lOSANCElfj}> ii3AIN(l]WV <^tl!BRARYQ^ %OJI1VD-J0^ ^«!/0JIW3J0'^ '^TiDDNYSOl^ ^lOS•A^ o IJL. lOSANCElfX^ :a3AiNn-3W'^ ^OFCAllFOi?/]^ ^OFCAIIFO/?^ .^WEUNIVERS/A ■ ^OFCAIIFO/?^^ i ^OFCAllFOff^ c-j 52 ,^WEUNIVER% :lOSANCEl£r;> a^HIBRARYQ<- (OJiivjjo^ ^J'iijONYSoi^' '^(sajAiNniwv^ %ojnv3jo'^ ^IIIBRARY' ^^lllBRARYOc aWEUNIVERS/a ^^:lOSAfJCEl%. -^tllBRARYOc. ^^HIBRARYOc ^■^mmm^ S "^aaAiNn-jvw^ %ojitv3jo^ "^^^ojiwjjo^ ^WEUNIVERS/A C )HERE are a great many respectable people in the world who hold the ^Wj® candle to the devil, and think they are doing no great harm. Some of these hold the candle knowingly and with design, taking much pains to snufFand trim it, that the great artificer of mischief may have plenty of light to do his work by ; but .there are others who, though they would not willingly, and do not knowingly, assist such labours, are still morally guilty of the offence of holding the candle. The unblushing candle-holder of the former class finds his lowest representative in the person who will not steal, but who will receive stolen goods, and his highest in the potentate who, by secret artifices, will set half the world by the ears in order to secure his own aggrandisement. The candle-holder of the latter class is the highly re- 4^ The Savage- Club Papers. spectable individual who, while he would scorn to be a receiver of stolen goods, whether thej are silver spoons or provinces, will yet not refuse the receiver's invitation to dinner. The moral guilt of the person who tolerates the company of a fla- grantly dishonest neighbour is obvious ; but when we substitute for the "vulgar keeper of a fence in Whitechapel the rich and powerfid occupant of a palace, the guilt of association is not so obvious ; but it is none the less great. Wealth, rank, influ- ence, position, genius, notoriety even, are allowed to hide a multitude of sins. The most resj)ectable, the most virtuous, the most conscientious of us, in the hot pursuit of our honest ends, are constantly eivino; countenance to unworthiness such as no truly honest person ought to tolerate. Between the fence in his dark and mysterious cellar, and the emperor seated on his throne, we shall find plenty of examples of candle-holding. There is the poor but honest tradesman, struggling to maintain a large family. He would scorn to do a dishonest action ; but he is not above taking the hand of some neighboiu' whom he knows to be a rogue. He will eat with him, drink with him, deal with him, and accept favours at his hands without scruple ; his neighbour is a rogue, but his ill-gotten money is as good and as clean as the money of anyone else. In this class virtue is constantly paying homage to vice. The mechanic, Holding the Candle. 49 who toils from morninp; to nio;ht at honest labour, looks up with admiration to the idle, dissolute, scampish betting man, whose gains enable him to wear fine clothes, and spend money lavishly in public - houses. There is nothing more pitiful than to see an honest, well-disposed, working- man dancing attendance upon a character of this kind; calling him "sir," humbly accepting his drink, laughing at his coarse and ribald jokes. Again, what could be more pitiful, more sadden- ing to witness than the homage which virtuous women of the lower class pay to those shameless creatures of their own sex who are pleasantly named " gay ladies" ? A humble, honest, virtuous woman of this class will work as cheerfully for one of these as she would for the most honourable lady in the land. She thinks it no shame to wait upon her in the humblest capacity; and if she wanted a companion, the poor woman would not scruple to send her one of her young daughters. Who has not seen poor, ill-clad, toil-worn mothers of families pause in the street to gaze with admira- tion, and almost longing, at some finely-dressed daughter of shame ? The one redeeming quality of " gay" vice is generosity. There may, there- fore, be some excuse for the honest poor in yield- ing suit and service to the sinner who sympathises with them — in holding the candle to one who is, in a very essential respect, un hon diahle. VOL. II. E 50 The Savage- Club Papers. But this excuse vanislies gradually when we pursue our inquiries into higher spheres, vanishes until it disappears altogether. Poverty is a plea for many crimes, one that will' often extenuate if not acquit. What shall we say of those who, urged by no necessity, stoop to hold candles to devils who are not good in any sense, who have no white spot about them, who are as black as any paint can nftike them, who willingly allow no one to share in the produce of their evil deeds ? A familiar example of this devil is the successful City man. He ia often of a low origin, one with whom, if he were not rich, no refined person would asso- ciate. He is often a vicious person, immoral and indecent in his way of life ; one with whom, if he we]"e not rich, no respectable person would willingly be seen. Yet, just because he is rich, refined persons forget his grossness, and respect- able persons overlook his immorality. Honour- able men are not ignorant that his wealth is acquired by transactions which will not bear the light of day; yet they flock to his table. Re- spectable mothers know that he is a rou4^ yet they trust their daughters in his company. The worship of riches, even when adorned by virtue, is far from commendable. There are cer- tain commoners, whom we all know, whose wealth counts to them for as much as high lineage and a title. Tliey go to court, tliey are invited to all Holding the Candle. 5 1 the grand entertainments of tlie nobility, and for no reason in the world except that they are mil- lionaires. They are good peojjle enough, chari- table people enongli, but no more virtuous, no more charitable than you or I, whom the court and the nobility would never think of placing on an equality with themselves. This worship of wealth with virtue combined, merely for its own sake, may be some excuse for the worship of wealth tainted with vice ; but it is not much. In both cases the virtue and the vice are the elements least considered. The love of a lord is another examj)le of can- dle-holding. There is no lord so disreputable that he will not find respectable middle -class folks who will be proud of his acquaintance. We all have some knowledge of disreputable lords. There are always two or three of them floating about in middle-class society. They may be said to be poor devils, who, being cast out from the grand world, find some consolation in the worship of the little world below. They are lords who have been " dismissed the service," who have disgraced themselves in betting transactions, who have been sent to prison for assaulting the police, who have figured in actions for crim. con. ; lords with very dirty hands indeed. But let their hands be never so dirty, there are always j)lenty of respectable middle-class people eager to gfasp 52 The Savage-Cluh Papers. tliem, and proud of the honour of being noticed bj a lord. Yonder goes mj Lord Tom Noddj, of crim. con. notoriety, with little Timkins's wife. Little Timkins walks behind, proud to tell everybody that the lady on liis lordship's arm is Mrs. Tim- kins. Mr. and Mrs. Timkins accept invitations to meet his lordship at Miss Demirep's balls and parties, which, it is well known, are paid for by his lordship. Mrs. Timkins thinks Miss Demirep a most agreeable person. Yonder, in a private box, sits Snobson with Lord Dicebox, dismissed from the service for cheating at play. Snobson sits well forward, that people may see he is in good company. It may be said that these are gross and ex- treme cases, and that the persons who toady noto- riously bad characters because they are rich or have handles to their names are not fair repre- sentatives of respectable society. Let us, then, probe a little deeper, and see if the best of us are not in other ways equally guilty of the meanness and hypocrisy of holding the candle. The motives of the toady are not always sordid : he bows down to other things besides wealth and rank. There are some of us who worship genius, who habitually permit the great ability of a man to bhnd us to glaring defects in his moral character. Holding the Candle. 53 In every social relation he may be a bad man ; but he is a famous poet, or painter, or sculptor, or actor ; and we are proud to know him and shake hands with him. We do even worse than this : we countenance vulgar notoriety. A certain person, by some audacity, some preeminency in shamelessness, becomes the talk of the town. It is well known that this person is a vile character ; yet he or she soon becomes a subject of half- admiring conversation in our family circles. We are curious to hear about them, we turn in the street to look at them, their names become house- hold words in the mouths of our innocent children. It makes one blush for human nature to think how good men and good women have abased themselves befere the vilest of mankind. The days are not yet past when pious clergymen hold the candle to Jezebel in the hoj)e of a good word (towards preferment) from painted lips. The ink is scarcely dry on the page of history which records how a pious queen so far forgot her character and her position as to write a letter of thanks to a dishonoured and abandoned woman who helped her to a shameful legacy. In many seemingly little but really important matters the best of us are constantly holding the candle to the devil. Let us look nearer home. There is a neighbour of ours, one of our own class, in the same condition of life as ourselves. 54 The Savage- Club Papers. He is a very bad man — a bad liusband, a bad father, bad in every domestic relation. We know this, and yet we keep up an acquaintance with him, visit him, ask him to our house, and never venture to reproach him with his conduct ; though the moment he leaves our door-step we tln-ow up our hands, turn up our eyes, and exclaim, " What a cruel, wicked, bad man !" We hold our best wax-candles to this devil ; when, if we were but commonly honest, we should shut our doors in his face. Then, again, there is the man whose sole recommendation is his power to amuse us with quaint stories and witty sayings. He is a very bad character indeed — positively dishonest, it may be — but yet we tolerate and countenance him because he is an amusing dog. If he were not amusing, we should regard his presence as a con- tamination. Gentlemen, worthy of the name in other re- spects, are too much in the habit of leading one life at home and another out of doors. They pass with the greatest ease from the pure thoughts, pure conversation, and gentle behaviour of the domestic circle, to the ribald talk and licentious manners of the club smoking-room. Even the parson relaxes when he comes down from the pulpit, and will not scruple to talk lightly of the sins and follies of mankind. Who has not Holding the Candle. 55 known a clergyman laugli at a queer story told over the wine at some hospitable board? It is not that he is afraid, from motives of interest, to rebuke the impropriety, but that, in deference to the easy habit of society, he permits himself to be too complaisant. Other examples of candle-holding, of various shades and degrees of criminality, will occur to everyone who is accustomed to study the actions and motives of mankind ; and I am afraid that the conclusion which we must all arrive at is, that the whole fabric of society is cemented with hypocrisy, and plastered over, so to speak, with a thin compo' of insincere politeness. It is a difficult thing to keep a pure heart in this worldly world. Robert Burns sorely felt this when he wrote to his friend Mr. Hill : "I am out of all patience with this vile world for one thing. Mankind are by nature benevolent creatures, except in a few scoundrelly instances. I do not think that avarice of the good things we chance to have is born with us; but we are placed here amid so much poverty and want that we are under a cursed necessity of studying selfishness in order that we may exist." Yes, we may pity the poor who are vicious ft'om necessity, but we should have no toleration for the rich who sin out of mere politeness and the desire to please. Some earthy philoso^^her has said, that if every 5 6 The Savage- Cluh Papers. person were on all occasions to speak liis mind and say exactly wliat he thinks, the world would be Intolerable. It is very convenient to believe that ; but is it true ? "Would not the world be far more tolerable if honest true-hearted men and women would resolutely refuse to countenance every kind of hypocrisy, and suffer no kind of custom or politeness which is not founded upon sincerity? If societ}^ would band itself together for this object, the sheep would be separated from the goats, and honest folks would know their friends from their foes. It cannot be said that any man is a gentleman who permits himself to associate with, or tolerate, persons who are not gentlemen, or that anyone is pure who holds fellowship with the impure. ADAPTING FROM THE FRENCH. By JOHN HOLLINGSHEAD. BOW STREET. g>R. MORTON SCHNEIDER, who , had been out on bail, and who de- scribed himself as an English dra- e^=S!§$T^Jjl&i matic author, was brought up on remand, charged with stealing a pocket-handker- chief from the person of M. Adolphe Hyacinthe, a French " man of letters," residing at the Hotel de Provence, Leicester-square, London. The pro- secution was conducted by Mr. Coke, from the office of Coke and Littleton, and the prisoner was defended by Mr. Shadrach, of the firm of Sha- di-ach and Abednego. The prosecutor, who was examined through M. Albert, the sworn interpreter of the court, deposed that he was walking through Leicester-square, his custom always of an after- noon, on Thursday the 18th of October, when he felt a slight tug at the tails of his coat, and turning 58 The Savage- Club Papers. rapidly round with great quickness, he observed the prisoner walking quickly with great rapidity up a side street, court, or alley, leading into Soho, with what appeared to be his (the prisoner's) hand- kerchief in his hands. He (the prosecutor) fol- lowed him (the prisoner) ; but was unable to catch liim, owing to his (the prosecutor's) ignorance of the sinuous tortuosities of the neighbourhood. He saw no more of the prisoner for several days, until he met him promiscuously by chance at a table cThote or ordinary, held at a house near the Hay- market, much frequented or " used" by literary men. The prisoner then had the same handker- chief, which he openly displayed," as if rather proud of it, and the prosecutor noticed that the prisoner had had his, the rightful owner's, name taken out of the corner of the said handkerchief, and his own name put in its place. Cross-examined by Mr. Shadrach. Was not the handkerchief thoroughly cleaned when you last saw it ? Prosecutor. It was. Mr. Shadrach. Was it not very dirty — very unfit for an English audience — I mean an Eng- lishman — wlien you say you last had it in your possession ? Prosecutor. I cannot sav. Mr. Shadrach. Don't beat about the bush, sir ; tell the court the whole truth and nothing but Adapting from the French. 59 tlie truth ; was it not filthy dirty when you lost it, and clean and irreproachable when you found it ? Tlie learned magistrate here interposed. Do you admit the possession of the handker- chief, Mr. Shadrach? Mr. Shadrach. We do, your worship, and shall soon show our defence when we have finished the cross-examination of the prosecutor. The cross-examination then continued. Mr. Shadrach (to the prosecutor). You have not answered my last question ; was not the hand- kerchief spotless when you last saw it ? The prosecutor, after consulting for a few mo- ments with his solicitor, Mr. Coke, admitted that it had been cleaned. Mr. Shadrach. And a new name put in the corner of it ? Prosecutor. Certainly. Mr. Coke having declined to ask any questions, Mr. Shadrach addressed the learned magistrate for the defence. He contended, on the part of the prisoner, Mr. Morton Schneider, that the appro- priation of this handkerchief did not amount to stealing within the meaning of the Act ; it was simply a bold and successful adaptation from the French. The word " steal" was an ugly word, too often used in connection with transactions in which annexation, or less offensive terms, would be more ajopropriate. The prisoner, Mr. Morton 6o The Savage- Club Papers. Schneider, was a well -known literary man, and a member of the Dramatic Authors' Society. In the exercise of his vocation he had often taken pieces — that is, little dramas — and other property from the French, and amongst the rest from the prosecutor, M. Adolphe Hyacinthe. The prosecutor had never complained, or, if he had complained, had never brought his complaint before a legal tribunal. He allowed himself to be stripped of literary property worth many pounds sterling without saying a word, but made all the present fuss about a paltry handkerchief of the value of a few shillings. Mr. Morton Schneider never adopted more than one course in dealing with French pro- perty. What he did to French plays he did to French pocket-handkerchiefs. He relieved them, if he might be allowed the term, of all offensive impurities, made them English in fact, and accept- able to the fastidious British public, and was justly entitled to put his own name or initials in the place of the name or initials of the coarser French- man, author and proprietor. Adaptation like this, he contended, was an art, and not a crime. Even ad- mitting, which he, Mr. Shadrach, was not at all pre- pared to admit, that in adaptation the line ought to be drawn at pocket-handkerchiefs, still Mr. Morton Schneider ouo-ht not to suffer for an offence which the law had neMected to define. He should ask the learned mao-istrate to dismiss the case. Adapting from the French. 6i Mr. Coke made no remark, and the learned magistrate took time to consider his decision. The court was crowded with adapters, and there was an attempt at a^^plause near the close of Mr. Siia- drach's speech, but it was quickly suppressed. My ULTIJVlATUyVl. I. Who talks to me of " giving up"- Of lying down clesj)airing ? Who says the bitter in his cup Is bitter past the bearing ? For me, I feel the thing to do (Let fate be hard or tender) Is — like ia ^arc?e at Waterloo — To die and not surrender. II. What fierce encounters I have had, Escapes how very narrow ! My first affray was with a lad Who bore a bow and arrow. If I should ever fio-ht ao;ain That old and young offender, I see my course before me plain — To die and not surrender. Mij Ultimatwin. 63 III. And then I ran a race to snatch A laurel from Apollo, Whom very few contrive to catch, And very many follow. Amidst the throng of sons of song, The bards of either gender — E'en yet I pant and limp along — To die and not surrender. IV. I strove with Plutus day and night, But left the fray in dudgeon ; And now I wage a fiercer fight With Tempus, old curmudgeon. Go on, Destroyer! — you destroy. And Art shall be the mender. Gray hair? — I'll get a wig, my boy, Or dye and not surrender ! HENRY S. LEIGH. i i leiCfoHen^ af S^ad Solans./ ^ By the AutJior of " The Waterdale Neighbours." FRENCHMAN of genius has devoted some bitter and thrilling words to a de- scription of what he calls "the odious race of the unappreciated." The phrase is sharp and cynical ; but there is only too much truth under its sarcasm. He died himself, poor fellow, in a hospital, and his name is a scandal and a shuddering to the successful, the appreciated, and above all the virtuous. But in good truth they are an odious race, the una2Dpre- ciated. They have generally much more self- conceit than the successful — just as ugly women commonly have a far higher opinion of them- selves than handsome women — and they are all egotism and grievance, and they arc cruel, relent- '' Begotten of Sad Stars.'' ^ 65 less bores. Of course, even the unappreciated have their merits, and some of them are positively heroic in their fierce futile combats v^ith the Avind of public opinion which blows over them unheeding ; and others are more heroic still in the dignity with which they accept their fate. It is a grand endowment, the faculty of knowing how to fail ; and the unappreciated sometimes, not often, possess it. But to aj)preciate the unappre- ciated, you must not see them too often or too near. It has been my lot to see a good many of them, and very closely, and I have a short story to tell of one who was a bore indeed, but went very, very near to being a lion ; and who had to succumb at last, to clip Elysium and resign his chances of fame, not because of any fault or defi- ciency of his own, but only because fate and the world, and the flesh of oflacialism, and the devil of delay, were too strong for him, and crushed him. Perhaps of all unfortunate and pitiable race of men luider the sun of English civilisation the most unfortunate and pitiable are the race of in- ventors and discoverers. Sic vos non vohis is their motto and their epitaph — that is, when their discovery is real, when their invention is worth anything. A miserable personage was the poet of Grub-street and the Dunciad. A sad poor dog was the broken-down Bohemian of the Quar- tier Latin in the old days, when there was a VOL. II. F 66 The Savage-Cluh Papers. Bohemia, and when the Garden of the Luxembourg was yet unmenaced by the Prefect of the Seine. An Irish poor scholar, tramping the country with shoeless feet and empty stomach, was not an ex- hilarating spectacle. But the worst of these for- lorn ones was happy compared with the broken- down, luckless, unsuccessful inventor. The Grub- street hacks had their hom-s of cheap revelry, the Bohemian had his snatches of delirious joy, when they forgot booksellers and creditors, the grinding of verses and the invention of plots. Bui; your scientific inventor has no reprieve. Science is a remorseless mistress. She never leaves yom* poor tortured brain when once you have allowed her to take exclusive possession of it. She is with you ahrays, suggesting dreadful new combina- tions, racking you with fresh calculations, putting you through fearful mental processes as you eat your bread, steeping crucial problems which will not dissolve in your cup, stuffing your sleepless pillow with angles, and wheels, and decimals, and fossils, and salts, and parallaxes, and other such torments of the weary brain. As editor of a journal in a great busy ship- building, manufacturing, stock -broking town, I had many painful opportunities at one time of knowine; the unsuccessful inventor or discoA^erer. Sometimes he came in the full flush and bouncing buoyancy of first discovery, and seemed to offer a Begotten of Sad Stars" 67 quite as a favour to a journalist tlie chance of learning something in advance about the grand jjroject which was to awaken the world. The new paddle or screw which was to cross the Atlantic in three days; the mechanical contrivance which was to supersede steam ; the explosive material to do away with gunpowder ; the never-failing fire- extinguisher ; the balloon capable of being guided anywhere; the telescope destined to resolve the most distant nebulee; the new method of printing; the universal-language scheme ; the one only true and new theory of currency ; — how often, 0, how often, have such projects been expounded to my exhausted ears! The new and fresh inventor is hopeful and triumphant. He is very familiar with the names of Ministers of State, g-reat scien- tific men, and mighty steamship builders and con- tractors; and they are all positively fascinated with his scheme. " I explained it all to Stanley, sir, myself, and he was quite taken with it ; and Stanley has promised me to bring it at once under the notice of the Cabinet." " Brassey saw it in a moment ; I think he is prepared to make any terms with me." " Brewster admitted my prin- ciple at once." "You should have seen how Herschell caught at the idea." This is well enough ; but the poor broken-down creature, whose invention or discovery dates from years back, and who has been vainly knocking at every 68 The Savage- Club Papers. door, and buttonholing every influential man ever since, is only a sad spectacle. His cheeks are hollow, his chin is badly shorn, his eyes have a ghostly light in them, his hands tremble with eagerness and weakness too-ether — there is not a gleam of shirt anywhere visible about him. He can only tell you mournfully of his genius, his grand discovery, and his disappointment. Some- times he borrows half-a-crown, but not often. I do not know why it is, but I have found that though science makes paupers as well as 'litera- ture, she has not the same faculty of making beggars. Sometimes the unappreciated inventor presents himself in more stormy fashion, with fierce tale of personal grievances, affecting every Minister or living ex-Minister, with bundles of cor- respondence tending to prove corruj)tion, malice, hatred, nay, high treason on the part of at least tliree successive Presidents of the Board of Trade or First Lords of the Admiralty or War Secre- taries. He expects you to read his papers, and take up his quarrel, and write leading articles calling for the instant impeachment of the traitor, of all the traitors : and if you do take his pajoers and read them, and find, as you knew you must find, that he has not a ghost of a case against any- body, he persecutes you for days and weeks, in- sisting upon convincing you ; and, failing in that, goes away at last, and adds you to the list of his ' ' Begotten of Sad Stars. " 69 purchased and perjured enemies. One can put up with him, however. But when the inventor is a manlj, patient, dignified being, in wljose clear sad eye you read genuine intellect and devotion unajDpreciated, — one who your instinct tells you is surely in the right, and yet who,' your experi- ence of the world convinces you, will never make either money or fame by his invention ; it is hard to think him a bore, even when most he bores you — it is impossible not to wonder at the malign fate whicb condemns genius and perseverance and pa- tience to no better business than the wasting out of a life in the pursuit of something Avhich, even if found , and brought to full light, will only at best make another fortune for a capitalist, and hardly win a spray of laurel to throw upon the finder's grave. The man I have especially to speak of now was a discoverer, not an inventor. His name was Hamilton Seamark, and he made my acquaintance rather abruptly. In the provinces, a newspaper editor is not an impersonal creature, an influence, an unseen Jove hidden away in Olympian clouds, and heard only in his thunders. He is known of all men, and his editorial room is as often as not a sort of salon, club, or council-chamber for the little notabilities of the place. Therefore, Mr. Seamark, whom I had never seen before, had no difiiculty in making to yo The Savage-Cluh Papers. his way into my room one evening. He had a bmidle of papers with him, but I did not at first see in him an inventor or discoverer. He was more like an artist, or tlie conventional type of poet which still is to be fomid in some parts of the provinces. He was young, very young, small, slight and handsome, with worn cheeks and bright restless eyes. When he began to talk, he talked with amazing rapidity and much accompaniment of energetic gesture. After a little, I found that he had a couo-h which mio-ht have satisfied the notions of artistic propriety avowed by Feuillet's Delilah. " I want you to- get me justice," he said, after some very rapid preliminaries of self-introduction. "Justice. You can get it: they will listen to you ; they only listen to newspaper fellows now ; a man of science, a man of genius is worse than nothing. / am a man of science." *' And a man of genius, doubtless," I added. That was my sneer, you see ; for I was offended by his manner of alluding to the British press, the palladium of &c. &c. " And a man of genius," he quickly replied. " I have arrived at a discovery by the sheer force of genius that their hirelings never coidd have lighted on with all their instruments and their labour." " Their hirelings," I continued — still sarcastic ^^ Begotten of Sad Stars.'''' 71 — '' are, I presume, the hirelings of the British Government ?" " Thej are." ^' Board of Trade, or Admiralty, or War Of- fice, perhaps ?" " None of these. I am an astronomer." " !" This was quite out of my line. He laid a bundle of papers on my table, went to the doors — there were two in the room — looked cautiously out, to make sure that no one was within hearing, then closed the doors, came up to my desk, and gazing into my eyes with eyes that gleamed, he said : "I have discovered a new planet !" I was on the point of replying, like the hero in the play of Tlie Irish Ambassador when so- lemnly and secretly informed by a mysterious dij)lomatist that he "has seen the Swedish Am- bassador" — " The devil you have !" The announce- ment appeared to me so very uninteresting that I could not understand why my new acquaintance should be at all excited about it. He saw by my face that I did not care much about the discovery. " Don't you know what a planet is ?" he asked sharply and querulously. "Look here; I'll ex- plain." " Thank you ; you really need not explain to me what a planet is. You say you have dis- covered a new one." 72 The Savage- Club Papers. " I have discovered a new one. Good heavens ! do you think such a thing can be a matter of 02:)inion ? It is a matter of fact." " Very well ; you have discovered a new planet. What can I do in the matter ?" Then came the explanation, in an exposition so long that I should certainly have fallen asleep but for the vivacity, the energy, the bitter complaints, the querulous, feverish impatience with which it was ornamented. At times the earnestness of my lecturer rose to a passion that had something in it sublime ; at times his manner was like that of a disappointed schoolgirl, who only waits to get out of the room in order to burst fairly into tears. I was somewhat surprised. A poet, Avhose first work had just been birched by the Saturday Re- view, might have gone on in such a strain ; but a scientific man, a student of the stars, who claimed to have found a new planet ! I became interested, hoAvever ; and I, at last, got to understand his story. I spare the reader technical details, which then bewildered me, and would bewilder me again if I were to attemi:)t to explain them. Enough to say, that for years this youth — he was about five-and-twenty — had been absorbed in an effort to account for the perturba- tions of a certain planet, and had become convinced that they Avere caused by the existence of another planet hitherto unknown. Without a great tele- " Begotten of Sad Stars^.^'' 73 scope, witliout access to any observatory, without any assistance wortli speaking of from the calcu- lations of eminent astronomers, he had gradually constructed a jjerfect scheme of the place, orbit, and motions of the unknown planet : he had found it, in fact, only he had not seen it. No telescope he could get at was of any use for the purpose ; perhaps none yet made could find it. But there it was. Every test that science could help him to apply, short of that final test, he had applied, and the result had been to make his discovery a cer- tainty. Yet he had dunned our official department of astronomy in letter after letter in vain. He asked that the great observatories might be set to work to find his j)lanet with telescopes — to test his calculations, to acknowledge his discovery — in vain. They would not go into the question. He received polite and chilling answers, the most de- cisive being to the effect that no man could make such calculations — as he had made. He was in other words quietly told that he was an amateur, a sciolist, a dreamer; a man who had made a wild guess, and then invented calculations to sup- port it. This I learned during our first interview. I knew, of course, just as much about astronomy as most journalists and literary men do — that is to say, almost nothing. But I understood his case, and I thought he had been treated with unfair 74 The Savage- Club Papers. neglect, and I was anxious to do my best to serve him. Wliat could I do ? Little or nothing. We might, of course, have made j)ublic his supposed dis- covery and his calculations. TJiis I was anxious to do ; but Seamark shrank from publishing a word until he had obtained positive conviction and proof of his discovery. " I have not found the planet — actually found it," he said. " To publish my conviction and my calculations will be only to enable some other to make the final discovery, and claim share of the honour." All I could do, then, was to write letters and back up his appeals ; and I need not tell the readers of these papers how supreme is a provin- cial journalist's influence over the official lords of State science. But Seamark and 1 became friends. He was a terrible bore sometimes ; and I often told him so. He had only his one subject. He sometimes dined with me and a few other friends ; and he was silent as an owl, mitil we were left alone, or were walking home together : and then itur ad astra again. One night we were thus going home : Seamark was unusually reticent. Several times he began to say something confusedly, as if he had a confi- dence to make of which he felt half-ashamed. At last I said : '' Come, Seamark, you have something to tell ^'' Begotten of Sad Stars.'''' 75 me — out with It. Aiiytliiiig wrong in the calcu- lations ?" "Wrong in the calculations! Stuff! What ignorant men you journalists are ! Do you think mathematics and numbers chano-e like the fa- shions ?" " Wish they did. There would be variety." " But I have something to tell you. Only I am really ashamed — ^you will think me such an idiot." " Perhaps, But tell me all the same." " Then — to come to the point — " He stood still, and looked down. " I am haunted. I see a perpetual spectre at my side." " Haunted ! The haunted man ! Come, this is too much — a savant and a Positivist sees a ghost, and believes in it !" Seamark, I should say, was an indomitable Positivist. " I don't say I believe in it ; but I see it. Listen to me. Always when I shut my eyes — often while they are open and in broad day — now, at this moment, while I look at that pavement, I see my ghost !" " And what form does the grisly phantom wear?" " The worst he could assume in my eyes. I see — " and Seamark smiled a wan and dreary smile — " I see a man who is at work with a star- 76 The Savage-Club Papers. map and a telescope, and is trying to find out my planet. I have seen him this long time. I can mark his progress. He started much later than I did ; but he has maps and instruments I cannot get, and he is on the verge of success. Mark my words, he will complete his task before I do, and he will have the fame, and I shall die unknown." The thing was past laughing at. The deep genuine despair and agony in the face of the poor young fellow were cruel to look at. " I don't wonder at all," I said as cheerily as I could, " that you should have visions of this kind. A man who works and thinks at least eighteen hours out of the twenty-four, who drinks little and eats less, must have phantoms of some kind ; and one can easily trace the genesis of your goblin. The feverish child sees mad bulls coming to gore him : the mad bull you fear is a rival astronomer. There is your ghost for you ! A little rest and change of air would lay him soon enough. I wisli. Seamark, you would fall in love." " You must not think," he said irresolutely — disregarding my last suggestion — ' ' that I believe in any silly rubbish about spectral visitations. But we know very little of the more occult laws of the universe. There may be secret influences and forces, and — " "Yes; I have heard all that before. I think " Begotten of Sad Stars.'''' "jj the Davenport Brothers used to appeal to the possible existence of such laws to explain their tomfoolerj. But they were not scientific men, or Positivists." " At all events," he said, " this thing I see is not subjective. How could it be? I tell you I see this man's face now as plainly as I see yours. I could make his portrait if I w^ere a painter." " I saw a face last night in a dream as plainly as ever I saw a real face in my life." " Ah, but you don't see the same face always." He sighed wearily, and we said no more on the subject. Nor did I speak to him of it when we next met. A few days after, I called to see him, and found him looking more depressed than ever. He said, with a ghastly twitching of the face, some- thing between a spasm and a smile : " My rival makes terrible progress. He will distance me yet." I made iip my mind that day to speak to a physician, a personal friend of mine and a man of vigorous intelligence, free from any of the ped- antry of his profession, about the condition of my j)oor young astronomer. Meantime I insisted on dragging Seamark out for a walk. Usually when we thus went out we sought green fields, quiet roads, and solitude. Now I thought the sight of 78 The Savage- Club Papers. a bustling street would be far more enlivening and distracting. So we walked down the prin- cipal street of the town. The day was bright, frosty, cheery, in late December. The street was crowded, noisy, busy as Regent-street. Carriages were at every shop-door. There were glimpses everywhere of feathers and velvets and furs, of pretty faces, bright petticoats, symmetrical ankles. I insisted on Seamark's looking at everything and everybody. Some photographs in a "vsindow at- tracted me. I dragged him to the shop to look at them. He was about to turn carelessly away when something caught his eye, and his whole face flushed up. He seized me by the arm, and said in a loud and eager tone, to the amazement of some idlers who, like ourselves, were looking at the photographs : " Look there ! Look at that face ! That is my rival ! That is the man who is destined to forestall me !" I looked at the photograph he pointed to. It stood in a row with Mr. Gladstone, the Bishop of Oxford, Miss Menken, Professor Owen, and, I think. Leotard. It bore no name. It was the face of a thin, intellectual man, with bald fore- head and square jaw. " That is he," said Seamark, now more calm ; " that is the face I always see. It is an excellent " Begotten of Sad Stars.'''' 79 l^liotograiDli ; for I see the real face tliis very moment." I began to tliink tlie bystanders would regard my friend as a madman ; I therefore gladly as- sented to his proposal that we should go in and buy the photograph. How I longed that it might prove to be the likeness of some eminent Chancery lawyer or agricultural member of Parliament ! The young woman in the shop, when asked who the photograph represented, took it out of the case, looked at the back of it, and found the name written in pencil. She boggled rather over the reading of it. " It was a foreign name," she said. Seamark seized the cai^te rather abruptly and read out the name. It was that of a great living- French astronomer. " You see !" he said to me with a elauce half- triumphant, half-sad. He paid for the photograph and we came away. " I see," said I, when we were in the street, " the solution now of the whole mystery. No doubt you had seen the portrait of the great astro- nomer before, and it stamped itself on your me- mory ; and in your anxiety about your discovery his face arose in your mind as that of one likely to be a rival. The whole thing is obvious." " I never in my life saw a portrait of that man before." 8o Tlie Savage-Club Papers. " You may have seen it and forgotten it, yet the imj)ression— " " I tell you I could not have forgotten it. I never saw his portrait before. I was reading one of his lectures only last night, and it never even occurred to me that he could be the man. Do you think I coidd have failed, then, to remember his face if I had ever seen it ?" I argued no more, for he was becoming pain- fully excited. Undoubtedly the thing was strange ; but I felt convinced then — indeed, I am inclined to think still — that my explanation, or something A^ery hke it, was the true solution of the apparent mystery. But the impression wrought on the excit- able and overtasked mind of poor Seamark was profound. I suggested that he shotdd communicate with the French astronomer, who was a man of noble reputation, and especially remarkable for his sympathetic kindness to young savants. But Sea- mark would hear of nothing of the kind. " Alone," he replied, " or not at all, — all, or nothing." I confess I beijan to doubt whether there was really anything in my friend's discovery. It seemed impossible to suppose that our Astronomer Royal could be indifferent to his urgencies if they really merited serious attention. Seamark after- wards told me that he had received a series of questions or tests from the Observatory, designed, I understood, to prove rather the extent of his " Begotten of Sad Stars." 8 1 capacity to make a discoveiy, than the proba- bilities of the discovery itself; and that he had treated them with disdain — refused, in fact, to take any notice of them. It need hardly be said how little he served his object by such a pro- ceedino;. A few nights after, I returned late to my lodgings. I was a bachelor, and had furnished apartments, first-floor front, in a house which stood in a long, gaunt, broad, monotonous street, ending in a great square, on which my win- dows gave a side-glance. I had been writing a good deal all day, and was tired, but not sleepy ; and the sky over the broad moonlit square at- tracted me much, and led me to fall into a dreamy way of thinking about poor Seamark and his fatal discovery, and his spectral second- sight. The stars had a personal interest for me now, which I may confess they never had be- fore. And 3'et my intimacy with Seamark had to a great extent robbed them of their poetry, and converted them into pitiless mathematical task- masters, whom their votaries celebrate in num- bers that are only arithmetical. Nothing could be more hard, mechanical, prosaic than the life which poor Seamark led, devoted to his evil stars. The only poetic attribute of this star-worship was its cruelty. Messalina expected less of her adorers VOL. II. G 82 TJie Savage- Club Papers. than did Seamark's ruthless invisible mistress, the accursed unknown planet-Isis, which he was doomed to adore. Suddenly I saw a figure, dark against the moonlight, come hurrying across the square. I knew the slight boyish form. It was a keenly cold night, but poor Seamark wore no overcoat. He came striding along to the house where I lived, looked up at the window, and seeing no light (I had refrained from lighting my gas that I might not spoil my star-gazing) he hesitated, then stamped A'ehemently and seemed about to hurry away. I opened the window and called to him. " Let me in," he said ; " I want to speak to you. I have bad, bad news." I hurried down and opened the door : we came upstairs. Before telling me anything he pointed to a decanter that stood on a side-table. " Is that brandy?" he asked eagerly. " It is." I was surprised at the question. He pom-ed out a glassful and drank it — he who W'as usually a hater of all stimulants. " Now, Seamark, what is your bad news, — nothing dreadfully bad, I hope ?" " Only that it's all over," he said. " There's an end to all my hopes and my labours. I am late. He has found it !" I knew quite well what he meant, and I as- sumed, of course, that some iDublic announcement ' ' Begotten of Sad Stars. " 83 had claimed for the French astronomer tlie honour of the discovery. " Are you sure ?" I asked. " Have you read anything about it yourself — ^with your own eyes?" " Eead with my own eyes !" he exclaimed in bitter tones; "I saw with my own eyes. I saw him in his observatory — I saw him point the tele- scoiDC, I saw his look of final triumph. I saw him note down the spot — the hour — minutes and se- conds. It is all over. I have thrown away these vears — for nothino; !" " Then you only saw this in your dream, or vision, or whatever it is ?" " Nothing on earth can be more certain than what I saw. I knew this long time back — I knew it must come to this ; and yet I feel as if I must go mad." And indeed he talked and raved for a while like one going mad. He stormed and cursed at Astronomers'- Koyal, and scientific authorities, V and the world, and fate, and himself. At last he sat on the sofa, pressed his thin white hands to his face, and fairly burst into a passion of tears. As I looked at him, my eyes fixed only on his forehead, his long loose hair, his fair delicate fin- gers through which the tear-drops came streaming, I might have thought I gazed at the passionate an- guish of a forsaken girl. Then it struck me for the first time how singularly girlish were his form. 84 The Savage- Club Papers. his face, his gestures — his nature. Never before or since have I known such a human paradox. That penetrating, far-reaching, indomitable intellect, which had grappled alone and unassisted with calculations so abstruse and difficult that they seemed beyond the stretch of man's unaided brain, — how came it to be cooped up in that frail femi- nine body along with that fitful, passionate, weak, feminine nature ? As the unhappy young man sat there and sobbed, one felt almost compelled to take his hand and soothe and pet him, so wonder- fdlly did he resemble a weeping woman. Seamark remained with me that nio;ht. We sat up nearly all night, and I have to confess that I made him drink a good deal of brandy. He calmed and brightened of course, just as a girl does, after his outburst of tears, but his conviction of the reality of what he had seen was unshaken. Did I believe in it ? I affected not to ; but in my heart I think I had now become almost as credulous as he. Yet I started as if I too had seen something preternatural when, on opening Galignani a few days after, just as the post had brought it, I read a lengthened accomit of the discoveiy of a new planet made at the Paris Ob- servatory by poor Seamark's rival. It was Sea- mark's planet. Of course we then wrote and published, and vindicated his claims — too late. The French astro- ' ' Begotten of Sad Stars. " 85 nomer behaved most generously, and frankly de- clared on examination of the whole question that he was convinced Seamark was really the first dis- coverer. Our official astronomers expressed a polite regret that Seamark had not furnished the calcu- lations they sought, which might, they thought, perhaps have led to a decisive discovery prior to that of the Frenchman — to whom now, of course, they felt bound to award the honour. Seamark's name bubbled for a little while on the surface of scientific controversy, and then disappeared. The French astronomer is accepted by the world and by science as the discoverer of the planet. Seamark ought, perhaps, to have dramatically died or killed himself then; but he lived, and after a while got over his cruel disappointment, and went to work afresh among his pitiless stars. I removed to London, and for a while lost sight of him ; but I heard of him for the last time some year or two back. He joined a scientific party which set out to make astronomical observations in the Southern Seas; in a night of storm he was washed off" the deck of the vessel in mid-ocean and drowned. By a freak of fate, which seems almost as strange as the one inexplicable part of the story I have told, he was doomed to lie in death where the stars to which he gave up his life could not even shine upon his grave. THE RAVEN. jFrom tl)c 6fvman. By John Oxenford. I. The moon is bright, and clear the sky; The robber from the gibbet swings ; Tlie Raven from the wood must hie, For mighty hunger stirs his wings. II. He scents the dainty feast afar, And first of all the guests wall be ; And widely spread his pinions are, As loud he croaks — " Tlie best for me !" III. He picks the carcass at his ease. Until the face arrests his gaze, AVhen suddenly his cawings cease—r What can the Raven tlms amaze ? The Raven. 87 lY. It is liis master — sure enouc-li — The man who kei^t him long ago, And often from his hand so rough A sav'ry morsel would bestow : V. He gave him meat, he gave him bread, He call'd him " Bonny Jack," of old ; Now hangs he on the gibbet dead ; The kindly hand is stiff and cold : VI. He patted him in days long past. And smiled on him with kindly eyes : — The bird has found his lord at last. And shrieking from the gibbet flies. VII. I 1 He hears the croakings loud and glad Of other ravens by his side : I Poor Jack, they think, is surely mad — The taste of flesh he can't abide. i VIII. The moon is bright, the sky is clear. The robber from the gibbet swings : One bird, to whom his lord was dear, 1 His way into the forest wings ! \ Terrible Telegrams. BY THOMAS ARCHER. AM of opinion that some place of residence should be provided for quiet old-fashioned j^eople who find it impossible to accustom themselves to the rapid and to them most obnoxious changes (misnamed " improvements") which are supposed to be essential to what is called progress. Such people as myself, for in- stance, who cannot run, and are equally unable to get out of the way, are continually being knocked down by the wheels of the triumphal car of the nineteenth century. Cannot the Government set apart a suburb for our especial benefit ; — a place to which no local railway has yet penetrated ; where no hansom cabs linger along the roadways for the purpose of making furious dashes at timid pedestrians who venture on a crossing ; where clean and genteel flys may be hired of a civil John l-,ilmcr, del. Dalziel Bros , sc. THE TELEGRAM. Terrible Telegrams. 89 stable-keeper ; and a couple of sedan chairs, re- tained for ordinary evening visitations in the next street, to be carried by the carpet-beater and general odd-man and messenger,' assisted by the son of the small -coal man or the greengrocer? It may be replied that there are suburbs already in existence, where such a condition of things might easily be inaugurated, — suburbs, or, at all events, adjacent though outlying country places, where there are as yet no railway stations. I can only say, I don't know one in which, directly a few select inhabitants take quiet possession in the hope of remaining undisturbed by the restless, soul- less, mechanical activity of the age, a speculative builder does not run up hideous streets of semi- detached villas, and form a colony of stockbrokers' clerks and aspiring tradespeople, who leave their shops behind daily at five o'clock. The conse- quence is, that to take these people to town every morning there is an omnibus competition which en- tirely excludes the original residents from all the inside seats ; and finally, a branch railway, and a wretched, horribly new stone-and-stucco station disfigures the place ; the best walks are cut up and spoilt; the streets are infested with hordes of navigators, who demoralise the labouring population and increase the number of the beershops, and Ave are all scared by day and kept sleepless by night by the scream and ratfcle of the trains. The whole 90 The Savage- Club Papers. scandalous proceeding is consummated by the ar- rival of a telegraphic apparatus and the newspa- pers; nasty closely -printed unwieldy great broad- sheets, from which if anybody ventures to read them — and it is Avhat I never could bring my mind to do — the ink all comes off upon one's gloves and soils one's muslin dress. It is to the telegrams that I personally have the greatest aversion, how- ever : not that there is any objection whatever to the curious discovery of the powers of electricity. The wonders of science as exhibited at the Poly- technic, where I make a point of going twice a year, have ever been a source of gratification to me ; and I would have them made useful in the in- struction of youth at half price : but nothing now is too high or too sacred for trade ; or, as those who are ashamed to call it by its right name, say, "for the advancement of commercial interests." Of all the modern inventions which have served to overthrow sentiment among us, to abolish refine- ment, and to use the results of a high material civilisation for the purpose of establishing a men- tal and spiritual barbarism, I regard the Electric Telegraph as the worst. Telegrams (the very word is, I am told, a barbarous and illiterate jargon) are illustrative of what is called modern progress — of the progress which leaves everything best worth having behind, and, for the sake of living faster, enjoys nothing. If they have not almost abolished Temhle Telegr'ams. 91 writing, they have at least nearly put an end to epistolary correspondence. We get no letters now ; only brief uninteresting and frequently ungram- matical communications, scrawled illegibly on a tiny scrap of flimsy tissue note-paper. Who ever re- ceives a good, honest, earnest letter now-a-days ? — a letter which the writer has sat down to as to a labour of love, and, warming with the task, has extended over a fair sheet of gilt-edged post, and then crossed'? In a few more years there will be no- body left who keeps packets of letters tied up with ribbon, in secret nooks and drawers of their desks and bureaus. There will be no desks and bureaus, perhaps ; no letters certainly ; it will all be done by telegram, and an invitation will be sent an hour before dinner-time, with just "4.30 sharp" upon it; and the reply will be, " Yes, thanks." This, however, is sarcasm. It ill becomes me to satirise that which should rather be regarded with serious grief; for consider how much letters have had to do with the lives of people like myself: how al- most every epoch in our quiet existences has been marked by epistolary correspondence. I never re- ceived but two of those dreadful telegrams in my life, and one of them was delivered to me in mistake for somebody else. It contained only these words : "All right. A girl. Both doing well." It gave me a dreadful shock, for I remem- bered how the advent of a little stranger in our 92 Tlie Savage- Club Papers. family bad always been accompanied by a series of observances which indicated that an immortal beino; had been ushered into the world. There was first a white kid glove on the knocker, then a cushion stuck with pins of welcome, next the solemn whispering reception of visitors by the young motlier, wdio sat up in a lace cap and a large white shawl : and of half-cro^\Tis bv the nurse, who assiduously produced light refreshments on the occasion ; then there was the christening, with white favours and a quiet party ; and a silver mug, a papboat, a coral and bells from godfathers and godmothers. All these ceremonies w^ere the occasion of letters wdiicli kept alive family affec- tion, and made life something more than a mere passing reminder, and time worth a better record than the mere memorandum of a railway clerk. Letters were a part of the observances of so- ciety in those days. There were proper seasons and occasions for them, quite independent of any- thing happening which required to be communi- cated — at Christmas-tide especially, and on New- Year's day, and birthdays, and on hearing inci- dentally of some piece of good fortune or any sorrow which had overtaken a friend. I hope we have not yet reached such a pitch of brutality that we could communicate by telegram on any of these occasions, giving our secret thoughts and' tender sympathies- to the ear of the clerk, and Terrible Telegrams. 93 sending tliem briefly in a couple of lines. I re- member even in my school-days how much letters had to do with our daily life. There were the let- ters that we got from home with the cake and the parcel of fruit, the new writing-desk and the box of toys. Then there were the holiday letters, written just before breaking-up days, wherein we were supposed to write the sentiments of our hearts by beginning " My dear Parents," and declaring tui* hope that we should " ever be mindfid of the constant love and care" bestowed upon us by our dear friends, and "of the inestimable advantages to be derived from the pursuit of those studies to which we were directed by those to whom the care of our education was intrusted." How well I remember the old formula ! I have some of my own letters in my desk now, along with those others — those mournful deep-black-bordered ones that came to me with the first great sorrow that almost laid my life low ; but which, coming as mes- sengers of terrible intelligence, had yet something of healing in their wings, because of the love and compassion that dwelt in the words by which that awful message was conveyed. Tlie ink is all brown and faded now, but the remembrance of the sorrow- lives, the remembrance of the sorrow and of the tenderness, both of which can be recalled as it were in their first freshness by a glance at those blurred and paling characters. 94 The Savage- Cliib Papers. Shall I, or will anybody who was at school with me, at the Miss Walkintwos' establishment, ever forgetthe " breaking-up day itself?" This too was anticipated by the receipt of a letter directed to each young lady in the school. We saw the elder Miss Walkintwo write them ; we saw the younger Miss Walkintwo (Miss Jane, who took the juniors) seal and direct them ; and we knew that when we went up to bed we should find them on our pillows ; but they were a part of our proper observance of the proprieties, and we each felt that it gave an air of consummate grace to our break- ing-up party to have "the pleasure of our com- pany requested to an evening assembly of the pupils and friends." In the same spirit we all met on the night in question, as though we had not all known for a week before what dresses (down to the minutest end of ribbon) we shoiild each wear. In the same spirit we entered and were re- ceived by Mrs. Walkintwo (dear old lady !), in the lace cap which each of the elder girls had been shown separately and secretly in the best bedroom ; and by the Misses Walkintwo, who smiled a real welcome to us from their cheery hard-worked anxious-looking faces. Poor ladies ! they must have longed for the holiday time even more than we did, though they had their bills to make out and to pay, house to refurbish, and preparations to make for the next half year. In the same spirit we Terrible Telegrams. 95 partook of the very thin bread and butter which some of us had seen in the very process of cutting, and of the seed-cake, the odour of which had per- vaded the entire house ever since our makeshift dinner at twelve o'clock — and our hurried flight to the mysteries of white muslin toilettes with blue and pink ribbons. Probably the dancing- master and the writing-master had received simi- lar invitations ; and even some of the brothers of young ladies (brothers who wore jackets and could dance) were expected to be present. The dancing-master, Monsievu* la Sarre — it was reported by one sarcastic girl that his real name was Lazarus; and he certainly had a very hooky nose, and spoke through it — was resplen- dent on these occasions in an embroidered velvet waistcoat and a dress-coat lined with white satin, and such small feet, that when he came into the room and bowed, with his hand on his breast, and talked with more of a foreign accent than ever, he looked as thouo-h he had been stuck there on two polished ebony wooden legs. Then there was Mr. Ruleight, the drawing- and writing-master, whose daughter was in the school ; and once I remember that an old pupil, on her return fi-om her marriage-tour, paid vis a visit. Her husband, who called for her in the evening, was a fine man buttoned up to the chin in a tight frock-coat, and with such curly hair and large whiskers that we 96 The Savage- Club Papers. all tlioiight he was an officer in the army, or at all events a person of great distinction ; till that same sarcastic Emma Goo-sbury said her brother knew him very well, and that he was a bottled- beer merchant, besides keeping a ham-and-beef shop in the Kingsland-road. I don't know why I should have grown so cparrulous, even thou oh I have lived to be an old maid. Yes, I have none of those other letters in my secretary — letters that tell of the heart's devo- tion, and of which some of my friends have re- ceived so many, and have allowed me to participate in their joy, not always lasting. I might have had, but it Avas not to be. There came to me one day a black-bordered messenger instead of a white- winged dove, and the page that might have been opened in my book of life was closed for ever. I will not think of that now, not that the thought gives me pain. But I have gone quite away from the subject of telegrams. I said I had only re- ceived two. The second was from my dear niece Bertha. She too was educated at the Miss Walk- intwos', one of their last pupils previous to their retiring from business ; but her parents live in the country, and I have ever tried to act to her as though she had been my own daughter. She is a fiery, imperious creature, for she was a spoilt child always, and very, very beautiful, / think. So "William thought ; for she no sooner left school Terrible Telegrams. 97 tliaii he wanted to many her, and married they were before she was twenty years old. I thought it would have been better for her to have had some household or domestic training first; but that, it appears, has gone out of fashion too. At all events, as her future husband had a good business in the City, they obtained her parents' consent ; and my only fear was that her passionate temper might be a trouble to her. Fortunately William was one of the best of men — slow, but with an amiability that nothing could ruffle, and a fine constitution. They were a handsome couple, and I gave them all my old silver tea-service, and the best spoons, for a wedding-present. They have been married now very little above six- months, and I have more than once had occa- sion to warn Bertha not to give way to her temper, or to try her husband's affection too far. Judge, then, of my surprise, my almost horror, when, the day before yesterday, I received a "telegram" from Bertha, saying no more than — " Dear Aunty, come to me at once ; I am so miserable." You might have knocked me down with a feathei- ; but I sent Hannah for a fly — she brought a cab, and it was full of muddy straw, and some- body had been smoking tobacco inside it — and drove off to Barbarossa - villas at once. What could have happened? When I got in. Bertha flew into my arms and became hysterical. VOL. II. H 98 TJie Savage- Club Papers. "What— what is the matter, child?" I ex- claimed. " Nothing between you and William, I solemnly hope and trust?" " I — I was very wicked, and behaved so badly to him this morning ; and I deserve it all, and I am a wretch. But 0, how could he be so cruel ?" she sobbed. " Why, what has he done ?" said I in dis- may. " He went away without a word, or, at all events, I didn't listen, for I went into my own room, and banged the door ; but look — look there !" 1 saw what it was — a telegram. 0, how I loathed the sight of the wretched scrap of blue paper, with its red letters ! This was it : " It is too heavy for me. I cannot come ; but it Avill be brought home to you, and you will have to pay for it." What was to be done ? I tried to cheer her ; told her to hope for the best; that he had sent that hateful message in the heat of passion, which would have subsided over the rational employment of writing a letter. It was with difficulty that I could get her to take a cup of tea. Wearily the hours went on — eight, nine, ten, eleven, midnight — and she sat there dumb, weeping, almost heart- broken. Suddenly there was the sound of a key in the Terrible Telegrams. 99 lock of the street-door, a foot upon tlie stair, and her husband burst into the room. He looked Avith surprised inquiring glances from one of us to the other. With a great crj Bertha sprang into his arms, her face iTpon his shoulder. " So YOU have forgiven me, dear William ! you have come back !" she said in broken accents. " Come back !" he replied ; "of course I have. What ever is the matter, my love ? — you got my message, didn't you? — and the turkey's in the passage, I see. You've paid for it, haven't you ?" " Paid for it !— 0, WiHiam ! Yes ! no— what do you mean ?" " Please, ma'am," said the servant-girl, who came in at that moment, " I wished to tell you as the man that have brought the turkey he's my fust- cousin, and I asked him to step into the kitchen, ma'am, till sech times as you was re- covered sufficient for to pay for it." " I'll go and see to it," said I, and went out of the room, leaving the young couple together. MRS. RALPH GREEMi^G'S FIRST LODGER. By Arthur Locker. ISS yiEGINIA GREENING pre- sents her compliments to the Editor of the Savage- Club Papers^ and will he kindlj permit the accompanying narrative to appear in his widely-circulated pages? Although not herself a member of that renowned coterie, she distinctly recollects a great-uncle, Ben- jamin Greening, Physician-Extraordinary to his late Majesty King George the Third, who in his youth accompanied Dr. Johnson and Mr. Savage to the Club, and passed a most delightful evening there. She remembers having heard that on this occasion the Doctor sang his famous song 'And so says Mrs. Johnson,' which excited peals of merriment. Miss Greening will feel highly obliged by the Editor's consent, as there are ramifications of her family scattered all over the world, and she wishes Mrs. Rali)h Greenhujs First Lodger. lOi them to read the o-enulne account of an unfortunate occurrence which has been shamefully misrepre- sented. Miss Greening is at home every afternoon at five o'clock, and will be most ha2:)py to see the Editor, or any of his collaborateurs. Tea and coffee are always provided. Bruton-street, Mayfair, October 18 — . The Greenino;s are an ancient and honourable family. Om- name is unmistakably Saxon ; we did not come over with the Conqueror — we were here before him. We remained rather sulky for a couple of hundred years after the Battle of Hastings, as befitted sturdy Englishmen; but at length loyally attached ourselves to the service of the Plantagenet kings. My ancestor Ralph Grenpige was the archer who carried the famous message from Edward the Third to the Black Prince at the Battle of Cressy : " Let the child win his spm's, and let the day be his!" My ancestor Lionel Grenynge was in Henry the Seventh's Exchequer, and many a time has as- sisted that avaricious monarch to count his money. Another Ralph Greeninge — observe the gradual change of spelling — was Deputy Almoner of the Stone Scullery under the Virgin Queen, and in that capacity rode between Drake and Frobisher 102 The Savage- Club Papers. to Tilbuiy Fort (the Southend Eailway was not then open) in the eventful year 1588. But the time would fail me to tell of all the official services performed hy the Greening family. One was Governor of Lundy Island ; another (of Republican tendencies) carried General Cromwell's spyglass at the Battle of Dunbar; an- other mended the pen with which the Peace of Ryswick was signed; another, when grouse-shoot- ing in the neighbourhood, was eye-witness to the Chevalier's landing at Moidai*t; another stood by Captain Cook's side on the fatal shore of whyhee. What more need I say? The present generation of Greenings are equally distinguished. Tlu'ee of them are in the Army, seven in the Church, and fifteen of them in various branches of the Civil Service. Have I not, then, a right, as aunt to the late Ralph Podmore Greening, to take up my pen for the purpose of denying the following atrocious scandal, which j)lease, Mr. Editor, to print in italics: A member of the Greening family is gaining her livelihood by letting furnished lodgings to criminals! This intelligence has already penetrated to the East Indies. My cousin. Bob Greening, Canton- ment Magistrate at Kumaon, has written two full sheets about it, via Marseilles. "What is the real truth about this discreditable affair?" he asks in- dignantly. For the benefit, therefore, of the various branches Mrs. Ralph Greening's First Lodger. 103 of the Greening family, and of the pubhc at large, I purpose telling all I know of the matter; and, the better to accomplish my object, will begin at the beo;innino;. People say that I am proud, and have an ab- surd veneration for purity of blood. I plead gnilty to the charge, and have never ceased to regret my brother William's marriage. You may remember, my dear relatives (I am addressing the Greening brotherhood), that he married Sophia Podmore, only daughter of Podmore and Pundle, the great soap-boilers at Rotherhithe. I never thought the Podmore blood would do us any good. My brother William died, leaving five children. I need say nothing of the others. I shall simply follow the fortunes of my favourite nephew — Ralph. He was a well-disposed gentlemanlike boy, in spite of the Podmore blood, and might have done well, had not that silly old Lady Podmore — Sir Samuel was knighted, you may recollect, for presenting his late Majesty with the freedom of the City in a soap- dish — had not that silly old Lady Podmore died, and left Ralph nine thousand pounds. I certainly liked Lady P. She was very good-natured, but she was vulgar and silly, and effected my nephew's ruin by means of that fatal bequest. He quitted the University of Cambridge without taking his degree, which was the more provoking, because his tutor, the Reverend Isaac Tofts, assured me • 104 The Savage- Cluh Papers. • that he never knew a young man with such a head for pure mathematics : it was to an ancestor of mine — Greorge Greening, Fellow of Caius College, and not to that palavering Frenchman Pascal — Rascal, I think it should be — that Sir Isaac New- ton Avas indebted for his theory of gravitation. To return to Ralph. He made no attempt to follow any profession, but wandered in an objectless man- ner up and down the continent of Europe; while at the premature age of twenty-two he married the eldest daughter, of a small and struggling draper, with nine in family, at Beccles in Nor- folk. The news came upon our quiet menage in Bru- ton-street like a thunderbolt : Mr. Ralph Podmore Greening, Mrs. Ealph Podmore Greening^ and on the envelope, Sarah Sabrina Welsh. " Let us thank Providence," I said at length, addressing my poor sister Carry, who sat the pic- ture of grief, with her teacup trembling in her hand, " that Ralph has done no worse. He might have married a foreigner ; she is at any rate an Englishwoman, and, I trust, a member of the Ano-lican Church." " Sadly vulgar, I fear," murmured Carry, with her salts to her darling nose. " Let us suspend our judgment, dear, till we see her," I replied. "With all his weaknesses, and in spite of the Mrs. Ralph Greening's First Lodger. 105 Podmore blood, Ralph was a Greening, and a gen- tleman. After the honeymoon he wrote us a very nice note, asking permission to bring his wife to call upon us. We assented, but our misgivings were terrible. I fully expected to encounter a young person whose charms would be most fitly described by the vulgar adjective " blowsy." I was agreeably disappointed — is tliat correct English, Mr. Editor? Mrs. Ralph proved to be a timid little blushino; creature, with a soft g-entle voice. I actually might have mistaken her for a lady, had I not been aware of her parentage. Of course she was pretty — boys of two-and-twenty must have good looks — but I had expected a different sort of beauty. She had soft dark eyes and brown hair, a very fair complexion, and a trim little figure. I am ashamed to confess — and Carry and I nearly quarrelled over it — that I fell in love with Mrs. Ralph before she had been half an hour in my company. Perhaps, however, it was as well that I did so, for a pair of more helpless babies never plighted troth to each other. Ralph answered an adver- tisement inviting him to speculate in Australian copper mines. He accepted the offer, and in three years had lost every farthing of Lady Podmore's bequest. He was too shamefaced to apply to his friends for assistance, or I have no doubt Sir Lewis Greening, who is hand and glove with the io6 The Savage- Club Papers. C: — 1 S — t — J, would have got liim some snug governorship in the West Indies, instead of which the foohsh creature buried himself in a barbaria2i quarter of London, called the New North-road, where I discovered him, with an immense vulgar brass plate on his door, selling wine and coals on commission ! I persuaded Sir Lewis to buy some of his coals, but they turned out very slaty ; while as for his wine, Colonel Greening of the — th, wdio ordered a few dozen for the mess, says that they were obliged to make a present of it to the non- commissioned officers on St. Patrick's day, and that an Irish sergeant said it went down fairly enough when its flavour was disguised with j)lenty of whisky. Poor Ralph was getting into a bad way, and Carry and I, though our means are but small, were privately allowing his Avife ten shillings a w^eek, when he caught a severe cold, from standing all day in the rain among the coal-trucks at King's- cross — ^poor dear creature! — and died. As soon as the first burst of grief ^vas over, the poor little widow had to think about gaining a livelihood for herself aiid her two babies. She could not retm-n to her parents, for her father had failed in business, and was living on the charity of his friends. I afterwards learnt that though a draper by trade, his mind was absorbed in geo- logical pursuits, and that he was always willing il/rs. Halpli Greening's First Lodger. 107 to desert Horrocks's longcloths for the chance of securing an ammonite or a trilobite. Mrs. Ralph revolved various schemes in her pretty little helpless head. She would do mantle- making and shoe-binding for the shops, she would advertise for musical pupils, she would get a sew- ing machine. At length somebody whispered in her ear, "Why not let lodgings ? a mint of money may be made by letting lodgings !" My family pride was sorely wounded when I reflected that a person who bore our honoured name, and in whose children's veins the Greening blood (though diluted with the inferior fluids of Podmore and Welsh) was actually flowing, should be about to engage in this humiliating avocation ; but Necessity has no Laws, as Sir Lewis observed in Latin when he kindly gave me a cheque for twenty- five guineas, — for I went begging all round the family, and raised a very pretty little sum. I persuaded Mrs. Ilalj)h to settle in a somewhat more accessible part of London than the New North-road, and she ultimately took a small house in Duberly-square, in the N.-W. district, a highly respectable, but thoroughly middle-class locality. And now, after this prolonged but absolutely necessary exordium, it becomes my duty to nar- rate the real occurrences which led to the circula- tion of those shameful rumours — rumours which have even penetrated so far as to poison the peace io8 The Savage- Club Papers. of families resident under tlie shadow of the Hi- malayas—I allude to the Cantonment Magistrate at Kumaon. Sabrina — for I am so fond of j\Irs. Ralph that, thouo-h the daufditer of a mere retail tradesman, whose family annals fade into ignominious ob- scm-ity as soon as you reach the grandfather, I frequently address her by her Christian name — Sabrina kept but one maid. I perceive that this is an inelegant sentence, the parenthesis is longer than the what's-his-name, but I cannot pause over errors of grammar. My feelings are too deeply stirred — the honour of the Greening family is at stake. Sabrina kept but one maid. Her name was Fox, Matilda Fox, an honest, hardworking, faithful, but somewhat eccentric young person. Her manner was far more familiar than we should have tolerated in Bruton-street, and her accent was exceedingly vulgar. With my own ears I heard her sliout the following information from the area for her young mistress's benefit: ^' Ilim a going Jiout, and loe donH ivani notlun from nohody.'''' But I can excuse this rude familiarity, and also pardon the discordant hues visible in her bonnet, when I reflect that she was born and bred in Mile End, and until the age of fifteen had never been farther west than Aldgate pump ! What a be- nighted existence ! She was large in person, strong- armed, pleasant-looking, but not at all beautiful. M)\s. Ralph Greening's First Lodger. 109 The clilldren adored her ; little Mrs. Ealpli was rather afraid of her. Enono;h of Matilda Fox's characteristics. Let me go on to say that the house was nicely furnished, and a bill announcing that apartments were to be let was exhibited in the window. It was the month of October, and the usual October pheno- mena were visible. The days were drawing in, Berkeley-square was strewed with dead leaves, our drawino:-room fire was lighted, and Sir Lewis had returned from Scotland to Old Palace-yard. But I am straying from the N.-W. district. Several persons had called during the day at Sabrina's house, but as none of them had engaged her lodgings, the foolish creature became quite de- sponding, although she had only embarked in the business about eight hours before. At length, just at dusk, " between the lights," as my housemaid expresses it, a loud and sonorous rat-tat-tat-tat sounded at the door. Matilda flew upstairs from the kitchen, while Mrs. Ralph hid herself in the par- lour. On the steps stood a tall stout man, with a good deal of hair upon his features. " Quite the gentleman" — Matilda presently informed her mis- tress, but she afterwards acknowledged that she would have liked his looks better if he had not been so closely buttoned up — she would have pre- ferred a more liberal exhibition of linen. He car- ried nothing in his hand but a small brown-paper no TJie Savage- Club Papers. parcel, and spoke in a loud autlioritatiA^e voice, likea"hofficer." " Haw !" he began, as he pulled his mous- tache. " Are you the mistress or the servant?" " The servant, sir," answered Matilda. " Haw ! I never like dealing with servants. Call yom' mistress." So Mrs. Ralph appeared from behind the par- lour door, blushing with excitement. The stranger pulled off his hat, and made her an exaggerated bow. '' Madam," he said, abandoning the haughty tone with which he had crushed Matilda, and speak- • incr with an air of easy condescension — "Madam, I'm an officer of Engineers, and I want a sitting- room and bedroom. If I like your apartments, I shall stop six months. In a day or two you'll see a ' crow's nest' on that church yonder. We're going to make a military survey of Camden Town." Tlie lodgings were then examined, and ap- peared exactly suited to the officer's require- ments. "Have my instruments come?" he suddenly said to Matilda. " No, sir, nothing's come as I know of." " Confound those optical scoundrels, they're always behind time ! An Engineer officer's no- where without his theodolite. Lucky I left my Mrs. Ralph Gveenin(jB First Lodger. 1 1 1 luggage at the Langliam. I fear I can't take your lodgings, madam," he said to Sabrina. "0, sir," sighed Mrs. Ralph in a tone of dis- appointment. " Well," he remarked relentingly, " perhaps I'd better stop now I'm here. But you must make me very comfortable, madam." " That I'm sure we'll do," said Sabrina. " You mustn't let the children annoy me. I've been very nervous ever since I went through the Indian Mutiny." " They shall be always kept downstairs, sir." " Very well, I agree to stop a week on trial." Sabrina looked joyous. Matilda nudged her mistress and whispered : " You ain't asked him for his reverences." " 0, it's the custom, I believe, sir," began the little woman, hesitating and blushing, " to give some — some reference." " Reference ! Ha ! ha !" burst out the stranger jovially, " I can give you a dozen. I hardly know where to begin. My own name, Captain Greville of the Engineers, is a pretty good reference ; but perhaps you'd better send round to my friend Lord John Haycock, of the Albany, Piccadilly ; or Sir Paul Packingham, at the Grrosvenor; or — " He poured forth such a list of fine names that Mrs. Ralph was quite overcome, and expressed herself perfectly satisfied. Matilda was less ere- 112 21ie Savage- Club Papers. dulous, and Avas about to state her suspicions, wlien Captain Greville said : " Now, we Engineers are very particular about our eating and drinking. Everything must be of the very best. Let me have a good dinner in two hours, and bring me up at once a bottle of sherry and soda-water. D'ye hear, girl ?" These last words were addressed to Matilda, in whose eye there lurked a rebellious expression. " Go at once, Matilda," said Mrs. Ralph, " and fetch everything that the gentleman re^ quu'es." Captain Greville was so much pleased with his dinner that he sent for Mrs. Ralph, and gravely complimented her on her excellent housekeeping. " But," said he, somewhat severely, as he held up a table-fork, " we Engineers are accustomed to eat off silver. I wonder that a lady of your position uses electro-plate — it's very vulgar. I hate shams. Have you no silver?" '' I have half-a-dozen tea-spoons," rej^lied Mrs. Ralph meekly. " Let me have silver at my breakfast," says the Caj)tain. " Lideed, he sha'n't have nothing of the kind," cried Matilda stoutly, when she and her mistress were in the kitchen together. " I don't believe in that captain, with all his Lord Toms and Sir Harrys. Do you know what he had in that Mrs. Ralph Greening'' s First Lodger. 113 parcel ? Nothing but a dirty brush and comb ; and I never see nobody that deserved to be called a gentleman so buttoned-up indoors. I don't be- lieve he's got a — " Next morning the captain asked for the silver spoons. " They ain't cleaned yet, sir ; and I ain't got no Avhitening," answered Matilda curtly. Captain Greville made a gesture of annoyance, but remained silent. Immediately after breakfast he said : '' Bring me a flat-iron." " A flat-iron !" asked Matilda, with a stare. " Yes," replied the captain with dignity, " a flat-iron. I want it to put on the corner of my trigonometrical plans while I'm drawing," " Wouldn't a weight be more handy, sir? We've a two-pound weight in the pantry." " I told you to bring a flat-iron ; — bring it." " Triggery medical plans indeed !" observed Matilda to her mistress. " I don't believe he's got anything of the sort. Why does he want the flat-iron hot? I popped in five minutes after- wards, and there it was between the bars." There was certainly a good deal of singularity in Captain Greville's behaviour. He talked largely of the extent of his baggage — two cab-loads' he affirmed — but he never sent for it; he stayed indoors all day, and only went out in the evening ; VOL. II. I 114 The Savage- Club Papers. no visitors called upon liim ; if on the stairs when any of the sterner sex chanced to be coming up — the glazier, for instance, or the vipholsterer with the curtain-pole — he retired swiftly to his own chamber; he kept his bedroom-door locked the whole forenoon, and when Matilda was allowed to enter it, the atmosphere smelt strongly of soap- suds and dirty linen ; he kept all the drawers locked, although the only outward and visible signs of luggage which he possessed were his hair-brush and comb. Day after day passed away. The captain lived like a fighting-cock, as Matilda expressed it, on Mrs. Ralph's cookery, and spent the remainder of his indoor life, when not asleep, in smoking cigars and drinking sherry. Day after day Matilda re- monstrated with her mistress, saying : " I'm sure he's no good ; he's got no luggage ; and you've never seen the colour of his money." At length, at the end of the week, the captain rang his bell sharply. " My bill !" Mrs. Ralph's foolish little heart fluttered with delight. " I knew he was a gentleman," she said. Matilda only tossed her head in rej)ly. The bill was made out, and taken upstairs by the landlady herself. The captain carefully scru- tinised the several items. Mrs. Ralph Greening'' s First Lodger. 115 " Yerj well, Mrs. Greening," lie said at length. " I always like to settle these things at once. Will you have a cheque, or — " Mrs. Ralph was about to say that she would willingly take a cheque, when the captain con- tinued : " No, I think I'll pay you in cash ; so I'll just step across the street, and change a twenty-pound note." One, two, three hours elapsed, and the captain did not return. Matilda went upstairs and ex- amined his apartment. His hair-brush and comb had disappeared, which she thought a bad sign, as, besides the clothes on his back, they were the only visible proj)erty of which he a2:)peared to be possessed. The same evening there sounded a j)eremptory knock at the door. Two keen-eyed gentlemen, dressed like farmers, stood there. " Got a tall stout gentleman lodging here ?" they asked Matilda. " He's gone liout, and I don't believe he's hever coming in again." " What makes you think that?" " Because he's a regular 'umbug. My missis has fed him and lodged him for a week, and never had a halfpenny of money from him." ' "It's our man, sure enough," said one of the visitors. ii6 The Savage- Cliih Papers. " What d'je mean by ' our man,' sir ?" asked Matilda. " I mean a man as we want veiy perti elderly, for half a dozen reasons — for a plate-robbery at Pimlico ; for a watch-robbery at Shoreditch Sta- tion ; for a portmanteau-robbery at the Langham Hotel." '' 0, gentlemen," cried Matilda, " ketch me, I'm agoing to faint !" And as she spoke she sank into the detectives' arms. " To think that we've been a 'arbouring such a villain. But what beats me most is that, after all his rogueries, he should be so short of shirts !" I have given this conversation vei'batim, Mr. Editor, as Matilda repeated it to me ; and you, I am sure, sir, will excuse the AOilgar idiom of this untutored native of the IMile End-road. I have simply desired to state the truth, and to show how it was that a person bearing the hon- oured name of Greenins; was reduced to the ioio- minions necessity of letting lodgings ; and how, through her infantine simplicity of character, she extended her first hospitalities to a notorious criminal. Poor thing ! Carry and I felt very * sorry for her, and made up the loss between us. Silly and helpless as she is, I cannot avoid lov- ing her ; indeed, I sometimes regard her as a daughter. il/rs. Ralph Gi^eening'^s First Lodger. 117 I have just heard the most terrible news. I entirely retract the observation I made about a daughter. For the future, Sarah Sabrina Green- ing must be a stranger and an alien to us. She is once more engaged to be married ! — and to whom ? Gracious powers ! why, to a middle-aged widower named Biggs, with six children, carrying on an extensive business as a pork-butcher in the Hamp- stead-road ! If the marriage appears in the Times, and she advertises herself as widow of the late Ralph Podmore Greening, Carry and I will never forgive her. What a gradual deterioration ! Pod- mores were bad, Welshes worse, Biggses are in- sufferable. What is to become of those two inno- cent babes, in whose veins the Greening blood is coursing ? Are they to mingle with the offspring of the pork-butcher ? I emphatically say, " No !" and darling Carry echoes the observation. We Avill adopt them. With the deepest sense of obligation for yom' exceeding courtesy, I remain, dear Mr. Editor, Your obliged and obedient servant, Virginia Greening. -'7<*g3r*5:f^:Mc:i>=5^ Cde Vmm in i\)t WoA Escaped the noise and whirl of town, The feverish toil, the narrow aim Of those who struggle for the crown Of Fortune or of fleeting Fame, A wearied mind, a heart bereft Of trust and love I with me bore, Nor sigh'd to quit the land I left, Nor smiled to reach the further shore. II. And yet that new-found coast was fair — A bay where arching aisles of rock On each hand lift their spires in air, And foremost meet the billows' shock. Behind them winding cliifs expand. Bright to the brink with waving grain And all the riches of the land Salute the splendour of the main. llie Vision in the Wood. iiQ I J ) III. I From thence I ^azed on folded hills, I On M^ooded vales or orchards meek ; 1 Beside their bounds the tinklino; rills j Reflect the apple's crimson cheek. j Ah me, how once, in scenes like these, I Mj heart to Nature's voice had thrill'd, | AVhile by her beauty and her peace j Each meaner thought was hush'd and still'd ! " 1 \ IV. i 'Twas something to lament the past, ] To feel a yearning faint and low j For the sweet glamour fancy cast i 1 Upon the days of long ago, ; As — scanning life's horizon line — ) One mourns a love too early set, ] And knows his sorrow more divine ' Than any joy that lingers yet. \ i i V. ', .1 Then, 'neath regret for what had flown, j There stirr'd a tremulous desire Like the first gleam of embers blown ] Into a fitful transient fire — ; A faltering hope that from its death, j Or seeming death, my soul might rise \ Quick with the life of love and faith — j The life of human sympathies. ^ 120 The Savage- Cluh Papers. VI. One eve within a ttingled wood I roam'd ere sunset ; pine and oak And young acacia stemm'd the flood Of tidal gold that else had broke Li dazzling glory o'er my course ; Now, glancing through the leafy shade, It struck the boughs with soften'd force. Or, wavering round the stems, it play'd. VII. The woodbine quiver'd in its glow ; The wild bee, with transfigm-ed wing. Shone as it rose ; the runnel's flow, When welling from its darksome spring. Surprised, grew bright ; my spirit, too. Issuing from depths of sombre thought. Met the mild splendour as it flew. And sudden gleams of youth recaught. VIII. And saw I, by that magic beam, The thicket's vista widening yield And frame a picture like a dream, A moving scene — an English field. An elm-fringed lane, a gabled roof, A watching face the casement nigh. Whose smiles were wrouo-ht into the woof And warp of all my destiny. Isaac Brown, del. Dal/icl Bros., sc. THE VISIOX IX THE -WOOD. Tlte Vision in the Wood. 121 IX. Througli my tranced brain a voice long liusli'd. In subtle music gently wound, Within my breast old feelings gusli'd, Responsive to tli' invoking sound ; And as a sand-lock'd bark once more Rocks 'neath the tide's advancing leap, My stranded hopes and aims of yore Rose buoyant on love's surging deep. The twilight fell, an amber rain Of moonlight steep'd the holy spot — Did sense deceive ? did fancy feign ? — Methought a Presence unforgot Sail'd from the shadow. Never, sooth. Did lovelier mien the sight engage — • Fair as a poet's dream in youth. Sweet as its memory in his age. XT. If audible utterance then was mine I know not ; but my spirit cried To her who fi^om the far confine Of bliss had wander'd to my side, " 0, earliest, latest, only love. Forgive the heart where thou wast tln'oned Its lapses from the life above, Thy better influence disown'd ! 122 The Savage- Cliih Papers. XIT. Forgive me for the scoffer's taunt, The worldling's greed of wealth and power, Or mean supremacies that vaunt Their pageant state, their transient hour ; Forgive the doubt of human worth, — How could he doubt, who knew thine own ? - Forgive the will that found in earth The immortal spirit's goal and zone. XIII. Lo, here at thy dear feet I fling This sordid self — again aspire, Again count love a holy thing. And duty dearer than desire, And doing good in humble ways A joy beyond the reach of fame. And right more blest with God to praise Than wrong with all the world's acclaim !" XIV. The vision waned ; I gain'd the steep ; The moonlit hamlet smiled below ; A path of splendour cross'd the deep — From far I caught its musing flow. With chasten'd heart, and self-accused, I bless'd Him, who in forms of sense. Or grand or lovely, has infused For man redeeming influence. The Vision in the Wood. 123 XV. For still, as taught bard's earliest lays, A spirit-life in Nature dwells, And mystic power the soul doth raise When sunset fades on ocean swells ; And tender tones from stream and grove With life's pathetic memories blend, And lift the heart through human love To Him who is love's source and end. ARTEMUS WARD AMOx\G THE SHOSHO.XES. BY EDWARD P. KINGSTON/- AREIOR, M'hat do you say? Shall we go to Big Creek?" said i^rtemus. "Why not? It must be a queer place to see, and to lecture there will be some- thing droll to do. We Avill announce TJie Pioneer Lecture in the Shoshone Nation,'''' was my reply. ''We'll do it, Warrior. Only take care to have at the bottom of the bill ' Admission, one scalp; front seats, two scalps.' Noble War- rior, it's agreed to. Let's take a di'ink." It was a playful idea of j)oor Artemus to call me "Warrior." Before leaving Sacramento for * Mr. Hingston was poor "Ward's travelling companion during his expedition to the Mormon Territory — his trusted friend till death. I am glad to have, from his pen, this account of an incident of their travel to which Artemus often alluded. — Ed. Artemus Ward among the ShosJiones. 125 Salt Lake City, botli he and I had rendered our- selves fully acquainted with the questionable cha- racter of the Indian tribes throuoh whose terri- tories we had to pass. Friends who had recently made the journey advised us to provide ourselves with ojood pistols, and to be always ready in case of a fray. We both bought revolvers. Artemus, with characteristic eccentricity, persisted in car- rying his unloaded in his portmanteau — the am- munition in one corner, the pistol in another ; whilst I, with a due regard for the exigencies which might arise, displayed the latest edition of Colt cons2^icuously in my belt, just as other tra- vellers were accustomed to do. Hence the plea- sant banter of my being addressed as "Warrior." Our journey was made in the winter of 1863-4. The conversation above recorded took place at Aus- tin, Eeese River, Nevada Territory, nearly two hundred miles from any town we had left behind us, and four hundred from the next to which we were advanciiio;. We were in the heart of the Shoshone land. Behind and before us were In- dian tribes of the very worst classes of Indians ; beings rightly representing the savage in all the lawlessness, cruelty, dirt, and degradation belong- ing to the aborigine of the western wilderness. Neither Artemus Ward nor myself were saplings enouo;h to imaojine that we were about to meet the noble heroes of Fenimore Cooper. Uncas is 126 The Savage- Club Papers. about as mythical as Actgeon, and Cliingaclikook as legenclaiy as Ulysses. Mr. Hepworth Dixon, in liis recent journey to Utah, fell in with represen- tatives of many of the Indian nations ; but he did not travel south enough to see the most objection- able, nor west enough to meet the most degraded. We had been amongst the Digger tribe of Cali- fornia, than whom lower types of humanity can hardly be imagined ; the Cricks and Snakes of Nevada, than whom none are more wily and more treacherous ; and we were now among the Shoshones, who, if not the most to be dreaded, are cei'tainly the laziest and dirtiest. It has been asserted of them — how truthftdly I know not — that they have no idea of a Deity, nor au}^ belief in the existence of a great Spirit. Thoroughly nomadic in their habits, they roam from place to place ; feed on flaiits, roots, and game ; dress themselves in filthy skins ; cut their hair straight across the fore- head, and tie pieces of old iron to it at the sides ; make their women do all the work ; are polyga- mous as Mormons in their marital notions; and when they die ^^have their wives killed and buried with them. Amongst these gentle creatures we found ourselves at Austin. A strange place was Austin in 1863. To get to it we had left California, scaled the Sierra Ne- vada, visited the wondrous silver mines of Virginia City and Washoe, traversed the sterile desert of Artemus Ward among the Shoshones. 127 iJ^evada, crossed the " sink" of tlie Carson, where a river becomes absorbed and disappears abruptly in an arid waste ; stopped at stations to change mules, where the poor fellows who had charge of the sta- tion were expecting hourly an Indian attack ; and we were now some four thousand feet above the level of the sea, five hundred miles from the Pa- cific coast, high up in the Toiyabe range of moun- tains, Avitli nothing but wild country, wild beasts, and wild Indians away to the north, and little else but wilder Indians, wilder beasts, and wilder coun- try away to the south ; desert in any quantity to the west, and desert in greater quantity to the east. We had plenty of fresh air. Arrangements had been made for Artemus Ward to lecture in Austin, the Court-house hav- ing been retained for that purpose — a rough wooden building, stuck upon piles, by the side of a hiU. The miners had agreed to bring their own chairs and stools with them. But previous to our amusing the Austin folks there was just one evening to spare, and that Artemus desired to devote to Big Creek, a mining village about twelve miles distant, and of only a few months' growth. Why he wished to go to Big Creek was simply because it was the wildest place he could go to for lecturing purposes. Big Creek was on the very edge of the wilderness ; Big Creek had never had an entertainment of any kind ; and Big 128 Tlie Savage- Club Papers. Creek owned a mingled population of three parts miners and one part Slioslione Indians. No one else would have thought of lecturing there ; and that was the very reason why Artemus Ward wished to go. We "liquored up" at the International Hotel, an establishment constructed partly of wood and partly of canvas. We had also taken apartments there for sleeping. They consisted of two shelves, one above the other, in a room where there were eight or ten other shelves separated by linen par- titions. The floor Avas of hard mud, the roof of boards, through the holes in which the wind whistled and the rain fell. " This is pretty rough," observed Artemus ; " surely they cannot have anything rougher in Big Creek !" " Well, I guess they have," remarked Mr. William Albaugh, a stout miner, who stood at the bar beside us. " They're mighty rough over thar. If you are going over thar to lecture, you'll have to do it in the ' Young America Saloon,' and thar you'll see something ; and you'll have to get thar over some very queer country, and thar you'll see something ; and you'll find no beds thar, and have to ride back at night, when maybe you may see something too." " Any noble savages about ?" inquired Ar- temus. Artemus Ward among the Shoshones. 129 " Shoshones ? Yes, plenty ; and not an honest Injun among them." " Not much worse, I suppose, than that ma- jestic cliild of freedom cliopping wood in the road?" suggested Artemus, pointing to an In- dian who, chad in a fiUhy fur, was cutting up firewood in front of the hotel for the use of the inmates. " "Worse than he ? — worse than Buffalo Bill ? ay, a thousand times. And he'd as soon toma- hawk you as cleave that wood, if he dared. Mr. Ward, can you fight? are you armed?" asked Mr. William Albaugh very seriously. Ai'temus replied that he was ; and as for fight- ing, he presumed that he could do his share. But the impressiveness of Mr. William Albaugh made the Indian question serious. Our conversation had attracted the attention of some half-dozen loiterers in the bar, ijicluding a miner by the name of Marshall, and a stout, merry, red-faced man, who held the position of Wells and Fargo' s Express agent. " If you make up your mind to go to Big- Creek, Mr. Ward," said the agent, " I would ad- vise you to hire a black horse they have in the stables behind, put him in a strong buggy, and drive across. If any rascally Indians come in your way, drive all the harder." Artemus Ward meditated for a few minutes ; VOL. II. K 130 The Savage- Clnh Papers. then, taking me aside, he pointed to Buffalo Bill, who was still chopping the wood. " Kingston," said he, "there's not much to fear from such fel- lows as that. Besides, if we jib on going a jour- ney of twelve miles because of Indians, what's the use of our attempting to travel a thousand miles to the Rocky Mountains ? Have your revolver ready, old Warrior, and we'll do Big Creek, if only for the fun of it. ' The Pioneer Lecture in the Shoshone Nation, by the Wild Humorist of the Plains ;' that's the title. Never mind the In- dians. Come along." Every mining town of two hundred inhabit- ants "out west" has a newspaper -office. The Reese-River Reveille was the name of the one in Austin. There we succeeded in getting a dozen small posters printed; and having sent them on ahead, we started for Big Creek. Our start was an event of sufficient importance to draw together a large assemblage, composed of miners, Indians, coach -drivers, and "loafers." Buffalo Bill, the wood-chopper, his axe on his shoulder, stood the centre of a group of the wildest - looking Sho- shones, all of them intently regarding our pre- parations for departure. When we had taken our seats in the buggy and gathered om' furs around us, Mr. William Albaugh handed up a bottle of Bourbon whisky and a glass. " Take a good hoist," said he. " Keep to the Artemus Ward among the Slioshones. 131 track tlirough the sage-brusli. Have your pistols ready, and look out for Injuns." " Slioshones are thieving critturs, everyone of them," remarked Marshall the miner. '' Gentlemen, a pleasant drive to you, and take care to bring your scalps back to Austin," was the prudent advice of the Express agent. Artenms replied to them all by imitating the Avild screech of the Indian. Then oif we drove through the grand mountain - gorge in which Austin is situated. High up in the sides of the hills were the huts of the silver miners, and away down in the valley were the roughly-constructed mills for crushing the silver ore. There were a thousand people in Austin; six months be- fore there were not ten. Silver had done it all. The rocks on each side of us we knew to be full of silver ; the road over which we drove was seamed with silver ore ; and as we descended through Marshall's Canon to Clifton, the plains of Silver Land opened out to us, covered with stunted sage-brush, dreary, treeless, and desolate, — the cheerless basin of some ancient sea, the very waters of which would seem to have been liquid silver in the earth's first morn of being. Our course was to the south, almost parallel with Reese River, having the river to our right and a range of mountains to om' left. The plain was partially covered with snow. No Indians nor 132 The Savage- Club Papers. anything living was to be seen, nor any vegetation except tufts of the scraggy, gray-coloured sage- brush, the most forlorn and unpicturesque of ve- getable formations. Here and there deep gulches crossed our track ; but otherwise the road was pretty good, and not difficult to be traced through the thin coating of snow. Big Creek was arrived at in due time, and the lecture delivered that evening. Our lecture-hall was a large bar-room, the roof of whicli was formed of pine-branches, supported by pillars of roughly hewn j^ine-logs. The seats were formed of planks resting on old barrels and wheelbarrows. Every miner had heard of Artemus Ward. Big Creek turned out enthusiastically to listen to the story of the Babes in the Wood. The price of admission was three dollars each (twelve shillings). We had an audience of nearly a hundred- and - fifty miners, wearing gray shirts and large slouch hats. Artemus stood up on one end of the bar to talk, while the process of liquor -serving went on industriously at the other end. The lecture was over before nine o'clock, and, after partaking of a hasty supper and some whisky, we prepared to leave. Our hospitable friends supplied us liberally with cigars, and insisted on our taking a demijohn of whisky with us in the buggy. They also furnished us with- a lamp and a box of matches ; for though the night was fine Artemus Ward aniovg the Shosliones. 133 at present, there were signs of a storm coming on. '' Did you see William Albaugh in Austin ?" asked the landlord of the Young America Saloon, " and did he give you any caution about the Indians ?" " He did," replied Artemus; '' but there was not a sign of an Indian all along the road." " You mio-lit meet with them to-night, thouo-h. Don't go unless you've made up your minds to. We can find you a bed. If you do meet with Indians, keep a stiff' upper-lij), and your hand ob your pistol. The Shoshones are an awful lot." Artemus had no fear. Poor fellow, he never had. He was determined to go back to Austin that night ; and though I timidly suggested it would be wiser to stop where we were, he was resolute on going. There was sufficient moonlight at the starting to enable us to see our way nicely through the creek, and we were soon out upon the open plain. For the first three or four miles we bowled along rapidly over the crisp snow, amongst the crackling sage-brush. Then the moon became hidden by clouds; there was no light. We had to trust to the horse. " Where the plague have we got to?" sud- denly cried'but Artemus, who was driving. " Get out, Hingston, and see. Light the lantern." 134 The Savage- Cliih Papers. I did so, and it was well that I did. We were almost at the edge of a perpendicular bank, full twelve feet high, at the bottom of which was an inlet of Reese River. A few yards more, and we should have toppled over headlong. The pre- cipitous character of the gidch showed that we had driven too far to the left, and ouo-ht to have crossed the small stream higher up. Lantern in hand, I led the way over the snow to where we could find a fit place for crossing. It was too dark to drive fast ; so I picked out the road with the lantern, and Artemus walked the horse after me, until, arriving at a fordable place, we passed over the stream, found ourselves once more on the snow-covered plain, and I resumed my place in the buggy. " Hide that confounded lamp between your knees, and let me make out, if I can, where Ave are driving," said Artemus suddenly. '' It seems to me that there is a light ahead. What is it, my Warrior ?" I looked, and sure enough in the distance there was the gleam of Avhat appeared to be a fire. How a fire should happen to be there, un- less some one was encamped for the night, was more than we could guess. We commenced dis- cussing the question Avhether it was likely to be a party of miners or a party of Indians, when the horse stumbled, the buggy capsized, and we found Artemus Ward among the Shoshones. 135 ourselves in a ditch, one of our shafts broken, and the lantern lost. " Confound the road !" was my friend's ex- clamation, at the same time laughing heartily at our disaster. " Let us make for that light in the distance, whatever it is. You lead the horse, and ril feel the way. The light must be from a fire. We shall get a warming, if we get nothing else." Artemus affected to be careless of results ; but the silence he kept, as he paced on in advance, was evidence of his anxiety. We were approach- ing the light, which manifestly proceeded from a fire behind a piece of rising ground not far in front of us. As we neared it, we heard a slight rustle in the sage-brush beside us, and in a mo- ment two dusky figures rose out of the darkness and stood before us on our path. There was no mistaking them. Dark as the night was, their outlines were clearly discernible. They were Indians ! Before I could draw my pistol, my arm was pinioned in a tight grip. Artemus was seized upon in a similar manner. Oiu* captors at once gave a loud yell, which was answered by another of a similar kind from more Indians on the other side of the rising ground. Neither Artemus nor I attempted to resist. The suddenness of the seizure had paralysed us 136 The Savage-Club Papers. both. Trembling and shivering, we allowed the Indians to lead us to the fire, groujjed around which were five other Indians, dimly distinguish- able in the dusky light, but each with his face painted, his long black hair straggling over it, and each armed with a rifle, the muzzle of which was instantly turned upon us. In front of the fire were two large scalping-knives, placed there, as it seemed, to be warmed, their blades reflecting the firelight with a sickening gleam. Our captors motioned us to kneel down upon the earth, keeping guard over us with their rifles, while their five comrades retreated a little into the shade. After half an hour or more of silence, during which my blood seemed to trickle coldly through my veins, and we both remained almost motion- less, an Indian on the other side of the fire gave a wild whoop, brandished his tomahawk, leapt over the smouldering ashes, and, alighting in front of Artemus, demanded, in scarcely understandable English, his name. " Artemus Ward," very tremblingly spoken. " Wh-r-r-r-r-r-ah-e ! Uo, no, uo.* Ameri- cano talkee-man," cried the Indian, running his forefinger round each of our scalps, and imitating the process of scalping. * "Tes, yes, yes," in the Shoshone language. Artemus Ward among the ShosJiones. 137 " Talkee, talkee !" cliimecl in the others, as if addressing; Artemus. " What do they want?" asked my friend of me very anxiously. " Tliey want you to speak to them. Say something, for Heaven's sake !" '' My good Indian friends," commenced Arte- mus, '' I am a peaceful man. I — " '' Wh-r-r-r-r-r-ah-e !" cried another of the Indians, skipping forward with a bottle in his hand, and offering it to Artemus. " Whisky — devite, devite. Drinky — lecture — talkee !" " What do they want me to do ?" asked Ar- temus of me. " They want you to drink some whisky. De- vite is Shoshone for ' good.' They must know you, for they require you to get up on that bank and lecture to them. Pray do it ; do anything to please them." We both took a drink from the proffered bottle. It did not escape my notice that, as Ar- temus put the bottle to his lips, his eyes rested very searchingly upon the stoutest Indian of the party, the one whose face was painted the most, and who had the most genial expression, though the most uncouth attire. Giving back the bottle, Artemus stepped up on the bank beside the fire, and, in the coolest manner, commenced to talk : 13^ The Savage- Club Papers. " N'oble Shoshones ! Brave and heroic war- riors of a mighty race ! The constitution of the United States Avas framed hy the great and glo- rious G-eorge Wasliington. He wrote it out at tea-time over a bottle of Bourbon and a hot corn- meal cake. He wrote in that glorious document that the Shoshone nation should ever be respected. He wrote, did that great and good man, that — " "Bosh !" cried one of the Indians, in very good and very distinct English. At the same moment a whisky - bottle was thrown at Artemus, breaking into twenty pieces as it fell at his feet. The lecturer gave one glance at the stout Indian, whom he had noticed so intently a few minutes previously, jumped quickly from the bank, dashed at the savage, seized his long black hair, and tearing it away, revealed, when reft of their disguise, the unmistakable features of Mr. William Albaugh. Almost at the same moment I recocfuised in my captor the face of Buffalo Bill. A loud whoop from Artemus, and a louder burst of laughter from the Indians, was followed by Marshall the miner, and "Wells and Fargo's Express agent, also divesting themselves of their Indian head-dress, and shaking us very heartily by the hands. '• Gentlemen, we apologise for the scare we Artemrts Ward among the Shoshoues. I39 have given you," said Mr. William Albaugh. '' Let it be a lesson to you to be careful how you travel in Indian territory. We have waited for you out on the plain till we have got well chilled. Buffalo Bill, stir up the fire, set some water boiling, and let's all have a whisky-toddy." We had some, and in an hour afterwards were on our road to Austin. The Magical Oint/vl ENT, By HAIN FRISWELL. N tlie shores of the Eecl Sea, just where they fish for pearls, and sell to the outer barbarians of the West, and the Frankish unbelievers in the glorious Prophet — blessed be his name ! — the spoil of a shell-fish, there lived a poor merchant, Avho, never having had a good chance in his life, was therefore virtuous, though somewhat bitter against those whose chances were better. Do what he could, he never managed to get rich, great, or re- spected ; and he well knew that if he achieved the first, the second or third woidd be sure to follow. Our friend Hadji Beidawi read in the Koran three times a day, and performed his ablutions seven times; but no diver ever brought to him the large pearls, beautiful as the moon and re- The Magical Ointment. 141 splendent as the silver stars. Oftentimes, poor man, lie wonld specnlate upon the chances, and buy the contents of a boat — in conjunction with other merchants — but the fish withheld their trea- sures, and were mostly empty, or the pearls were as black as the tongue of a liar, or as the teeth of him who devours the betel-nut. At another time the Hadji Beidawi would ride forth and meet the Filial Karras^ the binder of sharks — a mysterious priest from Malabar — who, knowing that the Hadji was descended from a holy man, who had written a commentary on the one great book, would tell him all his secrets, and whether the Djinns would allow the boats to go out. If the Filial shook his head, and intimated that there would be no catch, then the Hadji would hasten back and stake his money against the market ; but he always lost. Then he tried a disbelief in the holy man, and placed his money in the reverse way advised, and with precisely the same result to him. Next he bought a slave, a diver, and sent him (for he was known to be lucky, and well reputed for courage and sagacity) all naked to the troubled waters, urging him, no less by blows than by promise of reward, to bring up a pearl of great value. Alas, the diver, after three or four days of fruitless labour, getting tired and exhausted, and yet driven to work in spite of the predictions of the binder of sharks, became sulky, foolish, and 142 The Savage- Clnh Papers. timid, and so fell into the way of the first shark which came near Jiim, and was rendered useless for life by having his right arm bitten off. The Hadji, with a groan of disappointment, had his slave's bleeding stump cauterised with a red-hot iron, and then sent him forth into the desert, giving him his freedom, since he was for ever useless. Then he wTapped up his head in the folds of his green turban, and sat silent and sulky in his tent, for ruin stared him in the face. His wdfe Ayesha— for the Hadji Beidawi was too poor to keep four wives, and therefore piously contented himself with one — came to bring him a bowl of camel's-milk, and to comfort him. " 0, my master," said she, "lift up your head and look out of the tent, for good-luck cometh this way in the shape of the Pillal Karras — beautiful are his feet !" "Accursed be he!" said Beidawi : "his less are but stumps, and his feet as big as those of a camel. He a binder of sharks ! — why bomid he not the mouth of the one which has rendered my diver useless for ever ?" " Beidawi, Beidfiwi !" said the Pillal, who stood within the tent and heard all ; "thrice, in the name of the Prophet, have I saluted thee ; and lo, a cloud is on thy face, and thine anger is kindled at thy friend, although I told thee that the sharks were out, and no magic would bind them." The Magical Ointment. 143 This indeed was true, as the Hadji well knew ; but he had lost all faith in the shark-binder, and hated him all the more because he was right. Then the Filial sat down, and Ayesha gave him to eat of rice that was as snowy as the flower of the myrtle, and of honey yellow as gold ; and the heart of the old priest warmed within him. " Where is thy son Omar ?" he asked of Ayesha. " Is he not the prop of the house and the promise of the future, as Isaac was to Abra- ham ?" The Filial was a learned man and a traveller. He was also a priest, although employed in this roving commission of binding the sharks and bot- tling-up the winds; so Ayesha hastened behind the curtain of camefs-skin to bring forward Omar. *' Come here, my son; here is a learned Der- vish, who can read and explain the Koran, and copy the ninety-nine names of Grod ; and who says the Fa-that.* He is a servant of the Rabbi 'lalamina (the Lord of all creatures), and perad- venture will bless thee; therefore come hither." Omar did as he was told. He was a most modest, innocent, good boy, almost ready to go forth into the world, and was well-grown and of good favour. He came, looking with astonish- * This forms the first chapter of the Koriin, and is the daily prayer of pious Mussulmen. The whole chapter is not so long as our Lord's Prayer, and does not extend to more than five lines of the type of the page before the reader. 144 The Savage- Club Papers. ment at his father, who still kept his head covered, and saluted the jjriest. " God is knowing and wise," said the Filial, quoting the Koran ; " Grod desireth to be gracious unto you ; turn not awaj from the truth with a great deviation." Beidawi groaned in spirit. How often had he said his prayers, and how utterly had they failed to bring him pearls, riches, mules, white asses, and people who should kiss his stirrups to do him honour ! " What is the use of prayer?" said he. " God hath indeed promised everyone Para- dise," said the imperturbable priest; "but few shall arrive there." Omar knew that he was quoting the holy book, from his measured and somewhat stilted tone, so he bowed his head piously. Beidawi bit his tongue with rage, and said nothing. " Seek not for riches, nor for power, yomio- man," said the priest, speaking at the father, but to the son. " Did not Eblis* seek for power, and did he not fall ? ' Worship Adam,' said God to the angels, and they worshipped ; but Eblis Avas not one who worshipped, for he said he was more excellent than Adam, since God created him of * Eblis is the Devil, Satan, or Temiiter. This story is told in the seventh chapter of the Koran, entitled Al Aruf— the Partition. The Magical Ohitment. 145 fire, but man of black mud. Then the Great One ordered him into hell, saying, ' Get thee hence ; thou art proud, but shalt be as one of the con- temptible.' Then Satan said, ' Give me respite till the resurrection.' 'Verily,' said God, Hhou art respited till then.' Then, with a malicious grin, Eblis cried, ' Thou hast depraved me, and I will deprave thy creatures; I will lie in wait for man in the strait path, and beguile him.' Then Allah said, ' Get thee hence, despised ; tins too is what /have ordained.' Yea, God is great; his designs are from the beo-innino- of the world !" Beidawi himself, although he knew the sacred writings, was plunged in thought by the relation, and uncovered his head. "Truly," said the Filial, "thy heart is warm within thee. I grieve at thy poverty, I grieve for thy slave. Here, take this box. Money I have none ; but this is more precious than money, or the glittering dust of the rock. It is not for thee ; but it will make the .fortune of thy son." So say- ing, he repeated the Fa-that, and turning round three times, left the tent. "An old humbug," said Beidawi; "what is the use of praying if you don't get money by it? Now, he does get money by his prayers. Fortune for my son ! alas, 'tis little else he'll have." He looked at the green box; a box of small dimensions indeed, made of ivory. He would VOL. II. L 146 The Sewage- Club Papers. have tliroAvn it in the fire, as we Europeans say, hut for two considerations. In the first place, there was no fire in his tent ; and secondly, he found on the box a band of paper on which was the name of God and his Proj^het, which it would have been an awful offence to burn. So putting it under his pillow, he rolled himself up on his carpet and sulked. " Fortune !" said he. " What an old humbug it is ! It can only contain a pearl as big as a small orange. Ah, what a fortune that would be ; or two or three diamonds as big as date-stones ! But no." Here he shook the box, and found that it did not rattle. Then he looked at the paper, and saw that a little grease, urged by the warmth of his pillow, had oozed forth. " What a rogue it is, this Filial !" said he. " Here, Ayesha, take the box. You believe in the priests ; 7 don't." So far Beidawi, who must now depart fi'om this story. The Filial made his fortune by prayers and jugglery, and went back to Malabar. The va- rious merchants made theirs with pearls, of which many were found ; and the unfortunate Hadji caught only a fever, which, made greater by dis- appointment and mental trouble, killed him in two months ; and his faithful wife Ayesha, who was worn out with nursing, only survived him five days, o;ivino; with her dvin^'- W. Bruntnii, iki. TM^ •" DalzicI Bros., sc. ST. ANTHONY PRTIACHTNO TO THK FISHES. A MEDl/EVAL LEGEND. By Walter Tiiornbxjry. -o- St. Anthony in his holy zeal Came to the river side, To preach to the little fishes On the wickedness of pride. II. The kincrfisher was divine: Down from the willow-stmiip ; The swallows gay were skimming Over the osier-clump ; III. The bulrushes were noddino- In an assenting way, The water-flags were wading Out from each shallow bay 156 The Savage- Club Papers. IV. As tlie Saint in liis long brown mantle Down through the osiers came, And called to all the little fish, And summoned them by name. Y. The dace, in clouds of silver. Came clustering in fear ; And after them the gudo-eons Swam jostling to hear. VI. The eels sped twisting, twining, Next the perch with his orange fin ; The surlj pike and the barbel. The bleak so gentle and thin. VII. The big trout crimson-spotted. Flapping his nimble tail ; And the supple, silvery salmon. Cased in his pliant mail. IX. He touched not at their special sins, But preached of avarice. Of homicide, and theft, and all Those forms of wickedness. St. Anthoni/s Sermon. 157 X. At simony and bigamy He launched full many a text, Until the finny peo2)le Wondered what woidd come next. XI. Then the Saint his cono-reo-ation Dismissed, and homeward went. Both the holy man and his hearers Each in their way content. T^rt .^^:=3— .^ ©"kistmns ^airn. By HENET J. BTEOX. Only a Faiiy for Christmas-time — Just for the month, or the two months, sav ; Notliing approaching the true sublime Regular genuine tricksy fay ; Only a fairy by name indeed, Just while her gauze and her tinselled dress Cover her poor little limbs : agreed ; Say — would you wish to know further ? Yes ? II. Only a Fairy for just to-night, Dull little drudge with the dawm of day ; Out of the beautiful pale lime-light, Merely a thin little girl in gray. Small and shabby, and scantly fed, Born to toil and a life of care, "Waking up when it's time for bed — Big-eyed baby with golden hair. A Christmas Fairy, 177 III. Follow lier liome when lier niglit- work's done ; Trudging wearily back she goes, Back to bed about half-past one ; Terrible hour to seek repose ! Most little children so long in bed, Sleeping peacefully, but my fay Seeks her mean little couch instead At the glinnner of coming day. IV. Wearily sleeping, but dreaming too — Dreaming mayhap she may one day be Dressed like that beautiful nymph in blue Who's so tremendous a salary. Think of the joy on the Saturday, Taking that glorious sum to those — Those who look on her paltry pay As something meaning both food and clothes. V. Cheery her voice In that dismal room, Sun-bright face with a smile that warms ; Lightsome her laugh in the midst of gloom. Small home-fairy whose presence charms — • Charms with mysterious strange delight ; So all the neighbours agree and say, " Surely this golden-haired, elfish sprite, Fairy sd, night, is the same by f/a^/." VOL. II. N • /^kat^CLcte^i^Su cuicL S^CEfZER, By Edwaed Deapeu. JIVE-AND-THIRTY years ago Lon- don-bred boys scarcely spent their time so pleasantly as their successors fs^^^lji^ do now. Let us be^in with the mat- ter of costume. Without the aid of a pencil it would be difficult to indicate to the present youth- ful generation the absm'd appearance presented by a boy in the full-dress of — let us say 1830. Here is a sketch which may answer the j)urpose. It will be at once evident, that every article of this wretched child's attire is constructed with a view to his personal misery. Note well that ridi- culous cap, with its circumference of cane, which, protruding, in fulness of time, Avill be drawn out to serve for purposes of castigation. Observe the Panjandrum button at the top, to which is affixed a silken braid, whence dangles a foolish tassel, which, inevitably attaining the miserable urchin's mouth, will give him experience of the flavour of silk and dye for the remainder of his days. Mark Characters and Scenes. 179 the exasperating japaimed-leather chin-strap ; also the maddening collar pinned in fi'ont. This lat- ter will be constantly coming unfastened, and will then exhibit some half-yard of cambric, edged with an idiotic frill, streaming down his back. His skeleton suit of short-waisted jacket and thin " nan- keens," buttoned outside, is pvu'posely so contrived that he can only by dint of great trouble get into it or out of it. His shoes are tied with ribbons. Only fancy a parent calmly contemplating a big boy of his own with shoe-ties, and entertaining no sense of the absurd therein ! This poor boy was unhappy at school. Nicho- las Nicklehy had not as yet exploded the brutal- i8o The Savage- Cluh Papers. ity of the pedagogue ; and the scholastic system was of the simplest. The pupil's lessons were set him, and he Avas thrashed whenever unable to re- peat them verbatim, without reference to his com- prehension. He was indeed thrashed for every thing, from spilling a blot of ink to breaking a window. Sometimes a boy Avas thrashed simply for not havino; been thrashed. So it was with Jonkins. He was a very good boy, who learnt all his lessons, never blotted his copy-book, did all his sums, called out the names of his schoofellows when they tried to talk in school-hours ; never fought, and was the greatest sneak in the school. One day he was thus accosted by a big fellow : '' Jonkins, you haven't been caned for some time. I think a hiding would do you good." He had it ; and the aggressor was thrashed in his turn by the master. But the London boy, as if to console him for his many miseries, had one source of supreme en- joyment. This was his theatre. The stage some- times relieved even his school torments. One of his daily reading-lessons was usually taken from the drama, and at- the Christmas breaking-up it was not at all unusual for the boys to play regular set pieces, with accessories of scenery and costume. An abridged version of Ricliard the Third, the scene between Arthur and Hubert in King John, and the farce of Turning the Tables, were in great Characters and Scenes. 1 8 1 favour on such occasions. Moreover, nearly every boy had a toy-theatre, with its pasteboard charac- ters and scenes, either his own, or joint property of himself and his " partner." These " characters and scenes" must by no means be judged of by the wretched little sheets still occasionally exhibited in the windows of sweet- stuff shops in metropolitan alleys. In those days they were really artistic pictures. The chief pub- lisher was one West, who kept a shop opposite the Olympic Theatre in Wych-street. His colouring was quite a marvel of effectiveness. The scenes were engraved by clever scene-painters, who de- signed and carried out many of the originals under the tasteful management of Madame Vestris, at the theatre across the road. The characters were etched by skilful artists, and were so well drawn that they frequently presented actual portraits of the performers. Karl, for instance, in the Miller and his Alen, is still easily to be recognised as Lis- ten ; and the likeness is carried on throughout the various positions of the character. I have mentioned the colouring ; it was often the work of the late William Heath, famous in his day as a Avater-colour painter and etcher. His caricatures and plates of military costume are still well re- membered. There are yet extant entire sets of characters and scenes painted by the late celebrated John Varley, and by Alfred Cocking, the unfortu- 1 82 The Savage- Cliih Papers. nate artist wlio sacrificed Lis life to a craze about a novel form of parachute. When the long evenings rendered out-door amusements impossible, the toy-theatre was the one absorbing delight of the boys ; and very fre- quently of their fathers. To carry out a play, from the preliminary saving of the pocket-money to the purchase or construction of the theatre, the colour- ing, pasting down, and cutting out of the characters, and the final fruition in a state performance on the parlour-table before an admiring party, was some- thing really worthy of a boy's ambition. It had, moreover, the beneficial effect, beyond the mere exercise of ingenuity and industry, of practically familiarising him with form and colour. Probably many an artist of the present day first conceived a love for art from being taught the use of his colour- box upon characters and scenes. It is true, there were certain difficulties inseparable from a dramatic performance carried on through the medium of pasteboard. In whatever attitude a character en- tered, he remained unalterable until his " exit," and when, as not unfrequently happened, he fell upon his face, he became instantly invisible except as an edge. But these small drawbacks only served to stimulate imagination. An artist, now renowned as a sculptor and illustrator, perfected, when a lad, a wonderful re- prese'ntation of the Miller and his Men. The scenes Characters and Scenes. 183 were painted and the characters coloured, cut out, and spangled in a style of unparalleled magnifi- cence. A grand performance was announced, and so great was the renown of the mise-en-scene, that a large audience of boys, at a penny per head, was collected in a corn-loft belonging to the father of the projector. Grunpowder and red fire were liberally provided to give effect to the explosion at the finale, stage -lamps were dangerously plenti- ful, and the performance proceeded with great eclat until a disaster occurred in the middle of the second act. The manager's papa, armed with a horsewhip, suddenly appeared above the ladder, and the catastrophe was supplied by a liberal thrashing bestowed with like goodwill upon the manao-ement and what actors call " the front of the house." It may be wondered how an amusement so po- pular and so pleasing as the toy-theatre ever fell into decay. It was for this reason : certain specu- lative print-publishers suddenly filled the market with inferior productions at half the prices pre- viously charged. The boys bought eagerly at first, , but soon their instinctive tastes revolted at the miserable substitutes, while the original pictures seemed too dear. But the legitimate trade had been ruined. No boy of ordinary perception would now care to possess the wretched pictm'es supplied for the toy-stage. The boys, too, seem 184 The Savage- Cluh Papers. to have lost, with their toj, the relish for dramatic entertainments. One now seldom sees a young fellow at the play, unless indeed at a broad bur- lesque. You may talk to a score before you can find one Avho can quote half a dozen lines of Shake- speare, or handle his pencils. Instead of the in- tellectual pleasures of the theatre, they resort to the less intellectual amusements of the music-hall. Of course no one would pretend to hold forth the Miller and his Men as a highly intellectual play. The alphabet and spelling-book are not great works of literature, but they in like man- ner are means to an end. It is now many years since poor West — the great publisher, if not the originator, of charac- ters and scenes — finally closed his little dark shop, whence had emanated so much salutary amusement to the boys of a former age. A short time before his death he commenced selling off" all his stock at ridiculously low j)rices. The poor old man could be heard gasping behind the simple screen which divided his death-bed from the public portion of his shop. There might then be had, capitally drawn, and when coloured, gorgeous as summer flowers, engraved character -portraits of all the dramatic celebrities of a past generation ; and these — we allude to the larger prints — were really good characteristic portraits ; not, as now, mere outrageous idealised figures sprawled into impos- D. T. White, del. Dalziel Bros., sc. THE LAST EOSE OF S0M.VIER. Characters and Scenes. 185 sible attitudes to fill all four corners of the sheet. Tlie bright colouring of such series as Blue Beard, the Elephant of Siam, and the other Oriental plays, was specially wonderful. The " scenery" was un- rivalled in its touch and picturesqueness. There were characters in the Wild Boy in which the free flowing lines of George Cruikshank could easily be traced, while those in Tom and Jerry were etched by Robert Cruikshank, who partially illustrated the original work. There were first-proofs coloured by the artist to guide the ordinary print colourer ; and some of these were as brilliant as though the pencil of Heath had but just quitted them. The means by which the extraordinary brightness of West's colouring was obtained was a continual puzzle to the boj^s. Much was certainly due to daring ap- position of colours ; but, even granting this, there must have been some trade-secret in the prepara- tion of the pigments. Shortly before "West's death, the late Mr. Albert Smith, happening to pass along Wych-street, entered the shop and purchased a copy of every print then remaining on sale. All the plates are now destroyed, and scarcely a character, scene, or theatrical portrait of West's exists save in the folios of collectors. The miser- able prints now published in their place are, as works of art or interest, simply beneath notice. TO TUE PRESIDENT OF THE EARLY-RISING ASSOCLVTION. By George Grossmitk. NE morning I received the following letter from a quiet little town in Milksliire : " Dear Sir, — The Committee of our Literarv Institution have deputed me to request your at- tendance here to deliver a lecture. " Speaking individually, I should prefer a serious subject ; but on behalf of the directors collectively I am bound to say that the writings ' of Charles Dickens have been mentioned. " For my own part, I do not like Dickens, never having read his works. Indeed, I consider his repeated attacks on the medical profession (to Early -Rising Association. 187 which I have the honour to belong) most unjust and uncalled-for. " I have been in the habit of lecturing to our people myself for many years, but I fear my sub- jects are beyond their grasp ; at any rate they seem to require a change. " I may add that I am also President of the Early- Rising Association in this town. If, there- fore, you can introduce anything in your lecture illustrative of the advantages of early rising, you will confer a particular favour on me individually and the committee collectively. " P.S. There will be a bed in my house at your service, and the first up -train to London leaves here at six o'clock in the morning.'' "&• Now I am not one of those ingenious profes- sors who undertake to decipher human character through the medium of a person's handwriting and thirteen postage-stamps ; but there really was something about the style of this application that enabled me to form an estimate of the writer which proved to be strictly correct in all respects, except that he had a wooden leg, which certainly nothing in the letter had led me to expect. On my arrival in the town, I sought informa- tion as to the whereabouts of my intended host. I was cautioned as to his being a "little eccen- tric," and warned not to be put out by his pecu- l88 The Savage- Cluh Papers. IJarities ; as, apart from these, he was a very worthy and much-respected gentleman. For example, it was suggested to me that he was in the habit of risins; each evenlno; after the lecture to correct any false impressions which the lecturer might have left upon the minds of the people. Luckily I was spared this humiliation, as I did not happen to touch upon any controversial topics. I seldom do. It doesn't pay, as a rule. But I have encountered a good many " eccentric people" in my wanderings, and mean some day to write a book about them. Once, in Dampshire, the president of a society, sitting just by my side, kej)t up a running commentary upon my lecture, thus : '' Ah, just so !" " Well, very possible." " No, really, you must excuse me tliere ; that M^on't do down here ; you.'d better try that some- where else." "Very good — ha, ha!" (a horse- laugh). '' Pve heard that before.^'' And when, at the close of the lecture, I asked how that sort of thing was tolerated doion there^ I was told, with undisguised astonishment at my metropolitan audacity, that the eccentric gentleman was the deputy -lieutenant of the county, and gave the institute twenty pounds a year ! And certainly some of the Mechanics' Institutes in the country would allow any amount of eccentricity at that price. Early-Rising Association. 189 On another occasion, in Baconsliire, I had the misfortune to incur the animosity of an eccentric laclj. It was in one of those httle country towns where they don't often have lectures, but where, oddly enough, whenever they have one, they are pretty certain to have tioo the same night ; for, being about equally divided by religious and poli- tical differences, such is the neighbourly, friendly spirit in which all matters are conducted there, that whenever one side invites a lecturer down from London, the other section are sure to have one down the same night in opposition. Now I was engaged to hold forth on the Sketches hy Boz. My rival, in the opposition room, lectured on the Pilgrinis Progress. The lady in question — elderly, very respectable, but not very intelligent — wan- dered from her peaceful home with the view of attending the latter; but she went to the wrong room, and taking her place on the front seat, and putting on the most solemn countenance it was ever my misfortune to behold, became a listener to my discourse on the writings of Boz, and I am certain, for the first twenty minutes, did not dis- cover the mistake she had made. But, alas, when I at length referred to my author's description of a country fair, and the servant-girls out for the day, " not allowed to have any followers at home, but now resolved to have 'em all at once," the dear old soul gave a shriek of horror, and said. IQO The Savage-Club Papers. quite audibly, " 0, how shocking !" This excla- mation was repeated when I described " the fat old ladj with the Jack-in-the-box, and three shies a penny;" and at last I became somewhat un- nerved. I tried not to look at the old lady ; but there is nothing in creation more difficult than the effort not to look at a thing you don't want to see. At length I approached, with horror, the author's description of a thimble -rig, knowing it would upset her. '' Here's a little game to make you wake up and laugh six months after you're dead, buried, and forgotten, and turn the hair of your head gray with delight. Here's three little thim- bles and one little pea. Keep your eye on the pea, and never say die ! Now then, with a one, two, three, and a three, two, one !" &c. &c. This was quite enough. The old lady, mistaking me for the creature I was describing, and believing that I was offering to bet with the company, uttered a scream of horror and left the room. " Poor lady," said I to the quiet old chairman, " of course she's mad ; but why did the committee let her in ?" " No, sir," said the president, " that lady is not mad ; she is my wife /" I apologised ; but, to my comfort, the chairman was not so much offended as I supposed ; for, addressing me again, he said, " Never mind; you'd better get on with your lecture. She's more trouble to me than she is to you. You'd better get on with your lecture." Early-Rising Association. 191 Recently, an eccentric " secretary," inviting me to lecture for liis society, obligingly assured me that he was not at all jxirticular as to time, and added, " but please to avoid Advent, Lent, and Passion-week, and we mtist have a market- day and a moonlight night !" while only last week an eccentric clergyman, living within range of the Crystal Palace, objected to my giving read- ings from Pickioick in the parish school-room, to the Working-Man's Institute, on a Saturday night, on the ground that " it ivas too near Sunday''^ ! But to return to my friend, the President of the Early-Rising Association. Having found out his quiet abode, and taken my seat at his table, I soon had an opportunity of studying the peculiar bent of his " eccentricity." A tall, fine, handsome old gentleman, speaking with a sort of subdued inward voice, and having a strange habit of repeating the last word or two or syllable of each sentence. Thus he addressed me : " I understand, Mr. Smithers — Mr. Smithers — that you have something to do with The Thames newspaper — newspaper; and it has occurred to me — to me — that you might possibly know the editor — the editor. Now within the last two years — two years — I have written as many as forty-seven letters — forty-seven letters — to the editor of that paper — paper — upon questions of 192 Tlie Savage- Club Papers. medical jurisprudence — prudence ; and strange to say, sir — say, sir — not one of tliose letters has ever been inserted — inserted." I said I Avas sorry to liear that. " Precisely so, sir — so, sir ; and if j^ou know the editor — editor — I thought you might not ob- ject to ask him — ask him — if he is ever likely to use any of those communications — cations; and, if not, will he kindly return me the letters (for I did not keep copies of them — copies of them) dated the 3d of January last, February the 6th and 12th, March the 19th, and April the 1st— the 1st." I informed him of the well-known fact that the editor of The lliames received dailv a suf- ficient number of letters to occupy the entire space at his disposal; and having satisfied him, I hoped, that it was want of room, and not want of appreciation of his very learned effusions, which had led to their rejection, I was obliged in common honesty to add that there was uot the smallest possibility of his ever recovering possession of any document once committed to the charge of Squint- ing-house-square. Precisely as the clock struck ten that night, the few guests invited to assemble after the early lecture rose from the supper-table simultaneously, without finishing the conversation in hand, and quietly departed. In a few more minutes my ec- Early-Rising Association. 193 centric host placed a chamber-candlestick in my hands, and said that he would show me to my room. I rose and followed the wooden leg up- stairs. He then told me that he would call and fetch my candle in ten minutes. I said I would bloAv it out ; but as this intimation did not appear to satisfy him, and I heard the wooden leg hovering about impatiently on the landing, I extinguished the "flaming minister" and jumped into bed. About seven minutes afterwards, as it seemed to me (although, I confess, on reference to my watch, I find it to be as many hours), I heard that wooden leg again on the stairs. It entered my room, lit up my candle with a wax taper, said it was " past five o'clock — o'clock," and walked out again. I regarded this as a strong hint that I must get up ; and while I was endeavouring to realise the suggestion in my mind, I must have dozed off; for I was again disturbed from a half-broken reverie by the noise of that wooden leg on the stairs. It entered my room, went straight up to the candle, snuffed it sharply, said nothing, and went out again. I saw that but one course was open to me ; and while struggling manfidly with the temptation to defer it, I again dropped off — travelled about 400 miles, lectured to 3000 j)eople, suj^ped with the president, heard his daughters sing and play delightfidly, broke down in a comic song myself, VOL. II. o 194 The Savage- Club Papers. and was being precipitated, with thirteen railway- carriages, from a Cornish viaduct 1200 feet high (all in five minutes) — when, for the third time, 1 heard the sound of that terrible wooden leg on the stairs. In a moment I was out of bed. My first impulse was to rush to the candle and snuff it. I then knocked over two chairs, to satisfy my host of my rapid progress in dressing ; and, hastening downstairs (all thought of shaving with the cold hot water on the table being out of the question), I stumbled out an abject apology — " hoped I had not kept him waiting," &c. &c. With character- istic candour he replied that 1 had, but that " it was of no consequence, except that the coffee was quite cold — quite cold," and ^^ the Jirst up- train to London had gone^ I left my eccentric friend shortly afterwards Avith the melancholy conviction that I had lost caste for ever, as no doubt I had done, in the estimation of the " President of the Early-Rising Association." e-K-it E. Hull, del. Dal/icl Bros., sc. LOVE S SEASONS. LOVE'S SEASONS. V'ords icritten hi/ WILLIAM BROUGH. Music composed hy T. GERMAN REED. Allegretto quasi Andante. >-!•-• ff- - — — I r I I — r— ] --1 I , , n I—; mil. I * ^ 5^=f= ■"r!!'^^-^cr' s i -r-r - r ^ -p — p- ^ t==ti a teynpn. 'Twas Siiring-time ! I met her. To i ^CPE g^-^^ ^ r .^-al • fg- ijt I*3=il see, was to love her. New hopes and new life in my 196 The Sanage-Chih Papers, rail. heart seemed to rise ; xVll na - tuie looked -p-l»- ^^ T I I ^&^^ * -S-JL T ; I -^=SW =1 ^ ^" colla voce I* r ^ "> » ^ ^ ^3 fair - er; The bright sun a-buve her shoue bright cres. T^^ T^ =5=P= -n — -m- T^ n^ ' '' -^-^- 1 I I I §£ -* ', i7^K tji ^ =* 1=^ mi- ttf '-U fer F i ^ ^p ?'^=F ; She lent him new light from her eye. rlim. !s N :^ g qw=1« ^=^ T2 •1^'a -1 ^-^-»l _«^ «_ 1 « -1 gi 1 -^s^^^ ^ hW a< »l «! ^ i dim. r-^r-^r^ t z Z Pastorale. Love's Seasons. 197 S m com - fields ■were turn - iiig cre.i. to gold )m (Hin. t'i,;?. g ^=m: Z(?=it as the sun hU fierce ra^'s on them shed ; let r=i 1 1 1 ^ I | =-^ii \ -w- !•" ^5=t -go m- J 1 T r" diiii. ~'-^' r ^^^ ^-r^ C £ 35=3- ^^ pur - er the flame in my breast Ihnt was burn - iiig. Jfoie crts- , _ , , 12^: ^ S- ^ygg= J=^ "IS-- i^ "Cli? — pi gold -i* ga ?; Si ■jg- - en the ha - lo love shed round her Lead. -*=1 i - i i^^^ w. rfe ;^^ ^"yl ^^ ivq f<-| >: i^ Z2I I * -1 ^ -i=g:rq ^^ ::;^ i 198 The 8avagc-CIub Fapers. m -r— r- * I m- J u To see was 'Twas Spring-time I met her, to (i w^. ^=P^=i^ ■^=^— I— «i- -=i- T ' < i collavoce. W=f=^'- ± ^: - r- tt » "^" ^^^ I0V8 her, Kew hopes and new life in . . . myheartseem'dto /7\ i ^ ^ 'm^3s^ ^ ^ss=^^l ^ ^ ^- ^§j^^^S^S_^^3?5^Sr3^ ^^ ^f^ m/ • • • -^-^ ;i=Ut m^^M^^s^^^ -I r Love's ISeason I9V m s 'Twas Au - tumii ! I won her, the fields hea - vy . r ^ t T '• ^ -j-j- - ^ m> - * —d-^ 1 la- den With har-vcst, rich joys to the reap - ern Idi i 4* ^ s 1=1= It It part, Yet rich - er my har - vest, my own dear - e.7l :p=?i= =p.-ii ^Ei T g 2 T "r^^ 5 ^ ^f=* T ' r f r » * If den safe housed — gar - nered up in the I Sh*« U. r^^iTy _* it 4«L 1 ^t^^ft ~ip- w V -w 1^ u ^ r 200 The Savage-Cluh Fapera, 3 w JJt agitato. ^ =1= ^^ depths of my heart. 'Tis 'Win - ter, i==^=^=^=M ^^ ■-*«- Jrfc 3 I've f^ i*::d: f=f^^ J . '' s -=<- agitato. ty :P=P= a35=1t Sl=l= :S==S: Ei ^ ± t.±t^ L'St h'rr- All's cheerless a-roundtte, — Cold, death - like the i H s ^z 3t3t P^I :M: , Ir R- ^JBE P= -r - ^- I Jf ^ I* ::p=p: _ti =P=k: -k-fe'- =tz=t*: earth is with snow covered o'er, And Des-pair in his za jiEq: 3 1 ^,:Z:jZ-^ ia>\ d S tS' r &^-=^ m. -TTJ- rj::zL =?2= I ores. T' cold i-cy fetters hath bound me, My young heart is fcfc dim. ^m Lore's Seasons. _ rail. 201 =tlE =t: It J*zz=^l^== t^iS iitt fro - zon to wake ne - ver - more. .5^ lift H^ S5 dim. m. -t^ ^ -J- rail. Ei? ^ * -P2- =P I C^ p semplire. ^ P^ aF=f 'Twas Spring-time semplice. I met her, 'Twas ■S— I V ^ ?^ ?^ Summ.er I woo'd her, 'Twas Au - tnmn i p ^ :^ ^ :* r rent. $ 3 [- i ^»i-'^=^^^^ a tempo, cre^ won her. 'Tis Win - tsr, I've lost her. 'Tis Win I- r 3=:e: ^ r p- recii. / r =P^ -p — F- - u^ ^e -f--r-- - jMj — 1- ^1 ss gC j# » » k I I I I I ^ 1* k r ^ ii=*= =^p= -)=-F- Harrison Weir, del FAITHFUL UNTO DEATIT. DEALINGS WITH THE DEVIL. By H. Sutherland Edwards. " A dark and stormy demon hovered over the bottomless pit, when above him shone a bright and beautiful angel. The spirit of denial, the spirit of doubt, saw the sweet vision and shed a tear of compunction. I have seen thee, thou bright one, and thou shon'st not on me for nothing 1 Not all in the heaven I hated, not all in the earth I despised !'' Pushliin. f LAYGOERS must have observed that no class of pieces are so uniformly successful as those in which the devil, or diabolical agency, or a personage possessing diabolical attri- butes, is introduced. If no devil nor imp in any shape can be brought in, it is sometimes enough to pay the fiend the compliment of recognition by mentioning him in the title — as, for instance, in Fra Dlavolo. In support of the general proposi- tion, Don Juan, Faust, Der Freischiltz, Rohert le Diahle, the Devil on two Sticks, the Devil to Pay, and a long list of favourite works, including three or 204 ^'^*^ Savage-Club Papers. four masterpieces, might be pointed to. Recom'se to the devil's aid may be had in various ways; but when a diabohcal atmosi)here pervades the whole play, as in Der FreiscJiutz, it is not found necessary to do homage to the evil spirit in the playbill ; nor when his name is made so conspi- cuous and is repeated so often as it is in Fra Diavolo, does it seem requisite that he or his should be mixed up with the action of the drama. Let the least acknowledgment of his power in any shape be made, and the Prince of Darkness, who is notoriously a gentleman, is sure to respond. It is true that in Faust, Der Freischiitz, Bohert, and most works in which a struggle between the principles of good and evil is exhibited, the devil in the end generally comes off second-best. Still, there he is. Instead of being ignored, as prac- tically he is in modern everyday life, he is caused to figure as an important and irresistible agent in hufiian affairs, and only succumbs at last to that higher Power, beneath whose blows even the Napoleon imagined by Victor Hugo fell crushed at Waterloo. Besides, how many people wait to see the denouement of these pieces? Robert le Diable is a magnificent opera, but it is in five acts ; and if everyone does not leave the theatre after the trio in the fifth, even the feAv who remain begin to think of going; and the final overthrow of the Satanic Bertram is scarcely witnessed by Dealimjs loith the Devil. 205 anyone. One can fancy the arch-fiend saying to himself, with a diaboKcal grin : " M. Meyer- beer wishes me to be beaten in the end, does he ! Let him compose his opera in five acts, and no one will stay to see whether I am beaten or not." Everyone, we should think, must wait for the last piece in Der Freisclmtz ; but here, though the Satanic cliaracter undoubtedly gets the worst of it, he is shamefully cheated, so that a certain amount of sympathy is felt for him by all just- minded spectators. Bat in every literary work in which the hero makes a formal compact with the fiend, diabolical interests are, on the whole, very well served; and this from the time of Theophilus of Syracuse,* the first man who is recorded to have formally sold himself to the devil, though by no means the first, and certainly not the last, who has done so un- formally, perhaps even unconsciously, but actually all the same. In all these cases it is a decided , advantage to the hero to have bartered away his soul, as per agreement. He invariably gets it back again in the end, and in the mean time he is all-powerful in worldly matters. No woman can resist his eyes, nor can any man stand against his sword. Every wish that he may form, while the * His interesting history has been written by Dr. G. W. Dasent, and is published at Messrs. Pickering's. 2o6 Tlie Savage- Club Papers. compact lasts, is gratified ; and finally, when ho wants to cheat the devil, all he has to do is to repent for five minutes and be eternally saved. This is not a bad career ; and it is prettj nearly the career of Faust, as the drama, whether in a purely dramatic or in an operatic form, is re- ])resented on our stage ; of Robert, in Meyer- beer's celebrated work; and of Rodoljih, in Der Freischiltz. Don Juan, who has come to no regular uu- derstanding with the fiend, does not escape so easily ; and this shows the disadvantage of not conducting your affairs, whatever they may be, in a proper business-like manner. Don Juan has opened an account with the infernal regions, but without seeing the head of the establishment, and without making any arrangement as to when and where he is to pay. It seems to have been the usual practice at this shop to make customers enter into personal recognisances beforehand ; and as their agreements and bonds were always proved to be . worthless when payment was demanded, all who conformed to the rules of the establishment got off scot-free. Don Juan, however, was too law- less even for the infernal regions. Otherwise the eternally devoted Elvira might have saved him, through the artful device of shifting his respon- sibility on to some other and more unfortunate man. Dealings loith the Devil. 207 That stories of diabolical agency have a great charm for the public cannot be denied ; it may be argued, however, that it is not because the agency is diabolical, but simply because it is supernatural, that they are found so fascinating. Oddly enough, though the devil is alloAved to work his worst on our stage, it may be doubted whether the exhi- bition of supernatural agency of a heavenly origin would be tolerated in England. When Robert le Diable was first produced in London, it excited a perfect storm of disapprobation ; and " shock- ing," "revolting," were the mildest epithets ap- plied to it. Since then, however, the devil has become a perfectly well-received personage at English theatres. We didn't like him at first, but we have become used to him, as we get used to other bad things ; and the introduction of Satan himself on the stage would now cause very little astonishment. After all, the devil never swears; so that he is a much less objectionable character, as far as his language is concerned, than many of our low comedians. But even in France, where nothing seems to be thought too sacred or too profane for stage- representation, it may be doubted whether the lioly supernatural could be introduced with any great success. There is no piquancy about a miracle performed by legitimate means. Thus the miracle of the roses, in the beautiful legend 20 8 Tlie Savage- Club Papers. of Elizabeth of Hungary, produces but little effect in the dramatised version of the storj, as given on the French stage. " Progress," in dramatic affairs has taken a strange direction. We be- gan with mystery-plays and moralities based on sacred subjects. At present we banish sacred subjects absolutely from the theatre, and give all the best dramatic situations, as it has been said that we give all the best tunes, to the devil. Yet there is one charming story of the super- natural, hitherto undramatised, which possesses points in common with each of the three legends of Theophilus, of Faust, and of Don Juan, and in which the triumph of the good over the bad is not a sort of after-thought tacked on to the play like an epilogue, but an essential part of the drama. Let us finish our " Dealings with the Devil" by giving a short account of the only man of whom we can find it recorded that, having once put him- self in communication with the evil sj^irit, he had yet sufficient strength left to refuse the terms pro- posed to him, and to break off the negotiations. In one of a collection of Cordes Devots belong- ing to the twelfth century, it is narrated that a certain nobleman being unable to touch the heart of a fair lady whom he loved, " and whom he even wished to marry," lost his appetite and took an aversion to life. In this condition he heard of a Jew, a great astrologer and necromancer, to whose Dealings with the Devil. 209 occult science he was urged to have recourse. He began by making the magician a handsome pre- sent, after which he told him the story of his un- requited love, and offered him an immense sum of money if he would enable him to gain the affection of the beautiful lady. The Jew said it was the easiest thing in the world ; but that in the first place the nobleman must renounce " God, the saints, and the holy Virgin." " No," said the nobleman, who understood the art of selling himself to the devil, and wished to secure a means of escape from his compact, " any- thing else you please, but not the Virgin." '^ A virgin, more or less, in an affair of this kind is not important," observed the Jew. " I refuse positively to renounce the holy Vir- gin," persisted the nobleman. The Jew understanding how, if he acceded to the nobleman's views, the whole bargain might easily be rendered null and void,* declined to do business, and the nobleman went away in de- spair. On his road home he entered a church, threw himself on his knees before an image of the holy Virgin, to show he was faithful above all things, * It was by the direct aid of the holy Virgin that Theo- philus of Syracuse got himself set free from the terms of his bond, VOL. IT. P 210 The Savage- Club Papers. and implored lier help, praying either that ho might obtain the lady of his heart, or that he might cease to love her. His prayer was granted, in token of which the Virgin bowed her head. But he was so full of his love and so intent on his devotions, that he did not see the sign, and continued kneeling and praying. The lady of his heart, however, had been all this time in the church, and had noted the Vir- gin's gracious action; and she understood that this Christian man was loved by the holy Mary, and that she ought to love him also. Accordingly, she followed him when he left the church, and asked him why his face was so changed, and where he had been since she had last seen him. He ans- Avered, by telling her all tliat he had done since she had refused him, and what his prayers had been to St. Mary. " St. Mary has rewarded you for your devo- tion to her," replied the lady, "for I will be your wife whenever you please." Geori;e Cniikshank, del. Dul/ifl Bros., sc. BETWKKN TIlIv THAINS. jl S^chcl/l ftjaiiL a ^ame^cLij^, BY DION BOUCICAULT. Scene — A Bedchamher. NeTTLETOP in bea, shamming sick. He has been divorced by his -wife Isabella, but still is in love luith her. He desires to attract her sympathy and play upon her feelings by spreading a report that he is at deatKs-door. ■Enter De. Minimum. Nettletop. Ah, Dr. Minimum, how good of you to come so promptly ! Minimum. No worse symptoms, I hope, sir ? Nettle. The heart, doctor ; the heart. Min. Allow me to feel your pulse. Ah ! — um ! — no fever there. How is it with the ap- petite ? Nettle. I live on smoke and alcohol chiefly. Min. The absence of fever, in presence of such products of irritation, is a curious featm'e — very curious. In what form do you exhibit alcohol ? Nettle. In the shape of brandy and soda. * From How she loves him. 212 The Savage- Club Papers. Min. Ha ! — of course — of course ! Internal fever, conquered by a febrile stimulant — similia similibus f Yours is a most interesting case, and one in which the allojiathic treatment exhibits its deficiency in a singular manner. Large doses of physic, sir, would only irritate you. Nettle. They always d-d-did. Min. It is the homoeopathic practice to explain to the patient the pathology of his disorder, so that he may feel an interest in his progress, and ac- company his own case. Nettle. Be introduced — into himself, as it were ; be t-t-taken in. Min. Preciselj^ The seat of your complaint is in the sternum. Nettle, {sitting up). You astonish me ! Min. Here it lies; the anterior of the thorax in its median line. Your diagnosis portends a morbid inflammation of the pectoralis major, pleu- ritis muscularis. Take in a deep breath ; ah — so, that pains you ? Nettle, {lies down). N-n-not in the least. Min. {disconcerted). Ah! — um ! — a bad sign, sir ; an insidious indication when nature won't do what she ought. ( Taking out a case.) You have water here ? So the pectoralis major is evidently in sympathy with some more important organ, which we must make to speak. We will exhibit aconite in alternation with belladonna: then we A Scrap from a Comedy. 2 ] 3 shall try pulsatilla {Alinimum prepares doses in two tumblers^. Nettle. You could not give me a little of Isa- bella, could you? (^Sitting up.) Min. You have no fever. We must create some. Eveiy disease is its own antidote. Nettle. Just as marriage is the cure for love. Min. Nature is full of corroboratinei; evidence. Three drops in a pint of water — one teaspoonful every Wednesday night. You will commence with No. 1. If not attended with relief, we'll try something else, and so go on changing till you are cured. The old system would have at- tacked your disorder with a prescription ; that is, sixteen homicidal drugs compounded into one con- spiracy against your inside. Now we explore the mystery with one agent at a time, trying the whole pharmacopoeia wdthout prejudice, until the patient is well ; the last dose proving that we have hit on the remedy required. Nettle. And if he die ? Min. I can defy our w'orst enemies to say we killed him. Nettle. Doctor, I feel better already. Min. That's faith, sir. Faith, sir, is the only medicine which homoeopathy permits to be taken in allopathic doses. Good-morning — good-morn- nig. •<^isj- BILL BJNKS'S DAT OUT. BY THE JOURNEYMAN ENGINEER, Author of " Some Habits and Customs of the Working Classes." you know what I've been thinking, Bill?" said my Bessie to me the other evening, almost before I could get in- side the door. " Well, about getting me something nice for tea, I hope," I says, for I had been out with goods from before four o'clock in the morning, and was precious hungry. " Yes, I've thought of that," she says, nodding towards a couple of nice bloaters, bristling before the fire; "but that wasn't exactly what I meant." " Why, then, my dear," I says, beginning to slip into my tea, " if what you did mean ain't ver^ particular, and it's all the same to you, sup- pose you let me finish my tea juid have a wash before you tell me what it is ?" "Well, lean do that. Bill," she says; "but you needn't have been so snappy about it." Bill Banhs's Day out. 215 " If I loas snappy, Bessie," I says, " you must blame it on the hunger; for you'll see that when he's polished off the herrings, and this plate of toast, and got the regulation three cups of ' best mixed' into him, your William will be his good- humoured self ao-ain. "And now, Bessie my lass," I says, when, after having a wash and putting off my greasy overalls, I was comfortably seated on my own side of the fireplace, "what have you been thinking about?" "Well, I know you'll laugh. Bill," she says; "but this afternoon, while I was looking at the book as you've got from the institution, it struck me all of a minute, why shouldn't our Bill write something for print? he's a good scholard, better than most working men, and he's read no end of books." " Don't talk silly," I says ; "what could I write about?" " 0, thank you for the compliment," says she; " but I didn't know as how I ivas talking silly; and as to what you'd write about, why there's lots of things." " Well, nevermind the lots," I says, "just let's hear you name one, and then perhaps I'll talk to you." " Why," she says, thinking for a minute, " you could write about when we went Saint- Mondaying to Hampton Court awhile back. Other 2i6 The Savage- Cluh Papers. people are always writing ^about their holidays, and I don't see why a working man shouldn't write about his; he earns 'em hard enough, and has few enough on 'em, goodness knows," " Well, that's right enough as far as it goes, Bessie," I says, " and I would write in a minute, only, don't you see, very little of that sort of thing's two 25enn'orth, and it's guineas to goose- berries against getting it printed." " 0, 1 can't see that," says Bessie ; '' a holiday is a holiday all the world over, and if editors, as they call 'em, '11 print about one holiday, surely they will about another, or else they must be curious characters." " Well," I says, " if any of them was to hear you going on in that style, they would think t/ou was a curious character, anyway." " 0, you needn't get on with your sneering to me. Bill," she says, quite huffed ; " I daresay I could talk to a gentleman quite as well as you; and there's some of these 'ere editors as are no great shakes, after all; for how anyone calling himself a scholard, and pretending to know what's what, could put such rubbish into his paper as them what-you-may-call-'em articles — well, lead- ing articles, you knew very well what I meant — as that fool of a Dick Barnes comes here reading to you of a night, gets over me. He's a pretty character to have cominc; after vou, he is. Tries Bill Banks'' s Day out. 217 to come the grand over everybody, just because his wife's aunt left him them four rickety old houses, as he'll have drunk away before another year's over his head, if he goes on as he's been doing lately. I don't know how you can have the patience to sit there listening to him ; and I just tell you what it is, — I ain't going to have him a- coming here any more asking me to go for his dirty pots of four-ale and screws of tobacco ; and getting on with his rights of property — pretty pro- perty /as is to brag about ! — and suchlike nonsense, till one can't hear their own ears; and if you don't send him packing the next time he comes here a-spitting on the fire-irons, and making a pot-house of my clean kitchen, I loill, and with a flea in his ear too ; and so mind, I tell you." " Take wind, my dear," I says, " and give us the end of my nose back, anyway." " Now you're not going to get my temper out, 3111," she answers, "and so you needn't try; all that I've got to say is, that if that drunken, blather- ing Dick Barnes was to come and ask you to write something for him, you'd do it in a minute, for all you're so ready with your excuses when I want you to oblige me ; but never mind, I'll serve you out for it yet." " Well, well," says I, " anything for a quiet life ; hand us the writing tackle and the dictionary, and here goes to do my best, hit or miss." 2 1 8 The Savage- Club Papers. "Ah, now that's something like!" she says, brightening up in an instant, and reaching the things off the bookshelf; "you know I'd do as nuicli for you any day, now don't you, Bill ?" " I am sure you would, Bessie," I says. " Yes, that I would!" she says, leaning over my shoulder as I was beginning to write, "and more too if I could. It was the thouo-ht of that Dick Barnes comino- here drinkino;, and ^-ettino; on with his ' representation of real estates,' and all the rest of it — as he knows as much about as a pig does about its grandmother — that put me out of the way just now. However," she finishes, feeling me beginning to wriggle my shoulder, " I'll leave you to it, for my chatter would only hinder you : and so I'll just give Mrs. Jones a call ; she's got something particular to tell me about them lot as made a moonlight flit of it from opposite her." And as it's along of Bessie that this is wrote, so it was along of her that we had the holiday. " Bill," she says to me, when we wore at din- ner the Wednesday before, " you ain't been look- ino; over-well this last two or three weeks." " Ain't I ?" I says ; " well, I feel well enough, and you can see by the style I'm performing in now, I ain't off my feed any." " Well, I don't mean to say you look regular ill like," she says, " but you seem fagged, and look as if a bit of a holiday would do you good." Bill Banks s Day out. iic) 0, 0, thinks I, tumbling to her little game in a minute, thafs the way the bull runs, is it? But I said nothing;, and after waitino; a bit she went on. " And so I've been thinking that if we were to have a day out together next Monday, it would freshen you up a bit, and do me no harm. What do you say?" " Well," I says, " I like a hohday as well as here or there one, but at the same time I think it's only those who can afford holidays who ought to take them ; and as times are hard and money not over plentiful, I don't think we can afford one just now." " 0, that's always your tale," says Bessie, firing up in a moment ; " we can't afford this and we can't afford that. Bother the afford ! We afforded a day out last year, and I don't know as we're any the worse off for it now ; and if we afford another, I daresay we won't be any the poorer for it this time next year ; and at any rate, it will be all the same in a hundred years to come. Upon my word. Bill," she went on, softening down a bit, '' it isn't nice of you. You know, though I say it as shouldn't, I'm as good a manager as most, and never waste a penny ; and it ain't what I expected of you, to begin about ' can't aflPord it,' as if I was some waster, when I asked you to have a day out, and for your own good too !" Well, I saw she meant to have her own way. 220 The Savage- Club Papers. and I tliouo-lit I mio-lit as well knock under first as last, and so I says, " I know you mean well, Bessie, and we loill have a holiday; for, after all, it's a poor heart that never rejoices, and as the song says, if we mean to go it, let's go it while we're young." " Ay, that's yer sort. Bill !" she says, smiling; " I knew you'd come-to." " And now where shall we go to ?" I asks her. "0, to Hampton Com-t," she answers; "Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, and Polly Edwards and her young man, and some more people from here- about are going, and they wanted another couple to make up the number for the van, and so I took the seats." " 0, that's it, is it ?" I says. " Yes, that's it, my dear," she ansAvers, again laughing; " I thought I might as well take them at once, for I knew it would be all right when I mentioned it to you." " You knew you intended to have your own way, you mean, I suppose ?" says I. " Well, yes, if you like," she says, keeping on laughing. " You know. Bill, Avhen we were mar- ried I didn't say love, honour, and obey, but love, honour, and have my own way ; so I'm bound to have it, to keep my promise." " You generally manage to get it, anyway," I says, "promise or no promise." Bill Banks's Da>j out. 221 " And what if I do, Bill?" she asks, looking up in mj face, and speaking quite coaxing like; " it ain't such a bad way after all, is it now?" " That it ain't, my lass," I says ; " it would be a good job for working men (and it's true, though perhaps I shouldn't say it), if there was more like you." ''Well, I daresay it would," she says, getting ujT and beginning to clear away the dinner-things ; "but the holiday's settled, isn't it?" " 0, yes, it's settled," I answers ; '' and as I ara going in for it, you needn't be afraid but what I'll go in with a will." And settled it was ; for on the Monday morn- ing off we goes, Bessie looking her best, and dressed up to the nines, in a little top-knot bonnet and a zebra-patterned dress, and her' gloves on, and carrying a blue parasol. When we got to " The help me through the World" (shown by the picture of one fellow trying to pull another through a globe), the public as the van was to start from, all the party were there except Polly Edwards and her young man, and in a few mi- nutes they came up ; Polly, who is in the dress- making line and knows all about the fashions, sweeping along the street all a swell, with no crinoline, and her dress dragging a yard behind her, and her hair frizzed in front, and a chignon about the size of a young bolster at the back. 22 2 The Savage- Club Papers. " Good-morniiig, Mr. Banks," she says, shak- ing hands with me quite polite; ''allow me to introduce my young gentleman — Mr. Smith, Mr. Banks." " How do, Mr. Smith?" I says. " Pretty tidy, thank you," says he. " Beautiful day, ain't it?" says 1; " what do you say if we have a Avet before we start ?" " I don't mind," he says ; and so we turned in and had a pint of ale, and then we all got into the van and rattled off, the children in the street giving us a cheer, and the cornet-player that was with us playing " Slap-bang." Well, we got to Hampton all right, except for a little bit of a squabble between Polly's young man and the musician, who got playing " The ugly Donkey-cart," which, seeing' as our turn-out wasn't over and above spicy, wasn't quite the thing ; for, as Polly's chap said, it would give peo- ple the pull of us if it came to a chaffing match ; and so, after a deal of persuasion, we got him to play " The King of Trumps," instead. The owner of the van had contracted to supply us with a good dinner at half-a-crown a-head, and was to have it all ready at three o'clock, in a nice quiet spot near the Wilderness, which he showed us how to find the way to ; and so when \\e got to the Palace about eleven o'clock, as we all knew^ where to meet again, and didn't want to look like Bill Banks's Day out. 223 a lot of yokels, we broke up into parties, — Polly and her chap, and Bessie and me, going together. We went through the different rooms, a-looking at the pictm-es and painted ceilings, and all that, and very nice they was, though we couldn't quite un- derstand some of 'em, 'specially the ceilings, which were all gods and goddesses, and cupids, and them sort of people as you read about in old poetry- books, and see in the statues at the Crystal Palace, and as I don't believe ever was in reality. How- ever, we couldn't stay to look at 'em very par- ticular, as it took us all our time looking pretty sharp to get through all the rooms by dinner- time. The dinner was a first-rater — beef and mutton and ham, and any quantity of rolls, and lots of fruit-tarts, in the way of eating, and bottled ale and a small cask of porter to wash 'em down. We were all at the dinner-place to the call of time, and as soon as the last of the lot had come in we set to work, and soon spoiled the looks of the joints and tarts, and made a hole in the porter. Eating and talking at the same time don't generally go w^ell together, and ain't a profitable game, but there's no rule without an exception ; and so when I saw, by them beginning to slacken their speed, that all hands had had a good rough filling, I thinks to myself, " It'll be all the more comfortable if we take our time, and have a chat over finishing." 2 24 The Savage- Club Papers. So, bj way of making a start, I says, " Well, I never saw such a lot of fine pictures together before, as what's here." " Well, there's some beautiful ones among them, that's certain," said a young fellow as was out for the day with his intended, " 'specially some of the likenesses of ladies ; it does a fellow's eyes good to look at 'em." "Ay," I says, " some of 'em were court beau- ties in their day, and I daresay gave many a fine swell the heartache." " Well, if all's true as is said about them, some of them weren't no better than they should have been," says Polly Edwards, quite sharplike. " Why, as far as that goes, Polly," I made answer, " I fancy there ain't many of us as are any better than we should be." "Well, then, if you ivill be so particular, Mr. Banks," says she, getting quite warm, " they weren't as good as they should have been, not by a long way." " No, that they weren't," says an old woman with spectacles on, and a face that sour-looking that it's a wonder to me it hadn't turned the por- ter (she was the mother-in-law of a quiet-looking young chap as was sitting close to me, and as told me afterwards that she led him a regular dog's life) — " No, that they weren't," says she, taking up the conversation quite vicious ; " they were a J. P,iliTier, «..!v...a-i It is usually a tree of gigantic growth, and sound and green as any of its forest brethren. It is its fruit that makes it so singular a spec- tacle. As everybody is aware, the vegetable pro- ductions of the dominion of the Kincr of Mascat are marvellous to behold. Little bushes are bowed to the ground with scarlet orange-shaped fruit as large as cocoa-nuts; and trees bigger than English beeches present the appearance of a giant bouquet, being literally covered with tiny waxen white flowers, delicate as the jonquil and fragrant as the rose. Grape-like bunches of delicious-looking fruit festoon the highway hedges in far greater A^OL. II. R 242 The Savage-Club Papers. abundance than blackberries on" Enolish buslies, and hang and rot; for so deadly poisonous are they, that a bullet through the head would not be more fatal than one of these grapes in the mouth. But the most curious tree of all is the one that from its bole to its topmost branch is fes- tooned with rags and scraps and flinders of every possible description. Little parcels of dried grass, screws of matting pinned through with a thorn, scraps of cask-hooping, broken bottles, splinters of wood, old pots and pans, wisps of straw, fag- ends of rope, and a hundred other things beside. This is " the devil -tree." Every district of Zanzibar possesses one ; indeed, its existence is as essential to the lives of the inhabitants — that is, the native inhabitants — as their daily bread. There is no such thing as doing without the devil-tree ; and yet the jet-black, woolly-headed believers in it pass by it with fear and trembling, and can scarcely look on it without a shudder. And no wonder ; it is a hive of imps. Of the thousand devils that afflict the good people of Zanzibar, there is not one but has its representative housed in this tree. Imps of plague live there, imps of famine, small-pox imps, yellow-fever imps, and imps that afflict men with raving madness. These are there, and many more, all alive, and ready to hop down and begin their old tricks anew, The Devil-Tree. 243 if ever iliey should grow dissatisfied with their lot. That innocent - looking stone bottle, handleless, spoutless, and with a great rent in its side, is the house of an imp, whose diabolical mission it is to break men's limbs. That bit of crooked iron hoop, gibbeted to yon big bough, looks perfectly harm- less, but invisibly astride it, or on it, or some- where about it, is an imp of the blackest dye, no less, indeed, than a mm-der imp. His history is soon stated. He took possession of a man and caused him to break his wife's head with a club, and to strangle his two little children and throw them into the river. True, they hanged the man for it, but they could not kill the wicked imp that still lurked within his inanimate body; so his friends coaxed the dead man of the hangman, and conjured the dreadful little demon into that bit of iron hoop, and hung him up in the devil-tree. The bit of iron hoop was not so Avithered-looking at the time the man was hanged as it is now. It was quite a new bit of hoop, and the imp must have procured it for the prisoner out of the king's store. At all events, they had caught the wretch with it on the morning of his execution, and he had ground it as sharp as a razor against a stone, for the purpose of taking his own life, it was thought, but his courage failed him. When his friends fetched' the body home, they were a little perplexed as to which the imp wbuld choose 244 The Savage- Club Papers. as his future abode — the chib with which he had killed his wife, or the bit of iron hoop. They laid both implements on the dead man's breast, and the mystery-man and the musicians, with their reed whistles and their copper bangers and their tom-toms, sat round him, and played all the prettiest tunes they knew. It was plain, from the length of time the imp kept the musicians at work, that he was undecided as to whether the club or the bit of iron hoop should be his futm'e abode ; but presently the mystery-doctor observed the bit of iron hoop quiver, and of course that settled the question. So every rag, tag, and flinder attached to the devil-tree has its story. Some are so very old, that the particular atrocity for which the imp dwelling therein was captured and condemned to the evil tree is forgotten ; but the tree is of gigantic size, and the imps' houses may be counted by hundreds. A middle-aged man, beginning that ti'ee's history, could scarcely hope to finish it before the death-imp caught him napping, and stopped his breath. It will be better, therefore, to be mo- derate, and select but one of the thousand imps' houses, only one. Which shall it be ? Here, hang- ing by a stout iron chain, which is bound firmly round it, is what appears to be a dirty-white rag, rotten through long exposm'e. Let us question the priest of the tree concerning it. Tlie Demi-Tree. 245 "Is it in the rag or in the chain that this par- ticular imp has its lodging?" " In tlie rag," replies the mjsterj-man, in a frightened whisper. " In the rag ! but why is it necessary to secure so flimsy a thing Avith a chain strong enough to hold a ship at her moorings ? A piece of bark- cord would do quite as well." " Ah, there you are mistaken," says the mys- tery-man solemnly; " so powerful a devil lives in that cloth that any fastening less strong than an iron chain would be insufficient to hold him. He would break away and be among us again in a minute." "Anyhow, he cannot be a very big imp; there is nowhere for him to lodge but in the knot that attaches the rag: to the chain." " Ah, but he is not all in one," replies the priest, in a whisper so low that to catch what he says it is necessary to incline your ear towards his lips, "he is not all in one; he is spread about in spots — yellow spots." " But where are the yellow spots? I can't see any." " Hush ! he is so cunning, that is the reason ; when he was first hung up you could see his spots a long way off. This was so until last winter, and the season of rain and wind. When we then came to look, what we could see of the cloth was with- 246 The Savage- Club Papers. out spots, and we said, ' The wet and the cold have starved him out ; he does not like wet and cold ; he likes to lie snug and warm ; he has left us. We may take down his ugly house and burn it !' I thought so too ; so I got a fetish ladder to climb up and unhook the chain ; but as T was about to do it, the thought came into my head that I had better make sure ; so I took the folds of the rag-shreds in my fingers and pulled them apart and peeped in. It was lucky that I did so. He was there all the time, hiding within the knot. There were his yellow spots to be seen quite plain. What an escape ! No doubt he is tired of hanging up there, and would be glad to be amongst us again at his horrible work." Surely we cannot do better than elect for re- cital the story of the imp with the yellow spots. " How old he is no man knows," says the mystery-man. " Nobody in Zanzibar recollects seeino; him before, but some of the m-av-bearded say that they have heard their fathers speak of this spotted devil, how he came among them de- vouring them by hundreds. If this was so, he must be very old — a hundred years old, at least ; and truly he did go about his work like one used to it. '' He came amongst us just four years ago. It was in the middle of the hot season, and the rice was ready for gathering, and the harvesters were The Devil-Tree. 247 out. All the males of the village were abroad ; so that when the spotted imp came and looked about him, and peeped into the huts, some he found empty, and at best nobody but women and chil- dren. At last he came to a hut in which sat, grinding corn, a young woman whose husband was out in the fields, and there he tarried. " She was singing when the spotted imp entered, but in a little while she became silent and sick- looking; and though the sun was blazing at its highest, she began to shiver as though it were winter-time. For a little while she tried to bear up, never dreaming of the frightful thing that had possession of her. At last she was obliged to lay down the grinding- stone, and sit down with her head resting on her knees. " By and by it grew towards middle day, when she should have carried the water-bottle to her husband. He waited and waited, and finding she did not come, he slipped out of the field, and hur- ried home to see what was the matter. " She was still sitting with her head on her knees when he entered, and thinking she had fallen asleep, in a passion he lifted his foot to kick her ; but just in time she raised her face towards him, and his anger was at once turned to terror and amazement. Her face was so altered : her eyes were sparkling like fire, her hps were pinched away from her teeth, and her cheeks and her 248 The Savage- Club Papers. forehead and lier breast were covered with little round spots the colour of p^old. " To all his questions she could answer nothing ; so he called to one of his neighbours, and told him to fetch me ; and when I came, the hut was full of women, busying themselves about the afflicted one, and trjing to rouse her. This was a fine chance for the spotted imp, who made the most of it, as you shall presently hear. "It was plain that the unlucky creature was possessed, and, turning out the women, I sent for the musicians, and we laid her down, and began the task of driving the imp out of her. It was some time before I could make up my mind which bait was best to catch it. Ascertaining how the woman was engaged, I at once ordered that some half-ground meal should be put in a bag and laid on her breast, thinking it likely that, being hungry, the imp had smelt the meal as he passed the door, and entered to take some, but that, being alarmed, he had jumped down the woman's tlu'oat to save himself. " But though we drummed and beat the gong our hardest, and played on our whistles the most seductive tmies, the obstinate imp would not leave the woman, at least so we thought ; but when we had played for two hours and more, there was a loud knocking at the door, and in came a young man to tell us tliat it was of no use us trving to The Devil- Tree. 249 catch the spotted imp in that place, for at that very moment his old mother was possessed of him, and lying at death's door. " Hurrying to the hut where the young man's mother lived, we found it just as he had stated. There lay the woman with the same blazing eyes, the same pinched lips, and the same spots of the colour of gold on her cheeks and her forehead and her breast. Instantly I recognised her as one of the women whom I had found in the hut along with the harvester's wife when I first entered it, and consequently was able to account at once for a circumstance otherwise mysterious. The old woman, while bending over the young one, had attracted the malicious imp, and he had fastened on to her. " Now, thought we, we cannot fail to catch him ; so we took our places, and at once began to drum and whistle ; but scarcely had we commenced, when there came a knocking at this door as at the other. Another old woman was possessed of the yellow imp ; and scarcely had this messenger told his tale, when still another made his appearance, breathless and in affright ; and then one more, and still another, treading close on his heels, all in one voice clamouring the dreadful story, that the devil with the yellow spots had taken up his abode in their house. " It was plain there was something more than 250 The Savage- Club Papers. mystery in this : there was witchcraft. I told the peoj)le, as I appealed to them, to say if they had ever known me to fail in exorcising an evil spirit. I challenged them to show me an imp of the com- mon sort, who could withstand my powers. This, however, was no common im]3 ; it was an imp capable of being in twenty places at one time, and under such circumstances it was impossible to cope with him. They asked my advice, and I gave it them. It would be better, I told them, to hunt for the witch who was assisting the imp, and so to crush the mischief at its fountain- head. " Meanwhile the yellow- spotted devil had all its own way. With the swiftness of the wind he hurried from hut to hut, firing the eyes of young and old, jiinching their lijjs, and branding their breasts and foreheads with the blurry spot of gold colour. To be so branded was to be impressed with the seal of death. Not one escaped. In nine days four hundred, little and big, were carried out, and thrown into the pit. Had the yellow imp retained his liberty for nine days more, there would scarcely have been a live man left. Day by day the mischief increased, so that if sixty died to-day, a hundred would die to-morrow, and a hmidred and fifty the day after. But, fortunately, a sudden stop was put to the horrible pranks the imp was playing. The witch, who Avas assisting The Devil- Tree. 251 the imp to appear in a hundred and fifty places at one time, was discovered. " It was the witch's own son who found him out. We never thought th'at he possessed witch-power, but regarded him as a j)Oor old man who got his living by the river, helping to load the merchant- men's boats. Not one of us but would have been bound for the old man's harmlessness ; but this, of course, only showed the deep cunning of his witch-nature, and of the intensity of the malice which actuated him. " It was in the night he was found out. Sud- denly there was a loud noise in the street, mingled with prayers and entreaties for mercy. Less noise would have served to rouse the town, and out rushed the people to see what the matter was. There they saw the old boat-j^orter lying on the ground, and his son, who was a great strong fellow, dragging him along by one of his arms. It was a moonlight night ; and they likewise could see that the old porter, who was very small and shrunken, was imp-struck. They saw that his eyes gleamed, and that his lips were pinched back from his teeth, and that his forehead and his cheeks and breast were blurred with the terrible colour. When they saw that he was so afflicted, some of the people raised an outcry at what they thought was great cruelty on the part of the son, and bade him desist from serving his father in a manner so scandalous. 252 Tlie Savage- Club Papers. and even threatened him ; but by the utterance of a few simple words he instantly made them alter their tone. ' He is the witch,' said he ; ' he is the wicked wretch who is leagued with the spotted imp to kill us all. He carries about with him the house in which the imp with the yellow spots lives.' When the people heard' this, they set up a loud yell of execration, and would instantly have fallen on the monster, and torn him limb from limb, had they not been afraid of approaching him too closely. As it was, the son began to drag the old man through the dust towards my hut, the mob following behind and pelting him with stones. " Now, I had known the son to be a very ignorant fellow, and, hearing how matters stood, resolved to act cautiously, and not convict his father without substantial evidence. It was not wanting. I came out of my hut, and before the people, who gathered in a great ring, I bade the old man cease his clamour, Avhile his son stated the charge against him. '■'■ ' This night,' said he, ' as I lay asleep with my father in his hut, he awoke me, and said, ' My son, I am ill ; the yellow-spotted one has fastened on me, and I shall die. I am poor, and have no wealth to leave thee — nothing but this. Long have I hoarded it secretly; now it shall be thine.' What it was my father offered me he bade me search for under his girdle, whence I took it ; but The Devil-Tree. 253 as soon as I saw it, I thrust it back again, and there it is now.' " As the old man lay panting on the ground, I thrust my hand where the son pointed, and there I found it — the cloth with the yellow spots — the same that hangs up in the tree till this day, bound by an iron chain. There was no mistaking it : there were the blurry spots, in every one of which, doubtless, lived one of the vindictive imps. Never- theless, and although the mob stood round with great stones in their hands, yelling and howling for his destruction, I thought it but just to ask the old witch what he had to say. " ' There is no witch in it,' says he; 'a year and more ago, a sailor-man gave it to me, and I have never worn it because it was too fine. I oflPered it to my son because I had nothing else to leave him, and that he might remember me.' " Was it a wonder, when the people heard him utter this ridiculous excuse, that their wrath waxed hotter than ever ; that in their mad fury they for- got even their respect for me? They bade me stand aside, unless I too would be stoned ; and hurled their missiles at the witch till his body was, beaten into the ground. They burnt down his hut, and dragged his body from under the stones which were heaped on it, and threw it on the red-hot embers of his hut, and it was con- sumed. They then took the spotted devil-house 254 The Savage- Club Papers. and hung it on the tree, and jDnrified their huts, and bathed in the sea, as is their custom after having been delivered from a great calamity. " From that time there were fewer deaths from yellow spot, and in a little while the plague ceased entirely." n H W^h Jplimc tovll to\m. BY FRANK YOUNGE. I. " The time will come !" these simple words A world of varied meaning tell, — Now merry as the song of birds, Now mournful as a passing bell. The child — who longing to be free To roam the sunny woods and fields, Where rippling streams flow on in glee, And Nature store of fragrance yields — • When all his heart makes holiday, And bees o'er blooming flow'rets hum, Doth, hopeful of his freedom, say, " The time will come — the time will come !" 256 The Savage- Club Papers. II. " The time will come !" aspiring cries, With throbbing heart and soul aflame, The ardent youth who vows to ris^ Till he has won an envied name, When his renown aloft shall shine Like some proud star above the sea. To all the world a brilliant sign That he hath gain'd the victory : For ever to his eager soul. Like sound of " spirit-stirring drum," These accents, full of promise, roll — " The time will come — the time will come I" III. " The time will come !" the maiden fair Has murmur'd, in her bloom of youth. In hope the future time to share With one who vow'd her life-long truth. Alas, alas, that such things are ! Her idol proves but worthless clay, Who, deeming gold more precious far, Her priceless love has cast away. But shall he scatheless do this deed ? No, conscience never will be dumb ; For him repentance shall succeed ; " The time will come — the time Avill come !" The Time tvill come. IV. ^S^ " The time will come," the patriot cries, " When men shall do me justice here ; Which though raj native land denies, Not less is she my country dear. When force and fraud would trample low Her liberties amid the dust, My life-blood in her cause shall flow, And prove me worthy of her trust. Those hearts shall do me justice then That Falsehood now has stricken numb, Yet shall they rise to truth again : The time will come — the time will come !" " The time will come !" — a captive's hope. Who, gazing through his prison-bars, Surveys the distant azure cope Where shine the soft and pitying stars. He thinks of home, and those who pine To hold him to their hearts once more ; Where wife and children's pray'rs combine To hail his cruel bondage o'er. Though, haply. Death alone may be His liberator, yet the sum Of all his hopes thus whispers he — '' The time will come — the time will come !" VOL. II. s 258 TliC Savage-Club Papers. VI. " The time will come !" tlie weary heart, Worn by its conflict with the world, Sighs, as though longing to depart For realms where Sorrow's wings are fm-l'd, Where Falsehood cannot enter in, Where love and friendship ne'er grow cold, But perfect truth and beauty win Each heart within their tender fold. To meet again the loved and lost. To hear those tones Death bade be dumb, We pray — though here so tempest-tost — " The time will come — the time will come !" "■^^ F. Barnard, del. Dalziel Bros., sc. CATCHING DABS. BY GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. " Nessun maggior piacere Che ricordarsi, nel tempo felice, Delia miseria." Anonymous. ^^UT was it misery? "Well, it was po- verty ; and are not poverty and misery one and the same thino; ? Understand me : I do not call him poor who has enough of anything: — be it trnffles and Chambertin, or tripe and onions, or bread and cheese. " We can be good and happy without socks," poor Robert Brough made his erratic phi- losopher Billy Barlow say ; but Barlow had never felt the want of socks. Had he worn them, they might have impeded the freedom of his march, the independence of his port. Barlow was a nomad, a quagga kind of man; restless, incult, 260 The Savage-Club Papers. but liappj. Because Pocahontas had never known the hixury of a chemise she was not less Princess of Virginia. To be very poor Is to be very miserable ; and to be very miserable is, I hold, a very beneficial mental and bodily state for any man to be in. To have wanted bread and raiment and a bed now and then in the course of your career, should tend — if you have a man's heart in you, and not a beast's — to mnke you, if you attain prosperity, tolerant and charitable, and passably humble and grateful. For all your fine horses and carriages, and money in the funds, you may be a beggar again some day. There is your incentive to humility. Spurn not that mendicant; set him not down sternly as an impostor : you were yourself quite innocent of imposture when you were needy and sought re- lief. There is your incentive to charity. Don't be angry with the poor devil who worries you with the begging- letter. You were expecting a re- mittance when you wrote to Dives requesting the favour of that small loan. You did intend to repay him, with grateful thanks. You had pawned your coat. You had not tasted food for two days when you waited, sick at heart, at the foot of his stair- case for an answer, or were repulsed by his lac- queys from his outward rooms. Now, how is a man to understand poverty, and to appreciate want, and to pity necessity, if he have not been Three Hundred and Four. 261 himself one of the hisognosi — if he have not him- self gone through the slow-grinding mill of utter penurj? There never were two more charitable men than Oliver Goldsmith and Samuel Johnson, and there had seldom been, in their earlier days, two needier onerf. 'Twas the remembrance of the time when, he liA^ed anion o; the beggars of Axe- lane — when he pawned the suit of clothes the publisher had obtained for him on credit — when he left liis Bishoi^-visitor Warburton in Green Arbour-court to lend the Irishwoman below a slop-basin full of coals — that opened Oliver's hand when he came to wear silk stockinp;s and a coat of Tyrian bloom, that moved him to enrol that band of small pensioners who made a more solemn show when he lay dead in the Temple than all the Gen- tlemen Pensioners could make at the obsequies of a king. 'Twas mindfulness of huno-er and naked- ness and cold — of nights passed with Savage, wan- dering up and down the cruel streets, or crouching upon tradesmen's bulks — of the spunging-house and the twopenny ordinary — of the time when he devoured his victuals behind a screen, because, in his ragged horseman's coat, he was not deemed fit to sit at meat with Mr. Cave's grand company — that stirred the grand lieart of Johnson to in- finite tenderness and j)ity — that bade him oj)en his house and purse to the fractious blind woman and the silly, troublesome apothecary — that led 262 Tlie Savage- Club Papers. him to take up the fainting, perishing drab on his back, and bear her to where there was shelter. Did you ever see Murillo's picture of San Juan de Dios ? Well, an engraving may serve your turn. The painting is at Seville, in the church of La Caridad — Don Juan's church. The saint has found a beggar, perishing in the gutter, as John- son found the wanton. Forth^^'ith he hoists him on his shoulders. But the holy man is old and weak, and he staggers, and is falling beneath the load, when an angel comes out of the darkness of the night — an angel with shining face and wings, and cheers him up, and props his arm, and guides his footsteps with his charge, to the 'spital. When I first looked on this picture, I thought at once of Dr. Johnson and the drab. Do you think, if those wise gentlemen of the House of Commons — many of them o'ealhj wise, generous, charitable according to their lights — had known anything of absolute, grinding, crust- wanting poverty, they would have j:)assed that stupid clause in the Street-Traffic Act which bade fair to deprive thirty thousand costermongers of their means of existence? I am leady to believe that Parliament is far more willing to helji a man to earn his bread than to try to starve him ; but the M.P.'s sinned, not of malice, but of ignorance. There is a great talk of working-men as repre- sentatives of their class in Parliament. Ay, but lliree Hundred and Four. 263 I hold that the hisognosi should be likewise repre- sented — that the Blind Bego-ar of Bethnal Green should have his say as well as the guardians and the rate -payers. Twenty years ago, more or less — more, I think ; it was just after the great Railway Mania of '45 — I first became acquainted with Three Hundred and Four. It was a shop then, and it is a shop now ; but the merchandise sold there is of a far different kind from that which was dispensed in my day. Three Hundred and Four is in the W.C. district, is at the corner of a narrow street, and is not a hundred miles from the church of St. Clement Danes, or of St. Mary-le- Strand, whichever you may choose to fix upon. I will not more minutely particularise. I pass that street-corner almost every day of my life, and salute Three Hundred and Four as an old mournful friend. The shop will always be associated in my mind with my first entrance into the career of letters, and with the extremest poverty. I had elected to " earn my own living," and have my own home, and '' be my own master ;" and I slmdder sometimes to think of the anguish I have endured. It ivas anguish, and of the bitterest. It is vastly fine for Beranger to sing, " Dans un grenier qiCon est hien a vingt ans.''"' But how is it when, at twenty years, the garret is lacking, or you are locked out by the landlady for not paying the 264 Tlie Savage-Cluh Papers. rent ? Beranger talks of his Lisette, of his credit at Madame Gregoin's cabaret, of his pledging his watch to defray the cost of a carouse. How is it when you have no Lisette, no wineshop-keeper to trust you, no watch to pledge ? Beranger had a trade ; he was a compositor, and a working-man need never starve. But in the days I speak of, I could do nothing that would secure me a regular livelihood. I could not draw, or engrave, or paint, or write well enough — although I dabbled in all those crafts — to be received as a skilled journeyman in any workshop. I was that which is very coarsely but very expressively termed a " duflfer," that is to say, an incapable, and my services were not worth a pound a-week to any employer. I know that it has often turned me sick when I have gone into a tavern for half a pint of porter to see a swaggering customer throw down a sove- reign, and rattle the great shining half-crowns as he put them up in his fob. I had early fallen a slave to Tobacco — the great consoler, the great afflicter, the merciless usurer, who exacts higher interest each time he renews the bill, and at last claims his capital, and sells you up, and leaves you bankrupt in nerve and brain. I know that when I have not had the means of purchasing a solitary "screw" of bird's-eye, and have searched all my short pipes in the fruitless hope of finding in some Three Hundred and Four. 265 forgotten bowl a remnant of" mundungus," I have experienced a miserable pleasure in walking in the street behind a gentleman who was smoking a good cigar, and that the aroma drove me into a kind of sensuous incoherence that was half satisfaction and half despair. I know that I have walked down to Club-land — have wandered up, and down Pall Mall and Waterloo-place and St. James's-street, and have gazed, in summer time, through the open windows of the great gas-lit palaces, and have Avondered whether the stout gray-headed gentle- men I saw throned before the clean white damask. Inlying their knives and forks, or sipping their wine, or lounging behind newspapers, belonged to a superior race of mortals — whether they walked and talked like other folks. I have been deferential to the club-»porter, and have moved away uneasily when I thought the eyes of one of the club flunkeys were upon me. There is a portrait of a general officer visible from the street in one of the saloons of the Senior United Service, and there are some red-backed chairs you can see through the win- dows of the Travellers', which affect me strangely to this day. The times I lived in were prior to the epoch of what is termed, I scarcely know why, Bohemianism. At least, I belonged to no Bohemian clique ; and I remember that I once addressed a very distin- guished man of letters, wdio I am given to under- 266 The Savage-Club Papers, stand was one of the mamiates of Bohemia, as " Sir." I thought him a very grand fellow indeed, who passed a merry life over broiled bones and soda-and-brandy. My city of Prague ^yas in my own garret, and I often felt inclined to cast myself from the window thereof, " after the Bohemian fashion."* There is much, of course, in the mere fact of youth that aids the poor young man in enduring hardship. He can "rough it" well enough at twenty. His heart may give him a twitch now and then — although I doubt whether any male ever falls really in love before thirty ; girls begin at ten — but he is rarely, unless he be a victim to hereditary disease, aware that he has a liver and kidneys or lungs. The " extra glass" may give him a splitting headache the next morning ; but later in life every " extra glass" brings with it more than headache — a bushel of coffin-nails. When you are young, you may exceed for a week at the cost of a day's uneasiness ; when you are old, you cannot exceed for a day under the pen- alty of a week's torture. Only an elderly bibber * la the Middle Ages, when the citizens of Prague quar- relled with their burgomasters, they were accustomed to heave them out of the Townhall windows ; another deputation of citizens stood beneath and considerately received the falling magistrates on the points of pilies, to prevent their hurting themselves by collision with the pavement. This was called doing justice " after the Bohemian fashion." Three Hundred and Four. 267 could have written those terrible lines we find in Elia : "To bo an object of compassion to friends, of derision to foes ; to be suspected by strangers, stared at by fools ; to be esteemed dull when you cannot be witty; to be applauded for witty wdien you know that you have been dull ; to be called upon for the extemporaneous exercise of that faculty which no premeditation can give ; to be spurred to efforts wdiich end in contempt ; to be set on to ])rovoke mirth which procures the pro- curer hatred ; to give pleasure, and to be paid with squinting malice ; to swallow draughts of life-destroying wine, which are to be distilled into airy breath to tickle vain auditors ; to mortgage miserable morrows for nights of madness ; to waste whole seas of time on those who pay it back in little inconsiderable drops of grudging applause — are the wages of buffoonery and death." Young Bibo is rarely called upon for the '' ex- temporaneous exercise of that faculty which no premeditation can give." He does not swallow draughts of life-destroying wine ; he can rarely afford it ; and the j)ots of beer he drinks do not do him much harm, and his excess in potations is generally combined with hard exercise and horsej)lay, and what is termed "larking." A young sot, a " boozer" at twenty, is a monster. There are moments, Mr. Thackeray tells us in Esmond, when the conversation of a pretty lass 2 68 The Savage- Club Papers. and a flask of champagne in a tavern form the sumimtm honum of fehcity to the mind of a very young man. The enjoyment of champagne and the conversation of pretty lasses imply the pos- session of money. The very poor young man is fain to substitute for them a pipe of tobacco, a pint of beer, and the conversation of young men as poor as he. This last is more difficult to obtain in England than in France. The starving young fellows in Henri Miir2:er's Vie de BoMme make each other's acquaintance at cafes and eating- houses easily; no formal introduction is needed; but in this country the streak of caste is on every brow, from that of the Blood-Royal Prince to that of the costermonger. The country sparrow is not received, without proper credentials, by the town sparrow. The pauper in " the House" thinks himself above the pauper in the Casual Ward. Drunken people at tavern-bars sometimes fore- gather ; but the poor young man rarely forms ac- quaintances in the taproom, which he is sometimes forced to frequent, because he yearns to hear the voice of his fellow-men, and to sit in a warm, bright room, and because he is not a member of the Carthaginian Club, Pall Mall. Old Soakesby, Avho is a member of that palatial establishment, has his taproom in the smoking-room of the club, where he drinks four glasses of hot grog after dinner. He, too, desires a warm, bright room. Three Hundred and Four. 269 The conversation of his fellow-men Soakesby does not care much for. On the whole, I am inclined to think that the poor young man can endure occasional alcoholic excess better than he can endure huno-er. When you are young, you care very little about being in rags. You make jokes about the dilapidated state of your hat and boots. Society does not yet insist upon your putting on a clean shirt every day. But it is in the belly — to be paradoxical — that the shoe i^inches. Young men have such deuced good appetites. I hear an infinity of fine talk about " gross and carnal appetites," and the like ; but if you were to take a rigid moralist, or a serene philosopher, or Mr. Matthew Arnold, with his " sweetness," an J his '' light," and his " cul- ture," and shut him up in a room for three days without any victuals, you would hear him roar like a bull-calf for food. The poor young man's healthy stomach roars within him for meat. To be hungry when you are young, without the means of satisfying your craving, is absolute physical agony; and I have always maintained that the schoolmaster or schoolmistress who would strive to punish a growing child by stinting it in its food is guilty of diabolical cruelty. Three Hundred and Four ! Three Hundred and Four ! you are accountable for all these thoughts ; for within your precincts did I first learn to think. 270 The Savage- Cliih Papers. We sold Literature at Three Hundred and Four. We published an Illustrated Journal of Facts, Fun, Fiction, and On Dits ; we sold it at the not im- moderate price of one halfpenny. The " Trade" had a discount of five-and-twenty per cent on their purchases, and " thirteen as twelve" in the quire, I think. We were very deferential to the Trade. My heart used to go pit-a-pat when on Monday morning the men and boys with their bags came into the shop, and pei'emptorily delivered their commissions from Fleet-street and Paternoster- roAV. It made a great difference, I can assure you, if they wanted four instead of two "quires," for the Trade always paid on the nail, and jingled their shillings and halfpence over the counter in a most inspiriting manner. I wonder whether Mr. George Vickers is aware that ho has fre- quently been the means of suj^plying the present writer with a mutton-chop. I used to edit the Illustrated Weekly Journal of Fun, Fact, Fiction, and On Dits. I drew political caricatures for it. I wrote in it a most a^^palling romance, several small jokes, much bad poetry, and a series of essays of a highly philosophical tendency, Even- tually I became one of Three Proprietors of the Journal. Our united capital, I believe, amounted to seven pounds ten shillings. My earnings as editor and contributor varied between eighteen shillings and twenty-two shillings a week. Three Hundred and Four. 271 But, long prior to my 'promotion to the edi- torial throne — which was a three-leo-crecl stool be- hind the counter — I had hung about the office in search of a "job," precisely as an " odd man" might hang about a city warehouse or a dock-gate. Sometimes I got eighteenpence for a joke. Some- time the price of three stanzas of comic poetry rose to three shillings and sixpence. Very fre- quently the then Proprietor was in difficulties, secreted himself in adjoining ambushes and paid nobody. On those days I starved : not figura- tively, but literally. I remember that on the 10th of April 1848 I was enrolled as a special constable, at the request of the proprietor, who was a strong loyalist, and that I mounted guard with a very big staff in the courtyard of Somerset House. 1 was myself rather afraid of the Chart- ists, who, down Drury-Lane way, ran large, and " would strike ;" but the Altar and the Throne had to be supported, you know ; and when the ominous day was safely over the proprietor treated us all to cold beef and warm ale at Betty's Chop- house. There is no Betty's Chophouse now, and the proprietor went to California. I can't help thinking that I was a little worse off at Three Hunch'ed and Four as Part Proj)rietor than I had been as Editor. In the former case I received a salary : not much, but still sufficient to keep body and soul together. In the latter 272 The Savage- Club Papers. case I was supposed to participate in the profits. There were no net profits, so we were constrained to appropriate the gross proceeds. UnfiDrtunately, mj co-proprietors were as hungry as I was, and on more than one occasion we were, under the unpleasant necessity of fighting for the halfpence in the till. Those were the days of heavy adver- tisement duties : — eighteenpence on each adver- tisement, and cumulative penalties if you did not pay. We were always in arrear with the Stamp Office, and at one period I believe, taking all the cumulative penalties into account, we must have been indebted to her Majesty's Revenue at least One Hundred Thousand Pounds sterling. About this time, having always had a taste for specula- tion, I was induced to add to the publishing busi- ness the sale of the new patent medicine known as the " Shaking Quaker's Herbal Pills." They did not sell : they were not popular with the public. I'm sure I don't know why, for I took several boxes of Shaking Quakers myself, and they never did me any harm. I withdrew from the entire concern at last — quite disgusted with literature, pills, and journalism — and did not write a line for print again for three whole years. It was not a jolly time. It was not an amusing time. During three-fourths of it I was inexpres- sibly wretched. I look on Three Hundred and Four now, as rapid wheels bear me daily past it, Three Hundred and Four. 273 not witli fond remembrance, not with a soft and mellowed interest, but with a kind of cold shud- dering aversion, as a place where I suffered long and bitterly. The lessons I learned there will not, I trust, bo forgotten ; but any pleasure I may feel from looking back on scenes of misery arises, not from the knowledge that they were tempered by the joyousness and carelessness of youth, but by the conviction that I am better off now, and by the hope that I shall not get into such a scrape again. VOL. II. T €!)f fmn af ^HuBic ^' Thus it yvas that the enemies of Stradella, being much carried away by jealousy and all manner of wickedness, employed a certain assassin, one Rito Spalda, to kill him before he could leave the town. Stradella had gone to the Church of Sancta Capella, so that the assassin and his companion were obliged to seek him there. When they entered the sanctuary, they were immediately en- tranced by strains of heavenly music : their ac- cursed hearts were struck with sorrow and very great remorse ; so much so, that they flung them- selves at Stradella's feet, confessing all their de- signs, and begging forgiveness in the name of the Holy Virgin." Chronicles of Lomhardy. C. ,Mur>;,iii. del. l).il/,icl Bins., M.. THE POWER OF MUSIC. %,ife l^ncomforfalrk '§to^h. By William Kirkus. I HE world swarms with uncomfort- able people ; and no doubt if one had ^flJP ^^^^^ ^ competent knowledge of hu- man nature, one might be able to di- vide this interesting tribe into dozens of genera and species. But it will be enough, and perhaps more than enough, to divide them into tM^o grand classes — those who make themselves miserable, and those who make other people miserable. And yet it is almost too much to say that they pro- duce misery. If a man is compelled to suffer the amputation of a limb, or even of a great-toe, there is a sort of cruel mildness in saying that he is uncomfortable ; and, on the other hand, no- body but a milksop would declare that he was miserable because the dust had blown into his 276 The Savage- Club Papers. eyes. Tlie discomforts of life, taken separately, are mere trifles ; but unfortunately tliey very sel- dom can be taken separately. A man can have liis leg amputated only once in a lifetime, but he might have it pricked with pins or worried with fleas every minute ; and many people have been more frightened of mosquitoes than of an enemy in complete armour. The discomforts of life are more numerous and more incessant than great calamities, while they do not call forth the same amount of energy for their removal, or forethought for their prevention. So that uncomfortable peo- ple, though they would rather be shot than steal a silver spoon, are among the most horrible nuis- ances of life. To begin with, there are the people who make tliemselves uncomfortable ; and a very unaccount- able folly it seems. Yet, after all, the conditions of perfect comfort are by no means superlatively easy. They are neither more nor less than these : either to be, and also to believe that you are, per- fectly Avhat you ought to be ; or at any rate to believe that you are, even if you are not. Make- believe and impudence, though producing a good brassy exterior, a very safe defence against at- tacks from without, furnish no protection whatever ao;ainst attacks from within. The cleverest liar in the world finds it uncommonly difficult to cheat his own conscience ; and the most elaborate hy- Uncomfortahle People. 277 pocrisies are precisely those which are most un- comfortable. But if a man really is everything that he ought to be, and knows that he is, there is nothing whatever to disturb him either in his own self-examination or in his dealings with other people. If they do not like him, so much the worse for them ; their want of judgment in no degree embarrasses him. Indeed, so readily do our virtues degenerate into what may be called their corresponding vices, that the stupidity of our neighbours is more likely to increase than to lessen our personal comfort. But if a man knows that he is a fool, or ignorant of the ways and manners of society — if even he fancies that he is below the level of the wisdom or cleverness of those he has to do with, he is sure to be wretch- edly uneasy. Even authors — people, that is to say, who have the assurance to publish to the universe their own private opinions on all manner of subjects — are far enough from being superior to the folly of this needless self-torment. With a miserable self- depreciation — which, whatever his merits may be, will reduce the market value of whatever he has done or can do by at least fifty per cent — a bashful author enters the private room of a publisher with an insane determination to sacrifice himself. To begin with, he does not like to go there at all. As long as there is the faintest excuse for not appearing in person, he contents himself with 278 The Savage- Club Papers. writing letters ; the obvious effect of wliieli is that half his letters are never answered at all, and the rest are snubbed. When at last he summons up courage enough to face some great lord of the book-world, he is eager to disparage his own pro- ductions, and can scarcely feel quite certain that he is not imposing on a good-natured publisher by asking him to buy a cop^Tight. " We are very full just now," says the publisher ; '' and really the supply of this kind of book is so large that the market is almost glutted. The very most we can do is just to accommodate those authors whose works are most in demand ; and even then we make a very slender profit." "Well, of course," says the unhappy wretch, " I can quite under- stand that it must be so ; but still I thought that — ^110 doubt it's an author's vanity — but I really think I have read worse books than this, and — " " Well," breaks in the publisher, " what do you want for it ? and, to come to business, what's the least you'll take?" Thereupon the miserable author plunges into an abyss of self-abasement, and sells his birthright for a mess of pottage. Idiotic ass ! Now a comfortable man, a man with a firm belief in his own merits, and even his own superiority — nay, for this purpose, a man of brassy impudence, without any merits at all, or only merits of the smallest — would have man- aged matters with a far more lucrative result. Uncomfortable People. 279 He would have said, " Look here, my dear boy," or old fellow, or he would have at least christian- named or surnamed the publisher, and put him- self at once on terms of easy familiarity — " look here, my dear boy, the capacious mouth of the whole universe is gaping with an insatiable hunger, which nothing but this — this little manuscript — can satisfy. Publish this, my dear boy, and you'll help to make my fortune ; and you'll very much more help to make your own. It has got wind, and I have had offers and suggestions ; but it's not in my way to desert anyone who has done me a good turn when I can do Jdm a good turn ; so yoib shall have it, my dear boy. For this, which I Avill stake my reputation on affirming will be the book of the season, you shall just give me not a penny more (I wouldn't impose upon you) nor a penny less than — " " Illi robur et ass triplex Circa pectus erat," as old Horace might say of many people besides the first sailor. Then, again, in humbler walks of life there are people who can never for the life of them be com- fortable in a drawing-room. Somebody is sure to ask them to do something that they know they can't do ; or, what is far more bewilderino-, to do something which they know they can do, but 28o The Savage- Club Fajjers. Avhicli they think everybody else will think they can't do. There is not the slightest merit, for instance, in being able to dance, or play whist ^ but if you are the only person in the room who can do neither when everybody is expected to do both, you may knoAV all about the differential and integral calculus, you may have edited half- a-dozen Greek manuscripts, and compiled a grammar of the Syriac tongue, but you'll be a very wise philosopher indeed if you don't feel an ass. Nay even in church, which ought to be so very humble a walk of life that there a man's self should simply vanish out of sight, there are hosts of people who cannot kneel down to pray without feeling uncomfortable about their legs. '' I met four or five of my old college friends in town this afternoon, my dear. They've just arrived from the country, and they are coming up here to-night to supper. Have something nice for them ; not a scrap of ceremony or fudge, but enough solid stuff for five or six hungry felloAvs to eat. But ^oic know, old girl ; just make it snug and cosy." " Well, I'm sure !" she says, " that's just like you, asking a lot of people to supper; and you know how I dislike company, and what stupids our servants are ; and we have nothing nice ; and I wish to goodness you'd just be a little conside- Uncomfortable People. 281 rate when you ask people in this way, with such short notice." " Why, what does it matter, my dear ? they don't care ; they don't come to see me for the sake of Avhat they can eat ; and besides, the ser- vants always do very well, and it's not a bit of extra ti-ouble, except washing up about four more plates. It's just as easy to cook twelve or four- teen pounds of beef as it is to cook six. It hangs on the same hook, and twiddles round on the same string in front of the same fire, and — " " Well now, come, don't you interfere. If I'm obliged to have these people, I suppose I must have them ; and you just know nothing at all about it." " Well, old girl, you needn't make a bother about it. Of course you are obliged to have them ; and I'm very glad they are coming. You'll man- age all right enough." " Yes, there you go ! I'm not making a bother about it at all. Of course it will be all right by my dragging myself to pieces running up and down stairs, and nearly roasting myself in front of the kitchen-fire seeing that all's right."" Now isn't it perfectly plain that the " old girl" is an uncomfortable person ? And then — not after these few only, for they are but a sample — there is scarcely a single human being who is not sticking a pin somewhere or 282 The Savage- Club Papers. other into liis own flesh — but after the whole host of people who make themselves uncomfortable, there come those who make other people uncom- fortable. And these are not always one's enemies, but, for instance, the people who can't keep a secret, the people who can't take a hint, the people who never understand a joke, the people who by some fatality are always asking the most incon- venient and aggravating questions. Then, again, there are the people who are always, with the best intentions, repeating every unpleasant thing they hear anybody say about you. " I was hor- ribly vexed, my dear, and of course I contradicted it; but I think it right to let you know what is being said against you, that you may have the opportunity of contradicting it yourself.'''' But unfortunately we are never able ourselves to con- tradict whatever any fool may choose to say about us ; and as we cannot mend the mischief, it were surely just as well that we should know nothing about it. " Avaunt ! begone ! thou hast set me on the rack ; I swear 'tis better to be much abused Than but to know't a little." Once more — for amongst uncomfortable people are those who go prosing on, telling you what you know already — there are candid friends ; the people who, out of the great love they bear you, must needs set all your faults and frailties full in Uncomfortable People. 283 your view, as if there were not enemies enough in the world to do that uncomfortable work for you. " What on earth is the matter with you, my dear fellow?" "0 nothing — and yet there is something — there's something I want to say to you ; and I don't know whether or not I .ought to say it." "Why, what ever can it be? You know you are perfectly at liberty to say what- ever you like to me." " Yes; but still even friends do not always like to hear of their own faults." And then he begins to say exactly what your worst enemy might have rejoiced to tell you. And very likely I am doing the very same thing. If you'll look honestly into your own be- haviour, you'll find perhaps that you are an un- comfortable person ; and then of course I must be a very uncomfortable person for telling you so. A SONG. By William Brough. * 'TwAS Spring-time ! I met her. To see was to love lier ; New hopes and new life in my heart seemed to rise : All Natm-e looked fairer ; the bright sun above her Shone brighter — she lent him new light from her eyes. 'Twas Summer! I wooed her. The corn-fields were turning To gold, as the sun his fierce rays on them shed ; Yet fiercer the flame in my breast that was burning, More eolden the halo love shed round her head. * The music for this song will be found at page 195. Love's Seasons. 285 'Twas Autumn ! I won her. The fields, heavy- laden With harvest, rich joys to the reapers impart ; Yet richer my harvest — my own dearest maiden Safe housed, garnered up, in the depths of my heart. 'Tis Winter ! I've lost her. All cheerless around me — Cold, death -like, the earth is with snow shrouded o'er ; And Despair in his cold icy fetters hath bound me ; My young heart is frozen, to throb never more. yA. yVloDEL C ODEL LHILD, BY E. C. BARNES. QUICK footstep outside my studio- door aud a sharp rap roused me from my morning pipe and paper. ^(f^ii;^ " Come in !" I growled, not liking the interruption, for I was just in the middle of an interesting paragraph, " Starved to death in Lon- don ;" and trying to twist it into a sensation-picture for the next Academy. The door opened with a jerk, and the first thing I saw was a large ragged umbrella, the rain streaming in a long silver thread from the stumpy ferule ; then followed a strange, careworn little face, surrounded with shaggy black hair, that looked as if it had stopped growing, all the ends having made frantic efforts to curl, and given it up as a faihu*e. The different locks E. C. Barnes, del. Dalziel Bros., sc. A "MODEL" CHILD. A Model Child. 287 had evidently not kept pace with each other, for they were all manner of lengths, straggling abont, and very wet ; one wisp falling from under the old speckled-straw hat, and across her pale cheek, gave a notion that it was a large note of exclama- tion on a clean sheet of paper. On her shoulders she wore an old-fashioned black-silk cape, trimmed with heavy fringe that reached below her knees ; the rest of her wardrobe was of the scantiest de- scription, old, but clean. " Hallo ! how are yer? ain't I jolly wet!" was the first greeting, spoken in a thick voice, as though some old cold was struggling with the words in her throat and getting the best of it ; then after cast- ing her eyes — a bright and knowing pair ! — rapidly round the room, she said, " Can yer give me a sitting to-daj^ ?" '' Why, Sally, you little imp ! what's brought you out such a day as this ?" " Why, you see, mother has gone to rehearsal. She's in the pantomime at Ashley's this year; she's going to play Queen Bright-eyes ; ain't it a lark to call her Bright-eyes, when one of hers is a glass un ! But I tell her nobody '11 see it from the front of the house. She does some dancing as well. I should have been with her, only we can't both leave Francis Henry." ''Why, who is he?" I asked. "He's my little brother, you know; him as 288 Tlie Savage- Cluh Papers. you painted when lie had the tooth-rash, and you said he did very well for a saint ; he's a dear little chap, he is ; he's the only comfort I've got. Well, after mother had gone out, I tidied up a bit, swept our room — you know, I do all the house-work, — then I gave Francis Henry his cold potato." "His what?" " His cold potato; he always has one when I go out, to play with. Then he eats it. Lor bless you ! with that and a few cinders he'll sit as good as good for hours together. He's got a doll — it's the first we've had in the family; I bought it with one of the pennies that gentle- man gave me — ^your jfriend — him with the carroty beard, as looks so miserable, and says such funny things ; w ith the other copper I bought a reel of cotton for mother, and a ha'p'orth of sweets for me and Francis Henry. He's such a dear ; he did swallow 'em up quick. I give Kitty Mathews some to come and stop with him a bit, and she lent me her umbrella ; it ain't a very good mi, is it?" " No," I answered ; " I shouldn't be proud of it." " 0, 1 don't mind; it ain't many people as looks at me : and I wanted to come and see if you could give me a sitting." " I'm afraid not to-day," I rej^lied. A Model Child. 289 '' Then I must cut it, and earn a shilling or two somewhere, for next week is Christmas, and Charlej 'II be coming back. I mean to have a good plum-jmdding this year ; we had a very small one last, only the size of a dumpling ; for Avhat with father dying, and Charley going away, we couldn't manage it. But there, if father had been alive he Avoukhi't have helped us much. Ah, he was a bad un to poor mother and me ! He starved us all for his drink. Why, the very day he died, he told mother to send me out to see if any of the artists wished to paint a dying man, for he wanted some more rum ! Wasn't it awful?" " Yes," I said, while humming to myself, " Thy gentle voice still leads me on, My own, my guiding star." " He was a nice man ; he ought to have been painted. It's a good job he's dead," she went on. " Francis Henry won't hear any swearing, nor see his mother kicked, as I used to. I got the little pudding I was telling you about, last Christmas, by playing one of my father's tricks. Mother was very down and fretting about Charley, so I thought it would do her good and cheer her up a bit ; but there wasn't many currants in it. I'll teU you how it was. We hadn't any money; so I persuaded mother to pawn my boots. My father always did if he got a chance. I've lost lots of sittings by VOL. II. u 290 The Savage- Cluh Papers. it. They were quite neAv, and I wasn't going to any studios; all the artists were gone away enjoying themselves, and it didn't matter about my going out of doors for a few days. We had dinner all to ourselves. I think I eat it nearly all. Mother was mending her dancing- shoes, and crying about my brother. But he's coming back next week, and we shall have a jolly lark ! I've saved up two shillings unbe- known to mother !" " Don't wink at me, you little ^^Tetch," I said ; " but give me a light for my pipe, and tell me where's Charley been to all the year?" The little creature's expression suddenly changed, and pausing in tlie act of lighting a piece of paper, walked close up to my elbow, and with a mysterious nod towards the lay figure, as though she doubted that that object's sense of honour would not prevent its listening, whispered, " I don't know for certain, but I've my suspicions — and I think I'm right — he's in prison !" Her face now wore a sad and troubled look that was very touching. I hope I may not often see so little of the child left in a child. She was only ten years of age, but she looked twenty. " How do you think I found it out," she continued. " You know we live up at Clerken- well, in one of those holes they call courts. Well, every day when I went home from sitting, if A Model Child. 291 motlier was witli me, slie would send me on first to open the door, and she was always a long time following me. One day — it was raining like it is now — I was going home from here ; just as I turned the corner by the pawnshop, who should I see leaning against the prison-wall but mother ! I knowed she was a-crying, she shook so ; I'd seen her too often when father was alive not to know that. She was leaning, with her face covered in her shawl, against the cold bricks, and tap- ping on the wall with the door-key. Just as I was going to speak, I heard her sob out, so pitifully, so pitifully ! ' Charley, Charley ! poor soul, poor soul ! I know you didn't do it ; I always said it wasn't 2/011 ! He told the truth before he died. God forgive him for your suffer- ings, my poor boy, my true heart !' When I heard that, I went home; but I never said any- thing to her about it, and Charley shall never know what I heard as long as ever I live. Mother would be worse if she thought I knew. But, my eye ! ain't I wasting my time ! You don't want me to sit, then?" " No, my dear, not to-day. Tlie pictm*e is finished. Some other time." Wow THE pHOST V^ALKED. BY HENRY LESLIE. OME years ago a popular actor (a son of one still more famous) was, while still engaged in London, also the lessee of a small provincial theatre within a few miles' distance of the metropolis. Tlie public of the little town looked coldly on his speculation. In the course of the season business drooj)ed from bad to worse, till, the managerial caj)ital being ex- hausted, the payments from the treasury became uncertain ; ultimately, indeed, the only reliance the " poor players" had for their Sunday meal was on the rather handsome salary received by the manager for his histrionic displays in London, and which he forwarded with the most honourable regularity to his actors in the country. In most travelling companies there are one or two individuals noticeable for some odditv of clia- How the Ghofit ivalked. 293 racter or peculiarity of temperament. In tliis particular one, the " old man" was a leading ec- centricity. He took a singular pride in a clu'onic state of ill-health, to which he declared himself a martyr, and which, in his opinion, entitled him to dictate to any other person who might be suf- fering from the slightest indisposition. A cough from the merest stranger would be a sufficient inducement for him to take a medical work — which, apart from his profession, was his only study — out of his pocket, and read to that stranger whole pages of the probable inconveniences or fatal results which might press closely on the heels of his slight catarrh. By these means he contrived, with the best intentions, to make everybody by turns intensely miserable around him. Another peculiarity of the same man was his habit of putting people down by the most daring, -but not always truthful, assertions. Thus, if the conversa- tion turned upon some point of church-discipline, he would declare that he was thoroughly ac- quainted with the subject, because he had taken orders. If the topic were the army, he would say he had held her Majesty's commission ; if the law, that he had been called to the bar ; and so on. Advantage was once taken of this habit to play a practical joke upon him, which he never entirely forgave. One evening, in his presence, the conversation 294 The Savage- Club Papers. was artfully turned on law points, as connected with the conduct of criminal trials at the Old Bailey. One of the company roundly expressed a positive disbelief that there were any persons base enough to peijui*e themselves for money con- siderations. Everyone coincided loudly in tliis belief except our belligerent old man. " Pooh, pooh! nonsense! — you know nothing!" he said. ' ' Thing is of every-day occm'rence. I've done it myself often." Another oddity in the same company was an American actor, Avho had positively travelled from the States to this country on the strength of one joke. This was the joke : in cheap-Jolm fashion he would profess to be selling a pill, and in re- commendation would cite an instance of the father of a family taking one for the gout, which not only cured him completely, but also relieved his wife from the rheumatism, his children fi^om the measles, and besides all this, to the profound aston- ishment of everybody, mended the kitchen-stairs. Feeble as the joke originally was, it became still more attenuated by frequent repetition, till at last the poor fellow was obliged to do almost anything to earn a scant, irregularly -paid salary. This " funny" actor's properties consisted only of a lace collar, a pair of ribbon rosettes, and a paste buckle. Handy at his needle, he had made a small bag to contain these, and thus protect them How the Ghost walhed. 295 from damage or loss. Once, while out walking with a fellow-actor some distance from the town, he was informed by his companion that an execu- tion for rent was threatened in the house where he lodged. " Well, they can't touch me," replied the American. "But they can seize your wardrobe, though." The moment this was made clear to him, he started off at the top of his speed. " Hullo, where are you going?" shouted his friend, panting after him in pursuit. "Home," responded the Yankee, "home : there's all my property hanging on the window-shutter !" A third character was a stout old scene-painter, who, despite a lisp, had, by the exigencies of the business, occasionally to appear on the stage. On these occasions he was regularly hissed by the few little boys who patronised the gallery. One even- ing he was cast for the Uncle in " Lillo's sublime tragedy" of George Barnwell. The moment he made his appearance he was, as usual, received with marks of disapprobation. " Beatht of boyth !" exclaimed the Uncle. " You might have waited till I thpoke." He then went on, in the words of the " sublime dramatist" aforesaid, " If I were thuperthitouth, I thould fear that death were nigh, or thome danger were at hand," &c. 296 Tlie Savage- Club Papers. Wlien he got to the end of his speech, he waited quietly to be shot by his nepliew, who ought to have been hirking behind. The Uncle turned round, and caught a glimpse of him at the wings. " Come and thoot me !" roared the Uncle. " Can't find the pistol," whispered the anxious Barnwell at the wings. " Thtab me !" said the Uncle. " All right; I've got it," whispered Barnwell. Uncle returned to his former place on the stage, and, without the least expression in his countenance, waited to be shot. He heard his nepliew behind, snapping the pistol, but no ex- plosion followed. The weapon was not loaded. The painter, however, was fertile in expedients. Stimulated by the titters of the small audience, he rushed up to Barnwell, took the pistol, placed the empty barrel to his forehead, and shouting out the single word ''bang!" fell in the convul- sive agonies of death, amid the unrestrained mer- riment of both audience and actors. Tlie foregoing were three members of a com- pany who one Saturday evening — for in those times there was no performance on the Satur- day — were waiting most anxiously for the " ghost" (that is, the salary), which it was hoped would "walk" on that, the seventh, day of the week. 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