The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. XX, No. 1014,
June 3, 1899, by Various

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Title: The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. XX, No. 1014, June 3, 1899

Author: Various

Release Date: October 20, 2019 [EBook #60536]

Language: English

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[Illustration: THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER

VOL. XX.—NO. 1014.]      JUNE 3, 1899.      [PRICE ONE PENNY.]




ERE THE HARVEST TIME.

BY CHRISTIAN BURKE.


[Illustration: “UNDERNEATH THE SUMMER SUN.”]

_All rights reserved._]

    All the earth lies hushed and silent,
      Underneath the summer sun,
    Gardens blush with later roses,
    In the pleasant orchard closes
      Fruits are ripening one by one.

    Cool between its fringing grasses,
      Drowsily the river flows,
    Singing, but the sudden hushes,
    Not as in the spring it rushes,
      Widened by the melting snows.

    Full-leafed trees scarce lift their branches,
      Voiceless all the feathered band;
    Fledglings faltering flights are trying,
    Ere the moment comes for flying
      To some far-off foreign land.

    Gone the thrill and stir of Springtide—
      Ere the year had reached its prime,
    Nature laboured without measure,
    Now she dreams in golden leisure—
      Resting until harvest time.




THE HOUSE WITH THE VERANDAH.

BY ISABELLA FYVIE MAYO, Author of “Other People’s Stairs,” “Her Object
in Life,” etc.


CHAPTER X.

“WHERE IS TRUTH?”

Jessie appeared. It was marvellous to note how the traces of her recent
outbreak had nearly disappeared. She looked almost her old decorous
self, save for a slight tearfulness and quivering of the lips, the
result of some conversation which had been passing between her and Miss
Latimer downstairs.

She and her cousin looked at each other. Jessie’s eyes might fall,
shamed, before Lucy, but they met the other woman’s boldly, almost with
a scowl.

“Come, Jessie,” said the woman, in a wheedling tone, “I’m sorry to hear
what’s happened; and she says you’re to come away with me at once.”

Jessie took no notice of her, but turned to Mrs. Challoner.

“Well, m’m,” she said, “I beg your pardon for anything that’s
happened. I’ve often wondered what you thought o’ me speaking so much
o’ the master, an’ me never set eyes on him. But ’twas because I was
a-thinkin’ o’ you, an’ a-prayin’ you may never know what it is to be a
widow-woman. I’d have kep’ all right if I’d got into such a place as
this when Alick was took—that I do believe—but there I was, set down
with those grumpy old people, with never a pleasant word; and there
wasn’t any comfort to be had but just a sip of what they was always
a-sippin’ themselves. An’ it was worse when the old lady was left
alone.”

“And yet the minister and the lawyer thought so well of you, Jessie,”
said Lucy, with grave reproach.

“I was all right so far as the lawyer ever knew,” Jessie answered. “An’
as for the minister, he sipped his drappie too, an’ he never saw me the
waur o’ mine, which is mair than I can say o’ him.”

“Hush, Jessie,” said Mrs. Challoner. “But how could you do your duty to
your aged mistress if you got into such a state as you were yesterday?”

“I never did that till I went to live with that woman there,” she
answered, turning on the cousin with ill-repressed fury. “When they
asked me up to London they knew I’d got my nice little legacy. She
wouldn’t have let her husband invite me but for that!” she interpolated
bitterly. “And they didn’t want me to go till it was all spent, at
least she didn’t!” she said, with an acrimonious emphasis on the
feminine pronoun. “And she used to treat me plentiful, an’ me just
pinin’ with loneliness and homesickness; and then when my money was
gone there I was, an’ she run me into debt, and turned up here and
bullied my first month’s wages out of me, an’ when you came down on
Christmas Eve, like an angel, and put my next month’s wages into my
hand, thinks I to myself, somebody’ll turn up to-morrow and get it all
away, an’ I thought I’d just run out and buy myself something in case
I got a cold, or was too low to get well through my cooking, and then
somehow that picture that hangs on the kitchen wall (‘The Empty Chair,’
m’m, it’s called) was just too much for my spirits, and I took a drop
and lost my reckoning, and there it was! Oh, m’m, may you never know
what it is to be a poor widow-woman!”

How much was merely maudlin, or how much was the incoherent cry of a
weak soul that had lost itself in loneliness and neglect, Lucy could
not decide. It was possibly less the woman’s words than the chord of
Lucy’s own life which they reached, that brought tears to Lucy’s eyes.

“I’m not asking you to give me another trial, m’m,” went on the
miserable creature, in a tone which yet had something of a forlorn hope
in it.

Lucy could not answer, but her head gave a half-involuntary shake.

“I’m not asking you to give me another trial, m’m,” she repeated. “It’s
not for the likes o’ you. I see well enough what your life’s got to be,
and you’ve quite enough to do for yourself and the dear little master.”

“Oh, Mrs. Morison,” cried Lucy earnestly, “won’t you make an effort to
put this evil thing away? Though you must go out of this house, I will
do all I can to help you. I will try to get you into a Home, where they
will take care of you and help you to do right.”

Mrs. Morison did not answer at once. Perhaps a good impulse and an
evil habit contended within her. The habit conquered, as alas! a habit
generally does.

“I don’t need to go into a Home,” she said, with a soft stubbornness.
“I’ve just got to make up my mind to keep right. I don’t believe in
Homes. I’ve been, in a way, my own mistress all my life, being so much
trusted. If I take myself in hand, that’ll do.”

But what a big “if” that was! And what weakened will can ever raise
itself effectually, save by its first effort placing it in the good
grasp of a stronger will? Yet Lucy could urge no more. She could only
remind Mrs. Morison that if she really meant to keep her word and to
struggle on in honest sobriety, Lucy would stand her friend, so far
as she could, in truth and uprightness, would even recommend her as a
worker to any whose circumstances and sense of duty might incline them
to extend another chance to her, after hearing of her failing and its
possible recurrence.

Mrs. Morison thanked Lucy for so much “kindness.” But, even as she did
so, Lucy felt sadly sure that it would never be claimed. Then Mrs.
Morison said “good-bye,” and she and her cousin went away together. It
had been arranged that her boxes should be sent after her by a carrier.
Despite the acerbity the widow had shown towards her relative, and
despite the fact that one or the other of the pair had been telling
grievous untruths of the other, Lucy saw that they went down the street
laying their heads together in mutual confidences as if nothing had
come between them.

She turned from the window, so weary and disheartened that she felt
as if she had been beaten, body and soul. It was her first close
experience of the baffling contest with natures lacking all bottom of
truth and principle—natures like bogs, greened over with sentiment
and seeming, luring us to trust our foot upon them only to plunge us
in depression and defilement. It seemed to Lucy as if the fruitless
arguments and pleas of the last hour had taken more energy out of her
than even the long strain of yesterday. She did not yet realise that
where the nerves are concerned the whole of the back bill is always
added on to each fresh item.

As Lucy turned from the window she felt something at her feet. Stooping
in the twilight, she picked up the bright little ball, which Jessie
Morison had brought in for Hugh on Christmas Eve!

It was but a trifle, yet it finally overcame the weary lady. Oh, the
pity of it! Oh, the waste of poor human nature that still had so many
good qualities in it! Oh, the awful mixture of good and evil, of
selfishness and kindliness. Talk of the good in evil, and the evil in
good—as if there was some compensation in that weird mingling—why, it
is this very mingling which tries our fortitude and faith more than
anything else, and God sees more of this mingling than any human eye
can see. And God can bear it because He is God and is all goodness,
and knows the end. We can but lean our staggering strength against His
everlasting arm, assured that it can gather up what mortal powers must
drop.

Miss Latimer came into the parlour presently and found Lucy sitting in
the gathering darkness. The old governess was a wise little woman, and
instead of lighting the gas, she stirred the fire into a ruddy, dancing
blaze. Then she called Hugh, and sent him in “to talk to mamma.”
By-and-by she reappeared again, with the tea-tray and a delicious smell
of toast.

That recalled Lucy to her duties. She sprang up, protesting against
Miss Latimer having gone to work by herself, and she lit the gas and
closed the curtains. They had a cosy little meal, at which, for Hugh’s
sake, not a word was said of the recent domestic catastrophe.

When his mother took him off to bed, and heard him—though not without
a significant pondering pause—join “Mrs. Morison’s” name in his prayer
“for papa and mamma,” she remembered all Charlie had said to her, and
felt that the child’s simple affection in its ignorance and blindness
may reflect the heart of God more clearly than ours, blurred with
inevitable criticisms and repulsions.

When she had kissed him and was leaving the room, he called her back.

“Mamma!”

She turned at once, but he paused a moment. The child’s sensitive
nature had realised the moral atmosphere about him sufficiently to feel
that storms were there.

“Mamma!” again. Then in a whisper, “Will Mrs. Morison come back
to-morrow?”

“No, my dear.”

“Mamma, will she ever come back?”

“I do not know, dear. I fear not. If she gets better I think she will.”

“Is she ill, mamma?”

“Yes, dear; her soul is very ill. We must be very sorry for her.”

When she returned to the parlour Miss Latimer was sitting there. She
had taken a sock from Lucy’s work-basket and was darning it.

“Can you stay with me to-night, dear friend?” asked Mrs. Challoner.

“Yes,” she said; “to-night and to-morrow night. Then I shall have to go
home.”

There was no need for inquiry why. Miss Latimer was virtually retired
as a governess; but her tiny income sorely needed a supplement. She
secured this by reading aloud for two hours every morning to a blind
lady, whose house was not far from her lodgings, though a long way from
the Challoners’. The Christmas holidays, which had brought relatives to
visit her blind patroness, had set her free for three days.

“It is terribly hard that the few holidays of your industrious life
should be wasted as these have been,” remarked Lucy.

Miss Latimer laughed. She was a quaint little body, with a flashing of
energy about her which imparted something youthful to her sixty years.

“As it was bound to happen at all, my dear,” she said, “I am glad
it happened in my holidays, so that I have been free to be a little
helpful. Make the most of me while you have me. What step are you going
to take next?”

“My first step,” answered Lucy, a hard note sounding in her voice, “is
to destroy the last pages of my letter to Charlie. I had not brought
‘Mrs. Morison’ into it till Christmas Eve, so I can let it stand as it
is up to that date. I see that I ended my instalment of the 22nd by
writing that ‘Miss Latimer, Mr. Somerset, and Tom Black are to spend
Christmas with me, and we shall all talk about you and send you our
best wishes.’ This just comes to the very end of a page, so I shall
put in half a sheet without a date with just my last messages. I will
leave Christmas as in the future, where it was when I wrote that. What
a mockery it is to read what I wrote on Christmas Eve!” She covered it
over hastily, tore the sheet into tiny fragments, and dropped them into
the fire.

“Is this the first letter you are sending to your husband?” asked Miss
Latimer, to give a turn to Lucy’s bitter thoughts.

“My first letter—yes,” Lucy answered, “because Captain Grant was not
quite sure where the ship would touch. But to every port where she may
call I have sent postcards just assuring him of our well-being. Then,
if he can call for those, he goes on with an easy mind, and if he
can’t, why, there is really nothing lost.”

“You have not heard from him yet?” inquired the old lady.

“No,” said Lucy, “not yet. Charlie said he should keep a letter always
in progress, and despatch it home whenever that was possible. I begin
to look for one every morning now.”

They sat in silence for a while, then Lucy said abruptly—

“That poor woman! Her words haunt me! Perhaps, if she had not been left
a widow, she would now be a respected and worthy member of society.”

Miss Latimer looked up surprised. Lucy, who was gazing into the fire,
did not catch the expression, but went on—

“Did you have much talk with her? She came up from the kitchen crying.
You had made an impression on her. But what will rouse her will? To-day
she seemed to have no will—only wilfulness. And it was so awful to have
to speak to a woman with white hair as I was obliged to speak to her—a
woman who has been through trials and sorrows of which I know nothing.”

“I had some conversation with her,” said Miss Latimer. “She was
inclined to be confidential. But what makes you think that, if her
husband had lived, she would not have been as she is?”

“Because she said she got into the bad habit through living in
loneliness and dulness with people who were inclined to be topers
themselves,” answered Lucy. “One can understand how the temptation
could come, and how gradually one might slide down too deeply at last
to readily recover one’s footing.”

Miss Latimer looked puzzled and hesitated.

“But, my dear,” she said, “she told me that she first took to drinking
because her husband was such a terrible drunkard and ill-used her so
cruelly. She said to me, ‘Ah, m’m, you single ladies don’t know what
misery is, and mustn’t be hard on them that do!’ Then she said she
had kept straight for years because she lived with miserly old folks,
who never had liquor in their house, and who lived two miles from any
licensed premises. She said she thought she’d got such a mastery over
herself that she might venture to take “a little support” through her
Christmas cooking, but that the old craving came and re-enslaved her
before she was aware.”

The two friends’ eyes met, and they looked at each other with the
deprecatory, half-alarmed, half-shamed expression which always comes on
honest faces at any new discovery of human duplicity.

“What is true? What is false?” wailed Lucy. “It seems to me that she
adapted her stories to what she thought would best reach and touch
you or me. True, sometimes the same story sounds differently when
differently told and differently repeated. But I cannot see how these
two versions can have the same original. This awful falseness, Miss
Latimer, is even worse than the drunkenness.”

“My dear,” said the old lady, “it is the moral quagmire from which the
drunkenness springs, and, therefore, is ‘worse’ just as a quagmire is
‘worse’ than any coarse weed which springs from it—being bound to bear
such weeds, if not of one type, then of another.”

“It seems to me as if she was all dramatic impersonation,” Lucy
observed; “and still one cannot help loving and yearning over the
cheerful-faced working-woman seated knitting before her kitchen fire
with her dead husband’s lover-gift of a Bible lying on the dresser
behind her.”

Miss Latimer looked at Lucy.

“Just now,” she said, “I found that Bible; it was in the dustpan, with
a good many leaves roughly torn out.”

“She must have done that while she was—not herself,” said Lucy.

“No,” Miss Latimer persisted, “it was lying on the dresser all right
this morning long after she knew perfectly well what she was doing. It
must have been done about noon to-day.”

“But why should she do that?” urged Lucy. “Whatever is amiss with
her now, and whatever may be the truth of her history, why should
she suddenly and wantonly destroy something which she has evidently
cherished for so many years?”

Miss Latimer shook her head.

“My dear,” she answered, “I begin to suspect that this poor Bible may
have been but one of the ‘properties’ belonging to what you aptly
call her ‘dramatic impersonation’ of the respectable, faithful widow.
I would not be at all surprised if she picked it up at a second-hand
bookstall, and matched her story to its names and dates. Don’t think
me cynical. As a governess, I have lived in many houses, and have come
across some strange adventurers. How do we know that her name was ever
Jessie Milne, or that she was really a Mrs. Morison?”

“There were her credentials from Edinburgh,” explained Lucy; and then
she told Miss Latimer all about the lawyer’s letter and the minister’s
testimonial.

Miss Latimer sat and pondered.

“I may be wrong,” she said, “I may be carrying my suspicions too far.
We are all apt to do that when all firm ground of confidence is taken
from our feet. But, my dear Lucy, you should have never taken her in
on the strength of written characters of however fair seeming.”

“But how unjust that would be!” pleaded Lucy. “It would mean that if
a woman left the neighbourhood where she had worked, or if employers
themselves left it, then she would not be able to get another place.”

“No, no, Lucy,” explained the old lady, “there is a difference. A
personal interview between past and future employers is always best,
because, apart from the easiness with which questions are asked and
answered, it has an environment which tells a tale of itself. But it
is quite true that this cannot always be. Then the new mistress should
always address herself directly to the people willing to give ‘the
character.’ Even that leaves some opening for chicanery; but it is
small indeed compared with that which attends ready-made certificates.
You yourself should have written to the doctor and the lawyer.”

“I did not like the idea of the written character,” said Lucy, in
self-excuse. “I think I might have hesitated to take it from a supposed
former mistress. But these were professional men; they might not have
cared to be troubled with letters of inquiry in such matters; and then,
too, when she left Scotland, she had not thought of going at once in
quest of a situation. I assure you those letters seemed to be the
productions of educated men, and the paper they were on was stamped
with the lawyer’s address and with the name of the minister’s manse.”

“As I tell you, my dear, I may be going too far,” said Miss Latimer;
“but I assure you my experience in other cases justifies it. Do you
remember the addresses given?”

“No, I do not,” answered poor Lucy, who began to feel that she had
been woefully unwary. “And oh, if you had only seen how nice this Mrs.
Morison looked among all those other women, I’m sure you too would
have felt ready to trust her! How can one understand such people, who
know so well what ought to be, and who have it in them to simulate it
so perfectly when it suits them for a time, but who keep their other
nature all the same, always ready to spring to the front? How are we
to realise which is really they? Is it possible that they themselves
are not quite sure? Why, I really thought that the only fault to be
detected in Mrs. Morison was just a touch of self-satisfaction, a
little turning of the Pharisee’s nose returning thanks for superiority
over others.”

Miss Latimer shook her head.

“Ah, my dear,” she said, “you are diving deep into the abysses of
human nature. The questions you ask may be also put concerning very
different people from this poor woman. Perhaps such questions might be
asked, in a degree, concerning all of us—at least, until we begin to
put them to ourselves and to know all that is meant by God’s desiring
‘truth in the inward parts.’ Mrs. Morison tells lies. She is, according
to my belief, a very deliberate and skilful deceiver; but far be it
from me to say that her hypocrisies may not reveal what was once her
ideal—ay, and that, in some vague way, she may still mean to live up to
it—only foredoomed to failure because she begins with false pretences.
My dear, we talk about criminals and weak and fallen people of all
sorts as ‘having our common human nature’; but, talk as we may, we
rarely realise it. The temptations they have are so different that this
difference blinds us to the truth that their thoughts and feelings
and failures are made of the same stuff as our own. Mrs. Morison is
a deceiver of others; but it is quite possible that she is also a
self-deceiver.”

“I cannot see what interest such a capable woman could have in taking
trouble to lay deliberate plots of deception to get into such a place,
and then taking no more trouble to keep up the deception, and so losing
it in two months,” said Lucy. “What has she made by it? She has done
lots of work, and has earned less than three pounds.”

“There it is!” cried Miss Latimer. “You must remember we are looking
at it from what you have believed and from what has happened. From
all that transpires of the cousin’s lack of truthfulness, it is quite
likely that Mrs. Morison had not been out of a place for many days when
you took her. We will, for convenience’ sake, grant that the Edinburgh
story is true; then if she gets another place to-morrow (as with her
appearance she easily may) she will simply tell the same story she told
you, and will ignore her experience of your place as if it had never
been. And it is quite likely she will go to the new place—as it is
likely she came to you—believing that she means to turn over a new leaf
and to be what she seems. In the meantime we must leave off talking
about her and consider what you are to do next. You must get another
servant as soon as possible. You cannot be without help in this house,
apart from the engagements that begin with the New Year.”

“I won’t go back to that registry office,” said Lucy stoutly. “Shall I
advertise?”

Miss Latimer mused.

(_To be continued._)




THOMAS ARNE.

(THE ENGLISH AMPHION.)

    “Where Covent Garden’s famous temple stands,
    That boasts the work of Jones’ immortal hands,
    Columns with plain magnificence appear,
    And graceful porches lead along the square.”

                                          _Gay._

[Illustration: COVENT GARDEN IN 1660.]


Come with me for a walk in Covent Garden, you, my country reader, who
know not the London of to-day; and you, my friend of the great city,
who know not the London of yesterday.

As we pass through the crowded Strand we are so jostled by
foot-passengers, and so deafened by the noise of vehicles, passing and
repassing, that intercourse between us is impossible, but this quiet
by-street will quickly lead us to our destination, and soon we shall
find ourselves in front of the famous market.

A low, rambling building fills up the centre space, which is surrounded
on three sides by houses. Here, in the very small hours of the morning,
the crowds are as dense and the business is as brisk as in the Strand
which we have just left behind us, but during the daytime there is
little life or bustle about the market. The fruits, vegetables and
flowers, which began to arrive at midnight, are already scattered to
the four quarters of the great city, and only a few loiterers stand
about at the street corners, or employ themselves in desultory fashion
in clearing up the refuse.

But you and I are not dependent on market gardeners:

    “There is a flower which bloometh
      When autumn’s leaves are cast,
    Oh, pluck it ere it wither,
      ’Tis the memory of the past!”

This flower is to be found at all times and seasons in Covent Garden.
It clings round every stone like the ivy on a ruined tower.

In a street hard by the great musician, Thomas Augustine Arne, was
born; in the square, on which the market now stands, he played football
and cricket with the companions of his boyhood; here, as a young man,
he walked and dreamed; here he married, here he died, and here, in the
church yonder, he sleeps the last long sleep.

[Illustration: DR. T. ARNE.]

It is always interesting to note the environment of a great man, and
Arne’s environment was exceptionally rich in historic associations.
He was born in the reign of Queen Anne—the Augustan age of English
literature—and Covent Garden was the cradle of the wit and learning of
his time.

Let us now continue our walk, and, as we look round us, we will picture
to ourselves this scene as it was some two hundred years ago.

To our left lies the Church of St. Paul’s. It turns its back to us,
but, as if to make up for any seeming unfriendliness, it carries
its portico on its back. This church was designed by Inigo Jones in
1631, by command of the Duke of Bedford, who—the story goes—told the
architect that he wanted a chapel for the parishioners of Covent
Garden, but that he was not minded to expend much money upon it. “In
short,” his Grace is reported to have said, “I would have it not much
better than a barn.”

“Very well,” answered Inigo; “you shall have the handsomest barn in
England.”

The church accordingly was built, and the “noble Tuscan portico,” which
is said to be exactly like one described by the Italian architect
Vitruvius, was erected in Covent Garden—nobody remembering that the
entrance could not possibly be there, as the altar occupies the eastern
extremity of every church.

Passing through the “sham portico”—as it was contemptuously called by
Horace Walpole—we come to the northern side of the square and find
a long row of red-brick houses built over a colonnade so broad and
lofty that we pause in wonder. The handsome groined roof is supported
on massive stone pillars, now disfigured with paint and compo. The
pavement is dirty and ill-kept, and the shops, thus sumptuously
sheltered, are of the dingiest description. At the end of the colonnade
the stone pillars have been replaced by iron ones, and behind these is
the large foreign fruit market.

This colonnade is called the Piazza, and it, too, was designed as long
ago as 1633 by Inigo Jones. Probably the fact that the architect took
the model of his church from Vitruvius will account for the Italian
name given to the square, a name which struck Byron as so remarkable,
that he wrote—

        “bating Covent Garden, I can hit on
    No place that’s called Piazza in Great Britain.”

To realise the aim of Inigo Jones in building this place, we must
picture the scene as it was in his day.

There was no market, and the great square was a free open space, neatly
gravelled, and admirably kept in order. It was bounded on the south
side by the garden of Bedford House, outside the wall of which a grove
of trees, “most pleasant in the summer season,” gave grateful shade to
a few market-women who sat there selling fruit and vegetables. Jones’s
Piazza was built round the north and east sides of the square, and the
colonnade thus constructed formed the fashionable promenade of the
ladies and gentlemen who lived in the surrounding houses. Some years
later a handsome column, surmounted by a sun-dial, was erected in the
middle of the open space, and on the black marble steps at its base, we
are told that “cleanly matrons” used to sit and dispense barley broth
and porridge to their customers.

At the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth
centuries the houses in the Piazza were occupied by persons of high
position and considerable wealth. Among these were several celebrated
painters, such as Sir Peter Lely and Sir Godfrey Kneller. Lely’s real
name was Van der Faes, but his grandfather being a perfumer, whose sign
was the lily, Sir Peter’s father, on becoming an officer, discarded the
family name, adopting instead that of Lely, which his son was destined
to make famous. Sir Peter became a great favourite at the English
Court; he died in 1680, and was buried by torchlight in the Church of
St. Paul’s, which faced his dwelling.

The next year Sir Godfrey Kneller came into the Piazza, and here he
lived for twenty-four years. He had a wonderful garden behind his
house, and cultivated the rarest and most beautiful flowers.

In 1717, the beautiful and witty Lady Mary Wortley Montague was living
in the Piazza. She had been christened at St. Paul’s in 1689.

Close by the church, in the corner house, lived the Earl of Orford,
better known as the great Admiral Russell, who defeated the French
off La Hogue. His ship was called the _Britannia_, and from its beams
he made the staircase of his house, which had—and, I believe, still
has—wonderful carvings of ropes and anchors, the whole being surmounted
by the coronet and initials of the house of Orford. Here he was living
in 1710, and on his left, three houses further up in the Piazza,
was the painter Closterman, whose beautiful portrait of Purcell was
reproduced for readers of THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER in the last December
number.

To the right of Admiral Russell’s house was King Street; in fact this
house, which has since been re-built, is now numbered 43, King Street.

Our illustrations shows Covent Garden as it was in 1660; that is, fifty
years previous to the time now under discussion. Lord Orford’s house
had then not been built, and the so-called Little Piazza, a column of
which appears in the foreground to the left, was not completed. But
the church is there and a portion of the Great Piazza, in the corner
to the right. The gabled houses just beyond the Piazza are in King
Street, then, as now, a business street. No. 38, which we know as
Stevens’ Auction Rooms—a great place for buying bulbs at certain times
of year—was long occupied by Paterson, the celebrated book auctioneer,
whose son, Samuel, was the godson of Dr. Johnson. In Paterson’s rooms
the literary men of the day used to meet; there Dibdin wrote some of
his finest songs, and there the walls have often echoed to the applause
which followed his singing of “Poor Jack.”

Four doors further down, at No. 34,[1] there was living in 1710 an
upholsterer—Thomas Arne, by name—whose sign was the Two Crowns and
Cushions. In 1690, this Arne had been overseer of the poor of the
parish of St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, and he was then living in a much
more modest dwelling in Bedford Street.

Apparently he was a man of artistic tastes, for his rate-book, which
may still be seen, bears his name upon its cover in very beautiful
ornamental lettering.

That he was also an excellent man of business is sufficiently proved by
the fact that he occupied his house in King Street until 1733, paying
a yearly rent of £75—a high price in those days. He was twice married,
his second marriage taking place in 1707 at Mercer’s Chapel, and the
lady’s name being Anne Wheeler. In 1710, two important events took
place. On March 12th, there was born to Mr. and Mrs. Arne a little son,
whom they called Thomas Augustine, and who has since been called “the
English Amphion.”

A month later there came to lodge with them four Indian kings, or, as
we should say, chiefs of the North American Indians. These chiefs had
been brought over to England by an English officer, who very wisely
foresaw that the best way to secure their allegiance, and obtain the
assistance of their tribes in driving the French out of the English
settlements in Canada was to impress them with the grandeur and power
of England.

Accordingly, the visitors were treated with every courtesy; they were
received by Queen Anne herself, and loaded with presents. Two royal
carriages were placed at their disposal, they were lodged, as we have
seen, in “a handsome apartment,” and they were taken about to see the
sights of London.

The ruse was successful. When the “kings” left our shores they were
quite willing to back the English against all the world. Readers of
Fenimore Cooper’s stirring novel, _The Last of the Mohicans_, will
gain some further knowledge of Queen Anne’s strange visitors, for the
Mohicans are there said to be subordinate to the Iroquois, or Five
Nations, to which the chiefs belonged.

Addison was much interested in the strangers, and says in the
_Spectator_ of April 27, 1711, that he often mixed with the rabble and
followed them for a whole day together. Some very amusing accounts of
the “kings” are given both in the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_. One of them
I must repeat.

During their sojourn in England, according to the _Tatler_, of May 13,
1710, one of the kings fell ill. The landlord, Mr. Thomas Arne, was
unremitting in his attentions to the sufferer, who, having never slept
in a bed before, felt great admiration for the skilful upholsterer who
had constructed “that engine of repose, so useful and so necessary in
his distress.” When, therefore, the patient was recovered, he and his
brother kings consulted among themselves how they should evince their
appreciation of the kindness shown them, and it was decided that to
honour their host befittingly, they must confer upon him the name of
the strongest fort in their country. The upholsterer accordingly was
summoned, and, on entering the room, he was received by the four kings
standing, all of them addressing him as “Cadaroque!”

After a month’s sojourn in King Street, the Indians returned to
their own land, and Thomas Arne was able once more to devote himself
exclusively to his business and his family.

Four years afterwards a baby girl was born and received the name of
Susan, and, later there were some more children who, however, have no
particular interest for us.

Thomas Arne was determined to give his son every advantage, so when the
boy, Thomas Augustine, was old enough he sent him to Eton. But Master
Tommy had no mind for learning, and gave his professors considerable
trouble. When he should have been studying his lessons, he was found
playing the flute, and the upshot of it all was, that when the time
came for him to leave college, neither he nor anyone else was very
sorry.

He was now articled to a solicitor, for his father’s ambition was to
see him a lawyer, but he managed to smuggle a spinet into his bedroom,
and, having muffled the strings with a handkerchief, he practised when
the family was asleep. He also contrived to get violin lessons from a
man called Festing, and in the evenings he used to borrow a livery and,
thus disguised, visit the opera, where the servants of the aristocracy
were allowed free access to the gallery.

His progress in violin-playing was so rapid that he was soon able to
lead a small orchestra, and we can imagine what the surprise of the
upholsterer must have been when one evening, having been invited to a
musical party, he found that his own son had been engaged to provide
the entertainment.

Thomas had an uncomfortable walk home that night with his angry parent,
but the good man was too sensible not to recognise that it was better
that his son should be a fair musician than a bad lawyer. Finally,
harmony was restored to the family circle, and the young performer was
allowed to follow the bent of his genius.

Before long he found that his sister Susan had a beautiful voice, which
he trained so carefully, that in 1732, when she was eighteen, she was
able to appear in an opera by Lampe, called _Amelia_.

Encouraged by her success, he now set to work to compose music for
Addison’s play, _Rosamund_, in which she sang when it was produced
at Lincoln’s Inn Theatre in 1733. A year later, Susan Arne married
Theophilus Cibber, the son of the poet laureate, Colley Cibber. She
was not happy in her married life, but it would have been impossible
for any girl to be happy with such a husband. The music historian,
Dr. Burney, has said of Susan that she captivated every ear by the
sweetness and expression of her voice in singing; but her principal
charm seems to have consisted in her exquisite simplicity. With Händel
she was a great favourite. He wrote for her the contralto songs in the
_Messiah_, and the part of Micah in _Samson_, and she was the first
Galatea in his _Acis and Galatea_. She died in 1766, and was buried in
the cloisters of Westminster Abbey.

In 1736 young Arne—now twenty-six years of age—married Cecilia Young,
a daughter of the organist of All Hallows, Barking. She was a pupil of
Geminiani, and was called “the nightingale of the stage,” her voice
being considered matchless “for melody, fulness and flexibility.”

In 1738, Milton’s _Comus_ was produced at Drury Lane, and Arne was
engaged to write the music for it. The description of this work given
by Busby in his _History of Music_ is so charming that I am tempted to
quote it.

“In this mask Arne introduced a style unique and perfectly his own.
Without pretending to the high energy of Purcell or the ponderous
dignity of Händel, it was vigorous, gay, elegant and natural, and
possessed such strong and distinctive features as, by its production,
to form an era in English music. By the beauty of this piece and
by that of his numerous songs, Arne influenced the national taste,
and begat a partiality for that flowing, sweet, and lucid style of
melody which captivates the ear by the simplicity of its _motivo_,
and satisfies the understanding by the truth and emphasis of its
expression. It long guided or governed the genius of inferior composers
for the theatres and public gardens, and constituted and settled a
_manner_ which more justly than any other may be denominated _English_.
Unfortunately, the ingenious inventor of this manner, the mellifluous,
the natural, the unaffected Arne, was not himself sufficiently sensible
of its value to continue true to the native cast of his own genius.
Tempted to follow the Italian composers, he deserted a path in which he
could not be exceeded or followed.”

Busby’s censure of Arne’s deviation from that path in which the highest
honours awaited him, has reference to the opera _Artaserse_, which was
written in the florid Italian style popular at the time. But it is
hard to blame the composer for a backsliding which was the inevitable
consequence of the bad taste of the public. _Artaserse_ was produced
at Covent Garden in 1762, and, as we are told, was “immediately
successful.”

Whose fault was it that the good English works of the previous thirty
years were not so “immediately successful?”

During those thirty years Arne had produced the music to the
_Tempest_, which contains that daintiest of dainty songs, “Where the
bee sucks.” I hope that there is not an English girl with a voice in
her throat who has not sung those witching notes of Ariel’s.

Scarcely less beautiful are the songs in _As You Like It_—“Under the
greenwood tree,” “Blow, blow, thou winter wind,” and “When daises pied.”

But all these and many more would not have gained for our composer the
title “the English Amphion,” which is so justly his. The legend tells
that to the sound of Amphion’s lyre the stones placed themselves in
order, forming an impregnable wall round the city of Thebes; and the
story is explained by the assumption that, fired by their leader’s
eloquence, the men of Thebes became invincible.

Was ever patriotic song written so great as “Rule, Britannia,” or could
Amphion himself have led an army to battle with more inspiring music?

Wagner once said that the whole character of the English nation
is contained in the first eight notes of “Rule, Britannia.” It is
interesting to compare these eight notes with the first eight notes of
the parallel French and German songs.

[Music: “The Marseillaise.”]

[Music: “Rule, Britannia.”]

[Music: “Die Wacht am Rhein.”]

The French song repeats every step—that is dull!

The German song looks back twice in its short course—that is weak!

The English song plants its feet firmly—then rushes to the point,
without swerving an eyelash. It says in music—

    “Up, boys, and at them!”

Bravo! Thomas Arne.

This song, “Rule, Britannia,” completes a masque, called _Alfred_,
written by Thomson and Mallett, and composed by Arne. It was first
performed in August, 1740, on a stage erected in the beautiful grounds
at Clieveden, in Buckinghamshire—then the residence of Frederick Prince
of Wales, now the home of an American millionaire—where a _fête_
had been arranged to commemorate the Accession of George I., and to
celebrate the birth of Princess Augusta.

Five years later _Alfred_ was given in London, at Drury Lane, for the
benefit of Mrs. Arne. It seems specially appropriate that Arne should
have been the composer of “Rule, Britannia.” The earliest associations
of his childhood must have been connected with the home of the great
Admiral, the Commander of the _Britannia_, who lived almost next door
to his father’s shop, and doubtless the boy often peeped in through the
open doorway at the grand staircase, of which he will have heard that
its beams once formed part of the wooden walls of England.

It is possible that he may have lived in this house himself at a much
later date, for in 1774 it passed into the hands of David Low, and was
opened by him as a family hotel, the first establishment of that kind
in England.

But if Arne ever lived there it was only for a short time, for he
died on March 5th, 1778, at his house in Bow Street, which he had only
occupied for four months and a half. On the early editions of his _New
Favourite Songs_, as also on the _Winter Amusements_, there is the
announcement that they are “to be had of the author at his house in the
Piazza, next the Church, Covent Garden”; but there is no mention of his
name as a householder in the rate-books of St. Paul’s, from 1760 till
1777-8, when, as I have said, he rented a house in Bow Street for a
short time before his death.

One of the innovations for which we have reason to be grateful to
Thomas Arne was the introduction of female voices into oratorio
choruses, an experiment which was tried by him for the first time at a
performance of his _Judith_ at Covent Garden on February 26th, 1773.

This oratorio had been performed at Stratford-on-Avon in the quaint
old church in which Shakespeare was buried, on the occasion of the
Jubilee festivities organised by Garrick in 1769. On the second day of
that festival an Ode, written by Garrick and set to music by Arne, was
given, the actor-poet designating the composer as “the first musical
genius of this country.”

In connection with Garrick’s relations to Arne, an amusing story is
told. Arne was very anxious that Garrick should hear his favourite
pupil, Miss Brent, and with some difficulty he succeeded one day in
arranging a meeting between them. Miss Brent sang, and Garrick, after
complimenting her, turned to Arne with the supercilious remark:

“After all, Tommy, your music is but pickle to my roast beef!”—implying
that the drama was the superior art.

Dr. Arne was not the mildest of men, and he cried:

“I’ll pickle your roast beef, Davey, before I am done!”

The threat was no idle one. Refused an engagement at Drury Lane, which
was under Garrick’s management, Arne set up his famous pupil at Covent
Garden, where she had such success in _The Beggar’s Opera_, that all
the town flocked to hear her, and Garrick was nearly ruined.

The degree of Mus. Doc. was conferred on Arne by Oxford University
in July, 1759. In addition to being a great composer, he was a
great teacher, laying particular stress on the importance of clear
enunciation of the words. Most of his earlier works were written for
his wife, who accompanied him on a visit to Ireland in 1742, and who
was a very successful singer. After she retired from public life Arne’s
pupils interpreted his compositions. He had one son, Michael, who went
on the stage at an early date, but his chief successes were gained as a
player of the harpsichord.

Like so many other great men, Dr. Arne was buried in St. Paul’s, Covent
Garden, and there was originally a monument to him in that church, but
owing to the carelessness of some plumbers engaged in repairs, the
building was almost totally destroyed by fire in the year 1795; and
though it was rebuilt on the same plan and in the same proportions, the
memorials of its mighty dead were never replaced, and there is nothing
now to show that here rest, with Dr. Thomas Arne, the poets, Samuel
Butler and Peter Pindar; the dramatists, Mrs. Centlivre and William
Wycherley; the painter, Sir Peter Lely; the sculptor, Grinling Gibbons;
and many more whose names are inscribed upon the scroll of Fame.

        ELEONORE D’ESTERRE-KEELING.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Through the kindness of Mr. Alfred Stutfield, who has taken
infinite trouble to search the old rentals of the Bedford estate,
I have been able to identify the site of the house in which Thomas
Augustine Arne was born, and in which he spent the first twenty-three
years of his life. The house itself was rebuilt in 1871, and is now
occupied by the publishers, Messrs. Rivington.

[Illustration]




[Illustration: FISHING.

(_From the painting by Florence A. Saltmer._)]




JULY.

BY ERIC BROAD.


    Now is the noon of summer’s sweet content
      O’er field and hedgerow, valley and high hill;
      And hushed the music of the laughing rill
    Whose strength is stolen and whose song is spent!
    With anxious twitter all the birds lament
      The sudden gloom; the air grows strangely still.
      Vague murmurs all the valley seem to fill;
    The sun is blotted from the firmament.

    Hark! tis the diapason of God’s organ rolled
      Through all the field of stars; chord follows chord
      The march triumphant of our Blessed Lord,
    Who rides the sky in chariot of gold;
      And then the gloom is rent; with swift accord
    The beams, with golden arms, our forms enfold!

[Illustration]




CHRONICLES OF AN ANGLO-CALIFORNIAN RANCH.

BY MARGARET INNES.


CHAPTER VIII.

THE LADY-HELP FROM HOME—THE JAP—THE AMERICAN GIRL—THE GERMAN WOMAN—THE
    CHINAMAN WING LONG—OTHER CHINAMEN.

I think I could write volumes on the miseries and discomforts inflicted
by the ignorant and pretentious lady-help. Not for a moment would I
say one word to wound the real honest workers, who can, however, be
recognised at once, and I ought certainly to know, having been most
devotedly helped and nursed through long years of ill-health by one
of the best. But I speak of those women who have reached the age of
maturity, and yet have never put enough earnestness into anything to
learn to do even one single trifle well, and who tell you with an air,
as though it were something to be proud of, that they have never done
any work, but are quite willing to learn.

It was unfortunately one of this helpless class that was sent out to
me, and though she had undertaken to cook and bake in good style for
her £70, she had not troubled herself to learn the rudiments of either
cooking or baking. She told me, with a ladylike smile, that she had
thought she would soon be able to pick it up from me! She had had some
time before leaving England, when she might have taken lessons; but as
far as I could learn, she spent the time in making a round of farewell
visits.

She considered herself eminently respectable and superior, and, I
believe, thought that these virtues alone were worth her pay to any
family. Before long, too, the ideas of equality, which she absorbed in
a perfectly undigested state, went to her head, and made her take all
kinds of liberties, which Americans born and bred would not dream of.

It is certainly a fact that ignorant aliens, taking up these new ideas,
have a most offensive way, quite their own, of interpreting them.

We bore with muddle and confusion and fatigue for some seven months,
longing to be able to dismiss her, but uneasy at the notion of her
being adrift so far from home. We might have spared ourselves, as it so
often happens, for she came one day to tell me, with a proud toss of
the head, that she had found another place that would suit her better.

So she went, leaving us thankful to escape from her on any terms.

Then we tried a Jap, who was also unsuccessful, and we returned to an
American girl. This time we were more fortunate; she was a middle-aged
woman, capable and willing, and fortunately also fond of reading; so
that we were able, by lending her plenty of books, to keep the effects
of the loneliness at bay for some time.

She thoroughly enjoyed all the most up-to-date books, and we often
laughed among ourselves at the comicalness of Sarah Grand, Grant Allen,
Ibsen, and even Mrs. Humphry Ward in the kitchen. She had decided views
about all she read, and had, indeed, the intention, so she told us, of
writing something for the public herself when she could get leisure.
However, this peaceful time came also to an end. In eight months or
so she wearied of the loneliness and wanted to return to town and her
friends.

Our next fate was a German woman. I believe she was a little out of her
mind; she certainly nearly drove us out of ours. She was an enormous,
coarse-looking woman, and often told us how she had been a keeper in
one of the large State asylums for many years; and, oh, how we pitied
those poor lunatics at her mercy!

My husband was ill with an abscess in the throat while she was with us,
and for some wicked reason of her own, whenever anything was put on the
stove, such as beef tea or hot water for poultices, she regularly took
it off again as soon as we left the kitchen.

Finally we telephoned our distress to our friend in town, and he
advised a Chinaman. We agreed, and by the evening train out came a
bright, smiling little man called Wing Long, and we found at once
comfort and peace.

He was a beautiful cook, careful and economical, and very proud of
making all his dainty cakes and sweets for much less than we could have
bought them in town.

In the evenings, when we were all quietly reading, he would come in
suddenly, carrying two big dishes piled up with different dainties,
saying, “Coss one dollar in San Miguel, makee him fifty cents here,”
and plump them down in the middle of the table for us to admire. If
friends were coming to supper, he would work so hard, and would make
innumerable dishes and dainties that I had not dreamt of ordering, and
when the evening arrived, would come bustling in with all these grand
“plats” till we could hardly keep from smiling at the grand show. His
idea was not so much hospitality, I fear, as a great desire to make an
impression upon strangers of the grand way in which we lived. He would
say privately afterwards, “Dey no see notings likie dat, dey no eatie
such our dinner; oh, no!”

One drawback to all his virtues there had to be, of course. He had
told me, as the months passed and he still remained with us, that
his friends in Chinatown were much surprised; for, he said, looking
intently at me, he was called “Clazey Jim,” and had never stayed long
anywhere. This made us a little uneasy, though nothing could have
been more reassuring and sane than his usual cheery, diligent ways.
But once or twice he did alarm me slightly, when he would launch out
about his hopes of some day becoming a Buddhist priest, when he should
have saved enough money to take as an offering to the priesthood. In
speaking of this he became quite excited, joining his hands together as
though in prayer and raising them above his head, turning up his eyes,
and telling me all kinds of wonderful legends about miracles that had
happened to believers in Buddha.

He was quite embarrassingly generous. When he went into town for a
holiday, he would return in high spirits. He was always in a perfect
fever to get his bundle of purchases undone and to show us all he had
bought. He would drag out a small pair of embroidered shoes for himself
and show them to us; then perhaps a silk jacket or a tasselled girdle,
such as they wear round the waist. Always, too, there were boxes and
bottles of uncanny-looking medicine, of which he generally took several
doses indiscriminately on the spot to prove to us how strong was his
faith in their virtue; then, with a flourish, he would bring out a
dainty parcel and hand it to me with a kind little word, and some
curiosity for the boys, or often a piece of pretty porcelain for the
house.

It was too much, but we did not know how to stop it. His delight over
all this was quite pathetic. So far in our experiences he is the only
lovable Chinaman we have come across, and he proved to be out of his
mind! For seven months all went well, however, and we felt that the
five dollars a month extra in wage was money well spent for such
comfort and order; then the friendly, kindly spirit of our little Wing
Long seemed to cloud over, and we determined to send him away for a
rest and a holiday. We still did not understand what was amiss.

He was to leave us the following morning, and had installed Chong Woh
as _locum tenens_, when that night a violent opium frenzy seized him,
giving us all a good fright, and keeping us awake and on the watch most
of the night, lest he should set fire to the house or carry out some
other mad freak.

In the morning he seemed quite sane, and painfully humble and
broken-spirited. There was nothing for it, however, but that he must
go. We had heard too much about the opium habit among Chinamen to dream
of trying to overcome it. We heard, too, from Chong Woh that Wing had
been in the asylum several times; so it seemed a hopeless business.

We none of us liked the _locum tenens_ Wing had provided, and hearing
of a Chinaman who was leaving a neighbouring ranch where the family had
gone East, we engaged him. He was a tall, fat man, with a very stately
way of carrying himself, and from his airs most evidently considered
himself a “beau.” It was in the month of January when he was with us,
and in the early mornings it was rather too cold to be comfortable
with his thin white cotton jacket only, so he wore over this a wadded
sleeveless jacket made of soft Chinese silk of a most lovely golden
bronze colour, which made him look very grand indeed.

Like Wing, too, he seemed very generous, and had not been with us
long when he produced from somewhere a large jar of very good Chinese
preserved ginger, which he brought in upon a tray, together with a
little Chinese box of “welly fine tea.”

It was given with a gracious, lordly air, and I accepted it with the
finest manner and the best compliments I could muster. Again in a few
days he brought a sweet-scented Chinese lily, growing in a bowl, which
I knew he had been tending in his bedroom till it should bloom; and a
packet of his quaint writing-paper, which I had admired one day when
I chanced to see him writing letters, he brought with the same grave
courtesy.

But he had already been some months in the country, and soon wearied
of the quiet of our place. He came one day and told me that he had
urgent business to attend to in China, and must leave us and sail very
shortly for his Celestial fatherland. So he went, and every time I go
to the little Chinese store now I see him there, and we smile in a
most friendly fashion to each other, while he serves me and asks if
we are all well, and neither of us is so ill-bred as to refer to that
“business in China”!

During the winter months the town of San Miguel is quite crowded
with Eastern visitors; all the hotels and boarding-houses are full,
and every Chinaman who is worth his salt, is engaged, at a good wage
too. The only men who are at liberty are the blacklegs, the gamblers,
and opium fiends. So, though our friend at the agency bureau did his
very best for us, he could not save us from such a time of worry
and annoyance as I can hardly bear to look back upon. We were all
over-worked, tired out, and had illness in the house as well.

For three months we had such a succession of Chinese blackguards as
makes my flesh creep to remember. Some of them stayed one day, some two
or three, some a week; but we became positively ashamed of driving into
El Barco station, taking in and bringing out different Chinamen.

It is a drive of ten miles too, there and back, and added no small
bother and waste of time to the rest of the discomforts. Then there
were gaps between, when the expected Chinaman did not arrive, and the
buggy came home empty; and we would turn from the verandah where we had
been anxiously watching, with an opera-glass, to see if there were one
figure or two in the buggy, turn into the house with the knowledge that
we must cook and bake and sweep for ourselves as best we could until
better times dawned.

Alas, then, for a charwoman within call, however inefficient! It would
be something, at least, to get the sweeping and washing-up done.

(_To be continued._)

[Illustration]




“OUR HERO.”

A TALE OF THE FRANCO-ENGLISH WAR NINETY YEARS AGO.

BY AGNES GIBERNE, Author of “Sun, Moon and Stars,” “The Girl at the
Dower House,” etc.


CHAPTER XXXV.

THE RELEASE OF ONE.

Jack’s uneasiness grew as days went by. Denham was certainly in a
condition by no means satisfactory. This last heavy blow—the death of
his adored Chief, of the man who had been to him as a guiding star from
boyhood—seemed to have shaken his hold on life, and the old courage and
energy were gone. Though he struggled on, it was in a listless fashion.

Even the assurance as to Polly’s constancy could not arouse him. The
lassitude which oppressed him was unconquerable.

“It is so much the worse for her,” he said dejectedly to Jack. “If she
could forget me, she at least might be happy. She is wasting the best
years of her life in this miserable waiting. I may be out here another
ten years. Or I may never go home.”

“You don’t wish her to forget you, my dear fellow.”

“For her sake I could be glad. Not for my own.”

“Fact is, there’s no manner of use in expecting you to take reasonable
views of things, while your head is in this state,” said Jack.

But he became so troubled that he confided his cares to Lucille. He
could not worry the Colonel or Mrs. Baron, who were anxious enough
already.

“I’m not at all happy about him, and that’s the solemn truth,” Jack
declared confidentially a fortnight or so after his arrival. “I don’t
like the look in his eyes, or here,” drawing a finger across his brow.
“And as for strength, just see him this afternoon. He’s utterly floored
by that stroll on the ramparts. Why, in old days he’d do his twenty
or thirty miles at a stretch, and get back as fresh as he started. He
didn’t know what it was to be done up.”

Lucille had not the least idea why, at this point, she should find
herself to be confiding to Jack a secret which she had told to nobody
else. She and he were becoming extremely good friends. Jack had taken
to Lucille on the spot, when they were first introduced, and the
feeling was returned. Still Lucille had not meant to let anybody know
what she had done. Somehow it slipped out.

She had long wondered whether it might not be possible to obtain
leave for Denham to return home. Some few among the détenus had been
permitted by the Emperor to do so, under exceptional circumstances. And
Captain Ivor was a soldier. It was well known that, if Napoleon were
chivalrous to anybody, he would be so first of all to a soldier. He was
always harder upon civilians.

At the Emperor’s Court an old friend of hers moved—one who had been
formerly a Royalist, and who now for some years had attached himself to
the fortunes of Buonaparte. Lucille had found it hard to pardon this
change of front in her old friend—more strictly her parents’ friend—and
intercourse between the two had been almost dropped. Yet Lucille had
heard of him from time to time, and she knew that he was not one to
forget the past, the more so in her case since that past included a
heavy debt of gratitude from him to Lucille’s father.

It had one day occurred to her that she might write to this friend,
explaining about Captain Ivor’s failing health, and begging him to
intercede with the Emperor for permission for Ivor to go home. Lucille
did not tell Jack—it was not needful—how many days she had held out
against this notion. Not for Denham’s sake, but for her own. He had
been so long the main centre of thought in her quiet existence, that
she could hardly now picture life at Verdun without him. Not that she
was exactly in love with Ivor, because from the very beginning she had
always known him to be Polly’s, and she had not permitted him to become
to her what he might easily have become. But she was very much his
friend.

So she hesitated, till one day the selfishness of her own hesitation
broke upon her, awakened by some fresh view of his altered looks. Then
at once she acted. She wrote to the friend, putting the matter before
him, frankly stating her own belief that Ivor was in point of fact
slowly dying of captivity, and entreating him, in memory of old days,
to interest himself in the matter, and, if possible, to get permission
for Ivor’s return to England.

The friend, whose name Lucille did not mention to Jack, had answered
her letter. He had written kindly, cordially, promising to take an
opportunity sooner or later to lay the matter before the Emperor. He
might or might not meet with success; but, at least, Mademoiselle de
St. Roques could depend upon him to do his best for her English friend.

“And you think there is the smallest hope?” Jack said incredulously.
He did not know that, at this very time or soon after, Major Charles
Napier, taken prisoner in the Battle of Coruña, was generously released
by Marshal Ney and sent to England, because he had there an old blind
mother. The proviso was made only that he should count himself a
prisoner on parole, debarred from fighting, until an exchange had been
arranged for him, which in the course of a few months was done. Ney
took this step on his own responsibility out of sheer kindliness of
heart, not knowing whether the Emperor might not be seriously angry
with his action. But the Emperor endorsed his decision with a readiness
hardly to have been expected from that man of fire and blood. Even
Napoleon was not so utterly bad in all respects as he was painted by
some of his contemporaries. He might and did hate with a virulent
hatred the British nation as a whole, he could be harsh to civilian
détenus, and he was brutal to women; but to the individual English
soldier he was quite capable of showing generosity.

“I cannot tell. There is no certainty—none,” Lucille answered. “But,
until I hear from my friend that all is hopeless, I will not give up
hope. You will not say one word to the Colonel or to Mrs. Baron—least
of all to Captain Ivor?”

“Trust me—I’m staunch!” declared Jack. “Never do to raise his hopes for
nothing.” Jack himself had not the faintest expectation of any result
from Lucille’s efforts. None the less, he was gratified to be treated
as her confidant. He liked her immensely and increasingly.

As a matter of course Jack had taken up his abode under the same roof
with the Barons. Roy’s former room was given to him, and he made a
markedly cheerful addition to the family circle.

One evening, some ten days later, they were together after dinner.
Jack was dictating a letter to Molly, having pressed Lucille into
his service as amanuensis. Whether the letter would ever reach its
destination was doubtful; but Jack had resolved to send it off, and
his right arm was still incapable. The Colonel was reading, his wife
was working, and Denham for an hour past had not stirred or spoken.
They all knew what this meant, and mercifully left him alone, speaking
themselves in subdued tones. Jack’s glance wandered often towards the
motionless figure in the sofa corner, and in the midst of his dictation
he paused to murmur—

“Head as bad as ever.”

“Oui!” Lucille said with a sigh. “All day; and now he is quite ‘done,’
and can keep up no longer. It is always so. What am I to write next?
Ah, I am called! Somebody wants me. Will you excuse—till I come back?”

Jack amused himself during her absence by scrawling caricatures with
his left hand upon the unfinished sheet. Then Lucille came swiftly in,
running, as if with joy, while her eyes were full of tears. Her face
seemed to shine, and a suppressed sob could be heard in her voice as
she panted—

“Something for Captain Ivor!”

Denham looked up slowly as she came to his side; and, though he
received the packet from her hand, he would have put it aside without
attention.

“Ouvrez-le, ouvrez-le, vîte!” she urged impatiently.

“Who brought it?”

“A gentleman travelling from Paris. Ouvrez-le!”

Denham roused himself with difficulty to obey.

“A passport!” he said with listless surprise and a slight laugh. “Not
the passport for Roy surely? Rather late in the day.”

“But read—read!” implored Lucille; and he made an effort to do so. Then
a rush of colour came, and he looked at Lucille, a strange gleam in his
eyes.

“This!—What does it mean?”

“It means that you are free! Free to go home.”

From the others broke a chorus of exclamations.

“Buonaparte’s signature! It must be all right!” Ivor spoke in a
bewildered tone. “But what can have made him choose me? Why not Colonel
Baron?”

“Are you not glad?”

“Glad!” The word was too absurdly inadequate. He walked across to
Colonel Baron. “Will you read this, sir? Tell me if I understand it
rightly.”

Colonel Baron complied, then passed the papers on to his wife and Jack,
while he grasped Ivor’s hand.

“I congratulate you with all my heart,” he said. “Nothing could have
given me greater delight. For your sake, not for ours.”

“But to leave you all here still——”

“Don’t think of that. Your duty is to go. Your being here does not make
our captivity easier. No”—decidedly, in answer to a glance—“not when
you look as you have done lately.”

“What are the conditions? I can’t read to-day.”

“Not to bear arms against the French Army for twelve months from the
date of your reaching England, unless an exchange is arranged sooner.
It will not be, of course! There is no exchange for détenus. That only
means that for one year you will be still a prisoner on parole; only
in England instead of in France. It will take you some months to grow
strong enough for fighting.”

“I am strong already,” was the answer; and even in those few minutes it
was remarkable how his face had changed, gaining a healthier tint and
losing its languor, while the very hollows seemed to be already filling
up. “One year from the day I arrive in England! Then I must be off at
once—not lose a day.”

“Next week,” suggested Jack.

“To-morrow. But I cannot understand. What can have induced the Emperor
to free me? Why me more than any other détenu?”

“Ask Mademoiselle de St. Roques,” said Jack; and this brought upon
Lucille a flood of questions. She related simply, and in few words,
what she had done, not specifying, as she had specified to Jack, the
precise manner of description given of Ivor’s health.

Denham lifted her hand to his lips.

“It is you, then, whom I have to thank!” he said, much moved. “But no
thanks could repay what you have done. I can never forget this debt.”

Then he turned to Mrs. Baron.

“You have said nothing yet!”

“Dear Denham, how can I not be pleased—for you?” she asked tearfully.
“You would not wish me to pretend that we shall not miss you
terribly—every hour! But indeed I am thankful. I know how you have
suffered. And this will do you good. He is better even now, is he not,
Lucille?”

“Jack seems to have come in time to take my place,” remarked Denham,
which Jack declared to be “a truly heartless observation.”

“Mademoiselle de St. Roques will have to petition the Emperor next on
my behalf! Eh, Mademoiselle?”

One grey shadow lay on Ivor’s happiness, of which Jack alone was
allowed a glimpse, when the two were together late at night.

“If it had but been to serve once more under _him_!” broke from Denham,
in a tone which Jack too well understood. The sorrow of that loss, to
those who had known John Moore personally, could end only with life
itself.

(_To be continued._)




A LITTLE ADVICE TO AMATEUR NURSES.

BY “THE NEW DOCTOR.”


[Illustration: The Hospital Nurse]

There was a time when every man was nursed through sickness by his
wife or daughter. Then there appeared upon the scene a class of women
who were styled “monthly nurses,” who took over the more onerous part
of nursing, but who did not overthrow the whole of the duties of the
invalid’s relations.

These monthly nurses were for the most part ignorant women, and often
slovenly and drunken. They threw over the old and best system of
nursing, and in its place introduced the worst.

A little later the monthly nurse gave place to the certified nurse,
who is taught her profession and is in all respects a very great
improvement upon her prototype.

Nowadays it often happens among the wealthier classes that as soon as
a member of the family is ill, a physician is sent for; a nurse is
appointed; and the relatives practically desert the invalid till he is
well again.

Fortunately the wealthy classes are a small minority, and but few of us
can afford the great expense of this treatment. We said fortunately,
for though it has its advantages, it has very great drawbacks. And we
are of opinion that in most cases of sickness the best nurse for an
invalid is his nearest female relative.

People think that physicians always advise a certified nurse and object
to a patient’s wife or sister turning amateur nurse for the time
being. We can assure you that this is not the case. Of course, it is
an advantage to the physician if he can have a nurse whom he knows to
look after his case; but, as a general rule, he is indifferent in the
matter, except in some diseases, when the aid of a person skilled in
nursing those suffering from that disease is indispensable.

We address these notes to amateur nurses; but really you are as
much professionals as are your trained colleagues. Nursing, like
housekeeping or cooking, is one of the duties of the gentler sex, and
is not a profession at all.

Every woman is by right of her sex a nurse, but every woman is by no
means a good nurse. To be a really good nurse requires a great many
qualities and a certain amount of knowledge which many have not got.
Nursing—even nursing one’s dearest relative—is a difficult and onerous
duty, and the first and most important virtue which must be possessed
by nurses is patience.

We call a sufferer a “patient,” but the term would be better applied to
the nurse. For the good nurse is patient when she could, if she willed
so, be impatient; but the sufferer makes a virtue of necessity when he
is patient—and very often he is by no means patient.

The second virtue required is kindness. Oh, always be kind when you are
nursing an invalid. It is here where an invalid’s relatives are more
desirable than paid nurses. It is a most brutal thing to be unkind to
an invalid. All the knowledge of nursing in the world is not worth half
so much as patience and kindness.

In the course of our professional duties we have become acquainted with
many nurses, including some of the most famous of the time. And if you
ask us what is the chief difference between these best nurses and the
ordinary probationers, we answer without hesitation, “They are more
kind and patient.” Of course they are more skilled, more experienced,
and—take it to heart—more obedient; but kindness is their chief
characteristic.

The nurse must always be absolutely obedient to the physician, and
she must carry out his directions to the letter, and neither add to
nor deduct from his treatment. It is not only the good nurse who is
obedient. A woman who departs from the mandates of the physician
is an encumbrance—nay, more than an encumbrance—she is distinctly
detrimental to the health of the patient.

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” especially in medicine.
Nurses—I mean certified nurses—have a little knowledge of medicine; and
if they lack obedience, their knowledge becomes a very dangerous thing
indeed.

If you are patient, gentle and kind, obedient and ready to do your
duty, however irksome it may be, and if also you are clean, you will
make a good nurse. As regards the knowledge of nursing—well, it
really is of very secondary importance! If you are nursing and you
are a little doubtful about any point, you have only got to ask the
physician, and he will make all clear.

But there are many points in nursing which everyone ought to know.
Probably most of you do know them; but repetition will do no harm, for
we are all liable to forget.

It is thought by some persons that all advice on nursing should be
written by nurses. But here we object. Surely the physician is entitled
to say what he requires?

We certainly consider that we have a right to have our say in a matter
which concerns us more than anyone else save the patient. We physicians
are responsible for the well-being of the sick. We are to blame, and we
are blamed, when the results are disastrous. If we employ a careless
nurse, and she, by her bungling, thwarts recovery, we are to blame. It
is upon us, not upon the nurses, that retribution falls. And perfectly
rightly. We do not complain at this. Still, we consider that we have a
right to advise those who wish to nurse our patients.

And so this will explain the apparent anomaly of a physician writing a
paper on nursing.

The sick-room must be large and airy, but free from draughts. There
should be at least two windows in the room, and, if possible, they
should have a south or west aspect. Before the invalid takes to this
room, the floor, the windows, all the paint, etc., should be thoroughly
cleaned by ways of which you know more than we do. If the ceiling
has a cornice this should be dusted. The chimney should be swept and
everything seen to so that a fire may be lighted at any minute, and
that it may light and draw without any of the unpleasant accidents
which so often occur when a fire is lighted in a room for the first
time.

Not only in winter but at any season, even in the middle of summer, the
fire should be ready. In our uncertain climate we often have a bitterly
cold and wet day in the midst of very hot weather. We have seen trouble
from neglecting this precaution.

Then everything in the room should be dusted or cleaned. Any
superfluous objects which are likely to hold dust should be removed;
but do not let the room look like a prison cell. An invalid spends
most of his time looking about him, and an empty room will soon become
distressing to him. Personally we prefer a carpet in a sick-room—at all
events, unless the floor is polished, and there are no cracks. But the
carpet should be beaten before the room is occupied.

Of course, we do not know whether you yourself will have to do this
work, but if it is done by another, you must see that it is properly
done. It is the duty of the nurse to see that the room is in good
order, even through she does not clean it herself.

The bed should always have a hard mattress. A water bed may be
required, but under no circumstances should an invalid have a feather
bed. See that there are one or two good new blankets on the bed. Flimsy
quilts may well be dispensed with. It is better to let the bed stand
out in the room, and not be placed in an alcove or near a wall.

The bed of an invalid should be made every day—made properly, not
merely the sheet pulled up and the upper blanket rearranged. Creases in
the lower sheet are very wrong, for they make the patient uncomfortable
and predispose to bed-sores. Crumbs in a bed are worse still, and very
great care must be taken to see that the bed is perfectly free from
them.

The patient must have his hands and face washed every morning and
evening. He should always be washed with warm water. To tell if the
water is of the right temperature, dip the tip of your elbow into it.
Your hands are not sufficiently sensitive to warmth to be safe guides.

Hot bottles are often needed by invalids. They should never be filled
with boiling water. They must be made of earthenware and covered with
flannel jackets. The water must be of a temperature of about 100° to
120° Fahrenheit. They should never be left in the bed after they have
got cold. Another point to remember is that you must see that the
bottles do not leak. We have seen a nurse place an uncovered bottle
of boiling water at the feet of a patient with paralysis. He did not
feel the heat, but next morning the nurse found, to her horror, that
the patient’s feet had been burned out of all recognition, and from
these burns he died. We have seen and heard of many similar cases, but
fortunately the result is not often so disastrous.

The ventilation of the sick chamber is very important. Unless the room
is very draughty, it is usual to leave the window open throughout the
day. If the weather is gusty, or the situation is exposed, some other
method of ventilation may be acquired. A fire is a very satisfactory,
though not a theoretically perfect, method of ventilating a room. As a
matter of fact, the ventilation of the room depends entirely upon the
room itself and its arrangement. On his first visit you should ask the
physician how the room should be ventilated, and this will relieve you
from any responsibility in the matter. Remember that the commonest of
all mistakes in the treatment of illness is insufficient ventilation.

We were going to devote the whole of this article to the question
of diet in sickness, but our space is more than half taken up by
preliminary matters, so we must be brief.

The question of feeding invalids is always a troublesome one. People
who are sick and are in bed all day, lose their appetite, take violent
dislikes to some articles, and develop an abnormal desire for dietetic
curiosities which they would never eat when they are healthy.

We remember attending a woman who refused to eat anything we put before
her. We tried milk, very nice puddings, and chickens, and we do not
know what not. But, no, all to no purpose! She would eat nothing. The
matter was becoming serious, for the poor woman had had nothing to our
knowledge for three days, and we were thinking whether forcible means
would have to be used to give her nourishment. But the extraordinary
part of it was that she gained strength and was recovering from her
disease by rapid strides.

But we solved the mystery by entering the room suddenly and finding
her munching a little green apple and a tartlet! Apparently she
had developed an extraordinary desire for green apples, pastry and
cocoanuts! Knowing that had she asked to be allowed to have these
things, she would have been refused, she worried a lady-visitor into
buying the things for her. And she had been living on green apples,
pastry and cocoanuts for four days! When asked what quality she so much
fancied in this strange dietary, she said—

“The apples are so nice and sour, and the cocoanut is so scrunchy!”

Whatever you put before an invalid in the way of food must look
appetising. We have seen great greasy chops, half cold, served up to
an invalid—a meal which would disgust a labourer. You cannot be too
careful about the appearance of food given to people whose appetites
are not what they should be. Let the cloth be spotlessly white, let the
glass be nicely cleaned with a glass cloth and no stray fluffs left
upon it, let the plate be hot and the cover—never forget the cover
from a dish given to an invalid—brightly polished, and let the dish
smell nice and be tastefully arranged. Never serve up food in large
quantities except to convalescents, who never seem to be satisfied.
You may think these details are trifling, but it is attention to these
trifles which distinguishes a good from a bad nurse.

Then as to the food itself. Of course you must never give an invalid
anything without first asking the physician whether he may have it. We
shall never forget calling to see a patient who had typhoid fever. It
was our second visit, and as we entered the room, we saw the patient—a
young girl—vigorously attacking a beef-steak! And the nurse—she was
a trained nurse—looking on with approval. We asked why the girl had
been allowed meat when we had expressly said that she was under no
circumstances to have any other food than milk. The nurse replied—

“Oh, sir, I do not believe that patients with typhoid fever should be
fed on milk. I think it is far better to give them solid food!”

We are afraid that we lost our temper at this criminal disobedience.
What answer we gave we do not remember, but we secured the nurse’s
discharge within an hour. Whether it was due to this unfortunate affair
or not we cannot say, but certainly this was one of the worst cases of
typhoid that we have seen.

Whatever you give to an invalid must be of the very best. Let your
custards be made with new-laid eggs—oh, you may laugh! but custards are
sometimes made with bad eggs. Let the chicken be young and the fish
fresh and nicely boiled, or if it is fried let it be nice and brown and
free from grease.

You should never give food to an invalid which has been kept overnight,
and never serve up the same dish two days running. Invalids very
rapidly tire of everything, and as varied a diet as possible must be
provided for them.

The drinks of persons suffering from fevers often occasion considerable
difficulty. Nowadays we let fever patients have as much to drink as
they like, though in the old days the fluids were restricted.

Invalids should always have tables at their bedsides, and a drink of
some sort should be placed beside them that they may quench their
thirst whenever they please.

Whatever drink they are taking, it should be prepared fresh every
morning and evening. It is a great mistake to leave jugs of stale
lemonade or other drinks in a sick-room.

In cases of fever, and indeed in all diseases, it is well to have
plenty of ice on the premises. You will find that many invalids prefer
sucking ice to drinking, and it is better for them, because it is less
likely to injure the stomach.

Lemonade made from fresh lemons and boiling water, strained and iced,
is perhaps the best drink for invalids. Aerated lemonade should not be
given, but the other aerated waters may be administered freely in most
cases.

Talking about ice, you must be very careful where you get it from. In
London the ice supplied is usually quite pure, but in the country,
and still more abroad, you must be very careful about ice. If it is
possible to obtain it, the best ice is that made at home from distilled
water with a freezing machine.

Milk given to invalids should always be scalded. Barley-water must be
made fresh at least once a day. Under no circumstances may it be kept
overnight, for it rapidly decomposes, and sometimes becomes highly
poisonous. Toast-and-water, our pet aversion when we had measles, is a
thing of the past. We have never ordered it nor seen it ordered.

From diet we pass to medicine. You cannot carry out the instructions
of the physician too carefully. Always measure out physic with a
clean glass measure. A “drop” or a “teaspoonful” is a most uncertain
quantity. Remember that a drop is a minim, a teaspoonful is a dram,
and a tablespoonful is half an ounce. But these measures are now
old-fashioned, and in a few years will be obsolete.

We now use the decimal system, and order so many “c.c.’s” of fluid
(_i.e._, so many cubic centimetres) to be taken. One cubic centimetre
equals not quite seventeen minims. You can easily obtain decimal
measures at the same rate as the old forms.

The time of the day at which medicines are given is extremely
important. We will give you an example of this. We ordered Mrs. —— a
sleeping draught containing chloral to be given at 9 P.M. The nurse,
Mrs. ——’s daughter, forgot to give the draught at the time stated, so
she gave it her as soon as she woke up in the morning! If you forget
to give physic at the time stated—especially if it is a draught to be
given at bedtime—do not give it at all until you have again seen the
physician. But there is no excuse for anyone to forget to give the
patient his medicine at the right time.

Before the physician calls see that the room is tidy and the place well
arranged. Of course we can do our business as well in a coal-cellar
as in a palace. But you have no idea what a difference it makes to
yourself and your patient if the physician is not inconvenienced in any
way. We are all human, and if we see that the nurse is doing her best
to make her patient comfortable, it stimulates us to do all that we
possibly can. And if the nurse is an amateur, and we see that she is
giving her whole attention to her work, we are more likely to relieve
and instruct her as far as lies in our power. If when we call we see
the room is in disorder, with stale food about the place and signs of
negligence on the part of the nurse, we are inclined to get away as
soon as possible, knowing that whatever we order stands a very fair
chance of remaining undone.

One last word. You have a very great advantage over trained nurses in
that, as you are related to the invalid, you can cheer him, you can
read to him, and generally comfort him.

We have nothing to say against trained nurses. In some diseases the
help of a woman skilled in nursing is essential. What we want to do is
to impress upon every woman the fact that it may become her duty to
nurse her relative or friend, and that, if she will put her whole mind
into the work, she will be as competent to nurse invalids through most
diseases as are her specially skilled sisters.




SHEILA’S COUSIN EFFIE.

A STORY FOR GIRLS.

BY EVELYN EVERETT-GREEN, Author of “Greyfriars,” “Half-a-dozen
Sisters,” etc.


CHAPTER IX.

A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE.

To explain what had occurred, and how that terrible cry had arisen, it
is necessary to describe what had been passing in the large hall whilst
the tableaux were going on upstairs.

The stalls of the bazaar were by that time pretty well empty, and made
fine seats for the crowd of little people waiting eagerly to watch
the antics of the performing dogs. Numbers of grown-up people, unable
to get into the “theatre,” as it was dubbed for the nonce, remained
to take care of the little ones, and the middle of the floor was left
clear for the showman and his troupe.

This, like most other of the entertainments, was an amateur affair, the
showman being a young man of fallen fortunes, who, from his love for
animals, had taken to the training of performing dogs, sometimes making
money by them, but always ready to lend his services for a good cause.

One of the cleverest of his dogs was a black poodle, half clipped
and half shaggy, and he did wonderful things, as did also a
big fox-terrier, his special friend and comrade. One of their
accomplishments was to strike a match and light their pipes, and this
feat was so applauded that it was repeated.

Somehow—nobody of course could say how or why—a spark from the match or
the pipe settled in the poodle’s glossy coat, and, as it so chanced,
his master had lately used a wash for it having some paraffin in its
composition.

Instantly the poor dog was in a blaze, and, terrified out of all
knowledge, rushed wildly hither and thither to the terror of all,
whilst his master, catching up a great heavy cloak which a lady, with
great presence of mind, flung across to him, pursued the poor creature,
and at last succeeded in throwing this over him, and rolling him over
till the flames were extinguished.

Everybody was watching the chase and the capture, and crowding round to
know how much the poor dog had been hurt; and meantime a little thread
of flame was running up one of the festoons against which the dog had
dashed, and this in turn set fire to other festoons, till some burning
paper fell upon one of the flimsy draperies of a stall, and in a moment
a piercing cry went up from fifty throats—

“Fire! Fire!”

This was the cry which fell upon the ears of the packed assembly in
the upper room, and immediately a thrill and a rustle went through the
spectators.

North was one of the actors in the picture, but in a moment he sprang
to the footlights and said, speaking with an air of authoritative
entreaty—

“I beg you, ladies and gentlemen, to keep your seats, and only go
out quietly. Remember that that door is the only exit. If it becomes
choked nobody behind can escape. Probably whatever has occurred is only
trifling. I beg you not to endanger your own safety and that of others
by any sort of a rush. Let those on the back rows move first, and in
five minutes the place can be cleared.”

So spoke North, and a cheer went up from several amongst the audience,
and those in the front remained still, though faces were pale, and
heads were anxiously turned towards the door, where the sounds from the
great hall below became more and more menacing. Then a puff of smoke
darkened the air and a lady shrieked, and the next moment a man’s voice
from the stage exclaimed hoarsely:

“I vow the place is on fire! I’m not going to stay to be suffocated
like a rabbit in its warren!”

At those words the whole hall rose in a sort of panic, but North had
caught hold of the figure, which in its finery was on the verge of
leaping into the space below, and in a voice hoarse with passion he
cried out:

“Cyril—you coward! You sha’n’t do it! Not if I have to detain you by
force. If there is a panic now it will be all your doing!”

For a moment it was touch and go. North held his breath. His voice
could not be heard, but his action had been seen. Somebody had thrown
back the darkening curtains and let in the bright sunshine, and Oscar
instantly turned off the gas of the footlights. The opportune flood
of daylight had the effect of restoring momentary confidence; and
Miss Adene, who was in the third row, was earnestly entreating those
about her not to crowd out before their turn. She had a calm and
gentle firmness of manner that had its due effect, and though there
was considerable press in the doorway, and often those who got through
gave an audible shriek on reaching the vestibule leading into the hall
below, still there was no absolute choking of the one exit, and North,
who stood holding back the struggling Cyril, his face sternly set
towards the door, gave a sigh of infinite relief as he saw that there
would not be the dreaded block, which might have meant loss of many
lives.

Suddenly his hold on Cyril’s torn finery relaxed, and he half pushed
him from him.

“Go now, if you must! I have others to see to, but——”

Cyril waited for nothing more. He was off like an arrow from a bow,
pushing and elbowing his way out, even jostling past Miss Adene, who
was quietly conducting down the gangway a party of ladies who had
instinctively turned to her as to a tower of strength in a terrible
moment. He did not recognise her, though she knew him well enough, and
a little curve of the lips showed her feelings as he pushed by.

Upon the stage was a frightened group of white-faced girls all clinging
together, watching with dilated eyes the melting of the crowd round the
door, and the increasing volume of smoke rolling in.

Effie’s father had pushed his way upwards and was on the stage, holding
his daughter closely in his arms, whilst Sheila had run to Oscar at the
first hint of danger, and the two were standing together, he striving
to keep her calm, whilst she was piteously asking if they could not get
out by one of the windows. She knew the hall was on fire.

May’s brothers had taken possession of her and another girl-actor who
had nobody with her. North had climbed up to see if there was any
reasonable chance of rescue from the street. It was very plain that to
go out into the larger hall was only to change one peril for another.
Lionel Benson came up and said—

“Look here, North, this place is almost clear now. I’ll go and have a
look what is happening below. If there’s a crush and panic there and
the exits are choked, we’d better shut the doors upon ourselves and
attract attention from without. The building is solid enough, that
won’t burn easily. It’s the flimsy flummery that’s caught alight. Hark
at that screaming below. I’m afraid things are bad there. Don’t let our
girls go out into it just yet. We may be safer here. I’ll go and look
and report.” And, in fact, as Lionel was speaking, there was a backward
recoil into the hall of many who had left it. Miss Adene came in with a
pale face, saying to North who eagerly met her—

“They are getting the children out as fast as they can. I trust there
will be no lives lost; but it is a terrible sight, with all the
draperies in a blaze, and flakes of fire falling down from the burning
festoons. The firemen are here. I have seen brass helmets; I think they
will stop the choking of the exits, but I would rather be here with
May. Is the child very much frightened? Let me go to her.”

May and Sheila both ran forward at sight of Miss Adene. Their faces
were white beneath the stage paint; they clasped her hands, and cried
out piteously—

“Oh, Miss Adene, oh, Cousin Mary! What is it? What is happening? Is it
very bad? Oh, please tell us! Can’t we get out? Must we stay here to
be——”

They could not get out the awful word; they were trembling like aspens.
Miss Adene took a hand of each and said—

“Nothing can happen to us but what our heavenly Father permits. We will
ask Him in our hearts to bring us safely out of this, and I think He
will. Brave men are at work to put down the danger. They are getting
the hose into the building, and I think they will soon get the fire
under. I think we are better here than swelling the number below.
See, they have shut out the smoke now! Suppose you come and change
your dresses? You will be more comfortable then; and for the next ten
minutes I think you may be sure you will not have to move.”

Trembling and terrified, yet half reassured, the girls allowed
themselves to be led into the dressing-room beyond, where others had
crowded, as though to get as far off as possible from the sounds below
and the terrible, choking smoke-wreaths. The windows were open, and
here there was little to be heard or seen. They hurried into their own
dresses, listening and talking in breathless undertones the while,
whilst messengers went to and fro, and Mr. North sat holding Effie in
his arms, the shock having been quite too much for her, and culminating
in an acute attack of breathlessness which the smoke-laden air seemed
to aggravate.

“Let her come to the window,” said Sheila, and room was made for her
there. But nobody could keep still or help starting and shuddering at
every sound from without. They could hear what a tumult was going on in
another street, and it was hard to bear being shut up here; yet every
messenger who went out for news came back saying they were safest where
they were.

Then a sudden cheer arose from North and the youths about him, and in
dashed Oscar, crying out—

“Here comes the fire-escape round the corner, with Lionel Benson to
guide it! He has got out all right, and has brought it for us. Now we
are as safe as anything! Good old Lionel! Now then, ladies, one at a
time! We will have you all safe directly.”

Sheila suddenly went sick and white with the revulsion of feeling, and
May, seizing Miss Adene’s hands, sobbed out—

“Oh, Cousin Mary, Cousin Mary, God has heard us, after all! I’m afraid
I did not quite believe He would!”

The next minute a helmeted figure was among them, quietly settling
matters, and sending one girl after another down the shoot, to be
received with cries and cheers by those below.

But it took some little time, and Miss Adene, disengaging her hands
from May’s, said quietly—

“I should like to go and have one more look into the hall. I shall have
plenty of time before my turn comes.”

“Oh, let me go with you!” cried Sheila eagerly, and May, too, was
filled with a sudden, timid, and irresistible curiosity. Oscar, who was
standing beside his sister, took her hand at once, and said—

“Come, then, and see! But I think the worst is over now. They have had
the hose at work some while now. But the place is like a kiln; you
could hardly get through it now.”

And, indeed, when the doors were opened, such a volume of hot, reeking
steam came pouring in that it was with difficulty they could see
anything. The steady sound of pumping was in their ears, and through
the gloom they could still see darting tongues of flame rising up
from the charred masses of woodwork and drapery that had once been
gaily-decked stalls. The hiss of the water, the moving shapes of the
firemen with their shining helmets, the desolation of the scene as
compared with what it had been an hour before was something rather
terrible to contemplate; and Sheila, clinging to Oscar’s arm, whispered
a frightened query—

“Oh, tell me, has anybody been killed?”

“I believe not—I hope not; but some have been hurt and more have been
terribly frightened. If the ladies with the children had not behaved
splendidly when it broke out, they say there must have been a fearful
loss of life; but nobody knows any details yet.”

“I think the only person who has absolutely disgraced himself is my
brother Cyril,” said North, coming up to look for the missing ladies,
his face still wearing the stern, set look that had characterised it
throughout. That he felt Cyril’s behaviour keenly was self-evident. May
took the arm he offered her, and said in her gracious way—

“But I suppose sometimes even a brave man may lose his head. I’m sure,
if I could have moved hand or foot, I should have made a most frantic
rush.”

“You did not do it, at any rate,” said North, with a straight look into
May’s charming face that made her colour up to her ears—“and Cyril did.
I think I could forgive him better if he were not my brother. And there
was no immediate danger where we were. He had not that excuse. To push
aside women and girls to effect his own escape——” The young man ceased
suddenly, as though realising that in the stress of his feeling he was
needlessly vituperating his own brother. But, as he said, it was the
very fact of the close relationship that made the disgrace so hard to
bear.

It was an easy descent to the street, though a strange experience, and
Sheila stood beside May in the midst of the eager crowd, breathless,
safe, and more keenly excited than she had ever been in her life before.

“Oh, Sheila,” she cried as, in response to North’s eager invitation,
they all moved off together in the direction of River Street, “I have
had my wish at last!”

“What wish?”

“Oh, don’t you remember what I said one day about wishing there could
sometimes be danger to see what men and women would do? We were in
danger to-day, were we not? And how splendidly so many of the people
behaved!”

“Didn’t they!” cried Sheila eagerly. “I think North was fine. The way
he held back Cyril, and kept all the people quiet! And Miss Adene was
just as splendid too.”

“Oh, yes; I do like to see brave things!” cried May impulsively. “I
thought your brother and cousin—I mean North, you know—were just what
men should be—thinking of things and doing them, and never troubling
about themselves.”

“Yes, my other cousin wasn’t much like that,” said Sheila, with a
scornful turn of the lip. “I shall never, never care the least bit for
Cyril again.”

“I don’t think anybody could,” said May, “who saw him to-day.”

(_To be continued._)




ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.


⁂ The Editor begs to announce that he cannot undertake to return the
MSS. of compositions (literary or musical) sent for criticism in this
column.


STUDY AND STUDIO.

SODA.—We think you must refer to the Deppé method of learning the
pianoforte. If you apply to Miss Chaplin, 138, Marylebone Road, she
will give you full particulars of a class that has been formed, as well
as of private instruction. We cannot pronounce on the merits of the
system, but believe it is highly esteemed by many authorities.

AILSA.—1. Your lines are decidedly above the average of those submitted
to us for criticism. You evidently understand how to write in metre,
though your rhymes are not always good, _e.g._, “glories” and
“chorus.”—2. You can hardly get your words set to music unless you know
some musical composer who will do it. You might apply to a well-known
musical firm, but we fear it would be of no use.

“COBO.”—We are quite certain you could not hope to earn money by
book-illustration without some instruction in “black and white.” If
you gave us your address, we could direct you where to apply for this;
but you might inquire of the Secretary, Technical Education Board, St.
Martin’s Lane, London, or refer to Mrs. Watson’s articles on “What are
the County Councils Doing for Girls?” in THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER for 1897.

DAUGHTER OF A SIXTEEN YEARS’ SUBSCRIBER.—We commend to you the advice
of our last answer. There are a great number of scholarships for girls
now offered by the County Council, of which you can easily obtain the
fullest particulars.

“ALWAYS IN A HURRY.”—We think your writing is very fairly good, and
do not consider, especially as you are so busy, that you need use a
copy-book. Keep a regular space between the lines of a letter, and
do not leave a margin at the end of them; also guard against sudden
blacknesses, which spoil the general effect. We are inquiring for your
extract, and thank you for your information and kind letter.

SOROR.—The fee for the National Art Training School, South Kensington,
is £5 per session of five months, with an entrance fee of 10s. The
hours are from 9 A.M. to 3.30 P.M., every day except Saturday. No doubt
the lady superintendent could recommend your sister some place where
she could board. A great many girl-students of art and music board
at Alexandra House, South Kensington. You might apply there also. Do
you know of the Crystal Palace Company’s School of Art? There is a
board-residentiary house in connection with it, and there are annual
scholarships.

CANARY.—1. Your quotation—

    “Men must work and women must weep”

is from a short poem by Charles Kingsley, which begins—

    “Three fishers went sailing away to the west.”

You will find it in any edition of his works, and it has been set to
music.—2. September 28th, 1887, was a Wednesday. Two questions are our
limit.


GIRLS’ EMPLOYMENTS.

SOUTH AFRICA (_Agency for Lady Housekeepers_).—A list of respectable
employment agencies has been compiled by the Associated Guild of
Registries, and may be obtained from the publishers, Messrs. Gardner,
Darton & Co., 44, Victoria Street, S.W. You could apply to any of the
registries mentioned in that list with entire confidence. But the point
to remember is this, that no agency can promise to find situations
which are very scarce and desired by a vast number of people, such, for
instance, as the post of lady housekeeper you mention. If you would
undertake the duties of a working housekeeper or working matron, it
is probable you would easily find employment, and would not then have
cause to complain that registry-office keepers take fees and do not
provide work.

DUM VIVIMUS VIVAMUS (_Employment for Part Time_).—This is always
exceedingly difficult to obtain, and, for this reason, employers who
only want part of a person’s time usually pay at a higher rate than
they otherwise would do, knowing that it is difficult for a girl to
fill up the other half. You think of employing the three days of the
week that are left free in copying letters and addressing envelopes.
But this we cannot counsel, such work being both scarce and miserably
paid. But, living as you do tolerably near Norwich, it seems to us that
it would be far better for you to engage regularly and for all your
time in one of the industries of that city. Some girls are employed
at a large circulating library and printing works, and this kind of
occupation might suit you. Then there are some electrical organ works
in Colegate Street, where girls who have deft fingers and are well
educated can sometimes find employment of a superior class to that of
the principal factories. But Norwich abounds in occupations for girls
in connection with its large manufactories, and it is therefore hardly
needful to enumerate the many kinds of business which are carried on in
that city.

UNSETTLED (_Emigration_).—From what you tell us of yourself and
your circumstances, we are led to believe that emigration might be
a desirable course for you. For a young woman standing alone in the
world as you do, the life of a cotton-mill hand is apt to become
dreary, whereas in Manitoba you might make friends and interests of
your own. The climate, too, cannot fail to prove beneficial to you,
and the life will altogether be hostile to the bronchitis from which
you now occasionally suffer. Possibly the British Women’s Emigration
Association, Imperial Institute, Kensington, London, could arrange for
you to go out to Canada with a protected party; and you should make a
note of the address of the Girls’ Home of Welcome, 272, Assiniboine
Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba, for you could be received there and
boarded free of charge for the first twenty-four hours after arrival,
and doubtless the Superintendent could make some suggestions with
regard to your finding employment. You should continue to occupy your
evening hours in attending some cookery and laundry classes. April is
considered the best month for arriving in Canada. The through fare to
Winnipeg is about £7 10s.

GERTRUDE (_Painting Cards, etc._).—The manufacturers of Christmas
cards only care to receive designs which they can colour and reproduce
in great number. They have no use for hand-painted cards. But as
you are wise enough not to insist, like so many girls, on doing
work only in your own home, it is quite possible you might obtain
employment with either a firm of chromo-lithographers or the highest
class of manufacturing stationers. You would be well prepared for the
chromo-lithographic business by studying for a time at the Royal Female
School of Art, Queen Square, Bloomsbury. In the stationery trade girls
are employed, but as they are mainly occupied in tinting the spaces
which are afterwards embossed with a crest or monogram, there is not
much scope for progress beyond a fixed point. The payment, however, is
good in the best establishments, and the work is certainly not arduous.

LAEN (_Home Work_).—They must be very clever and exceptional girls
indeed who can earn £2 or £3 a week by work done at home. Promises of
such amounts are sometimes held out by advertisements; but inquiry
often reveals that the girls who reply are expected to spend something
first, and then to await payment, which never comes. It is probably
some advertisement of this kind that gives rise to your question.


MEDICAL.

NEMO.—The cause of the perspiration having an unpleasant smell has
been attributed to many things. Just lately a germ has been discovered
which has the power of rendering the perspiration offensive in a very
short time. Usually the sweat is perfectly inodorous when exuded, but
in some families a condition known as bromhydrosis obtains, in which
the perspiration is of an offensive odour. In some diseases, where
excessive perspiration occurs, the sweat soon develops an offensive
smell, doubtless due to the machinations of the germ mentioned above.
The commonest diseases in which excessive sweating occurs are ague,
phthisis, and rheumatic fever. We advise you to take a bath every day,
and to change your linen as frequently as you can. A lump of borax,
or better still, a wineglassful of vinegar added to your bath will
help you to rid yourself of this unpleasant annoyance. If this does
not succeed, sponge over the parts of the body which perspire the most
freely with a mixture of toilet vinegar and water (1 in 6).

PATIENT.—You may be suffering from gall-stones, or you may not. This
disease is one of the most difficult of all disorders to detect;
indeed, it is but rarely diagnosed with certainty. Gall-stones by
no means always give rise to symptoms. Jaundice is sometimes due to
gall-stones, but as this is a sign of many diseases, it does not follow
that because you are jaundiced you have gall-stones. And the converse
is equally fallacious, for gall-stones do not always cause jaundice.
You must go to a physician, and he will do his best for you; but as
we said before, it is by no means always possible to tell whether
gall-stones are present.

[Illustration]

EYES.—1. Your eyes become tired because you use them too much. You
say you are constantly reading or writing, so your poor eyes are
kept constantly at work. You should, if possible, allow your eyes
some rest, or more properly recreation, for the eyes cannot rest
during the light; but above all things you must be careful not to
give your eyes unnecessary labour. Never read small print, or read
in a dim or flickering light. Use white paper in preference to blue
or cream-colour. If you have reason to believe that your eyes are
not quite normal, go to an oculist and have them tested, and obtain
spectacles if such are needed. The puffiness under the eyes is only
a symptom denoting that the eyes have been over-used. An eye-wash
consisting of ten grains of boracic acid, and half a teaspoonful of
compound tincture of lavender in a pint of warm water will cause the
swelling to subside. Indigestion does affect the eyes in several ways,
not the least important of which is to render them less able to resist
the effects of over-use.—2. Cure your indigestion and your colour will
improve.

NYDIA.—You suffer from flushing caused by indigestion. You have been
treated for indigestion, and all your symptoms have disappeared except
this flushing—not at all an uncommon history, for flushing is one of
the most difficult symptoms of indigestion to quell. You know how to
treat dyspepsia, so we need not go over that ground again; but to
cure flushing, the most important points to attend to are, to avoid
tea and coffee, and to drink very sparingly with meals, to masticate
thoroughly, and not to run about after meals.

DESPONDENT.—Yes! girls do suffer from gout. We have seen typical acute
gout in girls in their “teens.” It is not, however, very common, and,
as far as we have seen, it only occurs in members of a gouty family.


MISCELLANEOUS.

MARGUERITE JAUNE and EVELYN.—It is quite easy to paint on satin with
water-colours if a certain amount of body-colour be employed as a
foundation, and one drop of Miss Turck’s water-colour fixative or
medium be added to each colour. We could not pronounce an opinion on
the superiority of one hospital over another in the matter of training
nurses. The following are the general rules that obtain in all our
hospitals. The age, from 25 to 40, good references as to character, and
condition of health. After a test of a few weeks, they enter on a year
of probation, during which time their wages are on an average £12, with
(or without) partial uniform. They are usually expected to remain in
the service of the hospital where they have been trained for a further
period of three years, in the course of which their wages rise to £22
or £25.

SPEEDWELL.—The specimen is _Claytonia perfoliata_. It is a native of
N.-W. America, Mexico and Cuba, but has now become naturalised in
England. Plants should be laid flat between sheets of blotting-paper
and a weight placed upon them; some flat irons or large stones will
do; or better still, if they can be put in a press they will readily
dry and retain their colour to some extent. _Every day_ the sheets of
blotting-paper should be thoroughly dried and the plants replaced until
they are perfectly dried.

M. A. T.—The French phrase, “Je vous en fais mes compliments
empressés,” means, “I present my hearty compliments on” so-and-so, or
such an event. Literally rendered (according to French idiom), “I you
on it make my compliments earnestly” (or more literally “emphasised”).

RABY.—A Conservative is a medium Tory, one who wishes to preserve the
union of Church and State, and not radically to alter the Constitution.
The term was first used in 1830, in the January number of the
_Quarterly Review_. Liberal was a term first employed in 1815, when
Lord Byron and his friends started the periodical called _The Liberal_,
to represent their views. A Radical is an ultra-Liberal, verging on
republican opinions. The term was first applied in 1818 to those who
wished to introduce _radical reform_ into the representative system.
The Liberal-Unionists are those Whigs and Radicals who united in 1886
with Lord Salisbury and the Conservative party to oppose Home Rule for
Ireland. The present Duke of Devonshire was head of the Whigs, and Mr.
Chamberlain head of the Radicals, who seceded. The term Whig appears to
be extinct at present. There is a very great change in all opinions,
and to quote a recent speech, “the Conservatives have become more
liberal, and the Liberals more conservative” than of yore.

LUSITANIA.—The term “stock,” as employed in English cookery books,
signifies the foundation of soup, and is made from meat and bones.
To make good soup from it, the stock should be in jelly when
cold. Pea-flour, vegetables, lentils, and so forth, and whatever
flavouring may be desired, should be added to it. The cold which some
people suffer in the feet and hands arises from mal-nutrition, an
insufficiency of warmth-giving food, as also of suitable clothing; and
thirdly, from an insufficient amount of exercise. Tight stays also
greatly impede the due circulation of the blood. When you finish taking
exercise and sit down to your avocations or recreations, put your feet
into a fur slipper or foot-warmer, such as employed in a carriage. The
heat-producing foods are those containing starch, sugar, gum, and fat.

IRENE.—“Sir R. Loder,” with no initial letters after his name, is
simply a knight, a dignity which is not hereditary, and cannot descend
to his son. “Sir Thomas Hesketh, Bart.,” is a baronet, which is a
dignity inherited by his eldest son. “Bart.” is an abbreviation—solely
restricted to writing—of “baronet.”

FOUR YEARS’ READER.—You had better go to a musical instrument shop, or
communicate with the manager by letter, respecting the instrument you
name. Without reasonable doubt he will give some addresses of masters
for it. You should not spell “entitled” “entiteled,” “whom” “whome,”
nor “oblige” “oblidge.”

H. GAMBLE.—There is a hospital for epilepsy at Portland Terrace,
Regent’s Park, near St. John’s Wood Road Station, where patients may
be received free, or according to the means of the family. There is
another, the West End Hospital, 73, Welbeck Street, W.: but whether
patients may be received there free you must inquire.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Transcriber’s Note—The following changes have been made to this text:

Page 562: grevious to grievous—“grievous lies”.

Page 566: rght to rght—“to the right”.

Fennimore to Fenimore—“Fenimore Cooper’s”.

Page 569: removed dittograph “he”—“he would work so hard”.

Page 573: amuteur to amateur—“nurse is an amateur”.

atten- to attention—“her whole attention”.

Page 576: fixitive to fixative—“fixative or medium”.]






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1014, June 3, 1899, by Various

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