i'OK 
 
 . o\ 
 
 ON 
 
 MRS. W/K, COFFORI) 
 
 .AUSTIN .iiOBr 
 
 R. L, ST£V£NS0W 
 
 i^:rc. ETC.
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 VOLUNTARIES 
 
 FOR AN EAST LONDON HOSPITAL 
 
 BY 
 
 THE EARL OF LYTTON, BISHOP OF BEDFORD, E. M. ABDY-WILLIAMS 
 
 T. ASHE, C. CHESTON, MRS. W. K.CLIFFORD, AUSTIN DOBSON 
 
 ARTHUR GAYE, A. EGMONT HAKE, T. GORDON HAKE 
 
 ^rRS. HECKFORD, W. E. HENLEY, MAY KENDALL 
 
 ANDREW LANG, WALTER POLLOCK 
 
 F. MABEL ROBINSON, EDWARD ROSE 
 
 CLEMENT SCOTT, R. L. STEVENSON 
 
 J. L. TOOLE. 
 
 LONDON 
 DAVID STOTT, 370, OXFORD STREET, W 
 
 1887 
 
 {All Rights J^eservi-d.)
 
 LONDON 
 
 HENDERSON, RAIT, AND SPALDING, I'RINTEnS, 
 
 3 AND 5, MARVLEBONE LANE, \V.
 
 Ma^t fiondon Hospital for phildren, 
 
 ■^•® •<&(>-   
 
 To 
 
 ASHTON WARNER, 
 
 Secretary. 1 88 
 
 I ivish yoH to place iny Nam' a<; a * 
 
 h> the East London Hospital for Children, Shadwkll, E., 
 
 for the Sum of £ _ 
 
 Signature , 
 
 * State here Donor or Annual Subscriber. 
 
 Address 
 
 Subscriptions and Donations wiil be thankfully received by the I'ankers- The Alliance, 
 Bartholomew Lane ; JMessrs. Dimsdai.es, Cornhill ; Messrs. Coutts, Strand ; Messrs. 
 Pkescott & Co., 6j, Threadneedle Street, E.C. ; and by 
 
 CHARLES CHESTON, Chairman. 
 CHARLES A. PRESCOTT, Vice-Chairman. 
 EDWARD S. NORRIS, Treasurer. 
 ASHION WARNER, Secretary. 
 
 {v. T. I).
 
 PriDiIeges of Subscribers anb Donors. 
 
 A Subscriber shall be entitled to recommend two Out-Patients 
 annuall^'for each guinea given to the Hospital. Donors of ^lo los. 
 in one sum are Life Governors, and are entitled to recommend hve 
 Patients annually for life ; and every recommendation shall be 
 equivalent to an ordinary In-Patient's letter, if the case require it. 
 
 The Hospital contains 92 beds. The In-Patients are taken from 
 the Out-Patients. They are selected on this principle : Is there a 
 bed vacant? Is this the worst case of the clay? — the admission 
 being entirely at the discretion of the medical attendant. 
 
 The Out-patients attend with orders from Subscribers, who 
 receive two letters or orders for each annual subscription of a 
 guinea. 
 
 Special Cots are maintained according to the following scale : — 
 
 Scale of Amounts required for Endowment, or Support of Special Cots. 
 
 To endow a Cot in Perpetuity ... ... ... ^1,000 
 
 ,, ,, for Lifetime of Donor ... ... 300 
 
 ,, ,, by Annual Subscription ... ... 50 
 
 .Such scale to be subject to modification under special circumstances brought 
 
 before the Board. 
 
 N.F5. — Accidents and urgent cases are admitted at any time, of any age, 
 and without letters
 
 
 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 
 
 This volume is given to the public by its promoter, 
 
 Mrs. Charles Cheston, in the hope that the East 
 
 London Hospital for Children, in aid of which it 
 
 has been produced, will materially benefit by the 
 
 proceeds of its sale. 
 
 Mrs. Cheston asked me to assist her in the quest 
 
 of good material to lay before the reader, and 
 
 wishes me now to offer her warmest thanks to the 
 
 many distinguished writers who have contributed to 
 
 this book. At the same time she gives me this 
 
 opportunity to record my own grateful recognition of 
 
 the kindness of those who, in answer to my appeals, 
 
 have so promptly and graciously given of their 
 
 treasures for the sake of East London's suffering 
 
 poor. 
 
 H. B. DONKIN. 
 
 lime, 1887. 
 
 B * 
 
 86C7C1
 
 ^ast f (riikn Ifaspital far Cljiltoit, 
 
 S H J^H) "WIE Xj Xj . 
 
 -:o: 
 
 PATRONS. 
 
 HER MOST GRACIOUS MAJESTY THE QUEEN. 
 
 Her Royal Highness Princess Louise, Marchioness of Lorne. 
 Her Royal Highness the Princess Mary Adelaide, Duchess 
 
 of Teck. 
 The Dowager Duchess of Beaufort. 
 The Dowager Marchioness of Lansdowne. 
 Mrs. Edward Marjoribanks. 
 
 The Right Hon. and Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of London. 
 The Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Bedford. 
 
 PRESIDENT, 
 EARL OF STRAFFORD. 
 
 VICE-PRESIDENTS. 
 
 Thomas Charrington. [ George Sturge 
 
 The Right Hon. William Evvart Sir Francis Wyatt Truscott, 
 
 Gladstone, M.P. 
 Sir William McArthur. 
 Francis Peek. 
 
 Sir Richard E. Webster, Q.C.,M.P. 
 Samuel Whitbread, M.P. 
 W. R. Winch. 
 
 TREASURER. 
 EDWARD S. NORRIS, M.P. 
 
 TRUSTEES. 
 
 Sir R. N. Fowler, Bart., M.P. 
 Samuel Gurney Sheppard. 
 
 Edward S. Norris, M.P. 
 Clifford Wigram.
 
 GENERAL COMMITTEE. 
 
 Lady Anstruther. 
 Lady Colebrooke. 
 Lady Susan Melville. 
 Mrs. Heckford. 
 Mrs. Walsham How. 
 J. G. S. Anderson. 
 Rev. J. Bardsley, M.A. 
 Thomas Charrington. 
 Lionel Cohen, M.P. 
 Stanley Dent. 
 
 Lord George Hamilton, 
 
 John Holt. 
 
 Thomas Morgan. 
 
 John Nesbitt Malleson. 
 
 T. Scrutton. 
 
 Arthur Denis deVahl. 
 
 John Watson. 
 
 F. Maryon Wilson. 
 
 Samuel Whitbread, M. P 
 
 M.P. 
 
 BOARD OF MANAGEMENT. 
 
 Charles Cheston, Chairman. 
 
 Charles A Prescott, Vice-Chair, 
 
 Edward S. Norris, M.P., Treas. 
 
 Rev. Edward Bray, Hon. Chaplain. 
 
 Rev. H. Sinden, lion. Librarian. 
 
 Tom Bird, M.A. 
 
 Arthur Csesar. 
 
 Rev. Arthur R. Carter, D.D. 
 
 J. A. Coutts, M.B. 
 
 H. Radcliffe Crocker, M. D. 
 
 William Evans Denny. 
 
 Stanley Dent. 
 
 H. B. Donkin, M.B. 
 
 J. L. Drew. 
 
 Louis A. Dunn, F.R.C.S. 
 
 Sir Robert Nicholas Fowler, Bart., 
 
 M.P. 
 F, W, Freese. 
 
 Alfred Frost. 
 Rev. Father Gorman. 
 Daniel Howard. 
 Robert Johnson. 
 Robert Jones. 
 W. Kemp-Welch. 
 Rev. J. Kennedy, D.D. 
 Lord Kilmarnock. 
 F. C. Mills. 
 A. de Mattos Mocatta. 
 R. W. Parker, M.R.CS. 
 Captain Parkington. 
 George Russell. 
 John Schwartz. 
 Eustace Smith, M.D. 
 Rev. C. H. Turner, M.A. 
 Dawson Williams, M.D. 
 H. Granville Wright. 
 
 SECRETARY. 
 ASHTON WARNER. 
 
 B 2
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Story of the East London Hospital for 
 
 Children Mrs. Heckford ix 
 
 Ballade of the Dream Atidrew Lang i 
 
 The Boy who followed the Sunset May Kendall 3 
 
 Knurr and Spell Walter Pollock 10 
 
 A Machine Hand T. Ashe 42 
 
 The Chippendale Chair E. M. Abdy-Williams 
 
 (Mrs. Bernhard Whishaw) 44 
 
 How I Paid Half-a-Crown to see "Trying a 
 
 Magistrate" J. L. Toole 46 
 
 Queen Victoria's Day. A Jubilee Ode ... Thos. Gordon Hake 50 
 
 The Two Cots C. Cheston 58 
 
 A Vicious Circle The Earl of Lytion 64 
 
 The Last Scene of the Play Mrs. W. K. Clifford 78 
 
 To the Mammoth Tortoise of the Mascaeene 
 
 Islands Austin Dotson , 128 
 
 Hospital Sketches W. E. Henley 130 
 
 A Lady Land Leaguer ...F. Mabel Robinson 149 
 
 A Comforter The Bishop of Bedford 169 
 
 A Woman's Song! Clement Scoti 170 
 
 Three Unpublished Letters of General Gordon 
 
 Contributed by A. Egmont Hake 172 
 
 On the Shelf Arthur Gaye 174 
 
 Ad Matrem Robert Lotds Stevefison 199 
 
 The Singer Edward Rose 202
 
 THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. 
 
 BY MRS. HECKFORD. 
 
 I HAVE been asked to write a short account of the 
 East London Hospital for Children, and having 
 consented, I must, before beginning, ask the in- 
 dulgence of all who read it. 
 
 In the entrance hall of the hospital is a large 
 tablet with this inscription : 
 
 In Memory of 
 
 Nathaniel Heckford, M.D., M.R.C.S. 
 
 Born in Calcutta, April, 1842 
 
 Died 14th December, 187 1 
 
 Aged 29 
 
 He Founded this Institution 
 
 At His Own Cost 
 
 In a Warehouse at Ratcliff Cross 
 
 January 28, 1868 
 
 He Lived For It 
 
 And Died 
 
 A Few Days After The Site 
 
 Of This Building was 
 
 Purchased by the 
 
 Committee of Management of the 
 
 Hospital.
 
 X THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 It is not a mortuary tablet, but a beautiful mosaic 
 of Venetian manufacture, and the golden ground, 
 rich colouring, and Egyptian alabaster bring a vision 
 of San Marco and of Venice, when she was the bond 
 between stern European facts and gorgeous Eastern 
 idealism, before the eyes of those gifted with a little 
 learning and some imagination. For the rest of those 
 who look at it, it is but a fantastically graceful 
 memorial contrasting strangely wnth its surroundings, 
 and telling of the Eastern birth, short life, and single- 
 minded devotion to the hospital of a man, the 
 memory of whose unusual beauty of disposition and 
 form still appeals to the untutored imaginations of 
 numbers of poor toilers in the grime of Katcliff and 
 
 Shadwell. 
 
 I cannot tell the story of the hospital's life without 
 telling his, nor his without in part telling my own and 
 those of others, for an institution lives in the human 
 hope, love, and aspiration that strive to express 
 themselves through it, and its biography is to be 
 found in the lives of those whose happiness and woe 
 have ebbed and flowed from and around it ; to whom 
 it has been as a living creature, to be tended lovingly,
 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xi 
 
 to be looked to in time of need as a trusty friend ; a 
 thing to be cherished and relied upon, to be wept 
 over and prayed for ; a thing worth living and dying 
 for. 
 
 In the year 1866 Nathaniel Heckford was a 
 surgeon and doctor at the London Hospital. He had 
 carried off all the honours possible during his student 
 days, taking the gold medal for surgery and medicine 
 in the same year. His devotion to his profession, his 
 chivalrous championship of the weak or oppressed, 
 and his unselfishness to all, rendered him a favourite 
 alike with his teachers, his patients,, and his comrades. 
 When the cholera broke out in the summer of that 
 year he volunteered to help a friend, Dr. Woodman, 
 who was in charge of the Wapping District Cholera 
 Hospital ; and there I first met him, I being also a 
 volunteer, in the capacity of nurse : in addition to 
 which I was a student of medicine. 
 
 We soon became friends, for in his spare moments 
 he was always ready to talk of his patients' cases, of 
 their individual joys and woes, or to drift into 
 speculations, moral, social, or religious, showing an 
 absence of conventionality in his ideas, and a
 
 xii THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 fearlessness in following his thought, to whatever end 
 it tended, which was almost startling ; whilst perhaps 
 a moment after he would exhibit an appreciation 
 of fun and a childlike pleasure in trifles which 
 contrasted strangely with his more serious moods. 
 He was a great favourite in the hospital with both 
 patients and nurses, and from the latter I heard of 
 his devotion to the out-door sufferefs — of how he 
 never thought it trouble to go out at any hour if he 
 could be of use ; and, further, a little trait of his con- 
 sideration for creatures not human, namely, for that 
 domestic plague, a black-beetle, the life of one of 
 which I was told half indignantly, he had rescued, 
 saying that death was probably as disagreeable to the 
 beetle as it would be to him. I heard also that 
 he described himself as an " Indian," and I remarked 
 that his ideas and even his modes of expression were 
 tinged with Orientalism. 
 
 From the maze of figures which rise before me as 
 I recall this time, one stands out prominently. 
 Margarite (I spell her name as she spelt it) was the 
 servant in the doctor's room, and used to bring me my 
 dinner from thence. I can see her now as she first
 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xiii 
 
 attracted my notice — a delicately-formed girl of seven- 
 teen, with a small refined face and dark hair and 
 eyes. She was leaning on the stair balustrade out- 
 side the ward — a ray of sunlight heavily laden with 
 motes gilding her hair, whilst it threw her face into 
 soft shadow^ ; her arms were bared to the elbow, and 
 her taper fingers peeped from under the white apron 
 carelessly thrown over them, as she stood there 
 droopingly, her dark lashes resting on her pale 
 cheeks — and quite unconscious that she was making 
 a charming picture. 
 
 One evening shortly before the cholera wore itself 
 out, Mr. Heckford, as he was walking to my lodgings 
 with me, said he had a favour to ask, if I would grant 
 it. He told me that he was much interested in 
 Margarite, that he thought her a very superior girl, 
 and that he knew she was doomed by consumption if 
 she were not removed from her actual surroundings. 
 He asked me if I could help her in any way, for that 
 he could not : saying frankly, that he had no money, 
 and that his recommendation would do her no good 
 with anyone he knew but me. We then planned that 
 she should be sent to my sister's and my house in the
 
 xiv THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 West End, there to be trained under our lady's- 
 maid. 
 
 Thus Margarite became a legacy of the Cholera 
 Hospital. On the 28th January, 1867, I was mar- 
 ried to Mr. Heckford, and we took the girl for our 
 servant. 
 
 We determined to work out our theories of life as it 
 ought to be, on thoroughly new principles ; we were 
 somewhat undetermined as to what to do, but we 
 agreed that we must do something to show how much 
 happiness might ensue if persons of means and 
 culture would devote themselves to elevating those 
 less fortunate than they. 
 
 Almost everyone expected that my husband would 
 enter the career of a consulting surgeon in the West 
 End; but the Ufe of a fashionable medical man 
 offered no attractions to him. It was not the first 
 time that he had turned carelessly from what would 
 have allured most men. 
 
 '• What is the greatest result you look forward to in 
 that sort of life ? " he said to me ; " why do you want 
 me to go in f(;r it ? The most it would lead to would 
 be our wasting our time trying to please people.
 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xv 
 
 instead of trying to help them ; in our frittering away 
 in ostentatious living almost as much money as we 
 should make, and in giving parties to people we 
 should not care for, and who would not care for us ; 
 and then at the end perhaps I should become Sir 
 Nathaniel Heckford. What a glorious ambition ! 
 Let us stop and work in the East End — it will be 
 much better." 
 
 It was the same with his sending notes of his cases 
 to the medical papers, or contemplating writing a 
 book on any special subject. He was often urged 
 to bring his name forward by men who knew how 
 much success de2:)ends on a name being often before 
 the public. " When I have any really instructive 
 case," he would say, " I will bring it forward. What 
 good will it do to bring my name forward ? That is 
 what fills up more than half the medical papers — men 
 puffing themselves." 
 
 One evening, when the days were already short, 
 he came home rather late from a visit he had 
 been paying at the London Hospital to some men 
 on the resident staff. " I tell you what we must 
 do," he said, " we must start a Children's Hospital.
 
 xvi THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 It is the thing most needed, and will do the most 
 good. It is the great need of the East End, and 
 we must do that and nothing else ! " 
 
 Then began the search for premises. My husband 
 in his spare time, and Margarite and I at all times, 
 tramped daily over the parishes of Shadwell, Ratcliff, 
 and Stepney, in what seemed a hopeless quest. 
 At last a Dissenting minister of the name 
 of Benn told us of two old warehouses at Ratcliff 
 Cross, close to the river. The price asked Svas 
 ;!^2,ooo, an exorbitant sum, but we were so hope- 
 less of finding anything else, and so impatient to 
 begin, that we agreed to it. 
 
 It was delightful work now. ' We moved our 
 furniture, and electrified Ratcliff Cross by the sight 
 of the van and its contents. Some of the articles 
 were too large to pass up the narrow stairs, and 
 had to be hoisted through the windows, whilst a 
 crowd of excited youngsters in the street acted chorus 
 as each article was removed from the van, crying, 
 " Here comes the sofa ! Here come the fenders ! Oh ! 
 look at the gold, oh ! — " their minds not having yet 
 grasped the idea " all is not gold that glitters," which
 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xvii 
 
 delusion also caused our little drawing-room to 
 be described by one privileged to see it as being " all 
 furnished in gold," owing to a buhl cabinet and some 
 ormolu ornaments. When our rooms were settled 
 they looked very pretty ; in the ward above them ten 
 little iron bedsteads awaited their inmates ; I painted 
 " East London Hospital for Children and Dispensary 
 for Women " on a board ; we fixed it above the 
 warehouse door, and on the 28th January, 1868, the 
 first anniversary of our wedding day, the hospital was 
 opened. 
 
 It soon increased in every way. We were crowded 
 with " in " and " out " patients, and my husband gave 
 up his private practice, partly in order to devote all 
 his time to the hospital, partly because he wished to 
 avoid suspicion of using it as a means to push him- 
 self professionally before the public. We hardly 
 knew how the time went, and took but little count 
 of it ; indeed, we worked so late, and were called up 
 from our sleep so often, that day and night got some- 
 what mixed up ; added to which, I often went out to 
 attend women in their confinements, and my husband 
 constantly attended patients at their own homes,
 
 xviii THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 besides doing amateur work as a nightly visitor in 
 haunts where the police were afraid to go alone. It 
 was dangerous, no doubt, and I always felt thankful 
 when he came home safe : but he had a great in- 
 fluence over the people, and it was a part of our 
 scheme for reforming the neighbourhood. No one 
 who did not live near the Ratcliff Highway then can 
 have an idea of what it was. I have seen men and 
 women fighting and rolling together in the gutter 
 before the hospital doors ; have heard the shrieks of a 
 woman in an opposite house until they were stopped 
 by her being felled to the ground, and left weltering 
 in her blood, by her drunken husband, whilst her 
 children stood aside in terror ; and although we could 
 see all from the windows of the wards, have been 
 powerless to interfere because the poor creature had 
 not called " Murder ! " I have seen my husband stand 
 unarmed in the midst of a yelling mob, which the 
 police were afraid to approach, and have heard his 
 voice rise above the din and quell it, whilst he ap- 
 pealed to the better nature of those wild men and 
 women ; until at last they would disperse, the very 
 combatants bidding him " Good-night, and God bless
 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xix 
 
 you, sir!" But as time went on the civilizing effect 
 of the hospital began to be felt. I do not wish to 
 paint these poor people as better than they are, but 
 I think it speaks volumes in favour of the wretched 
 population seething around " The Highway," that not 
 only my husband, but that I also, alone, have traversed 
 their streets and alleys at all hours of the night and 
 early morning, with a watch and gold chain round 
 my neck, a diamond ring on my finger, and a valu- 
 able brooch fastening my dress, yet have never been 
 molested. 
 
 If we saw dreadful scenes, we also saw much 
 laughter and merriment. We were a band of friends, 
 with but httle distinction of social rank kept up be- 
 tween us, although we enforced strict disciphne; 
 there was not an elderly person in the whole estab- 
 lishment, and where all are young and are heart and 
 soul in a common work, mirth is sure to be. It was 
 wonderful how the girls or young women (for we had 
 no man-servant at first) seemed to grasp the idea of 
 friendship without familiarity, and how enthusiastically 
 they embraced the thought of endeavouring to help 
 others rather than themselves. Perhaps they were
 
 XX THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 kept too busy to have time to quarrel, but certain 
 it is we never had bickerings to contend with. Soon 
 we opened another ward, on the top storey of the 
 second house. It was a babies' ward, and was a new 
 feature altogether; for, until we set the example, no 
 child under two years old was admitted as a hospital 
 inmate. 
 
 The work was soon as much as we could get 
 through with ; but my husband was still impatient 
 to push on, so we opened the fourth or bottom ward, 
 and by means of partitions turned the ground floor of 
 the second house into a nurse's sitting-room, a small 
 office, and a store-room for the various garments 
 which began now to be sent to us. We were also 
 obliged to engage a house opposite for sleeping ac- 
 commodation, as the increasing staff of nurses and 
 servants was becoming seriously cramped. 
 
 I cannot but linger lovingly over the remembrance 
 of our nurses and servants, for without their devotion 
 we should never have made the hospital a success, and 
 further, because they taught me a lesson which has 
 been to me of great value. 
 
 It is often said in good faith that the distinction of
 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xxi 
 
 rank lies below the surface, and that it is not merely 
 a difference of polish. This is a mistake, but a 
 mistake so easy to make, and so difficult to avoid, 
 that, except under very unusual circumstances, it is 
 an inevitable one. As a rule, when a person of 
 education, refinement, and wealth, encourages an 
 intimate acquaintance with a social and educational 
 inferior, one of the two endeavours to accommodate 
 his or her perception to the habitual mental focus of 
 the other. A housemaid who endeavours to look 
 at life from the same point of view as her fashionable 
 mistress, becomes absurd, and vice versa. The 
 natural aspect of things is disturbed through faulty 
 vision, and their efforts at understanding each other 
 tend to separate instead of uniting them ; but let 
 circumstances arise which cause the mistress and 
 servant to be united in one great common interest 
 which gives them a common focus,, and they will soon 
 understand that the distinctions of social rank depend 
 solely on polish, and that there is as much refinement 
 and elevation of thought to be found in the homes of 
 the poor as of the rich. It is a) difficult idea to grasp, 
 unless in the midst of such work as ours was. The
 
 xxii J HE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 beauty of a thought, inelegantly or inadequately 
 expressed, is often lost to the hearer, and but half 
 appreciated by the speaker ; yet its lustre is revealed 
 if it can but express itself in action instead of in 
 words. It is the same with sentiment. How fre- 
 quently does one hear it said that the poor have 
 not the same amount of feeling as the rich. It seems 
 a true remark often ; yet, in action, the poor will 
 show a perseverance in endurance and toil for the 
 sake of a loved one that few rich persons ever contem- 
 plate. A rugged face does not, as a rule, lend itself 
 to the delicate changes which betoken emotion, 
 neither is an untaught tongue able to form words to 
 express ideas ; nay, more than this, the terrible 
 exigencies of a life of grinding poverty blunt that 
 sense of the fitness of things which gives the 
 finishing touch to a picture of joy or woe. It is not 
 until we stand side by side in our daily work with the , 
 hewers of wood and drawers of water that we realize 
 how much our leisure enables us to study dramatic 
 effect in all that goes to make up life. A woman who 
 has to lock her baby's corpse into the only cupboard 
 she has, along with the bread and sugar, in order to
 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xxiii 
 
 prevent her remaining little ones from wasting her 
 scanty stores, or being frightened at the dead body 
 whilst she is away at the hospital waiting for the 
 certificate of death ; a man who cannot but allow his 
 wife's corpse to be opened in his own room, perhaps 
 lying on his one table, in order that the professional 
 scruples of her medical attendant may be satisfied 
 before giving the same necessary document ; or a 
 child who hears the most private concerns of its 
 parents' life ruthlessly discussed by a parish officer, is 
 hable to harden on the outside ; but within there 
 may be, and often is, as refined a nature as can be 
 found amongst the most delicately nurtured ladies or 
 gentlemen. 
 
 I could fill a large volume with tales revealing 
 this fact, though in this short sketch I can say 
 but this, that we exercised no particular selection 
 in taking girls into the hospital to train, many 
 of them being chosen rather on account of their 
 need of help than because they appeared par- 
 ticularly desirable ; yet that the moral tone of the 
 establishment was so high that servants would confess 
 their own delinquencies, and pay the fine imposed on 
 
 c 2 *
 
 xxiv THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 them in consequence, when they might have escaped 
 punishment by silence ; that a domestic rebelhon 
 took place to force us to provide more delicate food 
 for our own use than was allowed in the kitchen, our 
 plan being to fare alike throughout ; and that in a 
 place where theft was particularly easy, and where the 
 temptations to it were great, it was practically unknown. 
 " It is not my work," was a remark never heard in the 
 hospital. If a thing had to be done, it was done by 
 whoever had time and ability to do it; and the 
 intelligence displayed by even very young girls in 
 learning to perform such services as in large hospitals 
 are entrusted to " dressers," was remarkable. 
 
 Margarite distinguished herself particularly. She 
 studied anatomy in her leisure hours, learned the use 
 of the stethoscope, and attended at the post mortems. 
 She was an invaluable nurse ; gentle, merry, but firm, 
 and with a brightness of intelligence that seemed to 
 render new ideas her own in a surprisingly short space 
 of time, she soon came to be our right hand in 
 everything regarding the patients. Our only anxiety 
 respecting her v>'as her health ; this sometimes obliged 
 us to remove her from her work, much against her
 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xxv 
 
 own will, although she was aware of the extent of her 
 delicacy. I remember her startling us once in the 
 post mortem room. We were examining the lungs of 
 a patient Avho had died of a peculiar form of consump- 
 tion, when suddenly she said, " That is the same sort 
 of case as mine, sir, I think, only worse ? " The 
 purely scientific interest expressed in her voice and 
 look as she asked the question impressed us both 
 forcibly. 
 
 We had not long opened the fourth and last ward 
 before we found that funds were running short. We 
 were spending our entire private income, and even 
 trenching on capital, in order to supplement the 
 hospital funds ; but, about the same time, we made 
 two good friends — Dr. Murray and his cousin, 
 Mr. Anderson. Dr. Murray had been appointed 
 by the editor of the British Medical Journal \.o report 
 on various hospitals, amongst others on the " London." 
 My husband made his acquaintance, and asked him 
 to visit our banthng. He was to come to lunch, and 
 go over the hospital afterwards. 
 
 W^e seldom indulged in luxuries, and our cooking 
 was of the simplest ; but this being a special occasion
 
 xxvi THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 we determined to rise to it, and, in solemn conclave 
 with the cook, I determined to attempt strawberry 
 tartlets. The excitement produced in the kitchen 
 by this announcement was great : it was generally 
 felt that a superior effort was about to be made for 
 the good of the hospital. 
 
 Dr. Murray came and partook, all unconsciously, of 
 the tardets. Whilst he was in the wards, after lunch, 
 Mr. Heckford descended to the subterranean kitchen 
 to see that all was in order there. It was an unevenly 
 paved, murky apartment at best — a cellar in disguise, 
 but at that particular moment an accidental slip of 
 the foot had upset a pailful of water which made 
 small pools in the inequalities of the floor. " Wipe it 
 up, quick," said my husband ; " Dr. Murray is just 
 coming down. You'll get us a bad report." "What!" 
 exclaimed the girl addressed, " after all them tarts ? " 
 
 The report, however, was a good one; and not 
 only that, but Dr. Murray subsequently helped us in 
 many other ways. 
 
 Shortly after this Mr. Charles Dickens paid a visit 
 to the hospital, and then the excitement was general. 
 The cook, who was fat, hid herself, and peeped at
 
 1 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xxvii 
 
 Mr. Dickens from a retired corner, having, as she 
 explained afterwards, a dread of being "took off" by 
 the great novehst. After leaving the hospital he went 
 with my husband to visit some of our poor neighbours, 
 and in a few days he sent me the proof-slips of an 
 article he had written on our hospital and them. It 
 came one evening whilst I was out, and I found it on 
 the table on my return. I opened it with a trembling 
 hand : it is needless to say that it was beautiful. 
 When did that marvellous writer pen anything that 
 was not beautiful, or fail to touch the chords of the 
 heart ? 
 
 The article appeared on the 19th December, 1868, 
 and the last post of that same day brought a letter to 
 my husband in a round childish hand, in which the 
 writer told her " Dear Mr. Heckford " that her mamma 
 had read the story of his hospital to her, that she was 
 only a little girl of six, but would like to give him the 
 contents of her money-box for the little children, and 
 signed herself his "affectionate little May." I have 
 that letter still. It was the poetical beginning of an 
 influx of money and other help. The next day, and 
 for long after, letters flowed in so rapidly that we had
 
 xxviii THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 difficulty in answering them quickly enough. The help 
 came just in time, and the relief from excessive anxiety 
 was in itself a shock. We determined to give a grand 
 Christmas party : two hundred of the poor around 
 were invited. A member of our Committee kindly 
 provided a magic lantern, and a few friends came 
 from the West-End. We had a Christmas-tree in the 
 operating theatre, and a grand tea in the out-patients' 
 room, where the magic lantern was subsequently dis- 
 played. We made the nurses exquisitely happy by 
 presenting them with white book-muslin dresses and red 
 sashes, in which they looked charming, and we fixed the 
 day for Christmas Eve. Everything was most success- 
 ful : the hospital, decorated with flags and evergreens, 
 offered a quaint appearance filled with motley guests. 
 Our poorer friends were delighted at seeing the pretty 
 dresses of those who were richer, and also the unusual 
 attire of the nurses. We had a Punch, with a Dog 
 Toby, and a barrel-organ for music. There were but 
 few dangerous cases in the wards at the time, and 
 many of our litde patients were brought downstairs to 
 enjoy the fun after the Christmas-tree was dismantled. 
 I must here pay a tribute to Mr. Julius Cffisar.
 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xxix 
 
 He was only a lad, and nominally was our 
 volunteer dispenser, but really he was the life of 
 the hospital. Nothing ever came amiss to him : if I 
 wanted anything done, I was sure to ask Julius, and 
 if a toddling baby in the wards wanted anything done, 
 it very probably asked Julius also. " Mr. Cffisar," 
 was a household word in many a poor home in those 
 days, and even now is not forgotten. The little 
 patients, and the nurses and servants, idolized 
 him. His advent in the ward, whither he always 
 betook himself after dinner, was heralded by a shriek 
 of delight and a universal romp ; and many a time he 
 would catch up a baby and run downstairs with it 
 sitting on his shoulder, to show it the glories of our 
 private apartments, whilst on the occasion of 
 impromptu festivities in honour of the birth-days of 
 our nurses and servants, his genius for making 
 people enjoy themselves was invaluable. 
 
 But in spite of all our fun, not only my husband, 
 but Margarite and I were beginning to suffer from 
 over-work and anxiety, Margarite most of all. Just 
 then, an American lady, Mrs. Johnson, a friend of 
 Charles Dickens, asked us to recommend a nice
 
 XXX THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 trustworthy girl to be a maid and playfellow to her 
 little daughter, who, with one much older, was to 
 accompany her in a tour through France, Italy, and 
 Switzerland. After some consultation we determined 
 to ask her to take Margarite, on the understanding 
 that the girl was to receive no wages, but was not to 
 be treated as an ordinary servant, and was, if neces- 
 sary, to have the extra comforts required by an 
 invalid. We arranged to provide her with dress 
 allowance and pocket money, and Mrs. Johnson 
 acceded. 
 
 It was evidently the last chance to save Margarite's 
 life, for she was drooping rapidly. We provided her 
 with a little travelling library, and she started on her 
 new life. As letter after letter came home, we read 
 them with ever increasing astonishment. It was 
 difficult to imagine that the writer was the Margarite 
 of but two years back. The girl's writing and speUing 
 had always been good ; but not until we read these 
 letters did we realize what a development had taken 
 place. Mrs. Johnson acted in a spirit of true 
 American liberality : Margarite was worthy of being a 
 member of her family, and she treated her as one.
 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xxxi 
 
 Christmas was coming round again — but Christmas 
 laden with terrible anxieties. Money was not coming 
 in, and our expenses, both as regarded the hospital 
 and our private arrangements, were increased. We 
 retrenched in every way we could, planned and re- 
 planned how we could make a shilling do duty for 
 one-and-sixpence ; but when, close on Christmas, we 
 paid our monthly accounts, all we had in hand was 
 two-and-eleven-pence of the hospital funds, and a 
 balance of two or three pounds at our bankers. It 
 was evident that we could not go on, and it was 
 decided despairingly to close two of the wards and 
 discharge some of our nurses. When the fatal de- 
 cision was known, the whole staff of the hospital 
 came to us as a deputation, even to the last scrubber, 
 whose face, I remember, was streaked with grimy 
 tears. They would serve for nothing — we might cut 
 down whatever could be cut down in their food — 
 they would trust to our paying them what we could 
 when the money began again to come in— anything, 
 not to shut the wards. I forget who were spokes- 
 women, but I know there were many sobs and tears 
 when we explained that it would be an unavailing
 
 xxxii THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 sacrifice ; for that it was not the small wages we paid 
 that constituted the difficulty, but the keep of the 
 patients. 
 
 There was an amateur entertainment given at the 
 " London " on a certain evening, in aid of the funds 
 of that institution. Although the fiat for reducing 
 our little hospital had gone forth, we had yet made 
 no change. We were invited to the entertainment, 
 and went, although little disposed for merriment. It 
 was a brilliant little affair. We walked home 
 gloomily. The day was close at hand when the wards 
 must be cleared ; and it seemed so hard to think 
 that the rich " London " was being fed whilst our 
 little struggling hospital was dying of starvation. We 
 had no heart left even for lament, and we 
 walked in silence. I was taking off my bonnet in my 
 room when my husband came in quickly, waving a 
 letter in his hand. " What do you think this is ? " he 
 asked. "A thousand pounds!" "Nonsense; how 
 can you talk so ? I exclaimed ; but he held it before 
 my eyes : it was — it really was a note for one 
 thousand pounds — sent anonymously ! The relief 
 was so great that our entire household was stunned
 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xxxiii 
 
 by it ; nor do I remember any rejoicing until the 
 next day. 
 
 As Christmas came on great preparations were 
 made for our treat. The tree promised to be 
 magnificent with the toys sent by kind friends. We 
 had nightly rehearsals of the carols to be sung by 
 children in costume ; a special Punch and 
 Judy was to be provided by one of our Committee ; a 
 brass band from one of the schools was to perform ; 
 there was to be a tea for the children in the out- 
 patients' room, and supper for the grown-up people in 
 the kitchen, which was to be illuminated with Chinese 
 lamps. Numbers of friends of the hospital came to 
 this party, amongst others an artist from the Illustrated 
 News. It was a great success, but it struck me, even 
 at the time, that there was a new and faulty element 
 in it. There was no longer that perfect feeling of 
 accord in one, and only one, object between those 
 who in one way or another represented the hospital, — 
 the object, namely, of giving as much pleasure as 
 possible to the poorer guests. There were some 
 who were thinking simply of amusing themselves, and 
 others of what effect was being produced by the
 
 xxxiv THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 scene on persons who might support the charity. I 
 could hardly have put the idea into words then, but -I 
 felt it. We were beginning to be touched with the 
 disease that kills so many institutions. Nevertheless, 
 the success was grand as far as the poor were con- 
 cerned ; and years after I heard a woman who 
 was there recount how she and her husband 
 had that night seen what they had never seen 
 before or since — ladies in evening dress ; and how 
 they had been regaled on turkey and champagne in a 
 room lit by Chinese lamps. I did not destroy the 
 harmless illusion, but my memory must be strangely 
 at .fault if there were either turkey or champagne 
 provided, although I know there was some very weak 
 mulled wine ; the glamour of the unusual sight around 
 her acted like a fairy's wand, I imagine, in respect of 
 the viands. 
 
 The new year brought with it the certainty that 
 Mr. Heckford was in consumption, and the more he 
 felt his strength failing the more feverishly impatient 
 did he become to see the hospital's life ensured. 
 Like all impatience it defeated its object, for it 
 sapped his strength and power of work, whilst sub-
 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xxxv 
 
 scriptions were falling off, and the committee 
 seemed lacking in initiative. 
 
 "There is but one thing," he said to me 
 one evening when he was greatly dispirited ; " they 
 wont pull together until they know that the place 
 absolutely belongs to them ; they have some idea 
 that we want to put ^?^;'selves forward. Let us give 
 them the freehold ; they must work then." I de- 
 murred, and suggested giving a nominal leasehold ; 
 but he did not think that would suffice. The matter 
 dropped ; but as the clouds gathered fast, he reverted 
 again and again to it. " We shall neither of us live 
 long," he would say in answer to my reminding him 
 that by giving the freehold he deprived himself for 
 ever of the right to dispose of the premises, which we 
 had already determined that it was imperative to 
 leave as soon as we could collect enough money to 
 purchase ground for and erect a new building. It 
 had been his original intention that when the Child- 
 ren's Hospital was " started " in a more suitable 
 home the old warehouses should be utilised as a 
 Lock Hospital for Women, in the hope of thereby 
 being able to combat evil morally as well as physically ;
 
 xxxvi THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 but now he resigned the idea as hopeless. "We 
 shall never live to do it," he said. " Let us make 
 sure of the future of our one scheme ; we shall never 
 do more, if even we can manage that : if we die 
 before it is fairly started it will be ruined. The 
 Committee must work, and they won't till they feel 
 the place is theirs." I knew there was a great deal of 
 truth in what he said ; but the conviction that was 
 growing on me that his life was being worn out by 
 his desperate anxiety regarding the hospital at last 
 wrung consent from me. 
 
 The deed was drawn up and signed, but the good 
 resulting from the excitement and astonishment 
 caused by our unexpected gift was ephemeral. 
 
 It was just then, at our utmost need, that the 
 gentleman who has ever since been our Secretary was 
 appointed, and I soon knew that a more experienced 
 hand than either of ours was on the helm of the 
 hospital bark. 
 
 The life of fun and frohc was gradually fading 
 away like the dew of early morning before the noon- 
 day glare. We could not understand why this should 
 be, and we rebelled fiercely against it : it was in some
 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xxxvii 
 
 ways a nineteenth-century version of Jonah and the 
 gourd in the days of Nineveh. " The hospital " 
 meant to us — not a mere hospital, however well 
 appointed and well managed,. — it meant a system by 
 which widely different classes of society might come 
 to appreciate their unity, and learn to develop the 
 good which is in all alike, disguised under varied 
 aspects. I doubt whether my husband could have 
 formulated the idea in words,- — I know I could not at 
 that time ; but "the hospital" formulated it in action, 
 and was its true practical expression. No Committee 
 can be blamed for finding it impossible to realize this 
 idea, yet in this fact lies, I think, the great danger of 
 all charitable institutions, a danger that can be averted 
 by individual effort, but which must be recognized in 
 order to be averted, and which it would be well if 
 every subscriber to such an institution should think 
 upon. Guineas alone do not give life to institutions, 
 any more than to their irimates ; the gold must be 
 given, doubtless, but so must the sympathy, which 
 can come but by personal contact. As day after day 
 we met the Secretary in the office, and marked how 
 calmly, firmly, and conscientiously he did his work — 
 
 D *
 
 xxxviii THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 never being in a hurry, but always being ready, — we 
 wondered whether he would be able to take up our 
 idea, and help us to work it out. 
 
 By the end of the autumn my husband's health 
 was so shattered that he was ordered to winter 
 either in Italy or Egypt. We only got as far as 
 beautiful Amalfi, and settled down in the quaint 
 and comfortable hotel of the Capucini, where he 
 revived. We were lulled in a smiling haven, but 
 outside the storm was rising, and I felt sure my hus- 
 band would soon put out into it again. Our letters 
 from England were not at all reassuring, and our 
 anxiety became daily greater and greater. My hus- 
 band watched feverishly for letters, — even telegrams 
 once passed between Amalfi and London ; and when 
 finally, in February, we received some important and 
 startling news, he determined to return home. 
 
 How well I remember when he finally arrived 
 at this decision ! It was a beautiful evening, and 
 I had been sitting on the balcony for a long while, 
 gazing at the enchanting view, which was becoming 
 more and more fairy-like as the sun lowered, and 
 as each headland and bay, each pinnacled rock or
 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xxxix 
 
 tangled break of that fretted coast caught a transient 
 gleam of sunlight, or was thrown into purple shade. 
 My thoughts had been sad enough, but I was 
 entranced by the magic of the scene. My husband 
 joined me, and stood leaning on the balcony : 
 suddenly he turned — " Well," he said, " when shall 
 we start ? " It was like the tolling of a death-bell, 
 breaking the spell which bound me. With all 
 that soft loveliness tempting him to stay, it seemed 
 cruel that he must go back in the teeth of the 
 March winds. 
 
 I took the situation all to pieces, and ended by 
 saying that I would not, could not advise, but that 
 he must see that it was useless for him to go back 
 unless he meant to put himself into hard work at 
 once, which, in his state of health, meant certain 
 death within the year. He might right the hospital 
 by a supreme effort, and die ; or he might wait, 
 leave it to its fate, whatever that might be ; regain 
 his strength, and be able to work for years. "But 
 the hospital would be ruined," he said. I could 
 make no reply. My faith in a Providence of which 
 we are at best but instruments, and often mere 
 
 D 2 *
 
 xl THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 tools, was very faint and vague. I believed in him, 
 and in myself, practically more than I believed in any- 
 thing else. He stood for a while, gazing dreamily 
 over the blue sea, then turned from it. "We will 
 go home," he said, at last ; " what you say is true, 
 I shall not see next year, but the hospital will 
 be saved ! What is my life against the good of 
 numbers? 'The hospital must go first.'" By the 
 time we reached England he was once more ill. I 
 have no doubt we made more of the difificulties and 
 dangers surrounding the hospital's career than was 
 reasonable, yet, looking back, I still adhere to my 
 husband's opinion that he was right in returning 
 home. 
 
 Shortly after, Margarite returned to England, and 
 paid us a flying visit as she passed through London 
 on her way to Torquay with Mrs. Johnson. We were 
 a short way out of town at the time, and I drove to 
 the station to meet her. The train arrived and a young 
 lady came quickly forward. I almost gasped. It was 
 our Margarite, yet not our Margarite. Even before 
 she spoke there was that indescribable something 
 about her which is so seldom met with but in
 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xli 
 
 one who, if not born, has been, at least, from 
 childhood, bred a "lady." But Margarite was 
 one; by every turn of her face and figure, by 
 every action, every word, even by the intonation 
 of her voice. It was a triumph ; and my husband 
 and I rejoiced over it accordingly. But our re- 
 joicing was very spasmodical now. Anxieties of all 
 sorts pressed heavily on us. 
 
 Before the autumn was ended, Mr. Heckford 
 achieved what he had longed for : the site which he 
 had months before chosen as being the most suitable 
 for the new hospital, was agreed to by the Committee, 
 and purchased. Plans for the new building were 
 ordered to be drawn out, and a fresh and complete 
 set of rules, suitable for permanently working an 
 institution by, was under consideration. Then he 
 broke down completely. At the last Committee 
 meeting in October, unable any longer to leave him, 
 even for a few hours, I asked for leave of absence 
 from my post of Visiting Governor, and went with 
 him to Ramsgate. There he seemed to revive for a 
 few days. Julius came down to cheer us, and made 
 the place bright, as he always did, by his Hght-hearted
 
 xlii THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 unselfishness. The Secretary came also for two days. 
 I remember, during this visit, his making a remark 
 which struck me so forcibly that it has since influenced 
 me much. I said that I " believed " something, and 
 he objected to my use of the word. " If you con- 
 sider," he said, " you do not believe it. We say that 
 we beheve many things ; but our actions prove often 
 that not only do we not believe them, but that we 
 believe the reverse. Nothing is believed in which is 
 not made the basis for action." I, of course, cannot 
 repeat the words exactly, but the sense I have 
 rendered. It struck me as a great and novel truth — 
 one worth thinking of; I wondered I had never 
 thought of it before, and I repeat it here, deeming that 
 others too may never have thought of it. 
 
 At last my husband was confined to his bed. Even 
 there he worked at amendments to the rules, which 
 had been sent to us in slip. An important meeting 
 of Committee was expected to take place on the 12th 
 of December. He insisted that I must leave him to 
 be present at it ; and I went. It was night before I 
 reached Ramsgate. My husband's first words were a 
 question as to the result of the Committee. He had
 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xliii 
 
 been lying with the watch beside him during the day, 
 impatient for the time when he knew that I should be 
 speaking. He knew he was dying, and was at times 
 delirious ; indeed he had known for some time that 
 there was no more hope. " I have done so little," he 
 said once, " and I hoped to do so much ; but I 
 suppose it was worth living for to do but that 
 httle ? " Shortly before he died, he told me that I 
 must try to feel that it was better for him to die than 
 to live, for that, broken as his health was, he should 
 only cause me to waste money and thought in carrying 
 a worn-out creature from place to place, instead of 
 devoting both to helping those who might yet be 
 useful. " You will be able to do much more good 
 without me than with me," he ended. " You will not 
 be long in following me, but you must see the 
 hospital settled." He breathed his last on the 
 morning of the 14th December. Before his body 
 was laid in our family grave at Woking, it lay for a 
 day in his old consulting-room in the hospital, 
 where crowds of women and children came to weep 
 over it. 
 
 A year after Margarite passed away. Unable to
 
 xliv THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 bear the inaction of the hfe she was leading in the 
 house of a dear friend of mine, where she had remained 
 after Mrs, Johnson left for America, whither Margarite 
 could not accompany her on account of the cold, she 
 besought me to let her go once more to the hospital. 
 " You will not be alive in three months time if you 
 do," I said. She threw herself on her knees by my 
 side. " Do not think me ungrateful," she said, kiss- 
 ing my hands ; " but I claim it as a right to be 
 useful. My idleness is against all Mr. Heckford taught 
 me to know as right — all that you yourself hold as 
 right. Let me go ! I am not afraid of death." She 
 was greeted with delight by the doctors, who 
 knew her worth, and worked until she fell in the 
 ward, from weakness, as she was going to tend a 
 patient. Her body Hes in a grave beside that of my 
 husband in the Woking Cemetery. 
 
 In the summer of 1875 the foundation stone of the 
 new hospital was laid ; in the autumn of the following 
 year the new building was finished and the tablet 
 placed in the hall. It was the signal for my final 
 abdication of all guardianship over our child. The 
 building was not yet inhabited when I bade farewell
 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xlv 
 
 to the life I have told of, and to Europe. Before I 
 left, the Secretary and I went over the empty building 
 together. We lingered lovingly over each little 
 detail, even to the gnarled markings on the massive 
 and polished wooden doors. It seemed so strange to 
 stand in that beautiful new place, and to think of the 
 once struggling life of the litde old hospital ; strange, 
 too, to think that a new sort of life — a life utterly 
 ignorant or forgetful of all that had made this place 
 what it was, would soon be pouring through the 
 passages where now our footsteps echoed. As we 
 stood there together, I felt that, for the nonce, this 
 eldest daughter of my hopes and fears belonged 
 equally to us ; but that she w-as decked for her bridal, 
 and that even as a mother parts with her daughter to 
 the man who has nobly won her heart, with some- 
 thing of pain but more of thankfulness, so I was 
 about to surrender the future hospital to this friend 
 of mine, for he had won the right to call it his 
 by the self-denying devotion and the untiring work of 
 brain and hand of which this building was the result. 
 There was a pang in the thought that the time would 
 come when our very names would be forgotten by 
 
 w
 
 xlvi THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 those who would dwell within these walls, and pass to 
 and fro through these passages ; but it was 
 momentary, for I knew that as long as that building 
 stood, so long would the tablet in the hall tell of the 
 one to whom that hospital would be a monument, of 
 one without whose vivifying touch we two should never 
 have awakened to the happiness that is to be found in 
 living for an idea, even if the effort to express it in 
 action be fraught with sorrow and disappointment. 
 
 Nearly eleven years have passed since that day, 
 and I have passed far away from all that hospital 
 circle ; but a child never loses its right to call for its 
 mother's help ; the hospital has called for mine, and 
 trifling though it be, I give what I can from my heart. 
 
 It is to mothers and fathers that I appeal. Our 
 hospital still takes into its wards babies under two 
 years old, whom no other hospital will admit because 
 they are so troublesome and so expensive ; still admits 
 little children doomed before their admission to swell 
 its death-rate and its expenditure, preferring the true 
 glory of alleviating moral and physical suffering to the 
 false glory of flattering statistics. 
 
 Think of this when standing by the cot of your
 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xlvii 
 
 healthy darhng, or whilst trying to lull the fretful cry 
 of your ailing one ; when its little life is hanging in the 
 balance, and nothing on earth but the lavish expendi- 
 ture of money can save it for you, or ease its last 
 moments with you. Statistics are dry, but glance at 
 those appended, and think if the sickliest baby ever 
 seen in a rich nursery could compare with the misery 
 of the little creatures, bred and cradled in abject 
 want, who come to the hospital pleading for some 
 respite to their sufferings. They will be the fellow- 
 citizens of your children in days to come ; will you 
 not try to help them to some gentle memories that 
 may soothe the bitterness of the life that is before 
 them ? For these little things often come to the hospital 
 again and again when the pressure of misery breeds 
 disease in their frail bodies, are tided over their 
 infancy and childhood, and come to be men and 
 women, such as those who sometimes stop me in the 
 street and ask hesitatingly if I am not the wife of the 
 doctor at the old Children's Hospital, and if I do not 
 remember " little Johnny,'' or " the little girl as 
 you used to call ' Dolly.' " Think, too, of what a 
 treasure it would be to one, who, like our Resident
 
 xlviii THE STORY OF THE EAST LONDON 
 
 Medical Officer, is fighting, and for the last six years 
 has fought, for the lives of these children, if he had 
 the means of giving something more than medicine 
 to cases which cannot be admitted, or which are dis- 
 charged cured, but which are being, or going to be, 
 starved, through no fault of their own or of their 
 parents. Think what an awful weight of sorrow rests 
 on a man who feels with, but cannot relieve, the 
 sufferings caused to his patients by hunger. I am 
 pleading not only for subscriptions to an Hospital 
 Extension Fund, but for a Samaritan Fund to be 
 placed at the disposal of the Resident Medical 
 Officer. Men in that position cannot be imposed 
 upon by mock distress, and those who, like Mr. Scott 
 Battams, work, year in year out, amongst scenes of 
 woe without becoming callous, are gradually killed by 
 the overstrain ; it is worth thinking of even from a 
 utilitarian point of view, for surely men who unosten- 
 tatiously form a link of sympathy between riches and 
 poverty are bulwarks of public safety. And let me 
 beg of all those who buy this book to read and ponder 
 the following letter addressed last year by Mr. Battams 
 to the Committee of the hospital : there is no senti-
 
 HOSPITAL FOR CHILDREN. xlix 
 
 mental trapping around the facts mentioned ; their 
 awful pathos, written in this rich and Christian land, 
 wants none. 
 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 I have the honour to lay before you for the 
 fifth time my yearly classified Report of In-Patients of 
 this hospital. Of 950 children admitted into the 
 hospital, 346 were infants of two years and under ; 
 no less than 1 95 being of one year and under. There 
 were nearly 100 babies under six months. There 
 have been 209 deaths ; 144 occurring in infants 
 under two years of age. Of these children, 33 died 
 before the second day ; and 23 died a few hours after 
 admission. During the past year the work of the 
 hospital has been rendered more difficult and more 
 anxious by reason of the terrible increase in the poverty 
 and destitution in this — the poorest — district of 
 London. Diseases have been rendered more severe 
 and more hopeless. Half-starved and half-clothed 
 children have been admitted in large numbers ; and 
 not the least distressing feature of our work has been 
 the returning of these children to their squalid homes
 
 THE STORY OF THE HOSPITAL. 
 
 after having surrounded them with every comfort. A 
 larger number of parents have been forced to apply to 
 the parish authorities to bury their children than in any 
 previous year. Those who know most of the poor 
 will best understand the full significance of the fact. 
 I am, Gentlemen, 
 
 Your obedient Servant 
 
 J. SCOTT BATTAMS, 
 
 Resident Medical Officer, 
 
 To THE Board of Management, 
 
 East London Hospital for Children.
 
 Appendix. 
 
 WEIGHTS OF TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY CHILDREN. 
 
 Taken consecutively and without selection 
 
 frorti the Hospital Books. 
 
 
 NUMBER 
 
 LOWEST 
 
 HIGHEST 
 
 AVERAGE 
 
 AGE. 
 
 WEIGHED. 
 
 WEIGHT. 
 
 WEIGHT. 
 
 WEIGHT. 
 
 I Month. 
 
 I 
 
 81bs. oozs. 
 
 81bs. oozs. 
 
 81bs. oozs. 
 
 2 ,, 
 
 7 
 
 7 12 
 
 12 4 
 
 8 2 
 
 3 >. 
 
 20 
 
 6 10 
 
 25 
 
 14 2 
 
 4 » 
 
 8 
 
 4 
 
 13 2 
 
 9 
 
 5 „ 
 
 7 
 
 4 10 
 
 38 
 
 13 8 
 
 6 „ 
 
 3 
 
 7 14 
 
 22 8 
 
 13 
 
 7 „ 
 
 4 
 
 7 8 
 
 13 8 
 
 II I 
 
 8 „ 
 
 3 
 
 12 5 
 
 14 6 
 
 13 3 
 
 9 ,, 
 
 I 
 
 12 8 
 
 12 8 
 
 12 8 
 
 lO „ 
 
 2 
 
 II 4 
 
 20 
 
 15 IS 
 
 II ,, 
 
 4 
 
 10 
 
 13 
 
 12 I 
 
 12 „ 
 
 7 
 
 10 
 
 17 10 
 
 15 
 
 13 „ 
 
 7 
 
 10 
 
 16 8 
 
 12 9 
 
 14 M 
 
 15 
 
 7 2 
 
 22 
 
 14 I 
 
 15 „ 
 
 4 
 
 17 
 
 18 14 
 
 17 4 
 
 16 „ 
 
 IS 
 
 8 
 
 22 
 
 IS 3 
 
 17 „ 
 
 4 
 
 12 10 
 
 14 
 
 12 13 
 
 18 „ 
 
 8 
 
 14 
 
 28 
 
 IS 8 
 
 19 „ 
 
 3 
 
 13 4 
 
 19 8 
 
 16 4 
 
 20 ,, 
 
 5 
 
 14 
 
 23 6 
 
 17 
 
 21 „ 
 
 2 
 
 II 8 
 
 II 10 
 
 II S 
 
 22 ,, 
 
 2 
 
 13 
 
 15 
 
 14 
 
 23 „ 
 
 2 Years. 
 
 None. 
 26 
 
 
 
 
 12 
 
 26 
 
 17 12 
 
 3 „ 
 
 21 
 
 15 4 
 
 39 12 
 
 24 
 
 4 ,, 
 
 14 
 
 18 
 
 36 
 
 27 8 
 
 5 „ 
 
 14 
 
 23 8 
 
 44 8 
 
 29 2 
 
 6 „ 
 
 9 
 
 21 
 
 39 6 
 
 21 6 
 
 7 „ 
 
 13 
 
 29 
 
 51 
 
 34 I 
 
 8 >, 
 
 I 
 
 40 
 
 40 
 
 40 
 
 9 „ 
 
 9 
 
 35 12 
 
 46 8 
 
 38 6 
 
 10 ,, 
 
 6 
 
 40 
 
 56 
 
 45 2 
 
 13 „ 
 
 5 
 
 54 
 
 69 8 
 
 57 4 
 
 An average child at birth should weigh Slbs. 
 ,, » I year „ 24 
 
 ,, „ 6 years ,, 48 
 
 13 years 
 
 82
 
 BALLADE OF THE DREAM. 
 
 BY ANDREW LANG. 
 
 Swift as sound of music fled 
 When no more the organ sighs, 
 
 Sped as all old joys are sped, 
 
 So your lips, Love, and your eyes, 
 So your gentle-voiced replies. 
 
 Mine, one hour, in sleep that seem. 
 Flit away as slumber flies, 
 
 Following darkness like a dream. 
 
 As the scent from roses red, 
 As the dawn from April skies, 
 
 As the phantom of the Dead, 
 From the living love that hies, 
 As the shifting shade that lies 
 
 On the moonlight-silvered stream, 
 So you rise, when dreams arise, 
 
 Following darkness like a dream.
 
 BALLADE OF THE DREAM. 
 
 Could some witch, with woven tread, 
 Could some spell in fairy wise, 
 
 Lap about this dreaming head 
 In a mist of memories, 
 I would lie like him that hes 
 
 Where the lights on Latmos gleam 
 'Neath Selene down the skies 
 
 Following darkness like a dream. 
 
 ENVOY. 
 
 Sleep that grants what life denies, 
 Shadowy bounties and supreme. 
 
 Bring me back the face, that flies 
 Following darkness like a dream.
 
 THE BOY WHO FOLLOWED THE SUNSET. 
 
 BY MAY KENDALL. 
 
 There was a child who was small and frail, and 
 could not understand the rough games of his 
 comrades, but often spoiled their pleasure by his 
 backwardness or timidity, so that they did not care 
 to have him join them ; and even if out of good- 
 nature they let him share tn their play, he was 
 ridiculed for his awkward mistakes, and the more 
 impatient boys called him careless and a spoilsport. 
 Often this made him very unhappy, and at nights he 
 used to pray that Heaven would make him brighter 
 and stronger, like his playfellows ; but this never 
 came to pass. Indeed, his very longing for it stood 
 in his way, and made him more apt to blunder, till by 
 and by he was afraid to join in play at all, and would 
 wander away by himself into quiet spots, and forget 
 his failures in lonely dreaming. As he grew older 
 this sensitiveness increased, and having no one (for 
 
 15 2
 
 4 THE BOY WHO FOLLOWED THE SUNSET. 
 
 his mother had died when he was very young) to 
 whom he could go for sympathy in his boyish 
 troubles, the habit of solitary musing strengthened, 
 and he loved to conjure up in his mind a place where 
 all v*'as different. He fancied himself strong and 
 active, a king among his playfellovrs, or doing some 
 great and heroic deed, and winning for himself great 
 love and honour. But even in his dreams a restless 
 discontent pursued him — a wish for something 
 beyond life, some nameless and ineffable beauty 
 that was hidden behind the beauty of the river and 
 grass and hills. Most of all at sunset, when he 
 watched the dying splendour of the sky, this feeling 
 haunted him, and he longed to step out into the 
 radiance and leave the earth behind. The land 
 beyond the sunset became the home of all his dreams, 
 and often he tried to reach it, but was alwa}s 
 baffled by the falling night, and went home weary and 
 disheartened. The glory of the sunrise he also 
 thought an entrance into that distant country, though 
 it never was so dear to him as the fading glory of the 
 west ; the rushing of water, and, more than all, the 
 sound of music, were voices calling him far away.
 
 THE BOY WHO FOLLOWED THE SUNSET. 5 
 
 There was one of his playmates more beautiful 
 than the rest, whose face was like the faces he saw in 
 dreams, and whose voice, when she sang, awakened 
 the vague longings he could not understand. She 
 mingled with the others ; but he always felt a difier- 
 ence between them, and a reverence grew up in him 
 for the child — the only one whose thoughts he could 
 not guess, and who also loved to watch the sunset 
 and the hills. Bertha was the swiftest and the 
 readiest in all their play ; yet she never laughed at his 
 blunders as the others did, but helped him willingly 
 and took his part. They all loved her, yet she was 
 often alone, and many a time the boy saw her slight 
 figure, with dark eyes and waving hair, flit by him in 
 his solitary wanderings, till it became an interest with 
 him to watch for her coming from some hidden nook, 
 and a regret v.hen the day passed and he had never 
 seen her. 
 
 When he was yet young, his father died, and he 
 was free to follow his old wish and seek the country 
 beyond the sunset. There was little in the village 
 that he should miss — only Bertha, and she was so 
 much more bound up in his dreams with the beauty
 
 6 THE BOY WHO FOLLOWED THE SUNSET. 
 
 of the distant land than with the home where he had 
 known her, that it hardly seemed to him he was 
 leaving her behind in travelling towards the sunset. 
 So one evening he set his face to the west, and 
 walked till the sun sank, and then lay down to sleep. 
 The next day he travelled on again, but when night 
 fell the sunset country was yet distant, and night after 
 night it seemed no nearer. Then the boy's heart 
 grew weary, though he could not bear to give up 
 hope and go back to his old home. Months went 
 by, and even years, but the golden sunset was still 
 beyond his reach, and he forgot the flowers and hills 
 and glorious dawn in following it far away. 
 
 But one day, when the morning sun woke him from 
 sleep, he knew that the time was not yet come to find 
 the sunset country, and he turned and saw the domes 
 of a great city glistening before him. Then, with a 
 sigh, he set his face from the west and went towards 
 the city, that lay on the shore of a great ocean. And 
 there he found all the people working — some at ships, 
 and some at marble, and some at metals; but none 
 idle. All kinds of work were going on in this mar- 
 vellous city. There were artists and musicians, under
 
 THE BOY WHO FOLLOWED THE SUNSET. 7 
 
 whose hands sprang up wonderful shapes and sounds 
 of beauty ; there were poets and philosophers, and 
 all had allotted them a certain share of labour, but 
 their common aim the boy could not understand. 
 As he looked, he saw that a place was also left for 
 him, with a portion of work, humble and simple as 
 he thought, for it was only carving in common wood. 
 But as he worked he saw that it was part of the 
 building of a great organ, and then he became better 
 content, and toiled on, though his hands grew tired, 
 and the sound of the waves breaking on the shore 
 still called him to that golden radiance he saw night 
 by night reflected on the sea. Often he thought his 
 work, though simple, ill and carelessly done, and 
 wearied of it, envying the players who should draw 
 glorious sounds from the keys at whose shaping he 
 had laboured. Yet the builder was satisfied, and the 
 organ grew into a beautiful and noble instrument, 
 worthy of a great musician. 
 
 At last, one day, he heard a voice singing, a voice 
 that he knew well. It was Bertha's, only stronger and 
 sweeter than in her childhood. Her share of the 
 work lay apart from his — only at rare intervals he
 
 8 THE BOY WHO FOLLOWED THE SUNSET. 
 
 saw her, and saw that she was more beautiful than 
 ever. He never spoke to her, and one day, at sunset, 
 he missed her voice, and her place was filled by 
 another. But it was to him as if she were still 
 there, for her face and her singing haunted him con- 
 stantly as he worked, and he knew at last that he 
 never could forget them. Then more and more it 
 seemed, at evening, that all the light and music 
 and wonder of the city were but reflections from 
 beyond the sunset sky, and that the beauty from 
 which he might part with sorrow, if he could gain 
 that country, would meet him again in greater radi- 
 ance, and raise him up into its life. 
 
 Year by year the faces round him changed, and 
 many new workers replaced the old ones, while the 
 ocean glittered with ships that came and went, bearing 
 passengers to and from the city. One day the 
 builder of the organ embarked and left the shore, and 
 his was almost the last of the old faces that had been 
 familiar to the boy who entered the city — now so 
 many years ago. Still he worked on, but now his 
 work was nearly ended. 
 
 One evening, when the sky was radiant with sun-
 
 THE BOY WHO FOLLOWED THE SUNSET, g 
 
 set, the last stroke was added to his carving, and the 
 tools dropped from his hands. Was he dreaming or 
 awake ? The glory of the sky was gathering round 
 him, and he saw a path of gold leading across the 
 water to the setting sun. A boat was by the shore, 
 and as he entered it some power, whether wind or 
 tide, floated it gently away along the gleaming track. 
 The waves rippled about the keel, and it seemed as 
 if low organ harmonies were blended with their tones. 
 The path of gold deepened, narrowed, into the very 
 heart of that ineffable splendour. ... A cry broke 
 from his lips, and the boat floated swiftly on ; but 
 those on shore could see it no longer, for their eyes 
 were blinded by the glory.
 
 KNURR AND SPELL. 
 
 BY WALTER POLLOCK. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Mr. TuTTUTSON, the analytical dyer, was a man in 
 whom a modest confidence was oddly blended with 
 an ostentatious delight in his inventive successes. 
 He was indeed a man in whom a freakish nature, 
 departing from the usual custom of a dyer's hand 
 growing to that it works in, had fitted the new man 
 with a new characteristic, and had with feeble wag- 
 gishness predestined the name for the bearer. For in 
 his seeming moments of leisure, when he sat back 
 with his eyes closed, a posture and face invariably 
 adopted by thinkers for the purpose of thinking, he 
 was wont to indulge in a favourite exclamation. 
 
 His nearest, in some sense his only, friend was an 
 office clerk, suspected by some men of the world of 
 being a Potentate in disguise, who, as all things in 
 nature save the intangible have a name, was called
 
 KNURR AND SPELL. u 
 
 Toby Trimmer. It was their habit to meet often, to 
 talk often, and that loud and much, and generally 
 both at the same time and on different subjects. 
 This added to the liveliness of the discourse, and 
 eschewed the monotony of argument. But even to 
 the shining of the sun there are exceptions (when 
 eclipses happen, a point not always observed), and it 
 chanced that such an exception came when one day 
 their haphazard footsteps — which, however chancy, 
 always kept ''time, time, time, in a sort of Runic 
 rhyme " — led them to a magnificent edifice devoted to 
 a vulgar purpose ; a huge and gilded chamber where 
 men met or parted, for the two actions are not 
 simultaneous, to eat and drink. 
 
 The dyer, who had closed his eyes and said, " Tut, 
 tut ! " while his keener companion had kept his on a 
 responsive satellite at a neighbouring bar, presently 
 left off thinking and spoke. 
 
 " Toby," he whispered rather than said, " I have 
 been in this place before." 
 
 " You tell me," said the other with a wide look, 
 " strange things." 
 
 «' V 
 
 You will find them," replied the dyer hotly, " as
 
 12 KNURR AND SPELL. 
 
 true as strange ; and that in these days is no light 
 matter." 
 
 The tone, rather than the speech, recalled the clerk 
 to iBatter-of-factness, and he asked quite simply : 
 
 " When, where, how, what, why, who ? " 
 
 " You demand too much at once," said the dyer, 
 with a dye— I mean a dry — smile. " But I will tell 
 you this much to feed and whet your curiosity. It 
 was not to-day, nor yesterday." 
 
 " Indeed ! " answered the clerk, beating down his 
 comrade with the airs of a man of fashion. " Who is 
 she ? " 
 
 " You might have surm.ised," said the dyer, " from 
 the openness with which I broached so important a 
 matter, that there was no she in the case." 
 
 " That," retorted the clerk, with a nettled twist of the 
 mouth, " is as may be. Either way it alters the case." 
 
 "Now," said the dyer, "you speak like a lad of 
 sense, and, believe me, I do not value your spirit one 
 whit less than your intelligence. It was out of sight 
 of my experience the most fanciful incident I have 
 seen, though it may turn out to prove nothing in the 
 tellins;."
 
 KNURR AND SPELL. 13 
 
 " That," said the other, " I can well believe, both 
 from hearsay and knowledge. But pray take me with 
 you/' he added, courteously waving off his companion's 
 growing distrust of his interest. 
 
 "Well," resumed the dyer, "you will know, as a 
 man of the world, that I am not bound to give you 
 exact dates. But it was during my lifetime." 
 
 The other nodded gravely. 
 
 " I was sitting in this room, at this table, when two 
 men came in with a certain dejected look, and took 
 up a position at the adjoining one. I find it 
 difficult to describe, with any certainty of being 
 intelligible, the impression they produced on me, but 
 this I can tell you, that they had so much the same 
 air and haviour of haggardness and fatigue, that, but 
 for their being entirely unlike in height, voice, colour- 
 ing and figure, you might have taken them to be one 
 and the same person." 
 
 " A strange reversal," muttered the clerk, " of the 
 ordinary effect." 
 
 " I had not the honour, sir," said the dyer, who had 
 heard him perfectly, " to catch your last remark." 
 
 " All right, old chap," began the clerk ; and then.
 
 14 KNURR AND SPELL. 
 
 remembering his duty to the author, corrected him- 
 self thus : " It is, I think, to your advantage that you 
 did not ; for it was, I protest, a trivial interruption. 
 Your story interests me strangely. Proceed." 
 
 "These two men," added the dyer, " called each of 
 them, but in different voices, for a brandy-and-soda." 
 
 " For a brandy-and-soda ? and in different voices ? 
 Ay, ay ! " said the clerk. " This begins to assume a 
 very different look. Can you, with due regard to 
 discretion, give me any information as to the appear- 
 ance of these two men ? " 
 
 " I have told you, " replied the other testily, " that 
 they were not the same. That for a legal clerk should 
 be enough." 
 
 "In some cases I do not say— but in an issue of 
 this moment — was one, for instance, short and the other 
 tall ? " 
 
 "You are right," said the other, whose astonishment 
 made him look for an instant like a man danced off his 
 fixity of tenure. 
 
 " Then," replied the clerk, " it may be, Master 
 Dyer, that I know your two men. Did they hold any 
 conversation ? "
 
 KNURR AND SPELL. 15 
 
 " I will tell you," said the dyer, greatly impressed 
 with his younger friend's sudden acuteness, " as nearly 
 as I can remember, their own words." 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 It will perhaps be more convenient to give the 
 narrative of what the dyer overheard in an unbroken 
 course, shaping together at the end of it such 
 irrelevant and interjectional remarks as we may see 
 fit to attribute to the dyer, or the clerk, or both, or 
 anybody else ;. for it doesn't much matter. 
 
 The two men, then, at the adjoining table, had 
 called each for his cup of brandy-and-soda, and when, 
 with a dexterous circuit, the waiter had brought them 
 what they desired, each sat sipping and eyeing the 
 other with a curious look. 
 
 In saying that one was tall and the other short, the 
 dyer had lied — it was a way he had got, for lying and 
 dyeing differ only by two letters — but it was true that 
 the two were in other ways unlike enough. They 
 were of much the same height, but one, the elder of
 
 i6 KNURR AND SPELL. 
 
 the two, a dark man, had a vast frame, which carried 
 off (or, to speak by the card, carried on it) a certain 
 tendency to portliness. The other did not resemble 
 him in any of these points. Nor, being some years 
 his junior, was he of the same age. The elder man 
 bore in his visage and port all the signs of a country 
 life, and a clever observer would therefore have said 
 that he habitually lived in the country. This, again, 
 was not the case with his companion. 
 
 " Snowle," said the younger presently, *' I do not 
 believe that this is a good kind of drink." 
 
 " How so ? " asked the other. 
 
 *' Partly," rejoined Montagu, " because I do not 
 wish to compass the end which Falstaff assigned to 
 sighing and grief, when he declared that they blew a 
 man up like a bladder." 
 
 " Montagu," said Snowle, with a ring of sincerity, 
 " I believe you are right there. Look at your French- 
 man, who, whatever his faults may be — and I fancy 
 we are pretty well agreed upon them^ — at any rate has 
 a shrewd notion of taking care of his interior. Do you 
 ever see him filling himself up with soda and brandy ? 
 Not he. He is far too wise. If he takes brandy, it
 
 KNURR AND SPELL. 17 
 
 is with his coffee, or without his coffee in a petit 
 verre." 
 
 " Quite so," Montagu assented ; " but here in 
 England we have come upon what a favourite drama- 
 tist of mine has termed the brandy-and-sodaic age, 
 and in that I see excuse for the blue-ribbonites, w^ho, 
 however, I confess, do not please me much. I have 
 known one of them seated at my own table, when I 
 had provided him with all kinds of temperance drinks, 
 descant for an hour by Shrewsbury clock to the 
 assembled guests on their viciousness in drinking wine. 
 And it was good wine, too," he added pathetically. 
 
 " Then," said Snowle, " he spoke, consciously or not, 
 with the voice of envy." 
 
 " He spoke with a singularly tiresome voice," said 
 Montagu. " But all this leads us away from my 
 original proposition." 
 
 " Which is the converse," answered Snowle, " of 
 the saying that all roads lead to Rome." 
 
 " You speak," cried Montagu admiringly, " like a 
 man in a book." 
 
 "That," said Snowle, with a grave smile, " is 
 because I am one. You will understand more of 
 
 c
 
 1 8 KNURR AND SPELL. 
 
 these matters when you are as old as I am. For the 
 present, enough said on that head. You were say- 
 ing } " he added inquiringly. 
 
 " I was saying," rejoined Montagu, " long ago, and 
 should have repeated it longer ago if you had not 
 interrupted me— but, before we go further, may I ask 
 you, my oldest friend, one question ? " 
 
 " You may ask me," said Snowle, kindly as slowly, 
 " as many as you have time and both of us inclination 
 for. Whether I shall answer or not is a question still 
 lying in the lap of the gods." 
 
 " Why do we both talk in the same manner and 
 phraseology, and both of them so very odd ? " 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " No more of this fooling," said Snowle, speaking 
 for the first time sternly. " We are in a public place, 
 and as there are some fifty people sitting close by us, 
 it is barely possible that we may be observed." 
 
 " I had not thought of that," cried the other, " and 
 I assure you I regret what I have said."
 
 KNUKR AND SPELL. 19 
 
 " You are forgiven," said Snowle, with a stately 
 inclination of the head ; " and we will now consider 
 your original proposition, which was, if I mistake 
 not " 
 
 " That brandy-and-soda is an ill drink. I will go 
 further, and say that, to nie at least, spirits in any 
 form are harmful rather than advantageous." 
 
 " It may be so," rejoined Snowle ; and casting a 
 look of pride at his own massive proportions, as 
 though to prefer them to his companion's slighter 
 build, he added, " I will tell you what I will do. I 
 will make a compact with you." 
 
 Then, leaning forward, he spoke rapidly and in a 
 low tone some words, of which the listener, Mr. Tut- 
 tutson, could only distinguish the following : 
 
 " Till we meet again — great strait — Redhill — is it 
 agreed ? " 
 
 " One moment," said Montagu, in doubtful tones. 
 " What did we do this time three days ago three years 
 ago ? " 
 
 In spite of the inward form of the question, Snowle 
 repHed like a man who had learnt a lesson by rote : 
 
 " We went to see a performance of ' The Corsican 
 
 c 2
 
 20 A'NUIiR AND SPELL. 
 
 Brothers.' It occurs to me that a mysterious 
 sympathy of that kind, if it grew up in our cases, 
 might be inconvenient. 
 
 " Nonsense, boy ! " said the other. " You have 
 been reading novels of occultism and shilling tales of 
 wonder." 
 
 " On the contrar}', I have been reading " 
 
 Here the younger man leant across the table with a 
 communicative whisper, which the listener failed to 
 catch. But thereafter he asserted that the two shook 
 hands and got up. Then the younger made a show 
 of paying for what they had had, but allowed himself 
 to be easily over-persuaded by the elder. Then they 
 walked out, each wearing a satisfied smile. And the 
 narrator further insisted that, in spite of the mysterious 
 reference to " The Corsican Brothers," they were still 
 quite different. 
 
 " And now,'' said Mr. Tuttutson to Toby, " what 
 do you think of it ? " 
 
 Toby, who during the narrative had put in here 
 and there a pertinent question with a disengaged, 
 even a double-and-disengaged, air, replied de- 
 liberately :
 
 KNURR AND SPELL, 21 
 
 " I think I can guess who your Snowle is. As to 
 the other, I can but conjecture. But it is very plain 
 to me that something passed between these two 
 men." 
 
 At this expanse of legal acumen the dyer could 
 only stare. The clerk saw his advantage, and pressed 
 it. 
 
 " I shall make it my business," he said sturdily, 
 " as it will also be my pleasure, to unravel this sleave. 
 I shall fit the cap upon your younger interlocutor. In 
 fact, if his name is Montagu, mine shall be Cap — 
 you— let." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 It was Snowle's habit, simple as his rural tastes were, 
 to keep a modest pied-a-terre in London, and, in 
 order to avoid attracting attention, he had chosen for 
 this purpose a disused luncheon and drinking bar in 
 a small street in one of the most crowded parts of the 
 town. It was on the ground-floor, and he had 
 furnished it by, in the first instance, simply reversing
 
 22 KNURR AND SPELL. 
 
 the modern order of things, and having plates on the 
 table instead of on the wall. 
 
 One night, not long after the events just narrated, 
 two footmen (I do not mean lackeys, but persons who 
 are footmen as opposed to horsemen) might have 
 been seen wending their way towards this place, had 
 anyone observed them. And, as though to prove 
 that fiction is sometimes quite as commonplace as 
 truth, out of the hurrying crowd which thronged the 
 streets some one did observe them. This was a 
 person so elaborately disguised as a retired Indian 
 colonel, that no one could possibly help at once 
 discerning that he was a clerk. He had in one 
 pocket " M. Lecoq," and in another — for there was 
 not room for both volumes in the same — " Le Crime 
 de rOi)era." These he would from time to time pull 
 out and Study with air of comparative philosophy by 
 the light of a street lamp, never, however, losing sight 
 of the two whom he seemed to be shadowing. How 
 he accomplished this feat is a matter which need not 
 be explained. He followed them in this manner to 
 the Deserted Restaurant, and was then compelled to 
 relinquish his quest for a time, because, having
 
 A'NURR AND SPELL. 23 
 
 opened the portal and gone in, they closed it behind 
 them. He felt like a man in whose face a door had 
 been suddenly shut. We may take a privilege which 
 was not his (because he did not write this story), and 
 overhear the conversation which took place between 
 them. 
 
 " You bet " said Snowle. 
 
 "An American phrase, I think," sighed Montagu. 
 
 " Not at all," said Snowle, with a peremptory nod, 
 '• I was about to say, you bet that within the time 
 stated our compact is broken, and that one or both of 
 us will suffer heavily for it in an unforeseen way." 
 
 " I do," said Montagu calmly. " I know it, for I 
 have been reading " 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 At this moment there was a violent knocking at the 
 door, which Snowle opened, so that it was possible to 
 see what was outside it. This was apparently a waiter 
 from a neighbouring tavern, carrying a tray supporting 
 bottles of soda-water and other things such as a waiter
 
 24 KNURR AND SPELL. 
 
 might be expected to carry on a tray. (It is not for 
 nothing that a person reads Gaboriau and Boisgobey.) 
 "You sent for this, gendemen?" asked the waiter 
 in a tone halting between hope and mistrust, 
 
 " I," rephed Montagu, who being the youngest, 
 naturally spoke first, "have given no such com- 
 mand." 
 
 " And," added Snowle, with a jolly laugh, " nothing 
 was nearer my thoughts or further from my intentions. 
 Ho, ho ! " 
 
 " My good friend," added Montagu, in silvery yet 
 menacing tones, "there is clearly some unfortunate 
 
 mistake. It would be better to " 
 
 " Go before you kick me out," interrupted the 
 waiter, with swift apprehension. "Yes, sir. Certainly, 
 sir ! " 
 
 And therewith he vanished. 
 
 " He looked like a waiter," said Snowle thought- 
 fully. 
 
 " You remind me," replied Montagu, "of the natur- 
 alists who first discovered the skunk — not that I mean 
 to compare an excellent and deserving class of men 
 with a beautiful but disagreeable animal."
 
 KNURR AND SPELL. 25 
 
 " I am not acquainted with the story," said Snowle 
 proudly. 
 
 " Then," rephed Montagu, seizing his opportunity, 
 " you shall be. The following observations passed 
 between them : ' It looks like a skunk — it smells like 
 a skunk — it behaves like a skunk. Let's call it a 
 skunk.' " 
 
 " This," replied Snowle, his voice taking a sonorous 
 ring, " is trifling. Montagu, i/mt is no waiter ! " 
 
 " What ! " said the other ; " not a Knight-Temp — " 
   *' No ! " thundered Snowle. " Did you ever know 
 me make hackneyed quotations, save from my own 
 immortal works ? No, boy ; no waiter, but a masque- 
 rading clerk." 
 
 Monrtagu stood open-mouthed at his friend's sagacity. 
 He had had many proofs of it from Snowle's frequently 
 calling him a fool, but it always struck him with a keen 
 and over-mastering surprise. 
 
 " How — how," he muttered falteringly " did you dis- 
 cover this ? " 
 
 (It never occurred to him to doubt a fact thus 
 announced by a man who said he was the cleverer of 
 the two.)
 
 26 KNURR AND SPELL. 
 
 " Oh," replied Snovvle, with a smile of fine scorn 
 hovering on his upper lip, " do you mean that you 
 did not see ? " 
 
 " No ! What ? Tell me ! " 
 
 " I will; but I will tell you first why you should not 
 thus have failed in observation." 
 
 " Oh, mercy ! " groaned Montagu ; " more talkee- 
 talkee ! I mean," he added, correcting himself, " I 
 shall be happy to listen to any information you may 
 be pleased to give me." 
 
 " Then," returned Snowle, with a gratified face, 
 " you shall observe that it is a maxim with detectives 
 in novels that a criminal always forgets some trifling 
 matter, which in the end gives a clue to his detection. 
 This may also occur to persons who assume disguises, 
 and you may here observe that, both in actual life and 
 in novels, criminals sometimes have become detec- 
 tives. This was so with Vidocq and with Gaboriau's 
 Lecoq." 
 
 " He told quite another story about him in another 
 novel," said Montagu feebly. 
 
 " Boy ! " cried Snowle loudly ; " let me tell tny 
 story. I am not in a position to state why the
 
 KNURR AND SPELL. 27 
 
 person who has just left us assumed a disguise. But 
 of this I am certain, that he is not a waiter, but a 
 clerk. He had forgotten a detail which none but a 
 practised eye could seize. He had " 
 
 " What ? " cried Montagu, roused to an agony of 
 questioning. 
 
 " A pen behind his ear ! " 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " There is something in that," said Montagu. 
 
 " Say the word again," said Snowle, " and I will 
 drive this dagger to your heart." 
 
 " You quote Levei," rejoined Montagu, " and 
 Archimedes had none." 
 
 " None what ? " asked Snowle in a secret voice, for 
 he saw that the quondam waiter, disguised as a Swiss 
 field-marshal, was listening at the key-hole. 
 
 " None Powstow," said Montagu, at once catching 
 his older friend's meaning. 
 
 " Powstow ! " said the supposed field-marshal to
 
 28 KNURR AND SPELL. 
 
 himself; " that, then, is the name of a third 
 accomphce." 
 
 And therewith he hurried off to convey this intelH- 
 gence to his older friend, concealing the fact that he 
 was disguised by picking up and putting on two sand- 
 wich-boards, which he had left ready at the nearest 
 corner. 
 
 Meanwhile, Snowle and Montagu interchanged a 
 last grip of the hand, and so parted, Montagu softly 
 murmuring " The Compact " ; and Snowle sending 
 out in a stentorian voice the words, " The Compact ! 
 Ho! Ho!" 
 
 Toby had given an old apple-woman, who, unbe- 
 known to him, was one of the greatest of living French 
 detectives, a sum of money to see where the two 
 friends went, and he learnt in due course that Snowle 
 had taken a ticket for Northgate-on-Sea (a place to 
 which he went because he lived there), and that 
 Montagu had returned to his London lodging. 
 
 But the first remarkable thing that came of the two 
 friends' strange meeting, Toby was not privileged to 
 witness. 
 
 One of Montagu's attractions was a certain large-
 
 KNUKR AND SPELL. 29 
 
 ness of sentiment (art-critics speak of a large feeling, 
 and they must be right), which at this period had led 
 him into a particularity of affection. 
 
 It was a very few days after he had parted from 
 Snowle that he went to call on the mother of Miss 
 Cantilene, a young lady for whom he cherished the 
 tenderest feelings. He was fortunate in getting an 
 opportunity of speaking alone with her, and he was 
 not inapt to lead their conversation to a point which 
 enabled him to hint at the emotions which possessed 
 him. 
 
 " J/m Cantilene,'" he had said, after an eloquent, if 
 vague, appeal, which he meant to be received with 
 favour, '■'' what I memi is this : I have learned to long 
 for your society, your presence, to remetnber and to 
 dream over your lightest words, to consider them, to 
 weigh them this way and that, in the wild hope of 
 finding in them the mea?iing7vhich I should wish to fitid. 
 I think, indeed, of nothing else. Could lul I hope that 
 my aspirations are not entirely vain ; could yo?i but 
 give me— — ." Here he stopped dead short, and a 
 strange and horrible expression passed over his face. 
 He collected himself, and resumed : " Could von but
 
 30 KNURR AND SPELL. 
 
 give me ." Again the spasm seized him, and in a 
 
 dull voice, and with wide-staring eyes, he continued : 
 " Could you but give vie — a glass of brandy ? " — adding 
 in heart-broken accents, and more than half to himself : 
 " The fellow's drinking soda-water, confound him ! " 
 
 Miss Cantilene looked at him in amaze, and said 
 with quiet dignity : 
 
 " Mr. Montagu, I fear you are not quite yourself" 
 
 " That," he replied sadly, "is unluckily a great deal 
 truer than you think it is. Pray, pray, forgive me, 
 and make my excuses to your mother. It is a 
 mystery — I cannot explain now. Some day it may be 
 possible. Once more, forgive me ! " and with these 
 words he fled, leaving the girl whom he adored, angr)-, 
 astonished, and puzzled. 
 
 Montagu got into a cab in a state of misery, was 
 driven to his club in a state of miser}', ordered a 
 liqueur-glass of brandy in a state of misery, and, 
 having drank it, sat down and reflected. 
 
 "It is just like Snowle," he said to himself ; "he 
 has got thirsty and forgotten all about it, and probably 
 ruined all my hopes with Miss Cantilene. In such a 
 case as this I will have revenge, even on my
 
 KNURR AND SPELL. 31 
 
 oldest and dearest friend. I'll go home and dine ; 
 this time / will drink soda-water." 
 
 He did ; with vast perseverance and discomfort he 
 got through half a dozen bottles of soda-water, and 
 then went wretchedly to bed, wondering what would 
 come of it. What did come of it was this : Snowle, 
 while Montagu w^as dining alone and wretched in his 
 London lodgings, was playing billiards at Northgate, 
 in a friend's house. The friend presently suggested 
 to him a brandy-and-soda, the materials for mixing 
 which stood on a side-table. 
 
 " No, thank you," replied Snowle. " I mustn't 
 touch it ; it's against my — my doctor's orders."   
 
 " Doctor's orders ? " said the friend ; I never knew 
 you had a doctor ; you certainly have never wanted 
 one." 
 
 " Well, no," replied Snowle somewhat confusedly ; 
 
 " but you see, the fact is that " Here he 
 
 suddenly made a wry face, such as a man makes who 
 absently helps himself to ice pudding, not having 
 observed the nature of ihe. plat. "Confound the 
 boy ! " he said, irrelevantly, as it seemed to his friend. 
 "I'll change my mind, please, and have a liqueur
 
 32 iCiWURR AND SPELL. 
 
 glass of brandy by itself." This he poured out and 
 drank, and then said, again as it seemed to his friend 
 v/ith some irrelevance, " So, Master Montagu, now I 
 know what to expect." 
 
 Before the three games of billiards they had agreed 
 to play were finished, Snowle had quietly drunk six 
 liqueur-glasses of old cognac, which interfered neither 
 with his play nor with his comfort, after which he 
 went home to bed, and waked the next morning as 
 well as possible just at the same time when Montagu 
 waked from a series of nightmares, in many of which 
 he had figured as a balloon. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The next incident in the double, yet strangely united, 
 life of the two friends, shall be given as it was recounted 
 to Mr. Tuttutson by Toby, who, again disguised, 
 appeared as a hired waiter at a dinner given by 
 Montagu's rich uncle and godfather, Mr. Goodlad, in 
 honour of Montngu's birthday.
 
 KNURR AND SPELL. 33 
 
 " Mr. Tuttutson," said Toby Trimmer. 
 
 " Toby Trimmer," said Mr. Tuttutson. 
 
 " Mr. Tuttutson," said Toby Trimmer. 
 
 " Toby Trimmer," said Mr. Tuttutson. 
 
 " Look here, old chap," rejoined Toby, " when I 
 went in for this game I bargained, mentally or other- 
 wise, for talking like people in books. But " 
 
 " Well ? " said the dyer. 
 
 " Well ? " said Toby, from a vile habit, which he 
 instantly repudiated by adding, " You have caught me 
 tripping once again, but never no more. You have 
 tried me much, and I have never yet appealed. But 
   — here I take my stand (an American expression, you 
 will observe) — I will not talk Howells." 
 
 " Your answer," replied the dyer, " interests, but 
 does not surprise me. Proceed." 
 
 " May I talk like a man out of a book ? " queried 
 Toby timidly. 
 
 " I wish to heaven you were a man out of this 
 book," replied the dyer, and then put as a semicolon 
 to his remark, " At least, I should do so were I an 
 unbiased critic, unconnected (as I wish I were) with 
 any literary loves or hatreds. I should add," he said, 
 
 D
 
 34 KNURR AND SPELL. 
 
 with a wise suddenness, " that I have no control over 
 your speech, since I share your invidious position." 
 
 "O. K.," said Toby with an eponymous wink, and 
 then in his turn added, " I mean, all shall be done as 
 you please. These, sir, are the facts. I waited " 
 
 " You might have waited longer, for all I cared," 
 said the dyer. 
 
 " I waited," resumed Toby, disregarding the inter 
 ruption, which, if regarded, might have injured the 
 narration, "I waited disguised as a waiter, at Mr 
 Goodlad's dinner. Mr. Montagu came in." 
 
 " When did he go out ? " asked Tuttutson thought- 
 lessly. 
 
 " After he had come in," replied Toby. " Let me 
 now be brief." 
 
 "You shall" rejoined the dyer; and added, with 
 the air of a man breaking a confidence to himself, 
 " that will please the public." 
 
 " Public ? " said Toby, catching his last word. 
 " Not at all. It was at Mr. Goodlad's. I was there, 
 as I told you, in disguise. I know some gay actors, 
 and they gave me the tip. I had a gauze neck, papier- 
 mache toes, and "
 
 KNURi: AND SPELL. 35 
 
 " It were tedious to go o'er," said the dyer ; " and 
 now, do drop style and come to facts." 
 
 Toby straightened himself up, and said all in one 
 breath, save when nature, resenting police interference, 
 compelled him to take breath at a most inappropriate 
 moment : 
 
 " From information received, waited, as a waiter, at 
 Mr. Goodlad's on Wednesday last. Dinner-party. 
 Mr. Montagu present as guest. While soup was 
 being served, Mr. Montagu turned pale and called 
 for brandy. Butler — discreet person— whispered, 
 " Master's finest old dry sherry." Mr. Montagu 
 persisted — said, " Damn all sherry ! Brandy it is. 
 He's drinking soda." Servants were puzzled. Mr. 
 Goodlad was annoyed. Brandy was given to him as 
 per request. Later on, Mr. Goodlad produced (this 
 was after the ladies had gone up to the drawing-room) 
 some — as he said, and as I know " 
 
 " How do you know ? " asked the dyer. 
 
 " As I know," continued Toby, without moving a 
 muscle — " some exquisite Bordeaux. This was 
 offered to Mr. Montagu. He was about to raise a 
 glass containing this nectar to his lips, when he fell 
 
 D 2
 
 36 KNURR AND SPELL. 
 
 back in his chair and cried out with offensive loud- 
 ness, ' Soda-water ! ' ' Soda-water ? ' asked Mr. 
 Goodlad, with grave insistence ; ' it is old wine.' 
 ' Yes,' returned Montagu, ' it is, but it will be older 
 to-morrow ; you cannot deny that. Oh ! what am I 
 saying ? ' he added. ' It's here — it's here — he's at 
 it.' 'At what?' asked the host. 'At — at — atavis 
 edite regibus — regibus or omnibus — tous les chats 
 sont gris le soir — Buona notte, M. Atavis — bon soir, 
 Signor Grislesoir — gute nacht, Herr Pantaleone — Now 
 — maintenant — nun — jam (not currant but elegiacs) — 
 dans this augenblick — ci — he's drinking cognac — he's 
 been reading About and Besant. Take me away — 
 any way — out of this ! ' With these wild words," 
 Toby concluded, "he was carried forth, and that night 
 I saw him no more." 
 
 " You have given me," said the dyer, " much to 
 think over." 
 
 "Then," rejoined Toby, "I had better light the 
 candles." 
 
 "By no means," said the dyer benignantly. " I 
 would have you to remember that I always think best 
 in bed. I am going to bed. Man," he continued.
 
 KNURR AND SPELL. 37 
 
 while his eyes danced with sleep, " I am an excellent 
 thinker." 
 
 "Thinker, thailor, soldier, sailor," began Toby 
 feebly, and then, with an unexpected bow, lighted his 
 patron out of the room. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Left alone, the clerk struck his clenched hand with 
 his open forehead several times, and then betook him- 
 self to Montagu's residence. 
 
 The policeman on the beat was his third cousin, 
 and in his company he walked up and down until the 
 early morning, when Montagu, pale and dishevelled, 
 appeared upon the doorstep, muttering. 
 
 Toby, if he had had six ears, would have used them 
 all to listen. He had only two, and these he 
 employed. 
 
 " Redhill," he heard Montagu say. " It certainly 
 must be so. I will telegraph before I start, and 
 Snowle will — nay, he shall meet me there." The
 
 38 KNUKR AND SPELL. 
 
 speaker had closed the street-door in a fit of abstrac- 
 tion, and now he rang at it to summon a maid. 
 " Mary," he said, when she appeared. I shall not be 
 home till dinner-time. I am going to — into the 
 country." 
 
 " But, sir," said Mary wonderingly, "you've still got 
 your dress-clothes on ! " 
 
 " No matter," said Montagu drearily, "/it' hasn't." 
 
 " And I beg your pardon, sir," said Mary, "but it's 
 raining, and you've only taken a stick." 
 
 " No matter," again said Montagu fatally, " he has 
 his umbrella ; " and with this he started for the railway- 
 station in a hansom. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Toby, following him in another hansom, altered the 
 arrangements of his reversible ulster so that it looked 
 like a cassock, made himself up with a few sticks of 
 crayon gras and a hand-glass, discharged the cab at 
 the corner before the station, and, following close on
 
 K'NURR AND SPELL. 39 
 
 Montagu's heels, took his ticket in a Curatic fashion 
 for Redhill. He was so absorbed in the change that 
 he scarcely noticed a person who seemed, with offensive 
 obviousness, to be a Railway Director, and who 
 stumbled against him in his eagerness to secure a 
 ticket for Portsmouth by the same train which was to 
 carry Montagu and Toby to Redhill. 
 
 Montagu got out at Redhill. 
 
 So did Toby. 
 
 So did the Railway Director. 
 
 Montagu went straight to the refreshment-room. 
 
 So did Toby. 
 
 So did the Railway Director. 
 
 Montagu was met by a large, jovial, well-looking 
 man. 
 
 "Why, damme," said Toby, surprised into speaking 
 half aloud, " that's the other one ! " 
 
 " Oh, oh, oh ! " said the obvious Railway Director 
 to himself with three different intonations ; "then this, 
 as I thought, is no Curate ; and now I have them all." 
 
 " Snowle," said Montagu pathetically, in an under- 
 tone of which not a syllable was lost by the clerk and 
 the Director, " see what you have made of me ! "
 
 40 A'NURR AND SPELL. 
 
 " Ho ! ho ! " laughed Snowle, and his laughter 
 seemed to shake the station. " You would have it so, 
 boy. But, indeed, I am of opinion that it has gone 
 far enough. AV^aiter ! two brandies-and-sodas ! 
 
 The two friends drank the two brandies-and-sodas 
 in solemn silence. The effect upon Montagu was 
 remarkable. He grew suddenly cheerful, and pro- 
 ceeded to relate to his elder friend (at great length) all 
 that had happened since their parting. 
 
 Toby, hunched up in a corner with a Bath bun, 
 listened with growing astonishment. When Montagu 
 had finished, he rose, and said to himself : '•So that's 
 it. When one drank soda, the other was to drink 
 brandy. When the other drank brandy, the one was 
 to drink soda. Strange — but I must hurry to tell my 
 patron." 
 
 He was about to leave the refreshment-room, when 
 the Director stopped him quietly but in a masterful 
 manner, saying, with a slight foreign accent : 
 
 " So this is how we avoid our old friends ? " 
 
 " Old friends ? " said Toby, aghast. 
 
 "Surely," replied the Director, "you have not for- 
 gotten Palot, of the Siarete' ? It is for that little
 
 KNURR AND SPELL. 41 
 
 forgery I want you — the extradition warrant is all in 
 order." 
 
 " O Lord ! " said Toby, and collapsed. 
 
 Before he had come to himself enough to convince 
 the French detective that he had made a mistake, the 
 two friends had disappeared. 
 
 The Frenchman, however, vras equal to the occasion. 
 Like all good policemen he had a clue, and, armed 
 with this weapon, he and Toby followed Snowle and 
 Montagu to the house of the Cantilenes, where, by a 
 happy chance, the dyer happened to be calling. 
 
 Montagu then, for the second time, related (again 
 at great length) all that had happened. 
 
 Miss Cantilene accepted the explanation, and him. 
 
 The dyer gave a learned address, and took Montagu 
 into partnership. 
 
 Toby became a variety entertainer. 
 
 Palot returned to Paris, and wrote an article for the 
 Figaro, explaining, with illustrations, that in England 
 all clerks are amateur detectives of great skill in 
 disguise. 
 
 Snowle laughed, and went back to his country- 
 house.
 
 A MACHINE HAND. 
 
 (LONDON, E.G.) 
 BY T. ASHE. 
 
 My little milliner has slipp'd 
 
 The doctors, with their drugs and ways 
 Her years were only twenty-two, 
 
 Though long enough her working days. 
 
 She went at eight through wet and snow, 
 Nor dallied for the sun to shine, 
 
 And walked an hour to work and home, 
 Content if she was in by nine. 
 
 She had a little gloomy room, 
 Up stair on stair, within the roof, 
 
 Where hung her pictures on the wall. 
 Wherever it was weather-proof. 
 
 She held her head erect and proud. 
 Nor asked of man or woman aid ;
 
 A MACHINE HAND. 
 
 And struggled till the last ; and died 
 But of the parish pit afraid. 
 
 Jennie, lie still ! the hair you loved 
 
 You wraps, undipped, if you but knew ! 
 
 We by a quiet graveyard wall, 
 For love and pity, buried you !
 
 THE CHIPPENDALE CHAIR. 
 BY E. M. ABDY-wiLLiAMS {Mrs. Bemhard W/iishaw). 
 
 It was not a settle, nor yet a couch, 
 
 But a double Chippendale chair, 
 And it filled the whole of the window wide, 
 
 In the curtained corner there. 
 And the lady sat with her gown spread out, 
 
 And a frown on her face so fair. 
 While the gallant prayed she would but make room 
 
 For two on the Chippendale chair. 
 
 The lady sat with her gown spread out. 
 
 And the gallant, he stood beside, 
 And he twirled a ring with a diamond stone 
 
 And muttered and stuttered and sighed, 
 Till she rose with a bend of her haughty head, 
 
 And made him a curtsey rare. 
 And he bowed himself out of the dim recess 
 
 Where stood the Chippendale chair.
 
 THE CHIPPENDALE CHAIR. 45 
 
 Eut there came another, in humbler mood, 
 
 Who offered nor wealth nor gold, 
 Save the wealth of worship his eyes confessed, 
 
 And the boundless love they told. 
 And then the lady drew back her gown 
 
 With a blush on her face so fair, 
 And they found there was plenty of room for two 
 
 On the quaint old Chippendale chair.
 
 HOW I PAID HALF-A-CROWN TO SEE 
 " TRYING A MAGISTRATE." 
 
 BT J. L. TOOLE. 
 
 " I don't think I want a ticket," I said to the lady 
 at the door. 
 
 " And why not ? " she asked. 
 
 " I am Mr. Toole," I said, smiling in my best 
 manner. 
 
 " That will not do," she answered, smiling in what 
 was evidently her worst. 
 
 " Won't do," I said, " why not ? " 
 
 "You must pay, sir," she answered, with increased 
 severity, "the tickets are half-a-crown." 
 
 " But I am going to recite for the charity," I said, 
 not hking to be treated as an impostor. 
 
 " Oh, I dare say," she replied, and there was such an 
 amount of what the dramatists call withering scorn in 
 the expression of her face, that I felt further discussion 
 might be awkward, for she was a very fine woman, and 
 moreover, the time had arrived when I was to ha\'e
 
 "TRYING A magistrate:' 47 
 
 been on the platform ; so I paid half-a-crown to hear 
 myself recite, and, looking at the transaction from an 
 auditor's point of view, I need not say I was very 
 much delighted. I heard myself try a magistrate, and 
 I don't mind telling you between ourselves (of course 
 I should not like it to go any further) that I think it 
 was one of the most amusing recitals I ever heard, 
 so full of genuine wit, and yet so genial ; you feel 
 while you hear it a certain amount of sympathy for 
 the magistrate, and yet you cannot help laughing at 
 him. If he had not been a particularly kind-hearted 
 magistrate he would certainly have committed that 
 witness for contempt of court — I know I should have 
 done so. 
 
 By the way, did you ever hear of the American 
 who stepped into a Massachusetts court one day, and 
 spent some time in hearing the trials. Presently a 
 man was brought up for contempt of court and fined, 
 whereupon the stranger rose from his seat and 
 advancing to the bar, said, " How much was the 
 defendant fined ? " 
 
 " Five dollars," replied the usher. 
 
 " Well, if that's all, I'd like to jine in," and he laid
 
 48 HOIV I PAID HALF-A-CROWN 
 
 down five dollars, saying, " I have had a few hours' 
 experience of this court, and no one can feel a greater 
 contempt for it than I do, and I am willing to pay 
 for it ! " 
 
 You can pay for almost anything in America. But 
 I was telling you about the Charity Bazaar where I 
 paid to see myself, and when I come to think of it, I 
 never spent half-a-crown to better advantage, so much 
 so, that when the lady at the door offered me her 
 apologies and that half-crown back again I refused 
 both, " My dear lady," I said, " I have enjoyed the 
 entertainment very much. I think Mr. Toole is worth 
 double the money ; and whenever he comes to 
 Blunderford again, I hope you will let me know." 
 
 She said she hoped I would let her know, she had 
 never been so much annoyed at herself in all her life ; 
 but she was very glad to inform me that I was not the 
 only one by hundreds who had paid to see me Trying 
 a Magistrate, which had resulted in a large addition to 
 the Hospital Fund. She confessed I had tried her 
 too, but she did not mind if I didn't. " To tell you 
 the truth," she said, " I thought I should have dropped 
 when I saw you come on the stage, and you were Mr.
 
 rO SEE ''TRYING A MAGlSTRATEr 
 
 49 
 
 Toole after all." (The audience were differently 
 affected, I am glad to say.) In the language of the 
 immortal Bard, I remarked, " All's well, that ends 
 well " ; in her own equally familiar vernacular, she 
 replied, " That's true."' And so we parted, both of us a 
 trifle wiser than when first we met, but neither of us 
 the sadder for our pleasant interchange of incivilities.
 
 QUEEN VICTORIA'S DAY. 
 Hn #He on t\)t 50tlj ^itntbcrgarp of i^cr Jivtigii. 
 
 BY THOS. GORDON HAKE. 
 AVANT COURIER. 
 
 Statecraft and kingly power for ages schooled 
 
 The nation's will ; the rod of genius ruled ; 
 
 At last, glad day, a maideti's gentle hand 
 
 Sufficed to guide the rei?is of State by sea and land. 
 
 Then said a voice from Jleaven, her lengthened reign 
 
 Is to eclipse the pride of kings : 
 
 A virgin Queen has come again, 
 
 And to all loving homes her blessing brings. 
 
 Soon this Queen shall be a bride, 
 
 And with her faithful F?-ince her State divide, 
 
 His virtues matched by hers alone, 
 
 A fitting glory to her throfie. 
 
 So shall their perfect lives be blest 
 
 Till Heaven, who knoT.vs our welfare best, 
 
 Calls him the earliest to his rest.
 
 QUEEN VICTORIA'S DAY. 51 
 
 Since hath the gracious sun 
 Fifty times his year begun, 
 And she remains, our hope and hourly care, 
 Her children round her, many a happy pair ! 
 England, be this a day of mirth 
 From dawn to utmost even ! 
 It is a day to keep on earth ; 
 The day is kept in heaven. 
 Partake the wine and break the bread : 
 This day shall all her poor be fed. ^ 
 
 There is joy o'er the blessings her reign has showered 
 down, 
 Yet lone is the star that shines in her crown. 
 Though sickness and sorrow are common to all. 
 In our joy let our hearts the departed recall ; 
 Let us think of the friend 
 
 In her youth so beloved : 
 May our blessing attend 
 On his home far removed ! 
 His name, held so dear, to our children be told ; 
 He loved her, revered her, in days that are old, 
 He blesses her still her children among. 
 For the days that are old are the days that were young. 
 
 E 2
 
 52 QUEEN VICTOKLVS DAY. 
 
 Oh, the days of our youth, what memories they fill ! 
 We looked on her then and we look on her still. 
 "Who now blind once beheld her, to her are not blind, 
 They treasure their Queen in their innermost mind : 
 Who deaf once gave ear to the tones of her voice, 
 Remember them still, in her accents rejoice. 
 
 CHORUS. 
 
 Since hath the gracious sun 
 
 Fifty times his year begun, 
 And she remains, our hope and hourly care. 
 Her children round her, many a happy pair ! 
 
 England, be this a day of mirth 
 
 From dawn to utmost even ; 
 It is a day to keep on earth, — 
 
 The day is kept in heaven. 
 
 Rejoice the heart from labour free, 
 It is a holy Jubilee ! 
 Where grief does not sadden 
 Let mirth the heart gladden ; 
 Where our wanderings have been, 
 Where our footsteps may stray,
 
 QUEEN VICTORIA'S DAY. 53 
 
 Remember the Queen 
 
 On her Jubilee day. 
 Rejoice, O brave legions, 
 In the sun-gilded regions ! 
 
 There reigns she afar. 
 Rejoice, O brave souls, 
 At the furthermost poles ! 
 
 Her children ye are. 
 
 May no grief her heart sadden. 
 
 May this day her heart gladden: 
 Victoria sits on her earth-rounded throne ! 
 From the waters that freeze into mountains of stone 
 To the fire-flashing shores of the tropical zone. 
 When a soldier has fallen a tear can she shed. 
 With the widow she knows how to mourn for the 
 
 dead ; 
 She makes all the cares of her kingdoms her own. 
 Though the touch of the monarch no longer heals, 
 As balm to the heart her sympathy steals. 
 
 'Tis her own Jubilee ! 
 Where her ships plough the deep,
 
 54 QUEEN VICTORLVS DAY. 
 
 Let no memories sleep ; 
 Where the thunder hangs mute, 
 Let her cannon salute 
 Every wave of the sea. 
 
 Musicians, whose glory it is to control 
 Our hearts and to sunder our cares from the soul, 
 Strike deep where hope's solace we seek for in vain, 
 Strike deep, though of ills hard to bear we complain ! 
 Strike deep to the hearts of the soldiers who guard 
 The precincts of freedom, our love their reward ; 
 Strike chords that in battle their sufferings appease, 
 Till their banners seem floating in victory's breeze. 
 
 It is summer, the June of the Jubilee year, 
 The month when the first-fruits of spring-time appear. 
 The month when the lark thrills the sky with a song. 
 Where the blue-bells hang silent the moorlands along. 
 It is June, glorious June, the month of the Queen ! 
 The cornfields are paling, the pastures are green. 
 The ferns are uncurling, the hedge-rows are gay 
 ^\'ith wild roses as welcome as blossom of May, 
 The trees are swelled out 
 In the foliage of spring, 
 
 -■i...^'tf$«M«MiiudAii>d«
 
 QUEEN VlCTORI.rS DAY. 55 
 
 The cuckoo's about 
 
 With its voice on the wing. 
 
 The morning has come, the churches pour forth 
 The batthng of bells from the south to the north ; 
 The peals from the belfries are merrily rung, 
 All hearts are rejoicing, all nature is young. 
 
 The joys of the earth while they last are our own, 
 Let us give them to her, to her hearth, to her throne. 
 Victoria, loved Queen ! We proclaim thee again, 
 May the trust we repose ever sweeten thy reign ! 
 
 Loud and deep are the cheers 'neath the old village 
 oak : 
 The health, the long life of the Queen they invoke. 
 A fife at the lips and a drum all their band. 
 The villagers gladden the length of the land : 
 The bunting from gable to gable is swung, 
 The casements with flags and fond mottoes are hung, 
 The maidens, alert from the burst of the morn, 
 I'heir bosoms with sweet-scented posies adorn : 
 In the love-threaded dance their steps are untired
 
 56 QUEEN VICTORIA'S DAY. 
 
 As they weave them to tunes by affection inspired. 
 The children are shouting and romping in throngs : 
 Like anthems seem holy their merriest songs. 
 The wayfarer pauses in crossing the stile ; 
 He lists in a dream to their voices awhile : 
 The voices of children a stranger may win ; 
 Through them are our hearts with the angels akin. 
 'Twas so on the day she ascended the throne : 
 We live o'er again the days that are gone, 
 The days of our youth ! What memories they fill,— 
 We looked on her then and we look on her still ! 
 
 GRAND CHORUS. 
 
 Victoria sits on her earth-rounded throne ! 
 From the waters that freeze into mountains of stone 
 To the fire-flashing shores of the tropical zone, 
 Her kingdoms are free ! 
 Where her ships plough the deep. 
 Let no memories sleep ; 
 Where the thunder hangs mute, 
 Let her cannon salute 
 Every wave of the sea.
 
 QUEEN VICTORIA'S DAY. 57 
 
 Rejoice, O brave legions, 
 In the sun-gilded regions ! 
 
 There reigns she afar ; 
 Rejoice, hardy souls, 
 At the furthermost poles ! 
 
 Her children ye are.
 
 THE TWO COTS. 
 
 BY C. CHESTON. 
 
 Hushed silence reigns supreme ; the lamp, turned low, 
 
 Lights up a corner of the spacious room, 
 Where wife and husband, knit in common woe, 
 
 ^Vatch their child suffer in the darkening gloom. 
 The summer day dies hard ; the heavy air, 
 
 Unfreshened by the coolness of the night, 
 Breathes hotly o'er the infant lying there 
 
 With flushing cheeks, and eyes unduly bright. 
 The quickened breath, the feeble ceaseless moan, 
 
 Mute cry of pain from lips too young to speak. 
 Wring from the father's heart an answering groan, 
 
 Send swift tears coursing down the mother's cheek. 
 It is her firstborn ; born to high estate, 
 
 To wealth beyond computing, to a name 
 Itself a priceless heritage, yet fate 
 
 Hangs dubious o'er that fever-stricken frame. 
 Princes of science leave their graver cares 
 
 To bring wise counsel in this lordhng s need ;
 
 THE TWO COTS. 59 
 
 A skilful nurse the mother's vigil shares, 
 
 Giving each slightest want the swiftest heed. 
 Ah ! mother, watching with an anguished heart. 
 
 Thine infant feebly struggling for its life. 
 Longing to set it free, and bear its part 
 
 Of pain and suffering in the feverish strife : 
 Whose infinite nobility of love 
 
 Would give up all, so that thy child might live, 
 Placing its mere existence far above 
 
 All that wealth, station, or a name can give ! 
 Cast but thine eye a hundred yards away 
 
 From the broad square, where stands thy stately 
 hall, «• 
 
 To the foul court, where grim despair holds sway, 
 
 x\nd poverty outspreads its funeral pall ! 
 There, in yon attic, might thine eye discern 
 
 A mother suffer pangs akin to thine, — 
 A wailing infant's lips with fever burn. 
 
 Tended by love, like thine own heart's, divine — 
 Yet all around is changed, that slender purse, 
 
 brained every day for bread at hunger's call. 
 Can pay no doctor's fee, no watchful nurse : 
 
 A mother's love must do the work of all !
 
 6o THE TWO COTS. 
 
 The air that struggles through the propped-up frame 
 
 Teems with ill odours, wafts on every breath 
 The drunken laugh that tells of cynic shame, 
 
 The oaths and shouts of those who fight beneath. 
 By one poor candle's light, with aching head, 
 
 With features wasted more with woe than age. 
 The worn out woman plies th' unceasing thread 
 
 That feeds her children with its meagre wage. 
 Nor rests she, save with loving touch to smooth 
 
 The ragged couch on which her babe is lain : 
 Or with angelic tenderness to soothe 
 
 The restless movements of its silent pain : 
 Or just to glance where, stretched upon the floor 
 
 On a thin pallet, other two lie still, 
 Hungry, yet taught they must not ask for more, 
 
 But be good children, since their brother's ill. 
 See, as a staggering step ascends the stair, 
 
 What silent terror glances in her eye. 
 The grateful lips find utterance in prayer 
 
 As the dread terror for the time goes by ! 
 * * * * * 
 
 Enough ! a vulgar tale of common want. 
 
 Of low-born refuse, and their hopes and fears :
 
 THE TWO COTS. 6l 
 
 (live up, I pray, this hypocritic cant 
 Of sorrows quite unfit for cultured ears. 
 
 The workhouse is the place for such as these : 
 There they can live at least from want removed — 
 
 The crime of giving alms just as we please 
 Political economy has proved. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Out ! comfortable cant of callous greed, 
 
 That turns its back on sorrow, shame, and sin, 
 And spurns the deathless poet's kindlier creed, 
 " One touch of nature makes the whole world kin ! " 
 Preach as thou may'st, one heritage of care 
 
 Binds man to man in ties thou canst not loose : 
 And of thy surplusage a fitting share 
 
 Stands mortgaged to thy needing brother's use. 
 Spurn not the sacred duty, lest the curse 
 
 Of outraged nature fall upon thy head. 
 For thee, as well as Croesus, stands the verse, 
 
 Call no man happy until he be dead. 
 Thank God ! to woman thou may'st prate in vain. 
 
 Such dogmas find no echo in her breast ; 
 Swift to discern, prompt to allay the pain, 
 
 She spurns her own, so she gives others rest.
 
 62 THE TWO COTS. 
 
 Alone, amid this money-curs'ed age 
 
 Woman's self-sacrifice still gives to man 
 A holier instinct, as a sure presage 
 
 Of life unfettered by this mortal span. 
 Thus maidens, highly nurtured, quit their ease, 
 
 Stooping ? Nay ! rising to the menial duty. 
 Striving with eager art the sick to please, 
 
 Making each sufferer's cot a thing of beauty. 
 Ye Queens of Womanhood, earth holds no crown 
 
 Meet for the brows of angels such as ye ! 
 Sweet charity shall mark you for her own 
 
 With heavenly light through all eternity ! 
 Each grateful glance that greets your kindly love, 
 
 •Each timid whisper struggling to be bold 
 
 From suffering children, stores for you above 
 
 Riches no earthly treasury can hold. 
 
 ******* 
 
 Mothers ! whom closer ties forbid to roam 
 In search of sorrows ye would fain assuage, 
 
 Whose love finds fitting duties nearer home, 
 
 Think on the war with grief these women wage ! 
 
 And, as your happy children round your knee 
 (The sweetest picture to your loving eye)
 
 THE TWO COTS. 63 
 
 Laugh at a fairy tale in happy glee, 
 
 Unconscious of their fellows' misery : 
 Teach their young hearts to feel another's grief, 
 
 Show them the purest joy they e'er can knov/ 
 Is found in giving comfort and relief 
 
 To those condemned to poverty and woe. 
 Tell them the rose that blooms upon the hedge 
 
 Is cousin to the cultured hot-house flower : 
 Want is no crime, sickness no sacrilege 
 
 That we should blame the paupers of the hour. 
 One power made us all, ease nurtures some 
 
 In peaceful indolence to spend their time : 
 Want stifles others, till in time they come 
 
 From youth neglected to an age of crime. 
 Each waif that struggles on its sordid path 
 
 Hath yet a spark of nobleness within ; 
 Seize it, and turn it from the coming wrath 
 
 That waits upon a life of shame and sin. 
 And for the sick ones : help the skilful band 
 
 Of girls who labour in our Shadwell wards : 
 Their hero lives your sympathy commands : 
 
 The work their strength is spent in is the Lord's.
 
 A VICIOUS CIRCLE. 
 
 BY THE EARL OF LYTTON. 
 I. 
 
 How fleas are put to death we all know well, 
 But how they come to being who can tell ? 
 Long ere by Monsieur Pouchet it was stated, 
 The common people took for demonstrated 
 Without the need of any demonstration 
 The Doctrine of Spontaneous Generation ; 
 And they aver that fleas from sawdust come 
 All cap-a-pie, complete and mettlesome 
 As arm'd Minerva from Jove's brain, or free 
 As full-grown Aphrodite from the sea, 
 Or rising statesmen from the Cabinet 
 Into which no one guesses how they get. 
 
 II. 
 
 O Spallanzani, Spallanzani, fie ! 
 
 How couldst thou circulate that heresy 
 
 jEx ovo onnie viviim ? Were it true,
 
 A VICIOUS CIRCLE. 65 
 
 Would not the world's end be too much ado 
 About an omelette ? But it matters not \ 
 For no inch nearer truth wouldst thou have got. 
 If thou precisely the reverse hadst said, 
 Nor will " ex vivo omne ovum " aid 
 Our knowledge one step further after all. 
 The origin of things in general, 
 And in particular of fleas, remains 
 Obscure as ever, spite of all our pains 
 To trace it : and from egg to flea, from flea 
 To egg, the interminable pedigree 
 Would, though less varied, be as vast as those 
 Which Levy's Duke and Croy's Prince suppose 
 To be their own. Thy motto, Monarchy, 
 To fleas doth better than to kings apply. 
 " The Flea is dead, long live the Flea!" For own, 
 From dust no royal race was ever known 
 To spring by mere spontaneous generation. 
 And even before the King was dead, the Nation 
 Has sometimes cried " Long live the . . . ! " 
 
 "Fabulist, 
 You know the penalty if you persist 
 In speaking out of order, so refrain ! " 
 
 F
 
 66 A VICIOUS CIRCLE. 
 
 Allow me, Mr. Speaker, to explain 
 
 That these irregularities and slips 
 
 Are owing to the way in which by skips 
 
 And hops the subject moves. There's no offence ! 
 
 I scratch my last word out and recommence — 
 
 III. 
 
 His birthplace mean, his birth undated, born 
 
 Among the shavings suffer'd to adorn 
 
 The workshed by a carpenter erected, 
 
 His education had been much neglected. 
 
 But with advantages in vain supplied 
 
 To Mediocrity it is the pride 
 
 Of Genius to dispense. The carpenter 
 
 That own'd this workshed had a son and heir. 
 
 Who was himself a sawyer — not of wood 
 
 But bones; could also blister, purge, let blood, 
 
 Deliver ladies who are brought to bed, 
 
 Vaccinate babies, lint and plaister spread. 
 
 Prescribe in Latin, mix a draught or pill. 
 
 And, for a fee extremely moderate, kill 
 
 As many patients in an honest way 
 
 As any Brook Street doctor.
 
 Ai VICIOUS CIRCLE. 67 
 
 Now one day 
 This Flea, who was a flea of intellect, 
 Seeing the surgeon busily dissect 
 Dead bodies, was forthwith inspired to try 
 Experiments in physiology 
 On living ones. And 'tis indeed the name 
 Of Dr, Pulex that has prior claim 
 To that discovery de niohi cordis 
 Et sanguinis, who fame-usurping lord is 
 Our British Harvey. Tho' the fact's undated, 
 A flea it was that first investigated 
 That most unreasonable tendency 
 In human blood (which is the reason why 
 A similar phenomenon we find 
 In all the reasonings of the human mind) 
 To keep in vicious circles turning round. 
 And seek an issue where no issue's found. 
 
 IV. 
 
 'Tis known that all the famed discoveries 
 
 By lesser nations filch'd have had their rise 
 
 In some great Frenchman's first instinctive guess ; 
 
 Steam, Electricity, the Printing Press, 
 
 F 2
 
 68 A VI-CIOUS CIRCLE. 
 
 Gunpowder, and the Laws of Gravitation. 
 
 Tom Puce (his private name denotes the nation 
 
 Whose native genius in his soul was found) 
 
 Reach'd not, however, at a single bound 
 
 That grand discovery whereof the fame 
 
 Unfairly decorates another's name. 
 
 With sunken rocks that treacherously split 
 
 The fragile barks by Genius launch'd on it 
 
 The Sea of ffCnowledge teems ; -and I suspect 
 
 Ambition was the sunken rock that wreck'd 
 
 Tom Puce in his first cruize. But you shall judge. 
 
 V. 
 
 An unfeed visit, which he did not grudge, 
 The youthful surgeon every Sunday paid 
 His pretty cousin, who was waiting-maid 
 To a young Duchess in the neighbouring town. 
 Thither one morning, to himself unknown, 
 Tom Puce he carried in his best cravat. 
 The tie was loose. In consequence of that 
 The pretty cousin with a graceful twist 
 Adjusted it, as she its owner kist. 
 This trivial fact was destined to produce
 
 A VICIOUS CIRCLE. 69 
 
 A crisis in the fortunes of Tom Puce. 
 'Twas not at home he pass'd that night. 
 
 They say 
 Knowledge is Power. But ah, well-a-day, 
 Frailty, thy name is . . . Knowledge ! Life attests 
 The Idyll is a Siren that arrests 
 The Epos in its passage. As of yore 
 Discoverers like himself had done before, 
 Tom Puce to that insidious Siren's charm 
 Succumb'd — but, hke Ulysses, took no harm, 
 Nor was it he that was devour'd. 
 
 He ow'd 
 To this, his life's first amorous episode, 
 The finest passage in that work of his 
 By Harvey filch'd, de rnotu sanguinis. 
 But soon ambition in his ardent breast 
 Was fated to replace love's tenderest 
 Emotions. For the pretty waiting maid 
 Was summon'd by the Duchess she obey'd 
 To dress Her Grace for the Court Ball. O chance 
 To go to Court ! To see the Emperor ! Dance
 
 70 A VICIOUS CIRCLE. 
 
 Even with the Empress ! Such a chance in view, 
 
 Farewell all vulgar loves ! Lisette adieu ! 
 
 Between a Duchess and a Chambermaid 
 
 The distance is not ahuays, be it said, 
 
 A gulf impassable. This Rubicon 
 
 Was cross'd without miscarriage — and anon 
 
 The lovely Duchess lost a droplet red 
 
 Of that pure blood which, ere her birth, was shed 
 
 At Ascalon, Nicaea, Antioch 
 
 In bucketfuls abundant . , . . to unlock, 
 
 Think you, the Painim's unbelieving hand 
 
 From its black grip upon the Holy Land ? 
 
 No ! but to found the famous pedigree 
 
 Whose forty quarterings fed this favour'd Flea. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Fleas are dependent on their entourage. 
 
 Our hero's life here turns a nobler page, 
 
 Inscribed no longer with the vulgar name 
 
 Of plain Tom Puce, who from this hour became 
 
 Known by the title he was born to win. 
 
 As the Chevalier de Pucelin.
 
 A VICIOUS CIRCLE. 7^ 
 
 Now was the time to profit, now or never, 
 
 De motu cordis of the great. What clever 
 
 Adventurer (and de Pucelin was both) 
 
 Would not, with such an opening, have been loth, 
 
 When by a Duchess introduced at Court, 
 
 In his advancing fortunes to stop short 
 
 Till he had reach'd ambition's highest pitch ? 
 
 Lord President of the Imperial Itch 
 
 Might he not be ? And get himself addrest 
 
 As Privy Counsellor the priviest ? 
 
 About the Imperial Person day and night, 
 
 Chief of Court Vermin, and Grand Parasite ! 
 
 From nothing need a flea's ambition shrink. 
 
 Between all parties the connecting link, 
 
 If he to power (as every hero does) 
 
 Must wade thro' blood, he mingles as he goes 
 
 With every class, and in his own contains 
 
 The blood of noble and plebeian veins. 
 
 Whig, Tory, Protestant, or Catholic, 
 
 All's one to him. He knows the statesman's 
 
 trick 
 Of using, fusing, and confusing all 
 The various currents which, inimical
 
 72 A VICIOUS CIRCLE. 
 
 Each to the other's drift when let alone, 
 By him united serve to speed his own. 
 
 On principle despising prejudice 
 
 Our Flea, who was in nothing over nice, 
 
 — (I say " Our Flea," since in a certain sense 
 
 This may by all of us, at whose expense 
 
 Fleas thrive, be said of every flea that lives. 
 
 For fleas are the true representatives, 
 
 The sole successful realized ideal, 
 
 Of Socialism, and there's nought unreal 
 
 In bloodshed and equality — for fleas. 
 
 Who naturally benefit by these.) 
 
 — Our Flea, then went to Court. And, with address, 
 
 When to the embrace of his fair patroness 
 
 The fingers of the Imperial Hand were given 
 
 De Pucelin pounced upon them. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 / 
 
 Gracious heaven ! 
 
 That high-born hand on whose fair finger tips 
 The Duchess was about, witli perfumed lips. 
 To press what many a proud moustache in vain
 
 A VICIOUS CIRCLE. 73 
 
 Had often pined and pleaded to obtain — 
 That scepter'd hand that to the world beneath 
 Waved hfe and honours or disgrace and death, 
 That snowy hand of smiling Majesty 
 That in it lightly held the mute reply 
 To Hamlet's monologue — was now, alack, 
 With a swift gesture of disgust drawn back, 
 And ... Ah poor Duchess ! 
 
 Never from that fall 
 Did she recover. 'Twas observed by all. 
 Publicity augmented her disgrace, 
 Though none the private cause of it could trace . 
 In spite of explanations not a few ; 
 Which only proved, what everybody knew 
 Or might have known before, that with impunity 
 No woman can eclipse the fair community 
 Of her own sex. 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Duchess was undone. 
 And, if the scandal had no further gone 
 'Twas bad enough. But libertines begin 
 Where liberties should end. De Pucelin,
 
 74 A VICIOUS CIRCLE. 
 
 Hadst thou confined thy galantries audacious 
 Unto the baise-main only . . . but good gracious ! 
 The Lauzuns and the Grammonts of gone days 
 Whose memoirs scandahze us and amaze 
 Were not more enterprising. 
 
 X. 
 
 For a time 
 Still further on his path of prosperous crime 
 The gay Chevalier was allowed to get 
 Unpunish'd, thanks to Courtly Etiquette. 
 But once the Imperial pageant at an end, 
 And .... Monaldeschi ! 
 
 Our adventurous friend 
 Had fared no better than the Swedish Beau 
 Who for Court favours paid at Fontainebleau 
 More than their value (and thus here alas 
 Had closed the life of Tom Puce, alias 
 De Pucelin, alias Dr. Pulex, first 
 Discoverer of the truth, since so disperst, 
 De motu cordis^, if a silken-ear'd 
 King Charles had not then luckily appear'd 
 In the Imperial Boudoir. Entry-free
 
 A VICIOUS CIRCLE. 75 
 
 Are favourite spaniels (lucky dogs they be ! ) 
 
 To approach the Imperial Presence day and night. 
 
 And who would squander time, or injure sight, 
 
 By looking in a lap-dog's hackled hair 
 
 To find one flea ? As soon, by looking there. 
 
 You'd find one statesman in St. Stephen's Hall. 
 
 There are so many of them, and they all 
 
 So hopelessly like one another be ! 
 
 XI. 
 
 The Imperial Spaniel, a Don Juan he, 
 
 Had in the Maid of Honour's slim greyhound 
 
 His small Zerlina of the moment found. 
 
 But his Zerlina's sensitive young heart 
 
 Had secretly been wounded with love's dart 
 
 By the more massive and majestic grace 
 
 Of Beaurevoir, who foUow'd to the chase 
 
 The Master of the Buckho.unds. Beaurevoir 
 
 Had for his humble friend and servitor 
 
 Herbault, an honest dog but lowly born, 
 
 Who turn'd the kitchen spit from night to morn 
 
 The Sire de Pucelin, from dog to bitch 
 
 Pursued for ever by the noble itch
 
 76 A VICIOUS CI E CLE. 
 
 For knowledge, whilst neglecting not athletics 
 Completed thus his course of Cynagetics : 
 Which brought him by a brief career at last 
 From Court to Courtyard. While her husband 
 
 pass'd 
 His time in turning the Imperial Spit, 
 Dame Herbault, who was lively, had the wit 
 To enjoy more tender tasks. And, thanks to her, 
 His fortune found occasion to transfer 
 The Ex-Chevalier de Pucelin 
 From Madame Herbault on to Haptopin 
 The butcher's bull-dog. He migrated then 
 From Haptopin to Rattler, and again 
 From Rattler pass'd to Carlin, and at last 
 From CarUn, back with little Azor, pass'd 
 To the mean shed where first he came to life. 
 For Azor's mistress Avas the lawful wife 
 Of that shed's lowly lord, the carpenter. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Thus love's Emotion and Ambition's stir, 
 Hair's-breadth Adventures, Contact with the Court, 
 Science, Romance, and Politics,— in short
 
 A VICIOUS CIRCLE. 
 
 The whole career which this discoverer ran 
 Was doom'd to finish just where it began. 
 A vicious circle, take it how you will ! 
 But still a circle. And a circle still, 
 Whether we please to praise it or decry, 
 Remains the emblem of Eternity. 
 
 77
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLAY. 
 
 BY MRS, W. K. CLIFFORD. 
 
 The village stood half-way up the slope. Behind it 
 rose the mountains. Round it stretched the brown 
 earth almost destitute of trees, of greenness of any 
 sort, but covered by even rows of little dark stumps. 
 They were not more than a foot high, those curious 
 stumps, they looked like little old men, cross and 
 wrinkled. It was difficult to believe that they had 
 ever borne anything good to see or to use. Yet a few 
 months later they would have sent forth long green 
 twigs covered with leaves and heavy with fruit. Of 
 all things seen for the first time, a French or Swiss 
 vineyard is one of the most disappointing ; even at its 
 best, which is not till the summer is waning, its 
 monotony and stuntedness make it utterly unlike the 
 vineyard of imagination. In winter it is barren- 
 looking, dead, and positively ugly,
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE TLA Y. 79 
 
 In front of the village the slopes, crossed and 
 re-crossed by low grey walls dividing off the vine- 
 yards, stretched downwards to the white carriage 
 road, to the railway line, to some leafless fruit trees, to 
 some green patches of vegetable garden, to a walk 
 planted on either side with plane trees that, thick and 
 short, interlaced to make a deep shade in summer, 
 but now as bare as the vines, to the blue waters 
 of Lake Leman. Over the lake, and over most 
 things, the sun was shining. It touched the misty 
 clefts in the mountains till each one became a 
 heavenly mystery behind which lay an enchanted 
 land. The Dent du Midi was covered with snow, 
 but the wide dark streaks showed that the sun's power 
 was returning. The mountains that from a distance 
 seemed to form a locked gate to the Rhone 
 valley, as well as the mountains of Savoy, gathered 
 high and close all along the southern side of the 
 lake, even the hills round Ghon and Chillon 
 were still white and thick with snow above the 
 line of frequented pathway. But lower down the 
 snow had melted as though the shivering slopes 
 had warmed and comforted themselves against
 
 So THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLAY. 
 
 the homes of men. The sun was hot enough for 
 June, but in the shade the cold air and biting wind 
 betrayed their March parentage. Yet there were 
 signs that spring . was already on its way. 
 The few trees huddled round the village, as 
 though they feared the gaunt wastes beyond, were 
 budding. In the markets at Lausanne and Vevey 
 the seed-sellers drove a brisk trade. The little heaps 
 of manure put ready in the vineyards showed that it 
 was nearly time to look after the stumps that as yet 
 were all that represented the coming vintage. 
 
 The village consisted of two or three clusters of 
 houses, none of them alike, and none too grand for 
 the thrifty or working-class. A few were picturesque, 
 but the majority were ugly, white-washed, and poor- 
 looking. Here and there the ugliness was relieved 
 by a carved wooden balcony, or an outside staircase, 
 from which hung bunches of yellow corn or pots of 
 greenery fastened up by strings ; but the Swiss 
 villager is not over-burdened with a sense of beauty, 
 nor given to spending his time on the decoration of 
 his home. 
 
 Standing a little apart from the houses, like a
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PL A Y. 8i 
 
 reverend elder, was an old church with a square 
 tower and faded clock. At the end of the one 
 dead-alive street stood the pump and the inevitable 
 washing-troughs, round which the gossips gathered 
 to idle and the housewives to wash their clothes. 
 A few cobbled-stoned narrow ways, with old high 
 houses warning off the sunshine, wound out of the 
 street or from round odd corners. That was all, save 
 a couple of dreary cafes, and a letter-box, the latter 
 let into a blank wall on which were pasted one 
 or two ofncial notices of the Commune and a 
 placard concerning an Easter concert at Vevey. 
 Few enough were the signs of life, except by 
 the pump, and at stated hours that necessitated 
 going to and fro to transact the trivial business 
 of the day. The children going and coming 
 from school, the cows being taken in and out 
 of the sheds at milking-time, the gathering of 
 letters from the letter-box, the dragging of a load 
 of wood that had come from some mysterious place 
 far out of sight, where trees were plentiful enough 
 to be cut down and sent to villages beyond, a 
 scanty straggling group going towards the cafes 
 
 G
 
 82 THE LAST SCENE OF THE FLA Y. 
 
 after the dinner hour, to which the whole place 
 held itself sacred ; these were the chief signs of 
 animation, and for months the only ones. Here 
 and there, outside the village, was to be seen 
 a stray house, surrounded by a patch of almost 
 uncultivated garden, weather-beaten and deserted, 
 with its shutters closed like the lids of tired eyes. 
 It was as if, in the drowsy noon or the still cold 
 night, first one dwelhng and then another had 
 wandered away from the village, and for ever 
 stayed to dream. When the spring came they 
 would all awake, the shutters would be flung 
 open wide ; the villagers would rouse themselves 
 and make ready for the summer. But as yet 
 there was only the sunshine, just a hint that 
 Heaven was not forgetful ; that the world would 
 soon be beautiful once more, and its people must 
 awake to behold it. 
 
 Far up behind the village, so far that it was beyond 
 the vineyards and the little meadows that were growing 
 green again, just at the edge of the fir-trees that clothed 
 the topmost part of the mountain, stood a long low 
 building ; its whiteness could be seen for miles
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLA Y. 83 
 
 away. Close beside it was a ruined wooden chalet 
 with piles of grey stones near it. Yet, though hands 
 had surely placed the stones in heaps quite lately, 
 there was not a sign of life anywhere about ; nothing 
 but the firs above, and the slope beneath with the 
 village half-way down towards the lake. Midway 
 between the firs and the village stood the highest in- 
 habited house in the immediate vicinity — one of those 
 houses that seemed to have strayed from its fellows 
 and stood conspicuously apart. 
 
 The house was only one story high, with a window 
 at the back looking up at the firs and the ruined chalet 
 and shed, and a door and several windows on the other 
 side looking down towards the village and the lake. 
 Before the upper windows stretched a wooden balcony 
 and from it hung great bunches of maize corn. Round 
 the house was a patch of garden-ground that had lately 
 been dug over, and here and there displayed a few 
 homely vegetables doing fairly well in the keen March 
 winds. The garden and the maize corn were the only 
 signs of eating and drinking and waking humanity. 
 The door was shut, the windows closed, the green 
 shutters fastened inside so that no gust disturbed 
 
 G 2
 
 84 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PL A V. 
 
 them; there was no smoke from the chimney; the 
 house seemed simply a part of the landscape and the 
 stillness. 
 
 But above the stillness was broken. In the ruined 
 chalet there was a sound of some one moving 
 cautiously. Between the wide chinks a man's eyes 
 looked out as far as they could see, again and 
 again down at the slope, at the lonely house, and 
 anxiously towards the village. At last, seemingly 
 satisfied that no one was watching him, he 
 came cautiously out from his shelter, and, keeping 
 close to the low grey wall, began to descend. He 
 almost bent double as he advanced as if to avoid 
 being seen ; he hurried and yet took each step 
 with care, casting a glance about him every 
 moment. He drew near the house with a sigh of 
 relief, keeping in a line with it as soon as its 
 height formed a screen between him and the 
 ' village. He stole to the front door with noiseless 
 
 steps, and, lifting the latch, entered. There was a 
 long dim passage, bare and white-washed, flagged 
 with rough grey stones. At the farther end was a 
 ^ wooden staircase ; he looked towards it anxiously
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLA V. 85 
 
 and listened. To his left there was suddenly the 
 sound of a wheezing cough. He heard it with an 
 air of relief. He turned and examined the fasten- 
 ings of the street-door; they consisted of a lock 
 and a bolt ; he drew the bolt, and turning the 
 key in the lock, took it out. Then opening a door 
 on the left he entered a dirty comfortless kitchen. 
 At a glance he noticed that the windows were 
 fastened inside the closed shutters. An old woman 
 rose as he entered. He gave her the key of the door. 
 
 " Some one might come for us," he said. " Do 
 not let in any visitors to-day, we have letters to 
 write and wish to be quiet, and if anyone comes 
 to see you there is no need to say that the artist 
 has gone and we are here. I have locked the 
 door and taken out the key, so that if any people 
 come they may think the house is empty. Let them 
 knock." She looked at him suspiciously. " It is 
 only for to-day," he added. " To-morrow it will be 
 different." 
 
 " I will not say that Monsieur the painter is gone," 
 she answered. "I will not let in anyone unless the 
 knocking is so loud I cannot help it."
 
 86 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLA Y. 
 
 He nodded, and left her looking at the key. The 
 English were strange people, she thought, it was of 
 no use suspecting them, for there was no knowing 
 what even the best of them would do ; and she sat 
 down to consider. The painter who had stayed in 
 her house since January painting the snow-covered 
 mountains had been gone a fortnight. The day 
 before he went he had talked with a stranger who 
 had looked over his canvass while he sat painting 
 near Vevey. He had always loved to talk, had the 
 painter. A foolish waste of time it seemed to the old 
 woman, who had lived long years almost in silence. 
 For work and talk were never trusty partners ; if one 
 was good for aught the other went for little. But 
 the painter had told the stranger how he had lived 
 for two months in her house, pointing it out on the 
 slope, and that the next day he was going to Italy. 
 He went, and that same night the strangers came. 
 They told her not to say that the painter had gone 
 and they had come, for they wanted to be alone and 
 quiet. The lady was ill and suffering. The old 
 woman was to forget if she could that she had 
 changed her tenant. They asked the painter's name,
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE FLA Y. 87 
 
 then said theirs was the same, and they expected no 
 letters, no friends ; they wanted to be alone and quiet. 
 Well, they were curious people, were the English, 
 always liking to keep to themselves. These were easy to 
 do for, quiet enough, staying up in their rooms almost 
 in silence. She would have forgotten that they were 
 there but for the serving of meals. She doubted 
 if the village knew that they were there, for the 
 painter had walked away in the early morning with 
 all he possessed on his back, and the same even- 
 ing these two had walked in with all they possessed 
 in their hands, and neither had passed through 
 the village. It was just as well ; Louis Strubb would 
 not come asking for his money. The painter was 
 known to be poor, for how could a man who sat 
 all day before an easel be rich ? But this English- 
 man who was able to travel with his wife might well 
 be supposed to pay more, and Louis Strubb was 
 not one to wait patiently if he could help it. She 
 had noticed that each time the Englishman went 
 out he avoided the village : none could know that he 
 had come. To-morrow at the market, if any one had 
 seen him, there might be questions asked, and Louis
 
 88 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLA V. 
 
 Strubb made wiser. But that was in the future. To- 
 day there was nothing to disturb her, nothing to 
 trouble about till it was time to prepare the strangers' 
 supper at seven. No need either to think of that 
 yet, nor to burn the wood in waste. For a while she 
 could rest, forgetting that she was cold. Ah, that 
 was comfortable, a chair and a high stool on which 
 to put her legs ; she was tired and nearly sleeping. 
 And why not sleep ? Good dreams might come of 
 youth — a foolish time when one loitered and laughed 
 over-much, yet pleasant to dream of when one's 
 limbs ached and there was little to do but rest. Her 
 head fell on her chest, her withered eyes closed, the 
 wrinkles in her face smoothed away, and all things 
 were forgotten for a little space as she sat and dozed 
 beside the cold black stove. 
 
 II. 
 
 The man went slowly up the creaking stairs which 
 turned abruptly towards the front of the house and 
 faced a door at the top. Between the door and the 
 last stair there was a landing which went along the 
 width of the house ; and on to it opened all the
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE FLA V. 89 
 
 rooms of the top story. He opened the door facing 
 the stairs ; and entered a bare, silent room, which 
 the old woman beneath called the salon. There was 
 a second door, leading to an inner room ; he went 
 towards it and listened, then opened it gently and 
 looked in. The inner room was furnished as a bed- 
 room, dim, from the closed shutters, and chilly, for 
 the sunshine passing over the house had left it in 
 shade. On one of the two low beds a woman was 
 lying. She was dressed, her head was pillowed high, 
 and her arms thrown back beneath it raised it still 
 higher. She was young, but worn and haggard- 
 looking. She was beautiful, or would have been so 
 but for a look of anguish that seemed to have become 
 a settled expression on her face. She started as the 
 man entered, and in a voice that was full of dread 
 asked, " Is it all right ? " He nodded. With a sigh of 
 relief she sank back. 
 
 " It is very cold," he said ; " you had better lie 
 still — do you hear ? " for she had collapsed in some 
 strange way, and turned her eyes from him. " I will 
 call you presently ; I want to be alone a little while." 
 There was a certain power in his voice that seemed to
 
 90 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PL A Y. 
 
 render the woman helpless. She made a sign of 
 assent, then looked up, and having answered simply 
 " Yes," turned her face away till it was almost hidden 
 in the pillow. He glanced quickly at the door lead- 
 ing to the landing, and saw that it was locked. He 
 went back to the salon and closed the bedroom door 
 behind him. For a moment he looked out, through 
 the green bars of the closed shutters, at the village 
 below, at the lake with the sunshine sparkling on it, 
 at the Savoy mountains, with the little towns and 
 villages set low down along the shore. If he were 
 only across that bit of blue water scrambling up the 
 snow-covered heights, or speeding along in the train 
 towards Bellegarde, he might yet escape unnoticed. 
 He turned away and looked round the comfortless 
 room. He had a way of taking in his surroundings 
 quickly and keenly. The room was bare, and, like the 
 rest of the house inside and out, whitewashed. There 
 was a round table, a gaunt sofa, two or three 
 chairs : a wide, open fireplace with a few logs 
 piled up ready for lighting on its stone cheeks. 
 That was all, save that between the windows stood 
 a high, well-made escritoire. It had a flap that let
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLAY. 91 
 
 down in front to form a desk ; beneath the flap 
 there were several drawers, and behind it several 
 smaller ones. He let down the flap ready to write, 
 then opened a drawer and took out an old photo- 
 graph, faded and yellow. It had the indescribable 
 look of a portrait of some one who was dead. 
 That old woman with the long, thin face, and 
 prim cap, could not be living. He looked at it 
 tenderly, put it on the mantelshelf, then, going back 
 to the escritoire, sat down to write. It was a little 
 difficult to see ; there was almost a recess between 
 the windows, and the shadow kept off the light. A 
 single moment would have sufficed to open the 
 shutters and make the whole room lovely with the 
 sunshine without, with the landscape looking in, 
 but he did not dare to risk it. He put a sheet of 
 paper, before him, and glanced uneasily about before 
 beginning. It was a sort of relief to see his 
 mother's portrait on the shelf. Something unde- 
 fined seemed to be standing by him, to be watch- 
 ing him, to fill the whole room with a strange 
 presence. The woman on the low bed in the inner 
 room felt it too ; it filled all the space about them
 
 92 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLA Y. 
 
 both. The man defied it, the woman quailed before 
 it with agonized shrinking. In every atom of the air 
 there seemed to be a suggestion of consciousness. It 
 gave the one a vague knowledge of what was coming, 
 it sent a sick dread into the heart of the other to 
 share its bitter anguish. 
 
 The man began his letter almost desperately, 
 feeling that he was writing it against time and in 
 the teeth of many things. The light changed and 
 fell upon his face. It was thin and weary, but it 
 had none of the sadness or the fear of the 
 woman's. He was singularly handsome, tall and 
 well-made ; perhaps he should be described as dark. 
 There was something in his eyes difficult to 
 fathom — a light, a spark almost, an expression 
 that made the whole face a puzzle. It gave 
 him at times an uncanny — a shifty — at others a 
 kindly humorous look. There was a changefulness 
 about the face that seemed to make the whole 
 man an uncertainty to everyone in everything, a 
 man who for some reason almost beyond his con- 
 trol could not be counted on in any way. He 
 somehow conveyed the impression that he was
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLA V. 93 
 
 capable of doing great deeds and generous ones 
 if they were suggested to him and came easy, with- 
 out in the least seeing their greatness or generosity ; 
 or of committing almost any crime, any meanness, 
 if they too came in his way or were convenient, 
 never realizing or caring about the enormity or the 
 meanness. Good and evil had been settled and de- 
 fined by others, but he was not able to distinguish 
 accurately between them, or to care which was which. 
 In a certain sense he was morally blind as some 
 are colour-blind. He did that which came in his 
 way, which seemed easiest ; the goodness or the 
 badness did not concern him. People might 
 applaud one deed, and be shocked at another. To 
 him in a way they were the same. He was glad 
 if people liked what he did ; if they did not, he 
 shrugged his shoulders ; he could not help it. The 
 one real guide he acknowledged was his own feel- 
 ing, the general convenience of himself and, occa- 
 sionally, of those immediately about him. Of 
 very strong feeling he was almost destitute, of a 
 queer analytical one he was constantly possessed. 
 Perhaps it was this that put the uncanny look
 
 94 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLA Y. 
 
 into his eyes. They were the eyes of some other 
 person looking on at himself, occasionally those of 
 a mocking fiend who was his master. He was dis- 
 tinctly a man who attracted women. It was 
 impossible to help thinking that many had probably 
 loved him. But men were more cautious. In all 
 his life but one man had been his true and fast 
 friend. How true that one had been he had reason 
 to know well, and yet, unable to put absolute con- 
 fidence in anybody, he had many a time weighed 
 in a mental balance the one friendship that had 
 never failed him. It was three years since he had 
 dared to see that friend, but he was writing to 
 him now : — 
 
 " Dear Jack, 
 
 " To-day I got a paper at Vevey, and see they 
 have tracked us to Lausaune. They will probably 
 not be long in scenting the rest of the trail. To- 
 night we — or I, at any rate — make an effort to 
 get elsewhere. Meanwhile do not be nervous. I 
 shall not be taken alive. After all, Death is but 
 a scene-shifcer, but I prefer giving him the signal
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLA Y. 95 
 
 myself to leaving it to others. I hope that meddling 
 fool, her brother, will be content when he finds that 
 I have escaped him, as I shall do anyway, dead or 
 alive, and that he will not give you any trouble. 
 But I know nothing of legal matters, and, as you 
 see, mean to keep clear of them. 
 
 " Yours, old fellow, 
 
 " H. W." 
 
 He went to the window again and carefully 
 scrutinized the landscape ; then to the back of the 
 house, and looked up at the ruined chalet, the 
 dark firs, the upper paths that led to higher 
 villages out of sight. He shook his head and 
 returned to the saloti. " I suppose it is always 
 so ; every place seems safe till one gets to it, and 
 then every other seems safer. I must try Charlotte 
 soon." He went to the escritoire and half-hesi- 
 tatingly opened the deepest drawer inside the flap. 
 He drew out a small pair of Derringers. They 
 were loaded. With grim satisfaction he examined 
 and replaced them. For a moment he stood un- 
 certain, facing the room, as if almost he were trying
 
 96 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLA V. 
 
 to understand some hidden thing, to force his 
 perceptions into the future, to get some help, some 
 direction for the present. Then, as if he recognized 
 the folly of inactivity, or hesitation, he went forward 
 quickly and called the woman from the inner room. 
 
 " Charlotte ! " — he opened the door and looked 
 in. She started to her feet, almost as if she were 
 scared. 
 
 " Yes — is it anything ? " 
 
 " Well — no," he answered in a leisurely voice, in 
 which there was no alarm though a suggestion of doubt- 
 fulness. " But I think it would be as well to have a 
 talk. We are pretty silent as a rule." She came 
 slowly into the sa/on, a tall, slight woman with a pale 
 face, and eyes that were full of fear and sorrow. Her 
 mouth was curved and beautifully formed, her hair 
 was dark, and gathered back into a knot behind. 
 She looked like a loving, tender, woman, yet there 
 was an air of strength and determination about her, 
 a manner that made her seem reserved and cold. 
 She had probably been counted both in the days of 
 her happiness and beauty. She hesitated at the 
 doorway ; the grey light, her own pale face and plain
 
 .- THE LAST SCENE OF THE FLA Y. 97 
 
 black dress, all made her look taller than she actually 
 was. She seemed to sway to and fro for an instant, 
 almost as if she were tottering. She went to the 
 window and looked out, but the brightness blinded, 
 almost frightened her, and with a shudder she turned 
 away and stood leaning against the escritoire, waiting 
 for her husband to speak. He scanned her face 
 in an odd, reflective manner. 
 
 " It is strange that you should feel it so much more 
 than I," he said. 
 
 " Do you not feel it ? " she asked passionately, 
 clasping her hands. She had a- deep sweet voice ; it 
 was the voice of a woman who could suffer sorely and 
 love well. A voice to which it was impossible to help 
 listening, one realized so keenly the living woman 
 behind it. 
 
 " I suppose I do as much as anyone can ; but men 
 take things calmly. Besides when a deed is done no 
 amount of feeling will undo it." 
 
 "Harford," she cried, yet she spoke in so low a 
 tone that the keenest ears beyond the room could not 
 have caught a sound, " is it true ? That is what I 
 am always asking myself — is it a dream, or madness, 
 
 H
 
 98 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PL A Y^ 
 
 or truth ? It has come on me so suddenly I cannot take 
 it in. I feel as if you cannot have lived these two 
 years since we have been married, these three since 
 she died, — you could not have lived so calmly 
 through them if it were true." He looked at her, the 
 strange expression was in his eyes, he seemed to 
 be watching the effect of every word he said. 
 
 " It is true," he answered doggedly, " as true 
 as it is that you stand there. I gave her enough 
 poison to kill half a dozen women. If any doctor 
 but Jack had been called in, there would have been 
 
 but one thing for him to do ." She writhed in 
 
 agony at every word he said, shrinking involuntarily 
 farther away from him. He saw it plainly enough, 
 but it produced no visible effect upon him, except, that 
 the odd interested look on his face grew more 
 intense, as though he were making an experiment 
 and keenly watching the effect. She raised her 
 head for a moment, he saw that her lips were white, 
 he looked gravely into her eyes. 
 
 " How could you live ? " she cried. "The shame, 
 the horror, the remorse, why did they not kill 
 you? They seem to be killing me now. In every
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PL A Y. 99 
 
 sound there is a taunt, a threat, a reproach, and 
 everywhere I see a dead woman's face — the face 
 of the woman you killed — I can see her even at 
 this moment as plainly as though she were between 
 us, — her closed eyes and still hps and folded hands. 
 O God, Harford, how could you ? " but her words 
 had no effect on him. 
 
 " It is very odd," he repeated, " but it seems 
 as if it had cost you, these last few days since you 
 knew, as much as it has cost me all these years 
 since it was done." She did not answer, she 
 felt bitterly that it was true. The crime had 
 been his; the agony and remorse, the horror and 
 the dread were hers, and she had borne it all in 
 the last few days in which she had known. 
 " Has it cost you nothing ? " she asked. 
 "I think it has," he said, "it has not left me 
 many minutes' peace since it was done. Only men 
 don't take their pain in the concentrated manner of 
 
 women." 
 
 There was a ring of truthfulness in his voice that 
 was some sort of relief to her. She felt as if she could 
 bear anything better than the terrible callousness that 
 
 H 2
 
 loo THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLA V. 
 
 had added a sting, if a sting were possible, to the 
 knowledge that had come upon her. 
 
 "Why has it been so suddenly discovered now, and 
 why — why did you do it — how could you ? " She 
 burst out speaking of the thing directly for the first 
 time. 
 
 " I bore it as long as I could, but she made life 
 such that it came to be impossible for us both to live 
 in the same world. It was after our long quarrel, 
 after I heard that you had come back, and gradually 
 I got possessed of the idea that she or I must die. 
 She felt ill, and the devil suggested how it could be 
 managed. I got Jack to come and see her. He being 
 a doctor I thought it would make things right, and 
 that it would never occur to him to suspect. But it 
 did. He discovered it the moment he saw her, but she 
 was then past saving. He would have had me hanged 
 if I had not prevailed on him at last to hold his 
 tongue. "They'll make him pay for that now, I fear," 
 he added, uneasily. " He agreed to be silent for the 
 sake of bygones and for my mother's sake," (and he 
 looked towards the faded photograph); " it was when 
 she was failing, and he knew that betraying me would
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE FLA Y. loi 
 
 be killing her. Perhaps he thought it was enough to 
 kill one woman between us." He was silent a moment 
 as if he expected her to speak, but she did not make 
 a sign. " He made me promise not to marry you," 
 he went on, " but I broke that promise ; it was not in 
 human nature to keep it. I had married the other 
 woman only in a fit of jealousy, it was not possible 
 to miss the chance when it came, and I found you 
 cared for me still." But the last words only made 
 her draw back a little farther from* him, and she 
 was silent. 
 
 " Did she love you ? " she asked at last almost in a 
 whisper. He was silent for a moment ; he seemed to 
 call up some past scene in his mind, before he 
 answered : 
 
 "Well, yes," he said slowly, "she did. I wish she 
 hadn't ; it was long enough before I could get rid of 
 the memory of her eyes following me round and 
 round that room, and looking up gratefully when I 
 gave her the dose that finally killed her." She locked 
 her teeth to keep her lips still. She could see it all 
 as clearly as if now the woman lay dying once more 
 before him. But his voice was just the same.
 
 102 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PL A V. 
 
 She wrenched her thoughts from the dead woman 
 to the living man. 
 
 " Why did no one suspect before ? " 
 
 " It was no one's business to do so. There was a 
 chattering servant ready to say what she only half 
 thought, but when no fuss was made, and the doctor 
 asked no questions, she forgot it. I gave her ten 
 pounds when she went away, and perhaps she under- 
 stood she was to hold her tongue. It would never 
 have come out if Tom Carr had not come back ; he 
 always hated me, and he was always suspicious. He 
 went poking about, and got hold of a chemist's 
 assistant and of Jack, though Jack said nothing ; but 
 that only made matters worse. Then it occurred to 
 the meddhng fool to get an order to have the body 
 exhumed. He managed it somehow ; I heard it from 
 Jack. He had never spoken to me since the hour 
 we parted by her coffin. But he gave me the hint 
 and we fled. It was lucky we had arranged to go to 
 Italy that very day. No one suspected it was flight, 
 and we got a start." 
 
 " And if they find you ? " she whispered. 
 
 " If they take me, the rest will be easy — for them," 
 he said quietly.
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLA Y. 103 
 
 " Are you certain they can prove it ? " 
 
 He smiled grimly. 
 
 " I was a novice in the art, and merely put 
 the proof into a cupboard till it should occur to 
 someone to look for it. It has been looked for 
 and found ; it is virtually proved against me as 
 clearly as if I had given her the dose in public. 
 One would have thought the grave was a good 
 hiding-place, but it has been a bad one." She 
 hardly heard the last words. The crime and his 
 calm relation of it were so awful, and, besides 
 that, there was the dread of what might overtake 
 him. 
 
 " If they should find you ? " she gasped. 
 
 "If they took me there would be — the hang- 
 man's rope," he said quietly. She raised her 
 hand quickly to her lips to stop a cry that rose 
 to them. Even then he watched her cruelly. "It 
 would not hurt much, it would soon be over. There 
 may be something to come." He said the last 
 words as if he were doubtful, yet politely curious 
 concerning eternity. "I have drained life pretty 
 dry," he added. She remembered an account of an
 
 104 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLA V. 
 
 execution she had once read. Something had seemed 
 to force her to read it, but for days afterwards it had 
 haunted her. The prisoner was taken from his cell 
 — she dimly saw the ghastly procession that was 
 formed — the death-bell tolling, the parson in his 
 surplice reading the Burial Service over the living 
 man — into a stone yard it went, and the hangman 
 was there, he stood beside the man — O God, had 
 she been there ! She could see and hear it all. Was 
 it coming true — true of Harford ! 
 
 " Would there be no escape ? " she asked in an 
 agonized voice she could not raise above a whisper. 
 " Surely it would be better to die first — anything 
 rather than that." He was silent for a moment. 
 A gleam of triumph came into his eyes. He opened 
 the deep drawer behind the flap. 
 
 "Yes," he said, almost with a smile, and pointed 
 to the drawer. She turned slowly and looked in, 
 then raised her eyes enquiringly to his. In some 
 strange way he seemed to know how it would all 
 be. He took up one of the Derringers and put it 
 to his head, "it will be time enough when they 
 are three steps from the door," he said. A little
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE TLA V. 105 
 
 sense of relief went through her. He had, at any 
 rate, courage for that. She hfted his right hand, but 
 dropped it quickly with a shudder, and, taking up 
 the left one, kissed it — a hurried, frightened kiss. 
 For one short moment her eyes reflected the 
 triumph of his. 
 
 " One is enough to kill ? " she asked. 
 
 " One is enough," he answered. 
 
 "The other will do for me." 
 
 He looked at her silently ; he knew well enough 
 that she meant it. " For you ? " 
 
 " Yes, for me," she said, firmly. 
 
 " I don't think you would take life easily without 
 me," he said, slowly. 
 
 Her lips gave but one word — "No." 
 
 He considered for a moment. " I don't see why 
 we should not go on together if we are forced to 
 use them," and he touched the drawer. " I believe," 
 he added, and there was an odd sound in his 
 voice, " I believe every atom of me would know 
 it if your lips ever touched another man's, though 
 I were dust being swept before a March wind like 
 that that howled round us last night."
 
 lo6 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLA Y. 
 
 She did not answer, the words seemed so out 
 of place, so foreign to all things possible : they fell 
 almost unnoticed on the space about them. For a 
 few moments there was silence again. The cold 
 inside the room had become intense; its emptiness 
 exaggerated, as though something had previously 
 been in it; the strange atmosphere that had hung 
 over it, had somehow vanished, had gone seeking, 
 perhaps, the fate that was nearing the two who stood 
 together. Outside the sun was still shining, the 
 lake sparkling, the little villages across it standing 
 out distinctly in the clear afternoon light. He saw 
 them through the bars of the shutters, and she, fol- 
 lowing the direction of his eyes, understood his 
 thoughts. The room was like a prison, yet it felt 
 insecure, as though already it were known and 
 watched. Her teeth chattered with cold, her limbs 
 trembled, her icy hands went for a moment round 
 her throat seeking the little warmth gathered at the 
 back beneath the coil of hair resting low in the nape 
 of her neck. Suddenly she looked up at the man 
 beside her, at his tall figure, at his handsomeness, 
 at his strange, uncertain eyes. She had been very
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLA V. 107 
 
 happy with him, and proud of him. There had 
 been phases during their married hfe when he 
 had been cold and strange, but never a time, 
 never since she had first known him, when she had 
 not loved him, when he had not seemed like 
 no other man on earth. It was all over. For 
 ever and for ever finished. There was nothing in 
 the living world that could adjust things, no chances, 
 no possibihties that could set them right ; nothing 
 that could bring to life a dead woman — a woman 
 whose white face and closed eyes were always before 
 her as though in some dim shadow. They waited, 
 she did not dare to think for what? She stood 
 staring at the terrible realities, quaking miserably 
 alike at the past and at the future that was swiftly 
 coming; she could almost see it now before her. 
 He, watching her, understood something of what 
 was in her heart. A sense of shame stole 
 over him, and of utter helplessness. He felt 
 that she had been looking back into the memories 
 of years, that in a measure she had softened towards 
 him. He knew perfectly all that he had been to 
 her. He put out his hand to touch hers. She drew 
 back, but more gently than before.
 
 io8 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLA Y. 
 
 " Wont you kiss me," he said. " It will probably 
 be all over soon. Wont you kiss me, Charlotte? 
 My wife, wont you kiss me once more ? " 
 
 His words were almost passionate, but his voice 
 was still only curious, his eyes were shifting, he was 
 still in a measure experimenting upon her. He had 
 loved her in the past, and he remembered it; but 
 it was doubtful if he actually loved her much now.- 
 She had become so truly a part of his life that 
 he could not separate it from his own, nor endure the 
 thought of separation, and for that same reason he 
 was cruel and merciless to her as to~himself ; curious 
 for her fate as for his own, and, so long as it did not 
 sever itself from his, almost careless of what she 
 suffered. She heard his words, but did not move 
 till he repeated them. Then she dragged herself a 
 step towards him and with an effort put up her face. 
 The touch of his went through her. AVith a shudder 
 she put the knowledge of all things from her. Her 
 whole heart filled with tenderness — miserable aching 
 tenderness. Weary and desperate she felt as if for a 
 single moment she must feel herself clasped to him 
 once more, it might be for the last time on earth.
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE FLA Y. 109 
 
 He bent down to put his face against hers ; and so 
 there came to him a moment's rest and satisfaction — 
 the only living rest that was possible to him in all the 
 world. 
 
 " God help me, Charlotte," he said. " Let me be 
 what I may, I have loved you with all my heart." 
 The shifty look had gone from his eyes, his voice was 
 natural. It was as if his hfe, touching hers, was for a 
 moment purified in it ; as if the evil that had possessed 
 him stood a little way off, waiting till she had drawn 
 apart from him. " But you shudder when you come 
 near me now, you are afraid " 
 
 " No, no," she said, " not of you ; but it seems 
 sometimes as if a mocking fiend possessed you. It 
 is not you of whom I am afraid, but of that — and of 
 what you did." 
 
 " Have you any love for me still ? " he asked half 
 desperately, half curiously. She did not answer for 
 a moment. He looked down at her face and 
 mentally traced out the lines that misery had drawn 
 on it. " I can feel that it is all gone," he said 
 cynically, watching her closely, " you only loved the 
 good in me, and there was never much of that.
 
 no THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLAY. 
 
 You only loved me while it was easy and convenient. 
 Now you are only doing your duty, trying to bear with 
 me. Women are much alike." He seemed to be 
 comparing her to someone unseen. She looked at 
 him almost in wonder, she raised herself from his 
 arms and spoke in a low voice that seemed to come 
 from the depth of her soul. 
 
 " There has never been a time when I have not 
 loved you," she said, " not since the day we met first 
 when I was a little girl still, and we sat on the grass 
 and picked daisies while our fathers talked. It has 
 grown with me and strengthened with me ; it is my 
 life to love you, a thing I cannot shake off. Even 
 though it shrinks from you or makes no sign, it is 
 there — but this " she said clasping her hands " kills 
 me. It is worse than death. I know I shrink from 
 you and shudder, and dread your touch and shiver 
 at your voice, at your step, and yet I love you. O 
 God, if I could give my body and soul for ever and 
 ever to be burnt for you so that you might be pure 
 again, so that you might be without that crime upon 
 you, it would be sweeter than heaven, far." For a 
 moment she stopped. He did not speak. It was so
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLA Y. in 
 
 strange to him this intense love — a love of which he 
 himself had never been capable, though he had 
 loved the woman before him better than any 
 other. He looked on as a spectator at that which 
 was written in her eyes, almost afraid of it, though 
 fear of anything else in the world he had none. 
 It was a thing beyond his ken, beyond his grasp, a 
 strange odd thing of which he had been well enough 
 aware before, yet had never wholly realized. He 
 stood waiting for her to speak again, in doubt, almost 
 in awe, like one who has strayed into a church and 
 stands before the altar of a religion at which he has 
 sometimes scoffed but suddenly feels to be true. 
 " It is my life, my unutterable woe to love you," she 
 went on, " do not doubt me or think that I shall fail 
 you because I cannot kiss you or let your arms go 
 round me now. There is something stronger in me 
 than my shrinking self, something that clings to you, 
 though I stand here, and that cannot swerve from 
 you." 
 
 " Not though you know me now for a coward 
 and a murderer ? " he asked. 
 
 The bitter tears fell down her face, the cold
 
 112 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLAY. 
 
 unconscious tears of woe, too great to find other 
 expression. 
 
 " No," she said slowly, " not even though I know 
 
 you are a murd " but her lips refused to say the 
 
 word. " Oh that I could have been both for you," she 
 cried passionately, bowing her head, " could have 
 done the crime and borne the load, and you never 
 knowing." She put her face down in her hands and 
 rested them on the escritoire. But still he stood 
 silent, almost ashamed, seeing all things clearly as 
 though a door had opened, gazing in speechless 
 wonder at the woman who was his wife. 
 
 "I cannot tell," he said at last, "what put it 
 into your head to care for me. I have never 
 been fit for you for one single moment in my 
 whole life." 
 
 " Oh, yes, yes, you have been, but for this terrible 
 crime." 
 
 " No. I was never worth your loving," he said 
 in a low voice, "and yet though I have been not 
 only what you know now, but everything else on 
 earth that was bad, I have loved you." As if her 
 measure were not quite full, some fiend put a sudden
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLAY. 113 
 
 thought into her heart. She raised her head and 
 looked at him eagerly. 
 
 " Harford," she said, in a voice that had changed 
 altogether, " You have loved me — well and truly ? 
 Tell me that, let me know that, though I do know it, 
 but let me hear you say it." There was no doubt 
 of this in her heart, it was but to hear him say it, to 
 have his own testimony to his own truth of which she 
 was certain. But he turned his eyes from hers ; 
 he could not meet them, and was silent. A new 
 terror possessed her, a strange numbness stole over 
 her. " I do not mean that time before, but since 
 we were married, dear," she said entreatingly, and 
 a world of tenderness came into her voice. " Since 
 I have been your wife you have loved me truly and 
 been faithful ? " But still he did not move. There 
 was a long moment's silence before he spoke. 
 
 " There shall be no lie between us now, Charlotte," 
 he said, and turned to look at her, but he could not 
 meet her eyes. " I have not even been faithful to 
 you. Yet I have loved you, do not doubt that. You 
 have been the one woman in the world to me." 
 
 " And yet not faithful even to her ? " she said, look- 
 
 I
 
 114 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLAY. 
 
 ing up with eyes that wondered what demon it was 
 that had put her heart beneath his feet. She could 
 not say another word, her hfe seemed to wane, her 
 heart ahnost to lose its sense of suffering, her senses 
 to stupefy. The whole world had betrayed her, a 
 great avalanche had overwhelmed her. She looked 
 at the sofa, and with her eyes measured the distance 
 between it and the escritoire ; with uncertain steps she 
 reached it and hid her face on the hard square 
 pillow. There are limits even to human capacity to 
 feel pain. She sat still and almost senseless, the sight 
 of everything hidden from her, yet understanding 
 plainly all that had overtaken her ; as though unable 
 to bear the load longer, she had put it down before 
 her to contemplate. 
 
 The man looked at her wonderingly, doubtful what 
 to do, cursing the folly that had made him betray 
 himself. He had had other things to say when he 
 called her from the inner room. There was a matter 
 of life and death to arrange, and arrange quickly, and 
 as yet he had not even entered upon it. For a few 
 moments he stood considering, then, kneeling by the 
 sofa, he leant over her.
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLAY. 115 
 
 " Charlotte," he said tenderly, " look up. You 
 were always the bravest woman on earth. You are 
 not going to break down now ? " 
 
 " No," she said bitterly, "you need not fear that." 
 " You women cannot understand men, the power 
 that mere flesh and blood has over them, and yet 
 the little difference it makes to their best feelinsrs. 
 I have never swerved from you in my heart, even 
 when I have been falsest to you. I have loved no 
 other woman on earth, could have endured life with no 
 other, have trusted thoroughly no other human being. 
 Men and women are so different ; a man can separate 
 life, feeling one thing for one woman and one thing 
 for another, yet truly love just one. A woman 
 puts all she has on one man, and would think any- 
 thing short of that treason. I have been a base 
 wretch, a scoundrel, everything that is bad, but 
 you have been the one woman of my life ; any 
 good that was in me, any strength, has been 
 spent in loving you, only the badness and weak- 
 ness have gone elsewhere." She raised her head. 
 Her face was proud and white. She looked like a 
 statue come to life to know life's keenest misery. 
 
 I 2
 
 Ii6 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLAY. 
 
 " I only saw the good, I did not think the other 
 existed. It seems as if there had been two men, 
 one my husband, the other some fiend that 
 mocked and tempted him and used him as its 
 puppet." 
 
 " That is so, Charlotte," he answered simply. She 
 lifted her eyes to his face — the dear face she had 
 loved so well. Good or bad, he was everything 
 to her even now — ^just her own life, and she clung 
 to him as the shipwrecked soul clings with de- 
 spairing hands to the battered, broken thing that 
 was once a ship with a freight of happy life ; clings 
 desperately, knowing that when it is gone there will 
 be only the black water and the everlasting silence. 
 
 " If we could get away into some other world 
 together " she began with lips that quivered. 
 
 " We will, we must," he said bitterly. 
 
 "Leaving all things behind, all that has brought 
 us this woe and misery, and begin some new life 
 together — if we could die out of this one we have 
 known, and begin all things afresh," she went on 
 with a voice full of infinite longing after all that she 
 knew and felt was for ever at an end.
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLAY. 117 
 
 " My dear," he said gently, " we must. In one 
 form or other we must simply die, either by those," 
 and made a sign towards the drawer with the pistols, 
 " or living, we must vanish and leave no track 
 behind." 
 
 " Why ? " She put aside the pain that was 
 eating into her heart, to gather strength to face 
 what was coming. " Why," she repeated, for he half 
 hesitated, as if he were loth to break in upon her 
 momentary calmness, her ghost of a dream of a 
 future. 
 
 " I think we are getting towards the end," he said 
 slowly, " that this is somehow," and he looked round 
 the cold bare room, " the last scene of the play." 
 
 "What do you mean — tell me." She put her 
 hands on his shoulders and forgot everything but his 
 danger. 
 
 *' I called you just now to break it to you " 
 
 " Have they traced us 1 " 
 
 " Pretty nearly," he said, and the old calm manner 
 came back as he found himself on the ordinary lines 
 of practical life again. "This morning I bought a 
 paper at Vevey. They have traced us to Lausanne,
 
 Ii8 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLAY. 
 
 they will not be long doing the rest. I came back 
 by the upper paths again and looked round the fir- 
 wood above, there is no practicable escape in that 
 direction. But we must get ft-om here at once — as 
 soon as it is dark to-night." 
 
 " Why not now ? " 
 
 " We may be watched, we should certainly be seen. 
 I have planned it all. They may be a little time 
 getting the clue to us ; they may not know in the 
 village that the artist has gone and we are here, no 
 one saw us come or has seen us since. To night, when 
 the old w^oman is asleep, I will make a new start " 
 
 " You ? " He felt the tug had come. He knew 
 she would help him, but whether she would trust 
 him too he was curious to find out. For he did 
 not know himself what the result of his going would 
 be, even though he escaped safely. How much he 
 still cared for her and how necessary he would find 
 her he wanted to prove. He had not been able 
 to help wondering how it would feel to be cut adrift, 
 absolutely adrift, from all his present ties and 
 surroundings. The sensations of beginning life 
 again a free man, he felt, would be so exciting.
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLAY. 119 
 
 The thought of them made him eager. He was 
 always anxious to see the next moment, to know what 
 might be its secret. He had this feehng, and this 
 only, regarding even death. In death there would be 
 certain escape from the present, and possibly life — life 
 of a sort beyond human experience. He was in no 
 hurry, he was willing to go on here if it could be 
 managed. After all, this world might contain many 
 surprises yet ; but if it refused him liberty, or 
 threatened still worse, there was the Derringer. In 
 a moment he could give life the slip, and perhaps 
 from across the strange boundary look back, unseen 
 and triumphant, at the things that had perplexed 
 him, the things that in the end he had baffled. 
 Meanwhile he looked curiously at the woman before 
 him, weighing the probabilities that suggested them- 
 selves. 
 
 *' You ? " she repeated. She seemed to know what 
 he was going to propose, to divine what was in his 
 thoughts. 
 
 *' I think it would be better for me to go alone, if 
 you have nerve to stay ; I have thought it all out. I 
 can disguise myself a little and get over the hills
 
 120 THE LAST SCENE OF THE FLA Y. 
 
 behind to the Rhone valley. Perhaps I could cross 
 the lake unnoticed by one of the morning steamers, 
 from a station further on towards Chillon ; this end 
 may be watched. So I may get over to Savoy, and 
 there trust to chance, or I may push along the valley 
 and over some lonely pass into Italy." 
 
 "And I?" 
 
 " And you must stay and pretend that I am ill to 
 the woman below. She need not enter the bed-room, 
 and will think I am there. I must devise some 
 means of letting you know where I am. I will think 
 it over before I start. There will be money at Vevey. 
 You must manage to get it and, when it is safe, to 
 come to me. I cannot live long without you, but they 
 know we are together and are less likely to trace us if 
 I start alone. Besides you could not walk and bear 
 the fatigue that I can. You see I have thought it 
 out. Can you do it } " 
 
 " Yes, I can do it,"' she answered gently. " You 
 know that. You had better go as soon as it is dark. 
 You will get farther on by the morning, and may even 
 get an early train unsuspected." She had seen it all 
 in her mind. " It must be getting late, the sun has
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLA Y. 121 
 
 been behind the house this long time. You must 
 have food. At seven the woman will bring our supper ; 
 
 she had better see you ." She stopped, he was 
 
 not attending to her words but to something farther 
 off, to something outside. 
 
 "I thought I heard a footstep go round the 
 house," he said. They stood up and listened, for a 
 moment she felt paralysed. He opened the door, and 
 looked down the stairs, all was dusky and silent. 
 The woman beneath was still sleeping beside the 
 empty stove. He went along the landing to the 
 window at the back of the house and peered out. 
 He came back quickly, his face pale and determined. 
 He hurried towards the closed shutters and looked 
 through the bars. Then he turned quietly round. 
 
 " It is too late," he said, " we are surrounded back 
 and front. They are at the door." For a moment 
 she stood helplessly looking at him, then the dazed 
 feeling seemed to pass from her. 
 
 " What must we do ? " she asked, in the voice of a 
 woman awaking. 
 
 "There is only one thing; there is no other 
 chance left." His anxiety to see how she would act
 
 122 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLAY. 
 
 now that the crisis that would test her had come 
 seemed to be his strongest feehng. 
 
 "Is there no escape?" she gasped. 
 
 " None, We will be absolutely certain first ; but 
 half-a-dozen men can hardly be round the house for 
 any other purpose." They stood by the open door of 
 the salon, he with his arm just touching her waist, 
 yet drawing back a little, she leaning forward, her 
 face ashy white, her eyes flashing with a strange fire. 
 
 There was a loud knock at the barred front door ; 
 with a wild throb her heart echoed it. They could 
 almost hear the old woman start from her sleep. 
 She pushed back the stool on which her legs had 
 rested; it made a loud grating noise on the stone 
 floor. The knocking was repeated. The two listen- 
 ing above drew closer together. The man cast a 
 hurried glance at the escritoire behind, calculating in 
 his mind the number of seconds it would take to 
 reach it. They heard the old woman go slowly 
 towards the door. The man looked at his wife. The 
 moment had come. He made a step towards the 
 escritoire. With a cry she threw her arms round 
 him, kissing his eyes, and mouth, and neck as if
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLAY. 123 
 
 with those last kisses she would draw her whole 
 soul into her heart. 
 
 " I will not live one hour without you, my love, 
 my life. Oh, if I could but give you my life, my 
 soul, and take yours into mine ! " 
 
 " You forgive me ? " he said grimly, smoothing 
 back her hair, and looking at her face as he held it 
 between his two hands. The strange light was in his 
 eyes; even in that last moment he could not give him- 
 self up wholly to a passionate farewell. He was alive 
 to the finger-tips with the whole situation, curiously 
 waiting to see what the next thing would be in this 
 world or the other. Her agony was odd to him 
 even then, but a great tenderness came into his heart, 
 a great gratitude to this pure woman who had loved 
 him. He could see their two lives before him, their 
 two souls, hers in its whiteness and agony clinging to 
 him hopelessly. For the first time he shuddered, 
 though only for a moment, at his own past. He 
 kissed her, and in that last kiss there came the strange 
 feeling that it was sacrilege in him to touch her. 
 There seemed to sweep over him the sudden 
 knowledge that here they parted. Here life ended,
 
 124 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLA Y. 
 
 and, in any life to come, together they would be no 
 more. Already space seemed to be wrenching them 
 apart. Clearly before his eyes he saw the loneliness 
 of eternity, an eternity in which never more would 
 they be together. His heart grew cold, and 
 it seemed as if he saw and understood all things 
 in the hour that was for ever too late. But he made 
 no sign. " You forgive, my darling, I know 
 that," he said with a long sigh, and then his 
 composure and coolness came back to serve him 
 to the end. 
 
 " Forgive you ? " she cried, with a long, yearning 
 look up into his face. " Don't ask me that. You 
 know. You are my life, my heaven, my eternity — 
 there is none other for me, and I will have none 
 other. Do life and heaven ask forgiveness ? " The 
 door had been opened below, as in a dream they had 
 heard their own names uttered. There were voices 
 and steps coming along the passage, already at the 
 foot of the stairs. There was not a moment left; 
 he looked at her. She understood. Her head had 
 been on his breast — she lifted it ; her tender hands 
 let go — and they had parted. He took the pistols
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLAY. 125 
 
 from the drawer ; he hid one under the hard cushion 
 of the sofa, looking at her meaningly with the gleam 
 of triumph in his eyes. The footsteps came round 
 the bend in the creaking stairs. She nodded to him, 
 with a scared look on her face, but he was satisfied. 
 He knew she would not fail. The men coming up 
 were in sight of the doorway. In a second she was 
 outside it, holding the door-handle behind in her 
 hands. Tall and erect she stood, without a sign of 
 fear, and faced them. 
 
 " What do you want ? " she asked. For a moment 
 they hesitated, as if uncertain what to do. Her 
 hands trembled, otherwise she did not stir, but 
 like a flash it went through her that she was holding 
 the door to while her husband died. 
 
 *' Mrs. Harford Wilson ? " one of the strange men 
 said in English. 
 
 " Yes, Mrs. Harford Wilson," she answered 
 defiantly. Her heart throbbed. What did it mean, 
 the strange silence behind. Had he faltered ? Was 
 he to be taken after all — taken and hanged as a felon. 
 She could see the executioner beside him. Could he 
 have found some strange means of escape ? She
 
 126 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLAY. 
 
 had left him with the pistol in his hand. She 
 remembered the second one ready beneath the sofa- 
 cushion. 
 
 " Madame," said an old man with a silver-headed 
 stick (he was the representative of the police from the 
 village), " you must stand aside, we have to arrest 
 your husband." They advanced a step. They were 
 four stairs from the top, within two yards of her. She 
 grasped the handle more tightly, almost supporting 
 herself by it, but her calmness staggered the men 
 before her. She looked scornfully at the old man 
 who had spoken. 
 
 " We have a warrant for his apprehension on the 
 charge of murder," the Englishman said in the 
 business voice of an officer of the law. " You must 
 stand aside," and he advanced, " or we shall be 
 
 obliged to use force and " there was a sharp 
 
 report, the sound of a heavy fall. The men started 
 back for a second in dismay. The woman's hands 
 fell from the door-handle and with a click the door 
 opened for an inch or two. A shock seemed to go 
 through her, yet for a second there was a smile of 
 triumph on^her lips, the gleam that had been in the
 
 THE LAST SCENE OF THE PLA V. 
 
 127 
 
 man's eyes seemed to pass through hers, then a cry 
 burst from her. 
 
 " You can enter, there is only a dead man there," 
 she said, and fell senseless across the doorway.
 
 TO THE MAMMOTH-TORTOISE 
 
 OF THE MASCARENE ISLANDS. 
 
 BY AUSTIN DOBSON. 
 
 Tuque, Testudo, resonare septem 
 
 Callida nervis. Hon iii. ii. 
 
 Monster Chelonian, you suggest 
 To some, no doubt, the calm, — 
 
 The torpid ease of islets drest 
 In fan-like fern and palm ; 
 
 To some your cumbrous ways, perchance, 
 
 Darwinian dreams recall ; 
 And some your Rip-van-Winkle glance, 
 
 And ancient youth appal ; 
 
 So widely varied views dispose : 
 
 But not so mine, — for me, 
 Your vasty vault but simply shows 
 
 A Lyre immense, — J>er se,
 
 TO THE MAMaMOTH-TORTOISE. 129 
 
 A Lyre to which the Muse might chant 
 
 A truly " Orphic tale," 
 Could she but find that public want 
 
 A Bard — of equal scale ! 
 
 Oh, for a Bard of awful words, 
 
 And lungs serenely strong. 
 To sweep from your sonorous chords 
 
 Niagaras of song, 
 
 Till, dinned by that tremendous strain. 
 
 The grovelling world aghast. 
 Should leave its paltry greed of gain 
 
 And mend its ways. . . at last'! 
 
 K
 
 HOSPITAL SKETCHES. 
 
 On ne saurait dire k quel point un homme, seul dans son lit et 
 malade, devient personnel. — Balzac. 
 
 I. 
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS. 
 
 The gaunt brown walls 
 Look infinite in their decent meanness. 
 There is nothing of home in the noisy kettle, 
 The fulsome fire. 
 
 The atmosphere 
 Is heavy and rank and unfamiliar. 
 Dressings and lint on the long, lean table — 
 
 Whom are they for ? 
 
 The patients yawn, 
 Or lie as in training for shroud and coffin. 
 A nurse, in the corridor, scolds and wrangles. 
 
 It is grim and strange.
 
 HOSPITAL SKETCHES. 131 
 
 Far footfalls clank. 
 An old man waits with his leg unbandaged. 
 My neighbour chokes in the clutch of chloral . . . 
 
 What a curious world ! 
 
 • II. 
 
 OPERATION. 
 
 You are carried in a basket, 
 
 [Like a carcase from the shambles] 
 
 To the theatre, a cockpit. 
 
 Where they stretch you on a table. 
 
 Then they bid you close your eyelids, 
 And they mask you with a napkin. 
 And the angesthetic reaches 
 Thro' your senses, hot and subtle. 
 
 And you gasp, and reel, and shudder 
 With a rushing, swaying rapture, 
 While the voices at your elbow 
 Thin, receding — fainter — farther. 
 
 K 2
 
 132 HOSPITAL SKETCHES. 
 
 Lights about you shower and tumble, 
 And your blood seems crystallising, 
 Edged and vibrant, yet within you 
 Racked and hurried back and forward. 
 
 Then the lights grow fast and furious, 
 And you hear a noise of waters. 
 And you wrestle, blind and dizzy, 
 In an agony of effort. 
 
 But a sudden lull accepts you, 
 
 And you sound an utter darkness. . . 
 And awaken — with a struggle — 
 On a hushed and curious audience. 
 
 III. 
 VIGIL 
 
 Lived on one's back 
 
 In the long hours of repose. 
 
 Life is a nightmare, 
 
 A grimy, a horrible nightmare.
 
 VIGIL. 133 
 
 Shoulders and loins 
 
 Ache, and the mattresses, 
 
 Horrid with boulders and hummocks, 
 
 Burn, and the gas. 
 
 An inevitable atom of light, 
 
 Haunts me, and stertorous sleepers 
 
 Snore me to madness. 
 
 All the old time 
 
 Surges before me malignant. 
 
 Old faces, old kisses, old songs. 
 
 Blossom derisive about me. 
 
 While the new days 
 
 Pass me in endless procession : 
 
 A pageant of shadows 
 
 Silently, staringly wending 
 
 On to the future. 
 
 Sleep comes at last — 
 
 Sleep, full of dreams and misgivings. 
 
 Broken with brutal and sordid 
 
 Voices and sounds that impose on me, 
 
 Ere I can wake to it. 
 
 The unnatural, intolerable day.
 
 134 HOSPITAL SKETCHES. 
 
 IV. 
 CLINICAL. 
 
 Hist? .... 
 
 On through the corridor's echoes 
 
 Louder and nearer 
 
 Comes a great shuffle of feet. 
 
 Quick, every one of you, 
 
 Straighten your quilts, and be decent ! 
 
 Here's the Professor. 
 
 In he comes first, 
 
 With the bright look we know 
 
 Under the broad, white brows, from the kind eyes 
 
 Soothing yet nerving you ! Here, at his elbow, 
 
 White-capped, white-aproned, the Nurse 
 
 Towel on arm, and her inkstand 
 
 Fretful with quills ! \ 
 
 Here, in the ruck, anyhow. 
 
 Surging along. 
 
 Louts, duffers, exquisites, students, and prigs — 
 
 Whiskers and foreheads, scarf-pins and spectacles!— 
 
 Hustle the Class ! And they ring themselves
 
 CLINICAL. 135 
 
 Round the first bed, where the Chief 
 (His dressers and clerks at attention !) 
 Bends in inspection already. 
 
 So shows the ring 
 
 Seen, from behind, round a conjuror 
 
 Doing his pitch in the street ! 
 
 High shoulders, low shoulders, broad ones and 
 
 narrow ones, 
 Round, square, and angular, serry and shove ; 
 While from within a voice, 
 Gravely and weightily fluent, 
 Sounds ; and then ceases ; and suddenly 
 (Look at the stress of the shoulders !) 
 Out of a quiver of silence. 
 Over the hiss of the spray, 
 Comes a low cry, and the noise 
 Of breath quick intaken through teeth 
 Clenched in resolve. And the Master 
 Breaks from the crowd, and goes. 
 Wiping his hands, 
 To the next bed, with his pupils 
 Flocking and whispering behind him.
 
 136 HOSPITAL SKETCHES. 
 
 Now one can see. 
 
 Case Number One 
 
 Sits rather pale, with his bedclothes 
 
 Stripped up, and showing his foot 
 
 (Alas for God's image !) 
 
 Swaddled in wet, white lint 
 
 Brilliantly hideous with red. 
 
 V. 
 
 ETCHING. 
 
 Two and thirty is the ploughman. 
 He's a man of gallant inches, 
 And his hair is close and curly, 
 
 And his beard ; 
 But his face is wan and sunken, 
 And his eyes are large and brilliant. 
 And his shoulder-blades are sharp, 
 
 And his knees. 
 
 He is weak of wit, religious, 
 Full of sentiment and yearning, 
 Gentle, faded — with a cough 
 And a snore.
 
 CASUALTY. 137 
 
 When his wife (who was a widow, 
 And is many years his elder) 
 Doesn't write, and that is always, 
 He desponds. 
 
 If his melancholy leave him, 
 
 He will tell you pretty stories 
 
 Of the women that have wooed him 
 
 Long ago ; 
 Or he'll sing of bonnie lasses 
 Keeping sheep among the heather, 
 With a crackling, hackling click 
 
 In his voice. 
 
 VI. 
 
 CASUALTY. 
 
 As with varnish red and glistening 
 Dripped the hair ; the foot was rigid ; 
 Raised, he settled stiffly sideways : 
 You couid see the hurts were spinal. 
 
 He had fallen from an engine. 
 
 And been dragged along the metals.
 
 138 HOSPITAL SKETCHES. 
 
 It was hopeless, and they knew it : 
 So they covered him and left him. 
 
 As he lay, at fits half sentient. 
 Inarticulately moaning, 
 With his stockinged feet protruded 
 Sharp and awkward from the blankets, 
 
 To his bed there came a woman, 
 
 Stood and looked, and sighed a little. 
 And departed without speaking, 
 As himself a few hours after. 
 
 I was told it was his sweetheart. 
 They were on the eve of marriage. 
 She was quiet as a statue. 
 But her lip was gray and writhen. 
 
 VII. 
 
 LYRIC. 
 
 Bleak's the night, and black and blustrous. 
 But for sanitary reasons 
 Someone dashes down the window. 
 And the north wind enters blatant.
 
 LYRIC. 139 
 
 How the gaslight flares and flutters ! 
 Cards and tickets flicker madly, 
 And the red quilts wave like banners ; 
 And my fancies with the weather 
 
 Mingle swiftly — I am fronting, 
 Glad and breathless and defiant. 
 The immeasurable clamour 
 Of the sea among the darkness. 
 
 Oh, the war of winds and waters ! 
 Low in heaven, afear'd and hurried, 
 As the scudding wrack is rifted. 
 Flits in fear a runaway moonlet. 
 
 Oh, the storm's exhilaration ! . . . 
 I am back upon my pallet, 
 And the tickets shake and flicker, 
 And the quilts are blown like banners.
 
 140 HOSPITAL SKETCHES. 
 
 VIIL 
 
 INTERLUDE 
 
 Oh, the fun, the fun and froUc 
 
 That the Wind that Shakes the Barley 
 Scatters through a penny whistle 
 Tickled with artistic fingers ! 
 
 Kate, the scrubber (eight and thirty, 
 Stout but sportive) foots it lightly. 
 Grinning like a ballet dancer, 
 Fixed as fate, upon her audience. 
 
 Stumps are shaking, crutch supported ; 
 Splinted fingers tap the rhythm ; 
 And a head all helmed with plasters 
 Wags a measured approbation. 
 
 Of their mattress-life oblivious, 
 All my mates, alert and cheerful. 
 Are encouraging the dancer, 
 And applauding the musician.
 
 ROMANCE. 141 
 
 Dim the gas in the expression 
 Of so many ardent smokers, 
 Full of shadow lurch the corners, 
 And the doctor peeps and passes. 
 
 There are, maybe, some suspicions 
 Of an alcoholic presence . . . 
 Now and then the dragon dozes. 
 New Year comes but once a twelvemonth. 
 
 IX. 
 
 ROMANCE. 
 
 " Talk of pluck ! " pursued the sailor, ^ 
 Set at euchre on his elbow, 
 " I was on the wharf at Charleston, 
 Just ashore from off the runner. 
 
 " It was gray and dirty weather, 
 And I heard a drum go rolling, 
 Rub-a-dubbing in the distance, 
 Awful dour-like and defiant.
 
 142 HOSPITAL SKETCHES. 
 
 " And between the bales of cotton, 
 
 Mud, and chains, and stores, and anchors, 
 Tramped a squad of battered scarecrows — 
 Poor old Dixie's bottom dollar ! 
 
 " Some had shoes, but all had rifles, 
 ^'^ Them that wasn't bald, was beardless. 
 
 But the drum was rolling ' Dixie,' 
 And they stepped to it like men, sir ! 
 
 " Rags and tatters, belts and bayonets. 
 On they tramped, the drum a-roUing, 
 Mum and sour ! — It looked like fighting, 
 And they meant it too, by thunder ! " 
 
 X. 
 
 MUSIC. 
 
 Down the quiet eve, 
 Thro' my^ window, with the sunset, 
 Pipes to me a distant organ 
 Foolish ditties. , . .
 
 MUSIC. 143 
 
 I am well and young ; 
 Summer glares from road and footway, 
 And my heart is full of summer 
 Sap and sweetness. 
 
 In the quiet eve 
 
 I am waiting, I am dreaming . . . 
 Dreaming, and a distant organ 
 Pipes me ditties. 
 
 I can see the shop, 
 
 Cool with sprinkled blind and pavement, 
 Where she serves — her chestnut chignon 
 Fills my senses. 
 
 Oh, the sight and smell, 
 Quiet eve and sprinkled pavement ! 
 In the distance pipes an organ .... 
 The sensation 
 
 Comes to me anew, 
 
 And my spirit for a moment. 
 
 Thro' the music, breathes the blessed 
 
 Air of London.
 
 144 HOSPITAL SKETCHES. 
 
 XL 
 
 NOCTURN. 
 
 In the weary waste of midnight, 
 When the shadow shuts and opens 
 As the loud flames pulse and flutter, 
 I can hear the cistern leaking. 
 
 Dripping, dropping, in a rhythm, 
 Rough, unequal, half melodious. 
 Like the measures aped from nature 
 In the infancy of music j 
 
 Tone and semitone emerging 
 With significant inflections, 
 Thro' surprising modulations. 
 In barbaric turn and cadence ; 
 
 Still, irrational, persistent, 
 
 Like the buzzing of an insect . . . 
 I must listen, listen, listen, 
 In a passion of attention,
 
 PASTORAL. 145 
 
 Till it taps upon my heartstrings, 
 And my very life goes dripping, 
 Dropping, dripping, drip-drip-dropping, 
 In the drip-drop of the cistern. 
 
 XII. . 
 
 PASTORAL. 
 
 This is the spring. 
 
 Earth has conceived, and her bosom. 
 
 Quick with the summer, is glad. 
 
 Through the green land 
 
 Wind the gray roads, full of promise. 
 
 Peopled with wains, and melodious 
 
 With harness bells jangling, 
 
 Jangling and twangling rough rhythms, 
 
 To the slow march of the stately great horses 
 
 Whistled and shouted along; ! 
 
 *o 
 
 White fleets of cloud. 
 
 Argosies heavy with fruitfulness,
 
 146 HOSPITAL SKETCHES. 
 
 Sail the blue peacefully. Green flame the hedge- 
 rows. 
 Blackbirds are bugling, and white in wet winds 
 Sway the slim poplars. 
 Placid in dreamy beatitude 
 Spread the sweet meadows, and viewless 
 Walks the mild spirit of May, 
 Visibly blessing the world. 
 
 Oh, the delight of the copses, 
 
 The unspeakable charm of the fields ! 
 
 Loud lows the steer ; in the fallows 
 
 Rooks are alert ; and the brooks 
 
 Gurgle and tinkle and trill. Thro' the gloamings. 
 
 Under the rare, shy stars. 
 
 Boy and girl wander 
 
 Dreaming in darkness and dew. 
 
 This is the spring. 
 A sprightliness feeble and squalid 
 Wakes in the ward, and I sicken. 
 Impotent, winter at heart.
 
 DISCHARGED. 147 
 
 XIII. 
 
 DISCHARGED. 
 
 Carry me out 
 
 Into the wind and the sunshine, 
 
 Into the beautiful world. 
 
 Oh, the wonder, the spell of the streets ! 
 The stature and strength of the horses, 
 The echoing rustle of footfalls, 
 The flat roar and rattle of wheels ! 
 A swift tram floats hugely upon us — 
 Is it a dream ? 
 
 The smell of the mud in my nostrils 
 Is brave — like a breath of the sea. 
 
 Just as of old, 
 
 Vaguely and strangely provocative. 
 
 Ambulant, undulant drapery 
 
 Flutters and beckons. And yonder. 
 
 See, the white glint of a stocking I 
 
 Sudden, a spire. 
 
 Wedged in the mist ! Oh, the houses, 
 
 L 2
 
 148 HOSPITAL SKETCHES. 
 
 The long lines of lofty, gray houses, 
 Cross-hatched with shadow and light ! 
 These are the streets. 
 Each is an avenue leading 
 Whither I will ! 
 
 Free — ! 
 
 Dizzy, hysterical, faint, 
 
 I sit, and the carriage rolls on with me 
 
 Into the wonderful world. 
 
 W. E. Henley, 
 
 The Old Infirmary, Edinburgh, 
 August, 1873— April, 1875.
 
 A LADY LAND LEAGUER. 
 
 BY F. MABEL ROBINSON. 
 
 Despite the wind and rain she had trudged over 
 many miles of bog and hill, alone, and after nightfall ; 
 and though she had started with a heavy money bag 
 she, at the time, had felt no fear ; but now that her 
 tramp was done and she was home again, a retro- 
 spective terror came over her and she burst into 
 tears. 
 
 She was a single woman — a young lady she would 
 have called herself — of thirty-five, and she lived quite 
 alone on her own means. The means were 
 small, but they sufficed her, for she had few and 
 simple wants. For the two past years she had lived 
 rent free in a tin house, provided by the Land 
 League, and which stood solitary on a bleak Donegal 
 hill side. 
 
 On the first of each month Miss Mulligan received 
 a cheque for a hundred pounds, and then she set off 
 on a car — she, herself, called it a " kyar " — and drove
 
 ISO A LADY LAND LEAGUER. 
 
 into town, cashed her cheque, and drove out again 
 till the road became too rough for wheels ; then she 
 alighted, and money bag in hand she scrambled over 
 the rough hillside in sun, or rain, or wind. 
 
 Every month she went the same round, over the 
 mountain, over the cliff, down that deep dell, up the 
 steep height of the opposite hill, stopping from time 
 to time at a shelter of tin or wood or a hut of rough 
 stones, and after each stoppage her bag was lighter by 
 a fixed sum, duly acknowledged in her register. 
 These money grants were always less than the 
 recipients hoped to receive, and in return. Miss 
 Mulligan got more complaints than thanks, coupled 
 sometimes with a threat of " going in again." This 
 menace she bore with equanimity, firstly, because 
 since the evicted tenants had not the wherewithal to 
 pay the arrears of rent due, they were mere empty 
 words, and secondly, because the sole result to 
 herself of their fulfilment would have been the saving 
 of some fatigue and trouble. Indeed, sometimes her 
 weariness so far surpassed her patriotic ardour, that 
 she did wish the more isolated farmers could and 
 would find some means of " going in."
 
 A LADY LAND LEAGUER. 151 
 
 Her round was a long one, and occupied two 
 days, and on the second night her nerves always gave 
 way, and she indulged herself in the luxury of a " rale 
 good cry." The luxury was one she enjoyed keenly, 
 and it was well within her means ; it cost her nothing, 
 it injured no one, and as she had few diversions, she 
 availed herself of it in unstinted measure, and fre- 
 quently. 
 
 Without any well defined grievance, she suffered 
 much from a sense of being hardly used. She was, in 
 fact, unfitted by nature for her lonely life, and these 
 desolate home-comings to the chill shelter, tireless and 
 cold, overwhelmed her with a sense of misery. True 
 she had dry clothing in her bedroom, abundance of 
 wood and peat in her kitchen, and plenty of the raw 
 materials for supper, but she was spent and weary, and 
 the effort necessary to create her own comfort was too 
 great for her : self-pity and tears were the most handy 
 consolations, so she took them; but the beneficial 
 effect suggested by the adjective "good " were never 
 among the outwardly discernible results of her weep- 
 ing, she merely sobbed herself hysterical, went to bed 
 cold and hungry, and passed a night of bodily
 
 152 A LADY LAND LEAGUER. 
 
 discomfort and .often of mental terror. Neuralgia 
 and cold in the head generally made the following 
 days of the month unendurable, and one or two of 
 them were commonly spent in bed. 
 
 The distribution of funds was however not the 
 sole nor the chief of Miss Mulligan's self-imposed 
 duties ; true it was essential that this ofifice should be 
 performed by a person of unquestioned honesty, for 
 by giving one sum and writing a receipt for a larger it 
 would have been easy to appropriate a considerable 
 portion of the fund, but honourable women are 
 as plenteous as blackberries in September, and it 
 was on her skill as a sewing teacher that Miss 
 Mulligan valued herself — a perfect mastery of every 
 variety of fine needlework was her one accomplish- 
 ment. 
 
 Her father had been a grocer in a good way of 
 business, and she had been educated in a convent, 
 regardless of expense ; but whether the curriculum 
 of that establishment was unscientific, or whether a 
 certain haziness of brain unfitted her to grapple 
 successfully with the deeper mysteries of the three R's, 
 it is a fact that Miss Mulligan, though an intelligent
 
 A LADY LAND LEAGUER. 153 
 
 woman, was unable to distinguish between debit and 
 credit, or to make out her accounts in a manner that 
 conveyed any distinction between the items of receipt 
 and of expenditure to minds less subtle than her own. 
 Her conversation was no less involved than her book- 
 keeping ; her brain was active, and she had so many 
 ideas that, long ere she had traced one to its con- 
 clusion, something more brilliant or more opportune 
 diverted her, and this, in its turn, led to a fresh train 
 of thought, so that a chat with Miss Mulligan was a 
 fine intellectual exercise for those whose minds move 
 slowly and in familiar currents. She never wrote a 
 letter less than twelve pages long, and as she enter- 
 tained a profound indifference for spelling and 
 punctuation, and a marked predilection for paren- 
 theses, her letters were not such that he who runs 
 may read. They were, however, worth the trouble of 
 deciphering for her own sake, and often for the 
 subject matter. 
 
 Even in her wet clothing, muddy boots, and gene- 
 rally draggled and bespattered condition, Miss Mulli- 
 gan was nice looking, and it was evident that she had 
 been extremely pretty in her day ; she had good
 
 154 A LADY LAND LEAGUER. 
 
 features, sweet, honest eyes, dark, abundant hair, and 
 a certain dignity of look and bearing — the hall mark 
 of single-mindedness and purity of purpose. No one 
 in the world could have thought ill of Miss Mulligan. 
 She, on the other hand, was prone to make harsh 
 judgments; like most hysterical persons she was 
 suspicious, seeing an enemy in everyone who was not 
 pronouncedly a friend ; she was resentful too, dearly 
 loving a grievance, and she had found one in the 
 supposition that her services were undervalued by her 
 male coadjutors. In this she was right, for perhaps 
 no human being estimates at its full value the 
 devotion of another's life, and the world is so used 
 to the self-abnegation of elderly young ladies that it 
 has come to believe that hardships and solitude are 
 sweet to spinsters over thirty, and that love of com- 
 fort and the force of habit are but slight bonds to a 
 woman when once the bloom and vigour of her youth 
 are past. Therefore, Miss Mulligan was justified 
 in thinking that the men undervalued her. They 
 did not realize that, after all, though she was five 
 and thirty, Miss Mulligan was still the centre of 
 creation to Miss Mulligan, nor did they comprehend
 
 A LADY LAND LEAGUER. 155 
 
 the extent of her self-abnegation in resigning the 
 tempered joys of independent spinsterhood in Derry. 
 Forgetting the monotony and isolation of the life she 
 had taken up, they thought this industry a pleasant 
 outlet for her pent up energies. They knew she was 
 a good woman, but they found her hysterics trying, 
 and her book-keeping intolerable, and though they 
 were as convinced that the money was rightly spent 
 as though this had been logically demonstrated, their 
 faith was in no way proved by the elaborate sheets of 
 figures she sent up in support of her statements. 
 Faith did not satisfy Miss Mulligan, she demanded an 
 act of understanding, and she alternated, according to 
 her mood, in thinking the " men " extremely stupid, 
 and trying to persuade herself that they wished to 
 asperse her character. 
 
 On this wild night she had returned unusually cold 
 and weary and depressed; she was worn out ^\ith 
 battling against wind and gusty rain, and the many 
 voices of the storm deprived her home of all peace 
 and rest. Below in the valley the wind swept along 
 with a rushing whirl, and ahead on the coast the 
 waves beat and broke on the rocks with a deafening
 
 IS6 A LADY LAND LEAGUER. 
 
 roar ; then a crash — then a sound hke a sigh, or, as 
 Miss MulHgan thought, a curse of impotent rage. 
 Her shelter was quite a high-class affair ; it had a door 
 with a knocker, a central passage ornamented with 
 framed photographs of the Leaders, and terminating 
 in a window of green glass and with two rooms on 
 either side; those to the right were devoted to her 
 sewing school, and on the left were her bedroom and 
 kitchen. The shelter had, in fact, been shown at an 
 exhibition as the ideal Land League hut, and embellished 
 by new paint and green ribbons had appeared quite a 
 desirable residence. But the paint was now worn, 
 ribbons no longer adorned the knocker, and the 
 shelter, as is the nature of galvanized iron houses, was 
 cold as a barn in winter, and a very oven in summer ; 
 the stove was addicted to smoking, and the doors had 
 "settled," so that two of them would not stay shut, 
 while no effort of Miss Mulligan's sufficed to close 
 the others, which were fixed immovably open. On 
 such a night as this, the house too conveyed an un- 
 pleasant impression of fragility, and at every gust Miss 
 Mulligan expected, or thought she expected, to be 
 blown, house and all, into the valley. The windows
 
 A LADY LAND LEAGUER. 157 
 
 Strained and groaned beneath the assaults of the gale, 
 and though Miss Mulligan had stopped the banging of 
 the loose doors by propping them with chairs, they 
 shook incessantly ; the portraits of the Land Leaguers 
 rattled briskly in their frames, and the knocker flapped 
 solemnly at longer intervals. 
 
 Every inch of the house creaked and swayed, and 
 over it all the rain clattered, noisy as pebbles on the 
 iron roof, with a gusty rattle-splash-swish. At such 
 seasons emotional persons, even in the happiest sur- 
 roundings, feel the sob rise in their throats, and Miss 
 Mulligan would have shed tears on such a night under 
 any circumstances. Hungry, cold, weary, and forlorn, 
 she wept from sheer misery and desolation, hugging 
 the slur on her character theory till she really came 
 to believe it. She had a vague feeling that all her 
 discomfort, including the noisy and terrifying storm, 
 was due to the " men," for it was under this abstract 
 noun of multitude that she made mental reference to 
 Callaghan. She held Callaghan especially responsible 
 for her woes ; firstly, because he was an old friend and 
 ought to have known better — an unspecified charge 
 which left Callaghan powerless to defend himself —
 
 158 A LADY LAND LEAGUER. 
 
 and, secondly, because he was that official of her 
 branch of the League with whom Miss Mulligan was 
 personally concerned. It was Callaghan who wrote 
 the cheques and did up the accounts, and who pro- 
 fessed himself unable to master her system of double 
 entry. In her present humour it did not take Miss 
 Mulligan long to fan up a bright flame of resentment 
 against Callaghan. She felt an imperative need of 
 quarrelling with some one, so she sat down at her 
 table and, sobbing the while, wrote a long letter to 
 Callaghan, charging him with accusing her of falsify- 
 ing the accounts. " When you know every penny has 
 been accounted for while as for myself I might 
 have had and did have a good home but for you not 
 that I regret what I have done for our poor people 
 but I am sorry that it has caused me to be accused 
 by them that can have no nobility in theirselves, 
 as they do not believe it in others but are 
 always willing to think the worst of others and 
 judge others by theirselves who would not for 
 the whole world take a penny of the poor 
 people that God knows ! has a hard enough task 
 to support theirselves and could not do that if it was
 
 A LADY LAND LEAGUER. 159 
 
 not that I have taught the women to sew and knit 
 and have given up every moment of my time to this for 
 two years. Not that I wish to boast of this for I feels 
 it to be no more than everyone should do but those 
 that tries to do their Duty and looks for no Reward in 
 this world should not be accused of doing things which 
 the meanest robber would scorn to do his heart would 
 blead to see the places that these poor people has gone 
 into, and he would feel that a League should feel very 
 sure of what the end of it will be before they ask poor 
 people to give up the bad thing that they has and take 
 the worse, but it is no use to write to one that living at 
 his ease in town knows nothing of the dayly trowbles 
 of the poor, that would bring tears to the eyes of a 
 stone." 
 
 Having thus relieved her mind. Miss Mulligan 
 wiped her eyes and went to bed ; and, supported by an 
 exultant conviction that she had vanquished Callaghan, 
 escaped the influenza which formed the usual 
 epilogue to her admistration of the fund. All through 
 the week, her manner was marked by a certain 
 indefinable elation, from which her pupils argued that 
 she had found a husband. Nothing, in fact, was
 
 i6o A LADY LAND LEAGUER. 
 
 further from Miss Mulligan's mind than a wish to 
 find a husband ; she had a poor opinion of the men, 
 and was one of the many women who maintain that 
 they can do aught that doth become a man, and a 
 great many things besides. In forming this judgment 
 she had her own capacity for book-keeping in view, 
 and contrasted the masterly ease with which she made 
 out her accounts, with Callaghan's crass stupidity in 
 comprehending them. How Callaghan managed to 
 keep the books of the League was past her compre- 
 hension, and as Miss Mulligan's accounts were by no 
 means so unique, among the many sent in to him, as 
 he could have wished, it was almost past his own 
 comprehension also. 
 
 I am sorry to say that Miss Mulligan's letter did 
 not impress him in at all the way that she had antici- 
 pated ; he was a big, jolly, good-natured man, who 
 had never in his life been thrown much into the 
 society of women, and the sex was to him a mystery, 
 even more unfathomable than the chaos of Miss 
 Mulligan's accounts. He was content to accept both 
 as simple substances defying analysis, but of by no 
 means equal interest and value. He was extremely
 
 A LADY LAND LEAGUER. i6i 
 
 soft-hearted towards women, young or old, pretty 
 or ugly, all minor differences being merged in 
 the pathetic mystery of their womanhood. Had 
 Miss Mulligan come into his office he would at once 
 have protested that he understood every item in her 
 accounts, but her rigmarole did not carry the soften- 
 ing effect of her presence, and Callaghan laughed. 
 Yes, I am sorry to say he found Miss Mulligan's 
 heart-wrung reproaches a tery good joke. Still 
 laughing, and in a teasing mood, he wrote to her — 
 " My dear Miss Mulligan, — Surely 'tis you, not I, that 
 are willing to believe the worst of others, but though 
 I have no nobility I am not so stupid as to doubt 
 yours. Believe me, I appreciate the sacrifices you 
 have made, and never dreamt of accusing you of 
 anything worse than an involved system of book- 
 keeping. Never mind about debit and credit, I will 
 try, by the items, to make a guess at which is which, 
 but do try to keep the Grant money for the tenants 
 distinct from the Loan for the sewing-girls, and 
 which, you know, we may have to refund at any 
 moment." 
 
 Now this was not quite honest of Callaghan. The 
 
 M
 
 1 62 A LADY LAND LEAGUER. 
 
 money, though nominally a loan, had been expended 
 without thought of repayment, and there was no 
 probability that the institution that had lent it would 
 ever ask for its return ; but at the moment this note 
 seemed to him the best way of explaining the need 
 for keeping the accounts distinct, and also an excellent 
 joke. 
 
 But " a jest's prosperity lies in the ear of him who 
 hears it," and Callaghan's letter found Miss Mulligan 
 in no joking humour. She read a slight between every 
 word ; the whole tone of the letter seemed to her 
 evidence of the basest ingratitude, and she was fairly 
 frightened at the suggestion that the loan might be asked 
 for at any time. The money was spent, and it was 
 beyond her power to recall it. Packets of baby clothes 
 and finely tucked nightdresses represented its value. 
 These she removed from their shelves and laid one by 
 one in a deal box till she had made up a package 
 worth more than the forty-five pounds. Then she nailed 
 up the box, addressed it to Callaghan, walked three 
 miles to her carman, and bade him send round for it 
 that very afternoon. When it was safely started, she 
 sat down and made a second attempt to reduce the
 
 A LADY LAND LEAGUER. 163 
 
 iniquitous Callaghan. " If you had taken the trowble," 
 she wrote, "to read what I have wrote you, you would 
 know that the money is all spent on calicoe and lace 
 and cannot be had back. It has all been spent on our 
 poor people but I don't wish that they or anyone else 
 who respects theirselves should put theirselves under 
 a compliment to any that grudges them their bread. 
 I am very sorry that I cannot send you the money 
 back but it is spent and the clothes I send you is 
 worth more. You will quite easy find market for them 
 in town as they are all very nice and you can get at the 
 shops 1 5 per cent higher than I have priced them but 
 I would rather sell at a loss than keep a loan that was 
 grudged. If I was a man I should behave different 
 and try to help women in their work instead of which 
 all you think of is how you can crush me. I don't 
 suppose the League is different to the rest. All men 
 are alike and would rather put us down than 
 help us." 
 
 Several tears blotted this epistle, and the trembling 
 handwriting testified to the emotion which had 
 inspired it. Until the answer came, Miss Mulligan felt 
 very down : the short winter days seemed shorter, the 
 
 M 2
 
 1 64 A LADY LAND LEAGUER. 
 
 long nights more interminable than before. Yet when 
 the time came for it to be possible for her to receive an 
 answer, Miss Mulligan prayed daily with beating heart 
 that the postman might not come, and when at last he 
 left a letter she hardly dared to open it. After long 
 speculation as to its possible contents she read : " My 
 dear Miss Mulligan, — This is too bad of you, and 
 makes me terribly ashamed of my little joke. I do 
 not want the money, and, if I did, how could I go 
 about hawking baby clothes ? After long study I still 
 can't discriminate between the ' shirts ' and ' shifts.' 
 Come up to town and find a market for them yourself, 
 and keep the proceeds for your industry, and please 
 come soon, as my furniture is covered with baby 
 clothes. You have really got to come, and must find 
 what consolation you may in the thought that you 
 have brought it on yourself." 
 
 A fortnight later the shelter was still empty and 
 Miss Mulligan still in town. _" The man," she ad- 
 mitted, had really been quite kind to her ; he had let 
 her hold a sale of work at his house, had been 
 induced to act unpaid commercial traveller in baby 
 linen, and had given a large order for knitted socks.
 
 A LADY LAND LEAGUER. 165 
 
 Despite her hatred of his sex, and her conviction of 
 his desire to crush her, Miss Mulligan went every- 
 where under his escort, and endured his society with 
 equanimity. But now the end of the month was 
 come, and in two days the grant would be due. For 
 some incomprehensible reason Miss Mulligan had 
 found it impossible to broach the subject of her 
 return, and she now walked quickly into Callaghan's 
 office and said abruptly, " I'm going back to-morrow, 
 so you may as well give me the money to take with 
 me." 
 
 Callaghan rose and went over to the fire-place. " I 
 shall feel very lonely without your scoldings," he said, 
 looking at the blaze. 
 
 " Oh, I dare say ! Much heed you pay to 'em ! " 
 said Miss Mulligan, bridling and laughing self-con- 
 sciously. 
 
 " Did ever you ask me to do a thing that I didn't 
 do it ? " 
 
 " Oh, that's your way," said Miss Mulligan airily, 
 " you're a terrible man for the ladies." 
 
 Callaghan laughed, he was past forty, and growing 
 stout, so he protested in only a half-hearted manner ;
 
 1 66 A LADY LAND LEAGUER. 
 
 and, as I said before, Miss Mulligan was very nice 
 looking. Her eyes now were just as soft and pretty 
 as though she had had the lightest possible hand in 
 flirtation, and the best conversational style. " There 
 is nothing too bad for you to believe of me," said 
 Callaghan, in a tone that challenged denial. 
 
 " Now I'm sure I never said that," said Miss MuUi- 
 gan, with a provoking look that added, " though I 
 might have meant it." 
 
 *' Well, you wrote it ! " retorted Callaghan, " I've 
 got the letter ! " 
 
 " Then just burn it at once," said Miss Mulligan, 
 inwardly very much pleased ; " What would you 
 think if I kept all your cross letters — like an 
 informer ! " 
 
 " You couldn't do that — I never wrote a cross word 
 to you ; perhaps I will now I find out you destroy my 
 letters." 
 
 ' Well, if they're nice I'll keep them for your bio- 
 graphy." Miss Mulligan laughed a good deal at 
 this sally of hers ; the notion of the biography was 
 clearly more fantastic in her eyes than in Callaghan's, 
 but he too laughed as he retorted —
 
 A LADY LAND LEAGUER. 167 
 
 " And I'll publish yours, that people may see what 
 I've had to put up with ! " 
 
 " Then I'll write no more to be safe ! " 
 
 " Oh, that you will when you think my one aim is 
 to crush you." 
 
 " Sure, I never said that ! " 
 
 Callaghan thrust his hand into his breast pocket — 
 " I'll show you the letter ! " 
 
 Miss Mulligan stayed him with her hand. " I 
 didn't mean it. 'Tis dull there — one must have some 
 diversion." The tears welled up into her pretty 
 eyes. 
 
 " Is abusing your friend a diversion ? " 
 
 Miss MuUigan smiled : " Just to make him 
 remember me." 
 
 " You might give him a stab for that reason." 
 
 She shook her head, laughing. " Hard words break 
 no bones." 
 
 " They break hearts though," said Callaghan, re- 
 turning to his desk. " However, you wouldn't mind if 
 you broke mine, would you ? " 
 
 " Indeed, but I would ! " 
 
 "Well, there's but one way out of it now," said
 
 i68 A LADY LAND LEAGUER. 
 
 Callaghan, a dusky, middle-aged blush suffusing his 
 features. " You must do that or be my wife." 
 
 Miss Mulligan drew in her breath with a sob. " I 
 must stay with the tenants till they get back." 
 
 Callaghan bowed his head ; he respected that senti- 
 ment. " And after ? " 
 
 " Well — after," said Miss Mulligan.
 
 A COMFORTER. 
 
 BY THE BISHOP OF BEDFORD. 
 
 I WAS SO weary with the strife and din, 
 
 And strange sad questionings that, night and day 
 Clamouring for answer, would not pass away, 
 
 And all the mystery of grief and sin 
 
 That smote upon my heart and entered in, 
 I could have craved to flee from out the fray, 
 And, in some rural home withdrawn, allay 
 
 This restless heat, and sweet contentment win. 
 
 Then came to me a little stranger child, 
 
 With wide blue eyes and wealth of sunny hair. 
 And climbed upon my knee, and nestled there : 
 
 And as in lovi^ig trustfulness she smiled. 
 And laid her golden head upon my breast, 
 I had my fill of comfort and of rest.
 
 A WOMAN'S SONG! 
 
 BY CLEMENT SCOTT. 
 I. 
 
 She took her Song to Beauty's side, 
 Where riches are, and pomp, and pride. 
 Among the 'World, amidst the crowd. 
 She found out hearts by sorrow bow'd ; 
 There midst a dream of hghts and dress, 
 She saw the pain of loveliness ! 
 Her voice's magic held a tear. 
 She made the weary ones draw near, 
 And all the Passions of the throng 
 Were melted into Peace by Song ! 
 
 II. 
 
 She took her Song along the Street, 
 And hushed the beat of passing feet ; 
 So tired toilers stopped to fill 
 Their hearts with music at her will !
 
 A WOMAN'S SONG. 171 
 
 She sang of Rest to weary feet, 
 Of sea-moan, and of meadow-sweet ! 
 Her voice's pleading stilled the stir. 
 And little children wept with her ! 
 So all their hate, and grief, and pain. 
 She softened into Love again ! 
 
 III. 
 
 She took her Song to those who rest 
 
 Safe in the clasp of Nature's breast ! 
 
 Amidst the graves, along the shore 
 
 Washed with salt tears of nevermore ! 
 
 And then she sang, " How long ! how long ! 
 " Before we hear that perfect song, 
 "That angel-hymn, that mystic strain, 
 *' When those who loved shall love again ; 
 " When Life's long trouble shall be blest 
 "With Music of Eternal Rest !" 
 
 Afril loth, 1S87.
 
 THREE UNPUBLISHED LETTERS OF 
 GENERAL GORDON 
 
 To his old Friend, the late Colonel C. Elwyn Harvey, R.E. 
 Contributed by A. Egmont Hake. 
 
 7, Cecil Street, Strand, 
 
 16.1.77. 
 My dear Charles, 
 
 I am not going back to the Khedive, 
 and my future is rather hazy. I am in town, for 
 a short time, but cannot say for certain, for how 
 long, however I am sure to hear you are in 
 town, and we will be sure to meet. About the 
 dining out, I cannot stand it anywhere, puts me 
 into a fidget, having a dinner hanging over one's 
 head, so you will not press that question. I hope 
 Mrs. Harvey and your boy is well, and with kind 
 regards, Believe me in haste. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 C. E. GORDON. 
 
 [Reproduced in facsimile.^

 
 --^<l^<-^«,-*--0,,,^t-w^ ^J-Vt-'V. <--»-*-^-t7 >^-<-«u--V ^ ,^ 
 
 ^^^^^C^ . ^ ^^^ ^^^^ /^— -;, 
 
 ^{....X — y^^^r^^-*^
 
 

 
 THREE UNPUBLISHED LETTERS. 173 
 
 7, Cecil Street, Strand, 
 
 25.12.76. 
 My dear Charles, 
 
 I arrived in London last night, and 
 
 am not at all certain of my future, for I have 
 
 promised to come back to Cairo in three weeks, 
 
 and then I have repented. I was pressed into 
 
 it by Khedive, who is Men uialheureux, and I 
 
 did not like to desert a sinking ship. 
 
 How is Mrs. C. Elwyn ? I hope well. How 
 
 is that place Tring ? I used to be sick of 
 
 the very name. With very kind regards, 
 
 BeUeve me, my dear Charles, 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 C. E. GORDON. 
 
 7, Cecil Street, Strand, 
 
 24.1.77. 
 My dear Charles, 
 
 Sorry not to have seen you, ere 
 I leave, which I do for Cairo, on the 31st inst. 
 I am so much occupied that I have not time 
 to write at length. I tried to cry off, but H. H. 
 would not have it, so I am going. Kind regards 
 to Mrs. Charles and your boy. 
 
 Yours sincerely, my dear Charles, 
 
 C. E. GORDON. 
 
 ' \Reprodiiced in facsimile. '[
 
 ON THE SHELF. 
 
 BY ARTHUR GAYE. 
 
 I AM one of the rare and thrice fortunate beings who, 
 so far from being ashamed of their great age, actually 
 glory in it themselves, and are commended for it by 
 others. This amiable characteristic I share with wine, 
 fiddles, and, to the best of my behef, with none 
 beside. Nay, I enjoy a distinct advantage over even 
 these. There is a limit to the desirable antiquity of 
 all that is vinous. The prime is reached and should 
 never be passed, or it will too surely degenerate into 
 something which savours less and less of vinosity. 
 Good wine, it is true, needs no bush, and good old 
 wine wants a champion even less; but not all the 
 vegetation in Christendom can successfully proclaim 
 a liquor which has begun to lose its virtue, be it never 
 so^ patriarchal. It is fit only for base uses, and 
 ultimately becomes vinegar or worse. So, too, with 
 the masterpieces of the Cremona workshops. The
 
 ON THE SHELF. 175 
 
 handiwork of Stradivarius and the Amati is, to begin 
 with, a good deal younger than myself, though, I 
 freely admit, of a very respectable age. Then again, 
 its authenticity is constantly being called in question. 
 Perhaps not a score of persons within the length and 
 breadth of this country can arbitrate with authority 
 where a reputed " Strad " is on its trial. Of the fifty- 
 eight or seventy pieces of wood which, as I am told, 
 go to form it, only an expert can decide whether all, 
 and if not all, how many or how few are what they 
 pretend to be. The purfling, for example, may be 
 genuine, and the finger-board and the sound-post, but 
 what of the scroll and the varnish ? In any case the 
 bridge must have had many predecessors, and strings, 
 even the Roman, which, they tell me, are most highly 
 prized, must be renewed at frequent intervals. But 
 granted that the whole and all its parts are un- 
 doubted original, and un-improved product of the great 
 Antonius himself, yet, after all, the really appreciative 
 admirers of the instrument must be confined to the 
 initiated few. It can be so easily imitated to delude 
 the vulgar ; nay more, its counterfeits are the back- 
 bone of a regularly organized trade. With me and
 
 176 PN THE SHELF. 
 
 my congeners it is not so. Wine may turn sour and 
 fiddles may be forged ; but each new year only adds 
 to my value and mellowness, and the sincerest form 
 of flattery cannot so much as approach me, for I am 
 imitator proof. Need I say more to disclose my 
 identity ? I am an old book. 
 
 Where was I born ? Well, I do not pretend to be 
 a Caxton, or even from the press of Aldus Manutius, 
 or of Elzevir. A man may be venerable without hav- 
 ing reached the age of Methuselah, and a book may 
 well inspire a notable degree of interest, and yet have 
 not issued in the first instance from the famous house 
 in Westminster. To tell the truth, I first saw the 
 light, or what little there was of it to see, in a damp 
 cellar, for printing, in my day, was still looked at some- 
 what askance, and, albeit its profits were handsome, the 
 practice of it was not all plain sailing, or even devoid 
 of actual danger. As for my precise date, you will 
 find it, if you are inquisitive, in its proper place on my 
 title-page. I have said already that I am proud of it, 
 quite as proud, after my kind, as you are of your 
 power to destroy space by conversing with your 
 friend in Oceania, or to blow up your friends and foes
 
 ON THE SHELF. 177 
 
 with the latest development of dynamite. I belong, 
 you see, to a constrnctive age, while yours, I take it, 
 is in the main of a destructive tendency ; yet I am 
 presumptuous enough to fancy that I shall survive 
 when you and your explosives have long passed into 
 oblivion, 
 
 I was a long time about coming into the world ; I 
 made my entry letter by letter and line by line. 
 Perhaps that is why my pages have lasted so long. 
 For many previous years, of course, I had already 
 existed in manuscript, such manuscript as no mortal 
 pen could in these days design. Copies of me were 
 made by patient hands, but Gothenburg's invention 
 soon put an end to the art of the copyist, and, more- 
 over, it is with my life in print that I am now concerned 
 to entertain you. How well I remember that smaH 
 underground chamber in which I gradually assumed 
 my present character ! You are wont to speak in these 
 times of "rushing" into print; there was little enough 
 of rush about it in my day, the process being only some- 
 what more expeditious than the original writing by 
 hand. Once perfected in the fount, however, I could 
 be multiplied at pleasure, not indeed at the terrilic
 
 178 ON THE SHELF. 
 
 rate of modern literature, but yet very much more 
 speedily than had been anyhow possible hitherto. 
 Half a page of me, perhaps, would be printed in the 
 time which you now occupy in striking off a volume, 
 though I do not know that you are altogether gainers 
 by this marvellous acceleration of speed. Then, too, 
 it must be borne in mind that I am not in crown 
 octavo, but in folio. Most of us were folios in the 
 early years of the press, when Plancus was consul. 
 But of that more anon. 
 
 Whose was the inner consciousness from Vv-hich I 
 was in the first instance evolved I do not greatly care 
 to set down. Scarcely one of you, probably, would 
 recognize the name ; you may find it in catalogues of 
 scarce books, but in this degenerate age it is not, I 
 freely admit, one to conjure with. In my very 
 youngest days, that is to say, when first I knew myself 
 to be a complete MS., long, long before my era of 
 leaded type, I took a pardonable pride in the subject 
 which I was originally designed to elucidate and adorn. 
 That pride is to this day not wholly obsolete in me, 
 but it is decidedly obsolescent. In common with 
 many other literary efforts of my own standing, I am a
 
 ON THE SHELF. 179 
 
 Romance of Chivalry, consisting in a voluminous 
 compilation of the jests of once famous Knights, and 
 concluding with sundry maxims intended to awaken 
 the chivalrous spirit anew. I am not indeed the rare 
 edition of Amadis de (iaul, but I may fairly claim to 
 be one of that ilk. The aim of my author has not 
 been realized. While there is a good deal within my 
 covers that would do honour to any age and any land, 
 there is also not a little that, in my opinion, although 
 I herein speak against myself, has very wisely been 
 abandoned 'and forgotten. Many of the principles, 
 for example, in vogue among those Knights of the 
 Round Table, whose exploits are familiar to you in the 
 melodious Idylls of one of your best poets, will be up- 
 held by right-thinking men until the end of time. But 
 their principles, as we well know, did not always 
 coincide with their practice, and these heroes, and 
 others who followed them, lapsed not seldom into the 
 grosser errors of frail humanity. Hence it is that I 
 contain divers passages which might with advantage 
 be expunged, though I cherish no vain hope that any 
 editor will ever think it worth his while to bring out 
 an expurgated version of me. To redress the vvTongs 
 
 N 2
 
 i8o ON THE SHELF. 
 
 of the weak and oppressed, to hold fast by the Truth, 
 to endure hardness for the Right, to take heart ot 
 
 Grace and stand up vahantly against the evil-doer 
 
 verily these be one and all excellent features in a 
 man. But it grieves me that not a few of my vener- 
 able pages exhibit a strong confusion of chivalry and 
 licence. I am liberal enough to recognize the fact 
 that the doughty kpights, whose feats are recounted in 
 me, were on the whole considerably inferior to other 
 and more modern champions, whose names, it is true, 
 are unknown to fame, but whose deeds nevertheless 
 evince a nobler spirit, and belong, as it seems to me, 
 to a far higher order of chivalry than anything that I 
 myself was penned and printed to illustrate. Having 
 lived through many phases of social life and carefully 
 noted them all, I think, for instance, that the knights 
 who minister to the grievous necessities of sick 
 children in the East End of London are, to speak 
 truth, a good many rungs on the ladder of true 
 nobility above the mailed warriors who spent their 
 days in tilting for the favour of fair maidens. I some- 
 times feel that the fate which overtook the librarj' of 
 the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance was on the
 
 ON THE SHELF. i8i 
 
 whole not much worse than it deserved. This, of 
 course, is in my melancholy and self-abasing moments. 
 At other times it gratifies me to remember that I can 
 offer some really sound, worthy, and remunerative 
 reading. And even in my most disconsolate moods I 
 am apt to dwell with satisfaction on the shrewd 
 Spaniard's comforting conclusion, borrowed, however, 
 from a more ancient source : No hay libro tan malo 
 que no tenga alguma cosa buena. — Even the worst 
 book has some good in it. A fallacious remark, pro- 
 bably, like most sayings proverbial or epigrammatic, 
 but it consoles me notwithstanding, call it vanity or 
 what you will. 
 
 It is possible that you may be interested to know 
 something as to my appearance without and within. 
 There is a certain sameness about the covers of 
 volumes of my date, but it is a sameness which does 
 not necessarily become a weariness. There is nothing 
 fantastic about them, nothing crude, nothing loud or 
 extravagant. The marvellous freaks of the binder's 
 art, which I have observed during the present century, 
 have absolutely nothing in common with the sober 
 hvery which obtained for the most part in my own
 
 1 82 ON THE SHELF. 
 
 day. Such miserable subterfuges also, if you will 
 excuse the term, as cloth, boards, and leatherette, 
 were yet a long way off. If my comrades and myself 
 cannot boast the magnificent exteriors which were 
 designed and executed by some of the later French 
 and Italian craftsmen, we have at least much that is 
 substantial, and, witness our longevity, durable to 
 show. Our backs and sides were, at any rate, made 
 of leather (and, as all men know, there is nothing like 
 leather) and solid to boot. Our very size lent us 
 externally some importance. A well-bound folio 
 means a good deal of binding material, and neither 
 quantity nor quality in our case was stinted. We 
 represent, each one of us, several square feet of 
 outside, and every inch was clad in the bravest. The 
 men who produced us (I mean our form, not our 
 matter) took the greatest pride in their work. That 
 work was not in so many different hands as the 
 editing of books now is. Printer, binder, publisher, 
 and seller, were all one and the same worthy soul, 
 under whose watchful eye each department wrought 
 its special share of labour. The profits of the trade 
 were encouraging, and its various details were
 
 ON THE SHELF. 1S3 
 
 honestly, thoroughly, sometimes even lavishly, carried 
 out ; nothing was scamped. Whether the actual 
 writers were satisfied with their publishers or not, in 
 my century, I am not prepared to say. Probably, 
 like their successors, they were not; perhaps they 
 too, even as one of your own modern authors, were of 
 opinion that Barabbas was a publisher. Be that how 
 it may, they could certainly never find fault with the 
 outward appearance of their histories or romances 
 when they finally issued from the press. Externally 
 they were, they are, all that the soul of author could 
 desire. But, as I said before, I and my con- 
 temporaries had, most of us, existed for many 
 generations in MS., or ever we were advanced to the 
 dignity of type. 
 
 I confess to a feeling of comfortable security, not 
 unmixed w'ith a sense of superiority to those around 
 me, when I take note of the kindly pressure of my 
 sturdy leathern sides. Time-worn no doubt they are, 
 time-worn and travel-stained, and here and there are 
 indications of visits on the part of an attentive but 
 voracious and coleopterous little friend, whose name 
 is well known in libraries. I do not grudge him,
 
 1 84 ON THE SHELF. 
 
 however, an occasional meal at my expense, and I 
 wish him happy digestion. It would have been strange 
 indeed had I come down through this long range of 
 years without betraying some slight symptoms of wear 
 and tear. But I am solid enough still as to my outer 
 skin, and I feel that I shall be solid to the last. Yes., 
 here and there on my ample covers you may detect 
 the friendly worm-hole ; my edges may be a trifle 
 bowed with age, and the ribs on my broad back may 
 have lost a little of their whilom glory. But what of 
 that. The years that I have been cased in leather 
 are to be reckoned by centuries. And the colour of 
 me — can you anywhere match this fine deep russet, 
 which nothing save length of years and soundness of 
 constitution combined can hope to produce ? It was 
 once whispered, in my hearing, that a spray of scarlet 
 geranium carelessly laid upon me would create a 
 study worthy the brush of the greatest of painters. A 
 beautiful old tome I have many a time been called, 
 for the warm, mellow colouring of my back and sides 
 alone. Add my strength and symmetry to my beauty, 
 and you have something, I humbly submit, which 
 cannot easily be equalled, let alone excelled, in the 
 matter of book-binding.
 
 ON THE SHELF. 185 
 
 When you shall have sufficiently admired my outer 
 charms, let me invite you to open me and feast your 
 eyes upon the grace and grandeur that are contained 
 within. Here too, of course, some little allowance 
 must be made for the ravages of time. I do not pre- 
 tend that my every page is spotless or free from the 
 inevitable ills to which a book of my age is unhappily 
 heir. Now and again you will certainly come upon 
 the traces of the tiny borer and the pestilential dog's- 
 ear. A few pages of my fine Dutch paper are 
 unacountably yellow, and one or two have been 
 patched, cleverly enough, but not so cleverly as to 
 deceive myself. But, these insignificant blemishes 
 apart, where, I should like to know, will you find 
 among your own printed volumes such type, so clear 
 and so regular as mine? I have no patience with 
 your wretched little duodecimos and diamond editions, 
 which serve only to injure young eyes, and baffle 
 those that are old. What wonder that the readers of 
 these days are constrained to avail themselves often in 
 youth and almost without exception in middle age of 
 artificial lenses, in order to spell through a page at all. 
 Books in my time were not so plenty by many degrees
 
 1 86 ON THE SHELF. 
 
 as now, but they could at least be read with tolerable 
 comfort. Fine black letters and capitals in royal 
 scarlet ; these are what meet your eye as you turn my 
 leaves. The initial letters of my chapters, you will 
 observe, are genuine works of art. I do not owe them 
 to the skill of my printer, for the spaces were left 
 blank, and were afterwards filled in with designs to 
 suit the taste and fancy of my first purchaser. He 
 employed a deft illuminator to give me these finishing 
 touches, and I think you must admit that his con- 
 fidence was not misplaced. Each several initial is a 
 perfect picture in itself, and, as I have overheard it 
 said, affords a pleasant relief to the reader's eye from 
 the monotony of the printed character. You cannot 
 fail, again, to notice and, I should hope, to admire 
 also, the elegant little tail-pieces, which are continually 
 cropping up. In truth, look where you will, at the 
 beginning of chapter or at end, you must needs recog- 
 nize in me a grand and edifying specimen of the art 
 introduced into this land by the laborious Caxton and 
 continued by Wynkyn de Worde and his successors 
 unto this day. 
 
 Whilst passing through the press I was accustomed
 
 ON THE SHELF. 187 
 
 to take note of sundry manners and customs affected 
 by the jDrinting folk, most of which have long since 
 gone out of use, and are known now, if known at all, 
 only by vague tradition. In the first place, every 
 printing-house went by the name of a " chappel." I 
 have heard it said, but with what truth I know not, 
 that Caxton set up a press within the precincts of 
 Westminster Abbey, nay in one of the chapels them- 
 selves, and hence the term. Each workman, or 
 compositor, as you call him in these days, was styled 
 a " member of the chappel," and the oldest freeman 
 was the " father." Very strict discipline was main- 
 tained in these societies, and various penalties were 
 imposed when a " chappel " law or custom was 
 infringed. Some of the commoner breaches sound 
 quaint enough to modern ears, as also does the 
 penalty, oddly termed a " solace." I can call to mind 
 several instances. Thus swearing, fighting, abusive 
 speech, or giving the lie in the " chappel " involved a 
 " solace." So, too, for a stranger to come to a 
 compositor and enquire if he had news of such and 
 such a galley at sea. If any man brought a wisp of 
 hay directed to a pressman (we may guess the gentle
 
 1 88 ON THE SHELF. 
 
 insinuation) he was straightway " solaced." And if 
 the fines were not religiously paid the delinquent was 
 placed with scant ceremony on the "correcting 
 stone," and the amount due was collected in stripes. 
 Each new workman had to pay his " benvenue " or 
 entrance-fee, and, until he had paid it, took no benefit 
 of " chappel" money or other benefits accruing to the 
 recognized members of the craft. And, finally, there 
 was the so-called "wayzgoose," or printers' feast, 
 which still survives, and is useful, if for no other pur- 
 pose, at least as exercising the wits of the etymologists. 
 Indeed, if by chance you have a turn for roots and 
 derivations, you will find in the various printers' terms 
 a wide field for testing your powers of extraction and 
 assimilation. You might, for example, discover for us 
 the true source of the (printers') devil, for I suppose you 
 will not rest satisfied any more than myself with the 
 tradition which makes the first of the tribe a lineal 
 descendant of one De Ville, who came over in the 
 Conqueror's train in company with the first D'Ash- 
 wood and the original D'Umpling. Possibly there is 
 more of truth in what an old writer says of this 
 opprobrious ekename : " These boys do in a printing-
 
 ON THE SHELF. 189 
 
 house commonly black and dawb themselves, whence 
 the workmen do jocosely call them devils, and some- 
 times spirits, and sometimes flies." But I leave the 
 nut to your cracking. 
 
 In the course of a long life I have naturally 
 experienced many vicissitudes of fortune. I have 
 been in many countries and more hands. I can 
 remember on one occasion a long visit to Spain, a 
 country interesting to me as the birthplace of many 
 Romances of Chivalry, and no less interesting, I 
 trust, to you as having been the first land (though by 
 some the palm is given to Italy) to establish a 
 Hospital. It was not, we may be sure, so complete 
 or so well organized an institution as many a one, in 
 these more enlightened days, to be found in the 
 great English capital. Still it was a beginning, and 
 honour to whom honour is due, whether Spaniard or 
 Italian. It has been my lot to witness more than 
 once or twice the horrors of war and pestilence, and 
 it grieves me to reflect how many a noble life has 
 been lost through lack of appliances and skill which 
 you more fortunate moderns have at your very doors. 
 I can well remember the time when charms and
 
 I90 ON THE SHELF. 
 
 incantations supplied, in great measure, the place of 
 drugs, when the poor wrestled with the Rider on the 
 Pale Horse, in wretched hovels, untended and 
 uncared for, and sick children had none to minister 
 to their necessities. Truly, if to weep were one of a 
 book's prerogatives, I could shed copious tears over 
 the pathetic ignorance and superstition of the past, 
 whenever I contrast them with the comfort, the 
 unwearied ministrations, and the skilful treatment, 
 which are within the reach of the afflicted poor, 
 whether infant or adult, of to-day. 
 
 I have had in my time many masters, and yet 
 have remained for as much as a century in one 
 family, handed down religiously from father to son. 
 To say that I have been widely or deeply read 
 would, perhaps, not be vi-ithin the limits of strict 
 veracity. A good many of my possessors were 
 unable to read at all, and those of them who were 
 competent to decipher me have, for the most part, 
 with sad want of taste, contented themselves with 
 regarding me in the light of an interesting fossil, 
 worth having but only to be looked at. My market 
 value, however, has always been a constant quantity ;
 
 ON THE SHELF. 191 
 
 nay more, as I grow in years, so also do I rise in 
 price. Dainty fingers have turned my pages, assisted 
 not seldom by others of less delicate mould, and I 
 have sometimes heard whispered over me words 
 which sounded like O graji bontd de' cavalieri antichi, 
 but I fancy they were meant merely as a cloke of 
 ignorance, or to air a slender acquaintance with a 
 foreign language. At all events I feel quite certain 
 that in my MS. days, when it required the labour of 
 years to reproduce me, my contents were conned and 
 digested much more assiduously than they have ever 
 been since I was promoted to the honour of print. 
 
 Though in one sense undoubtedly our natural home 
 and rest-house it is humiliating even to a book to lie 
 perpetually on the shelf. For years together I have 
 reposed in that haven, and have acquired sometimes 
 a coating of dust which weighs upon me. Not indeed 
 that I bear any ill-will towards the quiet dust, on the 
 contrary, I enjoy it in moderation, and I yield to no 
 book, ancient, mediaeval, or modern, in my abhorrence 
 of the housemaid; that irrepressible, unreasoning, 
 irreverent, bugbear of the library. From time to 
 time I have emerged from this obscurity, and I must
 
 192 ON THE SHELF. 
 
 admit that I have invariably been treated ^Yith the 
 greatest respect — the respect due to age, but not 
 ahvays accorded even by those who know that I 
 belong to a period in which the printing-press was 
 still a novelty, and its children costly to come by. In 
 my later years I have been much sought after by 
 collectors, and thus have many times changed hands, 
 always, however, maintaining a good reputation for rarity 
 and representing therefore a high commercial value. 
 But it was a gruesome hour for me when I first 
 became acquainted with the hammer of the auctioneer. 
 To lie cheek by jowl with a heap of flimsy novels, or 
 to be jostled by ill-printed, meanly bound, editions of 
 popular authors, was a strange and melancholy 
 experience for one, like myself, accustomed to the best 
 and most ancient folio society. It was some consola- 
 tion on these occasions to find myself now and then 
 within hail of an Elzevir in similarly reduced circum- 
 stances, and to join my lamentations with his anent 
 the decadence of the book-world. Adversity, as your 
 proverb runs, makes strange bedfellows ; and the 
 truth of the adage has ere now come safely home to 
 me when I have discovered in my next neighbour an
 
 ON THE SHELF. 193 
 
 octavo copy of the pleasantries of one Joseph Miller, 
 or the Adventures of an obscure person entitled Tom 
 Jones. No true aristocrat of bookdom, I fancy, but 
 would shudder in such company. 
 
 Latterly, however, I have ceased to grieve over the 
 inevitable ; perhaps it is resignation, perhaps the 
 weariness and apathy of age. It even amuses me in a 
 mild way to hear myself described in the catalogues 
 as "this very scarce and curious work, a good tall 
 copy in old stamped calf binding (a few MS. notes on 
 the margin in a very old hand, part of one leaf defi- 
 cient) splendidly printed in red and black ink on 
 thick vellum paper, and embelHshed with a woodcut 
 title and very numerous large ornamental capitals.' 
 I know that I shall be knocked down to a dealer or a 
 collector, neither of whom has the slightest intention 
 of mastering my contents. Once valuable for the 
 information and sentiments I contain, I am now 
 prized merely for my antiquity and excellent state of 
 preservation. Even these characteristics are only 
 regarded as entitling me to " fetch," such is the slang 
 phrase, so many coins of the realm, and breathing 
 this mercenery atmosphere I suppose I have caught 
 
 o
 
 194 ON THE SHELF. 
 
 something of the spirit of the auction-room myself. 
 At any rate I do listen with some Httle interest to the 
 course of the bidding, and the fall of the hammer 
 strikes somewhat less of contempt and disgust into 
 my ancient heart when the competition for me has 
 been more than usually brisk, and I have changed 
 hands at what is vulgarly called a high figure. My 
 public appearances, however, have of late years been 
 so many that the excitement of the auction must 
 needs soon pall upon me. 
 
 At the present moment, and for some months 
 past, lying idle and unnoticed in the back room of a 
 celebrated dealer, in readiness for a customer who 
 declines to appear, I have employed my leisure in 
 jotting down these few notes of my life. This is how 
 it all came about. I have for society just now several 
 highly respectable old volumes, and during the night, 
 when we are free from intrusion and the abominably 
 rough handling which falls to our share during the 
 day, we are fond of talking over old times together. 
 It makes our present condition a trifle less monoton- 
 ous, to compare notes. A few nights ago it was 
 suggested by a very worthy Amsterdam quarto, that
 
 ON THE SHELF. 195 
 
 one of us should set down a few of his experiences 
 for the benefit of the outside world. He went on to 
 propose that the perpetrator of these autobiographical 
 lucubrations should be myself, and he quoted as one 
 reason for his preference a saying which he declares 
 to be current in his own country. I should tell you 
 that both he and the rest of my comrades are well 
 aware that I set some store by my handsome binding. 
 So, in his somewhat uncouth, but always kindly 
 Netherlandish fashion, he maintained that I was the 
 proper person to undertake the task, because " een 
 zindelijk kleed is eene goede aanbeveling," or 
 rendered into intelligible language, " a smart coat is a 
 good letter of introduction." Though the compli- 
 ment was not precisely in the vein of my own 
 chivalrous up-bringing, I somehow, could not find it 
 in my heart to say him nay, and the proposal being 
 seconded by a shrivelled Aldine and endorsed by the 
 rest of the company, all, by the way, more or less, in 
 tatters, I agreed to do my best in the direction 
 indicated. 
 
 The Hollander, who happens to be a scarce edition 
 of the life of the famous Boerhaave, then mentioned 
 
 o 2
 
 196 ON THE SHELF. 
 
 that he contained between his two rather squat covers 
 a vast store of antiquated information on the subject 
 of Medicine. This led him to express a wish that 
 I should introduce into my reminiscences a word or 
 two touching the wonderful expansion in these days 
 of medical knowledge and benevolence. He spoke 
 especially of the Hospitals for Children, and regretted 
 that the great Dutch physician could not see a sight 
 which would have gladdened his eyes, but which was 
 not destined to be visible till many a long year after 
 his death. The Quarto, whose heart is as sound as 
 his binding is the reverse, begged me to draw atten- 
 tion to the great need which exists of further develop- 
 ing the system. He cited several of his guttural 
 native proverbs to prove that the loving care of 
 children, and especially of children who are sick 
 or poor, is the duty of all Christian men and 
 women. It appears that he lived for some time 
 in Shadwcll, and there became aware of the 
 Hospital which for several years has been 
 devoted to the reception of the suffering little ones 
 who dwell in the East. Tell the world, he said, what 
 an incalculable blessing such a refuge becomes in
 
 ON THE SHELF. 197 
 
 such a wilderness, provided as it is with everything 
 that science can suggest for the alleviation of the 
 pains of these little patients, and wanting only the 
 co-operation of the well-to-do classes to extend its 
 blessings yet more widely. " Grijp jnoed" he con- 
 cluded, "and write your best." 
 
 These remarks being received with great applause, 
 expressed in the book-world, by subdued clapping of 
 Ifeathern sides, I gave my promise that they should be 
 introduced as nearly verbatim as my knowledge of 
 the Dutch language permitted. And, in truth, you 
 have here the gist of my stout friend's highly praise- 
 worthy sentiments. Allow me to commend them to 
 your very particular and appreciative notice. 
 
 I have run on, pray do not say " maundered " or 
 " drivelled," somewhat beyond, I fear, the limits of 
 your patience. Kindly forgive the garrulity of age, 
 and let also the worthiness of my object plead some 
 excuse. Probably you are of opinion that you your- 
 self could do a great deal better than this, did you 
 essay to speak " hke a book." Try by all means, and 
 my best wishes go with you. But whatever you write, 
 fail not, I beseech you, to edge in a word for the Sick
 
 1 98 ON THE SHELF. 
 
 Children, and the noble Hospital, whose staff of doctors 
 and Nurses, daily and nightly, play the good Samaritan 
 to them. Think of your own little ones, whose lightest 
 malady is so carefully tended and cured : and then 
 think of, and help those other little ones, dragged up 
 in " poverty, hunger, and dirt," the misery of whose 
 sick beds can only be relieved if you consent to 
 stretch out the helping hand. 

 
 AD MATREM. 
 
 BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 
 
 It is not yours, O mother, to complain, 
 
 Not, mother, yours to weep, 
 
 Though nevermore your son again 
 
 Shall to your bosom creep, 
 
 Though nevermore again you watch your baby sleep. 
 
 Though in the greener paths of earth, 
 Mother and child, no more 
 We wander ; and no more the birth 
 Of me whom once you bore. 
 
 Seems still the brave reward that once it seemed of 
 yore ; 
 
 Though as all passes, day and night, 
 
 The seasons and the years. 
 
 From you, O mother, this delight, 
 
 This also disappears — 
 
 Some profit yet survives of all your pangs and tears.
 
 200 ^ AD MATREM. 
 
 The child, the seed, the grain of corn, 
 
 The acorn on the hill, 
 
 Each for some separate end is born 
 
 In season fit, and still 
 
 Each must in strength arise to work the almighty will. 
 
 So from the hearth the children flee 
 By that almighty hand 
 Austerely led ; so one by sea 
 Goes forth, and one by land ; 
 
 Nor aught of all man's sons escapes from that 
 command. 
 
 So from the sally each obeys 
 
 The unseen almighty nod ; 
 
 So till the ending all their ways 
 
 Blindfolded loth have trod : 
 
 Nor knew their task at all, but were the tools of God. 
 
 And as the fervent smith of yore 
 
 Beat out the glowing blade, 
 
 Nor wielded in the front of war 
 
 The weapons that he made, 
 
 But in the tower at home still plied his ringing trade ;
 
 AD MAT REM. 201 
 
 So like a sword the son shall roam 
 
 On nobler missions sent ; 
 
 And as the smith remained at home 
 
 In peaceful turret pent, 
 
 So sits the while at home the mother well content.
 
 THE SINGER. 
 
 (after beranger.) 
 BY EDWARD ROSE. 
 
 Stretched here on the straw, 
 Withered, and poor, and old, 
 
 Too small to breathe in the crowd 
 That struggles for joys and gold 
 
 My cry breaks sadly forth, 
 A wail, a murmuring — • 
 
 Then God bends down and whispers 
 " Sing, poor little one, sing." 
 
 I.ove came and helped my sorrow 
 
 Once on a happy day ; 
 Now Youth has taken with him 
 
 Sweet Love away. 
 I am alone, alone, 
 
 The days no comfort bring- 
 But God bends down and whispers 
 " Sing, poor little one, sing."
 
 THE SINGER. 
 
 I only live to sing 
 
 For those who list to hear ; 
 But some my songs have gladdened 
 
 Perhaps may hold me dear. 
 Perhaps some weary heart 
 
 To mine is echoing 
 When God bends down and whispers, 
 " Sing, poor little one, sing." 
 
 203 
 
 Henderson, Rait, & Spalding, 3 & 5, Marylcbone Lane, London, W.
 
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