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[Illustration: "WILL HE COME?"

_From the Painting by Marcus Stone, R.A._

_By Permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., London, W._]

       *       *       *       *       *

The
HARMSWORTH

MONTHLY PICTORIAL

MAGAZINE.


VOLUME 1, 1898-9. No 2.

       *       *       *       *       *

My travelling companion

A COMPLETE STORY

BY CATHERINE CHILDAR.

_Illustrated by Fred. Pegram._


It was a miserable day in November--the sort of day when, according to
the French, splenetic Englishmen flock in such crowds to the Thames, in
order to drown themselves, that there is not standing room on the
bridges. I was sitting over the fire in our dingy dining-room; for
personally I find that element more cheering than water under depressing
circumstances.

My eldest sister burst upon me with a letter in her hand: "Here, Tommy,
is an invitation for you," she cried.

My name is Charlotte; but I am generally called Tommy by my
unappreciative family, who mendaciously declare it is derived from the
expression "tom-boy."

"Oh, bother invitations," was my polite answer. "I don't want to go
anywhere. Why, it's a letter from Mysie Sutherland! How came you to open
it?"

"If she will address it to Miss Cornwall, of course I shall open it.
I've read it, too--it's very nice for you."

"Awfully jolly," put in Dick, who had followed my sister Lucy into the
room.

"Oh, I don't want to go a bit."

"Well, then, you'll just have to. It's disgraceful of you, Tom; why, you
may never get such a chance again. You'll meet lots of people in a big
country house like that, and perhaps--who knows?--marry a rich
Scotchman."

"I declare, Lucy, you are quite disgusting with your perpetual talk
about marrying! Why, I shan't have the time to get fond of anyone!"

"You're asked for a month; and if that isn't time enough, I don't know
what is."

"Time enough to be married and divorced again," cried Dick.

"But I shan't come to that; and besides, I have no clothes fit to be
seen."

"Oh, never mind; I'll lend you my white silk for evenings." And my
sister, who was always good-natured, carried me off to ransack her
wardrobe.

There was no help for it; remonstrances were useless; I had to go. The
invitation was from a schoolfellow of mine, Mysie Sutherland by name.
She lived near Inverness, and asked me to go and stay a month with her.
The idea filled me with apprehension. She was the only daughter, and
lived in style in a large house: I was one of a numerous family herded
together in a small house in Harley Street. Her father was a wealthy
landed proprietor: mine was a struggling doctor. Altogether I was shy
and nervous, and would much have preferred to remain at home; but Lucy
and Dick had decided I should go, and I knew there was no appeal.

A few days afterwards I was at Euston Station, on my way to the North.
My mother and sister had come to see me off, and stood at the carriage
door, passing remarks upon the people.

A knot of young men standing by the bookstall attracted our attention,
from their constant bursts of laughter. There was evidently a good joke
amongst them, and they were enjoying it to the full. The time was up,
and the train was just about to start, when one of them rushed forward
and jumped into my carriage. The guard slammed the door, his friends
threw some papers after him in at the window, and we were off.

For some time we sat silent, then a question about the window or the
weather opened a conversation. My companion was a good-looking young
man, with thick, curly brown hair. He had neither moustache, beard, nor
whiskers, which gave him a boyish appearance, and made me think he might
be an actor. His eyes were peculiar--they were kind eyes, honest eyes,
laughing eyes, but there was something about them that I could not make
out. As he sat nearly opposite to me I had every opportunity of studying
them, but not till we had travelled at least a hundred miles did I
discover what it was. They were not quite alike. There was no cast--not
the slightest suspicion of a squint--no, nothing of that kind; only they
were not a pair--one eye was hazel, the other grey; and yet the
difference in colour varied so much that sometimes I thought I must be
mistaken. At one moment, in the sunlight, the difference was striking;
but when next I saw them, in shadow, the difference was hardly
perceptible. Yet there it was, and it gave a peculiar but agreeable
expression to the face.

He was extremely kind and pleasant, and I must own that when an old
gentleman got in at Rugby I was sorry our _tête-à-tête_ should be
interrupted. We had been talking over all sorts of subjects, from
pitch-and-toss to manslaughter, exclusive--for those two subjects had
not yet been discussed. (I know it is a very vulgar expression, and I
ought not to use it, only I am always with the boys and I am a "Tommy"
myself.)

The old gentleman, however, did not trouble us long, for he had made a
mistake and had got into the wrong train. He hobbled out much quicker
than he got in, and my friend the actor was most polite in helping him
and handing out his parcels.

When that was over we settled down again comfortably. By the time we got
to Crewe we were like old friends, and chatted together over my
sandwiches, or at least while I ate them, for he had his lunch at
Preston, as Bradshaw informed us the passengers were expected to do.

I fully expected we should get an influx of companions here, for the
platform was crowded, but my carriage door was locked and I noticed the
guard hovering near; he seemed particularly anxious to direct people
elsewhere. Perhaps he thought that as I was an unprotected female I
should prefer to be quite alone, and I was busy concocting a little
speech about "a gentleman coming back," in case he should refuse to let
my actor come into the carriage. It was quite unnecessary, however, as
directly he caught sight of him in the distance he opened the door with
an obsequious bow. I began to wonder if he knew him. Perhaps he was a
celebrated actor, and when actors are celebrated nowadays they are
celebrated indeed. I felt quite elated at having anything to do with a
member of such a fashionable profession, and looked at him with more
interest than ever.

I was dreadfully sorry when we reached Carlisle, for there my journey
ended--for that day at least. I was to spend the night with a maiden
aunt, living near Carlisle, and go on to Inverness the next morning. The
station came in sight only too soon. My companion had been telling me
some mountaineering experiences which had been called to his mind by the
scenery we had been passing through, and the train pulled up in the
middle of a most exciting story. I had to leave him clinging to a bare
wall of rock in a blinding snowstorm, while I went off to spend the
night with my Aunt Maria. There was no help for it. My aunt, a thin,
quaint old lady, stood waiting on the platform. She wore a huge
coalscuttle bonnet, which in these days of smaller head coverings looked
strange and out of proportion, a short imitation sealskin jacket, and a
perfectly plain skirt, which exposed her slender build in the most
uncompromising (or perhaps I ought to say compromising) fashion.

I recognised her at once, and felt secretly ashamed of my poor relation.
It was horrid of me, and I hated myself for it; but at that moment I
really did feel ashamed of her appearance, and actually comforted myself
with the thought that my companion had seen my fashionable and befrilled
sister at Euston.

I was pleased to find that he was as sorry to part as I was. He broke
off his story with an exclamation of disgust. "I thought you said you
were going to Scotland," he cried.

"So I am," I answered; "but not till to-morrow."

Here Aunt Maria came forward. I had to get out and be folded in the
embrace of two bony arms. My companion (I had not found out his name)
had, in the meantime, put my bag and my bundles upon the platform, and
was standing, cap in hand, bowing a farewell.

He looked so pleasant, and Aunt Maria so forbidding, that my heart sank
at the thought that he was going away, and that in all probability I
should never see him again. Involuntarily I stretched out my hand to bid
him a more friendly good-bye. Perhaps it was forward of me--Lucy always
says I have such queer manners--but really I could not help it; I felt
so sorry that our pleasant acquaintance should come to an end so soon.

[Illustration: "PERHAPS IT WAS FORWARD OF ME."]

Mysie Sutherland met me at Inverness. A pompous-looking footman came
forward and condescended to carry my bag; one porter took my box to a
cart in waiting, another put my rugs into the carriage, and Mysie and I
went off at the rate of ten miles an hour. The pleasure of meeting her,
the speed of the motion, the comfort of the well-stuffed cushions, quite
raised my spirits. How different from trudging along with cross Aunt
Maria!

We soon arrived at Strathnasheen House, and a very fine place it looked
as we drove through the park. I began to get a little nervous again at
the thought of meeting strangers; but Mysie comforted me, saying that
her mother was just an angel, and her father very nice when you got used
to him. As I had never been intimate with angels, and hardly expected to
be there long enough to get used to an old man's peculiarities, I still
trembled.

[Illustration: "I WALKED IN TO DINNER ON SIR ALEXANDER'S ARM."]

We had reached the porch. The pompous footman got down and executed a
fantasia with elaborate "froisture" upon the knocker. The butler, who
must have been waiting in the hall in a stunned condition till the
performance was over, flung open the door, and I entered Strathnasheen
House. The pompous one clung to my bag as a dainty trifle he could
carry without loss of dignity. The butler stood motionless, content with
"existing beautifully," the more so as a second footman, with powdered
hair, plush breeches, and unimpeachable calves, rushed forward to our
assistance. He was such a magnificent and unexpected apparition that I
gazed in wonder, and eventually in horror.

[Illustration: THE NEW FOOTMAN SPILT THE GRAVY OVER MY WHITE SILK
DRESS.]

It was my travelling companion of the day before!

I never knew how I got through the dreaded introduction to Sir Alexander
and Lady Sutherland. I have a faint recollection of going up to a tall
old man in spectacles, and answering his polite inquiries in a dazed,
bewildered way. I recollect, also, that Lady Sutherland made an
impression of softness and warmth, and that she said something about
"changing my feet," which I looked upon as a mysterious and
uncomplimentary suggestion.

Then Mysie carried me off to show me my room. There was a blazing fire,
which was very inviting, and I was glad to plead fatigue and sit down
till dinner.

Tired I certainly was, but that was nothing to my mental condition. My
hero a footman! What would Lucy say to me? And Dick? Well, they always
said I had low tastes, and they turned out to be right.

Then I tried to persuade myself that I had been mistaken--that this was
another man; but I soon gave that up, for I knew all the while it was a
mere subterfuge. I had recognised him at once--his eyes alone were
sufficient; but, in fact, I knew all his features perfectly. Had I not
sat opposite them all day in the railway carriage, and thought of them
half the night, as I tossed upon Aunt Maria's hard, uncomfortable bed? I
grew hot from head to foot as I remembered it.

It is all very well to say class distinctions are rubbish and that all
men are equal, but I could not feel flattered to find my Admirable
Crichton in plush breeches. The more I thought of it the more wonderful
it appeared. When I got over the first shock my brain began to steady
itself. I was sure of two things: first and foremost, that the footman
was the man I had travelled with; secondly, that the man I had
travelled with was a gentleman; but how to reconcile the two facts I did
not know.

When I went down into the drawing-room I found a large party assembled
for dinner: a number of men, mostly young, standing about in groups.
These were some neighbours whom Sir Alexander had invited to shoot and
dine. Lady Sutherland, Mysie, and myself were the only ladies.

After a painful indecision upstairs I had come to the conclusion that I
must in some way acknowledge the existence of my travelling companion.
After our friendly intercourse yesterday it would be snobbish to pretend
I had never seen him before. And yet I was in agony to know how to do
it. Young, shy, staying for the first time in a large country house,
among people higher than myself in the social scale, it was not
agreeable to flaunt an acquaintance with one of the men-servants. Still,
it had to be done, if only for the sake of my own self-respect.

And this was the man before whom I had blushed for poor Aunt Maria
yesterday! Only yesterday? It seemed a week ago!

So as I walked in to dinner on Sir Alexander's arm and passed close to
my footman, I gave him a slight--a very slight--inclination of the head,
it could hardly be called a bow.

I devoutly hoped nobody behind detected it, but I could see it was not
lost upon my footman. He was equal to the occasion. The only
acknowledgment he made was to put a still more respectful deference into
the curve of his respectful, deferential back. I breathed more freely as
I sat down in my place on Sir Alexander's right.

[Illustration: "'ARE ALL YOUR FOOTMEN CALLED PETER?' I ASKED."]

We were eleven to dinner, and a little discussion ensued as to who
should sit near my friend Mysie. I noticed a good deal of man[oe]uvring
on the part of a dark, middle-aged man to sit there. Mysie saw it too,
and seemed pleased when he succeeded. As he drew in his chair to the
table he gave her a glance which spoke volumes. I was quite excited. I
wondered if anyone else had noticed it. I was certain there was
something between those two.

This was the only interest I had. My host was absorbed in the carving
and in the details of the day's sport; my other neighbour was evidently
too hungry to waste his time in talking to a chit of a girl like myself.
It was a dull and tedious meal. Lady Sutherland was gentle and polite,
but not talkative. Mysie was too absorbed in her neighbour. As they were
on the opposite side of the table I could catch a word now and then,
though they spoke in an undertone.

The number of courses, the number of strangers, the number of servants,
all confused and bewildered me; the only thing I had grasped was that my
footman friend was called Peter. It was an ugly name and most
unsuitable. Indeed, he appeared to think so himself, for he seldom
answered to it. I cannot say my friend shone as a waiter; he was far
more in his element relating mountaineering adventures. I suddenly
recollected his story of having spent the night on a ledge of rock in a
snowstorm. How did a footman get into such a predicament? One can only
picture him carrying a picnic basket in the tamest of scenery.

The only other people that interested me besides my travelling companion
were Mysie and her friend. I did not wish to act the spy, but a sort of
fascination compelled me to look and listen. The gentleman was immensely
_empressé_, yet nobody seemed to notice it but myself.

"Have you heard from your cousin Fred?" I heard him say.

"Oh, no, we never hear anything of him now. I'm afraid he'll never do
any good. A rolling stone, you know----"

"I thought he was such a favourite of yours," said Mysie's dark admirer,
with a world of meaning in his eyes and voice.

She was conscious of it, and blushed deeply as she replied, "You always
made that mistake. I liked him when we were children; he was my cousin
and I saw a good deal of him, but now----"

Here my attention was suddenly called to myself, and I heard no more. A
pint of rich brown gravy was trickling down over my white silk dress!
_Mine_, do I say? Far worse--_Lucy's_ white silk dress!

[Illustration: "PETER CAME FORWARD WITH THE COLONEL'S GREATCOAT IN HIS
HAND."]

My dismay was too great for words. Besides, all words were idle, and I
knew the culprit was my friend the new footman, who would be scolded
enough as it was. Sir Alexander glared furiously at him and rapped out
an oath, while I mopped up the thick greasy fluid with my table-napkin
and murmured sweetly that it did not signify in the least.

I was glad when the dinner, with its innumerable courses and
interminable dessert, came at last to an end and we ladies were alone in
the drawing-room.

"What do you think of the new importation, mamma?" said Mysie.

I blushed scarlet. For one brief moment I actually thought she was
alluding to me, but I soon found out it was Peter she was talking about.
That did not make me feel any cooler; if possible, I grew redder and
redder.

Lady Sutherland considered a few minutes in a fat, comfortable sort of
way. Then she said, slowly, "Well, dear, he puzzles me a good deal. I
cannot think he has been well trained. He does not wait so cleverly as
the last Peter. Didn't he spill something on your dress, my dear?"
turning to me.

"Oh, that's nothing," I replied, eagerly, twisting my skirt still more
out of shape to hide the huge brown spot. To change the conversation I
went on, "Are all your footmen called Peter?"

[Illustration: "COLONEL WITHERINGTON WITH HIS HAND ON PETERS SHOULDER,
THE PAIR SHAKING WITH LAUGHTER."]

"Yes, at least the second one is." It was Lucy who answered me. "Our
first footman is always called Charles and the second one Peter. Papa
made that arrangement because he got so mixed when we changed servants.
After all, mamma, the new Peter may improve. He can hardly have got over
his journey yet."

I racked my brain for a change of subject. I was so afraid it should
come out that we had travelled together. I was too young to see the
amusing side of it, and was in terror lest Peter himself should reveal
it to the kitchen. With more abruptness than was polite I turned to
Mysie.

"Who was that dark man who sat by you at dinner?" I asked.

She looked a little embarrassed as she replied, "A near neighbour of
ours, Colonel Witherington. We have known him for years and are great
friends; I always like to talk to him, he has so much to say."

"Methinks the lady doth explain too much," was my inward comment. An owl
could see that she was in love with him. (It is true that the owl is the
bird of wisdom.)

After a short interval the gentlemen joined us. They were all evidently
anxious to get home, and ordered their dogcarts (or whatever they had)
as soon as they decently could. Colonel Witherington was the last to go.
He had lingered so long that the butler and the pompous Charles had
retired, leaving only Peter standing in the hall.

"Now don't come out of the warm room, Sir Alexander," said Colonel
Witherington; "I shall manage very well--your man is out here."

Peter now came forward with the Colonel's greatcoat in his hand; and the
drawing-room door was shut.

Suddenly a peal of laughter was heard, long, loud, and irresistible.
Then another voice joined in--the merriment seemed uncontrollable. The
Sutherland family looked at each other in angry astonishment. Could it
be the new footman indulging in this unseemly mirth? Impossible!

Sir Alexander opened the door into the hall; we followed him with one
accord. What a sight met our eyes! There stood Colonel Witherington,
with his hand on Peter's shoulder, the pair of them shaking with
laughter.

"Go back, my dears," said Sir Alexander, with a wave of his hand towards
us. With the true instinct of the British pater-familias, he was eager
to send his women-kind away from anything unusual or improper; but
Mysie's curiosity was too great--besides, Colonel Witherington was now
dragging the footman forward.

[Illustration: "'COME AND EXPLAIN YOURSELF, YOU RASCAL.'"]

"Come and explain yourself, you rascal. Why, Mysie"--the name slipped
out unawares--"don't you see who it is? It's your cousin Fred."

An explosion of dynamite would have less upset the worthy baronet than
this announcement. He stood speechless and staring; Lady Sutherland
looked annoyed and incredulous. As for me, I cannot describe my
feelings; I was in a perfect whirl. Mysie was the first to recover from
her astonishment. She joined in the laughter of the two men.

"How like you, Fred, to do a thing like that! Do come and tell us all
about it. I thought you were at the Cape. Still, that loud guffaw
sounded familiar. But how different you look without your moustache--and
your hair, too! Well, I should never have known you!"

"The want of a moustache made me recognise him," said Colonel
Witherington. "He was just such a beardless boy when he joined the
regiment. I noticed the likeness at dinner; and when I got a chance of
looking into his eyes I was sure----"

"I call it most ungentlemanlike--most unpardonable," began Sir
Alexander, who had now recovered his speech.

"I did it for a lark," said the supposed footman, in a hearty, cheerful
voice. "I wondered what you really thought of the good-for-nothing
nephew, and how you would receive him if he returned like the prodigal
son in the parable."

"It was hardly fair on us, Fred," said Lady Sutherland's gentle voice.

"Perhaps not, dear Aunt Margaret; but _you_ would never be found
wanting." Mysie stepped back a few paces and took hold of my arm; her
cousin went on: "Talk of Her Majesty's uniform, these togs beat all. I
never was so gorgeously attired in my life."

Sir Alexander was too angry to endure this any longer. He marched off
to the smoking-room, and tried to soothe his nerves with the fragrant
weed. The rest of us went back into the drawing-room.

"Do lock the door," whispered Mysie to Colonel Witherington; "the
servants will be coming in."

Fred Sutherland (to give him his right name) then explained his strange
conduct. He had been obliged to leave his regiment, and had, as they
knew, gone to the Cape. Here he fell in with an old school-fellow who
was going to the diamond fields. They joined forces, bought a claim for
a mere song, and set to work. To the surprise of the whole camp they
were successful. In the claim, which had been abandoned months before as
"no go," they came upon one of the largest stones that had ever been
turned up in South Africa.

Fred Sutherland turned his share into cash directly and started for
home. "I'm quite a millionaire, I assure you," cried the footman,
slapping his plush breeches.

It looked so impudent and familiar of him to be sitting among us dressed
like that, that his aunt could not bear it.

"Do go and take off those dreadful clothes," she said; "I can't think
what made you do such a thing."

"I haven't done it in vain; I've learned what I wanted to know," he
said, with a light laugh and a look at Mysie and Colonel Witherington.

A wave of depression came over me. Of course he was in love with his
cousin and came to see how the land lay.

Poor fellow! Still, he seemed to bear up.

He turned towards me as if expecting an introduction. He did not show
the slightest sign of ever having met me before. I never was so puzzled
in my life. What ought I to do?

"This is my school-fellow--Miss Cornwall--but she will prefer to make
your acquaintance in other attire; won't you, Lofty?"

"I have done so before," said I, summoning up courage and holding out my
hand. "We travelled together from Euston."

Everything was so astonishing that nobody seemed surprised. I was
pleased to see the expression which beamed on the footman's face, and to
feel the cordial grip as we shook hands.

"Now," said Colonel Witherington, "you had better come home with me.
Nobody need know anything about it. You must manage your father with
regard to Fred," he whispered to Mysie, "and I will call early again
to-morrow."

And so ended my little adventure--or rather it did not end here, for
Fred came back with me when I returned to London. And--well, my
travelling companion has promised never to leave my side.

[Illustration: "FRED SUTHERLAND THEN EXPLAINED HIS STRANGE CONDUCT."]

[Illustration: VIEW OF THE "COUNTRY" THROUGH WHICH THE RAILWAY RUNS.]




A £10,000 TOY.

COMPLETE WORKING RAILWAY IN A ROOM.

BY ROBERT MACHRAY.


The seven beautiful illustrations which appear in this article are taken
from photographs of what is without doubt one of the mechanical marvels
of the day. They clearly set forth the most complete, and, at the same
time, the most costly miniature model railway system in the world.

So perfect, indeed, is this line and its equipment that the first
cursory glance at these pictures of it will certainly cause the beholder
to imagine that he is looking at presentments of some portions of the
London and North-Western Railway or of some other well-known, full-grown
railway. But his eye, on gazing a little longer at these views, will
take note of the curious circumstance that the entire system appears to
be embraced within the four walls of a single room. Having discovered
this, he will look still more closely, and then he will see other things
which will immediately excite his interest, and he will forthwith "want
to know" all about it.

This wonderful railway is owned, controlled, and operated by Mr. Percy
H. Leigh of Brentwood, Worsley, one of the suburbs of Manchester. This
gentleman has no professional connection with railroading, but for
some years past he has amused himself with models of locomotives and
their practical working. "Some men spend their money on racehorses,
others on yachts, and so on," says Mr. Leigh, "but this railroad of mine
is more to my fancy."

I am not permitted to state how much exactly this hobby of Mr. Leigh's
has cost him, but I am not betraying any confidence when I say that in
one way and another a sum not far short of ten thousand pounds has been
spent on his Liliputian line. This large amount may be accounted for by
the fact that Mr. Leigh was not to be satisfied with anything short of
perfection in every detail. His instructions to the contractors who
built and equipped the "road" were that there were to be no "dummies,"
and that everything was to be made accurately to scale. How faithfully
and thoroughly Messrs Lucas and Davies, of Farringdon Road, have carried
out his commands will be evident from the following statement with which
they have been kind enough to supply me.

The country, if I may so term it, within which the railway runs, is a
great, oblong, single-storied building, consisting of one chamber,
ninety feet in length by thirty feet in breadth. It has been added on to
Mr. Leigh's residence, and was specially constructed with a view to
giving the line a sufficient range for its successful operation, and
also to afford it protection from damp and other undesirable effects of
the weather. The room is provided with a double floor--a wooden one, on
which stand the trestles supporting the track itself, and, two or three
feet below it, another of concrete. An even temperature all the year
round is secured by means of two rows of hot-water pipes. When these
precautions are considered, it will be seen that this railway system
probably enjoys the most perfect climate in existence.

The line has not yet been given any comprehensive name. Perhaps it is
almost too soon for that, for it is hardly more than finished; indeed,
the goods-engine remains to be delivered by the builders. But it might
be christened, from the names of the two stations on it, the Oakgreen
and Beechvale Railway.

First of all, to describe the track. The road-bed is made of pitch pine,
mounted on sixty-five trestles, three feet from the floor, and the track
extends to 276 feet, of a double line of rails. Of the rails all
together there are 1,200 feet; and some idea of what this means may be
understood from the fact that when they came from Sheffield, where they
were specially rolled for Mr. Leigh, they formed two solid heaps of
metal, each as high as a man. The rails are of mild steel; they are
double-headed, and about an inch in height; some of them are nearly
twelve feet long. They are fastened down to 2,000 pitch pine sleepers by
4,000 malleable cast-iron chairs, held in place with hard-wood wedges
and 16,000 screws. All the fish plates, bolts, and nuts used in joining
the rails together are exact miniatures of those to be seen on an
ordinary railway. The track is ballasted with nine hundredweight of
limestone chips, and the gauge is six inches.

Details which involve a large number of figures are apt to be rather dry
and tiresome; but in the present case, if frequent reference be made
from the letterpress to the illustrations, it will be seen with what
extreme care, and with what extraordinarily minute and even loving
faithfulness, all the features of a first-class modern railway have been
reproduced in miniature.

[Illustration: OAKGREEN STATION, WHERE THE LINE STARTS.]

The line starts from Oakgreen, the principal station, where are located
the offices of the management. In front of the buildings is a platform
twenty-four feet long, provided with the usual seats and other
conveniences for passengers, of whom a few may be noticed waiting for
the express to convey them to their destination. The platform is
sheltered from the elements by a glass roof, while the gates admitting
to it are of the regular palisade type. At the further end is a
passenger foot-bridge of trellis-work covered over; it stands high above
the line, and is reached by two staircases, and everybody is warned not
to venture to cross the railway by any other means. At the same time
there are level crossings for the greatly daring.

[Illustration: BEECHVALE STATION, SHOWING TUNNEL IN THE DISTANCE.]

Behind the station proper is the goods station and siding, forty feet
long, the goods shed itself being four feet long.

Both of these stations, and indeed the other station and the whole line,
are beautifully lighted up, when necessary, by electric lamps fitted
with reflectors. There are in all fifty-eight of these soft, lovely
lights; and a particularly tall one will be observed in the goods
station for the purpose of affording sufficient light to that very busy
portion of the company's undertakings. The lamps are supplied from
storage batteries placed under the track, and their illuminating
capacity is enough to light up the whole room without bringing the gas,
with which it is also fitted up, into requisition.

The electric lamps also serve the purpose of lighting up both the signal
cabins and the signal posts along the line. There are three of the
former mounted at the side of the track, and they contain no less than
twenty-six levers, from which stretch flexible wires and runners to the
signal posts. The last-named, which are twelve in number, are three feet
in height, and are fully equipped with semaphores, lamps showing red,
green, and white, platforms and ladders. Besides these, there are also
worked from the signal cabins sixteen sets of points, by means of rod
connections and levers. Every particular with regard to the signalling
and the shunting has been thought out and executed with the most
laudable and painstaking thoroughness and accuracy. And these
arrangements decidedly add a somewhat picturesque element to the line,
while they also strengthen the effect of reality which is the chief
impression given by this marvellous railway.

It is, of course, impossible to enumerate every matter of interest
connected with the line itself, but it must be stated that there have
been provided two turntables to take the locomotive and tender, and that
the turntables have four levers for the points, and also that they have
been furnished with spring buffers; and, further, that a tank, into
which the boiler can be emptied, has been let into the track.

In the course of the length of the line, the train passes through a long
cutting, forty feet in extent, and two feet deep. To heighten the
illusion, the sides of the cutting are covered with grass, and on the
top of both sides there is a dwarf hedge. This portion of the road
supplies it with its chief scenic attraction. Some distance from the
cutting there is a road bridge across the railway, three feet long by
two feet wide. Before reaching the second station, Beechvale, a long and
fearsome tunnel has to be negotiated--its actual length is eighteen
feet. The station-house, platform, and other accessories of Beechvale
are very similar to those at Oakgreen.

[Illustration: TURNTABLE FOR THE ENGINE AND TENDER.]

The locomotive, with its tender, is five feet long and about eighteen
inches in height. It is of six-inch gauge, and is an exact duplicate on
a small scale of an express of the London and North-Western Railway. It
is a real working locomotive, most exquisitely made. The only points in
which it differs from its model are such as come from its comparatively
diminutive size. Thus, its boiler has not the usual number of tubes, it
has no injector, and steam is got up in it by a charcoal fire, the
charcoal being kept at a great heat by a "blast."

[Illustration: SNAP-SHOT OF THE TRAIN EN ROUTE.]

The cost of the engine and tender was £320 or a little more, and it was
made entirely by Mr. Lucas, of Lucas and Davies. It took him nearly nine
months to complete it, but from this period there would have to be
deducted a good many hours when he was called away to attend to some
other piece of business for his firm. And here I may remark that it
took eighteen months to build the line, five months of which were
occupied in fitting up the large room already mentioned.

The speed of the train on the straight portions of the line is six miles
an hour, but it is considerably less on the curves at either end, which
are twenty-six feet in diameter. The contractors experienced a great
deal of difficulty in getting the curves exactly right, as the six-inch
gauge of the railway, no other line being of any assistance in this
particular, introduced an entirely new problem in railroad construction.
The engine can travel six times round the entire length of the system
without its being necessary to renew the charcoal fire.

[Illustration: DEEP CUTTING, FORTY FEET LONG.]

There are both a passenger train and a goods train. The former consists
of three carriages and a guard's van. One carriage is a first-class
corridor, a second is a third-class corridor, and the third is a
composite first-class and third-class carriage. Each of them is fitted
with the usual upholstered seats found in compartments belonging to
their classification; there are hat racks and blinds, mirrors and
lavatories and so forth in every carriage; there are carpets, too, on
the floors of the first-class. The guard's van has not been neglected,
but in its dog-boxes and other appointments is a facsimile of the vans
that go out daily from Euston. As a matter of fact, the whole train is
panelled and painted throughout in the familiar colours of the London
and North-Western Railway. The carriages are mounted on bogies, and have
been completely equipped with carriage springs, grease boxes for the
axles, spring buffers, draw-bars and screw couplings right and left. The
two corridor carriages have the proper extending covered ways.

The goods train is quite as remarkable in its way as every other part of
this railway. It is composed of ten trucks and vans, and has besides a
guard's brake-van fitted with a screw-down brake of the usual sort.
There are two high-side trucks, four medium, and two low; two covered-in
vans and two cattle trucks, and, if a glance be taken at the
illustration which exhibits the goods train most completely, it will be
noticed that all of these trucks and vans are loaded with appropriate
articles of freight--logs of wood, slates, casks of beer, marble, and
other things, while the two bullock wagons are filled with animals.

All these trucks and vans are fitted with hand lever brakes,
tarpaulins, chains, hooks, stanchions, and everything necessary for the
handling of the no doubt enormous goods traffic of the road. They are
all mounted on carriage springs, and have grease boxes, spring buffers,
and every other device in use on the London and North-Western
Railway--from which they have been copied, like everything else on this
Liliputian line. The greatest railway in the world took a friendly
interest in the smallest, and supplied it with the drawings and models
from which it and its rolling stock have been imitated.

[Illustration: THE HEAVY GOODS TRAIN--THE TRUCKS LOADED WITH
MERCHANDISE.]

One tiny detail I think I must mention in conclusion, and it is that the
management have thoughtfully provided fourteen hand lamps for the
service of the line.

In acknowledging my indebtedness to Mr. Leigh, I should like to say that
he has found in his miniature railway not only a source of continual
amusement, but also a means of doing good to others, for he has on more
than one occasion shown it in operation to large gatherings of people,
who have flocked to see it both on account of the interest naturally
excited by it, and also for the sake of "sweet charity," the proceeds
realised from these exhibitions being devoted to some worthy object.

For the photographs which accompany this article we are indebted to Mr.
J. Ambler, of Manchester.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: THE VERY SHORT MEMORY of MR. JOSEPH SCORER]




A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE AT THE SEASIDE

BY JOHN OXENHAM.

_Illustrated by H. M. Brock._


Could it, after all, be called unique? Hardly, perhaps, in the strict
sense of the word, since others shared in it. But to us it was, and I
trust ever will be, a unique experience.

We have generally spent our August holiday at the seaside in apartments,
and suffered many things in consequence--an uninterrupted succession of
mixed odours of cooking from early morning till late at night; fleas and
other insect pests, which seemed to thrive mightily on the powders put
down for their extermination; landladies afflicted with spasms and
inordinate thirst, and landladies' cats with unappeasable appetites;
cramped quarters, of course, which did not afflict one on fine days, but
on rainy ones became pandemonium; terrible attempts at amateurish
cooking and service--in which the dining-room's vegetables and tarts got
mixed up with the drawing-room's vegetables and pies--and slatternly
maids of all work, who killed on the spot even one's seaside appetite,
the moment they appeared to set the table.

And so, after mature consideration of ways and means, we decided this
time to attain to the dignity of a small furnished house--or a cottage,
at all events--if by any chance such could be found within the limits of
a moderate purse.

Further consideration fixed on Eastnor as the place where our holiday
was to be spent.

We had, in the course of twelve years' wanderings, tried most of the
South and East Coast watering-places, and found most of them a-wanting.
If the atmosphere was bracing, the beach was shingle. If the beach was
sandy, the atmosphere was enervating.

Somewhere in our family history a strain of Israelitish blood must have
got mixed with all the other strains. It probably dates right away back
to the forty years' wanderers, or even, maybe, as far back as Noah--in
whose family one can conceive, at one period of its history, almost as
strong a craving for sand as had again out-cropped in this present
rising generation of mine.

[Illustration: "'WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU, SIR?'"]

The one thing my youngsters insist on is sand--wet sand with pools, for
amateur canal-engineering; dry sand for houses and forts, and Canutish,
wave-repelling castles. Sand, and plenty of it, is their one demand, and
no holiday is complete without it. When they were very young,
Broadstairs was all right for a time, and satisfied their inordinate
cravings; but it became too crowded, and to our family connoisseurs the
quality of the sand has deteriorated somewhat, and has got too much
mixed up with mud and buns and paper bags, and other people's babies,
and so we had to try further afield.

[Illustration: "THE DOOR OPENED, AND A SMALL LAME MAN LOOKED AT ME."]

The Great Sahara would have been just about the very thing for us, but
on inquiry I found the journey to be a long and trying one, and a trifle
beyond our means, and the accommodation for visitors somewhat defective.

Eastnor was named to us; we had never tried Eastnor. Was there
sand?--Yes, any amount. So to Eastnor I journeyed, with a
Saturday-to-Monday ticket and stringent orders from headquarters to
first try the sand--as to quality, quantity, texture, depth and
pools--and if up to standard measurement, I was authorised to pick up a
small house for August on the most reasonable terms obtainable.

The requirements were at least one sitting-room and three bedrooms and a
kitchen--if an extra room or two without extra charge, so much the
better. I was to come back fully informed as to what was left in the
house in the way of furnishings and utensils, and what we would be
expected to take with us.

I found Eastnor all right as regards sand; the very streets were full of
it, and as I stood on the Esplanade at low tide, and leaned up against a
strong south-west breeze, and saw the dry sand sweeping like smoke along
the flats and piling knee-deep to windward of the groins, and got my
mouth and eyes and ears full of it, I decided, from the taste and smell
and feel of it, that--from a sand point of view, at all events--Eastnor
would do.

Now to find a lodgment for the night, and then to prowl round for a
house.

I struck a neat little confectioner's for tea, and, following a plan
which had acted well on previous occasions, asked, as I was paying for
it, if they could accommodate me for the night.

Well, they had rooms, but they were let for the following week--being
regatta week--and, yes, said the stout lady behind the counter, she
thought she had better not take me; but the "Balaclava Inn," next door,
put up beds--I had better try there.

Yes, at the "Balaclava" they put up beds, and they showed me to a room.
"But if I should get a good let to-morrow--lots of folks come down on
Sunday to stop for regatta," said the hostess--"I shall have to turn you
out; but maybe I can find you a bedroom nigh handy."

This just to show the extreme independence of the aborigines.

Then I turned out to find the desirable seaside residence with the
maximum of accommodation and comfort at the minimum of cost.

I rooted round till I struck the chief estate agent--who was also the
chief grocer--of the town.

His shop was full, and trade was evidently booming.

I stood behind a triple row of clamorous lady visitors, who were
ordering everything under the sun in the grocery line, and complaining
vehemently to the badgered shop-men that their last orders had all been
very inadequately fulfilled. I waited patiently till the mob, having
apparently bought up the whole shop, thinned out, and a dapper
London-trained young shopman smoothed down his ruffled front hair and
leaned over the counter and asked, "And what can I do for you, sir?"

"I want a small furnished house," I said, meekly.

"Ah," he said, with a grin, "I'm afraid we are out of them at present;
I'll ask Mr. Wilson."

"Small furnished house for August?" echoed Mr. Wilson, in aggrieved
amazement. "Not such a thing to be had in Eastnor. All let a month ago.
You should come in May or June to get a house for August."

I thanked him, and left depressed. I wandered through the town, and
found myself back on the Esplanade. I walked the whole length of it, and
then along the sea bank into the uninhabited region beyond.

Not quite uninhabited, as it proved, for, about half a mile from the
Esplanade, I came suddenly on a cottage with nothing between it and the
sandy beach but a tiny garden plot, with a bit of grass and some
nasturtiums and pinks mixed up with cabbages and potatoes and a row of
scarlet-runners. It looked very clean and inviting, and I said to
myself, "Now, if only that were to let, it's just exactly what I want."

There could be no harm in asking, so I went up to the door and knocked.
No one came. I knocked again. Still no answer. I waited. It seemed to me
there was some movement in the side room, the sliding window of which
was partly open, but was covered with a white curtain.

I knocked again, and the door opened suddenly, and disclosed the small
brown face of a small lame man, looking up at me with a pair of small
but very sharp brown eyes, with, as I now remember, a slightly startled
look in them, as of one caught in the act.

"Yes?" he said, in a sharp voice.

"Oh, I wanted to ask if this cottage is by any chance to let any time in
August."

He hesitated, and then snapped, "How long for?"

"Two, three, or four weeks."

"When d'you want it?"

"About the seventh or eighth."

He pondered the matter, and barked, "Come in."

I went in. It was charming. Nicely, though plainly, furnished, and as
clean as a new pin. I went all over it. Two sitting, four bedrooms,
kitchen, scullery, wire spring mattresses, wool beds, two blankets to
each bed, blankets very white and almost new.

"And the rent?" I asked, wondering how much above my limit I would not
go to possess all this for a month.

"Well," he said, slowly, "three guineas a week is what we generally get,
but if you could wait till the twelfth I'd let it go for two and a half,
if you'll buy the stuff in the garden. I reckon there's a good pound's
worth between the potatoes and cabbages and beans, and they'll be just
about ready by the time you come in. I've made a good let for the three
weeks before you come, and they don't want to go out till the eleventh,
and" (dropping his voice to a confidential whisper) "my missus, she's
expecting to be laid up very soon, and she wants to go to her folks at
Wilborough, else I wouldn't let it go so cheap."

[Illustration: "I GAVE A DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF MY ADVENTURES TO MY
RECEPTIVE FAMILY CIRCLE."]

Diplomatically veiling my satisfaction, I closed the bargain on the
spot, and sat down then and there and wrote out a couple of agreements,
by which Joseph Scorer agreed to let, and John Oxenham agreed to take,
for one month, from August 12th, the cottage known as Sandybank Cottage
in the town of Eastnor, with the furniture, etc., named in the
inventory attached, for the sum of ten guineas, whereof the receipt of
one pound was hereby acknowledged.

"What about the inventory?" I asked.

"I've got one ready for the other folks. If you like to check it I'll
make you a copy and send it on."

It was a strange and wonderful document, that inventory, but with Mr.
Scorer's assistance I succeeded in checking the main points of it. Many
of the items were strange; the spelling was phonetic and curious, and at
times stumped us both, and then Mr. Scorer would scratch his head and
opine that it must mean so-and-so.

"One cundler" in the kitchen brought us to a dead-lock for full five
minutes. At last Mr. Scorer pointed to a battered implement with its
bottom full of holes, hanging on the wall, and said, triumphantly,
"That's it."

"What in heaven's name is it?" I asked, gazing suspiciously at the
shapeless object.

"Why, you squeedge your cabbages through it," he said.

"Oh, I see, a colander."

The humours of that inventory come upon me still in the dark night
watches at times, and I laugh internally till my wife wakes up and
advises me to get up and take a dose of camphor if I feel as bad as all
that.

The larger articles, such as bedsteads and chairs and washstands, we
easily identified, and these we triumphantly ticked off first, and then
gradually worried out the smaller ones.

"One indimat" caused us some trouble in the best bedroom, but finally a
strip of straw matting, two feet by one, was hauled out from its
lurking-place under the washstand, whither it had crept for concealment,
and reluctantly answered to its name.

The crockery was heterogeneous, and was slumped under colour-headings.

"Three cupps pink; one sosir pink; three cupps blew; four sosirs blew
(one crack)," and so on.

That searching inventory went right to the root of things, and by its
_fiat-justitia-ruat-c[oe]lum_ candour impressed me most favourably with
the stark, staring, straight-forward honesty of Mr. Joseph Scorer.

"One bird in glass case, bird's leg broke--four orments, all crack--one
ormlu clock (won't go)"--could transparent honesty go further than this?

Moreover Mr. Scorer asked me casually, "Did you know Mr. William Henry
Sawyer, Esquire, of the 'Ome Office?"

I did not. My acquaintance does not as a rule extend to the Home Office.

"A nice gentleman, 'e is. Been 'ere in this 'ouse every year for the
last five years. 'E comes early, about May, and sometimes again in
October."

"It is good to be Mr. William Henry Sawyer, Esquire, of the Home
Office," I said. I am a fairly truthful man as men go, and I never spoke
a truer word than that, but that knowledge only came to me later.

I was delighted with Mr. Joseph Scorer, and with his receipt in my
pocket and my two pounds in his, I went home on the Monday morning
triumphant, and on the Monday evening whistled myself into the bosom of
my family to the tune of "See, the conquering hero comes."

[Illustration: "I WAS SURPRISED TO SEE A HEAP OF LUGGAGE."]

I gave a detailed description of my adventures to my receptive family
circle, and when my wife heard Mr. Scorer's last message, "I will come
over the day before you are coming in, and have the place put in order,
and will have a fire on in the kitchen for you," she labelled him
"treasure," and vowed we would keep on going there every year.

"I wish I had remembered to ask you to tell him to get in some coals,
and milk, and bread," she said, regretfully.

"I did," I answered, triumphantly. "He suggested we would want them, and
I paid him for them, and for oil for the lamps too, so that's all
right."

"You have done well," said my wife, and I thought so myself.

August 12th found us duly landed at Eastnor station, and furtively
raking out our belongings from the piles of other people's. At last they
were all collected, and I chartered a carriage and a porter's cart to
convey us and our luggage to Sandybank Cottage.

Mr. Joseph Scorer met us at the door, and we forthwith took possession.
The kitchen fire was lighted, the coal was there, and the milk, and the
bread, and oil.

Everything was as nice as it could be.

The luggage was carried in, and we settled down to a month's solid
enjoyment and undisputed possession of our new abode.

Mr. Scorer was solicitous of our comfort. He altered the inventory in
one or two minor points, in respect of articles broken by our
predecessors. He dug enough potatoes for next week's dinners, and cut
two plump cabbages. He collected his £4 15s., half the balance of the
rent, and departed, followed by the blessings of the entire family, save
those members who were already knee deep in the ocean just the other
side of the garden patch.

"This is simply splendid," said my wife, beaming at me in the way I
like; "it seems almost too good to be true."

She was right.

Next morning was magnificent. My wife went out to buy up the town. All
the rest of us plunged into the sea, except the servant, Amelia Blatt,
who was rapidly converting herself into a negress over the intricacies
of the strange little range in the kitchen.

One of the advantages of Sandybank Cottage was that from its proximity
to the beach you could use your bedroom as a bathing machine, assume
your marine costume therein, skip across the lawn, and be into the water
with a hop and a jump.

It was simply delightful, really almost too good to be true, as my wife
had said.

We all had a glorious bathe and a scamper on the sands, and then trooped
up to the cottage to dress. As we came up over the lawn I was surprised
to see a great heap of luggage, and two bicycles, lying around,
evidently all just discharged from a couple of retreating carriages.

[Illustration: "IT WAS LUDICROUS STANDING THERE IN A BATHING SUIT."]

I am an unusually modest man, and it was rather over-facing. There were
several ladies in the party and an elderly gentleman. They all turned
and watched our advent. The ladies looked put out at something. I feared
it might be at myself in my bathing costume. However, my foot was on my
native heath, so to speak, which was more than could be said of theirs,
so I put on as bold a face as could legitimately be expected of a modest
man in nothing but a bathing costume, and went forward. The old
gentleman also seemed disturbed, but he disguised his feelings to the
best of his power, and addressed me suavely.

"Been enjoying a last bathe?" he asked.

There was just a hint of "What the deuce do you mean by it, sir?" in his
tone.

"I beg your pardon?" I said.

"Couldn't refrain from one more dip, I suppose?" he said again, with a
forced smile. "Might I ask what time you are leaving? We understood--"

"Leaving?" I said, with some force. "Why, we only got here yesterday."

He gazed at me in blank astonishment, the ladies also.

"Oh," he said, soothingly, "there must be some mistake."

"I am not aware of any," I answered, somewhat brusquely.

It was ludicrous, standing there in a bathing suit, discussing the
matter under the gaze of three pairs of outraged female eyes, and a
blazing sun.

"But, my good sir," said the old gentleman, "I have taken this
cottage--it is Sandybank Cottage, is it not?" he asked.

"It is."

"Mr. Joseph Scorer's?"

"Yes."

[Illustration: "A PARTY OF THREE OLD MAIDEN LADIES, WITH THREE DOGS AND
TWO CANARIES."]

I was getting angry and the sun was blistering my neck.

"Well, I have taken it for four weeks from August 13, and have paid a
deposit on it."

"And I have taken it for four weeks from August 12, and have paid a
deposit and half the rent," I said. "We came in yesterday, and we go out
September 9."

"And you have an agreement with Mr. Scorer?"

"Certainly I have, but I have not got it on me."

"Well, I'll be hanged," said the old gentleman, very red in the face,
and turned to his women folk.

"My dears, there is evidently some mistake. An infernal nuisance, but
this gentleman is evidently not to blame. Would you mind my seeing your
agreement?" he asked, turning again to me.

"Certainly I would mind. My agreement has nothing to do with you, sir,
and I am not in the habit of having my word doubted. Now perhaps you
will permit me to go in and dress, before my neck is absolutely raw."

They hung around for a time, talking unpleasantly among themselves, and
finally the old gentleman stalked off to the town, and came back with a
cart for their belongings. They were loaded up, and the party
disappeared in a cloud of dust on the way to Eastnor.

"That is rather a curious thing," said my wife, when I detailed the
experiences of the morning to her on her return from her shopping. "I
hope--"

"Oh, we're all right," I said, lightly. "They can't put us out.
Possession, you know--"

"Yes, I know. I wasn't thinking of that," she said, with a far-away look
in her eyes.

By evening the raw edge of the annoyance of the morning had worn off. We
sat in the porch enjoying the evening breeze, and counted ourselves for
the time being among the fortunate ones of the earth. Our charity even
extended at odd moments to the disappointed would-be occupants of our
shoes--and bedrooms, and we devoutly hoped they had found rooms
somewhere, and were not occupying airy apartments in bathing machines.

"It was a stupid mistake of Mr. Joseph Scorer's," we said, "and he ought
to be more careful."

"I shall write when I have time," I said, "and tell him so."

But I never had time. I was much too fully occupied with other things.

Next day, after a morning bathe and paddle on the sands and early
dinner, we started for a long afternoon's ramble round Eastnor, to get
some idea of the place, leaving the two youngest children with the
servant, with strict injunctions not to get drowned, and to get their
tea whenever they felt like it.

We did Eastnor thoroughly, and then, noticing that there was a concert
on the pier that night, my wife suggested tea at a confectioner's, and
an adjournment to the pier afterwards for the concert. This was carried
with acclaim. We enjoyed the tea, the concert, and the stroll home, and
arrived at Sandybank Cottage about ten o'clock, fully satisfied with our
day's outing.

Amelia met us at the door. She was in a state of extreme nervous
excitement.

"Thank goodness you come 'ome!" she burst out.

She was unfortunate in the place of her birth and up-bringing, was
Amelia. To judge from her accent she must have been born right up in the
steeple of Bow Church. Otherwise she was a sterling girl. I will tone
down her vernacular: it does not spell easily.

"Sich a dye I never had. Seems to me we'd better git away 'ome's quick's
we can," she began.

"Why, Amelia, what's the matter?" asked her mistress.

"Matter?" said Amelia, with rising inflection. "Well, there's been a
party of three old maiden ladies, with three dawgs, and two kinaries,
and a parrick in a cage, all a-settin' cryin' on their boxes outside
here all day long since half an hour after you left, a-waitin' for you
to come back and go out of this 'ouse and let 'em come in. They say they
took it from August 14 for a month, and paid a dee-posit, and they was
to come in to-day. And the kitching fire was to be ready lighted, an'--"

"And there was to be coal, and bread, and milk in the house, and oil for
the lamps, and they'd paid for them," said I.

"My! Did you hear 'em?"

"No," I said, "I didn't."

"And what did you do, Amelia?" asked my wife, anxiously.

"I just told 'em straight that we was 'ere for a month, and there must
be some mistake, seein' as we wasn't a-goin' out till our time was up,
and then they just set down and cried, and the parrick swore awful till
they covered him up. He belonged to a nevew what was a sailor man, they
said, when he begun to swear, and I told the children to run inside lest
they'd catch it. Then they was so misrable settin' there, dabbin' of
their poor little red noses, that I made 'em some tea, and they could
'ave kissed me, and they wanted me to take pay for it, but I wouldn't."

"You're a good girl, Amelia, and you did quite right," said her
mistress, and turning to me--

"This is really very trying and very uncomfortable. What do you suppose
is the meaning of it?"

She looked a little bit as though she thought it was my fault.

"I don't know what's the meaning of it," I said, feeling angry. "I'm
afraid Mr. Joseph Scorer has a very short memory. If I had him here I'd
try if screwing his neck round would lengthen it."

Next day being Sunday we had a genuine day of rest, and enjoyed it with
quite a novel sense of freedom from the cares and worries of life.

On Monday, by the morning train and the station omnibus, arrived a
family much like our own--father, mother, four children, servant, and
innumerable boxes.

I had had my bathe, and was sitting in the porch armed with a pipe and
my stamped agreement with Mr. Scorer, prepared to repel all intruders.
So, before the grinning omnibus-man had time to dump down the baggage, I
took the father on one side, showed him my agreement, and explained the
situation, telling him his was the third party I had had to turn empty
away.

[Illustration: "I TOOK THE FATHER ASIDE AND SHOWED HIM MY AGREEMENT."]

He was very wroth, and swore, I should say, as lustily as the old maids'
nephew's parrot could have done. He was a lawyer, too, and wanted to go
into the legal aspects of the case. I assured him that they did not
interest me, unless I had some ground of action against Mr. Joseph
Scorer for the disturbance of my peaceful possession of his much-let
habitation.

He was a good fellow on the whole, and he left me his name and business
address, and made me promise to let him know if I ever found out where
Mr. Scorer had gone to, and also to refer to him any of the outraged
claimants to the cottage who wished to take legal action in the matter.

His wife and the youngsters had been peering out anxiously at us from
the back windows of the bus while this colloquy was taking place. The
father explained the matter to them, and, with a wave of his hand to me,
they drove crestfallen back to Eastnor.

On Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, variously-composed parties
arrived with their baggage, and I turned them all away, and sent them to
find lodgings in Eastnor, suffering much in the doing of it from their
unnatural ill-humours and chagrin.

On Saturday there arrived a rollicking reading-party of students from
Oxford with a coach. I explained my painful situation and experiences,
and informed them that they made the eighth party I had had to repulse.

They were merry, good-humoured fellows, and they lay flat on my patch of
lawn and fairly screamed with delight at the cuteness of Mr. Joseph
Scorer. "He was born an Oxford gyp," they averred.

[Illustration: "THEY SCREAMED WITH DELIGHT AT THE CUTENESS OF MR.
SCORER."]

They enjoyed the affair so much that I could hardly get rid of them. My
wife gave them tea and cakes, and they sat and smoked, and laughed, and
joked, till the stars were up, and then they got a carriage and drove
off to the hotel, after promising to come up every day about noon to
assist me in my hateful task of holding the fort against all comers.

And they did it, too, and enjoyed it immensely.

On the pier, on Sunday morning after church, we met at intervals all the
families who ought to have been stopping in Sandybank Cottage.

The irate first old gentleman stopped me to ask, "Well, how are you
getting on? Say, that was the nastiest trick I ever was served. If I
could find Mr. Scorer I would jolly well like to wring his nasty little
neck."

I said I felt that way myself, but I feared there was not much chance of
laying hands on it.

I told him I had now had to send away eight different parties who all
claimed the cottage, and at that he felt very much better.

My lawyer friend was just passing, and I introduced him to the old
gentleman, and, catching sight of my young friends from Oxford, I
introduced them all to one another, and they all had a very lively time
together, and enjoyed themselves extremely.

On Monday I bethought me to go to the station, and acquaint the cabmen
with the true state of matters, and beg them not to bring any more
parties to Sandybank Cottage. They listened with broad grins to all I
had to say, but absolutely refused to comply with my wishes. It all
meant double fares for them, and all was grist that came to their mills,
and it wasn't in human nature to refuse a fare when it was offered, and
in fact any such refusal might invalidate their licences, and would
certainly lose them their places. So, much as they regretted the
annoyance it caused me, they felt in duty bound to go on dumping
would-be tenants and their baggage on my front lawn as fast as they came
along.

I could find no arguments to advance against all this, and so the game
went merrily on.

That day two separate parties arrived within ten minutes of one another.
The Oxford contingent was sitting on the lawn, and revelled in the
disgust of the heads of the families when they were made acquainted with
the state of affairs.

Paterfamilias number two, who I think from his manner must have been a
performing Strong Man, threatened to pitch me and my belongings bodily
into the sea. Young Oxford, however, came to the rescue, and Mr. Strong
Man and family eventually retired amid the hootings of the crowd.

For the curious situation of matters at Sandybank Cottage could no
longer be hidden under a bushel. The news had got abroad, and numbers
of people came up each day now, and sat round our house to enjoy the
fun. In fact we had become one of the centres of attraction of Eastnor,
and the folks travelled up to Sandybank Cottage as at other places they
would have gone to a switchback or a nigger minstrel show.

[Illustration: "THREATENED TO PITCH ME AND MY BELONGINGS BODILY INTO THE
SEA."]

Perhaps the funniest thing was to see the three old maiden ladies come
straggling up every day in single file, each with a wheezy waddling pug
dog in a lead, which was fastened round its body lest undue pressure on
its neck should induce the inevitable apoplectic fit a day sooner than
was assigned for it. They came panting up, and gazed mournfully at the
cottage, and reproachfully at me whenever I appeared, and they looked
sadly at the gradually disappearing supply of potatoes and cabbages for
which they had paid, and which I was eating. For Mr. Joseph Scorer had
sold and been paid for that garden produce no less than sixteen times
over. It needs a genius of that kind to run a garden profitably.

In the natural course of things the local paper gave a humorous account
of the affair, which was copied into one of the London dailies, and this
it was that eventually brought about the climax.

Among the would-be occupants this week was a well-known actress, who
came with her maid and a companion and a white poodle. We had rejoiced
in her exceedingly, at a distance, for many a year, and both my wife and
myself were delighted to make her more intimate acquaintance--much more
delighted, in fact, than, under the circumstances, she was to make ours.
We invited her in, and gave her tea, and apologised for the annoyance
she was being put to through no fault of ours, and did our best to make
her comfortable.

When young Oxford saw her they were with difficulty restrained from
chairing her to an hotel, and on the whole I think, when the first
annoyance had passed off, she rather enjoyed herself.

By Saturday night we had repelled sixteen different attempts on our
tenancy of Sandybank Cottage and, by this time, if a single day, except
Sunday, had passed without the arrival of one or more claimants we would
have begun to suspect something had gone wrong.

There was one thing, however, that puzzled me exceedingly, and no amount
of thoughtful consideration of the subject cast any light upon it. What
on earth had made Mr. Joseph Scorer act in this way? If he had let the
cottage in the usual manner he could have made at least £22 or £23 all
told in the two months. As it was I reckoned he had made about £37 by
his monstrous duplicity, and it was the utter inadequacy of the plunder
which puzzled me so much.

Why would a man want to hang sixteen indictments for fraud around his
neck for such a very small reward? It seemed inconceivable, especially
in such a smart and far-seeing man as Mr. Joseph Scorer. It was the
action of a fool; and whatever else he was, Mr. Joseph Scorer could
hardly be called a fool, except in this one point of utter inadequacy of
motive.

[Illustration: "WE FOUND A GENTLEMAN SITTING ON THE BENCH."]

However, my eyes were to be opened, and in a somewhat unpleasant
fashion--the process is not, as a rule, an enjoyable one.

On Sunday the 29th, being the third Sunday of our visit, when we
returned from church and the usual augmented Sabbath meeting of
malcontents on the pier, we found a gentleman sitting on the bench in
the porch awaiting our arrival.

Sunday had hitherto been an off day with us, and we rather resented this
infraction of the rules of the game.

I went up to him and addressed him somewhat curtly.

"Well, sir, and what can I do for you?"

He looked at me whimsically, and said--

"Your name is Oxenham?"

"It is."

"Mine is Sawyer."

"Not Mr. William Henry Sawyer, Esquire, of the Home Office?"

"Yes," he said, smiling at the evidently recognised formula.

"I understood you only came down in May and October."

"So I do generally; but, seeing that the cottage is mine, I suppose I
have the privilege of coming whenever I choose."

"The cottage is yours?" I said, in surprise.

"Undoubtedly. I bought it and its contents five years ago, and I run
down whenever the spirit moves me."

I sat silent, looking at him.

[Illustration: "I CALLED HER AND PUT THE QUESTION."]

"But if the cottage is yours," I said, at last, "how came that little
scoundrel----"

"That's just what I have come down to find out," he said. "Now, tell me,
Mr. Oxenham, from whom did you take the cottage?"

"From Mr. Joseph Scorer."

"William, you mean; but that is a detail."

"Joseph," said I. "Stay! I'll show you my agreement," and I went inside
and got it.

"Joseph?" he said, with knitted brow, as he perused the document; and,
after a pause, "Then what the deuce has become of William? What kind of
a man was he?"

"Small, sharp, brown man, with one club foot."

He nodded.

"Which foot?" he asked.

I had to cast back my thoughts.

"Left," I said, at last.

"No, right," said he.

"Left; I am quite sure of it."

He tapped the folded paper against his hand, and said--

"One of us is wrong. Scorer has been in my service for fifteen years,
and I ought to know."

"Suppose we ask my wife if she remembers?"

I called her and put the question.

"His left foot was the lame one," she said, after a thoughtful pause. "I
can see him standing there"--she said it so decidedly that we
involuntarily turned to look, but he was not there, except in her
memory--"and it was his right shoulder that humped up. Yes, I am quite
sure of it."

"This is very curious," said Mr. Sawyer. "I am afraid there is something
wrong. Besides, Scorer never could have done such a thing. He was as
honest as the day."

"And yet he let this cottage sixteen times over to sixteen different
parties, and I have had the privilege, such as it is, of holding the
fort against them all."

"I can't believe William Scorer would do such a thing," he said, looking
at us with eyes full of puzzled suspicion, as though he were not quite
sure whether I had told him all I knew of the matter.

"Joseph," said I.

He tapped his foot impatiently, and we lapsed into silence. An idea
struck me suddenly.

"Is there a Joseph Scorer as well as a William?" I asked.

He looked at me abstractedly.

"There was a brother," he said at last, "and, if I remember rightly, a
twin brother, but I have not heard of him for years. I do not think I
ever saw him. I have an idea he went to the bad." Our eyes met and held
one another, and my thought crossed his.

"What do you suspect, Mr. Oxenham?" he asked.

"I suspect that I met Joseph and you know William," I said.

"But I left William in charge here."

"And I found Joseph."

"Then where is William?"

"William is the missing link. Find him, and we get to the bottom of the
matter."

"Yes, that sounds common sense. Now, where is William?"

That was by no means an easy question to answer. Mr. Joseph Scorer could
probably have told us, but as the discovery of William was but the first
step towards the discovery of Joseph, that fact did not advance us.

The puzzle, however, solved itself in the simplest manner possible, and
without any assistance from us.

As there was a spare bedroom in the cottage, the least we could do was
to put it at Mr. Sawyer's disposal if he cared to make use of it. So we
invited Mr. Sawyer to occupy it for a day or two, and he consented to do
so, and turned out to be a very pleasant and genial companion.

The tide next morning did not serve well for bathing till about an hour
after breakfast. Then Sawyer and I and some of the youngsters went in.

It was one of those absolutely still mornings when the water is as
smooth as oil, and you can hear the beat of the steamers' paddles miles
away, and when you shout it is like shouting inside a bell.

We were all swimming and paddling about, enjoying ourselves immensely,
when I saw the three little fat pugs and the three old ladies coming
along the beach path to take their regular wistful morning look at the
cottage, where they ought to have been living, and were not.

Then from behind the cottage came a great tumult--the noise of many
voices, mingled with groans and laughter, and there swept round the side
of it a mob of people, who came to a stand on the little green plot in
front.

We were still wondering what was the meaning of it, when Amelia Blatt,
our servant, came tearing down the sands towards us, holding on to her
square inch of cap with one hand, and to her flying skirts with the
other.

"They want you up there," she panted.

"Who are they, and what do they want?"

"It's all them folks he let the house to, and they've got 'im----"

And as we made for the shore, Amelia, who was a very modest girl, fled
precipitately up the slope.

"Hey, Milly!" I shouted, "bring us down a couple of those big bath
towels."

[Illustration: "'THEY WANT YOU UP THERE,' SHE PANTED."]

Amelia made no answer, but presently the big bath-towels met us under
the arms of a small boy. We twisted our ordinary towels apron-wise over
our dripping bathing-suits, and draped the big bath-towels gracefully
over our shoulders, and then stalked as majestically as circumstances
permitted towards the noisy crowd, which resolved itself into its
component elements as we drew near.

The outer fringe consisted of excited and irrepressible small boys of
the town, who scampered round and round, shouting and dancing, and
cuffing one another, in sheer enjoyment of living and the knowledge that
something unusual was on foot. Inside them stood a number of the town
loafers, all facing in towards the centre of the ring, and laughing and
making jocular remarks to one another. Closer in still, came an excited
circle of our friends who, like the old ladies, ought to have been
living in the cottage, but were not. The irascible old gentleman was
there, purple in the face and swearing frightfully; the solicitor was
there, with a slightly anticipatory look in his face; the Strong Man was
there, and looked as if he wanted to break something; and closer in than
all these, forming a solid bodyguard of white flannels and laughing
faces and briar pipes, were our young friends from Oxford.

The three little old ladies, with their pugs in their arms, crept round
the revolving outskirts of the crowd, and joined my wife, who stood
wondering in the doorway, and began timidly questioning her as to the
meaning of the uproar.

Mr. Sawyer and I elbowed our way through the crowd, and the bodyguard
opened to let us into the circle.

In the centre stood a little, trembling meek, brown-eyed, crooked man.

"Scorer!" said I, "by all that's wonderful!"

[Illustration: "WE STALKED AS MAJESTICALLY AS OUR CIRCUMSTANCES
PERMITTED TOWARDS THE NOISY CROWD."]

"William!" said Sawyer.

"Jos---! No, by Jove! it is the other leg!"

"Now, William," said Mr. Sawyer, "what is the meaning of all this?"

The crooked little man's eyes brightened when he saw Mr. Sawyer.

"Mr. Sawyer, sir, I know no more than a babe unborn. I come in by the
10.30, and no sooner hadn't my foot touched the ground than these young
gentlemen they gathered round me and began a arskin' what I meant by it,
and then all them others came along. I dunno what's matter wi' em. Seems
to me they're all gone crazy."

"Where's Joseph?"

"Why, ain't he 'ere? I left him 'ere when I went into h--orspital; and
'e said 'e'd keep things all shipshape till I come out."

"Where did you find him? I thought he was away."

"He come to see me just when I were sickening, Mr. Sawyer, sir, and he
promised to keep things all straight and shipshape till I were right
again. So I sent off the wife to her folks--for her trouble--you know,
and then Joe he took me along to the h--orspital, and he said he'd keep
things all--"

"I see," said Mr. Sawyer; "and how's the wife?"

"She's A1, Mr. Sawyer, sir."

"And the baby?"

"He's a reg'lar little ripper, sir, and as straight as a lath."

There was more ingenuous pride packed into those last five words than
any five words ever held before; but the meek brown eyes shone suddenly
moist.

One of the Oxford boys started, "Three cheers for the baby! Hip, hip,
hurrah!--rah!!--rah!!!" And then they fell naturally into "He's a jolly
good fellow!" and yelled it at top of their voices, while they all
joined hands and danced round us till their faces were all on fire, and
all their pipes were out for want of breath to keep them going, and
William Scorer's eyes were like to fall out of his head. They did not
quite understand matters, but they saw there had been some mistake, and
they were all very healthy and very happy. They could not forget Joseph,
but they heartily forgave William for his brother's sins, and they vowed
they would not have missed the fun for three times the amount of
Joseph's little peculations.

"What's it all mean, Mr. Sawyer, sir?" asked the bewildered William.

"It means this, William, that that scamp of a brother of yours has let
this house of mine some sixteen times over to sixteen different people,
and all for about the same date, and that most of them have paid him a
deposit. Hence----" and he waved his hand comprehensively over the
throng.

"Nay,--sure--ly!" said the little man, and it seemed to me that his
stricken wonder was not absolutely untinged with admiration.

There was nothing more to be said or done. Everybody recognised that
fact. Joseph was not to be found, and William was not to blame.

The stout little gentleman vowed he'd be something'd if he'd ever heard
of such a something'd queer business before. The Strong Man looked
regretfully at William, and wished he was Joseph just for five minutes
or so. The solicitor recognised the fact that a case would not lie
against little "Dot-and-carry-one," as he called him, so he put it in
his pipe and smoked it, and by degrees the crowd thinned away, and left
us in peaceable possession. The last to go were the three little old
ladies, and from their manner I should say they were by no means
convinced of the existence of William's brother Joseph.

The Oxford boys, by the way, insisted on chairing little William to the
"Blue Pig," down the Wilborough Road, and tried to induce him to enjoy
himself, but as he declined to touch anything stronger than gingerbeer,
there was no great harm done.

Mr. Sawyer stayed a couple of days with us, and offered us the cottage
free for next August, to make up for the annoyances we had suffered;
and, unless we hear that William Scorer has been taken ill again, and
that his brother Joseph has come to nurse him, we shall accept the
invitation.

[Illustration: "'THREE CHEERS FOR THE BABY! HIP, HIP, HURRAH!'"]

[Illustration: "TWO'S COMPANY."]




THE MEDICAL DETECTIVE AND HIS WORK.

CRIMINALS CONVICTED BY THE MICROSCOPE.

BY T. F. MANNING.


Owing to the fact that they often flatly contradict one another, medical
experts do not stand very high in popular repute; nevertheless, it is a
positive fact that a single medical expert is worth half Scotland Yard
in the detection and prevention of crime. Thousands of rivals in love,
disagreeable husbands, dangerous political agitators, harsh masters and
mistresses, rich uncles, and people of that sort, would be popped off
with a few grains of arsenic, or a drop of prussic acid, only that it is
well known the doctor has the eyes of a hawk for poison. And, on the
other hand, many and many a family is saved from the suspicion attaching
to the sudden death of a member, and even many an innocent man from the
scaffold, by the proof of natural death which the doctor supplies.

Although great poisoning, shooting, stabbing, and other homicidal trials
have a wonderful fascination for all newspaper readers, very few fully
appreciate the medical evidence, which is usually the most important
link in the chain. The evidence is of three kinds--that of the ordinary
medical man, who sees the patient dying, perhaps, and performs the
post-mortem; that of the chemist, who, in his quiet laboratory, traces
the poison or identifies the blood stain; and that of the expert, who
gives his inference from the facts stated by the first two. It is these
experts who often differ from one another.

In a large number of cases the _post-mortem_ examination is the first
step in unravelling a mystery.

The man who performs it is not to be envied, for the smallest scratch on
his hand may admit a dose of deadly poison.

[Illustration: THE OLD STYLE DETECTIVE--EXAMINING SCENE OF MURDER.]

Many medical men, indeed, wear rubber gloves, and those less careful
generally cover their hands with a layer of sticky ointment. It takes
from two to four hours to do the job thoroughly.

But it is not all cutting up, as most people think. The first thing done
is to notice the position of the body, and whether there are any
weapons, bottles, or glasses near.

Then it is examined from head to toe for scratches, cuts, bruises,
moles, tattoo marks. Everything about the hair, eyes, teeth, nose, ears,
and other parts, is written down. The height, the age, the muscular
development, are all noted.

Of course, this inspection alone often reveals the cause of death.
Suppose, however, that no external injury is found and no organ is
diseased, the suspicion of poisoning naturally arises. In that case, the
doctor looks for certain marks that the commonest poisons make, and then
he places the stomach and other parts in glass jars, which are securely
covered, sealed, labelled, and handed to the analyst.

Poisoning is not much favoured by the Briton as a means of killing
either himself or anybody else. He generally does the deed in a more
open, if more brutal, way. But it is to be feared that a great many more
people get rid of undesirable contemporaries in this manner than is
popularly supposed.

[Illustration: THE DETECTIVE--NEW STYLE--IN THE LABORATORY.]

Probably, in most cases, the ordinary medical attendant is able to tell
whether a person is dying a natural death or is being carried off by
some deadly drug. His position, however, is not a pleasant one. It is
impossible to be certain; and, in order to make a full investigation, he
must suggest either that the victim is committing suicide, or that
someone else, perhaps his wife or son, is committing murder. And, after
all, the signs in the living are very obscure. Of course, if a person is
foolish enough (as many are) to drink sulphuric or nitric acid, his
mouth and throat are burned as if he swallowed coals of fire, the
former leaving black and the latter yellow stains; but when the poison
is arsenic, or opium, or strychnine, the symptoms are very like those of
certain diseases.

When the cholera was last in London, a father, mother, son, and daughter
dined together. Immediately after dinner, all, except the son, became
suddenly ill, and died in a few hours, with the symptoms of arsenic
poisoning.

The son, who was always quarrelling with the rest of the family, was
arrested on the doctor's report and charged with murder. But a
_post-mortem_ examination showed that cholera was the real cause of
death.

Apoplexy, in the same way, is very like opium poisoning; and
hydrophobia, lock-jaw, and even some cases of hysteria, closely resemble
poisoning by strychnine.

Still, when a healthy man grows suddenly ill soon after a meal, the
doctor keeps his eyes open, and if death follows he has a pretty shrewd
idea of what caused it.

At all events, he feels perfectly justified in assuming that the case is
not a normal one. He therefore hands over to the analyst the jars and
other receptacles containing the portions of the subject's body likely
to bear traces of the poison, knowing full well that if any poison is
there the analyst will infallibly detect it.

The analyst begins by making a series of what may be called "brews,"
mincing, pounding, boiling, cooling, filtering, decanting, and
distilling, over and over again. In these operations various solvents
are used in succession, plain water separating out one class of poisons,
alcohol dissolving out another group, benzol taking up a third, naphtha
a fourth, ammonia a fifth, and so on. This preliminary work takes, not
hours, but days to perform. At an early stage in it the operator
discovers such volatile poisons as prussic acid, chloroform, carbolic
acid, and phosphorus, if any of them be present. Later on he comes
across the alkaloids, such as strychnine, digitalin, cantharidin, and
other terrible poisons of that class.

Finally, the residue of the animal matter with which we have supposed
the medical detective to be experimenting is mixed with hydrochloric
acid, and distilled once again, after which it can contain no poison
except one of the metals.

Thus, in the course of his examination, the analyst has made a number of
decoctions, in one of which the poison is certain to be. In each
decoction there may be any one of several groups of poisons.

In which is it, and what is it? After all this patient labour the
solution is still far off. It may be a ptomaine from poisonous fish or
decayed meat, a deadly berry, or leaf, or root, a small quantity of
morphia, or phosphorus, or lead, or arsenic, or antimony.

Each brew is tested in turn. But, as illustrating the general procedure,
take the last, which contains whatever metal may have had the fatal
result. First, the chemist tests with "group reagents." He knows that if
he puts into the glass containing the last brew certain bodies in
succession, some metals, if they are there, cannot be kept from rushing
into the arms of one, others will as passionately embrace another,
others still will unite with a third, while some will always repudiate
any alliance. There are in all cases signs of the union, when it takes
place, such as a blue or white or red colour, or a powder falling to the
bottom, or a fizzing of escaping gas.

In practice the analyst puts a little of the brew in a small glass
test-tube, pours in some distilled water, and carefully drops in some
hydrochloric acid. Now, if there is either silver, mercury, or lead, in
the brew, down goes a white powder; if none of these things is there, no
change follows.

Next he adds some sulphuretted hydrogen water, a sort of aerated water
smelling of rotten eggs. If tin, platinum, bismuth, cadmium, arsenic, or
one of several other metals, is in the brew, a coloured powder falls to
the bottom. Should nothing occur, he adds other things, until he has
tested for five groups of metals.

When he finds a poison belonging to a certain group, he has still to
ascertain which of five or six bodies it is.

For instance, after adding the first two test-liquors, if he sees a
yellow coloration or precipitate, he knows that he has either arsenic or
tin or cadmium. He then adds some strong ammonia, after boiling the
liquid till the smell of rotten eggs has disappeared. If the powder
dissolves, and the colour goes, he is quite sure he has found arsenic.

In this business-like way the murderer is convicted.

But now arises the necessity for making doubly sure, and another kind of
test altogether is employed. Life and death hanging on the result, the
test must be beyond all doubt. But arsenic is one of those
self-assertive things about whose presence there cannot be the most
infinitesimal doubt. Give a man a particle the size of a mustard-seed,
and let him swallow it. When he dies bury him, and let him lie under the
earth for a quarter of a century. Then gather the few remnants, give
them to a chemist, and he will return you a considerable portion of the
poison in the same state as that in which it was administered.

[Illustration: ARSENIC CRYSTALS.]

Probably the most famous special test for arsenic is Marsh's, the
invention of a Woolwich chemist, and equally famous is Reinsch's, which
is performed as follows: The suspected liquid is put in a little glass
test-tube with some hydrochloric acid. Then a small bit of bright copper
is dropped in, and the test-tube is held over a flame.

Now, arsenic has the wildest love for copper, and every trace of it in
the tube flies to the slip of copper and covers it with a grey coat.
Another metal does the same, certainly, but they can be distinguished
subsequently.

Presently the copper is removed, washed, dried, and placed in a tough
glass tube, very narrow at one end. This is held over a flame and
carefully heated, and then a phenomenon, not unknown, either, in the
loves of mortals, occurs. The arsenic abandons the copper, and clings in
crystals to the sides of the glass tube, where it can be recognised by
the aid of a magnifying-glass or microscope; and if the crystals are
heated with a bit of acetate of potash the odour drives the chemist from
the room.

To this curious fact, that arsenic loves copper when it is wet with warm
hydrochloric acid, and hates it when it is hot and dry, is due the
discovery of many a crime.

It is already plain to the reader that the analyst's task is not an easy
one. Sometimes the analytical examination is of vast extent; sometimes
it is greatly narrowed by hints from the family doctor. These hints are
interesting, and show that the doctor is, when he knows his business, a
real and a very skilful detective.

The doctor's eye is a wonderful one. When he enters a room, he not only
measures the patient from head to toe, notes the colour of his face, the
posture of his body, the signs of pain, stupor, or perhaps sham; but
observes the manner of the other people present, and sees every bottle,
glass, and cup in the place.

Now, although sudden death is usually from natural causes, when it
occurs soon after food there is always suspicion, as we have said. So,
if the doctor perceives great pain and nausea, he thinks of arsenic,
antimony, tinned meats, mushrooms, toadstools, and other things; if the
pupil of the eye is as small as a pin-head, and the sick man is drowsy,
he thinks of opium; if something seems to have caught hold of the
patient's heart, and to be squeezing it like a sponge, he thinks of
digitalis; if the poor victim is being worked like a puppet, and his
pupils are large with fear, he thinks of strychnine; if there is great
thirst, colic, and cramps in the legs, he thinks of lead.

[Illustration: IS IT ARSENIC, OR NOT?]

He knows that prussic acid kills like a bullet in the brain--a glass of
cold water taken while hot from exercise may do the same--and he smells
for it. He can also tell if it is phosphorus or carbolic acid, by the
smell.

He knows that relatives usually kill each other by means of particular
poisons; that other poisons are used for suicidal purposes; that the
photographer takes cyanide of potassium, the medical man and chemist
prussic acid or morphia, the poor man vermin-killer or oxalic acid, or
carbolic acid, or some such agonising destroyer of life. And thus,
though all poisons lead to the same end--stoppage of the breathing and
blood circulation--yet each has its own particular way of sending the
soul to eternity. He can therefore often tell the analyst detective how
to take a short cut.

[Illustration: THE SPECTROSCOPE--AN INSTRUMENT THAT HAS BEEN FATAL TO
MANY CRIMINALS.]

By the way, there is no such thing as a slow poison--that is, a poison
which, taken to-day, does not show its effects for weeks. This is a
fiction of the novelists. On the other hand, there is--except in the
case of prussic acid and nicotine--no death straight away after taking
poison, as one sees it on the stage, Shakespeare notwithstanding.

An actual case will show that the discovery of murder by the doctor and
analyst is not always plain sailing.

A good many years ago, a Mr. Sprague was tried for the murder of the
Walker family by means of the well-known poison of the deadly
nightshade. The medical evidence showed clearly that they all died from
belladonna poisoning, and belladonna was found in the rabbit-pie they
had for dinner. A common-sense jury, however, acquitted the prisoner;
and only recently have medical men solved the mystery by discovering
that rabbits can eat any quantity of this plant without suffering harm,
while their flesh becomes fatally poisonous.

A second case shows what wonders the chemists can work. A surgeon's wife
died from corrosive sublimate, given in a draught by her husband. He
said that, in making up the draught, he mistook a bottle of mixture,
which he had prepared for a sailor, for the water-bottle, and had poured
some of it into his wife's draught. The sailor's mixture was analysed,
and it certainly contained corrosive sublimate; but, not content with
finding the poison, the analyst measured the quantity present, and,
while the sailor's mixture contained only ten grains to an ounce of
liquid, the wife's draught contained fifteen grains, showing that the
surgeon's ingenious explanation was a lie!

Blood is so characteristic a fluid that it might be supposed a skilful
analyst could never have any difficulty in recognising it. Of course, if
he were given, say, a cupful in its ordinary state, he could not make a
mistake. But he never gets a chance of earning his fee so easily.

When the police seek his assistance they give him, perhaps, a suit of
dirty clothes, which may be stained by two or three small dark spots
that might be anything.

Or perhaps he is given a rusty knife, or a perfectly clean hatchet, and
is asked to say if there is blood on it. And when he comes into court he
is expected to tell the jury whether the blood is human or animal, how
old it is, was it spilled from a living blood vessel, and in what part
of the body was this blood vessel.

Take an actual case. Years ago a celebrated murder was committed in
Eltham, and in the report of Dr. Letheby, the analyst, is the following
note:--

"On the evening of May 3rd I received from Mr. Mulvaney" (of the police)
"a brown paper parcel containing a pair of dark trousers, a man's shirt,
and a man's wide-awake hat. On the following evening I received from Mr.
Mulvaney a brown paper parcel containing a lock of hair, a pair of men's
boots, and a plasterer's hammer."

These were all very dirty, but that did not prevent the analyst from
finding a number of blood stains and hairs, and giving valuable and
decisive evidence at the trial.

What the analyst first does, when he receives such an article as a pair
of trousers, is to scrutinise every inch of its surface with a
magnifying glass. If he finds a little lump of dark-coloured stuff he
scrapes it off and puts it into a watch glass. If he discovers merely a
dark stain, he cuts out the piece of cloth and puts it into a small
quantity of distilled water.

[Illustration: HUMAN BLOOD MAGNIFIED 400 TIMES.]

Now he has to find out whether the suspicious-looking thing is really
blood, or whether it is merely red paint, or logwood, or cochineal, or
madder, or iron-mould. There are three ways of doing this, and he nearly
always utilises them all.

[Illustration: PIG'S BLOOD MAGNIFIED MANY TIMES.]

First, there is the marvellous spectroscope test. This test will reveal
the presence of the minutest trace of blood, and it is practically
infallible. It depends on the curious property, possessed by nearly all
bodies, of absorbing certain parts of the light that passes through
them. Sunlight passing through a prism is split up into the familiar
seven colours of the rainbow. But if a little blood dissolved in water
is placed in a glass tube, and if the light is made to pass through it
on its way to the prism, the blood takes something out of it; for now
among the seven bright colours are seen two dark bands near the middle
of the yellow ray. Nothing but blood gives these two bands in that
particular place, with the exception of two or three substances that are
not likely to be found on criminals' clothes. These are cochineal, mixed
with certain chemicals, hot purpurin sulphuric acid, and the red dye of
the banana-eater.

Blood, however, changes after it is shed. In stains a few weeks old the
colouring matter changes from what is technically called hæmoglobin to
methæmoglobin, and, later still, to hæmatin. All of these give different
spectra. The analyst has standard spectra already mounted, and he
invariably looks at the mounted or standard specimen and the suspected
liquid at the same time, placing them side by side, so that a mistake is
impossible. All the red colours in the world, in fact, have been tried,
and, with the exceptions named above, none of them gives a spectrum like
the colouring matter of blood in any of its forms.

But though the spectroscope is a certain discoverer of blood, it can
draw no distinction between human and animal blood. That duty remains to
the microscope.

[Illustration: LITTLE LINKS IN THE CHAIN OF EVIDENCE.--THE CORPUSCLES IN
THE BLOOD OF DIFFERENT CREATURES.

  Man.   Mouse.   Horse.   Camel.
  Toad.   Pike.   Pheasant.   Pigeon.]

With the microscope can be seen those red corpuscles which, in some
mysterious manner, seize on the oxygen of the air as it passes into the
lungs, shoulder it, so to speak, and rush away with it, like so many
ants, to the remotest parts of the body. Unfortunately, they can only be
seen in blood that has not been very long shed--that is to say, some
weeks or months. To see these, the analyst scrapes the little clot from
the piece of cloth, or wood, or iron, and places it on a slip of glass;
over this he carefully lays the little film called a cover-glass; and
then he gently places, at the edge of the latter, the tiniest possible
drop of water. This gradually insinuates itself, and soon dissolves the
blood clot; and, when the mixture is placed under a microscope
magnifying from 300 to 500 diameters, he sees one of several pictures.
The various shapes and arrangements taken by these little bodies are
illustrated on the following page. Small as they are--it would take
12-1/4 millions to cover a square inch--they have the most peculiar way
of behaving, and only the practised eye of the microscopist can
recognise them in all their disguises.

[Illustration: HUMAN BLOOD CORPUSCLES UNDER THE MICROSCOPE.]

Individually, the blood corpuscle is just like a tiny round biscuit, and
measures 1/3200 to 1/4000 of an inch across its face. It is these two
factors, the shape and measurement, which enable the medical man to say
whether the blood is human. The picture above shows how a corpuscle
looks under the microscope. Looking at its face, it is like a
thick-edged biscuit, with a dark depression in the centre. Some are
turned sideways in our illustration. These exist in blood and nothing
but blood, so that, when the spectroscope fails, the microscope
succeeds.

But it is not always that the analyst can get sufficient blood to place
under the microscope. Perhaps he gets a piece of cloth saturated with a
trifle of red fluid which he cannot scrape off, or perhaps he gets a
stain some months or years old (Dr. Tidy identified a blood stain one
hundred and one years old), in which the corpuscles are destroyed. Or
perhaps he gets a garment which has been carefully washed, on which
there is only the faintest trace of colouring matter. Even then the
microscope tells whether the stain is blood.

Our detective mixes the particle of blood-stained wood, or earth, or
dust, or cloth fibres, with water and caustic potash, and filters it.
Then he takes a drop of the liquid and places it in the useful
watch-glass. Into this he puts some glacial acetic acid and a crystal of
ordinary table salt. He heats the mixture and lets it cool. And, if it
is blood, he gets peculiar crystals visible under the microscope. These,
by the way, differ to some extent in different animals.

Another test is so new that it has not yet been given a fair trial. It
is as follows:--If a fairly large quantity of blood can be got, it is
burned, and the ash is analysed. Now, there are two salts always in
blood--sodium and potassium salts. But, while the quantity of the former
in human blood is usually twice that of the latter, it is six times as
great in the sheep's blood, eight times as great in the cow's blood, and
sixteen times as great in the blood of a fowl. Very important results
are expected from this principle.

Reliable as are the microscope and spectroscope, the analyst always uses
the third means at his disposal--the chemical test. For instance, he
gets a knife covered with dark red stains. Are they blood, or are they
only the rust formed by vinegar or the juice of a lemon that has
deceived so many people? Assuming that he has removed the stain, he
places the matter in any kind of tiny vessel, and drops in some tincture
of galls. If the thing is only rust, he has some excellent blue ink; if
it is blood, he finds that a reddish powder makes its appearance.

[Illustration: BURNING CLOTH IN THE LABORATORY.]

Perhaps he gets a handkerchief with a red stain. If the cloth is white
he can apply a test direct to it, but as a rule he prefers to dissolve
the stain out. Now, a handkerchief may be stained with a number of
different reddish things--Condy's fluid, jam, cochineal log-wood, or red
paint. He puts a drop of ordinary ammonia on the cloth. If the stain is
caused by currant, gooseberry, or other fruit juice it turns blue or
green; if it is Condy's fluid it becomes blue; if it is cochineal it
becomes crimson, and so on. But if it is blood, it does not change in
the least. Other tests might be described, but we have not the space.

Probably the most interesting of all his duties to the analyst is that
of judging from what animal the blood stains came. This can be done only
in some cases; that is, when the blood is not quite so old that the red
corpuscles have entirely lost their shape.

Of course this is a matter of the greatest importance when a man is on
his trial; for, in the first place, every spot of blood found on his
belongings is supposed to have come from his victim, although it may be
nothing more than the blood of a fish; and, in the second place, the
stock explanation of blood stains on his clothing offered by a prisoner
is that they came from some animal he killed. The plan is to ask him
what animal. Five times out of six he will say a domestic fowl or some
kind of bird especially if he is a poacher who has killed a
gamekeeper--and then he is done for.

Look at the pictures on page 149 and you have the whole thing in a
nutshell. It will be seen that the red corpuscles of the blood of birds,
reptiles, and fishes (with the exception of the cyclostomata) are oval,
while those of mammalian blood are round. Here is, at once, a sure way
of differentiating mammalian blood from that of the other three great
classes of animals. The only difficulty is that blood corpuscles get out
of shape, under certain circumstances, and are no longer either oval or
round. But there is another difference. A mammalian corpuscle is of
uniform substance throughout: that of a fish, bird, or reptile has a
small, dense spot near the centre, called a nucleus. Snails, slugs,
worms, and other low forms of animal life do not come into the question
at all, for their blood is generally colourless, and, if not, it is
blue-green, violet, brown, being scarcely ever red, and then not from
the presence of corpuscles.

All that remains for the analyst, therefore, supposing he finds a round
corpuscle, is to say to what mammalian animal it belongs. (The llama,
alpaca, camel, and their kin, by the way, have oval corpuscles.)

How are the corpuscles of different mammalia to be distinguished under
the microscope? Merely by their size. They have all been measured with
the greatest care, a specially small unit of length, called a micron,
having been invented for the purpose. It is only 1/25000 of an inch
long, and, expressed in tenths of a micron, the average diameter of a
human blood corpuscle is 77; of a dog, 73; of a rabbit, 69; of a cat,
65; of a sheep, 50; of a goat, 41; and of an elephant, 94. But these are
average measurements, and some corpuscles are smaller, some larger.

[Illustration: MORE TINY CLUES.--HUMAN HAIR CONTRASTED WITH ANIMALS'
HAIR, WOOL, AND FIBRE.

  Cat's Hair.   Bat's Hair.   Berlin Wool.   Reindeer's Hair.   Woody Fibre.
  Human Hair.   Fox Hair.   Hare's Hair.   Squirrel's Hair.   Human Hair Bulb.]

Therefore, when it is a question of whether the blood is that of a dog,
pig, hare, rabbit, or man, he would be a daring man that would give a
decided opinion. But it is certainly possible to come to a safe
conclusion as to whether it is that of a human being or a sheep, goat,
or elephant.

Owing to the influence of disease on the blood, however, it is never
really safe to say absolutely "This is human blood," and, in fact, all
that is generally stated in evidence is whether it is mammalian.

There is one other important piece of work the medical detective can
perform in his laboratory, in the way of tracking criminals; that is to
distinguish hairs from vegetable fibres, and human hairs from animals'.
Our illustrations show how it is done. He simply places the thing to be
tested under the microscope, and--as he is acquainted with every
description of hair, cotton, wool, silk and other fibre--he can tell at
a glance what it is.

Hair is more like wool than anything else, but wool is irregular and
hair is pretty regular in breadth. The hair of an adult, also, has a
streak in the middle.

[Illustration: AN IMPORTANT CLUE--MEASURING FOOTSTEPS.]

We append accurate illustrations, from microscopic photographs, of the
hairs of many animals. Obviously, there is no difficulty to the
practised eye in distinguishing them. In fact, most animals' hairs can
be known by the naked eye, or with a small magnifying glass; but that of
skye terriers and spaniels is wonderfully like human hair.

On all these little things hinges, very often, the terrible issue of
"guilty" or "not guilty"!

Some years ago, a woman was found dead with a knife lying loosely in her
hand. This fact might mislead people into thinking it was a case of
suicide; but the fact that the knife was not held tight made the doctor
suspicious. He examined the blood on the knife, and found woollen fibres
which resembled those of the husband's clothes. This discovery so acted
on the husband that he confessed his guilt.

On another occasion a Taunton man was seen last in company with a man
subsequently found dead. In the Taunton man's possession was a knife
with a slight film of blood on the blade. He said he had been cutting
raw beef. The analyst easily showed, however, that the blood on the
knife came from a living animal; and, further, he found on it some
little scales from the lining of the human gullet. The Taunton man was
convicted.

A remarkable instance of the analyst's power was given in a Cornwall
murder case. A man was found with his head broken. On a hammer belonging
to a suspect were a couple of grey hairs. This hammer, however, had been
used for beating goat-skins, and, in fact, it was found in a hedge on
which a goat-skin was spread out to dry.

But the medical witness swore that the two hairs came from somebody's
eyebrow, and, on comparing them with the dead man's eyebrow, they
corresponded!

In one case a man was very near being hanged--and in the old days,
doubtless, he would have been hanged--mainly because a knife with red
stains was found in his possession. The medical witness found that they
were rust caused by an acid fruit; and then it was found that the
prisoner had actually used a knife for cutting a lemon. But, curiously,
this stain is so very like blood that the naked eye of even the most
skilful medical jurist would be deceived by it.

[Illustration: FOOTPRINTS.--(1) WHEN RUNNING. (2) STANDING. (3) WALKING.]

Footprints are usually left to the police to interpret. But, very
probably, the result is often a miscarriage of justice. When the police
are working up a case they would not be human if they did not view
evidence with a certain amount of bias. The scientific witness, on the
other hand, has no personal interest one way or the other. And,
moreover, the comparison of a naked foot with its supposed print on the
ground, or the fitting of a boot to a boot-mark, is a process requiring
not only the most exact measurements, but consideration of the kind of
mark made on different kinds of soil, and in the various positions taken
by the foot in standing, walking, and running. In running we press
mainly on the toes, and in walking the greater part of the foot comes
down, and the longer the foot rests on the ground the deeper is the
impress. In fact, an expert can make a pretty shrewd guess as to the
rate at which the owner of the foot was travelling, by considering the
size and depth of the footprint.

In order to make a comparison a cast has to be taken, if the mark is on
soft ground. This is done by heating the footprint with a hot iron, and
filling it in with paraffin. From this a plaster cast is taken, and it
can be preserved for comparison until someone is arrested.

When the footprint is found in snow, gelatine is used to take the form
of it, and from this also a plaster cast is made.

Of course, these operations have to be carried out with the greatest
care, for footprints are frequently the strongest pillars of an
indictment. In order to compare the foot of the suspected person, he is
made to walk, stand, and run, over a surface similar to that on which
the incriminating print has been found. There is one case in which the
scientific detective is certain--when the person has stood still on
soft, but firm and tenacious, soil.

The footprints represented in our sketch are those of course of naked
feet, which give the clearest impression. But a corresponding variation
occurs in all footprints made by persons wearing boots, so that the
attitude or action of the wearer is easily told.

Now and again some deformity, such as the possession of six or of only
four toes, leaves no room for doubt. When the mark has been made by
boots, rather than with the naked foot, it is frequently easy to
identify it by the arrangement and number of the nails, by a missing
nail, or a patch, or a hole, or a heel worn on one side.

Nevertheless, footprints are, to the medical man, exceedingly doubtful
evidence, although from this view the police, and probably the jury,
differ.

Taking him altogether, the medical detective does his work with a skill,
certainty, and absence of prejudice, worthy of emulation by all engaged
in hunting down the criminal. The story of modern medical detective work
is one of the most romantic of our times.

[Illustration: MURDER OR SUICIDE--WHICH?]




THE ONLY WHITE "ZOO" IN EXISTENCE.

LORD ALINGTON'S QUAINT HOBBY.

BY ALFRED ARKAS.


The subject of eccentric hobbies is always fascinating, more especially
when the hobby-rider need spare neither time nor expense in humouring
his particular fancy.

From time to time we hope to give our readers some account of the many
curious and interesting hobbies pursued by those who are distinguished
in this direction, although it is doubtful if a more interesting example
than the Crichel White Farm is to be found.

The White Farm belongs to Lord Alington, whose name is better known in
connection with Turf matters. It was he who bred the immortal Common,
one of the grandest horses that ever won the Derby. Common was sold for
£15,000. The same week two other of Lord Alington's horses changed
hands, the three together making a record price of £39,000. These facts
are of peculiar interest in this connection, since the White Farm and
the Racing Stud Farm are practically the same, one being part and parcel
of the other.

Near the entrance to the White Farm there appears a long low building,
over which three flags are flying. This is one of the racehorse stables;
and the flags, which are of yellow silk, bear the names of three of
Crichel's winners.

Mr. Bartlett, Lord Alington's trainer, is 74 years of age, and one of
the most successful men the turf has ever known. In spite of his age he
is as sprightly as a young man; and I should say many another "good 'un"
is to be expected from his hands.

Common's stable overlooks a portion of the White Farm, and is that seen
in the illustration of the white mule.

Crichel is situated six miles from Wimborne, in Dorsetshire. It is on
the edge of the New Forest.

On nearing the farm one gets the impression that there is something
unusual about the place. The long low stable buildings, the tall white
masts and bright yellow flags, numberless white-painted cages, aviaries,
outhouses, and the spotless white of the fencings and gateways, all lend
it a pleasing individuality.

On turning into the big White Farm gate one encounters the spectacle of
a teeming population of bird and animal life. All are pure white,
spotlessly clean, and you couldn't find a dark hair or feather if you
tried to do so.

[Illustration: "ALL ARE PURE WHITE, SPOTLESSLY CLEAN."]

The only thing that seems to be missing at a first glance is a white
elephant; but the farm is that itself in a sense, as one may readily
imagine, when the difficulty of keeping it stocked is considered.

Although one could hardly conceive a more complete collection of white
birds and beasts, it is by no means so large or varied as in the past.
The mortality among what may be termed the "hot-house" species--the
birds and animals from tropical countries--was very great, and the
difficulty and expense of constantly replacing them was so considerable
that Lord Alington decided to dispense with them altogether.

[Illustration: "FANNY," THE WHITE DEER.]

The most striking creatures on the estate--and well they know it--are
the white peafowl. The many-coloured peacock with which we are familiar
is a beautiful bird, but I never saw anything in my life as perfect as
the white specimen at Crichel.

We were fortunate enough, by the exercise of the patience of Job, to
stalk one of these birds, and snap him in full war paint.

[Illustration: THE WHITE PEACOCK--THE KING OF THE WHITE FARM.]

The photograph will give some idea of the beauty of the bird, but it
cannot convey any adequate notion of the rich silken texture of the
plumage, or the aristocratic stateliness of this beauty among beauties.
Built into the hedge close to the place where our snapshot of the white
peacock was taken, are several white cages devoted to some of the rarer
breeds of white pigeons and guinea pigs. At the extreme end are the
white rats and mice.

[Illustration: A PICTURESQUE CORNER OF THE FARM.]

One of the rarest and most interesting members of the white family is
the mule--which is really much more like a pony in appearance--shown in
another illustration.

The poor brute has experienced many social vicissitudes; originally he
was the property of the "Shadow of God upon Earth," as the Sultan of
Turkey modestly styles himself.

When Lord Alington was visiting Constantinople, the Sultan, who had
heard of his hobby, presented the animal to him. The mule had not long
been installed at the White Farm, when a gentleman who drove a
four-in-hand of these animals was ordered abroad. He had a white mule in
his team which he sold to Lord Alington, and so the farm became
possessed of a pair.

[Illustration: WHERE THE SHAGGY GUINEA-PIGS LIVE.]

They were regularly used in harness till the death of the last-mentioned
purchase. Then, as the survivor threatened to die of inactivity and
crass laziness, he was given to the local baker, who uses him for the
work of distributing bread round the country-side.

From the Yildiz Kiosk to a country cart! How are the mighty fallen!

[Illustration: A PRESENT FROM THE SULTAN TO LORD ALINGTON.]

In a little paddock on the left-hand side of the entrance, a small but
most interesting collection of white animals attracts the attention of
the visitor. It consists of four superb Angora sheep and a pigmy bull.

[Illustration: THE PIGMY BULL--NOT LARGER THAN A NEWFOUNDLAND DOG--AND
THE WHITE ANGORA SHEEP.]

The pigmy bull has no history of any particular interest. But if he
lacks history, he has a temper--a temper with which it is useless to
argue. The photographer, with courage worthy of a better cause, leapt
light-heartedly into the paddock, with the trigger of his hand camera at
half cock. With a lightning movement he took aim, but the pigmy was too
quick for him. He charged our harmless snapshotter, who, "retiring in
confusion," as the war correspondents say, made for the fence and fell
over it, camera and all, only half a second before the infuriated
animal's head rammed furiously into the iron railings. A moment's
hesitation and these photographs had never seen publication. The
photograph of the bull we reproduce was taken immediately after the
adventure. Tiny as the animal is, it is not a creature to be trifled
with. As a matter of fact the brute had a bad fit of tantrums during
the rest of the day, and the last sound we heard as we wended our way
through the quiet lanes that evening was the angry bellowing of offended
majesty.

[Illustration: FEEDING TIME OF THE PIGEONS, FOWLS, AND TURKEYS]

In endeavouring to get a snapshot of Fanny, the white deer, we had quite
a different experience. With the modesty and timidity characteristic of
the breed, she was strongly opposed to the idea of being photographed.
She literally flew round the paddock for some time after our entrance,
and I was very much afraid we should have to give her up as a hopeless
job.

However, by the exercise of great patience we were enabled to get a
snapshot as she stood nervously surveying us from a dark corner. Fanny
is one of the beauties of the farm; she is on the most friendly terms
with her keeper, and follows him about like a dog. Needless to say, she
has not a dark hair in her coat.

An even greater expenditure of time and ingenuity was necessary in
photographing the smaller denizens of Lord Alington's Zoo.

Your ordinary guinea pig is a nervous fellow at best; the white variety
suffers from hyper-sensitiveness. Over and over again, by frequent
offerings of the most tempting dainties, were the shaggy bright-eyed
little creatures lured from their haunts. But no matter how stealthily
stalked by the camera fiend, they were off like greased lightning long
before he was near enough; which circumstance explains why only two of
these interesting little pets appear in the vicinity of the runs. At one
time during my visit I saw the small paddock devoted to their use simply
alive with them.

The White Farm guinea pigs are much larger than the ordinary cavies kept
by most of us in boyhood days, and the coat is long and shaggy. Save for
the head they are more like pigmy Angora sheep than anything.

For much the same reason we were unable to photograph more than a small
corner of the rabbit run. It literally teems with pure white rabbits,
but they are not used to visitors, and their native modesty makes them
shun the camera like the plague. Only three or four braved the ordeal,
but as they are much like their companions, one has only to multiply
them indefinitely to obtain some idea of what the run looks like when in
full swing.

The title "King of the White Farm" undoubtedly belongs to the peacock.
You have only to glance at him to realise that he is equally certain of
his position.

But there is another gentleman--the white turkey cock--on the estate who
obviously does not share this view, and, were it not for the fact that
his consummate vanity renders him blissfully unconscious of his
colleague's pretensions, I imagine there would be war. Certainly the
turkey cock is a beautiful and stately creature. He was purchased by
Lord Alington for £10.

Needless to say, all the ducks and fowls are of the prevailing colour,
and very fine birds they are. Even the pigs must turn grey or get
themselves bleached if they wish to take up permanent quarters at
Crichel.

The pigeons interested me more than anything else in the place, possibly
on account of their number, and intelligence. The whole farm is alive
with them, and the sight of the colony whirling in mid-air above their
cotes is one not readily forgotten.

[Illustration: SOME HUMBLE MEMBERS OF THE GREAT WHITE FAMILY.]

They cross the sun like a white cloud, and when they swoop downwards to
the ground the air vibrates with the hum of whirling wings. They have a
trick of sitting along the coping tiles of the roof in single file like
a company of soldiers drawn up in line, and on one occasion I saw some
hundreds resting so closely together in this fashion that there was not
room for a sparrow between them the whole length of the roof.

They are perfectly tame, and are the most knowing-looking rascals I have
ever seen. Feeding time is a great institution, and, to my mind, is the
most fascinating sight on the farm.

They know their dinner hour to the second, and some time before it is
due the air is white with returning stragglers.

The ceremony is interesting enough to justify several illustrations, but
we can find room for only one. Preparatory to the all-important
function, the birds collect in their hundreds on the roofs of the
adjoining buildings. A few seconds later the more impatient spirits
among them fly to the ground and move restlessly about near the door
from which they know the attendant will emerge.

Directly the man appears they swarm round him as he makes his way into
the middle of the grass plot where the food is scattered.

There is not a single feather in any one of the birds which is not of
the purest white. A dark feather seals the doom of its unfortunate
owner. However, this is a rare event. Possibly the birds conspire to
preserve uniformity of colour by plucking alien shades from each other's
plumage before they are noticed by the keeper.

If space would permit, one might illustrate many other interesting
features of the White Farm, but enough has been said to give a general
notion of the charm and interest of Lord Alington's fascinating hobby.

[Illustration]




[Illustration: THE CHOLERA SHIP]


A COMPLETE SHORT STORY[1]

BY CUTCLIFFE HYNE. _Illustrated by Richard Jack._


She was not the regular Portuguese mail. She was an ancient seven-knot
tramp, which had come across from Brazil to Loando, and had been lucky
enough to pick up half a cargo of coffee there for Lisbon. She called in
at Banana, the station on the mangrove-spit at the mouth of the Congo,
where the river pilots live (and on occasion die), and where the Dutch
factory used to bring trade till the Free State killed it with duties;
and at Banana she had further fortune. There were two hundred and thirty
negroes there, Accra men and Kroo-boys mostly, a gang that had made
their fifteen or twenty pounds apiece on the railway, and were waiting
to go home.

The passenger-boys had collected their chattels, and were gathering in a
howling chattering mob by the surf-boats ready to go on board, when the
first notion came to me of joining her. It was the Danish harbour-master
who gave it. He came up, under his old white umbrella with the green
lining, to the house where I was staying, and told me that the tramp was
going to call in at San Thomé and the Bonny River.

"Now, we don't hanker to get rid of you here, Mr. Calvert," he said,
"but if you want to climb that mountain in Fernando Po, you're not
likely to get so good a chance for the next three months to come. Your
place is on the road between San Thomé and Bonny, though of course
you'll have to make it worth the skipper's while to stop. But that's
your palaver."

"Can you put a figure on it?" I asked.

"I should take it," said the harbour-master, "that you could hustle the
man into Fernando Po for ten sovereigns. He's only a Portugee. Come
aboard now in my gig and see him."

The tramp's interior was not inviting. We went into the chart-house and
drank the inevitable sweet champagne with the captain; and whilst the
bargain was being made, a thousand cockroaches crawled thoughtfully over
the yellow-white paint.

"I tell you straight," said the harbour-master in English, "she's a
dirty ship, and the chop'll be bad enough to poison a spotted dog. But
if you will go to these Portugee and Spanish places to sweat up
mountains, that's part of the palaver."

"Oh, if the grub's good enough for them, it won't kill me."

"Then if you will go, I'll send my boy off in the boat for your boxes
one-time, because the Old Man's in a hurry to be off. He's got a bishop
on board below, very sick with fever, and he wants to be out of this
stew and get to sea again as quick as it can be done. Thinks it'll give
the ship bad luck, I suppose, if the bishop pegs out."

The harbour-master's boy was speedy, and the harbour-master himself
piloted us out into the wide gulf of the river's mouth. The
beer-coloured stream gave up its scent of crushed marigolds strongly
enough to pierce through the smells of the ship and the smells of the
crowded chattering negroes on the fore-deck, and the old steamer began
to groan and creak as she lifted to the South Atlantic swell. The sun
went down, and night followed like the turning out of a lamp. The
lighthouse flickered out on the Portuguese shore away on the port bow,
and above it hung the Southern Cross, a pale faint thing, shaped like an
ill-made kite.

[Footnote 1: Copyrighted in the U.S.A. by Cutcliffe Hyne, 1898.]

[Illustration: "CAME DOWN OFF THE UPPER BRIDGE."]

The bumping engines stopped, and the Dane came down off the upper
bridge. He stood with me for a minute on the brown, greasy deck planks,
and then went down the ladder into his boat.

"Oscar-strasse, tretten, Kjobnhavn!" he shouted, as the gig dropped
astern. "Mind you come. I shall be home in another nine months."

"Wanderers' Club, London; don't forget; sorry I haven't a card left," I
hailed back, and wondered in my mind whether in any of the world's
turnings I should ever meet that good fellow again. But the steamer was
once more under way, mumbling and complaining, and the store-keeper at
that moment was beginning to open the case of dried fish--baccalhao, as
they call it on the coast--to which we traced back the hideous plague
which in the next few days swept away her people like the fire from a
battery of guns.

There were only two other passengers beside the bishop and myself--a
pair of yellow-faced, yellow-fingered Portuguese from down the coast,
traders both, with livers like Strasbourg geese. The Skipper was a
decent, weak little chap from Lisbon, who might have been good-looking
if he had sometimes washed; the Chief Engineer was a Swede, who spoke
English and quoted Ibsen; and the other officers I never came specially
across. There was only one of my own countrymen on board, a fireman from
Hull, one of the strongest men I ever met, and certainly the most
truculent ruffian. His name was Tordoff on the ship's books, but that
was a "purser's name." He spoke pure English when he forgot himself, and
certainly had once been a gentleman.

[Illustration: "LIFTED THE BODY AS THOUGH IT HAD BEEN RED-HOT."]

It was baking hot down below, and the place was alive with rats and
cockroaches. I rigged a wind-scoop through the port in my room, got
into pyjamas, and lay down on the top of the bunk. But I can't say I did
much business with sleep; the menagerie held cheerful meetings all
round, and the perspiration tickled as it ran off my body in little
streams; and these things keep a man awake. My room was to starboard,
and when through the porthole I saw day blaze up from behind the low
line of African hills, I turned out, rolled a cigarette, and went on
deck. I was just in time to see the first funeral.

Four very frightened-looking men and a profane mate were fitting a
couple of biscuit sacks over a twisted figure which lay on the grimy
greasy deck planks. They pulled one over the head and another over the
heels, and then with a palm and needle made them fast about the figure's
middle. Afterwards they lashed a fire-bar along the shins, and then,
with faces screwed up and turned away, they lifted the body as though it
had been red-hot, and toppled it over the rail.

The dead man dived through the swell alongside almost without a splash;
but, as though his coming had been a signal, a dozen streaks of foam
started up from various points, each with a black triangular fin in the
middle of it; and I did not feel any the happier from knowing precisely
what that convoy meant.

However, the sharks and the body drifted away into the wake astern, and
I rolled another cigarette and got a chair and sat on the break of the
bridge deck. From there I saw the mate and his four hands fetch one by
one five other bodies out of the forecastle, and prepare them for
burial. Three they covered with canvas; and then the supply of biscuit
sacks seemed to run out, because the last two they put over the side
with the fire-bar attachment only.

The fifth man had to be content with four participators in his funeral.
The remaining sailor held strangely aloof; his face turning through a
prism of curious colours; his body swaying in uncouth jerks. As the
fifth corpse toppled over the rail, this fellow threw himself down on
the hatch cover, and lay there writhing and screaming in a torment of
cramps.

At that moment a man in a white serge cassock, which reached to his
heels, came out of one of the forecastle doors and walked rapidly across
to the new victim. He was a long lean man with a hawk's nose, and bright
large eyes. The skin of his face was like baggy yellow leather, and it
was dry with fever. As he knelt beside the writhing sailor, I saw the
metal crucifix nearly fall from his thin hands through sheer weakness.
He was the Portuguese bishop from down-coast of course, and when I
remembered that he had just been through black-water fever (which is own
brother to yellow jack) I judged that from a human point of view he was
behaving with exquisite foolishness in meddling with first-crop cholera
patients. But I respected him a good deal for all that, and went and got
opium and acetate of lead and gave the man on the hatch a swingeing
dose. It was a useless thing to do, because the chap had got to die, and
one incurred one's own risks by going near him; but if that bishop was a
fool, I had got to be a fool too, and there was an end of it.

[Illustration: "HE KNELT BESIDE THE WRITHING SAILOR."]

Mark you, I wasn't feeling a bit frightened then. I'd been through
cholera-cramp in India, and knew what my chances were, and was ready to
face them without whimpering; though of course I'd freely have given
every farthing I was worth to have been snugly back in the Congo again.
But the thing had got to be seen through, and I intended to keep my end
up somehow. I couldn't afford to die like a rat in a squalid hole like
that.

I had breakfast all to myself that morning, because no one else turned
up; and afterwards the captain did me the honour to call me into
consultation. My Portuguese is off colour, but I speak enough to get
along with.

"You English know so much about these things," he said.

[Illustration: "'WE NO FIT FOR STOKE, SAR. WE GENTLEMEN WID MONEY,
SAR.'"]

"We keep clean ships," I answered, "and when anything goes wrong on them
we do not lose our heads. Also we try to trace our way back to the root
of evils. How did this plague start?"

"You must have brought it on board at Banana. We had not in the ship
before you came."

"We did not bring it. There is no cholera in the Congo now. And,
moreover, your passenger-boys are none of them sick. We must try back
further."

We did that together laboriously; and at last traced the mischief to
that fatal case of baccalhao which had been shipped at Bahia, an
infected port; and had this essence of pest promptly thrown to the
sharks. Next we went into the question of hands.

"I have not enough firemen and trimmers left to man a single watch,"
said the captain. "The cholera hit the stoke-hold first. The fellows who
are working there now have stood three watches on end, and they are
hardly making enough steam to give her steerage way."

"If you let your old beast of a tramp stop and drift about here like a
potato-chip in a frying-pan it won't improve matters. Those of us who
don't peg out with cholera will start murdering one another. The niggers
will begin."

"Yes, I know. I wanted some of them to serve as firemen for good pay.
But they will not listen to me. I do not think they understood. Will you
come and translate?"

We took revolvers, holding them ostentatiously in our pockets. I crossed
the dizzy sunshine of the lower main deck. The negroes on the forecastle
head were chattering together like a fair of monkeys, but they ceased
when we came up, and stared at us with faces working with excitement.

"Which be head-man?" I asked.

A big fellow stood forward, hat in hand. "I fit for head-man, sar."

I told him hands were wanted for the stoke-hold, and that the gorgeous
pay of four shillings English per diem was offered.

"We no fit for stoke, sar," said he. "We gentlemen wid money, sar. We
passenger-boys, sar."

"Very well, daddy," said I. "But stoke you've got to. And if you won't
do it civilly you'll do it the other way. Now my frien', pick me out
twelve good strong boys. If you don't do it, I'll shoot you dead
one-time; if they won't work, I'll shoot them. You quite savvy?"

We got the men and they went off to the stokehold, frightened and
raging. Poor wretches, eight of them toppled over in the next
twenty-four hours, and half-a-day later the engines stopped for the last
time. I was smoking industriously under the alley-way, and Tordoff came
and loafed near me.

"I'm a bally fine chief-engineer, aren't I?" said he.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I'm the best man that's left of all our crowd, that's all.
They're every sinner of them dead, black men, white men, and Portuguese.
Where are we now?"

"Slap bang under the equator. That mountain-top sticking out of the
water is San Thomé."

"Then I'm off there," said Tordoff. "This bloomin' steamer's played out.
She can't steam, and she wouldn't sail if there was any wind, which
there isn't. I shall take one of the boats and skip. You'd better come
too."

"No."

"What for? Why not?"

"Because there are only two boats and they aren't enough for all hands."

"The boats will hold all the white men, or them that call themselves
white. But if you are one of the missionary crowd that hold niggers as
good----"

"I'm not. I know what niggers are, and therefore I'm not an Exeter Hall
fool about them. I'll make free to tell you this boat-game's been
thought of before; but that bishop says he won't leave the niggers to
peg out alone; and if he's going to be idiot enough to stay, I am going
to be another idiot. That's the size of it."

"Well," said Tordoff, "I've got no use for that kind of foolishness
myself, and if you're left, you needn't come and haunt me afterwards.
You've had the straight, square tip. And you'll do no good by spreading
this palaver about. If anyone tries to stop us there'll be a lot of men
killed. We aren't the kind of crowd that'll stick at trifles if we're
meddled with. So long!"

[Illustration: "'THIS STEAMER IS PLAYED OUT. I SHALL TAKE ONE OF THE
BOATS AND SKIP.'"]

He slouched off, and I went to the deck of the bridge and looked down on
a curious scene. The main deck was a shambles. There were a score of
corpses there, pitching about stiffly to the roll of the ship, with no
one offering to touch them. There were a score more of sick, shrieking
and knotting themselves in their agony. The survivors were in two sorts
of panic--the comatose, and the madly violent. A crowd of yelling
dancing negroes, most of them stark naked, had set up a ju-ju on a
barrel of the fore-deck winch, and were sacrificing to it a hen which
they had stolen from one of the coops. The little wooden god I knew: it
was one that I had picked up in the Kasai country, and I was taking it
home as a curiosity. It had been lifted from my own state-room by some
prowling negro, and was now receiving fresh daubs of red blood amid the
clamour of frantic worshippers. It was quite a reasonable thing to
expect under the circumstances. But what threw the action of these
savages into grotesque relief was the sight of another man crouched in
prayer beside the bulwarks. It was the bishop. His tottering hands were
pinning the crucifix to his hollow chest; his hips were swaying under
him with weakness; his dry cracked lips moved noiselessly; and the
molten sunlight beat upon him as it pleased.

[Illustration: "I WAS FIGHTING FOR MY LIFE AMONGST A CROWD OF FURIES."]

The sight of that man gave me a bad feeling. Before I knew quite how it
happened, I was down on the frizzling main-deck, and the ju-ju had been
plucked from the winch barrel and flung over the side, together with the
tortured hen, and I was fighting for my life amongst a crowd of furies.
Tordoff was there too (though I'm sure I don't know how he came), and
thanks to him I got back again on to the bridge deck; but the bishop did
not come with us. He stayed down there amongst those sullen animal
blacks, imploring them, praying with them, soothing them. He was a
braver man than I, that Portuguese.

Another night came down, and the steamer wallowed in inky blackness. In
the morning we were still more helpless. The mates, the few remaining
sailors, the stewards and cooks, and the two yellow traders had gone;
the captain lay in the alley-way with a knife between his
shoulder-blades; the bishop and I and Tordoff were the only white men
remaining on board. Yes, Tordoff. I went into the pantry smoking a
cigarette, and found him there, eating biscuits and raisins.

"You here?" I said, "Why, man, I thought you cleared out with the rest."

"No," he said, "I thought it would be so fine to stay behind and be able
to scoff the cabin grub just as I pleased. I just stayed for the grub,
it's worth it."

"You're rather a decent sort of liar," I said; "do you mind shaking
hands?"

"I don't see the need," he said; "and besides, I'm using my hands to eat
these raisins; but you may kick me if you like. There isn't a redder
fool than me in both Atlantics. By the way, how's the padre?"

"Very sick. I looked into his room and found him lying in his bunk. He
couldn't talk."

"I put him there. Found the old fool preaching to those beasts on all
fours this morning, and looked on till he dropped; then I lugged him
under cover."

"Any more dead?"

"Five pegged out during the night. They were lying pleasantly in and
amongst the others, and there were seven more sick. I told the head-man
when I went down with the padre to have them put over the side or I'd
kill him. And when I came back I found he'd shoved over the whole dozen.
The man-and-a-brother's a tolerable brute when he comes to handling his
own kind, Mr. Calvert."

We went out then and set the passenger-boys to washing down decks. We
could not give them the hose because there was no donkey working; but
they drew water in buckets and holystoned and scraped and scrubbed till
they cleaned the infection out of the decks, and sweated it out of
themselves. The cholera seemed to have exhausted itself. There were
three other cases, it is true, but they were mild, and none died. In
their fright the boys would have chucked their friends overboard as soon
as they were taken sick, but I promised the head-man to shoot him most
punctually if any one went over the side who was not a pukka corpse, and
if niggers were addicted to gratitude (which they are not), there are
gentlemen now living on the Kroos coast who might remember me
favourably. For we did get in. A B. and A. boat picked us up three weary
days later, and towed us at the end of an extremely long hawser into the
very place to which I wanted to go.

Of course Fernando Po, being Spanish, kept us very much at arm's length;
and we did a thirty days' most rigid quarantine, which made (after the
last case had recovered) a matter of forty days in all. But we had no
more deaths, and the bishop pulled up into fine form. He was not a man
that I could ever bring myself to like, and as Tordoff was for the most
part sullen and unwishful for talk, the time that we swung to our anchor
off Port Clarence was not exhilarating.

Still it was pleasant to think that one was alive, and to realise that
one had got respectably out of a very tight corner--yes, one of the
tightest. The tramp's two boats never turned up again. I suppose they
carried cholera away with them, and drifted about in the belt of
equatorial calms, full of sun-dried corpses, till some tornado came and
swamped them. So that we three were the only Europeans left out of
thirty-four, and of the two hundred and thirty negroes who left Banana
in the Congo, only seventy-four came to Fernando Po. It was a tolerable
thinning out, but when it came to climbing the peak, that made up for
all which had gone before. Indeed it is a wonderful mountain.

I saw Tordoff again just as I was going away from the island, and tried
to put it to him delicately that I was not badly off, and would like to
give him a lift if the thing could be managed.

"No, Mr. Calvert," he said, "thanks. I prefer to go to the devil my own
gait. I don't suppose you'd ever know who I am; but if anybody describes
me and asks, just say you haven't seen me."

[Illustration: "'THERE ISN'T A REDDER FOOL THAN ME IN BOTH ATLANTICS.'"]

And that is the last I have seen or heard of him. It is extraordinary
how one drifts away from men. But, on the other hand, I should not be in
the least surprised at stumbling across Tordoff again, in purple and
fine linen for choice on the next occasion.

[Illustration]




IN A DISAPPEARING CHESHIRE TOWN.

THE STRANGE STORY OF NORTHWICH.

BY PERCY L. PARKER.


The town of Northwich is subject to fits, and the reason is that people
like salt. The existence of the fits is proved by a glance at the photos
here given, and a few words will explain their cause.

A stranger who knows nothing of the town may well be alarmed as he walks
down its streets, for on all sides he sees walls and houses standing at
every possible angle. Houses lean against each other in a way suggestive
of intoxication; doorways are all awry, and pavements and roads roll
like a sea-serpent.

[Illustration: _May & Co. photo._] [_Northwich._

CASTLE CHAMBERS, WHICH FELL OVER WHOLE IN THE NIGHT.]

It is not certain that you will find your horse or cow in its stall next
morning even if you lock the door at night, for a great gulf may have
swallowed it alive. Most people like to see their fireplaces standing
above the level of the floor, but such prejudices cannot be tolerated at
Northwich, and if your fireplace goes beneath the floor, well, such is
one of the privileges of living in the place. It may happen that your
house falls over in the night, or that its roof may come crashing down
on your head. Even churches are not safe. Two at least have suffered
demolition, and one is now closed as unsafe. The town bridge leads a
vagrant life, and makes constant settlements, which impede the traffic
on the river. Northwich cannot boast a town hall, for it also was a
victim of the "moving" spirit of the place.

The details of this state of things are little known even in England,
but a graphic description recently appeared in a German newspaper. It
declared that so serious was the condition of Northwich that the
inhabitants had fled to the neighbouring mountains, and all that could
be seen on the site of the ancient town was the funnel of a passing
steamer.

Some worthy people at Bradford evidently had a similar idea, for after a
certain bank of that town had lent the Northwich authorities £5,000 they
heard such alarming things about the place that they sent two directors
to see if there was any chance of anything being left of Northwich when
the repayment of the loan was due.

It is true that boats have been seen in the streets of Northwich, for
every now and then they get flooded. The case of Northwich is serious
enough, but there is still dry land, the people have not fled to the
mountains, and the bank is pretty certain to be paid. What then is the
matter?

[Illustration: _T. Birtles, photo._] [_Warrington._

ONE OF THE MOST COMMON SIGHTS IN NORTHWICH.]

Northwich has the misfortune to be built on the top of a pie-crust. If
you cover some fruit in a pie-dish with a crust and then pump out the
juice and fruit through a hole in the crust and place a heavy weight on
it, you naturally expect the crust to break and the weight to fall into
the dish. The pie under Northwich is made of rock salt, and on the top
of the salt is a large amount of juice (or brine), and over it is the
earth's crust. But a good many Jack Homers have been at this pie and
have pumped the brine away. The heavy buildings on the crust have then
broken through it, and in this way Northwich is subject to "fits."
Locally they are called "subsidences."

The classic event at Northwich was the upsetting of a house called
"Castle Chambers," occupied at the time by a solicitor. At 3 o'clock one
morning in May, this house fell back into a large hole which suddenly
opened at the rear of it. But not a single brick was moved nor a pane of
glass broken, though the chimney was not proof against such antics and
fell to the floor. This was due to the way in which the house was built.

[Illustration: _May & Co., photo._] [_Northwich._

WHERE A HORSE WAS SWALLOWED UP.]

For so universal and expected are these subsidences, that the houses are
now all built in wooden frames with massive timber beams screwed tightly
together. This has revived a style of building common enough more than a
hundred years ago, specimens of which are often seen in country places.
If the house subsides it falls as a whole and does not necessarily
collapse. All you have to do is to use a screw-jack to raise the house,
fill in the hole, remove the jack, and sleep as before till another
subsidence, when the same operation is gone through. Castle Chambers,
however, were taken down and the ground made "sound." Twelve months
after another subsidence took place, and the result is shown in the
above photograph.

[Illustration: _May & Co., photo._] [_Northwich._

THE SECOND SUBSIDENCE ON THE SITE OF CASTLE CHAMBERS.]

Just opposite Castle Chambers stood the old "Wheat Sheaf Inn." It was
built with timber to resist the dreaded subsidence, but to no purpose.
Money was frequently spent in making good the damage done. One year it
had to be raised no less than nine feet! A year after part of the
building disappeared, then the cellars went, and as a climax a horse
which was in the stable was swallowed up.

One Sunday morning a neighbouring farmer put his horse--worth £30 with
its harness--into the stable, and when he returned after doing his
business, he found that the beast had gone down a hole 15 ft. in
diameter which had suddenly opened. The house was then pulled down and
built further up the street. This shows how owners in Northwich stand to
lose both buildings and the sites of them.

Next to the "Wheat Sheaf" was a butcher's shop, which was robbed one day
of a sausage machine by the gaping earth. When it is mentioned that a
second horse disappeared, and that a minister had a narrow escape from
being swallowed, the fun of the following story will be appreciated. The
minister one day in a funny mood was making some remarks at a public
meeting about the strange disappearance of the horses and the sausage
machine. He suggested that when the people below received the first
horse they naturally wanted a sausage machine, and hence the
disappearance of that useful article. Then so much did they enjoy the
produce of the machine that they wanted a second horse, and hence the
second disappearance. At this point the chairman of the meeting rose and
gravely asked whether on one occasion they did not also want a minister
(referring to the funny man's escape), and the story-teller meekly ended
his tale.

Another extraordinary subsidence was that which took place in a house in
Tabley Street. The family were quietly seated in a room when they heard
a tremendous crash, which soon brought the neighbours out to see what
was the matter. An adjoining room was found to be minus its fireplace;
instead there was a big hole reaching to the cellar beneath. The marble
mantel-piece was smashed, and the tiled floor or hearth had fallen to
the cellar. The cellar wall of the next house had given way, and there
was great danger that the chimney would come smashing down. Soon after
the walls cracked and the floors were drawn apart, making the house more
breezy than comfortable. This was a peculiarly hard case, for the
proprietor had recently spent a good deal of money in putting the
property in order. In the end, the house and site were worth nothing.

[Illustration: _T. Birtles, photo._] [_Warrington._

A CHASM IN A ROADWAY.]

The house of a linen draper in the town sank one-fifth of its height
between the years 1881 and 1891, and in the seven years since it has
sunk nearly another fifth. One kitchen window looks out on the river,
and the water is now but a few inches below the window sill. When I saw
it the moon was shining on the water, making the scene singularly
effective. At one time the kitchens were lofty rooms, now one can hardly
stand upright in them, for the floors and the walls have not kept pace.

Another house I saw had eight steps of one foot each down to the front
door. Not many years ago the doorstep was on the road level. An
ironmonger's shop floor has sunk six feet in a similar way. One side of
the floor is describing a semicircle, and the walls have long been
cracked.

The "Crown and Anchor," the chief hotel in the place, had to be rebuilt,
for to walk its floors was "like being at sea in a heavy gale." The
floor of the dining-room had sunk so much that it was several feet below
the level of the roadway, and the windows afforded a beautiful view of
passing feet.

[Illustration: _T. Birtles photo._] [_Warrington._

BRINE PUMPING SHAFT IN A FIT.]

A jeweller had the novel experience of seeing his fireplace sink below
the level of the floor and his mantel-piece half buried. Even the police
station was not safe. It was built at a cost of £2,000, repairs to the
extent of £300 were soon needed, but it became so bad that it had to be
abandoned.

There are several streets in Northwich where the houses are simply
tobogganing into each other, and all over the place are houses which
have been condemned and now are closed. One street became suddenly
several feet wider than it used to be, for one side was sliding away. It
was afterwards found that the houses on that side had moved three feet
from their foundations, which were discovered under the kerb stones of
the pavement! The Marston Road sank 15 feet in forty years, and at last
had to be abandoned owing to a huge chasm many feet in width which
formed across it.

It is only fair that even the buildings of the salt works in the town
are not exempt from these subsidences, which, indeed, are due to their
activity. One photograph is given which shows a pumping shaft in a
serious epileptic fit, which ended in its total collapse. Some time ago
the curious sight might have been seen of a large wall travelling from
three to four feet away from the building of which it was once a part.
And in several of the salt works I found the walls parting in all
directions, the floors in the shape of an S, and whole blocks of
buildings waiting for the house-breaker.

One of the most remarkable features of these subsidences is that no loss
of human life has occurred. A girl with a child was passing the "Wheat
Sheaf Inn" on the occasion of a subsidence and was nearly swallowed up,
but not quite. The only loss of life was that of the two horses already
mentioned and a cow. A man was driving a cow through the streets and
turned to speak to a friend. On looking round he found that his cow had
been swallowed up. He was assured that the animal would be pumped up
with the brine at some point, but the beast was never seen again!

The subsidences already mentioned are almost invariably caused by the
pumping away of the brine. Other subsidences are caused by the falling
in of old and disused salt mines which have not been properly worked, or
worked too near the surface. The result of these subsidences is
generally seen in the formation of huge lakes of water called "flashes."
One of these covers 100 acres, and is 40 to 50 feet deep. They cover
what were formerly fields, and the ensuing loss was very great.

One gentleman had to make a new road to his property because 100 acres
were under water, and other areas were badly damaged by subsidences;
another built a house costing £6,000, and the largest offer he could get
for it was £1,500--it had been so much injured by subsidence.

The area over which these subsidences take place is about two square
miles. Some years ago the property in Northwich was valued at £311,885,
but the depreciation on it was valued at one _third_, or £102,945--the
annual loss being £5,147. When the matter was brought before the House
of Commons it was stated that damage had been done to no less than 892
buildings. But the number to-day, if it could be estimated, would be
infinitely larger. These 892 buildings comprised five public buildings,
15 manufacturing works, 21 slaughter-houses and stables, 34 ware-houses
and workshops, 41 public-houses, 140 shops, and 636 houses and cottages.

In ten years the pumping up of brine had excavated from beneath beneath
Northwich a space large enough to form a ship canal from Northwich to
Warrington 150 feet wide and 30 feet deep. And a well-known authority
declares that the subsidences during the present century form an
excavation very much more extensive than was required for the Manchester
and Liverpool Ship Canal. For the subsidences correspond with the amount
of salt taken from the earth.

[Illustration: _May & co._] [_Northwich._

ANOTHER VIEW OF CASTLE CHAMBERS ON ITS BACK.]

Every ton of white salt consumes one ton of rock salt, and a ton of rock
salt represents a solid cubic yard. As 1,200,000 tons of white salt are
made every year at Northwich it follows that at least 1,200,000 cubic
yards of solid foundation are removed from beneath Northwich each year.
This is equal to an annual uniform subsidence of 248 acres one yard
thick. No wonder that Northwich has fits!

Taking the fits as proved, we will now look more closely beneath the
pie-crust of Northwich. The best way to do so is to get into a big tub
which will just hold two people and go down the shaft of a salt mine,
lowered by a windlass. First of all you pass through 32 feet of soil
and drift, and then about 92 feet of what would commonly be called rock.
Then below these 124 feet you come to the first bed of rock salt, which
averages about 75 feet in thickness. Passing through this you come to 30
feet more of rock, and below again is found another bed of rock salt,
which averages in thickness about 90 feet. It is the lower bed of rock
salt which is mined. The bottom of the mine down which I went was 330
feet below the surface, but the atmosphere was delightful, being cool
and dry and not in the least oppressive. A magnificent chamber, 25 feet
high and 17 acres in extent, had been dug out of the salt, and its
extent could easily be gauged by the help of the candles which had been
lit all round the mine. Massive pillars of salt of 10 or 12 feet square
are left at intervals of 25 yards to support the roof.

The rock is got largely by blasting. A hole is drilled, and into the
bottom of the hole a small powder ball is put. Loose powder is placed in
a piece of straw and the straw is lighted. In a few seconds it burns
down to the powder ball, and the rock salt which has lain so quietly in
its bed for æons breaks up, and in process of time may find itself in
any quarter of the globe.

[Illustration: _T. Birtles, photo._] [_Warrington._

A FLOOD IN THE STREETS OF NORTHWICH.]

No damage is done to the surface by the mining of this lower bed of rock
salt. It is too deep for that. The subsidences are all connected with
the upper bed of salt. These upper beds used to be worked because the
lower beds were not known, and when they were neglected they fell in,
and in this way the large sheets of water of which I have spoken were
formed above the earth's crust.

[Illustration: _T. Birtles, photo._] [_Warrington._

HOUSES WHICH COLLAPSED OWING TO A SUBSIDENCE.]

But the mining of the upper bed of salt by man does not account for the
subsidences here recorded. The name of the dangerous miner is "water."
When water reaches the upper bed of salt it dissolves it as water does
snow. Water can take in 26 degrees of salt and no more, and then it is
called brine. Underneath Northwich is a sea of brine which lies on the
top of the upper bed of salt rock. From this brine white salt is made by
a process of evaporation, and that is why all over Northwich you see
numbers of pumping stations which pump up the brine as fast almost as it
is made. As the brine is taken out fresh water flows in and takes up its
26 degrees of salt. In this way the great cavities under Northwich which
cause all the subsidences are made; they will grow bigger and bigger as
long as the pumping up of brine is continued.

Truly Northwich lives and moves and has its being in salt, and promises
to be buried in it too.

Brine pumping is the source of a terrible injustice. A man may buy a
piece of land large enough to erect a pumping station, and if on that
spot he can tap the brine there is nothing to prevent him from drawing
brine from any part of Northwich. And though his neighbour's house is
engulfed in the process, and though he is ruined thereby, he can secure
no compensation. If you were to mine salt or coal under your neighbour's
house you could be brought to book, but not if you take water, salt or
fresh.

Such was the law till a few months ago. But after a tremendous fight a
bill has been passed which gives a Compensation Board power to levy not
more than three-pence a ton on all brine pumped at Northwich. This levy
is to go to the compensation of those whose houses and property have
suffered. But at present not a penny has been paid and in no case will a
penny ever be paid for all the damage done before the passing of the
Act. Such is the tragedy of salt getting.

Illustration: OUR ARTIST'S WAKING DREAM OF A STREET IN NORTHWICH.]

Northwich has been called the salt metropolis of the world, and as
becomes a metropolis it is unique. It has a Salt Museum, the only one in
existence, which contains the finest collection of Indian and American
salts in the country. It also contains some very interesting exhibits.
Among them are a pair of boots and an old broom-head which were left in
an old salt mine for fifteen years. They had not much beauty when they
were left, but Nature has made them exquisitely beautiful, for they are
encased in salt crystals which were formed upon them in those fifteen
years.

No one can go down a salt mine without asking, How did this salt come
here? And no one can fail to be impressed by the answer. Æons before the
footfall of man was heard upon the earth there stretched across Cheshire
a great salt lake; and under the hot sun of a semi-tropical age the salt
crystallised out of the water and rested at the bottom of the lake. How
many years it is since the first layer was deposited can hardly be
imagined, for it was formed under deep waters, while now it is over 300
feet beneath the earth's crust. But there are few finer fields for the
exercise of the imagination than in trying to conceive the vastness of
time and change which have elapsed since then. And when one does realise
something of the eternity of that time one ceases to wonder that
Northwich has fits when its heart of salt is taken from it.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]




THAT FIVE HUNDRED POUND PRIZE.

THE STORY OF A GENIUS.

BY RICHARD MARSH.

_Illustrated by John H. Bacon._


To him, the idea, from all points of view, suggested nothing but
objections. He told her so.

"You know, Philippa, I don't believe, as the cant of the day has it,
that a woman ought to earn for herself her daily bread; and that a woman
should earn her husband's daily bread as well--to me, the mere idea of
such a thing is nauseous. There may be men who are content to take the
good which their wives provide. Thank goodness, I am not one of them. In
this matter I am old-fashioned in my notions. I look at woman from a
point of view which is, perhaps, my own. To me, the woman who, urged
even by necessity, works for money, soils her womanhood, falls away from
her high estate. I pity her, but--not _that_ woman, if you please, for
me. Necessity, Philippa, surely does not urge you. Am I not always at
your side? Believe me, my day will come--come shortly! Only wait!"
Putting his arm about her waist, he looked up into her face, with, in
his eyes, a certain light of laughter. "Besides, in the great army of
the workers, what work do you think there is for you? Do you think that
in you there is the making of a woman of letters, Philippa?"

So he kissed her, and she said nothing. She could say nothing. She could
only let him fondle her, as though they still were sweethearts. For she
loved him, and he loved her. But though she loved him, in her heart
there was a hot remonstrance, which she allowed to remain unspoken,
because she loved him. It was easy to say that there was no necessity to
prick her with a spur. But there were the tradesmen's bills unpaid, the
rent in arrear, and the children wanted things--not to speak of herself
and of him. And there was a drawer full of his unaccepted manuscripts.
They went hither and thither, from editor to editor, and then for the
most part they seemed to settle in the drawer.

She understood well enough what he meant when he asked if she thought
that she had in herself the making of a woman of letters. She had been a
nothing and a nobody. She had not even been very pretty. Certainly no
superfluity of money had been thrown away upon her education. It was not
at all as it is in the story books, but, quite by chance, he met her.
Before he knew it, he was wooing her. And, when things came to the worst
at home, he married her--she having nothing which she could call her own
except the things which she was wearing. And he had very little more. It
was not strange that he should doubt if in her there was the making of a
woman of letters--she, who, save in the way of love letters, had
scarcely ever written a line.

Geoffrey Ford was a genius. He had given her to understand that from the
very first--in the days when, in her ignorance, she scarcely understood
what a genius was. He gave her to understand it still, almost every day.
With him, to write was to live. To be a great writer was the dream of
his life. He strove to realise his dream with that dogged pertinacity
which is only to be seen in the case of a master passion. When they
first were married, he was struggling to be a dramatist. He was quite
conscious that, in the trade of the writer, wealth was only to be
achieved by the successful playwright. He believed that his was
essentially the playwright's instinct. Although his plays met with
abundance of good words, they did not attain production. It seemed as if
they never would. When they began to be actually starving, she
suggested that he should put aside playwriting for a time, and try to
earn money by other products of his pen. He had acted on her suggestion.
He had become that curiosity of modern civilisation--a writer for the
magazines. And, in a way, he had been successful. He was earning,
perhaps, an irregular hundred and fifty pounds a year. But what are an
irregular, a very irregular, hundred and fifty pounds a year, when there
are three babies? And yet he said that there was no spur of necessity to
urge her on.

The worst of it was, she was beginning to be a doubter. She would not
own it, even to herself, but she was beginning to fear that he might be
mistaking the desire to be, for the power to be. What he considered his
best work invariably came back. He said that this was because editors
were unable to appreciate strikingly original ideas when they were
presented to them by a wholly unknown man. What they desired was a
commonplace, and when he said this, she--well, she said nothing. From
the first she had insisted on his reading aloud to her everything he
wrote. Unconsciously to herself she had become a critic. She was
beginning to fear that he was only at home in the lower levels. When he
soared, he floundered. It was only among the hacks that he held his own.
Even then, at times, he lagged behind. So far from hinting to him her
fears, she would almost rather have died than have allowed him to know
she had them. Their love for each other had never faltered, even when
their cupboard was emptiest. It had seemed to grow stronger with the
coming of each child. And, what is more, it appeared to her that, but
for him, she would have dropped into a ditch.

Lately there had been growing up within her a desire to add to the
family income. And, oddly enough, it had seemed to her that the best way
to do this would be by writing. She had hinted something of this desire
to Geoffrey. She had suggested, playfully, that she should join her pen
to his--that they should collaborate. He had received her playful
suggestion in such a way that she had not ventured to repeat it in
earnest. She knew him, through and through. She knew that he desired to
succeed, not only for himself, but, first of all, for her. He loved his
work for the work's sake. He cared nothing for fame in the sense of
popularity, or its equivalent, notoriety. In that respect he was a
clear-sighted man--he knew what the thing was worth. For himself he
cared nothing for the material products of success. His own tastes were
of the simplest kind. He desired to achieve success simply that he might
pour the fruits of success into her lap. He wished her to owe nothing to
anyone but to himself, to owe nothing even to her own self. He wanted to
be all in all to her, to have his love her beginning, and her end.

She knew this. Yet--the rent was overdue. Of late his manuscripts
seemed coming back worse than ever. He seemed to be out of the vein. And
the children wanted things so badly. And so----

Well, one day he came to her with an expression of countenance which she
knew so well. It meant that a new idea, some fresh project, either was
germinating, or else had germinated, in his mind. In his hand he held a
newspaper.

[Illustration: "'I AM GOING IN FOR A PRIZE COMPETITION.'"]

"Philippa, I am going to do what I have told you I thought that I should
never do--I am going in for a prize competition. See here." He opened
the paper out in front of her. "The _North British Telegraph_ is
offering £500 for the best story, £250 for the second best, and £100 for
the third best. I am going to win one of those prizes--mark my words,
and see if I don't."

[Illustration: "SHE BEGAN ATTENTIVELY TO STUDY THE ANNOUNCEMENT."]

He was kneeling at the table by her chair. She had her hand upon his
shoulder. She smiled as he spoke. She knew his tone so well. He was
always going to do this, that, or the other. But somehow, after all, he
seldom did it.

"Are you? The money would be very useful."

"Useful! I should think it would. Why, to us, it would be a fortune. But
that's not the only thing. You know how ideas come to me in an instant.
Directly I saw that announcement I saw _the_ story which will be the
very thing."

"Did you?" Her heart grew faint. She was beginning to be a little afraid
of his sudden flashes of inspiration. "How long is the story to be?"

"It does not say exactly, but it says that it should not exceed a
hundred and fifty thousand words. It will give me elbow room. I shall
have a chance to let myself go--to get into my stride. I am sick of
dancing in fetters, with a limit of four thousand words or so."

"But it will take you a long time to write, won't it?"

"Oh, about six weeks. It will take me no time, when I am once well into
the story. You know how I do travel, when I once have got my grip. It is
half mapped out in my head already. Every line of it will practically be
written before I begin. There will only be the pen work to do." Putting
both his hands upon her shoulders, he stooped his eager face to hers.
"Philippa, you see if I don't do the trick this time."

"Geoffrey, if I were you, I wouldn't be so sanguine. You know how
disappointed you have been before."

Thrusting his hands into his trousers pockets, he began to stride about
the room.

"Yes, I know that is so, and I won't be sanguine. But, somehow, I feel
quite certain that, this time, I have the thing--however, I'll say
nothing. But don't you tell me not to be sanguine, or you'll put me
clean off--you know how funny I am, that way. You keep the children
quiet, and don't let me hear a sound, and you'll see--well, you'll see
what you will see." He laughed, and she laughed too. "Don't you laugh at
me! If I don't get the first prize, it'll be hard lines if I don't get
one of the three--even a hundred pounds is not to be despised."

"But, Geoffrey, what will become of your other work during those six
weeks? And you know, when you have finished a long story, you never feel
inclined to start again at once."

"Don't talk to me like that, or you'll drive me off my head. Philippa,
I've set my heart upon doing this thing--do let me do it. You don't want
me to be a penny-a-liner all my life, sweetheart, do you? By the way, I
saw _The Leviathan_ at the library. There's a first-rate story in it, by
a new man--Philip Ayre. I know good work when I see it, and that is good
work. And, do you know, it might almost be a story about us--you should
read it. It is called 'Two in One.'" Wandering hither and thither about
the room, he did not notice that his wife's face had suddenly been bent
low over her mending, and that her cheeks had paled. "Another thing, I
met old Briggs." Mr. Briggs was their landlord. "I assure you, when I
saw him coming, I was half inclined, Dick Swiveller fashion, to dodge
down some side street. I made sure he was going to dun, and that I
should have to shuffle. But, to my surprise, he was quite friendly. He
asked how you were, and how the children were, and never said a word
about the rent. So, of course, I said nothing either. I'm just going for
a stroll, and a smoke, and a think. Mind, when you go to the library,
that you don't forget to read that thing in _The Leviathan_."

When he had gone, spreading out the paper which he had brought in front
of her she began attentively to study the announcement of the _North
British Telegraph_ prize story competition. Putting down the
figures--150,000--upon a scrap of paper, she began to divide and to
sub-divide them, as if she were trying to find out exactly what they
meant. When she had finished her calculations, she continued to sit in a
brown study, quite oblivious of the heap of mending which still lay
unfinished on her knee.

"If I could only help him to win it--if I only could! Poor Geoff! The
day on which he gave me five hundred pounds, as the product of his own
work, would be the happiest day that he had ever known. My own, own
Geoff!

"I wonder if he will win it? Oh, if he only would! But supposing that he
does not win it, it would be just as well that--that someone else should
win it--someone in--in his own home. Oh, what a wicked wretch I am!
What's that? It's baby! I do hope she won't wake up. There's all this
mending, and I've only milk enough for one more bottle. There! She is
waking up! You naughty, naughty, _darling_ child!"

[Illustration: "UPSTAIRS THE WIFE SAT WITH THE CHILDREN."]

The next day Geoffrey Ford began his story. He began to pour it out upon
the paper, white-hot from the furnace of his brain. Seldom had he seen
his way so clearly. It had come, as he said, in an instant. It possessed
him, as it were, body and soul and mind, as his work was wont to possess
him when, as he thought, he saw his way. His ideas would come to him
with the force of a mighty rushing river. He could not dam them back. He
felt that he was obliged to give them instant utterance or they would
overflow the banks, and so be lost. He worked best, or he thought that
he worked best, at high pressure. He believed in striking the iron when
the force of the fire had almost made it liquid. Not for him was the
journeyman labour of hammering out tediously, and with infinite care,
cold iron.

The story was to be called "The Beggar." He had even got the title! It
was one of those half-psychological, half-transcendental stories, in the
turnings and twistings of which he liked to give his fancy scope. His
fault was not too little imagination, but too much. The task of keeping
it within due bounds was not only a task which he hated, but possibly it
was a task which was beyond his strength. There are impressionists in
painting. He was an impressionist in literature. He was fond of large
effects--effects which were dashed in by a single movement of the brush.
To descend to details was, he thought, a descent indeed. He was
conscious that there was a public which would read a volume which, from
first to last, only dealt with the minutest particularity, with a couple
of days in the life of a single individual. That was a public he
despised. He preferred to deal with a whole life in the course of a
couple of pages.

He was, in short, a genius. And when I say a genius, I mean, in this
connection, a wholly unmanageable person. As you read his work, you felt
that you were in the presence of an exceptional mind--in the presence of
a man who saw things, great things, things worth seeing, which were
hidden from other men--who saw them, as it were, by flashes of
lightning. That was just how he did see them--by flashes of lightning.
He saw them for an instant, then no more. Partially, and not the whole.
In a lurid light, which almost blinded the beholder. So, when you read a
work of his, you were startled, first by the light, then by the
darkness. It seemed strange that a man who one moment could be so light,
the next could be so dull. Soon you began to be irritated. Then you were
bored. When you reached the end--if you ever reached the end--you
wondered if the man was mad, or if he was merely stupid. But he was
neither mad nor stupid. He was a genius, who, so far, declined to allow
himself to be managed. When he became manageable, he would cease to be a
genius--in the sense in which the word is here being used. Then, if he
wrote at all, he would write what the plainest of plain men could
plainly read.

The idea of his story was not an unattractive one--to a certain sort of
writer. It was to be the story of a beggar, of a man who asked for alms
in the streets, and who, by the exercise of certain arts, which verged
upon the marvellous, amassed a fortune. Geoffrey Ford proposed to follow
the beggar, as he amassed his fortune, and to show what he did with his
fortune, when he once had gained it. And in the little room upstairs,
the wife sat with the children, watching over their every movement to
see that they made no unnecessary sound. They were good children. When
papa was writing, even the baby seemed to do her best to keep the peace.
The little ones seemed willing to give up the birthright of the
child--the right to enter into the heritage of life with a rush of happy
noise. And, below, the husband, and the father, wrote, and wrote, and
wrote, and rushed about the room, chasing his dreams, so that he might
imprison them, with ink, on paper.

[Illustration: "HE FELT THAT SHE WAS TREMBLING."]

The days went by, and the story grew. And so wrapped up was the writer
in its growth, that he failed to notice that about his wife there was
something unusual, and even a little strange. She was interested in his
work, there could be no doubt of that. But she did not, as he was
inclined to think that she was apt to do, worry him with continual
questions as to how it was getting on, and inquiries into this, or that.
She let him go his own way, without making so much as even one
suggestion. She was wont to be a little too free with her suggestions,
he sometimes fancied. For her suggestions hampered him. And--but this he
did not notice--she went her own way too. Rather an odd way it seemed to
be. For one thing, she seemed to be unusually busy. She did not come
into the room in which he was working even after the children had gone
to bed. She seemed to have something on her mind. She became distinctly
paler. It might have been illness, or it might have been anxiety, or it
might have been overwork. A queer look came into her eyes. Sometimes it
was almost like a look of apprehension. Then there would come a timidity
in all her movements, as if she were even afraid of him. Then it would
be like a look of vacancy, as if her thoughts were far away. When that
vacant look was there, she seemed to be unconscious of her husband's
presence--just as he had a trick, in his meditative moods, when he was
thinking of his work, of becoming unconscious of her. Then again, as one
looked into her eyes, one would have thought that she was possessed by
some mastering excitement--a flaming fire which glowed within.

One afternoon her husband came in from his daily visit to the Library
Reading Room. He was not in his happiest mood. He was a man of moods.
When the black mood was upon him, all the world was black.

"On my word, I do not know what things are coming to. There's Graham, of
_The Leviathan_, sends back everything I send him. That MS. which came
back this morning, he has had two months, and it's a first-rate thing.
Then he goes and fills his pages with stuff which I wouldn't put my name
to. The new number's out, and there's another story in it by that man
Philip Ayre. I never read such rubbish in my life."

His wife had looked up at him, as he came in, with a smile of welcome.
When he began to speak of _The Leviathan_, her face dropped again. It
went paler than even it was wont to do. There was a tremor in her voice.

"I thought you said that that other story of his was rather good."

"It was good enough--of its kind. But it's a kind I hate. There's a
craze about for sickly pathos, which, to me, is simply disgusting. In
that man Ayre there's the making of a popular writer. Mark my words, and
see if he doesn't make a hit. In a few months he will be all the
rage--you see. And it is to make room for such men as Ayre that I shall
be condemned to eat my heart out till I die."

Putting down her work, his wife came to him from the other side of the
table.

"Geoffrey, don't say that!"

Tears were actually in her eyes.

"Philippa, what's the matter?" As he put his arms about her and drew her
on to his knee, he felt that she was trembling. "Sweetheart, what is
wrong?"

"Don't speak like that of Philip Ayre!"

"Not speak like that of Philip Ayre! Why, lady, do you hold a brief for
him? You silly child! It's only a foolish way I have. But if you could
only realise how I long, and long, and strive, and strive, to stand up
with the best of them, you would understand how it galls me to find how
I am thrust aside by men whose work seems to me to be so poor a thing.
For their work's sake, I almost begin to hate the man."

"Geoffrey! Geoffrey! Not that! not that!"

Flinging both her arms about his neck, she burst into an hysterical
flood of weeping--she who never cried.

"Dear heart!--tell me!--what is wrong!--Philippa! Philippa!--my wife."

She did not tell him what was wrong. It seemed as if she could not tell
him what was wrong. Perhaps, as he told himself, it was because, after
all, there was nothing wrong. She was only out of sorts that
day-unusually out of sorts for Philippa.

After a while he began upon another theme.

[Illustration: "HIS WIFE WENT WHITE TO THE LIPS."]

"Sweetheart, if something doesn't come in soon--and I don't know where
it's going to come from--I can't see what we shall do for money. I don't
know if you are acquainted with the state of the family finances. What
we must owe the people I am afraid to think. Why they don't worry us
more than they do is a mystery to me. I see you've been getting new
boots for the children. They wanted them. But they'll have to be paid
for, I suppose. Never mind! All things come to those who wait, and luck
will come to me. I'm sure I've waited. Let's hope that an unexpected
cheque will come along. Anyhow, wait until the 'The Beggar' is finished.
It'll be a splendid thing-you see! I'm putting some of the best work
into it I ever did. If it doesn't win the first prize, it's bound to win
the third. Why, Philippa, your eyes are red. The idea of your crying
because I was pushed against the wall to make room for an unknown ass
like Mr. Philip Ayre!"

"The Beggar" was finished. It was sent in. Then came the weeks of
waiting. Geoffrey Ford did scarcely any work. The larger proportion of
the work he did came back again. He seemed to be in a curious frame of
mind--as though he took it for granted that that five hundred pounds was
already on its way to him.

"If I get that five hundred pounds," he would say, "I will do this, or
that."

His wife grew sick at heart.

"Geoffrey, I wish you wouldn't think of it so much. You make me think
about it, too. And then, if you don't get it, you know what a bitter
disappointment it will be."

"I suppose you take it for granted that I shan't get it?"

"I don't take anything for granted. I never do. I wish you wouldn't
either."

"There's one thing, I don't believe that these competitions are ever
conducted fairly. I don't see how they can be. I don't see how any man,
or any set of men, can wade through a cartload of MSS. in such a manner
as to be able to judge, with critical nicety, which is the best one in
the truckful. But I'm sure of this, I don't believe that any man sent in
a better story than 'The Beggar'--a more original one, I mean. I know
the sort of people who enter for these competitions-a lot of wretched
amateurs."

She said nothing in reply. What could she say? She knew that it was not
only conceit which prompted him to talk like that. She understood quite
well the almost anguished longing which filled his heart. Her own heart
throbbed pulse for pulse with his.

Returned MSS. seemed to annoy him more than usual. He was case-hardened,
as a rule. When they reappeared, he simply packed them up again, and
sent them off upon another journey. Especially was he irritated by the
return of a MS. which he had sent to _The Monthly Magazine_.

"I knew that would come back. I see that Philip Ayre has something in
this month's number. I don't know who he is. So far as I know, he is the
very last discovery. But I believe that that man is destined to be my
evil star."

His wife went white to the lips.

"Geoffrey! I wish you wouldn't talk like that. It doesn't sound like you
at all."

"I suppose they're quite right in preferring his work to mine, only--"
He shrugged his shoulders. "Philippa, I sometimes wish that you were a
writer. Then you would understand me better. You would understand what I
feel when I see the dream of my life growing dimmer and dimmer, and more
dream-like, every day."

Philippa was still.

The day approached on which the conductors of the _North British Herald_
had stated that they would announce the winners in their competition for
stories. Geoffrey Ford's anxiety increased to fever heat. His heart
stood still every time he heard the postman's knock. His wife knew that
it was so, although he did his best to hide how it was with him.

"To-morrow," he said, "I shall know if I have won."

"Or," his wife suggested faintly, "if you have lost."

[Illustration: "HE BEGAN TO UNFASTEN IT WITH HANDS WHICH TREMBLED."]

"Or, as you say, if I have lost. But we won't speak of losing. I have
never put my heart into anything as I have put it into this. I am sure
that 'The Beggar' is the best work I have ever done--I am sure of it. I
will go further, and say I believe it is as good work as I shall ever
do. Upon my honour, Philippa, something tells me I shall win--it does!
Oh, if I could only win!"

He had arranged that a copy of the issue of the paper containing the
announcement should be sent to him by post. That morning the postman
brought him two enclosures. One was a bulky parcel. When he saw it, his
heart, all at once, ceased beating. He had to gasp for breath. Without a
word, he began to unfasten it, with hands which trembled. Philippa
bustled about the breakfast table, as if her own heart was not working
like a wheezy pair of bellows.

[Illustration: "'BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SAY! I AM PHILIP AYRE.'"]

"Philippa! it's 'The Beggar'! the manuscript--come back again!"

"Never mind." How she tried to speak in the most commonplace of voices.
"You can send it somewhere else. It's sure to get accepted."

"Send it somewhere else?" She saw that his lips were twitching, that
his face seemed bloodless. "But--I don't understand. Not a word of
explanation is enclosed. I don't know what it means. Perhaps there's
some mistake. Let's--let's see who's won."

The other enclosure which had come for him was obviously a copy of the
paper. He tore it open-still with hands which trembled. He searched its
columns for the announcement.

"My God!"

"Geoffrey! what's the matter? Who has won? Oh, Geoffrey, have you won?"

"Me! me!" He rose to his feet, as it were, inch by inch. "It's Philip
Ayre!"

"Philip Ayre!"

Falling on her knees beside the table, Mrs. Ford covered her face with
her hands.

"It's Philip Ayre! Didn't I tell you he was destined to be my evil star?
Curse----"

Mrs. Ford rose up in front of him.

"Geoffrey, be careful what you say! I am Philip Ayre."

"You? What do you mean?"

She advanced to him, on tottering feet, with outstretched hands.

"Geoffrey, I am Philip Ayre!"

"You are Philip Ayre? What on earth do you mean?"

"Oh, Geoffrey, don't you understand? Philippa--Philip Ayre!"

There was a moment's pause--a pause which, probably, neither of them
ever would forget.

"You--you are Philip Ayre! How dull I must have been not to have seen
the pretty play upon your name before. Philippa--Philip Ayre. Of course!
So you have been my rival. My wife--the mother of my children--the woman
I loved better than all the world."

"Geoffrey, don't say that I have been your rival!"

"No? Not my rival? What then?"

"I did it all for you!"

"For me? I see. I am beginning, for the first time, to understand the
meaning of words. You did it for me? This is not a foreign language
which you are speaking--I suppose it is English?"

"Geoffrey, will you listen to me for a moment?"

"Certainly; and I shall understand that I am listening to you, to your
own self, for the first time. It is someone else I have listened to
before. Proceed, Mr. Philip Ayre."

She seemed to find some difficulty in proceeding. Very soon she was to
give another child unto the world. Perhaps it was that which made her
seem so weak. She never had been very pretty. She had not grown prettier
with the passage of the years. Now, as she stood trembling so that she
had to clutch at the table to keep her stand, she seemed an
insignificant, pale-faced, ill-shaped woman--not a thing of beauty to
the eye. She seemed, also, to be in mortal terror.

"Geoffrey, I would have told you all along, only I was afraid."

"Afraid to tell me that you had set up as a rival in the business? I
see. Go on."

"I wouldn't have done it at all if we hadn't been so short of money."

"Which was because you had a blundering fool for a husband. That is
clear. Well?"

"The children wanted things, and--and there were the bills, and--and the
rent."

"Which you paid. Now I understand Mr. Briggs' civility, the tradesmen's
reticence. I have been living on my wife. What a blind worm a man who
has the use of his eyes can be!"

"I--I never meant to be your rival--never, Geoffrey, never."

"Mr. Philip Ayre----"

"Don't call me Mr. Philip Ayre!"

"Why not? Aren't you Mr. Philip Ayre?"

"Oh, Geoffrey! Geoffrey!"

She knelt down before him, so that her hands fell on his knees as he was
seated on his chair. He moved her hands and rose.

"Let us understand each other, quietly. Philippa, I told you, before we
were married, that I objected to a woman who worked for money. I had no
objection to _women_ who worked for money. That was no affair of mine. I
simply objected to make such an one my wife. I imagined, when you became
my wife, that you would make my hopes and my ambitions yours. Indeed,
you told me that you would. I was poor, and you were poor. You knew that
I would work for you with all my strength. And so I have done. When, a
little time ago, you suggested that you, too, should become a labourer
for hire, I told you, with such courtesy as I could command, that, to
me, the idea was nauseous. Perhaps I should have told you then, what,
indeed, I had told you before, and what I tell you now again, that
rather than have a wife who worked for money, I would have no wife. You
were perfectly aware of this. You were well acquainted with what I
thought and felt upon the matter. I do not say that my thoughts and
feelings were correct. Still, they were mine. You said you loved me. You
swore it every day. I never dreamed that, to you, my wishes were
nothing, and less than nothing. And that you should deliberately set
yourself to cheat me out of the fruits of what you well knew was the
labour and the longing of my life--"

"Not cheat you, Geoffrey--no, not cheat you!"

"Yes, cheat me! cheat me! I suppose that you sat upstairs and pretended
to keep the children quiet, while I sat down here and wrote. And for
every page I wrote, you wrote another, the object of which was to rob me
of the life-blood with which I had written mine. But far be it from me
to reproach you, Mr. Philip Ayre. You have won, and I--poor devil!--I
have lost. It is the fortune of war. I am without a penny. You have your
five hundred pounds. And, as it is quite impossible that I can consent
to be the recipient of charity from the woman who calls herself my wife,
I have the pleasure, Mr. Philip Ayre, of wishing you good day."

She sprang between the door and him.

"Geoffrey! What are you going to do?"

"I am going to live my own life. I am going to earn my own living under
the shelter of a roof for which I myself have paid. I am going to meet
you with the gloves off, in fair and open fight, not behind a hedgerow,
with a gun in my hand, Mr. Philip Ayre."

"Geoffrey, any--any hour I may be taken ill."

"What do you wish me to do? I will stay here until you are well, but
only until then, on the understanding that not a penny of your money is
to be used for me."

"The children are upstairs. Won't you--won't you let them in?"

"Let them stay upstairs. Philippa! What is the matter?"

Her time was come--that was the matter. By noon their fourth child was
born.

When the nurse came to the sitting-room door, she found Geoffrey pacing
round and round like some wild creature in a cage.

"Mr. Ford, sir?"

He looked round with a start.

"Yes, nurse."

"Mrs. Ford would like to see you, sir."

"To see me? Oh! Is she well enough?"

"Well, sir, she's not so well as she might be. But she says that it
would do her good to see you. Only you musn't let her talk too much, nor
yet you musn't stay too long."

"I won't stay too long."

He went upstairs. He paused for a moment outside the bedroom door. Then
he entered the room.

"_Geoff, I'm going to die!_"

Her words so frightened him that, in the suddenness of his fear, he
staggered backwards.

"To die!"

"All along I knew that I should. I knew it when I was writing that
wicked book--the book which has won the prize, I mean. Perhaps that was
why I wrote it. It is the best way out of the trouble. I should never
have been the same wife to you again. I know you so well. But, Geoffrey,
you won't refuse to accept a legacy from me when I am dead. It is the
only thing I have ever had to give you. For the children's sake, and the
little baby's sake, and mine."

He sat on a chair by the bedside, trying to hold himself in, as it were,
with every muscle of his body.

"Philippa, you musn't talk like that."

"If you'll forgive me, Geoff, I'll be content--only promise that you'll
accept my legacy."

"Not if you die, I won't."

"Geoff!"

"I'll accept it if you live."

Holding the baby in his arms, he knelt beside the bed. She turned to
him. They were face to face. As he began to perceive how she had wasted
to a shadow, it did not seem as if he could read enough of the story
which was told upon her face. She, in her turn, did not seem as if she
could gaze long enough at him.

"Geoffrey, do you really mean that if I live, and get well, really and
truly well, you will take me for your wife again--that I shall be to you
the same wife that I have always been?"

"Philippa, if one of us is to die for the other, let me be the one to
die."

"Geoff, I do believe that if there is anything which must be done, you
must be the one to do it. Can't you understand, that if you love to do
great things for me, I, also, love to do great things for you. I can't
help it. It was that which made me Philip Ayre."

"Be Philippa--or Philip Ayre. Only--stay with baby and with me."

She was silent for some moments as she lay and looked at him with a
singular intensity of gaze.

"I think, Geoffrey, I shall live."

[Illustration: "'BE PHILIPPA--OR PHILIP AYRE. ONLY--STAY WITH BABY AND
WITH ME.'"]




THE MOST CRUEL SPORT IN THE WORLD.

THE HORRORS OF THE BULL-FIGHT.

_By Sidney Gowing._

[Illustration]


Do not believe it when you are told that bull-fighting is near its end.
The great sport is as popular and deeply rooted in Spain as cricket is
in Britain, and will last as long. To attempt to stop bull-fighting by
law would cause a bigger revolution among the Spaniards than the most
fearful disasters at home or abroad.

The great home of bull-fighting is Seville, and when the Seville fights
are in their glory even Madrid takes second place. The Seville bull-ring
is a little larger than that of Madrid, though it is not quite so
gorgeously designed. Still, it holds over 14,000 people.

Nearly every Sunday throughout the year there is a bull-fight of sorts
to be seen.

About 300,000 people go to the bull-fight every week in Spain, on an
average. One must also count in an infinite number of little amateur
fights in outlying villages of the provinces.

[Illustration: THE PROCESSION SALUTING THE PRESIDENT.]

[Illustration: THE GORGEOUSLY DRESSED MATADORS ENTERING THE ARENA.]

But at a _pukka_ bull-fight in Seville, six of the finest bulls and at
least forty horses are provided, to say nothing of the _cortège_ of
gold-clad operators drawing terrific salaries. Fashion and the masses
turn out together to hoot and whistle and shout, and nothing on earth
short of Armageddon could stop a fight half-way.

[Illustration: THE CRUELLEST PART OF THE PERFORMANCE.]

Half-past two in the afternoon is the usual time for commencement. Seats
in the sun cost between eighteenpence and two shillings, and in the
shade anything from three shillings to five pounds. The bulk of the
seats are merely stone steps, like the face of a pyramid, and above them
a double row of chairs fenced in by a balcony. It is only these last
that are covered from the sky. Half the ring is protected by its own
height from the heat of the sun, and the other half is open to its
glare.

When the amphitheatre is full of sun-hatted Spaniards, with a sprinkling
of girls wearing white mantillas (only at bull-fights are white
mantillas the thing), the president takes his place in a little box by
the side of the big white platform that is set apart for special
visitors.

Then the door at the far end of the arena opens, and the suite comes
forth. There are a couple of sombre-looking cloaked horsemen mounted on
rather sorry nags, and these amble forward, salute the president, and
request the key of the _Toril_, the great stable where the bulls wait to
die. Then come the matadors--they who do the killing--from two to four
of them, dressed in knickerbocker attire, with short jackets, after the
fashion of an Eton coat. These are generally of light pink or blue silk,
hung with infinite short tassels of spun gold or silver. The cloak,
which is as fine a piece of embroidery as one could find anywhere, is
lapped round the back and held tight in front. The hats are not of the
inverted saucepan-lid type that are always depicted in bull-fight
pictures, but big black furry structures, bulging at the sides. The men
are short, but well made, and carry themselves with a lithe swing that
at times savours distinctly of swagger.

In a double row the banderilleros come next--they whose duty it is to
place the papered darts--and behind them a few chulos, who are in the
first stages of the art, and whose duties are confined to agile
exercises with the red cloak.

In the rear ride the picadors--heavily clad lancers--gaily dressed
somewhat after the Mexican fashion, and carrying long wooden lances that
bear nothing more hurtful than a short blade, the size of a flattened
tea-spoon, at the end. These lancers would look still more impressive
but for the fact that their steeds are aged and weary carriage hacks,
such as would in Britain be sent to the knacker's yard.

Six picadors complete the _cortège_, with a hanger-on or two behind to
help direct the horses. They, poor brutes, are bandaged over one
eye--the eye that is to be nearest the bull.

The suite salutes the president, who is a Town Magnate of high degree,
and he bows his stateliest in reply. The gorgeous cloaks are only for
show, and they are thrown over the barrier into the little corridor that
separates the ring from the tiers of seats, and held by an official. In
return, the fighters receive their working cloaks--scarlet,
blood-stained, and ragged--and range themselves round the walls of the
ring. And here let us get rid of the word "toreador"--it is never used
in Spain. All other nations seem to take kindly to it, but _torero_ is
the Spanish for bull-fighter.

The heralds at the far end of the arena lead off with a flourish of
trumpets, and the great door with the iron bull's head over the top
swings open and shows a gloomy cavity beyond. There is nothing to see
for about ten seconds. There is a hush all round the tiers of waiting
people, and presently a blurred shadow looms through the dark.

[Illustration: "FLINGING HORSE AND RIDER LIKE STUFFED MUSEUM
SPECIMENS."]

The bull trots out nimbly to the rim of the arena, glares aggressively
at the empty space ahead of him, shakes his mighty head, and every line
of his lithe frame says "Ready!" He is not like our British bulls, heavy
and ponderous, but spry and agile as a terrier, twisting on his own axis
like a small rater in stays. He was not goaded or tortured before the
entry, to make him savage, as the historians of bull-fights would have
us believe--there is no necessity. It is almost the finest part of the
spectacle, this first entry, and those who cannot bring themselves to
sit out the drama of blood and steel that comes later should witness it
and then go. So the bull trots in and looks round for something to slay.
This is a chance for a young and agile torero to show his skill.

[Illustration: "THE AWFUL DRIVE HOME OF THE GREAT HORN INTO THE HORSE'S
BODY."]

The seeker of fame runs out to about the centre of the sandy arena and
stands with his arms folded. His Majesty the bull waits for nothing
farther, but puts all four hoofs to the ground and thunders towards the
youngster at full gallop. Just as the great horns lash upwards for the
toss, the boy twists himself round, and at that moment the space between
the two is to be counted by inches. The bull usually puts so much
vicious power into this first effort, that at the attempted toss he
flings his forequarters clear of the ground, and his forefeet come down
with a sounding crack on the hard floor. There is nothing left for the
fighter to do but run, and he vaults the barrier into the corridor
beyond. The bull frequently gathers so much impetus in following at the
runner's heels, that he too must leap the fence--a goodly jump for a
bull--about five feet. Then follows a wild scramble of corpulent
policemen, sweetmeat-sellers, water-carriers, and so forth, and they
scuffle heavily over the barrier into the deserted ring. But a door is
soon opened, the bull turned back into the arena, and the herd of
onlookers climb feverishly back into safety.

There are three picadors on their sorry mounts standing round the fence,
but before these come a little knot of chulos, men with cloaks, inviting
the bull to a species of game of "touch." The chances are largely in
favour of the men here, for the cloaks are large, and can be fluttered
in the bull's face while the holder is two or three yards away. Besides,
a bull charges with closed eyes, and always attacks the cloak, not the
man. There are exceptions to this, but such exceptions give a new turn
to the fight, and moreover give work to the little surgeon in the
whitewashed room beyond the stables, and to the priest who attends
without for the peace of soul of those that may need him before the
sixth bull is slain.

Here, again, a matador, he who kills, will often take a cloak and show
the audience three or four artistic passes with it, as distinct from the
go-as-you-please way in which cloaks are wielded by the chulo. These
passes only allow the cloaker to miss the bull by a short breadth, and
are well defined and recognised by all connoisseurs. The bull has now
given up those wild rushes from a distance, and fences warily, evidently
much annoyed at the fruitlessness of his charges, and the impossibility
of driving his horns home in solid flesh. So out comes the picador on
his halting steed, and plants himself well away from the barrier, so
that he may not be thrown against it in the fall. His legs are cased
beneath the yellow leggings with sheet iron, for he cannot shield them
from the enemy's rush. Horsemanship is absent--there is no need for it.
To plant his lance, and fall without hurting himself, is the whole art
of a picador, and this part is the greatest blot on the performance. It
is merely an act of deliberate slaughter, for the horse is intended to
be killed, and will be kept there till it is killed.

[Illustration: "IT IS ONE OF THE MOST PERILOUS FEATS, THIS PLACING OF
DARTS."]

The horse always seems vaguely conscious of something wrong, though it
is not generally unmanageable. The other horses, while their comrade is
being done to death, often grow restive and frightened, though they are
unable to see what goes on. The bull seldom appears anxious to attack
the horse, but it is pushed forward under his nose, and the big picador
on top poises his lance aggressively. Then comes the short, plunging
charge, the shock of the short lance-point in the bull's shoulder, and
the awful home drive of the great horn into the tottering horse's body.
In such a case the forequarters of the mount are lifted clear from the
ground, and I have even seen a strong eight-year-old bull fling horse
and rider over his back, as if they had been lightly stuffed museum
specimens, instead of weighty flesh and blood. The breed of bulls called
Miura--one of the most dangerous to fighters--generally strike home
about the horse's chest, and thus death is rapid and sudden; but the
famed Muruve bulls usually attack the flanks, and the scenes that follow
this are too shudderingly horrid to put down on clean paper. Even then,
if the wounds allow of the horse standing at all, the stricken beast is
mounted again and led forward for another fall, though the populace
resent this by whistles, as a rule. Whistling, by the way, is the
Spanish method of expressing disapproval.

A bull that takes the stab of the lance without flinching is usually
esteemed and applauded; but a young animal may be turned by the first
chilling pain of the raw steel. If the horse is overthrown, the picador
falls with a crash, and wriggles aside as best he can that the poor
beast may not roll on him. In the nick of time a chulo flaunts his
crimson rag in the bull's face and draws him away from the helpless
lancer, who is hoisted to his feet by the assistants and given a lift on
to his steed's back again--if the latter is still capable of bearing a
man. If not, the dagger-man--"cachetero" he is called--arrives with a
short arrow-headed knife, and severs the doomed beast's backbone at the
neck with one short stab. There is no quicker death. The horse wilts
like a rent air-balloon, and is dead without a quiver.

[Illustration: "A SERIES OF PASSES WITH THE SCARLET FLAG."]

He is happier than the long line of his fellows that wait in the gloomy
stables beyond.

On an average about three horses fall to a bull, but a single bull has
often killed twenty. Some cattle seem to have a leaning towards
horse-slaughter, but the majority appear not to relish it. They stand
before the picador, and gaze as if considering whether it would be
sportsmanlike to rend such a tottering beast. Still, three corpses
usually lie about the sand, with the dark, raw pools around them, before
the second trumpet-blare sounds.

This is the signal for the withdrawal of the horses. A bull must be
allowed to kill as many as he likes, and then the banderilleros are rung
on. One comes forward--dressed like the rest, but without any cloak as a
protection--carrying a pair of gaily-papered wooden darts, pointed with
a large iron barb at one end. He walks into the centre, places his feet
together, and defies the bull by a rapid poise of the twin sticks, one
in each hand.

If the bull charges at once it is touch and go with the holder, and he
must plant his barbs exactly parallel either in the nape of the bull's
neck or behind the shoulders--always well on top and within an inch or
two of each other. A slight clumsiness is loudly hooted and whistled at
by the audience, who are as keen critics of everything that transpires
as our own crowds are of cricket.

It takes years to make a good banderillero. Three, or even four pairs of
banderillas are planted in the shoulder of the bull, and they mislike
him much. He tosses his head and roars angrily when the first pair are
placed, but the pain of the inch-long barb, as it falls over and grips
the flesh, generally bewilders the bull for a second, and allows the
banderillero time to slip aside and run for the barriers.

It is one of the most perilous feats, this placing of darts, for they
are never thrown, except in the accounts of bull-fights that occur in
novels or newspapers, but thrust into the enemy's neck by hand.

Possibly the bull refuses to charge until the fighter runs towards him
from an obtuse angle, and this is the easiest plan for the man. On the
other hand, a daring matador will sometimes take a pair of darts and sit
on a chair before his prey.

On the charge the slayer slips aside, plants the darts neatly, and the
chair often flies twenty feet into the air. This is seldom practised,
except at the great Easter fights during Holy Week.

[Illustration: "NOW ONE OR THE OTHER HAS TO DIE."]

The darts are about two feet six inches long, and merely round pieces of
deal, more or less straight, with a wrought-iron semi-arrow at the
extremity. The barb is thus single, like a fish-hook. There is not room
on a bull for more than four pairs, if they are placed properly; so the
banderilleros are rung out, and the trumpets sound the entry for the
last act of the red drama.

The matador comes forward. He walks up to the bedizened and top-hatted
president, doffs his cap, and makes a speech. He holds a red cloth in
one hand, about four feet square, and in the other a straight Toledo
sword with a slightly rounded end. There is a ceremony to go through
here, and ceremony is the breath of life in the nostrils of a Spaniard.
He dedicates the bull to the president, or to the chief lady visitor,
and waves the sword and the sable cap impressively the while. Then, with
a majestic sweep, he flings the cap to the audience to hold for him--a
coveted honour--and walks out to face the bull.

[Illustration: "ONE SHORT STAB OF HIS DAGGER BEHIND THE SKULL."]

This latter, by loss of blood and much chasing, is glum of aspect and
foot-weary. The nerve-tearing barbs rattle their wooden holders about
his back as he moves. He seems to recognise that the last part of the
fight has come, for all the teasing chulos have withdrawn, and he is
alone with one small, wiry man with a bright sword. The time for wild
rushes is past; the bull plants himself gloomily and waits his chance.
There is the _faena_ to go through first--a series of passes with the
scarlet flag. There may be a dozen or so to show, each well recognised
by the schools of bull-fighting, and each with its own value and
technique. _Alto_, _de pecho_, _derecho_, and so forth--they are too
numerous and intricate to explain here; but when the bull has bravely
charged the last of them, and passed under the flag into space again on
the other side, then comes the preparation for the death-stroke. No
other beast in the world would have fought so long. Tiger, wild boar,
any of the most blood-thirsty tropical brutes, steeped in vicious
savagery--none of them will stand up to the enemy after such bitter dole
as is the portion of a bull in the arena, and fight to the end without
once turning tail.

So the matador arranges the cloak in his left hand and the sword in his
right. Teasing has been the form so far, but now one or the other has to
die, and it is not as invariably the bull as most people suppose. There
are many ways of making the last stroke.

A short aim, a wave of the flag, and with the last blind, lunging charge
the swordsman slips aside, and his blade runs up to the hilt behind the
bull's shoulder. The hammered steel feels the great tired heart within,
and the enemy falls--the pluckiest beast of his day.

[Illustration: "REMOVING THE BODY OF THE BULL."]

This is what should happen, and with a first-rate swordsman it does. But
often half-a-dozen lunges are made, till at last the red, tottering
brute kneels down peacefully from sheer inability to stand, and the
puntillero comes up behind and writes the end with one short stab of his
iron dagger behind the skull. The matador walks round the barriers
bowing to the cheers of the people, and behind him stalks a chulo, who
picks up for him the showers of cigars, hats, and so forth that are
showered into the ring.

A big folding gate swings back, and two teams of gaily-ribboned mules
canter in with smart teamsters running beside them. One is hitched to
the bull, and with a shout and a long sweep round the reddened sand the
bull is hauled out at full gallop, one horn drawing a wavy line in the
yellow floor, and one stiff fore-leg wagging grimly to the long lope of
the jingling mules. The dead horses are drawn out in the same way, with
the same ringing whoop, and as the gates close on the slain the _Toril_
looms open afresh, and the second bull comes forward to his death.

There are variations. Instead of receiving the charge upon the sword the
matador may achieve the "volapie" (half-volley), by running towards the
bull and driving the sword home as the two meet. Or, a favourite method,
but a difficult one, is to sever the spinal cord behind the skull with
the point of the sword as the great head goes down to toss. Yet another
variation that I have seen more than once is the tinkling of the sword
upon sand, a rapid leap, as it seems, of three feet into the air, by the
matador, and his writhing collapse upon the floor. Then a hurried flash
of red cloaks in the bull's face, to draw him from the fallen man. The
fighters are vastly plucky about their mishaps, and generally manage to
run out rather than be carried. Few of them, if they have seen much
bull-fighting, but are scarred freely with old wounds. The horn
generally enters the stomach or groin, and a terrible wound it makes.
The photograph illustrating the "death-stroke" on this page shows
Espartero, who was the most famous and most utterly reckless of toreros
during his life. His sword is up to the hilt in the bull's left
shoulder, the flag just passing over its forehead, and its right horn
shaving the matador's right knee by a few inches, The upward toss, if
the bull were just a little nearer, would bury the horn in Espartero's
waist, but those four inches were the rim between life and death, and a
second later the bull was stretched upon the sand.

Espartero was killed in the Madrid arena in July 1894. As he
administered the death-stroke, the bull, a fierce and very hardy Miura
called Perdigon, drove its horn home, and the two died together.
Espartero was accorded by far the finest funeral that was ever seen in
Spain, easily eclipsing that of any statesman or royal personage that
ever died there. His loss was made almost a cause for recognised
national mourning. He was an esparto-grass weaver by trade ere he took
to the arena, and before his death was wont to receive between £300 and
£500 for a single afternoon's work in the ring.

[Illustration: ESPARTERO, THE FAMOUS BULL-FIGHTER, WHO WAS KILLED IN THE
MADRID ARENA IN JULY 1894.]

Bull-fighters begin as chulos, drawing about £3 a week, and when
qualified as banderilleros they make from £5 to £30 a week. A
first-class matador, such as Guerrita, draws about £300 or more for a
single fight, and generally there are two first-class matadors in a good
Seville or Madrid fight.

A really good bull-fight costs from £1,500 to £2,000 and more. Good
bulls are worth between £30 and £50 apiece if full-grown and from the
best flocks. The cattle are perfectly wild during their lifetime, and
are allowed to run at large among the plains and marshes as they please.

The horses, poor beasts, are worn-out carriage-hacks, and cost about £2
apiece.

Without question bull-fighting is a truly loathsome sport, and the
British traveller whose curiosity leads him to witness a performance is
rarely tempted to repeat the experiment.




THE DESCENT OF REGINALD HAMPTON.

BY HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE.

_Illustrated by W. Rainey, R.I._

[Illustration]


Reginald Hampton, the distinguished aeronaut, was at the mercy of any
wind that chose to do him an ill turn. He had entirely lost control of
his balloon--of which he was the only occupant--and, so far as he could
see, the odds were fairly even as to whether he would find a watery
grave in the English Channel, or a rocky one on the Kentish mainland.
First came a kind of gentlemen-at-large breeze, which took him seawards;
then a rival gust drove him back; finally the balloon stopped for a
couple of minutes to think out the situation. Reginald Hampton, being by
nature a fatalist and by training an aeronaut, awaited the decision
without any appearance of impatience or anxiety; when his vehicle was
ready to move on, he would try to fall on his feet if possible, but not
for the world would he wish to hasten the departure.

[Illustration: "IN THE HAMMOCK REPOSED A MAIDEN."]

The balloon, after profound meditation, decided in favour of land, and
in no long time she began to settle quietly down, with the gentleness of
a snow-flake, and finally sank gracefully into the arms of a huge pear
tree, white with blossom; whereupon the aeronaut grappled her to the
tree, filled and lit a comfortable-looking pipe, and leaned carelessly
over the edge of the car, to spy out the nakedness of this foster land.
It was against his principles to seem otherwise than dispassioned on
these occasions.

[Illustration: "HE TOOK A CONTENTED SURVEY OF HIS FRUIT TREES."]

Below him he saw a big garden, full of yews, box, fruit trees, and
spring flowers, all hobnobbing with one another in the cheeriest manner
imaginable. At the far end of the garden stood a house, of ruddy
complexion, prosperous bulk, and Queen Anne architecture. Immediately
beneath him--the branches diverged considerately, so as to allow his
vision free play--a hammock was swinging gently from side to side, and
in the hammock reposed a maiden. Now the prospect of a speedy demise did
not excite Reginald Hampton, but a suggestion of feminine beauty had
never been known to fail in this. He nearly fell out of the car in his
eagerness to distinguish the details of the girl's appearance. A girl in
a hammock, he reflected, ought always to be pretty, and artistic
propriety demanded that she should be a veritable Peri when he had taken
the trouble to save his neck by falling into the very tree to which her
hammock was attached.

So eager was he, indeed, that his teeth lost their hold of the big
briar, which cannoned from branch to branch, and dropped, somewhat
forcibly, into the girl's hand. The prospective Peri was naturally a
little startled, and more than a little angry, because the pipe had hurt
her considerably. She slipped out of the hammock and stood looking about
her with an air of enraged bewilderment. And from the clouds there came,
as it were, a voice independent of any human tabernacle, a _vox et
preterea nihil_.

"I'm awfully sorry--upon my word, most careless of me--may I come down
and make my apologies in proper form?"

"Please, where are you?" demanded the girl. The tree was so constructed
that Hampton could more easily see her than she him; and moreover it is
one of the most difficult things in the world to locate an unexpected
sound.

"I'm tree'd," laughed the voice, "straight above your head."

"That sounds odd," returned the other, beginning to enter into the
spirit of the situation; "how on earth did you get there, and who are
you?"

"An aeronaut. If you will leave the shelter of this particularly fine
tree and look up above, you will see a balloon; attached to the balloon
is a car, and attached to the car is myself."

"And do you propose to stay up there indefinitely? It isn't very
amusing, is it?"

"Not particularly. If you can suggest a method of escape, I shall be
only too happy to descend."

"Climb out of the car, and then down the tree-trunk. Nothing could be
simpler."

"Pardon me, but have you ever tried that particular form of gymnastic
exercise? Directly I begin to get out of the car, she will topple over,
and I wouldn't for the world give you the trouble of collecting my
fragments at the bottom."

"Please don't. It would be like making one of those wretched toy-houses
out of bricks, and I know I should never fit in the pieces properly.
Still, you can't stay up there for ever, can you, now?"

"Not possibly. For one thing, I have not tasted food for twelve hours,
and I shall expire if I don't get some presently."

"I might bring you a sandwich, if you have got a piece of string you can
let down," said the girl, with the easy _badinage_ of an old friend. It
is not every day that one is privileged to encounter a tree'd
balloonist, and she felt that the proprieties were not particularly at
home in such an _al fresco_ environment.

"Thanks," responded the aerial voice, "but I prefer to reach firm
ground, if it can any way be managed. I say, could you get me a ladder?"

"Yes. I'll hunt up the gardener, and tell him to bring one. You think
you can get down that way?"

[Illustration: "'WHAT THE MISCHIEF ARE YOU DOING IN MY PEAR TREE?'"]

"I think so. If the gardener holds the ladder tight against my car, it
should fix it pretty firmly, and then I can climb on to the ladder. By
the way, you are awfully good to take all this trouble on behalf of an
entire stranger. I forgot to make the observation earlier, because, you
see, we grow accustomed to finding ourselves uninvited guests. I once
dropped into the middle of a Royal Garden Party."

"Did you, really? Tell me all about it," said the girl, forgetting her
errand of mercy.

"Oh, they thought at first I was a Nihilist or a Fenian or something,
come to blow up the whole Royal Family. I escaped finally by explaining
that the Prince of Wales--who was fortunately absent--had hired me to
make the descent by way of affording a little relief to the tedium of
the gathering. Incidentally, may I ask into what particular garden I
have had the good luck to fall?"

"This is Caviare Court, Fullerton, Kent."

"_No?_ You don't mean it?"

"Why, yes. Why shouldn't I mean it?"

"That really is odd. Then your father is Colonel Currie?"

"Yes. How ever do you come to know that?"

"Because he happens to be my mother's brother. My name is
Hampton--Reginald Hampton."

There was silence for some time; then--

"You should have told me that before," said the girl, in an aggrieved
tone.

"I don't see that _we_ are responsible for parental quarrels," responded
the other, warmly. "My mother married the wrong man, from Colonel
Currie's point of view, and they have sworn eternal enmity. But how
should that affect us? By Jove, we're cousins! To think that I have to
thank the friskiness of my balloon for getting to know you."

Another silence.

"I hope father won't come home while you're here," cried the girl,
suddenly. "He's never seen you, but you may be like the family, and it
is not a likeness one can easily mistake. Have you a peculiar little
dent in the middle of an otherwise straight nose?"

The query was advanced with an eagerness ludicrously at variance with
the difference of their respective situations. It seemed--as Charles
Lamb said of humorous letters to distant lands--as though eagerness must
grow so stale before it reached the summit of this big pear tree.

"Yes, I have," answered Hampton, laughing.

"Then your fate is sealed. Father may return at any moment, and you
really musn't come down into the garden."

"But I'm awfully hungry," said Mr. Hampton, plaintively.

"I'll send you up something to eat, as I suggested at first."

"I have no string, or rope, or anything I can let down."

This was scarcely accurate, but Reginald Hampton saw too many
capabilities in the situation, to let it go readily. Finally, he
overcame the girl's scruples, and she departed in quest of a ladder.

As his daughter disappeared at the rear of the house, Colonel Currie
came round the front. He was smoking a cheroot, the slowly curling smoke
from which, as also his whole gait and mien, was suggestive of peaceful
proprietorship. He paused to examine his bed of spring wallflowers,
stooped to uproot an impertinent dandelion which had taken root in his
otherwise irreproachable turf, gathered a fine auricula and placed it in
his button-hole. Then he took a contented survey of his fruit trees,
until his eyes finally rested upon the white-robed bower of the balloon.
A change came o'er the spirit of the Colonel's pastoral dream. His ruddy
gills assumed a purplish hue, his grizzled hair stood up in fighting
attitude. He advanced to the foot of the tree and peered upwards. His
inability to see the occupant of the balloon called to battle the last
drop of the plentiful supply of choler wherewith Indian heats had
endowed him.

"What the mischief are you doing in my pear tree?" thundered the
Colonel.

His voice was suggestive of heavy artillery at short range; but
masculine anger was not one of the things that ruffled the balloonist's
equanimity.

"I'm sitting tight until your gardener is kind enough to bring me a
ladder," he responded, imperturbably.

"Eh? What? Well, upon my soul, sir! Do you know that this is my very
finest pear-tree--jargonelles, sir, I tell you, jargonelles? You and
your impudent machine have ruined the crop. It's just the spirit of this
confounded age--anarchy, disruption, red riot--no man's house safe--his
garden a refuge for any air-climbing rascal who cares to take up his
quarters in it."

The Colonel, from this point onwards, seemed to imagine that he was
talking _at_ a coolie; coolie intercourse cultivates the faculty of
expression wonderfully, and Reginald Hampton's host entertained that
amused aeronaut for fully ten minutes with a wealth of epithet--very old
in bottle, and of a fine tawny flavour. Hampton took advantage of the
panting calm that followed the outburst to put in a plea for himself.

[Illustration: "'THERE IS A GENTLEMAN AT THE VERY TOP OF THE TREE DYING
FOR WANT OF FOOD.'"]

"I can only say, sir, that I regret this _contretemps_ as much as
yourself. The fact is, I had no choice in the matter; the wind got the
better of me, and took me just where it pleased."

"P--r--r--rh--Humph, humph!" sputtered the old gentleman. "Serves you
right for getting inside such a flimsy contrivance. Can't understand how
any man can be fool enough to want to career through the air when heaven
has blessed him with a pair of sound legs. Perhaps you have no legs,
though, for I'm hanged if I can see you," he concluded, irately,
returning to his pet grievance.

"Yes, I have legs--rather long ones," returned the aeronaut, genially.
"As to ballooning, it is a matter of personal taste, of course. We
needn't quarrel about that, need we, Colonel Currie?"

"Eh, eh? How do you come to know my name?"

Reginald Hampton, in the privacy of his retreat, smiled beautifully to
himself. He had watched the old gentleman's progress through the garden,
and had guessed that he was tremendously proud of his flowers, his
trees, his lawn; and an inspiration had come to this light-hearted
trifler with another man's pear blossom.

"I guessed it, sir," he responded, very suavely. "I knew I had dropped
somewhere in Kent, and a glance at that well-kept grass of yours, at the
rare profusion of early flowers, at the extreme
fulness--er--profligacy--of your fruit-blossom, told me in a moment that
the garden could belong to only one man in the county. Do you suppose I
have been a horticultural enthusiast all these years without knowing
Colonel Currie by name? Why, the--the dahlias you exhibit are alone
sufficient to make your name cling to one's memory. Sir, I am deeply
sorry that I have injured your crop of jargonelles, but I cannot regret
that I have been privileged to meet you."

Reginald Hampton had a cheery way of emerging with safety from any
embarrassment in which he happened to find himself. His haphazard
assumption of enthusiasm for the one subject on earth of which he knew
least might so easily have led him astray; yet in the very nick of time
that word _dahlia_ crept into his consciousness and won the day. It
chanced that dahlia-cultivation was the Colonel's most absorbing hobby.
The old gentleman's anger had already begun to cool, under the influence
of his enemy's persistent politeness, and this liberal application of
the flattery-trowel at once set up a counter-current of positive
cordiality.

"I apologise, sir, I apologise for the--ah--breadth of my language.
These little accidents will happen, of course--do happen, doubtless,
every day--and I had no idea that you were a grower of dahlias. Now,
what soil do you consider the most suitable for the Cactus varieties?"
Thus the Colonel, in tones of peace.

[Illustration: "WHY, WHATEVER IS THE MATTER?' SHE CRIED."]

There was stillness in the flowery region just above the Colonel's head.
A perplexed balloonist was at one and the same time suppressing an
outburst of hysterical laughter, and encouraging coy soil-theories to
evolve themselves from the blank chambers of his brain.

"It is difficult to say off-hand," he began. "Every grower, you see, has
his own views."

"So he has, so he has--and he likes to hear other people's views, if
only for the sake of abusing them. What is your own candid opinion on
the subject?"

"Well, as you ask me, I should say--use pretty much the same soil as you
would for the other varieties. Er--ah--a suspicion of loam, not too dry,
and fairly well matured, sprinkled over the surface, is not
inadvisable."

"You don't say so? For my part, I stick to the old-established methods,
but no doubt modern enterprise has done something in the way of
development. Loam, you say, sprinkled over the surface? I must try it."

"But be careful that it just hits the happy mean in the matter of
moisture. If you keep it too dry, the plant runs to leaf instead of
flower; if too wet, the colour is apt to--to run a little."

The balloonist, having fairly spread the wings of his imagination, was
by this time quite prepared to fly into fresh difficulties. He was
enjoying himself tremendously, and had even forgotten that his
prospective rescuer was rather late in coming to his aid.

"But," objected the Colonel, omitting to notice a slight horticultural
mistake of the aeronaut's, "but how do you manage about the watering?
The loam must be wet at some times and comparatively dry at others."

"My dear sir, you mistake; the latest method is to carefully remove the
surface loam before watering, and then to replace it, moistened to the
proper degree."

"This is all very interesting," quoth the Colonel. "How it does one good
to talk with a genuine enthusiast on these delightful subjects! You are
trying for the blue dahlia, of course?"

"I've got it, sir," responded the balloonist, with triumphant emphasis.
He was now prepared to go any lengths, trusting that Fate would see the
thing through satisfactorily.

The Colonel skipped about in the wildest excitement.

"_Got the blue dahlia?_ Why, I have only got half way to it, and I
thought I was farther than most men. You know, of course, that there is
a prize of a thousand pounds offered for that unique production? Have
you claimed it?"

"I didn't care to," said Hampton, carelessly. "Frankly, there are so
many poor men trying for the prize--praiseworthy toilers who finish a
hard day's work by an evening's tending of some cottage garden--that I
could not bear to step in and take the prize. I have quite enough money,
too; I should scarcely know what to do with more."

The airy invisibility of the stranger, the unwontedness of the scene,
must have played havoc with the Colonel's credulity. He absorbed
everything, as a dry sponge sucks up water. The aeronaut's car was
shaking visibly.

"But that is not all," said the latter recklessly. "I promptly set to
work on a new colour, and I produced----"

"Yes, yes--you produced----"

"_A pea-green dahlia, twelve inches in diameter._"

"My dear, my very dear sir," cried the Colonel, well-nigh hysterical
with wonder and delight, "I insist on your coming down _at once_ from
that tree and partaking of luncheon with me. I have some excellent '49
port, and we'll discuss the two subjects together. Really, it is very
remiss of me not to have suggested your coming down sooner; the
situation is not well adapted to conversation, and doubtless you are far
from comfortable."

"No apology necessary, I assure you. I took the liberty, some time ago,
of requesting your daugh--your gardener to bring me a ladder. He will
appear presently, I have no doubt--in fact, I see him coming at this
moment."

Now Miss Currie, though apparently she had forgotten the very existence
of Reginald Hampton, had in point of fact followed his fortunes with an
interest bordering on trepidation. Having run the gardener to earth, she
was informed by that functionary that there was not a ladder about the
place sufficiently long to reach to the top of the pear tree; the
Colonel's longest ladder had been broken a week ago, and of the others
not one was half the necessary size.

"But you _must_ find one somewhere," insisted the girl, with the pretty
imperiousness of feminine youth; "there is a gentleman at the very top
of the tree, and he is at this moment dying for want of food. What a
pity the pears are not ripe! Can't you think of someone who would lend
you a ladder?"

The gardener scratched his head and pondered. There _was_ one at
Langbridge Farm, a good mile away, but it was a powerful hot morning to
walk a mile with a heavy ladder on one's shoulder. Still, Missy seemed
anxious, and Missy had had a right to have her own way ever since she
was as high as one of his dwarf rose trees.

[Illustration: "THE COLONEL GREW PURPLE, THEN WHITE, AND BEAT UPON THE
TABLE WITH HIS FINGERS."]

So the gardener had departed to Langbridge Farm, and Miss Currie had
peeped round the corner of the house, to see how it was faring with the
balloonist. She found her worst fears confirmed; her father was standing
under the pear tree and abusing the poor man like a pickpocket. The
girl, realising how futile it would be for her to put in an appearance
and add to the already deafening hurly-burly, quietly secreted herself
in a lilac-bush, and listened to what was going on. She began to laugh
as the aeronaut unwound his imaginative threads; then she grew angry
with him for his recklessness; then she laughed again at the astounding
coolness of the man, and the skilful manner in which he avoided all
difficulties in his path. Finally, at the end of what seemed to her an
eternity and a half, the gardener appeared with his borrowed ladder, and
proceeded in the direction of the pear tree. Miss Currie watched the old
man place the ladder against the tree, under the combined directions of
her father and the unconcerned occupant of the balloon-car, and then she
thought the time was ripe for her to stroll up in a negligent manner.

"Why, whatever is the matter?" she cried, with innocent surprise.

"Nothing, my dear, nothing," responded the Colonel, beamingly. "A very
worthy gentleman and a magnificent florist has, by good fortune, become
my guest, and he is coming down in order to partake of luncheon."

"But where is he, and how did he come there?" she went on, deeming it
highly prudent to disown any previous knowledge of the matter.

The old gardener looked at her with an intelligent grin, inwardly
remarking that Missy was a deep one, she was. The aeronaut laughed with
incontinent heartiness. The Colonel explained to her how the accident
had occurred. After which Reginald Hampton climbed out of his nest,
reached _terra firma_, and found himself entirely satisfied with the
slim beauty of his rescuer.

The moment might have been an embarrassing one for the average man; it
was, however, precisely the kind of situation that Reginald Hampton most
enjoyed.

"Delighted to make your acquaintance at closer quarters," he remarked,
first raising his cap to the Colonel, and then extending his hand. "Your
daughter, I presume?" he added, turning to Violet Currie. "I am glad, by
the way, she did not happen to be occupying the hammock there, or my
abrupt descent might have startled her somewhat."

"So it might, so it might," responded his host, urbanely. "Now, let us
go indoors; you must be positively famishing, and that port of mine is
itching, I know, to see the light of day."

"What a time you are going to have!" whispered the girl, as they took
their places at table.

He and she managed to stave off the evil day until lunch was half over;
but procrastination was not nearly as wholesale a thief of time as they
wished him to be.

"Now, about those two unique dahlias of yours," began the Colonel; "you
really must allow me to come and see them."

"Delighted, sir. Any time that may be convenient to you. Come and spend
a week with me."

"You are very kind. I should say to-morrow if, literally, any time would
do," laughed the Colonel; "but I think even you cannot induce dahlias to
flower before July."

"Well, no. Of course, my 'anytime' presupposed these natural limits,"
said the aeronaut, aloud.

"I fancied they were spring flowers," said the aeronaut in a
stage-aside. "So I can go scot-free until July. I must marry her before
then."

Colonel Currie was on the point of launching well out into his favourite
waters--in which case the Providence of so fatuous a trifler as Reginald
Hampton must surely have deserted him--when a certain peculiarity in his
guest's face arrested his attention. He gazed fixedly at him for a few
moments, then frowned ominously.

"I beg your pardon, sir, but you have the family nose. I have never seen
that peculiar dent in the middle in any but a Currie nose. Is it
possible--"

"I also beg your pardon, Colonel," responded the balloonist, following a
sudden inspiration; "but before answering your question, may I ask if
you are really as devoted to flowers as you seem to be?"

"I am indeed. They are the passion of my life," said Colonel Currie,
still gazing perplexedly at his companion's nasal hallmark.

"For my part, I can never forgive a florist--a true florist--who can
find it in his heart to put other--other considerations first. If a man
told me that he possessed a blue dahlia, for instance, I would go and
see that man in the teeth of gatling guns."

"So would I. Grape-shot is a matter of no consequence by comparison."

"If the man had relations in the house whom it made my head ache to
meet, I would still go. Nothing in the world, sir, ought to stand in the
way of a blue dahlia."

"Nothing," responded the Colonel, forgetting everything else in a sudden
fervour of sympathetic enthusiasm.

"You are quite convinced of that?"

"Quite. How can you doubt me?"

The aeronaut paused, and then planted this shot squarely in the
Colonel's astonished person.

"Then, uncle, you won't mind my saying that I am Reginald Hampton, and
that it will be necessary for you to see the blue dahlia _and_ your
sister in conjunction."

The Colonel grew purple, then white; he stammered, and beat upon the
table with his fingers, and talked in strange languages. But he had the
good sense to see that he was cornered. Besides, what had his nephew
ever done to him, and how could he help being proud of so unique an
horticulturist?

Finally, the Colonel reached out his hand across the table.

"Confound you, boy, you've conquered me! I must see that dahlia!" he
cried.

"How to arrange matters floral when the merry month of July comes round,
I can't guess," mused Reginald Hampton, as he lit a Manilla. "But
sufficient for the day is the evil thereof, and my bounden duty is to
marry the little girl in June."

Which he did.




THE MODERN MINIATURE CRAZE

ILLUSTRATED BY CHARMING EXAMPLES.

BY H. M. TINDALL.


A painter once made a miniature of King Charles II. which was more or
less of a caricature. "Is that like me?" said the King when he saw it.
"Then, odd's fish, I'm an ugly fellow!"

The remark recalls another made to our own Queen when she said to
Chalon, the miniaturist, that photography would ruin his profession.

"Ah! non, madame; photographie cannot flattère," was the confident
reply.

[Illustration: [_By M. Josephine Gibson._

"KATHLEEN".]

These comments seem to imply that miniatures make either "ugly fellows"
or flattered dames, which is by no means true. But in selecting those
which accompany this article, we sought for pretty faces, and decided to
admit no "fellows" of any sort except one--no less than a Lord Chief
Justice.

The very marked attention which the miniatures in the Royal Academy
attracted this year is one of many things which show how great a revival
there has been in the taste for miniatures--a revival which is one of
the most significant features in the history of modern art.

When photography appeared, it had no difficulty for a time in sweeping
miniatures out of the field, for many people preferred the novelty of an
exact portrait to a "work of art."

[Illustration: [_By M. Josephine Gibson._

"MA BELLE."]

But the pendulum of taste has again swung back. We no longer accept a
coloured photograph as a substitute for a genuine miniature, but realise
that the two things are quite distinct. At the same time, there are
to-day a number of so-called miniaturists who content themselves with
copying photographs. But all those whose work is here represented
condemn the practice, and do their work from the life. This involves, of
course, several sittings for the person to be painted--a fact sometimes
resented. Two famous miniaturists wanted to paint King Charles II., so
to save time he made them paint him at the same sitting.

Mr. Cecil Rhodes is a man who thinks sittings are superfluous. He gave a
commission to Miss Carlisle--a clever portrait painter and
miniaturist--to paint his portrait, but nothing could induce him to give
a sitting. Miss Carlisle therefore had to dodge him in all sorts of ways
to see what manner of man he was.

He used to pass her studio on his way to the Park in the morning, so
Miss Carlisle was always on the watch for him and on many other
occasions, about which he knew nothing.

[Illustration: [_By Edith Maas._

"DELIA."]

Miss Carlisle was born in South Africa, where her grandfather, General
Sir John Bisset, was well known. Curiously enough, when Miss Carlisle
was quite a young girl she came over to England on the same boat as Mr.
Cecil Rhodes. He was then, she says, "a long and lanky youth, who spent
all his time in reading books." He was coming to Oxford to keep his
terms.

By the way, there was a famous lady miniaturist in the days of Charles
I. named Carlisle, and to show his appreciation of her work the King
presented her with £500 worth of ultramarine!

To paint a miniature is as arduous a task as to paint a large picture in
oils, and requires quite as much skill. Miss Coleridge--whose miniature
of her uncle, Chief Justice Coleridge, attracted so much attention in
the Academy this year, and is reproduced on p. 202--says: "I find the
work, though I love it, even harder than painting large portraits; it
requires quite as much thought and care. It is only by working straight
from the life, studying your model's expression and character, that you
can hope to be even the most humble disciple of the art as it was in the
last century.

"The great difficulty I experience is in getting people to understand
that they must sit to me. They all say, 'Miss or Mr. So-and-So paints
from photos--why can't you?' No doubt these artists do a very charming
lightly-stippled coloured photo for them, but there can never be any
life in these things, nor can they be anything else than coloured
photographs, however pleasant to the eye of their owners."

The portrait of Miss Wilson, one of the beauties of the season, is also
by Miss Coleridge, who works a great deal in pastels.

[Illustration: [_By Maud Coleridge._

MISS MURIAL WILSON.]

Many amusing stories are told by artists about their sitters, but as a
rule the stories are told with this absurd restriction: "but you mustn't
publish that"--which, of course, takes the point absolutely away.

[Illustration: [_By Annie G. Fletcher._

"SWEET GENEVIEVE."]

Mr. Alyn Williams, the President of the Society of Miniature Painters,
to whom the Society owes its origin and prosperity, tells a good story
which he does not claim to be original. He tells it rather to show the
difficulties which an artist is sometimes made to overcome by his
client.

A man who distinctly came from the provinces once went to an artist who
had painted a celebrated picture of David, and said that he wanted him
to paint a picture of his father.

The artist consented, and suggested that it would be necessary for the
subject to come to his studio. That, however, the son declared to be
impossible, and at last the fact came out that he was dead.

"Have you a photograph?" asked the artist.

No; a photograph had never been taken.

"Then I cannot paint him," declared the artist.

"But you painted David," retorted the man, "and he has been dead much
longer than my father!"

This was irresistible, and so the artist consented to do his best.

When the fancy picture of the father was finished, the faithful son came
to see it, and liked it very much.

"It is very good," he said. "But," he added, after a little reflection,
"how he has changed!"

[Illustration: [_By Mabel E. Hankin._

A PORTRAIT.]

[Illustration: _By A. R. Merrylees._]

A BONNIE BAIRN.]

[Illustration: [_By Alyn Williams._

A "GAINSBOROUGH" PORTRAIT.]

Miss Merrylees, whose miniatures, seven in number, make a fine show at
the Academy, once had to paint a miniature of a clergyman; but the only
way of getting his right expression was to make him recite long poems
and dramatic scenes from Shakespeare. While he was doing this, Miss
Merrylees "went on painting madly."

Another time she was painting a little boy, who was sitting very still
and silent.

Suddenly he convulsed his painter by propounding this tremendous query:
"Do you like your groom to sit _so_, or _so_?" And he indicated two
varieties of the akimbo manner.

A charming portrait of a pretty child indicates Miss Merrylees' style of
work. This was exhibited both in the Royal Academy and the Paris Salon.

Holbein, who was a great miniaturist, had a very summary method of
dealing with people who troubled him while he was painting miniatures. A
nobleman once came into his studio while he was painting a lady, and was
promptly thrown downstairs, like Daddy Longlegs of immortal fame.

The King, Henry VIII., heard of it, but sympathised with the painter.
"Of seven peasants I can make as many lords, but not one Holbein," he
said.

King Henry had a special reason for this sympathy. When he heard of a
pretty woman he sent Holbein to paint her, with a view to making her his
wife. On one occasion, at least, a flattering miniature led its unhappy
subject into trouble--Anne of Cleves.

[Illustration: MRS. C. L. SHAND. _By Edith Maas._]

A word should be said about the origin of the miniature. In the first
instance the word had nothing to do with the size of a painting. It
comes from the Latin word _minium_, or red lead. In old days the
capitals of illuminated missals were painted with this by great artists,
while the less important work was done by minor ones. Thus the
_miniatura_ meant the picture painted by the great artist. The word
miniature, in its present sense, was born in the 18th century, which was
the best period of British miniature painting.

The material on which miniatures have been painted has varied from time
to time. To-day ivory cut very thin is almost invariably used.

The elephant is not a graceful or artistic beast, and no particularly
sentimental thoughts at first sight attach to him. But artists to-day
would be at a loss without his tusks, and much sentiment is lavished on
them in the form of lovers' portraits.

While love lasts the miniature will always be in vogue, for artists
frankly admit that it is so convenient to carry in the pocket. It
represents so much in so little. Miniature painting is especially
therefore "the lovers' art." Some say that it makes the subject
"beautiful for ever," and what more could Romeo want?

Ivory, however, is of comparatively modern use in the art world and the
studio. Vellum, gold, silver, and enamel were the things on which
miniatures were painted before the days of ivory.

The prices of these dainty pictures vary enormously. As much as £3,000
was paid for one in the Hamilton collection, while another in a diamond
setting sold at Christie's for £2,000. Nowadays, £5 to £100 is easily
obtained, according to the skill of the painter.

Her Majesty the Queen is a great collector of miniatures. Her collection
at Windsor is of great historic as well as financial value. She has
greatly encouraged the art, and has been repeatedly painted in
miniature. She frequently gives these miniatures of herself away as
special presents.

Miss Carlisle painted one of the Queen with which she was very pleased.
She gave it to the Prince of Wales, who said that it was the best of his
mother which had been painted for many years.

[Illustration: MISS PAMELA PLOWDEN. _By Winifred Hope Thomson._]

To deal in detail with the miniatures on these pages. Mr. Alyn Williams
is the painter of the charming portrait of a lady in the Gainsborough
style.

Miss Küssner, who is represented by a miniature of Lady Dudley, has
already painted an enormous number of ivories. She arrived in New York
in 1893 an unknown girl, with a letter of introduction to a lady of
social influence, but "very exclusive."

[Illustration: THE PRIDE OF ENGLAND. _By Esmé Collings_]

In much fear and trembling the letter was presented. The lady was too
unwell to see the artist, but she sent word down that she would see the
miniature she had with her.

"This was almost more than she could bear, and she sat waiting the
maid's return in sadness that was near despair. But when she did come,
how the little miniaturist's sinking heart leaped; for the maid brought
an invitation--the lady would see her in her own room." So a friend
tells the tale.

Since then Miss Küssner has pained many of the English aristocracy, and
gets £100 a miniature.

This is how Miss Küssner works. First comes the study of her sitter, and
perhaps one entire sitting will be devoted to this. Then follows the
sketching of the face on the ivory--a transcript of the form and spirit.
Lastly comes the actual painting, with infinitesimally small brushes,
each stroke made under a powerful magnifying glass.

Lady Dudley's marriage was quite a romance. She was the daughter of Mr.
Gurney, of Norfolk, whose business reverses caused him to resign his
partnership in the well-known Gurney Bank and surrender his possessions
for the benefit of his creditors.

His wife came to London and opened a milliner's shop, and in this her
two daughters served. But it was not a success, and so the daughters
entered the employ of a well-known West End _modiste_. But the Duchess
of Bedford and Lady Henry Somerset became interested in them; and it was
as the adopted daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Bedford that Rachel
Gurney married Lord Dudley.

Miss Winifred Hope Thomson, whose miniature of Miss Pamela Plowden we
give, had the place of honour in the miniature room of the Academy this
year. Simplicity of style is the feature of Miss Thomson's work, and
probably the reason why her miniatures are considered like those of the
great Cosway.

[Illustration: "DAFFODIL." _By E. J. Harding_.]

[Illustration: HON. MRS. BENYON. _By Edith Maas_.]

Miss Edith Maas is another lady whose miniatures are very greatly
admired for their beauty and style. Her portrait of Delia, the daughter
of the Rev. and Hon. Ed. Lyttelton, Head Master of Haileybury College,
has been exhibited in the New Gallery. The other miniatures we give are
of Mrs. Shand, wife of His Honour Judge Shand, and the Hon. Mrs.
Benyon, daughter of Lord North. The latter was exhibited in the '93
Academy.

[Illustration: LADY DUDLEY. _By Miss Küssner._]

The number of ladies well known as clever miniature painters is quite
extraordinary, and with but few exceptions all the portraits on these
pages were painted by ladies.

Miss M. Josephine Gibson sends us two charming pictures which she calls
"Ma Belle" and "Kathleen." These are exquisite, both in conception and
execution. Mrs. Lee Hankey, who, with Miss Gibson, is on the Council of
the Society of Miniature Painters, is represented by one strong picture.
"Daffodil" is by Mrs. E. W. Andrews, also known as "E. J. Harding." All
these ladies have miniatures in this year's Academy.

From the studios of Mr. Esmé Collings, of Bond Street, comes the
charming miniature of two girls' heads, originally painted in black and
white. This gentleman has published a very dainty little brochure on
"The Revival of Miniature Art," which gives some romantic stories about
miniatures and their painters.

One tells how the Comte de Guiche, being in love with a daughter of
Charles I., wore her portrait, mounted on a snuff box, over his heart,
and owed his life to this circumstance, for the box turned aside a
bullet which struck him in battle--a hint which all soldiers should
take. This box is now in the possession of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts.

Other stories tell of Richard Gibson and Miss Biffin, both gifted
miniaturists. But the first was a dwarf, 3 feet 10 inches high, who
married another dwarf of his own height who lived till she was
ninety-seven, and became the mother of nine children. As for Miss
Biffin, she was limbless, but managed her paint-brush and pencil with
her mouth.

Of course there are miniatures _and_ miniatures. But Shakespeare, by a
miniature in words, has given us an exquisite conception of what a
miniature in art should be--at least when it is "Fair Portia's
counterfeit."

          "... Here in her hair
  The painter plays the spider, and hath woven
  A golden mesh to entrap the hearts of men
  Faster than gnats in cobwebs; but her eyes--
  How could he see to do them? having made one,
  Methinks it should have power to steal both his,
  And leave itself unfurnished."

But Bassanio was not an art critic--merely a lover! The miniaturist,
however, who can weave on ivory "a golden mesh to entrap the hearts of
men" may surely find content.

[Illustration: THE LATE LORD COLERIDGE. _By Maud Coleridge._]




[Illustration: HIS LORDSHIP & MISS O'CALLAGHAN]

A COMEDY BY CHARLES KENNETT BURROW.

_Illustrated by Edmund J. Sullivan._


After my engagement to Lucy Vivian I took to working very hard--a man
always does that or nothing at all--and the work suited me better than
the idleness. I suppose we had been engaged five months, and I was
beginning to grow accustomed to it, when one afternoon the amiable peer
who had been of such service to me in the affair strolled into my
studio. Directly I set eyes on him I knew he had something in the wind,
his manner was so absolutely uninterested.

He nodded to me without speaking, crossed over to the fire (it was
bitterly cold outside), and stood with his back to it. Then he pulled
off his gloves slowly and invited me to come and shake hands.

"You lazy beggar!" I said; "you come here! Can't you see I'm working?"

"Working! you're always working. What's come over you?"

"You forget----"

"Oh, it's Lucy, is it?" he asked. "Well, well! she's a dear child, Phil,
I admit."

"Lord St. Alleyne," I said, "you never spoke a truer word."

"Why will you always be throwing that confounded title in my face? I'm
only an Irish peer; that title has been a great drawback to me."

"How?" I asked.

"It makes people take twice as long as they should to find out I'm a
decent chap."

"It didn't take me long," I said.

"You're different, Phil; it's the women it troubles."

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Well, what do you want?" I asked.

"A cigar," he said.

"You know where they are, don't you?" I replied.

He went to my cigar cabinet and selected one thoughtfully. Then he lit
it and drew his favourite armchair up to the hearth. His profile was
towards me, and I remarked, as I had done a hundred times before, what a
beautiful face it was. The lines were as clear and round as a woman's;
the mouth sensitively delicate, but firmly set; the nose straight, with
only the slightest indentation below the brows. It was a face of
singular purity and candour. After a time he bent forward towards the
blaze and looked hard into the fire's heart.

"I believe I'm done for, Phil," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"I won't tell you till you put down those brushes. You know you can't
see."

"All right," I said. "If you come here to make me neglect my duty, I
suppose I must put up with it."

"Pooh!" he said; "sit down then and don't be an ass."

"I'll sit down, but perhaps I can't help being an ass."

"I daresay you can't, poor dear," he said. Then he lay back in his chair
and laughed. "To think of me," he chuckled, "falling in love."

I sat down at the other side of the fire and lit a pipe.

"But you've been in love ever since I knew you."

"The others didn't count; this does."

I begged him to explain.

"Well, it's like this. When I saw her often I wasn't quite sure about
it, but now that I can't see her at all the thing's dead certain."

I again begged him to be more explicit. "You talk in the dark," I said.

"Then why don't you light a lamp?"

I did as he suggested and sat down again.

"Is there anything else I can do for you?" I asked.

"Yes," he said, "you're coming over to Ireland with me to-morrow."

"I'll see you hanged first," I said.

[Illustration: "HE LIT IT, AND DREW HIS FAVOURITE ARMCHAIR UP TO THE
HEARTH."]

"The train leaves Euston at 8.45 p.m."

"It can leave when it likes. I shan't be there."

"By eleven o'clock on Thursday we shall be in Stromore."

"Well?" I said, weakly.

"I knew you'd come!" he said.

"But I won't," I said.

He smiled tenderly upon me.

"And yet," he said, "I endured that dragon Mrs. Vivian for your sake for
full ten minutes."

"If you'll explain what it's all about," I said, "I'll do anything I can
to help you, but as to--"

He tapped me on the knee with the poker.

"Listen!" he said. "In my opinion, my cousin, Mrs. O'Callaghan, is mad."

"I'm not surprised to hear it," I said.

He tapped me again with the poker.

"My cousin, Mrs. O'Callaghan, has a daughter, and in any decent man's
home," he added, "there'd be something to drink Norah's health in."

I got up wearily and produced what was required, and we drank solemnly
to Norah O'Callaghan.

"That's better," said St. Alleyne. "Now Mrs. O'Callaghan has her heart
set on Norah's going into a convent, and Norah, poor child, thinks she
has a leaning towards the religious life, and that before she has seen
any other life at all. When I heard of this folly I went over, but never
a sight of the girl could I get except with her mother. The old woman
never lets her outside the grounds, and there they walk up and down for
an hour every day."

I was becoming seriously interested, and St. Alleyne saw it.

"Does Miss O'Callaghan know you care for her?" I asked.

"I suppose any girl knows," he said.

"Did you ever speak to her about it?"

"Not seriously," he said.

"Isn't it possible she thinks you were playing with her and may be
playing still; and, granted she cares for you, mayn't that be driving
her into the convent?"

His face was suddenly flushed with a kind of pitying shame.

"By Jove!" he said. "It may be so, Phil; I never meant to play with her,
I swear that."

"I believe you," I said, "but it looks as though there might be
something in what I suggest."

"It does," he answered.

"Have you written to her?"

He tapped me once more with the poker.

"No, and if I did she'd never get the letter. I know my cousin, Mrs.
O'Callaghan. She thinks all the St. Alleynes are a bad lot, because, I
suppose, my grandfather was a wild devil once. That's where I have to
suffer for my name."

"But you could convince her otherwise, I suppose?"

"I'd undertake to do it, if I were sure of Norah."

I knocked the ashes from my pipe and stood up. The situation interested
me; my own happiness was so near that I was prepared to do a great deal
for my friend.

"Well," I said, "suppose I go over with you, how am I to help?"

He rose and stood by my side, putting his right arm round my shoulder.
He was quite his old cheerful self again.

"We'll think of that when we get there," he said. "You must draw Mrs.
O'Callaghan off while I talk to the girl somehow. If I have a sure
friend at hand the thing can be managed. I knew you'd come, old man. My
cousin, Mrs. O'Callaghan," he added, "has burnt her own boats; if she
hadn't played me this trick I might never have discovered that I wanted
Norah."

[Illustration: "MY FRIEND WAS CONSUMING LARGE CIGARS."]

"Oh, yes, you would," I said.

"You know, of course," he said, pinching my ear.

When I awoke the next morning I confess that our project did not look
particularly hopeful, but I had undoubted faith in St. Alleyne's
ingenuity, and it was a great satisfaction to me to see Lucy, and let
her into the secret of our expedition. Her eagerness, indeed, was much
greater than mine, and she made me promise to send her a telegram
directly there was any good news to communicate.

It was a bitterly cold night in January when St. Alleyne and I crossed,
and I am not a particularly good sailor. I remained on deck for the sake
of the air, the saloon being hopeless, and made what efforts I could to
keep myself warm. Every now and then I looked into the smoking-room,
where my friend was consuming large cigars; I envied him his occupation,
but rejected all his invitations to join him. After a time he came out
and wrapped me up in half a dozen rugs on a seat. By the time we reached
Dublin I was numb to the heart, and knew I was in for a violent cold.

However, we made no delay, but caught the mail for the south. The
carriage was warmer than the boat, and by a judicious arrangement of
rugs I managed to bring back some heat into my blood, and with it came a
revived interest in our expedition. St. Alleyne had said nothing about
his plan since starting, but as I looked across at him I could see that
he was thinking hard. He caught my eye and smiled.

"Feel better?" he asked.

"Much," I said.

"You look a poor starved rat of a man, even now."

"I'm sorry," I said, "that I haven't your terrific constitution."

"It hasn't been much good to me so far," he said, "and I'll thank you,
Mr. Mildmay, for one of those excellent cigars of yours."

"I think I could manage one myself," said I, sitting up.

"Bravo! Now we can talk seriously.... I've been thinking, Phil."

"I could see that!"

"You could, could you? Well, I've hit on a plan--a beautiful plan."

"Capital!" I said.

"But the carrying through depends upon you."

"Am I in fit condition?" I asked.

"Faith, you'll be in too good condition presently. It depends on your
sickness."

It was always necessary to beg St. Alleyne to explain: I did this
forcibly, and he brought his head close to mine.

"I told you, I think," he said, "that in my opinion my cousin, Mrs.
O'Callaghan, is mad?"

"You did."

"Well," he said, "she's not so mad, neither. She has some idea of true
charity. Now Norah is a great hand with the sick; she has a way with
her, as we say over here, and Mrs. O'Callaghan encourages her to visit
them; it's all part of the convent scheme."

"I begin to see," I said; "I'm to be sick."

"And who," said he, "would you rather see in your suffering than an
angel like Norah?"

"I'd rather see Lucy," I said.

"Well, well, you're a constant creature. I have a little place over here
near Stromore, as you know; but you mustn't be ill there; you must go to
the hotel." He paused and looked at me.

"Go on," I said.

"And being very low," he continued, very slowly, "you'll speak to Biddy
about it."

"Who's Biddy?" I asked.

"Mahony's daughter; he runs the hotel. And you'll say that you'd like to
see someone--a woman for choice--as you have something weighing on your
mind; and then you might drop Miss O'Callaghan's name. Now Biddy was
Norah's maid for a time, and what more natural than that she should
suggest bringing her old mistress to the poor sick guest?"

"You're a rogue," I said.

"Then Norah will come to you," he went on, "and I shall be in the next
room, and after a time you'll speak of me, and then--"

"We must wait for the rest," I said, "But what will your cousin, Mrs.
O'Callaghan, be doing all the time?"

"She'll be talking to Mahony about the price of oats downstairs."

"This is a very charming plan," I said, "but will it work? And do you
think me humbug enough to mix myself up in such an affair?"

"You're humbug enough for anything," he said, "but have you the nerve?"

"It doesn't need much nerve," I said.

"You haven't seen Norah," he replied.

"Well, I'll risk it; I came over here to help you, and I may as well do
it, little as the job suits me."

"Oh," he laughed, "it'll be grand to see my cousin Mrs. O'Callaghan's
face!"

It was important to our plan that St. Alleyne and I should not seem to
be together, so he gave me final instructions before we reached Stromore
Station. "You must get the bedroom over the door," he said, "because
there's a sitting-room next to it, and we must have them both."

"Suppose it's already occupied?" I said.

[Illustration: "WE SWUNG UP THE ROAD FROM THE STATION."]

"You don't know Stromore in the winter," he said; "there won't be a soul
in the place, and Mahony will kneel at your feet."

"I hope he won't," I said, "because I might feel inclined to kick him."

"Kick Mahony!" he cried, "the man's six feet two, and as strong as an
ox. You'd better begin to be sick almost at once, hadn't you?"

"I feel bad enough," I said.

We shook hands in the carriage as the train pulled up at Stromore; on
the platform we did not know each other.

I secured a car at once, and told the man to drive to the St. Alleyne
Arms, and as we swung up the road from the station I looked back and saw
his lordship coming slowly down the steps.

"Do ye know," asked my driver, "how long his lordship's come for?"

"His lordship!--whose lordship?"

"Lord St. Alleyne," he said, looking at me incredulously.

"What do I know about the man?" I asked. "Where is he?"

"He's there, sure, comin' down the shteps."

"Indeed," I said, and told the man to hurry, as I was cold.

I had no difficulty in securing the two rooms I wanted, and as I took
possession of them I felt some of the pangs of a conspirator. I was
also, as a matter of fact, quite sufficiently unwell to see things
rather gloomily, and as I sat by my window after lunch, and looked out
into the grey street, I confess that I wished myself engaged in a less
dubious enterprise.

[Illustration: "THE GIRL GLANCED UP AT THE INN."]

And then, as I sat there, I heard the brisk sound of wheels, and a
carriage drove by, and in it there sat a lady of a rather severe aspect
and a girl. The girl glanced up at the inn as she passed; from out of a
nest of white fur, there looked a face that made me come nearer to
forgetting Lucy than anything I could have imagined. "That," said I to
myself, "is Norah, and the other is Mrs. O'Callaghan. My dear St.
Alleyne, I'll begin my part of the game this minute if it's to help you
to win that child."

And indeed there was no time to be lost, for we had arranged that St.
Alleyne was to call at eleven o'clock the next morning to see how things
were getting on. I accordingly looked for a bell-rope, but, being unable
to find one, I opened the door and called downstairs. Biddy came up
light as a bird, and with a merry engaging smile on her face.

"Biddy," I said, "I feel ill, and I think I'll go to bed. I've caught a
bad cold, and it may turn to fever with me."

"Lord save us!" she cried, "will I send for the docther?"

"No, I'll see how I am later. And, Biddy, at six o'clock, I might try to
eat some dinner."

"To be sure, sorr," she said. "Can I do anythin' for ye now?"

"No," said I, pressing my hand against my forehead, "but if I want
anything I'll ring."

"There's no bell," she said, "so you must just knock on the flure, an'
I'll hear ye."

With that she departed, and I made up the fire and got slowly into bed.
My head did ache a little, but not enough to make me unhappy, and it
seemed to me, as I lay in the midst of that apparently dead Irish town,
that I was coming perilously near to playing the fool. But my confidence
in St. Alleyne was unbounded, and under all his lightness of manner it
was plain that he was in deadly earnest; so presently, thinking of him
and of the face I had seen, and being horribly tired after the previous
night, I fell comfortably asleep.

When I awoke it was dark outside and there was only the red glow of
firelight in the room. I got up to light a candle, and felt rather
lightheaded and feverish; it gave me some satisfaction to realise that I
should not have to altogether act my part. I looked at my watch and
found that it was a quarter to six. I lay down again and listened;
beyond the slight movement in the house there was not a sound to be
heard; I might have been in a lodge in the wilderness.

Presently I heard Biddy's light step on the stairs, and there was a
tentative knock at the door.

"Come in," I cried, and she entered with dinner and a lamp.

"Are you betther, sorr?" she asked.

"No," said I, "but worse."

"Will I send for Docther Nolan now?"

"No, Biddy, I'll try to eat some dinner."

"Do, poor soul!" she said. She drew a little table to the bedside, and,
having set the food on it, left me. It was not a good dinner; a healthy
appetite and an easy conscience might have been satisfied with it, but
neither of these was mine at the moment, so I did no more than just play
with it. Then I knocked on the floor for Biddy, who came up at once. She
was always smiling; she had one of those faces to which only laughter or
tears seem natural.

"Have ye done, sorr?" she asked, in undisguised surprise.

"Yes," I said, "I can't eat."

She suggested Doctor Nolan again.

"No, I'm afraid a doctor could do no good until I've got something off
my mind."

"Will I sind for a priest, thin?" she asked.

"At present, Biddy, it's not a matter for a priest, but if you knew of
some good woman, not a nun, but still in the world--" I paused from
sheer inability to go on; I was so unused to this kind of thing that any
sign of suspicion on Biddy's part would have meant disaster. But Biddy
had a kind heart, and instantly scented a romance.

"Ah," she said, "I see how it is wid ye."

I said nothing, but lay still, watching her face. I tried once or twice
to mention Miss O'Callaghan's name, but my lips refused to approach it
without a weakness that might have betrayed me. And then, all at once,
Biddy did it for me.

"I might ast Miss O'Callaghan to see ye," she said.

My face burned. "And who's Miss O'Callaghan?" I asked.

"A dear, dear heart," said Biddy, "an' just the lady to help ye if it's
love you're throubled about. She's had throuble herself," she added,
"an' may his lordship be made to pay for it!"

"What do you mean about Miss O'Callaghan and his lordship?"

"Was I her maid for three years and not know her secrets?"

I begged Biddy to explain, which she refused to do; but I gathered
enough from her to judge that my surmise had been correct, and that
Norah was wholly his lordship's if he could get fair speech with her.

"Biddy," said I, "you're a good girl, and if you can bring Miss
O'Callaghan to see me at half-past eleven to-morrow I'll dance at your
wedding."

"I'll go to her now," she said; "rest quiet, now, till I come back."

When Biddy had gone I was almost sorry that I had not taken her
completely into my confidence, but her interest seemed so deeply engaged
on my behalf that I felt sure she would work strongly on Miss
O'Callaghan's feelings; and so it proved, for she returned in an hour to
say that the lady would come on the following morning. After this piece
of news I calmly went to sleep again, and only awoke to find Biddy once
more at my bedside with breakfast.

I assured her that I felt somewhat better, and would be ready for Miss
O'Callaghan when she came. Just as I had finished breakfast I heard St.
Alleyne's voice below. Presently Biddy came up with curiosity shining
from her face.

"Why didn't ye tell me," she said, "that ye knew his lordship?"

"Biddy, can I trust you?" I asked.

She tossed her head. "Thrust me," she said, "an' why not, sure?"

[Illustration: "BIDDY, I FEEL ILL, AND I THINK I'LL GO TO BED."]

"I knew I could. Well, you'll show Lord St. Alleyne up, and he won't go
down again until after Miss O'Callaghan has seen me."

"Lord save us!" cried Biddy.

"I know," I went on, "that you have your late mistress's happiness at
heart, and this will make it safe. It depends upon you whether there is
to be a great wedding at Stromore, or the convent for Miss O'Callaghan."

[Illustration: "'MISS O'CALLAGHAN TO SEE YE, SORR.'"]

"Lord save us!" Biddy cried again, between laughter and tears.

"Mrs. O'Callaghan," I said, "is a strange woman, I understand."

"She is that!" Biddy interjected.

"And therefore this interview must be arranged as best it can. On your
life, don't say a word to either of them about his lordship being here!"

Biddy's hesitation was only momentary; she promised, and fled from the
room.

When St. Alleyne came in I saw he had not had much sleep and that his
nerves were on the rack, but his manner was as unperturbed as ever. He
sat down on the side of my bed and looked at me curiously.

"How are you?" he asked.

"Perfectly well," I answered; "don't I look it?"

"You look a bit flushed, that's all."

"And with good cause. Miss O'Callaghan will be here in half an hour."

"Thank God!" he said, and walked to the window. He stood silently with
his back to me for some time, looking down into the street. Then he
said, "How are you going to manage the interview?"

"I don't know; if you worry me I shall make a mess of it."

"I'm not going to worry you, old chap," he said; "you must just do it
your own way."

"I saw her yesterday."

He swung round and faced me.

"What did you think of her?" he asked.

"I think," said I, "that you must have been born for each other."

His face lit up with a sudden, boyish smile.

"Thanks," he said, and turned to the window again. A moment later he
stepped back quickly.

"There she is," he said, "and my cousin, Mrs. O'Callaghan, with her."

"It was just like you," I cried, "to stand there where the whole street
could see you."

"Don't be angry, Phil," he said, humbly, "she didn't look up."

"For heaven's sake get into the next room and shut the door."

He came over to me swiftly and rested his hands on my shoulders.

"Play up, Phil," he whispered, "for the sake of old times." Then he left
me, and the door of the sitting-room closed softly behind him.

When I heard footsteps on the stairs and realised that the game had
really commenced, the ambiguity of my position overwhelmed me; I wished
myself, for a moment, well out of the affair at any price. But the
thought of the greater strain upon St. Alleyne, and what it meant to
him, restored my composure, and I waited with closed eyes. The door
opened, and I heard Biddy's voice say, "Here's Miss O'Callaghan to see
ye, sorr." When I looked up, a vision of loveliness greeted my eyes.

Miss O'Callaghan came towards me with a face full of the tenderest
solicitude. She was wearing a tailor-made dress that fitted her to
perfection, and on her head she had a large hat, from under which tiny
tendrils of dark hair had escaped; her skin was of the whiteness of rose
petals except where the blood flushed, her eyes had the look of wet
violets in spring. My lips murmured incoherent thanks and welcome. I
could not force my mind away from the waiting figure in the next room.

"You wished to see me," she said, in a soft voice that had an under-note
of sadness. "If I can help you, please be quite free with me. It's to be
my life's work to help those who are in trouble."

"Your life's work?" I repeated.

"Yes," she said, "I'm to go into a convent."

"My trouble will seem very small to you, but to me it seems great, and
it has to do with so worldly a thing as love."

Her face flushed and paled again before she answered--

"True love can never be small--it is always beautiful."

"That is my thought of it, too," I said; "but however much one wants to
do the right thing, it is sometimes terribly hard to decide."

"I know," she said, "I know."

"Now suppose," I said, "that I loved a girl with all my heart--as I do,"
I added, thinking of Lucy, "but had never told her so; and suppose that
her friends, for some foolish reason, did not like me, and wished her to
devote her life to a calling which she herself had some leaning to----"

"Yes," she said, breathlessly, and I could see she was applying the case
to herself.

"And suppose," I went on, "I had been blind in the past, and perhaps
unknowingly allowed the time to go by when I should have spoken: would I
be justified in coming into her life again, drawing her away from the
peace that this calling might already have given her, and asking her to
come back with me into the world where love is?"

For an instant she turned her head aside, and I saw the tears heavy
under her eyelids.

"It would be for her to decide," she said; "you should tell her."

"That's just what my friend Lord St. Alleyne thinks," I said.

"You know him?" she cried. The look in her eyes at that moment was
certainly not for me.

"He is my very dear friend," I said, "and I have often heard him speak
of you. I know him for one of the best men alive."

She slipped down on her knees by the bed, and if I had not already known
all about the matter her eyes would have told me.

"I believe he is, I believe he is," she said. "Tell me about him. Is he
well? When did you see him last?"

"No longer ago than this morning," I said.

[Illustration: "SHE SPRANG TO HER FEET, AND RAN TO HIM WITH A JOYFUL
CRY."]

She hid her face and was silent for a time; I could see that she loved
him beyond the ordinary love of women, and the sight sent such a wave
of content through me that I believe I laughed softly. At any rate she
looked up and I could not bear to see her unhappy any longer.

"My dear Miss O'Callaghan," I said, taking into my hand the warm little
gloved fingers that lay on the coverlid, "will you forgive me for being
a conspirator and a humbug? Remember I did it for the sake of my friend,
and I knew he was worth it. I spoke of him and not of myself."

"What do you mean?" she cried. And then, with a hand at her bosom, "Oh,
tell me, tell me!"

"St. Alleyne," I said, "loves you, and he's here to tell you himself."
And with that I raised my voice and called his name. The door opened
instantly--he must have had his hand on the latch the whole time--and
there he stood, with his arms stretched out to her and the name,
"Norah," on his lips. She sprang to her feet and ran to him with so
joyful a cry that I knew my part in the comedy was over, and just as
they embraced I turned away and closed my eyes.

Ten minutes later they came back; she was leaning on his shoulder and he
had an arm about her waist.

"This conspiracy has been so successful," I said, "that I shall never
engage in another. It would never do to spoil my record."

"You have two friends now instead of one," Miss O'Callaghan said.

"Phil," said St. Alleyne, "get up, you old dear, while Norah and I go
downstairs to see my cousin, Mrs. O'Callaghan."

They left me once more, and as I dressed I felt so absurdly
light-hearted that I had to sing to myself; I forget what the song was,
but I know, there was something about lovers' meetings in it. As I
reached the foot of the stairs I heard voices in the dining-room; one of
them was rather high-pitched and hard, but it sounded pleasant enough as
it said, "Well, St. Alleyne, you've beaten me this time, and I suppose I
must give in, but it will take you long years to make me believe in your
family."

And I concluded it was the voice of his lordship's cousin, Mrs.
O'Callaghan.




TO KEEP THE DOGS DOWNSTAIRS.


Here is an interesting photograph of a pair of "dog gates" which may be
seen at Slyfield Manor, near Leatherhead, in Surrey.

[Illustration: "DOG GATES,"

Slyfield Manor, Leatherhead, Surrey.]

These gates were very common in country houses in the days of Queen
Elizabeth, but there are not many to be seen to-day. Dogs know how to
behave now, and there is no need for them.

As their name implies, the gates were used to keep the dogs of the house
from wandering upstairs into bedrooms and other places where they had no
right.

But many people like to hear their dogs scratching at the door in the
morning.

The gates shown in our photograph are in excellent condition. They were
photographed by Mr. S. H. Wrightson, of Aldershot.




[Illustration: CRICKET & CRICKETERS]

_Pictures by Mr. "Rip."_

_Words by M. Randall Roberts_


Why is it, in these days of up-to-date cricket reporting, no one has
noticed the most striking characteristic of Ranjitsinhji's play? The
pose of W. G. Grace's tip-tilted foot as he stands at the wicket, Abel's
serio-comic expression as he cocks his eye and ambles from the pavilion,
and Mr. Key's rotundity, are as familiar as Mr. Chamberlain's eye-glass
even to the non-cricketing public; but the ballooning of Prince
Ranjitsinhji's silk shirt has hitherto been allowed to lie in obscurity.

About the silk shirt itself there is no particular mystery; dozens of
other cricketers wear one exactly like it; but none of these garments
"balloon" with the same unvarying persistence as Ranji's. Whether half a
gale is blowing on the Hove ground, or there is not enough wind to move
the flag at Lord's, the Indian prince's cricket shirt always presents
the appearance of the mainsail of a six-tonner on a breezy day in the
Solent. Anyone can satisfy himself as to the truth of this assertion by
glancing at the first illustration on page 213. The batsman's face is
concealed by his arm, and his attitude in playing the ball is almost
identical with that of hundreds of other cricketers. Yet there is no
mistaking the player. It's Ranji as plainly as if his name was printed
all over it; the curve in his shirt gives him away at once. Unkind
critics, indeed, declared that the secret of his success in Australia
was that, while the rest of Mr. Stoddart's team were panting for a
breath of fresh air with the thermometer at 100° in the shade, some
mysterious Indian deity was perpetually blowing on Ranji with a thousand
cooling zephyrs. Nowadays, Ranjitsinhji's critics are becoming more
sane; but when first he burst into splendour, many of his weird strokes
were attributed to some supernatural agency. Ranji's most telling
stroke, as every cricketer knows, is what is technically known as the
"hook" stroke. Most fine batsmen are content to stop short straight
balls on a fast wicket. Ranji is more ambitious. When he sees a ball of
this kind coming, he stands directly in front of his wicket, and at the
moment when the ball is apparently on the point of going through his
body, he "hooks" it round to leg.

How hazardous this proceeding is may be gathered from the obvious fact
that if the batsman fails to get his bat exactly in the proper place in
exactly the proper fraction of a second, he will infallibly have to
retire either with a fractured skull or "leg before wicket."

[Illustration: RANJI FIELDING.]

While the cricket scribes used to regard Ranjitsinhji's good fortune in
escaping a violent end while playing this speciality of his as a
supernatural gift, practical cricketers consider the stroke bad form.
"That leg stroke of yours," said an old player to him in the pavilion
at Lord's, "is all very well now and then, but it's not cricket; it's
far too risky. If you miss the ball, you're bound to be out leg before."
"Quite so," replied Ranji; "but one would be out pretty frequently,
clean bowled, if one missed the ball--every time a straight ball came,
in fact."

Ranjitsinhji's batting has been variously described as satanic,
electric, and elusive. "Serpentine" would be far more accurate. Anyone
in the least familiar with the famous Indian's style will at once see
the point of the epithet.

The line of beauty, we all know, is a curve; and the real secret of the
attractiveness of Ranji's batting (from the spectators' point of view)
is that every position he assumes seems to be laid out in a curve.

In the illustration on page 215 "Rip" has but very slightly exaggerated
the effect of the sinuous curves into which Ranji's body resolves itself
before he makes a stroke. That he can unbend faster than any other
cricketer past or present is an incontestable fact. The yarn of how in a
match at Cambridge he once brought off a catch with such amazing
rapidity that the batsman, under the impression that the ball had
travelled near the boundary, continued running till Ranji extracted the
ball from his pocket, is most likely apocryphal; but to anyone who has
seen him fielding slip the feat ascribed to him won't seem impossible.

[Illustration: RANJI BATTING--A STUDY IN GRACEFUL POSE.]

By the way, it's an odd thing that while Ranjitsinhji's batting owes its
attractiveness to the "curves" of the batsman, an equally graceful
player--to wit, the lengthy William Gunn--is built on uncompromisingly
straight lines. Somebody said that if Gunn were to model his style on
Ranji's the result would be a sea-serpent--six and a half feet of
curves.

Briggs has so many attitudes and antics of his own that he can't be said
to have any characteristic pose. In everything he does he's "Johnny."
Briggs may be said to have just missed greatness by a lack of
seriousness. According to George Giffen, if he had only taken batting
more seriously Briggs would have been, after W. G. Grace, the second
best all-round cricketer in England. There's a deadly earnestness about
his bowling and fielding, but as a batsman he always seems more anxious
to amuse the spectators than to improve his average. Like other famous
men, Johnny Briggs may be often misunderstood, but at any rate this is
the impression he creates. About six years ago, in the middle of the
cricket season, Briggs appeared to have suddenly gone "stale," and the
Lancashire Committee suggested to him that he should take a week's
holiday. Briggs selected a remote village in Wiltshire; but, as luck
would have it, the villagers were particularly keen cricketers, and when
the news got about that the great Briggs was in their midst, the captain
of the local team at once waited on him to ask what would be his terms
for playing in a match against a neighbouring town.

[Illustration: JOHNNY BRIGGS MEANS BUSINESS.]

"I asked," says Briggs, "what I thought were absolutely prohibitive
terms, namely, £10; but the terms were accepted, so of course I had to
play. My side lost the toss, and I had to begin the bowling. My first
ball was hit out of the ground for six, and in a short time 100 went up
with no wicket down. I suggested to the captain that he had better let
someone else bowl, but he said that if he took me off, the spectators
who kept pouring into the ground would want their money back, and would
see that they got it, too. Finally, I had two wickets for about 120
runs. The crowd looked a trifle nasty, but what finished them was when I
went in to bat and was bowled second ball.

[Illustration: A RARE CATCH.]

"As I left the ground I heard, 'That's him. 'E's no blooming Briggs,
'e's a blooming fraud. Let's give him a jolly hiding.' Only the railway
station and a couple of stalwart policemen saved me from the jolly good
hiding, and I have never tried village cricket since."

[Illustration: AND TAKES A WICKET FIRST BALL.]

[Illustration: MAKES THE CROWD LAUGH.]

A. G. Steel declares that the secret of Dr. Grace's phenomenal success
against young batsmen is the terror inspired by the sight of his beard.
Batsmen meeting the champion for the first time see an enormous man,
with a great black beard waving in the breeze, rushing up to the
wickets. They expect something quite different from the gently lobbed-up
ball which this black-bearded giant delivers; before they can recover
from the shock of surprise they find themselves clean bowled.

But W. G.'s beard does something more than frighten young cricketers. As
Maurice Read says, "it talks to you." Other human beings wag their
heads; Grace wags his beard when things are going wrong. It is even said
that, with a team that knows him, he can indicate to the fieldsmen to
change their positions by merely moving his beard.

[Illustration: WAITING FOR ANOTHER.]

There are dozens of persons all over the country who pose as cricket
authorities on the strength of having once watched the champion
practising at the nets. At a cricket match in a small Welsh town one of
these gentlemen was acting as umpire, and could not agree with his
fellow umpire as to whether a certain batsman was run out.

The argument waxed very fierce, until the umpire of the visiting team
called out--

"What do you know about cricket? You 'aven't shook 'ands with Lord
Hawke, 'ave yer?"

"No."

"Well, I 'ave," triumphantly declared the other, as the crowd dispersed.

And the batsman was declared out.

[Illustration: "Ranji" A STUDY IN CURVES.]

[Illustrations]




FAMOUS LONDON DOOR-KNOCKERS


What souvenir of a great man can compete with the knocker of his door? A
door-knocker is to a man's house what a sign is to a shop or tavern; but
it is also something more. Take, for instance, the knocker on the door
of the official residence of the Prime Minister, No. 10, Downing Street.
No less a person than Lord Beaconsfield once described to a friend this
particular knocker as having a marked resemblance to the features of his
political opponent, Mr. Gladstone. There is no knocker in existence, we
may fairly state, that has been handled by so many distinguished people
as this one. If only the friends of Mr. Gladstone were enumerated, they
would make up a long list of illustrious names, and many Prime Ministers
have resided at the unpretentious, old-fashioned mansion so conveniently
situated for the Houses of Parliament.

[Illustration: THE PRIME MINISTER'S (10, Downing Street, Westminster.)]

[Illustration: THOMAS CARLYLE'S. (Cheyne Row, Chelsea.)]

The knocker on the door of Carlyle's house, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, a house
which was occupied by him for half a century, is another very
interesting specimen. Scarcely was the young ex-schoolmaster and author
of "Sartor Resartus" well settled in his new abode than he began to
receive callers, who, if not very famous then, have since achieved
considerable renown.

Among them was young Mr. Charles Dickens, then the blushing "Boz," who,
with Mrs. Dickens, stepped out of a gorgeous green hackney coach to
administer a knock on the door, having driven all the way from Doughty
Street, Brunswick Square, to pay a call. Forster, Serjeant Talfourd,
Maclise, Macready, Landor, Leigh Hunt, and Thackeray were frequent
knockers during the first decade.

[Illustration: MR. ALMA TADEMA'S. (St. John's Wood.)]

It is not difficult to imagine some youthful admirer of Carlyle giving a
timid knock at the door, and then wishing that he had the courage to run
away from the house before being ushered into the presence of the
irascible Philosopher. Mr. Alma Tadema's knocker is forbidding enough
in appearance, and holds out but little promise of the beauties of that
wonderful house where the artist resides in St. John's Wood. No doubt it
is, like everything else about his home, from a design by the great
painter himself.

[Illustration: THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE'S. (Piccadilly.)]

The most beautiful knocker in this collection, if not the most beautiful
in London, is that of the Duke of Devonshire, at No. 80, Piccadilly. It
represents a head of classic contour set in a circular disc, chiselled
with an exquisite border. Not a few among the Duke's guests have so far
expressed their admiration of this work of art as to desire duplicates
for themselves, but it is not known if any exist, it having been done by
the Duke's own command from his own designs.

It is to be wished that the Duke would follow up his artistic success in
this particular by designing a wall for Devonshire House to replace the
existing hideous structure.

[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS'. (17, Doughty Street.)]

Dickens' door-knocker recalls the residence of the happy couple who
removed to Doughty Street from Furnival's Inn shortly after their
marriage. It was here that Charles Dickens the younger was born, and
where the author of "Pickwick" first became on terms of friendship with
many of the brilliant men of letters of his day. The knocker is held in
its place by a fleur-de-lis of the same metal, and it was Serjeant
Talfourd who humorously rallied Dickens on his supposed predilection for
the French, who at that time were in the midst of preparing that series
of more or less revolutionary movements which preceded the downfall of
Louis Philippe and the ascendency of the third Napoleon.

[Illustration: DR. JOHNSON'S. (Bolt Court, Fleet Street.)]

But an older and more characteristic door-knocker may be found well
within a mile of Doughty Street, still on the door of a house once
inhabited by the great sage Dr. Samuel Johnson himself. Surely if any
knocker is characteristic of its owner this one is. It represents a
sturdy fist clenching a baton from which depends a bulky wreath of
laurel fastened in the middle by a lion's head. The worthy doctor, as we
are told by Boswell, carried no key, nor did he permit any member of his
oddly-selected household to possess one. At all times and seasons the
house in Bolt Court was inhabited, and unquestionably the burly knocker
resounded in the ears of the inhabitants of the court often enough, and
at unseemly hours, for the sage was not at all scrupulous as to what
hours he kept, and many a time would talk irregularly on at the club
until some of his neighbours had serious thoughts of rising.

[Illustration: CRUIKSHANK'S. (Hampstead Road, N.W.)]

The contemporaries of the great caricaturist George Cruikshank during a
fruitful period of his life will gaze not without feelings of emotion on
the accompanying representation of the familiar knocker on his house in
the Hampstead Road.

It was Clarkson Stanfield who, calling upon his friend Cruikshank one
day, had much ado in making the artist's aged servant aware that a
visitor awaited at the portals; again and again he knocked, but in vain;
the servant's deafness was proof against the onslaughts of a vigorous if
not wholly artistic door implement. At last, losing all patience, he
picked up the foot-scraper and was about to impetuously hammer away at
the panels, when the caricaturist, hastily throwing up an upper window
sash, recognised and appeased his indignant visitor.

"You should," remarked Stanfield, "get a younger servant, or a heavier
knocker, or else build your house in Turkish fashion--that is, without
doors."

[Illustration: THE KNOCKER THAT SUGGESTED SCROOGE IN DICKENS' "CHRISTMAS
CAROL." (8, Craven Street, Strand.)]

In every article which deals with the curiosities of London, the name of
Dickens must figure very largely. The last knocker of our collection is
the most remarkable one of all, inasmuch as Dickens derived his idea of
Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol" from its hideous lineaments. Look at our
photograph and then read Dickens' own description of the unamiable
Scrooge:

"Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge; a
squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old
Sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out
generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.
The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose,
shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait.... He carried his own low
temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days;
and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas."

[Illustration]




OUR MONTHLY GALLERY OF BEAUTIFUL AND INTERESTING PAINTINGS.


[Illustration: A CUBAN BELLE.

_From the Painting by Gabriel Ferrier._

_By Permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., London, W._]

[Illustration: SUMMER.

_From the Painting by W. Reynolds Stephens._

_By permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., London, W._]

[Illustration: MAKING A MARRIAGE IN THE OLDEN TIME.

_From the Painting by A. T. Vernon._

_By permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., London, W._]

[Illustration: THE WATER CARRIER.

_From the Painting by J. W. Godward._

[_By Permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., London, W._]

[Illustration: WHICH WINS?

_From the Painting by Arthur J. Elsley._

_By Permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., London, W._]

[Illustration: A BURDEN OF LOVE.

_From the Painting by N. Sichel._

_By Permission of the Berlin Photographic Co., London, W._]