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The Quiver 11/1899


[Illustration: MOTHERHOOD.

_After the Picture by_ MISS IDA LOVERING.]




LADY DOCTORS IN HEATHEN LANDS

By the Author of "The Child Wives and Widows of India," Etc.


A garrison of snow-capped mountains; a valley smiling in Oriental
luxuriance; the gorgeous, romantic loveliness described in
"Lalla Rookh"--such are the general impressions of the land of
Kashmir. Dirt, disease, and degradation summed up its prevailing
characteristics in the eyes of an Englishman, who, in October, 1872,
toiled wearily over the Pir Panjal, 11,900 feet above the level of
the sea.

This was Dr. Elmslie's last journey. He hardly realised, as he
dragged his weary limbs over rough but familiar paths, that one
object for which he had struggled for years was practically
accomplished. He sank from exhaustion on the way, and the day
after his death Government granted permission for missionaries to
spend the winter in the Valley of Kashmir. Still farther was he
from knowing of another result of his labours. He had appealed to
Englishwomen to bring the gifts of healing to suffering and secluded
inmates of zenanas. Dr. Elmslie had found a direct way to the hearts
of prejudiced heathen men. The sick came to him for healing, and
learnt the meaning of his self-denying life.

[Illustration: (_Photo: Elliott and Fry._)

THE LATE DR. FANNY BUTLER.

(_At the time she went to India._)]

"Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life,"
are ancient words of wisdom; but this rule has exceptions. To Hindu
women, at least, caste is dearer than life. It would be as easy
to restore the down to a bruised butterfly's wing as to give back
self-respect, and with it all that makes life worth living, to a
zenana lady who has been exposed to the gaze or touch of a man other
than a near relation. Custom of the country debars a respectable
woman from receiving ministry to body, soul, or mind, unless it
comes from one of her own sex. Dr. Elmslie's appeal resulted in Miss
Fanny Butler's offer of service to the Indian Female Normal School
and Instruction Society. She was the first enrolled student of the
London School of Medicine, which had just been transferred from
Edinburgh, and passed second out of one hundred and twenty-three
candidates, one hundred and nineteen of whom were men, in the
Preliminary Arts Examination. She went to India in October, 1880,
the first fully qualified medical missionary to women.

Seventeen years after Dr. Elmslie's death Dr. Fanny Butler obtained
another concession for Kashmir, the permission for missionaries to
live within the city of Srinagar. She saw the foundations of a new
hospital for women begun within the city, and fourteen days after
she also laid down what, an hour before her death, she described
as a "good long life," in the service of Kashmiri people. The age
of thirty-nine, she said to the friends who surrounded her, and
who felt that she of all others could not be spared, was "not so
very young to die," and she sent an earnest plea to the Church of
England Zenana Society, the division of the old society to which
she belonged, to send someone quickly to take her place. The new
hospital was the gift of Mrs. Bishop (Miss Isabella Bird) in memory
of her husband. She had seen the dirty crowd of suffering women at
the dispensary door overpower two men, and the earliest arrivals
precipitated head foremost by the rush from behind, whilst numbers
were turned away in misery and disappointment.

Hospitals and dispensaries have rapidly increased since the day
of pioneers. Absolute necessity has forced medical work on many
missionaries in the field. The most elementary knowledge of nursing
and hygiene appears miraculous to women sunk in utter ignorance. A
white woman too modest to give them remedies for every ailment is
usually regarded as unkind. A neglected missionary dispensary is
practically unknown.

[Illustration: (_Photo supplied by the Church of England Zenana
Missionary Society._)

OUTSIDE THE VERANDAH OF THE WOMEN'S HOSPITAL AT TARN TARAN.

(_Showing some of the patients placed out to spend the hot night in
the open._)]

At the time when the Countess Dufferin started her admirable
scheme for providing medical aid for Indian women a well-known
Anglo-Indian surgeon stated publicly that, whatever other
qualification was required in a candidate, two were absolutely
necessary: she must be a lady in the highest sense of the word,
and she must be a Christian, and he proceeded to give good reasons
for what he said. The experience of every woman who has taken up
this work would bear out his sentiments. Without courtesy and
ready intuition of the feelings of others it would be hard to
get an entrance into zenanas, and nothing but love and devotion
to her Master would enable a woman to persevere in spending her
life amongst sick heathen women, in spite of sights, scenes, and
vexations beyond conception in England.

[Illustration: (_From a Photograph._)

THE DUCHESS OF CONNAUGHT'S HOSPITAL, PESHAWUR.]

The greatest difficulties are probably met in high-caste zenanas.
There, in the midst of unhealthy surroundings, the friends and
neighbours have grand opportunities of undoing any good that may
have been accomplished. It is grievous to a medical missionary to
find her fever patient dying from a douche of cold water, because
the white woman has defiled her high caste by feeling her pulse.
It is enough to make her give up a case in despair if, after she
has explained that quiet is absolutely necessary, the friends and
neighbours decide that the evil spirit supposed to be in possession
must be driven out by the music of tom-toms. A Hindu man is said
to "sin religiously," and a Hindu woman excels him in devotion to
her creed. A fever patient in the Punjab refused to drink milk--the
one thing of all others that her medical woman ordered her--because
she said, if it were the last thing she swallowed, her soul would
pass into the body of a cobra. One medical missionary found a
woman, who was in a critical state, lying on a mat, whilst an old
woman, supposed to be learned in sickness, stood on her body, or
patrolled up and down like a sentinel, as far as the length would
admit. This was kindly meant. Another found one suffering seriously
from the effect of a linseed poultice. She had carefully explained
the mysteries of making and applying it, but in her absence the
patient's friends had spread dry linseed over her chest and poured
boiling water over it.

[Illustration: (_Photo: Baness Bros._)

WAITING THEIR TURN.

(_Patients outside the Tarn Taran Hospital Dispensary._)]

Happily, all the women in India are not secluded in zenanas. By
far the largest proportion live in the villages, but their notions
of propriety are very strict. The hard-working field-women will hide
themselves on the suspicion of a _sahib_ being within reach. When
once they are satisfied that the visitor belongs to their own sex
and is harmless, crowds beset the missionary encampments. Many tales
of suffering are poured into sympathising ears.

"I am blind from crying for my only son" is not an infrequent
complaint. Nothing can be done in this case.

"There is no god or goddess to love a Hindu woman. Whatever
offerings we make her, the goddess of small-pox smites us, and then
the men say the women have not offered enough, and are angry." This
was the reply of a Punjabi woman, who spoke for her friends and
neighbours.

One Bengali woman told a missionary of the death of a precious baby
boy. There did not seem much the matter, but the _hakim_ (a native
quack) first gave him something burning to swallow, and then applied
a red-hot iron to each side in turn; and the child only drew one or
two breaths after this treatment. This also, one hopes, was kindly
meant. The Hindus are by no means wanting in humanity, but ignorance
is often as fatal as cruelty.

Many patients find an excuse for coming again and again to the
dispensaries. There they hear of blessings in this world and the
next which they say seem too good to be true. They see love shining
in the earnest faces, and feel it in the touch of hands that will
not shrink from dressing repulsive sores.

The majority of cases in dispensaries are ordinary fevers or skin
diseases resulting from dirt, and other scourges that follow
defiance of elementary rules of health.

Patients discharged as cured often return. "Tell me again that Name
that I can say when I pray," one of them asked, to explain the
reappearance of her shrivelled old face; "I forget so soon." And she
went on her way repeating the Name that even some of the heathen
realise must be exalted above all others.

"I know that your Jesus must reign over our land," a Punjabi woman
said to a lady who had opened a dispensary at Tarn Taran, a sacred
city of the Sikhs; "I know it, because your religion is full of
love and ours has none at all."

The mission hospital at this city, with the name which literally
means "The Place of Salvation," and the dispensary seen in the
illustration, came mainly into being through the determination
of the inhabitants. A suffering baby might claim a share in its
existence. This infant's mother brought it to a missionary whose
training as a nurse had made her a friend in sickness. The child's
sight was hopelessly gone. The mother said that the _hakim_ had told
her alum was good for sore eyes, so she had put it under the lids.

"You have used it in such a way as to blind your baby," the
missionary said; "and I could have told you what to do."

"How should I know?" the woman replied, using a common phrase to
express helplessness or lethargy; but she told the story to her
friends, and other mothers, whose babies' eyes were suffering, soon
proved that the white woman had made no empty boast. Ophthalmia
is terribly common in India, and its marvellous cures began to be
famous.

One day a family party carried an invalid into the verandah of the
Tarn Taran mission house. The missionary looked inside the _doolie_;
she was not a doctor, and declined to undertake such a serious case,
and told the men to take their invalid to the Amritsar Hospital.
They were determined to take no such trouble. To show that she was
equally determined to make them, she went inside the house and shut
the doors and blinds. Who would hold out the longest? The result was
a foregone conclusion. The Punjabis, armed with a greater disregard
for a woman's life, gained the victory by the simple method of
beating a retreat, leaving the helpless woman behind them. In common
humanity she could not be left to die. In a few days her family
returned to inquire, and were gratified to find her progressing
towards recovery. The white woman's celebrity was now secured, and
to her consternation and embarrassment she found her verandah full
of patients, and, from overwork, was soon herself added to the
number. The people of Tarn Taran afterwards gave the building for a
Women's Mission Hospital, and a new one is now in the charge of a
fully qualified lady doctor.

Hospitals are by far the most satisfactory part of medical
missions. In zenanas and dispensaries it is one thing to prescribe
and give advice, and another for orders to be obeyed, especially
if they are contrary to rules of caste or custom. It is well known
that a Hindu soldier, who will follow his British officer into the
fiercest _mêlée_, and, if necessary, die for him, if true to his own
creed, will not receive a cup of water at his hands. When wounded
his parched lips will close tightly, lest his caste should suffer.
The same principle debars his womenfolk from accepting physic in
a liquid form from Englishwomen. They may, however, take powders.
Written directions are generally useless, and verbal ones often
misunderstood. It is little wonder if dispensary patients make slow
progress.

"Are you sure you took the medicine I gave you?" inquired a medical
missionary of one who made no advance at all.

"Quite sure, Miss Sahiba."

"How did you take it?"

"I ate the paper and threw away the dust."

This mistake was not astonishing under the circumstances. One
Mohammedan specific is to swallow a paper pellet with the name of
God written in Arabic; another, for the _mullah_ to write an Arabic
inscription on a plate, and for the water that washes it off to be
the dose.

[Illustration: A GROUP OF WORKERS AT THE DUCHESS OF CONNAUGHT'S
HOSPITAL.

(_Dr. Wheeler stands at the left-hand side of group._)]

It is well when superstition and misconception stop short at
swallowing paper and inky water. A woman, seriously injured from
an accident, was carried into the Duchess of Connaught Hospital,
Peshawur. Her husband accompanied her, and saw the medical
missionary in charge carefully attend to fractures and bruises. Rest
and sleep and quiet were doing their work, and the man was left to
watch. A sudden crash startled the ward. The husband had turned
the bedstead over on its side, and flung his wife down. He fancied
she was dying, and said it would imperil her soul if it departed
whilst she lay on anything but the floor. He had the satisfaction
of knowing that she died where he placed her. This was a case
of a Hindu "sinning religiously." It would be harder to forgive
the frequent sacrifice of life to superstition, if there were no
ennobling element underlying it of honest desire for some vague
spiritual good.

The Duchess of Connaught Hospital is a permanent memorial of her
Royal Highness's kind interest in the women of India. Whilst on the
North-Western Frontier she went through the Dispensary and Nursing
Home which represented the first effort to bring medical aid to the
Afghan women, and allowed it to be called after her name. A new and
much larger building, of which a drawing has been reproduced, has
taken the place of the native quarters, where Mohammedan bigotry
was by slow degrees overcome. For years the ladies of the Church of
England Zenana Missionary Society, who had charge of this hospital,
were the only Europeans living within the walls of Peshawur.
Every night the great city gates closed them in, and separated
them from other missionaries and from Government servants. They
chose to be in the midst of their work, and though outbreaks of
Mohammedan fanaticism repeatedly checked teaching in schools and
zenanas, ministry to the sick continued, and never lost the friendly
confidence of Peshawuris.

[Illustration: (_Photo supplied by the Church of England Zenana
Missionary Society._)

STAFF AND PATIENTS OF ST. CATHERINE'S HOSPITAL, AMRITSAR.]

In its early and humbler days, the fame of this hospital reached
far-away Khorassan. A lady of that country who was suffering
terribly, caused herself to be carried the fifteen days' journey to
Peshawur. Miss Mitcheson, who opened the first dispensary, and is
now the head of the hospital, saw that her case was critical and
required an operation of a far more serious kind than she had ever
attempted, and begged her to allow the civil surgeon to see her.

"I would rather die," the patient answered. The combined forces of
suffering, fear of death, and persuasion, were powerless to move
her. The Englishwoman, of whose powers she had heard in her own
country, might do what she liked with her, but no man should come
near her. Happily Miss Mitcheson successfully accomplished what was
necessary, and the Khorassan lady made a good recovery. When the
time came for parting from her new friends, she promised to use in
her own country the knowledge she had gained in Peshawur. She kept
her word, as more visitors from Khorassan testified, and they said
she had not forgotten the benefits she had received in the mission
hospital.

[Illustration: (_Photo supplied by the Church Missionary Society._)

BACK VIEW OF NEW WOMEN'S HOSPITAL, HANGCHOW.]

During Miss Mitcheson's absence in England Dr. Charlotte Wheeler,
who with her fellow-workers, in the illustration on p. 102, stands
in the verandah of the old building, superintended the medical work.
On Miss Mitcheson's return, Miss Wheeler opened a medical mission
amongst the women in Quetta. This work extended rapidly on and
beyond the frontier, so that in November, 1896, when it was a year
old, eight different languages were spoken on the same day in the
dispensary waiting room.

Institutions for training Christian girls of India as doctors or
nurses have come into existence as the number of candidates has
increased and the necessity has arisen. The North India School
of Medicine has been established at Ludhiana with this object.
Many of the mission hospitals also have training classes. St.
Catherine's Hospital, Amritsar, under the superintendence of Miss
Hewlett, who has had nineteen years' experience, has provided very
valuable assistant medical missionaries for stations in the Punjab
and Bengal. At the last census a hundred Christian women--counting
missionaries, assistants, patients, nurses and students--were within
its walls. An illustration shows the inmates mustering before going
to church.

One student in St. Catherine's Hospital, who had gained a
scholarship, gave promise of a brilliant career. Before the time
of study in which she delighted was over, the lady superintendent
became suspicious of what this young girl described as broken
chilblains on her fingers. A doctor was called in, and confirmed
her impression that it was leprosy. An Eastern girl knows, what in
Europe is only faintly imagined, of the horrors of this loathsome
disease. One cry of anguish only escaped her when she was told
the verdict. Then she rose above the trial, and resigned herself
cheerfully to the will of God. She was prepared to start the next
day for the Leper Settlement near Calcutta without meeting her
friends or fellow-students for a word of farewell.

"What comforts me," she said to the Clerical Secretary of the Church
of England Zenana Missionary Society, who was in Amritsar at the
time, "is that I may go as a missionary rather than as a patient."

She went to that place of death and banishment, to live out the rest
of her days in ministry for others. In her case the days lingered
into years, and the disease took a severe form, but her devotion
and courage never failed. When death came to her as a friend, and
her work was done, the memory of the "superior girl," who had lived
among the afflicted people as a missionary rather than a patient,
remained. Perhaps her fellowship in suffering gave her the final
qualification to be a missionary to lepers.

India is the land which above all others cries out for lady medical
missionaries; but other Eastern countries have also a claim.
Wherever Islam has planted its iron heel, women are jealously
guarded in harems, and it is very unusual for a man to be allowed
entrance on any pretext. In China, also, women of superior class are
hidden within the high walls that surround their houses. Those free
to go out gain little but suffering from the barbarous attentions of
native surgeons. In the East the knowledge which brings relief from
pain is a power to overcome obstacles to Christianity that resist
every other force.

The Church of England Zenana Missionary Society has sent out a
qualified lady doctor to Foochow, and in 1894 the Church Missionary
Society opened a hospital for women in Hangchow with one large
and six smaller wards. One patient who was brought into this
building--of which two views are given--suffering from diseased
bones, has gone out to devote her recovered health and new knowledge
to the service of God and her own countrywomen.

[Illustration: (_Photo supplied by the Church Missionary Society._)

INTERIOR OF NEW WOMEN'S HOSPITAL, HANGCHOW]

There is scarcely a mission hospital or dispensary that cannot
tell of similar results of the double ministry to body and soul.
Each year justifies the increased number of women with medical
qualifications sent into the mission field. Some, like Mrs.
Russell Watson, of the Baptist Mission at Chefu, are the wives of
missionaries, others have been sent out by various missions, such
as the Zenana Bible and Medical Mission, or by the women's branches
(added during the close of the present century), to the more
venerable societies.

Dr. Henry Martyn Clark, of Amritsar, once asked a friendly Hindu
what department of foreign missions his people considered most
dangerous.

"Why should I reveal our secrets to the enemy?" the Hindu responded.
But he yielded to persuasion. "We do not very much fear your
preaching," he said, "for we need not listen; nor your schools, for
we need not send our children; nor your books, for we need not read
them. But we do fear your women, for they are gaining our homes; and
we very much fear your medical missions, for they are gaining our
hearts. Hearts and homes gone, what shall we have left?"

What may be expected when medical and women's missions are combined?
According to the friendly Hindu, the very citadels of idolatry and
superstition might tremble at the advance of this double force to
rescue the captives.

  D. L. WOOLMER.

[Illustration: OUR ROLL OF HEROIC DEEDS]

This month we devote our space to a pictorial representation of an
heroic act by James Williamson, a fisherman of Whalsay, Shetland.
During a heavy storm he waded out to the succour of two companions,
who had been pinned on the rocks by their capsized boat and were
in imminent danger of drowning. Williamson was at first carried
away by a heavy sea, but was returned by the next. Then with an
extraordinary effort he lifted the side of the boat, seized the men,
and, with one under each arm, fought his way through the boiling
surf to dry land. For this conspicuous act of bravery Williamson was
awarded the Silver Medal of THE QUIVER Heroes Fund.]




[Illustration: PLEDGED]

PLEDGED

By Katharine Tynan, Author of "A Daughter of Erin," Etc.




CHAPTER IV.

YOUTH AT THE PROW.


"And then, old fellow," went on Sir Anthony's letter to Jack Leslie,
of the Blues, his particular chum, "I stood staring, with my eyes
watering and a little scratch on my nose bleeding where the old
rooster--for a rooster it was--struck me with his spurs as he flew.
He might have knocked out my eye, the brute! The second missile (an
invention they call a sun-bonnet, I believe, made of pink calico and
horribly stiffened) lay crumpled at my feet. And there in front of
me stood the culprit herself, looking half-ashamed and half-inclined
to follow the example of the other sun-bonnet which had buried
itself in a big chair at the end of the room, and made scarcely a
pretence of stifling its peals of laughter. I felt no end of a ninny
I can tell you, especially as the owner of the first sun-bonnet was
by long chalks the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen.

"I'm no good at describing a girl's charms, but even at the first
glance her beautiful violet eyes struck me. Blue eyes and black
lashes and eyebrows--it is a thing happens over here sometimes,
they tell me. Then, though she'd been rushing about after the
ancient barnyard fowl who was to have graced the table in my honour,
she had no more colour than a white rose; and yet she looked the
picture of health and life--so different from fine ladies. This was
Miss Pamela--Pam for short--as I discovered later. To finish her
description, her charming head is covered with a mass of short black
curls. She had a very shabby frock on, which didn't take a bit from
her loveliness. I couldn't help wondering what the mater would have
thought if she could have seen her. She would surely have called her
'a young woman,' with that superb contempt of hers.

"However, the breeding tells. Nothing could have been finer than the
little air with which she pulled herself together, and said, as if
it were an every-day thing to blind and maim your visitors:

"'You must be Sir Anthony Trevithick. I am so sorry. That wretched
fowl flew in through the open window, and we've been three-quarters
of an hour chasing him round. It was so unfortunate his flying out
just at that moment, and still more unfortunate that I should have
flung my bonnet after him. But you've no idea how he had aggravated
us.'

"I assure you the mater couldn't have done it better, if one could
conceivably imagine the mater under such circumstances.

"I could think of nothing to do but to pick up the bonnet and hand
it to her, muttering some idiocy about it not mattering a bit. While
this was going on the laughter in the chair was dying off in sobs of
enjoyment.

"But before we could get any further Mr. Graydon himself made his
appearance. I suppose something about my looks struck him--for a
cucumber wasn't in it for coolness with Miss Pam--because he said,
'Why, bless me, Sir Anthony! what's the matter? What's the matter,
Pam? Why, Sir Anthony, your nose is bleeding!'

[Illustration: "The old rooster struck me with his spurs."--_p._
107.]

"'Why, so it is!' said Miss Pam, calmly. 'Sir Anthony was trying
to catch the red cock, papa, with a view to his dinner, but he's
escaped, I'm sorry to say, and the dinner with him. It will be
days before he comes home after the alarm we've given him. I'm
so sorry you're wounded, Sir Anthony. Can I get you a little
sticking-plaster?'

"'I never know where I shall find the fowls in this house,' said
Mr. Graydon, a little irascibly, I thought; 'but the drawing-room
at least ought to be kept free from them. Why, Sylvia, what are you
doing there, child? Come here, and speak to Sir Anthony.'

"I expected a small child to come out of the big chair in answer to
the summons; but, lo and behold! out of the sun-bonnet there looked
another satin-cheeked damsel, almost as beautiful as the first. She
made her bow demurely, and, I assure you, there wasn't a feather out
of her after her fits of laughter at my expense. She had rather an
ecstatic look, and her eyes were a bit moist--that was all. I can
tell you I never felt so small in my life as when I stood up before
those impudent girls, for I could see that the pair of them were
hugely delighted at the whole affair.

"'Get some tea for Sir Anthony, girls,' said the father, 'and see
that he has hot water taken to his room; he's had a long journey.
Sit down, my lad--that is, if there's a chair in the room without a
dog on it. Here, Mark Antony, you lazy animal, come off that sofa.'
This to the fattest bulldog I ever saw--with such a jowl. He's Miss
Sylvia's, and an amiable dog, despite his looks.

"Then the eldest daughter came in--not a patch on the others for
beauty, but a Madonna of a creature, with a beautiful voice and a
rather sad expression. She was greatly concerned about my scratched
nose. But all the time she was talking I noticed that she looked at
her father steadily reproachful. At last he noticed it too, for he
suddenly blurted out:

"'Why, bless my soul! Molly, I forgot all about it,' and then he
stopped and laughed. Miss Pamela has told me since that they had
instructed their father to keep me on the way as long as possible.

"You'll gather that it is a rather rummy place. It is. The windows
in my bedroom are mended with brown paper, and there are holes in
the floor you could put your foot through. Not that my father's son
need mind little hardships. But I am amused to think of what the
mater would say, with her notions of things.

"By the way, if you're in Brook Street any time, don't repeat
what I've told you. The mater hated my coming here. She has some
extraordinary prejudice against Graydon, though he scarcely seems
to remember her. But as I've given up my desire for soldiering to
please her, it's my turn now to please myself by reading for this
Foreign Office grind with my father's old friend.

"A word more and I am done. You'll think me as long-winded as
some of those old women at the clubs. But their ways here are too
delicious. The establishment is managed by one old woman--Bridget,
who seems mistress, maid, and man rolled, in one. Well, the morning
after I came, when I rang for my shaving water there was no
response. At last I heard a foot go by my door, and I looked out
cautiously. It was Bridget, and to her I made my request. 'Why,
bless the boy!' she said, staring at me, 'You haven't been pullin'
that old bell that's never rung in the memory of man?' I assured her
I had. 'Well, then,' she said, 'goodness help your little wit! An'
so ye want shavin' water, do ye? Sure, I thought ye wor a bit of a
boy, that never wanted shavin' at all, at all!' However, she brought
me the water obligingly, in an extraordinary piece of kitchen
crockery. 'I suppose you're used to valetin',' she said. ''Twas
Misther Mick spoiled me entirely for other young gentlemen. He'd
dart down for his shavin' water--aye, many a time before I had the
kitchen fire lit.' Mr. Mick was apparently a former pupil; I often
hear of him.

"There's any amount of sport here, but I won't tantalise you. I like
Graydon better every day; he's a dear old boy, and though he's in
the clouds half the time when he's supposed to be coaching me, I can
see that he knows more than half the tutors in London put together.
He's a delightful companion out of doors, a good sportsman, and as
young as the youngest.

"It's a mystery his being buried here. But I've no time to try to
unriddle it now, and you'll never get as far as this, I expect.
Good-bye, old fellow--I'm extremely well satisfied with my present
quarters, and pity you in Knightsbridge. I suppose town is getting
empty."

       *       *       *       *       *

When this enormous epistle was finished and sealed, the young
gentleman put it in his pocket and went downstairs. His pace was
hastened by the fact that he could hear the joyful yelping of dogs
in the hall, from which he gathered that someone besides himself was
bent on outdoor exercise. Indeed, as he reached the hall and caught
his hat from one of the dusty antlers, he saw the two younger Miss
Graydons setting out amid their leaping and yelping escorts. He
hurried after and overtook them.

"May I come with you?" he asked eagerly. "I've a very important
letter to post, and if you're going to the village you might perhaps
point out the post-office. I'm such a duffer at finding out things
for myself."

"But we're turning our backs on the village," said Miss Sylvia,
"going in exactly the opposite direction."

"Oh, well, then, it doesn't matter; the letter can wait till another
time."

"Though it is so important. Oh, but you must post it. We'll put you
on the way for the village. You turn to the right and we to the left
when we reach the gate; then you'll walk straight into the arms of
the post-office."

Pamela, who had not yet spoken, turned her heavenly-coloured eyes
on her sister, but without speaking. Something in the look made the
young fellow's heart throb suddenly.

"Ah, Miss Sylvia," he said imploringly, "don't put difficulties in
my way. I want to come for a walk, if you will have me, and the
letter can wait. I'm not contemplative enough to enjoy a country
walk alone; and it will be a pleasure to walk with you and your
sister."

"And the dogs?"

"And the dogs. The joys of a country walk are doubled in the society
of dogs."

"I hope you'll think so when you have the felicity of fishing them
out of a bog-hole. They will chase every beast they see; and our
neighbour, Jack Malone's black cow, Polly, always leads them such a
dance, ending up deservedly in a bog-hole."

"I'll try to endure even that, Miss Sylvia."

"Then if Mark Antony gets a thorn in his paw, as he almost
invariably does, you'll have to carry him home."

"He must weigh three stone, Miss Sylvia."

"About that, Sir Anthony."

"Then it is better I should carry him than you."

"Oh, if you're bent on it, Sir Anthony."

"If you're not bent against it, Miss Sylvia."

"Well, come along then, for this is the parting of the ways."

They had arrived at the gate by this time.

"Sylvia should have told you, Sir Anthony, that though we turn our
backs on the village, yet we pass a wall letter-box, which the
postman empties on his way to Lettergort."

It was Pamela speaking for the first time, and in this less
hoydenish mood of hers she had a likeness to her gentle elder sister.

"I'm not surprised to hear it, Miss Pamela. I guessed Miss Sylvia
was only piling up the difficulties to tease me. But I was not to be
put off."

"You are really a most persistent person, Sir Anthony."

"I know when I want a thing and mean to get it, Miss Sylvia."

"Did you ever see anything more beautiful than the rose-light on
that mountain, Sir Anthony?"

"I have seen more beautiful things, Miss Pamela."

He spoke with the utmost simplicity, but the girl blushed
nevertheless, and was furious with herself for blushing.

"See how rosy the peak is," she went on in some confusion, "but the
woods are purple at the base. If we were over there where the road
winds round the hill-foot, we should hear nothing but the singing of
little streams. They are chattering through the bracken everywhere,
and spilling into the road, where they make little channels for
themselves, clear as amber."

"They make your boots very wet and your skirt draggle-tailed,"
remarked Sylvia.

"I see chimneys rising above the wood," said Sir Anthony. "Is there
a house there, then?"

"There is, but it is empty at present. It belongs to Lord Glengall,
who is away just now. It has a queer story attached to it."

"Indeed?"

"Yes. Lord Glengall went to Australia as a boy, and was unheard
of for years. His mother lived there, with one old servant, in
the bitterest poverty. She was so proud no one dared to interfere,
until, it having been noticed that the chimneys were smokeless
for days, the house was entered by force, and mistress and maid
were found dying of starvation side by side. The house was full of
valuables--lace and plate, and all kinds of lovely things--but they
were heirlooms, and the old lady would rather starve than sell them,
and the old servant was quite of the same mind."

"What happened then?"

"They were taken off to the Rectory by old Mr. Rogers, who died last
year. And in the nick of time Lord Glengall, whom everyone said was
dead, turned up safe and sound to nurse his old mother. 'I kept the
things together for you, my boy,' she said as soon as she recognised
him.

"And the next thing she said," went on Sylvia, taking up the tale,
"was, 'Where's that cat?' The faithfulness of animals, Sir Anthony!
Old Tib, with whom they had shared all their short-commons, had, it
seems, stolen the very last drop of milk that stood between them and
starvation, and had then escaped through a window into the woods. 'I
should like to give him a good hiding before I die.' That was the
second speech of the indomitable old lady."

"What a chance for the novelist this country of yours presents!"
said Sir Anthony.

"But that fortunately he never comes our way," replied Pamela.

"Your father promised me you would take me fishing one day." He
spoke to Sylvia, but his eyes turned from her to Pamela.

"So we shall," said Sylvia readily.

"The river runs quite close to the house?"

"Yes, but if you want the pleasantest fishing, you must climb for
it. Up there in the hills are little golden-brown trout-streams
running through the valleys under the shadow of woods, and they are
full of trout spoiling to be caught."

"You know the best places, Miss Sylvia."

"Don't let her guide you, Sir Anthony. I'll tell you a story about
her. She was always tantalising Mick St. Leger, an old pupil of
papa's, who is in India now, with stories of a wonderful pike which
inhabited one of the big holes in the Moyle. Well, poor Mick used
to sit and fish for hours, now and then catching a little fish by
accident, for his heart wasn't in it for thinking of Sylvia's big
pike. And Sylvia used to sit by watching him, apparently full of
sympathy. One day he was fishing the big hole as usual, when he
gave a long whistle. 'What is it, Mick?' Sylvia cried, running to
him. 'It feels like a twenty-pounder,' said poor Mick, very red in
the face. 'Oh, Mick, do let me help!' cried Sylvia. And then, with
an immense deal of carefulness, and poor Mick holding on like grim
death, they reeled up an old tin can full of stones, in the handle
of which Mick's line was caught."

"Mick would never have known," said Sylvia dispassionately, "if
little Patsy Murray hadn't come running after me a week later,
calling out, 'Where's that apple ye promised me for sinkin' me
mother's ould can in the river?' Mick never believed in me as an
honest angler afterwards."

"No wonder! But to think your father should have suggested you as my
guide, Miss Sylvia!"

"Pam's just as bad, Sir Anthony. I generally do the things, but Pam
encourages me."

Pamela again turned those eyes of heaven's own colour in mute
reproach upon her sister.

"I'll have faith in you, Miss Pam," said Sir Anthony impulsively,
"no matter what your sister says to the contrary."

And he meant his rash promise.

[Illustration: "The letter can wait till another time."--_p._ 109.]




CHAPTER V.

THE WISHING WELL.


"My friends generally call me Tony," said a voice, the youthful
growl of which was subdued to all possible softness.

"We have known each other such a little while," replied Pamela,
looking down at the ground, which had begun to cover itself in the
flying gold of the autumn woods.

"As the calendar counts; but we--'we count time by
heart-throbs'--doesn't somebody say that?"

A colour, like a pink rose-leaf, warmed in Pamela's clear cheek.

"We have become very good friends," she said, "seeing that it is
only six--or is it seven?--weeks ago since we met."

"It is eight," said the youth. "I came in mid-July, and now it is
mid-September. But it sometimes seems to me that I have always been
here, and that my life elsewhere was but a dream."

[Illustration: "Tell me what you wished for?"]

"If that were so," she said demurely--and for a moment the violet
eyes looked up at him under their shadow of night--"if that were so,
then I might really call you by your name, Sir Anthony. But it is
too soon."

"Then you will one day, Miss Pamela? How many days must go by first?
You called that other man--St. Leger--by his name. It is 'Mick' with
all of you."

"Ah," said Pamela, again with the bewildering glance; "but Mick was
Mick, you see."

A sudden irrational anger kindled in the young man's eye, and his
expression stiffened.

"Oh, I see," he said. "This paragon had special privileges which no
one else may hope to share."

"He certainly had," said Pamela. "For no one else would endure them,
poor dear!"

"Now, what do you mean by that?" he said doubtfully. "Do you mean
the privilege of being called by his name?"

"No, but the privilege of my society and Sylvia's."

"He must have been jolly hard to please."

"He wasn't, then. He was as easily pleased as a child. I should
like to have seen you in some of the situations in which Mick
distinguished himself."

"I daresay I'd be very undistinguished. I make no pretence of being
a paragon."

"It would be useless to, Sir Anthony."

"I don't dispute it, Miss Pamela. I suppose we'd better be making
for home?"

He turned and walked sulkily along the forest path with the girl by
his side. For a second there was silence; then Pamela broke it by
saying softly:

"I often have thought that one reason why Molly fell in love with
Mick was because she pitied him so much. He came to the wall in all
our escapades. Of course, he was always in love with Molly, but I
believe it was in protecting him from us that she became so fond of
him."

"He is your sister's lover, then?" incredulously.

"Why, _of course_ he is. Whose did you suppose he was?"

"Yours, Miss Pamela."

"Mine! why, he'd never look at me when Molly was by. Besides, you
don't know how horribly we ill-used the poor dear fellow."

"Miss Pam, I wish you'd ill-use me."

"You wouldn't like it at all, Sir Anthony."

"Yes, I should, Miss Pamela. So Mick is engaged to your sister. What
an ass I have been!"

"Yes, poor dears, they are engaged, without the remotest prospect
of ever being married that I can see. Mick's a subaltern in a line
regiment, with just his pay--he got in through the Militia--and
Molly, needless to say, hasn't a penny."

"He's a lucky fellow, all the same. And now, Miss Pamela, what have
we been quarrelling about?"

"I'm sure I don't know, Sir Anthony. Have we been quarrelling?"

"_I_ have."

"But I haven't. I did think you were a little cross about something.
But here is the Wishing Well that I told you about."

They had come on a little glade of the forest, in the midst of which
was a brier heavy with blackberries. The bush hooded a little space,
and, looking underneath, one saw, as in a cup, a still depth of
water over pebbles of gold and silver.

"You are to drink, Sir Anthony, without spilling a drop, and think
on your wish at the same time."

"Drink from what, Miss Pamela?"

"Why, from your hands, of course."

"I couldn't; the water would all run away."

"No, it wouldn't. See how I manage it."

The girl scooped the water into her rosy palms and drank it slowly.
Then she looked at him, and again the wave of rose flowed in her
cheek.

"I never could manage it; I'm such a duffer at things. Miss Pamela,
would you let me drink from your hands? _Do!_"

Without a word she stooped and lifted the water and held it to him.
He drank from the rosy cup to the last drop. Then he suddenly caught
the hands that had served him, and pressed them to his lips. For a
moment they were yielded to him, and then the girl drew back. He
thought she trembled a little, and the ardour in his gaze grew.

"I am sorry," he said, "but I couldn't help it. You are not angry,
Miss Pamela?"

"I am going home, Sir Anthony," she said.

"Not till you tell me one thing----"

He barred her way, putting himself in front of her. "Tell me what
you wished for."

Her eyes fell before his, and as she stood with her hands clasped,
and her head bent, she was a different creature from the wild Pamela
of a few short weeks ago. The sunlight through the thinned branches
fell on her short curls, for her hat--which she had been swinging by
a ribbon--had fallen to her feet.

"Look at me," he said; "I want to see what is in your eyes."

She lifted them obediently, and then let them fall again.

"Ah, that is enough," he said, with exultation in his voice. "You
have answered me, Pam. That is enough just for the present. Some day
I shall tell you what I wished for, and we shall see if our wishes
come true. A double wish should have double force to induce its
fulfilment. Isn't it so, Pam?"

She said nothing, and he looked at her with triumph shining in his
eyes. Blent with it was the tenderness of a lover when he knows he
is loved, and just a shade of shamefacedness as well.

"We must be wise, little beautiful Pamela," he said presently, in a
low voice. "We must be wise and wait. I mustn't ask yet all I would
ask, but I will one day--one good day, Pamela. You will trust me,
won't you?"

"Yes," said Pamela, hardly knowing what she was asked.

"It will not be for long. Indeed, I could not endure it for long.
Shall we be friends for a little while longer, Pamela darling?"

"Yes," said Pamela, forgetting to rebuke him.

"After to-day I will not call you darling till I have the right
before all the world. After to-day. I meant to have held my tongue,
but you bewildered me, Pamela. You are not angry with me?"

"No," came almost in a whisper.

"Lift up your eyes to me and say it. That is right. How beautiful
your eyes are, Pamela! Say 'Tony,' now."

"Tony!"

"Dear Tony."

"Dear Tony!"

"How sweetly you say it! It is like silver in your voice. But, come
now, we will go home. I have to be wise, you know. Ah, Pamela,
Pamela! why did you bring me to the Wishing Well?"

"You wanted to go."

"Yes, I know; but it was an accident that we were alone, or it was
Fate--yes, it was surely Fate that sent Miss Spencer's carriage for
your sister at the last moment, so that we had to take our walk
without her. Shall we go now, and talk no more about love to-day?"

Pamela hesitated, and then said:

"Poor Sylvia! She has spent this lovely afternoon shut up with an
old lady and a dog."

"She wouldn't mind the dog, I fancy, Pam."

"Nor the old lady. Sylvia is fond of Miss Spencer, strange as it may
seem."

"Why is it strange, Pam? I can't help using the sweet little name."

He had taken her hand by this time, and they were walking like
children down the aisle of golden trees.

"You haven't seen Miss Spencer. She is a little mad and a little
grotesque to most people. But she is devoted to Sylvia, and Sylvia
to her. She is not mad to Sylvia."

"How does it come that I haven't seen Miss Spencer?"

"She has been abroad. You'll see her one of these days, I expect.
She was crossed in love in her youth, and it seems to have made her
strange in ways. She's immensely wealthy, and gives a good deal in
charity, but mostly among single women. She seems to think that
those who have husbands and children don't need pity."

"She's quite safe for your sister to be with?"

"Oh, quite. She has all her senses, only that she's a trifle
peculiar. She's a splendid business woman, everyone says."

"It is a curious friendship. I should never have supposed it of Miss
Sylvia."

"No. One funny thing is that Miss Spencer's full of sentiment--wait
till you hear her sing 'She wore a Wreath of Roses'--whereas
Sylvia's quite without sentiment, and laughs at everything
sentimental."

"I feel sorry for the poor old thing," said Sir Anthony, with a
half-ashamed laugh, "because she was crossed in love. I shouldn't
like to be crossed in love myself, Pamela."

"It was cruel," said Pamela simply. "The man made her love him, and
then went away and never came back. She was poor then. She inherited
Dovercourt quite unexpectedly."

"What a sweep he must have been!"

[Illustration: "Come along, Trevithick," he cried, rushing away.]

"Poor Miss Spencer always thinks he will come back, though people
say he married abroad and died there. I tell you all this so that
you won't be the least bit in the world inclined to laugh when you
see her. I daresay it's funny enough to see a pink silk coal-scuttle
bonnet on top of a grey head; but then, you know, you don't feel
like laughing."

"No, indeed, darling."

"Sylvia says it's made a man-hater of her. That's how she excuses
herself for treating her admirers so outrageously."

"I'd have fallen in love with Sylvia myself, only for you, Pamela."

"It's lucky you didn't, Tony." The name came with soft hesitation.

"Why, Pam?"

"She'd have laughed in your face."

"I'd rather have your way, Pam."

"My way?"

"Though it made me behave worse than I intended. But never mind. A
little time will unravel the tangled skein. Now we are nearly out of
the wood. Ah, Pamela! kiss me once--I shall not ask you again till I
have the full right."

Without a word the girl lifted her face to meet his kiss. To her it
was the kiss of betrothal.




CHAPTER VI.

"I WILL COME AGAIN, MY DEAR."


"I wish my friend, Glengall, were at home," said Mr. Graydon,
leaning back in the chair by the study fire. "He'd give you a mount
while you were waiting for Johnny Maher's little mare. The hounds
meet at Lettergort to-day."

He looked wistfully through the bare trees on the lawn, as though
he saw in imagination the scarlet horsemen pounding away after the
streaming line of hounds.

His pupil thrust into a book a sketch of Pamela which he had been
making absent-mindedly.

"Why don't you hunt, sir?" he asked, with sympathy.

"So I do, my lad, when I can. But I can't afford to keep a horse,
and there aren't many mounts to be had here. Glengall is going to
set up stables when he comes back, and I'll have the run of them, I
suppose. He's a good fellow--one wouldn't mind being obliged to him."

"The mare'll be a good one when she's broken," said the young man.

"The best in the world for Irish fences, if she does look a bit
roughish."

"You'll ride her for me, when I am away at Christmas, to get her
mouth in?"

"Thank you, my lad; I should like to." Mr. Graydon's eye kindled
with pleasure. "But I didn't know you were going. It seems a longish
way to go home for Christmas."

"My mother would like to see me."

"To be sure, to be sure. I quite understand, and, of course, there
are friends in London you naturally want to see."

"No one very particularly, sir."

"Ah, well! it will be a holiday from this dull place."

"No, I assure you, sir. It is partly because I have some--some
business I want to settle. It is really true that there is no one
I go to see whom I regard more than the friends I shall be leaving
behind."

Sir Anthony blushed hotly over this avowal, but his unsuspicious
host only saw in it the shamefacedness with which a man, and
especially a young man, makes a display of his feelings.

"Now, that is kind of you," he said, looking at his pupil
benignantly. "I am sure our Christmas will be dull without you. Do
the girls know you are going? They won't like it, eh? And they will
be disappointed that you will not be here for the Vandaleur affair."

"I am coming back for that, sir."

"I am glad. It is really the children's first outing. It is a dull
enough affair for young people, but then they will wear their pretty
frocks and see strange faces. We are such quiet people, Trevithick,
that even Vandaleur's big dinner and reception, which comes off
regularly whenever there is a general election in sight"--Mr.
Graydon broke off to laugh and rub his hands--"is an event for us.
But we are forgetting our Tacitus, my boy. Let us get back to the
old fellow."

At that moment there was the sound of a horn, and, with the shout of
a boy, Mr. Graydon was up.

"Come along, Trevithick," he cried, rushing away, hatless and
coatless. "We shall get a glimpse of them. What a day for a scent!
They are sure to find at Larry's Spinney."

His words came back to his pupil, who was getting under weigh more
leisurely.

"Dear old boy!" he muttered to himself. "It's not surprising my
father never forgot him. I wonder why the mater regards him with so
deadly a hatred, though?"

At lunch Mr. Graydon announced that Sir Anthony was going home for
Christmas. There was a shrill expostulation from Sylvia, and even a
mild protest from Mary, but Pamela said nothing. Perhaps it was not
news to Pamela.

"You will not be here for the skating," said Sylvia aggrievedly;
"that is, if there's going to be any. And I've promised them at
the Rectory that you'd recite at their penny reading and give away
the presents at the Christmas-tree, besides managing the magic
lantern. And, oh!"--the magnitude of the misfortune coming full upon
her--"you're not surely going to miss the Vandaleur dinner?"

"No, Miss Sylvia, I shall be here for it certainly. I wouldn't
miss it for anything; but I object to your engagements for me with
the Rectory people. I'd rather be shot than recite, and--the other
things are beyond me," laughing.

"Never mind, then," said the young lady airily. "Lord Glengall will
do just as well. I shall like to see him distributing the articles.
Besides, he will please the people better than a 'baronite,' and be
of the rale ould blood, too."

"Sylvia!" said her father, with a rebuke in his voice.

"Never mind, papa dear. Sir Anthony understands all about his being
only a 'baronite.' Bridget told him the other day that if the master
had his rights 'tisn't teaching a 'Sir' he'd be."

"So she did," said Sir Anthony.

Mr. Graydon laughed.

"Ah, well, my boy! you mustn't tell your mother what odd people
you've found among the wild Irish--will you?"

"She wouldn't understand a bit, but I'll tell her what dear friends
I have found and made at Carrickmoyle."

He blushed again, and Mr. Graydon thought how well his modesty
became him.

"Ah, well!" he said, "I suppose we must make up our minds to spend
Christmas without you. What are you going to do this afternoon?"

"I'm going to Maher's to see the mare, and put her through her
paces. I'd like to have her stabled here as soon as possible. If
she's ready, she can come at once."

"To be sure. There's stabling for twenty horses here, though the
stalls are bare--worse luck! But we won't let Sheila starve. Shall
we, girls? I'll go bail these children will make a fine pet of her,
Trevithick."

"I shall be all the fonder of her, sir, though I'm well pleased with
her at present."

"She's a sweet little bit of horseflesh," assented Mr. Graydon. "I
think I shall come with you, if you don't object to my company. I've
a bit of business with Johnny myself."

When they returned in time for the afternoon cup of tea, they found
an old yellow barouche standing before the door.

"Ah, Miss Spencer is here," said Mr. Graydon. "She's rather an
oddity, my boy, so prepare to meet one."

"I heard her story from Miss Pamela. It is very sad."

"When I was a boy of thirteen or fourteen I remember her a
brilliantly lovely young woman. That was before that scoundrel came
in her way."

When they entered the drawing-room Miss Spencer was sitting with her
back to them, almost hidden in a deep armchair. The three girls were
sitting or standing about her, all evidently much interested.

"Here is papa, and our guest with him, Miss Spencer," said Mary.

The little old woman came out of her chair with a sudden darting
movement like that of a bird. Her gaze went from Mr. Graydon to the
younger man.

"Oh!" she cried. "Whom did you say?"

She looked at the stranger for a moment with an agony of expectation
in her yet bright eyes, while she fumbled nervously for the
long-handled glasses at her side. When she had found them she peered
at him through them; then dropped them, the expression of her face
changing to indifference.

"I beg your pardon, sir," she said. "I am expecting a friend, and
for a moment I thought you were he."

"How do you do, Miss Spencer?" broke in Mr. Graydon. "I see you have
Stella under the barouche again. I'm glad she has recovered from her
lameness."

"The foot has come all right, thank you," said Miss Spencer,
assuming quite an ordinary manner. "You weren't hunting to-day?"

"No; I must wait till Glengall sets up his stables."

"Ah, Glengall is coming home soon?"

"He expects to reach Plymouth on the eighteenth. He will be at home
for Christmas."

"There'll be nothing in order for him in that old barrack of his."

"He'll stay here while he's getting things straight. He is going
to make a grand place of Glengall. He has plenty of money, and the
heart to spend it, and the practical wit to direct it."

"What will he do with it then? He has neither chick nor child."

"There is always time, Miss Spencer."

The slightly mad, brooding look came back to the little wizened
white face.

"Yes, of course, there is time," she said, dreamily. "I remember
someone--who was it?--who knew Glengall when she was a young woman
and he was a little boy. Glengall can't be old, of course, and any
day people may return--mayn't they?"

"Why, to be sure they may. Glengall did, though he was twenty years
out of the reach of civilisation."

"Oh, I wasn't thinking of Glengall. It was of someone much younger,
someone about the age of that young gentleman there."

Trevithick stood in the background and watched her with honest eyes
of wonder and pity. She was smoothing the pink silk of her gown,
while her eyes watched the fire as if she saw something very happy
in it. Her skin was waxen white, and her features sharpened, but the
brilliant eyes kept their beauty, and her little old hands, covered
with rings, were delicately shaped. Her hair was half-white through
the original black, and very oddly her pink bonnet, with its wreath
of roses inside, sat on the streaked hair and over the white face.
She had thrown off a large sable cloak on to the back of her chair.

[Illustration: Trevithick watched her with wonder and pity.]

Sylvia now broke in on Miss Spencer's half-mad mood. She touched one
of the hands tenderly. Trevithick, as he noticed it, thought that
it was the first time he had seen Sylvia's face really soft; and
wonderfully the new expression completed the girl's beauty. So she
will look, he thought, some day, when she is in love, like--like
Pamela. But Pamela's serious face was hidden from him now with a
fire-screen she held in her hand. He had noticed of late that she
seldom looked at him, nor was he displeased. He knew the secret she
was afraid to reveal.

"We are all going to the Vandaleur affair, Miss Spencer," Sylvia
was saying. "It will be on the thirtieth. There are to be great
doings--acres of marquees for the diners, and the winter garden lit
by electricity, and I don't know what besides."

Miss Spencer came back to every-day life with a start.

"To the Vandaleur affair, child! Why, who is going to take you?"

"Papa, of course. He loves a little outing, though he won't admit
it. He says he'd rather stay at home and have a quiet night's work
at his book, and get some hot tea ready for us by the time we come
home."

"Why shouldn't I take you?" said the old lady. "I'm hardly old
enough for a chaperon, of course, still I've the carriage, and
I'd enjoy the function. I haven't been at one since the time Tom
Charteris was master of the hounds. How long ago is that?"

Mr. Graydon, to whom she spoke, answered her without looking at her.

"A goodish few years ago."

"It can't be," said the old lady; "not more than four or five at the
outside. I wore white satin and pearls. That reminds me: what are
you going to wear, minx?"

This to Sylvia, at the same time softly pulling her ear.

"We've got pattern-books of silk stuffs from Dublin. They're
dirt-cheap; but the dressmaking will be the bother. However, I
daresay we'll manage. Mrs. Collins' Nancy, who is a lady's-maid, is
expected home for Christmas. She'll cut the frocks out, and we'll
sew them ourselves. She'll know the fashions."

[Illustration: "I must go, to unravel a tangled skein."]

"Stuff and nonsense, child! Your first public appearance, too."

"It's Pam's also. But you'll see we'll look very nice. I shouldn't
be surprised if the prince fell in love with me."

"What prince? Oh, I see, Cinderella's. But Cinderella went
magnificently to her evening party--not in cheap and nasty stuffs
cobbled up anyhow."

"The prince wouldn't see that. He'd be disconsolate when I
disappeared at twelve o'clock, and he'd send all over the country to
find the fit of my glass slipper, and Molly and Pam would cry tears
of rage because it wouldn't even fit on their toes."

"You're not ball-going, minx."

"It will be just as good. There'll be a beautiful dinner, and
everyone in the county there, and afterwards there will be acres of
beautiful things to see. It is a thousand pities Mr. Vandaleur is an
absentee."

"If he wasn't, he wouldn't have to remind you of his existence now,"
said the old lady cynically. "But am I to be chaperon?"

"Well, I'll tell you what, Miss Spencer," said Mr. Graydon. "If
you'd take charge of these children, I'd be greatly obliged to
you. The fact is that I've to attend a sort of unofficial meeting
of Vandaleur's supporters in the afternoon, and he has hospitably
offered me a bed. So I thought I'd take my bag over and dress there
after the meeting."

"And stay all night? I knew it," cried Sylvia. "Papa pretended it
was such a bother, and all the time he was longing to be in for
every bit of it. Only he didn't know what to do with us."

Mr. Graydon laughed.

"Maybe you wouldn't like it yourself. I shall be button-holed by
Musgrave and Frost and Clitheroe, and every man in the county who
thinks he has a head for politics and wants a patient listener."

"And you will go at it hammer and tongs with the best of them, and
forget you have daughters. I don't suppose you'll even remember at
dinner-time to see whether anyone is asking us if we've an appetite."

"The young fellows will do that. Every boy in the county will be
there, including the 300th from Dangan Barracks."

"I daresay," said Sylvia: "you're always ready to shift your
responsibilities. Never mind, Miss Spencer; I daresay we shall be
able to find someone who will look after us, if it's only a waiter."

"Oh, indeed, you'll find someone to befriend you, never fear. And so
will Pam. And so shall I. But what about Molly?"

"Never mind me, Miss Spencer," said Mary. "It would never do to have
you chaperoning three girls, and I shouldn't enjoy it a bit. I shall
stay up and have tea for you after your cold drive."

"I don't know what girls are coming to," said Miss Spencer; "I
shouldn't like to have to stay at home myself."

"We don't mind Molly," cried her sisters; "she really likes to stay
at home and write her perpetual letters."

"I shouldn't mind having the three of you," went on Miss Spencer;
"we'd pass for four sisters."

"We should never look as lovely as you in that white satin and
pearls," said Sylvia, fondly.

"I was much admired," said Miss Spencer, complacently. "But now I
must be going. I've letters to write before dinner: I don't want to
lose my beauty-sleep sitting up to write them."

When Sir Anthony came into the drawing-room before dinner, he found
only Pamela stretching her hands to the wood fire in the low grate.

The lover stooped down and kissed them.

"Have you been out?" he asked in a whisper.

"Only to the stables with Sylvia. Your Sheila has come. She is a
dear thing."

"You like her, Pam?"

"Who could help it? She looks so wild and shy, and she is so gentle
at the same time."

"Do you like her because she is mine, Pam? Do you, just a little
because of that? Say you do, Pam."

"Just a little," whispered Pam.

"Why, if you like, she shall be yours, when--when everything has
come right. I think she would carry a lady beautifully. What do you
say, Pam? Would you like her, _then_?"

"Yes," said Pamela, with her eyes very bright.

"You didn't seem to mind my going away at Christmas, Pam. You were
the only one who didn't protest."

"I know you wouldn't go if you could help it."

"Wise little woman. I must go, darling--to unravel a tangled skein.
Afterwards it will be paradise, Pam. I will come back as soon--as
soon as ever I can. I shall be in a fury of impatience till I come
back."

"And I," said Pam, lifting her eyes to her lover, and flooding him
with their light.

"Sweetheart! you were a coquette when I knew you first, Pam. Now you
don't try me as many girls try their lovers."

"I have only love for you now. Ah! what should I do if you did not
come back?"

"I will come back, 'though 'twere ten thousand mile.' I shall be
here for your great function. Do you think I would have you go
without me?"

"I shouldn't care for it without you."

"There will be other men there, Pamela, to see how beautiful you
are. I must be there to guard my own."

"There is no need for that."

"I believe you, my love, you are as much mine as if you were my
wife. And I am as much yours."

"Love can only mean that."

"Ah, my darling! how sweet you are! You wouldn't care for the
admiration of other men, Pam?"

"Only for one."

"It is hard to be wise, Pam, when I am with you. You are too sweet.
It is fortunate I am going."

"When you come back it will be different."

"Yes; you will have to make up to me for my prudence all these
months. I have been good, Pam; I have never asked you for a kiss."

"Yes, you have been good."

"And you, you are a girl in ten thousand. You have never asked me
what stood between us--a shadowy barrier, Pam, but even that must go
before I claim you, my queen. When I come back, Pam! Ah, when I come
back!"

"Here is Molly," said Pam, in a low voice, as her sister entered the
room.

  END OF CHAPTER SIX.




[Illustration: GREAT ANNIVERSARIES]

GREAT ANNIVERSARIES

_IN DECEMBER._

By the Rev. A. R. Buckland, M.A., Morning Preacher at the Foundling
Hospital.


December is a month of great names. On December 21st, 1117,
according to some authorities, there was born, in a house that stood
on the site of the Mercers' Chapel in Cheapside, Thomas à Becket.
Whether men side with Church or State, and are for or against
Becket, they will hardly deny him the right to be remembered as an
outstanding figure in our history. On the last day of the month died
another great Englishman; like Becket, an Oxford man, and a potent
factor in the religious development of our nation. On December 31st
there passed away at Lutterworth John Wycliffe. His bones, thirteen
years after burial, were dragged from their resting-place and cast
into the River Swift. Thomas Fuller turns that shameful act of
ecclesiastical malice to good use. "Thus," he says, "this brook did
convey his ashes into the Avon, the Avon into the Severn, the Severn
into the narrow sea, and this into the wide ocean. And so the ashes
of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which is now dispersed
all the world over." On the 13th of the month, many generations
later, there came into the world Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, an
ecclesiastic of still another type. No modern dean ever identified
himself with his cathedral as Stanley did with Westminster Abbey.
Its national character was always present to his mind. His simple
piety, his good works, his sympathy with Nonconformists, all helped
to make the Dean himself rather a national possession than merely an
ecclesiastic. He died in 1881.

[Illustration: JOHN WYCLIFFE.

(_From the Portrait at King's College._)]

We have had the Church, let us come to the State. It is a rich
month that claims the birth both of William Ewart Gladstone
(December 29th) and of his great rival, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of
Beaconsfield (December 20th). They began their careers under very
different auspices. Eton and Oxford prepared the one for immediate
entry, under favouring circumstances, into Parliamentary life. The
other was educated privately, designed for the law, and first caught
the public eye as an author when he burst upon the world with the
novel, "Vivian Grey." Mr. Gladstone survived his rival seventeen
years.

[Illustration: DEAN STANLEY.

(_Photo: The London Stereoscopic Co._)]

There died on December 14th one whom the British nation can only
number amongst its own worthies by adoption. The death of the Prince
Consort in the prime of life, and just when his very considerable
powers and great devotion were beginning to be understood by those
who at first regarded him with doubt because he was a foreigner,
plunged our Queen into sorrow which long darkened the life of the
Court and was felt by the whole nation. The pure, unblemished life
of the Prince Consort, his sincere desire to advance the welfare of
the people, his ready promotion of the arts and sciences, as well
as his tender devotion to the Queen, have long been understood and
valued by the nation which he served.

[Illustration: JOHN MILTON.

(_From the Miniature by Samuel Cooper._)]

To come to other fields: there was born in London on December 9th,
1608, John Milton. Educated at Cambridge, he early gave free play to
the powers which in their issue have made his name familiar wherever
the English language is spoken. Few remember him as a writer of
polemical treatises on affairs of the State and the Church, or even
as Latin Secretary to Cromwell; but he was an old man and blind when
he gave the world "Paradise Lost."

On the 12th there died Robert Browning, a poet who spoke to his
age as few men have ever done, and spoke of God and the soul, of
the here and the hereafter, with a clearness of faith which was as
distinct as the robust manliness of his character.

[Illustration: SIR CHRISTOPHER WREN

(_From the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller._)]

December 28th is given as the date upon which Westminster Abbey was
consecrated in 1065; and on December 2nd that other minster, St.
Paul's Cathedral, was opened in 1697. Legend says that the same
King Sebert who founded the original St. Paul's also founded the
Abbey at Westminster, whilst another story invokes the aid of King
Offa. There is, however, clear testimony to the establishment of
a Benedictine abbey at Westminster in the time of Edgar; that is
antiquity respectable enough to satisfy most of us. A cathedral
on this site is mentioned by the Venerable Bede as early as 604;
but the actual fabric of St. Paul's has, according to Mr. Loftie,
undergone greater vicissitudes than that of any other cathedral in
England. The present St. Paul's was begun in 1675 and finished in
1710. Its cost was £736,752. Sir Christopher Wren, its architect,
received for his services £200 a year. What were then called "the
new ball and cross" on the cathedral were completed in this same
month in 1821.

[Illustration: ROBERT BROWNING.

(_Photo: Cameron and Smith, Mortimer Street, W._)]

An old calendar assures me that on the 15th of this month, in the
year 1802, "societies for abolishing the common method of sweeping
chimneys" were instituted.

On the 20th of this month, in the year 1814, Samuel Marsden landed
in New Zealand--a missionary anniversary worth recalling.

[Illustration: W. E. GLADSTONE

Photo: Samuel Walker.

THE EARL of BEACONSFIELD.

Photo: Hughes-Mullins, Ryde. I.W.

TWO EMINENT STATESMEN BORN IN DECEMBER.]




[Illustration: The Limits of Human Genius]

The Limits of Human Genius

_Pulpit at Gloucester Cathedral._

A Sermon Preached by the Very Rev. H. Donald M. Spence, D.D., Dean
of Gloucester, at the Opening Service of the September (1898)
Meeting of the Three-Choirs Festival in Gloucester Cathedral.

     "As for Wisdom, what she is, and how she came up, I will tell
       you, and will not hide mysteries from you, but will seek her
       out from the beginning of her nativity, and bring the knowledge
       of her into Light, and will not pass over Truth."


The surroundings of a custodian of a mediæval cathedral, beautiful
though they are, at the same time are unutterably pathetic. They
tell him, do the pages of the old solemn Book of Stone he is never
weary of turning over and of pondering upon, that the genius of
man has its limits, which it may never pass; that the story of
human progress to higher and ever higher levels is often a delusive
one; that in past ages his forefathers were perhaps as noble and
chivalrous--aye, nobler, more chivalrous than the men of his own
generation--that their imagination was more brilliant and their
hands more cunning; that if in some respects progress is visible, in
others the movement is retrograde.

Again, a great mediæval cathedral like our own glorious Gloucester,
inimitable in its fadeless beauty and matchless strength, surely
deals a very heavy blow to human pride, and it teaches humility to
the most competent and ablest of our number, for it is a conception
belonging to a past age. A great gathering, however, like the
present, numbering some six or seven thousand persons, is for varied
reasons an inspiring one and bids us be trustful--even hopeful.

Dwell we a brief while first on our surroundings. Of all works
devised by human ingenuity and carried on by human skill, the
triumphs of architecture are among the most enduring, afford the
most genuine and purest delight to the greater number of men and
women, are confessedly the most attractive, perhaps the most
instructive, as they are among the most enduring of human creations.
The glories of Luxor and Karnak, which for several thousand years
have been mirrored in the grey-green Nile; the white and gleaming
shrines of Athens the bright and happy, the mighty ruins of Eternal
Rome, are splendid instances.

But perhaps the conspicuous examples of this architecture, the
most loved of human arts and crafts, are, after all, the mediæval
cathedrals. The first object of interest for the modern traveller in
search of health or rest is a cathedral. All sorts and conditions
of men find delight in its contemplation. The delight, of course,
is varied, but the strange and witching beauty appeals to them all.
This appeal to the higher and devotional side of our nature speaks
to every soul, to the unlearned as to the learned, to the mill-hand
as to the scholar. The wanderer from the New World beyond the seas
at once seeks them out, conscious that in them he will find a
beauty and a joy such as he will never see or feel outside their
charmed walls.

I have said that to the custodian of such a cathedral the
surroundings are, if not sad, at least pathetic, for these
magnificent and loved creations of human genius belong to a somewhat
remote past, and, as far as these exquisite buildings are concerned,
save for purposes of necessary repair--repair simply to arrest the
ravages of time--for nearly four hundred years the clink of trowel
and pickaxe has been hushed.

It is scarcely an exaggerated statement which speaks of
architecture, in its noblest sense, as a lost art. Very significant
are the words of one of the greatest of modern architects, who,
after dwelling on the decadence of his loved art, tells us how "It
is a somewhat saddening reflection--but there is no escaping from
the conclusion--that the art which created the glorious abbeys and
minsters, the beautiful parish churches so plentifully dotted over
our country--abbeys, minsters, and churches which the churchmen of
the second half of the nineteenth century so reverently and wisely
restore and seek to copy stone by stone, arch by arch, window by
window, down to the smallest bit of ornament--is a lost art! Men
have come sorrowfully to see that mediæval architecture is the
last link--perhaps the most beautiful as well as the last link--of
that long chain of architectural styles, 'commencing in far-back
ages in Egypt and passing on in continuous course through Assyria,
Persia, Greece, Rome, and Byzantium, and thence taken up by the
infant nations of modern Europe, and by them prolonged through
successive ages of continuous progress till it terminated in the
beautiful thirteenth-and fourteenth-century Gothic, and has never
since produced a link of its own.... Alas! it is the last link
of that mighty chain which had stretched unbroken through nearly
four thousand years--the glorious termination of the history of
original and genuine architecture.'" Well may men love it and seek
to preserve the examples they possess of it, and aim at copying it
as well as they can. These remarkable and melancholy words above
quoted were deliberately spoken by Sir Gilbert Scott, R.A., LL.D.,
in his first lecture on Mediæval Architecture delivered at the Royal
Academy some years ago.

So much for my note of sadness. Now let me strike a different chord.

Such a gathering as the present, I repeat, is an inspiring one, for
it tells me that if one great art dies, He who loves us and has
redeemed us at so great a price, gives His children something in its
place. Now it is strange that amidst all the gorgeous and striking
ceremonial of the mediæval services, with their wealth of colour
and ornament, with all their touching and elaborate symbolism,
music, as it is now understood, was unknown and comparatively
neglected. In the noblest cathedral of the Middle Ages, in the
stateliest Benedictine or Cistercian abbey, while the eye was filled
with sights of solemnity and beauty, each sight containing its
special and peculiar teaching, the ear was comparatively uncared
for. Strangely monotonous and even harsh would chaunt and psalm
and hymn, as rendered in the mighty abbeys of Westminster, Durham,
or Gloucester in the days of the great Plantagenets, of the White
Rose or Red Rose kings, sound to the musically trained ears of the
worshippers of the second half of the nineteenth century. Indeed,
music as a great science was unknown in pre-Reformation times. The
most complete anthem-book may be searched through by the curious
scholar, but scarcely a musical composer of any note will be found
in these collections of a date earlier than the reign of Queen
Elizabeth. It would seem as though, when architecture ceased in the
sixteenth century to be a living craft, a new art was discovered and
worked at by men.

A new art! I say these words, strange to some, with emphasis.
One who has indeed a right to speak of music[1] thus voices my
assertion. While telling us that certain grand forms of music loom
out of the darkness of the earlier centuries of our era, the famous
musician to whom I refer adds that little of what we understand of
music existed before the later years of the fifteenth century. It
was no mere renaissance, for that which had never been born could
not be born again.

[1] Professor Hullah, in his "Lectures on the History of Modern
Music," delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain,
published 1884. See, too, Professor Hullah's Royal Institution
Lecture on the Transition Period of Musical History (1876).

In case some should think that too strong expressions are here
used, it may be well to quote some of Professor Hullah's own
words, which he used in the above-mentioned lecture at the Royal
Institution:--"Music is a new art.... What we now call music ...
what answers to our definition of music, has come into being only
within comparatively few years; almost within the memory of men
living." "I should say that in the scholastic music there was no
art, and in the popular music no science; whence it is that the
former has ceased to please, and the latter has for the most part
perished utterly."

It was a new art which charmed and delighted men as they listened to
the magic of the sounds evoked by the majesty of the compositions
of Palestrina, or by the sweetness of the music of Marenzio. It is
true, as I said, that certain grand forms of music loom out of the
darkness of the remote past--shadowy forms--and the rare composers
and writers of the music of the past are, as far as music is
concerned, but the shadow of names now. I allude, as famous examples
of these shadows of names, to names such as Gregory and Isidore,
Hucbald and the eleventh-century _maestro_, Guido Aretino.

With extraordinary rapidity developed the new craft. To give here
some familiar landmarks--

Henry VIII. was reigning before Josquin Deprès, whom all musicians
revere as one of the earliest, certainly the most renowned, of the
pioneers of modern music, became generally known in Europe. Josquin
Deprès was born somewhere about the year 1466, dying about 1515,
some ten or fifteen years before Palestrina was born. Luther said of
him, "Other musicians do what they can with notes; Josquin does what
he likes with them." The Abbate Baini alludes to him as "the idol of
Europe"; and again writes, "Nothing is beautiful unless it be the
work of Josquin."

The famous Roman School of music only dates from 1540. The oratorio,
even in its more simple forms, made its appearance some seventy
years later.

Not until the last years of our Queen Elizabeth were the names of
Palestrina and Marenzio, those great early composers, conspicuous,
and the Queen so loved of Englishmen had long fallen asleep before
Carissimi, the earliest master of the sacred cantata in its many
forms, gave his mighty impulse to the new-born art; while the works
of his world-famed pupil Scarlatti, and of our own English Purcell,
belong to the art-records of the days of William and Mary and Queen
Anne. See how the whole of the marvellous story of music--as we
understand music--belongs to quite recent days!

All through the eighteenth century, when the Georges reigned,
architecture slept its well-nigh dreamless sleep. But the new art of
music grew with each succeeding year, while the men whose names will
never die lived and wrote.

It was this eighteenth century which saw a Beethoven, a Handel, a
Bach, a Haydn, and a Mozart. As masters of the new-born craft none
can be conceived greater.

The century now closing boasts, however, a long line of true
followers and worthy disciples of those great ones, men whose names
are household words in every European city.

But my brief record, necessarily dry and bald, of a momentous
change in the teaching of the world would be incomplete without one
word on the glorious instrument--the voice, so to speak--of these
masters of a new art, the organ. The first organ known in Western
Europe traditionally was sent to Pepin in France by the Emperor of
Constantinople in 759, but Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne, in his poem
on Virginity, some half a century earlier, apparently describes
what appears to have been the organ. Elphege, Abbot of Winchester
in the tenth century, is said to have caused a very large organ to
be constructed; but, with this solitary exception, all the mediæval
organs seem to have been small and comparatively unimportant
instruments. The oldest organ-cases preserved do not date back
further than the last years of the fifteenth century, and these by
the side of modern organs are insignificant in size. Viollet le Duc,
in his great work, gives us a picture of the Perpignan organ, one of
the earliest (early in the sixteenth century). From this date the
size rapidly increased.

In the "Rites of Durham," where a great mediæval church is described
at the period of the Dissolution (1530-40), there were three organs
in use in the abbey church, the principal one being only used at
"principall Feasts," the pipes being "very faire and partly gilded."
"Only two organs in England," says the "Rites," "of the same
makinge, one in Yorke and another in Paules."

[Illustration: LISTENERS AT THE THREE-CHOIR FESTIVAL.]

The most magnificent organ-case in Europe is the one in St.
Janskirk at Bois le Duc, and, like the vast majority of the great
organ-cases, is Renaissance in style. Viollet le Duc sums up the
question in the following sentence:--

"It does not appear that great organs were in use before the
fifteenth century, and it was only towards the close of the
fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries that the idea of
building organs of dimensions hitherto unknown was first conceived."

The organ, as we now know it, was born among us at the same date
when architecture died. Like the music of the Middle Ages, in the
days when these vast and peerless buildings arose, it is true the
organ was not unknown; but, like mediæval music, it was a small,
poor thing compared with the stupendous instrument we know and love.
There was no great organ before the last years of the fifteenth
century, when the Tudors reigned. The sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries witnessed its development, and acknowledged its surpassing
grandeur, and recognised its fitness as one of the chief handmaids
of the new great art.

Now the secret of the men who built this lordly abbey is lost; never
again will such a triumph of, alas! a dead art arise to charm and
to delight, to instruct and inspire the children of men. But we
may still preserve and reverently use this rare and noble legacy
of a vanished age as a shrine and a peerless teaching-home--a
prayer-home, in which are taught the great evangelical truths
by which Christian men live and breathe and have their being,
the saving knowledge of the work of the Precious Blood, the glad
Redemption-story, the story loved of men; the story which never
ages, never palls, but which, like dew, descends on each succeeding
generation of believers, and gives them new stores of faith and hope
and love. This--these things--we try to do, and not without success,
for as God's bright glory-cloud once brooded over the sacred
desert-tent and the holy Jerusalem Temple, so now upon our beloved
and ancient cathedral, with its almost countless services of praise
and prayer and teaching, God's blessing surely rests.

"It sleeps," does our cathedral, as one has lately said in words
beautiful as true--"it sleeps with its splendid dreams upon its
lifted face." But it has, too, its many wakeful working hours. Not
the least memorable of these will strike this week, when the charmed
strains of Handel and Haydn, Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven, and
of the great Englishmen, Gibbons and Boyce and Walmisley and Wesley,
and last, but not least, of Hubert Parry, peal through these fretted
vaults, "lingering and wandering on" among these wondrous chambers
of inspired imagery; while the almost prophetic words of that truest
English song-man Wordsworth become history:--

    "Give all thou canst; high heaven rejects the lore
     Of nicely calculated less or more;
     So deem'd the man who fashion'd for the sense
     These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof
     Self-poised, and scoop'd into ten thousand cells,
     Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
     Lingering and wandering on as loth to die--
     Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
     That they were born for immortality."

[Illustration: Decorative]




[Illustration: A Hero in Disguise]

A HERO IN DISGUISE

A Complete Story. By M. Westrup.


The girl was little, slender, insignificant--only her love made her
heroic. The man was big, broad, one to be noticed in a crowd, and
his love made him as helpless as a little child.

They stood opposite each other in the poor, shabby little room. His
eyes devoured her face wildly, incredulously, but her eyes were
fixed on a great hole in the faded carpet.

Her mind was chaotic, for with his eager words of love rang others,
bewildering her. Side by side with his passionate outpouring of his
love for her, his longing to have her for his own, to live for her
and work for her, were other words--words of ambition and great
aspirations, words of intending travel into far-away countries, of
hardships and discomforts to be borne for the sake of the book that
was to be written--the book that was to bring fame and satisfaction
to the writer of it.

And these words rang with a deep note of earnestness and strength,
and overpowered those eager, present tones that were pleading to her
so wildly.

"I called you Kathleen Mavourneen last night, you remember, and you
smiled and blushed!" he protested, roughly. "Why did you do it?
Kathleen, you _do_ love me, you do! Why don't you speak to me? I
tell you, I have seen it in your eyes. Why do you deny it now?"

She shook her head, and her heart cried in agony, "How long? How
long?"

"Won't you try, then?" with a humbleness that was not natural to
him. "Oh, Kitty, little Kitty, I cannot live without you!"

He held out his arms to her despairingly.

"I have a singing lesson to give at one o'clock," she said.

His arms fell to his sides. The sun streamed in on to the pretty,
pale, downbent face of the girl, and on to the white, haggard face
of the man who stood opposite.

There were no shadows in the little room--it was all glare and
shabbiness.

"I will go," he said, and then his eyes caught fire; "but you are
a flirt! Do you hear, a paltry, heartless flirt! You have led me
on--played with me. You have made your eyes soft, your lips sweet,
to amuse yourself at my expense! How do you do it?" with a little
cynical laugh. "It's really clever--of its kind--you know----"

He moved towards the door.

"I beg your pardon," he said icily. "I should not have spoken so to
a woman. Good-bye."

"You will begin your travels now?" she said.

He laughed.

"Why keep up the pretence?" he said; "it's rather late now to
pretend any interest in my life."

She was silent.

At the door he paused.

He was a proud man, and he had an iron will.

But his love made him helpless and weak as a little child.

"Kathleen," he breathed, "you are sure?"

A moment she stood still and rigid as a statue.

"Little one, I love you so----" His voice was soft and caressing;
but her love made her heroic. She raised her head. "I am sure," she
said steadily.

       *       *       *       *       *

The girl sat in a corner of the warm, gorgeous drawing-room, and
wished vaguely that people would not nod and stare at her so
energetically. She was used to it now, and tired of it.

She had never liked it, but fame brings notoriety in its train, and
notoriety brings nods and whispers and stares.

She was dressed beautifully. She had always liked pretty things, and
now she could have as many as she wanted.

The man stood over in a doorway and watched her with cynical eyes.

He had not seen her for five years, and as he stood there another
man lounged up and spoke to him.

"Looking at _la belle Philomèle_?" he said; "she's quite the rage,
you know. Ever heard her sing? You're only just back from the wilds,
aren't you? Oh, well, of course you'll go to St. James's Hall
to-morrow? She's going to sing, you know. Her voice is splendid. I
never go to hear her myself--makes me feel I'm a miserable sinner
somehow--does, 'pon my word. I've heard her twice, and then I
dropped it. Don't like feeling small, you know."

He lounged away again, and the man with the cynical eyes still
watched her.

Her head was turned away from him--only a soft, fair cheek and
little ear nestling in a soft mass of hair, a white throat, and a
lot of pale chiffon and silk, could he see. And suddenly the cheek
and even neck were flooded with a red blush, and then they looked
whiter than before. He wondered, and smiled bitterly as he did so.

And the girl's eyes remained fixed, eager, fascinated, on the long
looking-glass before her.

But she was not looking at herself.

Afterwards he sought her.

"You were wise," he said mockingly, and her eyes grew dark with pain.

He took the seat beside her and played with the costly fan he had
picked up.

[Illustration: "You were wise," he said, mockingly.]

"I must congratulate you," he said indifferently. "This"--with
a comprehensive wave towards her dress and the diamonds at her
throat--"is better than the old days."

"Yes."

"But perhaps you have forgotten so long as--what is it?--ten--no,
five years ago?"

"No."

He furled and unfurled the fan in silence, and wondered who had
given her the Parma violets in her hair.

"Your--book?" she said timidly.

He stared at her blankly.

She reddened slowly.

"You--you--were going to--to travel, and write about it--strange
places----" she faltered.

"Oh, ah! yes, I believe I was--five years ago."

Her face was white again now.

"You _have_ travelled?" she ventured at last.

"Oh, yes! I've done nothing else for five years. I've shot tigers,
bears--I've lived with Chinamen and negroes--chummed with cannibals
once--oh!"--with a laugh--"I've had a fine time!"

Her eyes were wistful.

Her hostess brought up a man to be introduced, and when she turned
again, the chair was empty.

She did not see him again for two weeks.

There was an added pathos in the beautiful voice.

_La belle Philomèle_ brought tears to many thousands of eyes, but
her own were dry and restless. It was dawning on her that she had
made a mistake--five years ago.

"Seen Hugh Hawksleigh?" she heard one man say to another. "Never
been so disappointed in a chap in my life. Years ago he promised
great things. Those articles of his on 'Foreign Ways and Doings'
made quite a sensation, you know. And there was some talk of wild
travels and a book that was going to be _the_ book of the day. The
travels are all right, but where's the book?"

"The usual thing--a woman," drawled the other. "Didn't you know?
Some pretty coquette--the usual game--but the cost was heavier than
usual--to him. It knocked it out of him, you know. I never saw a
fellow so hard hit. That was five years ago, and he's never written
a line since. Poor fellow!"

The knowledge that she had made a mistake five years ago was growing
plainer to her.

At the end of the fortnight she met him and asked him to come and
see her.

He smiled, and did not come.

Her eyes grew too big for the small, sad face.

She met him again, and asked him why he had not come.

He looked down into the sweet, true eyes, and his love weakened his
will again.

He promised he would come. He came, and stayed five minutes. He
looked at her sternly as he greeted her.

"Why do you want me?" he said, and watched the colour come and go in
her cheeks with pitiless eyes.

"We--used--to be--friends," she whispered.

He laughed.

"Never! I never felt friendship for you," he said, "nor you for
me. You forget. Five years is a long time, but I have a retentive
memory. I forget nothing."

"Nor I," she murmured.

"No? Then why do you ask me to come and see you?"

She did not answer.

He looked round the pretty shaded room.

He laughed again.

"There is a difference," he said, "in you too."

She looked up quickly.

"I am the same," she said, knowing her own heart.

"Are you?" His eyes grew stormy. "Listen," he said, in a low, tense
voice: "I am five years wiser than I was--then. I will not be a tool
again. You have ruined my life--doesn't that content you? I would
have staked my life on your goodness and purity--once. I dare not
believe in any woman since you, with your angel's eyes, are false.
I was full of ambition and hope once; you killed both. I tried to
write--after. I could not. I shall never do anything now--never be
anything. I despise myself, and it's not a nice feeling to live
with. It makes men desperate. I love you still. Do you understand? I
have loved you all the time, and I loathe myself for it." His voice
changed. "You may triumph," he said, "but now you understand--I will
not come again."

She stretched out her arms after him, but he was gone. And she knew
now quite clearly that she had made a mistake five years ago.

For three weeks and a half she did not see him.

Then she saw him when he thought he was alone.

She studied his face with eyes that ached at what they saw. Then she
went forward and touched him gently on his arm.

"Well?" he said.

"Will you come," she said in a low voice, "to see me----"

"Thanks, no."

His eyes rested bitterly on her rich gown.

It came across him again how wise she had been. Tied to him, she
could not have been as she was now.

"I have something I must say to you," she said tremulously; "will
you come--just this once?"

He looked down into the soft eyes with the beautiful light in them.

"I would rather not," he said gently.

The weariness in his eyes brought a sob to her throat.

"Ah, do!" she entreated; "I will never ask you again."

He looked at her with searching incredulity.

Then he turned away.

Just so had she looked five years ago.

She laid a small, despairing hand on his.

The iciness of it went to his heart.

"I will come," he said gently, and went away.

       *       *       *       *       *

When he came, he wondered at the agitation in her small white face.

Her eyes were burning.

He waited silently.

She twisted her hands restlessly together, and he saw that she was
trembling.

He drew a chair forward.

"Won't you sit down?" he said.

She sat down in a nest of softest cushions.

"I--I----" she began, and put up her hand to her throat, "I want
to--to--to explain."

His face darkened.

She got up restlessly and faced him.

He thought of that time when they had faced each other before--in
the shabby, glaring little room--and his face hardened.

"When you----" she began; "I thought it was for you--I had heard you
say----"

"Are you going back five years?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Then would you mind _not_?" he said. "There can be no good in it,
and to me at least it is not a pleasant subject."

"I must!" she burst out. "Oh! cannot you help me? It is so hard!"

She held out her hands pathetically.

A deep colour came into his tanned face, and he stood still, looking
at her strangely.

"I think I will go," he said; "there is no use in prolonging this."

"Do you--love--me still?" she cried suddenly.

He turned on her in a white passion of anger.

"Not content yet?" he breathed. "What are you made of? Do you
want me to show you all my degradation? Why? Oh, Kitty, Kitty, be
merciful! Be true to those eyes of yours----"

He stopped abruptly and moved over to the door.

"Hugh, I love you!"

It was the veriest whisper, but it stayed his steps, and brought a
great light leaping to his eyes.

The light died down.

"It is too late!" he said, and turned away.

"Hugh, listen--I loved you always--five years ago. It was for your
sake----"

He turned again.

"Kitty?" he said uncertainly.

She went on bravely, always heroic through her love.

"I was poor--insignificant; you were ambitious--clever. I had heard
your longings after greatness. Hugh, how could you travel into those
wild countries with me? I knew you would give it up, and how could I
bear that? To be a drag, a hindrance to you! And in the coming years
I thought you would regret---- Hugh, you were poor, too, though not
so poor as I. I did it for you--it nearly killed me, Hugh. I was ill
after, but it was for you!"

Her voice died away into silence.

He stood very still, and his face was white and bloodless.

But in his eyes there was a great reverence.

"Forgive me!" he said.

She smiled softly.

"Oh, yes," she said.

The cynicism had gone from his face, and the hardness and bitterness
too.

[Illustration: "Oh, cannot you help me? It is so hard!"]

She looked at him wistfully. He turned away from her eyes and hid
his face in his hands.

"It was a mistake," he said, slowly, dully.

"Yes."

Still she waited.

He looked up, and she strove to read his face in vain.

Sad it was, and set, and yet there was a light there too.

He took her hands gently in his.

"Kathleen," he said earnestly, "God knows what I think of you. I can
work now. Good-bye, dear."

She raised her eyes to his--mystified and anxious.

He answered them, very gently, but with a firmness there was no
gainsaying.

"You are famous," he said; "when I have made a name I will come to
you. Will you wait, Kitty?"

"For ever, Hugh," she answered, understanding him so well that that
was all she said.

He bent and kissed her hands.

       *       *       *       *       *

She knelt at the side of his bed, heedless of the presence of the
nurse at the other end of the room, and her tears wetted his hand.
The right hand and arm were swathed in bandages.

He smiled sadly as he looked at her.

"I am a failure," he said.

"Ah, no, no! All England is ringing with your name. Hugh"--she
raised a face all alight with a proud joy--"you are famous now!"

A little flush rose to his white face.

"Pshaw!" he said, "rescuing a woman and a few children from being
burnt to death. Anyone would have done it."

"Ah, no, Hugh! Brave men shrank from that awful sea and burning
ship!"

He was silent, looking at his bandaged hand.

"I must learn to write with my left hand," he said.

She bent nearer.

"Let me write for you," she whispered; "let me finish your book,
Hugh, while you dictate it to me. I do not sing now in public, you
know."

"Yes, I know."

He drew her closer to him and rested his cheek against her soft hair.

"I said I would not come to you till I had made a name," he said. "I
am a wreck now! I shall be a wreck for a long while----"

"Ah, dear, but you are famous!" she interposed lovingly.

He sighed.

"I cannot do without you any longer, Kitty. I am beaten at last.
Will you take a wreck?"

"I will take _you_, Hugh, a famous----"

"A famous wreck," he finished with a smile.

[Illustration: "Let me write for you," she whispered.]




[Illustration: THE PULPIT MANNER]

THE PULPIT MANNER

CHARACTERISTIC GESTURES OF GREAT PREACHERS.

=By F. M. Holmes.=


First let us look at Dr. Joseph Parker. His sermons are constantly
attended by ministers of all denominations, including clergymen of
the Church of England; and no stronger testimony, we take it, could
be given to a man's extraordinary preaching power than that year
after year he continually attracts other preachers.

Dr. Parker, it is almost needless to explain, is the eminent
Congregational minister of the City Temple in London, and he
occupies the unique position of having maintained for thirty years
a noonday service every Thursday in addition to his usual Sunday
services. To this Thursday service come persons from the ends of the
earth, and ministers and laymen of various religious persuasions. On
one occasion the sittings of a conference belonging to one of the
minor Methodist bodies seemed seriously imperilled because so many
of the delegates desired to go and hear Dr. Parker.

What is the secret of his widely attractive power? The answer comes
in a word--he is intensely dramatic. We do not mean theatrical.
He chooses a clear message to deliver, and that message--that
paramount thought--is driven home to his hearers in a manner that
forces itself upon every mind, no matter how reluctant. He uses
short, pithy sentences, and heightens and emphasises their effect by
suitable modulations of voice, by deliberate or rapid utterance as
the words may require, and by vigorous and appropriate gesture. He
speaks only the very pith and point of what he has to say, and then
says it in the clearest and most suitably effective manner that he
can possibly command. It is the thing itself we hear, rather than
talk or argument all round and about it.

[Illustration: DR. PARKER.]

Thus, on one occasion, his theme was found in the text, "Jesus in
the midst." "Where is the midst?" he asked in a clear and striking,
sonorous voice that commanded attention at once. These were his
opening words, and after a pause he proceeded in the same manner and
in similar short, striking sentences to point to different ideas of
"the midst," and to declare that Christ was, or should be, in the
midst of the literature, science, philosophy, and business of the
day. Unless ministers preached Christ, said he, they had better be
silent.

[ILLUSTRATION: BISHOP OF RIPON. ARCHDEACON SINCLAIR.
DEAN LEFROY. BISHOP OF STEPNEY.]

There is nothing new in this, you will say. No doubt Dr. Parker
would tell you that he does not wish to preach anything new; but no
one can watch him critically without concluding that he constantly
studies not only what he shall say, but how he shall say it in the
most striking and effective manner.

As a dramatic preacher, we might also instance the Rev. J. H.
Jowett, who has succeeded the late Dr. Dale at Carr's Lane
Congregational Church, Birmingham. To his Oxford scholarship Mr.
Jowett has united an assiduous cultivation of a fine voice and
vigorous yet graceful and suitable gesture, which render him a most
striking and fascinating preacher.

But turning now to other styles, if Dr. Parker is one of the most
dramatic, Dr. Boyd Carpenter, the learned Bishop of Ripon, is one of
the most eloquent of preachers. He is also one of the most rapid.
He seems so fully charged with his subject that the words pour from
his lips like a torrent; his body turns first to one side and then
to the other, and anon leans forward in front, as though propelled
by the energy of the thought within. His hand is often held up
before him with the index finger pointing, as though to lead his
audience on to the next thought, and to prevent their interest or
attention from flagging. But, rapid and fluent as he is, it must
not be thought that he is superficial; on the contrary, there is
every evidence that the discourse is well thought out, and based
on a solid framework of reason, while the language is eloquent and
rhetorical. And it is, as it were, to mark the network of logical
deduction within the words that the index finger is brought so fully
into play. We judge that his voice is naturally somewhat thin and
poor, but by careful use and perhaps assiduous cultivation, and by
the most beautifully clear articulation, Dr. Boyd Carpenter can make
himself heard in St. Paul's with what appears to be perfect ease.
There is no straining of the voice and no shouting; but in a quiet
though forcible manner he sends his voice round the huge building.
Further, it has been pointed out to me that he will not commence his
discourse until the congregation have settled themselves down into
absolute quietness, and all the rustling of dresses, and coughing,
and fidgeting are stilled. Under these circumstances his voice
would, of course, carry far better in a large church.

Somewhat similar in manner is Canon Barker, of Marylebone,
who, in the energetic expression of the thought with which he
seems surcharged, bends forward sometimes so deeply towards the
congregation as to give, the impression that he is about to dive out
of the pulpit. But his style is that of the special pleader, the
advocate and the debater; it is as though he desires to argue out
everything to its logical conclusion, rather than to sway or move
his audience by eloquence and emotional appeals.

[Illustration: PREBENDARY WEBB-PEPLOE.]

Dean Lefroy of Norwich is also a debater; perhaps, a more keen
debater than Canon Barker, and he is also a rhetorician. He delights
to preach a strongly evangelical "Gospel" sermon, and to embellish
it with rhetoric and declaim it with passionate earnestness. It is
evident he thoroughly believes in his theme, he seeks to impress it
on his audience by vigorous, earnest, passionate utterance, in which
his energetic gestures are often of the most decided character.
A curious characteristic of his preaching has been related to me
by a friend. "You cannot listen to Lefroy for five minutes," said
he, "without violently taking sides either for or against him. You
are either intensely in favour of him or find yourself becoming
almost vehemently opposed"--a testimony, we take it that the Dean
is a decided, downright, assertive and aggressive preacher rather
than persuasive and emotional. He has instituted a Nave service at
Norwich Cathedral, at which he often preaches himself, and attracts
enormous congregations.

[Illustration: JOHN MCNEIL.]

Still continuing to glance at those whom we may call rapid and
fluent preachers, Prebendary Webb-Peploe comes to mind. He is not
so energetic as some others, but the rapidity of his utterance, the
fluency of his expression, and his great command of language, would
rival that of almost any speaker. He and many others would probably
utter three times as many words in a given time as Dr. Parker or
Archdeacon Sinclair.

[Illustration: IAN MACLAREN

(_Dr. John Watson._)]

The latter is slow, deliberate, and dignified in his utterances,
rarely using gesture and affecting a grave and somewhat sonorous
voice; but the Archdeacon's sermons are always most carefully
prepared, and indicate considerable study and research.

Among the grave and sedate preachers we might also place Dr. John
Watson ("Ian Maclaren"), of Sefton Park Presbyterian Church,
Liverpool; his sermons are full of thought, and, as might be
expected, exhibit an excellent literary finish.

Now, if we take Archdeacon Sinclair and Dr. John Watson as examples
of more deliberate and sedate preachers, we may regard the Rev. John
McNeil, the well-known Presbyterian minister, as an instance of the
colloquial preacher.

Not that his voice is low-pitched, as used in conversation. Mr.
McNeil has done what few preachers could physically undertake: he
has preached twice a day for a fortnight in the Albert Hall at
Kensington, the largest hall in London, and capable of holding
about ten thousand persons; and he has repeatedly filled the huge
Agricultural Hall at Islington, numbers being turned away from
lack of room. His voice, indeed, seems capable of filling the
largest hall without effort. But his style is easy, unaffected,
conversational, though sometimes, with both arms outstretched, he
bursts forth into loud and impassioned appeals. There is no doubt a
large section of the public who like this easy and colloquial style,
especially if it come quite naturally to the speaker.

[Illustration: DR. MCLAREN.]

And now another celebrated figure rises on the scene, the
eminent Baptist minister, Dr. McLaren of Manchester. Refined,
scholarly, brimming over with knowledge, and a master of beautiful
illustration, there is no doubt that he takes rank as one of the
very greatest preachers of the day. Like other great speakers, he
has evidently studied the art of preaching.

[Illustration: DR. HORTON. HUGH PRICE HUGHES. J. R. JOWETT.
SILVESTER HORNE.]

At a meeting at the Holborn Restaurant to celebrate his ministerial
jubilee in April, 1896, he said he had determined, at the outset of
his career, to concentrate his mind on the work of the ministry and
not fritter away his energies over many minor engagements. He had
always endeavoured to make his ministry one of Gospel exposition; he
had preached Christ because he believed that men needed redemption,
and he had preached without doubts and hesitations. It was Thomas
Binney who had taught him how to preach.

Undoubtedly Dr. McLaren has succeeded in his aim as an expositor
of the Scriptures, for that is regarded as one of his chief
characteristics. A favourite gesture of Dr. McLaren's--at all events
in his earlier days--was to squeeze up a handkerchief, no doubt
quite unconsciously, in his right hand by the nervous energy he was
putting forth in his discourse, and then suddenly his hand would
dart out to mark some emphatic passage as though he were about to
throw the handkerchief at the congregation; but needless to add the
handkerchief was never thrown.

Like Dr. McLaren, Dr. Whyte, of Free St. George's, Edinburgh, has
a great command of beautiful and striking illustrations. "He is
the most wonderful preacher in Scotland," declared an enthusiastic
Scot to me on one occasion. "Mr. Gladstone used often to hear him,
and Lord Rosebery does now." Dr. Whyte makes great use of the
imagination in his discourses and employs frequent gestures, but
graceful, emphatic and always to suit the action to the word and
the word to the action. "One illustration," said a gentleman, "I
remember some time ago. Dr. Whyte was preaching about tribulation,
and he showed that the word came from _tribulum_, which is a Latin
name for a roller or sledge for thrashing out corn, and in the same
way tribulation sifted men as wheat." How like a platitude this may
sound when summarised down to a line; but the point is that the idea
of the beneficial purpose of tribulation had been so firmly fixed in
the hearer's mind that he remembered it, and perchance in some dark
hour it had been to him a "cup of strength in some great agony."
Is not that, after all, one of the great aims and one of the great
tests of good speaking--to fix some idea, some truth firmly in the
hearer's mind so that it is never forgotten?

As a robust, manly preacher few, if any, we suspect, can surpass
Dean Hole of Rochester. He has a tall, commanding presence--he is
over six feet high--a bright, animated countenance, and a most
genial manner. When some years ago he held the living of Caunton,
Notts, he used to journey periodically to Liverpool, where his
midday addresses to commercial men were most successful and
exercised great influence. He does not employ much gesture, but his
fine voice, sparkling eye and manly, straightforward utterances,
based on reason and logic, always command deep attention.

[Illustration: DR. WHYTE.]

His appeal is rather to reason than to the emotions, and by way
of contrast we may glance at Canon Wilberforce, who is fluent and
fervent, and affords one of the best examples of the emotional
preacher. It would seem as though he set himself to arouse and stir
up all the feelings of his congregation and lead them into what
he conceives to be the right channel. Often choosing most unusual
texts, he can yet make direct and pointed appeals from the pulpit,
touching the greatest hopes and deepest trusts of human nature,
and yet can employ as illustrations the greatest events and the
newest discoveries of the day. He uses but little gesture, in this
respect being somewhat different from the eminent Wesleyan, the Rev.
Hugh Price Hughes, who might also be classed as an emotional--we
had almost said passionate--preacher. In fluency and fervour he
is probably surpassed by none. Possessed of a remarkably clear,
vibrating, and penetrating voice, which seems as though it could
thrill through any building, however large, there is no chance of
anyone dozing when he is in the pulpit. When pleading some cause or
denouncing some wrong, his feelings seem to get the better of him,
and he slashes away with his voice in a perfect hurricane of verbal
blows.

[Illustration: DR. CLIFFORD.]

Quite as emotional and quite as fluent is Dr. Clifford of Westbourne
Park Baptist Church. His command of language is extraordinary,
and with a mind less clear and well-regulated this great fluency
might prove a snare; but his discourses are always remarkably
well-arranged, his "points" are clear, and his meanings driven home
with remarkable emphasis. His congregations are immense, and his
hearers are devoted to him. His gestures often follow his words,
and one--probably quite unconscious--is, it must be confessed, not
graceful, even if forcible: it is a drawing back of his arms, and
then shooting them out both together as if appealing to the people.
His voice is exceptionally clear, penetrating, and resonant; and in
all very popular preachers much is due to the voice.

[Illustration: DEAN HOLE.]

The Bishop of Stepney, who may be described as bearing all the
characteristics of the highly cultured Oxford man, has in addition
a deeply sympathetic musical voice. He does not use much gesture,
but such as he does employ is well suited to the words, while his
illustrations are often drawn from his social and religious work in
the East End. He used frequently to preach in Victoria Park, where
he has readily acknowledged his best supporters were Nonconformists.

[Illustration: CANON BARKER. CANON WILBERFORCE.]

Another eminent preacher whom we may also describe as exhibiting all
the characteristics of Oxford culture is Dr. Horton of Lyndhurst
Road Congregational Church, Hampstead. Possessed, like the Bishop
of Stepney, of a remarkably sympathetic voice, he modulates and
varies it to suit the subject and the words, and his gesture,
never redundant, has lately been reduced almost to extinction. At
the sermon which he preached before the Congregational Union at
its autumnal assembly at Birmingham in 1897, his style was almost
severely quiet, but the effect of his thrilling voice and sometimes
awesome whispered tones, his polished literary language, and his
intense earnestness--as he declared that the ideal Christian must be
in constant touch with God, and yet in constant touch with men--was
very great, and appealed both to reason and emotion. Indeed, both
of these find their place in his sermons. Dr. Horton has mastered
the art of always being interesting, no matter what his theme; and
it would seem as though in his discourses he makes an effort to
really interest and to reach all sorts and conditions of men.

Another Congregational minister who exhibits much of the Oxford
manner is the Rev. Silvester Horne, of Kensington; but, in addition,
he seems possessed of a fiery zeal and fervent enthusiasm that will,
it is feared, wear him out physically before his day is fully spent,
unless he carefully husbands his nervous energy. Already, although
a young man, he has had to take rest for a whole year because of
ill-health. That inner fire, that mental energy, that disciplined
enthusiasm, which light up his face so brilliantly and animate his
suitable and graceful gesture, are far too precious a possession to
be quenched too quickly; but there are few or none of the younger
preachers of the day who have promise of a more brilliant future.

And now a word in conclusion for one who is perhaps the greatest
philosophical preacher of the time--Dr. Fairbairn of Mansfield
College at Oxford. His memory is marvellous, his power of choice
and accurate verbal expression is wonderful; he can speak for hours
without a note, and though sometimes a sentence should appear
involved and complicated, it will finish admirably, and, if read
in a verbatim report afterwards, will have all the finish of a
literary production wrought out in the quiet of the study. He uses
but little gesture, an occasional opening out of hands and arms, as
though to present and lay before the audience the thought which he
is uttering, seems nearly all. In fact, it would appear that he is
so absorbed in the abstract thought, the argument, the philosophy he
is working out before you, that he thinks nothing of the manner in
which he utters it.

We do not pretend to have exhausted the list of famous preachers, or
even to have glanced at all the different types; but these will be
sufficient to indicate the variety that prevails, and to show that
there is an art of preaching which, like other arts, needs to be
assiduously cultivated, and well repays those who intelligently do
so.




A MOTHER'S BIBLE.

  A pathetic incident occurred some years ago in connection with one
    of our wars abroad. A youth who had been wounded, and who died in
    the field hospital, clutched in his last hours an old worn copy of
    the Bible, on the flyleaf of which were inscribed these touching
    lines:--

TO MY BOY.


    Remember, love, who gave you this,
      When other days shall come,
    When she who had thy earliest kiss
      Sleeps in her narrow home.
    Remember! 'twas a mother gave
    The gift to one she'd die to save.

    A mother sought a pledge of love,
      The holiest, for her son;
    And from the gift of God above
      She chose a godly one--
    She chose for her beloved boy
    The source of light and life and joy.

    And bade him keep the gift, that when
      The parting hour should come
    They might have hope, and meet again
      In an eternal home:
    She said his faith in that should be
    Sweet incense to her memory.

    And should the scoffer in his pride
      Laugh his fond faith to scorn,
    And bid him cast the pledge aside
      Which he from youth had borne--
    She bade him pause and ask his breast
    If he or she had loved him best.

    A mother's blessing on her son
      Goes with this holy thing,
    The love that would retain the one
      Must to the other cling.
    Remember! 'tis no idle toy,
    Thy mother's gift! Remember, boy!




[Illustration: ROGER PETTINGDALE]

ROGER PETTINGDALE

_A RUSTIC LOVE-STORY._

By H. A. Davies.


Across the fields from the church--through the clover meadow first,
into the broad wheat-field next, and thence over the pasture lands,
all yellow with the glint of buttercups--you will come to the
Pettingdale farm. A thrill and a song and an aching went through
my blood all together when I looked on the block of buildings the
other day. How sweet-and-bitter is remembrance; how musical to the
heart, and yet how sad with yearning! For the sight of that rugged
old chimney standing square and grim and familiar upon the grey
roof of the house; the red-tiled barns clustering behind, plain and
prosperous; the sweep of the waving corn-fields towards the setting
sun; caused my heart to surge with swift memories, long since buried
and forgotten beneath the stress of life. How peaceful were the old
days amidst these very fields! When the heart is young, ah! then's
the time for music; and what echoes of far-off melodies--songs
of old summers past and gone--does the scene awaken! There's the
orchard where I spent such rare hours. Here are the hedges where we
went a-nutting. Yonder is the oak-tree which we used to climb, Frank
Pettingdale and I. It is still the same sturdy tree, keeping gnarled
and knotted guard over the same creaking gateway, just as in the old
days!

Wherever my eyes fell there were thorns and roses for the heart all
in one moment. It was in the old upland field that Clara Pettingdale
and I as children used to wander, hand in hand, amongst the
buttercups. She has long slept, poor Clara, in that corner of the
churchyard where lie generations of Pettingdales past and gone--a
long line of sturdy yeomen.

The full light of the sun falls upon the courtyard of the farmhouse.
It has a broad frontage, long and low and quaint, with irregular
gables and overhanging eaves and deep, mullioned windows. The
house runs queerly on two sides of the courtyard, one wing being
at right angles to the other. It is beautifully clean and prim,
with its whitewashed walls, its freshly painted woodwork, and
its geraniums growing in green boxes on every window-sill. On
the third side of the yard run the granary and the cider-house;
while the fourth, save for an ivy-covered wall, which gives way to
the entrance gates in one corner, is open to the gentle vista of
countryside which stretches away before the house. What a pleasant
old courtyard it is--so cool in the summer that the panting dogs
love to throw themselves upon its stones; so sheltered in winter
that the blustering nor'-easters touch it not; so prosperous-looking
always, with its well-kept flags laid from end to end, as level and
smooth as a billiard-table, and as spotless as the floor of the
farm kitchen. How the polished milk-cans glisten and blink upon
the wall! How the white sills of the old-fashioned windows gleam
in the sunlight! The whole place seems to breathe of scouring and
buckets, and scrubbing brushes and vigorous arms. Every morning the
yard is washed down by the house-boy (it used to be Elijah in my
day, but he is now a bearded man, and labours outside, and a young
Ezra is the present knight of the bucket); every morning the cans
are scoured and the tubs are scrubbed, and the step before the door
is free-stoned, and the flowers are watered, and the house seems to
smile a glistening, watery smile, as though it had just lifted its
head from its morning dip to bid you the time of day. There was ever
a charm to me about Pettingdale and its paved courtyard. I mind me
well what a brave and romantic sound to my young ears was that of
the horse's hoofs ringing and clamping upon the stones as he was
brought up to the door on market days with the high yellow dogcart
behind him; or the clatter of the wheels across the yard as Roger
Pettingdale drove out through the broad gateway, a fine old figure
with his white hair, and his aquiline nose, and his broad, well-set
shoulders.

[Illustration: His hair went snow-white early in life.]

He is still outwardly the same. One could hardly detect a single
point of change in him, save that his face is more furrowed and his
eyes deeper set. His hair went snow-white early in life. Generations
of Pettingdales have been subject to the same peculiarity. Thus it
is that the long step from forty to sixty-five has wrought little
difference in Roger Pettingdale. His body is as erect, his step as
firm, his voice as sonorous as ever. He was ever a well-known figure
at all the county markets and agricultural meetings, and it might be
twenty-five years agone for all the change that one can see in him.
Among other men he was always noticeable, with his tall figure, his
white hair, his clean-shaven, well-cut face, and that wide-rimmed
silk hat which he always affected. As he moved amongst the crowd I
have heard men say, "Who is that?" and others answer, "Don't you
know him? Why, surely everybody knows _him_? He's Roger Pettingdale."

He is elected on all the local bodies. Thus he is a guardian of the
poor, a member of the School Board, vice-chairman of the County
Council, and the people's churchwarden at the parish church. There
is no man amongst all those he meets in these capacities whose words
are listened to with more respect. That solid weight, that hallmark
of sound judgment which always attends upon sheer common-sense, is
apparent in every opinion he utters. He forms his judgments first,
and speaks afterwards. While other men are impulsively throwing
themselves into useless controversy on this or that vexed question,
Roger Pettingdale is silently weighing the _pros_ and _cons_ of
the matter in his own mind; and when he speaks there is usually
nothing more to be said. He chops no logic; he simply argues
with the sledge-hammer of common-sense, backed up by the blunt,
uncompromising sincerity of an honest and fair-dealing mind. His
tolerance, his breadth of vision, his power of seeing the other side
of the question, his scorn of all shams and pretences, have made his
name a password for integrity and sound judgment. "You will always
get a fair hearing from Roger Pettingdale," people say. "Does Roger
Pettingdale think so? Oh, then, there must be something in it."

In his home life, in the control of his farm, in his own daily
affairs, there is the same straightforwardness, the same sincerity,
the same well-balanced judgment and acumen. "There never was a
year, as I remember, when we didn't have plenty of hay to begin
conditioning on," said one of his labourers the other day. "Now,
at the next farm they've never got enough." That is only a small
instance of the perfection of method which marks every department of
the prosperous farm.

At home he is essentially a plain man, this sturdy farmer. There
is no nonsense about him, although he can claim blood with one of
the oldest families in the county. Yet he has a proper pride, in
a manly, direct kind of way, as you shall see. He has had four
children, two boys and two girls, in giving birth to the youngest
of whom his wife died. James, the eldest, is his right hand in the
farm management, and will some day be head of the family, as the
Pettingdales have succeeded, son to father, for generations out of
mind. Mary, the second, you shall hear more of anon. Frank, the
third, my old playmate, early in life took the fancy that he would
like to be a soldier. Roger Pettingdale has ever been a wise and a
tolerant father, studying well the nature of each of his children.
He unerringly knew Frank's proud and stubborn character.

"You want to be a soldier?" he said. "Well, I could have wished it
otherwise, Frank. It would have been a pleasure to me to see you
settle down on the farm. But we will not argue the point. Let it
stand for twelve months, and then talk to me about it."

Twelve months did not change Frank's resolve. When he mentioned
it again, a drawn look passed over Roger Pettingdale's face for a
moment--a look of keen pain--for he loved his children. Then he drew
himself up to his full height.

"You are still of the same mind, Frank! Then I have nothing more to
say. I am not going to attempt to dictate to you what your calling
should be. You have to live your own life, and as you make your bed
you must lie on it. Remember that, my lad. If you decide to go as a
soldier, you shall go in a proper fashion, lad. You shall have your
commission. No son of mine shall enter the ranks."

And have his commission Frank did. I looked at the tablet in the old
church the other day with a surging heart. It is a brass tablet, the
lettering of which has been recently renovated.

       TO THE MEMORY OF
  LIEUTENANT FRANK PETTINGDALE,
    WHO FELL IN ACTION IN THE
     BATTLE OF TEL-EL-KEBIR.

That was all. There was no vainglorious recounting of the brave
deed in the performance of which Frank was cut down. He fell "in
action." That was all. It was Roger Pettingdale all over--simple and
direct and manly. And were not the laconic words far more eloquent
than all the ornate elegiacs that poets might have written, just as
Roger Pettingdale's silent grief when the news reached him was far
more eloquent than all the passionate outbursts of frenzied sorrow
that one could conceive?

The fourth child, Clara, as I have already said, sleeps in the
churchyard. She died when she was a fair-haired girl of ten--as
bright and promising a maiden as one could wish to see. But she was
ever fragile, like her mother, and suddenly she faded away, leaving
a great gap in the home life at the Pettingdale farm.

As to Mary, the second child, she was nineteen years of age, and
newly returned from school, when Edward Leigh, the son of old Squire
Leigh, of the Hall, came home from his travels round the world.
These two, who had only distantly known each other as children,
met for the first time after many years--she a sweet-looking,
fresh-coloured girl, in the first blush of womanhood; and he a
manly, well-set young fellow with a pleasant, sincere face and
straightforward blue eyes. It was the old story! Twang goes the
bow of the roguish little archer, and to some heart or another the
world all at once becomes rose-colour. The old story! They saw each
other on a Sunday morning across the church. She, sitting in the
Pettingdale pew, mentally noted that there was a young man at the
Squire's side who could be no other than his newly returned son; and
he, from his corner underneath the dingy, ponderous coat-of-arms
of the Leigh family, looked upon her in her simple dress of white.
The sun, striking through the window to her right, glinted upon her
brown hair, which always curled so prettily about her forehead. He
thought, as he looked, that she was the sweetest, daintiest maiden
he had ever seen, and he fell in love with her.

He made no secret of his passion. Beating about the bush was
entirely foreign to Edward Leigh. The choleric old Squire went
off into a fit of apoplectic rage when he heard how things stood.
The veins swelled in his forehead, and that pugnacious under-lip
of his stood out and drew itself over the upper lip and the teeth
with a tight grip. But Edward had all the old Leigh blood in him.
"I love her, father," he said quietly, looking the Squire straight
in the face, and the old man's heart sank within him as he met the
steady glance of those blue eyes. Fits of passion, threats, fiery
denunciations--they were all of no avail. Edward was never once
other than respectful. He would stand with shoulders squared and
head uplifted, bearing the storm in perfect calm and silence, and
then would look his father in the face and say--"Father, I love
her"; and the Squire would clench his fist and march to and fro,
furiously stamping his feet upon the floor.

[Illustration: "Father, I love her."]

In one culminating fit of choleric rage the Squire rode over to the
farm. He found Roger Pettingdale in the corn-field, looking at the
growing wheat.

[Illustration: "Forgive me!"]

"Look here, Pettingdale," he burst forth fiercely. "This nonsense
must be stopped. Are you an idiot, that you cannot see what is going
on, or are you in the scheme to entrap my----"

Roger Pettingdale turned round upon him.

"I beg your pardon, Squire Leigh?" he said quietly, as one who had
not heard aright.

"Tut! Nonsense!" retorted the Squire. "Don't 'beg-your-pardon' me!
You know full well what I mean. Are you blind? I say it must be
stopped! You know full well that that precious son of mine has gone
stark mad over that chit of a girl of yours!"

"And what of that, Squire Leigh?" replied Roger Pettingdale, drawing
himself to his full height and looking at the Squire from underneath
his heavy eyebrows. "If that precious son of yours has gone stark
mad over my daughter, what of that?"

"Why, this," thundered the Squire: "that it must be stopped!"

"Very well, why don't you stop it?" replied Roger Pettingdale.

The retort, perfectly cool and natural, laid bare all the Squire's
impotence at one stroke, and drove him well-nigh to frenzy. His eyes
shot fire, and those veins in his forehead swelled as though they
would burst.

"It is not my daughter who is coming to the Hall after your son,"
Roger Pettingdale went on. "It is your son who is coming here after
my daughter. You seem to forget that point. You say it must be
stopped. And I repeat--Why don't you stop it?"

"It is as I thought," shouted the enraged Squire. "You are all in
it--all of you. All in the scheme to entrap him! A pretty plot,
don't you call it, for a man who poses as a Christian?"

In a blind access of fury he took a step forward and raised his
riding-whip. And then his shaking arm fell to his side, for Roger
Pettingdale had laid a hand upon his shoulder, and was confronting
him with grave, kindly, pitying eyes.

"You are in anger, Squire Leigh," he said, with simple dignity,
"else I should take your words as an insult. Be sure that the
Pettingdales have not fallen so low, nor their womenkind either,
that they need to trap the son of Squire Leigh. But I tell you this,
as man to man: if your son truly loves my daughter, and if she
loves him in return, I will put no bar before my child's happiness;
no, not for you, nor for all the Leighs in the world. We come of
as good a stock as you, Squire! Remember that! More money and more
land maybe you have--but not more pride of family. I care naught
for your money or your land. Thank God! I have prospered beyond all
expectation. And I tell you again, straight to your face, if your
son comes to me and asks for my daughter's hand, and I find it is
for her happiness, I shall say 'Yes.'"

"I shall disinherit him!" burst forth the Squire; "he shall not have
a penny--not a brass farthing!"

"I shall tell him," continued Roger Pettingdale, "that if he would
win my daughter, he must first make a position for himself in the
world, independently of aught you can do for or against him; and
that shall be the test of his sincerity."

Then he turned away, and the Squire, his face livid with passion,
marched off, savagely cutting at the wheat-ears with his
riding-whip. And when he mounted his horse at the corner of the
field, he dug his spurs so viciously into her that she bounded and
reared, and almost threw him.

Well, the long and short of it was that Edward Leigh was not found
wanting in the test which was imposed upon him.

"You are quite right, sir," he said to Roger Pettingdale; "the
condition is a reasonable one. I ask for nothing more than the
chance of proving that I am in earnest."

He went to London, studied under his father's old college friend,
John Wetherell, the well-known Queen's Counsel, and in five years
was making fair headway in the courts as a barrister. And the
strange part of it was that the choleric old Squire--who has a good
heart underneath his rough exterior--seeing his son's name in the
papers from time to time, felt his paternal pride rising within him
despite his stubborn resentment. Perhaps, too, he felt lonely in his
old age. At all events, he went over to the farm one day, and asked
to see Mary.

"I shall fight against it no longer, my dear," he said, holding
out his hand. "The lad has proved his grit, and the woman who
can call forth such steady love in a man is more than worthy of
being mistress of the Hall. I am an old man, and have no time left
for bitternesses. Forgive me, and you will find me as staunch in
friendship as you have found me frank in enmity."

Mary is now Mary Leigh, of Leigh Hall, and a sweeter, gentler, more
winsome mistress you could not find in the whole land. You may often
see the old Squire leaning upon her shoulder--a bent, white-haired
figure--as they walk in the grounds.

       *       *       *       *       *

Among all the seasons of the year, I think there is none that Roger
Pettingdale loves so well as the time of harvest. You may see him
standing at the gateway, looking in meditation down the long shimmer
and sheen of the golden wheat-field as the wind ripples over it.

"I love to gaze at fields white with corn," he said to me once.
"They seem to breathe rich promises of that full fruition to which
our own lives shall come if we live them well and uprightly."

At the last harvest thanksgiving service in the village church I was
present for the sake of old times, and from my place behind Roger
Pettingdale I saw him lost in meditation, with eyes fixed upon the
chancel window. And when he stood up to sing he was still rapt in
thought; but suddenly he joined in the sweet old hymn so lustily and
with such a full heart that it did me good to hear him.

    "The valleys stand so thick with corn
     That even they are singing."




THE ART OF READING.

By the Ven. Archdeacon Diggle, M.A.


Reading aloud is more commonly regarded as an accomplishment than
an art. In truth, it is both. It is an art in that it cannot be
left to its own guidance, but requires both an acquaintance with
rules and familiarity with their practice to bring it to perfection.
It is an accomplishment in that it is a means of completing our
equipment for happy social life. Good reading yields not only profit
but pleasure to others. It is one means of throwing brightness into
home-life to gather the children together and read really well to
them. And what a sweet delight it is in the ward of a hospital, or
among the inmates of a workhouse, or by the bedside of some dearly
loved invalid, to be able, by reading in soft, gentle, refreshing
tones, to charm away the monotony and the weariness, perhaps for
awhile to relieve even the pain, of the lonely and the suffering! We
might shed sunshine into the darkness of many a life if, instead of
spending our leisure hours in _ennui_ on ourselves, we devoted them
to reading aloud to others.

Reading aloud is good for ourselves both physically and morally. It
is good morally, for if we never read anything unfit for reading
aloud we shall not be likely to read anything morally deteriorating.
And physically, reading aloud is a benignant exercise. It widens
the chest, opens the lungs, strengthens the throat, and does good
to all the breathing organs. It is a mistake to suppose that using
the voice weakens it. Abuse or misuse of the vocal organs, as of any
other organs, injures them; but by proper use and exercise they are
strengthened and improved. Speakers and preachers have bad throats
not because they use their throat too much, but because they use it
badly. They force and torment it, instead of training it to natural
action and giving it free, full play. And who shall blame them? At
school they were taught to spell and mind their stops; but how to
breathe and manage the voice when reading, they probably were not
taught a single rule. In many instances teachers themselves are
wholly ignorant of the art and therefore incapable of teaching it.
And so it comes to pass that, unless either outward circumstance
or innate common-sense turn our attention in later life to the
management of the vocal organs, we never learn to read aloud without
weariness and with pleasure. It is mainly through lack of early
training that, of all useful and delightful accomplishments, the art
of reading aloud is one of the least practised and most rare.

[Illustration: (_Photo: Russell and Sons, Baker Street, W._)
ARCHDEACON DIGGLE.]

Yet it is an art which, in some degree, may be acquired by the
majority of people; very many could, by a little training and
perseverance, even excel in it. Of course, the art admits of many
degrees of excellence. But without reaching the splendid summits of
the art, attainable only by the highly gifted few, ordinary persons
may learn to read sufficiently well to gratify both themselves and
others, if they will take pains to learn and practise a few simple
rules.

The first requirement is to master the physics of the art: to learn
to breathe in through the nostrils and out through the mouth,
never to speak on an inflowing breath, quickly to fill the lungs
and slowly to empty them, never to gasp or strain after sound, not
to attempt the higher notes until the lower have been completely
mastered, to rely more on the lower than the higher notes, to teach
the lips and front portion of the mouth to do their fair share of
work equally with the larynx and the vocal cords. A moustache is an
impediment to easy and distinct reading. It hinders the air from
passing in free, full flow up the nostrils, and it troubles the
waves of sound as they issue from the mouth; causing indistinctness,
more or less flat and thick, in enunciation.

Clearness of enunciation ranks next in importance after easy,
natural, flexible production of voice, and largely depends on it,
for there can be no clear, crisp, distinct enunciation of words,
unless the tools by which words are made, viz. the organs of voice,
are kept sharp and well burnished. Moreover, for the attainment
of limpid and finely articulated enunciation careful training is
required both in the melody and modulation of sounds.

Precision and beauty of enunciation are much assisted by habitual
practice of the graduated series of all the tones from the keynote
to its octave. Do not sing when you are reading, but, in order to
read well, first learn to sing; otherwise your reading will be flat
and monotonous, without light and shade, instead of being fresh,
richly modulated, and melodious.

The next requirement of good reading is to learn the relative value
of the letters, and the right handling of the syllables, of which
words are composed.

This study is both interesting and attractive, for, as Plato
observes, letters themselves have a clear significance. The letter
_r_ is expressive of motion, the letters _d_ and _t_ of binding and
rest, the letter _l_ of smoothness, _n_ of inwardness, the letter
_e_ of length and the letter _o_ of roundness.[2] Letters run in
families, and each family has its own characteristic significance of
sound. Some letters belong to the lips, others to the throat, others
employ the whole mouth. Vowels and final consonants are the letters
which demand most care and support in good reading. For the most
part, vowels should be rich and full, and the final consonant well
sustained.

[2] _Cf._ Jowett's Plato, I. 311.

If letters in themselves are expressive and significant,
collocations of letters in syllables and words are clearly more
significant still. "By various degrees of strength or weakness,
emphasis or pitch, length or shortness, they become the natural
expressions both of the stronger and the finer parts of human
feeling and thought." To read well, therefore, it is necessary to
give intelligent and ready heed to the relative weight of words,
to notice whether consonants are massed together to increase their
density, or vowels are freely interspersed to leaven and make
them light. True enunciation largely depends on a careful study
of the natural formation of words and a right appreciation of the
proportionate value of their several syllables.

Reading, however, is frequently spoiled by pedantry and exaggerated
minuteness. In seeking to avoid slovenliness readers often fall into
foppery. Good reading goes at an easy pace, it is neither too fast
nor too slow; it neither counts the letters nor omits them, neither
jumbles syllables together nor anatomises words. The good reader
reads so that intelligent listeners can spell his words, but he does
not read as if spelling them himself. He avoids the extremes both
of negligence and nicety, and constantly remembers that whatever is
overdone is badly done. Avoid ostentation. No rule in reading is
more fundamental than this.

Near akin to ostentation is the taint of false and histrionic
emphasis. Colourless reading, bad though it be, is better than
tawdry reading. Especially in all reading of a religious or sacred
character should affectation and dramatic artifices be reverently
avoided.

To read the Bible in church as if playing a part on the stage is as
inappropriate and irreligious as to read like one in haste to catch
a train.

Each kind of subject demands its own proper style in reading. Prose
should not be read like poetry; nor all kinds either of prose or
poetry alike. As in writing, each species should be dressed in
language from its own wardrobe; so in reading, each several kind
should receive its own appropriate tone, and travel at its own
appropriate speed. To read everything alike is to read nothing--or
at most only one thing--well.

[Illustration: Charming away the monotony and the weariness.]

Great authors are by no means invariably good readers, even of
their own productions. Lord Tennyson read some of his own glorious
poems beautifully; but others he read either droningly or with too
much singsong. Dickens read his own works with wonderful power and
realisation. Wordsworth read his own verse admirably; but we are
told that neither Coleridge nor Southey could read verse well: "They
read as if crying or wailing lugubriously."

Reading, therefore, is an art which doubtless requires, for
the attainment of excellence, some degree of histrionic
gifts--imagination, imitation, fervour, and passion.

Similarly with oratory and authorship. Both these arts are distinct
from that of reading; as each of these again is distinct from the
other.

It is curious, indeed, how few among great authors are great
orators; or, among great orators, great authors. The gifts which
tell in writing--condensation, terseness, finish--are not the
gifts which tell most in speaking. In speaking, the essentials are
clearness of enunciation, sympathy with the audience, copiousness
of illustration, directness of statement, uninvolved reasoning. The
merits which impart value to a book--wealth of fact, niceness in
balancing opposing considerations, delicacy of assertion, depth and
sweep of argument--may easily become ineffective in the delivery of
a speech. Hence, therefore, whereas a good speaker is occasionally
a good writer, owing to his rare combination of different orders
of talent, it more frequently happens that the one set of talents
is given to one man to enrich them in seclusion, and the other to
another man to use them with publicity.

In like manner with reading; it is an art by itself. It is natural
to suppose that no one could possibly read an author's works so
well as the author's self, because no one can understand them so
intimately as their own creator. Yet experience proves this to be
not the case; and for a reason which at first sight is not wholly
apparent. It is just because they are his own that, as a rule, he
cannot read them well. He may have a richly cultivated voice, clear
enunciation, a varied power of modulation; he may even be able to
read the works of others well, yet be a failure in reading what he
himself has written. Why is this? Partly, perhaps, it is due to
an unavoidable self-consciousness in reading his own works; and
self-consciousness is the ruin of good reading. "Forget thyself"
is a necessary condition of good reading. Partly, perhaps, it is
due to over-absorption in the memory of sensations and sentiments
which overpowered him when he wrote in the solitude of his chamber,
but which are somewhat unnatural and overstrained for exhibition
before a concourse of auditors. But probably the principal reason
is that one of the greatest charms of good reading arises from the
co-operation of two spirits toward one end--the spirit of the author
and the spirit of the reader. The reader of another's works seeks
actively to express the spirit of his author, yet unintentionally
he is expressing his own spirit also. The author enters into him
and he throws himself into the author; his reading, therefore, is
the union, the marriage, the interpenetration and expression of two
spirits--the author's and his own. However interesting, therefore,
and delightful it may be to hear an author read his own works,
yet is there always lacking the dash and force and suggestiveness
produced when a great author is interpreted by a great reader. The
author merely reproduces his original meaning in what he wrote;
the reader, through the agency of his own independent personality,
idealises and diversifies that meaning.

Idealisation is one of the most beautiful effects of the fine art of
reading. The most ordinary poem or piece of prose, when idealised
by an accomplished artist in reading, grows lovely and sweet. And
one way of learning to read well ourselves is to sit at the feet of
some of these great masters of reading. Until we have heard a great
reader read it is next to impossible to conceive what a fine and
noble art true reading is. On the other hand, we can never become
good readers by merely listening to others, any more than we can
become good musicians by hearing others play.

In the art of reading, others may be our models; none but ourselves
can be our makers. Listening to others may show us how the thing
can best be done, but without doing the thing ourselves the thing
can never be truly learned by us. Sometimes, indeed, listening to
others has an effect quite the opposite of a model for imitation.
"Pausanias tells us of an ancient player on the harp who was wont to
make his scholars go to hear one who played badly that they might
learn to hate his discords and false measures." In like manner, one
way of learning to read well is to hear others read badly.

The art of reading aloud culminates in the expression of the
spiritual through the medium of the physical. As sculpture aspires
to express its ideals in stone, and painting in colour, and music
in sound, so reading embodies its ideals in uttered words. A
well-trained voice, clearness of enunciation, rhythm and flexibility
of articulation--these are the physical framework of the art of
reading aloud. Without first acquiring these the reader is as
impotent as the painter without colour or the sculptor without
stone. But the physics of reading are nothing more than its material
framework. Unless the reader is inspired with ideals, reading will
never rise to the dignity and glory of an art with him. He may be
as a house-painter with his brush, or a mason with his stone--an
industrious and useful artificer, but not an artist in his work.




MIDGET CHURCHES

By J. A. Reid.


The subject of church architecture is ever a fascinating one.
Millions of money and an immense amount of time and labour have been
spent in erecting places of worship, some of which are magnificent
structures capable of seating several thousands. On the other hand,
small, humble edifices sometimes suffice to meet the requirements of
the worshippers; and it is with these that we here propose to deal.

Which of the midget churches is the smallest it is somewhat
difficult to say; but it is believed that the smallest church in
England is the truly miniature church of Lullington, in Sussex.
It is a primitive and quaint building, constructed of flint with
stone quoins, with a roof of red tiles. It can boast of a little
weather-boarded turret at its west end; but its bell does not toll
now, and the birds of the air have long since found the turret a
convenient nesting-place. The church is but sixteen feet square. The
pulpit is a pew, with panelled sides and door, and the furniture is
of the plainest. Five, narrow, diamond-paned windows throw a scanty
light upon the interior, in which there is accommodation for thirty
persons--quite sufficient for the population of the village.

[Illustration: (_Photo: H. J. Unwin, Hailsham._)

LULLINGTON CHURCH.

(_Sixteen feet square._)]

A somewhat larger edifice is the very interesting church of
Wythburn, in Cumberland, the dimensions of which are--nave (length),
thirty-nine feet; height of walls, ten feet; and width, fifteen
feet. This was the original church, erected about one hundred and
sixty years ago, and is of the simplest description. The roof is
constructed of old ships' timber, and the windows are square holes
with wooden frames. The chancel is eighteen feet long by fifteen
feet by ten feet. The beautiful little east window is by Henry
Holiday, and was put in to the memory of the late vicar. What
a magnificent site for a church! The poets have thus expressed
themselves with regard to this humble but beautifully situated
church:--

Canon H. D. Rawnsley wrote:

    "We cannot stay--for life is but an Inn,
     A halfway house--and, lo! the graves how near!
     Yet mighty minds have hither come for cheer
     Before the upward path they dared begin.
     Here Gray the pilgrim rested pale and thin,
     Here Wilson laughed, and Wordsworth murmured here.
     Here Coleridge mused, and ere he crossed the mere
     Hence Arnold viewed the Goal he hoped to win.
     And we who would Helvellyn's height essay,
     Or climb towards the gateway of the mound
     Where Dunmail died because his realm was fair,
     May join their gracious company who found
     Earth's beauty made Life's Inn a House of Prayer,
     And speed, refreshed of soul, upon our way."

[Illustration: _Wythburn Church as compared with St. Paul's
Cathedral._

(_Photo: T. Dumble, Keswick._)

WYTHBURN CHURCH.

(_Thirteen yards long, five yards wide._)]

Wordsworth, too, said:

    "If Wythburn's modest House of Prayer,
     As lowly as the lowliest dwelling,
     Had, with its belfry's humble stock,
     A little pair that hang in air,
     Been mistress also of a clock
     (And one, too, not hung in crazy plight),
     Twelve strokes that clock would have been telling
     Under the brow of old Helvellyn."

And H. Coleridge:

    "Humble it is, and meek, and very low,
     And speaks its purpose by a single bell:
     But God Himself, and He alone, can know
     If spiry temples please Him half so well."

We have given two instances of very small churches: let us now refer
to a midget chapel. At Crawshawbooth, a village near Burnley, there
is an extremely interesting diminutive place of worship known as
the Friends' Meeting-House, an old-fashioned building covered with
ivy, and environed by a well-cared-for burial ground. It contains
half a dozen oak benches, on which the worshippers sit. Though these
benches are sufficient to provide seating accommodation for about
sixty, the attendance is rarely more than six. John Bright once
worshipped here, walking from Rochdale, a distance of twelve miles.
This quaint little place is naturally regarded with much interest by
visitors.

It is interesting to point out that there is another Quaker
meeting-house in the hamlet of Jordans, in Buckinghamshire, which
is, if anything, smaller than that already referred to. It has been
called the Shrine of Quakerism, for early in June every year a
gathering of Quakers takes place. Here lie the remains of William
Penn, one of the greatest of Quakers. At a cottage in the vicinity
Milton wrote his "Paradise Lost."

[Illustration: (_Photo: R. W. Lord, Little Lever, near Bolton._)

THE FRIENDS' MEETING-HOUSE, CRAWSHAWBOOTH.

(_Containing six oak benches to accommodate sixty worshippers._)]

To revert to churches, Kilpeck Church is well worth referring to as
being a lovely little place of worship. The nave is thirty-six feet
by twenty, and the chancel seventeen by sixteen feet ten inches,
the total length being sixty-eight feet and the average breadth
about sixteen feet. It is built upon a Saxon foundation, and Saxon
remains are still to be seen--notably, a "holy-water" stoup that
must be one thousand or eleven hundred years old. It is not possible
to do justice to this beautiful church in a few words, but the
accompanying photograph will give an idea of the quaintness and
beauty of the structure. The sculpture is remarkably interesting.

[Illustration: (_Photo: Poulton and Sons, Lee._)

KILPECK CHURCH.

(_Nave thirty-six feet by twenty._)]

An article on midget places of worship would be incomplete without a
reference to the little lath-and-plaster church of Essex, consisting
of nave, chancel, and a small turret. Hazeleigh Church, as it is
named, stands in the near vicinity of Hazeleigh Hall--once the
home of the Essex family of the Alleynes, one of whom founded the
College of God's Gift at Dulwich. This little church has thus been
described by the Rev. H. R. Wadmore, sometime curate:--

    "... A little church beside a wood
     Securely sheltered from the sweeping blast;
     So quiet, so secure, it seems to be
     A very type of rest and all that's still."

[Illustration: (_Photo: R. D. Barrett._)

CHILCOMBE CHURCH.

(_Twelve yards long._)]

This little church of Hazeleigh, owing to its simple character,
differs but slightly from the roadside cottages. It has been styled
"the meanest church in Essex," owing to its unpretentious character.

[Illustration: (_Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd._)

THE CAVE CHURCH AT LEDAIG, NEAR OBAN.

(_The most primitive church in the kingdom._)]

A pleasing little church is that of Chilcombe, near Bridport,
Dorsetshire. Chilcombe is mentioned in the Doomsday Book, and at one
time was the property of the Knight Hospitallers of St. John. The
existing church dates from the thirteenth century. It is in the
Roman style, and possesses a good Norman font. The length of the
nave is twenty-two by fourteen feet, the chancel being thirteen by
eleven feet. The owner of the parish and the patron of the living is
Admiral the Hon. M. H. Nelson.

[Illustration: GROVE CHURCH, NEAR LEIGHTON BUZZARD.

(_Capable of seating fifty people._)]

Another remarkably small church is that of St. Peter, on the Castle
Rise, at Cambridge, its dimensions being twenty-five by sixteen
feet. It is of Norman architecture.

England by no means possesses all the diminutive churches and
chapels, and a very quaint and interesting church is that of Ledaig,
near Oban. It is unsectarian, and its congregation numbers, on the
average, twenty-five. It was founded by John Campbell, who was more
familiarly known as "The Bard of Benderlock." He converted a natural
cavern in the cliffs of Ledaig into a place of worship. A portion
of a trunk of a tree, on which Robert Bruce is said to have rested,
serves as a table and reading-desk. Trunks of trees around the sides
of the cavern serve as seats for the worshippers. Mr. Campbell
officiated as minister for many years to a band of faithful Highland
worshippers in this curious church. Mr. Campbell was a remarkable
personality. He was postmaster of Ledaig, and he also gained a
considerable reputation as a poet. He was a much respected man, and
his memory is dear to many.

[Illustration: (_Photo: A. A. Inglis, Edinburgh._)

ST. MARGARET'S CHAPEL, EDINBURGH CASTLE.

(_For some time used as a powder magazine._)]

I would like to refer to a very interesting midget church at
Grove, near Leighton Buzzard, which I had the pleasure of visiting
recently. It is the smallest in the county, and is a gable-roofed,
barn-like fabric, with a door on the north side. In 1883 the little
church was restored throughout, the fine old-fashioned square
pews being replaced by open wooden seats, and it is now capable
of seating about fifty people. Formerly the edifice contained a
"three-decker"--clerk's desk, reading-desk, and pulpit combined. The
churchyard contains many graves, but only one tombstone (eighteenth
century). The dimensions of the church are--length, twenty-nine and
a half feet; width, eighteen feet; height, about forty feet; in
all probability, the church was formerly larger than at present.
Grove is generally considered to be one of the smallest parishes in
England, and one could hardly conceive of a smaller. It consists
practically of a farmhouse and a lock-keeper's cottage.

[Illustration: ST. ROBERT'S CHAPEL, KNARESBOROUGH.

(_Showing figure of a Knight Templar cut in the rock._)

(_Photo: G. E. Arnold, Knaresborough._)]

We must not forget that at the top of Edinburgh Castle is the
historical diminutive chapel of St. Margaret's, which was the
private chapel of the pious Margaret, Queen of Malcolm III., during
her residence in the castle. Until very recently it had been quite
lost sight of, having been converted into a powder magazine and
fallen into disrepair. In 1853, however, it was "discovered" and
put into an efficient state of repair. It is considered to be
the oldest and smallest chapel in Scotland, its dimensions being
sixteen feet six inches by ten feet sixteen inches. The semicircular
chancel is separated from the nave by a well-carved double-round
arch, decorated with Norman zigzag mouldings. It is too small to be
made available for divine service for the troops quartered in the
castle, and the only use that it is now put to is for occasional
baptisms and morning Communion.

[Illustration: (_Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd._)

SMALL CHURCH AT ST. ANDREW, GREENSTED, NEAR ONGAR.

(_Believed to include the only remaining portion of a Saxon wooden
church._)]

There are several very small places of worship which are now, alas!
in ruins. At Iona, for instance, on the west coast of Scotland,
are the remains of an extremely small chapel, known as St. Oran's
Chapel. It is very near Iona Cathedral. It is constructed of red
granite, and its external measurements are sixty feet by twenty-two
feet. It is now roofless, and is very old. This little chapel
is believed to have been built by Queen Margaret in 1080. Its
architecture is Romanesque, and it has one low entrance. This humble
edifice is interesting inasmuch as within its walls is the tomb of
Sir Walter Scott's "Lord of the Isles," the friend of Bruce.

[Illustration: (_Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd._)

DIMINUTIVE CHAPEL AT POINT IN VIEW, NEAR EXMOUTH.

(_Containing an organ made by the pastor._)]

There is another tiny barn-like edifice at Greenloaning, near
Dunblane. The little church is situated adjacent to a farmhouse, and
seems to have been erected for the benefit of the farm-workers. It
is remarkably small. The scenery in the vicinity is magnificent, and
the church is regarded with much interest by tourists.

St. Anthony's Chapel is another small building also in ruins. It is
interesting owing to its historic surroundings, being in the near
vicinity of Holyrood Palace. It comprises a hermitage, sixteen feet
long, twelve feet wide, and eight feet high, and a Gothic chapel
forty-three feet long, eighteen feet broad, and eighteen feet high.

One of the most remarkable of these little churches is that at
Knaresborough, in Yorkshire, which is a very queer little chapel
elegantly hewn out of the solid rock, the roof being beautifully
ribbed and groined in the Gothic style. At the back of the altar is
a large niche, where an image used to stand, and on one side of it
is a place for the "holy-water" basin. There are also figures of
three heads--designed, it is believed, for an emblematical allusion
to the order of the monks at the once neighbouring priory. Possibly
they were cut by some of the monks. The order was known as Sanctæ
Trinitatis. A few yards away there is another head. It has been
surmised that this is a representation of St. John the Baptist, to
whom the chapel is supposed to be dedicated. There is a cavity in
the floor, in which some ancient relic was rested. The chapel is
ten feet six inches long, nine feet wide, and seven and a half feet
high. Near the entrance is the following inscription:--

    "Beneath yon ivy's spreading shade,
     For lonely contemplation made,
     An ancient chapel stands complete,
     Once the hermit's calm retreat
     From worldly pomp and sordid care,
     To humble penitence and prayer;
     The sight is pleasing, all agree--
     Do, gentle stranger, turn and see."

The chapel is known as St. Robert's Chapel. St. Robert, the hermit
who used it for devotions, was born about 1160, and was the son
of Sir Toke Flouris, who was mayor of the city of York. In his
youth he was noted for his piety, and he entered the Cistercian
Abbey of Newminster in Northumberland. He was only there eighteen
weeks, however, removing to York, and then to Knaresborough, where
he retired from the world to live a life of contemplation in this
restful spot. He died in the September of 1218. On one side of the
entrance to the chapel, under the ivy, is the figure of a Knight
Templar, cut in the rock, in the act of drawing his sword to defend
the place from the violence of intruders. This is a queer and
remarkable building, and, though not now used as a place of worship,
the reference here made to it may prove interesting.

[Illustration: (_Photo: Cassell and Co., Ltd._)

INTERIOR VIEW OF PERIVALE CHURCH.]

The cathedral of St. Asaph, in Flintshire, might be mentioned in
this category as being the smallest cathedral in the country. It
is in the shape of a simple cross in plan, consisting of a choir
transept, nave, with five bays with aisles, and a central tower
forty feet square and one hundred feet high. The choir was built in
1867-68 from the designs of the late Sir Gilbert Scott, R.A., and is
of Early English architecture.

Passing references might also be made to the diminutive church of
Warlingham, in Surrey, which runs the midget church of Wotton in
that county very close; and to Grosmont Church, Monmouth, erected
by Eleanor of Provence, a quaint little structure with an octagonal
tower. There used to be a church known as St. Mildred in the
Poultry, which was removed to Lincolnshire. It formerly occupied a
position in the eastern end of Cheapside, and in 1872 it was taken
to pieces and re-erected at Louth. It is generally considered to be
the smallest church designed by Wren.

At St. Andrew, Greensted, near Ongar, there is a very small church,
and it is a curiosity, inasmuch as it is believed to be a relic of
the only church of Saxon origin built of wood remaining.

There is a small chapel at Point in View, near Exmouth. It is
Congregational, and it provides seating accommodation for eighty
persons, and forms one side of a block, the other three sides being
taken up by four little almshouses, each consisting of two rooms
occupied by four elderly maiden ladies. Over the chapel door is this
motto:--

    "One Point in View
     We all pursue."

The chapel contains a diminutive organ made by the pastor. In the
vicinity there is a peculiar round house, the property of the
Reichel family. It was a member of this family who founded the
chapel and almshouses.

The little church of St. Nicholas at Hulcote should be mentioned.
It is near Woburn, the seat of the Duke of Bedford. It is rather
difficult to find, at any rate when the foliage is on the trees,
so surrounded is it by them. It was built about the year 1610 by
Richard Chernocke. Its measurements are: length, from the tower to
the chancel step, thirty-nine and a half feet; chancel, eight and a
half feet from step to east; width, sixteen feet three inches. There
are carved oaken panels to many of the seats, and on the north wall,
inside the chancel rails, are some valuable old monuments in memory
of the Chernocke family. It is now between fifteen and twenty years
since the church was used for divine service, but it is still used
for funerals.

There is a little church, near London, known as Perivale. Although
so near to the great metropolis, it is situated in a peculiarly
lonely district. It lies in the valley of the Brent amid expansive
meadows and hay farms. In 1871 there were only seven houses and
thirty-three inhabitants in the parish. The midget church is
situated at the end of a field near a low, semi-Gothic half-timber
parsonage and a farmhouse. Although somewhat desolate, the spot is
a restful one, and the hill and spire of Harrow in the distance
make the scene pleasing to the eye. The little church is in the
Early Perpendicular style, and consists of a nave, a narrow chancel,
a rough wooden tower with short, pyramidal spire at the west,
and porch on the south-west. The interior presents a well-kept
appearance. The church was restored in 1875. In the windows is some
late fifteenth-century glass containing figures of St. John the
Baptist and St. Matthew, in fairly good condition, and of Mary and
Joseph, which are not so well preserved.

The prettily situated ivy-clad church of St. Lawrence, Ventnor,
Isle of Wight, is another edifice which might well be described as
a midget church, although some years ago it was found necessary to
enlarge it. The church originally was thirty feet eight and a half
inches long, it is now forty feet eight and a half inches; and its
breadth was formerly eleven feet, whereas it is now twenty feet.
The height to the eaves is about six feet. The architecture is Old
English, but not at all striking. The church dates back to about the
year 1190.

[Illustration: (_Photo: F. N. Broderick Hyde._)

THE OLD CHURCH AT ST. LAWRENCE.]

We have now exhausted our space, but not our subject. There are
other examples of diminutive churches throughout the country, but we
have made a selection of the more interesting ones. However small
the church, the worshippers have this assurance from the Founder of
the Christian religion: "Where two or three are gathered together in
My name, there am I in the midst of them"; and with that quotation
this little article may fittingly be concluded.




[Illustration: Canon's Daughter]

THE MINOR CANON'S DAUGHTER

_THE STORY OF A CATHEDRAL TOWN._

By E. S. Curry, Author of "One of the Greatest," "Closely Veiled,"
Etc.




CHAPTER IV.

A PREMATURE PROPOSAL.


In the Canons' Court, between Mr. Bethune's and the Deanery, lived
Mr. Warde. He was a pleasant man, well off, artistic, musical--and
happy in a life of little work, which left him leisure for his
artistic pursuits. He had a rosy, kind face and plump figure; the
Bethune children, Marjorie included, went to him before anyone else
in times of need. He had often shielded them from offended law.

It was he who set on foot the literary and drawing guilds,
arranged concerts, and was the universal handy man for games and
social festivities to all the county round Norham. He was about
thirty-five, and had a chivalric devotion to Mrs. Bethune and her
children, since, as a young man, he had first come to Norham.

Marjorie was so accustomed to this that she did not see what was
manifest to other eyes, on her return from school in Munich. She
took all his kindness as a matter of course, having no more relation
to herself individually than the Bishop's or the Dean's. Since her
return, he had been sedulously pursuing his courtship in every way
that occurred to him.

This gentleman was standing beside her under the lime-tree at the
top of the garden, where Marjorie could superintend the pursuits of
her two youngest brothers. They were now busily engaged underground.
For a whole week every minute of David's and Sandy's leisure had
been spent in digging a deep hole in the corner of the garden
devoted to their use. Thence, with infinite patience, passages had
been scooped, and the mound of earth thrown up against the wall had
come in useful as a toboggan ground.

The little boys had received strict orders that morning that all
the earth in the passages of the "cave," which, in a frenzy of
labour, the two schoolboys had burrowed out before breakfast, was
to be removed before their return in the afternoon. As it got
deeper, steps had been conveyed from the house for the descent of
the hole. The utility of division of labour had been impressed upon
the children. Orme was to fill the baskets; Ross, being surer of
his equilibrium, was to carry them up and empty them. If the work
was not done, and done properly, the babies would have to play
elsewhere; no longer would their presence be tolerated by their
elders.

Marjorie was enjoying a new book, whose alluring cover was fit index
to its contents. Now and then, between the pages, dark eyes looked
at her in a strange and wonderful fashion. When this occurred, she
would lift her own, and gaze dreamily over the currant bushes, her
breath coming quickly, the colour fluctuating in her cheeks. Upon
one such moment Mr. Warde had intruded.

"I thought I would come in and talk to you about your sonnet,
Marjorie," he said, looking about for a seat. There was nothing
handy except a cleft log--used by the boys as a block for chopping
sticks. On this uncomfortable seat Mr. Warde poised himself.

[Illustration: The man, looking at her, thought he might take hope.]

"But that wouldn't be fair, would it?" asked Marjorie.

"Oh! we judged the poems yesterday. I didn't propose to alter
anything. Mrs. Adeane's is the best, and Lady Esther's next.
But--your usual imagination was wanting this time," he said gently.

"I thought it was bad--it seemed so prosaic," Marjorie said humbly.
"You see, father's advice always is, not to let imagination go
further than it knows."

"Have you never imagined, never thought about love?" he asked softly.

"Often, lately," frankly. "I thought it was a very silly subject to
choose."

"Not silly, Marjorie. The loveliest poetry has been written about
it, as it is the loveliest subject. Why 'lately'?" he asked.

"To get ideas. They don't come, if you don't think--not to me, at
least."

"That way of putting it is new," he said, considering. "Well,
Marjorie, I want you to think of it, to imagine all you can of what
it means--the new brightness, the new beauty it gives to life;
how it transforms all things, even the commonest, so that----" He
paused. Marjorie was looking at him in wonder.

Was it something in his glance that brought irresistibly back to her
remembrance that look in Mr. Pelham's dark eyes, of which more than
once that afternoon she had been thinking? She coloured brightly,
and her beautiful eyes grew soft.

"Ah! I see you know what I mean," Mr. Warde said gently.

"Oh! I don't," said Marjorie confusedly. But the man, looking at
her, thought he might take hope. He went on:

"It is expressed in all beautiful music, as well as in the best
literature and art. It appeals to everyone, because it is natural to
all, and answers to something in the heart of every one of us. So
you see, Marjorie, knowing you and your gift of imagination, I am
disappointed at this bald little verse."

"Father says it is dangerous imagining on nothing," Marjorie
replied, plucking up her spirit. "First get facts, absolutely
accurate. Then build on them."

"Well, Marjorie, don't you realise that the facts are all about
you, that I----Whatever's the matter?"

A yell broke across the summer air, and Marjorie, springing up, bent
over the edge of the crater-like hole. At the bottom lay Orme, his
basket beside him, its contents upon him. In a second Marjorie had
descended underground, and Mr. Warde was left gazing into space.

When she emerged, Orme was in her arms, muddy tears bedewing his
cherubic cheeks. "Fall'd," he announced, in a self-pitying tone, to
the visitor.

Marjorie reseated herself, her little brother's head upon her
breast. As she comforted him, the man observing her grew more in
love than ever. Marjorie, soft and gentle, unconsciously rehearsing
Madonna attitudes, gave him a thrill of delight. Presently the boy,
his conscience uneasy over neglected work, slipped from her knee,
and, with muttered remarks on "er, nasty ground," descended again
into its bosom.

He had learnt the imprudence of engaging in another man's labour.
Resenting the meaner part of filling the baskets for the more stolid
and surefooted Ross to ascend and empty, he had been promptly
punished for his ambition. His little soul was now sore with the
injustice of things.

"Er, nasty steps slipped poor Orme," he said to Ross, watching his
careful ascent.

"You not big anuff," Ross answered importantly. "Go and fill er
basket. Do what David bidded you."

Meanwhile Mr. Warde had glanced at his watch. Soon, all too soon,
this semi-solitude in which he had been fortunate enough to find
Marjorie would be invaded by the schoolboys. He was no nearer the
end for which he had come, and he could not again drag in Marjorie's
little verse for criticism. She glanced at him, as she drew the
alluring book towards her, and said, not too politely:

"If you are going to stay, I'll just fetch my work," rising as she
spoke.

"No, Marjorie, don't go. There's something I specially wished to
say, to talk to you about," he said, becoming a little confused
under her unconscious gaze. Could he, after all, disturb this
serenity by the suggestion of love and marriage? He felt somehow
that the time was not ripe--that they would seem incongruous to her
in connection with himself. And yet, if he did not speak, and be
quick about it, another man might step in.

"I have had a letter to-day," he said, "offering me a college
living."

"Have you?" said Marjorie in a not altogether flattering manner, and
looking at him rather as though she were much surprised. She stood
poised, ready to fetch the threatened work; her attitude altogether
an unflattering one to a lover who has just made an important
communication.

"You won't go, shall you?" she went on, her glance going past him
to the wall which divided the gardens. Over the top big clusters
of the roses in which Mr. Warde delighted nodded gaily, whilst
further on the square face of his house was gay with bloom, amid
which the two lines of windows stared a little baldly. The blind in
each was arranged symmetrically, and in spite of its prim tidiness,
even its outside showed that no loved woman ruled within. From her
neighbour's house Marjorie's eyes jumped to her own home.

Here there was no symmetry, but its character as a home stood out
plain. The nursery windows, distinguished by their guarding bars,
were wide open, and the blinds drawn to the top, whilst in the three
open windows of her mother's room adjoining the curtains flopped
lazily, and the blinds had been adjusted to the sun. Somehow the
sight and the difference brought a feeling into Marjorie's heart
which had not yet stirred it in connection with Mr. Warde. Hitherto
he had not seemed to her to need pity. But now, when he went
back into his house--away from her and the homely garden, where
vegetables, and currant bushes, and the untidy quarter of the boys,
were of more account than flowers, where little feet pattered, and
boys' voices were never silent--what would he go back to? The blank
windows lit up empty rooms, where no foot but his own stirred. He
would find no companionship but that of his music and his books.
Marjorie never guessed of the visions that peopled his fireside.

"Shall you go?" she asked, looking at him--then speaking out
suddenly the pity her thoughts had called up: "Won't it be very
lonely?"

"Very. Sit down please, Marjorie, and listen to me."

Then, as she complied: "When first I came here, ten years ago, your
father and mother were very kind to me, and I grew so attached to
them and theirs, that I wanted nothing more. I felt no need of the
ties other men have or make, because I had--you." Then his tone
grew tender. "Do you remember how you used to come round and climb
into my study window for your lessons, when the boys began to go to
school? You were a bit forsaken then, Marjorie. And then, when you
were good--as you weren't always--how a little pony accompanied me
on my rides, and then when the pony and the child who rode it had
each grown bigger, one day they both disappeared. The child went
to school, to come back, nearly grown up, with music oozing out of
her fingers' ends. Well, Marjorie" (he had risen, and his face was
paling, his self-control vanishing, as he stood looking down on
her), "I have waited a long time for that little girl--who has yet
seemed always mine--I want her for my wife. Will you go with me,
dear, if I go?"

Marjorie gazed blankly into his face. "I? Of course, it is
me," she said slowly. "I don't know--I didn't think--how can I
leave--everybody?" her voice faltered.

She rose suddenly, putting aside the hand that would have stayed
her. There is nothing so cruel as a young thing who has no notion of
her power and of the devotion she has stirred.

"I didn't think," she said, cuttingly, "that you wanted payment. I
thought--I thought----" And then, not trusting her voice further,
she sprang away from his detaining hand, and fled.




CHAPTER V.

MARJORIE'S TROUBLE.


"Dear Marjorie,--You gave me no answer yesterday, and I am afraid I
took you by surprise, and perhaps shocked you. A girl is a tender
thing, I know. Will you send me just a little line of hope and
forgiveness? I love you--how dearly you cannot guess--and I want you
to be my wife. But I will press nothing against your will, and I
have written 'No' to the offer of that living. I think you will like
to stay near home. Whatever you decide, whether you say 'Yes' or
'No,' believe always that my love is too great to change, and that I
am ever your attached friend,--W. ST. J. WARDE."

       *       *       *       *       *

Marjorie was reading this letter with an expression which certainly
did not augur well for its writer. She had been seeing to household
matters for her mother, and had sat down with an armful of boys'
clothes to mend, when the note had been handed to her.

"I do not know what to say to him, mother. I wish--oh, I do so wish
he hadn't done it."

"He is a good man, Margie," her mother said simply. "A man, I think,
to make you happy."

[Illustration: "He is a good man, Margie."]

"Happy, mother? I am happy now. What should I do next door? I should
always be running in to see you. And how could you get on without
me?"

"We shall manage. And next door with Mr. Warde would be so much
nicer than a long way off with someone else. It would scarcely be
losing you."

"Do you want me to go, mother?" asked Marjorie, struck by her
mother's tone.

"Not in one sense, dear; but you will go. It is natural for girls to
marry. You will marry, I hope; it is the happiest life, with a good
man you can look up to."

[Illustration: "You have been very good to my boys," Mrs. Bethune
said.]

"But do I look up to him? I think we--Charity and I--often laugh at
him."

"But you can laugh, and yet look up, or life would be very dull. Who
do you go to when you want to know anything that father can't teach
you?"

"To Mr. Warde," acknowledged Marjorie.

"And when you want to go anywhere?"

"Yes; but only because he has a carriage--and we haven't."

"And when you want to see the picture galleries?"

"He can go; he always has time. But all that doesn't mean that I
want to marry him," she added.

"But it is just that. You already look to him for most of your
pleasures. That is a long way towards loving him. You would find him
a very kind husband and friend."

"Oh! mother, what must I do?" entreated Marjorie, the tears
coming into her eyes. "He has spoilt everything. It is Charity's
garden-party this afternoon, and I shall be so uncomfortable.
Couldn't you go, mother, in your chair?"

Mrs. Bethune's face changed.

"I could, dear. Yes, I will go; perhaps it will be difficult for
you." She sighed softly; she was hardly as yet reconciled to her
helplessness in public, in spite of the cheery spirit which enabled
her to bear suffering with such courage.

Mrs. Bethune's spirit made her the idol and confidante of her boys.
Her fun was unquenched, even when the fire of life would seem to
have gone out for ever; after the terrible fall, when, to save the
infant in her arms, she had laid herself upon her back for life. The
baby--Orme--was found unhurt, folded round, so it seemed, by the
broken body of his mother. Ross, the most thoughtful, she averred,
of her six sons, once said to her:

"Mummie, you do laugh mor'n anybody. Is it 'cos you can't walk?"

"Yes, little son, perhaps it is; to make up, you know."

And Sandy, butting his bright head into her knees one day,
inconsolable about something, was won to laughter by, "Sandy, laugh!
Look at me!"--and he had looked. And the irresistible witchery
of the beautiful dark eyes had cured his woe. She was always the
sunshiny centre of the house, and only her husband, or Marjorie in
rare moments, guessed how sometimes the bright spirit quailed.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Dean was popular in the county. When Mr. Pelham came into the
Deanery garden somewhat late, he found Mrs. Bethune's chair under
the chestnut trees, a centre of laughter and conversation. Marjorie
was standing by her mother, with a wistful look on her face, he
thought at first sight, wondering at its expression. Love, when
presented first to a girl brought up as Marjorie had been, comes
as a great shock. That it should be Mr. Warde of all men who
should cause her this disquiet filled Marjorie with a sense of the
unsatisfactoriness of the world. It disturbed things that had seemed
to her as settled as the hills round Norham that this old friend
should want to be her lover.

Before going to the Deanery she had sent a little note in answer to
his letter, in which she had said--

"There is nothing to forgive. But you must not think of me like this
any more. You have always been so kind to all of us that it grieves
me to say 'No' to anything you want. Still, it must be 'No.'"

She hoped he would not be present at the Deanery. It was his turn of
duty at the cathedral. She would bring her mother away early, before
he arrived. The afternoon was quite spoilt for her.

And then Mr. Pelham had come up, and she had introduced him to her
mother with a tremulousness and agitation quite unlike her usual
serenity.

"You have been very good to my boys," Mrs. Bethune said gratefully.

"Your boys have been very good to my little girl," he answered,
admiring the delicate beauty of the face, scarcely looking older
than the unquiet one of the tall daughter beside her.

"They're very enterprising," their mother said. "I hope she will not
come to any harm with them. They're apt to give us surprises."

"I wonder if you will give me some advice about her," he went on,
drawn by some magic in the dark eyes to appeal to their owner for
sympathy, "if I may consult you. It is about clothes," he said,
smiling. "My nurse is kind and careful, but surely a baby in the
country does not really need expensive dresses from a Regent Street
outfitter. I should be so grateful if you would tell me where you
get those pretty things your little boys always look so nice in."

"Even when they are grubby?" laughed the mother. "I do not know
where they could be bought. My nurse, and Marjorie, and I make them."

"Then, if you do, surely my nurse ought to have time. I do not like
my baby's over-dressed look; at least, white satin seems to be out
of keeping with mud-pies and digging. She is great on digging just
now."

"Quite so," said Mrs. Bethune. "If you will send your nurse down to
see me, I will have a talk with her."

The Duchess of Norham, a very great person indeed now came up to
greet Mrs. Bethune. She was not one who troubled about dress.
To-day, in her grey silk, and round hat, she was the most plainly
dressed woman on the Deanery lawn. Charity, by her side, was an
effective contrast, in soft, shimmering pink.

"Glad to see you out again, my dear," she said to Mrs. Bethune. "And
this is your girl come back to you--grown past all knowledge. I hear
wonders about her music," kindly. "Charity, may I take her away for
a few minutes, presently? I want to hear this music Mr. Warde extols
so. Where is he?" looking round.

Marjorie's cheeks, in spite of her usual self-control, turned
scarlet. But the Duchess's gaze was arrested by the look on Mr.
Pelham's face. He, still standing with a hand on Mrs. Bethune's
chair, was looking at Marjorie with a surprised appeal in his
expression, as if he, too, was wondering at her sudden flush.

"Oh!" thought the Duchess, "I imagined it was Charity. Was I
mistaken then? Not about the girl, if those rosy cheeks are to be
trusted."

"Why isn't Mr. Warde here?" she asked of Marjorie, who, in obedience
to her gesture, turned with her towards the house.

"He is at the cathedral. It is his week."

And the Duchess thought she guessed rightly the reason of the
agitation she detected in Marjorie's voice.

"The Blackton man will be unsuccessful," she settled. "But Charity
is pretty enough to console him, and it will be a good marriage for
them both."

This great lady was never more happy than when arranging marriages
amongst her friends.

Marjorie did not dream how her sudden flush had betrayed her, and
forgot lovers and the difficulties they caused when she sat down
to the piano. But perhaps it was the perplexity in her mind that
conveyed itself to the listener, through the plaintive melody ending
in a staccato phrase which fell from her fingers.

The Duchess sat at a little distance, viewing with approval the
delicate face, framed in its bright hair.

[Illustration: "Hush! Barbe, don't call!" entreated Sandy.--_p.
168_.]

"Good, pure, true, and strong," she settled; "and," as a sudden
conviction struck her, "she is beautiful, like her mother was ten
years ago. Dressed"--her thoughts following along the same way as
Charity's--"well, she would be a success. She is wasted on Mr.
Warde. Shall I interfere?"

She was so deep in thought, working out a sudden plan, that she did
not notice when Marjorie ceased playing.

Marjorie, glancing at her, asked softly--

"Was that too sad? Shall I try something else?"

But in a moment the Duchess rose briskly, and put her hand kindly on
Marjorie's shoulder.

"No, my dear. I shouldn't like that spoiled by anything else. Mr.
Warde is right. You have a gift. But a girl like you should not be
sad or--or perplexed. Forgive an old woman. Is something troubling
you?"

Marjorie looked up into the keen eyes above her.

"Not troubling," she hesitated, "only things are sometimes
perplexing."

As she spoke her eyes travelled to the window, through which came
the sound of low-voiced chatter and delicate laughter. The older
woman, looking at the girl, saw a sudden arrested look come into her
eyes and, following their direction, was again puzzled. Charity,
standing by Mrs. Bethune's chair, was smiling up into Mr. Pelham's
face. She had the manner of one who is pleased, and who wishes
to please, and her pretty daintiness of pose and dress was very
attractive. Mr. Pelham's whole attention, as he conversed, was given
to her. In his courteous attitude were expressed, in the eyes of the
two lookers-on, both deference and admiration.

"That girl has grown very pretty," the Duchess said, "and Mr. Pelham
seems to think so. He is quite an acquisition here, though I am
amused to hear you sniffed at him at first."

"Yes," agreed Marjorie, a little pang at her heart.

The keen eyes travelled back again to Marjorie's face.

"But your mother was prettier than any of you. The sweetest,
merriest creature ever seen, with you babies at her feet. I am glad
to see her so much better, able to do even this little, poor soul,
poor soul!"

The sudden tears welled up into Marjorie's eyes at the appreciation
and tenderness of the tone.

"And, my dear--forgive an old woman again--but I think I have
guessed Mr. Warde's hopes for a long time, and he is a good man.
There, there"--as Marjorie's face grew agitated--"nothing could have
happened better. Your mother will have you at hand, and though she
is so unselfish and brave, she has missed you sadly; and there is
plenty of money."

Marjorie listened in silence, with a feeling as though chains were
being bound round her. As she walked back by the Duchess's side to
her mother's chair she strove in vain to recall her courage. In the
eyes of the man who watched her, as she came towards him, the shadow
on her face had deepened with that little excursion into the house.




CHAPTER VI.

A MIDNIGHT VISIT.


The boys had seized the opportunity of the attention of their elders
being engaged elsewhere to get into mischief. Although they had
made so much fuss about their right of way to school, it was not
the only way they used. They had, in fact, several ways. One was
by train to Baskerton, a village on the river five miles away, and
thence, by lanes and the parks, home. This, however, required time
and the absence of authorities. Another way was through Easton and
the parks, up the course of the little stream, which at one point
nearly touched the Court gardens. In this stream, its shallow waters
splashing up against their ankles, the boys were walking, and the
baby was prancing between them.

"Should we take Barbe with us?" David had asked, pausing on the
Green.

"If we can get her," Sandy had replied.

The boys reconnoitred, and the piercing whistle, which set the baby
all a-quiver with expectation, sounded through the garden.

"There then, go!" said nurse somewhat crossly, as Barbe began to
stamp; and she went. Her education was proceeding apace. Her father
sometimes listened aghast at the things which, in her baby prattle,
she reported herself to have done.

"See, Barbe, there's a rat!" Sandy said eagerly, as a flop and a
splash made them jump. "See, it's swimmin' away."

"'Wimmin' away," said the baby, stooping to look, her two hands
on her two knees, and the front of her frock sailing on the water
before her.

"Oh, Barbe, you're all wet!" David said, as they landed, and
strolled up the field.

"Wet!" she echoed delightedly. "Foots--f'ock!"

"You'll have to be dried."

"I know," said Sandy cheerfully; "we'll dry you by the Bishop's
fire--almost sure to be a fire."

But the study window, to which they crept warily by sheltered ways,
was shut. The Bishop was absent.

"Now what's to be done?" said David.

"I know where there's a fire," Sandy said. "Was this morning, 'cos
of that lead. Let's take her to the little room."

Again they slipped by leafy ways out of the Palace garden into the
cathedral yard. The baby's wet skirts flopped round her, and David
lifted her into his arms.

The approach of Mrs. Lytchett, returning from the Deanery in
unwonted bravery of attire, prompted them to seek refuge behind a
tomb. Here it took the boys' whole attention to prevent Barbe's
chatter drawing unwished-for notice upon them.

"Hush! Barbe, don't call!" entreated Sandy.

"Barbedie good girl," announced the baby in a loud voice, lifting
herself on tip-toe to see the passer-by.

Mrs. Lytchett's ears were good, and, besides, she felt certain at
this point that her eyes had seen something fluttering. She stepped
off the pathway, and examined a tomb near.

"Hush!--sh--sh!" cautioned David, holding up his finger to his
mouth--a movement which so pleased Barbe that she proceeded to copy
it.

Mrs. Lytchett passed on; the danger was over. David lifted up the
baby and carried her into a little octagon room near by, built in
the wall of the cathedral, and used frequently as a workroom or
office.

Here the boys were at home. It was the head-quarters of their
greatest friends--the masons engaged on the renovations always in
progress at the cathedral.

In the grate were the slowly dying embers of a fire, and the room
was empty.

"Mr. Galton ain't locked up yet, knowed he wouldn't," said Sandy.
"He likes his tea punctual--'spects it's time. Now, Barbe, come an'
get done."

Whilst David was holding the baby to the fire, Sandy disappeared,
presently returning with an excited face.

"They've nearly done," he said. "It's prime up there. Seems to me,
we'd best settle as soon as possible."

"This baby won't get dry," said David, gloomily. "Just look at her!"

"I know," said Sandy, regarding the bedraggled Barbe. "We'll take
it off an' leave it here. An' I'll fetch her somefink. Sure to be
somefink stored in Margie's basket--know Orme made holes in himself
last week."

So it happened that it was a little blue girl--clad in one of Orme's
shabbiest overalls--who met Mrs. Bethune's returning chair, and was
lifted to her knee for a "yide."

"But what has happened? where are her own clothes?" Mrs. Bethune
asked, recognising the substitute.

"We thought they were just a little damp," said Sandy in
explanation, climbing up the back of the chair to kiss his mother.

"Good boy, Sandy!" said his mother, "to take care of her."

"But how did they get damp?" asked Marjorie suspiciously.

"Just a little water p'raps got on them," he replied, feeling the
tone unkind after his mother's praise.

"Then you have been in mischief?" asked Marjorie.

"Barbedie walked in er water," the baby replied, as if she had been
doing a good work.

"You shouldn't have let her," Mrs. Bethune said caressingly.

"Barbe don't want lettin'," answered Sandy philosophically. "She
does wivout."

       *       *       *       *       *

The sweets of mischief whetted the boys' appetites for more. They
applied themselves with zeal to a work they had in hand, and for the
next few days little was seen of them.

One evening they were standing in a disused corner of the Palace
grounds, under the ruined window of the old banqueting hall, which
formed part of the wall enclosing the gardens of the modern wing of
the house. The corner where they stood was immediately adjoining the
wall of their own garden, and was part of an overgrown shrubbery
between the ruins and the parks.

Both boys were exceedingly dirty. Faces, capless heads, fingers,
clothes, all bore traces of the underground work from which they had
just emerged. They had burrowed from their cave, and were mightily
pleased at their point of exit. No place could be more secluded,
nor less likely to be discovered. And from the ruined wall close
by, under the shelter of a spreading elder, they were able to drop
easily either into the cathedral yard or the Bishop's garden.

"Now the game begins. We've got a base of operations," said David
grandly.

"How much?" asked Sandy.

"What you work from, and what you fall back upon, if you get
besieged. And it's a good base too," he added, looking round. "We've
got to make this passage hard and firm, and then hide it from that
prying gardener."

"An' we can pay back Mrs. Lytchett," said Sandy with joy.

"How?"

"Oh, I know! She just hates us going to the Bishop's window. He told
me he'd just got a new tin of gingerbread, an' now we can get in
wivout goin' through the gate. She's made that gate so it clicks."

"But you mustn't let her see."

"Not me! If she comes, we'll just run round the house, and she'll
fink we've come back way. And then she'll run round to catch us, an'
we shan't be there."

Sandy spoke with the certainty of much experience, as, indeed, he
had a right to do.

"Our character is all gone," David said thoughtfully, "so it don't
much matter how bad we are."

"No, s'long as it ain't wicked bad. We'll be highwaymen, but we
won't be thieves and robbers."

"We can get into the cathedral, too," suggested David.

And then, with minds full of revolution and anarchy, the boys bent
earnestly to the preliminary work of making their passage secure.

"Ross and Orme, you're never to go along there without us," David
said to his young brothers, when he had wriggled back to the cave
whence his passage started. Now their services were no longer
needed, they were felt to be rather nuisances.

"If you do, you'll get smacked right hard," said Sandy.

Both children fixed round eyes on their elders, unable to understand
this sudden change. They were dismayed at its injustice. For some
days they had been treated with indulgent kindness, all their faults
overlooked, so long as they did diligent work. They were cleaned
when possible, and consoled when their dirty appearance awoke wrath
in the powers responsible for them. Now, it seemed, all was changed.
There was no mistaking Sandy's attitude, as he stood ready to
administer the smacks alluded to. Nor were David's frowning brows
more encouraging.

Ross tried argument. "We'se scooped, too," he said. "We'se got
dirty, ever so," he added.

"Ever so," echoed Orme.

"No matter! You kids must do as you're bid, and if ever you go a
step along there you'll catch it. See?" said David. And the infants,
with moody brows, averred that they saw.

By this time the hole which formed the entrance to the cave was much
improved. The wooden steps had been replaced by a flight of mud
steps, the making of which had been a joy, not only to the boys,
but to the baby. They had required water as well as mud in their
making--endless paddlings and pattings and treadings down of little
feet before the staircase was complete. David had engineered the
proceedings, and Mr. Warde, now and then hovering about the top, had
conferred advice. He was not encouraged to descend. The boys wanted
no prying grown-ups to mar their schemes. Marjorie, now and then,
had suspicions that some extra mischief was afloat. Never before had
she known them to stick to anything for so long. But she recollected
the fascination of caves and holes, and was, besides, much engaged
with her own concerns.

[Illustration: =The Bishop and the boy.=--_p. 170._]

One evening the Bishop, on leaving the drawing-room, had gone to
his study. It had been a wet day, and the rain had finished in
a thunderstorm an hour or so before, leaving the sky washed and
pellucid under the summer moon.

The shutters had been closed and a little fire lighted; but
presently, finding the room warm, the Bishop opened the window, and
stood gazing over the wide lawn which occupied the space between the
house and the ruins.

The delicate tracery of the ruined window of the banqueting hall,
and the many unevennesses of the walls, stood out black against the
sky. Every object on the lawn--every bush and tree and flower--was
sharply distinct.

As he looked, his eye caught a movement among the distant shrubs.
Some small object was advancing along the gravelled walk surrounding
the lawn. Presently, as if attracted by the light, it turned off the
pathway on to the lawn, in a bee-line for the window.

The Bishop stood watching, wondering a little, when the object
resolved itself first into a small boy, and then into Sandy Bethune.

"Why, Sandy!" he exclaimed, "how did you get here?"

"Is it the middle of the night?" asked Sandy in his usual cheerful
way.

"Nearly. It's half-past eleven. Good gracious! What have you been
doing?"

For, on approaching the light, Sandy was seen to be covered with mud
and otherwise much disarrayed.

Sandy considered. He was in a deep fix--so deep a one as to threaten
the upheaval and overthrow of some well-laid plans, just on the
point of being carried out. The Bishop was an understanding man.
Sandy had confided in him before, and knew his worth. If only
Mrs. Lytchett did not live at the Palace, and spoil everything,
Sandy would have been quite willing to share that residence with
the Bishop. He had once told the Bishop so, artlessly asking when
Mrs. Lytchett was going away to live elsewhere. The Bishop, on his
side, found the children of his friend very charming, specially
so irrepressible Sandy; and was ready to be lenient when their
peccadilloes were in question. He now invited Sandy in, despite the
muddy covering which encased him from head to foot. Sitting down, he
began to question him gravely.

"What is it, Sandy? Why are you in such a mess?"

Sandy sat down on a little stool, as if glad to present his small
person to the fire, and said, "It's the bovering funderstorm. We'd
never thought of that. An' we got caught, an' had to take shelter,
an' when we got back our way was bunged up--all squashy with mud.
An' we hadn't got no spades nor fings out with us. So at last I said
I would go and scout--you know--an' then I saw you."

"Who's 'we'?" asked the Bishop.

"Me an' David."

"And how did you get into my garden?"

"Oh, over the wall. We're highwaymen, and we've got a way of our
own."

"Indeed. And where's David now?"

"Oh, he's over there, all muddy, tryin' to clean himself. He's a
deal worse than me," said Sandy cheerfully.

"He must indeed be bad, then. What do you propose to do?"

"That's it. We can't get back to the pantry window now our way's
gone," said artless Sandy. "Not in at all, not wivout knockin' at
the door. I did think p'raps"--persuasively--"you cud come and
knock."

"I see. And then?"

"Then, when you was talkin' to father, we cud slip in. Don't fink
father would see--not to notice."

"How long have you been highwaymen?" the Bishop asked.

"On'y about a week--and this is a sickener," said Sandy disgustedly.
"We was ghosts for a bit at first--till a woman screeched so we
nearly got caught, stupid fing!"

And the Bishop, remembering certain reports that had been made to
him, was pleased with his acumen in refusing to call in the police.

"If I were you, I should try a better line of business," he
said. "Ghosts frighten silly women, and highwaymen are not very
creditable, on the whole."

"Yes," agreed Sandy. "We're goin' to. Next we're goin' to be
pioneers and settlers."

"Ah, I see. And where are you going to settle?"

Sandy's bright eyes were turned suspiciously to the kind ones
looking down upon him. He fidgeted uneasily, and a smile came across
the Bishop's face.

"I see," he said. "Perhaps you have not yet made up your minds."

Sandy looked uncomfortable. "Not 'zactly," he confessed. "Truth is,
it depends--I don't fink Dave would like me to tell. It's such a
grand plan," he went on enthusiastically, "it 'ud be such a pity----"

"To have it spoilt. Well, don't get into more mischief than you can
help," the Bishop cautioned, "and don't do anything to make your
mother uneasy."

"Mother? Oh, mother'll laugh--she always does. You see, the bother
is," confided Sandy, "there ain't no places to pioneer--every bit's
taken. An' we've on'y just thought on it; an' it's splendid. We
want a girl badly, though. Margie? No, Margie's no good. Settlers
has wives an' squaws," went on Sandy pensively, "and we've on'y got
Barbe lately, an' she's aw'fly little. 'Sides, you have to take such
care on her--she's the on'y one Mr. Pelham's got. There's a lot of
us, but mother says she cudn't spare not the littlest bit of one. So
much less him his one, an' such a little one. It's a 'sponsibility,"
sighed Sandy, "when you want to do fings."

Through the open window came the musical sound of the chimes from
the cathedral. The Bishop, with a quick sigh, rose.

"There is a quarter to twelve. Your father will be going to bed.
Fetch David quickly."

"Should fink he's cleaned by now," said Sandy hopefully. "He was
rubbin' himself wiv the leaves off the trees--drippin' wet."

Mr. Bethune opened his front door in response to a low knocking,
which at first he did not hear. His eyes had the unseeing, far-away
look in them of a man disturbed in a possessing line of thought. The
red light in the hall shone on the face of the Bishop, who entered
and stood on the doormat for a minute, in such a position as to
shield the entrance of the two muddy boys.

"Here is the _Guardian_ for you," he said, "with a very appreciative
notice of your paper." Then he went on, "And tell Marjorie to-morrow
morning not to be too cross with the state of the boys' clothes.
They've been in mischief, but it won't happen again--not the same
sort."

[Illustration: The father pretended not to hear the scuffling of
small feet.]

The two men looked at one another and laughed, and the father
pretended not to hear the scuffling of small feet upon the stairs.
The Bishop went home with no weight on his conscience--only a little
pathetic envy of the man he had just left. Somehow those stifled
scufflings up the stairs had gone straight to the depths of his very
tender and lonely heart.

       *       *       *       *       *

"The Bishop knows all 'bout it," excused Sandy sturdily, when
confronted by Marjorie the next morning.

"The Bishop knows that all your clothes are in the bath, with both
taps running!"

"Well, he does," Sandy repeated, "proberly. He said we were the
out-an'-outest dirtiest little grubs he'd ever seen."

"That you are--no one will contradict him. But he couldn't know that
your clothes were in the bath."

"Yes, he would. If they were so dirty, where else could they be?
It's all that 'gustin' funderstorm."

"Thunderstorm!" echoed Marjorie suspiciously. "That was at ten
o'clock. What has that got to do with your clothes and the Bishop?"

"Tell you it has. You'd best ask him, if you don't b'lieve me," said
Sandy, hurt at her unbelief. "Anyhow, he does know that they was
dirty. An' just cos we want to save trouble an' wash 'em ourselves,
you're cross an' spiteful. Girls are no good--'cept little uns.
What's there to put on? Best be somefink old, cos there's a deal of
diggin' to be done."

"I shall stop that digging if you make such a mess of yourselves."

"You'd best not," said David meaningly, from his bed in the further
corner. "If you do, you'll be sorry," he said darkly.

  END OF CHAPTER SIX.




[Illustration: Three Songs of Birth]

Three

Songs of Birth

A

_Christmas_

_Sermon_

By the Rev. Hugh Miller, M.A.

  "Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host
   praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth
          peace, good will toward men."--ST. LUKE ii. 13, 14.


Three times are we told in Scripture that the angels sang. At the
birth of the world, when the foundations of the earth were laid, the
morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.
When Jesus was born into the world a multitude of the heavenly host
praised God and said, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth
peace, good will toward men." And when anyone is born again there is
joy among the angels in heaven over the sinner that repenteth. The
subject of the song in each case is the same: the leading _motif_ of
them all is man.

Man, to begin with, was God's chief end in creation, and the angels
sang not so much because a new world had been made, but rather
because a new being akin to themselves was put into it, to whom
they might minister and with whom they might co-operate in the
doing of God's most holy will; and this season comes to remind us
of our inherent dignity in God's sight, of the noble ideal He has
formed for us, of the value He sets on those whom He sent His Son
to seek and to save. As God made us and as He intends us to be, we
are not a little higher only than the animals, we are rather only
"a little lower than the angels." He has crowned us with glory and
honour and set us over the work of His hands. He has put all things
under our feet. The material universe was made for man, to be his
home, to develop his powers, to be a test and discipline of his
moral character. I refuse to be reduced to the same rank, or to be
placed in the same order, as the beasts that perish. Remembering the
angels' first song, I assert my supremacy.

And man is most of all supreme because God has given him the freedom
to choose the objects of his life, and the means by which he can
secure them. Sun, moon and stars are bound by laws which they cannot
transgress. The movements of the animals are guided by impulses
and instincts over which they have no moral control. To man alone
belongs the power of refusing to bow before God's greatness and of
disobeying God's commands. Man only has this sovereignty; but his
sovereignty led to his servitude, and the chains that bound him were
forged by an angel who fell before man's fall.

If, then, all the angels worshipped and adored when man was made
with the great gift of free choice, how must the holy ones that
remained after the first and great apostasy have grieved when the
fallen angels took man along with them in their fall! For because of
man's disobedience God's idea in making man seemed to be thwarted
and the peace and good will to which he was called appeared no
longer possible. Instead of being the master of creation, he was now
to a large extent its unhappy victim.

We know from hints thrown out here and there in Scripture with what
absorbing interest the angels followed the plans of God to bring
order once more out of the chaos caused by sin, and the effort He
put forth to create a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth
righteousness. No wonder, then, that when the fulness of the time
was come, and God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the
law to redeem man, the angels should have sung a second time, and
anticipated for man at last a happy time of peace and good will.

The angels had a clear perception of the purpose of Christ's coming.
One of the chief of them said to Joseph, "Thou shalt call His name
JESUS: for He shall save His people from their sins." And they all
sang when He came, because they knew that God was now dealing in a
special and most effective way with that dark thing which cast its
shadow on heaven as well as on earth. And it becomes us to remember
that it is the sin of man which in the mind of God and His holy
angels is associated with the coming of Jesus Christ. To this end
was He born, and for this cause came He into the world.

The sin of our first parents had passed on from generation to
generation, and each one of the millions of mankind had to say,
"Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive
me"; and each fulfilled in his own life all too truly the sad
promise of his birth. How was the tradition to be broken, and yet
broken by one who really belonged to the race? The instincts of man
himself foreshadowed the truth. Stories of a virgin birth here and
there discernible in paganism show the deep intuition which was
realised in Jesus Christ. He came into the world to fight with sin,
to redeem a race steeped in a terrible heritage of evil, and that He
might redeem it He Himself was born, and yet was free from evil.

He fought sin and He conquered it. Why, then, has the angels' song
not been fulfilled? Why does sin still cast its shadow on earth and
heaven alike? Why does God's loving purpose in sending His Son seem
still to suffer so wide defeat? Because in his recovery as in his
fall, man's will must play its part. I can only be saved from sin
when I _will_ to be saved; I only become a partaker of the benefits
which Christ brought from heaven to earth when, yielding to the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, I turn with full accord to Jesus
Christ as my Saviour. Marvel not, therefore, that we say to you with
peculiar emphasis on the day in which Christ was born, "Ye must be
born again." Otherwise, His birth is of no avail to you and me. We
are not honouring Him, we are putting Him rather to an open shame,
if we keep out of our thoughts at this time the supreme purpose of
His coming, if we are not personally dealing with Him even now as to
the burden and guilt of our sin.

But we can set the angels a-singing in the sky, and the melody of
their music can be felt in our own hearts, if we turn in lowly
penitence to Him who came to save His people from their sins, and to
quicken them to a new life of righteousness and peace and joy. Only
when a man comes to himself in lowly penitence, and then goes to his
Father with a lofty faith, does he enter into the full purpose of
his manhood; and only then, also, is there not only joy among the
angels in heaven over the sinner that thus repenteth, but there is
music and dancing on the earth as well, and the old life ends in
which sin reigned, and the new begins in which Christ reigns; and
His reign means "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace,
good will to men."

"There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked."




O Wondrous Night!

A NEW CHRISTMAS CAROL.


  _Words by_ ARTHUR BRYANT. _Music by_ CHARLES BASSETT.

    1.  O wondrous night! O wondrous night! we fain would tell
          The news the Angel told;
        The holy vision which befel
          The Shepherds by their fold.
        With fear they saw, with gladness heard
          The heav'nly minstrelsy,
        With hope each trembling heart was stirred
          At that sweet harmony: ...
        "We bring good news Which ne'er shall cease;
          To God be praise, to God be praise,
            On earth be peace."

    2.  O wondrous sight! O wondrous sight for simple swains,
          With hasty steps who sped;
        The music of those joyous strains
          To that poor manger led.
        With awe they gazed on Christ the Lord
          Amid that happy throng,
        And Israel at His feet adored,
          Taught by the Angels' song: ...
        "We bring good news,
          Which ne'er shall cease;
        To God be praise, to God be praise,
            On earth be peace."

    3.  O wondrous night! they homeward turned
          To where their flocks did lay,
        And sang the song they late had learned
          To cheer them on their way.
        The timid dawn began to peer
          Across the dewy wold;
        Their lips in accents loud and clear
          The gladsome tidings told:
            "We bring good news," &c.

    4.  O wondrous sight, that God should live
          In robe of flesh for man!
        O wondrous Love, Himself to give
          When closed His mortal span!
        Sing, O ye skies! be joyful, earth!
          Ye winds, bear o'er the seas
        The news of blessèd Jesu's birth,
          And those sweet harmonies:
            "We bring good news," &c.




THE HOUSE COMFORTABLE.

By Lina Orman Cooper, Author of "The House Beautiful," Etc.


The House Beautiful must needs be also the House Comfortable, if
we take true loveliness to consist of perfect fitness for service.
Thoroughness is the keynote of each. In order to strike it we
must have entered heart and soul into Ruskin's translation of St.
Ursula's Room. Carpaccio himself painted the useful in the beautiful
in this famous picture. From the princess's book, set up at a slope
fittest for reading, to the shelf which runs under the window,
providing a place to put things on--from a silver lamp on the white
wall to the little blue slippers beside her bed, each detail ensures
comfort of the first quality.

Comfort is a thing quite apart from fashion. So it is easier to
indicate the road which leads to the House Comfortable than it
was to point out details in the House Beautiful. We most of us
agree about the essentials required for real comfort: chairs upon
which you can sit fearlessly; beds which rest and do not bruise;
arms that support without cramping; pokers that bend not; strong
tables and sharp knives, these are a sample of the things I mean.
But true comfort depends on more than surface surroundings. It is
indissolubly linked with attention to detail. The houses to which
guests return time after time is the one in which soap is never
absent from its tray, and where pillows are not only covered with
frilled slips, but also stuffed with down and interlined with soft
covering in place of waxed ticking.

I would say, first of all, that the House Comfortable must stand
in a sunny situation. This ensures warmth and light, without which
our bodies are ill-nourished and miserable. "Where the sun never
comes the doctor does" is a much-to-be-quoted proverb. We cannot all
live exactly where we like. Circumstances of business, and means,
generally determine locality. But common-sense must guide us in the
selection of our houses. If we would be really comfortable, we must
live in light, dry, airy, and clean homes. Never take a house on
the sole recommendation of its pretty appearance. To have a really
beautiful house we must first see that it is essentially built for
comfort. The really useful and good is generally ornamental, for
it possesses the realistic beauty of _fitness_. A north and south
aspect for the chief sitting rooms, with east and west windows,
secures both sunshine and shade. We want afternoon coolness as well
as morning light. If our apartment looks towards the sun rising,
heavy curtains should be ready to draw when east wind rages. A stick
to effect this noiselessly is a small boon much appreciated. If our
casement faces the golden gates of the west, no such protection
is called for. But all windows should have double blinds--white
outside, to absorb heat, and dark inside, to veil the sun when
necessary. The comfort of lying in bed, facing a dark green blind
can only be estimated by those who have reluctantly been disturbed
by the too early shafts of the god Phoebus.

There should be a triple water supply in the House Comfortable;
ewers always filled from the soft-water pump. Every well and tank
should be tested ere we take up residence. Pure water, and plenty
of it, is essential to the health (and therefore comfort) of every
household. It should be perfectly clear and bright, and free from
taste or smell. Yet impurity may lurk even in the most sparkling
water. Therefore science must decide as to its desirability. If
only iron or lime water is procurable, jars of lump ammonia, or a
bottle of cloudy liquid ammonia, a bag of oatmeal or a bundle of
bran should lie on every washstand. The hot-water boiler not only
supplies unlimited baths, but may be devised to heat the house. In
every Canadian home a stove in the cellar warms the rooms above
by means of drums and fans. We might do much the same in England
with our hot-water pipes. These should certainly run through the
linen-press and clothes cupboards, and terminate in bathroom
spirals. On these, towels and rough sheets could be dried and
aired. A face cloth always warm is one of the luxuries in our House
Comfortable.

After sanitation, ventilation takes its place in the home.
How to secure a constant supply of fresh air is a question
which demands most serious consideration. In ages past, houses
were unintentionally ventilated by the ill-fitting doors and
window-frames, wide chimneys, and open fire-places. But in our
modern buildings comfort is secured by almost air-tight doors and
windows. Ventilators at the top of such are delightful and necessary
for real comfort, or a Queen Anne casement may have a swing in its
upper frame. It is not always easy, however, to secure exemption
from draught in our modern mansions. When the brick-and-mortar fiend
has placed door, window, and fireplace exactly opposite each other,
screens must be judiciously used. A brass rod from which hangs a
curtain, screwed into the door jamb and suspended by a tiny chain
from the ceiling, is a good thing, or an ordinary _portière_ may be
allowed. The former plan, however, enables us to keep the door open
without feeling a wind.

Padded stair-carpets secure noiseless ascent in the House
Comfortable. Cork mats by the big bath are welcome to bare feet.
Many cupboards are a necessity. A place for everything and
everything in its place is one of the initial rules for everyone's
comfort. It is also Divine law. Hanging presses, medicine cupboards,
butler's pantry, housemaid's closets, keep dresses from dust,
poisons from the unwary, silver and glass intact, and brushes unworn.

The House Comfortable must not be over-servanted. Neither must it
be undermanned. Of the two evils, the latter is preferable, as the
mistress herself then looks after the minutiæ of her house. With all
deference to Matthew Prior, comfort does not flow on a line with
ignorance. It requires a cultivated intelligence to provide such in
our homes.

Education has done much for us on this point. How not to do it
in the House Comfortable is exemplified by the abodes of our
forefathers. Going over Beaumaris Castle the other day, I noted
the small apertures for exit; the high caverns of chimneys; the
windows of horn; the crooked stairs. Nowadays we find stoves and
slow combustion grates quite a necessity for comfort--whilst lofty
ceilings, broad staircases, and wide windows can be quite as
picturesque, and are far more to be desired.

The dictionary definition of the word "comfort" implies enlivenment
and capability for dispensing bodily ease. For this, moral qualities
are as necessary as well-planned, well-equipped houses.

Punctuality, for instance, is an ingredient required to secure a
comfortable home.

When breakfast and dinner are movable feasts, served up at the whim
of a lie-a-bed or a gad-about, they can only be make-believes,
after all. Cold coffee is unpalatable even when partaken of in a
sunny room. Whitey-brown sausages are unappetising unless piping
from the pot. Yet this--like all other virtues--may be strained
too far. Nothing is more uncomfortable than to feel no latitude is
allowed to a weary guest, or to find one's host at marmalade three
minutes after the time appointed for the disappearance of a savoury.
Courtesy in this must be our rule. Neatness is another necessity.
No house can be really comfortable that is littered with papers,
or in which boots lie in the drawing-room--yet finickiness in
arrangement makes the home unbearable. The most uncomfortable visit
I ever paid was to the most scientifically correct house. Chairs
were not allowed to touch the wall-paper; footstools never shifted.
A towel for wiping down the varnish of the bath was provided, and--I
was made miserable! By all means keep paint and paper in as much
primitive purity as possible, but let unobtrusive service guard
these points.

Much more could I discourse of the House Comfortable, but space
forbids. Let me only remind you that the veriest cottage--plenished
with wisdom and lovingly provided--may fulfil all its conditions
just as well as the most luxurious castle.

Told in Sunshine Room.]




[Illustration: DONKEY BOY]

DONKEY BOY TO THE QUEEN

_A TRUE INCIDENT._

By Alfred T. Story

Part II.


A week passed before anything further was heard. Then a summons came
for Tam to appear before her Majesty on the following afternoon. He
was duly in attendance, and had not long to wait before a man in
Highland costume came into the room where he was seated and said--

"Noo, my braw laddie, her Most Gracious Majesty and his Royal
Highness the Prince Consort will come in through that door in twa
seconds. When they enter all you hae to dy is ta stan' up an' mak'
yer obeisance. An' when they ax ye a question jist ye say yes or
nae, your Majesty, or your Royal Highness, as the case may be. An'
if they ax ye naething--weel, jist ye say naething in return."

With these words the wise servitor withdrew. Barely had he gone out
of one door ere the other opened, and the same lady he had seen
before, leaning on the arm of the gentleman he likewise remembered,
appeared before friend Tam. They were both dressed much more richly
than when he had previously seen them, the lady having a brilliant
star on her breast, and the gentleman wearing a silken sash over his
shoulder.

For a moment the boy was confused, but he recovered himself
sufficiently to recollect that he had to make an "obeisance." He had
omitted to ask the Highland gentleman what that was, but he thought
it must be something like the soldier's salute, and so he stood
perfectly upright and saluted.

"So you have come, my lad, to see her Majesty about the position of
donkey-boy?" said the gentleman.

"Yes, sir--your Royal Highness," replied Tam. Only when he had got
out the word "sir" did it flash upon him that he was standing before
the Queen and her Royal Consort.

"Well, her Majesty has caused inquiries to be made about you, and
she finds that, although you are a little wayward and sometimes
disobedient to your grandparents, you are not on the whole a bad
boy."

"No, your Royal Highness," said Tam.

"Does that mean that you are not a bad boy, or that you do not
sometimes disobey your grandparents?"

This question, though backed by a genial smile, somewhat
disconcerted the would-be donkey-boy. He was silent for a moment,
then he answered, looking first at one and then at the other, with
that straight glance of his, "I hae sometimes been disobedient to
my grandparents, but I think I have learned better now."

"I am glad to hear that," said the Prince.

Then, speaking for the first time, the Queen said, "Well, Tam, if I
make you my donkey-boy, will you promise to be obedient to all my
slightest wishes and commands? Do not answer lightly. I am a severe
mistress in that I expect the strictest obedience and attention
to duty. But I, in return, am strict in doing my duty to those I
employ."

"And if you prove a worthy and trustworthy servant," added the
Prince, "your position is secure for life."

"Not, however, as a mere donkey-boy all your days," put in the Queen
with a smile.

Said Tam with a faltering tongue: "If ye'll try me, your Majesty,
I'll do my best, and," he added, as though struck with a sudden
thought, "I'll no need to lick the donkeys, 'cos I ken hoo ta mek
'em run 'thout the stick."

[Illustration: Yetta threw up her hands in amaze.]

"And how do you do that?" asked the Prince with a smile.

"I meks 'em carry a bunch o' thistles afore 'em."

"Well, we will see," replied her Majesty, smiling. "Now you may run
home and tell your grandparents you are to be ready to begin duty
this day week. But before you go you will see the gentleman who
spoke to you a minute or two ago."

With these words and a kindly smile the Sovereign and her Royal
Consort withdrew.

The one door closed, the other immediately opened, and again entered
the Highland gentleman. "Sae ye hae been engagit ta look after ta
cuddies, eh?" he questioned.

Tam said he had.

"Aweel, it's a verra guid step in life for a young callant to
begin wi', an' if ye tek heed there's nae telling whereto it may
lead--ablins even to the primiership, if ye ken what that is. For ye
mun know, the gift o' the heaven-made Prime Minister is just to ken
hoo ta manage a' th' human cuddies that are sent to Parliament to
bother 'em. But mebbe a' that's a wee bit abune yer understanding as
yet, and sae we'll just leave it an' speer aboot yer claes."

Needless to say how surprised Donal and Yetta were to hear Tam's
story, how thankful to reflect that their boy was to have such a
start in life. He reported to them what had been said, and the
promise he had given, and they believed that, like the Jamison he
was, he would be true to his word. All the same, they did not omit
to pray for that guidance and support for him without which his own
efforts would be vain.

The evening before Tam's week was up a parcel was delivered at
Jamison's door, addressed to his grandson. It contained a complete
new suit, as the Highland gentleman had said, "from the skin
outwards." Never was seen such a brave outfit, to Tam's thinking. He
turned it over and admired it, article by article, for at least a
couple of hours, but would not try it on, or any part of it, until
he had had a good wash. The tub was never a thing he was shy of, but
on this occasion it was used as though he intended to wash out his
every fault, as well as all the merely superficial smuts and stains
that had accumulated, so as to appear before his Queen a spotlessly
clean cuddy-tender.

When the operation was completed, Tam indued himself in his new
garments and went on parade, so to speak, before his grandmother.
Yetta was busy stirring the matutinal porridge when he walked into
the ben and said:

"How do I look, granny?"

Yetta, turning round, threw up her hands in amaze. She hardly knew
him, so great was the transformation effected by the new clothes and
the scrubbing he had given himself. Donal was no less surprised when
he came in from his morning milking. Tam looked two inches taller
and a lot sprucer.

"Ye mind me of yer puir father," said the old man as he sat down to
breakfast.

That was a note of sad recollection which brought tears to Yetta's
eyes; but a smile was soon gleaming through them when Tam, getting
sight of Meg, who was eyeing him as it were askance, said drily,
"Meg looks as if she hardly kenned what ta mek of her handiwark; for
the beginning o't was a' her doing."

Just then the noise of wheels was heard on the road, and as the
messenger who brought the clothes left word that one of the Queen's
carriages would pick him up on the morrow, Tam thought surely this
was the one. But it was not. Indeed, he ran to the door at least
twenty times ere, towards eleven o'clock, his vehicle arrived. It
was a quaint affair, half carriage, half wash-basket, drawn by two
asses, creatures as beautiful of their kind as could be found. It
was driven by her whom he knew, and by her side were several bright
little faces, while the Highland gentleman, riding behind on one
pony, as sturdy and Hielan' as himself, led another by the bridle.

Donal and Yetta came out and with bowed heads thanked the august
though simple-hearted lady for the great kindness she had shown to
their boy. She replied with a kindly smile:

"There appears to be the making of a good man in him, and, with
God's help, we will do our best to make him one."

Little more was said, and, mounting the led pony, Tam rode off by
the side of the faithful retainer, who never got further away from
the carriage than the dust raised by its wheels.

       *       *       *       *       *

Thus commenced Tam's career in life. Though he served the noblest
lady in the land, he did not find his way one altogether of buttered
parsnips and cream. The one thing abhorrent to his royal mistress
was idleness and indifference. The motto of her establishment--of
all her establishments--was "The diligent eye." In this principle
she found not only the best interests of her own house, but the best
interests also of those who served her.

Tam could not be called idle, nor could he be called exactly
indifferent; but during the years of his tending of cattle and
sheep on the brae-side he had got into the habit of liking to loll
about, to saunter and dream, and then to make up, or try to make
up, the leeway of work or duty by a spurt of energy. Another fault
he had was to leave things about--for others to "side" or put in
order. This arose, no doubt, from the narrow dimensions of his home,
where there was hardly room for everything to have its particular
place. It was, however, neither a very grievous nor a deeply rooted
fault; and a little sharp drilling, not unfrequently at the hands
of the Highland gentleman--a sort of major of the household, who
possessed "the diligent eye" _par excellence_--soon corrected Tam's
delinquency in this regard.

But the other fault was more deeply rooted and cost the young
donkey-boy many a bad quarter of an hour. Indeed, on one occasion it
nearly cost him his place. He had been given a task to do, and in
place of doing it with all diligence he had been found with his feet
growing to the ground, as it were. The consequence was an interview
with the Highland gentleman, who told him, "Tam, ye have either ta
pe punisht or to leave her Majesty's service: which shall it pe?"

"I'll tek the punishment, sir, if you please," he answered.

"Tam, ye are a wise poy, an' we'll mebby mek a man o' ye yet," said
the major-domo.

Tam took his punishment, and was the better for it; but he still
failed to come up to his royal mistress's ideal of a servant. Like
his fellow-servitors, he had plenty of time for rest and recreation:
hours of labour were by no means long. So much time had he, indeed,
for himself, that the Highland gentleman put suitable books before
him, and counselled him to improve his mind by reading and study.
He failed, however, to profit by the advice, and was presently made
aware of his error by a violent thunder-clap.

He was in attendance on his royal mistress one day, when she and
the children were out for a drive. A poor body was met, in apparent
distress, by the wayside. Inquiry was made as to her condition,
present help was extended, and a promise of future beneficence given
if further investigation should warrant its bestowal. Hence the
necessity arose for an address to be written down, and Tam, who was
that day the only person in attendance, was requested to do it.

When Tam entered the royal service he could read a bit and write
very imperfectly; but there had been time, had he followed the
counsel given him, to have greatly improved himself in both those
accomplishments. Not having done so, he fumbled egregiously over the
task set him, and, in short, made such a hash of it that an eye of
wrath was turned upon him.

Tam had seen that eye in all its moods--of laughter and smiles, of
grief, of earnestness, of affection, even of solemnity and awe, but
he had never as yet beheld it flash in indignant wrath. He felt as
though the muscles of his knees had been cut away and the ground
was sinking from under his feet. What would he not have given to be
miles away! But he had to face the storm, and it came in this way:

"Were not books and paper and ink put before you? And were you not
advised to improve your reading and writing?"

Tam falteringly admitted that such was the case.

"Why did you not attend to the advice?"

"I--I----" stammered the ease-loving Tam.

"Had you not the time?"

"Yes."

"Then why did you not do as you were wished?"

Tam hung his head in shame.

"Tam Jamison, listen to me. I will have those in my employ attend
to my wishes, and attend to them with all their might. Do you wish
to be ignorant all your life, when the time and the means for
improvement are placed at your command? In three months' time I
shall expect you to read and write in such a way that you will be
able to fulfil in a creditable manner a simple duty like that you
have to-day so grievously failed in. Now we'll go on."

Tam Jamison wanted no more speaking to. He was now thoroughly awake:
and he went to work with all his might to do the behest of his
mistress and Sovereign, and, in truth, he made prodigious progress;
so that when it happened one day--he being then in attendance on her
Majesty in another part of the country--that she required the names
of several rare plants to be written down for her future use, he did
it so cleverly that he was rewarded with a pleased smile.

Tam felt that he had acquired wings that afternoon, and the
strangest part of the affair was, that when he came to reckon up
precisely, he discovered that it was three months to a day since his
"royal earwigging," as the Highland gentleman called it.

To that worthy man Jamison communicated his delight. "Ah," said he,
"ye thocht, like many anither, that ye were doing a great service to
her gracious Majesty by your few hours of daily labour; but, guid
faith, she does a mighty deal mair for ye than ye, or ony the likes
o' ye, can do for her. Serve 'maist onybody else in the kintra, an'
they'll take yer service an' gie ye yer wage, an' there's an end.
But when her Majesty teks ye intil her household she teks ye to mek
a man o' ye--if it's in ye, ye ken. An' weel she knows hoo ta do
it--nane better. Sae ye just go on as ye've begun, Tam Jamison, an'
ye'll mebbe no bide a feckless cuddy-callant till ye're auld an'
blind."

Jamison did not need to be taught his lesson a second time. He made
diligent use of his opportunities, and improved so much and so
visibly that when he was fifteen he was raised to the position of
page. A greater mark of appreciation could hardly be given to one
in the royal employ; for her Majesty's pages are amongst the most
trusted of her servants.

At first the humbler duties of a page fell to his lot; but as he
improved in thoughtfulness and intelligence, and in his knowledge
of the manifold and delicate duties which fell to his care--in which
he had the aid and instruction of one of her Majesty's oldest and
most experienced pages, a man who had been in her service ever since
she ascended the throne--he rose higher and higher in the royal
service and the royal consideration, until at last his services were
rarely required except on State and exceptional occasions only.

[Illustration: Tam hung his head in shame.]

Scarcely a week passed that he did not recall the words of him we
have called the Highland gentleman, when he said that the Queen
did more for those in her service than they could ever do for her,
in that she not only made men and women of them, but treated them
more as gentlemen and ladies than as mere domestics. There were no
servants in her employ, no matter how humble their sphere, but she
knew them by name and had their welfare at heart; and if they served
her well, she never lost sight of them, or forgot them--no, not even
when the grave took them into its transitional embrace.

Jamison had had abundant opportunities to note and set these
things down in his heart, but he was never so much impressed by
her Majesty's deep regard for those who served her faithfully and
well as when, one dripping autumn day, he was required to accompany
her to the churchyard of a rural village, halfway betwixt London
and Windsor--in which, a day or two before, the aged servant above
referred to had been buried--in order that she might lay a wreath
upon his grave. It bore the words, "In grateful remembrance of a
devoted and faithful servant, V.R.," and as she bent down to place
it with her own hand upon the grave a tear fell upon the flowers
that outshone the brightest jewel of her crown.




TEMPERANCE NOTES AND NEWS.

By a Leading Temperance Advocate.


THE TEMPERANCE HOSPITAL.

[Illustration: DR. J. J. RIDGE.

(_Photo: J. Bacon, Newcastle-on-Tyne._)]

The story of the Temperance Hospital in Hampstead Road forms one
of the most interesting chapters in temperance history. When
the experiment of treating accidents and disease without the
administration of alcohol was first mooted, the idea was assailed
with a storm of criticism in which the medical profession found a
most active ally in the public Press. A quarter of a century has
now elapsed since the first patient was received in the temporary
premises in Gower Street, and although the medical staff have full
permission, under certain regulations, to administer alcohol if
deemed expedient, the last Report states that out of a total of
13,984 in-patients, alcohol has only been resorted to in twenty-five
cases. The percentage of recoveries compares most favourably with
the ordinary hospitals, and the cases include every variety of
disease and accident. The present head of the medical staff is Dr.
J. J. Ridge, who has been connected with the institution from the
first. For many years it has been the custom of the United Kingdom
Band of Hope Union to organise a Christmas collection in aid of
the Temperance Hospital. The amount thus realised has reached many
thousand pounds, and it is hoped that this year's collection will
prove the best of the series. The body of evidence in favour of
total abstinence which the Temperance Hospital has accumulated
certainly entitles the institution to the cordial support of the
temperance public.

[Illustration: THE TEMPERANCE HOSPITAL, HAMPSTEAD ROAD, LONDON.

(_Photo supplied by the Press Studio._)]


COMING EVENTS.

Among the fixtures worth noting may be named the New Year's Meeting
of the United Kingdom Band of Hope Union on Saturday, January 7th;
the Annual Meeting of the London United Temperance Council, to be
addressed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, on February 13th, in the
Queen's Hall; a great Industrial Exhibition, promoted by the Hackney
and East Middlesex Band of Hope Union, on April 10-13; Temperance
Sunday for London Diocese April 23rd (St. George's Day, a grand
opportunity for the clergy to strike a national note); and, as it is
well to look ahead, a World's Temperance Convention to be held under
the auspices of the National Temperance League in 1900.


THE NEW ENGLISH DICTIONARY.

It may be news to some of our readers that Dr. James A. H. Murray,
the editor-in-chief of the monumental literary work which has been
in progress for so many years, is an earnest total abstainer and a
Vice-President of the National Temperance League. Dictionary-making
and total abstinence seem to run together. In William Ball's "Slight
Memorials of Hannah More" is this remark: "I dined last week at
the Bishop of Chester's. Dr. Johnson was there. In the middle of
dinner I urged Dr. Johnson to take a _little_ wine. He replied:
'I can't drink a _little_, child, therefore I never touch it.
Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.'" It
is rather curious to note that it is only within recent years that
our dictionaries have taken any cognisance of the meaning which
temperance people give to the word "pledge." More than this, in
the early dictionaries the word was almost exclusively given up to
the other side of the drink question. For instance, in Bailey's
Dictionary (1736) we have the following definition of the word
"pledged":--"Having drank by the recommendation of another."...
"The custom of pledging in drinking was occasioned by the Danes,
who, while they had the superiority in England, used to stab the
English or cut their throats while they were drinking; and thereupon
they requested of some sitter-by to be their pledge and security
while they drank; so that 'I will pledge you' signifies 'I will be
your security that you shall drink in safety.'"

[Illustration: "DICTIONARY" MURRAY.]

Contrast this with the definition given in the last edition of
Webster's Dictionary:--

"A promise or agreement by which one binds one's self to do, or to
refrain from doing something; especially a solemn promise in writing
to refrain from using intoxicating liquors or other liquor; as to
sign the pledge."

No doubt, when Dr. Murray reaches the letter "P," we shall have a
definition even still more illuminating. The New English Dictionary
viewed from a temperance standpoint would make a delightful study.
Take, for instance, volume one, in which "Alcohol" has more than
a column to itself, while "Ale" has two columns, "Beer" two and
a half columns, and "Abstain," "Abstainer," and "Abstaining" are
treated with a wealth of illustration and meaning derived from such
authorities as Wyclif in 1382 down to J. W. Bardsley (the present
Bishop of Carlisle) in 1867, who is pressed into the service in this
form:--

"ABSTAINING.--Practising abstinence (from alcoholic beverages) 1867.
J. W. BARDSLEY in 'Clerical Testimony to Total Abstinence' 30: 'The
bride was the daughter of an abstaining clergyman.'"

[Illustration: MADAME ANTOINETTE STERLING.

(_Photo: Walery, Ltd., Regent Street, W._)]

Now we will leave it to our fair readers to puzzle over until next
month as to who the blushing bride was who is thus assured of
immortality in the greatest Dictionary the world has ever seen.


"TWO QUEENS OF SONG."

"Example is better than precept," says the old adage, and there
can be no doubt that the example of Madame Antoinette Sterling and
Mrs. Mary Davies in the matter of total abstinence has been of the
utmost value. It was at a reception given by Mr. and Mrs. Frederick
Sherlock at Hackney, in 1892, to the Archbishop of Canterbury
(then Bishop of London), that Madame Sterling, to the surprise of
a delighted audience, volunteered "a few words." The gifted singer
remarked that "she had been nearly all her life a total abstainer.
When on long tours with members of her profession, it had been
rather an aggravation to them to see, when they were pretty well
prostrated, that she was almost or quite as fresh at the end of the
journey as at the beginning. They also complained of the quality of
the wine furnished to them, as well as of water. She took milk and
cocoa, and also water, of which she did not complain, and scarcely
missed one engagement in the seventeen years during which she had
been before the public. She had never had a day's bad health, and
had not suffered from those aches and pains of which she had heard
other people complaining continually." Like Madame Sterling, Mrs.
Mary Davies has upon many occasions shown a deep and practical
interest in philanthropic work.

[Illustration: MRS. MARY DAVIES.

(_Photo: H. S. Mendelssohn, Pembridge Crescent, W._)]

[Illustration: (_Photo supplied by the Press Studio._)

MUSCULAR TRAINING AT THE NAVAL SCHOOL, GREENWICH.]

[Illustration: (_Photo supplied by the Press Studio._)

BUCKET-OF-WATER RACE AT THE NAVAL SCHOOL.]


A FAMOUS BAND OF HOPE.

Possibly the most unique Band of Hope in the world is that which is
held in the Royal Naval School, Greenwich. It was founded so far
back as 1871, by Samuel Sims, an honoured agent of the National
Temperance League, and upon his death, in 1892, was taken over by
Mr. W. S. Campbell, as the League's representative. No pressure at
all is put upon the lads to induce them to join the Band of Hope,
but, as a matter of fact, most of the lads in the school readily do
so, and the present membership is fully a thousand strong. Regular
weekly meetings are held, and the annual gathering, which is held
in the great gymnasium, is a most inspiriting spectacle. A visit
to the Royal Naval School, if it should happen to be in recreation
time, cannot fail to afford considerable satisfaction to those who
like to see Young England at play. Every type of healthy pastime is
encouraged in its turn, and these young abstainers have frequently
shown that they are well able to hold their own. It is encouraging
to know that the principles of total abstinence are not discarded
when the lads pass out into the Royal Navy or Mercantile Marine,
for every year large numbers of them are drafted into Miss Weston's
well-known temperance society.


TEMPERANCE SUNDAY.

The appointment of a special Sunday for the preaching of sermons on
temperance originated with the Church of England Temperance Society
many years ago. Owing to various circumstances, it is not possible
for the Church of England clergy to take one Sunday simultaneously
for the whole country, but each diocesan Bishop makes choice of
a day and issues a pastoral letter to his clergy, so that at one
period of the year or another the whole country is covered, so far
as the Church of England is concerned. The Nonconformist bodies
have, however, for some years past, fixed upon the last Sunday in
November for Temperance Sunday, and as we go to press we learn that
this year special reference will be made to the importance of Sunday
Closing.




SCRIPTURE LESSONS FOR SCHOOL & HOME INTERNATIONAL SERIES

With Illustrative Anecdotes and References.


DECEMBER 18TH.--=The Captivity of Judah.=

_To read--Jer. lii. 1-11. Golden Text--Jer. xxix. 13._

This chapter describes the fate of Judah. Later kings were all
wicked. Warnings of Jeremiah and other prophets all been in vain.
Time has come for judgment. Captivity in Babylon, long foretold,
now about to commence. Came about in reign of Zedekiah. The eleven
verses of this lesson almost identical with Jer. xxxix. 1-10.

I. =The King= (1-3). _His name._ Originally Mattaniah, was son of
good King Josiah and uncle of late King Jehoiachin. Jeremiah had
prophesied of a future king (Jer. xxiii. 5-7) as the "Lord our
righteousness." The king assumed that name, and was called Zedekiah.

_His acts._ "Did evil," but had not always been altogether evil.
Had made covenant with nobles and priests to abolish slavery
(xxxiv. 8-10). But his great wrong was breaking his solemn oath of
allegiance to king of Babylon (2 Chron. xxxvi. 13). This looked upon
as his crowning vice (Ezek. xvii. 8), for which God's anger was upon
him (ver. 3).

=Lesson.= When thou vowest a vow defer not to pay it.

II. =The Siege= (4-7). City besieged for last time. Jews never
forgot day it began. Was January--tenth day of their tenth month.
Great mounds or (earth-works) outside walls to shoot burning arrows,
etc.; houses outside thrown down (Jer. xxxiii. 4). Famine and
pestilence soon ravaged crowded population inside.

_The assault._ City, after eighteen months, taken by assault at
northern gate (B.C. 587). King and his family and royal guard
escaped by passage between two walls (Jer. xxxix. 4), by royal
gardens, down steep descent towards Jericho. There he was overtaken
and made prisoner. His broken oath caused his destruction (Ezek.
xvii. 20).

=Lesson.= Evil shall hunt the wicked to overtake him.

III. =Babylon.= He was taken to Babylon. His sons killed in his
sight, then his eyes put out, bound with chains, kept in prison till
death. Feeble in will, faithless in promise, judgment came upon him.

=Lesson.= 1. The word of the Lord standeth sure.


Bargains.

He who buys the truth makes a good bargain. Zedekiah dealt in
falsehood and lost his throne. Esau sold his birthright for a basin
of soup. Judas made a bad bargain when he sold his Lord for the
price of a slave. Take heed to the thing that is right, for that
alone shall bring peace at the last.


DECEMBER 25TH.--=A Christmas Lesson.=

_To read--Hebrews i. 1-9. Golden Text--St. Luke ii. 11._

This letter written to the Hebrews, i.e. Christians of Jewish birth
who clung to the priesthood and services of the Temple as well as
to Christianity. St. Paul shows how far the Christian system was
superior to and superseded the Jewish. The types and ceremonies of
the Law fulfilled in Christ, whose birthday is kept at Christmas.

I. =God's Revelation= (1-2). _Past._ God revealed or unveiled
Himself of old. This revelation inferior in three ways, viz. (1) It
was given gradually, in portions, a part at a time. (2) Given in
divers manners, under many figures and types. (3) Given by prophets,
only human.

_Present._ Final revelation of God's truth--once for all given to
the saints (Jude 3). Given by His Son--the Word of God (St. John i.
1, 2); heir of all things--God's agent in creation of the universe.

II. =God's Son= (3-9). _Great in Himself._ Has Divine glory--the
outshining of the Father's glory. He is God's image, the counterpart
of the Father. To see Christ is to see God (St. John xiv. 9).

_Great in His work._ (1) _Upholder_ of the universe as well as its
Creator. (2) _Saviour._ Came not only as prophet to reveal God's
will, but to purge man's sin. This He did by Himself with His own
blood (ix. 12, 14).

_Greater than angels._ In His person, His work. His exaltation to
glory; testified by Scripture, _e.g._ Psalm ii. 3 tells of Christ's
eternal Sonship--also referred to by St. Paul as fulfilled in His
resurrection (Acts xiii. 33).

_King over all._ Christ also a King. Rules in righteousness (Psalm
xlv. 6, 7); received throne as victor over His enemies--sin, death,
and the devil (xii. 2). Raised high above all.

=Lesson.= Christ is King--honour Him; He is Saviour--love Him; He
is God--fear Him. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry, and so ye perish.
Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him.


Christ in the Old and New Testaments.

A weaver, who had made an elaborate piece of tapestry, hung it
upon the tenterhooks in his yard. That night it was stolen. A
piece of tapestry was found by the police, which seemed to answer
the description; but, as the pattern was not unlike that of other
pieces, they wanted more definite proof. It was brought to the
weaver's yard, and there the perforations in the fabric were found
to correspond exactly to the tenterhooks. This was proof positive.
In like manner, if we place the life and character of Christ against
all the prophecies of Him in Scripture, they will be found to
correspond exactly.


1899.

_New Series. The Gospel according to St. John._


JANUARY 1ST.--=Christ the True Light.=

_To read--St. John i. 1-14. Golden Text--Ver. 4._

New Year--new course of lessons. This Gospel records the deeper
spiritual truths of Christ's teaching, especially about His own
Nature and Person. It sets Christ forth as God. St. John tells his
object in writing a fourth Gospel in chap. xx. 31, which the class
should read.

I. =The Nature of Christ= (1-3). _Eternal._ In the beginning, not of
the world, but before all creation, from everlasting. _Divine Word._
Christ is the expression of the mind of God. Came to reveal God to
man (xv. 15). _Living Person._ The Word not a mere attribute or
power of God but a distinct Person. "With God" from everlasting. Not
inferior to the Father, but very God Himself. _Creator._ As well as
Saviour and Governor of the world (read Col. i. 16, 17; Heb. i. 2).

II. =The Office of Christ= (4-13). _Source of Life._ As very God He
had life in Himself, which He poured forth on His creation (vv. 25,
26; xvii. 2). _Source of light._ The life from Son of God is cause
of man's inward spiritual light by which he is saved. _Himself the
light._ World was in spiritual darkness at Christ's coming. _Giver
of light._ No man has light in himself, however great his natural
powers. All true light is from Christ.

_Rejected._ By His own. The world He made knew not its Creator (1
Cor. i. 21). The nation He chose to be His own special people (Deut.
vii. 6) received Him not.

_Received._ By a few--both Jews and Gentiles; such as Nicodemus the
ruler (iii. 1, 2), the disciples from Galilee (ii. 11), and others.
How did they receive Him? By believing in Him. This faith, itself
the gift of God, rewarded by further privilege of becoming God's
sons--born into God's family by a new and spiritual birth (iii. 3).

III. =The Glory of Christ= (14). Word was made flesh by taking to
Himself man's human nature. He dwelt (_literally_ "pitched His
tent") with men, full of mercy to heal bodies and souls, full of
God's truth to teach.

=Lessons.= 1. _Hold fast the Christian faith._ Jesus Christ one for
ever with the Father. _God_--eternal, glorious, Creator, Giver of
light and life to the soul--yet _Man_, like one of us.

2. _Live the Christian life._ Jesus is our example, that we should
follow His steps.


Christians walking in the Light.

A little girl in a London slum won a prize at a flower-show. Her
flower was grown in a broken teapot in a back attic. When asked how
she managed to grow the beautiful flower, she said her success came
from always keeping the plant in the only corner of the room ever
favoured by a sunbeam. Only by walking in the light and sight of God
can Christians truly grow and bear fruit.


JANUARY 8TH.--=Christ's first Disciples.=

_To read--St. John i. 35-46. Golden Text--Ver. 36._

Christ now thirty years old; has been baptised and received special
outpouring of Holy Ghost (ver. 33), and also been tempted in the
wilderness (St. Matt. iv. 1). Is now ready for His public work and
ministry. Now begins to win disciples.

I. =The first two Disciples= (35-40). _Heard of Him._ Picture Christ
walking near the Jordan. St. John, who had baptised Him, points Him
out to his followers. Describes Him: this the Lamb of God to Whom
all the sacrifices pointed; the innocent lamb slain told of the
death of the spotless Son of God for man's sin. His words went home.

_Followed Him._ Who were they? Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, and
probably St. John, writer of the Gospel, brother of James. Why did
they follow? To learn more of Him. Had been baptised with baptism of
repentance. Sense of sin led them to seek the Saviour. Christ knew
their thoughts, encouraged them to learn more of Him (St. Matt. xi.
28, 29).

II. =The third Disciple= (41, 42). The two friends separate the next
day, each in search of his brother. Andrew soon finds his--eagerly
tells the news. They have found the long-expected Messiah, the
Anointed of God. Brings Simon to Christ. No greater proof possible
of having really found Christ than bringing another to Him. Christ
looks with eager and searching eye at Simon--reads his very heart,
sees his longing after truth; gives him a new name, Cephas (Hebrew)
or Peter (Greek), meaning "a rock" or "stone." What did this
signify? His bold and determined character, strong in the faith (St.
Matt. xvi. 16), eager in defence of Christ (xviii. 10), and, after
his fall and forgiveness, strong in love (xxi. 15).

III. =The fourth Disciple= (43, 44). Philip of Bethsaida. Must have
heard his friends talking of Christ. Probably stirred in his heart.
Christ found him, as He afterwards found Zacchæus St. (Luke xix. 5).
His mission to seek as well as to save. Happy they who obey Christ's
call and follow Him.

IV. =The fifth Disciple= (45, 46). Philip soon shows marks of
discipleship. He finds Nathanael. Tells him how Christ fulfilled
prophecies, such as of a "prophet" like unto Moses, a "king" whose
name should be "the Lord our righteousness" (Jer. xxiii. 5, 6).
Nathanael asks in honest doubt if it can be possible for the Messiah
to come from despised Nazareth. Philip did not argue, but bade him
"Come and see"--the best cure for all doubts.

=Lessons.= From the Baptist: The dying Saviour the greatest magnet
for drawing souls.

From Andrew: Show religion first at home.

From Simon: Taste and see how gracious the Lord is.

From Philip: Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.

From Nathanael: Hearken unto me, and I will teach you the fear of
the Lord.


"There's Another."

A traveller lost in the snow on the Alps was rescued by one of the
famous dogs of St. Bernard. When restored to consciousness his first
words were, "There's another." The monks to whom the dogs belonged
continued their search, and "the other" was found and saved. "Are
you saved?" Is there not another whom you can rescue from sin and
bring to the life of God?




[Illustration: Short Arrows]

Short Arrows

NOTES OF CHRISTIAN LIFE AND WORK.


The Quiver Santa Claus.

Last month we published full particulars of our scheme to provide
Christmas Stockings for the many poor and friendless little ones who
are not on Santa Claus's visiting list, and we appeal to our readers
for their hearty practical co-operation in this work. Each stocking
will contain wholesome goodies, in the shape of cake and sweets, in
addition to an unbreakable toy and a Christmas card. The Proprietors
of THE QUIVER have headed the subscription list with a donation of
£25, which is sufficient to provide the contents of

  FIVE HUNDRED CHRISTMAS STOCKINGS FOR
  POOR AND FRIENDLESS CHILDREN,

a sum of =one shilling= being sufficient to furnish a stocking and
pay the postage. But, as we can profitably distribute _thousands_ of
such presents, we confidently look to all lovers of the children to
lend their generous aid, in order that as many as possible of the
destitute little mites may have their Christmas brightened by such a
welcome gift. We shall also be glad to receive recommendations from
our readers of suitable cases for the receipt of the stockings, and
for this purpose the special application form to be found in our
Extra Christmas Number ("Christmas Arrows") should be used. As the
time is short, contributions for the Christmas Stocking Fund should
be sent =at once= to the Editor of THE QUIVER, La Belle Sauvage,
London, E.C., and all amounts of one shilling and upwards will be
thankfully acknowledged in our pages.

[Illustration: CURIOUS ALMS-BOX IN PINHOE CHURCH.]


A Curious Alms-box.

In the interesting parish church of Pinhoe, near Exeter, appears a
very curious alms-box surmounted by the figure of a man who seems,
from his costume and general character, to date from the period of
James I. He holds two books in his hand--representing most probably
Bible and Prayer Book--one of which bears the inscription, "Y^e Poor
Man of Pinhoo, 1700," but from information with which the vicar of
the parish, the Rev. Frederick W. Pulling, has kindly supplied us,
it appears that the books were added in 1879-80, when the church was
restored. Previously the figure held a small flimsy box in front of
him. He was, however, placed on the present handsome oak box bearing
the inscription, "Remember y^e Poor," and the old flimsy box was
removed. The present box was constructed from some very ancient
timber from the roof of Salisbury Cathedral, when under repair.
What the figure was originally intended to represent--whether a
beadle, the dispenser of charities, or a relieving officer--is not
known. Curiously enough, the parish records are quite silent as to
the figure, and when, some time since, it was repaired it was sent
to the eminent antiquary and ecclesiologist, the Rev. Mackenzie
Walcott, who said he had seen only two such figures before. The
wooden backing is of Jacobean style, and was designed by the
architect in 1879 to strengthen the whole structure.


"God Bless the Kernel."

After the marvellous achievements in his two Chinese campaigns,
which were sufficient to have made the reputations of a dozen
ordinary colonels, Gordon came back to England in 1865 as poor as
when he left home. During the next six years, which he spent in
Gravesend as an engineer, the future keeper of Khartoum devoted a
large portion of his leisure to visiting the sick and to teaching
and training many of the ragged and neglected boys of the rough
neighbourhood. So truly did these poor lads love their colonel that
it was not uncommon to see chalked up on the walls the singular
inscription, "God bless the Kernel." Their gratitude was apparently
stronger than their orthography. When Englishmen reflect how Gordon
placed his Divine Master first in every enterprise of his life, they
must feel that no institution intended to honour the dead hero at
Khartoum can be a worthy memorial which is not grounded on the rock
of Christianity.


Christmas Cards and Gift-Books.

Christmas is pre-eminently the season of universal good-will,
and the custom of conveying seasonable greetings by means of the
attractive Christmas card is every year becoming more general.
Amongst the publishers of these mementoes Messrs. Raphael Tuck and
Sons take front rank, and the specimen box of cards, calendars,
story-books, and illustrated texts, recently received from them,
affords ample proof that the variety and artistic excellence which
have always characterised their productions are well maintained this
year. Some of the cards are veritable works of art, and deserve more
than the temporary appreciation usually accorded to such; but the
palm for novelty, both in design and treatment, must be accorded
to the calendars, many of which are most original in conception,
and all are daintily and tastefully produced.--For years past we
have been accustomed to look for a Christmas book from Mr. Andrew
Lang, and this season he has edited an edition of "The Arabian
Nights Entertainments," which Messrs. Longmans have published in a
charming cover, and with a number of clever illustrations by Mr.
H. J. Ford.--Another suitable gift-book for children is "His Big
Opportunity" (Hodder and Stoughton), a brightly written story by
Amy Le Feuvre; whilst for young people what more inspiriting and
interesting work could be presented to them than the life-story of
the pioneer missionary, "Mackay of Uganda," of whose biography a new
illustrated edition has just been issued by the same publishers.--We
have also received the current yearly volumes of our contemporaries,
_Good Words_ and _The Sunday Magazine_ (Isbister & Co.). These would
both form valuable additions to any Sunday-school library, and are
also admirably adapted for use as prizes or presents.

[Illustration: (_From a Photograph._)

THE LAUGHING GOD OF CHINA.]


Compensation.

An Irishman being bound over to keep the peace against all the
Queen's subjects, said, "Then Heaven help the first foreigner I
meet!" We are reminded of this when we see people civility itself to
a good servant they are afraid of losing, or to the strongest-willed
person in their home, and then relieving their pent-up feelings by
being rude to the rest of the family.


Laughter and War.

"Have you any gods around here?" inquired an English traveller in
rural China. "Oh, yes," replied a venerable Celestial; "the three
Pure Ones, the God of the Fields, and the Goddess of Mercy." "My old
friend, I am afraid your gods are not a few." "Foreign teacher,"
said the old man, "verily, verily, our gods are ten thousand and
thousands of thousands." Some are of stone, others of wood, clay,
or bronze. One may be purchased for a farthing, another will cost
£200. The Laughing God in our illustration is a representation in
coarse pottery of Quantecong, supposed to be the first emperor.
There are laughing Buddhas for sale, and some few images of
beneficent mien; but the great horde are intended to inspire awe
or terror. The second illustration is a well-executed terra-cotta
figure of a deified warrior. The drawn sword and beard are similar
to those of Kwante, the God of War, regarded as the head of the
military department in China. In 1,600 state temples dedicated
to him the mandarins worship once a month, and in thousands of
smaller temples he is honoured with sacrifices of sheep and oxen.
His worshippers believe that he was a general, who just about the
time that the Prince of Peace came to this world in great humility
made the enemies of China to tremble. The elevation or manufacture
of gods is a simple affair. The keeper of an idol shop collects
the heads, limbs, and trunk that he has moulded out of mud, unites
them in one ill-proportioned figure, slips a frog, snake, lizard,
or centipede into the hole in the back, and the idol is ready for
dedication and worship! The calm, colossal Buddha at Peking is
seventy feet high, but it can only witness to a blind feeling after
God.


An Ancient Manuscript of St Matthew.

The romance of New Testament manuscripts is again enlarged; this
time by the discovery of a papyrus fragment containing a part of
the Gospel according to St. Matthew. The precious sheet was found
in the Libyan desert, about one hundred and twenty miles south of
Cairo, by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt, the discoverers of the _Logia_.
It is thought that this fragment may be older by a hundred years
than any other manuscript of the New Testament hitherto available.
Its value, had it been a whole book instead of two leaves, would
have been priceless. Even so, it is of singular interest. Its
actual history, of course, is beyond discovery, but its appearance
amongst the world of scholars reminds us of the strangely varied
channels through which Greek manuscripts of the New Testament have
come down to us. There is the romantic story of the discovery,
in a monastery on Mount Sinai, of the priceless manuscript known
as the _Codex Sinaiticus_. There is the scarcely less valuable
_Codex Alexandrinus_ which the British Museum now guards; that
came to England as a gift to King Charles I. from a Patriarch of
Constantinople. There is the great manuscript which is one of the
glories of the Vatican Library at Rome, where it is believed to
have been ever since that library was founded. There is the _Codex
Ephraemi_ at Paris, its ancient writing partly legible beneath a
much later work written over it--a manuscript which once belonged
to Catherine de Medicis. There is another palimpsest brought to
England from a convent in the Nubian desert. There is the manuscript
presented by Laud to the Bodleian, and supposed to have been used
by the Venerable Bede. In truth, the history of these treasures is
full of romance, and it is but fitting that new discoveries should
furnish other examples of the strange ways in which the text of the
Holy Scriptures in various parts and forms has been preserved for us.

[Illustration: (_From a Photograph._)

A GOD OF WAR.]


Humours of Hymen.

While nothing can be so distressing to a clergyman, whose duty it
is to solemnise marriages, as irreverence or flippancy, he can
hardly fail to be amused, if many of his people are poor and his
area is wide, at the occasional results of a genuine ignorance, or
a legitimate nervousness. A well-known church in Central London
can furnish several singular and recent experiences. It is not
often that either of the contracting parties comes furnished with
a prayer-book, but on a certain occasion the bride, a rather
strong-minded-looking lady, did so, and insisted on holding it
sternly and steadily under the nose of her future spouse. In
repeating the passage in which "cherish" occurs, a bridegroom,
in a faltering voice, expressed his willingness "to love and to
'_perish_.'" "Oh, sir, I do feel _that_ nervous!" once pleaded
another embarrassed swain in the middle of the service. A widower,
who was extremely awkward and stupid in making the responses
after the minister, apologised by saying, "Really, sir, it is so
long since I was married last that I forget"! Another bridegroom,
though middle-aged, seemed somewhat diffident with regard to his
responsibilities, and answered to the inquiry, "Wilt thou love,
comfort, honour, etc.?" "To the best of my abilities I will." A
year or two ago, the roof of the particular church of which we
are thinking was being renovated, and the interior was a maze of
ladders. Under these a superstitious bride earnestly begged not
to be compelled to go, so she was considerately conducted to the
chancel by a circuitous route. There was a wedding last year at
which a tiny bridesmaid made her appearance. As he had married her
parents about six summers previously, the clergyman thought he
might venture to take her by the arm and to place her in her proper
position behind the bride. Considerably to his surprise, the small
damsel hit out at him in a most workmanlike manner straight from
the shoulder, and the edifice resounded with a terrific yell of
defiance, "Me _won't_! Me WON'T!"

[Illustration: (_Photo supplied by the Church Missionary Society._)

INDIAN ORPHANS AT A BREAKFAST SUPPLIED BY MISSIONARIES.

(_A scene during the recent famine._)]


Some New Books.

One of the most interesting biographies of the season is that of
Bishop Walsham How, which has just been issued by Messrs. Isbister,
prefaced by an excellent portrait of the late prelate. The Bishop
was principally known by his work in the East of London, where
he was greatly loved by clergy and parishioners alike, and many
excellent stories are related _apropos_ of his cheeriness and
tolerant good nature in dealing with the mixed elements of his
crowded diocese. The memoir seems full and complete, as, indeed,
it should be, the biographer being Mr. Frederick How (a son of
the late Bishop), who had access to all the private memoranda of
his father, and was naturally acquainted with every incident of
interest concerning him. From the same publishers comes an excellent
work by our contributor, Dean Farrar, on "Great Books," in which
he critically reviews the life and works of Bunyan, Shakespeare,
Dante, Milton, and other "master-spirits." Though admittedly written
for young people, the volume contains much that is valuable and
interesting to older readers. Messrs. Isbister have also recently
issued a volume of sermons by the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, under
the title "The Gospel of Joy." Whilst we do not endorse all the
views expressed by the author, yet at the same time we are bound to
confess that Mr. Brooke's eloquent addresses teem with happy and
suggestive thoughts.--A daintily produced volume reaches us from
the Scientific Press in the form of Mr. J. T. Woolrych Perowne's
account of his recent journey in Russian Central Asia, published
under the comprehensive title "Russian Hosts and English Guests in
Central Asia." In many respects the journey described was quite
unique, and the interest is considerably increased by the number
and variety of the excellent illustrations which are scattered
throughout the book.--"Table-talk with Young Men" (Hodder and
Stoughton) is the title which the Rev. W. J. Dawson gives to his
recently published series of "pen-conversations" with young men.
Mr. Dawson's practical, straightforward and cultured "talk" on
such diverse subjects as "The Art of Living," "Christianity and
Progress," "Civic Responsibility," etc., is not only brilliant but
highly instructive, and the book is one which should find a place
on every young man's bookshelf, for it will richly repay careful
and constant perusal.--We have also to acknowledge the receipt of
"Comfort and Counsel" (Hodder and Stoughton), containing quotations
from the writings of Elizabeth Rundle Charles for every day in the
year; "The Children's Year-Book of Prayer and Praise" (Longmans),
compiled by C. M. Whishaw; a useful and informing little volume on
"Diet and Food" (J. and A. Churchill), by Dr. Alexander Haig; "A
Cluster of Camphire" (Passmore and Alabaster), containing short,
sympathetic addresses by Mrs. C. H. Spurgeon to those who are sick
and sorrowful; and "The Daily Homily" (Morgan and Scott), a series
of brief, pregnant discourses on the books of the Bible from 1
Samuel to Job, by the Rev. F. B. Meyer.


"Out of the Eater came forth Meat."

Samson's riddle is an everlasting proverb. Out of the devouring
famine that last year devastated India blessings have already come
to many provinces. A conquered race find it hard to love and trust
their rulers, but in their trouble dwellers in the famine districts
saw the practical side of Christianity. In the midst of universal
rejoicing England was moved with compassion, and provided food for
the starving. Government, in many instances, entrusted missionaries
with the distribution of grain. The Indian people are slow to act
and strong to endure. Thousands perished because they could not or
would not realise that relief was within reach. Parents gave their
last morsels to their children, and then lay down to die. Orphanages
overflowed, and new ones had to be erected. Where an open shed and
light meals of milk, rice, and curry meet the ideas of home and
housekeeping, this is easier than it sounds. After a famine the
number of Christian adherents to missions is always multiplied, and
the supply of pupils creates new demand for teachers. It must be
acknowledged that the taunt of being "rice-Christians" is sometimes
justified, though there is little doubt that genuine gratitude to
God, who moved His servants to help them, has caused numbers to turn
to Him.


Abraham's Vineyard.

This piece of land is close to the Holy City, and now belongs to
the Society for the Relief of Persecuted Jews. When the necessary
excavation for building was begun, Abraham's Vineyard revealed
signs of former glory and prosperity. Tesselated pavement, vats,
baths, and a columbarium hewn out of the rock, showed that it had
once belonged to a householder with taste for luxury as well as an
eye for exquisite scenery. The baths and vats have been converted
into cisterns for rain-water, and the place has become the scene
of industry. The earth, in past years again and again reddened by
battles, now yields peaceful harvests of grain. All the Jewish
refugees are not, however, cultivators. Soap-making from olive oil
and alkali grown on the Jordan Plain, glue-making, stone-dressing,
quarrying, are industries which offer many of them an honest living.
The idea of the founders of this society was "to give relief and
employment to the Jews, especially in Jerusalem, until they are able
to found colonies on their own account." The experiment of Abraham's
Vineyard has succeeded, and the Jews have carried the work farther,
as the trade in Jaffa oranges and olive-wood ware testify.


OUR CHRISTMAS NUMBER.

"CHRISTMAS ARROWS" (the Extra Christmas Number of THE QUIVER) is
published simultaneously with this part, and contains a complete
one-volume story by M. H. Cornwall Legh, entitled "=The Steep
Ascent=," copiously illustrated by Frank Craig. In addition
will be found a seasonable article by the Rev. Dr. Preston, on
"=Christmas Chimes from Jerusalem=" (illustrated by Mark Zangwill);
a contribution by the Rev. Canon McCormick entitled "=Christian
Hospitality="; and a long fairy-parable by E. H. Strain which bears
the title "=The Star Ruby=," and is illustrated by H. R. Millar.
"Christmas Arrows" also contains full particulars and conditions
of our scheme for providing =Christmas Stockings= for poor and
friendless children, as well as the =Voting Form= which any reader
is at liberty to use to recommend suitable cases for the receipt of
our Christmas gift.


ROLL OF HONOUR FOR SUNDAY-SCHOOL WORKERS.

The =Special Silver Medal= and =Presentation Bible= offered for the
longest known Sunday-school service in the county of =Leicester=
(for which applications were invited up to October 31st) have been
gained by

  MISS ANNE HARRISON,
         42, Humberstone Gate,
                Leicester.

who has distinguished herself by =fifty-eight= years' service in
Harvey Lane Baptist Chapel, Leicester.

As already announced, the next territorial county for which claims
are invited for the =Silver Medal= is

  SUSSEX,

and applications, on the special form, must be received on or before
November 30th, 1898. We may add that =Wiltshire= is the following
county selected, the date-limit for claims in that case being
December 31st, 1898. This county, in its turn, will be followed by
=Durham=, for which the date will be one month later--viz. January
31st, 1899.

The names of members recently enrolled will be found in our
advertisement pages.




NEW QUIVER WAIFS.

To be Selected by our Readers.


For many years past our readers have generously taken the
responsibility of maintaining a waif at Dr. Barnardo's Homes, and
another at Miss Sharman's Orphanage in Southwark; but, as the
present waifs are now growing up, and will soon be out in the world,
the time has come for another selection. For this purpose, we have
obtained particulars of eligible cases, which we submit to our
readers, and, as we look to them for a continuance of their kindly
help in supporting THE QUIVER Waifs, we feel that they would prefer
to choose the new little ones who are to be so known. We would,
therefore, request our readers to send a post-card (addressed to
The Editor of THE QUIVER, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C.), stating
for which waif in each of the two sets they desire to vote, and
the children with the highest number of votes will be elected. The
post-cards should reach the Editor not later than December 31st,
1898. It should be particularly understood that this course will
imply no pecuniary obligation whatever on the part of the voters, as
we shall rely solely upon the voluntary contributions of our readers
to furnish the total requisite sum for the maintenance of the waifs,
which amounts to £31 per year. All donations will be acknowledged in
THE QUIVER month by month.


Particulars of Cases.

I. _For Dr. Barnardo's Homes_ (one vote):--

ALBERT LE VASSEUR.--Eight years of age--mother left a widow with ten
children--totally unable to support them all--when discovered there
was no food or money in the house.

CHARLES SALT.--Seven years of age--mother a "drunken and
disreputable tramp"--father little better--parents without a home
and constantly ill-treating the child.

JOHN HARRISON.--Seven years of age--found in streets begging in
ragged condition--father dead--mother disreputable--John somewhat
lame in walk, owing to injury to the right knee in infancy.

II. _For Miss Sharman's Orphanage_ (one vote):--

ROSE HEELIS.--Aged two years--was born shortly after her father's
death--mother has died of consumption--promises to grow into a very
nice child, and is full of life and spirits.

ETHEL ROBINSON.--Aged six years--father killed by an
accident--mother in lunatic asylum--relatives too poor to help.

LILY PAVITT.--Aged ten years--mother dead--father deserted
children--an aunt took the child, but was unable to support her.


THE QUIVER FUNDS.

The following is a list of contributions received from October 1st
up to and including October 31st, 1898. Subscriptions received after
this date will be acknowledged next month:--

For "_The Quiver_" _Waifs' Fund_: A Glasgow Mother (101st donation),
1s.; J. J. E. (131st donation), 5s.; R. S., Crouch End (7th
donation), 5s.; E. M. B., Jedburgh, 3s.; R. Dendy, Eastbourne, 3s.;
Anon., Alford, 1s.

For "_The Quiver_" _Christmas Stocking Fund_: Jessie, Agnes, and
Cyril, 2s. 6d.; M. T., 5s.

For _The Ragged School Union_: R. H. B., 2s. 6d.

For _The Indian Leper Mission Fund_: A Thank-Offering, 1s.

For _Dr. Barnardo's Homes_: An Irish Girl, 13s. Also 7s. 6d. from
Diomedes sent direct.

For _St. Giles Christian Mission_: Thank-Offering, 1s.




THE QUIVER BIBLE CLASS.

(BASED ON THE INTERNATIONAL SCRIPTURE LESSONS.)


QUESTIONS.

13. What was the great sin of which Zedekiah, king of Judah, was
guilty and for which he was punished?

14. In what way was Zedekiah punished?

15. What prophecy was thereby fulfilled?

16. In what way does the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews
contrast the revelation of God to mankind under the old dispensation
with that of the new?

17. Quote a text which shows the relationship of the angels to the
human race.

18. What is the special characteristic of the Gospel of St. John?

19. Quote text in which St. John asserts the truth of the
Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

20. What reference to St. John the Baptist was made by the last of
the Old Testament prophets?

21. It is said of our Lord, "He came unto His own, and His own
received Him not." Quote passage from the Old Testament which shows
that this passage refers to the Jewish people.

22. From what circumstance should we gather that Nathanael was a
diligent student of the Old Testament?

23. In what words did our Lord show forth His divinity in speaking
to Nathanael?

24. In what way did St. John the Baptist point out to his disciples
that Jesus was the Messiah?


ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS ON PAGE 96.

1. Manasseh defiled the Temple at Jerusalem by setting up an idol
therein (2 Chron. xxxiii. 7).

2. 2 Chron. xxxiii. 14.

3. Manasseh, having been reinstated in his kingdom by the Assyrians,
gave up his idolatry and did all he could to restore the worship of
God in the land (2 Chron. xxxiii. 14-17).

4. Prov. iv. 14, 17.

5. Prov. iv. 18.

6. In the reign of Josiah the king sent to Huldah the prophetess to
inquire as to God's will concerning the people (2 Kings xxii. 14-20).

7. The copy of the Law which Moses had written was found (2 Kings
xxii. 8; 2 Chron. xxxiv. 14).

8. In the reign of Amon, king of Judah, we are told the people
worshipped the "sun, moon, and stars, and all the host of heaven" (2
Kings xxiii. 5).

9. In the reign of Josiah, who burnt men's bones on the altar at
Bethel (2 Kings xxiii. 15, 16; 1 Kings xiii. 2).

10. Jehoiakim threw on the fire the roll on which Jeremiah had
written at God's command a warning to the king and his people (Jer.
xxxvi. 23).

11. Jer. xxii. 13, 14; 2 Kings xxiv. 4.

12. Jehoiakim was bound in fetters to carry him to Babylon, but was
slain at Jerusalem and his dead body cast outside the city (2 Chron.
xxxvi. 6; Jer. xxii. 19).

       *       *       *       *       *

Transcriber's note:

Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note.
Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as
printed.

Missing page numbers are page numbers that were not shown in the
original text.

The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up
paragraphs.

Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where
the missing quote should be placed.

The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the
transcriber and is placed in the public domain.