Chambers’s Journal, by Various—A Project Gutenberg eBook

A recent writer remarks that ‘the practice of letters is miserably harassing to the mind. To find the right word is so doubtful a success, and lies so near to failure, that there is no satisfaction in a year of it.’ A cynical warning, indeed; but there is, we think, no danger of a scarcity of literary effort in the immediate future, whatever the appreciable results of it may be. There will always be a host of aspirants for literary honours, and the reason of this may perhaps lie, to a certain extent, in that very uncertainty which attends the pursuit of letters as an avocation; the brilliant rewards which have been earned and the underlying risk of failure, present together the very conditions of enterprise most powerfully attractive to many minds. For it must be remembered that there is no fixedness in the canon either of public opinion or of criticism in literature; that which fails to win attention to-day, may attract to-morrow; and success, especially that form of it which results from passing popularity, is in many cases very much dependent on the proverbial fickleness of the reading public. It would be difficult, we think, on other grounds than that of this attractiveness of the chances and prizes of the literary occupation, to account for the active competition which is so observable in the profession. That the pure literary faculty, as a stimulus, does not form a distinguishing characteristic of all aspirants, is plain enough. No doubt, a great impetus has been given to literary endeavour by the periodical press, which, by popularising ephemeral literature among the masses, and by its own requirements of supply, has thus increased its production. And the same is true of the newspaper press also, with its opportunities for the contribution of correspondence, which, though frequently a humble enough opening for talent, has often sufficed to originate and foster the habit of more ambitious composition.

The canon of literary criticism is, we have said, not an unvarying one. But undoubtedly there is, for all perfect, and still more for all enduring work in the world of letters a certain measure and standard of excellence in the mode of expression, which even the most brilliant genius cannot afford wholly to disregard, but which is as incapable of exact definition as it is difficult of attainment. It is much more, certainly, than ‘the finding of the right word,’ even granting that the right idea be behind it. A literary composition may be characterised by the most perfect accuracy of expression, may be faultless in every detail, and yet be after all a very mediocre piece of work at the best, though it may be difficult exactly to indicate in what respect it is defective. We can only in a case of this kind point to acknowledged merit as possessing what the attempt in question lacks.

It has also to be noted that excellence in literary workmanship is properly independent both of the nature of its subject and the scale on which it is executed. An instance of this may be found in Thackeray’s Roundabout Papers. In these apparently careless sketches, a designedly trivial subject is chosen; the treatment of it is everything, and the artistic finish is of the highest; the subject is dwarfed in the handling, and yet the very handling interests the reader abnormally in the subject. Perhaps, however, this subordination of the subject to the treatment—as in the inimitable narrative of the schoolboy purchasing, from his companion, the pencil-case with the movable calendar atop—is as a whole inferior to that method by which the incidents of the subject are brought out in relief, as it were, by the simplicity of the description, so much so, that the art of that simplicity is concealed. Nathaniel Hawthorne in his House of the Seven Gables and several of the Twice-told Tales has some exquisitely pellucid specimens of this complete literary facility. In such masterpieces we see the results only, without any indication of the labour involved in its execution. The statue is there in all its finished loveliness, but the chips of the marble have been swept away. ‘How clear and flowing your melody is,’ was{66} once remarked to an eminent musical composer; ‘how easily you must write!’ ‘Ah!’ replied he, ‘you little know with what hard work that ease you speak of has been purchased.’ When the late Charles Mathews was playing in Melbourne, fifteen years ago, he received what he considered the highest compliment of his professional career. A little girl in the audience was asked by her friends at the conclusion of the performance how she was pleased, to which she replied: ‘I didn’t care for Mr Mathews’ acting a bit; he just walked up and down the stage as papa walks up and down the dining-room at home.’ It is the fact of this appearance of perfect spontaneity in the highest art, being really the outcome of the most assiduous care, that renders it so truly inimitable, and the counterfeit so easy of detection. The ‘round O of Giotto’ was only a perfect circle, but it needed the master-hand to execute it with a simple sweep of the crayon. Ruskin tells us in one of his treatises on Landscape Painting, that in some of the greatest works of genius, an effect which is almost magical at the proper focal distance, is conveyed by what appears, to the uninstructed eye and viewed close at hand, to be a mere dash of loaded colour, but which in reality could not be added to or diminished by the smallest particle without detracting from the effect.

If it be true that literary excellence is only to be attained by the patient bestowal of ‘infinite pains,’ that there is no easy method of reaching it, it is no less the fact that, as a general rule, the time is wasted—perhaps worse than wasted—which is devoted by the young writer to a laborious imitation of the style of any distinguished author. Such an imitation is generally an unsuccessful one, and results in a reproduction of the faults and defects of the original without its graces. The advice Dr Johnson gave to those ‘desirous of attaining the English style,’ to ‘give their days and nights to the volumes of Addison,’ must be taken with reserve. Such a style, though eminently beautiful in itself, would practically nowadays be out of date, even if faithfully reproduced, while at the same time it is most likely that the student would overlook that deficiency of force with which the manner of Addison is fairly chargeable. The best model for style is not that of any particular or favourite writer, but rather the excellency of the best writers generally—the highest qualities of the highest types.

We have hitherto spoken of that perfect mastery of our language in writing which has been the possession of those famous in the history of English letters, and it may be inquired if such a high standard should in all cases be necessarily aimed at, seeing that for many purposes of everyday life a lesser degree of cultivation might be found as practically useful. To this it is sufficient to reply that much positive good must result from an endeavour to follow the best examples in the practice of any art, and further, that such an endeavour will be found the surest way by which to avoid all faulty and careless work, which can under no possible conditions be praiseworthy or even tolerable. No young writer can afford to write carelessly, till such time, at all events, as he has become fully versed in his art, when he will probably find that to write with the effect of carelessness is beyond his power. At the same time, young writers should be careful not to adopt for imitation a style of too great elevation, for by so doing they may find that they have contracted that worst of all literary diseases—bombast.

In estimating the amount of labour bestowed on the production of literary work, care must be taken to include the original mental processes involved in the conception of the ideas, as well as the subsequent elaboration of them in detail; the higher sort of composition includes both; and it is evident that when the question comes to be one of the labour of origination, we find ourselves in a region where estimate is all but impossible. ‘The workshop of the imagination’ will reveal no record of its toil. Edgar Allan Poe, indeed, in his Philosophy of Composition introduces us to what he would have us believe to be the very beginnings of invention, endeavouring to portray the very earliest growth of his marvellous constructive faculty exemplified in his poem of The Raven. But his explanation reads more like an intellectual pastime than a reality, even if it were beyond question that the central idea of the poem was original, and not borrowed from an eastern source. In the case of Auguste Comte, however, we have an instance of the amount of intellectual travail which may often precede the birth of a great work, the mental preparation before the committal of the thoughts to paper. To quote M. Littré’s account of Comte’s method: ‘Here is the way in which he composed each of the six volumes of the Positive philosophy. He thought the subject over without writing a word; from the whole he passed to the secondary groups, from the secondary groups to the details. Then, when this elaboration, first total, then partial, was completed, he said that his volume was done.’

CHAPTER VI.

The three weeks’ difference in practical time between England and the West Indies, due to the mail, made the day that Edward and Marian spent at Southampton exactly coincide with the one when Mr Dupuy and his nephew Tom went up to view old Mr Hawthorn’s cattle at Agualta Estate, Trinidad. On that very same evening, while Nora and Harry were walking together among the fields behind the battery, Mr Tom Dupuy was strolling leisurely by himself in the cool dusk, four thousand miles away, on one of the innumerable shady bridle-paths that thread the endless tangled hills above Pimento Valley.

Mr Tom was smoking a very big Manila cheroot, and was accompanied upon his rounds by a huge and ferocious-looking Cuban bloodhound, the{67} hungry corners of whose great greedy slobbering mouth hung down hideously on either side in loose folds of skin of the most bloodthirsty and sinister aspect. As he went along, Tom Dupuy kept patting affectionately from time to time his four-footed favourite, to whom, nevertheless, every now and again he applied, as it seemed out of pure wantonness, the knotted lash of the cruel dog-whip which he carried jauntily in his right hand. The dog, however, formidable as he was, so far from resenting this unkindly treatment, appeared to find in it something exceedingly congenial to his own proper barbarous nature; for after each such savage cut upon his bare flanks from the knotted hide, he only cowered for a second, and then fawned the more closely and slavishly than ever upon his smiling master, looking up into his face with a strange approving glance from his dull eyes, that seemed to say: ‘Exactly the sort of thing I should do myself, if you were the dog, and I were the whip-holder.’

At a bend of the path, where the road turned suddenly aside to cross the dry bed of a winter torrent, Tom Dupuy came upon a clump of tall cabbage palms, hard by a low mud-built negro hut, overshadowed in front by two or three huge flowering bushes of crimson hibiscus. A tall, spare, gray-headed negro, in a coarse sack by way of a shirt, with his bare and sinewy arms thrust loosely through the long slits which alone did duty in the place of sleeve-holes, was leaning as he passed upon a wooden post. The bloodhound, breaking away suddenly from his master, at sight and smell of the black skin, its natural prey, rushed up fiercely towards the old labourer, and leapt upon him with a savage snarl of his big teeth, and with ominous glittering eyes. But the negro, stronger and more muscular than he looked, instead of flinching, caught the huge brute in his long lean arms, and flung him from him by main force with an angry oath, dashing his great form heavily against the rough pathway. Quick as lightning, the dog, leaping up again at once with diabolical energy in its big flabby mouth, was just about to spring once more upon his scowling opponent, when Tom Dupuy, catching him angrily by his leather collar, threw him down and held him back, growling fiercely, and showing his huge tearing teeth in a ferocious grin, after the wonted manner of his deadly kind. ‘Quiet, Slot, quiet!’ the master said, patting his hollow forehead with affectionate admiration. ‘Quiet, sir; down this minute! Down, I tell you!—He’s death on niggers, Delgado—death on niggers. You should stand out of the way, you know, when you see him coming. Of course, these dogs never can abide the scent of you black fellows. The bookay d’Afreek always drives a bloodhound frantic.’

The old negro drew himself up haughtily and sternly, and stared back in the insolent face of the slouching young white man with a proud air of native dignity. ‘Buckra gentleman hab no right, den, to go about wid dem dog,’ he answered angrily, fixing his piercing fiery eye on the bloodhound’s face. ‘Dem dog always spring at a black man wherebber dey find him. If you want to keep dem, you should keep dem tied up at de house, so as to do for watchdog against tievin’ naygur. But you doan’t got no right to bring dem about de ro-ads, loose dat way, jumpin’ up at people’s troats, when dem standin’ peaceable beside dem own hut here.’

Tom Dupuy laughed carelessly. ‘It’s their nature, you see, Delgado,’ he answered with a pleasant smile, still holding the dog and caressing it lovingly. ‘They and their fathers were trained long ago in slavery days to hunt runaway niggers up in the mountains and track them to their hiding-places, and drag them back, alive or dead, to their lawful masters; and of course that makes them run naturally after the smell of a nigger, as a terrier runs after the smell of a rat. When the rat sees the terrier coming, he scuttles off as hard as his legs can carry him into his hole; and when you see Slot’s nose turning round the corner, you ought to scuttle off into your hut as quick as lightning, if you want to keep your black skin whole upon your body. Slot never can abide the smell of a nigger.—Can you, Slot, eh, old fellow?’

The negro looked at him with unconcealed aversion. ‘I is not rat, Mistah Dupuy,’ he said haughtily. ‘I is gentleman myself, same as you is, sah, when I come here over from Africa.’

Tom Dupuy sneered openly in his very face. ‘That’s the way with all you Africans,’ he answered with a laugh, as he flipped the ash idly from his big cheroot. ‘I never knew an imported nigger yet, since I was born, that wasn’t a king in his own country. Seems to me, they must all be kings over yonder in Congo, with never a solitary subject to divide between them.—But I say, my friend, what’s going on over this way to-night, that so many niggers are going up all the time to the Methody chapel? Are you going to preach ’em a missionary sermon?’

Delgado glanced at him a trifle suspiciously. ‘Dar is a prayer-meetin’, sah,’ he said with a cold look in his angry eye, ‘up at Gilead. De bredderin gwine to meet dis ebenin’.’

‘Ho, ho; so that’s it! A prayer-meeting, is it? Well, if I go up there, will you let me attend it?’

Delgado’s thick lip curled contemptuously, as he answered with a frown: ‘When cockroach gib dance, him no ax fowl!’

‘Ah, I see. The fowl would eat the cockroaches, would he? Well, then, Louis Delgado, I give you fair warning; if you don’t want a white man to go and look on at your nigger meetings, depend upon it, it’s because you’re brewing some mischief or other up there against the constituted authorities. I shall tell my uncle to set his police to look well after you. You were always a bad-blooded, discontented, disaffected fellow, and I believe now you’re up to some of your African devilry or other. No obeah,[1] mind you, Delgado—no obeah! Prayer-meetings, my good friend, as much as you like; but whatever you do, no obeah.’

‘You tink I do obeah because I doan’t will let you go to prayer-meetin’! Dat just like{68} white-man argument. Him tink de naygur can nebber be in de right. Old-time folk has little proverb: “Mountain sheep always guilty when jungle tiger sit to judge him.”’

Tom Dupuy laughed and nodded. ‘Well, good-night.—Down, Slot, down, good fellow; down, down, down, I tell you!—Good-night, Louis Delgado, and mind, whatever you do, no obeah!’

The negro watched him slowly round the corner, with a suspicious eye kept well fixed upon the reluctant stealthy retreat of the Cuban bloodhound; and as soon as Dupuy had got safely beyond earshot, he sat down in the soft dust that formed the bare platform outside his hut, and mumbled to himself, as negroes will do, a loud dramatic soliloquy, in every deep and varying tone of passion and hatred. ‘Ha, ha, Mistah Tom Dupuy,’ he began quietly, ‘so you go about always wid de Cuban bloodhound, an’ you laugh to see him spring at de troat ob de black man! You tink dat frighten him from come steal your cane an’ your mangoes! You tink de black man afraid ob de dog, yarra! yarra! Ha, dat frighten Trinidad naygur, perhaps, but it doan’t frighten salt-water naygur from Africa! I hab charms, I hab potion, I hab draught to quiet him! I doan’t afraid ob fifty bloodhound. But it doan’t good for buckra gentleman to walk about wid dog dat spring at de black man. Black man laugh to-day, perhaps, but press him heart tight widin him. De time come when black man will find him heart break out, an’ de hate in it flow over an’ make blood run, like dry ribber in de rainy season. Den him sweep away buckra, an’ bloodhound, an’ all before him; an’ seize de country, colour for colour. De land is black, an’ de land for de black man. When de black man burst him heart like ribber burst him bank in de rainy season, white man’s house snap off before him like bamboo hut when de flood catch it!’ As he spoke, he pushed his hands out expansively before him, and gurgled in his throat with fierce inarticulate African gutturals, that seemed to recall in some strange fashion the hollow eddying roar and gurgle of the mountain torrents in the rainy season.

‘Chicken doan’t nebber lub jackal, yarra,’ he went on after a short pause of expectant triumph; ‘an’ naygur doan’t nebber lub buckra, dat certain. But ob all de buckra in de island ob Trinidad, dem Dupuy is de very worst an’ de very contemptfullest. Some day, black man will rise, an’ get rid ob dem all for good an’ ebber. If I like, I can kill dem all to-day; but I gwine to wait. De great an’ terrible day ob de Lard is not come yet. Missy Dupuy ober in England, where de buckra come from. England is de white man’s Africa; de missy dar to learn him catechism. I wait till Missy Dupuy come back before I kill de whole family. When de great an’ terrible day ob de Lard arrive, I doan’t leave a single Dupuy a libbin soul in de island ob Trinidad. I slay dem all, an’ de missy wid dem, yarra, yarra!’

The last two almost inarticulate words were uttered with a yell of triumph. Hearing footsteps now approaching, he broke out into a loud soliloquy of exultation in his own native African language. It was a deep, savage-sounding West Coast dialect, full of harsh and barbaric clicks or gutturals; for Louis Delgado, as Tom Dupuy had rightly said, was ‘an imported African’—a Coromantyn, sold as a slave some thirty years before to a Cuban slave-trader trying to break the blockade on the coast, and captured with all her living cargo by an English cruiser off Sombrero Island. The liberated slaves had been landed, according to custom, at the first British port where the cutter touched; and thus Louis Delgado—as he learned to call himself—a wild African born, from the Coromantyn seaboard, partially Anglicised and outwardly Christianised, was now a common West Indian plantation hand on the two estates of Orange Grove and Pimento Valley. There are dozens of such semi-civilised imported negroes still to be found under similar circumstances in every one of the West India islands.

As the steps gradually approached nearer, it became plain, from the soft footfall in the dust of the bridle-path, that it was a shoeless black person who was coming towards him. In a minute more, the new-comer had turned the corner, and displayed herself as a young and comely negress—pretty with the round, good-humoured African prettiness of smooth black skin, plump cheeks, clear eyes, and regular, even pearl-white teeth. The girl was dressed in a loose Manchester cotton print, brightly coloured, and not unbecoming, with a tidy red bandana bound turban-wise around her shapely head, but barefooted, barelimbed, and bare of neck and shoulder. Her figure was good, as the figure of most negresses usually is; and she held herself erect and upright with the peculiar lithe gracefulness said to be induced by the universal practice of carrying pails of water and other burdens on the top of the head from the very earliest days of negro childhood. As she approached Delgado, she first smiled and showed all her pretty teeth, as she uttered the customary polite salutation of ‘Marnin’! sah, marnin’!’ and then dropped a profound courtesy with an unmistakable air of awe and reverence.

Louis Delgado affected not to observe the girl for a moment, and went on jabbering loudly and fiercely to himself in his swift and fluent African jargon. But it was evident that his hearer was deeply impressed at once by this rapt and prophetic inattention of the strange negro, who spoke with tongues to vacant space in such an awful and intensely realistic fashion. She paused for a while and looked at him intently; then, when he stopped for a second to take breath in the midst of one of his passionate incoherent outbursts, she came a step nearer to him and courtesied again, at the same time that she muttered in a rather injured querulous treble: ‘Mistah Delgado, you no hear me, sah? You no listen to me? I tellin’ you marnin’.’

The old man broke off suddenly, as if recalled to himself and common earth by some disenchanting touch, and answered dreamily: ‘Marnin’, Missy Rosina. Marnin’, le-ady. You gwine up to Gilead now to de prayer-meetin’?’

Rosina, glancing down at the Bible and hymn-book in her plump black hand, answered demurely: ‘Yes, sah, I gwine dar.’

Delgado shook himself vigorously, as if in the{69} endeavour to recover from some unearthly trance, and went on in his more natural manner: ‘I gwine up too, to pray wid de bredderin. You want me for someting? You callin’ to me for help you?’

Rosina dropped her voice a little as she replied in her shrill tone: ‘You is African, Mistah Delgado. Naygur from Africa know plenty spell for bring back le-ady’s lubber.’

Delgado nodded. ‘Dat is true,’ he answered. ‘Creole[2] naygur doan’t can make spell same as African. Coromantyn naygur hab plenty oracle. De oracles ob Aaron descend in right line to de chiefs ob de Coromantyn.’

The old man drew himself up with a haughty air. ‘Me fader,’ he answered with evident pride, ‘hab twelve wives, all princess, an’ I is de eldest son ob de eldest. King Blay fight him, an’ take me prisoner, an’ sell me slabe, an’ dat is how I come to work now ober here on Mistah Dupuy plantation.’

After a pause, he asked quickly: ‘Who dis sweetheart dat you want spell for?’

‘Pourtalès! Him mulatto! What for pretty naygur girl like you want to go an’ lub mulatto? Mulatto bad man. Old-time folk say, mulatto always hate him fader an’ despise him mudder. Him fader de white man, an’ mulatto hate white; him mudder de black girl, an’ mulatto despise black.’

Rosina hung her head down slightly on one side, and put the little finger of her left hand with artless coyness into the corner of her mouth. ‘I doan’t know, sah,’ she said sheepishly after a short pause; ‘but I feel somehow as if I lub Isaac Pourtalès.’

Delgado grinned a sinister grin. ‘Very well, Missy Rosy,’ he said shortly, ‘I gain him lub for you. Wait here one, two, tree minute, le-ady, while I run in find me Bible.’

In a few minutes, he came out again, dressed in his black coat for meeting, with a Bible and hymn-book in one hand, and a curious volume in the other, written in strange, twisted, twirligig characters, such as Rosina had never before in her life set eyes on. ‘See here!’ he cried, opening it wide before her; ‘dat is book ob spells. Dat is African spell for gain lubber. I explain him to you’—and his hand turned rapidly over several of the brown and well-thumbed pages: ‘Isaac Pourtalès, mulatto; Rosina Fleming, black le-ady; dat is de page. Hear what de spell say.’ And he ran his finger line by line along the strange characters, as if translating them into his own negro English as he went. ‘“Take toot’ ob alligator,” same as dis one’—and he produced a few alligators’ teeth from his capacious pocket; ‘“tie him up for a week in bag wid Savannah flower an’ branch of calalue; soak him well in shark’s blood”—I gib de blood to you—“den write de name, Isaac Pourtalès, in big letter on slip ob white paper; drop it in de bag; an’ burn it all togedder on a Friday ebenin’, when it doan’t no moon, wid fire ob manchineel wood.” Dat will gain de lub ob your lubber, as sure as de gospel.’

The girl listened carefully to the directions, and made Delgado repeat them three times over to her. When she had learned them thoroughly, she said once more: ‘How much I got to pay you for dis, eh, sah?’

‘No, nuffin. But you must do me favour. You is house-serbant at Orange Grove; you must come see me now an’ den, an’ tell me what go on ober in de house dar.’

‘Doan’t you ax what far; but listen to me, le-ady. De great an’ terrible day ob de Lard will come before long, when de wicked will be cut off from de face ob de eart’, an’ we shall see de end ob de evil-doer. You read de Prophets?’

‘You read de Prophet Jeremiah, what him say? Hear de tex’. I read him to you. “Deliber up deir children to de famine, an’ pour out deir blood by de sword.” Dat de Lard’s word for all de Dupuys; an’ when de missy come from England, de word ob de prophecy comin’ true.’

The girl shuddered, and opened wide her big eyes with their great ring of white setting. ‘How you know it de Dupuys?’ she asked, hesitating. ‘How you know it dem de prophet ’ludin’ to?’

‘How I know, Rosina Fleming? How I know it? Because I can expound an’ interpret de Scripture; for when de understandin’ ob de man is enlightened, de mout’ speaketh forth wonderful tings. Listen here; I tellin’ you de trut’. Before de missy lib a year in Trinidad, de Lard will sweep away de whole house ob de Dupuys out ob de land for ebber an’ ebber.’

‘Ah, de missy! You tink when de black man rise like tiger in him wrath, him spare de missy! No, me fren’. Him doan’t gwine to spare her. De Dupuys is great people now; puffed up wid pride; look down on de black man. But dem will drop dem bluster bime-by, as soon as deir pride is taken out ob dem wid adversity.’

Rosina turned away with a look of terror. ‘You comin’ to prayer-meetin’?’ she asked hastily. ‘De bredderin will all be waitin’.’

Delgado, recalled once more to his alternative character, pushed away the strange volume through the door of his hut, took up his Bible and hymn-book with the gravest solemnity, drew himself up to his full height, and was soon walking along soberly by Rosina’s side, as respectable and decorous a native Methodist class-leader as one could wish to see in the whole green island of Trinidad.

Those who judge superficially of men and minds, would say at once that Delgado was a hypocrite. Those who know what religion really means to inferior races—a strange but sincere jumble of phrases, emotions, superstitions, and melodies, permeating and consecrating all their acts and all their passions, however evil, violent, or licentious—will recognise at once that in his{70} own mind Louis Delgado was not conscious to himself in the faintest degree of any hypocrisy, craft, or even inconsistency.

A very erroneous impression generally exists in this country as to the manner in which the English language is spoken in the United States. This has arisen in some degree from the circumstance that travellers have dwelt upon and exaggerated such peculiarities of language as have come under their observation in various parts of the Union; but also in greater measure from the fact that in English novels and dramas in which an American figures—no matter whether the character depicted be represented as a man of good social position and, presumably, fair education, or not—he is made to express himself in a dialect happily combining the peculiarities of speech of every section of the country from Maine to Texas. With the exception of the late Mr Anthony Trollope’s American Senator, I cannot recall to mind a single work of fiction in which this is not the case. Take, for instance, those portions of Martin Chuzzlewit the scenes of which are laid in the United States; Richard Fairfield, in Bulwer’s My Novel; the Colonel in Lever’s One of Them; Fullalove, in Charles Reade’s Very Hard Cash; the younger Fenton in Yates’s Black Sheep; or the American traveller in Mugby Junction—in each and every instance the result is to convey a most erroneous idea as to the manner in which our common tongue is ordinarily spoken in the United States.

It is the same on the stage. The dialect in which Americans are usually made to express themselves in English dramas is as incorrect and absurd as was the language put into the mouths of their Irish characters by the playwrights of the early part of the eighteenth century.

As a matter of fact, the speech of educated Americans differs but little from that of the same class in Great Britain; whilst, as regards the great bulk of the people of the United States, there can be no question but that they speak purer and more idiomatic English than do the masses here. In every State of the Union the language of the inhabitants can be understood without the slightest difficulty. This is more than can be said of the dialects of the peasantry in various parts of England, these being in many instances perfectly unintelligible to a stranger. Again, the fluency of expression and command of language possessed by Americans even in the humbler ranks of life forms a marked contrast to the poverty of speech of the same class in this country, where, as an eminent philologist has declared, a very considerable proportion of the agricultural population habitually make use of a vocabulary not exceeding three hundred words.

But to return to the subject of this paper. Some words which have become obsolete in this country, or now convey a totally different meaning from that primarily attaching to them, are still current in America in the sense in which they were originally employed. Prink, to ornament or adorn, which is found in Spenser and other writers of the Elizabethan age, is at the present day a common term in the Eastern States. One Yankee girl will say to another, who has been some time at her toilet, ‘Oh, you have been prinking;’ or, ‘What a long while it has taken you to prink.’ In fact the verb is used in all its moods and tenses. Muss, a confused encounter or scramble, is generally supposed to be a purely American idiom. On the contrary, it is good Shakspearean English. In Antony and Cleopatra, Antony says:

Lamm, to beat, to maltreat, is an American word of English parentage. In a north-country ballad of the time of Edward VI., one line runs, ‘They lammed him and bammed him;’ and the word may also be found in Marlowe. Sick is an expression universally used in the United States in the sense of indisposition. A man will say, ‘I am sick,’ never, ‘I am ill.’ It scarcely need be said that the phrase was perfectly good English two centuries and a half ago, the word ‘ill,’ with the meaning now attaching to it, not once occurring in the translation of the Bible.

Bug, again, employed in America as a generic term for every species of insect, was used in England, formerly, in the same sense. ‘A bug hath buzzed it in mine ears,’ says Bacon in one of his letters. At the present day, the word has in England so limited an application, that when an edition of the works of Edgar Allan Poe was published in London, the editor altered the title of one story, The Golden Bug, to The Golden Beetle, in order not to give offence to ‘ears polite.’

Fearful, which now signifies to inspire terror or awe, has still in the United States the meaning it bore in Shakspeare’s time, when it was invariably used in the sense of timid or afraid. In Romeo and Juliet, when Romeo, after slaying Tybalt, is lying hidden in Friar Lawrence’s cell, the Friar says:

and again, in The Tempest, in that scene in which Prospero threatens Ferdinand, Miranda exclaims:

So obsolete, however, is now the word in the sense in which it is employed by the poet, that in most editions of Shakspeare, a footnote is appended to it, giving the definition as ‘timorous.’ In America, the expression, ‘He is a fearful man,’ or, ‘She is a fearful woman,’ is frequently applied to an individual of timid disposition, the meaning intended to be conveyed being precisely the opposite to that which in this country would attach to the phrase.

Some common English words have in the United States completely lost their original signification, wherefore, it would not be easy to say. Ugly, for instance, means ill-natured; smart, clever; clever, of an amiable disposition; and lovely—although this last locution is not perhaps so common as the others—lovable.

I was, when resident in New York, present during a conversation in the course of which a rather curious equivoque occurred, owing to the peculiar sense in which the words in question{71} are used on the other side of the Atlantic. On the occasion referred to, an American lady and an Englishwoman—who had only been a short time in the United States—were speaking of an old gentleman with whom they both were acquainted. The former was warm in his praises.

‘Why,’ was the surprised reply, ‘how can you think so? I consider him decidedly ugly.’

‘Ugly!’ indignantly retorted the first speaker. ‘He is not at all ugly. On the contrary, he is real clever.’

‘That Mr R—— is a man of talent, I admit,’ was the response; ‘but he is certainly anything but good-looking.’

‘Well, I do not deny that he is homely, and I never said that he was not,’ rejoined the other lady.

‘But,’ exclaimed the puzzled Englishwoman, ‘you have just asserted that he was not ugly.’

When the dialogue had reached this point, it being obvious not only that the two ladies were at cross-purposes, but that they were, in consequence, becoming a little heated, I deemed it advisable to interpose, and explain how their mutual misapprehension had arisen.

In connection with the phrase, ‘A man of talent,’ made use of by my countrywoman in the course of the above conversation, I may observe that ‘talent’ or ‘talented’ is an expression seldom heard from the lips of a native of New England. Lord Macaulay asserts that these words owe their origin to the ‘Parable of the Talents’ in the New Testament, and on one occasion he challenged Lady Holland to cite a single instance of their being employed by any English writer prior to the latter part of the seventeenth century. To the circumstance, therefore, that at the period when the Puritans left their native land to seek new homes in the New World, the words in question had not been incorporated into the language, may, I conceive, be attributed the fact that to this day they seldom have a place in the vocabulary of the inhabitants of the Eastern States.

When a word is already in existence which is fully adequate to express the idea it is employed to convey, it seems not a little curious that the use of it should be superseded by another, not, indeed, coined for the purpose, but by one divorced from its original meaning. Yet this has been the case in various instances in the United States. A place where goods are sold at retail is called a ‘store,’ not a shop, the use of the latter word being exclusively confined to those establishments in which some manufacturing or other mechanical industry is carried on. When ‘corn’ is spoken of, maize or Indian corn is always meant; all the other cereals being invariably designated by their respective names, as wheat, oats, barley, &c. Railway in America becomes ‘railroad;’ station, ‘depôt;’ line, ‘track;’ carriage, ‘car;’ whilst for tram, the phrase employed is ‘horse-car.’ A timber building is a ‘frame-building;’ a row of houses is a ‘block’ of houses. For poorhouse or workhouse, the expression used is ‘almshouse.’ When the idea intended to be conveyed is that which an Englishman attaches to the latter phrase, the word ‘asylum’ or ‘home’ is used by an American.

In fact, a list which should comprise all the words employed by our transatlantic cousins in a different sense from ourselves would be a tolerably long one. But the desultory examples I have given will suffice to illustrate the fact—to which I have already adverted—that in numerous instances, and without any apparent cause, many common English words have acquired in the United States a totally different meaning from that which they bear in this country.

CHAPTER IX.

It was nearly ten o’clock on the following morning before Edgar reached the Bedford, Covent Garden. He found the American in his private room waiting his arrival, and clad in a loose dressing-gown, which made him look extra tall and thin—a wonderful garment, embracing every known hue and colour, and strongly resembling, save as to its garishness, a Canadian wood in the fall. Mr Slimm laid aside a disreputable brier he was smoking, as soon as he perceived his visitor. ‘Morning!’ he said briskly. ‘Tolerably punctual. Hope you don’t object to the smell of tobacco so early?’

‘I don’t know,’ Edgar replied, throwing himself down in a chair. ‘Like most well-regulated Britons, I cannot say I am partial to the smell of tobacco before breakfast.’

‘Do you know,’ Mr Slimm responded dryly, ‘I have seen the time when I never smoked before breakfast. I don’t allude to any great outbreak of virtue on my part; but the fact is, when a man can’t get a breakfast, he can’t be accused of smoking before it—no, sir.’ Having administered this crushing piece of logic with characteristic force, Mr Slimm rang the bell and proceeded to order ‘the fixings,’ which was his term for the matutinal repast.

‘You Britishers have got some sound notions on the subject of dinners and promiscuous refreshment; but your imagination don’t soar to breakfast. There’s nothing substantial about it,’ said Mr Slimm, after finishing a pound or so of steak. ‘The Francatelli who rules the kitchen here is fairly good; and I flatter myself if I stay here much longer he will know what a breakfast is. I stayed for a week at a little place off the Strand once; but I was almost starved. Ham and eggs, chops and steaks, was the programme, with a sole, by way of a treat, on Sundays.’

‘Very sad,’ replied Edgar, with considerable gravity. ‘You must have suffered. You don’t seem, however, particularly short here.’

‘Well, no,’ Mr Slimm admitted, at the same time helping himself to fish; ‘I can manage here.’

‘I hope last night’s little scrimmage has not injured your appetite this morning?’ Edgar asked politely.

‘Not much. Æneas Slimm generally can pick up his crumbs tolerably. This little village is a fine place to sharpen the appetite.’

‘I don’t know; it all depends. I am doing London, you see, and when I do a place, I do it well. You’ve got some fine old landmarks here—very fine,’ said Mr Slimm with proverbial American reverence for the antique. ‘I guess we should be proud of the Tower over to New York—yes, sir.’

‘Do, tell. Man, I guess you’re funning. Seems to me kind o’ incredible for an Englishman to live in London and not see the Tower.’

‘Wall, if this don’t beat snakes! Never seen the Tower!’ exclaimed the American, chipping his third egg. ‘Maybe you never heard of a picturesque pile known to the inquiring stranger as the British Museum?—Now, have you ever heard of Westminster Abbey?’

‘Well,’ said Edgar laughingly, ‘I believe I have; but I must confess that I have never been inside either of the places you mention.’

‘Wonderful! Mr Seaton, you’re born to make a name. The man who can pass these places without emotion, ain’t no common shake. I guess you’re the kind of matter they make genius out of.’

‘You seem to be astonished. Surely, in New York, you have buildings and churches quite as fine as anything in London?’

‘You think so, do you? Wall, if it’s any consolation to you, keep on thinking so; it won’t hurt any one.—Mr Seaton,’ continued Slimm, lowering his voice reverently, ‘when I get pottering about down at Westminster, and look at the Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, strike me if I don’t wish I was a Britisher myself!’

‘That is high praise indeed; and I think it is due to your native patriotism to say your approval does you credit. But candidly, it always struck me that our Houses of Parliament are particularly mean-looking for their position.’

‘Maybe, maybe,’ Mr Slimm replied meditatively; ‘but there’s something about them that makes me feel chockful of poetry. When I wander into the Abbey among these silent stones and listen to that grand organ, I feel it does me good.’

‘I don’t, and that’s a fact. I don’t know F sharp from a bull’s foot; but I can feel it. When the artist presiding at the instrument pulls out that wonderful stop like a human voice, I feel real mean, and that’s a fact—yes, sir.’

‘It is wonderful what an effect music has on the human understanding,’ Edgar replied. ‘“Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast.” My wife always says’——

‘Considering I never told you that interesting fact, I do not see very well how you could know,’ Edgar replied with a smile; which was, however, not so cordially received by Mr Slimm.

‘Um,’ he said doubtfully.—‘Now, look here, my young friend; I’m a rough chap, and I’ve just got to say my mind, if I die for it. Don’t you think a young married man has no business in such a place as we met last night?’

‘But, you see, I had business there,’ Edgar said, still smiling. ‘It was stern business, and nothing else, which took me to that place.’

‘You mean, you don’t understand. Well, I am what is usually known—or rather, in my case, unknown—as a literary man. I am working up a series of articles on gambling-houses.’

‘Hard up,’ said Mr Slimm. ‘Case of needs must when what’s-his-name drives. You don’t look as if you were dragged up to this sort of thing neither?’

‘To be candid with you, I was not,’ Edgar replied, urged by some strange impulse to confide in the American. ‘I am a university man without money. My history is a common one. Educated at a public school, and afterwards at Cambridge, I am expected to get a living in some mysterious way. All my little money was spent upon my education, and then I had to shift for myself. Much good my second-class honours have done me.’

‘Of course. But now comes the most remarkable part of my story. My wife was her uncle’s heiress—not that her money was any inducement to me—and I was engaged to her with his approval. It was arranged I was to manage his property, and we were to live with him. Then a relative of his—a lady—came to stay, and everything went wrong from that time. Finally, acting under the lady’s wonderful fascination, my wife’s uncle forbade our marriage, and ordered her to marry a nephew of the lady’s. This, of course, she refused to do, and was consequently disinherited.’

‘What sort of a seraph was the lady?’ asked Mr Slimm, with considerable interest.

‘Don’t mention her, pray. She had the evil-eye, if ever woman had.—But to continue. After our wedding, we came to London, and at different times tried to bring about a reconciliation; but to no effect. Then the old gentleman died.’

‘A common story enough; but considerable rough on you and your wife,’ said Mr Slimm.

‘After that, a most remarkable occurrence happened. When the will was proved, not a sixpence of the old gentleman’s money could be found—that is, excepting the few hundreds in the local bank for household expenses. It is four years ago now, and to this day not one farthing has turned up.’

‘Penny plain, and twopence coloured,’ the American said sententiously—‘to be continued in our next. There’s the making of a sound family romance about this.—Anything more?’

‘A little. An old companion of my wife’s turned up the other day—or I should say my wife found her accidentally in London. She was standing in the rain on Waterloo Bridge,{73} looking into the water.—You comprehend, don’t you?’

‘“One more unfortunate, weary of breath,”’ quoted Mr Slimm with a tender inflection which surprised Edgar. ‘Go on.’

‘It was a wonderful coincidence, if nothing more. It appeared that my wife’s uncle on his dying bed gave her a paper for my wife; and he charged her most solemnly to find her and deliver it, which has been done.’

‘On the contrary, it is only a letter—a valedictory letter, containing no clue whatever.’

‘Stranger, you take this matter sort of calm,’ said Slimm solemnly. ‘I should like to see that letter. Mark me; providence has a hand in this, and I want you not to forget it. Such a meeting as that between your wife and her old companion didn’t happen for nothing. Listen, and I’ll tell you what once happened to me in Australia. I shall never forget it. I’m a rich man now, for my wants; but I was poor then; in fact, it was just at the time when fortune had turned. I had, at the time I am speaking of, nearly a thousand ounces of dust buried in my tent. As far as I could tell, not a soul in the camp knew what I had, as I had kept it quiet. Well, one night, I started out to visit an old chum in a neighbouring claim. It was nearly dark when I started, and I had no companion but my dog. I had not gone very far when he began to act in a ridiculous manner, barking and snapping at my horse’s heels, till I thought he was stark mad. Then he turned towards home, stopping every now and then to whine, and finally he struck off home in a bee-line. I rode on, never thinking anything about it till suddenly my horse stumbled and nearly threw me. He had never done such a thing before, and I hadn’t got twenty yards before he did it again. Stranger! I want you to believe I was scared, and I don’t scare easy either. Then I thought of the tales I had read about dogs and their cunning, and, urged by something I can’t understand, I turned back. You’d better believe I’m glad I did. When I got back to my tent, I stole in quietly, and there were three of the biggest scoundrels in the camp digging away exactly over the gold. I didn’t give them much time for meditation, I reckon. It was a tough fight; but I saved my gold. I got this valentine to remember it by; darn their ugly pictures;’ and Mr Slimm bared his huge chest, and displayed a livid gash seamed and lined thereon.

‘Suffocation,’ Slimm replied laconically. ‘The quality of mercy is strained pretty considerable in a mining camp.’

‘Dead!—killed by these scoundrels. I ain’t powerful in the water-cart line; but I don’t mind saying I snivelled then. I can’t think of that faithful insect without a kind of lumpiness in my throat—And now, my friend, don’t you tell me there’s no such thing as fate. You mind if your affair don’t turn out trumps yet.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Edgar replied dubiously. ‘It is all forgotten now, though it was a nine days’ wonder in Somersetshire at the time.’

‘Somersetshire? Now, that’s strange. I’m going to Somersetshire in a few days to see a man I haven’t set eyes on for years. He is a very different man from me—a quiet, scholarly gentleman, a little older than myself. He is a bookish sort of man; and I met him in the mines. We kind of froze to each other; and when we parted, it was understood that whenever I came to England, I was to go and see him. What part of Somersetshire do you hail from?’

‘Eastwood? Tell me quickly, is it possible that your wife’s uncle is Mr Charles Morton?’

‘What do I know of him? Why, he was the man I was going to visit; and he’s dead, poor old fellow! You see, I always liked him, and once I saved his life. It’s a curious thing, but when you do a man a favour, or save his life, or any trifle of that kind, you always get to like him some way. Poor old Morton! Well, if this don’t beat snakes! And your wife is the little Nelly he was always raving about? Dear, dear!’

‘There must be something more than meets the eye here,’ Edgar said, with a little quaver in his voice. ‘Taking all the circumstances into consideration, it looks as if some inscrutable providence has a hand in it.’

‘You bet. I’m not particularly learned, nor no scholar; but I do remember some lines of your immortal poet which tells us “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.” The more I think of life, the more it puzzles me, and that’s a fact. To think of you and I—two people in five millions—meeting by such chance! And to think of your wife being the niece of my old friend!’

‘A few. “Speak” is no word for it: he raved about her. If ever a man loved a girl, it was your uncle. You must not judge him harshly.’

‘I do not; I never did. That there has been collusion, or something more, I have always been convinced. He was so fond of me till his half-sister came; and as to Nelly, he worshipped her.’

‘That is soon done. It is a commonplace epistle, saying he wished to be remembered as a friend, asking me to forgive him, and hinting that if he had his life to live over again, how different things would be.’

‘It is written on part of a sheet of foolscap; and from the beginning of the first line to the finish, the paper is covered with writing.’

‘No; it is not signed; but is precisely like a letter without heading or signature trimmed close up to the writing with a pair of scissors.’

‘It is folded like an ordinary note, and there are various horizontal and perpendicular lines upon it. The lines are dotted. Can you make anything of it?’

‘Yes,’ said the American quietly. ‘I can make fortune of it. Show me that letter for five minutes, and I will show you something you would give ten thousand pounds to see.’

Next morning, Eleanor told her husband of a curious dream she had had during the night. She thought she stood on a strange shore, with the sea spread out before her to the utmost horizon. It was sunrise, and coming towards her over the quiet waters, was a great ship—an ‘Argosy with golden sails’—and somehow she thought it brought golden treasure for her. Three times she dreamed the dream, and saw the stately ship. She asked Edgar what he thought of it. He said that dreams went by contraries.

The writer remembers hearing of a gentleman who, not wishing to pay the legal and recognised fee for a consultation with his lawyer, devised an expedient whereby he expected to gain the information he required without the usual cost. He accordingly invited the man ‘learned in the law’ to dine at his house on a particular evening, as a friend and an old acquaintance. The lawyer gladly accepted the invitation, and attended at the house of his friend and client prompt to the minute. The conversation for some time was very general and agreeable, and by-and-by the shrewd client, by hinting and suggesting, at last drew the lawyer out into a learned and explicit dissertation upon the subject the host wished to be informed upon. The client was pleased, satisfied, and smiling, chuckled in his sleeve, thinking how nicely he had wormed out the advice desired and pumped his lawyer, free of cost!

The feast over, the lawyer departed, equally pleased, and both being satisfied, all went as merry as a marriage bell. But a few days afterwards, the client received a letter from his lawyer informing him that the charge for professional consultation and advice was thirteen shillings and fourpence, and would he ‘kindly attend to the payment of same at his earliest convenience, and oblige.’ The client was wild—caught in his own trap. But being determined to outwit the lawyer and gain his own ends, he forwarded to the latter a bill for ‘dinner, wines, and accessories supplied’ on the 16th inst., amounting to thirteen shillings and fourpence, saying that if he would settle the inclosed bill, he should only be too pleased and happy to settle the lawyer’s little bill. The lawyer retorted by threatening to commence an action against mine host for selling wines without a license, unless his, the lawyer’s, bill was immediately paid. Do I need to say that the lawyer was victorious?

When I was a boy, I heard of a lawyer who was called up in the middle of a cold winter’s night to draw out the will of an old farmer who lived some three miles away, and who was dying. The messenger had brought a cart to convey the lawyer to the farm; and the latter in due time arrived at his destination. When he entered the house, he was immediately ushered into the sickroom, and he then requested to be supplied with pen, ink, and paper. There were none in the house! The lawyer had not brought any himself, and what was he to do? Any lead-pencil? he inquired. No; they had none. The farmer was sinking fast, though quite conscious. At last, the legal gentleman saw chalked up on the back of the bedroom door column upon column of figures in chalk. These were milk ‘scores’ or ‘shots.’ He immediately asked for a piece of chalk, and then, kneeling on the floor, he wrote out concisely upon the smooth hearthstone the last will and testament of the dying man! The farmer subsequently died. The hearthstone will was sent to the principal registry in London with special affidavits, and was duly proved, the will being deposited in the archives of the registry. I may mention that the law does not state upon what substance or with what instrument a will must be written.

It is stated that a lawyer was some time ago cross-examining a witness in a local court, when he asked: ‘Now, then, Patrick, listen to me. Did the defendant in this case strike the plaintiff with malice?’—‘No, sor, sure,’ replied Pat gravely; ‘he struck him wid the poker, bedad.’ Again he inquired of the same witness: ‘Did the plaintiff stand on the defensive during the affray?’—‘Divil a diffinsive, yer honour; he stood on the table.’

A celebrity noted for being ‘a bit of a poet’ was brought up before a bench of local magistrates for an assault, when the following conversation took place:

The magistrate, laughing at the fellow’s ready wit, said: ‘Go away, you rascal, get out of my sight!’

There was once a plain out-spoken judge, who, addressing the jury, said: ‘Gentlemen of the jury, in this case the counsel on both sides are unintelligible; the witnesses on both sides are incredible; and the plaintiff and defendant are both such bad characters, that to me it is indifferent which way you give your verdict.’

It was once reported to the notorious Judge Jeffries that the Prince of Orange was on the point of entering into the country, and that he was already preparing a manifesto as to his inducements and objects in so doing. ‘Pray, my Lord Chief Justice,’ said a gentleman present, ‘what do you think will be the heads of this manifesto?’—‘Mine will be one,’ he grimly replied.

An undoubted alibi was some time ago successfully proved in an American court as follows:

‘And you say that you are innocent of the charge of stealing this rooster from Mr Jones?’ queried the judge.

‘I can prove that I didn’t steal Mr Jones’ rooster, judge, because I stole two hens from Mr Graston same night, and Jones lives five miles from Graston’s.’

It is said that the other day a client received the following bill from his lawyer: ‘Attending and asking you how you did, 6s. 8d. Attending you on the pier, when you desired me to look through a piece of smoked glass, 6s. 8d. Looking through the same, 6s. 8d. Rubbing my eye, which watered, 13s. 4d. Attending at luncheon, when you praised the sandwiches and asked me to partake thereof, 6s. 8d. Consulting and asking my opinion thereon, when I said they were very good, 6s. 8d.’ Most probably the client treated this as a joke; or perhaps it drove him to extremities.

‘Gentlemen of the jury,’ said a counsel in a suit about a herd of hogs, ‘there were just thirty-six hogs in that drove; please to remember that fact—thirty-six hogs; just exactly three times as many as there are in that jury box, gentlemen.’ We are informed that that counsel did not win his case. The jury were not so pig-headed.

Judge Kent, the well-known jurist, presided in a case in which a man was indicted for burglary, and the evidence at the trial showed that the burglary consisted in cutting a hole through a tent in which several persons were sleeping, and then projecting his head and arm through the hole and abstracting various articles of value. It was claimed by his counsel that inasmuch as he never entered into the tent with his whole body, he had not committed the offence charged, and must therefore be set at liberty. In reply to this plea, the judge told the jury that if they were not satisfied that the whole man was involved in the crime, they might bring in a verdict of guilty against so much of him as was involved. The jury, after a brief consultation, found the right arm, the right shoulder, and the head of the prisoner guilty of the offence of burglary. The judge accordingly sentenced the right arm, the right shoulder, and the head to imprisonment with hard labour in the State prison for two years, remarking, that as to the rest of the man’s body, he might do with it what he pleased.

Lord Justice-clerk Braxfield was a man of few words and of strong business habits, and consequently when he courted his second wife, he said to her: ‘Lizzie, I’m looking out for a wife, and I thought you just the person to suit me. Let me have your answer on or off to-morrow, and nae mair aboot it.’ The lady, next day, replied in the affirmative. Shortly after the marriage, Lord Braxfield’s butler came to him to give up his situation because he could not bear her ladyship’s continual scolding. ‘Man,’ Braxfield exclaimed, ‘ye’ve little to complain of; ye may be thankfu’ ye’re no’ married to her.’

During the time that Brougham was rising in his profession, he had a friend, a brother-counsel, who had contracted the habit of commencing the examination of a witness in these words: ‘Now, sir, I am about to put a question to you, and I don’t care which way you answer it.’ Brougham, with others, had begun to grow tired of this eternal formula, and consequently one morning he met his brother-lawyer near the temple and addressed him thus: ‘Now, Jones, I am about to put a question to you, and I don’t care which way you answer it.—How do you do?’

The celebrated lawyer Butt was one night going home very late, when he was accosted by a desperate-looking villain in one of the suburbs of Dublin, and asked what he was going ‘to stand.’ ‘Well,’ replied Butt meekly, ‘I’m very sorry that I can’t give you much, my friend, but what I have we will share. Here,’ he continued, drawing a revolver from his pocket, ‘is a weapon which has six chambers; I will give you three, and’—— But the lawyer immediately found himself alone.

‘Mr Robinson,’ said counsel, ‘you say you once officiated in a pulpit. Do you mean that you preached?’—‘No, sir; I held the candle for the man who did.’ ‘Ah, the court understood you differently; they supposed that the discourse came from you.’—‘No, sir; I only throwed a light on it.’

‘Gentlemen of the jury,’ said an Irish barrister, ‘it will be for you to say whether this defendant shall be allowed to come into court with unblushing footsteps, with the cloak of hypocrisy in his mouth, and draw three bullocks out of my client’s pocket with impunity.’

We have heard of several cases of female ingenuity in aiding the escape of prisoners. Here is one. The criminals were handcuffed, and with their escort were awaiting the train which would convey them to the county jail. Suddenly a woman rushed through the crowd{76} of spectators, and with a shower of tears, cried out: ‘Kiss me; good-bye, Ned.’ The escort good-naturedly allowed the process of osculation to be performed, and the sheriff smiled feelingly. The woman passed a key from her own to the prisoner’s mouth, with which he undid the ‘bracelets,’ and escaped whilst the train was in motion.

There is a girl who seems to have peculiar notions of breach of promise cases, for she threatens to sue her own father for breach of promise! She explains that the old gentleman first gave his consent to her marriage with her lover, and then withdrew it, and that in consequence her beau got tired of waiting, and has gone off with another girl.

‘Prisoner at the bar,’ said the judge to a man on his trial for murder, ‘is there anything you wish to say before sentence is passed upon you?’—‘Judge,’ replied the prisoner, ‘there has been altogether too much said already. I knew all along somebody would get hurt, if these people didn’t keep their mouths shut. It might as well be me, perhaps, as anybody else. Drive on, judge, and give me as little sentiment as you can get along on. I can stand hanging, but I hate gush.’

The annexation of Upper Burmah to the British Empire represents the most important addition to our possessions which has been made for very many years. Lying between India and China, the two most populous countries in the world, Burmah is favourably situated as a highway, along which a vast trade can be conducted. As to the country itself, it presents many valuable features. It has a plentiful rainfall, a healthy climate, and a luxuriant vegetation. The principal crops are rice, oil-seed, cotton, and tobacco. Sixty-one varieties of rice are known to cultivators, and half of these are of the hard kind familiar to us. The remainder have a soft glutinous grain, which is preferred by the natives of Burmah. The revenue and population of the country have both increased enormously during the past ten years.

In Mr Hallett’s interesting paper addressed to the members of the Scottish Geographical Society, entitled ‘A Survey for Railway Connections between India, Siam, and China,’ he showed that there is now no political hindrance to prevent our driving the locomotive up to the gates of China and opening up a vast trade with that prosperous empire. Mr Hallett has personally explored and surveyed Burmah, Siam, and the Shan States, and he points out how a railway can be made to join the Brahmapootra valley with the valley of the Irrawadi, and that such a railway could join the line which already finds a terminus at the seaport of Rangoon. This short line of railway, only one hundred and sixty-two miles in length, pays a good dividend, although it finds a formidable rival in the admirable flotilla of steamers which ply on the Irrawadi River hard by.

At a recent meeting of the Russian Geographical Society, M. Grjimaïlo gave an interesting description of the Pamir region, which we may remind our readers is a high tableland of Asia on the western limit of Little Tibet. His tour through this little-known region covered a period of eighteen months, during which time he was able to make extensive observations of its flora and fauna, as well as of the condition of its inhabitants. During the long winter, the people have to seek the shelter of their tents, and seem in the spring to wake up from a kind of lethargy with the joy and light-heartedness of children. The women do most of the work, which is of a pastoral kind. The country is intersected with enormous glaciers, and is situated at such a great elevation that the natives call it by a name which signifies ‘Roof of the World.’

The Cleopatra’s Needle which adorns Central Park, New York, has suffered much from transatlantic cold, and a mass of scales and chips has been removed from it by atmospheric influences, as thoroughly as if a number of masons had been set to work to achieve the same result. This gradual disintegration of the noble Egyptian obelisk has, however, been stopped by coating the monument with paraffin, which coating has given a slightly darker colour to the stone. Those who have charge of public buildings in Britain which have been built of perishable stone—and there are unfortunately many such—would do well to make a note of this employment of paraffin as a successful preservative.

A new artificial fireproof stone or plaster has recently been invented. Its principal constituent is asbestine, a mineral which is plentiful in certain localities in the State of New York, U.S.A. This asbestine, which is a silicate of magnesium, is mixed with powdered flint and caustic potash, and is then mingled with sufficient water-glass (silicate of soda) to make it into an adhesive plaster. In this condition it is prepared for transport, and is mixed with sand before use. This plaster is not only fireproof, but it adheres with wonderful tenacity to perfectly smooth surfaces. It does not, therefore, require a roughened surface before attachment, such as a wall composed of nailed laths, as is the usual case. A common mode of applying it is to line a room with sheet-iron, protected from rust by a coating of asphaltum, and to spread upon this metal basis a thickness of the new plaster. Besides being unaffected by heat, it will not crack if water is thrown upon it when in a heated state.

Mr Hannay, of Glasgow, has invented a new form of lamp which will prove very useful for various industrial purposes, where the more intense rays of the electric arc are not readily available. The lamp consists of a cylindrical vessel containing about thirty gallons of any heavy{77} hydrocarbon oil, such as creosote. At one side of this vessel is an entry-pipe for air, which must be under pressure of about fifteen pounds on the square inch. The air thus admitted forces the oil up a vertical pipe which springs from the bottom of the vessel, and ends in a burner which extends for some feet outside the oil receptacle. Another pipe surrounds the oil-tube, and through this, part of the air is carried, so that at the point where both tubes terminate, there rushes forth a blast of mingled air and creosote in fine particles. This is turned into a flame of great brightness when a match is applied to it, a flame, too, which is unaffected by wind or rain. The quantity of oil given above will supply a light for about twenty hours, which will be effective at two hundred yards from the lamp. This contrivance has already been used with success at the Forth Bridge works. It is now being introduced for various purposes by Mr James Sinclair, 64 Queen Victoria Street, London.

A plan for rendering paper so tough that it can be used for various purposes for which formerly it was considered there was ‘nothing like leather,’ has recently been published. The process is of continental origin. The paper pulp during manufacture is mixed with chloride of zinc in solution, and the more concentrated this solution is, the tougher is the finished paper. It is said that the new material has been successfully used in boxmaking, combmaking, and has actually taken the place of leather in bootmaking. This last application of the material is perhaps not quite so much of a novelty as it seems to be; for in the cheaper kinds of boots and shoes, the soles, instead of being of solid leather, are often made of a compound of which brown-paper pulp seems to be the chief constituent. The adulteration is not apparent to the wearer until wet weather makes it very evident indeed.

In the building operations of man he uses hair to bind the particles of lime together in forming a plaster wall. In the work of nature, much the same end is achieved by binding loose particles of soil together with the rootlets of various plants. The continually slipping particles of a newly made embankment have to be rendered secure by this means; but such grasses as have hitherto been used for the purpose need several months for their development. M. Cambier, of the French railway service, has recently pointed out that the double poppy is a valuable plant for this purpose. Its germination is rapid, and in a week or two its rootlets are sufficiently strong to give some support to the soil. But at the end of three or four months, the roots attain a length of twelve inches, and form a far stronger network to hold the soil in place than any grass known. The plant is an annual, but it sows itself after the first year.

We are glad to notice that a ‘Plumage League’ is being established for the purpose of discountenancing the inhuman fashion now in vogue of introducing the dead bodies of birds as ornaments on ladies’ bonnets, hats, and dresses. Lady Mount-Temple, in advocating the establishment of this League, the members of which will bind themselves to discourage in every way the use of plumage in dress, writes thus: ‘A milliner told me she had put twelve birds on one (dress). Another told us of a ball-dress covered with canaries.’ We should rejoice to see the Princess of Wales or some other member of the Royal Family setting her veto upon the cruel practice of adorning female dress with the bodies of our feathered songsters.

The Crematorium at Woking Cemetery has just been used for the third time under the auspices of the Cremation Society. In France, the Prefecture of the Seine is about to spend three thousand pounds on the erection of a similar building in the well-known cemetery, Père-la-Chaise. Sanitary reformers will rejoice that cremation is making some progress in both countries, although that progress is slow.

The fastest time ever made by a steam-vessel has recently been made by the Falke torpedo boat, built by Messrs Yarrow for the Austrian government. The mean speed of her six runs over the measured mile—during which time she was fully fitted and in fighting trim—reached the wonderful figure of 22.263 knots per hour. She then ran, according to contract with the Austrian government, for an hour at full speed, when she covered just twenty-two and a quarter miles. It is said that the vessel answered her helm well throughout these trials, and that there was very little vibration from the engines even when going at the highest speed. Messrs Yarrow are building twenty-four torpedo boats for the British government, besides several others for foreign customers.

Every poison is supposed to have its antidote, and the establishment of the torpedo system has necessitated the introduction of an antidote in the shape of torpedo catchers. The first vessel of this type which has been constructed has lately been tried at Portsmouth with satisfactory results, not only with regard to speed, but also with regard to manœuvring power. The vessel was fitted with an inner and an outer rudder on the system of Mr J. S. White, and known as the ‘turn-about’ method. This vessel is built of thin steel; it possesses a conning tower on deck, from which it is steered, and it is one hundred and fifty feet in length.

Some interesting gunnery experiments have just been concluded at Portland Bill. Their object was to test the value of the Moncrieff or ‘disappearing’ principle of mounting guns for coast-defence, a system which, like most others, has its detractors as well as its advocates. At Portland, a dummy gun only was used, so that the ship firing upon it from the sea had not the disadvantage of attacking a foe who could hit back. The gun was placed in a pit, and was so arranged that it remained hidden for two and a half minutes; then it appeared for half a minute, delivered its imaginary fire—which was represented by a puff of gunpowder to aid the foe in{78} sighting it—and again disappeared. The ship Hercules failed to make any impression upon the gun at all, although it was only made of wood and canvas. We may therefore conclude that the Moncrieff or ‘disappearing’ system of mounting guns is the most effectual which has ever been brought forward, and we may look for its great extension in our coast-defences.

Professor Germain Sée, of Paris, during a course of lectures on dietetics, has recently pointed out the importance of water in connection with food, that fluid being the only one which can dissolve the salts taken with the food into the body, and eliminate them from the system. He also remarked that it was quite impossible for man, an omnivorous being, to exist entirely on vegetable foods. So-called vegetarians are forced to make up for the want of solid meat by consuming eggs, milk, and butter. A healthy man must for his food draw upon the elements furnished by the three kingdoms of nature.

A new kind of turning-lathe, which seems really to possess the merit of novelty, is described by the Scientific American. It is intended for turning such articles as balusters for staircases, when such articles are required in quantities, and when they are wanted to be square or octagonal, instead of round. The lathe consists of a kind of skeleton cylinder, upon the surface of which the square rods which are ultimately to form balusters are readily clamped by levers working at each end. An ordinary T-rest supports the tool in cutting the required ornamentation on the rods as the lathe revolves. When one side of the rods has thus been treated, they are unclamped, turned over, and once more fixed in place. In this way the four sides of the square rods are operated upon one after the other. This lathe, which has been patented, will finish with clean, sharp edges about fifty balusters or other pieces of wood an hour.

The Lancet alludes to an alleged discovery which has been made in Columbia, which, if it should be confirmed, will be a valuable aid in surgery. It is reported that a certain shrub which is called ‘aliza’ exudes a juice which has the property of stopping hemorrhage, so that if a surgeon’s operating knife were only smeared with this juice, his work could be done with little or no loss of blood.

A meteorological station twenty thousand feet above the sea-level is being established by the Mexican government among their highest mountains. Those who remember the hardships which were encountered by Mr Wragge in his constant visits to the instruments on Ben Nevis before the observatory building was established there, will be prepared to understand the difficulties of dealing with a station at so much higher an altitude. For this reason, the instruments are being constructed to work automatically, to be self-recording, and, as far as possible, to require no attention for twelve months, if need be.

The Chinese alphabet consists in its integrity of about forty thousand pictorial symbols, and it is this alphabet which with some modifications has been used from time immemorial by their clever and more advanced neighbours in Japan. But the adoption of Western ways which has since 1868 been so rapid among the Japanese, has made them discontented with a system so elaborate and bewildering. They have therefore formed a Society called the Roman Alphabet Association, by which they seek to replace the cumbrous Chinese alphabet by the twenty-two letters of the Roman alphabet which are found sufficient to express all the sounds found in the Japanese language. The change is a necessary one, and marks a new and important phase of Japanese progress. It is somewhat akin to the movement which has for some time been in progress in Germany, by which Roman characters are being substituted for the old Gothic ones.

At a late meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society, it was announced that M. M. Henry had photographed part of the Milky-way. The exposure required was an hour, but the star discs were perfectly round and sharp. This wonderful result shows that the driving clock for keeping the telescope in motion, so as to counteract the motion of the earth, must have been of the most perfect kind.

From Germany, we learn that in that country during the last ten years the leather manufacture has shown a most extraordinary development. Large factories have been established, which produce goods of the highest quality, and compare favourably with those of foreign make. No expenses have been spared to import the best machines; the sons of the most prominent manufacturers are sent to America, England, and France, to learn the manufacture of the leather trade in all its details. The largest firms study principally the American methods of manufacturing, and the consequence is that many German factories are managed after the American system. German manufacturers are anxious to raise their goods to the highest perfection, and look forward to the time when German machine-made ladies’ boots will be found in the West End of London.

We learn from a South African newspaper that Natal is at last going to cultivate tea in earnest. The aroma of the samples produced is described as excellent; it has a taste by no means unpleasant, which is not characteristic of China teas, but it is one which would be readily acquired and appreciated. It is anticipated that fifty thousand pounds will be grown this season.

A large German lithographic firm doing a considerable trade in England, it is said has entirely left off printing from stone, and uses zinc plates only. The saving is said to be very considerable, and may partly explain how they are able to print more cheaply than our own lithographers. A Chicago trade journal estimates that if a work is to be printed in ten colours, requiring five double-sized stones of twenty-eight by forty-two inches, the cost of each stone would be about twelve pounds, while a first-class zinc plate costs eight shillings.

Mr H. T. Crewe, 17 Sunning Hill Road, Lewisham, London, S.E., has recently patented a system by which conservatories, the various structures of the horticulturist, and other buildings, can be fitted with glass roofs and walls without the use of putty. The system is an extremely simple one. Panes of glass are laid upon parallel rafters or beams. They are not placed flatly one beside the other, but the upper panes are made to slightly overlap the lower panes. They are fixed together by means of little metal clips, which{79} receive screws, that afterwards pass through holes in the panes and into the rafters or beams. Among the advantages claimed for the new system of glazing are, that it causes the roof to remain perfectly rain-proof, and that the greatest facility and despatch are attained in detaching and replacing panes. Condensation is carried away from the inside of the glass by the grooves which are cut in the rafters or beams.

SAFETY IN RAILWAY TRAVELLING.

Mr Edward Harford, general secretary to the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, replying to a request forwarded by peers, members of the House of Commons, and others for information as to the causes of railway accidents, and the means which, in the opinion of the Society, ought to be adopted for the safety of the general public and of railway servants, has issued a list of twenty-three proposals which set forth the necessary requirements. The principal are the following:

‘All railways ought to be worked on the absolute block-system, strictly carried out, so that no two trains shall ever be in one section at the same time.

The blocks and interlocking systems should be electrically combined and controlled, so that the safety of a block-section shall be under the control of two signalmen.

Junction block-working should be adopted at all junctions, so that no two trains which can foul each other at the points and crossings shall ever be allowed to approach a junction at one and the same time. All sidings and goods-lines should be provided with properly interlocked safety-points.

One code of block-system regulations and one pattern of signals should be adopted throughout the kingdom. A red light should be the only danger-signal. The practice of using purple or other lights is highly dangerous.

Facing-points ought to be avoided as far as possible. All facing-points, and points leading to main-lines, ought to be provided with a locking-bar and bolts, and properly interlocked with the signals and with the electric apparatus.

All passenger-trains ought to be provided with an efficient automatic continuous brake, having brake-blocks upon the wheels of the engine, tender, and every vehicle throughout the train, and fulfilling the five conditions laid down by the Board of Trade, August 30, 1877, and highly approved by the Society. To avoid the present dangerous practice of brake-power being cut off and rendered useless by the introduction of an unfitted vehicle, it ought to be the law that the Company should not be allowed to send vehicles over the line of another Company unless each vehicle is provided with the same form of continuous brake as that used by such foreign Company.

All goods-engines should be fitted with brakes upon their wheels, and those required occasionally for passenger-traffic should have continuous brakes.

All passenger-trains should be fitted with efficient means of communication with the driver and guards. Passengers should be able to reach it without putting their hands outside the window. The present cord-system is unreliable, and the plan of having no communication on trains which stop every twenty miles is very risky to the public.

All passenger-platforms should be raised to the standard height, and all carriages fitted with a high continuous footboard, to prevent persons falling between platforms and trains.

The crank or driving-axles of locomotive engines should be taken out after they have run a certain mileage. What the mileage limit should be ought to be at once decided by the Companies and the Board of Trade.

HOW CHILDREN GROW.

During the International Medical Conference held in Copenhagen in the summer of 1884, a paper read by the Rev. Mailing Hansen, Principal of the Danish Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, was listened to with marked attention and interest. It gave the results of the daily weighing and measurements of height which he had carried on for nearly three years on the one hundred and thirty pupils—seventy-two boys and fifty-eight girls—of the Institution, and demonstrated facts as to the development of the human body during the period of childhood that perfectly startled and astonished the assembled medical authorities, opening an entirely new field for investigation and reflection. Since then, Mr Hansen has continued his observations; and though he has yet a tremendous amount of work before him, he believes himself able to state now the outlines of the results he has obtained.

The children are weighed four times daily in batches of twenty—in the morning, before dinner, after dinner, and at bedtime, and each child is measured once a day. The common impression is, no doubt, that increase in bulk and height of the human body during the years of growth progresses evenly all through the year. This is not so. Three distinct periods are marked out, and within them some thirty lesser waverings have been observed. As for bulk, the maximum period extends from August until December; the period of equipoise lasts from December until about the middle of April; and then follows the minimum period until August. The lasting increase of bulk or weight is all accumulated during the first stage; the period of equipoise adds to the body about a fourth of that increase, but this gain is almost entirely spent or lost again in the last period.

The increase in height of the children shows the same division into periods, only in a different order. The maximum period of growth in height corresponds to the minimum period of increase in bulk, and vice versâ. In September and October a child grows only a fifth of what it did in June and July. In other words, during a part of the year—autumn and beginning of winter—the child accumulates bulk, but the height is stationary. In the early summer the bulk remains nearly unchanged, but the vital force and the nourishment are expended to the benefit of height. While the body works for{80} bulk there is rest for the growth, and when the period of growth comes, the working for bulk is suspended. The human body has, consequently, the same distinctly marked periods of development as plants.

A CHESS-CLOCK.

An ingenious clock has recently been patented by Messrs Frisch and Schierwater, 29 Church Street, Liverpool. It not only shows the ordinary time, but registers on separate dials—marked respectively ‘black’ and ‘white’—the period occupied by the players in a game of chess. It also indicates the number of moves in a game and whose turn it is to play. Another feature is the index upon the dial. This can be set for any time agreed upon—from one to fifteen minutes—during which a move must be made. The expiration of that time is shown by an indicator and by the ringing of a bell. By pressing a knob at the top of the clock, it is possible to temporarily check the progress of the mechanism. This would of course become necessary upon the players requiring a rest, or upon any other interruption taking place. The invention is, we believe, the first clock that has been constructed with a view to recording the movements in chess-playing. It may of course be utilised for other purposes. Being a travelling clock, it may be employed for indicating the times of different countries. The index and call-bell may be used, too, for public meetings, allowing so much time for each speaker; for a telephone Company, regulating an allowance of time; or for the testing of any machinery. The movement can be fitted to any existing clock. As a result of practical trial, the ‘Schierwater’s’ Patent Chess-Clock has been commended by many well-known chess-players.

NOVEL PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPERIMENTS.

The sinking of the caissons of the Forth Bridge has afforded opportunity for testing whether it was possible to obtain photographs below water in compressed air by the aid of electric light. To the novel conditions under which these attempts—the first, we believe, in this country—were made, their chief interest is due, rather than to any particular success hitherto achieved. We have recently described the method of founding by compressed air, and depicted the interior of a caisson, so that our readers are conversant with the surroundings under which the attempts were made.

A trial was made on shore by electric light at night to determine the length of exposure necessary for the plates; but subsequent experience proved the data thus obtained to be of little value in the air-chamber. Various trials were then made in the air-chamber with different classes of plates and gradually increasing lighting-power; eventually, five arc-lamps—each equivalent to twelve hundred candles—and plates of exceptional rapidity, were employed; and these, with an exposure of two minutes, gave the best results obtained.

The roof and sides of the air-chamber were whitewashed, to render them conspicuous and to diffuse the light. The formation of moisture on the lens threatened at first to give trouble; but after a little time the glass became warmed, and the difficulty ceased. The haze in the air-chamber, which any sudden expansion of the air—such as that due to its escape when the air-locks were opened—greatly intensified, proved a formidable obstacle, and must always render the highest results unattainable. The only course was to seize the most favourable moment when the haze was at its minimum. White objects and light clothing gave the best results; whilst the eyes of a group—presumably from their glistening properties—are remarkable for definition and sharpness.

So far as could be ascertained, no injury resulted to the dry plates either from air-pressure or moisture.

The Conductor of Chambers’s Journal begs to direct the attention of Contributors to the following notice:

If the above rules are complied with, the Editor will do his best to insure the safe return of ineligible papers.

Printed and Published by W. & R. Chambers, 47 Paternoster Row, London, and 339 High Street, Edinburgh.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Obeah, a form of African magic or witchcraft.

[2] The word Creole is much misunderstood by most English people. In its universal West Indian sense it is applied to any person, white, black, or mulatto, born in the West Indies, as opposed to outsiders, European, American, or African.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART, FIFTH SERIES, NO. 109, VOL. III, JANUARY 30, 1886 ***

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 109, Vol. III, January 30, 1886

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

CONTENTS

LITERARY ENDEAVOUR.

IN ALL SHADES.

CHAPTER VI.

SOME AMERICANISMS.

A GOLDEN ARGOSY.

CHAPTER IX.

LEGAL ANECDOTES.

THE MONTH:
SCIENCE AND ARTS.

OCCASIONAL NOTES.

SAFETY IN RAILWAY TRAVELLING.

HOW CHILDREN GROW.

A CHESS-CLOCK.

NOVEL PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPERIMENTS.

AN OLD ‘CHUBB.’

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 109, Vol. III, January 30, 1886

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

CONTENTS

LITERARY ENDEAVOUR.

IN ALL SHADES.

CHAPTER VI.

SOME AMERICANISMS.

A GOLDEN ARGOSY.

CHAPTER IX.

LEGAL ANECDOTES.

THE MONTH: SCIENCE AND ARTS.

OCCASIONAL NOTES.

SAFETY IN RAILWAY TRAVELLING.

HOW CHILDREN GROW.

A CHESS-CLOCK.

NOVEL PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPERIMENTS.

AN OLD ‘CHUBB.’

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

THE MONTH:
SCIENCE AND ARTS.