The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. XX. No. 1014, by Various.

THE HOUSE WITH THE VERANDAH.

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

CHAPTER X.

“WHERE IS TRUTH?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That recalled Lucy to her duties. She sprang up, protesting against Miss Latimer having gone to work by herself, and she lit the gas and closed the curtains. They had a cosy little meal,{563} at which, for Hugh’s sake, not a word was said of the recent domestic catastrophe.

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

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

“Mamma!”

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

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

“No, my dear.”

“Mamma, will she ever come back?”

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

“Is she ill, mamma?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Miss Latimer looked puzzled and hesitated.

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

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

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

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

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

Miss Latimer looked at Lucy.

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

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

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

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

Miss Latimer shook her head.

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

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

Miss Latimer sat and pondered.

“I may be wrong,” she said, “I may be carrying my suspicions too far. We are all apt to do that when all firm ground of confidence is taken from our feet. But, my dear Lucy, you should{565} have never taken her in on the strength of written characters of however fair seeming.”

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

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

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

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

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

Miss Latimer shook her head.

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

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

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

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

Miss Latimer mused.

(To be continued.)

THOMAS ARNE.

(THE ENGLISH AMPHION.)

“Where Covent Garden’s famous temple stands,

That boasts the work of Jones’ immortal hands,

Columns with plain magnificence appear,

And graceful porches lead along the square.”

Gay.

COVENT GARDEN IN 1660.

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

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

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

But you and I are not dependent on market gardeners:

“There is a flower which bloometh

When autumn’s leaves are cast,

Oh, pluck it ere it wither,

’Tis the memory of the past!”

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

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

DR. T. ARNE.

It is always interesting to note the environment of a great man, and Arne’s environment was exceptionally rich in historic associations. He was born in the reign of Queen Anne—the{566} Augustan age of English literature—and Covent Garden was the cradle of the wit and learning of his time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“bating Covent Garden, I can hit on

No place that’s called Piazza in Great Britain.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thomas had an uncomfortable walk home that night with his angry parent, but the good man was too sensible not to recognise that it was better that his son should be a fair{567} musician than a bad lawyer. Finally, harmony was restored to the family circle, and the young performer was allowed to follow the bent of his genius.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Transcriber’s note: click the titles to listen to the musical snippets. Links may not work in some versions of this etext or without an internet connection.]

“The Marseillaise.”

“Rule, Britannia.”

“Die Wacht am Rhein.”

The French song repeats every step—that is dull!

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

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

“Up, boys, and at them!”

Bravo! Thomas Arne.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eleonore D’Esterre-Keeling.

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FISHING.

(From the painting by Florence A. Saltmer.)

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JULY.

By ERIC BROAD.

Now is the noon of summer’s sweet content

O’er field and hedgerow, valley and high hill;

And hushed the music of the laughing rill

Whose strength is stolen and whose song is spent!

With anxious twitter all the birds lament

The sudden gloom; the air grows strangely still.

Vague murmurs all the valley seem to fill;

The sun is blotted from the firmament.

Hark! tis the diapason of God’s organ rolled

Through all the field of stars; chord follows chord

The march triumphant of our Blessed Lord,

Who rides the sky in chariot of gold;

And then the gloom is rent; with swift accord

The beams, with golden arms, our forms enfold!

CHRONICLES OF AN ANGLO-CALIFORNIAN RANCH.

By MARGARET INNES.

CHAPTER VIII.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was quite embarrassingly generous. When he went into town for a holiday, he would return in high spirits. He was always in a perfect fever to get his bundle of purchases undone and to show us all he had bought. He would drag out a small pair of embroidered shoes for himself and show them to us; then perhaps a silk jacket or a tasselled girdle, such as they wear round the waist. Always, too, there were boxes and bottles of uncanny-looking medicine, of which he generally took several doses indiscriminately on the spot to prove to us how strong was his faith in their virtue; then, with a flourish, he would bring out a dainty parcel and hand it to me with a kind little word, and some{570} curiosity for the boys, or often a piece of pretty porcelain for the house.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(To be continued.)

“OUR HERO.”

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

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

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE RELEASE OF ONE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

{571}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Head as bad as ever.”

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

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

“Something for Captain Ivor!”

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

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

“Who brought it?”

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

Denham roused himself with difficulty to obey.

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

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

“This!—What does it mean?”

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

From the others broke a chorus of exclamations.

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

“Are you not glad?”

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

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

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

“But to leave you all here still——”

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

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

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

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

“Next week,” suggested Jack.

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

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

Denham lifted her hand to his lips.

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

Then he turned to Mrs. Baron.

“You have said nothing yet!”

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

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

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

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

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

(To be continued.)

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A LITTLE ADVICE TO AMATEUR NURSES.

By “THE NEW DOCTOR.”

The Hospital Nurse

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of course, we do not know whether you yourself will have to do this work, but if it is done by another, you must see that{573} it is properly done. It is the duty of the nurse to see that the room is in good order, even through she does not clean it herself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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SHEILA’S COUSIN EFFIE.

A STORY FOR GIRLS.

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

CHAPTER IX.

A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Fire! Fire!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Nothing can happen to us but what our heavenly Father permits. We will ask Him in our hearts to bring us safely out of this, and I think He will. Brave{575} men are at work to put down the danger. They are getting the hose into the building, and I think they will soon get the fire under. I think we are better here than swelling the number below. See, they have shut out the smoke now! Suppose you come and change your dresses? You will be more comfortable then; and for the next ten minutes I think you may be sure you will not have to move.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What wish?”

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

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

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

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

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

(To be continued.)

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

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

STUDY AND STUDIO.

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

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

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

Daughter of a Sixteen Years’ Subscriber.—We commend to you the advice of our last answer. There are a great number of scholarships for girls now offered by the County Council, of which you can easily obtain the fullest particulars.

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

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

Canary.—1. Your quotation—

“Men must work and women must weep”

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

“Three fishers went sailing away to the west.”

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

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GIRLS’ EMPLOYMENTS.

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

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

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

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

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

MEDICAL.

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

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

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

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

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

MISCELLANEOUS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

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

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

Fennimore to Fenimore—“Fenimore Cooper’s”.

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

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

atten- to attention—“her whole attention”.

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

THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER

ERE THE HARVEST TIME.

THE HOUSE WITH THE VERANDAH.

CHAPTER X.

THOMAS ARNE.

FISHING.

JULY.

CHRONICLES OF AN ANGLO-CALIFORNIAN RANCH.

CHAPTER VIII.

“OUR HERO.”

CHAPTER XXXV.

A LITTLE ADVICE TO AMATEUR NURSES.

SHEILA’S COUSIN EFFIE.

CHAPTER IX.

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

STUDY AND STUDIO.

GIRLS’ EMPLOYMENTS.

MEDICAL.

MISCELLANEOUS.