The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. XX. No. 1015, by Various.

SHEILA’S COUSIN EFFIE.

A STORY FOR GIRLS.

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

“THE MAN GRINNED AND SHOOK HIS HEAD.”

CHAPTER X.

AFTER-EFFECTS AND CYRIL.

The whole place was in a tumult. The streets were thronged. Passionate inquiries and greetings were passing from mouth to mouth. The chief thing was to get the girls under cover as quickly as possible, out of the hubbub all round the municipal buildings. The Bensons threw open their house; the Cossarts did the same. Sheila soon found herself, together with May Lawrence and Miss Adene, in her aunt’s drawing-room, where Raby and Ray had preceded them, and they were received with the warmest effusion by the company gathered there, for in the confusion and alarm nobody was confidently reckoned to be safe till he or she had been actually seen.

North came in a few minutes later.

“Effie has been taken straight home in our uncle’s carriage. We could not get at you, Sheila, so Oscar is to take you back later on, when the excitement is abated. Are the girls there? That’s all right. Yes, mater, I am safe enough; but don’t keep me. There are frantic mothers hunting up their children still. I believe no lives have been lost; but I must go and do what I can to reassure them. We must find the waifs and strays, and get them to their right owners!”

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He kissed his mother and swung himself off; and then a little more quiet fell upon the room, whilst those who had been eye-witnesses of the catastrophe were eagerly called upon to relate their experiences.

Mrs. Cossart had not been at the hall that afternoon, being fatigued by her exertions the two previous days; and her husband, having let all the boys off, had had to keep to the office himself, and only came hurrying home in alarm and consternation when the news reached him that the Town Hall was on fire!

Sheila, listening breathlessly whilst some ladies who had been in the lower hall related their experiences, thought that they had escaped the worst of the terror by being in the upper room. Several of the children’s frocks had caught fire, and it seemed at one time as though the whole place and the hapless people would be in a blaze; but there were plenty of exits, and the police at the doors kept their heads, and passed the children out with great rapidity; and the firemen were on the scene almost at once. The flames got firm hold upon the temporary structures of stalls and so forth, but the building itself never took fire, being of solid stone.

There had been fearful screams, and wild panic; but on the whole the people had behaved exceedingly well, and though there was some inevitable crushing, there had been no actual block, and it was believed that no lives had been lost.

“The only man I saw who behaved really badly,” said one lady, who had evidently been instrumental in saving several children, and whose dress was much burnt in consequence, “was one of the actors from upstairs, who came flying down, and pushed and fought his way out without heeding anything or anybody. He overturned several little children, and one of them would have been trampled to death had not a policeman snatched it up. I was really glad to see another man—a fireman, I believe—give the young man a sound cuff on the side of his head that sent him reeling out into the open. I won’t say that nobody else hustled or pushed—at a time like that one cannot observe everything—but I saw no one else disgrace his manhood in that way.”

“Shameful,” said Mr. Tom sternly. “One of the actors, you say. One ought to be able to find out who it was.”

“He had on a white satin suit—that made him the more conspicuous. I suppose he had completely lost his head. One must not be too hard on people who do that; but one rather hates to see it.”

At that moment the door opened and Cyril came airily in. His cheek was very red, as though from some sort of injury, and his mother sprang forward exclaiming—

“Oh, my boy, did you get burned?”

Cyril put up his hand and laughed.

“Did I? I did not notice. One has not time to think of that sort of thing at such a time. Besides, I was out of it sooner than many. I was afraid the people in the council room, which was the theatre, would be cut off from help. I made a dash for it to get the fire-escape brought round to them at the windows. One could not tell at the outset how fast the fire would spread. I was horribly afraid they would all be suffocated up there, whilst the energies of the rescuers were directed to the larger hall. I’m afraid I was rather unceremonious in my flight, but, at any rate, I accomplished my purpose, and that’s the great thing.”

Sheila and May exchanged quick glances. Was that really Cyril’s motive in making that wild bolt? Certainly it had not been the impression produced upon those who had heard and seen him at the time. His father looked at him steadily, and said—

“I hope you were not the man in white satin, who overturned little children and pushed aside women and girls in his determination to get out. Whatever your motive, nothing could excuse conduct like that.”

Cyril’s face flushed, but he answered airily—

“In such confusion I think nobody can quite say what it is that happens. I am quite willing to bear any odium my townspeople like to put upon me, so long as I know that I was in time to accomplish my errand, and send the escape to the windows where my sisters and cousins were waiting.”

Nobody spoke for a few minutes, and then Raby remarked slowly—

“It was Lionel Benson who went for the escape and brought it.”

“Yes; Lionel came up in time to escort it. I was hardly in the costume for that part of the business. Well, he is quite welcome to the honour and glory. So long as you are all safe, I care for nothing else.”

A carriage presently drew up at the door, and one of May’s brothers came in, saying that the streets were getting quiet, and she could drive back safely now. Miss Adene and May were now the only guests left in the Cossarts’ drawing-room, and they bade a very warm adieu to their entertainers, drawn together by that common bond of sympathy which an experience such as had just been passed through quickly establishes.

“You must come and see us very soon,” said May to Sheila, “and tell us how Effie is. I’m afraid she will feel the shock.”

Sheila kissed her and Miss Adene affectionately, promised to ride over as soon as she could, and soon afterwards started off on foot with Oscar for Cossart Place, he having leave from his uncle to remain there over the Sunday if he were invited.

“For I don’t think any of you will be much good to-morrow,” said he, with a hand on Oscar’s shoulder. “It has been a bit of a shock to us all. Take a day off, and come back like a giant refreshed on Monday. Let us have word of poor little Effie. I hope it won’t throw her into a fever.”

Brother and sister went off contentedly together, and they could not but take a look into the open space round the Town Hall before starting out into the country.

The crowd was still large about it, but it was known now that no serious harm had been done to the building, and that there had been no loss of life, though a few persons had been injured, and many were suffering from the effects of fright and burns.

As they passed by the fire-station they saw the grimy face of the man who had come with the escape, and he, recognising them, put up his hand in salute, and said—

“The young lady none the worse, sir?”

“Not a bit,” answered Sheila, answering for herself; “you came and took us away before there was any real danger. Who was it told you about us up at the windows?”

“Mr. Benson, miss—Mr. Lionel, I should say. We might not have known about it but for him. We thought as everybody had come down and were getting out by the doors.”

“Was it not Mr. Cyril Cossart who first gave the alarm?”

The man grinned and shook his head.

“Bless you, miss, that young gentleman lost his head quite. They say he fought his way out like a madman, and lots of people saw him flying home in his white finery like a cat with a cinder on its back! No, no, missie, it was Mr. Lionel as brought us news of the folks at the windows. We musn’t be too hard on the people as loses their heads at such a time; but we likes better to see them behaving themselves rational like. It was fine the way the ladies in the hall behaved! They thought nothing of themselves, but all was for getting the little ’uns safely out. If they’d gone and lost their heads and made a rush, it would have been a terrible nasty business, and some of ’em had bound to be killed; but what with them behind and the police at the doors, it all went off beautiful, one might say.”

They talked a little more to the man and then went their way.

Sheila’s face wore an indignant flush. She said in a low voice to Oscar—

“I think I could have forgiven him the panic; he mightn’t be able to help that. But to tell that mean lie afterwards! Oh, I can never respect him again.”

Oscar was silent a few minutes, and then said slowly—

“I think, Sheila, that we had better try to forget it, and not to say anything to anybody else about it. It hurts people’s feelings if their next-of-kin are proved unworthy, and Cyril has been thought so much of at home. Perhaps in the confusion nobody will think much more about it. You know it is often the nearest relatives who do not hear the exact truth about a bit of a failure like that. We won’t be the people to talk of it. Our uncle and aunt have been very kind to us. We must remember that, and I think it would be a terrible trouble to Aunt Tom if she were to think——”

Oscar did not complete his sentence, and Sheila said quickly—

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“Isn’t it better for them to know the truth?”

“But perhaps it isn’t really the truth,” said Oscar, “I am not sure that a man should be judged for what he does in a time of panic——”

“No, but the lie afterwards——”

“Yes, that was bad; but think of the temptation to make some excuse for himself! Do you know I can fancy being tempted to it. He had always been thought so much of at home and in the town. To be branded as a coward! It would be almost unendurable.”

Sheila was silent; she felt that Cyril deserved the brand, and her youthful clearness of judgment made compromise difficult.

“Well, I won’t say anything if you don’t think I ought, but I can never like Cyril again. I shall always despise him.”

“We must not despise one another more than we can help,” said Oscar soberly. “You know, Sheila, we have so many faults ourselves. We ought to try and think of that.”

Sheila was accustomed to defer to Oscar’s judgment, and she was kindly by nature, though frank and candid. She did not see much good in hushing things up, but she promised not to speak herself of what the fireman had said. She rather hoped it would come out to some of the rest; she did not think that North would be easily deceived. He had been very indignant about Cyril’s conduct.

But upon reaching home the current of her thoughts was soon turned in another direction.

Effie was ill!

There was no gainsaying it this time. Fanciful she might be, and others for her, but the shock and the fright of the fire had been too much for her. She had lapsed into unconsciousness during the drive home with her father, and now, though put to bed and with the doctor in attendance, she had shown no signs of animation.

Sheila was not permitted to go up to the room, and glad was she that Oscar was with her. Suppose Effie should die! The thought sent the blood ebbing from Sheila’s cheeks.

“Oh, I wish I had cared more for her, I wish I had not been so selfish so often. Oscar, I begin to be afraid I am selfish. I do think first what I like myself, and then I try to invent reasons for doing it. I have so often left Effie alone and gone out riding, or doing things that amused me. Oh, I wish I hadn’t now!”

“I’m afraid we’re all rather like that,” answered Oscar. “I know I am. Perhaps things like this—that fire, and now Effie—are sent to pull us up and make us think. It came over me when for a moment one wondered whether there would be any getting out, how little one had done with one’s life. Perhaps it will help us to think more, Sheila. I’m sure I need it.”

“If you do, I do much more,” said Sheila; and they sat clinging together in the dusk, till at last the sound of steps and voices on the staircase roused them, and Sheila started up crying—

“Oh, there is the doctor. Let us go and ask him.”

He was coming down with Mrs. Cossart; she was looking greatly upset, but his face wore a look of grave cheerfulness, and they heard him say—

“Yes, she will want care—great care—for some time to come, but there is nothing to agitate yourself about—no probability of a return of that condition. Let her be kept perfectly quiet, and she will sleep right away now. What I have given her will ensure that. I will look in first thing to-morrow morning.”

Sheila stood trembling in the hall below, and hearing words which proved to her that Effie was better, she suddenly burst into tears and sobbed uncontrollably.

“Tut, tut,” said the doctor kindly, “what is the matter here?”

“She was upset to hear about her cousin’s illness,” said Oscar, answering for her. “She was in the Town Hall too, and I think we all got a fright, and coming home to hear of illness had upset her quite.”

“Send her to bed, send her to bed,” said the doctor kindly, “and keep her there till I come to-morrow. I can’t stay now. I am wanted in all directions at once. It has been a bad bit of business, but thank God things are wonderfully better than we might have looked to see.”

And the doctor went off in haste, being wanted, as he said, in half a dozen different directions, whilst Mrs. Cossart took Sheila in her arms, in an almost motherly embrace, for her tears over Effie’s illness had touched a chord of sympathy.

“Is dear Effie better?” sobbed Sheila.

“Yes, just a little; she’s come to herself, but he would not let her talk, and gave her an injection of morphia which sent her off to sleep. Perhaps she will wake up much better. And now, my dear, you must come to bed and tell me all about it, for I have not been able to hear anything, and I am all in a tremble still to think of you all—and my precious child—in the midst of such terrible danger.”

“And I don’t feel as though I could do anything,” cried Sheila, “till I have thanked God for saving us and for making Effie better.”

(To be continued.)

VARIETIES.

The Dishonest Servant.

A well-known firm in Edinburgh consisted of two partners, and to provide against dangers from fire and burglary it was made a stipulation in the deed of partnership that one or other of the heads of the firm should always sleep on the premises.

In the course of years this became rather an irksome restriction on their liberty, and in order to free themselves from it they agreed to take into partnership their manager, an old servant of the house, on condition that he should occupy the bedroom and so fulfil the requirements of the deed.

The old servant was naturally very much moved by this recognition of his services, but pleaded that he had not the necessary capital to qualify him for partnership. As to that it was only £500 that was required, and that the firm had decided to give him.

And so the matter was settled. The trusty servant became a partner and took possession of the room, and in it he was found dead next morning, having committed suicide.

He left behind him a letter in which he explained that all those years during which he had been so trusted by his employers, he had been robbing them, and their great kindness had so filled him with remorse that he could not live under it.

The Power of Music.

The late Dean Stanley was very fond of Jenny Lind, but when she stayed at his father’s palace at Norwich, he always left the room when she sang.

One evening Jenny Lind had been singing Handel’s “I know that my Redeemer liveth.” Stanley, as usual, had left the room, but he came back after the music was over, and went shyly up to the great singer.

“You know,” he said, “I dislike music. I don’t know what people mean in admiring it. I am very stupid, tone-deaf, as others are colour-blind. But,” he added, with some warmth, “to-night, when from a distance I heard you singing that song, I had an inkling of what people mean by music. Something came over me which I had never felt before; or, yes, I have felt it once before in my life.”

Jenny Lind was all attention.

“Some years ago,” he continued, “I was at Vienna, and one evening there was a tattoo before the palace performed by four hundred drummers. I felt shaken, and to-night while listening to your singing, the same feeling came over me. I felt deeply moved.”

“Dear man,” Jenny Lind used to say, when she told this story, “I know he meant well, and a more honest compliment I never received in all my life.”

Bad Temper.

“Of all bad things by which mankind are cursed

Their own bad temper surely is the worst.”

Cumberland.

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BOOKS BEFORE TRAVEL.

By DORA DE BLAQUIÈRE.

PART I.

nd even as I write this heading I feel my heart failing me somewhat. First the largeness of the subject before me is a cause of misgiving and next the thought of the many differing minds and impressions of the people who travel nowadays, and who, most of them, are of the generation of globe-trotters. These care more about covering the surface of the earth with their tracks, and are not in the least degree anxious about the culture that may be acquired in travel, and the nearly dormant condition of the intellect carried about with them in their peregrinations. Others who travel are eager to see, but have had in their past life neither the time nor the means to educate themselves for enjoyment; or they are too young to have had the opportunity to do so. We all meet with examples of these classes on our own travels, and there are few of us who have not, at some time, had cause to exclaim, “Good gracious! what on earth did these people come abroad for?” so little interest do they find or show in the beauties of nature or art which surround them. They are far more interested in their meals, the bills at the hotels, and the extortions of the shops, than in the finest pictures by Guido, or the loveliest and grandest view from a mountain-side.

But even while I write, this I know, that the earnest study of years and the reading of many books would hardly suffice to the knowing of it all; and we often have to be content with the careful reading of Baedeker or Murray, and the use of our eyes; and reserve the reading-up of the subject until we have reached home once more. Even then, we often do not know what to get in the way of reading, unless we have some direction to aid us. It is to help those who have time before starting, and those who desire to read up, as I have said, afterwards, that these articles are written, and if there be some shortcomings, some books left out, or others inserted that should not have been put in, it must be remembered that my views of what I personally want to prepare myself for a journey may not be your views; and that everyone is not interested in a special object. Therefore the list must be comprehensive, so as to take in all comers.

It always seems to me a good plan to start with the history of the country to which your steps are turned, because the chief interest of every land must naturally be derived from its past, from the people who made it what it is, and who lived in its buildings, on its lands, and worshipped in its temples. If the country in which we travel be our own England, we generally have learnt enough of its history to make the names of the actors in it household words; and the local histories have been carefully collected for us by the many archæological societies in all parts of England. So that we may, if we like, know all particulars of the styles of living, and the people, and manners of the past centuries. In England especially, men who lived in it made the interest of the land they lived in, and the same is true of Scotland. But in Ireland it was different, and there the land is the chief point of interest, and the interest is with legend more than with real people and things. If the Green Isle had only been fortunate enough to have a wizard-like Walter Scott to touch the scenery, and make it alive with people, what a change it would have worked for her to-day!

For a history of England we cannot do better than select Green’s History of the English People, which is not only history, but history written in a delightsome manner, and quite long enough to be interesting and concise enough not to fatigue the reader of any age. But if time be not an object to you, take Miss Strickland’s histories and read them through, every one of them, even including those of the Bachelor Kings. It may be the fashion to think her gossipy, but her gossip is worth anything in making you feel that the people of whom you read really lived, breathed, and walked the earth. Scott, Wordsworth, and Tennyson, Shakespeare, and Ossian; and in Ireland both Lever and Lover should bear you company, while the reminiscences of Dean Ramsay and Wilson will make you feel Edinburgh doubly delightful. In the far north, William Black has touched Thule and the Hebrides with the pen of romance; and Kingsley and Blackmore have done the same in the south, with Westward Ho! and Lorna Doone. And in London we walk with Thackeray and Dickens, on every side, from Piccadilly and Clubland to Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Fleet Street.

Beside the romancer we must also read Freeman’s English Towns and Districts and Fergusson’s Architecture, George Barrow’s Wild Wales, King’s Handbook of the Cathedrals, and Cassell’s Old and New London. Alfred Rimmer’s book on the Ancient Streets and Homesteads of England is most helpful, and I will end by remarking that you had better begin Ruskin, with, I think, the Elements of Drawing and the Lectures on Art.

In France we are very well off for books in all languages; but in the way of history, Guizot’s is rather a long business, and any shorter history which is available is less tiring, if you be not a rapid reader. Viollet le Duc will be a great delight to you, I am sure, and Hare’s Walks in Paris and Ways near Paris, and Eastlake’s Notes on the Louvre, with a good guide, should be enough for the capital. In the way of romance, you have Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame. Miss M. B. Edwards’ France of To-day, A Year in Western France, and Holidays in Eastern France are charming books, and so are Hamerton’s Round my House, Modern Frenchmen, and A Summer Voyage on the Saône. Miss Pardoe’s books on the Court of France are also well worth reading for the historical side of life.

Switzerland I have always thought most resembles England, in the interest of its history, and in the character of its people. In many ways it is the model country of Europe, for the Swiss are ever open to change and improvement, and to trying experiments in all the social walks of life into which many other greater nations would shrink from embarking. A book recently published on Social Switzerland gives a view of their charitable and other institutions, and shows this very clearly, and it is worth reading if you be interested in that side of the country. General Meredith Reade’s two great volumes of Vaud and Berne, deal entirely with the historical, descriptive, and family side of the country, and are very interesting. Foreigners have done much to make Switzerland delightful, and especially the English, for have we not that delightful Playground of Europe by Leslie Stephens, and J. A. Symonds’ Swiss Highlands, Tyndall’s Glaciers and Whymper’s Alps, to say nothing of a long series of most excellent guide-books, and histories, and the finest of poetry, beginning with Coleridge’s Hymn to Mont Blanc, and Byron’s Prisoner of Chillon.

There seems to be hardly a foot of this most delightful country that is without its interest, and its literature; and if we read French and German it is well worth the trouble to read Vinet, the philosopher and religious writer, and Amiel’s Diary, the saddest and most beautiful of records.

If you are interested in the flowers of the mountains, you have a delightful book by W. Robinson, Alpine Flowers; and The Alps in Winter are written of by Mrs. Main (Mrs. Fred Burnaby), and the many books on Davos Platz, and the Engadine, may all be found in any catalogue, if health be in question. If you were interested in geology, glaciers, and botany, you can study them with ease in Switzerland, as well as Lancastrian dwellings, and the last methods in tree-culture. As for schools, they abound, and the Swiss education is the best in the world, in its thoroughness and complete grounding in all subjects. Lately, too, it has been found worth while to study the Swiss army, and its manœuvres which take place every year in the month of September.

One of the European countries round which both history and literature have been making and growing is Holland; and for so small a country the amount of both is quite marvellous. It is all so interesting too, and most of it in our own tongue, so that we need not be professors in Dutch. The most delightful of all histories have been written for us by American hands, and no library is complete without Motley’s two great Dutch works, The Rise of the Dutch Republic and the History of the United Netherlands. The great Italian writer, Edmondo de Amicis, has written two books on Holland—Holland, and Holland and its People; and we have the charming volume on the Dead Cities of the Zuyder Zee, H. Taine’s Low Countries, and Holland and Germany, by J. P. Mahaffy and J. E. Rogers. In the “Story of the Nations” Series there is an excellent volume by J. E. T. Rogers, and there are several delightful tales published lately, with the Low Countries for a background. And we have made acquaintance with Maarten Maartens, the author of stories that are Dutch in their characters and surroundings.

You must bear in mind that the Netherlands means Holland and Belgium. For so small a portion of the earth, the history of Holland is most interesting; and we must remember that she was once the mistress of the seas. There is a popular history of the Great Dutch Admirals, by Jacob de Liefde, and he has also written Beggars, Founders of the Dutch Republic. Prescott’s work of Philip II. of Spain covers much the same ground as Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic, though from the point of view of Spain. In this connection, W. C. Robinson’s The Revolt of the Netherlands may be read. Holland claims to be the birthplace of printing, and advances the claims of Haarlem, in opposition to Mentz, and the record of the Elzevir presses at Leyden, Amsterdam, and the Hague is a very famous one. Lord Ronald Gower has written a Pocket Guide to the Art Galleries of Belgium and Holland, containing both the public and private galleries; and Kate Thompson has contributed a Handbook to the Picture Galleries{581} of Europe, while there are several very excellent guide-books in the ordinary way.

Now that Norway is so much visited, it would not be well to leave it out of the list of places to be seen, and read up before visiting. I think the most charming book I have ever read about it is Mrs. Stone’s Norway in June, which is quite as delightful as her Tenerife, and its Six Satellites. Round about Norway, by Charles W. Wood, is another pleasant volume; and Professor Boyesen’s History of Norway is one of the best-written of histories.

There are several best books on Sweden. The Land of the Midnight Sun, by Du Chaillu, and Under Northern Skies, by Charles W. Wood, are concerned with both countries; and in the way of romance, we have Frederica Bremer’s works, which are full of national colour. Paul du Chaillu has also written a delightful book called, The Viking Age, in two volumes, illustrated. The Story of Norway has been written also by Mrs. Arthur Sedgwick. In the way of Historical Biographies, there are many. Charles XII., Gustavus Vasa, Gustavus Adolphus, and the Thirty Years War; with that wonderful woman, Queen Christina, and Queen Caroline Matilda, who was the sister of George III.

The early history of Denmark is of course comprised in the history of Scandinavia generally; and the same may be said of Iceland and Greenland. An excellent Handbook of Runic Remains and Monuments, both in England and Scandinavia, has been written by Professor George Stephens, and these you should know something about in reference to both countries. The Danish novel Afraja, and Björnstjerne Björnson’s Stories and Norse Tales are well worth reading. Mrs. Alec. Tweedie has written A Girl’s Ride in Iceland, and a pleasant book about Finland. And there is the Ultima Thule of Sir Richard Burton, and The Story of Iceland, by Letitia MacColl. The Land of the North Wind, by E. Rae, and Under the Rays of the Aurora Borealis is a book written by a Dane, and translated. One of the most delightful books I ever read of, one of which a new edition was issued in 1887, is that entitled Letters from High Latitudes, by the Earl (now Marquis) of Dufferin; and there is a charming book by Baring Gould, on Iceland, its Sagas and Scenes. Iceland is a country which is more and more visited every year; but there are no more recent books than those I have mentioned.

We are so near to Russia that it seems foolish to pass it by, though I feel it is a difficult country to deal with. The history of Russia is dealt with in the “Story of the Nations” Series. Mr. A. J. C. Hare has given us Studies in Russia, and the R.T.S. a charming Russian Pictures drawn by Pen and Pencil. Mr. W. S. Ralston’s Songs of the Russian Peasantry contains an excellent account of the social life of Russia. In the way of poetry, the Rev. T. C. Wilson has translated for us Russian Lyrics into English Verse, which gives specimens of all the best recent poets, and there are translations of the works by most of the Russian novelists, as well as of Tolstoi’s books. But I do not feel inclined to advise you to enter on this troubled sea of thought. As a mere traveller you will not need to do so. Turner’s Studies in Russian Literature, and his Lectures on Modern Novelists of Russia, are quite enough for you, I fancy. The latter were delivered at the Taylor Institute, Oxford, and are pleasant and instructive, both. An Art Tour to the Northern Capitals of Europe, by Atkinson, includes those of St. Petersburg, Moscow and Kiel.

In Germany the poets are our best travelling companions. I remember Nuremberg best through the medium of Longfellow, and its history through the historical tales of Mühlbach, Auerbach, and Marlitt. The Baroness Tautpheous, the Howitts, and even Hans Christian Andersen, and Grimm, have all, too, lent a magic to the land. The literature that has arisen with Wagner and Bayreuth, for a centre, is very wide, and begins with the Arthurian Legends and the Nibelungen-Lied. Of the first you will have some knowledge from our own Tennyson and the Idylls of the King, even if you do not go as far as the Mabinogion, which was edited and translated by Lady Charlotte Guest, of which there is an abridged edition. We have a translation of the Nibelungen-Lied by W. N. Lettsom, and another by A. G. Foster-Barham, in the “Great Musicians” Series. Wagner is written by Dr. F. Hueffer, who has also written Wagner and the Music of the Future. There is a volume to be obtained at Bayreuth of all the operas given there, which you will most likely procure, if you should be led there any August to assist at the Wagner festival.

For Austria we have several delightful fellow-travellers. Amelia B. Edwards, in Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys, deals with the Dolomite region; a more recent book is Robertson’s Through the Dolomites; and there are two books by W. A. Grohman on Tyrol and the Tyrolese, and Gaddings with a Primitive People. Victor Tissot’s Unknown Hungary has been translated from the French, and the little-known Dalmatia has been dealt with by Mr. T. G. Jackson. C. W. Wood has written In the Black Forest. There are several modern books on Bismarck and his master, the Emperor William I., and also on Imperial Germany, and you should choose the most recent of these. There is an illustrated book, by K. Stieler, called the Rhine from its Source to the Sea, which has been translated and is very interesting. As a general thing, the guide-books are so many and so various, dealing with health, baths and spas, and the various artists, musicians, battle-fields, and seats of learning, that unless you were looking up any special subject, they will give all the information you require for travelling in the Fatherland.

In the way of extended literature, you may read, if you like, Helen Zimmern’s Half-hours with Foreign Novelists, and in the way of distant travels there is, to me, the ever-fascinating Ida Pfeiffer, that wonderful German woman, whose wanderings were worldwide, and the contents of whose purse was microscopic at all times. Mrs. Bird, Miss Gordon Cumming, Lady Brassey, Miss Kingsley, and that delightful Miss Gates, who is quite the equal of Madame Pfeiffer in her fearless and adventurous spirit, are all worth reading. James Gilmore, as a writer and traveller, is so delightful that one feels the deepest regret at his early death. Mr. and Mrs. Pennell are always excellent companions, whether they travel to the Hebrides or take a Sentimental Journey through France; or one nearer home, On the Stream of Pleasure; The Thames from Oxford to London, or Play in Provence. They are the pioneers in cycling, for the tourist, and have steadily ridden from the days of the tricycle, till it has been eclipsed by a more rapid machine.

{582}

“OUR HERO.”

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

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Rapid travelling, ninety years ago, was a comparative term, but Ivor performed the journey as fast as relays of horses could convey a post-chaise to the coast, and as quickly as contrary winds would allow him to cross the Channel.

He sent no warning of his approach. A letter could not go with greater speed than Denham went himself. Now that he was actually on the road to Polly, each hour’s delay became all but insupportable. Six long years since he had said good-bye for one fortnight to Polly! Would she be altered—as much as he himself was altered?

It was a cold day, late in spring, when he found himself at the front door of the Bryces’ comfortable mansion. The old butler opened to Denham, as once before to Roy, but this time Drake was not taken in. One glance—and his face changed.

“Sir!”

“You know me? I hardly thought you would.” Ivor grasped kindly the old retainer’s hand. “I am taking you all by surprise.”

“It is a surprise indeed, sir. And I’m heartily glad to see you again. Not but what you ain’t looking as you should, sir. Them furrin parts haven’t suited you, I’m thinkin’.”

“Captivity has not suited me. And I have travelled hard, and taken little rest. But the old country will put me right. Who is in?”

“My mistress, sir, is in the drawing-room, and Miss Keene and Miss Baron. I was about to take in lights.”

“Wait till I have gone in. And Drake, you can announce me, but don’t say my name so that it can be heard.”

Drake obeyed to the letter. He threw open the drawing-room door, and mumbled something inaudible. Denham entered, bowing ceremoniously.

“You can bring lights, Drake,” said Mrs. Bryce. The room was dark, and the fire had fallen low.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m excessive glad to see you, sir,” Mrs. Bryce declared cordially, after a hurried whisper to Polly, “Who did he say, my dear? Oh, well, ’tis easy to see—he’s one of the military. A soldier home from the wars.” Then she turned to Ivor with her welcome. “Mr. Bryce is away, I’m sorry to say, but doubtless you can await his return, and Mr. Baron will be in this minute.”

Ivor had some difficulty in recognising his friend Roy under this designation. Polly was casting half-shy glances at him. Something in the outline of his figure, dim though the light was, brought Denham to her mind, but it was not until he spoke that her colour changed fast from pink to white and from white to pink.

“I shouldn’t be surprised to be informed, sir, that you are but just home from the war,” said Mrs. Bryce.

“I have not been fighting, I regret to say. My turn for that will no doubt come. I have been long a prisoner.”

“And you have obtained your release?”

“The Emperor has consented to my return.”

Mrs. Bryce held up both hands.

“That is excessive gracious of him, truly. You are more fortunate than many. Roy Baron was not so well off, and he had to make his escape. But he has been since in the Campaign in Portugal and Spain under our great Commander, Sir John Moore. A truly melancholy story that, sir,—yet he died as a soldier would choose to die, covered with glory. And Roy—Mr. Baron, I should say—is now back with us for a little space; and we, his friends, fondly think he has done well. But will you allow me to offer you cake and wine? You have a very tired look. What can Drake be about not to bring the lights?” Mrs. Bryce’s hand was on the bell.

Denham was gazing earnestly towards Polly, so earnestly that she could not but return the gaze. A thrill ran through her, for there was no mistaking that voice. Molly took upon herself to put a pointed question:

“Have you come from Verdun, sir, if I might ask?”

“Pray take a seat, sir,” Mrs. Bryce was reiterating. She might as well have spoken to stone walls.

“I am straight from Verdun,” Ivor replied to Molly’s query. “As I am fain to think Miss Keene has already divined.”

Polly dropped a curtsey and said nothing. It was not for her to make any first move. Nobody could hear how her heart fluttered.

“Then, sir, doubtless you will bring messages for us all from the unfortunate prisoners there detained,” said Mrs. Bryce, not yet grasping his identity with one of those prisoners.

Drake at this moment carried in the lights, and Roy, entering with him, cried out in astonishment.

“Den! Why, ’tis Den himself! Can it be in very truth? Den, dear fellow!”—nearly wringing Ivor’s hands off with the energy of his welcome.

Pre-occupied though Ivor was with Polly, his gaze rested with satisfaction upon “his friend Roy.” The boy who had left Verdun for the dungeons of Bitche was a man now, broad-shouldered, well-built and soldier-like, frank as ever in manner, yet with a certain something in the young face, which told not only of endurance, but of the touch of sorrow. At the present moment, however, Roy’s look was all sunshine.

“I am glad, Den, more glad than words can say. Little I dreamt who I should find in here! And you’re free! But how is it? How has that come about? You don’t say old Boney has let you off! Of his own free will? I wouldn’t have given the old chap credit for so much generosity. What made him do such a thing? Lucille? No! Bravo, Lucille!”

Nobody else had a chance of being heard. Mrs. Bryce exclaimed and talked in vain. Polly and Molly waited. Roy’s eager questions had to be answered, before Denham was allowed to turn elsewhere.

Then came a change of manner and a lowering of voice.

“I shall have no end of things to tell you, things he said of you too, Den. Ay, I know”—at a slight gesture. “Another time. Yes, by-and-by. But you’ve seen accounts of the battle. That charge of the Reserve through the valley wasn’t bad! French column tried to turn our flank, you know. We did just knock ’em into a cocked hat and no mistake. The column just simply ceased to exist.”

Molly tried to put in a word, and was baffled.

“You’ll be as furious as I am at some of the comments in the papers. The utter ignoramuses! What about? Why, the state of our Army getting back from Spain. I should think the poor fellows were scarecrows, after all they’d gone through. Small wonder either! The scarecrows made the enemy give an uncommon good account of ’emselves at Coruña, all the same. But people here seem to think an Army can walk through a Campaign, and come back every inch as spick and span as when it left British shores. Much they know about the matter! And if shoes did wear out, and our fellows got back barefoot, whose fault was that but the fault of those who made the shoes at home?”

So much Roy poured out impulsively. Then he stopped. A consciousness had broken upon him of something unsatisfactory, something impending. Denham’s face was to him as an open book, and he saw written there more things than one. One thing that he saw made him turn sharply to Polly, as she stood a little way off, prettily composed. Was this the meeting of the two, after six years of enforced separation?

Roy recalled his talk with Polly on his return from Bitche, and in a flash he read the true state of affairs. He looked hard at each in turn.

“Polly, didn’t I tell you? He has come back.”

Polly stirred slightly.

“You understand? ’Tis Den himself.”

It was necessary for Polly to answer.

“Captain Ivor is indeed most fortunate to have obtained his release,” she said, adjusting her scarf.

“Fortunate to have obtained his release!” repeated Roy slowly.

Then he acted, with a decision and promptitude worthy of his vocation in life. A gesture ordered Molly to make herself scarce. Seizing Mrs. Bryce by the arm, he dragged away that astonished lady, reserving explanations till they were outside the room. After which he poured forth profuse apologies, but would allow no re-entrance, literally setting his back against the door.

(To be concluded.)

{583}

ON SOME POINTS OF DEPORTMENT IN SINGING.

I hope you who read these words will not think that I am encouraging the vanity of which we all, girls and boys too, possess a certain amount, in giving a few suggestions which may help to dispel some of the awkwardness so often shown by the young and inexperienced vocalist.

How often, usually at the moment of going on the platform at some small amateur concert, have I heard the cry, “Oh, I must have a piece of music to hold in my hand!” from some nervous young singer, oppressed by the feeling that she is all hands and has nowhere to hide them!

How often has a pretty song, tastefully sung, been spoiled by a wriggling of the shoulders, or a rocking of the body from side to side most irritating to behold!

How often has a song “breathing of scent and flowers,” of love and spring-time, been warbled with a forbidding scowl and wrinkled forehead—the expression of the whole face suggesting some hidden agony rather than interpreting the spirit of the composition!

All these things are most distracting to a listener and detract considerably from the effect of the performance; and a little trouble and study, combined with the assistance of your good and true friend the looking-glass, will do much to improve matters.

Let us take the three points I have mentioned in their order.

First the hands. Clasp them loosely in front of you and then forget all about them! Make a point of practising it whenever you are fortunate enough to obtain an accompanist to play for you, or when you are having your singing lessons. Commit your song to memory so as to dispense with the music, stand away from the pianoforte, avoid propping yourself against the wall or leaning upon the furniture, stand easily, and let your hands clasp naturally and comfortably.

Now for the wriggling. Any of you who have had your photograph taken must remember the unpleasant little arrangement which the photographer sticks behind your head to keep it still; and some of you may have protested against the discomfort and unnaturalness of it and have appealed to be allowed to pose without it, only to get the answer that it is indispensable, as the head moves constantly, though not enough to be noticed, yet sufficiently to spoil any exposure longer than an instantaneous one. And yet the person being photographed is apparently motionless! Now watch someone who is telling some exciting news or some funny story, and you will see that the head moves with every word spoken—the more emphasis, the more movement!

I remind you of these things in order to show you how very necessary movement is to us and how, naturally, the head moves in speech rather than the body.

If you carefully watch a confirmed wriggler, you will notice that, though the body sways or the shoulders move, the head is very rigid and is usually held very high, and altogether the position looks constrained and awkward, and it has a disastrous effect upon the voice, for all these little awkwardnesses and uglinesses mean that there is a corresponding unnaturalness of production, and the memorable maxim in the Koran, that “there are many roads to Heaven, but only one gate,” applies forcibly to singing, in the respect that the only true singer is he who produces his voice with the most ease and simplicity (though that may have only been acquired by the hardest study) quite irrespective of the particular method by which he has been taught.

There is one great drawback which we must take into consideration from which all singers suffer more or less, and which is at the root of most of these faults of “deportment” and of this one in particular, and it is this.

A certain amount of nervousness is inseparable from singing, whether we sing to just one or two chosen friends or before a large concert audience, and even when we won’t confess to “feeling nervous,” we cannot escape from another form of it and a very trying one—self-consciousness. And the usual result of self-consciousness is to seize upon the muscles of the throat, to cramp and contract them till the head is held as if in a vice, so that the voice comes hard and strained; and as the natural movement of the head is prevented by this rigidity, Nature (who never stands still) asserts herself by giving the necessary movement to the body instead; hence the wriggling of the shoulders and the rocking from side to side.

In this case prevention is better than cure, and the best thing to do is to practise diligently moving the head from side to side whilst singing, especially when practising exercises. Do not raise it high, and avoid the inclination to raise it as the voice rises to the higher notes; but move it freely and constantly from side to side. At first you will find this very awkward, and it will seem terribly unnatural and ridiculous; but persevere, and you will find that not only your appearance will be improved, but your voice will come easily and your throat will not get that aching, tired feeling of which so many complain after singing for quite a few minutes, and which is due to the contraction of the throat and the constrained position of the head.

For the third point, facial expression, I commend you to your looking-glass. Indeed, the greater part of your study should be done with its assistance. First to be assured that your mouth is open, then to watch that no grimaces appear, no pucker between the brows, no opening the mouth crookedly, no blinking of the eyelids. Try to let your expression vary as freely as it does when you are talking.

Remember you have only your face to assist you. A reciter can call gesture to her aid; but a singer does not want to do anything that might bring down upon her the accusation of being “theatrical.” She wants to stand quietly and naturally, her hands folded, her head rather low, and tell her story, her face changing with the changes of her song.

But bear in mind that all these things which come naturally to us when we are not thinking about them or about ourselves become unnatural when we are struggling in the grasp of the demon self-consciousness, and it is for that reason that I conclude these hints with the paradoxical reminder that as the unstudied and natural usually looks constrained and unnatural, our aim must be to learn artificially and to practise incessantly to look natural.

Florence Campbell Perugini.

{584}

“AFTERNOON TEA;” A CHAT OVER THE TEACUPS.

By AMY S. WOODS.

Within the last twenty years the simple but most popular meal known by the name of “afternoon tea” has become a prominent feature in domestic and social life.

“Afternoon tea!” The very words suggest to our minds pleasant visions of cosy fireside tea and talk on winter afternoons, or lazy enjoyment of the “cup that cheers” under the welcome shade of some spreading tree in drowsy summer-time.

True, the institution of this meal has been much condemned of late. We are told that women drink far more tea than is good for them and are growing more nervous in consequence; while the sterner sex complain that the enjoyment of their dinner is spoiled by their previous indulgence in the dainties of the tea-table.

Nevertheless, I think even those who cavil most at the evil influence of tea and its accompanying delicacies would, in their hearts, be sorry to witness the abolition of a meal which has won the support of so large a section of English society, from royalty downwards.

AFTERNOON TEA.

To those who are weary of formal entertainments, it comes as a boon and a blessing, while to those whose love of social pleasures is larger than their purse it is even more welcome, as it enables them to entertain their friends more frequently, with but little of the cost and trouble which more elaborate social gatherings involve. And it is to this latter class of afternoon-tea devotees that I dedicate the following recipes and suggestions.

It is easy for dwellers in London or other large towns to obtain a nice variety of cakes and biscuits wherewith to grace their tea-tables; but those who live in country villages are less fortunate, and are sometimes sadly conscious of lack of variety in the cakes they can make or procure. I hope therefore that the recipes here given will be acceptable to all those who are willing to spend a little care and trouble in carrying them out. Most of them are capable of further variation, and clever heads and fingers will devise artistic and dainty decorations and ornamentations for themselves, the result of which will be that their cakes will be quite as beautiful to look upon, and probably more beautiful to eat than those supplied by a fashionable confectioner.

One thing must be remembered by all aspiring cake-makers, viz., that dainty cakes and biscuits require time, care, and patience in their production, and cakes that are hurriedly made are seldom satisfactory. Another point to be remembered is that afternoon tea is not a substantial meal, so that we must endeavour to have all our dishes as dainty and elegant as possible both in their composition and manner of serving.

We cannot perhaps all boast of silver or Sheraton tea-trays, or of Dresden or Worcester china; but a plain linen or small-patterned damask cloth embroidered with a large initial, and either prettily hemstitched or edged with Torchon lace, will hide all the deficiencies of our tea-tray, and now that such pretty Coalport china can be bought at such a reasonable price, no one need be without a charming tea-set.

In arranging the china and linen for afternoon tea, it will be well to remember that coloured china looks best upon a white cloth or upon a cream-coloured one embroidered in silks or flax threads to match the colours in the china, while for use with plain white or white-and-gold china a cloth of art linen, in plain blue, yellow or pink, with white embroidery is most suitable.

Nor need any hostess lament over her scarcity of small silver table appointments in the way of teapot and cream jugs and sugar basins, for a china teapot and hot-water jug and the sweet wee cream jugs and tiny basins now sold to match almost every stock pattern{585} of china, look quite as dainty and artistic as their more imposing silver brethren.

See that your bread-and-butter is delicately thin, and that it and your cakes and sandwiches are served upon dainty doyleys of fringed damask, and if you provide two small plates, one with brown and one with white bread-and-butter, they will be found more convenient to hand about than one large plate.

When there is only a small party, the use of a luncheon tray, with three divisions, will save trouble in handing cakes, etc., and, be it whispered, these same trays are also convenient when your stock of cake is low, as small pieces of cake which could not possibly attain to the dignity of the cake-basket, will make quite an imposing appearance if cut in slices and arranged in one division of the tray, with some biscuits in the second and some carefully-rolled bread-and-butter in the third.

No doubt all my readers are acquainted with the silver or electro-plated handles which are now sold for attaching to cake and bread-and-butter plates, and a very convenient invention too; but should your means preclude your indulgence in these luxuries, do not, I pray you, be inveigled into buying the substitutes made of a sort of millinery arrangement of wire, ribbon, and artificial flowers. They soon become shabby and tawdry, while even when they can boast of pristine freshness the idea of ribbon and artificial flowers in such close proximity to eatables is to my mind at once incongruous and inartistic.

In cutting bread-and-butter or sandwiches, a loaf at least twenty-four hours old should be used, as it is impossible to obtain a satisfactory result with new bread. Servants, it may be noted, are as a rule far too liberal with the butter, which they often leave in lumps in any holes there may be in the surface of the bread; and should the bread be cut as thin as it ought to be, the butter will probably work its way through to the other side with very unpleasantly greasy results.

And now for the recipes themselves, and as savoury sandwiches—and, indeed, sandwiches of every kind—are always favourites we will have a friendly chat concerning them before passing on to cakes and biscuits.

For the foundation of all sandwiches, we must use evenly cut, and not too liberally buttered, bread, and be very careful that our seasoning is generously used, but with discretion. To crunch a lump of salt in a sandwich is by no means a pleasant experience.

Cress Sandwiches, though always appreciated, are simplicity itself. Carefully wash and thoroughly dry the cress, arrange on slices of bread-and-butter, sprinkle with salt, and, after pressing the covering slices firmly down, cut into two-inch squares and pile on a doyley, garnishing with tiny bunches of cress.

Watercress Sandwiches are made in the same way, using only the leaves, which must be most carefully washed in salt and water. Most people consider the addition of a little mayonnaise sauce a great improvement, and the following will be found a simple but excellent way to make it:

Rub the yolk of a hard-boiled egg very smooth, adding a good pinch of salt, a grain or two of cayenne pepper, and a quarter of a teaspoonful of made mustard; then add alternately, and drop by drop, lest the sauce should curdle, one tablespoonful of vinegar and two of salad oil, and one tablespoonful of very thick cream. Use a wooden spoon for the mixing, and do not make the sauce too liquid or it will ooze through the sandwiches.

Chicken Sandwiches, made with a little finely pounded chicken with a layer of watercress or lettuce and a little mayonnaise, are excellent.

Cucumber Sandwiches are always welcome in hot weather. Soak the slices of cucumber in some well-seasoned vinegar for two or three hours before using, turning it frequently. Cut the bread round each slice of cucumber with a small round pastry-cutter and garnish with parsley. A little dab of mayonnaise in each sandwich is a great improvement.

Shrimp Sandwiches are delicious. From a pint of shrimps, pick out a few of the largest with which to garnish your sandwiches, shell the remainder and allow them to get thoroughly hot over the fire (but not to boil) in a quarter of a pound of fresh butter, or two ounces of butter and two tablespoonfuls of thick cream, and a discreet seasoning of salt and pepper. Pound the mixture in a mortar until perfectly smooth, and then spread upon either white or brown bread-and-butter, and cut the sandwiches into rounds. A dariole or tiny pudding-mould with a crimped edge answers capitally for the purpose. Pile upon a doyley and garnish with the shrimps upon some fresh parsley.

Crab or lobster paste prepared in the same way but with the addition of a little mustard and vinegar, and no cream, makes excellent sandwiches.

Anchovy Sandwiches are made in the same way, using a good brand of anchovy paste instead of the shrimp mixture. If you have plenty of eggs at command, the hard-boiled yolks of two, pounded to a paste with two ounces of butter and a tablespoonful of anchovy paste, will make a superior sandwich.

Egg Sandwiches are filled with the same paste of pounded eggs, well seasoned, but without the anchovy; another ounce of butter or two tablespoonfuls of cream is an improvement in this case.

So much for sandwiches; the eight varieties I have mentioned will serve as a foundation from which clever housekeepers will devise numerous other kinds. Almost any scraps of shell-fish, game, or poultry, can be pounded and used as I have described, and if the seasoning is all that it should be, and the sandwiches are delicately made and served, they will always find some appreciative mortals to enjoy them!

And now to turn our attention to the cakes and biscuits, which I hope my fair readers will make with their own dainty hands, and thus ensure success, even if it be evolved from early failures.

Before passing on to the actual recipes, will they accept six general hints as to successful cake-making?

Firstly (as I have said before)—Give yourself time, and do not hurry or slur over any part of the process.

Secondly—Be sure your oven is at the right temperature before you put in your cakes. A quick oven is best for buns and small cakes, and a tolerably quick one to raise large cakes, and then the heat must be lowered and kept at a regular temperature to bake them through. When a cake has risen, lay a sheet of buttered paper over the top to prevent it blackening. To ascertain if a cake is sufficiently baked, plunge a clean knife or skewer through the centre; if it comes out clean and dry the cake is baked, if sticky, it requires further baking.

Thirdly—Be very careful that your cake-tins or moulds are thoroughly clean and well greased. Line your plain tins with well-greased plain paper, not printed. The tins for small cakes such as queen cakes should be sprinkled with flour and castor sugar after they are buttered.

Fourthly—Use only the best flour, and see that it is well dried, sifted, and warmed before using. Clean currants and sultanas with flour on a sieve; this not only cleans them but prevents them from sinking in the cake.

Fifthly—Before commencing to mix your cake, be sure your tins are ready, and that you have round you all your ingredients weighed and prepared, so that you may not have to leave your cake unfinished while you fetch something you have forgotten. All cakes but those made with yeast should be baked directly the mixing is finished.

Sixthly—Do not be disheartened if your first attempt to make a new cake is a failure. We too often forget that success is frequently the outcome of many failures.

Before giving any recipes for fancy cakes, let me advise you to give the following recipes for “Sally Lunns” and “Tea Cakes made with yeast,” a trial.

For the former, mix half a teaspoonful of salt in a pound of flour, and add three tablespoonfuls of sugar. Melt half an ounce of butter in half a pint of new milk, and when milk-warm pour it over half an ounce of German yeast. Add a well-beaten egg and a little grated nutmeg. Stir lightly into the flour with a wooden spoon, cover with a cloth and set it in a warm place to rise; then bake from fifteen to twenty minutes in a quick oven. Some well-greased hoops are best to use for baking Sally Lunns, and the cakes should be brushed over with some beaten egg before they are quite baked. To serve, split each one into three slices, toast a delicate brown, butter and cut each slice in two, place together and serve on a very hot plate.

For Tea Cakes take two pounds of flour, half a teaspoonful of salt, quarter of a pound of butter or lard, and three ounces of sugar, with a few currants or sultanas if liked. Mix half an ounce of German yeast with three-quarters of a pint of warm milk and one egg. Rub the butter into the flour, and add the other dry ingredients, mix in the liquid part and knead lightly, and then set to rise. When sufficiently light divide into round cakes, place on a baking-sheet and allow them to remain a few minutes longer to rise again before baking. They will require from a quarter to half an hour in a good oven. They may either be split open, buttered, and eaten while hot, or toasted in the same way as Sally Lunns. The great culinary authority, M. Soyer, recommends that after toasting cakes or hot buttered toast, each piece should be cut through separately and then placed together, as when the whole is divided at once the pressure needed to force the knife down to the plate, forces the butter into the lowest slice, which is often swimming in grease while the upper slices are comparatively dry.

And now we will turn our attention to a few cakes which I can cordially recommend. Let us take Cherry Cake to commence with. For this you will require six ounces of flour, three ounces of butter, three ounces of castor sugar, two eggs, the grated rind of half a lemon, two ounces of crystallised or glacé cherries and a teaspoonful of baking-powder. Slightly warm but do not oil the butter, beat it to a cream with the sugar and lemon, add the eggs, well beaten, then the flour and cherries (cut in halves), and lastly the baking-powder. Whisk thoroughly, pour into a paper-lined tin and bake from three-quarters to half an hour. Another plan is to bake the cake in a Yorkshire pudding tin, and when baked to cover the top with pink icing, made with the white of an egg beaten up till fairly liquid but not frothy, and mixed very smoothly with sufficient icing sugar to make a smooth paste. You will find the readiest way of doing this is to use a wooden spoon on a dinner-plate, holding the bowl of the spoon with the fingers; a little practice and patience are needed to make the icing perfectly smooth, but remember one lump spoils the appearance of the icing. Add a few drops of cochineal and a few drops of vanilla flavouring, and spread the icing evenly over the top of the cake{586} with a paper knife or dessert knife; a steel one must not be used. Take off any drops that may run over the sides of the cake and divide it in two pieces while the icing is wet, then dry at the mouth of the oven.

For Orange Cake take the weight of three eggs in butter, sugar and flour, the grated rind and strained juice of an orange, or two, if small, and a teaspoonful of baking-powder. Make and bake the cake in exactly the same way as the preceding one, but if iced, use white icing, or colour it with a little grated orange-rind and juice, using orange-juice to flavour it.

Madeira Cake is made in the same way and with the same proportions, but the orange is of course omitted and some finely-sliced lemon or candied peel substituted as a flavouring, or a little essence of vanilla.

For various kinds of cake you cannot have a better foundation than by taking the weight of as many eggs as you wish to use, in flour, butter and sugar, and then adding the various flavourings and a teaspoonful, more or less, according to the number of eggs, of baking-powder.

Desiccated cocoanut makes a nice change if Cocoanut Cake is desired, or, if you do not mind the trouble of grating it, the fresh cocoanut is of course superior. After the cake is baked brush the top over with a little white of egg and scatter some of the cocoanut upon it.

Twelve delicious little Rice Cakes may be made by taking one egg and its weight in sugar and butter, half its weight in ground rice and half in wheaten flour. When mixing add the rice after the flour, and also a few drops of flavouring or the grated rind of half a lemon. Bake in small tins in a quick oven for ten minutes. If two or more eggs are used and the other ingredients increased in proportion an excellent cake can be made.

Almond Buns are also nice. For these take half a pound of flour, six ounces of butter, six ounces of castor sugar, four ounces of almonds blanched and chopped, and a teaspoonful of baking-powder. Mix together the butter, sugar, eggs and flour, add the almonds and baking-powder last, form into buns and bake on a buttered tin for twenty minutes.

Queen Cakes are always favourites but require careful making and the proper heart-shaped tins to bake them in. Prepare the tins as previously directed by buttering them very thoroughly and sprinkling with castor sugar and flour. Then take three eggs, their weight in fresh butter, sugar, flour, and currants, and the grated rind of a lemon. Cream the butter and sugar together, add the eggs, fruit, and a pinch of salt, then the flour and half a teaspoonful of baking-powder, and lastly a small wineglassful of good brandy. Whisk thoroughly, shake off any loose flour or sugar from the tins, fill them three parts full of the mixture and hit each one sharply on the table before putting in the oven. Bake for twenty minutes.

Genoese Pastry is also popular, but cannot be made in a hurry. Take half a pound of butter, half a pound of castor sugar, half a pound of flour, the yolks of two eggs and the yolks and whites of two more eggs, and half a teaspoonful of baking-powder. Mix thoroughly, spread evenly over sheets of buttered paper placed in Yorkshire pudding tins, smooth over with a knife dipped in boiling water, and bake twenty minutes in a moderate oven, but keep the cake a pale brown colour.

While it is baking prepare some icing as directed for cherry cake, using the two whites of egg left over from the cake. Divide into two portions on two plates, colouring one pink and leaving the other white; flavour the former with a little raspberry syrup, or juice from some jam, and the latter with vanilla, lemon, or a little maraschino liqueur. Dissolve half an ounce of grated chocolate with two tablespoonfuls of water and stir it over the fire till thoroughly smooth and liquid, adding two or three lumps of sugar. If you have not a forcing bag with which to ornament your icing, or if you are not an adept in the use of it, provide yourself with a few crystallised cherries, blanched almonds, chopped pistachio nuts, and pink and white comfits with which to decorate your cakes. How they shall be decorated I leave to your own artistic minds to decide—only reminding you that almonds, pistachio nuts or a neat pattern of pink and white icing, or a border of alternate pink and white comfits are most suitable for decorating chocolate icing, while cherries and pink sugar look best on white, and almonds and white sugar on pink. A very speedy and effective decoration is to sprinkle white grated cocoanut on your pink cakes, and a mixture of pink (coloured with cochineal) and pale green (coloured with spinach juice) on white icing, using a mixture of all three colours on the chocolate. The study of the cakes in some high-class confectioner’s will help you here. When the cake is baked lift it by the paper on to a clean pastry-board, remove the paper, divide each slab of cake across, and then split it open. On one piece put raspberry jam and press the other half upon it while hot; on another marmalade, on the third apricot, and on the last strawberry or pineapple. Pour over the apricot cake your chocolate icing, and while still hot cut into strips about two and a half inches wide, and then cut again slantwise across the strips so as to form diamond-shaped pieces. Then place them at the mouth of the oven to dry, while you proceed in the same way with your other cakes. Be careful to use your pink icing with the red jam, and white with the yellow. When partially dry the decorations must be added, otherwise they will not adhere to the icing, and then the cakes must be again dried until the icing will not take the impression of the finger when pressed upon it.

Scotch Shortbread is a favourite with many people, though hardly to be commended to the notice of dyspeptic sufferers. The following recipe for it, given to me by a Scotchwoman, will be found a very good one.

One pound of flour, four ounces of ground rice, one pound and a quarter of butter, three-quarters of a pound of sugar, a little candied peel, and a pinch of salt. Beat the butter to a cream, add the sugar, and very gradually sift in the flour and rice; work with the hands till quite smooth and divide into six pieces. Put each piece on a sheet of paper and roll out to the thickness of half an inch, prick it all over, lay on it the pieces of candied peel, pinch the edges, and bake in a moderate oven from twenty minutes to half an hour.

Fancy Biscuits can be made at home, and will be found quite equal in taste and appearance to the more expensive kinds sold in the shops. Care must be taken that the oven is not too hot as they will not look well if they are browned; and the flour and sugar used for them must be very finely sifted and thoroughly dry. To make four varieties of these biscuits at once, take one pound of fresh butter and cream it with half a pound of castor sugar, and add two well-beaten eggs. When well whisked divide the mixture into four basins. Divide also a pound of fine flour into four parts. To the contents of the first basin add a quarter of a pound of flour and two tablespoonfuls of ground ginger. Mix well. Turn on to a floured board, roll out to the thickness of a quarter of an inch, cut out with a small pastry-cutter or the top of a wineglass, place a piece of candied peel or a preserved cherry on each, and bake on a sheet of buttered paper laid on a baking tin for about twenty minutes. Proceed in the same way with the second portion, but instead of the ginger add the grated rind and juice of an orange, and if needed, a tablespoonful more flour. To the third division add half a teaspoonful of vanilla flavouring, and ornament the top of each biscuit with a little pink and white icing after baking. If the biscuits are made stiff they will keep their shape well in the baking, and may be cut into various fancy patterns such as ivy leaves, stars, diamonds, etc. Ivy leaves with the veins put on in white or pink icing are very pretty. To the last basin add one ounce of finely-chopped almonds, and make the biscuits oval in form with two strips of blanched almonds on the top. Walnuts may be used instead of almonds, in which case I should make the biscuits in the shape of a half walnut shell with half a peeled walnut on the flat part. These would require to be made very stiff. Chocolate icing is very nice to put on vanilla biscuits.

And now space warns me that our chat over the tea-table must come to an end. I hope that the few simple recipes I have given will be found both good and economical. Too economical perhaps for some of my friends, but I would remind all who wish for richer cakes that in the many excellent cookery-books, both French and English, now published, they will find recipes which cannot fail to win their most cordial appreciation. Yet in all humility I venture to hope these few hints of mine may win a meed of fainter praise from those who, appreciating dainty cookery, have yet to study economy in their household management.

{587}

THE HOUSE WITH THE VERANDAH.

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

CHAPTER XI.

A MOTHER AT HOME.

his holiday season is bad for advertisements,” Miss Latimer decided. “I fear you must give another trial to registry offices. Other methods take time, especially private recommendations among shopkeepers or acquaintances—which is the best. You have only a week in which to make your arrangements. But do not go again to great registry offices, which let down their nets in wide waters, and catch many queer fish. I know a little quiet registry about midway between this house and my lodgings. Not a big professional place, my dear, but a shop. I suppose the registry is little more than an adjunct to the shop. But when I pass, I see a great many young women going in and out.”

“Should I have to go there to meet them?” asked Lucy, with a look of repugnance.

“Oh, dear, no,” Miss Latimer answered. “That is not done save in the big offices, unless an appointment is desired by some mistress from the country. Young women who seem likely to suit are sent to wait upon you in your house. If you decide on this, you can go there and give instructions to-morrow morning; I can keep house and look after Hugh during your absence. I wish I could give you better advice, but I think you must avail yourself of this for the present urgent necessity.”

Lucy accepted the counsel. She found the address Miss Latimer gave her. It was in one of the long roads which skirt the centre of London—roads which were rural once, and where, here and there, a garden still lingers isolated among the shops which have been built over its neighbours. Lucy’s destination was one of these shops set out with servants’ caps, aprons, small haberdashery wares, stationery, and a few cheap books. On the little counter was a big desk laden with ledgers and festooned with files of letters, and behind the desk stood an elderly woman. She had an air of old-fashioned gentility about her. She wore no cap, but her glossy, waving hair, unmingled with silver, hung in two or three curls and was done up in a crisp little knot behind. Her brown merino gown was severely simple and well kept, with no frill or ornament whatever, save an out-of-date embroidered collar, fastened by an “In Memoriam” brooch. There was nothing frowsy about this woman, nothing unctuous or self-indulgent in her thin sharp face, nor servile or fawning in her rather abrupt manner. Lucy was prepossessed by her, because she was so unlike the official at the big registry office.

This alert person had little encouragement to give. “Generals” were said to be few and far between. She asked Lucy searching questions about the situation she had to offer, saying that the young women would expect her to tell them all about it before they walked so far. She said that it would not recommend the place to most of them that it was very quiet; they generally thought that meant a “particular,” fidgety mistress, and “they didn’t mind a little more work if they could get the more of their own way.” Lucy said she would prefer an elderly woman, as she would be left much alone in the house. But the alert person shook her head, saying that in nine cases out of ten an elderly woman who would take such a place would drink—a statement which Lucy, after her recent experience, was not prepared to deny. The alert person promised “to do her best.” The fee for putting Mrs. Challoner’s name on her “book” would be only one shilling; she would go on sending girls till Mrs. Challoner was “suited,” when there would be another charge of four shillings.

Lucy walked home, feeling that she and the post she had to offer were at a terrible discount. As she watched the half-starved, slipshod, ill-clad girls who were carrying packages in and out of various small “home” manufacturing premises in the district through which her journey lay, she wondered bitterly what had gone wrong with domestic service, that its wholesome food, snug shelter, and respectability were rejected in favour of this tramping, trailing drudgery. She knew enough of social conditions to know that few of those girls earned wages higher than her servant’s salary, while these had to provide everything out of their earnings, and her maid had to buy only her clothes, and had plenty of leisure to make and mend them. This proved that no mere increase of wages will bring back the tide of female labour to the haven of domestic service. It has already voluntarily ebbed away to decreased emoluments.

This actually comforted Lucy a little. For though she was already paying all the wage her means could honestly afford, yet she had begun to reflect bitterly that, between the two registry offices, she had already laid out six shillings in less than two months, not to mention “deterioration of household stock” in burnt napery and other kitchen damages, still less to consider the wear and tear of her own nerves and the loss of her own time. If she was to go on paying and losing at this rate, she had realised that it would come to the same thing as offering twenty or twenty-two pounds a year.

But as she saw those squalid workgirls, it was borne in upon her that the form of labour she wanted had become scarce at any price, and that at any wage she might find the same heart-breaking disappointment.

Lucy gazed curiously at the crowds of young women who lounged or hurried past her. By the signboards on the forlorn houses behind the decaying gardens, she could guess the callings of the crowd. There were tailoresses, hat-sewers, cardboard-box makers, artificial florists. Looking at them, Lucy could not wish that any of them should change her mind and seek the vacant place in the kitchen. From their appearance most of them had been living poorly on sedentary work for years, and whatever they might have been at the beginning, they were sallow and haggard now. No signs of self-respect were visible on their raiment, though there was a pitiful display of draggled plumes, and sham jewellery worn over garments which seemed to have been bought third-hand, and boots such as one often sees thrown away on road-sides. Such strength as they had was clearly the strange perverted strength that resists bad atmospheres and monotonous misery, but few indeed had any sign of the wholesome vigour that is needed for honest household work.

“They must have their freedom, I suppose,” said Lucy to herself, dreamily repeating an axiom which she had often heard thrown down in scorn and contempt by irate matrons caught in the strait where she was now fixed.

Their freedom to do what? Freedom to toil at some soul-deadening task for eight or ten hours to earn a shilling—for the whole round of the clock to gain eighteenpence. Freedom to live crowded in noisome rooms among ever-shifting “neighbours,” to go untidy, to eat bad food ill-cooked. Freedom on Bank holidays with their rowdy crowds; freedom (when one is not too tired) to run about the gas-lit streets, or to sit in tobacco-reeking music-halls; freedom, in such dangerous proximity to the hospital, the casual ward, the pauper’s grave!

Lucy thought of what she understood by freedom. A life of useful labour, leisure for friendship, books, the joys of music and of pictures, of flowers and sunset skies, of wild wood and breezy shore.

And then she reflected. If it should be this kind of freedom that girls wanted—the sort of thing that Lucy herself meant by freedom—could she promise them that this was to be found in average domestic service any more than{588} that other freedom for which the poor souls around her were willing to pay so dear?

“The matter has got out of joint somehow,” she thought. “New social ideals, both good and bad, have gained sway in these days, and I fear that the majority of the mistresses have tried to shut out both from influencing the ways of domestic service. The consequence is, the bad ideals have withdrawn the mass of girls from household life. I should not wonder but the mothers of most of these girls have been domestic servants. Yet what they have told their daughters (possibly quite as often in commendation and praise as in bitterness and warning) has not attracted the girls, because they are not living in the same world as their mothers lived, and they have picked up the fact that domestic service is, in the main, left stationary in the out-of-date sphere.”

Lucy knew that she had not got her own progressive ideas concerning domestic service in her own parents’ house. She had got suggestions when visiting in the houses of schoolfellows belonging to thoughtfully “advanced” families, and these suggestions had opened her eyes to see the connection between this department of human life and the teachings she found in the best books she came across. Miss Latimer herself had often been helpful. Also when once Lucy’s days of courtship and marriage had begun, there was a fresh humanity in all Charlie’s ways of looking at things, which permeated her mind, and carried away lingering prejudices and preconceptions as a sweet breeze blows away the stuffiness of long-closed chambers.

Lucy’s own mother, who had died two years before Lucy’s marriage, had been a matron of the old school, kind and considerate to her servants, as she would have been to her pony or her dog, but with far less consideration for their individuality than many sympathetic people give to that of their four-footed pets. She expected her maids to go to her place of worship. She would have been surprised ever to see them with a book, save on Sunday, and then only with books which she “lent” them. She allowed no variation in their household uniform, and in their “best” dresses she looked askance at a puff or a flounce. Their letters had to be addressed to their unprefixed names. No visitors were allowed. They had their regulated “hours off” once a week, and these were never diverged from, varied or exceeded. A request for an arrangement for a fortnight’s holiday would have been met by instant dismissal.

Even in those earlier days, when Lucy had never questioned the righteousness of these domestic methods, she had yet somehow got an uneasy consciousness that they were tottering to their fall. She could not tell how she had got that impression, whether from murmurs in the kitchen or from added tenacity in the hand laid on the domestic reins. The house had been handsome, well kept and comfortable; the service perfectly regulated and reasonably well paid, the conditions which long defer catastrophe whether in states or households. It had been as one of the last strongholds of an ancient régime still holding out, though outposts are fast falling.

Lucy’s father had not survived his wife many months. He had been counted a wealthy man, but there had been such a revolution in his special article of commerce that when he died his estate barely met his liabilities. Jem Brand, the young stockbroker, had received a small dowry with Florence when he married her. But after the father’s debts were paid, there was not a penny left for Lucy, who had thankfully utilised her natural gifts and the excellent training they had received by accepting the position of art teacher at the St. George’s Institute, which position she had filled for more than a year before her marriage.

Perhaps Lucy had grown more inclined to broader ways of thought and simpler ways of life, because they had brought its crowning joy into her own life. Charlie Challoner had met her first in her independent breadwinning capacity. He was wont to say that if he had known her as a rich man’s daughter he would not have dared to woo her, and it is quite certain that a young professional man, with all his way to make, and with neither family nor fortune to serve him, would have received scant welcome from either of Lucy’s parents.

All these memories glanced through her mind as she hurried home. She reflected too, that the present transitional and contradictory state of the domestic world was further indicated by the fact that though her sister, Mrs. Brand, held all their mother’s household theories, yet their mother would have disapproved far more of the Brand ménage than she would of Lucy’s household, as that had been conducted during the seven years of Pollie’s service. Surely this went to show that the desirable results of the old order of things were now best to be secured under the new order!

Lucy said to herself—

“Well, I must be patient, and remember that my own position is rather exceptional. Domestic life, just now, seems to be of the nature of a series of experiments, while I stand at too critical a corner to find such experiments edifying or pleasant. I must do what everybody has to do—from prime ministers down to chimney-sweeps—make the best of the bad job left by those who have gone before me, and try my utmost not to make it worse for those coming after me!”

She entered her home, tired enough, and knowing that there could be no rest till bedtime. But she had made up her mind to be cheerful at all costs. Lo, on the hall-table lay something which made overflowing joy to be the easiest thing possible. There was a letter from Charlie!

It was marked “Ship letter,” and the last few lines (which in her bewildered joy she read first) had evidently been written in wild haste: “Homeward bound ship in sight—passing close by—Grant thinks opportunity for letter. God bless and keep you.—Charlie.”

“God bless and keep you!” The benediction folded her round. She was no more tired, no more disheartened. She was ready for anything!

And how much more so after she had read the whole letter! All was going well. The weather had been so propitious that Charlie had been able to be on deck nearly all day. He had grown so brown and plump that he scarcely knew his own face in the cabin looking-glass. It was a guarantee of the calm weather and of his own strength to enjoy it that his diary recorded that he and Captain Grant had played chess every night, and that their games were becoming prolonged and scientific.

When Miss Latimer had joined in the rejoicing, when Hugh had had his father’s letter to kiss, when the cat had had it to sniff—and had been decided to show much more interest and emotion than when the performance was repeated with a circular—when Lucy had written a postcard to hurry after the letter she had just sent to her husband—an ecstatic postcard, “Your ship letter received. Oh, so happy—so thankful to God!”—when all these things were done, then she turned back to her household cares and burdens, strong enough to bear the heaviest.

By this time Miss Latimer had taken her departure, and Lucy and her little laddie were alone. There was something for her to do from morning till night. She would not even call in the service of the charwoman, for she remembered that its results had not been too satisfactory even upon the perfect order and straightforwardness that Pollie had left behind her. Mrs. Challoner soon found that Jessie Morison’s month of service had not been quite so satisfactory as it had seemed. Little things had gone astray, little household matters, for which she had given Jessie money, were left unpaid—the whole amount perhaps not rising above three or four shillings. Still, all this determined Lucy to keep her own hand on the household helm for the moment. She could postpone the duties of wardrobe and store closets which she had assigned to herself for this last week of leisure. She would be general servant, nurse, and housemistress for once before she turned breadwinner!

The weather was cold, but it was bright and cheerful, and Lucy got real enjoyment out of her mornings in the genial warmth of the kitchen, with Hugh eagerly watching and proudly helping in those homely labours which delight all children. Do the banquets of after-life ever furnish such delicious dainties as that scrap of paste, extra from the pie-crust, which mother or elder sister sweetens, and rolls out, and cuts patterns upon, and pops into the oven, all before one’s eyes, and which we wait to see taken out crisp and brown?

Hugh was a happy little boy in those days. Had not papa’s letter enclosed a scrap of paper covered with o’s, and inscribed, “All for Hughie himself,” and didn’t Hugh know that{589} these meant kisses? Then there was nothing to hinder him from trotting after mamma all day long, and she often sent him upstairs or downstairs to fetch her a brush or a duster. She even let him help her make a bed. She told him he was “a useful little boy,” and that praise came to his ears with a pleasing novelty, which “a sweet darling” or “a precious dear” had lost. She let him watch her cleaning his little boots, she let him try to do it himself. That effectually convinced him how naughty it is to dip one’s foot in mud just for the fun of doing it. And while these delights went on the mother and child talked about the time when Hugh would be a man, perhaps a great explorer, alone in strange countries, and how well it would be for him to know how to do things for himself.

“Or I’ll do them for you when you’re very, very, very old, mamma,” he had said, and Lucy had been half-staggered and half-amused when he had next asked whether it would not be fully time for him to begin next year!

“No, I don’t think I shall want much done for me quite so soon,” she had cheerfully replied; “but you may be able to do something for yourself. I think boys and all men who are not very busy and tired out with doing other things, ought to clean their own boots.”

“I think I’d like cleaning boots,” said Hugh. “If papa doesn’t come home soon, I’ll get a box and go to the corner of the street and say, ‘A brush, sir!’ and I’ll bring you home all the pennies, and we’ll have a lot of money, and you can tell papa he needn’t hurry, I’m taking care of you.”

If here and there the childish prattle touched chords athrill in Lucy’s heart, there were full amends when Hugh put his little arms about her and whispered—

“Don’t let’s have any new servant, mamma—you be the servant yourself.”

“Ah, my pet,” she answered, “I’m afraid that’s a luxury out of my reach just now!”

She questioned herself sometimes whether it might not have been wiser had she never taken up her money-earning scheme, but had simply resolved to live within narrowest limits on their savings during Charlie’s absence? Yet the answer always came, that but for this money-earning scheme, she would scarcely have dared to propose this journey to Charlie, and it was still less likely that he would have entertained the idea. All seemed turning out so happily that perhaps such a venture might have well been made; but before ventures are made one has to reckon with fears as well as with hopes, to provide against mischance as well as to prepare for good fortune. Also, when Charlie should return in restored health, however strong and cheerful he might be, a depleted treasury would have been a drag, which might easily have destroyed much of the benefit received.

Yet strong was her own longing for quiet home life, and keen was her consciousness that the impending arrival of another dubious stranger was the sole element of anxiety and difficulty following her about among her household tasks. From these she didn’t shrink in the least, and she felt sure custom would soon make them easy and pleasant. She could not help feeling thankful that decision or reconsideration was now out of her reach. Her engagement with St. George’s Institute was made for the year, and must be honourably fulfilled.

It was tiresome to be interrupted in some kitchen or bed-chamber task by a ring of the door-bell, and only to find some obviously unsuitable “young person” sent from the registry office. She had to meet the half-derisive smile with which some of them noted that “the missus” herself had answered the door. She had to endure the contemptuousness of their rapid survey of her working toilette—the white handkerchief knotted about her hair, and the blue-checked apron. One or two of them at once said candidly “that the place would not suit.” To others she had to say the same. Yet her week of choice was rapidly passing, and she feared she might be forced to accept Mrs. Brand’s advice and “not be too particular about everything.”

Sometimes she wondered, after all, if she and Charlie had made a mistake and had started too ambitiously at the very outset. Yet they had then seemed entrenched on the safe side. Her own kin, beginning with the Brands, had all thought the little house with the verandah only too small for a young man of Charlie’s talents and prospects.

“You will have the trouble and expense of speedy removal,” they had urged.

These kindred had said, too, that the furnishing was unnecessarily simple. “That was a fault which might be gradually remedied,” Florence Brand had remarked. “But it was well to make a dash at the beginning, even if one economised afterwards, because in the first year of one’s married life people noticed one’s house more and talked about it more than they ever did afterwards.” But Charlie and Lucy had been firm, because they were determined not to run in debt, because they wanted to save as much as they could, to possess nothing that would be costly in its up-keep, or likely to tempt them into expensive ways, and because they both loved the beauty of simple form and the sweet cleanliness of things that are easy to dust and possible to wash.

Then Florence had privately urged Lucy to start with two servants.

“Get two smart girls for low wages,” she had said, “you won’t have much to do for a long time, except to watch that they are honest. It sounds well to say ‘my cook’ and ‘my housemaid.’ People think of a general servant as a mere slavey.”

But Lucy had steadily persisted in having only one, and Pollie’s diligence and progress had rewarded her.

Now, however, Lucy asked herself whether Charlie and she had done the very best after all. True, they had not satisfied the ideas of the Brands and others; but ought they not to have gone still farther in the opposite direction and contented themselves with a tiny flat and foregone any regular servant? It was true that the plan they had followed had been sound enough economically. The lease of the little house in Pelham Street had been bought by Charlie’s prenuptial savings, and the yearly expenditure had not been much larger than it must have been in the imaginary flat, Pollie’s domestic help having given Lucy time to do all the family needlework and to economise in those ways which leisure makes consistent with grace and beauty. To Lucy the life seemed to have been idyllic. But, then, at its foundation had been Pollie. So, if Pollies were an element not to be readily reckoned upon, life only was secure when it was planned to do without them.

(To be continued.)

{590}

STRAY LEAVES FROM ASSAM.

TWO WIVES.

“And my man?”

“Your man was shot down amongst the first who fell.”

The questioner turned away without a word, and lifting her child from the ground, slung it in her cloth and left the bungalow.

A terrible disaster had occurred. A political officer had been attacked and killed, and his escort cut to pieces, by the Angami Nagas. A few of the survivors had succeeded in reaching the stockade, and one of them—a bright young fellow who had marched out two days before, leaving behind him a one-week’s bride—was having an ugly wound on his head dressed by the native doctor.

A crowd of terrified women surrounded him, eager to hear his fearful tale, and by degrees they learnt the truth—not one could hope her husband had escaped, for he believed himself and one companion to be the only survivors out of eighty men. It was a sad tale of mismanagement, treachery, and bloodshed.

“We were in a trap,” the young fellow explained in broken sentences. “They fired upon us suddenly and killed a lot before we could escape to open ground. Kama Ram got us together at the foot of the hills, and we fought hard until he fell.”

A fair-faced Nepalese woman covered her face with her cloth and broke into low sobs.

“Yes,” he continued, “we fought hard; but half our men were killed, and the Nagas were there in hundreds. If we could have kept them off till dark we might have got away; but they surrounded us, and after Kama Ram was shot there was no one to lead us, and we got broken up and scattered. He told us to leave him there and fight our way back to warn the Sahib at Kohima; but how could we leave him? We carried him away, firing and then retreating. And so we got away, a few of us; but Kama Ram was heavy—was he not a big man?—and he said, ‘Oh, brothers, let me alone to die! I am dying now, and you must save your lives and get back to Kohima and help the Sahib; they will go there. You cannot save me. Put me where they cannot find me, as they will take my head.’ And then he died. We hid his body well, and then came on, and only two of us are here, and the Nagas are now on their way; they wait to take the heads. By daybreak they will come.”

The little Nepalese woman crept quietly away. Her child was sleeping in a corner of the over-crowded room, and she sat by him with her head turned against the wall and cried not loudly but most bitterly.

“What is the use of crying?” asked the other women in high-pitched trembling voices. “We shall be killed too in the morning.”

“Yes,” said the wounded man, “we shall all be killed. There are thousands of them coming on us.”

Then came the quiet question from a broad-faced rosy Naga woman—

“And my man—did you see him?”

Without the slightest sign of sympathy or feeling the curt answer came—

“Your man was shot down amongst the first that fell.”

Without a word she went away. None of the women had any sympathy to waste upon a Naga woman, even though her husband had been a constable and she had left her home and people to live with him. No one attempted to detain her, or said a kind word as she passed.

Following her out, I asked her why she went away, and warned her not to go. Her child would probably be killed by the first Angamis that she met, because her husband was well known.

“They will not harm the child. I must go and find my husband,” she replied, and passed on into the darkness and the rain. The chance of finding him alive urged her to hurry on. If he had fallen in the first attack, she knew the place, and made her way straight for it. But perhaps he was not killed. He might have been one of those who had rolled down the steep khud from the narrow pathway where they fell, and she would find him wounded, but safely hidden, at the bottom of the khud. If he was dead, she might yet be in time to save his head and bury him, and hide him from the cruel hands of her savage countrymen.

The Nagas met her on her way and jeered at her, asking her where her Sepoy husband was; but still they let her pass, and on she went. Who can describe the horrors of that journey!

The darkness hid many a ghastly sight, but daybreak found her near the scene of her disaster. Murdered men lay across her path headless, with gaping wounds; shrieks of despair rang in her ears from many a poor wounded wretch who had escaped in the night only to fall into the hands of his enemies in the morning; and yells of fiendish triumph went up as each new victim was discovered and despatched.

Esmé.

{591}

SOME HOLIDAY MUSIC.

Fine fun can be had out of two action songs by William Younge and Lionel Elliott (J. Williams). They just suit the merry season for youngsters of the family who must have amusing and interesting ideas to keep themselves and others happy. One is called “Home for the Holidays,” and the other, “Making the Pudding.”

For our tiny nursery people there is a really capital shilling book by Florence Wickins, consisting of “Merry little tunes, including all the original melodies to the nursery rhymes and a complete set of dance music for little folk” (Wickins & Co.). It is in clear, big print, with a gay cover, and there are some dear old favourites therein, such as the undying Miss Muffet, Tom Tucker, Lucy Locket, Baby Bunting, and other heroes and heroines of nursery lore in days of yore.

Schoolboys and schoolgirls too will join with fervour in Scott-Gatty’s new “Country House Songs” on “Golf” and “Cricket” (Boosey), and these will not fail to attract boys and girls of an older growth, so admirable are they.

Some stirring ditties suitable for musical entertainments after schoolroom teas are two rousing naval and military lays with telling refrains, namely, “Beresford’s Boys,” by Lionel Hume (Weekes), and “The Life of a Soldier,” by Gerald Lane (Enoch); “Two Gay Owls,” by M. Van Lennep (Doremi), with characteristic “tu-whit to-whoos” capable of expressive rendering, and “De Blue-Tailed Fly,” a plantation song by G. H. Clutsam (Stanley Lucas), the buzzing chorus of which can be given with much dramatic feeling!

Pretty little light pieces, all suitable for bright occasions, interludes for tableaux, charades, &c., are the following: “Danse Chic,” by Arnold Olding (Cramer); “Mountain Gnomes,” by Wilhelm Popp (Ashdown); “La Lucette,” by Gladys Hope (Weekes); “Vous Dansez Marquise,” by Augusta de Kabath (J. Williams); “Chanson de Louis Seize,” by G. Bachmann (Ashdown); and a small book of “Three Dances” by Corelli Windeatt (J. Williams).

These popular marches are desirable for the same purposes, namely, “Santiago,” by Walter von Joel (Ashdown); “The Charge at Dargai” (Cramer); and the “British Outpost,” by Lionel Hume (Weekes); while the quicker polka marches of “Gringalet” and “Automobiles,” both by Ad. Gauwin (Chappell), are spirited in music and in dashing frontispieces. Two nice little operettas for children are “Cock Robin and Jenny Wren,” by Florian Pascal, and “The Maid and the Blackbird,” by Ed. Solomon (J. Williams).

James C. Beazley writes a humorous and useful little partsong entitled, “There was a Little Man” (Doremi), who, as we know, “had a little gun,” and this sporting episode is facetiously and effectually carried out in the music.

Songs from Lewis Carroll’s “Sylvie and Bruno” (all in one small cover) are most amusingly quaint. Listen to the euphony of “King Fisher’s Song.”

“‘Needles have eyes,’ said Lady Bird—

Sing Cats, sing Corks, sing Cowslip Tea—

‘And they are sharp—just what

Your Majesty is not.

So get you gone—’tis too absurd

To come a-courting me!’”

And other lines linger in our memories like—

“Sing Prunes, sing Prawns, sing Primrose Hill,”

and so on in the inimitable spirit of “Alice in Wonderland” again.

The “Witch o’ the Broom” Lancers and Quadrilles by Fabian Rose (Phillips and Page) are as easy as easy to play from sight, so is “The Farmyard” Barn-dance, with a racy title-page for small folk (Phillips and Page), and in a loftier sphere the “Malmaison” Waltz by Caroline Lowthian (Metzler), and “Poppyland” Waltz by Cyril Dare (Cramer).

There are four “Characteristic Dances” by H. J. Taylor (Weekes), all of which might be prettily danced in character, the Grecian (No. 2) and the Japanese (No. 4) especially.

Some exceedingly facile and effective violin solos are No. 1, “The Children’s Home” of Cowen’s, and No. 10, Canzonetta by C. Borelli, of Morley’s Melodious Gems; “Sunny Memories” and “Good Wishes,” by Henry Tolhurst (Phillips and Page); a “Song Without Words,” by M. Marigold (Novello), and a convenient shilling book (Wickins) containing the beautiful “Träumerei” of Schumann and other choice little pieces for pleasurable performance. “Twelve Carols,” by M. C. Gillington and F. Pascal, are full of interest and of beautiful and original ideas in words and music (J. Williams).

Mary Augusta Salmond.

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS

STUDY AND STUDIO.

Katie Roberts.—No apology is necessary in sending your verses, but we fear you would scarcely be able to write anything for publication. The metre of your lines is incorrect; occasionally you begin a verse with a line far too short, e.g., “He is, we all know it.” “The Unseen Guest” is the better of the two poems, and we think it is natural to beguile hours when you are not on active duty by expressing these thoughts. It is not the substance but the form that we criticise. You should study the laws of versification.

Lisa.—We must commend to you the advice contained in the last clause of the preceding answer. If you wish to improve in writing verse, study the laws of metre, which you will find in any good handbook of the English tongue. In “Wait,” the second line is two syllables too long. “Guest” and “bless” do not rhyme.

Apple Blossom.—We have read your story, and are afraid we must literally comply with your request to “pull it to pieces.” The central incident is most improbable. Prosperous theatrical managers do not steal plays by copying manuscripts left with them for perusal. As “Claude” received his MS. again, you must see that detection was absolutely certain, and no motive is suggested for the extraordinary act of Sir Francis Lockhart, whom you should not call “Sir Lockhart.” Claude acted with foolishness and ingratitude in angrily refusing the offer of his uncle, which is so scornfully mentioned, of a “stool in his warehouse,” and genius does not burst forth in a moment in the construction of a successful play, nor the production of widely-read magazine articles, by a half-educated youth. These faults in your story proceed from ignorance of real life, but there are also very many defects in style; tautology is frequent, and you should not write of a “flunky,” nor of “Belgravia Square.” We hope you study the book we recommended to you. There is no “royal road” to literary success of any kind, even for aspirants with talent.

Arbutus.—We can mention in reply to your query, the Cambridge Training College for Women Teachers (fees £60 to £70 a year for residence, tuition, etc.), and recommend you, for particulars of teachers’ training, also to apply to the Secretary, Association for the Education of Women, Clarendon Building, Oxford. You do not say for what sort of teaching the training is required; but for elementary schoolmistresses there are a great number of colleges. The Bishop Otter Memorial College at Chichester is intended for the daughters of the clergy and professional men: fees, £20 per annum for Queen’s scholars, £50 for private students. In Ireland there are the Marlboro’ Street Training College, and the Church of Ireland Training College, Dublin. Stockwell College, Stockwell Road, London, is a fine college: fees £25 for two years’ board and tuition. For a full list of these training colleges for elementary schoolmistresses, and particulars of the entrance examination, apply Education Department, London.

Molly.—It would certainly not be “waste of time” to take lessons in drawing. You evidently have a love for it, and a good idea of copying. It would always be a pleasant resource for you.

Constance.—Apply to the Times Office, London, for the number containing Rudyard Kipling’s Jubilee poem. We believe it first appeared in Literature, but you will obtain information there.

Mrs. E. M. L. Knight.—1. We think you could not do better with your little boy than to adopt, as far as you can, the Kindergarten system. If you were to write to the Froebel Society, 12, Buckingham Street, Adelphi, London, W.C., you would probably be told of some book or books by which, as you seem a thoughtful and intelligent mother, you could guide yourself in the work of training the child’s faculties of observation and attention, and imparting knowledge of “natural surroundings.” It is pleasant to see the little children at the Kindergartens modelling in sand the promontory, island, hill, and showing the course of a river from its spring on the mountain to the sea. This is just one instance of the sort of occupation that teaches and amuses them. Considering what you tell us, we think if you could devote a part of each day to your boy, it would be far better than sending him to the village school. As he is only 2½ years old, there is plenty of time for school life.—2. A very useful though not new book on children’s ailments is Dr. Pye Chavasse’s Advice to a Mother. The National Health Society, 53, Berners Street, London, W., will send you a list of medical books or pamphlets for household use.

Elizabeth.—1. We should consider that Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Sir James Simpson, Sir Richard Owen, Lord Lister, Edison, Röntgen, Sir William Huggins, Professors Dewar and Ramsay were among “the greatest scientists of the present age.” We cannot possibly give you a full list here.—2. Your writing is clear, but inclined to be too childish in its thick down-strokes, and long loops to y’s and g’s. It needs more freedom.

J. J. A.—We refer you also to Mrs. Watson’s articles on “What are the County Councils doing for Girls?” and—if you cannot consult them—to the Secretary of the Board of Technical Education, St. Martin’s Lane, London. You might also write to the Secretaries of Queen’s College, Harley Street, W., and of Holloway College, Egham, for particulars of scholarships in connection with those institutions.

Edythe.—We think a very interesting way to teach young children spelling is to give them a good box of letters (“Spelling-Game”), and let them fill the frame with words, either from memory or from a book; or the letters of a word may be given loose to the child, and he be required to form the word himself. Games may easily be arranged with the letter-box for several children. Many thanks for your enclosure.

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GIRLS’ EMPLOYMENTS.

Isabel (Art Needlework).—You would be very well taught in the Royal School of Art Needlework, Exhibition Road, South Kensington; the fee for instruction is £5. The School does not, however, guarantee to find work for its pupils, but some of the latter earn an average income of £1 a week. In art-needlework shops, the payment is usually much lower, 14s. or 15s. a week being not unusual. If you are fond of needlework, could you not learn dressmaking at a technical institute, and then go out as a visiting dressmaker? You would do better in this way than as an embroideress, for you could earn about 2s. 6d. a day, and would receive board during the time of your engagement.

A Young Correspondent (Helping others).—The fact that you are very young need not prevent you from helping other people as you wish to do, and from making yourself useful in the world. If you can knit, you might write to the secretary of the Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, 181, Queen Victoria Street, E.C., and ask whether you could knit mufflers or mittens for the fishermen. Another kind of work in which help is required is in embossing books in Braille type for the use of the blind. In regard to this work, you should apply to the Hon. Secretary, British and Foreign Blind Association, 33, Cambridge Square, W. Do not trouble about the other matters you mention. Girls in their teens often do not look their best, and the complexion nearly always improves in later life. With a pleasant manner and a neat becoming style of dress, a girl may always make an agreeable impression, whereas there are many handsome girls who are so selfish and disagreeable that their beauty gives no pleasure to anybody, not even to themselves.

Pansy (Advice).—It would be a great mistake to become a companion, although you do say that such a career is your ambition. Companions occupy an anomalous position; their duties are undefined, and their services are consequently little valued. And, after middle life, the companion usually finds herself without an engagement, and without a profession of any kind. You say you do not wish to become a governess, but at the same time you feel yourself competent to teach children from seven years old to twelve. Now, under these circumstances would it not be wise to become an elementary school teacher? Your pupils would be of the ages mentioned, and you would have an occupation by which you could almost certainly earn a living. Elementary teachers are now in great demand, for this very reason, that so many girls will try to become companions and secretaries. Had you been under eighteen, you might have become an apprentice as a pupil-teacher in an elementary school; but as you are eighteen already, you had better pass the Queen’s Scholarship Examination, and then seek employment as an assistant teacher, or, much better, enter a teachers’ training college. You could study all the requirements more fully by obtaining through a bookseller a copy of the New Code, issued by the Education Department. If you wanted further advice, it is probable that some Board School or National School mistress in your own town would give it.

Snowball (Typewriting, etc.).—A typist and shorthand writer, employed as a clerk in a City office, usually receives a weekly salary of from 18s. to 21s. to begin with, rising at the end of a year or two (if she is really competent) to 25s. and, after that, rising again possibly to 30s., 35s., or any amount not exceeding £2. But many girls do not advance beyond 25s. per week, and employment is to some extent precarious, as so many girls can now do typing and write shorthand with moderate skill. But we consider that a girl occupies a tolerably secure position who can do verbatim reporting, and can be relied on to take down all that is said at a long meeting, which, when interruption and discussion takes place, is by no means an easy task. But as you are quite young, write a good clear hand, which you will doubtless improve within the next twelvemonth, and are determined to work, we should counsel the Post Office Department of the Civil Service in your case, especially if you pass the Cambridge Junior Examination well, for which you are preparing yourself. You should try to get into the Service as a girl clerk as soon as you are sixteen; that is better than waiting till you are eighteen to enter as a woman clerk. Pay great attention meantime to your studies in French, German, geography, arithmetic, and handwriting. Girl clerks begin at a salary at £35, and women clerks at £55. The latter are eligible for a pension after a certain number of years’ service.

Kalifa (House Decoration).—We do not quite agree with you that there is an increasing demand for ladies who undertake house decoration. To succeed in the business, a girl ought to be apprenticed to a decorator who will teach her how to draw and design furniture, and to see that workmen carry out orders properly. To learn the business thoroughly, a girl must either give time or pay a high premium; one of the foremost decorators charges £100. It is not an employment for everybody; and a good many ladies of taste have failed because they have not carried out their work in a sufficiently responsible and business-like manner.

Espérance (Suggestions).—If you shrink from nursing, it is difficult to know what you can do in the way of philanthropic work without possessing some private means. Perhaps through the church or chapel you attend you could be put in the way of doing something for the poor, such as district visiting. There are also, as you perhaps know, several settlements in the East of London in which women work. For instance, there is the St. Margaret’s House, Bethnal Green, a Church of England Settlement, and there is also the Canning Town Settlement, 459, Barking Road, Plaistow, which is unsectarian. You would probably find that should the occasion arise for you to earn your living, the experience gained by working in one of these settlements would help you to obtain a position as matron of some charitable institution. There is now a considerable demand for philanthropic workers who have been trained in settlements.

Lois (Librarianship).—We hardly think your scheme is feasible of obtaining a librarianship in a charitable institution or in a ladies’ club. In a workmen’s reading-room and institute it is quite possible you might obtain employment, or in a free library. The branches of the Manchester Free Library employ women. Some post of that kind you would probably fill well, as you have had several years’ experience already, and have interested yourself in the work. Then there is a large circulating library at Norwich, the property of a private firm, where some women are engaged. Otherwise, if you wish to make a change, you would have to seek a secretaryship, or post as book-keeper, as you say; but this seems to us rather a pity as you have done so well as a librarian.

Ingeborg (Needlework).—You had better communicate with the secretary of the Society for the Advancement of Plain Needlework, 16, Stafford Street, Marylebone Road, N.W., and ask what courses he would advise you to pursue in order to obtain a teachership of needlework. Very likely it may be thought best that you should pass the examination at the City Guilds’ Institute, as this qualification would help you materially to secure an appointment.

MEDICAL.

Eglantine.—If the teeth become loosened, and the gums show a tendency to bleed on slight provocation, use a mouth-wash of tincture of myrrh; add about a teaspoonful of tincture of myrrh to half a tumblerful of water, and rinse out your mouth and wash your teeth with it. The “tincture of myrrh and borax” of the shops is made by mixing tincture of myrrh with glycerine of borax. Both these are pharmacopœial preparations.

A Japanese Girl.—In common parlance we use the term “fainting” to express any condition in which a person acutely loses consciousness and falls to the ground. The term therefore includes epilepsy, apoplexy, sunstroke, acute syncope, and the condition which you wish to know about, ordinary fainting fits, or semi-syncope. The fits, as everybody knows, occur chiefly in young women and girls who are anæmic or hysterical. They consist of a momentary weakness of the heart-beat, as the result of which the brain is insufficiently supplied with blood, and the person drops down “in a heap.” This sudden falling lowers the position of the head, and so prevents the brain from becoming anæmic. When a person faints, or feels faint, her head should be lowered; if she is sitting in a chair, her head should be forced down to her knees; if she is standing up, she should be placed upon her back. How often we see kind-hearted persons carrying a fainting girl out of church, taking care to keep her head well raised! Sal volatile, cold water and brandy are sometimes given to fainting girls, but none of these is necessary, and the brandy usually does harm. Though fainting looks very dangerous, it is really very trivial. We have never seen a death during one of these young women’s fainting fits.

Lady Babbie.—It is related of a great physician that a girl once came to him complaining, as you do, that she made horrible grimaces, moving her scalp and eyebrows about in a most absurd manner, and making herself look ridiculous. Of course he knew at once what was the matter, and said to her, “Let me see you make these grimaces.” When she had finished, he said to her, “What you have got the matter with you is of no moment, but I warn you not to let anyone see you making those grimaces, because when you do so you present a striking resemblance to Mrs. ——” (a famous criminal of the time, then “wanted” by the police), “and you may get run in if you don’t take care!” This so frightened the girl that she never made grimaces again! This curious habit can be cured, as you see. It is semi-involuntary—that is, it was originally voluntary, but from constant repetition it has become a habit. It is a habit from which you must break yourself. It is no good saying you cannot—we say you can; but you must try, and at present avoid anything which is liable to produce it. We have not asked you to do anything impossible—“to do lessons or anything of that sort”—but why do you have such an objection “to do lessons or anything of that sort?” You will find that there are more unpleasant things in life than lessons!

MISCELLANEOUS.

Rebecca.—The invention of the gamut and the lines of the stave is attributed to D’Arezzo, an Italian who flourished in the eleventh century. At the Vatican, and in the King’s Library, Paris, there are valuable copies of his famous Micrologus.

Perplexed.—We think it would be for your own happiness if you cleared up the question, as no honest man has any right to be paying his addresses to two women at once. If you have a mother, you had better let her make the inquiry.

Marguerite.—The simnel-cakes made in Lent, at Eastertide, and Christmas, in Shropshire and Herefordshire—more especially at Shrewsbury—date back to great antiquity. Herrick speaks of them in one of his epigrams, from which it appears that at Gloucester it was the custom for young people to carry simnels to their mothers on mid-Lent Sunday, called “Mothering Sunday.” In Mediæval Latin it is called siminellus, and is derived from the Latin simila, or fine flour. Like the religious signification of the hot-cross-buns, the simnel-cakes were, in early times, marked with a figure of Christ or of the Virgin Mary. The Pagan Saxons ate cakes in honour or commemoration of their goddess Eastre, and, unable to prevent people from so doing as a heathen custom, the Christian clergy had the buns marked with a cross, to remind them of our Lord and His work of redemption.

Troubled One.—We are well acquainted with the infidel argument that “the death of one man could not atone for, nor make restitution for, the sins and the debts of millions of other men.” But first, Christ was the Second Person of the Divine Trinity, and One with the Father and the Holy Ghost, and His was an infinite sacrifice for finite sin; an infinite satisfaction for finite indebtedness. Secondly, as man’s rebellion was against his Creator, and the unfulfilled obligations were to Him, his Creator had an absolute right to punish, or forgive, to claim, or to remit man’s debt on His Own terms. Thus, if He said, “I will accept man’s acknowledgment of sin and indebtedness to Me, if he offer a lamb in token thereof,” He had an indisputable right to do so; and when He accepts a Divine, and therefore infinite sacrifice, He has a right to do so. Who may presume to question it?

Two Chums.—The phrase, “Once in a blue moon” means “very rarely,” and the originator of the phrase exaggerated what it was designed to mean, as it expresses not rarity only, but impossibility of occurrence, as there is no such thing as a “blue” moon, any more than a personage correctly designated “Blue Beard.”

Constant Reader appears to have overlooked many answers to her question. Brides do not supply house-linen, nor furniture, nor any household requisites. If her parents like to make a present of such a nature, it is perfectly gratuitous. The bridegroom is naturally to have a home suitable for the reception of his bride when he takes her from her father’s house.

Tom Tit.—Certainly there are books on conchology. You have only to inquire at a good librarian’s.

MacNally.—Inquire in the Will Department, Somerset House, and see those of that date. You should give the names and probable date; 1s. is charged for a search through each year, we believe. We have looked in the London Directory and the Royal Red Book, and did not see your cousin’s address.

A. Neighbour.—To obtain any particulars respecting the writer Mary E. Wilkins, you had better write to her publisher.

Antiquary.—Of all the ancient nations of which we possess historical records, Egypt stands first. According to Canon Rawlinson (quoted by Dawson), history and archæological discoveries give the earliest date as 2760 B.C.; of Babylon, as 2300 B.C.; of Phœnicia, as 1700 B.C.; of Assyria, as 1500 B.C.; of India, as 1200 B.C., and of China, as 1154 B.C. Whether any new light has been thrown on the subject by more recent investigations and discoveries than what we receive from Canon Rawlinson, we are not at this moment prepared to say.

Country Lass.—Rosemary-tea is excellent for promoting the growth of the hair. Chemists prepare it in a cleaner form than you can at home. You cannot make your hair “wavy and glossy” unless the hair have flattened sides to each tube (we mean if the hair be round it will not curl), and if naturally rough, any gloss artificially produced would only be through greasiness. Joan and Jane are feminines of the Hebrew name John—“the gracious gift of God.”

Amateur Stamp Collector.—With reference to the uses made by the authorities at the Asile des Billodes, at Le Locle, we can only repeat what we were told by a Swiss lady, who has long maintained a girl herself in this special institution, that “she believed the stamps were sent to, and made into papier maché at, Nüremberg”; so for whatever other uses they are employed, or to whatever other destinations they may be sent (perhaps exclusive of those at Le Locle, according to their printed advertisement), it seems that a large proportion goes to that place. We have the paper, a copy of which you are so good as to send, and are quite ready to believe our friend was mistaken as regards the Asile she helps to support.

[Transcriber’s Note: the following changes have been made to this text.

Page 579: Effiie to Effie—“and now Effie”.

Page 580: Soâne to Saône—“A Summer Voyage on the Saône”.

Symond’s to Symonds’—“J. A Symonds’”.

Edmond to Edmondo—“Edmondo de Amicis”.

Taines’ to Taine’s—“H. Taine’s”.

Page 581: Teneriffe, and its Seven Satellites to Tenerife, and its Six Satellites.

Vesa to Vasa—“Gustavus Vasa”.

Alex. to Alec.—“Alec. Tweedie”.

Grohmann to Grohman—“W. A. Grohman”.

Page 583: conciousness to consciousness—“self-consciousness”.

Page 586: baking powder to baking-powder—“baking-powder. Make”.]

1.	O	asi	S
2.	B	l	A
3.	E	lectri	C
4.	D	urba	R
5.	I	lluminat	I (a)
6.	E	thelwol	F (b)
7.	N	anc	I (c)
8.	C	ambri	C (d)
9.	E	uphrosyn	E (e)
Obedience.			Sacrifice.

THE GIRL’S OWN PAPER