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     “_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.




                            HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
                           A WEEKLY JOURNAL.


                     CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.


     N^{o.} 22.]      SATURDAY, AUGUST 24, 1850.      [PRICE 2_d._




                  FROM THE RAVEN IN THE HAPPY FAMILY.


I suppose you thought I was dead? No such thing. Don’t flatter
yourselves that I haven’t got my eye upon you. I am wide awake, and you
give me plenty to look at.

I have begun my great work about you. I have been collecting materials
from the Horse, to begin with. You are glad to hear it, ain’t you? Very
likely. Oh, he gives you a nice character! He makes you out a charming
set of fellows.

He informs me, by the bye, that he is a distant relation of the pony
that was taken up in a balloon a few weeks ago; and that the pony’s
account of your going to see him at Vauxhall Gardens, is an amazing
thing. The pony says, that when he looked round on the assembled crowd,
come to see the realisation of the wood-cut in the bill, he found it
impossible to discover which was the real Mister Green—there were so
many Mister Greens—and they were all so very green!

But, that’s the way with you. You know it is. Don’t tell me! You’d go to
see anything that other people went to see. And don’t flatter yourselves
that I am referring to “the vulgar curiosity,” as you choose to call it,
when you mean some curiosity in which you don’t participate yourselves.
The polite curiosity in this country, is as vulgar as any curiosity in
the world.

Of course you’ll tell me, no it isn’t, but I say yes it is. What have
you got to say for yourselves about the Nepaulese Princes, I should like
to know? Why, there has been more crowding, and pressing, and pushing,
and jostling, and struggling, and striving, in genteel houses this last
season, on account of those Nepaulese Princes, than would take place in
vulgar Cremorne Gardens and Greenwich Park, at Easter time and
Whitsuntide! And what for? Do you know anything about ’em? Have you any
idea why they came here? Can you put your finger on their country in the
map? Have you ever asked yourselves a dozen common questions about its
climate, natural history, government, productions, customs, religion,
manners? Not you! Here are a couple of swarthy Princes very much out of
their element, walking about in wide muslin trousers, and sprinkled all
over with gems (like the clock-work figure on the old round platform in
the street, grown up), and they’re fashionable outlandish monsters, and
it’s a new excitement for you to get a stare at ’em. As to asking ’em to
dinner, and seeing ’em sit at table without eating in your company
(unclean animals as you are!), you fall into raptures at that. Quite
delicious, isn’t it? Ugh, you dunder-headed boobies!

I wonder what there is, new and strange, that you _wouldn’t_ lionise, as
you call it. Can you suggest anything? It’s not a hippopotamus, I
suppose. I hear from my brother-in-law in the Zoological Gardens, that
you are always pelting away into the Regent’s Park, by thousands, to see
the hippopotamus. Oh, you’re very fond of hippopotami, ain’t you? You
study one attentively, when you _do_ see one, don’t you? You come away,
so much wiser than you went, reflecting so profoundly on the wonders of
creation—eh?

Bah! You follow one another like wild geese, but you are not so good to
eat!

These, however, are not the observations of my friend the Horse. _He_
takes you, in another point of view. Would you like to read his
contribution to my Natural History of you? No? You shall then.

He is a Cab-horse now. He wasn’t always, but he is now, and his usual
stand is close to our Proprietor’s usual stand. That’s the way we have
come into communication, we “dumb animals.” Ha, ha! Dumb, too! Oh, the
conceit of you men, because you can bother the community out of their
five wits, by making speeches!

Well. I mentioned to this Horse that I should be glad to have his
opinions and experiences of you. Here they are:

  “At the request of my honourable friend the Raven, I proceed to offer
  a few remarks in reference to the animal called Man. I have had varied
  experience of this strange creature for fifteen years, and am now
  driven by a Man, in the hackney cabriolet, number twelve thousand four
  hundred and fifty-two.

  “The sense Man entertains of his own inferiority to the nobler
  animals—and I am now more particularly referring to the Horse—has
  impressed me forcibly, in the course of my career. If a Man knows a
  Horse well, he is prouder of it than of any knowledge of himself,
  within the range of his limited capacity. He regards it, as the sum of
  all human acquisition. If he is learned in a Horse, he has nothing
  else to learn. And the same remark applies, with some little
  abatement, to his acquaintance with Dogs. I have seen a good deal of
  Man in my time, but I think I have never met a Man who didn’t feel it
  necessary to his reputation to pretend, on occasion, that he knew
  something of Horses and Dogs, though he really knew nothing. As to
  making us a subject of conversation, my opinion is that we are more
  talked about, than history, philosophy, literature, art, and science,
  all put together. I have encountered innumerable gentlemen in the
  country, who were totally incapable of interest in anything but Horses
  and Dogs—except Cattle. And I have always been given to understand
  that they were the flower of the civilised world.

  “It is very doubtful, to me, whether there is, upon the whole,
  anything Man is so ambitious to imitate, as an ostler, a jockey, a
  stage coachman, a horse-dealer, or a dog-fancier. There may be some
  other character which I do not immediately remember, that fires him
  with emulation; but, if there be, I am sure it is connected with
  Horses, or Dogs, or both. This is an unconscious compliment, on the
  part of the tyrant, to the nobler animals, which I consider to be very
  remarkable. I have known Lords, and Baronets, and Members of
  Parliament, out of number, who have deserted every other calling, to
  become but indifferent stablemen or kennelmen, and be cheated on all
  hands, by the real aristocracy of those pursuits who were regularly
  born to the business.

  “Ail this, I say, is a tribute to our superiority which I consider to
  be very remarkable. Yet, still, I can’t quite understand it. Man can
  hardly devote himself to us, in admiration of our virtues, because he
  never imitates them. We Horses are as honest, though I say it, as
  animals can be. If, under the pressure of circumstances, we submit to
  act at a Circus, for instance, we always show that we are acting. We
  never deceive anybody. We would scorn to do it. If we are called upon
  to do anything in earnest, we do our best. If we are required to run a
  race falsely, and to lose when we could win, we are not to be relied
  upon, to commit a fraud; Man must come in at that point, and force us
  to it. And the extraordinary circumstance to me, is, that Man (whom I
  take to be a powerful species of Monkey) is always making us nobler
  animals the instruments of his meanness and cupidity. The very name of
  our kind has become a byeword for all sorts of trickery and cheating.
  We are as innocent as counters at a game—and yet this creature WILL
  play falsely with us!

  “Man’s opinion, good or bad, is not worth much, as any rational Horse
  knows. But, justice is justice; and what I complain of, is, that
  Mankind talks of us as if We had something to do with all this. They
  say that such a man was ‘ruined by Horses.’ Ruined by Horses! They
  can’t be open, even in that, and say he was ruined by Men; but they
  lay it at _our_ stable-door! As if we ever ruined anybody, or were
  ever doing anything but being ruined ourselves, in our generous desire
  to fulfil the useful purposes of our existence!

  “In the same way, we get a bad name as if we were profligate company.
  ‘So and so got among Horses, and it was all up with him.’ Why, _we_
  would have reclaimed him—_we_ would have made him temperate,
  industrious, punctual, steady, sensible—what harm would he ever have
  got from _us_, I should wish to ask?

  “Upon the whole, speaking of him as I have found him, I should
  describe Man as an unmeaning and conceited creature, very seldom to be
  trusted, and not likely to make advances towards the honesty of the
  nobler animals. I should say that his power of warping the nobler
  animals to bad purposes, and damaging their reputation by his
  companionship, is, next to the art of growing oats, hay, carrots, and
  clover, one of his principal attributes. He is very unintelligible in
  his caprices; seldom expressing with distinctness what he wants of us;
  and relying greatly on our better judgment to find out. He is cruel,
  and fond of blood—particularly at a steeple-chase—and is very
  ungrateful.

  “And yet, so far as I can understand, he worships us too. He sets up
  images of us (not particularly like, but meant to be) in the streets,
  and calls upon his fellows to admire them, and believe in them. As
  well as I can make out, it is not of the least importance what images
  of Men are put astride upon these images of Horses, for I don’t find
  any famous personage among them—except one, and _his_ image seems to
  have been contracted for, by the gross. The jockeys who ride our
  statues are very queer jockeys, it appears to me, but it is something
  to find Man even posthumously sensible of what he owes to us. I
  believe that when he has done any great wrong to any very
  distinguished Horse, deceased, he gets up a subscription to have an
  awkward likeness of him made, and erects it in a public place, to be
  generally venerated. I can find no other reason for the statues of us
  that abound.

  “It must be regarded as a part of the inconsistency of Man, that he
  erects no statues to the Donkeys—who, though far inferior animals to
  ourselves, have great claims upon him. I should think a Donkey
  opposite the Horse at Hyde Park, another in Trafalgar Square, and a
  group of Donkeys, in brass, outside the Guildhall of the City of
  London (for I believe the Common Council Chamber is inside that
  building) would be pleasant and appropriate memorials.

  “I am not aware that I can suggest anything more, to my honorable
  friend the Raven, which will not already have occurred to his fine
  intellect. Like myself, he is the victim of brute force, and must bear
  it until the present state of things is changed—as it possibly may be
  in the good time which I understand is coming, if I wait a little
  longer.”

There! How do you like that? That’s the Horse! You shall have another
animal’s sentiments, soon. I have communicated with plenty ’of em, and
they are all down upon you. It’s not I alone who have found you out. You
are generally detected, I am happy to say, and shall be covered with
confusion.

Talking about the horse, are you going to set up any more horses? Eh?
Think a bit. Come! You haven’t got horses enough yet, surely? Couldn’t
you put somebody else on horseback, and stick him up, at the cost of a
few thousands? You have already statues to most of the “benefactors of
mankind,” (SEE ADVERTISEMENT) in your principal cities. You walk through
groves of great inventors, instructors, discoverers, assuagers of pain,
preventers of disease, suggesters of purifying thoughts, doers of noble
deeds. Finish the list. Come!

Whom will you hoist into the saddle? Let’s have a cardinal virtue! Shall
it be Faith? Hope? Charity? Aye, Charity’s the virtue to ride on
horseback! Let’s have Charity!

How shall we represent it? Eh? What do you think? Royal? Certainly.
Duke? Of course. Charity always was typified in that way, from the time
of a certain widow, downwards. And there’s nothing less left to put up;
all the commoners who were “benefactors of mankind” having had their
statues in the public places, long ago.

How shall we dress it? Rags? Low. Drapery? Common-place. Field-Marshal’s
uniform? The very thing! Charity in a Field-Marshal’s uniform (none the
worse for wear) with thirty thousand pounds a year, public money, in its
pocket, and fifteen thousand more, public money, up behind, will be a
piece of plain uncompromising truth in the highways, and an honor to the
country and the time.

Ha, ha, ha! You can’t leave the memory of an unassuming, honest,
good-natured, amiable old Duke alone, without bespattering it with your
flunkeyism, can’t you? That’s right—and like you! Here are three brass
buttons in my crop. I’ll subscribe ’em all. One, to the statue of
Charity; one, to a statue of Hope; one, to a statue of Faith. For Faith,
we’ll have the Nepaulese Ambassador on horseback—being a prince. And for
Hope, we’ll put the Hippopotamus on horseback, and so make a group.

Let’s have a meeting about it!




                     A SHILLING’S WORTH OF SCIENCE.


Dr. Paris has already shown, in a charming little book treating
scientifically of children’s toys, how easy even “philosophy in sport
can be made science in earnest.” An earlier genius cut out the whole
alphabet into the figures of uncouth animals, and enclosed them in a
toybox representing Noah’s Ark, for the purpose of teaching children
their letters. Europe, Asia, Africa, and America have been decimated;
“yea, the great globe itself,” has been parcelled into little wooden
sections, that their readjustment into a continuous map might teach the
infant conqueror of the world the relative positions of distant
countries. Archimedes might have discovered the principle of the lever
and the fundamental principles of gravity upon a rocking-horse. In like
manner he might have ascertained the laws of hydrostatics, by observing
the impetus of many natural and artificial fountains, which must
occasionally have come beneath his eye. So also the principles of
acoustics might even now be taught by the aid of a penny whistle, and
there is no knowing how much children’s nursery games may yet be
rendered subservient to the advancement of science. The famous Dr.
Cornelius Scriblerus had excellent notions on these subjects. He
determined that his son Martinus should be the most learned and
universally well-informed man of his age, and had recourse to all sorts
of devices in order to inspire him even unthinkingly with knowledge. He
determined that everything should contribute to the improvement of his
mind,—even his very dress. He therefore, his biographer informs us,
invented for him a geographical suit of clothes, which might give him
some hints of that science, and also of the commerce of different
nations. His son’s disposition to mathematics—for he was a remarkable
child—was discovered very early by his drawing parallel lines on his
bread and butter, and intersecting them at equal angles, so as to form
the whole superficies into squares. His father also wisely resolved that
he should acquire the learned languages, especially Greek,—and
remarking, curiously enough, that young Martinus Scriblerus was
remarkably fond of gingerbread, the happy idea came into his parental
head that his pieces of gingerbread should be stamped with the letters
of the Greek alphabet; and such was the child’s avidity for knowledge,
that the very first day he eat down to _iota_.

When Sir Isaac Newton changed his residence and went to live in
Leicester Place, his next door neighbour was a widow lady, who was much
puzzled by the little she observed of the habits of the philosopher. One
of the Fellows of the Royal Society, called upon her one day, when among
other domestic news, she mentioned that some one had come to reside in
the adjoining house, who she felt certain was a poor mad gentleman. “And
why so?” asked her friend. “Because,” said she, “he diverts himself in
the oddest way imaginable. Every morning when the sun shines so brightly
that we are obliged to draw down the window-blinds, he takes his seat on
a little stool before a tub of soap-suds, and occupies himself for hours
blowing soap-bubbles through a common clay-pipe, which he intently
watches floating about until they burst. He is doubtless,” she added,
“now at his favourite diversion, for it is a fine day; do come and look
at him.” The gentleman smiled; and they went upstairs, when after
looking through the staircase window into the adjoining court-yard, he
turned round and said, “My dear lady, the person whom you suppose to be
a poor lunatic, is no other than the great Sir Isaac Newton studying the
refraction of light upon thin plates, a phenomenon which is beautifully
exhibited upon the surface of a common soap-bubble.”

The principle, illustrated by the examples we have given, has been
efficiently followed by the Directors of the Royal Polytechnic
Institution in Regent Street, London. Even the simplest models and
objects they exhibit in their extensive halls and galleries,
expound—like Sir Isaac Newton’s soap-bubble—some important principle of
Science or Art.

On entering the Hall of Manufactures (as we did the other day) it was
impossible not to be impressed with the conviction that we are in an
utilitarian age in which the science of Mechanics advances with
marvellous rapidity. Here we observed steam-engines, hand-looms, and
machines in active operation, surrounding us with that peculiar din
which makes the air

  “Murmur, as with the sound of summer-flies.”

Passing into the “Gallery in the Great Hall,” we did not fail to derive
a momentary amusement, from observing the very different objects which
seemed most to excite the attention and interest of the different
sightseers. Here, stood obviously a country farmer examining the model
of a steam-plough; there, a Manchester or Birmingham manufacturer
looking into a curious and complicated weaving machine; here, we noticed
a group of ladies admiring specimens of elaborate carving in ivory, and
personal ornaments esteemed highly fashionable at the antipodes; and
there, the smiling faces of youth watching with eager eyes the little
boats and steamers paddling along the Water Reservoir in the central
counter. But we had scarcely looked around us, when a bell rang to
announce a lecture on Voltaic Electricity by Dr. Bachhoffner; and moving
with the stream of people up a short staircase, we soon found ourselves
in a very commodious and well arranged theatre. There are many
universities and public institutions that have not better lecture rooms
than this theatre in the Royal Polytechnic Institution. The lecture was
elementary and exceedingly instructive, pointing out and showing by
experiments, the identity between Magnetism and Electricity—light and
heat: but notwithstanding the extreme perspicuity of the Professor, it
was our fate to sit next two old ladies who seemed to be very
incredulous about the whole business.

“If heat and light are the same thing,” asked one, “why don’t a flame
come out at the spout of a boiling tea-kettle?”

“The steam,” answered the other, “may account for that.”

“Hush!” cried somebody behind them; and the ladies were silent: but it
was plain they thought Voltaic Electricity had something to do with
conjuring, and that the lecturer might be a professor of Magic. The
lecture over, we returned to the Gallery, where we found the Diving Bell
just about to be put in operation. It is made of cast iron, and weighs
three tons; the interior being provided with seats, and lighted by
openings in the crown, upon which a plate of thick glass is secured. The
weighty instrument suspended by a massive chain to a large swing crane,
was soon in motion, when we observed our sceptical lady-friends join a
party and enter, in order, we presume, to make themselves more sure of
the truth of the diving bell than they could do of the identity between
light and heat. The Bell was soon swung round and lowered into a tank,
which holds nearly ten thousand gallons of water; but we confess our
fears for the safety of its inmates were greatly appeased, when we
learned that the whole of this reservoir of water could be emptied in
less than one minute. Slowly and steadily was the Bell drawn up again,
and we had the satisfaction of seeing the enterprising ladies and their
companions alight on _terra firma_, nothing injured excepting that they
were greatly flushed in the face. A man, clad in a water-tight dress and
surmounted with a diving helmet, next performed a variety of sub-aqueous
feats; much to the amusement and astonishment of the younger part of the
audience, one of whom shouted as he came up above the surface of the
water, “Oh! Ma’a! Don’t he look like an Ogre!” and certainly the shining
brass helmet and staring large plate-glass eyes fairly warranted such a
suggestion. The principles of the Diving Bell and of the Diving Helmet,
are too well known to require explanation; but the practical utility of
these machines is daily proved. Even while we now write, it has been
ascertained that the foundations of Blackfriars Bridge are giving way.
The bed of the river, owing to the constant ebb and flow of its waters,
has sunk some six or seven feet below its level, since the bridge was
built, thus undermining its foundation; and this effect, it is presumed,
has been greatly augmented by the removal of the old London Bridge, the
works surrounding which operated as a dam in checking the force of the
current. These machines, also, are constantly used in repairing the
bottom of docks, landing-piers, and in the construction of breakwater
works, such as those which are at present being raised at Dover Harbour.

Among other remarkable objects in the museum of natural history we
recognised, swimming upon his shingly bed under a glass case, our old
friend the Gymnotus Electricus, or Electrical Eel. Truly, he is a
marvellous fish. The power which animals of every description possess in
adapting themselves to external and adventitious circumstances, is here
marvellously illustrated, for, notwithstanding this creature is
surrounded by the greatest possible amount of artificial circumstances,
inasmuch as instead of sporting in his own pellucid and sparkling waters
of the River Amazon, he is here confined in a glass prison, in water
artificially heated; instead of his natural food, he is here supplied
with fish not indigenous to his native country, and denied access to
fresh air, with sunlight sparkling upon the surface of the waves—he is
here surrounded by an impure and obscure atmosphere, with crowds of
people constantly moving to and fro and gazing upon him;—yet,
notwithstanding all these disadvantageous circumstances, he has
continued to thrive; nay, since we saw him, ten years ago, he has
increased in size and is apparently very healthy, notwithstanding that
he is obviously quite blind.

This specimen of the Gymnotus Electricus was caught in the River Amazon,
and was brought over to this country by Mr. Potter, where it arrived on
the 12th of August, 1838, when he displayed it to the proprietors of the
Adelaide Gallery. In the first instance, there was some difficulty in
keeping him alive, for, whether from sickness, or sulkiness, he refused
food of every description, and is said to have eaten nothing from the
day he was taken in March, 1838, to the 19th of the following October.
He was confided upon his arrival to the care of Mr. Bradley, who placed
him in an apartment the temperature of which could be maintained at
about seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit, and acting upon the suggestions
of Baron Humboldt, he endeavoured to feed him with bits of boiled meat,
worms, frogs, fish, and bread, which were all tried in succession. But
the animal would not touch these. The plan adopted by the London
fishmongers for fattening the common Eel was then had recourse to;—a
quantity of bullock’s blood was put into the water, care being taken
that it should be changed daily, and this was attended with some
beneficial effects, as the animal gradually improved in health. In the
month of October it occurred to Mr. Bradley to tempt him with some small
fish, and the first gudgeon thrown into the water he darted at and
swallowed with avidity. From that period the same diet has been
continued, and he is now fed three times a day, and upon each occasion
is given two or three carp, or perch, or gudgeon, each weighing from two
to three ounces. In watching his movements we observed, that in swimming
about he seems to delight in rubbing himself against the gravel which
forms the bed above which he floats, and the water immediately becomes
clouded with the mucus from which he thus relieves the surface of his
body.

When this species of fish was first discovered, marvellous accounts
respecting them were transmitted to the Royal Society: it was even said
that in the River Surinam, in the western province of Guiana, some
existed twenty feet long. The present specimen is forty inches in
length; and measures eighteen inches round the body; and his physiognomy
justifies the description given by one of the early narrators, who
remarked, that the Gymnotus “resembles one of our common eels, except
that its head is flat, and its mouth wide, like that of a cat-fish,
without teeth.” It is certainly ugly enough. On its first arrival in
England, the proprietors offered Professor Faraday (to whom this country
may possibly discover, within the next five hundred years, that it owes
something) the privilege of experimenting upon him for scientific
purposes, and the result of a great number of experiments, ingeniously
devised, and executed with great nicety, clearly proved the identity
between the electricity of the fish and the common electricity. The
shock, the circuit, the spark, were distinctly obtained; the
galvanometer was sensibly affected; chemical decompositions were
obtained; an annealed steel needle became magnetic, and the direction of
its polarity indicated a current from the anterior to the posterior
parts of the fish, through the conductors used. The force with which the
electric discharge is made is also very considerable, for this
philosopher tells us we may conclude that a single medium discharge of
the fish is at least equal to the electricity of a Leyden Battery of
fifteen jars, containing three thousand five hundred square inches of
glass, coated upon both sides, charged to its highest degree. But great
as is the force of a single discharge, the Gymnotus will sometimes give
a double, and even a triple shock, with scarcely any interval. Nor is
this all. The instinctive action it has recourse to in order to augment
the force of the shock, is very remarkable.

The Professor one day dropped a live fish, five inches long, into the
tub; upon which the Gymnotus turned round in such a manner as to form a
coil enclosing the fish, the latter representing a diameter across it,
and the fish was struck motionless, as if lightning had passed through
the water. The Gymnotus then made a turn to look for his prey, which
having found, he bolted it, and then went about seeking for more. A
second smaller fish was then given him, which being hurt, showed little
signs of life; and this he swallowed apparently without “shocking it.”
We are informed by Dr. Williamson, in a paper he communicated some years
ago to the Royal Society, that a fish already struck motionless gave
signs of returning animation, which the Gymnotus observing, he instantly
discharged another shock, which killed it. Another curious circumstance
was observed by Professor Faraday,—the Gymnotus appeared conscious of
the difference of giving a shock to an animate and an inanimate body,
and would not be provoked to discharge its powers upon the latter. When
tormented by a glass rod, the creature in the first instance threw out a
shock, but as if he perceived his mistake, he could not be stimulated
afterwards to repeat it, although the moment the Professor touched him
with his hands, he discharged shock after shock. He refused, in like
manner, to gratify the curiosity of the philosophers, when they touched
him with metallic conductors, which he permitted them to do with
indifference. It is worthy of observation, that this is the only
specimen of the Gymnotus Electricus ever brought over alive into this
country. The great secret of preserving his life would appear to consist
in keeping the water at an even temperature—summer and winter—of
seventy-five degrees of Fahrenheit. After having been subjected to a
great variety of experiments, the creature is now permitted to enjoy the
remainder of its days in honorable peace, and the only occasion upon
which he is now disturbed, is when it is found necessary to take him out
of his shallow reservoir to have it cleaned, when he discharges angrily
enough shock after shock, which the attendants describe to be very
smart, even though he be held in several thick and well wetted cloths,
for they do not at all relish the job.

The Gymnotus Electricus is not the only animal endowed with this very
singular power; there are other fish, especially the Torpedo and
Silurus, which are equally remarkable, and equally well known. The
peculiar structure which enters into the formation of their electrical
organs, was first examined by the eminent anatomist John Hunter, in the
Torpedo; and, very recently, Rudolphi has described their structure with
great exactness in the Gymnotus Electricus.

Without entering into minute details, the peculiarity of the organic
apparatus of the Electrical Eel seems to consist in this, that it is
composed of numerous _laminæ_ or thin tendinous partitions, between
which exists an infinite number of small cells filled with a thickish
gelatinous fluid. These strata and cells are supplied with nerves of
unusual size, and the intensity of the electrical power is presumed to
depend on the amount of nervous energy accumulated in these cells,
whence it can be voluntarily discharged just as a muscle may be
voluntarily contracted. Furthermore, there are, it would appear, good
reasons to believe that nervous power (in whatever it may consist) and
electricity are identical. The progress of Science has already shown the
identity between heat, electricity, and magnetism;—that heat may be
concentrated into electricity, and this electricity reconverted into
heat; that electric force may be converted into magnetic force, and
Professor Faraday himself discovered how, by reacting back again, the
magnetic force can be reconverted into the electric force, and _vice
versâ_; and should the identity between electricity and nervous power be
as clearly established, one of the most important and interesting
problems in Physiology will be solved.

Every new discovery in Science, and all improvements in Industrial Art,
the principles of which are capable of being rendered in the least
degree interesting, are in this Exhibition forthwith popularised, and
become, as it were, public property. Every individual of the great
public can at the very small cost of one shilling, claim his or her
share in the property thus attractively collected, and a small amount of
previous knowledge or natural intelligence will put the visitor in
actual possession of treasures which previously “he wot not of,” in so
amusing a manner that they will be beguiled rather than bored into his
mind.




                         THE GENTLEMAN BEGGAR.


                          AN ATTORNEY’S STORY.

One morning, about five years ago, I called by appointment on Mr. John
Balance, the fashionable pawnbroker, to accompany him to Liverpool, in
pursuit for a Levanting customer,—for Balance, in addition to pawning,
does a little business in the sixty per cent. line. It rained in
torrents when the cab stopped at the passage which leads past the
pawning boxes to his private door. The cabman rang twice, and at length
Balance appeared, looming through the mist and rain in the entry,
illuminated by his perpetual cigar. As I eyed him rather impatiently,
remembering that trains wait for no man, something like a hairy dog, or
a bundle of rags, rose up at his feet, and barred his passage for a
moment. Then Balance cried out with an exclamation, in answer apparently
to a something I could not hear, “What, man alive!—slept in the
passage!—there, take that, and get some breakfast for Heaven’s sake!” So
saying, he jumped into the “Hansom,” and we bowled away at ten miles an
hour, just catching the Express as the doors of the station were
closing. My curiosity was full set,—for although Balance can be free
with his money, it is not exactly to beggars that his generosity is
usually displayed; so when comfortably ensconced in a _coupé_, I
finished with—

“You are liberal with your money this morning: pray, how often do you
give silver to street cadgers?—because I shall know now what walk to
take when flats and sharps leave off buying law.”

Balance, who would have made an excellent parson if he had not been bred
to a case-hardening trade, and has still a soft bit left in his heart
that is always fighting with his hard head, did not smile at all, but
looked as grim as if squeezing a lemon into his Saturday night’s punch.
He answered slowly, “A cadger—yes; a beggar—a miserable wretch, he is
now; but let me tell you, Master David, that that miserable bundle of
rags was born and bred a gentleman; the son of a nobleman, the husband
of an heiress, and has sat and dined at tables where you and I, Master
David, are only allowed to view the plate by favour of the butler. I
have lent him thousands, and been well paid. The last thing I had from
him was his court suit; and I hold now his bill for one hundred pounds
that will be paid, I expect, when he dies.”

“Why, what nonsense you are talking! you must be dreaming this morning.
However, we are alone, I’ll light a weed, in defiance of Railway law,
you shall spin that yarn; for, true or untrue, it will fill up the time
to Liverpool.”

“As for yarn,” replied Balance, “the whole story is short enough; and as
for truth, that you may easily find out if you like to take the trouble.
I thought the poor wretch was dead, and I own it put me out meeting him
this morning, for I had a curious dream last night.”

“Oh, hang your dreams! Tell us about this gentleman beggar that bleeds
you of half-crowns—that melts the heart even of a pawnbroker!”

“Well, then, that beggar is the illegitimate son of the late Marquis of
Hoopborough by a Spanish lady of rank. He received a first-rate
education, and was brought up in his father’s house. At a very early age
he obtained an appointment in a public office, was presented by the
marquis at court, and received into the first society, where his
handsome person and agreeable manners made him a great favourite. Soon
after coming of age, he married the daughter of Sir E. Bumper, who
brought him a very handsome fortune, which was strictly settled on
herself. They lived in splendid style, kept several carriages, a house
in town, and a place in the country. For some reason or other, idleness,
or to please his lady’s pride he said, he resigned his appointment. His
father died, and left him nothing; indeed, he seemed at that time very
handsomely provided for.

“Very soon Mr. and Mrs. Molinos Fitz-Roy began to disagree. She was
cold, correct—he was hot and random. He was quite dependant on her, and
she made him feel it. When he began to get into debt, he came to me. At
length some shocking quarrel occurred; some case of jealousy on the
wife’s side, not without reason, I believe; and the end of it was Mr.
Fitz-Roy was turned out of doors. The house was his wife’s, the
furniture was his wife’s, and the fortune was his wife’s—he was, in
fact, her pensioner. He left with a few hundred pounds ready money, and
some personal jewellery, and went to an hotel. On these and credit he
lived. Being illegitimate, he had no relations; being a fool, when he
spent his money he lost his friends. The world took his wife’s part,
when they found she had the fortune, and the only parties who interfered
were her relatives, who did their best to make the quarrel incurable. To
crown all, one night he was run over by a cab, was carried to a
hospital, and lay there for months, and was during several weeks of the
time unconscious. A message to the wife, by the hands of one of his
debauched companions, sent by a humane surgeon, obtained an intimation
that ‘if he died, Mr. Croak, the undertaker to the family, had orders to
see to the funeral,’ and that Mrs. Molinos was on the point of starting
for the Continent, not to return for some years. When Fitz-Roy was
discharged, he came to me limping on two sticks, to pawn his court suit,
and told me his story. I was really sorry for the fellow, such a
handsome, thoroughbred-looking man. He was going then into the west
somewhere, to try to hunt out a friend. ‘What to do, Balance,’ he said,
‘I don’t know. I can’t dig, and unless somebody will make me their
gamekeeper, I must starve, or beg, as my Jezebel bade me when we
parted!’

“I lost sight of Molinos for a long time, and when I next came upon him
it was in the Rookery of Westminster, in a low lodging-house, where I
was searching with an officer for stolen goods. He was pointed out to me
as the ‘gentleman cadger,’ because he was so free with his money when
‘in luck.’ He recognised me, but turned away then. I have since seen
him, and relieved him more than once, although he never asks for
anything. How he lives, Heaven knows. Without money, without friends,
without useful education of any kind, he tramps the country, as you saw
him, perhaps doing a little hop-picking or hay-making, in season, only
happy when he obtains the means to get drunk. I have heard through the
kitchen whispers that you know come to me, that he is entitled to some
property; and I expect if he were to die his wife would pay the hundred
pound bill I hold; at any rate, what I have told you I know to be true,
and the bundle of rags I relieved just now is known in every thieves’
lodging in England as the ‘gentleman cadger.’”

This story produced an impression on me,—I am fond of speculation, and
like the excitement of a legal hunt as much as some do a fox-chase. A
gentleman a beggar, a wife rolling in wealth, rumours of unknown
property due to the husband: it seemed as if there were pickings for me
amidst this carrion of pauperism.

Before returning from Liverpool, I had purchased the gentleman beggar’s
acceptance from Balance. I then inserted in the “Times” the following
advertisement: “_Horatio Molinos Fitz-Roy_.—If this gentleman will apply
to David Discount, Esq., Solicitor, St. James’s, he will hear of
something to his advantage. Any person furnishing Mr. F.’s correct
address, shall receive 1_l._ 1_s._ reward. He was last seen,” &c. Within
twenty-four hours I had ample proof of the wide circulation of the
“Times.” My office was besieged with beggars of every degree, men and
women, lame and blind, Irish, Scotch, and English, some on crutches,
some in bowls, some in go-carts. They all knew him as “the gentleman,”
and I must do the regular fraternity of tramps the justice to say that
not one would answer a question until he made certain that I meant the
“gentleman” no harm.

One evening, about three weeks after the appearance of the
advertisement, my clerk announced “another beggar.” There came in an old
man leaning upon a staff, clad in a soldier’s great coat all patched and
torn, with a battered hat, from under which a mass of tangled hair fell
over his shoulders and half concealed his face. The beggar, in a weak,
wheezy, hesitating tone, said, “You have advertised for Molinos
Fitz-roy, I hope you don’t mean him any harm; he is sunk, I think, too
low for enmity now; and surely no one would sport with such misery as
his.” These last words were uttered in a sort of piteous whisper.

I answered quickly, “Heaven forbid I should sport with misery: I mean
and hope to do him good, as well as myself.”

“Then, Sir, I am Molinos Fitz-Roy!”

While we were conversing candles had been brought in. I have not very
tender nerves—my head would not agree with them—but I own I started and
shuddered when I saw and knew that the wretched creature before me was
under thirty years of age and once a gentleman. Sharp, aquiline
features, reduced to literal skin and bone, were begrimed and covered
with dry fair hair; the white teeth of the half-open mouth chattered
with eagerness, and made more hideous the foul pallor of the rest of the
countenance. As he stood leaning on a staff half bent, his long, yellow
bony fingers clasped over the crutch-head of his stick, he was indeed a
picture of misery, famine, squalor, and premature age, too horrible to
dwell upon. I made him sit down, sent for some refreshment which he
devoured like a ghoul, and set to work to unravel his story. It was
difficult to keep him to the point; but with pains I learned what
convinced me that he was entitled to some property, whether great or
small there was no evidence. On parting, I said “Now Mr. F., you must
stay in town while I make proper enquiries. What allowance will be
enough to keep you comfortably?”

He answered humbly after much pressing, “Would you think ten shillings
too much?”

I don’t like, if I do those things at all, to do them shabbily, so I
said, “Come every Saturday and you shall have a pound.” He was profuse
in thanks of course, as all such men are as long as distress lasts.

I had previously learned that my ragged client’s wife was in England,
living in a splendid house in Hyde Park Gardens, under her maiden name.
On the following day the Earl of Owing called upon me, wanting five
thousand pounds by five o’clock the same evening. It was a case of life
or death with him, so I made my terms and took advantage of his pressure
to execute a _coup de main_. I proposed that he should drive me home to
receive the money, calling at Mrs. Molinos in Hyde Park Gardens, on our
way. I knew that the coronet and liveries of his father, the Marquis,
would ensure me an audience with Mrs. Molinos Fitz-Roy.

My scheme answered. I was introduced into the lady’s presence. She was,
and probably is, a very stately, handsome woman, with a pale complexion,
high solid forehead, regular features, thin, pinched, self-satisfied
mouth. My interview was very short. I plunged into the middle of the
affair, but had scarcely mentioned the word husband, when she
interrupted me with “I presume you have lent this profligate person
money, and want me to pay you.” She paused, and then said, “He shall not
have a farthing.” As she spoke, her white face became scarlet.

“But, Madam, the man is starving. I have strong reasons for believing he
is entitled to property, and if you refuse any assistance, I must take
other measures.” She rang the bell, wrote something rapidly on a card;
and, as the footman appeared, pushed it towards me across the table,
with the air of touching a toad, saying, “There, Sir, is the address of
my solicitors; apply to them if you think you have any claim. Robert,
show the person out, and take care he is not admitted again.”

So far I had effected nothing; and, to tell the truth, felt rather
crest-fallen under the influence of that grand manner peculiar to
certain great ladies and to all great actresses.

My next visit was to the attorneys Messrs. Leasem and Fashun, of
Lincoln’s Inn Square, and there I was at home. I had had dealings with
the firm before. They are agents for half the aristocracy, who always
run in crowds like sheep after the same wine-merchants, the same
architects, the same horse-dealers, and the same law-agents. It may be
doubted whether the quality of law and land management they get on this
principle is quite equal to their wine and horses. At any rate, my
friends of Lincoln’s Inn, like others of the same class, are
distinguished by their courteous manners, deliberate proceedings,
innocence of legal technicalities, long credit and heavy charges.
Leasem, the elder partner, wears powder and a huge bunch of seals, lives
in Queen Square, drives a brougham, gives the dinners and does the
cordial department. He is so strict in performing the latter duty, that
he once addressed a poacher who had shot a Duke’s keeper, as “my dear
creature,” although he afterwards hung him.

Fashun has chambers in St. James Street, drives a cab, wears a tip, and
does the grand haha style.

My business lay with Leasem. The interviews and letters passing were
numerous. However, it came at last to the following dialogue:—

“Well, my dear Mr. Discount,” began Mr. Leasem, who hates me like
poison. “I’m really very sorry for that poor dear Molinos—knew his
father well; a great man, a perfect gentleman; but you know what women
are, eh, Mr. Discount? My client won’t advance a shilling, she knows it
would only be wasted in low dissipation. Now don’t you think (this was
said very insinuatingly)—don’t you think he had better be sent to the
workhouse; very comfortable accommodation there, I can assure you—meat
twice a week, and excellent soup; and then, Mr. D., we might consider
about allowing you something for that bill.”

“Mr. Leasem, can you reconcile it to your conscience to make such an
arrangement. Here’s a wife rolling in luxury, and a husband starving!”

“No, Mr. Discount, not starving; there is the workhouse, as I observed
before; besides, allow me to suggest that these appeals to feeling are
quite unprofessional—quite unprofessional.”

“But, Mr. Leasem, touching this property which the poor man is entitled
to.”

“Why, there again, Mr. D., you must excuse me; you really must. I don’t
say he is, I don’t say he is not. If you know he is entitled to
property, I am sure you know how to proceed; the law is open to you, Mr.
Discount—the law is open; and a man of your talent will know how to use
it.”

“Then, Mr. Leasem, you mean that I must, in order to right this starving
man, file a Bill of Discovery, to extract from you the particulars of
his rights. You have the Marriage Settlement, and all the information,
and you decline to allow a pension, or afford any information; the man
is to starve, or go to the workhouse?”

“Why, Mr. D., you are so quick and violent, it really is not
professional; but you see (here a subdued smile of triumph), it has been
decided that a solicitor is not bound to afford such information as you
ask, to the injury of his client.”

“Then you mean that this poor Molinos may rot and starve, while you keep
secret from him, at his wife’s request, his title to an income, and that
the Court of Chancery will back you in this iniquity?”

I kept repeating the word “starve,” because I saw it made my respectable
opponent wince. “Well, then, just listen to me. I know that in the happy
state of our equity law, Chancery can’t help my client; but I have
another plan; I shall go hence to my office, issue a writ, and take your
client’s husband in execution—as soon as he is lodged in jail, I shall
file his schedule in the Insolvent Court, and when he comes up for his
discharge, I shall put you in the witness-box, and examine you on oath,
‘touching any property of which you know the insolvent to be possessed,’
and where will be your privileged communications then?”

The respectable Leasem’s face lengthened in a twinkling, his comfortable
confident air vanished, he ceased twiddling his gold chain, and at
length he muttered, “Suppose we pay the debt?”

“Why then, I’ll arrest him the day after for another.”

“But, my dear Mr. Discount, surely such conduct would not be quite
respectable?”

“That’s my business; my client has been wronged, I am determined to
right him, and when the aristocratic firm of Leasem and Fashun takes
refuge according to the custom of respectable repudiators, in the cool
arbours of the Court of Chancery, why, a mere bill-discounting attorney
like David Discount need not hesitate about cutting a bludgeon out of
the Insolvent Court.”

“Well, well, Mr. D., you are so warm—so fiery; we must deliberate, we
must consult. You will give me until the day after to-morrow, and then
we’ll write you our final determination; in the mean time, send us copy
of your authority to act for Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy.”

Of course I lost no time in getting the gentleman beggar to sign a
proper letter.

On the appointed day came a communication with the L. and F. seal, which
I opened not without unprofessional eagerness. It was as follows:

                  “_In re Molinos Fitz-Roy and Another._

  “Sir,—In answer to your application on behalf of Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy,
  we beg to inform you that under the administration of a paternal aunt
  who died intestate, your client is entitled to two thousand five
  hundred pounds eight shillings and sixpence, Three per Cents.; one
  thousand five hundred pounds nineteen shillings and fourpence, Three
  per Cents. Reduced; one thousand pounds, Long Annuities; five hundred
  pounds, Bank Stock; three thousand five hundred pounds, India Stock,
  besides other securities, making up about ten thousand pounds, which
  we are prepared to transfer over to Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy’s direction
  forthwith.”

Here was a windfall! It quite took away my breath.

At dusk came my gentleman beggar, and what puzzled me was how to break
the news to him. Being very much overwhelmed with business that day, I
had not much time for consideration. He came in rather better dressed
than when I first saw him, with only a week’s beard on his chin; but, as
usual, not quite sober. Six weeks had elapsed since our first interview.
He was still the humble, trembling, low-voiced creature, I first knew
him.

After a prelude, I said, “I find, Mr. F., you are entitled to something;
pray, what do you mean to give me in addition to my bill, for obtaining
it?” He answered rapidly, “Oh, take half: if there is one hundred
pounds, take half: if there is five hundred pounds, take half.”

“No, no; Mr. F., I don’t do business in that way, I shall be satisfied
with ten per cent.”

It was so settled. I then led him out into the street, impelled to tell
him the news, yet dreading the effect; not daring to make the revelation
in my office, for fear of a scene.

I began hesitatingly, “Mr. Fitz-Roy I am happy to say that I find you
are entitled to ... ten thousand pounds!”

“Ten thousand pounds!” he echoed. “Ten thousand pounds!” he shrieked.
“Ten thousand pounds!” he yelled; seizing my arm violently. “You are a
brick,——Here, cab! cab!” Several drove up—the shout might have been
heard a mile off. He jumped in the first.

“Where to?” said the driver.

“To a tailor’s, you rascal!”

“Ten thousand pounds! ha, ha, ha!” he repeated hysterically, when in the
cab; and every moment grasping my arm. Presently he subsided, looked me
straight in the face, and muttered with agonising fervour, “What a jolly
brick you are!”

The tailor, the hosier, the bootmaker, the hairdresser, were in turn
visited by this poor pagan of externals. As by degrees under their hands
he emerged from the beggar to the gentleman, his spirits rose; his eyes
brightened; he walked erect, but always nervously grasping my arm;
fearing, apparently, to lose sight of me for a moment, lest his fortune
should vanish with me. The impatient pride with which he gave his orders
to the astonished tradesman for the finest and best of everything, and
the amazed air of the fashionable hairdresser when he presented his
matted locks and stubble chin, to be “cut and shaved,” may be _acted_—it
cannot be described.

By the time the external transformation was complete, and I sat down in
a _Café_ in the Haymarket opposite a haggard but handsome
thoroughbred-looking man, whose air, with the exception of the wild eyes
and deeply browned face, did not differ from the stereotyped men about
town sitting around us, Mr. Molinos Fitz-Roy had already almost
forgotten the past; he bullied the waiter, and criticised the wine, as
if he had done nothing else but dine and drink and scold there all the
days of his life.

Once he wished to drink my health, and would have proclaimed his whole
story to the coffee-room assembly, in a raving style. When I left he
almost wept in terror at the idea of losing sight of me. But, allowing
for these ebullitions—the natural result of such a whirl of events—he
was wonderfully calm and self-possessed.

The next day, his first care was to distribute fifty pounds among his
friends the cadgers, at a house of call in Westminster, and formally to
dissolve his connection with them; those present undertaking for the
“fraternity,” that for the future he should never be noticed by them in
public or private.

I cannot follow his career much further. Adversity had taught him
nothing. He was soon again surrounded by the well-bred vampires who had
forgotten him when penniless; but they amused him, and that was enough.
The ten thousand pounds were rapidly melting when he invited me to a
grand dinner at Richmond, which included a dozen of the most agreeable,
good-looking, well-dressed dandies of London, interspersed with a
display of pretty butterfly bonnets. We dined deliciously, and drank as
men do of iced wines in the dog-days—looking down from Richmond Hill.

One of the pink bonnets crowned Fitz-Roy with a wreath of flowers; he
looked—less the intellect—as handsome as Alcibiades. Intensely excited
and flushed, he rose with a champagne glass in his hand to propose my
health.

The oratorical powers of his father had not descended on him. Jerking
out sentences by spasms, at length he said, “I was a beggar—I am a
gentleman—thanks to this——”

Here he leaned on my shoulder heavily a moment, and then fell back. We
raised him, loosened his neckcloth—

“Fainted!” said the ladies—

“Drunk!” said the gentlemen—

He was _dead_!




                                 CHIPS.


                   FAMILY COLONISATION LOAN SOCIETY.

If on any Saturday you should chance to find your way to Charlton
Crescent, an obscure thoroughfare lying between the road from Islington
to Holloway and the New River, not far from the Angel, you will see
several men and women dropping into a small house, the parlour window of
which contains a printed bill with the above words. The callers are
chiefly of the decent mechanic class, and not a few travellers from the
country,—pilgrims in search of truth about emigration. Saturday is the
day on which the subscriptions of emigrants desiring to avail themselves
of the Family Colonisation Loan Society are received.

And what is the Colonisation Loan Society? The question is worth asking.

It is an association—devised by Mrs. Chisholm, and to be speedily
carried out extensively with the aid of several philanthropists, and the
advice of two eminent actuaries—for establishing a self-supporting
system of emigration, for assisting industrious people, and for
promoting practically the spread of sound moral principles in a much
neglected colony.

Persons desirous of emigrating form themselves into “groups,” after
being mutually satisfied of their respective suitability and
respectability. Each intending emigrant pays, either in one sum or by
weekly instalments, as much as will amount to half the passage money to
Australia. The philanthropists of the society lend the other half to be
repaid by four annual instalments,—each family becoming jointly bound
for the sums lent to each member of that family, and each group being
publicly pledged to assist in enforcing punctual repayments.

The details for securing repayment of the loans have been arranged by
Mrs. Chisholm, and are the result of her large practical experience.
Each emigrant, when he has paid back his loan, will have the privilege
of nominating a relation or friend to be assisted in emigrating with the
same amount of money. Thus, the original charitable fund will work in a
circle of colonisation, at the mere sacrifice of annual interest. That
emigrants among the humble classes are willing to remit for the purpose
of assisting their friends and relations to follow them, is proved by
the fact that, within the last three years, upwards of one million
sterling has been remitted by the Irish emigrants from the United States
alone, in small sums, to pay the passage of parents, brothers, sisters,
wives, or sweethearts in Ireland. Australia, in proportion to its
population, affords even greater opportunities of earning money wages
than the United States.

Mrs. Chisholm’s plan offers several advantages of an important
character. It will enable many to emigrate who, though frugal and
industrious, are not only unable to raise _the whole_ passage money;
but, during temporary trade-depressions, would be consuming their
savings. It will keep families united, and cherish an honourable,
independent spirit. It will secure a class of emigrants calculated to
improve the moral tone of the colony; for, as the character of each
emigrant will be investigated by his fellows, there will be no room for
the deceptions practised on the wealthy charitable. The certificate of
shop-mates with whom a man has worked, is more to be trusted than that
of the clergyman who has only seen him in his Sunday clothes. It will
afford the best kind of protection for young girls or single women
desirous of joining friends in Australia, because each ship will be
filled with “groups” previously acquainted and mutually _sifted_. Among
minor advantages, the cost of passage and outfit, by the aid of
co-operation and communication, will be much diminished.

The two following instances will display the practical working of Mrs.
Chisholm’s plan. Among the applicants to join the Society (for already
the working-classes are prepared to subscribe two thousand pounds) was
an artisan in the North, belonging to a trade which “strikes”
periodically. When contemplating these “strikes,” the leaders of the
trade base their financial arrangements for supporting the body while
out of work, upon the savings made by the more frugal of their
associates. The artisan in question being a Teetotaller and skilful, had
three times been able to save from fifteen to twenty pounds, with the
express design of emigrating; but twice his stock of cash had been
melted in the common treasury during strikes. With the assistance of a
loan from the Society, he will now be able to emigrate. There can be no
fear of such a man not repaying it honourably. Had he been able to
emigrate a few years ago, he must have been wealthy by this time, and in
a position to help all his relatives to join him.

Again, a benevolent Dowager Countess has subscribed two hundred and
twenty-five pounds to this Society; a sum which has been appropriated to
assisting the following parties in making up their passage money to
Australia. Let us see what this money will do:—

  It will send three wives with nine children, out to join husbands in
  Australia.

  Two aged widows who have children there.

  Ditto a man and wife, who have children there.

  M. and wife, with five children.

  H. and wife.

  P. and wife, with three children.

  L. and wife, with seven children. (This man has received the
  insufficient sum of fifty pounds to pay his passage from a brother in
  Australia.)

  W. and wife, with four children (have received twenty-five pounds from
  Australia for same purpose).

  Five young men, of whom three have relations in the Colony.

  Nine friendless young women, of whom four have relations there.

Thus it will be seen this two hundred and twenty-five pound loan affords

                       A passage, to Adults   31
                                     Children 28
                                              ——
                                      Total   59

At the end of the first year after the arrival of these persons, there
will be available for assisting other friends and relatives of this
batch of fifty-nine to join them, about forty pounds; at the end of the
second year, about sixty pounds; third year, about eighty pounds; fourth
year, about one hundred and twenty pounds.

This system sacrifices no independence; incurs scarcely any weight of
obligation. It affords the best possible kind of assistance; for it
helps those who help themselves, and puts it in their power to help
their fellows.




                     THE STRANGERS’ LEAF FOR 1851.


Among the myriads of products of art, science, and manufactures, to be
congregated under Mr. Paxton’s great glass house in Hyde Park next year,
it is to be hoped that the newspaper press will not be unrepresented. We
do not mean model morning papers, displaying several square acres of
advertisements, or news conveyed from the other hemisphere, by steam and
electricity, since the previous morning; but a modest sheet, in the
humble guise of a miniature Morning Post (like the Morning Post of old),
for the registry of the names and “up-puttings” of the tens of thousands
of strangers who will inevitably be thrusting themselves into London,
like needles in bundles of hay, where nobody can find them. Such a
humble record as we propose already exists, and we will describe it:—

About three years since, a brother of the well-known German philosopher,
Heine, established a paper in Vienna, called the “_Fremden Blatt_,” or
“Strangers’ Leaf.” One of its chief objects is to give the names and
residences of such strangers as arrive daily in the capital, and the
dates of their departure. It is printed on a sheet about the size of a
lady’s pocket-handkerchief. It costs rather less than a penny; the
expenses of conducting it are trifling, and its circulation is very
extensive. There is not an hotel or coffee-house, not a lounge, or a
pastry-cook’s shop (the chief place of resort in Vienna), which does not
take it in, and indeed, among the idlers and triflers—a very large class
of every population—it is the only paper read at all.

It will, perhaps, however, give a better idea of it to analyse the
contents of the number for July 31st, 1850, now before us. The first
column, and two-thirds of the second, is devoted to intelligence
connected with Austria and the provinces; all short paragraphs, most of
them of only three or four lines. Their matter concerns the movements of
persons of note, and such military and civil appointments, promotions,
and retirements, as are likely to be of general interest. If they touch
upon any other news, the bare fact is related without comment of any
kind. In the next column, Foreign news—including the exciting
intelligence from Schleswig Holstein—are disposed of in a dozen
paragraphs, containing, however, quite as much as it is necessary to
know to be on equal terms with one’s friends after dinner. Then come the
domestic _on dits_ of Vienna with the current topics of conversation and
a spice or two of scandal; by no means to be imitated here, or anywhere
else. Births, deaths, marriages, accidents and offences, follow. All
this is, however, merely the prelude. The rise and fall of nations, the
mere change of a dynasty, or the details of an earthquake, are but
accessories to the grand aim, end, and purpose of the Fremden Blatt’s
existence. As Sarah Battle relaxed from the serious business of whist,
to unbend over a book, so the editor of the Strangers’ Leaf dallies with
the great globe itself and its most terrific catastrophes to recreate
the minds of his readers previous to the study of—“arrivals and
departures.” Upon these the editor fastens all his care—all his genius.
They are alphabetically arranged with great precision. They are his
leading article. Should a mistake occur in geography, or should he be a
few thousands out in his statistics, it is nothing; but the accidental
mis-spelling of a title of ten syllables; if he happen to leave out a
“z” in the name of Count Sczorowszantzski; he inserts, next morning, an
apologetic “erratum” of great length.

The utility of such a register in London, at the approaching Industrial
Fair, as we presume to call it, is easily seen. Let us suppose Count
Smorltork arriving in England with the intention of writing an account
of the Exposition. He has only a few days to make his observations; and
it is not till he has driven half over London, that he discovers of Lord
Tomnoddy and Sir Carnaby Jenks—from whom he expects to derive his chief
information—that one is at Leamington, and the other in Scotland. Or we
may imagine Dr. Dommheit, with the grave Senor Eriganados, and their
volatile coadjutor, M. de Tête-vide, arriving in our capital on a
scientific excursion. It costs them a month’s income in messengers and
cab-fares, and a week’s waiting while their strangely spelt letters are
decyphered at the Post-Office, before they learn that Mr. Crypt is off
with Lord Rhomboid and the Chrononhotonthologos Society, somewhere in
the provinces; Dr. Dryasdust is looking for antiquities in the Hebrides;
and the oracle of their tribe, Earl Everlasting—having been left alone
with the secretary and the porter at the sixth hour of the reading of
his paper on the antediluvian organisms of a piece of slate—has gone
down to his “place” in Dorsetshire in a huff. On the other hand, the
famous Dr. Ledern Langweile, Monsieur de Papillon-Sauvage, and the great
Condé Hermosa-Muchacha-Quieres, are going crazy because they cannot find
each other; yet all are perhaps dwelling within a stone’s throw of each
other; perhaps in the same street or square—most probably Leicester
Square, which they have been given to understand is the most fashionable
quarter of the town. This is exactly the condition of things which may
be expected without such a register of names and addresses as we
suggest.

To our own men about town, also, or to “ladies of condition,” as
Addison’s Spectator has it, the Strangers’ Leaf will be invaluable. None
have so little time as the idle; and how severely Indolence will have to
work for the benefit of its foreign and provincial friends in 1851, it
must tremble to anticipate. To relieve it a little, some such means as
we suggest should be adopted, for allowing Indolence to find out easily
those strangers who have been recommended to his attention and good
offices. One glance at a list of “arrivals” would save it a world of
trouble.

The duties of the editor of the “London Strangers’ Leaf” would not be
very onerous. The names and intended addresses of every individual
coming from abroad it will not be difficult to obtain. To reach us
Islanders every visitor must arrive by sea, and at each port we are
blessed with a customhouse. The captain of every steamer is bound for
customhouse purposes to have the name of each of his passengers set down
in a sort of Way-bill; and, for a slight consideration, the person who
performs that office (generally the steward), would doubtless learn and
add the address to which each of the passengers is going in London. An
arrangement with a customhouse clerk at each of the ports could be made
for forwarding daily a copy of the list. Thus a complete record of
arrivals from abroad could be obtained with little trouble. The names
and lodgings of persons from the provinces would be more difficult of
access; but a good understanding with hotel-keepers, and some assistance
from the “Lodging-house Committee” (for of course there will be one,) of
the Executive of the Great Congress, would insure the editor a tolerably
complete “List of the Company” who assemble, even from the country. The
“Strangers’ Leaf” might be published early each afternoon so as to give
the arrivals of the morning.

It is not to be doubted that at the essentially Industrial Meeting of
1851, the _Chevaliers d’Industrie_ of all nations will make it their
especial business to attend in large numbers. _Their_ names, personal
appearance, addresses, and achievements, it would be very useful to
record in “the Strangers’ Leaf.” To our excellent friends the Detectives
the benefit would be great and reciprocal: for they would not only
derive, but contribute much useful information. As a kind of “Hue and
Cry,” of a more refined and fashionable kind, the proposed sheet would
be invaluable.

Should any enterprising gentleman, literary or otherwise, make the
experiment, it may possibly turn out not only useful but profitable.
Should such a speculation be deemed too undignified, we would silence
the objection with a remark from Macaulay’s Essay on the life of Bacon,
to the effect that Nothing is too insignificant for the attention of the
wisest, which may be of advantage to the smallest in the community.




                      NO HOSPITAL FOR INCURABLES.


It is an extraordinary fact that among the innumerable medical charities
with which this country abounds, there is not one for the help of those
who of all others most require succour, and who must die, and do die in
thousands, neglected, unaided. There are hospitals for the cure of every
possible ailment or disease known to suffering humanity, but not one for
the reception of persons past cure. There are, indeed, small charities
for incurables scattered over the country—like the asylum for a few
females afflicted with incurable diseases, at Leith, which was built,
and solely supported by Miss Gladstone; and a few hospital wards, like
the Cancer ward of Middlesex, and the ward for seven incurable patients
in the Westminster; but a large hospital for incurables, does not exist.

The case of a poor servant girl which lately came to our knowledge, is
the case of thousands. She was afflicted with a disease to which the
domestics of the middle classes, especially, are very liable—white
swelling of the knee. On presenting herself at the hospitals, it was
found that an operation would be certain death; and that, in short,
being incurable, she could not be admitted. She had no relations; and
crawling back to a miserable lodging, she lay helpless till her small
savings were exhausted. Privations of the severest kind followed; and
despite the assistance of some benevolent persons who learnt her
condition when it was too late, she died a painful and wretched death.

It is indeed a marvellous oversight of benevolence that sympathy should
have been so long withheld from precisely the sufferers who most need
it. Hopeless pain, allied to hopeless poverty, is a condition of
existence not to be thought of without a shudder. It is a slow journey
through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, from which we save even the
greatest criminals.

When the law deems it necessary to deprive a human being of life, the
anguish, though sharp, is short. We do not doom him to the lingering
agony with which innocent misfortune is allowed to make its slow descent
into the grave.




                           SORROWS AND JOYS.


               Bury thy sorrows, and they shall rise
               As souls to the immortal skies,
               And then look down like mothers’ eyes.

               But let thy joys be fresh as flowers,
               That suck the honey of the showers,
               And bloom alike on huts and towers.

               So shall thy days be sweet and bright,—
               Solemn and sweet thy starry night,—
               Conscious of love each change of light.

               The stars will watch the flowers asleep,
               The flowers will feel the soft stars weep,
               And both will mix sensations deep.

               With these below, with those above,
               Sits evermore the brooding Dove,
               Uniting both in bonds of love.

               Children of Earth are these; and those
               The spirits of intense repose—
               Death radiant o’er all human woes.

               For both by nature are akin;—
               Sorrow, the ashen fruit of sin,
               And joy, the juice of life within.

               O, make thy sorrows holy—wise—
               So shall their buried memories rise,
               Celestial, e’en in mortal skies.

               O, think what then had been their doom,
               If all unshriven—without a tomb—
               They had been left to haunt the gloom!

               O, think again what they will be
               Beneath God’s bright serenity,
               When thou art in eternity!

               For they, in their salvation, know
               No vestige of their former woe,
               While thro’ them all the Heavens do flow.

               Thus art thou wedded to the skies,
               And watched by ever-loving eyes,
               And warned by yearning sympathies.




                  THE HOME OF WOODRUFFE THE GARDENER.


                     IN EIGHT CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER I.

“How pleased the boy looks, to be sure!” observed Woodruffe to his wife,
as his son Allan caught up little Moss (as Maurice had chosen to call
himself before he could speak plain) and made him jump from the top of
the drawers upon the chair, and then from the chair to the ground. “He
is making all that racket just because he is so pleased he does not know
what to do with himself.”

“I suppose he will forgive Fleming now for carrying off Abby,” said the
mother. “I say, Allan, what do you think now of Abby marrying away from
us?”

“Why, I think it’s a very good thing. You know she never told me that we
should go and live where she lived, and in such a pretty place, too,
where I may have a garden of my own, and see what I can make of it—all
fresh from the beginning, as father says.”

“You are to try your hand at the business, I know,” replied the mother,
“but I never heard your father, nor any one else, say that the place was
a pretty one. I did not think new railway stations had been pretty
places at all.”

“It sounds so to him, naturally,” interposed Woodruffe. “He hears of a
south aspect, and a slope to the north for shelter, and the town seen
far off; and that sounds all very pleasant. And then, there is the
thought of the journey, and the change, and the fun of getting the
ground all into nice order, and, best of all, the seeing his sister so
soon again. Youth is the time for hope and joy, you know, love.”

And Woodruffe began to whistle, and stepped forward to take his turn at
jumping Moss, whom he carried in one flight from the top of the drawers
to the floor. Mrs. Woodruffe smiled, as she thought that youth was not
the only season, with some people, for hope and joy.

Her husband, always disposed to look on the bright side; was
particularly happy this evening. The lease of his market-garden ground
was just expiring. He had prospered on it; and would have desired
nothing better than to live by it as long as he lived at all. He desired
this so much that he would not believe a word of what people had been
saying for two years past, that his ground would be wanted by his
landlord on the expiration of the lease, and that it would not be let
again. His wife had long foreseen this; but not till the last moment
would he do what she thought should have been done long before—offer to
buy the ground. At the ordinary price of land, he could accomplish the
purchase of it; but when he found his landlord unwilling to sell, he bid
higher and higher, till his wife was so alarmed at the rashness, that
she was glad when a prospect of entire removal opened. Woodruffe was
sure that he could have paid off all he offered at the end of a few
years; but his partner thought it would have been a heavy burden on
their minds, and a sad waste of money; and she was therefore, in her
heart, obliged to the landlord for persisting in his refusal to sell.

When that was settled, Woodruffe became suddenly sure that he could pick
up an acre or two of land somewhere not far off. But he was mistaken;
and, if he had not been mistaken, market-gardening was no longer the
profitable business it had been, when it enabled him to lay by something
every year. By the opening of a railway, the townspeople, a few miles
off, got themselves better supplied with vegetables from another
quarter. It was this which put it into the son-in-law’s head to propose
the removal of the family into Staffordshire, where he held a small
appointment on a railway. Land might be had at a low rent near the
little country station where his business lay; and the railway brought
within twenty minutes’ distance a town where there must be a
considerable demand for garden produce. The place was in a raw state at
present; and there were so few houses, that, if there had been a choice
of time, the Flemings would rather have put off the coming of the family
till some of the cottages already planned had been built; but the
Woodruffes must remove in September, and all parties agreed that they
should not mind a little crowding for a few months. Fleming’s cottage
was to hold them all till some chance of more accommodation should
offer.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Woodruffe, after standing for some time, half
whistling and thinking, with that expression on his face which his wife
had long learned to be afraid of, “I’ll write to-morrow—let’s see—I may
as well do it to-night;” and he looked round for paper and ink. “I’ll
write to Fleming, and get him to buy the land for me at once.”

“Before you see it?” said his wife, looking up from her stocking
mending.

“Yes. I know all about it, as much as if I were standing on it this
moment; and I am sick of this work—of being turned out just when I had
made the most of a place, and got attached to it. I’ll make a sure thing
of it this time, and not have such a pull at my heartstrings again. And
the land will be cheaper now than later; and we shall go to work upon it
with such heart, if it is our own! Eh?”

“Certainly, if we find, after seeing it, that we like it as well as we
expect. I would just wait till then.”

“As well as we expect! Why, bless my soul! don’t we know all about it?
It is not any land-agent or interested person, that has described it to
us; but our own daughter and her husband; and do not they know what we
want? The quantity at my own choice; the aspect capital; plenty of water
(only too much, indeed); the soil anything but poor, and sand and marl
within reach to reduce the stiffness; and manure at command, all along
the railway, from half-a-dozen towns; and osier beds at hand (within my
own bounds if I like) giving all manner of convenience for fencing, and
binding, and covering! Why, what would you have?”

“It sounds very pleasant, certainly.”

“Then, how can you make objections? I can’t think where you look, to
find any objections?”

“I see none now, and I only want to be sure that we shall find none when
we arrive.”

“Well! I do call that unreasonable! To expect to find any place on earth
altogether unobjectionable! I wonder what objection could be so great as
being turned out of one after another, just as we have got them into
order. Here comes our girl. Well, Becky, I see how you like the news!
Now, would not you like it better still if we were going to a place of
our own, where we should not be under any landlord’s whims? We should
have to work, you know, one and all. But we would get the land properly
manured, and have a cottage of our own in time; would not we? Will you
undertake the pigs, Becky?”

“Yes, father; and there are many things I can do in the garden too. I am
old and strong, now; and I can do much more than I have ever done here.”

“Aye; if the land was our own,” said Woodruffe, with a glance at his
wife. She said no more, but was presently upstairs putting Moss to bed.
She knew, from long experience, how matters would go. After a restless
night, Woodruffe spoke no more of buying the land without seeing it; and
he twice said, in a meditative, rather than a communicative, way, that
he believed it would take as much capital as he had to remove his
family, and get his new land into fit condition for spring crops.


                          CHAPTER THE SECOND.

“You may look out now for the place. Look out for our new garden. We are
just there now,” said Woodruffe to the children as the whistle sounded,
and the train was approaching the station. It had been a glorious autumn
day from the beginning; and for the last hour, while the beauty of the
light on fields and trees and water had been growing more striking, the
children, tired with the novelty of all that they had seen since
morning, had been dropping asleep. They roused up suddenly enough at the
news that they were reaching their new home; and thrust their heads to
the windows, eagerly asking on which side they were to look for their
garden. It was on the south, the left-hand side; but it might have been
anywhere, for what they could see of it. Below the embankment was
something like a sheet of grey water, spreading far away.

“It is going to be a foggy night,” observed Woodruffe. The children
looked into the air for the fog, which had always, in their experience,
arrived by that way from the sea. The sky was all a clear blue, except
where a pale green and a faint blush of pink streaked the west. A large
planet beamed clear and bright: and the air was so transparent that the
very leaves on the trees might almost be counted. Yet could nothing be
seen below for the grey mist which was rising, from moment to moment.

Fleming met them as they alighted; but he could not stay till he had
seen to the other passengers. His wife was there. She had been a merry
hearted girl; and, now, still so young, as to look as girlish as ever,
she seemed even merrier than ever. She did not look strong, but she had
hardly thrown off what she called “a little touch of the ague;” and she
declared herself perfectly well when the wind was anywhere but in the
wrong quarter. Allan wondered how the wind could go wrong. He had never
heard of such a thing before. He had known the wind too high, when it
did mischief among his father’s fruit trees; but it had never occurred
to him that it was not free to come and go whence and whither it would,
without blame or objection.

“Come—come home,” exclaimed Mrs. Fleming. “Never mind about your bags
and boxes! My husband will take care of them. Let me show you the way
home.”

She let go the hands of the young brothers, and loaded them, and then
herself, with parcels, that they might not think they were going to lose
every thing, as she said; and then tripped on before to show the way.
The way was down steps, from the highest of which two or three
chimney-tops might be seen piercing the mist which hid everything else.
Down, down, down went the party, by so many steps that little Moss began
to totter under his bundle.

“How low this place lies!” observed the mother.

“Why, yes;” replied Mrs. Fleming. “And yet I don’t know. I believe it is
rather that the railway runs high.”

“Yes, yes; that is it,” said Woodruffe. “What an embankment this is! If
this is to shelter my garden to the north—”

“Yes, yes, it is. I knew you would like it,” exclaimed Mrs. Fleming. “I
said you would be delighted. I only wish you could see your ground at
once: but it seems rather foggy, and I suppose we must wait till the
morning. Here we are at home.”

The travellers were rather surprised to see how very small a house this
“home” was. Though called a cottage, it had not the look of one. It was
of a red brick, dingy, though evidently new: and, to all appearance, it
consisted of merely a room below, and one above. On walking round it,
however, a sloping roof in two directions gave a hint of further
accommodation.

When the whole party had entered, and Mrs. Fleming had kissed them all
round, her glance at her mother asked, as plainly as any words, “Is not
this a pleasant room?”

“A pretty room, indeed, my dear,” was the mother’s reply, “and as nicely
furnished as one could wish.”

She did not say anything of the rust which her quick eye perceived on
the fire-irons and the door-key, or of the damp which stained the walls
just above the skirting-board. There was nothing amiss with the ceiling,
or the higher parts of the walls,—so it might be an accident.

“But, my dear,” asked the mother, seeing how sleepy Moss looked, “Where
are you going to put us all? If we crowd you out of all comfort, I shall
be sorry we came so soon.”

As Mrs. Fleming led the way upstairs, she reminded her family of their
agreement not to mind a little crowding for a time. If her mother
thought there was not room for all the newly-arrived in this chamber,
they could fit out a corner for Allan in the place where she and her
husband were to sleep.

“All of us in this room?” exclaimed Becky.

“Yes, Becky; why not? Here, you see, is a curtain between your bed and
the large one; and your bed is large enough to let little Moss sleep
with you. And here is a morsel of a bed for Allan in the other corner;
and I have another curtain ready to shut it in.”

“But,” said Becky, who was going on to object. Her mother stopped her by
a sign.

“Or,” continued Mrs. Fleming, “if you like to let Allan and his bed and
curtain come down to our place, you will have plenty of room here; much
more than my neighbours have, for the most part. How it will be when the
new cottages are built, I don’t know. We think them too small for new
houses; but, meantime, there are the Brookes sleeping seven in a room no
bigger than this, and the Vines six in one much smaller.”

“How do they manage, now?” asked the mother. “In case of illness, say:
and how do they wash and dress?”

“Ah! that is the worst part of it. I don’t think the boys wash
themselves—what we should call washing—for weeks together: or at least
only on Saturday nights. So they slip their clothes on in two minutes;
and then their mother and sisters can get up. But there is the pump
below for Allan, and he can wash as much as he pleases.”

It was not till the next day that Mrs Woodruffe knew—and then it was
Allan who told her—that the pump was actually in the very place where
the Flemings slept,—close by their bed. The Flemings were, in truth,
sleeping in an outhouse, where the floor was of brick, the swill-tub
stood in one corner, the coals were heaped in another, and the light
came in from a square hole high up, which had never till now been
glazed. Plenty of air rushed in under the door, and yet some more
between the tiles,—there being no plaster beneath them. As soon as Mrs.
Woodruffe had been informed of this, and had stepped in, while her
daughter’s back was turned, to make her own observations, she went out
by herself for a walk,—so long a walk, that it was several hours before
she reappeared, heated and somewhat depressed. She had roamed the
country round, in search of lodgings; and finding none,—finding no
occupier who really could possibly spare a room on any terms,—she had
returned convinced that, serious as the expense would be, she and her
family ought to settle themselves in the nearest town,—her husband going
to his business daily by the third-class train, till a dwelling could be
provided for them on the spot.

When she returned, the children were on the watch for her; and little
Moss had strong hopes that she would not know him. He had a great cap of
rushes on his head, with a heavy bulrush for a feather; he was stuck all
over with water-flags and bulrushes, and carried a long osier wand,
wherewith to flog all those who did not admire him enough in his new
style of dress. The children were clamorous for their mother to come
down, and see the nice places where they got these new playthings: and
she would have gone, but that their father came up, and decreed it
otherwise. She was heated and tired, he said; and he would not have her
go till she was easy and comfortable enough to see things in the best
light.

Her impression was that her husband was, more or less (and she did not
know why), disappointed; but he did not say so. He would not hear of
going off to the town, being sure that some place would turn up
soon,—some place where they might put their heads at night; and the
Flemings should be no losers by having their company by day. Their
boarding all together, if the sleeping could but be managed, would be a
help to the young couple,—a help which it was pleasant to him, as a
father, to be able to give them. He said nothing about the land that was
not in praise of it. Its quality was excellent; or would be when it had
good treatment. It would take some time and trouble to get it into
order,—so much that it would never do to live at a distance from it.
Besides, no trains that would suit him ran at the proper hours; so there
was an end of it. They must all rough it a little for a time, and expect
their reward afterwards.

There was nothing that Woodruffe was so hard to please in as the time
when he should take his wife to see the ground. It was close at hand;
yet he hindered her going in the morning, and again after their early
dinner. He was anxious that she should not be prejudiced, or take a
dislike at first; and in the morning, the fog was so thick that
everything looked dank and dreary; and in the middle of the day, when a
warm autumn sun had dissolved the mists, there certainly was a most
disagreeable smell hanging about. It was not gone at sunset; but by that
time Mrs. Woodruffe was impatient, and she appeared—Allan showing her
the way—just when her husband was scraping his feet upon his spade,
after a hard day of digging.

“There, now!” said he, good-humouredly, striking his spade into the
ground, “Fleming said you would be down before we were ready for you:
and here you are!—Yes, ready for you. There are some planks coming, to
keep your feet out of the wet among all this clay.”

“And yours too, I hope,” said the wife. “I don’t mind such wet, after
rain, as you have been accustomed to; but to stand in a puddle like this
is a very different thing.”

“Yes—so ’tis. But we’ll have the planks; and they will serve for running
the wheelbarrow too. It is too much for Allan, or any boy, to run the
barrow in such a soil as this. We’ll have the planks first; and then
we’ll drain, and drain, and get rare spring crops.”

“What have they given you this artificial pond for,” asked the wife, “if
you must drain so much?”

“That is no pond. All the way along here, on both sides the railway,
there is the mischief of these pits. They dig out the clay for bricks,
and then leave the places—pits like this, some of them six feet deep.
The railways have done a deal of good for the poor man, and will do a
great deal more yet; but, at present this one has left those pits.”

“I hope Moss will not fall into one. They are very dangerous,” declared
the mother, looking about for the child.

“He is safe enough there, among the osiers,” said the father. “He has
lost his heart outright to the osiers. However, I mean to drain and fill
up this pit, when I find a good outfall: and then we will have all high
and dry, and safe for the children. I don’t care so much for the pit as
for the ditches there. Don’t you notice the bad smell?”

“Yes, indeed, that struck me the first night.”

“I have been inquiring to-day, and I find there is one acre in twenty
hereabouts occupied with foul ditches like that. And then the overflow
from them and the pits, spoils many an acre more. There is a stretch of
water-flags and bulrushes, and nasty coarse grass and rushes, nothing
but a swamp, where the ground is naturally as good as this; and, look
here! Fleming was rather out, I tell him, when he wrote that I might
graze a pony on the pasture below, whenever I have a market-cart. I ask
him if he expects me to water it here.”

So saying, Woodruffe led the way to one of the ditches which, instead of
fences, bounded his land; and, moving the mass of weeds with a stick,
showed the water beneath, covered with a whitish bubbling scum, the
smell of which was insufferable.

“There is plenty of manure there,” said Woodruffe: “that is the only
thing that can be said for it. We’ll make manure of it, and sweep out
the ditch, and deepen it, and narrow it, and not use up so many feet of
good ground for a ditch that does nothing but poison us. A fence is
better than a ditch any day. I’ll have a fence, and still save ten feet
of ground, the whole way down.”

“There is a great deal to do here,” observed the wife.

“And good reward when it is done,” Woodruffe replied. “If I can fall in
with a stout labourer, he and Allan and I can get our spring crops
prepared for; and I expect they will prove the goodness of the soil.
There is Fleming. Supper is ready, I suppose.”

The children were called, but both were so wet and dirty that it took
twice as long as usual to make them fit to sit at table: and apologies
were made for keeping supper waiting. The grave half-hour before Moss’s
bedtime was occupied with the most solemn piece of instruction he had
ever had in his life. His father carried him up to the railway, and made
him understand the danger of playing there. He was never to play there.
His father would go up with him once a day, and let him see a train
pass: and this was the only time he was ever to mount the steps, except
by express leave. Moss was put to bed in silence, with his father’s
deep, grave voice sounding in his ears.

“He will not forget it,” declared his father. “He will give us no
trouble about the railway. The next thing is the pit. Allan, I expect
you to see that he does not fall into the pit. In time, we shall teach
him to take care of himself; but you must remember, meanwhile, that the
pit is six feet deep—deeper than I am high: and that the edge is the
same clay that you slipped on so often this morning.”

“Yes, father,” said Allan, looking as grave as if power of life and
death were in his hands.


                           CHAPTER THE THIRD.

One fine morning in the next spring, there was more stir and
cheerfulness about the Woodruffes’ dwelling than there had been of late.
The winter had been somewhat dreary; and now the spring was anxious; for
Woodruffe’s business was not, as yet, doing very well. His hope, when he
bought his pony and cart, was to dispatch by railway to the town the
best of his produce, and sell the commoner part in the country
neighbourhood, sending his cart round within the reach of a few miles.
As it turned out, he had nothing yet to send to the town, and his agent
there was vexed and displeased. No radishes, onions, early salads, or
rhubarb were ready: and it would be sometime yet before they were.

“I am sure I have done everything I could,” said Woodruffe to Fleming,
as they both lent a hand to put the pony into the cart. “Nobody can say
that I have not made drains enough, or that they are not deep enough;
yet the frost has taken such a hold that one would think we were living
in the north of Scotland, instead of in Staffordshire.”

“It has not been a severe season either,” observed Fleming.

“There’s the vexation,” replied Woodruffe. “If it had been a season
which set us at defiance, and made all sufferers alike, one must just
submit to a loss, and go on again, like one’s neighbours. But, you see,
I am cut out, as my agent says, from the market. Everybody else has
spring vegetables there, as usual. It is no use telling him that I never
failed before. But I know what it is. It is yonder great ditch that does
the mischief.”

“Why, we have nothing to do with that.”

“That is the very reason. If it was mine or yours, do you think I should
not have taken it in hand long ago? All my draining goes for little
while that shallow ditch keeps my ground a continual sop. It is all
uneven along the bottom;—not the same depth for three feet together
anywhere, and not deep enough by two feet in any part. So there it is,
choked up and putrid; and, after an hour or two of rain, my garden gets
such a soaking, that the next frost is destruction.”

“I will speak about it again,” said Fleming. “We must have it set right
before next winter.”

“I think we have seen enough of the uselessness of speaking,” replied
Woodruffe, gloomily. “If we tease the gentry any more, they may punish
you for it. I would show them my mind by being off,—throwing up my
bargain at all costs, if I had not put so much into the ground that I
have nothing left to move away with.”

“Don’t be afraid for me,” said Fleming, cheerfully, “It was chiefly my
doing that you came here, and I must try my utmost to obtain fair
conditions for you. We must remember that the benefit of your outlay has
all to come.”

“Yes; I can’t say we have got much of it yet.”

“By next winter,” continued Fleming, “your privet hedges and screens
will have grown up into some use against the frost; and your own
drainage——. Come, come, Allan, my boy! be off! It is getting late.”

Allan seemed to be idling, re-arranging his bunches of small radishes,
and little bundles of rhubarb, in their clean baskets, and improving the
stick with which he was to drive: but he pleaded that he was waiting for
Moss, and for the parcel which his mother was getting ready for Becky.

“Ah! my poor little girl!” said Woodruffe. “Give my love to her, and
tell her it will be a happy day when we can send for her to come home
again. Be sure you observe particularly, to tell us, how she looks; and,
mind, if she fancies anything in the cart,—any radishes, or whatever
else, because it comes out of our garden, be sure you give it her. I
wish I was going myself with the cart, for the sake of seeing Becky; but
I must go to work. Here have I been all the while, waiting to see you
off. Ah! here they come! you may always have notice now of who is coming
by that child’s crying.”

“O, father! not always!” exclaimed Allan.

“Far too often, I’m sure. I never knew a child grow so fractious. I am
saying, my dear,” to his wife, who now appeared with her parcel, and
Moss in his best hat, “that boy is the most fractious child we ever had:
and he is getting too old for that to begin now. How can you spoil him
so?”

“I am not aware,” said Mrs. Woodruffe, her eyes filling with tears,
“that I treat him differently from the rest: but the child is not well.
His chilblains tease him terribly; and I wish there may be nothing
worse.”

“Warm weather will soon cure the chilblains, and then I hope we shall
see an end of the fretting.—Now, leave off crying this minute, Moss, or
you don’t go. You don’t see me cry with my rheumatism, and that is worse
than chilblains, I can tell you.”

Moss tried to stifle his sobs, while his mother put more straw into the
cart for him, and cautioned Allan to be careful of him, for it really
seemed as if the child was tender all over. Allan seemed to succeed best
as comforter. He gave Moss the stick to wield, and showed him how to
make believe to whip the pony, so that before they turned the corner,
Moss was wholly engrossed with what he called driving.

“Yes, yes,” said Woodruffe, as he turned away, to go to his garden,
“Allan is the one to manage him. He can take as good care of him as any
woman, without spoiling him.”

Mrs. Woodruffe submitted to this in silence; but with the feeling that
she did not deserve it.

Becky had had no notice of this visit from her brothers: but no such
visit could take her by surprise; for she was thinking of her family all
day long, every day, and fancying she should see them, whichever way she
turned. It was not her natural destination to be a servant in a
farm-house: she had never expected it,—never been prepared for it. She
was as willing to work as any girl could be; and her help in the
gardening was beyond what most women are capable of: but it was a bitter
thing to her to go among strangers, and toil for them, when she knew
that she was wanted at home by father and mother, and brothers, and just
at present, by her sister too; for Mrs. Fleming’s confinement was to
happen this spring. The reason why Becky was not at home while so much
wanted there was, that there really was no accommodation for her. The
plan of sleeping all huddled together as they were at first would not
do. The girl herself could not endure it; and her parents felt that she
must be got out at any sacrifice. They had inquired diligently till they
found a place for her in a farm-house where the good wife promised
protection, and care, and kindness; and fulfilled her promise to the
best of her power.

“I hope they do well by you here, Becky,” asked Allan, when the surprise
caused by his driving up with a dash had subsided, and everybody had
retired, to leave Becky with her brothers for the few minutes they could
stay. “I hope they are kind to you here.”

“O, yes,—very kind. And I am sure you ought to say so to father and
mother.”

Becky had jumped into the cart, and had her arms round Moss, and her
head on his shoulder. Raising her head, and with her eyes filling as she
spoke, she inquired anxiously how the new cottages went on, and when
father and mother were to have a home of their own again. She owned, but
did not wish her father and mother to hear of it, that she did not like
being among such rough people as the farm servants. She did not like
some of the behaviour that she saw; and, still less, such talk as she
was obliged to overhear. When _would_ a cottage be ready for them?

“Why, the new cottages would soon be getting on now,” Allan said: but he
didn’t know; nobody fancied the look of them. He saw them just after the
foundations were laid; and the enclosed parts were like a clay-puddle.
He did not see how they were ever to be improved; for the curse of wet
seemed to be on them, as upon everything about the Station. Fleming’s
cottage was the best he had seen, after all, if only it was twice as
large. If anything could be done to make the new cottages what cottages
should be, it would be done: for every body agreed that the railway
gentlemen desired to do the best for their people, and to set an example
in that respect: but it was beyond anybody’s power to make wet clay as
healthy as warm gravel. Unless they could go to work first to dry the
soil, it seemed a hopeless sort of affair.

“But, I say, Becky,” pursued Allan, “you know about my garden—that
father gave me a garden of my own.”

Becky’s head was turned quite away; and she did not look round, when she
replied,

“Yes; I remember. How does your garden get on?”

There was something in her voice which made her brother lean over and
look into her face; and, as he expected, tears were running down her
cheeks.

“There now!” said he, whipping the back of the cart with his stick;
“something must be done, if you can’t get on here.”

“O! I can get on. Be sure you don’t tell mother that I can’t get on, or
anything about it.”

“You look healthy, to be sure.”

“To be sure I am. Don’t say any more about it. Tell me about your
garden.”

“Well: I am trying what I can make of it, after I have done working with
father. But it takes a long time to bring it round.”

“What! is the wet there, too?”

“Lord, yes! The wet was beyond everything at first. I could not leave
the spade in the ground ten minutes, if father called me, but the water
was standing in the hole when I went back again. It is not so bad now,
since I made a drain to join upon father’s principal one; and father
gave me some sand, and plenty of manure: but it seems to us that manure
does little good. It won’t sink in when the ground is so wet.”

“Well, there will be the summer next, and that will dry up your garden.”

“Yes. People say the smells are dreadful in hot weather, though. But we
seem to get used to that. I thought it sickly work, just after we came,
going down to get osiers, and digging near the big ditch that is our
plague now: but somehow, it does not strike me now as it did then,
though Fleming says it is getting worse every warm day. But come—I must
be off. What will you help yourself to? And don’t forget your parcel.”

Becky’s great anxiety was to know when her brothers would come again. O!
very often, she was assured—oftener and oftener as the vegetables came
forward: whenever there were either too many or too few to send to the
town by rail.

After Becky had jumped down, the farmer and one of the men were seen to
be contemplating the pony.

“What have you been giving your pony lately?” asked the farmer of Allan.
“I ask as a friend, having some experience of this part of the country.
Have you been letting him graze?”

“Yes, in the bit of meadow that we have leave for. There is a good deal
of grass there, now. He has been grazing there these three weeks.”

“On the meadow where the osier beds are? Ay! I knew it, by the look of
him. Tell your father that if he does not take care, his pony will have
the staggers in no time. An acquaintance of mine grazed some cattle
there once; and in a week or two, they were all feverish, so that the
butcher refused them on any terms; and I have seen more than one horse
in the staggers, after grazing in marshes of that sort.”

“There is fine thick grass there, and plenty of it,” said Allan, who did
not like that anybody but themselves should criticise their new place
and plans.

“Ay, ay; I know,” replied the farmer. “But if you try to make hay of
that grass, you’ll be surprised to find how long it takes to make, and
how like wool it comes out at last. It is a coarse grass, with no
strength in it; and it must be a stronger beast than this that will bear
feeding on it. Just do you tell your father what I say, that’s all; and
then he can do as he pleases: but I would take a different way with that
pony, without loss of time, if it was mine.”

Allan did not much like taking this sort of message to his father, who
was not altogether so easy to please as he used to be. If anything vexed
him ever so little, he always began to complain of his rheumatism—and he
now complained of his rheumatism many times in a day. It was managed,
however, by tacking a little piece of amusement and pride upon it. Moss
was taught, all the way as they went home, after selling their
vegetables, how much everything sold for; and he was to deliver the
money to his father, and go through his lesson as gravely as any big
man. It succeeded very well. Everybody laughed. Woodruffe called the
child his little man-of-business; gave him a penny out of the money he
brought; and when he found that the child did not like jumping as he
used to do, carried him up to the railway to listen for the whistle, and
see the afternoon train come up, and stop a minute, and go on again.




                       TOPOGRAPHY AND TEMPERANCE.

                     FROM MR. CHRISTOPHER SHRIMBLE.


 “MR. CONDUCTOR,

“Sir, I take up my pen to tell you what’s going to happen if the cause
of temperance is to be allowed to have unlicensed power to unlicense all
the public-houses. We have heard a good deal about the advantages of
Temperance (and I don’t deny them), but Mr. Ledru Rollin has taught me
to look closer than ever to the dark side of things, and tee-totalism
has its dark side like everything else; it is not all clear water, I can
tell you. I look forward to the time when strong liquors will be
abolished, and pot-houses taken from the corners of the streets or
shifted from the sides of the road, and I say, ‘how _shall_ I find my
way about?’

“For the fact is; Sir, public-houses are the great land-marks of the
country. Whether you are benighted in a Northumberland moor; lost in a
Devonshire lane (the one thing in nature which it is well known has no
end); whether you are cast away in a river; left without a clue upon
Salisbury Plain; or reduced to a state of topographical despair in a
Warwickshire wood; the first person you meet—be it he or she, gentle or
simple, old or young, a genius or an idiot—will assuredly convince you
that the only rural means of directing you are the names and signs of
places of public entertainment. ‘Go on straight till you come to the
Green Lion, then turn to the left close to the Goat and Compasses, and
after you have passed the Plough, bear off to the right; and, opposite
the Jolly Gardeners, you will see a lane: go down that lane till you
have to cross a brook by the side of the Bottle and Bagpipes, and when
you have got to the Three Whistles and Cockchafer further down, get over
a stile next to the Tinker and Turkey-Cock, take the first to the
left—and that’s it.’ Such were the directions by which I found my old
friend, Groggles, last Monday. Without the signs I have mentioned, I
never should have found Groggles to this day.

“Now, Sir, I trust the advocates of temperance will pause before they
wash away the land-marks of England (Tooting included), in order to
substitute water-marks. How are we to find our way about without signs,
I wonder? for I suppose these will not be allowed to stand when the
houses behind them are taken away. Do the great Father Mathews of this
age intend—like the monks of old—to christen the wells, and to give
names to the pumps, and springs, and fountains, and conduits? Indeed I
hope they do; for these I venture to say will be the only taps they
intend leaving to a future generation.

“Unless, Sir, they wish the topography of our native land to be utterly
confused, and desire to make voluntary locomotion impossible (I call
railways compulsory travelling, for you must go where they choose to
take you), I do intreat of them to leave us their signs, whatever they
do with the inns. Why not move the former to stand sponsors to their
new-fangled watering places? Take the ‘Puncheon of Rum’ from what used
to be the posting-house (before steam blew post-horses off the road) and
stick it on the parish pump. Let wayside wells be ornamented with
effigies of ‘Topers Heads’; transfer the ‘Barrel of Beer’ from the
village inn to the village fountain, and the ‘Jolly Full Bottle’ from
the alehouse to the conduit. Then, when a man comes to the picture of
three drunken soldiers, and the inscription, ‘The Rendezvous,’ he will
know it means a reservoir, or regular meeting of the waters. The
‘Punch-Bowl,’ in gold letters, will indicate a water-trough; the ‘Black
Jack’ would give a significant license for water to be drunk on the
premises; and the ‘Sir John Barleycorn’ would indicate that a good
supply of the ale of our first parent is not far off.

“I do hope my suggestion will be complied with. The tavern signs of
England are a great topographical institution. If they will not take
them down, the Temperance Movement may do its worst for me. I, and a
good many others who live out of town and don’t carry lanterns at night,
will still be able to find our way about, and the agricultural
population will be able to show us when we have lost it. In that case,
the Green Dragons, Marquises of Granby, Roses and Crowns, Bears and
Buttermilks, Bulls in the Pounds, Stars and Stumps, with innumerable
other signs dear to the eyes and ready to the tongues of unconverted
tipplers for the behoof of way-beguiled strangers, would not be utterly
lost to the land. Without them, I venture to assert, in conclusion, in
the words of the late Mr. Pope, England (Tooting included) will be ‘a
mighty maze without a plan.’

                            “I am, &c., &c.
                         “CHRISTOPHER SHRIMBLE.
                        “Paradise Row, Tooting.”




                      THE LATE AMERICAN PRESIDENT.


Towards the close of the last century there was a movement of settlers
to the frontiers of Kentucky. The new comers to the then unsettled
district were from various parts of the American continent, and each of
the pioneers who thus cast his lot upon the extreme verge of
civilisation made his account for holding his homestead by aid of his
rifle, against the attacks of the denizens of the neighbouring forests.
Sometimes the enemy was only in shape of a wolf or a bear—oftentimes in
that of an Indian. In either case the farmer had to maintain his ground
by the strong hand, in those days the only law that held sway in the
backwoods. In such a state of affairs it is clear that none but bold
spirits would venture to found a home on the frontier; yet such were not
wanting; and amongst them was a farmer, who at an earlier period of his
life had left the plough to take up arms in defence of American
independence. In that rough and ready service he had gained the often
quickly-acquired rank of Colonel; but the war ceasing, he, like others
among his patriotic countrymen, quietly returned to his more peaceful
occupation as a farmer; choosing a location where land was plenty and
cheap to those who had the courage to hold it where Indians and other
dangerous neighbours were abundant. The sons of such a man, nurtured in
such a spot, might well be expected to inherit the enterprise, courage,
and hardihood which distinguished their parent. Handling a rifle as soon
as they were strong enough to lift one; accustomed to hunting excursions
and “camping out;” working now at the plough, now in building up a barn,
or in filling it when complete; driving the waggon and its load to a
distant market, and bringing back at any hour, and in all seasons, the
stores that varied their farm-grown contributions to the larder; and
when winter-time brought comparative leisure, turning to books for
almost the only education procurable in the rough and primitive region
they inhabited;—boys, so reared, could scarcely be other than bold,
energetic, and fruitful in resources, and equal in after life to the
shifting exigencies of an active military career. From such a parent,
and such a childhood and youth, and with such an early training, sprang
President and General Zachary Taylor, whose recent death our
Transatlantic brethren are even now deploring; and the story of whose
life their journals will help us to tell.

Zachary Taylor before he was twenty-one volunteered to leave home on a
military expedition needed by the exigencies of the time. This, his
first essay in war, proved very harmless; for no enemy was found, and he
soon returned to his father’s farm, with a taste, however, for the new
life he had made this short trial of. The taste thus acquired induced
him to accept with great alacrity an opportunity that subsequently
offered of joining the regular army of the United States, which he did
in 1803, with the rank of lieutenant. Shortly afterwards an occasion
arose for distinguishing himself, and he did not let it pass unimproved.
He defended a post called Fort Harrison, against great odds; and by the
check thus given to a large hostile party of Indians, saved a frontier
from devastation. This gallant commencement was followed by a succession
of equally noticeable exploits. He courted every chance of securing
active service, and in succession won new reputation in contests with
the Indians, with the English, and lastly with the Mexicans. Since it
was with this last opponent that his chief battles were fought, and his
really important victories won; and as those victories have gained an
European reputation from the fact that they led to the acquisition of
the real land of gold—El Dorado—California itself; we may glance over
the events that induced and characterised the strife, and led to so
memorable a result.

Mexico and the United States had long had causes of quarrel; not the
least of which was that the Mexicans got into debt to the Yankees, and
would not pay what they admitted to be due. With several such unsettled
and unsatisfactory accounts on hand, the Texas difficulty arose, and a
large body of the Texians declaring for annexation with the United
States, the few scruples that stood in the way of such an increase of
dominion were quickly overlooked, and the large and fertile province was
incorporated in the Union. Half such a cause of quarrel was enough to
secure a declaration of war from a country like Mexico—_a country that
has gone through eighteen revolutions in twenty-five years_—and
accordingly war began. The Mexicans took steps for re-assuming the lost
Texas, when, on the 4th of February, 1846, General Taylor received
orders to march, with a force of three thousand men under his command,
to the Rio Grande, the western limit of the newly-attached State. The
President, for the time being, of Mexico claimed Texas as a revolted
province, and hastened to submit the question to the ordeal of battle.
The Mexicans shed the first blood. They took some prisoners—some
Americans—and shot them in cold blood; and soon afterwards they captured
more Americans, including some women, whose bodies were discovered
subsequently with their throats cut. This brutality added fuel to the
flame before existing, and the struggle began that ended in the capture
of Mexico and the cession of California.

The early days of the war were characterised by many acts of daring
bravery. Amongst others, we find mention of the feat performed by a
Captain Walker. The Americans were in total ignorance of the movements
of the enemy, when they heard cannonading in the direction of a fort
with which they had been unable to keep open communications. Taylor
dispatched a squadron of cavalry, who returned without definite
information, and the General was in suspense as to the condition of his
friends in the fort, when Captain Walker arrived in the camp bearing
dispatches from the leader of the beleaguered party in Fort Brown. He
had left the small stronghold under the cover of night, and with no
other guide than the wind on his cheek had tracked his way through the
enemy’s camp, and through the wild, roadless country that lay between it
and the army of General Taylor. He brought the news that the Mexicans
had attacked Fort Brown, opening upon it a heavy cannonade. The besieged
had, however, returned the fire with spirit, and had succeeded in
dismounting some of the Mexican guns. General Taylor at once set off to
raise the siege, taking with him two thousand three hundred men. With
this force he encountered the enemy at Palo Alta, and the battle so
named was fought. For five hours was the strife continued, when the
attacking party carried the day. The Mexicans fell back.

On the next morning another engagement took place with the same result.
The Mexicans lost a thousand men; some cannon; and had one of their
generals taken prisoner;—and Fort Brown was relieved.

The war had thus commenced. The Mexicans loudly denounced what they
called the dismemberment of their empire; the Americans heard with
evident joy that their small army had won two battles of an enemy who
had provoked the encounter.

President Polk (the history of whose administration, by L. B. Chase,
affords us some of these particulars) was, after much debate, authorised
to call into the field volunteers, “to serve for a year or during the
war.” Double the number asked-for soon offered themselves, and General
Taylor found himself at the head of a force comparatively undisciplined
but eager to advance, and equal to almost any amount of endurance in the
prosecution of the enterprise on hand. The temper of the new levies was
soon tried. The fight at Monterey was a repetition, on a larger scale,
of the scenes and successes near Fort Brown. The Americans attacked and
put to flight an enemy four times as numerous as the attacking force.
The Mexicans seemed to think their invaders invincible; victory for the
American flag was the result of each encounter, and before long General
Taylor had a greater extent of country in his possession than the whole
force under his command could well grasp with security. At this juncture
General Scott, who for some time before this war began, had been
Commander-in-Chief of the American Army, finding that great renown was
being won by his junior officer, wrote from New York to General Taylor
to state his intention of taking command in Mexico, and leading forward
an additional force in advance of the positions conquered and held by
Taylor. General Scott decided upon attacking Vera Cruz, and Taylor,
being ordered to act on the defensive, complained bitterly when he found
that Scott was to withdraw from his command all the regular troops he
had, with the exception of one thousand men, leaving him to defend his
position chiefly with volunteers, and these in deficient force. The
military law of obedience to orders, however, left no choice, and though
stating his belief in the weakness of his army he declined to fall back,
urging the bad effect such a step must have on the minds of his new
levies. He enjoyed the prestige of successive victories, and by
supporting that alone could he hope to maintain his small force against
an enemy so largely outnumbering him.

About twelve thousand Americans had marched under Scott against Vera
Cruz; about five thousand mustered under the flag of Taylor, when the
news came that Santa Anna, with an army of twenty thousand strong, was
marching upon the scattered and weakened forces of the smallest of the
two American armies. Scott was too far on his way towards the sea coast
to march to the rescue of Taylor, and the latter was left to do his best
alone. On the morning of the 23rd of February, 1847, the unequal battle
began. General Taylor had secured for his five thousand men a strong
position at Buena Vista, in which the artillery of his antagonist could
not readily be brought into play. When Santa Anna approached with twenty
thousand men, he sent a message to Taylor to surrender at discretion; a
request which the American chieftain abruptly declined, and the fight
began. The contest was long and doubtful. The disparity of numbers was
soon felt, and the feeling that all depended on their valour nerved the
attacked party to greater desperation in their defence. Less than five
hundred of Taylor’s men were regular troops; more than four thousand of
them, but a few months before, were at work in the fields, and on
wharfs, and in warehouses in the States. But volunteers though they
were, no veterans could have done more. About seven hundred of them
fell, killed and wounded, but night, which stayed the battle, saw the
Mexicans in retreat before a force over which, in the morning, they
expected a rapid and easy victory. The gallantry of the Anglo-Saxons
prevailed over the numbers of their semi-Spanish antagonists, and Santa
Anna retreated with an army weakened by the loss of nearly two thousand
killed and wounded. “Along the road leading from Buena Vista to Agua
Nueva (says Mr. Chase), a scene of horror was presented on the night of
the 23rd of February. The means of transporting the wounded being
extremely limited, they were left to struggle with suffering and with
death, and the sighing of the wind and the cry of the wolf were their
only requiem. Abandoned to their fate, without food, parched with
thirst, without medical aid, and with no shelter to protect them from
the piercing night air, they awaited the moment when death should
release them from their suffering. The main body of the army reached
Agua Nueva at midnight, and, dying with thirst, many of the soldiers
plunged into a stagnant sheet of water which, in many cases, produced
instant death. Suffering from the want of food and water, dispirited and
disheartened by the result of the battle, they presented a striking
contrast to that splendid array which, buoyant with hope and confident
of victory, had attacked the American army.”

Many anecdotes of this period of Taylor’s career are told with pride by
his countrymen. Here are some of them which amusingly illustrate the
character of the man.

First we have one descriptive of his personal appearance.

  “Winding down a hill near Mont Morales, the column is halted to let a
  troop of horse pass. Do you see at their head a plain looking
  gentleman, mounted upon a brown horse, having upon his head a Mexican
  sombrero, dressed in a brown olive-coloured loose frock coat, grey
  pantaloons, wool socks, and shoes? From under the frock appears the
  scabbard of a sword; he has the eye of a hawk, and every lineament of
  his countenance is expressive of honesty, and a calm determined mind.
  The plain looking gentleman is General Zachary Taylor, who, with his
  military family, and a squadron of dragoons as an escort, is on his
  way to the front.”

A few more anecdotes will serve to show the peculiarities of the now
deceased general.

  “After the capitulation of Monterey, the officers of the army used
  their exertions to get General Taylor to move from his camp at St.
  Domingo to the Plaza, and there establish his head quarters. Several
  public buildings were examined and decided upon as suitable. After
  considerable persuasion General Taylor consented to move, at the same
  time giving the following instructions:—‘Choose a pleasant location—a
  house that is surrounded by a garden filled with large trees; put up a
  tent under the trees for my residence, and you [the staff and other
  officers] may have the house in front.’ It is needless to add, that no
  more was said about the head quarters being removed into the city of
  Monterey.

  “In the early part of a severe action, when the enemy had succeeded in
  turning the left wing of his little army, and secured a seeming
  advantageous position in rear of their line, at the base of the
  mountain; when a portion of the troops, overpowered by the superiority
  of numbers, were forced to retire in “hot haste;” when, indeed, the
  fortunes of the day seemed extremely problematical, an officer of high
  rank rode up to General Taylor, and announced the temporary success of
  the enemy, and expressed his fears for the success of the army.
  Taylor’s reply was characteristic of the man. ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘so long
  as we have thirty muskets, we can never be conquered! If those troops
  who have abandoned their position can be rallied and brought into
  action again, I will take three thousand of the enemy prisoners. Had I
  the disposition of the enemy’s forces, I would myself place them just
  where they are.’ The officer resumed his duties with a light heart,
  considering that the battle, in spite of appearance, was already won.”

The volunteers who flocked to his standard soon learned to regard the
old general as a friend as well as a commander.

  “As proof of his humanity, it is recorded that Taylor, before leaving
  the battle-ground of Buena Vista, ordered upwards of forty mule loads
  of provisions to be sent from his camp to Incarnacion, for the use of
  the wounded Mexicans who were in the hospital there, and starving from
  hunger.

  “Taylor told General Ricardo that General Ampudia had written to him,
  stating that the war should be conducted in accordance with the usages
  of civilised nations, but that after the last battle they had
  barbarously stripped and mutilated our dead. To this charge General
  Ricardo replied, that ‘this was done by the rancheros, who could not
  be controlled.’ ‘I am coming over, and will control them for you,’
  said Taylor.

  “The general had assembled his council of officers the night previous
  to the conflict of Buena Vista, for the purpose of hearing their
  suggestions in relation to the approaching battle. A good deal of
  uneasiness was exhibited—objections were raised—the disadvantages of
  the immense ‘odds’ were presented—propositions to retire and wait for
  reinforcements were urged—some were for giving the enemy battle—and
  one proposed that the American army should ‘fall back’—when the old
  hero’s opinion was asked. ‘Are you all done, gentlemen?’ Every one had
  finished. ‘Then, gentlemen, I will adjourn this meeting,’ coolly added
  Taylor, ‘_till after the fight to-morrow_.’ ‘Good!’ was the unanimous
  response. The battle was fought and—won.”

But we must return to our narrative. Whilst Taylor was holding his
position in the interior, General Scott was approaching the sea coast,
and a naval force being there ready to co-operate with him, the news
that reached Santa Anna not long after he had been beaten by Taylor was,
that the Americans had bombarded and captured Vera Cruz. The Mexicans
were deeply dispirited; intestine quarrels and partisan disputes, added
to the presence of a foreign enemy, rendered them more than ordinarily
indisposed to make any really great and national exertions for their
defence. Santa Anna had by his personal crimes gained many enemies, and
there were not wanting Mexicans who secretly hailed the advent of the
Americans rather as an advantage than a calamity. Hence, when Scott
advanced from his newly acquired stronghold upon the city of Mexico
itself, Santa Anna could at first bring only six thousand men to oppose
his march, and these were met and beaten at Jalapa by the Americans.
Three desperately contested battles soon followed, in which the
invaders, though suffering most severely, came off victorious. In one of
these, three thousand one hundred Americans met and defeated fourteen
thousand Mexicans, leaving, however, seven hundred of their comrades
dead upon the field. The final attack was upon the city itself, and by
the 14th of September, Santa Anna had fled; the city of the Montezumas
was in the hands of Brother Jonathan, and the stars and stripes waved on
the national palace of Mexico.

General Taylor never entirely forgave the Commander-in-Chief for taking
from him the best part of his force, and he contended that had Scott
threatened Vera Cruz only, and so divided the attention of Santa Anna,
leaving the army at Monterey in its full force to march thence upon the
capital, Mexico would have been taken at a less cost of time and blood
than was ultimately expended on the conquest of the place. So also
thought a large section of the American people, and though another
commander actually took possession of the capital, Taylor was popularly
regarded as the real hero of the Mexican war. This feeling was
strengthened when the series of quarrels began between Scott and his
companions in arms, and between that general and the American Minister,
Mr. Trist, deputed to arrange a treaty between the two countries; and
when Scott left the army in charge of General Butler to return in
disgust to the United States, there was no officer in all Mexico, whose
reputation could stand in competition with that of “Old Rough and
Ready,” as Taylor was now called. He was looked upon as the one heroic
leader of the successful war.

Bayard Taylor, after his stay in the city of Mexico, says he does not
believe that Mexican enmity has been increased by the war, but rather
the contrary. During all his stay in the country he did not hear a
bitter word against the Americans. The officers of the United States’
army seem to have made friends everywhere, and the war, by throwing the
natives into direct contact with foreigners, greatly abated their former
prejudices against all not of Spanish blood. The departure of the
American troops is declared to have been a cause of general lamentation
amongst the tradesmen of Mexico and Vera Cruz. Nothing was more common
to me (continues the traveller) than to hear Generals Scott and Taylor
mentioned by the Mexicans in terms of entire respect and admiration. “If
you see General Taylor,” said a gentleman to his namesake Bayard, “tell
him that the Mexicans all honour him. He has never given up their houses
to plunder; he has helped their wounded and suffering; he is as humane
as he is brave, and they can never feel enmity towards him.”

Not without contest and difficulties, but still by a considerable
majority, General Taylor was in November, 1848, rewarded for his many
years’ services by being installed in the highest position his
countrymen had in their gift. They made him President of the United
States, and his term of office in that capacity commenced in March,
1849, under the favourable impression created by the following
straightforward declaration:—

  “I intend that all new appointments shall be of men honest and
  capable. I do not intend to remove any man from office because he
  voted against me, for that is a freeman’s privilege; but such
  desecration of office and official patronage as some of them have been
  guilty of to secure the election of the master whom they served as
  slaves is degrading to the character of American freemen, and will be
  a good cause for removal of friend or foe. The office of the
  government should be filled with men of all parties; and as I expect
  to find many of those now holding to be honest, good men, and as the
  new appointments will, of course, be whigs, that will bring about this
  result. Although I do not intend to allow an indiscriminate removal,
  yet it grieves me to think that it will be necessary to require a
  great many to give place to better men. As to my cabinet, I intend
  that all interests and all sections of the country shall be
  represented, but not, as some of the newspapers will have it, all
  parties. I am a whig, as I have always been free to acknowledge, but I
  do not believe that these who voted for me wish me to be a mere
  partisan President, and I shall, therefore, try to be a President of
  the American people. As to the new territory, it is now free, and
  slavery cannot exist there without a law of Congress authorising it,
  and that I do not believe they will ever pass. I was opposed to the
  acquisition of this territory, as I also was to the acquisition of
  Texas. I was opposed to the war, and, although by occupation a
  warrior, I am a peace man.”

His subsequent conduct tended to realise the hopes created by this
opening avowal. But a life of hardship and an age verging on sixty
years, prepared him, but indifferently, to meet the renewed exertions
required by his new position. Resigning the panoply of the general to
assume the garb of the President, he gained a respite from the toils of
war to accept the still more soul-wearying contests, jealousies, and
responsibilities of civil government. With soldierly determination,
however, he addressed himself to the task, and, like a true hero, fell
with harness on his back. He was born on the 9th of November, 1786—he
died on the 9th of July, 1850. His last words were:—“I am prepared. I
have endeavoured to do my duty.” May all deathbeds be consoled by the
truthful utterance of such a sentiment.

                  *       *       *       *       *

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------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 ● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
 ● Renumbered footnotes.
 ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
 ● The caret (^) is used to indicate superscript, whether applied to a
     single character (as in 2^d) or to an entire expression (as in
     1^{st}).

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78192 ***