rosenheim. Take it,” he said, as his grasp on the flask relaxed; ‘Christmas gift to the Frenchman’s baby.” “And, with a smile on his lips, he died.” * * * * * * º Jeannette’s mother placed a flask in Jacques’ hand. tº U- “Le rêveillon de Noël,” she whispered. Jacques gently lifted Jeannette from his knee, and, standing up, solemnly drank to “The United States of Civilisation.” Then passed the flask to Corporal Ferdu. “A nos frères de la Prusse,” firmly spoke Corporal Ferdu, and drained the flask; then turned and grasped the hand of his friend. “Why, you’re crying again, old Jacques,” exclaimed Jeannette. “Look now,” says Jacques, “it is even so. That is a defect in roast goose and sausage: it always goes to my heart. I must never eat it on Christmas Eve again. But, there! Last Christmas I thought the ºg same thing. Allons done, one never knows.” I2 A CONFIDENTIAL CHAT. Fºy O far as I am able º to gather from a daily study of the newspapers, this 9 world is probably, - in some respects, one of the most interesting places ever invented. Indeed, I know of nothing to beat it —unless it be what polite persons euphemistically call “the other place.” And although I write for the news- papers, candour compels me to admit that there are moments when I question whether the entire purport and purpose of this eccentric sphere’s existence is precisely clear to me. : There are times, for instance, when I ask myself the difference betwixt reason and madness, and wonder which is which. There are times when it seems as if doing were only another sort of dreaming, and as if man’s divine privilege of free will bore a strange resemblance to the inspired wriggling of a fly on a pin or the helpless fluttering of a moth round a lamp. There are times when I am uncertain whether sours be not sweets or pleasure be pain—whether the A Confidential Chat. I3 impenetrable Cornish rock be not made of just the same queer stuff as lovers’ sighs and fancies. I read scientific lectures to mend my ignorance, and yet cannot name the simple elements whose curious conjunction produces the song of the lark, or the kiss of the salt breeze, or the midnight wail of a sickly child. Nay, in moments of exaggerated modesty, I even doubt myself. Am I anything? Or what? Which of me is me, and which is the chap inside my ego who don’t know who 'e are? Is he me? Or am I he? Or are we one another? Or neither? “You,” says he to me—this mysterious fellow inside my cranium, who lectures, chides, and bosses me— “you are an ass,” he sometimes says to me. - “You don’t know that,” say I in reply, “for surely you’re another.” “No,” says he, “not another, but the same.” “One ass,” says I, “is not such an ass as to throw rude words at himself. Therefore you can’t be me; you’re another.” “One ass,” he replies in my brain, “can’t talk to another without speaking. Therefore, I’m not another, but the same.” “Same as me?” says I. “The same, you ass,” says he. “Same ass, then,” says I, “and that’s a comfort, anyhow.” Do you ever talk to yourself? I have many a social evening with myself in that way, and find it as filling as any other company. “Ha!” I say to myself when I have finished an article that pleases me (“I” being the chap who wrote it, and “me” the fellow who afterwards judged it); “haſ that's pretty good.” Whereupon I figuratively walk around myself, and pat myself on the back. But after the glow of self-satisfaction has simmered, I4 - Dangle's Mixture. a small, shrill, chill voice, without sound, nips in with nasty remarks: “Ah!” it says, “smart man, ain’t you? Thank God, though gold’s dear, conceit’s cheap.” “Pooh!” answers another of me, “I am not conceited. I know I’m not a Shakespeare.” “Egad!” says the nipping imp, “who told you?” And then we both laugh at our own sharpness, and are quite pleased with each other’s society. But that isn’t often. Usually we disagree like fiends. “Good business!” says the chirpy part of me; “I’ve nothing to do to-day. I’ll go for a walk in the country.” “And what about poor old Jones, whom you promised to go and see as soon as you had an hour to spare?” promptly says the Me who attends to the disagreeable department. “Hang it! I'd forgot Jones,” said Chirpy, ruefully; “but never mind, I’ll see him to-morrow.” “To-morrow you’ve got to finish the second act of your tragedy,” says Disagreeable. “H” m / So I have. Shame, too, to waste such a fine day. And Jones’s rheumatism makes him so fright- fully ill-tempered.” “The more reason why you should go and cheer him Ul .” “I daresay. Such lovely weather! We mayn’t have another day like this for a year.” “Duty comes before self-indulgence.” “That’s like Duty’s cheek. It’s time Duty was made to know its place.” “You ought to be ashamed to jest about such things: Jones’s infirmities are not comic.” “They ain’t. That is the worst of them. They bore me.” “Shame on you—to be bored by a fellow-creature's suffering. It’s positively inhuman.” A Confidential Chat. I5 “I suppose it is. Confound it. I wish Jones was in heaven. Cuss his rheumatism. He’ll think it mean if I don’t go, poor old chap. Hang him. I am really sorry for him. Confound him. I suppose I must go. Such lovely weather. Poor old Jones. D––" Did you ever try to analyse the motives leading to any important act of yours? That’s a puzzling business, too—as puzzling as Penelope's web or Ariadne’s labyrinth. Try it. It’s capital exercise for reducing fatty degeneration of one’s self-esteem. Once or twice in the course of my terrestrial wriggling I have acted honestly. That is to say, that I have seemed on these occasions deliberately to close my eyes to the luresome becks and nods of self-interest, and to choose instead some inconvenience, perhaps a little suffering, in the service of a friend, of a cause, of a principle. And I have “codded” to myself in many of my confidential interviews with myself that these things proved me a very nice man. “It isn’t everybody would have done that, you know,” I’ve said to myself. “You’re a good sort of chap at bottom after all, young fellow. Your wife ought to be very fond of you. She ought to sit up at nights and curl your hair.” And then the other Self—the energetic head of the Disagreeable Department—has stepped forward, looking very brisk and pert and busy, as usual, and has blandly observed: “What’s wrong with the works now? Head swelling? What have you been drinking, you old ass?” Then I have “modestly” proceeded to put the case to myself: “Not bragging, of course; I suppose it was really no more than I ought to have done; but, anyhow, I think I’m entitled to chuck myself under the chin: I did my duty that time.” “That’s odd,” says the head of the Disagreeable Department; “what made you do that?” “Well, I can’t say. Modesty forbids.” And then I try to blush. But I am not a successful man. I6 Dangle's Mixture. “Modesty?” sneers Disagreeable; “what’s Modesty to do with you? Why don’t you treat yourself to a change, and speak the truth?” - “That is the truth,” answers Ego Princeps, stiffly, but falteringly. “If I didn’t do it for Duty’s sake, what did I do it for?” - “Because it suited you to do it, or pleased you to do it,” says Disagreeable, in his most remorseless tone. “You did it because your principle, as you call it, was more comfortable to you than the thing you gave up for it; or because your friend’s esteem was dearer to you; or because you knew you’d be a mean cur if you didn’t do it; and you like yourself too well to make more of a skunk of yourself than you can help. Garn! Get off that pedestal. It doesn’t suit your style of beauty. Lie down, you coxcomb, lie down.” And when I come carefully to investigate myself, I find lying down as suitable an attitude as I am able to command. - It’s a queer business, this life. Learned men explain the cosmic scheme to us, and laboriously prove by a + y that the world spins round because it would be otherwise if it didn’t. Whereupon they are knighted for their wisdom, and wear a curl over their foreheads ever after. Instead of which nobody knows what he is, or why he is that particular kind of thing, or what that sort of object was ever invented for. I can’t see what need there was for any of them– except an occasional pretty girl, or here and there a laughing child. My daughters, for instance, need no apology for existence. They are all right. But then my daughters are exceptional—they are so different from other people’s. No, on the whole, I think we’re a mistake. That is, if we’re anything. But perhaps we aren’t. I don’t know. One never knows, I7 HOW I WAS WOOED AND WON. THREE novels have I read within the last fortnight, each about the woes of a blubbery couple whose loves fell athwart some other person’s convenience or desire, and who yet stuck to each other as faithfully as doth the sloppy sucker to the slushy paving-stone. When I first read this eternal blazon, at the age of three, I thought it, in the coarse language of the Early English period, “slap up”; but since then the nap has worn off. You know the sort of thing:— Not a word fell from his lips. He gazed into the liquid depths of her beautiful blue eyes with peculiar melancholy. Why did he not speak? Was it the sweet, sad glow of burning, anxious Love that diffused his wan young cheek, and ruddily tinged his weary, dreary, bleary eye; or was it that the rain dripping down the back of his neck from the corners of her umbrella had son-e- what soaked and softened the vigour of his transports? B IS Dangle's Mixture. “Miss O'Flaherty 1" at last he gasped, and then he paused. She timidly withdrew the little hand which he till now had clutched. The movement shook down more rain, and recalled him to himself. “Sarah Laura Ethel Ann " he exclaimed. He could say no more. He was out of breath. - She looked slowly, wistfully, almost beseechingly up into his face. “Sarah Laura Ethel Ann l’ he again exclaimed, and though his utterance, choked by tender emotions and other matters, could no more assert itself—though he was powerless to open his virgin lips which never yet had fluttered over the fair cheek of any woman except his Aunt Matilda which was addicted to snuff—yet Sarah Laura Ethel Ann understood him. There was now that sympathy between them which made them one in feeling, in spirit, and in instinct. No false modesty should part them now. She gave a prettty little scream of delight, blushed bewitch- ingly, and in another moment she had clasped him to her bosom. “You do love me, Archibald?” said she, nestling her head in the time-honoured place. “Yes, yes, Sarah Laura Ethel Ann,” said he ; “but hadn’t we better go home? I fear that thou’lt get wet.” “Ah, my dearest Archibald,” she fondly murmured, “in every parting there is the image of death, and ol, Archibald, we may never meet again.” And she clung to him so fiercely that she wrung the rain through his clothes till it ran out of his boots. “Ay, ay,” said he ; “but you can trust me, you know.” “Yes, darling,” she gasped, “your own loving little Sarah Laura Ethel Ann will trust you, Archibald ; you will always be the same beautiful and brave Archibald that you have always been, won’t you, darling? and you will always love your little Sarah Laura Ethel Ann, whatever the cruel, cold world may say?” “Yes,” said he, absent-mindedly, “it is cruel cold. Let's get home.” To be continued ad nauseam. º: :: º: º: º: º: Leastways, if it isn’t quite like that, still, you know what I mean. Archibald makes eyes at Sarah L. E. Ann, and she, after the usual “slight blush, soft tremor, and calm kind of gentle feminine delight,” spreads herself out to envelop him and his silly simper, in the customary craze of love; oblivious of his boots, she begins to regard him as a child of air, and his every footfall as an echo of her beating heart. She cannot see him without some stir of her pulse, nor spend a week away from him without silly sick longing for his return. How I was Wooed and Woº. I9 Tell her now she may not have him, and she'll marry him or die. Now, that is her nasty obstimacy. Why on earth, then, must the novelists extol this stupidity as if it were the noblest virtue? Why must poets sing and rave about it as if it were a miracle of sweetness? Does any poet praise the constancy of the boy who, whining for the moon’s reflection in the water tub, swears he will not be happy till he gets it? Does any novelist sigh and rave and gasp for the pangs and desires of the faithful burglar who, having seen a service of plate that would be likely to suit him, spends weeks of scheming and contriving to acquire it? Has anybody ever shed the tear of sensibility for the stead- fast donkey of the ancient story, of whom it is recorded that however he was persecuted, yet he would not go? º: º: # 3: º: # I hope my lady readers will understand that I have no desire to disparage Woman’s well-known and justly popular gift of constancy. Where women are concerned I say nothing: I am married, and have learned to know my place. A still tongue makes a thatched head; what the tongue never says, the hair never grieves over; a word saved in time may save many a million; my speech may be silvern, but my flowing locks should be golden. The fact is, I prefer Cumberland wrestling to scratch- as-Scratch-can. A miss may be as good as a mile, and yet in these matters she may be no better than she should be. To lay low of one's own accord is pleasanter than to sit up under compulsion. - Therefore I never criticise the ways of women. If there were no women, men would turn into angels before their time. Therefore I approve of women’s existence; and whatever they do, I am always agreeable. Or at least as agreeable as I may be. Time was when, being young and foolish, I would argue about these things with Mrs. Dangle. 2O Dangle's Mixture. “Why do you do so-and-so?” I would ask her. “Because I do,” she would answer. “But why?” “Because I do, that’s why.” And then I would stamp my foot and whisper soft nothings to myself. For it is very aggravating when a woman won’t argue. And more so when she does. Especially if she happen to be right. Which simply proves that women are always aggra- wating. Except in the days of courtship. Then they don’t argue. But to return to our muttons—meaning, in this case, our mooncalves. Sarah, having set eyes on Archibald, will never smile again unless she marry him. They were predestined for each other. There is no other way. But what would have happened if he had chanced once to go out shopping with her before he married her? if she had seen him cheating his neighbours to make a living? if he had called when she was blackleading, or on washing-day? if she had, before marriage, visited his shop when he was permeating his Devonshire butter with Oleomargarine, or kneading his slabs of gypsum bread amongst the blackbeetles, or bullying a destitute creditor, or collecting his rack-rents in the slums, or trying to cultivate dignity on an office stool? Or if Archibald had chanced to be already married when he wrought his first effects upon Sarah Laura's heart, and if that fact had been casually mentioned to her upon the day after their first meeting, where would this undying, unalterable, instinctive love have been then? The colour would have risen for a moment to her face, and within a week she would have stalked the track of Another. Or if Archibald had proved to be already “engaged,” or if, after a fortnight's wooing, he had gone away, How I was Wooed and Wom. 2I leaving no address; or if he had been locked up next day for robbing his master's till—would Sarah Laura have let concealment like a worm i th’ bud feed on her damask cheek? and would she have pined away for grief and died? Would she never more have looked with gladness upon another man’s face, nor wished to See another man’s eye kindle at her approach? Tut, tut, these “natural affinities,” and tales of maids and youths “made for each other,” who fell in love at first sight, and would have perished had they been parted, are all my eye and Betty Martin. If Archibald comes, and Archibald stays, Archibald may serve. But if Archibald comes and rides away, then there's a chance for Reginald. And if Reginald “breaks down in his training,” so to speak, it is likely she’ll wed Adolphus. As for dying, tut, tut! That is clean out of the Way. Therefore, it seems to me that the limp pining through many volumes of the tall, dark young man with the thoughtful, searching eyes, and of the slobbery beauty with the yearning, wistful gaze, has reached a point at which it ceases to be amusing. We want a change. There are surely other themes in life to interest men and women besides “the sensual fancies of nerveless boys and the sickly reveries of girls for whose faculties society can find no employment” P There are other weaknesses and ailments that might serve the moralist's turn besides the rag-chewing of these afflicted mooncalves. Is not the fond attachment of the kleptomaniac for other people's property a theme, too, for sentiment and pathos? Is there no interest in the influenza? no poetry in the measles? no tenderness in corns? Or if we must stick to Love and Marriage as the be-all and (especially) end-all of Romance, let us seek our characters amongst them that are seriously addicted to the business. 22 Dangle's Mixture. For instance, I learn that the Sultan of Turkey has “five first-class wives, validés, twenty-four second-class, morganatic wives, and some 250 third-class partners variously described as ‘favourites’ and “slaves.” Now, here’s a Hero! here’s an Archibald! Here is material for Pathos:– Every year it was the custom of his mother to present him with some rare specimen of Georgian beauty to add to his palace of women; but now his aunt, the Sultana Adile, has to perform the delicate maternal office, the Imperial mother having joined the houris in Paradise. And an auntie, however kind, is not, alas! a mother. Indeed, as the saying is, “What is Home without a Mother?” And Echo dolefully answers: “Only five first and twenty-four second-class wives, and 250 favourites.” 3% # # º: º: s: Then, again, what rich material for tales of pathetic love might be found by an enterprising novelist in Persia! A recent writer informs us that things are so slack there “that men with fifteen or twenty wives have had to cut down their establishments to three or four.” One poor wretch had to “cut down” seventeen of his dearest pets—several of them probably the only one he had ever loved 1–and now has to make shift with only seven Think how lonesome now must be that Persian’s hearth! Picture him coming home at eve yearning and fretting for a little female society—counting them sadly over with his eye—seeing double mayhap after a full day, owing to his tears; but yet—only seven little cups held up for gruel! Seven little pairs of hands to comb his hair and pull his shoes off! Seven little heads upon the pillow; seven little pairs of boots outside the chamber door ; and only seven little nightcaps hanging out to dryl What a blank clothes–line it must look to his bereaved eyes! It will seem to his desolation as if his life’s train had run off that line—as if he were switched, so to speak, from the main to the single line. How I was Wooed and Wom. 23 When one reflects how large an effect may be produced by one single wife — or, more correctly speaking, one wife who is not single; how completely she can fill up the vacant spaces of a man’s existence, prevent his feeling dull, or lonely; how suasively she can snatch him from the things that are not good— or too good—for him; when one reflects, in short, what a lot one wife is—one realises what effects a novelist ought to squeeze out of a gentleman who has simultaneously “cut off” seventeen. Then there is the New Woman. In one of the magazines, lately, a lady wrote:– I shall never, never be satisfied until I have been permitted to make love to a man according to my own sweet will. Beginning at the very first meeting, I want to enjoy the novel sensation of telling a young man how I admire him ; how his large, grey eyes fascinate me; how I was struck by his graceful figure, his fine open countenance, bronzed to a soft brown and lighted by such a calm and thoughtful smile. And then, not with downcast eyes, but looking him straight in his fine, honest face, I want to take his hand and say: “Mr. Thomas, I am none of your gushing society girls, with no thoughts above marrons glacés and pretty- faced actors. I am a young woman of sense, and ripe, whole- some sentiment. May I not have the pleasure of meeting you again?” I should want to taste in small mouthfuls of bliss that soft and gentle gradient which leads to the telling of one's love in English, with no hems or haws, but straight to the point. Something like this: “Dear Tom, how grandly handsome you look to-night. Nay, my dear Tom, don’t blush, you can’t help it; I have heard it said that your father was an uncommonly hand- some man; it’s a matter of inheritance, dear Tom ; pedigree, don’t you know. My hair is naturally curly. Don’t be afraid of disarranging my bangs. You may kiss this hand of mine if you choose, Tom. The boys all tell me it’s very white and pretty, but I haven’t let any of them hold it. I’ve been waiting for you, dearest Tom. Might I sit beside you? Don't be frightened, Tom ; there’s no rice-powder to rub off on your coat. Thanks again. You really like me, don't you, Tom? I love you with all a true woman’s heart and soul. Can’t you see it in my eyes? Isn't it visible on my very lips?” And so on through the whole gamut, until at length, with sweet coyness, his love burst the bonds of his collegiate bashfulness, and he whispered that he was my own. Methinks I see them now—he, on a chair, drooping his fair and noble brow to conceal his gathering 2+ Dangle's Mixture. blushes, as she, upon her knees at his well-developed and beloved feet, pours out the impetuous stream of passion which still more lowly bends the lovely Trembler’s head. “Willst have me?” the suppliant, anxious maid exclaims. “I willst,” he murmurs, as he nestles and hides his tremulous bashfulness at the back of her ardent ears; and then, timidly raising his suffused cheek again, he adds: “When will you ask mamma?” No, the modern novel will not do. It is out of all date and reckoning. It is weary, stale, unprofitable, and doth, moreover, mislead a man to deception and calamity. - For instance, I read the old story in my youth till I acquired a general conviction that every girl I met was looking into my earnest, thoughtful eyes with a searching, wistful gaze, and would subsequently pass through a complicated system of pining and whining till she would clutch me to her breast in the last chapter, and become happy ever after. Instead of which, one day, a perky, irreverent young person of the feminine gender happened to say to me “How do?” in a cheerful and conducive manner; and before I knew where I was, I was engaged to be married. Had she looked at me with a searching, wistful gaze, I should have seen her coming, so to speak, and would have been on my guard. But the novelists had led me to expect a totally different mode of attack, and I was captured without a struggle. Nor did her obdurate parents persecute me, as they do in the books, through three volumes. On the contrary, they seemed exceedingly pleased to see the young person safely bestowed. Nor did I kill her brother by mistake—though I would have liked on several occasions to murder him a little by special design. º How I was Wooed and Won. 25 Nor did she pine away, nor clasp me to her breast in the last act and softly murmur, “My darling!” I happened one day to ask her: “How many up in this game?” “What game?” said she, affecting innocence. “Oh, I’m tired of showing off virtues that don’t belong to me,” I said. “Besides, I want to know the worst.” “Well, sweet youth,” says she, “thou willt never be promoted for beauty; but if impudence will benefit a man, thou didst ought to get on.” “Oh,” said I, “let us have done with these shams. I cannot let concealment, like a what's-his-name, feed on my damask cheek 22 “No?” she murmured. “Yet there’s room enough —too much, maybe-for concealment.” “Pooh!” said T. “This hollow mockery will no longer avail to hide from my penetrating eye the silent agony of thy yearning, quivering heart. I can no further deceive myself. It would be cruel any longer to withhold from thee the gift thy aspiring soul has coveted. Take me, girl, and be happy. The prize may be beyond thy deserts, but I cannot find it in my heart to refuse thee.” “I don’t believe in the prize-gift system,” says she; “but a Dutch image on the mantel-piece might lend colour to the house.” “Thou’lt have me, then?” “That’s so.” And she had me. Indeed, I have been had ever since. - ****** 26 THE WOMAN WHO SNORED. IF this were as ingenious an age as some have pretended, some- º % § % body would surely § invent something º º that somebody § needed. Submarine tor- pedo-boats, aerial dynamite ships, and mines of new -> explosives — these lſºſ | the fruitful time es', ſº fur n is he s in sº A sº A ghastly profusion. zºna M. º. But, good law do you or I need blow in g up? Bah Instead of teaching us to live, our wider knowledge only helps us the more awfully to die. An invention much more urgently required, it seems to me, is a thermometrical mechanical arrangement for adjusting bedclothes to the temperature. Why have I risen so early this morning to pen indignant diatribes against civilisation? 'Tis on account of the bedclothes. Last night, when with my bosom’s lawful lord I sought my righteous rest, I found myself sweltered and suffocated under an avalanche of bedclothes. The Woman Who Smoved. 27 For an endless count of agonised hours—or, at least, fully ten minutes—I turned and shuffled and groaned and sweated, the while the sharer of my joys and dis- carder of my sorrows luxuriantly snored and snorted (oh, heartlessness, thy name is Mary Ann') as if this vale of tears were an Elysium, and dreary life a lark. In vain I sweated, in vain I groaned, in vain I shuffled and turned. The hotter I grew, the more placid and ecstatic her tantalising snore. Here let me interrupt this thrilling tale of suffering and adventure to remark incidentally that of all the repulsive complacencies, all the self-righteous, strong, self-satisfied manifestations of selfish depravity and unconscious mental degradation that I have yet encountered, there is none so aggravates me, when lying awake in bed, as another person’s fat, heavy, stupid snore. - It is a sound so uncultured, so unintellectual, so ridiculous! But to return to our muttons. Recollecting the prescription of some bygone maiden aunt, I had slowly counted some millions of recalcitrant sheep jumping over thousands of elusive and impossible stiles; but nothing had come of it—except more mental restlessness. The process, which was originally designed to soothe the mind by its monotony, was in my case packed with exhilarating incident and variety. I never saw such comical sheep! The first half-dozen or so jumped readily enough; then waddled up a big, fat, alderman of a sheep who wouldn’t budge another yard, and three energetic youngsters came a-butting him behind, with a view to lifting him over violently; but it wasn’t till his wife—a long, thin, straggling sheep, with a shawl over her head—came to pull him by the ear, that the obstruction was removed and the procession renewed. After that came sheep with drums, concertinas, and blood-red banners, who shouted “Hallelujah!” and raised such a hullabaloo that I would fain have 28 Dangle's Mixture. jumped out to kick them, had I not remembered that my boots were off. When they had subsided, came sheep in black frock- coats and tall silk hats and eyeglasses—sheep on bicycles—sheep in velveteens and donkey-shays– sheep in ecclesiastical gaiters and aprons and shovel hats – sheep with hats on one side roysterously singing “We won’t go home till morning”—laughing ladybird sheep, with feathers in their hats and leg-of- mutton sleeves—sheep rampant—sheep couchant— sheep bounding, frisking, dancing, standing on their heads, tripping over tight-ropes—sheep on stilts—sheep playing hopscotch—sheep playing leapfrog–sheep, sheep, sheep—you never saw such sheep. Sheep evidently would not rhyme with sleep. Yet the missus snored * # º: #: # - º: Then I tried the other cure—the plan of fixing the thoughts upon the soothing swish of a gentle tide. That was worse. It started all right, with a caressing ebb and flow of placid water under the moon’s mellow light on a sandy shore—so soft, so sweet, so soothing! And, as the poet says– We sailed along so pleasantly, And all was calm and bright. But presently there came a change o'er the spirit of my dream. The murmur turned to a roar, the ripple to a splash of furious foam raging over sunken reefs, the yielding sand to high beetling promontories of unclimbable granite rock, with a hungry squadron of wide - crested waves furiously clamouring for my mangled remains at the base! Still the missus snored It was just then that I was struck with the utter futility and impracticability of the snore as a medium for literary expression. The Woman Who Smored. 29 “Oh, hang it!” I cried, sitting up with a start. “This is too much.” - The sound half-awakened my slumbering bride. Her snore changed to a drowsy plaint. “Too much ſ” she wailed—“far too much.” ... “Madam,” I said, “I’m as hot as the very deuce.” “I never pay more,” she thickly wailed, “than elevenpence three-farthings.” Strange how their aggravating instincts abide with these ladies even in sleep. I could no more endure. It was heartless to sleep so sound when I was so distressed. - “If nothing can wake her, deuce take her,” I cried, and, grabbing the bedclothes with both hands, I thought for a moment of emulating the famous act of the late General O’Thello. Fortunately, with me, to think is not to act, but to do the other thing. - Instead of smothering my Desdemona, I hurled the bedclothes to the floor. Then at last I was able to turn a cold shoulder to her snores, and, as quaint Pepys puts it, “and so to sleep.” Only to wake up an hour later, shivering with cold! Yes, drat the climate, I was frozen. And still she snored. # * # % # # But why do I harrow up your souls, freeze your young bloods, and make your eyes, like stars, start from their spheres? - Be mine alone the recollection of this awful night's particular details—how I got out of bed, and, after long time groping, found the sheet, and therein wrapped myself; how when I woke again an hour later I was colder than ever, and found the sheet twisted into rope, tightly encircling my neck and strangling me; how I arose again and found the counterpane; triumphantly donned it, and found it, 22 30 Dangle's Mixture. an hour later, swathing me in sections, leaving others cold and bare as charity; and so on. Still she snored. º: º: º: º: º: *: At last I rose in my wrath, put on my trousers, and came downstairs to utter this protest. Mind, I don’t altogether blame the inventors. As a matter of fact, of course, it is a wife's duty to look after these things—to arrange the bedclothes from time to time throughout the night to suit the shifting climate and her husband’s changing temperature. But, in these days of new women, where will you find a wife that does her duty? I have not found one. Therefore I appeal to science. Surely the ingenuity that invented the Maxim gun, the barrel organ, and the slot machine should be equal to the discovery of a patent reversible and adjustable arrangement of sliding thermometrical bedclothes. - #º iſ "{{? º intº #º º, E 3I CHRISTMAS PRESENTS. § % % % ºš. % §/ % - Øſ ºwVTN ſº. ' % - * º : - / ( §§§ % º N. º #|}/º 3.3% §/ftº: M ºft Cº.; - Nº| ſº §§§ ||{ - 27. ºğ - /// - *E. LESSINGS on the head of the man— or woman (it must h a ve been a woman)—who first invented Christmas presents! They bless them that give and them that take, filling both alike with an affectionate rapture, in whose warm glow the little resent- ments and jealousies of many days of workaday friction are consumed, and translated to sweet remembrance. Be it a precious, princely coronet, or a poor pennyworth of ribbon, if the gift be the token of a generous desire for another’s pleasure, the angels fill the air with their music to see it, and transform chill December in the giver's and taker's eyes to flowery May. For weeks before Christmas, the cupboards, the walls, the floors, the ceilings of every happy home gloriously glisten with the delight of Santa Claus's approach. 32 Dangle's Mixture. For days before the fateful day, the eyes of my little daughters incessantly sparkle with expectancy; and twenty times in each day I blunder in upon solemn confabulations in sequestered corners, where they mysteriously tell over their thrifty store of accumulated “spending pennies”; and eagerly whisper schemes and designs of investment that shall make their unsuspecting parents marvel on the glad, appointed day. Then how amusing their transparent little pretences and subterfuges to get out alone, that they may inspect the season’s exhibited treasures, and lengthily discuss the rival attractions, till the most effective has been selected. It may have been mean and treacherous, but—may the recording angel blot out the offence!—I could not resist the temptation to follow them one day, and watch their wistful progress. From shop window to shop window they fluttered and buzzed, chattering with tremendous eagerness, crying, “Look! look!” at each successive show of gay temptations, running in with flushed faces to ask the cost of things, coming out with modified ardour to count again their pennies, and vainly strive to make them fit with tantalising impos- sible prices. “What a bother money is Why can’t the nasty shopkeepers be satisfied with a little girl’s means, and not be so greedy? Father would have so liked that big carved meerschaum pipel If the tiresome old shop- keeper would only have let it go for a shilling! And that diamond brooch would have been the very thing for mother! But the nasty man wanted five pounds— and that is, oh! ever so much more than fourteenpence three farthings!” But their theory of value is happily elastic, and eventually they find a wonderful scent-bottle–oh! such a lovely thing!—that may be had for a shilling, and every bit as nice as that big, ugly diamond brooch! And such a dear little wooden pipe that is ever so much better than that clumsy meerschaum ! Christmas Presents. 33 Then they trot off home, chattering, chattering all the way, beaming, fussy, and self-important. And when they get home, they exchange mysterious nods and becks and smiles, and look so Ostentatiously innocent of guile, that it becomes almost impossible for a silly, fond mother to keep up her end of the innocent hypocrisy. - But, with determined effort on both sides, the pretence is maintained until the fateful day. Then, what excitement! What eager fumbling in secret hiding-places under beds and in cupboards! What gleeful pride in the production of the oh-so-unex- pected treasures! What cries of surprise and rapture! What beaming, happy faces! What kissing! What good business! Ah, you little minxes, do not imagine, because your stern parent has permitted himself graciously to unbend upon this auspicious occasion, and to let himself be pulled about and danced around as if he were a Guy Fawkes or a Father Christmas, that he doesn’t really mean it when he finds occasion again next week to inform you that you are a parcel of unregenerate IlullS8. In CôS. No, miss, father will not drink his breakfast coffee out of your ridiculous new tea service. How many cups do you suppose oh, well, well, if I must, I must. Ugh ! two spoonfuls of sugar in this tiny thimble of a teacup. I can’t possibly well, all right, I will drink it, then. But you are two little nuisances! 34 THE PRINCE AND THE TELEPHONE. THE announce- ment which interested me most in connection with the Persian Shahzada’s visit to England was the naïf announcement in a morning paper that he had been greatly “surprised" by the telephone. Now, that is one of those touches on the - raw which, as Shake- — speare says, sets all fº, the world aching. - “Surprised" | Is it “surprised"? I should almost have said “flabbergasted” Methinks I see the simple Oriental now, pressing the button. He would smile with pleased expectancy, and the sanguine flush of hope and confidence would deck his ingenuous brow. Then he would wait for the responsive tintinabula- tion. And wait. And wait. Then his smile would lose its terminal downward curve, and he would say: “They’re a long time.” The Prince and the Telephone. 35 Somebody would answer, and say: “Ring her up again.” And he'd ring her up again. #: º: #: 3% :: :: And again. # # º: # ::: #: And again. And the smile would desert his hopeful face, the divine seal of self-reliance would give place upon his forehead to wrinkles of care and scowls of devilish wrath, when suddenly the bell would ring violently, and before he had had time to lift the ear-fakement to its predestined assignation, the girl at the central office would shrewishly snap out: “Are you there? Why don’t you answer when I ring you up?” Then the Shahzada, discomfited and paralysed, would feebly mutter: “But I–" And she would answer: “All right! Don’t keep me all day. What number do you want?” Then he’d say: “Number? I don’t understand. I want to speak to Her Majesty the Queen.” “Well, what’s her number? You don’t expect me to know everybody’s telephone number, do you? Look it up, and ring again when you know what you want.” After the supply of such restoratives as are recom- mended for those occasions by the Royal Humane Society and the National Lifeboat Institution, the Shahzada would tackle her once more, and, after the usual waiting and repeating and waiting and repeating, he would be favoured again with the polite attentions of the switch-girl (so called because she never by any chance gets switched). “Oh, it’s you again, is it? Hope you’ll be a bit more civil now. Have you found out yet what it is you want?” “No. 0030004756,” the Shahzada will reply—or otherwise, as the case may be. 36 Dangle's Mixture. “No. 21, did you say?” “No. I said 0.03007 Oh, hang it! I've forgotten it again. Wait a minute.” “I haven’t time to wait. Ring up when you’re ready. And do try to find out what it is you want, will you?” By-and-bye—before closing time, if he started pretty early in the morning—the Shahzada would “get through,” as they call it, and, with hope bounding supreme again within his breast, he would shout: “Hullo there !” “Hullo!” the Queen would say; “who are you?” “The Shahzada.” “What name?” “The Shahzada " “Why don’t you speak louder? Can you spell it?” “S-h-a-h-z—” “Can’t tell a word you say. What do you shout like that for? This isn’t the House of Commons. What is it you want, anyway?” “I wanted to say, How do you do?” “Then why don’t you say it and go home, if that’s all?” At about this period of the interview, the Shahzada would begin to hear, faintly at first, then gradually swelling, and finally overwhelming him and his conversation, a confused murmur of many voices, running through the Queen’s remarks, something like this:– “Oh, you’re from Afghanis—lard is selling at 31s. 7d.—you can put me £5 each way, and—we shall hold Divine service at eleven o’clock, but—I can’t possibly get home to-night, darling; business is so—delightful, my pet, meet you at the corner near the Alhambra, and don’t forget to—get back to Cabul—what blithering Dutchman keeps shouting down this line; I’d like to punch his—” And then suddenly all the sounds would vanish The Prince and the Telephone. 37 together as if by the force of an enchanter’s wand, and it would gradually dawn upon the Shahzada that he was switched off. With furious emphasis he’d once more ring up the central office till the wire shook off all the chimney- pots it was connected with, when the demure young person at the switch instrument would step up as if nothing was the matter, and blandly inquire why he raised such a row. After he had explained, she would assure him that he was “through all the time”; and then he’d shout “Hullo” again, and get an answer from a very cursory bookmaker, who’d ask, “How can I talk if that old Dutchman don’t keep still?” and finally the Shahzada would go forth beneath the eternal silent stars and pour forth his soul in blasphemy. “Surprised,” is it? Oh, Heck! That reminds me of another of the inconveniences of the telephone system. - One day a lady received an invitation by telephone to dine in the country, and turning round to her husband, who was sitting in the room, she asked him, “What earthly excuse can I send this time?” Then through the telephone came back the answer, with awful distinctness, “If you don’t want to come, you needn’t send any excuse at all.” Which is so like the telephone! When it’s wanted to talk, it’s as confusing as the winds that from the AEolian hall roar through the woods; when it isn’t wanted to hear, it’s more alert and spry than Cerberus. It’s enough to cool any Shahzada. ºut. # | | I. FEBRUARY, 1896. IT is absurd. A battle of confetti in London? Bah! It is impossible. London? Where the heavy burghers are daily packed with roast beef and plum-pudding? It could not be done. Time was when we stolid Britishers could have made at least a feast of cakes and ale; but even that we have forgotten. As for the Parisian banquet of roses and wine, it never was, nor can it be, for us. Only here, in Paris, is it conceivable—here, where the men live on cigarette smoke, and the women on bubbles blown by culinary bellows in filigreed froth of whipped cream—here in airy, gay, artistic Paris—frivolous, light, and beautiful Paris—laughing, chaffing, fickle, reckless, restless, wilful, wanton, A musements of Paris. 39 wicked, voluptuous, and luxurious Paris—where Comus dwells, and Momus too, and Mercury and Venus. I came here posthaste two or three days ago on pressing private business. It was most important. Many things were important in that far-off time, two or three days ago! Now I wonder what could have made me think it mattered. It is the Paris Carnival, et j'en suis, moi, de la fête. If life be a dream, as one may here perceive, better it should be a rapture than a nightmare. That is all that matters—now. Since that far-off time, three days ago. -) # # # * º: º: Nay, madam, never shake your solemn head at me. Paris may be, as you say, dreadfully demoralising. I have an aching presentiment that I shall think so, too, in that distant time—to-morrow; when I wake again to the wearing cares of Duty. At present, j'em suis de la fête. Long live joy! Until to-morrow ! They say, the malicious ones here, that the reason why this Carnival of 1896 is the gayest and most tricksy since the Empire, is because the Government is in danger. The discontent of unreasonable starve- lings in dark corners was becoming serious. They wanted to abolish the reactionary Upper House of Parliament; to cut off from the State the spreading gangrene of blackmail, bribery, and general venality; they wanted bread, these unreasonable hungry. Something had to be done. So the sagacious rulers of the State treated the people to a brilliant Carnival. Instead of bread, they gave them sacks of serpentins and confetti, and a glimpse of a very fat ox in the midst of a procession which was—ah, so droll! so charming! And the people clapped their hands and were exceedingly content. 40 Dangle's Mixture. Was it not well bethought of the sagacious men of the State? º: º: º: #: º: º: To-day, in the Boulevards, there is an army of sweepers with great carts clearing and carrying off the drift of confetti, which in many places is several inches deep. Others, perched on high ladders, are stripping the thousands of trees of their fantastic floating foliage of coloured paper ribbons. It was very gay, the Carnival. Why cannot the confetti and the serpentins remain in the Boulevards always? # º: º: º: # º: Conceive it, if you can : the whole population collected in the principal streets; the pavements thickly swarming; chairs and benches filled; brightly- decorated, tightly-packed grand stands in every open space; every window and balcony lined with people. Everybody laughing and chatting as only French- men—and Frenchwomen—chatter and laugh. Many dressed in eccentric fancy costumes. Many more wearing masks; or, at least, the most ridiculous cardboard noses. And everybody—everybody—EVERY- BODY armed with bags full of little coloured paper discs, with which, throughout the three days of the Carnival, men and women never cease from pelting and covering each other. Except those who carry mops of coloured ribbons to whisk the clinging confetti from each other’s clothes and faces as they pass. At a club in the Place de l’Opera, the members were engaged throughout the passing of the procession in throwing confetti by sackfuls at a time upon the crowds below. First a great shower of pink paper painting the street in a dazzling couleur de rose. Then a green shower, blending with the pink, and delighting the eye with contrast. Then, amidst a Babel of screams and exclamations, an avalanche of funereal black, like a vast outpouring of Soot. And between whiles, violets, A musements of Paris. 4I in hundreds of bunches, thrown out to the catching competition of the pretty girls, and ha'pennies to th scramble of the urchins. Every person in the crowd—man, woman, boy, girl, old and young—is sprinkled with confetti. From hats, bonnets, mantles, coats, beards and hair, the discs are seen to glisten. No one escapes. They lie thick upon the streets as did the traditional leaves in Wallombrosa. And when one undresses at night, confetti fall in showers upon the bedroom floor. They lurk in folds and wrinkles and recesses of the figure, and when one wakes next morning the sheets have broken out in multicoloured spots. For days they keep on re- appearing—from pockets and creases and linings. The serpentins (long reels of paper ribbon thrown out lasso-fashion amongst the crowd, or from upper windows into the trees) festoon the Boulevards with garlands. Every twig of every tree on the great Boulevards wears its coloured ribbon on Mardi Gras. Then the procession. Shall I ever forget the car that symbolised the enchantment of flowers? A towering edifice of red and white roses in tapering circles, with living buds of feminine beauty archly peeping from every flower's heart. A rose that wore so sweet a heart, My heart would fain for ever wear; Its thorns might sting like Cupid's dart, But naught should thence my sweetheart tear. It had been said that Art and Realism were irre- concilable? Bah! I now perceive that since natural roses will not grow large enough to make each a woman’s dress, the only right way is to make shift– or make a costume—of roses artificial. º: º: º: º: º: º: Ah! my friends of England, a scene indescribable, a scene inconceivable to sober-sided burghers of 42 Dangle's Mixture. London. A fairyland; a fairyland in a material city; a material fairyland gone mad; a mad, material fairyland running amuck in a spasm of reckless merri- ment; a-quoi domc *—a scene inconceivable, a scene indescribable, a marvel, a saturnalia of wildness and jollity, a paradox, enfim—a Parisian Carnival. I have seen probably as many outdoor pageants, spectacular ballets, pantomime transformation scenes, and other products of theatrical fancy, as any man of my years, weight, and experience in the three king- doms. I have even seen previous processions of Pari- sian haeuf gras. But I have never seen anything like the Paris Carnival of 1896. - But it is all over now. The roses are faded, their fragrance departed, and Mrs. Dangle has sent on the gas bill from “Home, Sweet Home.” Tant pis, voilà. Mais on s'est amusé, n'est ce pas ? - , , º/ Wºl § t º º ~~ º /. % | ;| : 43 II. MAY, 1871. ºft ON semper erunt # Saturnalia, " It is not always amus- ing the gay and fes- tive Paris. Year by year it grows, more ‘‘civilised,’’ more artificial, and more rotten. I have known the “gay” city for close on thirty years, and now that the Car- nival’s intoxication is over, I soberly declare that in the rottenest days of the Third Empire the vice of Paris was not more - manifest. Look at the shameless pictures in the shop windows of the Rue de Rivoli and the Boulevards; read the novels that win the greatest measure of popular favour, with their open advocacy of nameless vices; see the painted, weary faces of the women, the shrunken, used-up figures of the men; see how vice flaunts it in costly carriages, and theft and murder stalk as boldly by in filth and misery! It wears the Mark of the Beast, this gay capital of European “civilisation,” and unless the purer air of the provinces can be plentifully pumped into the 44 Dangle's Mixture. stifling hothouse while there is yet time, the gay city shall again see trouble. For non semper erunt Saturnalia. It is not always en carneval, the blue and white Lutetia. Other proces- sions than that of the Fatted Ox, and other projectiles than ribbons of paper, have been seen in gay Parisian streets: gay Paris has swallowed through its sewers other red floods than those of yesterday’s confetti. Mon Dieu, yes; that also I have seen. Twenty-five years ago, in these magnificent streets, I saw a pelting rain of shot and shell; and the fathers of the black-bearded revellers that dance reckless ring-a- posies in the public squares to-day, danced then the death dance, behind the barricades, to the infernal music of the mitrailleuses. From that same window whence fell yesterday the rosy showers, I have seen the sharp puffs of smoke presage bullets that laid lusty Frenchmen stark and || bleeding on the pavement. I have seen these laughing boulevards flooded by a tide of fire and lead. I have seen the red corpses heaped up in these gay streets; the red blood run in a thick stream down these gutters, and the mud carts that to-day clear away the confetti, were engaged then in removing the bodies of massacred men and women and children. In yesterday’s Carnival Paris was mad drunk with mirth and jollity ; twenty-five years ago, I saw it mad drunk with hatred and lust for vengeance. Yesterday, it enacted the prettiest masquerade that I have seen; twenty-five years ago, I saw it enact the most hellish nightmare that ever was performed under the sun. For in that Carnival—that actual feast of flesh of five-and-twenty years ago, the skies were blue and smiling as yesterday. But under that springtime canopy, twenty-five years ago, desperate men grappled in the last spasms of a mighty agony. It is true that there also were plenty of figures º: º: “oumsoos ºſ ſí woºȚ]‘ILSI ‘ſā ĀWIN‘ITTOAIEI GIGI GIO， I[ńq ø.znąoydſ ºff, wolae ºſanºcººn », ntxº\ \ r ‘ “ （y）\，\;\! * T \!\， ， ---- - i l - | | ---- ---- ||||| ---------- 46 Dangle's Mixture. which would not have been out of place in yesterday's Carnival. For the ne'er-do-wells of Europe had gathered there their beauty and their chivalry. Finer soldiers, from a picturesque point of view, were never seen in all the history of war, except at Astley's Circus. There were officers with cocked hats and waving plumes, with Tyrolean hats and dark green feathers, and most fetching little képis; officers in Garibaldi blouses, and officers in the glittering glory of the Cuirassiers—most of them with clinking spurs and clanking sabres—and with such brave display of tinselled braid as the sun ne'er shone upon before. It was grander than the Drury Lane pantomime to watch them drinking at the little round tables on the boulevard flags, with the fickle fair of Gaiety’s Capital. It was more inspiriting than an evening at Sangers’, to see their spirited chargers caracoling down the street. Solomon in all his glory didn't carry so much style. Not Julius Caesar himself ever puffed cigarette smoke through his nostrils with more consummate elegance. And if Alexander of Macedon had trailed his sword on the pavement to the same extent as they, he would have made a great deal more noise in the world. - They became less conspicuous, these braves, when the fighting began. Their brilliant uniforms disappeared as if by enchantment. “The subsequent proceedings interested them no more.” For the days of gold braid were over; every corner had its barricade, every street its nameless battle, and every fight its heroes. * + * * * + During that Carnival the tricolour flag of France advanced triumphant through a city of ashes and death. On the night of the 25th of May, I looked upon a holocaust in which palaces blazed like matchwood, at a fire that, leaping in sheets to the lamp-black sky, flashed all the flames of hell upon its darkness. Stupendous “noſºſ sætn/)„į EIXIII nox SV NOOS SV. ,,[^? º.rm?øyd øy, nuou， ne`ſ ºvat*（\\ſ）)\, {: º: “’E’s a bleedin’ brick, that’s what 'e is, tell your aunt,” explained Tough Jimmy to his mate, the Rasper; “I seen 'im do it scores o' times. ‘E’s a corker, I tell you strite.” “I seen 'im, I know all abaht 'im. 'E's a doctor, that’s what 'e is. I seen 'im give the blankers a 'ole loaf to onst. 'E's a blanker, swelp me.” º: º: *: º: º: :: The man who inspired these varied praises stood by the frozen lake in St. James's Park, too much absorbed in his humane diversion to note the swelling crowd. Ducks and Swans pressed against his feet; sparrows innumerable perched on his shoulders and fluttered round his venerable head. They took the bread fearlessly from his hands, and even from his lips. He had proved a friend in need during many cruel winters, and, as Mrs. Swansdown had said, they all knew him. He formed a pretty picture under the wintry sky, and gaunt, bare trees, this tall, benevolent old gentle- man, with the clean, rosy countenance, and kindly, pleasant smile, surrounded by the feathery halo of his glory. No wonder that men and women halted in their walks and errands to rest their eyes upon the pleasant sight. So near the mad scramble of the streets, this peaceful scene was more like a glimpse of Fancy’s realm than London's reality. 74 Dangle's Mixture. But to-day of all days the idyll seemed most unreal, for amongst those that watched sat one whose obtru- sive figure had such an effect on it as a Bond Street swell in frockcoat and silk hat would have in a fairy scene of the pantomime. The aggressiveness of his stern realism made the idyll look ridiculous, impossible, more than ever like a picture of the senses which a rude breath must presently dispel. He was an old man, too, and tall, this other man, but thin-very thin, and grey-bearded. There was no smile upon his face, but a fixed bitterness that Smacked of cruelty and evil. - Like the others, he looked at the doctor; but yet not like the others, for while they beamed, he scowled; while they looked on with a sort of soft, purring satisfaction, he glared with a ferocious hunger that grew fiercer as he looked. It was not yet noon, but for many hours already he had walked the streets in his usual daily search, and, as usual, had found nothing. He had turned in here to rest, for it was a long way to the cellar in Bethnal Green, where his lame grand-daughter waited and hungered. The good doctor laughed aloud. Nearly half a bun had fallen from his hand, and a greedy duck had nearly choked himself in trying to swallow it whole. A gruff voice at his elbow checked his mirth. “Give me that bread,” said the voice; “I have a starving child at home. Give it me.” “How dare you speak like that?” answered the doctor, his kind old face clouding over with sudden anger. “Go away, or I'll call a policeman.” “I lost my manners when I found this hunger,” answered the other. “For God’s sake, give me that bread.” “Certainly not; your manner does not inspire charity. Go away.” “Give me that bread, d’ye hear?” and there was a A London Sketch. 75 moment’s scuffle, at the end of which the old man found himself cast on the ground by the strong young arm of one of the by-standing officers. “Thank you very much,” said the doctor; “but for your timely help, the ruffian would have assaulted me.” “Well, I am sure,” said little Mrs. Swansdown, bustling up, “I never, never did! In broad daylight, in a public park in London | What an impudent scoundrel he must be '" “By Jove! he’s unconscious!” exclaimed one of the officers. - “Intoxicated, as I supposed,” said Miss Brompton, sailing contemptuously away with her friend. “Damn it, old chap! there's something wrong with this fellow,” spoke the officer who had knocked the old man down, and now stooped anxiously over him. “I can’t feel his heart beat. Why, I believe he’s 25 “Eh? eh? what’s that?” said the benefactor of the birds. “Let me look at him. Why, great heavens, he is dead!” THE NEW WOMAN. ò tº N Å) º GIGGLY matron in JNVA . , ſº blue spectacles, a S.Nº. / \ gown like a tea- # - 7ſº cosy, and a pair of Sº - - policeman’s boots, accosted me the other day at a meeting, and asked me, “Do you like the New Woman?” “That is not the point,”I cautiously replied; “while My Old Woman lasts, I have no choice.” “But,” she per- sisted, “do you approve of the New Woman?” “Mad a m,” I said, “I decline to commit myself. How do I know that my admissions will not be hereafter used in evidence against me? If it’s all the same to you, I’ll be off with the Old ere I’m on with the New.” “No, no,” she said; “that is not what I mean. You do not take me.” “Not on purpose,” I said. “The question is—Do you welcome, do you accept the New Woman?” - º sº- The New Woman. 77 “Well, thank you, if I must take some, I think I would like her a little Newer,” I said. “Under forty- five, please, as you’re so pressing.” “You are merry,” said she. “On the contrary, I am married,” said I. “Ah!” she sighed, “I have buried six husbands myself.” “What's the game?” said I, absent-mindedly. “Seven up?” - “Ah me!” she continued, fortunately missing my slip of the tongue, “George has been a great loss to me.” “Loss fully covered, I hope, by insurance,” said I, trying to be polite. “How I once burned for him " she said, not noticing Ille. - “Poor George!” said T. “One good burn deserves another.” “Yes,” she said, misunderstanding my remark. “I shall marry again. I get so frightened when I am by myself long.” “I should be just the same,” said I. “How is that?” “I should get frightened if I were by you long,” said T. “Get away,” she said, digging her fan into my ribs. “Thank you, I will,” said I. And I am the Man who Did. CATS AND CUCK00S. F course, like all the other poets, I have for many years maintained pro- found professional veneration for the joys of country life, and, as the auctioneers say, for all thereunto apper- taining. I have sung praise of the trees and the bees, the rooks and the brooks, the plough and the - cow, the herds and the birds, the copse and the crops, the meads and the steeds, the sheaves and the leaves, the roses and the posies, and all the other agricultural machinery and appliances proper and essential to the construction of high-class pastoral poetry. Over every sight the country affords, I have figura- tively rolled mine eye in fine frenzy of appreciation. To every sound of rural life I have metaphorically waggled my wattles like an ass in a swarm of wasps. That was because, like the other poets, I lived in a town, and, to establish my superiority over my fat and greasy fellow-citizens, it was needful to despise 'em. Consequently, I despose 'em. -iſ:#. #º Cats and Cuckoos. 79 Besides, one always admires what one hasn’t got. The untutored small boy subtly admireth the seasoned meerschaum of his paternal parent, until, one day, he getteth it, and wisheth he were dead. The callow youth with the silly dawn of a beard upon his hopeful countenance, sets eyes upon the giggly maid with the crinkly hair, and lo! she becometh his heart’s desire—until, behold! he getteth her, and subsideth ever after into penitence. The busy merchant coursing from mart to mart in eager pursuit of fickle Fortune, paints to his longing, roseate pictures of Eden awaiting the possession of wealth; but, by-and-bye, he cometh to his treasure and his rest, and speedily bores himself to death—where- upon his careless progeny proceed to play toss with his hoard upon his gorgeous tombstone. “Man never is, but always to be blest.” The bird in the bush seems worth a dozen in the hand. We spend painful lives in running and stumbling after prizes, which, when we clutch them, turn to ashes in our grasp. We deem it dirt, the hard, firm earth that bears us, and feebly sigh for clouds which, if we could reach them, would melt beneath our tread, and drop llS. In short, man that is born of woman is no better than an ass. By-the-way, I forgot to tell you that this article was to be an essay in Natural History. Unless, indeed, it should turn otherwise. One never knows. When I start an article, I mount my Pegasus with purpose fixed and sanguine hopes of getting there; but the byways are so many and devious, the steed so erratic, and the rider so negligent of the bridle, that I thank the destinies if I find, on reaching the end, that I have arrived any- where at all. As for the patient readers—Heaven bless and com- 8o Dangle's Mixture. pensate them 1–I am sure that so long as I come somehow to an end, they are satisfied and grateful. But, as I was saying, until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t heard a cuckoo for years. You may therefore imagine my rapture, my trans- ports of delight, when, on leaving my new suburban mansion on the fateful morning in question, I dis- tinctly heard, quite distinctly, from a close-adjoining clump of trees, the sprightly shout of “Cuckoo!” The tone of it was so friendly, so neighbourly, so buoyantly here-we-are-again and glad-to-see-you-old- fellow sort of thing, that, if I had thought of it, I would have danced for joy. Instead of which, I flew indoors and called my bosom's lord. “My love, my pet,” I breathlessly cried, “prepare for happy news. The cuckoo’s come—quite close to us—the beautiful bird of the spring.” “What?” said she, coldly. “The cuckoo’s come! The cuckoo’s come!” I cried and cried again. “But the coal hasn’t,” said she, with freezing emphasis; “if you don’t hurry, you’ll get no dinner to-day.” That was the first repulse my gushing joy en- countered. “Coal l’’ ‘‘Dinner | | |’” - Oh, bathos, bathos, thy name is Mary Ann Yet there was comfort when I sallied forth again to find the herald of the spring waiting for me down the road with his untiring, so friendly shout of “Cuckoo!” And for months after that fateful morning, I never ceased, from earliest morn to dewiest eve, to hear the cuckoo's song. - The first arrival, perceiving the cordiality of my welcome, appears to have gone to fetch his friends and uncles and aunts. Cats and Cuckoos. 8I. Within a week the place swarmed with them. As I do live by sin, I saw three on one bough of a tree two days after the first one's arrival, and when they saw me, they all clapped their wings, and with one accord they shouted “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” After that they began to follow me all over the neighbourhood. Wherever I went, whatever my mood or preoccupation, they still trod close upon my heels in glad procession, crying out all the way “Cuckoo! Cuckoo !” - If I sat down to work in my study, they would cluster on my window-sill, standing on each other's backs, holding on by each other's tails, scrambling, struggling to get at me as soon as I appeared, to greet me with their cry of “Cuckoo! Cuckoo!” After a month or two, I began to grow fatigued. Gilbert White says that “the note of the cuckoo varies in different individuals; about Selborne Wood they are mostly in D; he heard two sing together, the one in D, the other in D sharp, which made a disagreeable concert”—but my little lot never varied. They all sung exactly alike, and always the same “Cuckoo! Cuckoo !” I don’t know whether they sang in D or in D sharp; but, after the first month, I did always—in a big, big D, sharp. And now, whenever I catch a cuckoo, I immediately place him between the nails of my two thumbs and carefully scrunch him. - It is the best way. º: º: º: ºf: :: º: That reminds me. - One of the standing features of the cosmic scheme which the professional funny man reckons amongst the providential perquisites of his miserable profes- sion, is the voice of the common or garden cat. The Professional Humorist constantly holds up the singing of cats to public derision as a thing ridiculous and contemptible; though there is every reason to F 82 Dangle's Mixture. believe that in the ears of the beautiful, tortoiseshell Tabitha there are few sounds more melodious than the midnight chant of her own particular Thomas, and that in the ears of the said Thomas the melancholy Philomel perched all night alone in shady groves, tuning her soft voice to sad complaint of love, and making her life one great harmonious woe, is not fit to clean the boots of his beloved Tabitha. Besides, perseverance has always, I believe, been acknowledged as a merit and beauty in them that display it; therefore the cat, being a singer far more determined and less ready to be discouraged than, let us say, a cuckoo, ought, on this ground at any rate, to be acknowledged the greater singer. What cuckoo would persist in cultivating his voice under a malignantly-sustained bombardment of bedroom furniture and appurtenances, from twelve of the night till four or five of the morning? I have tried both, and speak with knowledge. Therefore, instead of scoffing at the cat’s per- severance, let us rather accord praise to the cat for that it will not be deterred in its studies with saucy looks or weighty brickbats, but labours firm and plucks self-culture even from the spear-proof crest of rugged danger. - The fact is that in this, as in many other cases where man’s opinion is derived from a complacent assumption of his own superiority and the stale cackle of tradition, the human beast's insufferable self-sufi- ciency has prevented him from lending dispassionate consideration to the claims of other animals. Has any man ever lent fair and unimpassioned hearing to the singing of the cat? Has he sat comfortably down in a dress-suit and scented silk handkerchief, and everything handsome about him, to listen to the singing of the cat? Has he ever paid to hear a cat sing? It is humiliating to one’s pride to be compelled to confess that man has done none of these things. A - - cals and Cuckoos. 83 frantic prejudice has made him as fanatically hostile to the singing of the cat as are the Parisian gutter patriots to the rendering of Wagner's music. He listens to the cat, not in a handsome dress-suit, which inspires him with comfortable conviction of being admired by all the girls, but in a ragged nightshirt, which renders him, by appearance, utterly unpresentable in any feminine society. And he doesn't pay. That settles it. Go you to any theatrical or operatic manager and ask him which of his patrons are most discontented with his entertainment. The invariable answer is “the deadhead.” The man who comes not to pay remains to scoff. The fact that he is admitted free fills him with a preposterous sense of his own importance; and, moreover, there is a natural tendency in imperfect human nature to appraise all we get at the price which we have paid for it. Don’t you remember how you broke in a week the guinea meerschaum which Jones gave you? and you know how many months you have now been Smoking that horrid, malodorous, filthy, shilling briar for which you paid with your own money. It is even so with the music of cats. It is too cheap. The feline singers throw themselves away. Furthermore, the cat sings in the night, when men would steep their stupid senses in forgetfulness of their long day’s crimes. The voice of the cat prevents thi consummation, and in so far resembles the voice of conscience. Hence, and for other considerations, the singing cat does not get a fair hearing. Is a man a competent judge of music when, being suddenly awakened in the middle of the night, he stumbles through the dark bedroom, his eyes only half opened, bruises his shins against the iron foot of the bed, and kicks the dressing-table hard with his favourite corn, whilst attempting to navigate his course 84 Dangle's Mixture. to the window? What wonder that he should there- after “make boot of his distraction,” as Shakespeare says about some other subject in Antony and Cleopatra? # º: # º: º: º: The plain truth of the matter is that the regular pro- fessional funny man has proved nothing but his ignorant and narrow prejudice in this matter of the cat’s singing, as have the poets about cuckoos. Because he does not know the keynote of the psalm, he professes to find it full of discords. But let those who would judge well and truly of the quarrel between the singing cat and the professional humorist fortify their understanding first by calm observation of a few feline concerts. Let them stand resolutely by when Tabitha begins her solitary song, and pours to the cold moon a richer, stronger strain than that with which the lyric lark salutes the new-born day. Her deep and thrilling song seems, with its piercing melody, to reach the soul, and in mysterious unison blends thoughts of love and torture chambers. - Then hark to Thomas’s reply! In the enraptured ears of Tabitha, the Swelling sound is precious as the dew the amorous bounty of morn casts on the rose's cheek, and melodious as revolving spheres attuned by touch angelic; the violet's perfumed and purple crest, or phoenix burning in its spicy nest, would not so thrill her with its sweet sensation. Instead of which the regular professional humorist, who has never had the good taste to hear a cat-duet dispassionately through, comes round casting stupid jokes and boot-jacks at the singers. Now, do you know that there is a species of American thrushes known as cat-birds, much addicted to gardens, whose song is “strikingly similar to the plaint of a kitten in distress”? and, says a naturalist, “but for the unfortunate resemblance of its ordinary cry to the voice of an animal by no means a favourite, would be considered an agreeable bird.” Cats and Cuckoos. 85 Mark you, now, this signal proof of prejudice. The singing of cats being out of fashion, this agreeable bird’s silvery note cannot be discounted by any dealer in musical currency: - The cat-bird generally begins its song, while ſluttering with great sprightliness from bush to bush, before the dawn, when there is scarcely light enough to render it visible. His notes are more singular than melodious. He appears to study certain passages with great perseverance, commencing in a low key, and as he succeeds, ascending to a higher and a freer note, unembarrassed by the presence of a spectator. D'ye mind that, now? The cat sings, like the cat-bird, on the flutter. The cat-bird chooses that portion of the day for his musical exercises “when there is scarcely light enough to render it visible”; the cat, for obvious reasons, does the same. The cat-bird studies with great perseve- rance; so does the cat. The cat-bird is unembarrassed by the presence of a spectator; and the cat—why, bless you, the cat is unembarrassed and easy in the presence of tons of flying bricks and of blank-verse remarks as numerous as sands of fretful ocean. º: º: º: º: º: ºf: What a vista of conjecture is here suggested to the student of evolution | Cats are fond of birds: the nightingale is a singer in the dark. Who, then, that has imagination for the mysteries of science would recoil from undertaking to trace the descent of the melodious nightingale from that unappreciated, primary professor of the vocal arts—the common or back-garden cat? - X: º 86 THE SECRET OF ALL MY GREATNESS; SHOULD you ask me whence my greatness, whence my fame and high distinction, I should answer, I should tell you, 'twas all on account of my Dog. Wondrous condogenation of fortuitous circumstances! Is it mere Chance that from the Fire-Maelstroms, Creations, and Destructions of Worlds, and Systems of Worlds, evolves countless new immeasurable life-tissues and venous-arterial hearts, to spin their organic fila- ments mysteriously and awfully into hitherto unknown unities, and from the deep-sad tones of the melodious Death songs of World-Phoenixes a-burning, evolves the bright-glad tones of the more melodious Birth song, as one may say, of a Yellow Dog" Alas! this shall Man never know. Not he Not man, with his postulates and metaphysic bric-à-brac and countless jingling fools' rattles of school cant and pedantries hard-frozen. Not he, but another being, The Secret of all my Greatness. 87 very different from him—differing from him as Heaven from Salford. Deep down in the abysmal solitudes of eternity, wrapped cocoon-like in still celestial cells of crystal silence there, or weltering supernal in the chaos-floods of the naturally supernatural that bubble up from the wreck-strewn ocean-bed of the Infinite, the inscrutable, ineffable, resistless veracities of Destiny lie concealed. One never knows. Until we met, my dog and I, at the Dog Pound, my intellectual superiority and literary eminence had not been generally noticed. In those earlier days, if I thought of Shakespeare, I felt comparatively small. But, like Byron, “I awoke one morning, and found myself famous.” I had lost a collie, and went to the Dog Pound to seek him. The Pound-keeper showed me a dingy stable full of doomed dogs, which barked, yelped, bayed, yapped, yarred, yawled, snarled, howled, growled, grunted, hopped, sprang, leaped, ramped, capered, curvetted, rolled across my feet, and sat up begging, to woo me to their rescue. Such a writhing, wriggling, tumbling, tossing, scrambling tale of wretched dogs! In the foreground crouched the cringing curled darlings of fortune, their ribbons tarnished now, their snarly insolence sadly subdued, but wearing yet a sort of perkiness, as who should say: “Behold ! we are not as these other curs. You surely could not think of letting its be drowned.” Behind these stood the stoic gutter-curs, scarred, stolid veterans in Adversity's Army–brave, enduring, unconcerned; and conspicuous amongst them shone the quietest, mildest, most unpretentious dog I had ever met—a gentle, placid beast, in whose face patience and good-humour strove which should express her good- liest; not a trace of intreaty in his look, not a sign of hope about him. His eye met mine frankly and fearlessly. “Good-bye, my friend,” it seemed to say. “Here is my journey’s end; here is the very water- mark of my utmost sail. If these 'ere howling toffs 88 - Dangles Mixture. must die, there ain’t a dog's chance for plain, plebeian Jimmy. It is of no consequence. Go thou and do likewise.” - He was not an ostentatious dog—being mostly ears, and legs, and tail, and all unvarnished yellowness. But he spoke like a man. There was courage behind that softly-beaming eye; an honest, brave heart beat beneath that unkempt tawny hide. I said but two words of kindness to him, and he wagged me out such a wealth of thanks that I could resist no more. “I want that dog,” I said to the Pound-man. “That dog!” exclaimed the Pound-man. “Well, I’ll be jiggered!” - Perhaps he prophesied well. Perhaps he didn’t. Perhaps he went and got himself jiggered on the spot. Perhaps he left it over and forgot. I only know that as soon as I had paid half-a-crown to the pound, the Pound-man gave me in exchange a look of profound contempt, and—the yellow dog! “James” went home with me. Then began my greatness. He was a complicated dog, and attracted much attention. People would come for miles and ask me what sort of a dog he was. One erudite patriarch, a very clever man, who had read all Browning’s poems and understood bimetallism, declared that there was a deal of greyhound in him, though there was a bit of mastiff in the toss of his left shoulder, of the King Charles in the curl of his tail, of the pug dog in his easy self-confidence, of the St. Bernard in his chest, and of almost everything in the mouth and stomach. Another expert, a veterinary surgeon, who wore his hat further over his ear than any man I ever saw, spent two days and more whisky than I could have thought possible in analysing his breed, and finally came to the deliberate conclusion that he must be a fat dog. But a young friend, who subsequently published, under the title of “Merrie England,” a The Secret of all my Greatness. 89 collection of loose thoughts which I had incautiously dropped in his presence, settled the problem and established my glory for ever by referring to “James” one day in a newspaper article as “Dangle's Yellow Dog.” The effect was electrical. The populations of those regions where the article appeared were tickled down to their feet. There had been no such sensation since another great Humorist, some centuries ago, paralysed the human race with the previously-unsuspected fact that there was cause for mirth in the mother-in-law. Nay, one might go back even further for a precedent to that prehistoric occasion when the Palaeozoic panto- mime comedian, as he swung by his tail from the Sigil- laria, first informed his rival that his face was like a street-door knocker. Yet the people laughed. The instructors of youth, when out walking in the streets, would point me out to their processions of boarding-school prodigies. - “That's Dangle,” they would say; “ha, ha!” And the young ladies would roll upon the ground and roar upon the spot. - - If I was seen to cough or sneeze or blink, the thronging multitudes leaped for sheer delight, and go Dangle's Mixture. the oldest inhabitants, doubled up with hilarious groans and convulsions, would be carried away by dozens, their fixed eyes fearfully riveted still on me, and their lips working with inward mutterings to the form of “Dangle's Yellow Dog.” All the wits in those parts took up “Dangle's Yellow Dog,” and constructed elaborate edifices of Northern Humour round about him. One suggested that he ought to be stencilled in self-tints, with a Japanese dado round his lower storey. Another thought he ought to have his hair curled. They strained and racked and tortured themselves to invent new jokes about Dangle's Yellow Dog. Like Falstaff, “James” was the cause of wit in others. I laid low and said nothing. They pressed the button; I did the rest; on a sofa. They remained unknown, undistinguished, and unholy; I grew famous, and was worshipped for their humour. :: º: º: º: #: º: As for the dog, he did not worry. He would just stretch himself out on the geranium bed in the garden and let the restless world wonder. Content and smiling, he would lie there, till Mrs. Dangle—restless, discontented human creature—would rudely come to trounce him off. Then philosophically shrugging his shoulders, he would turn in for a map on the new plush sofa, and never turn a hair. Disturbed in his meditations there by Mrs. Dangle's remarks and a broomstick, he would wriggle his fat carcass to the cream satin counterpane in the visitors’ bedroom, and never care a rap. - Being hungry, he would walk down to the butcher's and select a steak. Did the fussy tradesman furiously bombard him with ugly words and meat-choppers, he would saunter on with his feast, and never care a rap. Butcher after butcher came to occupy the meat shop across the way; one struggled on for as much as six months, and then assured me, with emotion in his voice, that “the leakage and waste” was too much for The Scoret of all my Greatness. QI him. He accounted for his losses by reference to the importation of American dead meat. I said nothing. Nor did “James.” He never made any fuss. He wanted to eat, to lie down in the sunshine, and he wanted things kept quiet. Uninter- rupted by the vicissitudes of life, he would have lain all winter on the kitchen hearthrug, and in the sunny garden all through the summer. I remember to this day the look of silent disgust which he cast up at the Bounder from the corner of his eyes when that overfed humorist once asked him to sit up for a bone. “Wogh" said “Jimmy,” as plainly as eyes could speak, “how would he like to sit up for every bone he ot?” g And he looked at the Bounder severely sideways, and jogged back to the Sunshine. - :: #: ºf: :: *f; # Snub-nosed respectability in the shape of the rectory pug passed him by without acknowledgment. Did he fret? Did he rush to the city to increase his means? Did he trouble himself to acquire flash new clothes and jewellery? No; he figuratively expectorated over his left shoulder in the respectable pug's direction, and smiled at the sun; he didn’t care a rap. Ah, sirs, there be wailers and whiners grieve because they say the world is “going to the dogs!” Would that it were ! The world then would take things more easily. If “James” served no higher purpose in life, he served at least to teach me the usefulness of seden- tary habits and the advantage of fluency in feeding. But he never was a funny dog. That was the joke of it. While all the humorists were bursting blood- vessels in the effort to make people laugh about him, “James” would lean against a lamp-post half the day 92 Dangle's Mixture. to think, and spend the other half lying in the Sun– except when a cat came along, and then he'd walk away on his heels, pretending not to notice her. Nor was he amusing to look at. His head was too heavy for his other end, and he seemed as if he ought to have had a weight hung on to his tail to prevent him falling on his nose; but his tail appeared to have been so extensively chewed by rats that it would have been cruel to do it. Besides, there was a homicidal expres– sion in his offside orbit which discouraged familiarity. He was disreputable, but not ostentatiously so. He would cheerfully dart at a standing horse to make it run away, causing the contents of its cart to rattle up and down and spill, and its master to come rushing out of a conveniently adjacent shop, and paint the atmo- sphere with lurid speech; but there was no frivolity or swagger in the act. As soon as the startled horse had bolted, “Jimmy” would jog placidly along with the expression of an early Christian. He occasionally discouraged the demoralising exhibi- tion of food products in the public streets by Snatching a salmon or a leg of mutton from a stall; but he made no boast of it—on the contrary, he would withdraw to some unconspicuous place of retirement, and consume his booty there in modest quietness. He may have been a yellow dog in aspect, but he was quite different at heart. In fact, he was an uneventful dog. The only characteristic that ever brought him into prominence was his intense and singular distrust of every respectable person. A more courteous or affable dog never breathed to tramps; all the canine etiquette of bounding and curvetting in front of a visitor, of welcoming the guest by lightly prancing a few yards in advance, with tail upraised into the pomp and circumstance of a glorious flagstaff—all this would “James” perform with infinite smiling graciousness. But these gentle manners and caudal courtesies were never for my Sunday friends. That ass of a dog would wriggle his body and crook the pregnant hinges of his The Secret of all my Greatness. 93 tail for every dilapidated, low-down vagrom-man that came within my gates; his candied tongue would lick the hand of every ragged misery; he fawned upon poverty and wretchedness as though they were respect- able. But when any of my bank-directing, or company- promoting, sound, substantial guests arrived, the beast would crouch up to me as if to forbid the intruders’ nearer approach; his stiff, short hair would bristle up around his neck like quills around the fretful porcupine; his long ears would fall close to his head, and his curmudgeon nose uneasily twitch; his eyes would look sullenly up from beneath frowning eyebrows to scan my looks and catch at my command to charge. And so to the end of every successful person’s visit would he stand scowling and growling. Till, at last, bank directors and Prime Ministers ceased to visit me. One day, in the street, he met a little cur of low degree, a base-born tramp of a dog, a highway beggar, a canine disgrace to the parish, which he nevertheless brought home with him, and established in his tub as an honoured guest. In vain did outraged Respecta- bility (in the shape of Mrs. Dangle) let havoc loose, and spread the plain with bricks, broomsticks, and furious language; every time the mongrel cur was driven out, “James” growled and followed, returning presently hand-in-hand with his disreputable comrade. And so persistent was he in his hospitable resolve to rescue the cur from penury's barren path, that at last his mistress gave way, and “Lazarus,” as we called him, remained. And that is the only occasion in my other- wise successful married career when I have known my wife to miss having her own way. The usual yellow dog is a constant hullabaloo, a perpetual menagerie, a regular all-round circus in him- self. “James” was none of these. His tail and ears had been profusely dentated in honourable combat; but I never saw him fight except in a good cause. I never heard him growl at a dog 94 Dangle's Mixture. smaller than himself; but I have seen him attack one twice his size in chivalrous defence of another. Every little dog in the neighbourhood knew him for a reliable, disinterested champion. If the little dog had been maltreated by a canine bully, he would come to fetch “James” to the rescue. Then, with stately tread, the two would march, shoulder to shoulder and arm in arm, as one may say, upon the common foe— Two dogs with but one single thought, Two tails that wagged as one. And having pointed out the brute to “James,” the small dog would discreetly withdraw to some safe and convenient place of observation, whilst my prelia, chevalier calmly and stolidly sailed in to excavate the bully. #: º: sk #: º: ºk In these days I had a sort of an uncle—a childless widower, with property in Yorkshire—the only respect- able relative I ever had, though troubled with a mal- formation of the temper. Between him and “James” there sprang up the deadliest hostility. One day my uncle kicked him, and “James” retorted with a bite. The old gentleman foamed at the mouth, and screamed that the dog was mad. “He must be taken The Secret of all my Greatness. 95 to the veterinary surgeon’s at once, and carefully cauterised.” - “James” said nothing, but glanced at my uncle as who should say, “You don’t say so?” and thoughtfully scratched his right ear with his left foot. My uncle said we must take him along, with a rope at each side of him, so that he could be kept at an equal distance between us. The plan worked splendidly till we came to the veterinary surgeon’s door. There “James” sat down to consider the situation. We pulled at the rope with all our might, when, suddenly, “James” made an unexpected forward rush. Then we sat down. When we arose, “James” was gone. We saw him in the distance, Sauntering home with a hop, skip, and a Jump. - My uncle went in pursuit, threatening to grasp him by the throat and shake him till he was black in the face; but just as the old gentleman overtook him, “James” turned, with a sudden growl, and my uncle remembered a pressing appointment in the opposite direction. When I found him two hours later, sitting up a tree two miles away, he declared he would cut me off with a shilling. - I have not yet received the shilling, but I got the cut all right. My uncle adopted an Asylum for Indigent Daughters of Idiotic Politicians, and when he died they got the property. I got the needle. And on the day after the adventure, “James” was found dead—poisoned. Poor old “Jimmy” - sk º: º: # # º: When I began, I meant to tell you some funny stories about “James.” But, when I come to think of it, he was not built that way. His life was gentle, and the elements So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up And say to all the world, “This was a Dog.” 96 Dangle's Mixture. You might, in a large and miscellaneous collection of dogs, look upon his like again. But I never did. # º: + : # º: And though he was not a funny dog, I have never ceased, until these presents, to be regarded as such. Whether the other great living Humorists were set up in business on equally easy terms, I cannot tell. I study their Humours, and wonder. - But whilst they painfully preserve the secret of their renown, I give mine away. England wants more of us great men; it is the duty of those who know the way to point it out to others. - Should you therefore ask me, whence these stories, whence this booklet's publication, I should answer, I should tell you, je jette ma langue auá, chiems. And if there be any person in the crowd so incredibly ignorant as not to understand this expression, you and I, gentle reader, who have no ignorance to betray, can well afford to Smile at him; for by smiling you get credit for knowledge, I for wit, and so we kill two staring necessities with one sorry smile. Therefore, smile on, O gentle reader (if gentle reader you be). Smile while yet you may, and look distin- guished; for they that shall so smile at this book, I do assure you, will be exceedingly uncommon. As for the moral to be deduced from my Yellow Dog's tail (it being, as you have seen, a strictly moral tail), the moral is that it is better to start from the dogs than to go there; and that whilst some are born with Yellow Metal, and others achieve Yellow Books, the greatest of these is Modesty. “Clarion” Newspaper Co., Ltd., 72, Fleet Street, London, E.C. CLARION PUBLICATIONS. CT, ALERICIN ECCIES- MERRIE ENGLAND. By NUNQUAM. 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