The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. XX. No. 1019, by AUTHOR.

{642}

SHEILA’S COUSIN EFFIE.

A STORY FOR GIRLS.

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

“‘A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU.’” (See page 643.)

CHAPTER XIV.

CHRISTMAS TIME.

merry Christmas, Miss Cossart! Why, you don’t mean to say you are not coming to church! I thought you’d be sure to make a fresh start on Christmas Day!”

“Oh, I’m a regular heathen! I haven’t been to church twice the whole year! I can’t stand stuffy places, and I expect the scent of the flowers will make it twice as bad as usual to-day.”

“Well, you’re coming anyway, Miss Cholmondeley? Shall we start? It’ll be hot walking, and I hate that omnibus, and the carros are so slow. Come along. Miss Cossart will tell them that we’ve started.”

Sheila hung back a moment; she had an instinct that her aunt would be vexed, but she never knew how to refuse Ronald’s suggestions, made in a half masterful, half-pleading way. He took her prayer-book and walked off beside her, whilst Effie looked after them with a rather stormy light in her eyes.

“Does she really never come to church?” asked Ronald, as they took their way along the sunny road together.

“She has only been once or twice since I have known her,” answered Sheila. “She thinks the air might bring on asthma.”

Ronald was silent for a few minutes, swinging his stick. His face was rather graver than its wont.

“Somehow I don’t like to see people staying away from church like that. I know it isn’t fashionable to say such things, but I have a feeling that church is the place to help us to get the better of our infirmities, bodily and spiritual. My brother Guy will struggle out to church when he goes nowhere else, and I’m sure he is never the worse for it. I don’t like to hear a girl call herself a heathen in that flippant way. She must remember she won’t be judged by the standard of the heathens!”

It was so unusual for Ronald to speak seriously that Sheila was quite surprised, yet somehow it seemed to draw them closer together. That was how Oscar sometimes talked, and upon this Christmas morning her thoughts were very much with Oscar. It was the first Christmas they had ever spent apart, and Sheila was a little bit homesick in consequence.

“I should hate not to go to church on Christmas morning,” she said. “It seems to bring us near to everybody all round the world. It is so hard to realise that it is Christmas here. A few days ago when it rained so, and the snow came on the mountains, one could fancy, perhaps, that it might be winter somewhere; but with this glorious sunshine! It seems almost ridiculous!”

“Do you like Christmas out here, Miss Sheila?” asked Ronald, who often called her that, and sometimes “Miss Baby,” “or would you rather be at home?”

Sudden tears came quite unexpectedly into Sheila’s eyes. She looked down that Ronald might not see them.

“I don’t think I have a home exactly—now,” she said.

He looked at her quickly, a flash in his eyes.

“But surely your home is with your uncle and aunt?”

“Yes,” answered Sheila a little unsteadily, “in a way it is, but sometimes it doesn’t seem quite a real home.”

A tear plashed down, but Sheila turned her head away, and then looked back with a brave smile.

“I oughtn’t to say that, perhaps. It sounds ungrateful, but, of course, it can’t be the same as one’s own house, and last Christmas we were so happy, and I never thought of things changing like this!”

Ronald, of course, knew all Sheila’s story by this time. He looked the sympathy he felt.

“I know, I know. It must have been very hard! But you are happy with your relations, are you not?”

“Y—yes,” answered Sheila a little doubtfully, adding after a brief pause; “only sometimes I think my aunt doesn’t much like me now.”

“Oh, don’t think that! Everybody has ups and downs, you know. We all of us have our cross days.”

“You don’t,” answered Sheila, “nor Miss Adene, nor any of you! But Aunt Cossart is sometimes very glum and cross with me.”

There was a little gleam in Ronald’s eyes. It is a known fact that lookers on sometimes see most of the game, and it had not been unnoticed by the Dumaresq party that Sheila was rather out of favour with her aunt. They could see the reason plain enough. The hotel was filling up now, and still Sheila held her place as the favourite, and small notice comparatively was bestowed upon Effie. There was no blinking the matter that Effie bored people. Her sprightliness was not of an engaging kind, it had a contradictious defiance about it that was irritating, and her shallow theories and self-centred way of looking at life made her conversation monotonous and tiresome. When she allowed herself to forget herself, she could be much more agreeable; but generally she could not get away from herself, and the result was disastrous for herself.

Some other young girls had come, and Sheila would romp up and down the house with them, leading them into fun and frolic, teaching them the Washington Post up and down corridors or verandah, throwing herself into games of which she was the life and soul, and in which Ronald was always an able assistant, and in a hundred little ways making life merry for herself and others, whilst Effie never seemed able to amalgamate in the merry crowd.

Health might be one cause; but another was a certain quality in herself. She was so used to being the first thought and consideration with those about her, that if she was not that, she did not know how to take any place at all. Her mother would look on anxious and dissatisfied, utterly perplexed to find the answer to the question always forcing itself upon her. At last she reached the conclusion that Sheila was somehow in fault. If Sheila were different and made Effie welcome, things would go differently. Effie ought not to be sitting with a book in the drawing-room whilst the young folks were frolicking outside. It was not right or proper; only if Effie did go out to them, she speedily returned, not finding any fun in what amused them.

So Sheila got into disgrace with her aunt by imperceptible degrees, and upon this Christmas morning her heart was rather heavy within her, though she scarcely knew why.

The service, however, did her good, though she could not always keep back her tears. The building recalled no associations; it was but an ugly little place, something between a round and a square, the authorities refusing to permit a cruciform church to be built. The flowers, too, did not look at all Christmas-like in spite of a few bits of holly here and there; arum lilies were the great feature with roses and poinsettias. But the familiar hymns brought home back, and Sheila choked once or twice, thinking of Oscar, the father who had left them so suddenly, and the dear old home she never expected to see again.

She walked home with Miss Adene, who talked kindly and comfortingly to her. She had seen that the child was in danger of getting in trouble, and had warned Ronald to be careful; for she half-suspected Mrs. Cossart’s ambitions for her daughter. Ronald would never think of such a thing himself, nor would Sheila, who had the mind of a child in all such matters; but Miss Adene had seen a good deal of the world, and her kindly eyes were very keen and quick.

“Don’t be downhearted, little girl,” she said, “life is never all sunshine for any of us. We should not be good for much if it were. We want our east winds and rainy days, as well as the plants and flowers, to make us thrive. We should be dry and arid like a desert if we had nothing but our own way{643} all our lives, and no little crosses to bear.”

“Yes, I suppose so; only it seems hard when people are unjust. Aunt is vexed with me, and she won’t say why. She calls me rude and forward; but I don’t think I am, do you? I like fun, and they all play. Why should I be left out?”

Christmas was a gay day at the New Hotel, and nobody was left out in the general fun. The whole place was decorated with greenery—trailers of giant smilax twenty feet long, making the task of decoration easy. They were wreathed round the balusters of the staircase and festooned overhead in the dining-room, the waiters and maids got “tips,” and were more smiling than ever, whilst guests exchanged greetings and little gifts, and the table reproduced the typical fare of England—turkey, roast beef, and plum puddings all aflame!

There was tennis in the afternoon, and dancing for the young people in the evening; and Effie for the first time went down to the billiard-room, and Miss Adene kindly interested herself in getting partners for her amongst some of the visitors from the houses on the island, who had come to join the fun.

Miss Adene had several acquaintances in Madeira, and many persons had called upon Lady Dumaresq and her husband. Sheila from being much with them had received invitations to go out with them; and at first the girl had accepted, not knowing how to refuse. This had been another cause of offence; and now Miss Adene was good-naturedly seeking to induce their friends to call upon the Cossarts; and Mrs. Cossart had been made happy to-night by an invitation for New Year’s Eve to one of the biggest quintas in the island, where there would be a grand entertainment, culminating in a giant display of fireworks, which display, they heard, would be universal all over the island. For it was the custom in Madeira to welcome in the New Year by a perfect storm of fireworks. Even the poorest of the people spent their little savings in a few squibs or crackers. Every child who had a “bit” to spend laid it out in fireworks. Miss Adene said it was the most curious sight possible—the whole island, as far as the eye could see, alight and ablaze; for as the quintas and smaller houses ran right up into the hills to a considerable height, and extended far on either side, the panorama of coloured lights was something unique.

“Isn’t it nice that we have been asked to the big party?” asked Effie that night. “Not that I care so very much about parties, but I like to see all that is characteristic of a place. I suppose you were asked too, Sheila?”

“Why, yes,” answered Sheila gleefully; but Mrs. Cossart, who was in the room, said coldly—

“I am not sure about your going, Sheila.”

“Oh, aunt! Why not?”

“I am not sure that it is suitable; a big party like that, and your father not a year dead. I don’t know if it is seemly.”

Sheila was silent; she had never thought of that, certainly. It seemed a long, long time now since her father’s death; and even in the summer, when her loss was so recent, she had gone about with her cousins to little friendly gatherings at houses where they were intimate. Now here, in this far-away country, where nobody knew them, the objection did sound a little far-fetched; but Sheila did not know how to answer it, though her face fell.

“I know you don’t think about things as other girls would,” said Mrs. Cossart with a little asperity; “you go romping and playing and dancing just as though you had never had a loss of any kind, and I haven’t checked you, because I don’t want a scene every day, and you are so self-willed. But this big party is another affair. Why, you have not even a dress fit for it. I never thought of your going out to regular parties. No, I don’t think it would do at all.”

For a moment Sheila was tempted to rebel. She had heard so much about this New Year’s Eve party and she did so want to see it, and she did like the lights and music and flowers, the little dancing there was likely to be, and the gay greetings when the New Year came in. It did seem hard to be left out! But then the remembrance came over her of the words she had heard spoken in church, of Miss Adene’s kindly talk, of the resolutions she had made for herself. So gulping down her disappointment and sense of injury, she answered meekly—

“Very well, Aunt Cossart. I suppose you know best. I will stay at home.”

For a moment Effie looked as though she would like to speak, but then the impulse passed, and she said nothing. It had flashed into Effie’s head that it would be nice to go out without Sheila. Effie had begun to think a good deal about Ronald Dumaresq. Her mother had unconsciously led her to do this, though not with intention. Effie had been interested once in Cyril, but she had had her faith in him rather shaken, and his image was waxing proportionately faint. Ronald was the leading figure in her little world now, and when the evening came at last, and she was being dressed for the great party, she was more particular than ever in her life before, and Sheila’s clever tasteful fingers were called into requisition again and again before she could be satisfied.

But at last all was done to her satisfaction. She looked as well as it was possible for her to look, and Sheila admired her cordially. She would not let herself be dull; she declared she should sit up and watch the fireworks from the verandah, where a fine view was to be obtained, and as there were many people in the hotel who would be staying, she would not be left alone.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Sheila started from her doze in a snug corner of the verandah, and behold the island was a blaze of coloured lights, whilst the noise was like that of a bombarded city. She started up and ran forward, and then gave a little startled cry, for there was Ronald putting out his hand for hers, whilst he said in merry friendly tones—

“A happy New Year to you, Sheila!”

“Oof, how you startled me! But you are over there!” she cried laughing, and pointing to the quinta up in the hills, where a splendid show of rockets marked the exact spot.

“Am I? I thought I was here, but no matter. Here or there, I meant to be the first to wish you a happy New Year!”

“How nice of you!” cried Sheila, bubbling over with delight at the beautiful sight before her, and the happy feeling of having a friend at her side, “but you did go there surely?”

“Oh, yes, I showed up and did my duty; but somehow it seemed dull and flat. Something was wanting. Then, you know, this is the place of all others for seeing the whole panorama of the illumination. Up there you are too much in the middle of it. So I just made my escape, got a fellow to run me down to the bottom of the hill, and here I am. Are you glad to see me, Sheila?”

She looked frankly into his eyes, but saw there something that made her suddenly drop her own. With a new sense of shyness she dropped his arm, yet her voice had a happy ring in it as she answered—

“I am very glad to see you. I wish you a happy New Year too.”

“And I mean to get one,” said Ronald, suddenly possessing himself of her hand.

(To be continued.)

VARIETIES.

Good Manners.—To be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good; the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself.

Be Always Learning.—Of all treasures, knowledge is the most precious, for it can neither be stolen, given away, nor consumed.

Selfish People.—The more self is indulged the more it demands, and therefore of all girls the selfish are the most discontented.

Insight.

The riddle of the world is understood

Only by him who feels that God is good.

Whittier.

Meaning in Music.—Mendelssohn felt intensely the meaning of music. Comparing music with words, he said, “Die Worte reichen nicht hinzu”—“Words do not go as far.”

Living.—To live is nothing unless to live be to know Him by Whom we live.—Ruskin.

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THE HOME OF THE EARLS POULETT.

It is a bright day in early spring—the ash-buds still look quite black in the front of March—as we mount slowly the steep hill that leads to the quiet village of Hinton St. George. The fresh air breathes out vigour, but still we rest near the top to look back over the lovely browns and purples of the plain below dotted with red-tiled barns and towers of churches—Lopen, Merriott, South Petherton—built of the soft Ham stone of the county.

The road we go by has a rare charm, with tall ash-hedges not yet lopped to the shabby level demanded by the new injunctions. The crescent bending ash saplings with their ebony tips look to be some guard of halberdiers ready to marshal whichever earl eventually wins the day and comes to the old home to claim his heritage.

Primrose buds look out from the hedge-rows, but there is not yet much cheerful colour in the landscape. After the ash saplings come elder-bushes, whose boughs are just breaking in a sad green tinged with purple. The only warm colour that Dame Nature has taken on her brush is the deep blue of the hills that lie beyond Seavington and Shepton Beauchamp.

Busy folk tramping through noisy London streets are much exercised just now about the law-suit that is to be fought over this far-off spot. What a contrast there is between the distant city and this still village so remote that no builder has spoiled the quiet street, the houses with latticed panes and generous bow-windows, the old stone cross with its mutilated figure, and the long low stone farm with green palings sparkling in the sunlight!

Yet it was in the London church of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields that Queen Mary Stuart’s gaoler, Sir Amyas Poulett, was buried in 1588, and this most remarkable of a long line of Pouletts was not brought to Hinton—perhaps up this very road—till 1728, when no room could be found for him in Gibbs’ new church. This transference seems to form a link between the busy city and the quiet village.

Another bend brings us to the beautiful perpendicular church with its brightly gilded weather-cock dinted by the shots of a past earl, who used to practise shooting at the vane from the adjoining gardens.

Very lovely is the old churchyard, with the great cedars in the garden beyond for a background, and the tall tower, characteristic of the county, softened into the mellowest greyish yellow and flecked with lichens. We linger over the grave-stones, of which many have some link with the Pouletts, and notice the curious Somersetshire name of Tryphena on the tomb of one old servant who had lived in “exemplary servitude” with the family for forty-four years, dying in 1801. On an altar-tomb, with date 1691, is the curious inscription—

Over the pretty turf crosses, which are a peculiarity of this churchyard, a gay peacock walks, very unconscious that he is the old emblem of that immortality which shall survive “when all that seems shall suffer shock.”

Through the deep porch we pass into the church where the pallid marble monuments of many Pouletts go far to overpower the little building, but are relieved by the warm tones of the pinkish fawn stone roof of the chancel, the tender yellow of the Ham stone columns, and the unassuming white plaster of the walls. A beautiful window by Clayton and Bell sends red and purple lights along the stone floor that rest on the heads of little Elizabethan Pouletts who kneel in prayerful line beneath their placid parents in ruff and doublet, seeking—

We do not linger long over the virtues of the earls of last century, though we are amused at the wire-drawn periods of the epitaph to the Honourable Anne Poulett, fourth son of the first Earl Poulett, to whom Queen Anne was godmother. A suite of rooms was prepared for the Queen in the great house hidden in its cedars, and her bed used to be shown there; but death called her to follow her eighteen dead babies before the visit came to pass. She stood sponsor for the fourth son of the first earl and named him Anne just as she did Lord Anne Hamilton, the third son of the Jacobite duke who was killed by Lord Mohun in the famous Hyde Park duel described by Thackeray in Esmond. Lord Anne Poulett’s epitaph tells us that his “sedate fortitude, propriety of judgment, and universal knowledge, could not avert that death which tore him from his afflicted family”!

As we mount some steps into the Earl’s great pew, upholstered in red cloth, we pass a severely simple pulpit which is so in harmony with the church that it seems to melt into it, and leave all to the eloquence of the preacher. The low stone rail, bound with fair worked brass, recalls George Herbert’s words about the reading-desk and pulpit in his church of Layton Ecclesia, “for he would often say Prayer and Preaching, being equally useful, might agree like brethren and have an equal honour and estimation.” The red pew is spoiled by a very ugly window which, happily, is so far back from the main aisle of the church that it does not spoil the general effect. A little door leads us down into a space which was perhaps once the Lady Chapel, and which contains many monuments of great interest.

Much might be written about the early Paulets from Pawlet, near Bridgwater, and their descendant who wedded a Deneband, and so came to Hinton St. George; but in this family the chief interest centres in the early sixteenth century and the age of Elizabeth. In the mailed warriors under the north wall with their dames in curious head-dresses we see probably the warlike Sir Amias, who helped defeat Lambert Simnel at Newark in the days of Henry VII., built much at Hinton, and left his mark on the Middle Temple in London, where chiefly he lived. Beyond lies his son Sir Hugh, who helped Henry VIII. in his French war with Francis I., and is said to have put Wolsey in the stocks when he was a youth at Lymington School. This Sir Hugh perhaps helped to bring misfortune on the house, for he had the ill-fated office laid upon him of being supervisor of all the manors, etc., lately belonging to Richard Whiting, last abbot of Glastonbury.

But by far the most interesting monument in the whole church is that in the west wall of this chapel to the memory of Sir Amyas Poulett, son of Sir Hugh, and gaoler of Mary Queen of Scots during the last two years of her life. It is seldom indeed that so much personal character is expressed in marble as in the curious veins of this pale alabaster. One would think that many a Londoner must have paused, struck by the stern even irritable face, before the monument was removed from St. Martin’s, where it was situate so long under the same roof as Nell Gwynne and many another notable. How strangely it brings us into touch with past times to look at this strong face of the man who had so much to put up with! There he lies motionless in ruff and doublet upon a marble pillow, and yet he moved in the stirring world we know so well from Froude’s vivid pages and Alexandre Dumas’ bustling novels. In 1576 he was sent ambassador by Elizabeth to that frivolous court of Henry III., the king of favourites, who lives again in the pages of Chicot the Jester, with his swarms of little spaniels and his effeminate hands smeared with cream, surrounded by the plots and counter-plots of the Guises and the aged queen-mother Catherine of Medici.

Whilst Sir Amyas was in Paris, the negotiations were afoot for marrying Queen Elizabeth, a woman of forty-six, to the French King Henry’s brother Alençon, Duke of Anjou, a lad of twenty-three, “a small brown creature, deeply pock-marked, with a large head, a knobbed nose, and a hoarse croaking voice.” When he came to visit her in 1579, Elizabeth pretended to like him and called him her “grenouille,” her frog-prince, but the English nation had not forgotten the massacre of St. Bartholomew seven short years ago, and would have none of him. Sir Philip Sidney wrote out his indignation in an honest memorial to the Queen, and then retired for some time from Court to Wilton, where he wrote the Arcadia. On Stubbs, a Puritan pamphleteer, who opposed the match, the Queen vented her spleen by having his hand chopped off by the common hangman. “Long live Queen Elizabeth!”{646} cried the loyal Englishman as he waved his hat with his left hand. Feeling such as this proved to the Queen that her Englishmen would have none of the Italianated foreigner, but with her usual intricate diplomacy she kept up the negotiations for years, and Sir Amyas Poulett had to bear the brunt of Parisian indignation. “I have been baited here for a month or more as a bear at a stake, and had nothing to say,” he writes, “but stood still at my defence for fear to take hurt.”

We can fancy that the knowledge which Sir Amyas gained of French stratagems and spoils made him a suitable warder for the resourceful Scottish queen whom he watched over at Tutbury, Chartley and Fotheringay with a surly fidelity, for the last two out of her eighteen years’ captivity. His restless desire to force his own particular tenets upon her must have added to the trials of her last moments, though his honest refusal to let her be murdered by any secret assassin made the last sad pageant of execution possible, in which her unwavering fortitude won for her the sympathy of posterity. Sir Amyas liked plain dealing, and seems to have fretted much at the tortuous policy of Walsingham and Burghley. He discovered a priest in disguise in the Queen’s household at gloomy Tutbury, but knew not what to do with him, because Elizabeth, as he said, “so dandled the Catholics.” Sir Amyas yielded to Walsingham so far as to give in, perhaps perforce, to the shameful plot which entrapped Mary into a treasonable correspondence carried on by means of a water-tight box at the bottom of the ale-casks supplied to her at Chartley by a brewer from Burton, and then shamelessly copied for Walsingham. This double-dealing must have been grievous to the old man, and the terrible responsibility laid upon him, added to the pangs of the gout, shortened his own life. Poor Queen Mary was so unconscious of the toils she was in that hope improved her health, her swollen legs healed, and she was able to ride hunting with the hounds and kill a deer with her cross-bow.

Stand with me in fancy in the little chapel at Hinton, and recall some of the strange scenes beheld by that marble face.

Think of the sunny August morning in 1586, when Sir Amyas persuaded the unconscious queen to ride out nine miles to Tixall and kill a buck in Sir Walter Aston’s park. Mary is in high spirits, perhaps her many plots have seared her conscience, and if she does know of the purposed assassination of Elizabeth, it seems to her no high price to pay for her liberty. Sir Amyas on the other hand knows that Babington’s conspiracy is discovered, that he has had to flee from the forest of St. John’s Wood, and that in a few moments Queen Mary will be arrested for high treason. Deeply as he detests her Popish wiles, a little sympathy must surely cross his harsh features when the armed men whom she hails as her deliverers arrest her as a traitor in the Queen’s name.

Again. The fortnight of neglect and hardship at Tixall is over, and the queen returns to Chartley with her doom upon her to find her treasures and secrets all torn open, and her favourite attendant Barbara Curle stricken by terror to a bed of sickness with the new-born baby unchristened at her side. You can fancy the furrowed forehead of Sir Amyas as he harshly refuses to christen the poor babe by the traitor’s name of Mary, and the queen, ever with an instinct for the drama of history, as she promptly lays the infant on her lap and baptises it Mary in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

The weeks fly past. Elizabeth will not sign the death-warrant, but has a letter written to Poulett in which she roundly complains of his want of love and zeal for not having found some way to shorten the life of the Scottish Queen. The letter reaches Sir Amyas at five in the evening, and before an hour has passed he has written the letter, which you may see to this day, to say in hot haste, “God forbid that I should make so fowle a shipwracke of my conscience or leave so great a blot to my poor posteritie to shed blood without law or warrant.” Sir Amyas had to put up with Elizabeth’s angry pacings to and fro, and her words that he was “a dainty and precise fellow who would promise much and perform nothing,” but her later letters to him suggest that in the end she was not sorry that the rough honest man had stood like a rock.

It must have shaken most men’s fortitude to witness the terrible scene when Queen Mary knelt in the hall at Fotheringay and recited the penitential psalms in Latin and English in deep tones that sounded above the Puritan prayers of the men who refused her the last sacraments of her church and met to see her die. When the last moment came, she knelt calmly by the block among her black-robed executioners, herself clothed in blood-red from head to foot, and never flinched when the blow swerved and fell a second time.

In any case Sir Amyas only lived eighteen months after the Queen’s execution, and died soon after his return from the negotiations at Ostend for peace with Spain. Perhaps he endured hardships in that devastated Netherland country, where partridges were plentiful because the tilled land had become a wilderness. In any case the negotiations did not avert the Spanish Armada, and Sir Amyas died in September, 1588, a month after it had perished. He must have breathed more freely when the waves closed over the Spanish galleons, for in Queen Mary’s last letter to the Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, she had bidden him tell King Philip not to forget how she had been used by certain men, and among their names was that of Sir Amyas Poulett.

Beneath the recumbent figure there is a curious French epitaph to this quondam Governor of Jersey, in which are some touching lines—

His widow Margaret contributed a loving Latin epitaph, which may have been composed by herself in this age when Latin was no uncommon accomplishment for a lady. Queen Elizabeth puts her royal initials above a verse on the right hand of the figure—

There are other inscriptions playing upon the characteristic words of his motto, Garde la Foy, and the three swords of his crest; but it is time for us to leave the stone precincts and mount the old tower, from which we get an exquisite view of the surrounding country and the rambling old house.

The most ancient part of the present building was the work of Sir Amyas’ grandfather. The present front was built by the first Earl Poulett, Queen Anne’s minister. We cannot help regretting the “right goodly manor place of free stone with two goodly towers embattled in the inner court,” which old Leland saw in Henry VIII.’s days; but we may rejoice that the pretty wings remain in which “the slabs of the sandstone of the country forming the outer walls are cut in the shape of the rounded stones of the sea-shore.” When gay flowers again relieve the long line of stone, and a touch of green is added to the rows of white jalousies, perhaps a look of home will return to the old mansion.

The quiet park where deer haunt the glades must have looked gay indeed when the grandson of Elizabeth’s Sir Amyas entertained Mary of Scotland’s grandson, Charles I., at Hinton in 1644, with a loyalty that was ready to face much and pay heavily for his allegiance to the King. It was only fifty-five years from the day of Queen Mary’s execution when the two grandsons met at Hinton. Five short years were to pass, and the head of Charles I. fell from the block with a fortitude not unlike that of his grandmother, Mary Queen of Scots.

A few years more, and Hinton is holding high festival again, and feasting the Duke of Monmouth with junketing in the park. Almost directly after, the Duke was fleeing from Sedgemoor to be captured in the Hampshire fields, and travel to London and the headsman’s axe on Tower Hill.

As we walk back past the closed windows and fancy the treasures inside of portraits and statues, and frames by Grinling Gibbons, we find a poor dead thrush, called a “home-screech” in these parts, because its note is not so tuneful as that of its brother thrushes. The bird and its empty nest expresses the want we feel about this lovely spot with its sad memories. The nest is too good and fair to be left untenanted.

{647}

LESSONS FROM NATURE.

PART V.

Many persons look upon plants as still life, forgetting, or ignorant of, the fact that their existence depends on the movement of the juices which are embodied in them. This is not even quiet in winter, when all about the plant would seem dead indeed. There is still motion being carried on, although it is necessarily of a very feeble or languid nature. There is perhaps only a very slight enlargement of the buds, but there it is nevertheless; the almost imperceptible development preparing for spring’s coming.

If a small part of the cuticle of the Vallisneria, an aquatic plant, is placed under the microscope, there is visible in every one of its tiny cells a number of little globules coursing in order, round and round, faster or slower, in a varying degree of motion, until the portion under observation has exhausted its vitality. And by a wonderful instinct—as we say—the flowers of this species, male and female, which grow on different plants, are able to detach themselves at the right season. That is, the male flowers can leave the plant stems, and floating about on the stream, they join the female flowers, and so the reproduction is effected in them by a spontaneous action on their part which is brought about in many other cases by an outside agency, the action of bees, for instance.

When the waters of a stream rise, another aquatic plant, the Kuppia Maritima is able to coil and uncoil its flower stalks, which are curled in a spiral fashion; and, as the depth of the water in which it grows changes, its blossoms are always kept on a level with the surface.

In plant as in animal life, there is this wonderful power of accommodation to circumstances which might otherwise prove entirely adverse to the continuation of that life. Instinct is the term applied to vegetable as well as animal life. We use it for want of a better, although it certainly does not cover all that is implied in innumerable instances.

A thoughtful writer says that instinct, which belongs to the physiological expression of life, has no other end or function than the maintenance of these forms, whence it never operates without manifesting effects in the organic mechanism. Reason, on the other hand, has no relation to the body, except as the soul’s body or instrument; it belongs to the soul purely, and may be exercised without giving the slightest external token.

“The life whose phenomena are the instincts impels us only to eat, to drink, to propagate, to preserve our fabric safe and sound; the spiritual life, the phenomena of which are forms of reason, gives power, not to do corporeal things, but to think and to rise emotionally towards the source of life. It is by reason of this supra-instinctive life that man stands as the universal master.”

The great naturalist Buffon also says, “Man thinks, hence he is master over creatures which do not think.” And an ancient author writes finely, “While other animals bend their looks downwards to earth, He gave to man a lofty countenance, commanded him to lift his face to heaven, and behold with upturned eyes the stars.”

This has been a digression into which the use of the term instinct led me. Instinct leads the carnivorous animal to feed on flesh; but if this is scarce—even if fruit is plentiful, and offers itself in profusion—the puma will devour wild gooseberries and raspberries; so will the coyote wolves in the Rocky Mountains. I stayed for some time in a mountain region in Colorado—the district in which I made my notes for “Candelaria,” a story some of you have perhaps read in the pages of this magazine—and there in the autumn the big bears would come in their heavy rolling gait down the mountain-sides to devour the wild fruits, “choke cherries” and the like.

The power of accommodation to the exigencies of circumstance is so great that, as scientists will tell you, species will often develop through these, in time, an extra member. And again, faculties and powers, by their non-use, will desert us in time. Our power of adaptability is in point of fact beyond calculation. “All things are possible to him that believeth” is a truth too little tested by most of us.

Could yon slender reed, which is swayed by the slightest breeze, stand the fierce onslaught of a tempest? No, but it bends gracefully before it and escapes unhurt where stouter stems have been snapped asunder.

And, to take a simile from the bird world, all the herons, the different species of the Ardeidæ, which have ordinarily a slow and heavily flapping flight, when alarmed or pursued by their natural enemies, have a habit of easing themselves. They will disgorge the food which they have just swallowed in order to lighten themselves for more rapid flight.

This reminds me of a little incident in my own life. Some years ago I was in a collision at sea; the bow of a large steamer ran into the stern of the vessel in which I was, when both were going at top speed, and both vessels went down beneath the waters almost as soon as we passengers, most of us in our night clothing, had got free in the small boats. Over fifty lives, unfortunately, were lost that night, but only one woman out of very many others perished. That need not have been, but she was timid, and she would not risk the leap that other women had had to make down into the boat which waited for her ten feet below. As soon as the boat in which I was, arrived, a few hours later, alongside of a rescuing steamer, the women were most of them taken up into this by means of a rope and band fastened round the waist, but I climbed up a rope ladder which was overhung on the side of the ship. In order to grasp this firmly with both hands I had to lose my hold of a bag I had contrived to save, in which were some valuables very dear to me. I put it down on the boat seat, and of course I never saw it again. My precious things were lost, but my life was saved. A poor lady who was in the same wreck suffered a still greater loss, and she was one of those conservative sensitive natures who find it so hard to adapt themselves to changeful circumstances. She has never recovered her mental balance since that terrible night.

To preserve a trustful, cheerful frame of mind under adverse circumstances, to be able to adjust one’s resources, one’s capabilities to the exigencies of a life so liable to changes, is a gift for which the possessor cannot be too grateful to the Giver of all good gifts.

Science has been defined by someone as “the discovery of the changeless in the ever-changing.” I was sitting in a weak, fatigued state of mind once in a train at a great terminus. We were waiting for the moment of departure, and not being drawn up to the end of the platforms, trains moved constantly on either side of us. To my tired head—I had lately come off the sea, which had been a rough one—I did not seem able to make out whether it was our train or the other that was in motion when this occurred. Presently my eyes found a refuge in the contemplation of a massive column within sight. So long as they rested there, all was simple. I saw it was the others that were in motion, and we were quiet.

God is the changeless amid the ever-changing. If the eye of our soul is fixed on Him, all else adjusts itself. We have “an anchor sure and steadfast.”

The conies, says the wise man in the book of Proverbs, “are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks.” The conies belong to the same family as do our rabbits, but they have not paws suitable for burrowing, and their homes are in the clefts of the immovable rocks. Thither they flee to hide themselves when the enemy is in pursuit, or when the elements are adverse. They find tiny fastnesses, where, protected from all stress of weather, they can sleep in safety, and into which the great birds of prey cannot penetrate.

For some situations our powers of adaptability are all inadequate. The combat is too great for our forces, and the best course, the wisest, nay, often the only possible course lies in flight and in seeking a haven of refuge, until, as the Psalmist says, “the tyranny is overpast.” “I will flee to the Rock to hide me.” And as “that feeble folk, the conies” make their houses in the rocks, so we, like the wise man in the parable, build our house on the Rock, not on the shifting foundations of sand.

{648}

THE COURTSHIP OF CATHERINE WEST.

CHAPTER I.

hot August day, hot with the heat cherished through a sunny fortnight of rainless days; in which the earth radiated back to the atmosphere the warmth bestowed upon her by the cloudless skies, so that a light haze overhung the broad plains, and lay like a belt around the dark-foliaged trees and whitewashed villages of the surrounding country.

It was a monotonous and little-varied scene, yet the girl who was watching it from a railway compartment, as the train sped past it, found it full of interest and delight. It was all so distinctly un-English, and poorly as it might compare with the woody slopes and fruitful orchards of the land she had left behind her, these severe, hedgeless fields and austere lines of tall poplars had to her a special beauty of their own. She took little heed of her travelling companions, so absorbed was she in the novelty of her surroundings. And she was conscious, too, that this was only the beginning, that better things were in store for her. One short night and day, and then—the snowy mountains, hitherto visible only in dreams, the green pastures and tinkling cattle-bells, the climbing woods and glowing flowers. Truly, for the realisation of such a vision all past toil and patient expectation were well worth endurance.

If she had been less occupied with her observations, she might have noticed that one of her fellow travellers was keenly interested in her, and that the comic papers that were littered on the seat beside him received very little of his attention. A slight service rendered at Dover apparently gave him, at least in his own opinion, some sort of proprietary interest in this young woman, whose solitary journey seemed to him a challenge to his attention. Nevertheless, since they had entered the compartment, he had not been able to obtain so much as a glance from her. This, to one who was accustomed to think himself irresistible, was not a little irritating; a brilliant idea struck him, and he now held out to her one of the gaily-coloured periodicals. The familiarity of his tone, coupled with the fact that she had been accustomed to view such productions with disgust, impelled her to decline it; but remembering the relief she had felt at his help on the way, she accepted with a shy hesitation. The leaves fluttered in her hands, but the pictures that caught her eye, as she turned the paper over, distressed and annoyed her. In another moment she summoned up courage to hand it back to the owner.

“What—don’t you like ’em?” he asked in surprised accents. “Come, this is good, don’t you think so?”

He spoke with the assurance of an old friend, and the girl, who had entered the carriage with him, was seized with a sudden horror lest the other occupants of the compartment should identify her with this stranger.

“Thank you, my eyes ache when I read in the train,” answered she, searching about for some plausible excuse.

“Ah, that’s a pity, they’re much too pretty for that,” responded he with intended gallantry.

Her eyes swam in a mist of tears. A less diffident girl would have instinctively known how to rebuke the offender, but she was accustomed to think humbly of herself, and at once concluded that something in her own conduct had led the man to think that he might take liberties with her. Suddenly, to her intense vexation, a large tear splashed on her lap; but at the critical moment, a voice said to her—

“Pardon me, but I believe you would like a window seat. It is so much more comfortable. See, let me move your things.”

In another moment, the speaker, who had been sitting beside her, and next to the window, had changed places with her, and had moved her bag and rugs so as to make a comfortable barrier round her. She tried to thank him, and met the eyes of a young lady to whom he had been talking and who, she supposed, must be his wife.

“You are very tired, I am sure,” said the latter. “Granville, pass me my bag. Now, do have a little milk, it will be so good for you.”

“Oh, nonsense, you don’t know what is good for you! Come, I insist on it!”

So she swallowed the milk mechanically, and then went on looking out of the window, inwardly struggling between gratitude to the unknown lady and embarrassment at having her confusion noticed. She was angry with herself too. She had felt so perfectly competent to undertake this expedition—a High School mistress, living in rooms, she was accustomed to look after herself—and here was she, Catherine West, who had taken a high class at Cambridge, actually crying because an under-bred man had annoyed her! But the truth was that she knew very little of the world. She had gone straight from school to college, straight from college to the post that she now held. She had thought little of men or of their relations to her, for women, whose youth is absorbed in intellectual interests, are later in development on the emotional side than others, yet, when the awakening comes, are apt, perhaps because of the severity of their early training, to feel more strongly and to suffer more deeply.

The journey passed without further incident. One by one, as evening came on, the passengers settled themselves, comfortably or uncomfortably, against air-cushions or feather pillows, and fell asleep. But sleep was a long time coming to Catherine; she closed her eyes, but her excitement kept her awake, and when at last she fell into an uneasy doze, it was only to rouse at every station, where the train drew up with a jerk and scream, and to stare bewildered at the red lights that flashed across the darkness.

Morning at last, and the frontier reached! Catherine thought that she would never forget the breath of cool clear air that swept through the close compartment like a cleansing touch. The occupants, dishevelled and unwashed, rushed out for coffee and rolls, then back again, and the train went steaming on through the early coolness of the Swiss dawn, while Catherine watched the east growing rosy behind the pines that fringed the hills, and then, in one rapturous moment, caught sight of the first snowy peak, all hushed and stainless in the silence of the morning.

From that moment the compact of friendship was sealed between the two women; they began to talk to one another, and found that they had many interests in common. So the time passed pleasantly, till, arrived at length at their destination, they found that they were going to the same hotel.

“Give my brother”—Catherine started at this revelation—“the ticket for your luggage, and he will see after it for you,” said her friend. “You and I will go on to the hotel. Oh, the delight of a wash! And then——”

“Then something to eat would be advisable,” said her brother, who, having despatched the luggage in the hotel omnibus, now caught them up.

His words came as a shock to Catherine. “Fancy thinking of that when he has the mountains to look at!” Her opinion of masculine nature, which was chiefly based on an intimate acquaintance with the poetry of Shelley, went down a hundred degrees.

In a few minutes more she found herself in the little bare room allotted to her, where the furniture was of the simplest and the cleanliness complete. She felt herself, in her dusty dress, a stain on its exquisite purity. She rushed to her portmanteau and opened it.

“It is extravagant, I know, but I can’t help it!” And she shook out of its folds a white muslin dress that had hitherto been sacred to “functions” and festivals. And as she arrayed herself in it before the glass the conviction came to her that she really looked very nice. Was she growing vain, she wondered, or why was it that she felt such a sudden interest in her appearance?

She left her room and came timidly down the corridor. Now that she was alone in this big hotel, a certain fear came over her. She had boasted to herself that she was able to take care of herself; she had had no compunctions in coming alone on this expedition; of course she would have preferred to have a companion, but since all her efforts to obtain one had been unavailing, she had determined not to be disappointed of the anticipated pleasure, and had, therefore, come alone. But now she felt almost sorry that she had done so; however innocent her intention, she felt that she had laid herself open to misconstruction; her experience on the journey had told her that.

“My sister has sent me to see if I could find you,” said a voice beside her. “The dining-room is this way. She has kept a seat for you—unless, of course, you prefer to sit somewhere else.” The tone was rather constrained, as if the speaker had been party to an arrangement of which he did not altogether approve. Inwardly he was thinking, “She seems a nice girl enough, and is certainly very pretty, but I wish Margaret would not rush into these impulsive friendships.”

Catherine felt the coldness, and was glad to sink into the chair that he placed for her. His sister sat between them, and bravely tried to keep up a conversation. But Catherine was subdued and nervous, and her brother was silent and restrained.

Nobody was sorry when dinner was over, and Margaret and Catherine strolled into the verandah. The days were already drawing in, and it was nearly dark, but a slender moon hung between the two snowy peaks that guarded the valley, and in their ears was the murmur of a torrent, that, slipping from the icy embrace of the mountains, rushed impetuously from the glacier that was wedged between them.

“And now let us produce our credentials,” said her new friend. “I am Margaret Gray. I live by my wits, namely journalism; that is,{650} I write ‘Answers to Correspondents’ for half-a-dozen ladies’ papers. My brother is also engaged in the pursuit of letters. He is, in fact, Lord Mayne’s private secretary. He is very clever, as all brothers ought to be, and took a First in Greats. He is to marry, of course, an heiress, and go into Parliament, and make a name for himself and the family, the family being at present comprehended by himself and me. Finally, we are too poor at present to think of heiresses or even to approach the only available one, having piles of other people’s debts to pay off. Now for yours.”

Catherine told her simply and frankly all her short history. How, left an orphan, with just sufficient money to pay for her education, she had been brought up at an endowed school, and had then won a scholarship to Cambridge, and how, on leaving college, she had found a post in a High School in a large manufacturing town, where she lived by herself in rooms. She had only been there a short time, and did not know many people; there were so few people that she could know, except the other mistresses, living for the most part alone or sharing rooms together. It was less by what she was told than by her quick imagination, aided by her knowledge of other professional women, that Margaret was able to conjure up to herself the long harassing days, the physical fatigue that could seldom find relief, and then the solitary evenings in a dreary lodging-house. She contrasted it with her own life spent in London, among interesting people, and full of change and movement. Certainly she worked hard, but the possession of some private means and the knowledge that her future was comfortably provided for took away the anxiety that haunts the working days of so many women. Her heart went out in sympathy to this girl, who hardly realised as yet the whole significance of her position.

“Sometimes I feel as if I could endure it no longer, especially in the evening, when I have finished my corrections and am too tired even to read. But then there are the children, and children are so delightful; though at the end of the term I do feel as if I never wanted to see another child all my life. But that feeling soon wears off; they are so innocent and fascinating, and never mind showing what they think. Oh, yes; of course it is only the children who make things bearable.”

“Now I can understand the apparent absurdity of a girl like you rushing off on a Swiss tour by yourself. Even I, who am several years older, and have much more knowledge of the world, and no pretension to beauty, should hesitate about such a thing. Did it never strike you that people might misunderstand you, that you were laying yourself out to be misunderstood?”

“Never! Why should it? I did not think the world so cruel. Must we wait till we are too old to enjoy things, from fear of what people will say? In twenty years I shall be too old to climb mountains and travel cheaply. Then it will be quite proper, I suppose, but quite impossible.”

There was a touch of bitterness in her tone that threw a new light on her character to Margaret.

“The world is hard on us women,” she answered gently. “We are in a transition state at present. Only the most enlightened and sympathetic men understand the independent woman. The very fact of her independence makes her a prey to men like that cad in the railway carriage, or quite incomprehensible to chivalrous men like my brother. You understand; he would do anything to help you out of a difficulty, but would not understand your preference for all the perils of a solitary tour over the security and boredom of those dreadful lodgings. Most men still prefer the clinging trustful girl who claims their protection at every other step. She makes them so conscious of their own superior power. But the woman who strikes out for herself and asserts her own individuality is a challenge to the cad and an unknown quantity to most men of honour.”

“Yes. Sometimes I think we are suffering vicariously for the good of generations of unborn women. If we maintain the right of women to live independently and to think for themselves, a future age will concede it as a matter of course. And yet one must be very sure of oneself to take up that independent stand. Are you sure?”

“Only this, dear”—there was a lingering, protective stress on the last word that appealed to the lonely girl—“you seem to me one of those women who are independent by circumstance rather than by choice. One of those who proclaim aloud their independence at twenty and at thirty wail privately for the dependence they appear to scorn. One of those, in fact, who would seem more in her place with her foot on a cradle rocker than rushing over Europe accompanied only by a travelling trunk and a green ticket case.”

“Oh, you are mistaken, quite mistaken,” cried Catherine—“quite mistaken. I am not that kind of woman at all. And besides, if I were, what would be the good? Surely I am happier struggling by myself than making myself miserable over some man; for I can never marry, you know.”

“I am so poor, and the only kind of man that I could think of would never look at an insignificant person like me. No, I shall never marry; and that being so, I would rather school myself to independence.”

“You goose! How little you know of men. But I can assure you that till you have made yourself miserable—or otherwise—over some man, you will be an incomplete and, so far, an ineffective character.”

Catherine was unconscious of what Margaret’s intuition led her to suspect, namely, that her conviction of insignificance and renewed enthusiasm for independence were due to Mr. Gray’s polite indifference at dinner. He now joined them, and Catherine immediately said “Good night” and disappeared. She did not know that his eyes were following her slim white figure as it disappeared between the festoons of Virginia creeper that draped the verandah.

“Don’t lecture me!” cried Margaret when she had gone. “I know what you are going to say.”

“Oh, that I am too impulsive and all that, and that I shall get into trouble some day by making friends of unknown strangers, who may turn out after all to be disreputable actresses or anarchists in disguise.”

“Nonsense! But really, Margaret, you can never tell; all sorts of people come to these hotels.”

“Just as if I didn’t know that! Ah, my dear Granville, you may be very clever; your head is full of classics and politics, and things I don’t know anything about, but you’ve ‘no art to find the mind’s construction in the face,’ and that is just what I have. Now, can you say you have ever known me wrong in my estimate of people?”

“Not so far, certainly. But doesn’t it strike you as a little odd that so young a girl should be running about the country by herself?”

“Not at all,” and Margaret poured out Catherine’s story. “Poor little thing! She is terribly lonely. You and I must do our best to look after her, and give her a good time while we are here.”

Now this was a very heroic and unselfish resolution on Margaret’s part, for she did not often get her brother to herself, and this holiday had been anticipated with all the more pleasure on that account.

“As you will,” he said. “I will do my best to please you. I only hope that your charity may not be blinding your judgment. You are the only woman I know who is absurdly susceptible to beauty in her own sex.”

“Susceptible to beauty!” cried Margaret, with laughing eyes. “Just as if I should have noticed her at all if you had not made her change places with you. After all, Granville, you see it was you who began the acquaintance.”

“How absurd! Any fellow would have done that. Didn’t you see that she was on the point of tears?”

“Oh, you noticed that, too? And yet you suspect her genuineness. Now, do you think that any girl who wasn’t nice would let an incident like that trouble her?”

“Oh, well, I give it up. I daresay you are right. At any rate I will do my best for your protégée!”

“Mine? Remember your responsibilities,” she answered, and so they parted for the night.

THE PLEASURES OF BEE-KEEPING.

PART III.

As the combs get drawn out and filled with brood and honey, more room will be required by the swarm in the hive. This may at first be given by putting fresh frames fitted with foundation into the stock-box. When the stock-box is quite filled with frames and bees, and still more room is required, it will be time to think of putting on the surplus honey-chamber, or super.

There are two kinds of super, the rack of sections, and the box of shallow frames.

The bee-keeper who wishes to work for honey-in-the-comb uses the rack of sections. This consists of a light wooden rack, usually made to contain twenty-one little wooden boxes called sections, each of which when finished by the bees will contain about one pound of honey-comb (E in the illustration). The section (A) is cleverly cut from one strip of wood, which has three V-shaped cuts across it to form the corners, and is dovetailed at each end, so that it can be folded up very{651} easily by the bee-keeper, something after the style of the outer case of a match-box. In the figure are shown a section in the flat and the same when folded (A, B).

A starter of comb-foundation is as necessary for sections as it is for frames, otherwise the bees might build the honey-comb across the sections, joining them all together, and necessitating cutting the combs to get them apart. For this purpose a saw cut is generally made in the top bar of each section in which a strip of a specially thin description of foundation, called super foundation, is inserted (C).

The sections are placed in the section-rack in seven rows, each row consisting of three sections. Between each row a thin sheet of tin or wood, called a separator, is placed. The object of the separators is to ensure the face of the combs being flat, the bees leaving a uniform space of about a quarter of an inch between the separator and the face of the comb. The sections are held in place by means of a dummy-board and spring at the end of the last row.

The rack of sections is now ready to be placed upon the stock-box. You will notice that openings are cut in the edges of the top and bottom bars of the sections. The openings in the bottom bar are to enable the bees to gain access to the sections from the frames below. Often the end bars are similarly cut; when this is so the bees can travel from section to section in the rack.

To prevent the queen bee from going up into the super to deposit eggs in the combs which are intended to receive honey only, it will be necessary to place a queen-excluder between the stock-box and the rack of sections. The queen-excluder is a sheet of zinc which is perforated all over with holes; these are large enough to admit the workers, but just too small to let the queen pass through.

Choose a fine warm day for putting on the super. Midday, when the bees are flying freely, is the best time for the operation.

I will suppose that this is the occasion of the beginner’s first attempt at examining the interior of the hive, and will therefore go into the method of procedure somewhat fully.

The bee-veil will, of course, be worn on this occasion. A screwdriver may be useful for prizing up the ends of the frames, the bees having a habit of fastening down everything inside the hive with a sticky substance called propolis, which they collect from the buds of certain trees and plants. This substance is used more freely by the bees towards the close of the summer than at present.

The most useful appliance employed by the bee-keeper is unquestionably the smoker, for by its means the bees can be quieted and put into such a condition that almost anything can be done to them. Smoke for the bees might be compared to the anæsthetic of the surgeon, but it is not intended to stupefy them. Experience and judgment are required in using the smoker, and perfection cannot be attained at once. A few directions, however, will be useful.

It is very important that the smoker be charged with smouldering material that will not go out as long as it is wanted. The best fuel is perhaps a strip of brown paper rolled up loosely in the form of a cartridge, so that the air may have free circulation through it, but see that the brown paper is of the right kind, as some sorts are almost sure to go out in a few minutes’ time, while others again are equally liable to burst out into flame. Dry touchwood makes very good fuel for the smoker, seldom going out when once well alight. Old rags, dried fungus, etc., are also said to be useful, but on no account use any strong or poisonous smoke, such as would be produced by burning tobacco or sulphur. When not being used, the lighted smoker should be stood upright, in the position shown in the figure (see last paper); this will help to keep it alight by the better circulation of air.

The object of the smoker is to quiet, not to stupefy, the bees; it should not therefore be used too freely. After the roof of the hive has been removed, a few light puffs of smoke may be given under the edges of the quilts, and perhaps another in the entrance, the bees often replying by a deep low hum. Now wait a minute or two, so that the bees may prepare for the operation by gorging themselves with some of the newly-gathered honey, and then, having got them into a good temper, we may commence work without delay.

If we wish to ascertain the condition of the bees, we may lift a frame gently out of the hive, examine it, and then replace it speedily so that the brood shall not get chilled, care being taken not to crush any bees in so doing.

The bees may now begin to show signs of restlessness, “boiling over” the tops of the frames. This must be checked by the administration of a few more puffs of smoke.

If, as the result of our investigation, we have found that the colony is in an advanced enough state to make use of the super, the quilts must be removed, and the sheet of queen-excluding zinc laid over the frame in place of them. The rack of sections will then be placed on the queen-excluder, the quilts being now transferred to the top of the sections. If the rack of sections does not quite cover the tops of the frames in the stock-box, any spaces that are left round the sides should be covered over with strips of stout cloth. The operation is then completed by putting on the lift and roof.

In doing bee-work like the above, care must be taken not to jar the hive. Bees do not like vibration of any kind, and nothing upsets them so easily as rough handling.

Never open the hive with no definite object in view, except just to see how the bees are “getting on,” but make up your mind beforehand what has to be ascertained or done, and then carry it out as promptly and effectively as you can, closing up the hive as soon as your object has been accomplished. Things that should always be noted in opening a hive are (1) the presence of plenty of food in the shape of sealed or unsealed honey, and (2) the presence of healthy brood in all stages, including eggs; these last, owing to their small size, will require a little looking for at first. If some of the brood appears to be rotting, emitting a more or less foul smell, your bees have contracted a serious infectious disease which, to be successfully dealt with, requires the immediate assistance of a competent expert. This disease is known as “foul brood,” and it is now sadly prevalent in many parts of this country, owing chiefly to the lack of effort on the part of careless bee-keepers in stamping it out. The symptoms and treatment of foul brood will be described in a later paper.

Do not let an accidental sting or two{652} interfere with your work; the pain will go off in a minute or two, but in cases where the whole colony is allowed to get into an irritated state, the only way of reducing it to order will be to leave the work in hand and subjugate them with repeated smoking, but this is hardly good advice to the beginner.

I know of no really effective remedy for bee-stings. Many things are recommended as being more or less beneficial, such as blue-bag, dock-leaf, the juice of the fig-tree, etc. The best thing to do is to extract the sting at once with the poison-bag attached, taking care not to compress the latter, and then apply a little strong liquid ammonia; this will have the effect of somewhat neutralising the poison, which is acid. Sucking the spot before the poison has time to disseminate itself in the blood, does good. These measures, if taken promptly, will considerably alleviate the unpleasant after-effects of swelling and irritation which sometimes follow. The poison contained in the bee-sting does not seem to be really harmful to the system; the chief danger seems to be in excessive swelling, but such cases are so rare that the beginner has no ground for apprehension.

Though most people like sections of comb-honey, some prefer to have the extracted honey, which, when put up in bottles or jars, is a more convenient article for winter use.

In former times the only way of separating the honey from the comb was by cutting the honeycomb up and letting it drain through a canvas-strainer in a warm temperature. This process is apt to be a messy and tedious one, and the honey produced by it is more or less deep in colour from the large amount of pollen that it contains.

Nowadays, thanks to the invention of the honey-extractor, we may extract the pure, clear honey from the comb without having to cut it up, and the same frame of comb may be returned to the bees again and again, to be repeatedly refilled with honey, thus saving the bees a large amount of labour in comb-building. The details and working of the honey-extractor will be fully described in the next paper.

Frames of comb intended for extracting are usually not so deep as the ordinary standard frames in the stock-box: they are then called shallow frames, and the super containing them is called a shallow-frame box. The shallow-frame box is made like the stock-box, and contains generally ten shallow frames fitted with metal ends. Each frame must, of course, be fitted with at least a starter of comb-foundation, and in placing the box of shallow frames on the hive, a sheet of queen-excluding zinc should be placed under it, as with the rack of sections.

Those who are going to use shallow frames will also now need to procure a honey-extractor. A good extractor costs from eighteen to thirty shillings.

Often a colony is strong enough to take two supers at one time, one under the other. In this case the second one should be placed underneath the first, after the latter has been on the hive for about a week. A rack of sections may be used with a box of shallow frames, or two racks of sections and two boxes of shallow frames may be used instead, if desired. A swarm like the one I am describing is, however, very seldom able to fill two supers at once during its first year, because it does not commence work until a part of the season has passed, and the stock-box has to be filled before work can be undertaken in earnest in the supers.

THE HOUSE WITH THE VERANDAH.

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

CHAPTER XV.

“You needn’t go into raptures of gratitude till you hear all about my suggestion, my love,” said Mrs. Bray; “it’s not all advantage. In fact the person concerned has been rather on my mind, because I wasn’t at all sure it would be easy to find her a situation in what she calls ‘this Babylon.’”

Lucy at once thought of “Mrs. Morison,” but what she said was, “I think that is an advantage with me if she has been a good woman and—is sober.”

“A good woman? My love, she’s one of the unco’ guid! And she’s a total abstainer—always has been. But she is not what one can call a trained servant. She has not been in a situation for about twenty years.”

“Keeping her father’s house and looking after him,” answered Mrs. Bray, “and now he’s dead. He had a little farm—a croft, I think they call it—over the hills and far away, somewhere in a Highland place, which, because it is not an island, is called the Black Isle.”

The quick, sympathetic old lady caught and understood an expression which flitted over Lucy’s face.

“Oh, this is all quite genuine,” she said; “that is its one clear advantage. She’s a friend of my poor Rachel’s—at least, Rachel has known all about her and ‘her folks’ for years and years. Her brother was piper in the same regiment with Rachel’s lover. And when Rachel went North to see that lover’s mother, after he had gone to India, she was in this woman’s house, and Rachel says that it was most beautifully kept, and that there were no people in the place more respected than these Gillespies.”

“One wonders why she left her native place and came so far away,” observed Lucy.

The old lady shook her head knowingly, and replied, “As poor Rachel says, ‘there are wheels within wheels.’ It seems there is a married brother with his wife living near the ‘croft,’ and I understand there was no love lost between this woman and her sister-in-law. There was some sort of love-affair mixed up in their animosity. Rachel put me to sleep one afternoon telling me about it, so you won’t expect me to remember details. And when the father died, the home had to be broken up anyhow, for the daughter had nothing to live on. I fancy she didn’t care to go to service within the range of the sister-in-law, ‘mistress in her own house.’ There’s a deal of human nature in man, my dear, and especially in woman. Rachel says her friend doesn’t want to go back, but if she doesn’t get a place soon, she’s getting so low spirited that she thinks she will,” continued Mrs. Bray. “You see she has, after all, only a servant’s recommendation—Rachel’s—and that wouldn’t mean much to many, but it may to you, who have known Rachel in my house for so many years, and who understand how faithful and good she is, poor, silly, sentimental thing.”

Lucy looked up quickly into her old friend’s face. “I would take your Rachel’s recommendation quite as soon as a ‘character’ from any mistress,” she said.

“I think you would be wise to do so,” replied Mrs. Bray. “This woman will be clean and honest, certainly not likely to attract any troublesome flirtations. She’s got the soft Highland voice with a pretty little whine in it.”

“She’s terribly solemn to look at, and she ends her speeches with a sigh,” went on Mrs. Bray. “But she’s not bad-looking, and is of quite superior appearance. Her name is rather a mouthful—Clementina Gillespie—and she’s not a person whom one could reasonably shorten into Clem or Tina. No—it wouldn’t do. You might as well call Robert the Bruce—Bob!”

“Yes, I will,” said the old lady. “That ridiculous Rachel will be so pleased! It seems a comfort to her to think of having her dead lover’s dead old friend’s sister to live near her. To me it seems a far-off cry of consolation! But everyone to their taste. And now, at last, we’ll dismiss the kitchen, and you must tell me all about Mr. Challoner.”

Lucy had not only her good news to relate, but she actually had something to show. The Slains Castle had stayed for a few days at a certain port, and Charlie had sat for a photograph, which he sent home in his letter. It might not be much as a work of art or science, for the posing was all wrong and the chemicals were manifestly bad. Yet next to Hugh himself it was the very dearest thing in Lucy’s present possession, so satisfactory was its assurance of the beloved wanderer’s renewed strength and energy. Where were the wasted form and the wan countenance which had hitherto haunted Lucy’s memories of her husband? They had vanished, and thus the poor little photograph had cheered Lucy as not even{653} Charlie’s letters had done. For in those he might have been trying “to make the best of things”—to dwell on every trifling improvement, so as to cheer and uphold her in her loneliness. That fear had often haunted her, basing itself on her own silence concerning Pollie’s defection, which silence she had kept intact, “for fear of worrying him.” The shock which Mrs. Morison’s breakdown had given her, when on the eve of revelation, had restrained her from any further attempt at confidence on this matter. This reticence and its motive naturally made her dread some corresponding reticence on her husband’s part. The little portrait set that suspicion at rest. So it had its place in the centre of the dining-room mantelshelf, and was provided with a dainty little frame—the only “article of luxury” which Lucy had bought since Charlie’s departure.

Mrs. Bray went off gratified and elate. She loved to play the part of fairy godmother, though when she was defeated in that—as when the death of Rachel’s lover prevented her from overwhelming her maid with marriage gifts—she was apt to turn unsympathetic and cynical. She prolonged her visit to the little house with the verandah and had to give up two or three other calls she had arranged in the same neighbourhood. She drove off saying to herself with a full consciousness of the humour of the reflection—

“Now I feel good; I could be always good if I was in a world of good people and was able to straighten out every tangle I saw.”

Lucy had another visitor that evening, Tom Black, who had never failed to put in his appearance from time to time ever since that memorable Christmas Day. Tom’s visits were generally of a most cheerful not to say hilarious description, beginning with games of romps with Hugh and ending in all sorts of little services to Lucy herself. Thanks to his aid, she had really given all her books their spring dusting and had got them correctly restored to their proper places—a thing which could not have been done by Jane, who though perfectly able to read, would have stood them upside down, and scattered “sets” most recklessly. Tom always asked whether there was “anything going on that he could do?” and Lucy answered him frankly and candidly. She wondered sometimes whether the inquiry came from humility or pride—from an unnecessarily humble feeling that his presence might be less than pleasure unless it was useful, or from a proud masculine consciousness that a feminine household may often stand in need of a strong arm and a steady hand.

But this evening Tom was in such doleful dumps that Lucy was quite glad that her own spirits had been somewhat cheered by Mrs. Bray’s visit.

Tom had got to leave his lodgings. He had been placed, on his first arrival in London, with the elderly widow of a clerk in Mr. Challoner’s firm. She had a neat little seven-roomed house somewhere in Barnsbury, and she let two of her bedrooms and one parlour to Tom Black and another young man. It was a quiet and comfortable though unpretentious home, wherein a youth who was inclined to good habits found every influence to help his perseverance therein. Youths who were not inclined to good habits were not allowed to linger there. In her earlier and more vigorous days the worthy landlady had wrestled hard with sundry ill-doers, and not without a certain sort of success, though she herself was more inclined to regard the results with cynicism and suspicion than with self-satisfaction. When neighbours would say to her how proud she must be that So-and-so had profited by her warnings, disciplines, and encouragements, she was wont to say “that he was different from what he once was, but she wasn’t so sure that he was any better.” Being a Scots woman herself she would tell the story of the Scots minister who was of the opinion that the sight of one’s “converts” was generally calculated “to keep one humble.”

Of late years, however, she had ceased to struggle with those who inclined to do evil, and had reserved herself for the upholding of those who meant to do well.

“I’ve had my time of keeping a reformatory,” she had said in her quaint way, “now somebody else must take a turn!”

“Mrs. Mott is giving up housekeeping altogether now, Mrs. Challoner,” Tom explained with a rueful countenance. “She’s got a tenant for the whole house, and she’s going to live in the country in some little place which she can manage alone. She says she is ‘weary of her life because of those daughters of Heth’—meaning the servant girls. You know the way she speaks, Mrs. Challoner.”

Lucy laughed. She knew Mrs. Mott very well, and she was beginning to realise the difficulties which must beset such a person.

“I sympathise with her,” she said. “But surely many of her servants must have been models! I thought the house always looked so bright and pleasant.”

“She says that’s because she put herself into it,” explained Tom. “Just whatever they left undone, she says, she did, and she did it all, when they ran away or gave her notice and went off before she had got another. Now she says she can’t do so any more; she’s near sixty, and her feet are weak, and she can’t manage the stairs, and she won’t keep people in her house if it can’t be kept as it should be. I’m sure she might let her place go very different from what it is, and yet it would be a palace of neatness compared with the houses which I’ve seen since I’ve been looking for lodgings,” added poor Tom ruefully.

“She says that for the last three years she has only had one girl who was respectable and willing to learn, and she attended some class or guild where the ladies told her she was ‘too good for domestic service’ and took her off to be trained as a hospital nurse,” answered Tom.

“Oh, dear, dear!” said Lucy, “as if the work of prevention is not far better and more honourable than that of mere cure. And it ought to be more honoured!”

“We have had some very queer customers lately, I must say,” Tom went on in his blunt boyish way. “Young Hinton—that’s the other fellow who stays at Mrs. Mott’s—happened to have a good deal of note-paper and some hundreds of envelopes marked with a handsome H. Well, he never could understand how that paper went off so quickly. He would take out a packet, and write a few letters, and then the next time he went to write he would find the packet almost empty. He used to say it was bewitched! Well, Mrs. Mott caught that servant in the act of stealing something—I think it was taking out coal in the big basket she carried to fetch potatoes. When Mrs. Mott counted over her other things she found some towels missing. So she told the girl she had better open her box and show what else she had, and there, along with the towels, were heaps of Hinton’s paper and envelopes, and what was funniest of all, an old album of his with a lot of half-faded photos of his aunts and cousins. Now what could she have wanted with that? The paper, of course, she meant to use, because her name was Hannah—an H, you see.”

“The stolen photographs make the story look like a genuine case of kleptomania,” observed Lucy; “yet it may have had some object which does not readily occur to us. She may have wished to lay claim to relationship with some nice respectable-looking people, such as Mr. Hinton’s friends doubtless were.”

“That was what Hinton said,” Tom returned. “He found out Hannah had been a workhouse child, and didn’t know of anybody belonging to her. It did seem pathetic in a way. Hinton thought so. He wrote to his grandmother in the country and got her to take the girl and give her another chance. But she soon ran away. Some gipsy show-people had been in the town, and the police said she went off with them. They had seen her among them.”

“Ah,” thought Lucy, “and who knows what thread of hereditary lawlessness and vagabondage had been in this poor girl, whose childhood nobody had been at pains to understand and to discipline? And yet how impossible it is that such a one could be harboured in a house like Mrs. Mott’s—nay, it would be wrong, for nobody must voluntarily assume responsibilities which clash with duties.”

“What decided Mrs. Mott, though,” Tom went on, “was when her last girl calmly took a candle to see where the gas was escaping. Mrs. Mott just stepped out of the parlour in time to see her coming with it, alight, out of the pantry. The gas escape was in the kitchen, and she was on her way downstairs. If Mrs. Mott had stayed in the parlour, we should have been all blown up together, for I was in the room overhead. Mrs. Mott was dreadfully upset; she set open every door and window and then called me. I turned off the gas,{654} and soon found the leakage. Mrs. Mott was quite ill with the shock of knowing what might have happened. She said to me, at once, that she couldn’t stand it any more, she could not bear the responsibilities that the irresponsible might bring down on her head at any moment. I thought the feeling might pass off with the fright; but she’s stuck to it—more’s the pity for me.”

“One wonders at city girls not having yet learned the truth about gas,” said Lucy. “Certainly I have heard curious stories about country people coming into town and ‘blowing out’ the light, and wondering much at the ‘nasty smell’ which ensued, compelling them to open the window, though there might be frost and snow outside. Did this girl come from the country?”

“Not she,” said Tom; “she belongs to a mews quite close to our place. And what is more, on our kitchen wall there is a printed placard giving full instructions about such household matters as breaking pipes, escaping gas, or street doors left ajar.”

“Everybody can read nowadays,” observed Lucy, “but every now and then one comes across a person who does not seem to read with any ease or facility; perhaps she was one of these.”

Tom shook his head. “No,” he said. “Mrs. Mott told me that till that day she had never had much fault to find with her (she’d only been with us for about three weeks), but that she had been sorry to see that she spent all her leisure in reading penny papers, with stories and pictures of men in evening dress and women with trailing robes, all dukes and viscountesses, and pretty girls in shops. She must have spent threepence or fourpence a week on these, Mrs. Mott says, and when she had read them, she tore them up or burnt them. Mrs. Mott had told her she ought to settle to one good magazine and collect a nice stock for bound volumes.

“I don’t wonder Mrs. Mott is rather sick of it,” Tom went on, “only I wish she didn’t give up out of feeling so responsible for us. All that we shall gain, as it seems to me, is, most likely, girls quite as irresponsible, and a landlady equally so. Mrs. Mott’s charges have been very moderate—I did not realise how moderate—till I have gone about and seen what is offered for the same money.”

“Ay,” answered Tom, rather bitterly, “and I don’t know when I shall leave off or where I shall find myself. I mustn’t go one bit further from the office than Mrs. Mott’s house is. Indeed, that’s rather too far, except that I was there from the first, and knew when I was comfortable. I’ve spoilt two Saturday afternoons going round and asking questions at every house where I saw ‘Furnished Apartments.’ And oh, Mrs. Challoner!”—Tom broke off with an indescribably comic expression of dismay on his good-humoured face.

“Didn’t I?” echoed Tom. “The very first place to which I went was in a good street not very far from the office, and the house looked nice on the outside. The door was opened by such a girl!—I don’t know whether she belonged to the family, or was a servant—I should think the former. But she might have been a Fuzzy Wuzzy straight from the Soudan by the look of her hair. It stood straight up all round her head. You couldn’t believe it unless you saw it! And her gown might have been made of dirty dishcloths. The passage looked like a black cavern. I didn’t want to go in, but I didn’t know how to get away. So I asked some questions. I said I wanted a bedroom-sitting-room, and the use of a parlour for meals. She said, ‘There wasn’t no parlour; their gentlemen mostly took their meals out.’ That gave me excuse to say it wouldn’t suit, and I got away.”

“Surely that must be a very extravagant arrangement for the gentlemen,” said Lucy.

“Mustn’t it?” rejoined Tom. “I should be stone-broke in a month! But I found that was the cry at all of them. The best—the most decent-looking—would give you your breakfast and ‘something at night, if you wanted it.’ That last was quite a concession. But they all turned up their noses at the thought of dinners! ‘There were plenty of restaurants,’ they said, ‘and they were cheap enough.’

“And the rooms!” continued Tom, with his disgusted voice. “Those which I could have for my price were always at the back, with a brick wall within an arm’s length from the window. And, ugh! there was a feeling about them as if one could smell and taste all the fellows who had ever used them! Lots of the bedrooms had nailed-down carpets, whose very pattern had disappeared. And the curtains and chair-covers looked as if they had not been washed since they were made.”

“I daresay they were not washable,” explained Lucy. “Cretonnes have replaced dimities and chintz, and none but the very best cretonnes will bear washing. This is so much the case that I hear the trade of the ‘calenderer’ who used to make chintz as good as new, has gone almost out of existence.”

“Most of them told me that all my washing would be ‘put out,’ and I should get my own bill from the laundry,” said Tom, who seemed considerably puzzled by all these domestic ins and outs, but not without some sound conviction that they tended neither to his comfort nor his prosperity.

“I did not find one house where they were willing to give me dinner daily,” Tom went on, “except boarding houses with a lot of people in them. I don’t like the idea of those at all. It is very tiring and worrying to sit down every evening at a dining-table packed with strangers, most of whom will be replaced in a week or two by another set of strangers. And the very lowest fee of these, for a top back room, so small, and with a roof so sloping, that I could not use my Indian clubs without upsetting the furniture, is as much as I gave Mrs. Mott for all my peace and comfort—and then it doesn’t include the washing! Yet I expect I’ll have to come to this,” added Tom ruefully.

“I suppose the lodging-house keepers can’t cook themselves, and can’t get servants who can,” said Lucy. “And oh, Mr. Black, many of the old style lodging-house servants were terribly overworked and underpaid and ill-treated. I once went to get lessons from a lady who had apartments in one of these houses. She told me that there was only one servant—an undersized creature who had opened the door to me. There were four sets of apartments in that house, apart from her mistress’s family of four people, and the girl got no help, except a little in the cooking, from the mistress’s aged mother. The washing was done at home there, and the servant did it all! My teacher told me that the girl was on her feet and hard at work from six o’clock in the morning till after ten o’clock at night, and ‘the worst of it was,’ she added, ‘the girl was learning nothing, and getting so used to scamped and slovenly work, that she could never rise to anything better than the same drudgery.’ She had very low wages. A week’s illness would mean the hospital. Her life’s sole resting-place would be the workhouse. We can’t be sorry for any changes which end such a state of things, can we, Mr. Black?”

“Well, no, certainly not,” he said, “but are they ending? By the look of the servants I saw in the big boarding-houses, I shouldn’t think their lives are much easier or better. They may have higher wages. Mrs. Mott’s girls certainly had a better time. They were comfortable and happy when they chose to be so. She paid them a very fair wage, considering that she taught them housework thoroughly. She says that some of the girls she had long ago went from her place to the very best situations. One of them afterwards married a young farmer, and when she visits London she always comes to see Mrs. Mott.”

“As for getting meals at restaurants,” pursued poor Tom, “I can’t do it. I can’t afford it. I know they are very cheap; but somehow there doesn’t seem much ‘bite’ in their platefuls. And there’s such a noise, and such a hurry, and such a horrid smell of food. If fellows really have to come to that, I don’t wonder they take to drinking and smoking. There’s something unreasonable about the whole thing. Here are girls nowadays ready to do men’s work for half men’s wages, so that fellows can scarcely get work at all. When I was in the City the other day I saw a great crowd of men round an office. They were pushing right up the stairway and half across the road. I thought there must have been a murder. I said to a commissionaire who was standing by, ‘What’s up?’ ‘Oh,’ says he, ‘these people are applying for a clerk’s place that’s advertised.’ ‘Anything specially good?’ I asked. ‘No, sir, only a pound a week,’ he answered. And I know it’s always so. Yet our ways of living are all{655} getting dearer, and no woman is ready to be well paid for doing what we can’t do for ourselves. It’s inconsistent! It’s abominable!”

Lucy could not help laughing. “Don’t say ‘Women won’t do what men can’t do,’” she answered. “Don’t you know it is a favourite masculine reflection on feminine inferiority that all the great cooks are men! If that be so, then men are also likely to be the best average cooks. If they are so hard pressed for work, why do not some of them turn towards work which is crying for workers, and in which we always hear they could excel? A cook with a wage of eighteen or twenty pounds a year, and a thoroughly good home provided, is far better off than the earner of a weekly wage of a pound.”

“Oh, well,” said Tom, “I can well believe that. But why can’t women stick to cooking themselves? It’s women’s work.”

“Well, you see, it would seem a come-down for a man,” Tom candidly confessed. “A clerkship—domestic service; they have a different sound.”

“Just so,” said Lucy, “and that being the man’s standpoint, the girls have naturally adopted it too. What reason is there in such a standpoint? On the face of it, which work is the more honourable—securing and maintaining the comfort of homes, or entering figures in a ledger and addressing envelopes? Which sphere gives the more scope for individual talent and character? And until this perverted standpoint is changed, all our present miseries will continue and increase. I have got my share, and you are finding yours. What is your housemate, Mr. Hinton, going to do?”

“He’s one of the lucky ones!” said Tom. “His married sister and her husband are coming into London, and they mean to let him have their spare room.”

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

STUDY AND STUDIO.

T. R. A. M. A.—We think you must be confusing two poems. The lines—

“O Mother Ida! many-fountained Ida,

Dear Mother Ida, hearken ere I die!”

recur frequently in “Œnone,” a poem by Tennyson; they may have been confused by someone with the extract from Macaulay’s “Horatius,” which you quote—

“O Tiber, Father Tiber,

To whom the Romans pray,”

or may, of course, be foolishly introduced into a parody upon the “Lay” in question.

Daffodil (Portugal).—Thank you very much for your interesting letter from Oporto. We like to hear about your life. Your information is published elsewhere.

Bluebell.—The extract you give is from Lord Tennyson’s poem “Crossing the Bar.” You will find it in the last volume of his works, and it begins thus—

“Sunset, and evening star,

And one clear call for me.”

Agatha.—We are pleased to have your letter from the Sea-Bathing Hospital and hope you will soon be stronger. As for your quotation from Longfellow—

“We should dread the desert behind us

Worse than the dark before,”

it is true that in one sense one cannot “dread” what is behind; and yet it seems to us the poet’s meaning is clear. The world—life’s experience, life’s memories—deprived of the presence of children, would be more desolate and dreadful even than “the dark” or the unknown future. One must not be too strict in criticising poetical expressions, and “to dread” may mean to feel distress or horror, as well as apprehension.

Miss R. M. Jacob, 8, Waldenshaw Road, Forest Hill, London, S.E., sends us particulars of Correspondence Lessons in the cane basket-work. The method is her own and original, and she seems already to be very successful in teaching. Girls who need some fresh occupation will do well to apply to Miss Jacob for particulars.

B. E. M.—1. There are a number of reading societies you could join:—The National Home Reading Union, Surrey House, Victoria Embankment, London; “The Queen” Reading Club, Miss Isabel G. Kent, Lay Rectory, Little Abington, Cambridge; and one conducted by Mrs. Walker, Litlington Rectory, Berwick, Sussex, besides many others mentioned in this column from time to time.—2. You might consult Our Sketching Club: Letters and Studies in Landscape Art, by Rev. R. St. John Tyrwhitt, M.A. (Macmillan); Brushwork, first book, by Miss Yeats, published by Philip & Son, 32, Fleet Street; or Brushwork, or Painting without Pencil Outline, by D. Pearce, published by Charles Dible, 10, Paternoster Square. Two questions are our limit.

Peri.—We have pleasure in telling you that the poem you wish to find is called “The Man at the Gate,” and is contained in a small volume entitled “Ezekiel and other Poems, by B. M.” The book was published some time ago by Nelson & Sons at 3s. 6d., net price 2s. 7½d.

Nell Bell.—Dear girl, your letter is so disfigured by enormous blots and erasures that we really cannot ask a French girl to correspond with you. Your writing is good, and we are sure you could send us a neat letter if you liked.

Carnation (Australia).—Write direct to Mademoiselle Louise François, Anzin, Nord, France.

We have again much pleasure in noticing the Sketching and Copying Clubs of Miss H. E. Grace, 54, York Road, Brighton. The subjects for the fourteenth year, 1899-1900, seem chosen and named in a felicitous manner. We thank Miss Grace for her pleasant letter and enclosure.

Ancient Briton.—Will Carleton’s “The First Settler’s Story” is published in his book of Farm Ballads and also appeared in Our Own Gazette for February, 1893.

Amédée.—1. The building depicted in the frontispiece to The Girl’s Own Paper for February is, doubtless, the Parthenon (literally the virgin’s chamber), or temple to the Goddess Athênê on the Acropolis at Athens. This wonderful edifice was built under the superintendence of Phidias, who wrought in ivory and gold a colossal statue of the goddess for the interior. The temple consisted of an oblong central building flanked on all sides by a peristyle of pillars. It is a little difficult to say precisely what religious festival is here depicted; but all the Greek religious festivals were intermingled with the idea of gladness, procession, and public rejoicing. We observe the lyre (Greek, phorminx) as well as other instruments more familiar. You might be interested in consulting Smith’s Student’s Greece.—2. Without seeing the picture you name we cannot explain it. Art that makes the beauty of the past real to us has its own value, even without any precise lesson.

Daffodil.—Your sonnet, “The Soul’s Awakening,” is decidedly above the average of lines sent us for criticism. The thought is very good. There are a few defects in the working out; the last two lines do not rhyme with each other, or with any line, and the accent on “sepulchre” is forced. But we can on the whole give you sincere praise.

Sophia.—We fear your description is not full enough to enable us to help you as to the story you wish to find. Is it by any chance The Giant Killer; or, the Battle that all must Fight, by A. L. O. E.? That opens with the sons of a clergyman (Mr. Roby) quarrelling. Your outline reads rather like A. L. O. E.’s style. Thanks for your reply to Doubtful.

Mab (Scotland).—Your story is far too sentimental, and shows a lack of knowledge of real life. A complexion cannot be at once “tanned by exposure” and “delicately tinted as a pink wild rose.” At the same time your writing is not devoid of force, and it is quite possible that with time and study you might do better. There is no presumption whatever in your sending to us; we are always glad to advise our readers.

OUR OPEN LETTER BOX.

INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENCE.

MEDICAL.

A. B. C.—Writer’s cramp is a name given to a peculiar form of nervous disease of the right arm and hand met with, almost exclusively, in writers. The disease belongs to that class of afflictions called “habit spasms,” other examples of which are histrionic spasm, commonly called “stage strike,” “musical stammering,” and some forms of true stammering. Of the cause of writer’s cramp we know this much, that it occurs mainly in writers; that it is far more common in men than in women; that it sometimes occurs in persons who are run down in health; that it is more common among the members of neurotic families, and that it is most frequent in those writers who use their wrists and little fingers as the “fulcrum” when writing. It is very uncommon among type-writers. There are many types of the complaint. In some forms weakness or paralysis of the muscles of the right hand is the most marked feature; in other cases twitchings, cramps, or numbness are the leading symptoms. The treatment for the affection is perfectly simple, but, like most simple treatments, it is very rarely that it is carried out. It is absolute rest from writing. The disease is cured by absolute rest. Where this treatment is impossible, rest till all symptoms have subsided, and then gradually taking to writing again, is the next best thing. But the complaint is exceedingly likely to recur. Learning to write with the left hand, nothing like such a difficult proceeding as you would think, has frequently been tried for the trouble; sometimes with great success, but not infrequently the disease attacks the left hand also. Massage, galvanism, and other such measures are sometimes used, but their effects are doubtful, and they appear to have but little action. The same may be said of strychnine and other nervine tonics. Of drugs the most useful are malt, cod-liver oil, and suchlike foods. Writer’s cramp is a serious disease to writers, and, moreover, it is one which they can never escape from if they must still continue in their employment. It is far better to throw over their writing at once, than wait till they are obliged to do so by the disease crippling them.

Poor Humpback.—The deformity resulting from tubercular disease of the spine cannot be remedied. Indeed, the deformity is the remedy for the effects of the mischief. For in this condition the tubercle germs have destroyed some of the bones of the back, and the only way by which the strength of the backbone is maintained is by the falling together of the bones above and below the seat of the trouble, and this, of necessity, produces shortness and deformity.

Pink May.—You should not wash your hair too often; if it is healthy, once a month is quite sufficiently frequent.

Muriel.—It is indeed a difficult matter to clear a complexion “disfigured by innumerable freckles,” but still we can do a little to render the marks less noticeable. Freckles are small patches of pigment. We know there are fair and dark complexions, and a freckled complexion is one which is both fair and dark in patches. One of the greatest causes of excess of pigment in the skin is light, and we all know how likely we are to get freckled or browned after being in a strong sun. It is not the heat, but the light of the sun which forms the pigment in the skin, and the bluer the light the more rapidly it will form pigment. Light reflected from water is especially potent in the formation of both browning and freckles. If you want to escape freckles you must therefore keep out of the light, and you can do this by wearing a red veil or using a red parasol. It is said that freckles can be bleached with peroxide of hydrogen, but we have not seen much benefit from its use. Glycerine and lime-water is also said to remove freckles.

A Motherless Lass.—Although all drugs are injurious when taken regularly, if the reason why they are taken is persistent, it is necessary to take them regularly. It is taking drugs without reason which is so dangerous, or taking them to combat a complaint which is cured. Aloes is the best habitual laxative we possess, and in most cases it is the safest to employ, but in your case we do not advise you to continue it, but to take a teaspoonful of liquorice powder instead. For your anæmia we advise bone-marrow tabloids or the peptonate of iron. The tabloids are often exceedingly useful, but they must be taken with care. Begin by taking one tabloid crushed up in milk twice a day, after food. After a week take two tabloids twice a day. Do not exceed this amount. If headache, dizziness, or trembling occurs, drop the tabloids for a week, then take to them again gradually. Most of your troubles are due to anæmia, but this again is connected with what you tell us in the latter part of your letter. Unfortunately we cannot enter at length into the subject. We can only encourage you to persevere and never to give up the struggle, however often you may fail. You cannot expect to have good health unless you improve your way of living. As regards the medical part of the question, you should take plenty of healthy exercise and seek the companionship of others. Above all, be careful of what you read. Frivolous literature is a terrible evil which must be shunned without ceasing. And above all, do not despair; we are all weak and fail sometimes, but if we do our best and strive to do better, we may in time overcome our failings.

Primrose.—There are certain soaps which “won’t wash clothes,” and there are others which will not wash faces—or rather, will not wash them without injury. Girls should always be careful not to use coarse or strong soaps for toilet use. A soap made to scrub floors or soiled clothes is not suitable to wash a face. For floors, etc., you want a strong, coarse soap. But the human face is a delicate article, and should be cleaned with soap made with great care, with no coarse or biting principles to spoil the complexion. All soaps sold for the toilet, except patent ones, are made of refined materials carefully selected and blended; and it is these soaps, and these only, which should be used for toilet purposes. Patent soaps should never be used, not because they are impure, but because their preparation is secret, and nobody knows from what they are made.

A Hothouse Rose.—Read the answer to “Poor Humpback.” Tuberculosis of the spine is distinctly a curable disease, though usually some deformity, more or less slight, is left after the disease has ceased. The treatment is chiefly a question of absolute rest.

Anxious One.—We cannot tell you what causes the pain in your left side without any information about it. It is probably indigestion.

Another Anxious One.—You are very wrong to go about untreated.

Myall.—Coal gas is an intensely poisonous vapour. Unlike the “choke-damp” of miners, which is carbonic acid gas, coal gas is not only irrespirable, but is actually poisonous. A very small quantity of gas in the air of a room may produce alarming results in anybody sleeping in the room. We are all familiar, at all events through the newspaper, with the immense danger of gas escaping into a bedroom. “How the body of —— was found in bed, and an escape of gas noticed,” etc. But few people are aware of the danger of a little gas escaping from a defective bracket or burner. Yet many cases of chronic failing health can be traced to this cause—gas escaping into the bedroom, often in such small quantities as to be undetected till searched for. Coal gas acts directly on the blood and destroys its function. When a person is found unconscious in a room in which gas is escaping, she should be immediately taken out into the open air and artificial respiration employed at once. But only too frequently no effort is of any avail. Charcoal burned with a limited supply of air gives out the same gas as the poisonous factor in coal gas, namely, carbon monoxide. This gas has no smell, and therefore it is not the poisonous constituent of coal gas which gives it the characteristic odour. Amongst the symptoms which may be met with in persons who sleep in a room into which a minute quantity of coal gas escapes, are headache, lassitude, especially in the morning, worrying dreams and anæmia.

Old Mother Hubbard.—1. Sallowness of the complexion is one of the commonest symptoms met with in ill-health. Practically any form of illness may cause it. It is almost invariably present in chronic constipation.—2. Yes. One decayed tooth may injure every other tooth in the head, just as one rotten apple will spoil a whole sackful. Decayed teeth are not the least good to anybody; they cannot be used for mastication, and they are not beautiful. But they are exceedingly dangerous, and there are more deaths due to carious teeth than you would ever have suspected! The moral of this is obvious: decayed teeth should be removed or stopped at once.

Lady Disdain.—To ask us what natural mineral waters are advised for chronic rheumatism is a very large order. The action of most waters is profoundly obscure, and chronic rheumatism is an equally profoundly obscure disease, so, of course, it is for chronic rheumatism that most mineral springs come into existence. The mere mention of the names of all the waters used for this complaint would occupy a volume. And, moreover, we do not know the names of more than about one in six. But we think that we know the most important of those that have really any value. The sulphur waters are decidedly useful in chronic rheumatism. The best are Harrowgate and Aix-la-Chapelle. All the vast horde of alkaline waters have been advised for rheumatism. Seltzers, Vals, Vichy, Contréxeville, and Alet waters are those chiefly in use. Kreuznach and Woodhall, both of which contain iodine, and Royat, which contains chlorides, are often of great value in chronic joint affections.

Distressed Mother.—In cases where children cannot digest milk—which is almost always due to using milk badly prepared—and in the far more common cases of children requiring extra nourishment, either as the result of wasting disease or just before their taking a more solid diet, do not supplement their food with the patent foods sold for the purpose. These are never what is wanted, and they are frequently exceedingly injurious. A very excellent supplemental food for such cases is the following. It is difficult to make and is rather expensive, but it is in its way almost a perfect food. Follow the directions carefully:—Take four ounces of stale bread without crust (it is better that the bread be made with “seconds” flour); soak the bread for eight hours, squeeze it dry and then boil it in fresh water. Strain it, and rub it through a hair sieve, and allow it to cool. This forms a sort of jelly, and is called “bread jelly.” It is frequently ordered by physicians, and is the first ingredient of this excellent food. The second ingredient is meat juice. To make this, take four ounces of the best rump steak, obtained from a very trustworthy butcher, and shred it up fine. To it add one ounce (two tablespoonfuls) of cold water, previously sterilised by boiling, and squeeze the meat and the water through a muslin bag. Now to proceed. Take five teaspoonfuls of the bread jelly, six of the meat juice, two of fresh cream, and half a teaspoonful of white sugar. Two ounces of this food makes an excellent meal for an infant. You must be very careful to see that everything used in the making of this food is scrupulously clean. The bread jelly and the meat juice must be prepared fresh every day, and the cream must be obtained from a thoroughly reliable source.

THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER