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Miscellanea

by Juliana Horatia Ewing · English · Gutenberg #16347 · 344,323 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Miscellanea

Author: Juliana Horatia Ewing


        
Release date: July 22, 2005 [eBook #16347]
                Most recently updated: December 12, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISCELLANEA ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Paul Ereaut and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net










MISCELLANEA.


BY

JULIANA HORATIA EWING.


SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE,
London: Northumberland Avenue, W.C.
43, Queen Victoria Street, E.C.
Brighton: 129, North Street.
New York: E. & J.B. YOUNG & CO.


[Published under the direction of the General Literature
Committee.]




PREFACE.


The contents of this volume are republished in order to make the Edition
a complete collection of Mrs. Ewing's works, rather than because of
their intrinsic worth. The fact that she did not republish the papers
during her life shows that she did not estimate them very highly
herself; but as each one has a special interest connected with it, I
feel I am not violating her wishes in bringing the collection before the
public.

One of Mrs. Ewing's strongest gifts was her power of mimicry; this made
her an actor above the average of amateurs, and also enabled her to
imitate any special style of writing that she wished. The first four
stories in this volume are instances of this power. _The Mystery of the
Bloody Hand_ was an attempt to vie with some of the early sensational
novels, such as _Lady Audley's Secret_ and _The Moonstone_;--tales in
which a glimpse of the supernatural is introduced amongst scenes of
every-day life.

During my sister's girlhood we had a family MS. Magazine (as our Mother
had done in her young days), and two of the stories in Mrs. Gatty's
"Aunt Judy's Letters," _The Flatlands Fun Gazette_ and _The Black Bag_,
were founded on this custom, Mrs. Ewing being the typical "Aunt Judy" of
the book. Mrs. Gatty described how the children were called upon each to
contribute a tale for _The Black Bag_, and how No. 5 remonstrated by
saying--"I've been sitting over the fire this evening trying to think,
but what _could_ come, with only the coals and the fire-place before one
to look at? I dare say neither Hans Andersen nor Grimm nor any of those
fellows would have written anything, if they had not gone about into
caves and forests and those sort of places, or boated in the North
Seas!" Aunt Judy replied that she also had been looking into the fire,
and the longer she did so, the more she decided "that Hans Andersen was
not beholden to caves or forests or any curious things or people for his
story-telling inspirations"; but as it was difficult for the "little
ones" to write she enclosed three tales as "jokes, imitations, in fact,
of the Andersenian power of spinning gold threads out of old tow-ropes."
So far this was Mrs. Gatty's own writing, but the three tales were the
work of the real Aunt Judy, Mrs. Ewing herself. These three are (1)
_The Smut_, (2) _The Crick_, (3) _The Brothers_. The last sentence in
_The Brothers_ recalls the last entry in Mrs. Ewing's commonplace book,
which is quoted in her Life--"If we still love those we lose, can we
altogether lose those we love?"

_Cousin Peregrine's Wonder Stories_ and _Traveller's Tales_ were written
after Mrs. Ewing's marriage, with the help of her husband; he supplied
the facts and descriptions from things which he had seen during his long
residence abroad. Colonel Ewing also helped my sister in translating the
_Tales of the Khoja_ from the Turkish. The illustrations now reproduced
were drawn by our brother, Alfred Scott-Gatty.

In _Little Woods_ and _May-Day Customs_ Mrs. Ewing showed her ready
ability to take up any subject of interest that came under her
notice--botany, horticulture, archæology, folk-lore, or whatever it
might be. The same readiness was shown in her adaptation of the various
versions of the _Mumming Play_, or _The Peace Egg_.

_In Memoriam_ was written under considerable restraint soon after our
Mother's death. My sister knew that she did not wish her biography to be
written, but still it was impossible to let the originator and editor of
_Aunt Judy's Magazine_ pass away without some little record being given
to the many children who loved her writings. In Ecclesfield Church
there is a tablet erected to Mrs. Gatty's memory by one thousand
children, who each contributed sixpence.

_The Snarling Princess_ and _The Little Parsnip Man_ are adaptations of
two fairy tales which appeared in a German magazine; and as both the
tales and their illustrations took Mrs. Ewing's fancy, she made a free
rendering of them for _Aunt Judy's Magazine_.

_A Child's Wishes_ and _War and the Dead_ are more accurate
translations, but it may be said they have not suffered in their
transmission from one language to another. My sister's selection of the
last sketch for translation is noticeable, as giving a foretaste of her
keen sympathy with military interests.




CONTENTS.


The Mystery of the Bloody Hand

The Smut

The Crick

The Brothers

Cousin Peregrine's Wonder Stories:
     1. The Chinese Jugglers, and the Englishman's Hands

     2. Waves of the Great South Seas

Cousin Peregrine's Traveller's Tales:
     Jack of Pera

The Princes of Vegetation

Little Woods

May-Day, Old Style and New Style

In Memoriam, Margaret Gatty

Tales of the Khoja (_from the Turkish_)

The Snarling Princess (_adapted from the German_)

The Little Parsnip-Man (_adapted from the German_)

A Child's Wishes (_from the German of R. Reinick_)

War and the Dead (_from the French of Jean Macé_)




THE MYSTERY OF THE BLOODY HAND.


CHAPTER I.

A MEMORABLE NEW YEAR'S DAY.


_Dorothy to Eleanor_,

Dearest Eleanor,

You have so often reminded me how rapidly the most startling facts pass
from the memory of man, and I have so often thereupon promised to write
down a full account of that mysterious affair in which I was
providentially called upon to play so prominent a part, that it is with
shame I reflect that the warning has been unheeded and the promise
unfulfilled. Do not, dear friend, accuse my affection, but my engrossing
duties and occupations, for this neglect, and believe that I now take
advantage of my first quiet evening for many months to fulfil your wish.

Betty has just brought me a cup of tea, and I have told the girl to be
within call; for once a heroine is not always a heroine, dear Nell. I am
full of childish terrors, and I assure you it is with no small mental
effort that I bring myself to recall the terrible events of the year
1813.

Oddly enough, it was on the first day of this year that I made the
acquaintance of Mr. George Manners; and I think I can do no better than
begin by giving you an extract from the first page of my journal at that
time.

"_Jan. 1, 1813_.--It is mid-day, and very fine, but it was no easy
matter to be at service this morning after all good Dr. Penn's
injunctions, as last night's dancing, and the long drive home, made me
sleepy, and Harriet is still in bed.

"Though I am not so handsome as Harriet, and boast of no conquests, and
though the gentlemen do not say the wonderfully pretty things to me that
they seem to do to her, I have much enjoyed several balls since my
introduction into society. But for ever first and foremost on my list of
dances must be Lady Lucy Topham's party on New Year's Eve. Let me say
New Year's Day, for the latter part of the evening was the happy one to
me. During the first part I danced a little and watched the others much.
To sit still is mortifying, and yet I almost think the dancing was the
greater penance, since I never had much to say to men of whom I know
nothing: the dances seem interminable, and I am ever haunted by a vague
feeling that my partner is looking out over my head for some one
prettier and more lively, which is not inspiring. I must not forget a
little incident, as we came up the stairs into the ball-room. With my
customary awkwardness I dropped my fan, and was about to stoop for it,
when some one who had been following us darted forward and presented it
to me. I curtsied low, he bowed lower; our eyes met for a moment, and
then he fell behind. It was by his eyes that I recognized him afterwards
in the ball-room, for in the momentary glance on the stairs I had not
had time to observe his prominent height and fine features. How
strangely one's fancy is sometimes seized upon by a foolish wish! My
modest desire last night was to dance with this Mr. George Manners, the
handsomest man and best dancer of the room, to be whose partner even
Harriet was proud. Though I had not a word for my second-rate partners,
I fancied that I could talk to _him_. Oh, foolish heart! how I chid
myself for my folly in watching his tall figure thread the dances, in
fancying that I had met his eyes many times that evening, and, above
all, for the throb of jealous disappointment that came with every dance
when he did not do what I never soberly expected he would--ask me. A
little before twelve I was sitting out among the turbans, when I saw him
standing at some distance, and unmistakably looking at me. A sudden
horror seized me that something was wrong--my hair coming down, my dress
awry--and I was not comforted by Harriet passing at this moment with--

"'What! sitting out still? You should be more lively, child! Men don't
like dancing with dummies.'

"When her dress had whisked past me I looked up and saw him again, but
at that moment he sharply turned his back on me and walked into the
card-room. I was sitting still when he came out again with Mr. Topham.
The music had just struck up, the couples were gathering; he was going
to dance then. I looked down at my bouquet with tears in my eyes, and
was trying hard to subdue my folly and to count the petals of a white
camellia, when Mr. Topham's voice close by me said--

"'Miss Dorothy Lascelles, may I introduce Mr. Manners to you?' and in
two seconds more my hand was in his arm, and he was saying in a voice as
commonplace as if the world had not turned upside down--

"'I think it is Sir Roger.'

"It is a minor satisfaction to me to reflect that, for once in my life,
I was right. I did talk to Mr. George Manners. The first thing I said
was--

"'I am very much obliged to you for picking up my fan.' To which he
replied (if it can be called a reply)--

"'I wish I had known sooner that you were Miss Lascelles' sister.'

"I said, 'Did you not see her with me on the stairs?' and he answered--

"'I saw no one but you.'

"Which, as it is the nearest approach to a pretty speech that ever was
made to me, I confide solemnly to this my fine new diary, which is to be
my dearest friend and confidante this year. Why the music went so fast,
and the dance was so short on this particular occasion, I never could
fathom; both had just ceased, and we were still chatting, when midnight
struck, deep-toned or shrill, from all the clocks in the house; and, in
the involuntary impressive pause, we could hear through the open window
the muffled echo from the village church. Then Mr. Topham ran in with a
huge loving-cup, and, drinking all our good healths, it was passed
through the company.

"When the servant brought it to me, Mr. Manners took it from him, and
held it for me himself by both handles, saying--

"'It is too heavy for your hands;' and I drank, he quoting in jest from
_Hamlet_--

"'Nymph, in thine orisons be all my sins remembered.'

"Then he said, '_I_ shall wish in silence,' and paused a full minute
before putting it to his lips. When the servant had taken it away, he
heaved so profound a sigh that (we then being very friendly) I said--

"'What is the matter?'

"'Do you believe in presentiments, Miss Lascelles?' he said.

"'I don't think I ever had a presentiment,' I answered.

"'Don't think me a fool,' he said, 'but I have had the most intense
dread of the coming of this year. I have a presentiment (for which there
is no reason) that it will bring me a huge, overwhelming misfortune: and
yet I have just wished for a blessing of which I am vastly unworthy, but
which, if it does come, will probably come this year, and which would
make it the brightest one that I have ever seen. Be a prophet, Miss
Lascelles, and tell me--which will it be?--the joy or the sorrow?'

"He gazed so intently that I had some difficulty in answering with
composure--

"'Perhaps both. We are taught to believe that life is chequered.'

"'See,' he went on. 'This is the beginning of the year. We are standing
here safe and happy. Miss Lascelles, where shall we be when the year
ends?'

"The question seemed to me faithless in a Christian, and puerile in a
brave man: I did not say so; but my face may have expressed it, for he
changed the subject suddenly, and could not be induced to return to it.
I danced twice with him afterwards; and when we parted I said,
emphatically--

"'A happy new year to you, Mr. Manners.'

"He forced a smile as he answered, 'Amen!'

"Mrs. Dallas (who kindly chaperoned us) slept all the way home; and Miss
Dallas and Harriet chatted about their partners. Once only they appealed
to me. What first drew my attention was Mr. Manners' name.

"'Poor Mr. Manners!' Harriet said; 'I am afraid I was very rude to him.
He had to console himself with you, eh, Dolly?--on the principle of love
me love my dog, I suppose?'

"Am I so conceited that this had never struck me? And yet--but here
comes Harriet, and I must put you away, dear diary. I blush at my
voluminousness. If every evening is to take up so many pages, my book
will be full at Midsummer! But was not this a red-letter day?"

Well may I blush, dear Nell, to re-read this girlish nonsense. And yet
it contains not the least strange part of this strange story--poor Mr.
Manners' presentiment of evil. After this he called constantly, and we
met him often in society; and, blinded by I know not what delusion,
Harriet believed him to be devoted to herself, up to the period, as I
fancy, when he asked me to be his wife. I was staying with the Tophams
at the time. I believe that they had asked me there on purpose, being
his friends. Ah, George! what a happy time that was! How, in the sweet
days of the sweetest of summers, I laughed at your "presentiment"! How
you told me that the joy had come, and, reminding me of my own sermon on
the chequered nature of life, asked if the sorrow would yet tread it
down. Too soon, my love! too soon!

Nelly! forgive me this outburst. I must write more calmly. It is sad to
speak ill of a sister; but surely it was cruel, that she, who had so
many lovers, should grudge me my happiness; should pursue George with
such unreasonable malice; should rouse the senseless but immovable
obstinacy of our poor brother against him. Oh, Eleanor! think of my
position! Our father and mother dead; under the care of our only
brother, who, as you know, dear Nell, was at one time feared to be a
complete idiot, and had, poor boy! only so much sense as to make him
sane in the eyes of the law. You know the fatal obstinacy with which he
pursued an idea once instilled; the occasional fits of rage that were
not less than insanity. Knowing all this, my dear, imagine what I must
have suffered when angrily recalled home. I was forbidden to think of
Mr. Manners again. In vain I asked for reasons. They had none, and yet a
thousand to give me. When I think of the miserable stories that were
raked up against him,--the misconstruction of everything he did, or
said, or left undone,--my own impotent indignation, and my poor
brother's senseless rage, and the insulting way in which I was watched,
and taunted, and tortured,--oh, Nelly! it is agony to write. I did the
only thing left to me--I gave him up, and prayed for peace. I do not say
that I was right: I say that I did the best I could in a state of things
that threatened to deprive me of reason.

My submission did not produce an amount of harmony in the house in any
way proportionate to the price I paid for it. Harriet was obliged to
keep the slanders of my lover constantly in view, to quiet the
self-reproach which I think she must sometimes have experienced. As to
Edmund, my obedience had somewhat satisfied him, and made way for
another subject of interest which was then engrossing his mind.

A man on his estate, renting a farm close to us, who was a Quaker, and
very "strict" in his religious profession, had been for a long time
grossly cheating him, relying, no doubt, on my poor brother's deficient
intellect. But minds that are intellectually and in reason deficient,
are often endowed with a large share of cunning and caution, especially
in monetary affairs. Edmund guessed, watched, and discovered; but when
the proof was in his hands, his proceedings were characteristically
peculiar. He did not discharge the man, and have done with it; he
retained him in his place, but seemed to take a--let me say--insane
delight in exposing him to the religious circle in which he had been a
star, and from which he was ignominiously expelled; and in heaping every
possible annoyance and disgrace upon him that the circumstances
admitted. My dear, I think I should have preferred his wrath upon
myself, to being the witness of my brother's miserable exultation over
the wretched man, Parker. His chief gratification lay in the thought
that, exquisite as were the vexations he heaped upon him, the man was
obliged to express gratitude for his master's forbearance as regarded
the law.

"He said he should never forget my consideration for him till death! Ha!
ha!"

"My only puzzle," I said, "is, what can induce him to stay with you."

And then the storm turned upon me, Eleanor.

You will ask me, my dear, how, meanwhile, had Mr. Manners taken my
letter of dismissal. I know now, Nell, and so will not revive the
mystery that then added weight to my distress. He wrote me many
letters,--but I never saw one!

       *       *       *       *       *

And now, dear friend, let me pause and gather courage to relate the
terrible events of that sultry, horrible--that accursed June.




CHAPTER II.

THE TERRIBLE JUNE.


It was about the middle of the month. Harriet was spending some hours
with a friend, Edmund was out, and I had been left alone all day for the
first time since I came home. I remember everything that happened with
the utmost distinctness. I spent the day chiefly in the garden,
gathering roses for pot-pourri, being disinclined for any more
reasonable occupation, partly by the thundery oppressiveness of the air,
partly by a vague, dull feeling of dread that made me restless, and
which was yet one of those phases of feeling in which, if life depended
on an energetic movement, one must trifle. In this mood, when the
foreclouded mind instinctively shrinks from its own great troubles,
little things assume an extraordinary distinctness. I trode carefully in
the patterns of the terrace pavement, counted the roses on the white
bush by the dial (there were twenty-six), and seeing a beetle on the
path, moved it to a bank at some distance. There it crept into a hole,
and such a wild, weary desire seized on me to creep after it and hide
from what was coming, that--I thought it wise to go in.

As I sat in the drawing-room there was a rose still whole in my lap. I
had begun to pluck off the petals, when the door-bell rang. Though I
heard the voice distinctly when the door was opened, I vow to you, dear
Nell, that my chief desire was to get the rose pulled to pieces before I
was disturbed. I had flung the last petal into my lap, when the door
opened and Mr. Manners came into the room.

He did not speak; he opened his arms, and I ran straight into them,
roses and all. The petals rained over us and over the floor. He talked
very fast, and I did nothing but cling to him, and endure in silence the
weight which his presence could not remove from my mind, while he
pleaded passionately for our marriage. He said that it was the extreme
of all that was unreasonable, that our lives' happiness should be
sacrificed to the insane freak of a hardly responsible mind. He
complained bitterly (though I could but confess justly!) of the
insulting and intolerable treatment that he had received. He had come,
he said, in the first place, to assure himself of my constancy--in the
second, for a powerful and final remonstrance with my brother--and, if
that failed, to remind me that I should be of age next month; and to
convey the entreaty of the Tophams that, as a last resource, I would
come to them and be married from their house. I made up my mind, and
promised: then I implored him to be careful in his interview with my
brother, for my sake--to calm his own natural anger, and to remember
Edmund's infirmity. He promised, but I saw that he was slightly piqued
by my dwelling so much on Edmund's feelings rather than on his. Ah!
Nelly, he had never seen one of the poor boy's rages.

It may have been half-past six when Mr. Manners arrived; it had just
struck a quarter to nine when Edmund came in and found us together. He
paused for a minute, clicking his tongue in his mouth, in a way he had
when excited; and then he turned upon me, and heaped abuse on insult,
loading me with accusations and reproaches. George, white with
suppressed rage, called incessantly upon me to go; and at last I dared
disobey no longer; but as I went I touched his arm and whispered,
"Remember! for my sake." His intense "I promise, my darling," comforted
me then--and afterwards, Nelly. I went into a little room that opened
into the hall and waited.

In about twenty minutes the drawing-room door opened, and they came out.
I heard George's voice saying this or something equivalent (afterwards
I could not accurately recall the words)--

"Good-night, Mr. Lascelles; I trust our next meeting may be a different
one."

The next sentences on both sides I lost. Edmund seems to have refused to
shake hands with Mr. Manners. The last words I heard were George's
half-laughing--

"Next time, Lascelles, I shall not ask for your hand--I shall take it."

Then the door shut, and Edmund went into his study. An hour later he
also went out, and I was left alone once more. I went back into the
drawing-room; the rose-leaves were fading on the floor; and on the table
lay George Manners' penknife. It was a new one, that he had been showing
to me, and had left behind him. I kissed it and put it in my pocket:
then I knelt down by the chair, Nell, and wept till I prayed; and then
prayed till I wept again; and then I got up and tidied the room, and got
some sewing; and, like other women, sat down with my trouble, waiting
for the storm to break.

It broke at eleven o'clock that night, when two men carried the dead
body of my brother into his own kitchen--foully murdered.

But when I knelt by the poor body, lying awfully still upon the table;
when I kissed the face, which in death had curiously regained the
appearance of reason as well as beauty; when I saw and knew that life
had certainly gone till the Resurrection:--that was not all. The storm
had not fully broken till I turned and saw, standing by the fire, George
Manners, with his hands and coat dabbled with blood. I did not speak or
scream; but a black horror seemed to settle down like mist upon me.
Through it came Mr. Manners' voice (I had not looked again at him)--

"Miss Dorothy Lascelles, why do you not ask who did it?"

I gave a sharp cry, and one of the labourers who had helped to bring
Edmund in said gravely--

"Eh, Master! the less you say the better. God forgive you this
night's work!"

George's hoarse voice spoke again.

"Do you hear him?" and then it faltered a little--"Dorolice, do you
think this?"

It was his pet name for me (he was an Italian scholar), and touched me
inexpressibly, and a conviction seized upon me that if he had done it,
he would not have dared to appeal to my affection. I tried to clear my
mind that I might see the truth, and then I looked up at him. Our eyes
met, and we looked at each other for a full minute, and I was content.
Oh! there are times when the instinctive trust of one's heart is, so far
more powerful than any proofs or reasons, that faith seems a higher
knowledge. I would have pledged ten thousand lives, if I had had them,
on the honesty of those eyes, that had led me like a will-o'-the-wisp in
the ball-room half a year ago! The new-year's dance came back on me as I
stood there--my ball-dress was in the drawer up-stairs--and now! oh
dear! was I going mad?




CHAPTER III.

THE TIME OF TRIAL.


Meanwhile he was waiting for my answer. I stepped forward, intending to
take his hand, but the stains drove me back again. Where so much depends
upon a right--or a mis-understanding, the only way is to speak the fair
truth. I did so; by a sort of forced calm holding back the seething of
my brain.

"George, I should like to touch you, but--I cannot! I beg you to forgive
the selfishness of my grief--my mind is confused--I shall be better
soon. God has sent us a great sorrow, in which I know you are
as innocent as I am. I am very sorry--I think that is all." And I put my
hand to my head, where a sharp pain was beginning to throb. Mr. Manners
spoke, emphatically--

"God bless you, Dorolice! You know I promised. Thank you, for
ever!"

"If you fancy you have any reason to thank me," I said, "do me this
favour. Whatever happens, believe that I believe!"

I could bear no more, so I went out of the kitchen. As I went I heard a
murmur of pity run through the room, and I knew that they were
pitying--not the dead man, but me; and me--not for my dead brother, but
for his murderer. When I got into the passage, the mist that had still
been dark before my eyes suddenly became darker, and I remember no more.

When my senses returned, Harriet had come home. From the first she would
never hear George's name except to accuse him with frantic bitterness of
poor Edmund's death; and as nothing would induce me to credit his guilt,
the subject was as much as possible avoided. I cannot dwell on those
terrible days. I was very ill for some time, and after I had come
down-stairs, one day I found a newspaper containing the following
paragraph, which I copy here, as it is the shortest and least painful
way of telling you the facts of poor Edmund's death.

"THE MURDER AT CROSSDALE HALL.

"Universal horror has been excited in the neighbourhood by the murder of
Edmund Lascelles, Esq., of Crossdale Hall. Mr. Lascelles was last seen
alive a little after ten o'clock on Friday night, at which time he left
the house alone, and was not seen again living. At the inquest on
Saturday, James Crosby, a farm labourer, gave the following evidence:--

"'I had been sent into the village for some medicine for a sick beast,
and was returning to the farm by the park a little before eleven, when
near the low gate I saw a man standing with his back to me. The moon was
shining, and I recognized him at once for Mr. George Manners, of
Beckfield. When Mr. Manners saw me he seemed much excited, and called
out, "Quick! help! Mr. Lascelles has been murdered." I said, "Good
God! who did it?" He said, "I don't know; I found him in the
ditch; help me to carry him in." By this time I had come up and saw Mr.
Lascelles on the ground, lying on his side. I said, "How do you know
he's dead?" He said, "I fear there's very little hope; he has bled so
profusely. I am covered with blood." I was examining the body, and as I
turned it over I found that the right hand was gone. It had been cut off
at the wrist. I said, "Look here! Did you know this?" He spoke very low,
and only said, "How horrible!" I said, "Let us look for the hand; it may
be in the ditch." He said, "No, no! we are wasting time. Bring him in,
and let us send for the doctor." I ran to the ditch, however, but could
see nothing but a pool of blood. Coming back, I found on the ground a
thick hedge-stake covered with blood. The grass by the ditch was very
much stamped and trodden. I said, "There has been a desperate struggle."
He said, "Mr. Lascelles was a very strong man." I said, "Yes; as strong
as you, Mr. Manners." He said, "Not quite; very nearly though." He said
nothing more till we got to the hall; then he said, "Who can break it to
his sister?" I said, "They will have to know. It's them that killed him
has brought this misery upon them." The low gate is a quarter of a mile,
or more, from the hall.'

"Death seems to have been inflicted by two instruments--a wounding and a
cutting one. As yet, no other weapon but the stake has been discovered,
and a strict search for the missing hand has also proved fruitless. No
motive for this wanton outrage suggests itself, except that the unhappy
gentleman was in the habit of wearing on his right hand a sapphire ring
of great value." (An heirloom; it is on my finger as I write, dear Nell.
Oh! my poor boy.) "All curiosity is astir to discover the perpetrator of
this horrible deed; and it is with the deepest regret that we are
obliged to state that every fresh link in the chain of evidence points
with fatal accuracy to one whose position, character, and universal
popularity would seem to place him above suspicion. We would not
willingly intrude upon the privacy of domestic interests, but the
following facts will too soon be matters of public notoriety.

"A younger sister of the deceased appears to have formed a matrimonial
engagement with George Manners, Esq., of Beckfield. It was strongly
opposed by Mr. Lascelles, and the objection (which at the time appeared
unreasonable) may have been founded on a more intimate knowledge of the
suitor's character than was then possessed by others. The match was
broken off, and all intercourse was suspended till the night of the
murder, when Mr. Manners gained admittance to the hall in the absence of
Mr. Lascelles, and was for some hours alone in the young lady's company.
They were found together a little before nine o'clock by Mr. Lascelles,
and a violent scene ensued, in the course of which the young lady left
the apartment. (Miss Lascelles has been ill ever since the unhappy
event, and is so still. Her deposition was taken in writing at the
hall.) From the young lady's evidence it appears, first, that the
passions of both were strongly excited, and she admits having felt
sufficient apprehension to induce her to twice warn Mr. Manners to
self-control. Secondly, that Mr. Manners avowed himself prepared to defy
Mr. Lascelles' authority in the matter of the marriage; and thirdly, the
two sentences of their final conversation that she overheard (both Mr.
Manners') were what can hardly be interpreted otherwise than as a
threat, that 'their next meeting should be a different one,' and that
then '_he would not ask for Mr. Lascelles' hand, but take it_.' The
diabolical character of determined and premeditated vindictiveness thus
given to an otherwise unaccountable outrage upon his victim, goes far to
take away the feeling of pity which we should otherwise have felt for
the murderer, regarding him as under the maddening influences of
disappointed love and temporary passion. Perhaps, however, the most
fatally conclusive evidence against Mr. Manners lies in the time that
elapsed between his leaving the hall and being found in the park by the
murdered body. He left the house at a quarter past nine--he was found by
the body of the deceased a little before eleven; so that either it must
have taken him more than an hour and a half to walk a quarter of a
mile--which is obviously absurd--or he must have been waiting for nearly
two hours in the grounds. Why did he not return at once to the house of
Mr. Topham? (where it appears that he was staying). For what--or for
whom--was he waiting? If he were in the park at the time of the murder,
how came it that he heard no cries, gave the unhappy gentleman no
assistance, and offers no suggestion or clue to the mystery beyond the
obstinate denial of his own guilt, though he confesses to having been in
the grounds during the whole time of the deadly struggle, and though he
was found alone with scratched hands and blood-stained clothes beside
the corpse of his avowed enemy? We leave these questions to the
consideration of our readers, as they will be for that of a
conscientious and impartial jury, not, we trust, blinded by the wealth
and position of the criminal to the hideous nature of the crime.

"The funeral is to take place to-morrow; George Manners is fully
committed to take his trial for wilful murder at the ensuing assizes."

The above condemning extract only too well represented the state of
public feeling. All Middlesex--nay, all England--was roused to
indignation, and poor Edmund's youth and infirmities made the crime
appear the more cowardly and detestable.




CHAPTER IV.

DRIFTING TO THE END.


My misery between the time of the murder and the trial was terrible from
many causes: my brother's death; George's position; the knowledge of his
sufferings, and my inability to see or soothe them--and, worst of all,
the firm conviction of his guilt in every one's mind, and Harriet's
ceaseless reproaches. I do not think that I should have lived through
it, but for Dr. Penn. That excellent and revered man's kindness will, I
trust, ever be remembered by me with due gratitude. He went up to town
constantly, at his own expense, and visited my dear George in Newgate,
administering all the consolations of his high office and long
experience, and being the bearer of our messages to each other. From him
also I gleaned all the news of which otherwise I should have been kept
in ignorance; how George's many friends were making every possible
exertion on his behalf, and how an excellent counsel was retained for
him. But far beyond all his great kindness, was to me the simple fact
that he shared my belief in George's innocence; for there were times
when the universal persuasion of his guilt almost shook, not my faith,
but my reason.

There were early prayers in our little church in the morning; too early,
Harriet said, for her to attend much, especially of late, when Dr.
Penn's championship of George Manners had led her to discover more
formalism in his piety, and northern broadness in his accent, than
before. But these quiet services were my daily comfort in those
troublous days; and in the sweet fresh walk home across the park, my
more than father and I hatched endless conspiracies on George's behalf
between the church porch and the rectory gate. Our chief difficulty, I
confess, lay in the question that the world had by this time so terribly
answered--who did it? If George were innocent, who was guilty? My poor
brother had not been popular, and I do not say that one's mind could not
have fixed on a man more likely to commit the crime than George, under
not less provocation. But it was an awful deed, Nelly, to lay to any
man's charge, even in thought; and no particle of evidence arose to fix
the guilt on any one else, or even to suggest an accomplice. As the time
wore on, suspense became sickening.

"Sir," I said to him one day, "I am breaking down. I have brought some
plants to set in your garden. I wish you would give me something to do
for you. Your shirts to make, your stockings to darn. If I were a poor
woman I should work down my trouble. As it is--"

"Hush!" said the doctor; you are what God has made you. My dear
madam, Janet tells me, what my poor eyes have hardly observed, that my
ruffles are more worn than beseems a doctor in divinity. Now for
myself--"

"Hush!" said I, mimicking him. "My dear sir, you have taught me to plot
and conspire, and this very afternoon I shall hold a secret interview
with Mistress Janet. But say something about my trouble. What will
happen?--How will it end?--What shall we do?"

"My love," he said, "keep heart. I fully believe in his innocence. There
is heavy evidence against him, but there are also some strong points in
his favour; and you must believe that the jury have no object to do
anything but justice, or believe anything but the truth, and that they
will find accordingly. And God defend the right!"

Eleanor!--they found him Guilty.

       *       *       *       *       *

I have asked Dr. Penn to permit me to make an extract from his journal
in this place. It is less harrowing to copy than to recall. I omit the
pious observations and reflections which grace the original. Comforting
as they are to me, it seems a profanity to make them public; besides, it
is his wish that I should withhold them, which is sufficient.

_From the Diary of the Rev. Arthur Penn, D.D.,
Rector of Crossdale, Middlesex._

"When he came into the dock he looked (so it seemed to me) altered since
I had last seen him; more anxious and worn, that is, but yet composed
and dignified. Doubtless I am but a prejudiced witness; but his face to
me lacks both the confusion and the effrontery of guilt. He looks like
one pressed by a heavy affliction, but enduring it with fortitude. I
think his appearance affected and astonished many in the court. Those
who were prepared to see a hardened ruffian, or, at best, a cowering
criminal, must have been startled by the intellectual and noble style of
his beauty, the grace and dignity of his carriage, and the modest
simplicity of his behaviour. I am but a doting old man; for I think on
no evidence could I convict him in the face of those good eyes of his,
to which sorrow has given a wistful look that at times is terrible; as
if now and then the agony within showed its face at the windows of the
soul. Once only every trace of composure vanished--it was when sweet
Mistress Dorothy was called; then he looked simply mad. I wonder--but
no! no!--he did not commit this great crime,--not even in a fit of
insanity.

"Mr. A---- is a very able advocate, and, in his cross-examination of the
man Crosby and of Mistress Dorothy, did his best to atone for the cruel
law which keeps the prisoner's counsel at such disadvantage. The counsel
for the prosecution had pressed hard on my dear lady, especially in
reference to those farewell words overheard by her, which seem to give
the only (though that, I say, an incredible) clue to what remains the
standing mystery of the event--the missing hand. Then Mr. A---- rose to
cross-examine. He said--

"'During that part of the quarrel when you were present, did the
prisoner use any threats or suggestions of personal violence?'

"'No.'

"'In the fragment of conversation that you overheard at the last, did
you at the time understand the prisoner to be conveying taunts or
threats?'

"'No.'

"'How did you interpret the unaccountable anxiety on the prisoner's part
to shake hands with a man by whom he believed himself to be injured, and
with whom he was quarrelling!'

"'Mr. Manners' tone was such as one uses to a spoilt child. I believed
that he was determined to avoid a quarrel at any price, in deference to
my brother's infirmity and his own promise to me. He was very angry
before Edmund came in; but I believe that afterwards he was shocked and
sobered at the obviously irresponsible condition of my poor brother when
enraged. He had never seen him so before.'

"'Is it true that Mr. Manners' pocket-knife was in your possession at
the time of the murder?'

"'It is.'

"'Does your window look upon the "Honeysuckle Walk," where the prisoner
says that he spent the time between leaving your house and the finding
of the body?'

"'Yes.'

"'Was the prisoner likely to have any attractive associations connected
with it, in reference to yourself?'

"'We had often been there together before we were engaged. It was a
favourite walk of mine.'

"'Do you suppose that any one in this walk could hear cries proceeding
from the low gate?'

"'Certainly not.'

"The cross-examination of Crosby was as follows:--

"Mr. A.---- 'Were the prisoner's clothes much disordered, as if
he had been struggling?'

"'No; he looked much as usual; but he was covered with blood.'

"'So we have heard you say. Do you think that a man, in perfectly clean
clothes, could have lifted the body out of the ditch without being
covered with blood?'

"'No: perhaps not.'

"'Was there any means by which so much blood could have been accumulated
in the ditch, unless the body had been thrown there?'

"'I think not. The pool were too big.'

"'I have two more questions to ask, and I beg the special attention of
the jury to the answers. Is the ditch, or is it not, very thickly
overgrown with brambles and brushwood?'

"'Yes; there be a many brambles.'

"'Do you think that any single man could drag a heavy body from the
bottom of the ditch on to the bank, without severely scratching his
hands?'

"'No; I don't suppose he could.'

"'That is all I wish to ask.'

"Not being permitted to address the jury, it was all that he could do.
Then the Recorder summed up. God forgive him the fatal accuracy
with which he placed every link in a chain of evidence so condemning
that I confess poor George seemed almost to have been taken _in
flagrante delicto_. The jury withdrew; and my sweet Mistress Dorothy,
who had remained in court against my wish, suddenly dropped like an
apple-blossom, and I carried her out in my arms. When I had placed her
in safety, I came back, and pressed through the crowd to hear the
verdict.

"As I got in, the Recorder's voice fell on my ear, every word like a
funeral knell,--'_May the Lord have mercy on your soul!_'

"I think for a few minutes I lost my senses. I have a confused
remembrance of swaying hither and thither in a crowd; of execration, and
pity, and gaping curiosity; and then I got out, and some one passed me,
whose arm I grasped. It was Mr. A----.

"'Tell me,' I said, 'is there no hope? No recommendation to mercy?
Nothing?'

"He dragged me into a room, and, seizing me by the button, exclaimed--

"'We don't want mercy; we want justice! I say, sir, curse the present
condition of the law! It _must_ be altered, and I shall live to see it.
If I might have addressed the jury--there were a dozen points--we should
have carried him through. Besides,' he added, in a tone that seemed to
apologize for such a secondary consideration, 'I may say to you that I
fully believe that he is innocent, and am as sorry on his account as on
my own that we have lost the case.'

"And so the day is ended. _Fiat voluntas Domini!_"

       *       *       *       *       *

Yes, Eleanor! Dr. Penn was right. The day did end--and the next--and
the next; and drop by drop the cup of sorrow was drained. And when the
draught is done, should we be the better, Nelly, if it had been nectar?

I had neither died nor gone mad when the day came--the last complete day
that George was to see on earth. It was Sunday; and, after a sleepless
night, I saw the red sun break through the grey morning. I always sleep
with my window open; and, as I lay and watched the sunrise, I thought--

"He will see this sunrise, and to-morrow's sunrise; but no other! No,
no!--never more!"

But then a stronger thought seemed to rise involuntarily against that
one--

"Peace, fool! If this be the sorrow, it is one that must come to all
men."

And then, Nelly (it is strange, but it was so), there broke out in the
stone pine by my window a chorus of little birds whom the sunbeams had
awakened; and they sang so sweet and so loud (like the white bird that
sang to the monk Felix), that earthly cares seemed to fade away, and I
fell asleep, and slept the first sound, dreamless sleep that had blessed
me since our great trouble came.




CHAPTER V.

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS.


Dr. Penn was with George this day, and was to be with him to the last.
His duty was taken by a curate.

I will not attempt to describe my feelings at this terrible time, but
merely narrate circumstantially the wonderful events (or illusions, call
them which you will) of the evening.

We sat up-stairs in the blue room, and Harriet fell asleep on the sofa.

It was about half-past ten o'clock when she awoke with a scream, and in
such terror that I had much difficulty in soothing her. She seemed very
unwilling to tell me the cause of her distress; but at last confessed
that on the two preceding nights she had had a vivid and alarming dream,
on each night the same. Poor Edmund's hand (she recognized it by the
sapphire ring) seemed to float in the air before her; and even after she
awoke, she still seemed to see it floating towards the door, and then
coming back again, till it vanished altogether. She had seen it again
now in her sleep. I sat silent, struggling with a feeling of
indignation. Why had she not spoken of it before? I do not know how long
it might have been before I should have broken the silence, but that my
eyes turned to the partially-open window and the dark night that lay
beyond. Then I shrieked, louder than she had done--

"Harriet! _There it is!_"

There it was--to my eyes--the detached hand, round which played a pale
light--the splendid sapphire gleaming unearthlily, like the flame of a
candle that is burning blue. But Harriet could see nothing. She said
that I frightened her, and shook her nerves, and took pleasure in doing
so; that I was the author of all our trouble, and she wished I would
drop the dreadful subject. She would have said much more, but that I
startled her by the vehemence of my interruption. I said that the day
was past when I would sacrifice my peace or my duty to her whims; and
she ventured no remonstrance when I announced that I intended to follow
the hand so long as it moved, and discover the meaning of the
apparition. I then flew downstairs and out into the garden, where it
still gleamed, and commenced a slow movement towards the gate. But my
flight had been observed, Nelly, by Robert, our old butler. I had
always been his favourite in the family, and since my grief, his humble
sympathy had only been second to that of Dr. Penn. I had noticed the
anxious watch he had kept over me since the trial, with a sort of sad
amusement. I afterwards learnt that all his fears had culminated to a
point when he saw me rush wildly from the house that night. He had
thought I was going to drown myself. He concealed his fears at the time,
however, and only said--

"What be the matter, Miss Dorothy?"

"Is that you, Robert?" I said. "Come here. Look! Do you see?"

"See what?" he said.

"Don't you see anything?" I said. "No light? Nothing?"

"Nothin' whatever," said Robert, decidedly; "it be as dark as pitch."

I stood silent, gazing at the apparition, which, having reached the
gate, was slowly re-advancing. If it were fancy, why did it not vanish?
I rubbed my eyes, but it was there still. Robert interrupted me,
solemnly--

"Miss Dorothy, do _you_ see anything?"

"Robert," I said, "you are a faithful friend. Listen! I see before me
the lost hand of your dead master. I know it by the sapphire ring. It is
surrounded by a pale light, and moves slowly. My sister has seen it
three times in her sleep; and I see it now with my waking eyes. You may
laugh, Robert; but it is too true."

I was not prepared for the indignant reply:

"Laugh, Miss Dorothy! The Lord forbid! If so be you do see anything, and
it should be the Lord's will to reveal anything about poor dear Master
Edmund to you as loved him, and is his sister, who am I that I should
laugh? My mother had a cousin (many a time has she told me the story) as
married a sailor (he was mate on board a vessel bound for the West
Indies), and one night, about three weeks after her husband had--"

"Robert!" I said, "you shall tell me that story another day with
pleasure; but no time is to be lost now. I mean to follow the hand: will
you come with me and take care of me?"

"Go in, ma'am," he said; "wrap up warm, and put on thick shoes, and come
quietly down to this door. I'll just slip in and quiet the servants, and
meet you."

"And bring a lantern," I said; "this light does not light you."

In five minutes we were there again; and the hand was vivid as ever.

"Do you see it now?" whispered the butler, anxiously.

"Yes," I said; "it is moving."

"Go on," he said; "I will keep close behind you."

It was pitch dark, and, except for the gleaming hand, and the erratic
circles of light cast by the lantern, we could see nothing. The hand
gradually moved faster, increasing to a good walking pace, passing over
the garden-gate and leading us on till I completely lost knowledge of
our position; but still we went steadily forward. At last we got into a
road, and went along by a wall; and, after a few steps, the hand, which
was before me, moved sharply aside.

"Robert," I said, "it has gone over a gate--we must go too! Where are
we?"

He answered, in a tone of the deepest horror--

"Miss Dorothy! for the Lord's sake, think what you are doing, and let us
turn back while we can! You've had sore affliction; but it's an awful
thing to bring an innocent man to trouble."

"The innocent man _is_ in trouble!" I said, passionately. "Is it nothing
that he should die, if truth could save him? You may go back if you
like; but I shall go on. Tell me, whose place is this?"

"Never mind, my dear young lady," he said, soothingly. "Go on, and the
Lord be with you! But be careful. You're sure you see it now?"

"Certain," I said. "It is moving. Come on."

We went forward, and I heard a click behind me.

"What is that?" I said.

"Hush!" he whispered; "make no noise! It was my pistol. Go gently, my
dear young lady. It is a farmyard, and you may stumble."

"It has stopped over a building!" I whispered.

"Not the house!" he returned, hoarsely.

"I am going on," I said. "Here we are. What is it? Whose is it?"

He came close to me, and whispered solemnly--

"Miss Dorothy! be brave, and make no noise! We are in Farmer Parker's
yard; and this is a barn."

Then the terror came over me.

"Let us turn back," I said. "You are right. One may bear one's own
troubles, but not drag in other people. Take me home!"

But Robert would not take me home; and my courage came back, and I held
the lantern whilst he unfastened the door. Then the ghastly hand passed
into the barn, and we followed it.

"It has stopped in the far corner," I said. "There seems to be wood or
something."

"It's bundles of wood," he whispered. "I know the place. Sit down, and
tell me if it moves."

I sat down, and waited long and wearily, while he moved heavy bundles of
firewood, pausing now and then to ask, "Is it here still?" At last he
asked no more; and in a quarter of an hour he only spoke once: then it
was to say--

"This plank has been moved."

After a while he came away to look for a spade. He found one, and went
back again. At last a smothered sound made me spring up and rush to him;
but he met me, driving me back.

"I beg of you, dear Miss Dorothy, keep away. Have you a handkerchief
with you?"

I had one, and gave it to him. His hands were covered with earth. He had
only just gone back again when I gave a cry--

"Robert! _It has gone!_"

He came up to me, keeping one hand behind him.

"Miss Dorothy, if ever you were good and brave, hold out now!"

I beat my hands together--"It has gone! It has gone!"

"It has not gone!" he said. "Master Edmund's hand is in this
handkerchief. It has been buried under a plank of the flooring!"

I gasped, "Let me see it!"

But he would not. "No, no! my dear lady, you must not--cannot. I only
knew it by the ring!"

Then he made me sit down again, whilst he replaced the firewood; and
then, with the utmost quietness, we set out to return, I holding the
lantern in one hand, and with the other clinging to his arm (for the
apparition that had been my guide before was gone), and he carrying the
awful relic in his other hand. Once, as we were leaving the yard, he
whispered--

"Look!"

"I see nothing," said I.

"Hold up your lantern," he whispered.

"There is nothing but the dog-kennel," I said.

"Miss Dorothy," he said, "_the dog has not barked tonight!_"

By the time we reached home, my mind had fully realized the importance
of our discovery, and the terribly short time left us in which to profit
by it, supposing, as I fully believed, that it was the first step to the
vindication of George's innocence. As we turned into the gate, Robert,
who had been silent for some time broke out--

"Miss Dorothy! Mr. George Manners is as innocent as I am; and
God forgive us all for doubting him! What shall we do?"

"I am going up to town," I said, "and you are going with me. We will go
to Dr. Penn. He has a lodging close by the prison: I have the address.
At eight o'clock to-morrow the king himself could not undo this
injustice. We have, let me see, how many hours?"

Robert pulled out his old silver watch and brought it to the lantern.

"It is twenty minutes to twelve."

"Rather more than eight hours. Heaven help us! You will get something to
eat, Robert, and put the horses at once into the chariot. I will be
ready."

I went straight up-stairs, and met Harriet at the door. I pushed her back
into the room and took her hands.

"Harriet! Robert has found poor Edmund's hand, _with the ring_, buried
under some wood in Thomas Parker's barn. I am going up to town with him
at once, to put the matter into Dr. Penn's hands, and save George
Manners' life, if it be not too late."

She wrenched her hands away, and flung herself at my feet. I never saw
such a change come over any face. She had had time in the (what must
have been) anxious interval of our absence, for some painful enough
reflection, and my announcement had broken through the blindness of a
selfish mind, and found its way where she seldom let anything come--to
her feelings.

"Oh, Dolly! Dolly! will you ever forgive me? Why did I not tell you
before? But I thought it was only a dream. And indeed, indeed I thought
Mr. Manners had done it. But that man Parker! If it had not been for
Mr. Manners being found there, I should have sworn that Parker had done
it. Dolly! I saw him that night. He came in and helped. And once I saw
him look at Mr. Manners with such a strange expression, and he seemed so
anxious to make him say that it was a quarrel, and that he had done it
in self-defence. But you know I thought it must be Mr. Manners--and I
did so love poor Edmund!"

And she lay sobbing in agony on the ground. I said--

"My love, I pray that it is not too late: but we must not waste time.
Help me _now_, Harriet!"

She sprang up at once.

"Yes! you must have food. You shall go. I shall not go with you. I am
not worthy, but I will pray till you come back again."

I said, "There is one most important thing for you to do. Let no soul go
out or come into the house till I return, or some gossip will bring it
to Parker's ears that we have gone to London."

Harriet promised, and rushed off to get me food and wine. With her own
hands she filled a hot-water bottle for my feet in the chariot, supplied
my purse with gold, and sewed some notes up in my stays; and (as if
anxious to crowd into this one occasion all the long-withheld offices
of sisterly kindness) came in with her arms full of a beautiful set of
sables that belonged to her--cloak, cuffs, muff, etc.--and in these she
dressed me. And then we fell into each others arms, and I wept upon her
neck the first tears I had shed that day. As I stood on the doorstep,
she held up the candle and looked at me.

"My dear!" she said, "how pretty your sweet face does look out of those
great furs! You shall keep them always."

Dear Harriet! Her one idea--beauty. I suppose the "ruling passion,"
whatever it may be, is strong with all of us, even in the face of death.
Moreover, hers was one of those shallow minds that seem instinctively to
escape by any avenue from a painful subject; and by the time that I was
in the chariot, she had got over the first shock, and there was an
almost infectious cheerfulness in her farewell.

"It _must_ be all right, Dolly!"

Then I fell back, and we started. The warm light of the open door became
a speck, and then nothing; and in the long dark drive, when every
footfall of the horses seemed to consume an age, the sickening agony of
suspense was almost intolerable. Oh, my dear! never, never shall I
forget that night. The black trees and hedges whirling past us in the
darkness, always the same, like an enchanted drive; then the endless
suburbs, and at last the streets where people lounged in corners and
stopped the way, as if every second of time were not worth a king's
ransom; and sedan-chairs trotted lightly home from gay parties as if
life were not one long tragedy. Once the way was stopped, once we lost
it. That mistake nearly killed me. At last a watchman helped us to the
little by-street where Dr. Penn was lodging, near which a loud sound of
carpenters' work and hurrying groups of people puzzled me exceedingly.
After much knocking, an upper window was opened and a head put out, and
my dear friend's dear voice called to us. I sprang out on to the
pavement and cried--

"Dr. Penn, this is Dorothy."

He came down and took us in, and then (my voice failing) Robert
explained to him the nature of our errand, and showed him the ghastly
proof. Dr. Penn came back to me.

"My love," he said, "you must come up-stairs and rest."

"Rest!" I shrieked, "never! Get your hat, doctor, and come quickly. Let
us go to the king. Let us do something. We have very little time, and he
must be saved."

I believe I was very unreasonable; I fear that I delayed them some
minutes before good Dr. Penn could persuade me that I should only be a
hindrance, that he would do everything that was possible, and could do
so much better with no one but Robert.

"My love," he said, "trust me. To obey is better than sacrifice!"

I went up-stairs into the dingy little sitting-room, and he went to call
his landlady--"a good woman," he said: "I have known her long." Then he
went away, and Robert with him, to the house of the Home Secretary.

It was three o'clock. Five hours still!

I sat staring at the sprawling paper on the walls, and at the long snuff
of the candle that Dr. Penn had lighted, and at a framed piece of
embroidery, representing Abraham sacrificing Isaac, that hung upon the
wall. Were there no succouring angels now?

The door opened, and I looked wearily round. A motherly woman, with
black eyes, fat cheeks, and a fat wedding-ring, stood curtseying at the
door. I said, "I think you are Dr. Penn's landlady? He says you are very
good. Pray come in."

Then I dropped my head on my hand again, and stared vacantly as before.
Exhaustion had almost become stupor, and it was in a sort of dream that
I watched the stout figure moving softly to and fro, lighting the fire,
and bringing an air of comfort over the dreary little parlour. Then she
was gone for a little bit, and I felt a little more lonely and weary;
and then I heard that cheerful clatter, commonly so grateful to
feminine exhaustion, and the good woman entered with a toasted glow upon
her face, bearing a tray with tea, and such hospitable accompaniments as
she could command. She set them down and came up to me with an air of
determination.

"My dear, you must be a good young lady and take some tea. We all have
our troubles, but a good heart goes a long way."

Her pitying face broke me down. How sadly without feminine sympathy I
had been through all my troubles I had never felt as I felt it now that
it had come. I fairly dropped my head upon her shoulder and sobbed out
the apparently irrelevant remark--

"Dear madam, I have no mother!"

She understood me, and flinging her arms round me sobbed louder than I.
It would have been wicked to offer further resistance. She brought down
pillows, covered them with a red shawl, and propped me up till the
horsehair sofa became an easy couch, and with mixed tears and smiles I
contrived to swallow a few mouthfuls, a feat which she exalted to an act
of sublime virtue.

"And now, my dear," she said, "you will have some warm water and wash
your hands and face and smooth your hair, and go to sleep for a bit."

"I cannot sleep," I said.

But Mrs. Smith was not to be baffled.

"I shall give you something to make you," said she.

And so, when the warm water had done its work, I had to swallow a
sleeping-draught and be laid easily upon the sofa. Her last words as she
"tucked me up" were, oddly enough--

"The tea's brought back a bit of colour to your cheeks, miss, and I will
say you do look pretty in them beautiful sables!"

A very different thought was working in my head as the sleeping-draught
tingled through my veins.

"Will the birds sing at sunrise?"

Nelly, I slept twelve long hours without a dream. It was four o'clock in
the afternoon of Monday when I awoke, and only then, I believe, from the
mesmeric influence of being gazed at. Eleanor! there is only one such
pair of eyes in all the world! George Manners was kneeling by my side.

Abraham was still sacrificing his son upon the wall, but my Isaac was
restored to me. I sat up and flung myself into his arms. It was long,
long before either of us could speak, and, oddly enough, one of the
first things he said was (twitching my cloak with the quaint curiosity
of a man very ignorant about feminine belongings), "My darling, you seem
sadly ill, but yet, Doralice, your sweet face does look so pretty in
these great furs."

       *       *       *       *       *

My story is ended, Nelly, and my promise fulfilled. The rest you know.
How the detective, who left London before four o'clock that morning,
found the rusty knife that had been buried with the hand, and
apprehended Parker, who confessed his guilt. The wretched man said, that
being out on the fatal night about some sick cattle, he had met poor
Edmund by the low gate; that Edmund had begun, as usual, to taunt him;
that the opportunity of revenge was too strong, and he had murdered him.
His first idea had been flight, and being unable to drag the ring from
Edmund's hand, which was swollen, he had cut it off, and thrown the body
into the ditch. On hearing of the finding of the body, and of poor
George's position, he determined to brave it out, with what almost fatal
success we have seen. He dared not then sell the ring, and so buried it
in his barn. Two things respecting his end were singular: First, at the
last he sent for Dr. Penn, imploring him to stay with him till he died.
That good man, as ever, obeyed the call of duty and kindness, but he was
not fated to see the execution of my brother's murderer. The night
before, Thomas Parker died in prison; not by his own hand, Nelly. A fit
of apoplexy, the result of intense mental excitement, forestalled the
vengeance of the law.

Need I tell you, dear friend, who know it so well, that I am happy?

Not, my love, that such tragedies can be forgotten--these deep wounds
leave a scar. This one brought my husband's first white hairs, and took
away my girlhood for ever. But if the first blush of careless gaiety has
gone from life, if we are a little "old before our time," it may be that
this state of things has its advantages. Perhaps, having known together
such real affliction, we cannot now afford to be disturbed by the petty
vexations and worthless misunderstandings that form the troubles of
smoother lives. Perhaps, having been all but so awfully parted, we can
never afford, in this short life, to be otherwise than of one heart and
one soul. Perhaps, my dear, in short, the love that kept faith through
shame, and was cemented by fellow-suffering, can hardly do otherwise
than flourish to our heart's best content in the sunshine of prosperity
with which God has now blessed us.




THE SMUT.


The councillor's chimney smoked. It always did smoke when the wind was
in the north. A Smut came down and settled on a brass knob of the
fender, which the councillor's housekeeper had polished that very
morning. The shining surface reflected the Smut, and he seemed to
himself to be two.

"How large I am!" said he, with complacency. "I am quite a double Smut.
I am bigger than any other. If I were a little harder, I should be a
cinder, not to say a coal. Decidedly my present position is too low for
so important an individual. Will no one recognize my merit and elevate
me?"

But no one did. So the Smut determined to raise himself, and taking
advantage of a draught under the door, he rose upwards and alighted on
the nose of the councillor, who was reading the newspaper.

"This is a throne, a crimson one," said the Smut, "made on purpose for
me. But somehow I do not seem so large as I was."

The truth is that the councillor (though a great man) was, in respect
of his nose, but mortal. It was not made of brass; it would not (as the
cabinet-makers say) take a polish. It did not reflect the object seated
on it.

"It is unfortunate," said the Smut. "But it is not fit that an
individual of my position (almost, as I may say, a coal) should have a
throne that does not shine. I must certainly go higher."

But unhappily for the Smut, at this moment the councillor became aware
of something on his nose. He put up his hand and rubbed the place. In an
instant the poor Smut was destroyed. But it died on the throne, which
was some consolation.


Moral.

More chimneys smoke than the councillor's chimney, and there are many
Smuts in the world. Let those who have found a brass knob be satisfied.




THE CRICK.


It was a Crick in the wall, a very small Crick too. But it is not always
the biggest people who have the strongest affections.

When the wind was in the east, it blew the Dust into the Crick, and when
it set the other way, the Dust was blown out of it. The Crick was of a
warm and passionate temperament, and was devotedly attached to the Dust.

"I love you," he whispered. "I am your husband. I protect, surround,
defend, cherish you, and house you, you poor fragile Dust. You are my
wife. You fill all the vacant space of my heart. I adore you. I am all
heart!"

And if vacant space is heart, this last assertion was quite true.

"Remain with me always," said the Crick.

"Ever with thee," said the Dust, who spoke like a valentine.

But the most loving couples cannot control destiny. The wind went round
to the west, and the Crick was emptied in a moment. In the first thrill
of agony he stretched himself and became much wider.

"I am empty," he cried; "I shall never be filled again. This is the
greatest misfortune that could possibly have happened."

The Crick was wrong. He was not to remain empty; and a still greater
misfortune was in store. The owner of the wall was a careful man, and
came round his premises with a trowel of mortar.

"What a crack!" said he; "it must be the frost. A stitch in time saves
nine, however." And so saying he slapped a lump of mortar into the Crick
with the dexterity of a mason.

In due time the wind went back to the east, and with it came the Dust.

"Cruel Crick!" she wept. "You have taken another wife to your heart!"

And the Crick could not answer, for he had ceased to exist.

This is a tragedy of real life, and cannot fail to excite sympathy.




THE BROTHERS.


They were brothers--twin brothers, and the most intense fraternal
affection subsisted between them. They were Peas--Sweet-peas, born
together in the largest end of the same Pod. When they were little,
flat, skinny, green things, they regarded the Pod in which they were
born with the same awful dread which the greatest of men have at one
time felt for nursery authority. They believed that the Pod ruled the
world.

It was impossible to conceive a limit to the power of a thing that could
hold so tight. But in due time the Peas became large and round and
black, and the Pod got yellow and shrunken, and was thoroughly despised.

"It is time we left the nursery," said the brothers. "Where shall we go
to, when we enter the world?" they inquired of the mother plant.

"You will fall on the ground," said she, "in the south border, where we
now are. The soil is good, and the situation favourable. You will then
lie quiet for the winter, and in the spring you will come up and flower,
and bear pods as I have done. That will be your fate. Not eventful
perhaps, but prosperous; and it comforts me to think that you are so
well provided for."

But the best of parents cannot foresee everything in the future career
of their children, and the mother plant was wrong.

The Peas burst from the Pod, it is true; but they fell, not into the
south border, but into the hand of the seedsman to whom the garden
belonged.

"This is an adventure," said the brothers.

They were put with a lot of other Sweet-peas, and a brown paper bag was
ready to receive them.

"Any way we are together," said they.

But at that moment one of the brothers rolled from the bag on the floor.
The seedsman picked him up, and he found himself tossed into a bag of
peas.

"It is all right," said he; "I shall find my brother in time."

But though he rolled about as much as he could, he could not find him;
for the truth is, that he had been put by mistake into a paper of eating
peas; but he did not know this.

"Patience!" cried he; "we shall be sown shortly, and when we come up we
shall find each other, if not before."

The other Pea thought that his brother was in the bag with him, and when
he could not find him he consoled himself in the same manner.

"When we come up we shall find each other, if not before."

They were both sold in company with others, and they were both sown. No.
1 was sown in a cosy little garden near a cosy little cottage in the
country. No. 2 was sown in a field, being intended for the market.

They both came up and made leaves, and budded and blossomed, and the
first thing each did when he opened his petals was to look round for his
brother.

No. 1 found himself among other Sweet-peas, but his brother was not
there; and soon a beautiful girl, who came into a garden to gather a
nosegay, plucked him from his stalk.

No. 2 found himself also among Peas--a field full--but they were all
white ones, and had no scent whatever. He had been sown near the wall,
and he leant against it and wept.

Just then a young sailor came whistling down the road. He was sunburnt
but handsome, and he was picking flowers from the roadside. When he saw
the Sweet-pea he shouted.

"That's the best of the bunch," said he, and put it with the others.
Then he went whistling down the road into the village, past the old grey
church, and up to a cosy little cottage in a cosy little garden. He
opened the door and went into a room where a beautiful girl was
arranging some flowers that lay on the table. When she saw him they gave
a cry and embraced each other. After a while he said, "I have brought
you some wild flowers; but this is the best," and he held up the
Sweet-pea.

"This is not a wild flower," said she; "it is a garden flower, and must
have been sown by accident. It shall be put with the other garden
flowers."

And she laid the Sweet-pea among the rest on the table, and so the
brothers met at last.

The young couple sat hand in hand in the sunshine, and talked of the
past.

"Time seemed to go slowly while we were parted," said the young man;
"and now, to look back upon, all our misery seems but a dream."

"That is just what _we_ feel," said the Sweet-peas.

"I was very sad," said the young girl softly, "very sad indeed; for, I
thought you might be dead, or have married some one else, and that we
might never meet again. But in spite of everything I couldn't quite
despair. It seemed impossible that those who really loved each other
should be separated for ever."

Meanwhile the Sweet-peas lay on the table. They were very happy, but
just a little anxious, for the lovers had forgotten to put them in
water, and they were fading fast.

"We are very happy," they murmured, "very happy. This moment alone is
worth all that we have endured. It is true we are fading before we have
ever fully bloomed, and after this we do not know what will happen to
us. But the young girl is right. One cannot quite despair. It seems
impossible that those who really love each other should be separated for
ever."




COUSIN PEREGRINE'S WONDER STORIES.


THE CHINESE JUGGLERS, AND THE ENGLISHMAN'S HANDS.

(_Founded on Fact_.)


Cousin Peregrine had never been away quite so long before. He had been
in the East, and the latter part of his absence from home had been spent
not only in a foreign country, but in parts of it where Englishmen had
seldom been before, and amid the miserable scenes of war.

However, he was at home at last, very much to the satisfaction of his
young cousins, and also to his own. They had been assured by him, in a
highly illustrated letter, that his arms were safe and sound in his
coat-sleeves, that he had no wooden legs, and that they might feel him
all over for wounds as hard as they liked. Only Maggie, the eldest,
could even fancy she remembered Cousin Peregrine, but they all seemed
to know him by his letters, even before he arrived. At last he came.

Cousin Peregrine was dressed like other people, much to the
disappointment of his young relatives, who when they burst (with more or
less attention to etiquette) into the dining-room with the dessert, were
in full expectation of seeing him in his uniform, or at least with his
latest medal pinned to his dress-coat.

Perhaps it was because Cousin Peregrine was so very seldom troubled by
chubby English children with a claim on his good nature that he was
particularly indulgent to his young cousins. However this may be, they
soon stood in no awe of him, and a chorus cried around him--

"Where's your new medal, Cousin? What's it about? What's on it?"

"Taku Forts," said Cousin Peregrine, smiling grimly.

"What's Tar--Koo?" inquired the young people.

"Taku is the name of a place in China, and you know I've just come from
China," said Cousin Peregrine.

On which six voices cried--

"Did you drink nothing but tea?"

"Did you buy lots of old China dragons?"

"Did you see any ladies with half their feet cut off?"

"Did you live in a house with bells hanging from the roof?"

"Are the Chinese like the people on Mamma's fan?"

"Did you wear a pigtail?"

Cousin Peregrine's hair was so very short that the last question raised
a roar of laughter, after which the chorus spoke with one voice--

"Do tell us all about China!"

At which he put on a serio-comic countenance, and answered with much
gravity--

"Oh, certainly, with all my heart. It will be rather a long story, but
never mind. By the way, I am afraid I can hardly begin much before the
birth of Confucius, but as that happened in or about the year 550
B.C., you will still have to hear about two thousand four
hundred years of its history or so, which will keep us going for a few
months".

"Confucius--whose real name was Kwang-Foo-Tsz (and if you can pronounce
that last word properly you can do more than many eminent Chinese
scholars can)--was born in the province of Kan Tang ----.

"Oh, not about Confuse-us!" pleaded a little maid on Cousin Peregrine's
knee. "Tell us what you did."

"But tell us _wonderful_ things," stipulated a young gentleman, fresh
from _The Boy Hunters_ and kindred works.

If young bachelors have a weak point when they are kind to children, it
is that they are apt to puzzle them with paradoxes. Even Cousin
Peregrine did "sometimes tease," so his cousins said.

On this occasion he began a long rambling speech, in which he pretended
not to know what things are and what are not _wonderful_. The _Boy
Hunters_ young gentleman fell headlong into the quagmire of definitions,
but the oldest sister, who had her own ideas about things, said firmly--

"Wonderful things are things which surprise you very much, and which you
never saw before, and which you don't understand. Like as if you saw a
lot of giants coming out of a hole in the road. At least that's what
_we_ mean by wonderful."

"Upon my word, Maggie," said Cousin Peregrine, "your definition is most
admirable. I cannot say that I have met with giants in China, even in
the north, where the men are taller than in the south. But I can tell
you of something I saw in China which surprised me very much, which I
had never seen before, and which, I give you my word, I don't understand
to this hour, but which I have no doubt was not in the least wonderful
to the poor half-naked Chinaman who did it in my courtyard. And then, if
you like, I will tell you something else which surprised some Chinese
country-folk very much, which they never saw before, and which they
certainly did not understand when they did see it. Will that do?"

"Oh yes, yes! Thank you, yes!" cried the chorus, and Maggie said--

"First all about the thing _you_ thought wonderful, you know."

"Well, the thing I thought wonderful was a conjuring trick done by a
Chinese juggler."

"Did he only do one trick?" said the little maid on Cousin Peregrine's
knee.

"Oh, he did lots of tricks," said Cousin Peregrine, "many of them common
Eastern ones, which are now familiar in England, but which he certainly
performed in a wonderful way: because, you see, he had not the advantage
of doing his tricks on a stage fitted up by himself, he did them in the
street, or in my courtyard, with very little apparatus, and naked to the
waist. For instance, the common trick of bringing a glass bowl full of
water and fish out of a seemingly empty shawl is not so marvellous if
the conjurer has a well-draped table near him from behind which he can
get such things, or even good wide sleeves to hide them in. But my poor
conjurer was almost naked, and the bit of carpet, about the size of this
hearthrug, which he carried with him, did not seem capable of holding
glass bowls of water, most certainly. Besides which he shook it, and
spread it on the ground close by me, after which he threw himself down
and rolled on it. And yet from underneath this he drew out a glass bowl
of water with gold-fish swimming in it. But that trick and many others
one can see very well done in London now, though not so utterly without
apparatus. The trick which he did so particularly well, and which
puzzled me so much, I have never seen in Europe. This is the one I am
going to describe to you."

"Describe the conjurer a bit more first, Cousin Peregrine."

"There is nothing more to describe. He was not at all a grand conjurer,
he was only a poor common juggler, exhibiting his tricks in the public
streets many times in the day for the few small coins which the
bystanders chose to give him. He was a very merry fellow, and all the
time he was about his performance he kept making fun and jokes; and
these amused the audience so much that you may believe that I was sorry
my ignorance of his language hindered me from understanding them.

"All sorts of people used to stop and look at the juggler: brawny
porters, with loads of merchandise, or boxes of tea, or bars of silver,
which they carried in boxes or baskets slung on bamboo poles over their
shoulders."

"Like the pictures on the tea-boxes," whispered little Bessy.

"There's a figure of it in the grocer's window," said her brother, who
had seen more of the world than Bessy; "not a picture, a figure dressed
in silk; and they're square boxes, not baskets, that he's got--wooden
panniers I call them."

"Who else used to stop, Cousin Peregrine?" asked Maggie.

"Street confectioners, Maggie, with small movable sweetmeat stalls,
which they carry on their backs. Men with portable stoves too, who
always have a cup of tea ready for you for a small coin worth about the
twentieth part of a penny. Tiny-footed women toddling awkwardly along,
with children--also cramp-footed--toddling awkwardly after them, dressed
in all the colours of the rainbow, and with their poor little arms stuck
out at right angles with their bodies, to help them to keep their
balance. Even the blind beggars, who go along striking on a bell to let
people know that they are blind, as otherwise they might be knocked
over, even they used to stop and listen to my juggler's jokes, though
they could not see his tricks.

"All this was in the street; but sometimes I got him to come into my own
courtyard to do his tricks there, that I might watch him more carefully.
But watch as I might, I could never see how he did this particular
feat. He used to do it with no clothes on except a pair of short
trousers, for in the hot season, you must know, the lower classes of
Chinese go about naked to the waist. Indeed, hot as it is, they don't
wear hats. The juggler possessed both a hat and a jacket, as it
happened, but he took them off when he did his trick."

"And what _was_ the trick?" asked several impatient voices. "What did he
do?"

"He used to swallow ten or twelve needles one after the other, and 'wash
them down' with a ball of thread, which he swallowed next, and by and by
he used to draw the thread slowly out of his mouth, yard after yard, and
it had all the needles threaded on it."

"Oh, Cousin Peregrine!"

"He used to come quite close to me, Maggie, as close as I am to you now,
and take each needle--one after the other--between the finger and thumb
of his right hand--keeping all the other fingers away from it, stick the
point of it for a moment into his other palm, to show that it was sharp,
and then to all appearance swallow it bodily before your eyes. In this
way he seemed to swallow successively all the twelve needles. Then he
opened his mouth, that you might ascertain that they were not there, and
you certainly could not see them. He next swallowed a little ball of
thread, not much bigger than a pea. This being done, he seemed to be
very uneasy (as well he might be!), and he made fearful faces and
violent gestures, and stamped on the ground, and muttered incantations,
and threw up his hands and eyes to the sky; and presently the end of a
thread was to be seen coming out between his teeth, upon which he took
hold of this end, and carefully drew out the thread with all the needles
threaded on it. Then there was always much applause, and the small coins
used to be put pretty liberally into the hat which he handed round to
receive them."

"Was that all?" asked the young gentleman of the adventure books.

"All what, Fred?"

"All that you thought wonderful."

"Yes," said Cousin Peregrine. "Don't you think it curious?"

"Oh, very, Cousin, and I like it very much indeed, only if that's all
_you_ thought wonderful, now I want you to tell us what _you_ did that
_the Chinese_ thought wonderful."

"It's not very easy to surprise a town-bred Chinaman," said Cousin
Peregrine. "What I am going to tell you about now happened in the
country. It was up in the north, and in a part where Europeans had very
rarely been seen."

"How came you to be there, Cousin Peregrine?"

"I was not on duty. I had got leave for a few days to go up and see
Pekin. Therefore I was not in uniform, remember, but in plain clothes.

"On this particular occasion I was on the river Peiho, in one of the
clumsy Chinese river-boats. If the wind were favourable, we sailed; if
we went with the stream--well and good. If neither stream nor wind were
in our favour, the boat was towed."

"Like a barge--with a horse--Cousin Peregrine?"

"Like a barge, Maggie, but not with a horse. One or two of the Chinamen
put the rope round them and pulled us along. It was not a quick way of
travelling, as you may believe, and when the Peiho was slow and winding,
I got out and walked by the paths among the fields."

"Paths and fields--like ours?"

"Yes. Very like some bits of the agricultural parts of England. But no
pretty meadows. Every scrap of land seemed to be cultivated for crops.
You know the population of China is enormous, and the Chinese are very
economical in using their land to produce food, and as they are not
great meat-eaters--as we are--their fields are mostly ploughed and sown,
so I walked along among rice-fields and cotton-fields, and with little
villages here and there, where the cottages are built of mud or stone
with tile roofs."

"Did you see any of the villagers?"

"Most certainly I did. You must know that the inhospitable way in which
the Chinese and Japanese have for many long years received strangers has
come from misunderstandings, and ignorance, and suspicion, and perhaps
from some other reasons; but the Chinese and Japanese villagers who see
strangers for the first time, and have lived quiet country lives out of
the way of politics, are often very hospitable and friendly. I am bound,
however, to except the women; not because they wished us ill, but they
are afraid of strangers, and they kept well out of our way."

"Do the village Chinese women have those funny smashed-up feet, Cousin
Peregrine?"

"In the north of China they have. In the south only ladies deform
themselves in this fashion; and the Tartar women always leave their own
beautiful little feet uninjured. Well, the men came out of their
cottages and fields, and pressed eagerly but good-naturedly round me."

"Do the village men wear pigtails?"

"Every Chinaman wears a pigtail. A Chinaman without a pigtail would be
as great a rarity as a Manx cat, or rather, I ought to say, he would be
like the tailless fox in the fable; only you would never catch a
Chinaman trying to persuade his friends that it was creditable to have
no tail! For I must tell you that pigtails are sometimes cut off--as a
degradation--when a man has committed some crime. But as soon as he can,
he gets the barber to put him on a false pigtail, as a closely-cropped
convict might wear a wig. They roll them up when they are at work if
they are in the way, but if a servant came into your room with his tail
tucked up you would be very angry with him, It would be like a
housemaid coming in with her sleeves and skirt tucked up for
house-cleaning--_most_ disrespectful!"

"Were these the men you showed something to that _they_ thought
wonderful?"

"Yes, Fred. And now I'll tell you what it was. You must know that I
could speak no Chinese, and my new friends could speak no English, so
they chattered like magpies to each other, and laughed like children or
Chinamen--for the Chinese are very fond of a joke. When they laughed I
laughed, and we bowed and shook hands, and they turned me round and felt
me all over, and _felt my hands_."

"What about your hands, Cousin?"

"I had on dog-skin gloves, yellow ones. Now when all the male population
of the hamlet had stroked these very carefully, I perceived that they
had never seen gloves before, and that they believed themselves to be
testing the feel of a barbarian's skin."

"Barbarian?"

"Certainly, Bessie. They give us the same polite name that we feel
ourselves more justified in applying to them. Well, when they had
laughed, and I had laughed, and we had shaken hands afresh, laughing
heartily as we did so, and I began to feel it was time to go on and
catch up my boat, which was floating sluggishly down the winding stream
of the Peiho, I resolved on one final effect, like the last scene of a
dramatic performance. Making vigorous signs and noises, to intimate that
something was coming, and they must look out sharp, and feeling very
much like a conjurer who has requested his audience to keep their eyes
on him and 'see how it's done'--I slyly unbuttoned my gloves, and then
with much parade began to draw one off by the finger-tips.

"'Eyah! Eyah!' cried the Chinamen on all the notes of the gamut, as they
fell back over each other. _They thought I was skinning my hands_. I
'smiled superior,' as I took the gloves off, and made an effect almost
as great by putting them on again."

"Oh, Cousin Peregrine, weren't they astonished?"

"They were, Maggie, And unless they are more familiar with Europeans
now, the mystery is probably to this day as unsolved to them as the
trick of the ball of thread and the twelve needles still is to me. By
this time, however, my boat was

'Far off, a blot upon the stream,'

and I had to hasten away as fast as I could to catch it up. I parted on
the most friendly terms from my narrow-eyed acquaintance, but when I had
nearly regained my boat I could still see them in their blue-cotton
dresses and long pigtails, gazing open-mouthed at my vanishing figure
across the rice-fields."

       *       *       *       *       *

After a few seconds' silence, during which Maggie had sat with her eyes
thoughtfully fixed on the fire, she said, "Cousin Peregrine, you said in
your letters that it was very cold in the north of China. If Chinamen
know nothing about gloves, how can they keep their hands warm?" Maggie
had a little the air of regarding this question as a poser, but Cousin
Peregrine was not disconcerted.

"My dear Maggie, your question reminds me of another occasion, when I
astonished a most respectable old China gentleman by my gloves. I will
tell you about it, as it will show you how the Chinese keep their hands
warm.

"It was on this very same expedition. We were at Tung-Chow, about eight
miles from Pekin. At this place we had to leave the river, and take to
our Tartar ponies, which our Chinese horse-boys had ridden up to this
point to meet us. We had hired a little cart to convey our baggage, and
I was sitting on my pony watching the lading up of the cart, when a dear
old Chinaman, dressed in blue wadded silk, handsomely lined with fur,
came up to me, and with that air of gentlemanly courtesy which is by no
means confined to Europe, began to explain and expound in his own
language for my benefit."

"What was he talking about? Could you tell?"

"I soon guessed. The fact is I am not very apt to wear gloves when I can
help it, especially if I am working at anything. At the moment the old
Chinese gentleman came up I was holding the reins of my pony with bare
hands (my gloves being in my pocket), and as the morning was cold, my
fingers looked rather blue. Having ascertained by feeling that my
coat-sleeves would not turn down any lower than my wrists, he touched my
hands softly, and made courteous signs, indicating that he was about to
do me a good turn. Having signalled a polite disapprobation of the
imperfect nature of my sleeves, he drew my attention to his own deep
wide ones. Turning them back so as to expose the hands, the fine fur
lining lay like a rich trimming above his wrists. Then with a glance of
infinite triumph he bespoke my close attention as, shivering, to express
cold, he turned the long sleeves, each a quarter of a yard, over his
hands, and stuffing each hand into the opposite sleeve they were warm
and comfortable, as it were in a muff, which was a part of his coat.
More sensible than our muffs too, the fur was inside instead of out.

"He was the very pink of politeness, but at this point his pride of
superior intelligence could not be restrained, and he broke into fits of
delighted laughter, in which the horse-boys, the spectators, my friends,
and (as is customary in China) everybody within sight and hearing
joined.

"I took good care to laugh heartily too. After which I made signs the
counterpart of his. He looked anxious. I put my hand in my pocket, and
drew out my gloves. He stared. _I put them on_, and nodded, to show that
that was the way we barbarians did it.

"'Eyah!' cried the silk-robed old gentleman.

"'Eyah!' echoed the horse-boys and the crowd.

"Then I laughed, and the horse-boys laughed loudly, and the crowd louder
still, and finally the old gentleman doubled himself up in his blue silk
fur-lined robe in fits of laughter.

"An Asiatic only relishes one thing better than being outwitted--that is
to outwit.

"'Eyah! Eyah! Ha! ha! ha!' they cried as we rode away.

"'Ha! ha! ha!' replied I, waving a well-gloved hand, on my road to
Pekin."




WAVES OF THE GREAT SOUTH SEAS.

(_Founded on Fact_.)


"Very likely the man who drew it had been nearly drowned by one
himself."

"Very likely nothing of the sort!"

"How could he draw it if he hadn't seen it?"

"Why, they always do. Look at Uncle Alfred, he drew a splendid picture
of a shipwreck. Don't you remember his doing it at the dining-room
table, and James coming in to lay the cloth, and he would have a bit of
the table left clear for him, because he was in the middle of putting in
the drowning men, and wanted to get them in before luncheon? And Uncle
Herbert wrote a beautiful poem to it, and they were both put into a real
magazine. And Uncle Alfred and Uncle Herbert never were in shipwrecks.
So there!"

"Well, Uncle Alfred drew it very well, and he made very big waves. So
there!"

"Ah, but he didn't make waves like a great wall. He did it very
naturally, and he draws a great deal better than those rubbishy old
pictures in Father's _Robinson Crusoe_."

"Well, I don't care. The Bible says that when the Children of Israel
went through the Red Sea the waters were a wall to them on their right
hand and on their left. And I believe they were great waves like the
wave in _Robinson Crusoe_, only they weren't allowed to fall down till
Pharaoh and his host came, and then they washed them all away."

"But that's a miracle. I don't believe there are waves like that now."

"I believe there are in other countries. Uncle Alfred's shipwreck was
only an English shipwreck, with waves like the waves at the seaside."

"Let's ask Cousin Peregrine. He's been in foreign countries, and he's
been at sea."

The point in dispute between Maggie and her brother was this:--The
nursery copy of _Robinson Crusoe_ was an old one which had belonged to
their father, with very rough old wood-cuts, one of which represented
Robinson Crusoe cowering under a huge wave, which towered far above his
head, and threatened to overwhelm him. This wave Maggie had declared to
be unnatural and impossible, whilst the adventure-book young gentleman
clung to and defended an illustration which had helped him so vividly to
realize the sea-perils of his hero.

It was the day following that of Cousin Peregrine's arrival, and when
evening arrived the two children carried the book down with them to
dessert, and attacked Cousin Peregrine simultaneously.

"Cousin Peregrine, you've been at sea: isn't that an impossible wave?"

"Cousin Peregrine, you've been at sea: aren't there sometimes waves like
that in foreign places?"

"It's not very cleverly drawn," said Cousin Peregrine, examining the
wood-cut; "but making allowance for that, I have seen waves not at all
unlike this one."

"There!" cried the young gentleman triumphantly. "Maggie laughed at it,
and said it was like a wall."

"Some waves are very like walls, but those are surf-waves, as they are
called, that is, waves which break upon a shore. The waves I am thinking
of just now are more like mountains--translucent blackish-blue
mountains--mountains that look as if they were made of bottle-green
glass, like the glass mountain in the fairy tale, or shining mountains
of phosphorescent light--meeting you as if, they would overwhelm you,
passing under you, and tossing you like the old woman in the blanket,
and then running away behind you as you go to meet another. Every wave
with a little running white crest on its ridge; though not quite such a
curling frill as this one has which is engulfing poor Robinson Crusoe.
But his is a surf-wave, of course. Those I am speaking of are waves in
mid-ocean."

"Not as tall as a man, Cousin Peregrine?"

"As tall as many men piled one upon another, Maggie."

"It certainly is very funny that the children should choose this subject
to tease you about tonight, Peregrine," said Mamma.

We are all apt to speak inaccurately. Mamma did not mean that the
subject was a comical one, but that it was remarkable that the children
should have started it at dessert, when the grown-up people had been
discussing it at dinner.

They had not been talking about Robinson Crusoe's wave, but about the
loss of an Australian vessel, in sad circumstances which were in every
one's mouth. A few people only had been saved. They had spent many days
in an open boat in great suffering, and the particular question
discussed at dinner was, whether the captain of a certain vessel which
had passed without rescuing them had been so inhuman as to see and yet
to leave them.

"How could he help seeing them?" Mamma had indignantly asked. "It was
daylight, and of course somebody was on the deck, even if the captain
was still in bed. Don't talk to me, Peregrine! You would say black is
white for the sake of argument, especially if it was to defend somebody.
But little as I know about the sea, I know that it's flat."

"And that's flat!" interposed Papa.

"It's all very well making fun of me," Mamma had continued with
good-humoured vehemence, "but there were no Welsh hills and valleys to
block the view of castaway fellow-creatures not a mile off, and it was
daylight, and he _must_ have seen them."

"I'm not quite sure about the hills and valleys," Cousin Peregrine had
replied; "and hills of water are quite as troublesome to see through as
hills of earth."

At this moment the dining-room door had opened to admit the children,
Maggie coming first, and making her courtesy in the doorway, with the
old fat, brown-calf-bound _Robinson Crusoe_ under her arm. It opened
without the slightest difficulty at the picture of the big wave, and the
children appealed to Cousin Peregrine as has been related.

Maggie was a little taken aback by a decision which was in favour of her
brother's judgment. She was apt to think rather highly of her own, and
even now she pondered, and then put another question--

"But if the waves were so very, very big, Cousin, they would swallow up
the ships!"

"No, Maggie, not if the sailors manage their ship properly, and turn her
about so that she meets the wave in the right way. Then she rides over
it instead of being buried under it."

"It would be dreadful if they didn't!" said Maggie.

"I remember being in a ship that didn't meet one of these waves in the
right way," said Cousin Peregrine.

"Tell us all about it," said Fred, settling himself with two or three
severe fidgets into the seat of his chair.

"I _was_ going to have protested against the children asking you for
another story so soon, Peregrine," said Mamma, "but now I feel selfish,
for your wave-story will be quite as much for me as for the little
ones."

"Where was it, Cousin Peregrine?"

"Where was the wave, do you mean? It was in the great South Seas. As to
where I was, I was in a sailing-vessel bound for South Australia. To
begin at the beginning, I must explain to you that this vessel was one
of those whose captains accepted the instruments offered by the Board of
Trade to any ship that would keep a meteorological log. I was fond of
such matters, and I took the trouble off the captain's hands, by keeping
his meteorological log for him."

"What is a meteorological log, Cousin?"

"A kind of diary, in which you put down the temperature of the sea and
air, how cold or hot they are--the way the wind blows, how the barometer
is, and anything special and interesting about the weather overhead or
the currents in the sea. Now I must tell you that there had been a good
deal of talk about currents of warm water in the Southern Ocean, like
the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic, which keeps the west coasts of Great
Britain so warm. But these South Sea currents had not been very
accurately observed, and information on the subject was desired. Well,
one day we got right into a warm current."

"How did you know, Cousin?"

"By drawing up a bucket of water out of the sea, and putting the
thermometer into it. But I ought to tell you what a thermometer is--"

"We know quite well," said Maggie. "Nurse always put it into Baby's bath
when he had fits, to see if the water was the right warmth."

"Very good, Maggie. Then let me tell you that the water of the sea got
nearly thirty degrees warmer on that day between noon and midnight."

"How did you know about midnight?" Maggie inquired doubtfully; "weren't
you in bed?"

"No, I was not, I was very busy all day 'taking observations' every hour
or two, and it was at twelve o'clock this very night that the 'comber'
broke on deck."

"What _is_ a 'comber'?"

"A 'comber' is the name for a large wave with a comb or crest of foam, a
sort of wave over which our ship ought to have ridden; but I must tell
you that it was no easy matter to meet them on this occasion, because
(owing to the cross currents) the waves did not all go one way, but came
at us from various points. The sea was very heavy, and the night was
very dark. I tried the heat of the water for the last time that evening,
and having bade good-night to the officer whose watch was just over, I
stayed for a few minutes to talk to the officer whose watch was just
beginning, before going below to go to bed. We were standing aft, and,
fortunately for us, near one of the masts, when through the darkness we
saw the sloping sides of a great South Sea wave coming at the fore part
of the ship, but sideways. 'The rigging!' shouted the officer of the
watch, and as we both clung to the ropes the wave broke on our bows,
smashed the jib-boom, and swept the decks from stem to stern."

"And if you hadn't held on by the rigging you would have been washed
away?"

"I am afraid we should, Fred, for every loose thing on deck was swept
off in less than a minute. The bull kept his feet, by the bye; but then
he had four, and I have only two."

"The bull! what bull?"

"We were taking some cattle out to Australia. There was a bull who lived
in a stable that had been made for him on deck. When this comber broke
over us it tore up the bull's house, and carried it overboard, but I met
the bull himself taking a walk at large as I went below to change my
clothes and get some sleep."

"Were you wet?"

"Drenched, my dear Maggie; but when I got to my cabin I found that there
was no hope of rest for some hours. The wave had flooded the cabins,
broken in doors, and washed everything and everybody about. So we all
had to set to work to bale out water, and mop up our bed-rooms; and as
the wave had also put out what lights there were, we had to work in the
dark, and very uncomfortable work it was! What the women and children
did, and the poor people who were sea-sick, I hardly know. Of course we
who could keep our feet did the work."

"Weren't you ever sea-sick?"

"Never, I am thankful to say."

"Not when it's very, very rough?"

"Not in a gale. I have once or twice on that voyage been the captain's
only companion at dinner, tied to the mast to keep myself steady, and
with the sherry in one pocket and my wine-glass in another to keep
_them_ steady, and quite ashamed of my appetite, for if the sea doesn't
make you feel very ill it makes you feel very well."

"I had no idea there were such very big waves really," said Maggie,
thoughtfully.

"I see that they are quite big enough to shelter the captain's
character, Peregrine," said Mamma, smiling, "and I am much obliged to
you for correcting my ignorance. I don't _wish_ to believe that any
English sailor would pass a boat in distress without giving help, if he
saw it."

"I am quite sure no English sailor would, and very few real sailors of
any nation, I think. A real seaman knows too well what sea-perils are,
and that what is another man's case one day may be his the next; and
cowardice and cold-heartedness are the last sins that can be laid at
Jack Tar's door as a rule. But I will finish my story by telling the
children what happened next morning, as it goes to illustrate both my
statements, that it is not easy to see an open boat in a heavy sea, and
that sailors are very ready to risk their lives for each other."

"You're like Captain Marryat, Cousin Peregrine," said Fred.

"He's not a sailor captain, he's a soldier captain," said Maggie. "Go
on, Cousin."

"As I told you, we had two or three hours of very disagreeable work
before our cabins were even tolerably comfortable; but it made us more
tired than ever, and when I did turn in I slept like a top, and the
rolling of the ship only rocked me to sounder slumbers. I was awakened
at seven o'clock next morning by a fellow-passenger, who popped in to
cry, 'There's a man overboard!' 'Who?' shouted I as I jumped up.
'Giovanni,' he replied as he vanished, leaving me to follow him on deck
as quickly as possible. Now, Fred, picture to yourself a grey morning,
the damp deck of our vessel being rapidly crowded with everybody on
board, and all eyes strained towards a heavy sea, with big blue-black
mountains of water running at us, and under us, and away from us all
along; every wave had a white crest: but there were some other patches
of snowy white hovering over the dark sea, on which all the experienced
eyes were soon fixed!"

"What were they?" whispered Fred.

"Albatross," said Cousin Peregrine. "They had been following us for
days, hovering, swooping, and whirling those great white wings of
theirs, which sometimes measure nine feet from tip to tip."

"What did they follow you for?"

"They came to pick up anything that may be thrown overboard, and they
came now, as we knew, after poor Giovanni, whose curly black head kept
ducking out of their way as he swam with desperate courage in our wake."

"Oh, Cousin Peregrine! Didn't the captain stop the ship?"

"Certainly, Maggie, though, quickly as it was done, it left the poor
fellow far away behind. And heavy as the sea was, they were lowering a
boat when I got on deck, and the captain had called for volunteers among
the sailors to man it."

"Oh, I hope he got them!"

"I hope you won't insult a noble and gallant profession by having any
doubt about it, Maggie. He might have had the ship's crew bodily if he
had wanted them, and if the waves had run twice as high."

"Spare me!" said Mamma.

"As it was the few men needed were soon ready. The boat was launched
without being upset, and the men got in without mishap. Then they laid
themselves to their oars, we gave them a parting cheer, and they
vanished from our sight."

"_Drowned_, Cousin Peregrine?"

"No, no. Though I can tell you we were as anxious for them as for
Giovanni now. But when they had crossed the first water-mountains, and
gone down into the water-valleys beyond, they were quite out of sight of
the crowd on the deck of the ship, daylight though it was."

"I retract everything I ever said," cried Mamma impetuously.

"And not only could we not see them, but they could not see the man they
were risking their lives to save. Those crested mountains which hid them
from us hid him from them."

"What _did_ you do?"

"Men were sent up the masts to look out from such a height that they
could look over the waves. _They_ could see both Giovanni and the boat,
and as they were so high up the men in the boat could see them. So the
men on the masts kept their eyes on Giovanni, and the men in the boat
kept their eyes on the men on the masts, and steered their course
according to the signals from the look-out."

"And they saved him?"

"Yes, they brought him back; and if we cheered when they went away, you
may believe we cheered when they got safe to the ship's side again."

"And who was Giovanni? and did he get all right?"

"Giovanni was one of the sailors, an Italian. He was a fine young
fellow, and appeared to think nothing whatever of his adventure. I
remember he resolutely refused to go below and change his clothes till
he had helped to haul up the boat. With his white teeth shining through
a broad grin, he told us in his broken English that he had been
overboard every voyage he had taken. He said he didn't mind anything
except the swooping and pecking of the albatross. They obliged him to
dive so constantly, to keep his eyes from their beaks."

"Was it a comber washed him overboard?"

"No. He was mending the jib-boom, and lost his hold and fell into the
sea. He really had a very narrow escape. A less active swimmer might
easily have been drowned. I always think, too, that he had an advantage
in the fact that the water was warm."

"I am so glad the nasty albatross were disappointed."

"The nasty albatross were probably disappointed when they found that
Giovanni was not a piece of spoilt pork. However, they set their
beautiful wings, and went their way, and we set our sails, and went our
way, which was to Adelaide, South Australia."




COUSIN PEREGRINE'S TRAVELLER'S TALES.

JACK OF PERA.

(_Founded on Fact_.)


"Cousin Peregrine, oughtn't we to love our neighbour, whether he's a
nice neighbour or a nasty neighbour?"

"Certainly, Maggie."

"But need we when he's a nasty _next-door_ neighbour?" asked Fred, in
such rueful tones that Cousin Peregrine burst out laughing and said,
"Who is your nasty next-door neighbour, Fred, and what has he done?"

"Well, his name is Mackinnon, Cousin; and everybody says he's always
quarrelling; and he complained of our screaming and the cockatoo
playing--no, of the cockatoo's screaming and our playing prisoners'
base, and he kept our ball once, and now he has complained of poor dear
Ponto's going into his garden, and the dear darling old thing has to be
tied up, except when we take him out for stiff walks."

"I didn't notice anything stiff about his walk yesterday, Fred, He took
the fence into your nasty neighbour's garden at one bound, and came back
with another."

"I don't know what can make him go there!" cried Fred; "I wish he
understood about keeping to his own grounds."

"Ponto never lived in Constantinople, that is evident," said Cousin
Peregrine.

"Did you ever live in Constantinople, Cousin?" asked Maggie.

"Yes, Maggie, I am happy to say I have."

"Why are you glad, Cousin?"

"Because in some respects it is the loveliest city on earth, and I am
glad to have seen it."

"Tell us what it is like."

"And tell us why you say Ponto never lived there."

"I was a good deal younger than I am now," said Cousin Peregrine, "when
I saw Constantinople for the first time, and had seen much less of the
world than I have seen since; but even now I remember nothing in my
travels with greater delight than my first sight of that lovely city. It
was from the sea. Do you know anything about the Sea of Marmora, Fred?"

"I don't think I know much," said Fred doubtfully.

"But we've got an atlas," said Maggie, "so you can show it us, you
know."

"Well, give me the map. Here is the Sea of Marmora, with
Turkey-in-Europe on one side of it, and Turkey-in-Asia on the other side
of it. This narrower part that you come into it by is called the
Dardanelles, that narrower part that you go out of it by is called the
Bosphorus. The Bosphorus is about two miles broad; it is salt water, you
know, and leads from the Sea of Marmora to the Black Sea, which is
farther north. This narrow piece of water going westward out of the
Bosphorous is called the Golden Horn. Constantinople--which is built,
like Rome, on hills--rises above the shores of the Bosphorus and on both
sides of the Golden Horn. The part of it which is south of the Golden
Horn is called Stamboul, and is the especially Turkish Quarter. Across
the Golden Horn from Stamboul lies the Quarter called Galata--the
commercial port--and beyond that Pera--beautiful Pera!--the Quarter
where English people live when they live at Constantinople. North of
these are more suburbs, and then detached Turkish villages and gay
gardens dotting the banks of the Bosphorus."

"But you lived at Pera?"

"Yes, I lived at Pera; in a house looking into the Turkish cemetery."

"Was it nice, Cousin, like our churchyard? or do the Turks do horrid
things with their dead people, like those Chinese you told us about, who
put them in boxes high up in the air?"

"The Turks bury their dead as we do, my dear Maggie, and they plant
their graveyards with cypresses, which, standing tall and dark among the
headstones of the graves, have a very picturesque effect. The cemetery
in all Turkish towns is a favourite place of public resort, but I cannot
say that it is kept in very nice order, as a rule. For the sake of a
water-colour sketch I made in one, I was very glad that the upright
headstones were tumbling about in all directions, it took away the look
of stiffness and monotony; but I am bound to say that the graves looked
neglected as well as picturesque. The cemetery at Pera had too much
refuse, and too many cocks, hens, and dogs in it. It looked very pretty,
however, from my windows, sloping down towards the Golden Horn, beyond
which I could catch a glimpse of Stamboul on the heights across the
water. But I have not yet told you what Constantinople looked like when
I first saw it."

"You began about the Sea of Marmora, Cousin, and here it is. I've had
my middle finger on it ever since we found it, to keep the place."

"Very good, Maggie. We were coming up the Sea of Marmora one evening,
and drew near to Constantinople about sunrise. I knew we were near, but
I could not see anything, because a thick white mist hung in front of us
like a veil resting on the sea. We were near the mouth of the Bosphorus
when the sun broke out, the white mist rose slowly, like the curtain of
a theatre, and--more beautiful than any scene that human hands can ever
paint--I saw the Queen of Cities glittering in the sunshine."

"What made it glitter? Are the houses built of shiny stuff?"

"The houses are built of wood, but they are painted in many colours. The
rounded domes of the mosques are white, and the minarets, tall, slender,
and fretted, are white, with golden tops, or white and blue. I can give
you no idea how beautifully the shapes of the mosques and minarets break
the uniformity of the mass of houses, nor how the gay colours, the white
and the gold, shone like gems against a cloudless blue sky when the mist
rose. No princess in an Eastern fairy-tale ever dazzled and delighted
the beholder by lifting her veil and displaying her beauty and her
jewels more than my eyes were charmed when the veil was lifted from
Constantinople, and I saw her lovely and sparkling in the sun."

"Are the streets very beautiful when you get into them?"

"Ah, Fred, I am sorry to say--no. They are very dirty, and very narrow.
But they are picturesque, and made doubly so by the fact that in them
you meet people of all nations, in every kind of dress, gay with all
colours of the rainbow."

"Are there shops in the streets?"

"Most of the shops are all together in certain streets by themselves,
forming what is called a Bazaar. But in the other streets there are a
few, such as sweetmeat shops and coffee shops, where the old Turks go to
drink thick black coffee, and smoke, and hear the news; and (if they
wish it) to be shaved."

"I thought Turks wore long beards?"

"The lower-class Turks, and the country ones, and those who like to
follow the old fashions, wear beards, but they have their heads shaved,
and wear the turban. Most modern Turks, Government officials, and so
forth, shave off their beards and whiskers, and wear short hair and a
moustache, with the fez, or cloth cap. The old-fashioned dress is much
the handsomest, I think, and I am sorry it is dying out."

"The poor women-Turks aren't allowed to go out, are they, Cousin
Peregrine?"

"Oh yes, they are, but they have to be veiled, and so bundled up that
you can not only not tell one woman from another, but they hardly look
like women at all--more like unsteady balloons, or inflated sacks of
different colours. They wear yellow leather boots, and no stockings.
Over the boots they wear large slippers, in which they shuffle along
with a gait very little less awkward than the toddle of a cramp-footed
lady in China. If they are ungraceful on foot, matters are not much
better when they ride. Sitting astride a donkey (for they do not use
side-saddles), a Turkish lady is about as comical an object as you could
wish to behold, though I have no doubt she is quite unconscious of
looking anything but dignified, as she presses on to her shopping in the
Bazaar, screaming to the half-naked Arab donkey-boy to urge on her steed
with his stick. As the great cloak dress, in which women envelop
themselves from head to foot when they go out, is all of one colour,
they have this advantage over Englishwomen out shopping, that they do
not look ugly from being bedizened with ill-assorted hues and frippery
trimmings. In fact a mass of Turkish women, each clothed in one shade of
colour, looks very like a flower-bed--a flower-bed of sole-coloured
tulips without stalks!"

"The Bazaars are bigger than Charity Bazaars, I suppose," said Maggie
thoughtfully; "are they as big as the Baker Street Bazaar?"

"The Bazaar of Stamboul, the Turkish Quarter of Constantinople, is
almost a Quarter by itself. It takes up many, many streets, Maggie. I am
sure I wish with all my heart I could take you children through it. You
would think yourselves in fairy-land, or rather in some of those
underground caves full of dazzling treasures such as Aladdin found
himself in."

"But why, Cousin Peregrine? Do the Turks have very wonderful things in
their shops?"

"I fancy, Maggie, that in no place in the world can one see such a
collection of valuable merchandise gathered from all quarters of the
globe. But it is not only the gold, the jewels, the ivories, the
gorgeous silks and brocades, morocco leathers, and priceless furs, which
make these great Eastern markets unlike ours. The common wares for
everyday use are often of a much more picturesque kind than with us.
There is no great beauty in an English boot-shop, but the shoe-bazaar in
Stamboul is gay with slippers of all colours, embroidered with gold and
silver thread, to say nothing of the ladies' yellow leather boots. A
tobacconist's shop with us is interesting to none but smokers, but
Turkish pipes have stems several feet long, made of various kinds of
wood, and these and the amber mouth-pieces, which are often of very
great value, and enriched with jewels, make the pipe-seller's wares
ornamental as well as useful. Nor can our gunsmiths' shops compete for
picturesqueness with the Bazaar devoted to arms, of all sorts and kinds,
elaborately mounted, decorated, sheathed, and jewelled. Turkey and
Persian carpets and rugs are common enough in England now, and you know
how handsome they are. Turbans, and even fezes, you will allow to look
prettier than English hats. Then some of the shops display things that
one does not see at all at home, such as the glass lamps for hanging in
the mosques and Greek churches. Nor is it the things for sale alone
which make the Bazaar so wonderful a sight. The buyers and sellers are
at least as picturesque as what they sell and buy. The floor of each
shop is raised two or three feet from the ground, and on a gay rug the
turbaned Turk who keeps it sits cross-legged and smokes his pipe and
makes his bargains, whilst down the narrow street (which in many
instances is arched overhead with stone) there struggle, and swarm, and
scream, and fight, black slaves, obstinate camels, primitive-looking
chariots full of Turkish ladies, people of all colours in all costumes,
and from every part of the world."

"It must be a wonderful place," sighed Maggie; "streets full of
beautiful shoes, and streets full of beautiful carpets."

"Just so, Maggie."

"Not at all like a London Bazaar, then. I thought perhaps it was a place
that shut up to itself, with a beadle sitting at the door?"

"I never was in Stamboul at night, but my belief is that the Bazaar is
secured at night by the locking up of gates. You know the people who own
the shops do not live in them, and as most valuable merchandise remains
in the Bazaar, it must be protected in some way. I suppose the watchmen
look after it."

"Have the Turks watchmen like the old London watchmen, Cousin? With
nightcaps, and rattles, and lanterns, and big coats?"

"The Turkish watchmen wear turbans--not nightcaps; but they have
lanterns and big coats, and in one respect they are remarkably like the
old 'Charlies,' as the London watchmen used to be called. Their object
is not (like policemen) to find robbers and misdoers, but to frighten
them away. Just as the old Charlies used to spring their wooden rattles
that the thieves might get out of their way, so the Turkish watchman
strikes the ground with an iron-shod staff, that makes a great noise,
for the same purpose. In one respect, however, the Turkish watchmen are
most useful--they give warning of fires."

"Are there often fires in Constantinople?"

"Very often, Fred. And when a big straggling city is built of wood in a
hot climate which keeps the wood so dry that a spark will set it ablaze,
when the water-supply is small, and the water-carriers, who feed the
fire-engines from their leathern water-pots, are chiefly bent upon
securing their pay for the help they give; and when, to crown all, the
sufferers themselves are generally of the belief that what is to happen
will happen, and that there is very little use in trying to avert
calamity--you may believe that a fire, once started, spreads not by
houses, but by streets, leaving acres of black ruins dotted with the
still standing chimneys. However, I fancy that of late years wider
streets and stone buildings are becoming commoner. There were stone
houses, built by Europeans, in Constantinople even when I was there."

"Did you see a fire whilst you were there?"

"Yes, indeed. One came so near the house where I lived that I had
everything packed up ready for a start, but fortunately my house
escaped. I must tell you that the Turks have one very sensible custom in
connection with these fires. They have what are called fire-towers, on
which men are stationed to give warning when a fire breaks out in any
part of the town. They have a system of signals, by which they show in
what quarter of the city the fire is. At night the signalling is done by
lamps. There is an old Genoese tower between Pera and Galata which has
been made into a fire-tower. The one at Stamboul I think is modern.
These buildings are tall--like light-houses--so that the signals can be
seen from all parts of Constantinople, and so that the men stationed on
them have the whole city in view. Besides these signals, it is part of
the watchman's duty, as I told you, to give warning of a fire, and the
quarter in which it has broken out. I assure you one listens with some
anxiety when the ring of his iron-tipped staff on the rough pavement
is followed by the cry, '_Yan ghun vah! Stamboul-dah_' ('There is a
fire! In Stamboul'); or '_Yan ghun vah! Pera-dah_' ('There is a fire!
In Pera')."

"But there are fire-engines?"

"There may be very good ones now. In my time nothing could be more
futile than the trumpery one which was carried on men's shoulders.
Indeed, until the streets are much less rough, narrow, and steep, I do
not see how one could be _driven_ at any speed."

"Did the men who carried the engine run?"

"Yes, and at a good swinging pace too, their half-naked bodies streaming
with perspiration, and (I should have thought) their labours quite
doubled by yelling as they ran. Their cries are echoed by the
formidable-looking band which follows, waving long poles armed with
hooks, &c., for pulling down houses to stop the progress of the flames.
On the heels of these figures follow mounted officials, whose dignity is
in a fixed proportion to the extent of the calamity. If the fire is a
very very extensive one, the Sultan himself has to be upon the spot."

"It must be very exciting," said Fred, in a tone of relish.

"You've told us lots about Constantinople now, Cousin Peregrine," said
Maggie, who had the air of having heard quite enough on the subject;
"now tell us about why you said Ponto never was in Constantinople. Don't
the Turks keep dogs?"

"Not as we do, for pets and friends; and yet the dog population of
Constantinople is more numerous and powerful, and infinitely more noisy,
than I can easily describe to you."

"Whom do they belong to then?"

"They have no special masters or mistresses. They are more like troops
of wolves than a collection of Pontos."

"But who gives them their dinners?"

"They live on offal and the offscourings of the city, and though the
Turks freely throw all their refuse into their streets, there are so
many dogs that they are all half-starved. They are very fierce, and have
as a rule a great dislike to strangers. At night they roam about the
streets, and are said to fall upon any one who does not carry a
lantern."

"But does anybody carry a lantern--except the watchmen?"

"Everybody does. Coloured paper lanterns, like the Chinese ones, with a
bit of candle inside. With one of these in one hand and a heavy stone or
stick in the other, you may get safely through a night-walk among the
howling dogs of Stamboul."

"What horrible beasts!"

"I think you would pity them if you were there. They are half starved,
and have no friends."

"There isn't a home for lost and starving dogs in Constantinople then?"

"The whole city may be considered as the headquarters of starving dogs,
but not of lost ones. That reminds me why I said Ponto had not lived
there. If he had he would know his own grounds, and keep to them."

"But, Cousin Peregrine, I thought you said the Turkish dogs had no
particular homes?"

"Every dog in Constantinople belongs to a particular Quarter of the
town, which he knows, and to which he confines himself with marvellous
sagacity. In the Quarter in which he was born, there he must live, and
there (if he wishes to die peaceably) he must die. If he strays on any
pretext into another Quarter, the dogs of the Quarter he has invaded
will tear him to pieces, and dine upon his bones."

"How does he know where his own part of the town begins and ends?"

"I cannot tell you, Maggie. But I can tell you of my own knowledge that
he does. Jack did, though we tried to deceive him over and over again."

"Who was Jack?"

"The handsomest dog I ever saw in Constantinople. The Turkish dogs are
by no means beautiful as a rule, they are too much like jackals, and as
they are apt to be maimed and covered with scars from fights with each
other, they do not make much of what good looks they have. However, Jack
was rather less wild and wolfish-looking than most of his friends. He
was of a fine tawny yellow, and had an intelligent face, poor fellow. He
belonged to our Quarter--in fact the cemetery was his home till he took
to lying at our door."

"Then he was a Pera dog?"

[Illustration]

"Yes, and I and the brother-officers who were living with me made friends
with him. We gave him food and spoke kindly to him, and he laid aside his
prejudices against foreigners, and laid his tawny limbs on our threshold.
We became really attached to each other. He received the very British
name of Jack, and seemed quite contented with it. He took walks with us.
It was then that again and again we tried to deceive him about the limits
of his Quarter, and get him into another one unawares. He never was
misled. But later on, as he grew tame, less fearful of things in general,
and more unwilling to quit us when we were out together, he sometimes
strayed beyond his bounds, not because he was deceived as to his limits,
but he ventured on the risk for our sakes. Even then, however, he would
not walk in the public thoroughfares, he 'dodged' through gardens, empty
courtyards and quiet by-places where he was not likely to meet the
outraged dogs of the Quarter he was invading. The moment we were safe back
'in bounds' he came freely and happily to our side once more. I have often
wondered, since I left Constantinople, how long Jack lived, and how he
died."

"Oh, didn't you take him away?"

"I couldn't, my dear. And you must not think, Maggie, that if Turks do
not pet dogs they are cruel to them. It is not the case. A Turk would
never dream of petting a dog, but if he saw one looking hot and thirsty
in the street he would be more likely to take trouble to get it a dish
of water than many English people who feed their own particular pets on
mutton-chops. Jack was not likely to be ill-treated after our departure,
but I sometimes have a heart-sore suspicion that we may have raised
dreams in his doggish heart never again to be realized. If he were at
all like other dogs (and the more we knew of him the more companionable
he became), he must have waited many a long hour in patient faithfulness
at our deserted threshold. He must have felt his own importance as a dog
with a name, in that wild and nameless tribe to which he belonged. He
must have dreamed of his foreign friends on many a blazing summer's
afternoon. Perhaps he stole cautiously into other Quarters to look for
us. I hope he did not venture too far--Maggie--my dear Maggie! You are
not fretting about poor Jack? I assure you that really the most probable
thing is that our successors made friends with him."

"Do you really and truly think so, Cousin Peregrine?"

"On my word of honour I do, Maggie. You must remember that Jack was not
a Stamboul dog. He belonged to Pera, where Europeans live, so there is a
strong probability that his unusual tameness and beauty won other
friends for him when we had gone."

"I hope somebody very nice lived in your house when you went away."

"I hope so, Maggie."

"Cousin Peregrine, do you think we could teach Ponto to know his own
quarter?"

"I think you could, Fred. I once lived next door to a man who was very
fond of his garden. It was a mere strip in front of his hut--for we were
quartered in camp at this time--and not even a paling separated it from
a similar strip in front of my quarters. My bit, I regret to say, was
not like his in any respect but shape. I had a rather ragged bit of
turf, and he had a glowing mass of flowers. The monotony of my
grass-plat was only broken by the marrow-bones and beef-ribs which my
dog first picked and then played with under my windows. I was as fond of
him as my brother-officer was of his flowers. I am sorry to say that
Dash had a fancy for the gayer garden, and for some time my
good-tempered neighbour bore patiently with his inroads, and with a sigh
buried the beef-bone that Dash had picked among the mignonette at the
roots of a magnificent rose which he often alluded to as 'John Hopper,'
and seemed to treat as a friend. Mr. Hopper certainly throve on Dash's
bones, but unfortunately Dash took to applying them himself to the roots
of plants for which I believe that bone manure is not recommended. When
he made a hole two foot deep in the Nemophila bed, and laid a sheep's
head by in it against a rainy day, I felt that something must be done.
After the humblest apologies to my neighbour, I begged for a few days'
grace. He could not have spoken more feelingly of the form, scent, and
colour of his friend John Hopper than I ventured to do in favour of the
intelligence of my friend Dash. In short I begged for a week's patience
on his part, that I might teach Dash to know his own garden. If I failed
to do so, I promised to put him on the chain, much as I dislike tying up
dogs."

"How did you manage, Cousin?"

"Whenever Dash strayed into the next garden, I began to scold him in the
plainest English, and covered him with reproaches, till he slunk
gradually back to his own untidy grass-plat. When he touched his own
grounds, I changed my tone at once, to approbation. At first this change
simply brought him flying to my feet again, if I was standing with my
friend in his garden. But after a plentiful application of, 'How dare
you, Sir? Go back' (pointing), 'go back to your garden. If this
gentleman catches you here again, he'll grind your bones to make John
Hopper's bread. That's a good dog. No! Down! Stay where you are!'--Dash
began to understand. It took many a wistful gaze of his brown eyes
before he fully comprehended what I meant, but he learned it at last. He
never put paw into Major E----'s garden without looking thoroughly
ashamed of himself. He would lie on his own ragged lawn and wistfully
watch me sitting and smoking among the roses; but when I returned to our
own quarters he welcomed me with an extravagant delight which seemed to
congratulate me on my escape from the enemy's country."

"Oh, Cousin Peregrine! We must try and teach Ponto to know his own
garden."

"I strongly advise you to do so. Ponto is a gentleman of honour and
intelligence, I feel convinced. I think he will learn his neighbourly
duties, and if he does do so as well as Dash did--whatever you may think
of Mr. Mackinnon--I think Mr. Mackinnon will soon cease to regard Ponto
as--a nasty next-door neighbour."




THE PRINCES OF VEGETATION.


This fanciful and high-sounding title was given by the great Swedish
botanist, Linnæus, to a race of plants which are in reality by no means
distantly allied to a very humble family--the family of Rushes.

The great race of Palms puzzled the learned Swede. He did not know where
to put them in his system; so he gave them an appendix all to
themselves, and called them the Princes of Vegetation.

The appendix cannot have been a small one, for the Order of Palms is
very large. About five hundred different species are known and named,
but there are probably many more.

They are a very beautiful order of plants; indeed, the striking elegance
of their forms has secured them a prominence in pictures, poetry, and
proverbs, which makes them little less familiar to those who live in
countries too cold for them to grow in, than to those whose home, like
theirs, is in the tropics. The name Palm (Latin, _Palma_) is supposed to
have been applied to them from a likeness in the growth of their
branches to the outspread palm of the hand; and the fronds of some of
the fan-palms are certainly not unlike the human hand, as commonly drawn
by street-boys upon doors and walls.

So beautiful a tree, when it flourished in the symbol-loving East, was
sure to be invested with poetical and emblematical significance.
Conquerors were crowned with wreaths of palm, which is said to have been
chosen as a symbol of victory, because of the elasticity with which it
rises after the pressure of the heaviest weight--an explanation,
perhaps, more appropriate to it as the emblem of spiritual triumphs--the
Palm of Martyrdom and the Palms of the Blessed.

But as a religious symbol it is not confined to the Church triumphant.
Not only is the "great multitude which no man can number" represented to
us as "clothed in white robes, and palms in their hands"--the word
"palmer" records the fact that he who returned from a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land was known, not only by the cockle-shell on his gown, but by
the staff of palm on which he leant. St. Gregory also alludes to the
palm-tree as an accepted emblem of the life of the righteous, and adds
that it may well be so, since it is rough and bare below, and expands
above into greenness and beauty.

The palm here alluded to is evidently the date palm (_Phoenix
dactylifera_). This is pre-eminently the palm-tree of the Bible, and was
in ancient times abundant in the Holy Land, though, curiously enough, it
is now comparatively rare. Jericho was known as "the city of palm-trees"
in the time of Moses (Deut. xxxiv. 3). It is alluded to again in the
times of the Judges (Judges i. 11; iii. 13), and it bore the same title
in the days of Ahaz (2 Chron. xxviii. 15). Josephus speaks of it as
still famous for its palm-groves in his day, but it is said that a few
years ago only one tree remained, which is now gone.

It was under a palm that Deborah the prophetess sat when all Israel came
up to her for judgment; and to an audience under the shadow of this
tree, which bore her name, that she summoned Barak out of
Kedesh-naphtali. Bethany means "the House of Dates," and the branches of
palm which the crowd cut down to strew before our Lord as He rode into
Jerusalem were no doubt of this particular species.

Women--as well as places--were often named after the Princes of
Vegetation, whose graceful and stately forms approved them to lovers and
poets as fit types of feminine beauty.

Usefulness, however, even more than ornament, is the marked
characteristic of the tribe. "From this order (_Palmæ_)," says one
writer, "are obtained wine, oil, wax, flour, sugar, salt, thread,
utensils, weapons, habitations, and food"--a goodly list of the
necessaries of life, to which one may add many smaller uses, such as
that of "vegetable ivory" for a variety of purposes, and the materials
for walking-sticks, canework, marine soap, &c., &c.

The Princes of Vegetation are to be found in all parts of the world
where the climate is adapted to the tropical tastes of their Royal
Highnesses.

They have come into our art, our literature, and our familiar knowledge
from the East; but they abound in the tropics of the West, and some
species are now common in South America whose original home was in
India.

The cocoa-nut palm (_Cocos nucifera_) is an Indian and South Sea Islands
Prince; but his sway extends now over all tropical countries. The
cocoa-nut palm begins to bear fruit in from seven to eight years after
planting, and it bears on for no less than seventy to eighty years.

Length of days, you see, as well as beauty and beneficence, mark this
royal race which Linnæus placed alone!

Cocoa-nuts are useful in many ways. The milk is pleasant, and in hot
and thirsty countries is no doubt often a great boon. The white flesh--a
familiar school-boy dainty--is eaten raw and cooked. It produces oil,
and is used in the manufacture of stearine candles. It is also used to
make _marine soap_, which will lather in salt water. The wood of the
palm is used for ornamental joinery, the leaves for thatch and
basket-work, the fibre for cordage and cocoa-nut matting, and the husk
for fuel and brushes.

Cocoa and chocolate come from another palm (_Theobroma cacao_), which is
cultivated largely in South America and the West Indies.

Sago and tapioca are made from the starch yielded by several species of
palm. The little round balls of sago are formed from a white powder
(sago flour, as it is called), just as homoeopathic pillules are
formed from sugar. It is possible to see chemists make pills from
boluses to globules, but the Malay Indians are said jealously to keep
the process of "pearling" sago a trade secret. Tapioca is only another
form of sago starch. Sago flour is now imported into England in
considerable quantities. It is used for "dressing" calicoes.

Among those products of the palm which we import most liberally is
"vegetable ivory."

Vegetable ivory is the kernel of the fruit of one of the most beautiful
of palms (_Phytelephas macrocarpa_).

This Prince of Vegetation is a native of South America. "It is
short-stemmed and procumbent, but has a magnificent crown of light green
ostrich-feather-like leaves, which rise from thirty to forty feet high."
The fruit is as big as a man's head. Two or three millions of the nuts
are imported by us every year, and applied to all the purposes of use
and ornament for which real ivory is available.

The Coquilla-nut palm (_Attalea funifera_), whose fruit is about the
size of an ostrich-egg, also supplies a kind of vegetable ivory.

Our ideas of palm-trees are so much derived from the date palm of Judæa,
that an erect and stately growth is probably inseparably connected in
our minds with the Princes of Vegetation. But some of the most beautiful
are short-stemmed and creeping; whilst others fling giant arms from tree
to tree of the tropical forests, now drooping to the ground, and then
climbing up again in very luxuriance of growth. Many of the rattan palms
(_Calamus_) are of this character. They wind in and out, hanging in
festoons from the branches, on which they lean in princely
condescension, with stems upwards of a thousand feet in length.

There is something comical in having to add that these clinging rattan
stems, which cannot support their own weight, have a proverbial fame,
and are in great request for the manufacture of walking-sticks. They
are also largely imported into Great Britain for canework.

Another very striking genus (_Astrocaryum_) is remarkable for being
clothed in every part--stem, leaves, and spathe--with sharp spines,
which are sometimes twelve inches long. _Astrocaryum murumura_ is
edible. The pulp of the fruit is said to be like that of a melon, and it
has a musky odour. It is a native of tropical America, and abundant on
the Amazon. Cattle wander about the forests in search of it, and pigs
fatten on the nut, which they crunch with their teeth, though it is
exceedingly hard.

The date palm yields a wine called toddy, or palm wine, and from the
Princes of Vegetation is also distilled a strong spirit called arrack.

And speaking again of the Judæan palms, I must here say a word of those
which we associate with Palm Sunday--the willow palms--for which we used
to hunt when we were children.

It is hardly necessary to state that these willow branches, with their
soft silvery catkins, the crown of the earliest spring nosegays which
the hedges afford, are not even distantly related to the Princes of
Vegetation, though we call them palms. They are called palms simply from
having taken the place of real palm-branches in the ceremonies of the
Sunday of our Lord's Entry into Jerusalem, where these do not grow.

A very old writer, speaking of the Jews strewing palm-branches before
Christ, says: "And thus we take palm and flowers in procession as they
did ... in the worship and mind of Him that was done on the cross,
worshipping and welcoming Him with song into the Church, as the people
did our Lord into the city of Jerusalem. It is called Palm Sunday for
because the palm betokeneth victory; wherefore all Christian people
should bear palm in procession, in token that He hath foughten with the
fiend our enemy, and hath the victory of hym."

A curious old Scotch custom is recorded in Lanark, as "kept by the boys
of the Grammar-school, beyond all memory in regard to date, on the
Saturday before Palm Sunday. They then parade the streets with a palm,
or its substitute, a large tree of the willow kind (_Salix caprea_), in
blossom, ornamented with daffodils, mezereon, and box-tree. This day is
called Palm Saturday, and the custom is certainly a popish relic of very
ancient standing."

But to return to palms proper. Before taking leave of them, there is one
more word to be said in their praise which may endear this noble race to
eyes which will never be permitted to see the wonders of tropical
forests.

As pot-plants they are not less remarkable for the picturesqueness of
their forms, than for the patience with which they endure those
vicissitudes of stuffiness and chill, dryness, dust, and gas, which
prove fatal to so many inmates of the flower-stand or the window-sill.
Pot-palms may be bought of any good nurseryman at prices varying from
two or three shillings to two or three pounds. _Latania borbonica_ and
_Phoenix reclinata_ are good and cheap. Sandy-peaty soil, with a
little leaf-mould, is what they like, and this should be renewed (with a
larger pot) every second year. Thus, with the most moderate care, and an
occasional sponging, or a stand-out in a soft shower, the exiled Princes
of Vegetation, whose shoots in their native forests would have been of
giant luxuriance, will live for years, patiently adapting themselves by
slow growth to the rooms which they adorn, easier of management than the
next fern you dig up on your rambles, and, in the incomparable beauty of
their forms, the perpetual delight of an artistic eye.




LITTLE WOODS.


By little woods are here meant--not woods of small extent, but--woods in
which the trees never grow big, woods that are to grown-up woods as
children to grown-up people, woods that seem made on purpose for
children, and dwarfs, and dolls, and fairies.

These little woods have many names, varying with the trees of which they
are composed, or the districts in which they are found. One of the
best-known names is that of copse or coppice, and it brings with it
remembrances of the fresh beauty of spring days, on which--sheltered by
the light copse-wood from winds that are still keen--we have revelled in
sunshine warm enough to persuade us that summer was come "for good," as
we picked violets and primroses to the tolling of the cuckoo.

Things "in miniature" have a natural charm for little people, and most
of my young readers have probably been familiar with favourite copses,
or miniature pine-forests. Perhaps some of them would like to know why
these little woods never grow into big ones, and something also of the
history and uses of those trees of which little woods are composed.

They are not made of dwarf trees. There are little woods, as well as big
woods, of oak, elm, ash, pine, willow, birch, beech, and larch. In some
cases the little woods are composed of the growth which shoots up when
the principal trunk of the tree has been cut down, but they are
generally little merely because they are young, and are cut down for use
before they have time to grow into forest-trees. The object of this
little paper is to give some account of their growth and uses. It will
be convenient to take them alphabetically, by their English names.

The Ash (_Fraxinus excelsior_ and other varieties) is a particularly
graceful and fine tree at its full growth. It is a native of Great
Britain, and of many other parts of the world. It is long lived. The
most profitable age for felling it as a forest-tree is from eighty to a
hundred years. The flower comes out before the leaves, which are late,
like those of the oak. The bunches of seed-vessels, or "ash-keys," as
they are fancifully called, were pickled in salt and water and eaten in
old times. The Greeks and Romans made their spears of ash-wood. The wood
is not so durable as that of some other trees, but it is tough, and is
thus employed for work subject to sudden strains. It is good for
kitchen-tables, as it scours well and does not easily splinter.

In little woods, or ash-holts, or ash-coppices, the ash is very
valuable. They are either cut over entirely at certain intervals, or
divided into portions which are cut yearly in succession. At four or
five years old the ash makes good walking-sticks, crates to pack glass
and china in, hoops, basket handles, fences, and hurdles.
Croquet-mallets are also made of ash. At twelve or fourteen it is strong
enough for hop-poles. There are many old superstitions in connection
with the ash, and there is a midland counties saying that if there are
no keys on the ash, within a twelvemonth there will be no king.

There are several fine American varieties, and both in the States and in
Canada the wood is used for purposes similar to ours.

The Alder (_Alnus glutinosa_, &c.) is never a very large tree. It is
supposed to be in maturity when it is sixty years old. It will grow in
wetter places than any other tree in Europe--even than the willow.
Though the wood is soft, it is very durable in water. Virgil speaks of
it as being used for boats. It is highly valued in Holland for piles,
and it is said that the famous bridge of the Rialto at Venice is built
on piles of alder-wood. Though invaluable for water-pipes, pump-barrels,
foundations for bridges, &c., alder-wood is of little use on dry land
unless it can be kept _perfectly_ dry. Wooden vessels and sabots,
however, are made of it.

Alders are chiefly grown in little woods. Planted by the side of rivers,
too, their tough and creeping roots bind and support the banks.
Alder-coppices are very valuable to the makers of--gunpowder! Every five
or six years the little alders are cut down and burned to charcoal, and
the charcoal of alder-wood is reckoned particularly good by gunpowder
manufacturers.

The Aspen, or Trembling Poplar (_Populus tremula_), like the alder, is
fond of damp situations. It has also a white soft wood, used by the
turner and engraver, and for such small articles as clogs, butchers'
trays, &c, &c.

The quivering of its leaves is a favourite topic with poets, and there
is a curious old Highland superstition that the Cross of Christ was made
of aspen-wood, and that thenceforward the tree could never rest.

In "little woods" it may be cut every seven or eight years for faggots,
and at fifteen or twenty years old for poles.

The Beech (_Fagus sylvatica_). With this beautiful tree all our young
readers must be familiar. There may be those whose minds are not quite
clear about wych-elms and sycamores, but the appearance of the
beech-tree is too strongly marked to allow of any confusion on the
subject.

The beech is spoken of by Greek and Roman writers, and old writers on
British agriculture count it among the four timber trees indigenous to
England: the beech, the oak, the ash, and the elm.

It is said, however, not to be a native of Scotland or Ireland. It
attains its full growth in from sixty to eighty years, but is believed
to live to be as old as two hundred. The timber is not so valuable as
that of the other three British trees, but it is used for a great
variety of purposes. Like the alder, it will bear the action of water
well, and has thus been used for piles, flood-gates, mill-wheels, &c. It
is largely used by cabinet-makers for house furniture. It is employed
also by carriage-makers and turners, and for various small articles,
from rolling-pins to croquet-balls. The dried leaves are used in
Switzerland to fill beds with, and very nice such beds must be! Long ago
they were used for this purpose in England. Evelyn says that they remain
sweet and elastic for seven or eight years, by which time a straw
mattress would have become hard and musty. They have a pleasant
restorative scent, something like that of green tea. When we think how
many poor people lie on musty mattresses, or have none at all, whilst
the beech-leaves lie in the woods and go very slowly to decay, we see
one more of the many instances of people remaining uncomfortable when
they need not be so, because of their ignorance. The fact that
beech-leaves are very slow to rot makes them useful in the garden for
mulching and protecting plants from frost.

In Scotland the beech-chips and branches are burned to smoke herrings,
and pyroligneous acid (a form of which is probably known to any of our
young readers who suffer from toothache as _creosote_!) is distilled
from them. Mr. Loudon tells us that the word "book" comes from the
German word _buch_, which, in the first instance, means a beech, and was
applied to books because the old German bookbinders used beech-wood
instead of paste-board for the sides of thick volumes. Beech-wood is
especially good for fuel. Only the sycamore, the Scotch pine, and the
ash give out more heat and light when they burn. Beech-nuts--or
beech-mast, as it is called--are eaten by many animals. Pigs, deer,
poultry, &c., are turned into beech-woods to fatten on the mast.
Squirrels and dormice delight in it. In France it is used to make
beech-oil. This oil is used both for cooking and burning, and for the
latter purpose has the valuable property of having no nasty smell.

Of the beauty of the beech as a forest-tree--let artists rave! Its
smooth and shapely bole does not tempt the sketcher's eye alone. To the
lover and the school-boy (and, alas! to that inartistic animal the
British holiday-maker) it offers an irresistible surface for cutting
names and dates. Upon its branches and beneath its shadow grow many
_fungi_, several of which are eatable. Truffles are found there; those
underground dainties which dogs (and sometimes pigs!) are trained to
grub up for our benefit. They discover the whereabouts of the truffle by
scent, for there is no sign of it above ground. Nothing else will grow
under beech-trees, except holly.

Scarcely less charming than the beech-forests are beech-hedges. They cut
and thrive with cutting like yew-hedges.

"Little woods" of beech are common in Buckinghamshire. They are chiefly
grown for the charcoal, which is valuable for gunpowder.

"Copper-Beeches"--red-leaved beech-trees, very beautiful for ornamental
purposes--all come from one red-leaved beech, a sort of freak of nature,
which was found about a century ago in a wood in Germany.

The Birch (_Betula alba_, &c.) is also a tree of very distinctive
appearance. The silver-white bark, which peels so delightfully under
childish fingers, is not less charming to the sketcher's eye, whether as
a near study or as gleaming points of high light against the grey
greens and misty purples of a Highland hillside. It is emphatically the
tree of the Highlands of the North. It bends and breaks not under the
wildest winds, it thrives on poor soil, and defies mist and cold. So
varied are its uses that it has been said that the Scotch Highlander
makes everything of birch, from houses to candles, and beds to ropes!
The North American Indians and the Laplanders apply it almost as
universally as the Chinese use paper. The wigwams or huts of the North
American Indians are made of birch-bark laid over a framework of
birch-poles or trunks, and their canoes or boats are cased in it. The
Laplander makes his great-coat of it,--a circular _poncho_ with a hole
for his head,--as well as his houses and his boots and shoes. It will be
easily believed that birch-bark was used in ancient times for writing on
before the invention of paper.

Birch-wood makes good fuel. It is also used by cabinet-makers. Its uses
in "little woods" are many. The charcoal is good for gunpowder, and it
is that of which _crayons_ are made. Birch-coppices are cut for brooms,
hoops, &c., at five to six years old, and at ten to twelve for
faggot-wood, poles, fencing, and bark for the tanners. Birch-spray (that
is, the twigs and leaves) is used for smoking hams and herrings, and for
brooms to sweep grass. It is also used to make birch-rods; but as we
think very ill of the discipline of any household in which the children
and the pets cannot be kept in order without being beaten, we hope our
own young readers are only familiar with birch-rods in picture-books.

The (Sweet or Spanish) Chestnut (_Castanca vesca_) is grown in "little
woods" for hop-poles, fence-wood, and hoops. The wood of the full-grown
tree is also valuable.

Evelyn says, "A decoction of the rind of the tree tinctures hair of a
golden colour, esteemed a beauty in some countries." It would be
entertaining to know if this is the foundation of the "auricomous
fluids" advertised by hair-dressers!

Amongst "little woods" the dearest of all to the school-boy must surely
be the hazel-copse! The Hazel (_Corylus avellana_) is never a large
tree. It is, however, long lived, and of luxuriant growth. When cut it
"stoles" or throws up shoots very freely, and when treated so will live
a hundred years. With a single stem, Mr. Loudon assures us, it would
live much longer. Filbert-hazels are a variety with longer nuts. Hazels
are cultivated not only for the nuts, but for corf-rods,[1] hoops,
fencing, &c., and hazel-charcoal, like beech-charcoal, is used for
crayons. Like many other plants, the hazel has two kinds of flowers,
which come out before the leaves. The long pale catkins appear first,
and a little later tiny crimson flowers come where the nuts are
afterwards to be.

Many old superstitions are connected with the hazel. Hazel-rods were
used to "divine" for water and minerals by professors of an art which
received the crack-jaw title of Rhabdomancy. Having tried our own hand
at Rhabdomancy, we are able to say that the freaks of the divining-rod
in sensitive fingers are sometimes as curious as those of a table among
table-turners; and are probably susceptible of similar explanations.

The Larch (_Larix Europæa_, &c.). Though traceable in England for two
hundred years, it is within this century that the larch has been
extensively cultivated for profit. The exact date of its introduction
from the mountain ranges of some other part of Europe is not known, but
there is a popular tradition that it was first brought to Scotland with
some orange-trees from Italy, and having begun to wither under hot-house
treatment, was thrown outside, where it took root and throve thereafter.
The wood of full-grown larch-trees is very valuable. To John, Duke of
Athol, Scotland is indebted for the introduction of larch plantations on
an enormous scale. He is said to have planted 6500 acres of
mountain-ground with these valuable trees, which not only bring in heavy
returns as timber, but so enrich the ground on which they grow, by the
decayed _spicula_ or spines which fall from them, as to increase its
value in the course of some years eight or tenfold. The Duke was buried
in a coffin made of larch-wood! This sounds as if the merits of the
larch-tree had been indeed a hobby with him, but when one comes to
enumerate them one does not wonder that a man should feel his life very
usefully devoted to establishing so valuable a tree in his native
country, and that the pains and pride it brought him should have
awakened sentiment enough to make him desire to make his last cradle
from his favourite tree.

Larch-wood is light, strong, and durable. It is used for beams and for
ship-building, for railroad-sleepers and mill-axles, for water-pipes,
and for panels for pictures. Evelyn says that Raphael, the great
painter, painted many of his pictures on larch-wood. It will stand in
heat and wet, under water and above ground. It yields good turpentine,
but trees that have been tapped to procure this are of no use afterwards
for building purposes. The larch is said not to make good masts for
ships, but its durability in all varieties of temperature and changes of
weather make it valuable for vine-props. When made of larch-poles these
are never taken up as hop-poles are. Year after year the vines climb
them and fade at their feet, and they are said to have outlasted at
least one generation of vine-growers.

In "little woods" the larches are planted very close, so that they may
"spindle up" and become tall before they grow thick. They are then used
for hop-poles and props of various kinds.

The Oak (_Quercus robur_, &c.) is pre-eminently a British tree. Of its
beauty, size, the venerable age it will attain, and its historical
associations, we have no space to speak here, and our young readers are
probably not ignorant on the subject.

The durability of its wood is proverbial. The bark is also of great
value, and though the slow growth of the oak in its earlier years
postpones profit to the planter, it does so little harm to other wood
grown with it (being in this respect very different from the beech),
that profitable coppice-wood and other trees may be grown in the same
plantation.

The age at which the oak should be felled for ship-timber, &c., depends
on many circumstances, and is fixed by different authorities at from
eighty to a hundred and fifty years.

Oaks are said to be more liable than other trees to be struck by
lightning.

Oak-coppices or "little woods" are cut over at from twelve to thirty
years old. The bark is valuable as well as the wood.

The Pine (_Pinus sylvestris_, &c.), like the larch, will flourish on
poor soils. It is valuable as a protection for other trees. The
varieties and variations of this tree are very numerous.

It is a very valuable timber-tree, the wood being loosely known as
"deal"; but "deals" are, properly speaking, planks of pine-wood of a
certain thickness, "boards" being the technical name for a thicker kind.
Pine trunks are used for the masts of ships. "In the north of Russia and
in Lapland the outer bark is used, like that of the birch, for covering
huts, for lining them inside, and as a substitute for cork for floating
the nets of fishermen; and the inner bark is woven into mats like those
made from the lime-tree. Ropes are also made from the bark, which are
said to be very strong and elastic, and are generally used by the
fishermen."

In the north of Europe great quantities of tar are procured from the
Scotch pine. Torches are made from the roots and trunk.

Varieties of the pine are grown in "little woods" for hop-poles.

_Pinus sylvestris_ (the "Scotch Pine"), though a native of Scotland, has
only been planted and cultivated in Great Britain for about a century.

On the subject of "thinning and pruning" in plantations planters--like
doctors--differ. An amusing story was sent to Mr. Loudon by the Duke of
Bedford, in reference to his grandfather, who was an advocate for
vigorous thinning in the pine plantations.

"The Duke perceived that the plantation required thinning, in order to
admit a free circulation of air, and give health and vigour to the young
trees. He accordingly gave instructions to his gardener, and directed
him as to the mode and extent of the thinning required. The gardener
paused and hesitated, and at length said: 'Your Grace must pardon me if
I humbly remonstrate against your orders, but I cannot possibly do what
you desire; it would at once destroy the young plantation; and,
moreover, it would be seriously injurious to my reputation as a
planter.' My grandfather, who was of an impetuous and decided character,
but always just, instantly replied, 'Do as I desire you, and I will take
care of your reputation.' The plantation was accordingly thinned
according to the instructions of the Duke, who caused a board to be
fixed in the plantation, facing the wood, on which was inscribed, '_This
plantation has been thinned by John, Duke of Bedford, contrary to the
advice and opinion of his gardener._'"

The Willow (_Salix caprea_, &c.). The species of willow are so numerous
that we shall not attempt to give a list of them.

Willow-wood wears well in water, and has been used in shipbuilding and
carpentery, and especially for small ware, cricket-bats and toys.
Full-grown willows of all kinds are picturesque and very graceful trees.
The growth of the tree kinds when young is very rapid.

Willows are largely cultivated in "little woods" for basket-making,
hoops, &c. Shoots of the _Salix caprea_ of only a year's growth are
large enough to be valuable for wicker-work. It appears to be held by
cultivators that the poorer the soil in which they are grown the oftener
these willows should be cut over. "In a good soil a coppice of this
species will produce the greatest return in poles, hoops, and rods every
five, six, seven, or eight years; and in middling soil, where it is
grown chiefly for faggot-wood, it will produce the greatest return every
three, four, or five years."

Horses and cattle are fed on the leaves of the willow in some parts of
France.

Willows are often "pollarded." That is, their tops are cut off, which
makes a large crop of young shoots spring out, giving a shock-headed
effect which in gnarled old pollards by river-banks is picturesque
enough.

The "little woods" of willow on the river Thames and the Cam are well
known. They are small islands planted entirely with willows, and are
called osier-holts.

Osier-beds of all kinds are very attractive "little woods." One always
fancies one ought to be able to make something of the long pliable
"sally-withys"--as the Wiltshire folk call willow switches. Indeed, as a
matter of fact, the making of rough garden-baskets is a very simple art,
especially on the Scotch and German system. Let any ingenious little
prowler in an osier-bed get two thickish willow-rods and fasten them at
the ends with a bit of wire, so as to make two hoops. These hoops are
then to intersect each other half-way up, one being perpendicular, to
form the handle and the bottom of the basket, the other being placed
horizontally, to form the rim. More wire will be needed to fix them in
their positions. Much finer willow-wands are used to wattle, or weave,
the basket-work; ribs of split osiers are added, and the wattling goes
in and out among them, and at once secures them and rests upon them.

This account is not likely to be enough to teach the most intelligent of
our readers! But one fancies that a rough sort of basket-making might
almost be devised out of one's own head, especially if he had been
taught (as we were, by a favourite nursemaid) to plait rushes.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: A corf is a large basket used for carrying coals or other
minerals in a mine.]




MAY-DAY,

OLD STYLE AND NEW STYLE.

    "Now the bright morning star, day's harbinger,
    Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
    The flow'ry May, who from her green lap throws
    The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose."--Milton.


On the whole, perhaps, May is the most beautiful of the English months,
especially the latter half of it; and yet I suppose very few May-days
come round on which we are not disposed to wonder why our ancestors did
not choose a warmer, and indeed a more flowery season for Maypoles and
garlands and out-door festivities.

Children who live in the north of England especially must have a
painfully large proportion of disappointments out of the few May-days of
childhood.

Books and pictures, old stories told by Papa or Mamma of clattering
chimney-sweeps and dancing May Queens, such as they saw in their young
days, or heard of from their elders, have perhaps roused in us two of
the strongest passions of childhood--the love of imitation and the love
of flowers. We are determined to have a May-bush round the
nursery-window, duly gathered before sunrise. "Pretty Bessy," our
nursemaid, can do anything with flowers, from a cowslip ball to a
growing forget-me-not garland. The girls are apt pupils, and pride
themselves on their birthday wreaths. The boys are admirably adapted for
May sweeps. Clatter is melodious in their ears. They would rather be
black than white. Burnt cork will disguise them effectually; but they
would prefer soot. A pole is forthcoming; ribbons are not wanting; the
poodle will dance with the best of us. We have a whole holiday on
Saints' Days, and the 1st of May is SS. Philip and James'.

What then hinders our enjoyment, and makes it impossible to keep May-day
according to our hopes?

Too often this. It is "too cold to dawdle about." Flowers are by no
means plentiful; they are pinched by the east wind. The May Queen would
have to dance in her winter clothes, and would probably catch cold even
then. It is not improbable that it will rain, and it is possible that it
may snow. Worse than all, the hawthorn-trees are behind time, and are as
obstinate as the head-nurse in not thinking the weather fit for coming
out. The May is not in blossom on May-day.

And yet May-day used to be kept in the north of England as well as in
warmer nooks and corners. The truth is that one reason why we find the
weather less pleasant, and the flowers fewer than our forefathers did,
is that we keep May-day eleven days earlier in the year than they used
to do.

To explain how this is, I must try and explain what Old Style and New
Style--in reckoning the days of the year--mean.

First let me ask you how you can count the days. Supposing you wish to
remain just one day and night in a certain place, how will you know when
you have stayed the proper time? In one of two ways. Either you will
count twenty-four hours on the clock, or you will stay through all the
light of one day, and all the darkness of one night. That is, you will
count time either by the Clock or by the Sun.

Now we say that there are 365 days in the year. But there are really a
few odd hours and minutes and seconds into the bargain. The reason of
this is that the Sun does not go by the Clock in making the days and
nights. Sometimes he spends rather more than twenty-four hours by the
Clock over a day and night; sometimes he takes less. On the whole,
during the year, he uses up more time than the Clock does.

The Clock makes exactly 365 days of 24 hours each. The Sun makes 365
days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 49 seconds, and a tiny bit besides.

Now in time these odd hours added together would come to days, and the
days to years. About fifteen hundred years of this little difference
between the Sun and the Clock would bring it up to a year. So that if
you went by the Clock you would say, "It is fifteen hundred years since
such a thing happened." And if you went by the Sun you would say, "It is
fifteen hundred and one years since it happened."

Men who could think and calculate saw how inconvenient this would be,
and what mistakes it would lead to. If the difference did not come to
much in their lifetime, they could see that it would come to a serious
error for other people some day. So Julius Cæsar thought he would pull
the Clock and the Sun together by adding one day every four years to the
Clock's year to make up for the odd hours the Sun had been spinning out
during the three years before. The odd day was added to the month of
February, and that year (in which there are three hundred and sixty-six
days) is called Leap Year.

You remember the old saw--

    "Thirty days hath September,
    April, June, and November;
    February hath twenty-eight alone,
    All the rest have thirty-one;
    _Except in Leap Year, at which time
    February's days are twenty-nine_."

This is called the Old Style of reckoning.

Now I dare say you think the matter was quite settled; but it was not,
unfortunately--the odd day every four years was just a tiny little bit
too much, and now the Clock was spending more time over her years than
the Sun. After more than sixteen hundred years the small mistake was
becoming serious, and Pope Gregory XIII decided that we must not have so
many leap years. For the future, in every four hundred years, three of
the Clock's extra days must be given up, and ten days were to be left
out of count at once to make up for the mistakes of years past.

This change is what is called the New Style of Reckoning. Pope Gregory
began it in the year 1582, but we did not adopt it in England till 1752,
and as we had then nearly two hundred years more of the little mistake
to correct, _we_ had to leave _eleven_ days out of count. In Russia,
where our new Princess comes from, they have not got it yet. The New
Style was begun in England on September the 2nd. The next day, instead
of being called September the 3rd, was called September the 14th. Since
then we have gone on quite steadily, and played no more tricks with
either the Sun's year or the Clock's year.

I wonder what happened in the year 1752 to all the children whose
birthdays came between September the 2nd and September the 14th! I hope
their birthday presents did not drop through because his Majesty George
the Second had let eleven birthdays slip out of that year's calendar, to
get the Clock and the Sun to work comfortably together.

Now I think you will be able to see that in the next year after this
change, May-day was kept eleven days earlier in the Sun's year than the
year before; and it has been at an earlier season ever since, and
therefore in colder weather. May-day in the Old Style would have come
this year about the middle of the month; and as years rolled on it would
have been kept later and later in the summer, and thus in warmer and
warmer weather, because of that little mistake of Julius Cæsar. At last,
instead of complaining that the May is not out by May-day, people would
have had to complain that it was over.

Now in the New Style we keep May-day almost in Spring, and, thanks to
Pope Gregory's clever arrangement, we shall always keep it at the same
season.

It is not always cold on a May-day even in the north of England. I have
a vivid remembrance of at least one which was most balmy; and, when they
are warm enough for out-door enjoyment, the early days of the year seem,
like the early hours of the day, to have an exquisite freshness
peculiarly their own. Then the month of May, as a whole, is certainly
the month of flowers in the woods and fields. Autumn is the gayest
season of the garden, but Spring and early Summer give us the prettiest
of the wild-flowers.

    "Among the changing months May stands confest
    The sweetest, and in fairest colours drest."

That fine weather is not quite to be relied upon for May-day, even in
the Old Style, some of the old May-day customs seem to suggest. In the
Isle of Man it was the custom not only to have a "Queen of May," but
also a "Queen of Winter." The May Queen was, as elsewhere, some pretty
and popular damsel, gaily dressed, and with a retinue of maids of
honour. The Winter Queen was a man or boy dressed in woman's clothes of
the warmest kind--"woollen hood, fur tippet," &c. Fiddles and flutes
were played before the May Queen and her followers, whilst the Queen of
Winter and her troop marched to the sound of the tongs and cleaver. The
rival companies met on a common and had a mock battle, symbolizing the
struggle of Winter and Summer for supremacy. If the Queen of Winter's
forces contrived to capture the Queen of May, her floral majesty had to
be ransomed by payment of the expenses of the day's festivity.

Whether the Queen of Winter conquered in bad weather, and her fairer
rival when the season was warm and the flowers abundant, we are not
told.

This ceremony was probably learnt from the Danes and Norwegians, who
were long masters of the Isle of Man. _Olaus Magnus_, speaking of the
May-day customs of the Goths and Southern Swedes, says, "The captain of
one band hath the name and appearance of Winter, is clothed in skins of
beasts, and he and his band armed with fire-forks. They fling about
ashes, by way of prolonging the reign of Winter; while another band,
whose captain is called Florro, represents Spring, with green boughs
such as the season affords. These parties skirmish in sport, and the
mimic contest concludes with a general feast."

A few years ago in the Isle of Man the hillsides blazed with bonfires
and resounded to horns on the 11th of May (May-eve, Old Style). "May
flowers" were put at the doors of houses and cattle-sheds, and these
were not hawthorn blossoms, but the flowers of the kingcup, or marsh
marigold. Crosses made of sprays of mountain ash were worn the same
night, and they, the bonfires and May flowers, were reckoned charms
against "wizards, witches, enchanters, and mountain hags."

At Helston, in Cornwall, May-day seems to have been known by the name of
Furry Day. Perhaps a corruption of "Flora's Day." People wore hawthorn
in their hats, and danced hand-in-hand through the town to the sound of
a fiddle. This particular performance was known as a "faddy."

It is probable that some of our May-day customs came from the Romans,
who kept the festival of Flora, the goddess of flowers, at this season.
Others, perhaps, have a different, if not an older source. One custom
was certainly common to both nations. When the feast of Flora was
celebrated, the young Romans went into the woods and brought back green
boughs with which they decked the houses.

To "go a-Maying" is in fact the principal ceremony of the day wherever
kept, and for whatever reason. In the north of England children and
young folk "were wont to rise a little after midnight on the morning of
May-day, and walk to some neighbouring wood accompanied with music and
the blowing of horns, where they broke down branches from the trees, and
adorned them with nosegays and crowns of flowers. This done, they
returned homewards with their booty about the time of sunrise, and made
their doors and windows triumph in the flowery spoil." Stubbs, in the
_Anatomie of Abuses_ (A.D. 1585), speaks of this custom as
common to "every parish, town, and village." The churches, as well as
the houses, seem in some places to have been dressed with flowers and
greenery.

In an old MS. of the sixteenth century it is said that on the feast of
SS. Philip and James, the Eton boys were allowed to go out at four
o'clock in the morning to gather May to dress their rooms, and sweet
herbs to perfume them, "if they can do it without wetting their feet!"

Thirty or forty years ago May-day decorations, in some country places,
consisted of strewing the cottage doorsteps with daisies, or other
flowers.

In Hertfordshire a curious custom obtained of decking the neighbours'
doors with May if they were popular, and with nettles if they were the
reverse.

In Lancashire rustic wags put boughs of various trees at the doors of
the girls of the neighbourhood. Each tree had a meaning (well known in
the district), sometimes complimentary, and sometimes the reverse.

In France it was customary for lovers to deck over-night the houses of
the ladies they wished to please, and school-boys paid a like compliment
to their masters. They do not seem, however, to have been satisfied with
nosegays or even with green branches; they transplanted young trees from
the woods to the side of the door they wished to honour, and then decked
them with ribbons, &c. There is a curious record that "Henry II.,
wishing to recompense the clerks of Bazoche for their good services in
quelling an insurrection in Guienne, offered them money; but they would
only accept the permission granted them by the king, of cutting in the
royal woods such trees as they might choose for the planting of the
May--a privilege which existed at the commencement of the French
Revolution." In Cornwall, too, it seems to have been the custom to plant
"stumps of trees" before the houses, as well as to decorate them with
boughs and blossoms. And Mr. Aubrey (1686) says, "At Woodstock in Oxon
they every May-eve goe into the parke, and fetch away a number of
haw-thorne-trees, which they set before their dores; 'tis a pity that
they make such a destruction of so fine a tree."

One certainly agrees with Mr. Aubrey. Thorns are slow to grow, hard to
transplant, and very lovely when they are old. It is not to be regretted
that such ruthless destruction of them has gone out of fashion.

In Ireland "tall slender trees" seem to have been set up before the
doors, as well as "a green bush, strewed over with yellow flowers, which
the meadows yield plentifully." A writer, speaking of this in 1682,
adds, "A stranger would go nigh to imagine that they were all signs of
ale-sellers, and that all houses were ale-houses," referring to the old
custom of a bunch of green as the sign of an inn, which is illustrated
by the proverb, "Good wine needs no bush." I have an old etching of a
river-side inn, in which the sign is a garland hanging on a pole.

I fancy the yellow flowers must have been cowslips, which the green
fields of Erin do indeed "yield plentifully."

Besides these private May-trees, every village had its common Maypole,
gaily adorned with wreaths and flags and ribbons, and sometimes painted
in spiral lines of colour. The Welsh Maypoles seem to have been made
from birch-trees, elms were used in Cornwall, and young oaks in other
parts of England. Round these Maypoles the young villagers danced, and
green booths were often set up on the grass near them.

In many villages the Maypole was as much a fixture as the parish stocks,
but when a new one was required, it was brought home on May-eve in grand
procession with songs and instrumental music. I am afraid there is a
good deal of evidence to show that the Maypoles were not always honestly
come by! However, the Puritan writers (from whose bitter and detailed
complaints we learn most of what we know about the early English May-day
customs) are certainly prejudiced, and perhaps not quite trustworthy
witnesses. One good man groans lamentably: "What adoe make our young men
at the time of May? Do they not use night watchings to rob and steale
young trees out of other men's grounde, and bring them into their
parishe, with minstrels playing before?"

But as the theft must have been committed with all the publicity that a
fixed day, a large crowd, and a full band could ensure, and as we seem
to have no record of interference at the time, or prosecutions
afterwards, I hope we may infer that the owners of the woods did not
grudge one tree for the village Maypole. A quainter vengeance seems to
have sometimes followed the trespass. Honesty was at a discount. What
had been once stolen was liable to be re-stolen. There seems to have
been great rivalry among the villages as to which had the best Maypole.
The happy parish which could boast the finest was not left at ease in
its supremacy, for the lads of the other villages were always on the
watch to steal it. A record of this custom amongst the Welsh reminds one
that Wales was at once the land of bards and the home of Taffy the
Thief. "If successful," says Owen, speaking of these Maypole robbers,
they "had their feats recorded in songs."

In old times oxen were commonly used for farmwork, and it seems that
they had their share in the May fun. Another Puritan writer says, "They
have twentie or fortie yoke of oxen, every oxe having a sweete nosegaie
of flowers tyed on the tippe of his hornes, and these oxen draw home
this Maie poole."

How well one can imagine their slow swinging pace, unmoved by the
shouts and music which would stir a horse's more delicate nerves! Their
broad moist noses; their large, liquid eyes, and, doubtless, a certain
sense of pride in their "sweet nosegaies," like the pride of the Beast
of a Regiment in his badge.

Horses, too, came in for their share of May decorations. It was an old
custom to give the waggoner a ribbon for his team at every inn he passed
on May-day.

In the last century there was a fixed Maypole near Horncastle, in
Lincolnshire, to which the boys made a pilgrimage in procession every
May-day with May-gads in their hands. May-gads are white willow wands,
peeled, and dressed with cowslips.

There was a fixed Maypole in the Strand for many years--or rather a
succession of Maypoles. One, when only four years old, was given to Sir
Isaac Newton to make a stand for his telescope, and another seems to
have had a narrow escape from being handed over to a less celebrated
astronomer, some years later.

The wandering Maypole, with its Queen of the May and her chimney-sweeps,
is a modern compound of the village Maypole and May Queen with the May
games in which (as in the Christmas festivities) morris-dancers played a
part. The May-day morris-dancers, like the Christmas mummers, performed
sword-dances and sang appropriate doggerels in costume. The characters
represented at one time or another were Maid Marian or the May Queen,
Robin Hood or Lord of the May, Friar Tuck, Will Scarlet, Little John
Stokesley, Tom the Piper, Mad Moll and her Husband, Mutch, the Fool and
the Hobby Horse. Archery was amongst the May-day sports, especially in
the company of Robin Hood. The Summer King and Queen were perhaps the
oldest characters. They seem to be identical with the Lord and Lady, and
sometimes to have been merged in Robin Hood and Maid Marian.

    "Maid Marian fair as ivory bone,
    Scarlet, and Mutch, and Little John."

The King and Queen of May are spoken of in the thirteenth century, but
morris-dancing at May-time does not seem to date earlier than Henry
VII., and is not so old a custom as the immemorial one of going a-Maying

    "To bring the summer home
    The summer and the May-O!"

This was not confined to young people or to country-folk. Chaucer says
that on May-day early "fourth goth al the court, both most and lest, to
fetche the flowrès fresh, and braunch, and blome," and Henry VIII. kept
May-day very orthodoxly in the early years of his reign.

Milkmaids have been connected with May-day customs from an early period.
Perhaps because syllabub and cream were the recognized dainties of the
festival. In Northumberland a ring used to be dropped into the syllabub
and fished for with a ladle. Whoever got it was to be the first married
of the party. An odd old custom in Suffolk suggests that the hawthorn
was not always ready even for the Old Style May-day. Any farm-servant
who could find a branch in full blossom might claim a dish of cream for
breakfast. The milkmaids who supplied London and other places used to
dress themselves gaily on May-day and go round from house to house
performing a dance, and receiving gratuities from their customers. On
their heads--instead of a milk-pail--they carried a curious trophy,
called the "Milkmaids' Garland," made of silver or pewter jugs, cups,
and other pieces of plate, which they borrowed for the occasion, and
which shone out of a mass of greenery and flowers. Possibly these were
at first the pewter measures with which they served out the milk. The
music to which the milkmaids' dance was performed, was the jangling of
bells of different tones depending from a round plate of brass mounted
upon a Maydecked pole; but a bag-pipe or fiddle was sometimes
substituted.

Cream, syllabub, and dainties compounded with milk, belong in England to
the May festival. In Germany there is a "May drink" (said to be very
nice) made by putting woodruff into white Rhine wine, in the proportion
of a handful to a quart. Black currant, balm, or peppermint leaves are
sometimes added, and water and sugar.

The milkmaids' place has been completely usurped by the sweeps, who
clatter a shovel and broom instead of the old plate and bells, and who
seem to have added the popular Jack-in-the-green to the entertainment.
Jack-in-the-green's costume is very simple. A wicker-work frame of an
extinguisher shape, thickly covered with green, is supported by the man
who carries it, and who peeps through a hole left for the purpose.
May-day has become the Sweeps' Carnival. Mrs. Montague (whose son is
said to have been stolen for a sweep in his childhood, and afterwards
found) used to give the sweeps of London a good dinner every May-day, on
the lawn before her house in Portman Square.

Another May-day custom is that of the choristers assembling at five
o'clock in the morning on the top of the beautiful tower of Magdalen
College, Oxford, and ushering in the day with singing. At the same time
boys of the city armed with tin trumpets, called "May-horns," assemble
beneath the tower, and contribute more sound than harmony to the
celebration. Let us hope that it is not strictly a part of the old
ceremony, but rather a minor manifestation of "Town and Gown" feeling,
that the town boys jeer the choristers, and in return are pelted with
rotten eggs. The origin of this special Oxford custom is said to be a
requiem which was sung on the tower for the soul of Henry VII., founder
of the College. In the villages girls used to carry round May-garlands.
The party consisted of four children. Two girls in white dresses and gay
ribbons carried the garland, and were followed by a boy and girl called
"Lord and Lady," linked together by a white handkerchief, of which each
held an end. The Lady carried the purse, and when she received a
donation the Lord doffed his cap and kissed her. They sang a doggerel
rhyme, and the form in which money was asked was, "Please to handsel the
Lord and Lady's purse."

One cannot help thinking that some of our flowers, such as Milkmaids,
Lords and Ladies, and Jack-in-the-green Primrose, bear traces of having
got their common names at the great flower festival of the year.

In Cornwall boys carried the May-garland, which was adorned with painted
birds' eggs. Old custom gave these young rogues the privilege of
drenching with water from a bucket any one whom they caught abroad on
May-morning without a sprig of May.

Mr. Aubrey says (1686): "At Oxford, the boyes do blow cows' horns all
night; and on May-day the young maids of every parish carry about their
parish garlands of flowers, which afterwards they hang up in their
churches."

A generation or more ago the little boys of Oxford used to blow horns
early on May-day--as they said--"to call up the old maids." There was
once a custom in Lynn for the workhouse children to be allowed to go out
with horns and garlands every May-day, after which a certain worthy
gentleman gave them a good dinner.

In Cambridgeshire, within the present century, the children had a doll
dressed as the "May Lady," before which they set a table with wine and
food on it; they also begged money and garlands for "the poor May Lady."

There are some quaint superstitions connected with May-day and
May-blossom. To bathe the face in the dew of a May morning was reckoned
an infallible recipe for a good complexion. A bath of May dew was also
supposed to strengthen weakly children. Girls divined for dreams of
their future husbands with a sprig of hawthorn gathered before dusk on
May-eve, and carried home in the mouth without speaking. Hawthorn rods
were used at all seasons of the year to divine for water and minerals.
Bunches of May fastened against houses were supposed to keep away
witches and venomous reptiles, and to bring prosperity in various
shapes.

The Irish of the neighbourhood of Killarney have a pretty superstition
that on May-day the O'Donoghue, a popular prince of by-gone days,
returns from the land of Immortal Youth beneath the water to bless the
country over which he once ruled.

Some curious customs among the Scotch Highlanders (who call May 1st
_Beltan_ Day) have nothing in common with our Green Festival except as
celebrating the Spring. They seem to be the remains of very ancient
heathen sacrifices to Baal. They were performed by the herdsmen of the
district, and included an open-air feast of cakes and custard, to which
every one contributed, and which was cooked upon a fire on a turf left
in the centre of a square trench which had been dug for the purpose.
Some custard was poured out by way of libation. Every one then took a
cake of oatmeal, on which nine knobs had been pinched up before baking,
and turning his face to the fire threw the knobs over his shoulder, some
as offerings to the supposed guardians of the flock, and the rest in
propitiation of beasts and birds of prey, with the form "This to thee,
O Fox! spare my lambs! This to thee, O hooded Crow!" &c. In some places
the boys of the hamlet met on the moors for a similar feast, but the
turf table was round, and the oatcake divided into bits, one of which
was blackened with charcoal. These being drawn from a bonnet, the holder
of the black bit was held _devoted_ to Baal, and had to leap three times
over the bonfire.

I do not know of any children's games that were peculiar to May-day. In
France they had a May-day game called _Sans-vert_. Those who played had
to wear leaves of the hornbeam-tree, and these were to be kept fresh,
under penalty of a fine. The chief object of the players was to surprise
each other without the proper leaves, or with faded specimens.

A stupid old English custom of making fools of your friends on the 1st
of May as well as on the 1st of April hardly deserves the title of a
game. The victims were called "May goslings."

One certainly would not expect to meet with anything like "Aunt Sally"
among May-day games, especially with the "May Lady" for butt! But not
the least curious part of a very curious account of May-day in
Huntingdonshire, which was sent to _Notes and Queries_ some years ago,
is the pelting of the May Lady as a final ceremony of the festival. The
May-garlands carried round in Huntingdonshire villages appear to have
been more like the "milkmaids' garland" than genuine wreaths. They were
four to five feet high, extinguisher-shaped, with every kind of spring
flower in the apex, and with ribbons and gay kerchiefs hanging down from
the base, by the round rim of which the garland was carried; the
flower-peak towering above, and the gay streamers depending below.
Against this erection (not unlike the "mistletoe boughs" of the North of
England) was fastened a gaily-dressed doll. The bearers were two little
girls, who acted as maids of honour to the May Queen. Mr. Cuthbert Bede
describes her Majesty as he saw her twenty years ago. She wore a white
frock, and a bonnet with a white veil. A wreath of real flowers lay on
the bonnet. She carried a pocket-handkerchief bag and a parasol (the
latter being regarded as a special mark of dignity). An "Odd Fellows'"
ribbon and badge completed her costume. The maids of honour bore the
garland after her, whose peak was crowned with "tulips, anemones,
cowslips, kingcups, meadow-orchis, wall-flower, primrose,
crown-imperial, lilac, laburnum," and "other bright flowers." Votive
offerings were dropped into the pocket-handkerchief bag, and with these
a feast was provided for the children. If the gifts had been liberal,
"goodies" were proportionately plentiful. Finally, the May-garland was
suspended from a rope hung across the village street, and the children
pelted the May-doll with balls provided for the occasion. Their chief
aim was to hit her nose.

Another correspondent of _Notes and Queries_ speaks of ropes with dolls
suspended from them as being stretched across every village street in
Huntingdonshire on May-day, and adds, that not only ribbons and flowers
were attached to these swinging May Ladies, but articles of every
description, including "candlesticks, snuffers, spoons, and forks."

There are no May carols rivalling those of Christmas, and the verses
which children sing with their garlands are very bald as a rule.

A Maypole song of the Gloucestershire children would do very well to
dance to--

    "Round the Maypole, trit-trit-trot!
    See what a Maypole we have got;
            Fine and gay,
            Trip away,
    Happy is our New May-day."

I have read of a pretty old Italian custom for the friends of prisoners
to assemble outside the prison walls on May-day and join with them in
songs. They are also said to have permission to have a May-day feast
with them.

Under all its various shapes, and however adapted to the service of
particular heathen deities, or to very rude social festivity, the root
of the May-day festival lies in the expression of feelings both natural
and right. Thankfulness for the return of Spring, anxiety for the coming
harvests of the fruits of the earth, and that sense of exhilaration and
hopefulness which the most exquisite of seasons naturally brings--brings
more strongly perhaps in the youth of a nation, in those earlier stages
of civilization when men are very dependent upon the weather, and upon
the produce of their own particular neighbourhood--brings most strongly
of all to one's own youth, to the light heart, the industrious fancy,
the uncorrupted taste of childhood.

May-day seems to me so essentially a children's festival, that I think
it is a great pity that English children should allow it to fall into
disuse. One certainly does not love flowers less as one grows up, but
they are more like persons, and their ways are more mysterious to one in
childhood. The cares of grown-up life, too, are not of the kind from
which we can easily get a whole holiday. We should do well to try
oftener than we do. Wreaths do not become us, and we have allowed our
joints to grow too stiff for Maypole dancing. But we who used to sigh
for whole holidays can give them! We can prepare the cakes and cream,
and provide ribbons for the Maypole, and show how garlands were made in
our young days. We are very grateful for wild-flowers for the
drawing-room. To say the truth, they last longer with us than with the
children, and perhaps we combine the delicate hues of spring, and
lighten our nosegays by grass and sword-flags and rushes with more
cunning fingers than those of the little ones who gathered them.

For these is reserved the real bloom of May-day! And the orthodox
customs are so various, that families of any size or age may pick and
choose. One brother and sister can be Lord and Lady of the May. One
sister among many brothers must be May Queen without opposition. Those
of the party most apt to catch cold in the treacherous sunshine and damp
winds of spring should certainly represent the Winter Queen and her
attendants, in the warmest possible clothing and the thickest of boots.
The morning air will then probably only do them a great deal of good. It
is not desirable to dig up the hawthorn-trees, or to try to do so, even
with wooden spades. The votive offering of flowers for her drawing-room
should undoubtedly await Mamma when she comes down to breakfast, and I
heartily wish her as abundant a variety as Mr. Cuthbert Bede saw on the
Huntingdonshire garland. That Nurse should have a bunch of May is only
her due; and of course the nursery must be decorated. Long strips of
coloured calico form good ribbons for the Maypole. Bows and arrows are
easily made. It is also easy to cut one's fingers in notching the
arrows. When you are tired of dancing, you can be Robin Hood's merry
men, and shoot. When all the arrows are lost, and you have begun to
quarrel about the target, it will be well to hang up an old doll and
throw balls at her nose. Dressing-up is, at any time, a delightful
amusement, and there is a large choice among May-day characters. No
wardrobe can fail to provide the perfectly optional costumes of Mad Moll
and her husband. There are generally some children who never will learn
their parts, and who go astray from every pre-arranged plan. By any two
such the last-named characters should be represented. In these, as in
all children's games, "the more the merrier"; and as there is no limit
to the number of sweeps, the largest of families may revel in burnt
cork, even if dust-pans in proportion fail. If a bonfire is more
appropriate to the weather than a Maypole, we have the comfort of
feeling that it is equally correct.

It is hardly needful to impress upon the boys what vigour the blowing of
horns and penny trumpets will impart to the ceremonies; but they may
require to be reminded that Eton men in old days were only allowed to go
a-Maying on condition that they did not wet their feet!

Above all, out-door May Fun is no fun unless the weather is fine; and I
hope this little paper will show that if the 1st of May is chilly, and
the flowers are backward, nothing can be more proper than to keep our
feast on the 12th of May--_May-day, Old Style_. If the Clerk of the
Weather Office is unkind on both these days, give up out-door fun at
once, and prepare for a fancy-ball in the nursery; all the guests to be
dressed as May-day characters. Garland-making and country expeditions
can then be deferred till Midsummer-day. It is not _very_ long to wait,
and penny trumpets do not spoil with keeping.

But do not be defrauded of at least one early ramble in the woods and
fields. It is well, in the impressionable season of life, to realize, if
only occasionally, how much of the sweetest air, the brightest and best
hours of the day, people spend in bed. Any one who goes out every day
before breakfast knows how very seldom he is kept in by bad weather. For
one day when it rains very early there are three or four when it rains
later. But we wait till the world has got dirty, and the air full of the
smoke of thousands of breakfasts, and clouds are beginning to gather,
and then we say England has a horrible climate. I do not believe in many
quack medical prescriptions, but I have the firmest faith in May dew as
a wash for the complexion. Any morning dew is nearly as efficacious if
it is gathered in warm clothes, thick boots, and at a sufficient
distance from home.

There are some households in which there are no children, and there are
some in which the good things of this life are very abundant. To these
it may not be very impertinent to suggest a remembrance of the old
alderman of Lynn's kindly benefaction. To beg leave for the children of
the workhouse to gather May-day nosegays for you, and to give them a May
feast afterwards, would be to give pleasure of a kind in which such
unhomely lives are most deficient. A country ramble "with an object,"
and the grace-in-memory of a traditionary holiday and feast, shared in
common with many homes and with other children.

To go a-Maying "to fetche the flowrès fresh" is indeed the best part of
the whole affair.

But, when the sunny bank under the hedge is pale with primroses, when

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