The Project Gutenberg eBook of Household words, No. 24, September 7, 1850
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Title: Household words, No. 24, September 7, 1850
A weekly journal
Editor: Charles Dickens
Release date: March 11, 2026 [eBook #78194]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Bradbury & Evans, 1850
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78194
Credits: Richard Tonsing, Steven desJardins, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOUSEHOLD WORDS, NO. 24, SEPTEMBER 7, 1850 ***
“_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.
HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
A WEEKLY JOURNAL.
CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.
N^{o.} 24.] SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1850. [PRICE 2_d._
ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHEAPNESS.
THE STEEL PEN.
We remember (early remembrances are more durable than recent) an epithet
employed by Mary Wollstonecraft, which then seemed as happy as it was
original:—“The _iron_ pen of Time.” Had the vindicatress of the “Rights
of Women” lived in these days (fifty years later), when the iron pen is
the almost universal instrument of writing, she would have bestowed upon
Time a less common material for recording his doings.
Whilst we are remembering, let us look back for a moment upon our
earliest schooldays—the days of large text and round hand. Twenty
urchins sit at a long desk, each intent upon making his _copy_. A nicely
mended pen has been given to each. Our own labour goes on successfully,
till, in school-boy phrase, the pen begins to splutter. A bold effort
must be made. We leave the form, and timidly address the writing-master
with—“Please, sir, mend my pen.” A slight frown subsides as he sees that
the quill is very bad—too soft or too hard—used to the stump. He dashes
it away, and snatching a feather from a bundle—a poor thin feather, such
as green geese drop on a common—shapes it into a pen. This mending and
making process occupies all his leisure—occupies, indeed, many of the
minutes that ought to be devoted to instruction. He has a perpetual
battle to wage with his bad quills. They are the meanest produce of the
plucked goose.
And is this process still going on in the many thousand schools of our
land, where, with all drawbacks of imperfect education, both as to
numbers educated and gifts imparted, there are about two millions and a
half of children under daily instruction? In remote rural districts,
probably; in the towns certainly not. The steam-engine is now the
pen-maker. Hecatombs of geese are consumed at Michaelmas and Christmas;
but not all the geese in the world would meet the demand of England for
pens. The supply of _patés de foie gras_ will be kept up—that of quills,
whether known as _primes_, _seconds_, or _pinions_, must be wholly
inadequate to the wants of a _writing_ people. Wherever geese are bred
in these islands, so assuredly, in each succeeding March, will every
full-fledged victim be robbed of his quills; and then turned forth on
the common, a very waddling and impotent goose, quite unworthy of the
name of bird. The country schoolmaster, at the same springtime, will
continue to buy the smallest quills, at a low price, clarify them after
his own rude fashion, make them into pens, and sorely spite the boy who
splits them up too rapidly. The better quills will still be collected,
and find their way to the quill dealer, who will exercise his empirical
arts before they pass to the stationer. He will plunge them into heated
sand, to make the external skin peel off, and the external membrane
shrivel up; or he will saturate them with water, and alternately
contract and swell them before a charcoal fire; or he will dip them in
nitric acid, and make them of a gaudy brilliancy but a treacherous
endurance. They will be sorted according to the quality of the barrels,
with the utmost nicety. The experienced buyer will know their value by
looking at their feathery ends, tapering to a point; the uninitiated
will regard only the quill portion. There is no article of commerce in
which the market value is so difficult to be determined with exactness.
For the finest and largest quills no price seems unreasonable; for those
of the second quality too exorbitant a charge is often made. The foreign
supply is large, and probably exceeds the home supply of the superior
article. What the exact amount is we know not. There is no duty now on
quills. The tariff of 1845—one of the most lasting monuments of the
wisdom of our great commercial minister—abolished the duty of
half-a-crown a thousand. In 1832 the duty amounted to four thousand two
hundred pounds, which would show an annual importation of thirty-three
millions one hundred thousand quills; enough, perhaps, for the
commercial clerks of England, together with the quills of home
growth;—but how to serve a letter-writing population?
The ancient reign of the quill pen was first seriously disturbed about
twenty-five years ago. An abortive imitation of the _form_ of a pen was
produced before that time; a clumsy, inelastic, metal tube fastened in a
bone or ivory handle, and sold for half-a-crown. A man might make his
mark with one—but as to writing, it was a mere delusion. In due course
came more carefully finished inventions for the luxurious, under the
tempting names of ruby pen, or diamond pen—with the plain gold pen, and
the rhodium pen, for those who were sceptical as to the jewellery of the
inkstand. The economical use of the quill received also the attention of
science. A machine was invented to divide the barrel lengthwise into two
halves; and, by the same mechanical means, these halves were subdivided
into small pieces, cut pen shape, slit, and nibbed. But the pressure
upon the quill supply grew more and more intense. A new power had risen
up in our world—a new seed sown—the source of all good, or the dragon’s
teeth of Cadmus. In 1818 there were only one hundred and sixty-five
thousand scholars in the monitorial schools—the new schools, which were
being established under the auspices of the National Society, and the
British and Foreign School Society. Fifteen years afterwards, in 1833,
there were three hundred and ninety thousand. Ten years later, the
numbers exceeded a million. Even a quarter of a century ago two-thirds
of the male population of England, and one-half of the female, were
learning to write; for in the Report of the Registrar-General for 1846,
we find this passage:—“Persons when they are married are required to
sign the marriage-register; if they cannot write their names, they sign
with a mark: the result has hitherto been, that nearly one man in three,
and one woman in two, married, sign with marks.” This remark applies to
the period between 1839 and 1845. Taking the average age of men at
marriage as twenty-seven years, and the average age of boys during their
education as ten years, the marriage-register is an educational test of
male instruction for the years 1824–28. But the gross number of the
population of England and Wales was rapidly advancing. In 1821 it was
twelve millions; in 1831, fourteen millions; in 1841, sixteen millions;
in 1851, taking the rate of increase at fourteen per cent., it will be
eighteen millions and a half. The extension of education was proceeding
in a much quicker ratio; and we may therefore fairly assume that the
proportion of those who make their marks in the marriage-register has
greatly diminished since 1844.
But, during the last ten years, the natural desire to learn to write, of
that part of the youthful population which education can reach, has
received a great moral impulse by a wondrous development of the most
useful and pleasurable exercise of that power. The uniform penny postage
has been established. In the year 1838, the whole number of letters
delivered in the United Kingdom was seventy-six millions; in this year
that annual delivery has reached the prodigious number of three hundred
and thirty-seven millions. In 1838, a Committee of the House of Commons
thus denounced, amongst the great commercial evils of the high rates of
postage, their injurious effects upon the great bulk of the
people:—“They either act as a grievous tax on the poor, causing them to
sacrifice their little earnings to the pleasure and advantage of
corresponding with their distant friends, or compel them to forego such
intercourse altogether; thus subtracting from the small amount of their
enjoyments, and obstructing the growth and maintenance of their best
affections.” Honoured be the man who broke down these barriers! Praised
be the Government that, _for once_, stepping out of its fiscal tram-way,
dared boldly to legislate for the domestic happiness, the educational
progress, and the moral elevation of the masses! The steel pen, sold at
the rate of a penny a dozen, is the creation, in a considerable degree,
of the Penny Postage stamp; as the Penny Postage stamp was a
representative, if not a creation, of the new educational power. Without
the steel pen, it may reasonably be doubted whether there were
mechanical means within the reach of the great bulk of the population
for writing the three hundred and thirty-seven millions of letters that
now annually pass through the Post Office.
Othello’s sword had “the ice-brook’s temper;” but not all the real or
imaginary virtues of the stream that gave its value to the true Spanish
blade could create the elasticity of a steel pen. Flexible, indeed, is
the Toledo. If thrust against a wall, it will bend into an arc that
describes three-fourths of a circle. The problem to be solved in the
steel pen, is to convert the iron of Dannemora into a substance as thin
as the quill of a dove’s pinion, but as strong as the proudest feather
of an eagle’s wing. The furnaces and hammers of the old armourers could
never have solved this problem. The steel pen belongs to our age of
mighty machinery. It could not have existed in any other age. The demand
for the instrument, and the means of supplying it, came together.
The commercial importance of the steel pen was first manifested to our
senses a year or two ago at Sheffield. We had witnessed all the curious
processes of _converting_ iron into steel, by saturating it with carbon
in the converting furnace;—of _tilting_ the bars so converted into a
harder substance, under the thousand hammers that shake the waters of
the Sheaf and the Don; of _casting_ the steel thus converted and tilted
into ingots of higher purity; and, finally, of _milling_, by which the
most perfect development of the material is acquired under enormous
rollers. About two miles from the metropolis of steel, over whose head
hangs a canopy of smoke through which the broad moors of the distance
sometimes reveal themselves, there is a solitary mill where the tilting
and rolling processes are carried to great perfection. The din of the
large tilts is heard half a mile off. Our ears tingle, our legs tremble,
when we stand close to their operation of beating bars of steel into the
greatest possible density; for the whole building vibrates as the
workmen swing before them in suspended baskets, and shift the bar at
every movement of these hammers of the Titans. We pass onward to the
more quiet _rolling_ department. The bar that has been tilted into the
most perfect compactness has now to acquire the utmost possible tenuity.
A large area is occupied by furnaces and rollers. The bar of steel is
dragged out of the furnace at almost a white heat. There are two men at
each roller. It is passed through the first pair, and its squareness is
instantly elongated and widened into flatness;—rapidly through a second
pair,—and a third,—and a fourth,—and a fifth.—The bar is becoming a
sheet of steel. Thinner and thinner it becomes, until it would seem that
the workmen can scarcely manage the fragile substance. It has spread
out, like a morsel of gold under the beater’s hammer, into an enormous
leaf. The least attenuated sheet is only the hundredth part of an inch
in thickness; some sheets are made as thin as the two-hundredth part of
an inch. And for what purpose is this result of the labours of so many
workmen, of such vast and complicated machinery, destined?—what the
final application of a material employing so much capital in every step,
from the Swedish mine to its transport by railroad to some other seat of
British industry? _The whole is prepared for one Steel-pen Manufactory
at Birmingham._
There is nothing very remarkable in a steel pen manufactory, as regards
ingenuity of contrivance or factory organisation. Upon a large scale of
production the extent of labour engaged in producing so minute an
article is necessarily striking. But the process is just as curious and
interesting, if conducted in a small shop as in a large. The pure steel,
as it comes from the rolling mill, is cut up into strips about two
inches and a half in width. These are further cut into the proper size
for the pen. The pieces are then annealed and cleansed. The maker’s name
is neatly impressed on the metal; and a cutting-tool forms the slit,
although imperfectly in this stage. The pen shape is given by a convex
punch pressing the plate into a concave die. The pen is formed when the
slit is perfected. It has now to be hardened, and finally cleansed and
polished, by the simple agency of friction in a cylinder. All the
varieties of form of the steel pen are produced by the punch; all the
contrivances of slits and apertures above the nib, by the cutting-tool.
Every improvement has had for its object to overcome the rigidity of the
steel,—to imitate the elasticity of the quill, whilst bestowing upon the
pen a superior durability.
The perfection that may reasonably be demanded in a steel pen has yet to
be reached. But the improvement in the manufacture is most decided.
Twenty years ago, to one who might choose, regardless of expense,
between the quill pen and the steel, the best Birmingham and London
production was an abomination. But we can trace the gradual acquiescence
of most men in the writing implement of the multitude. Few of us, in an
age when the small economies are carefully observed, and even paraded,
desire to use quill pens at ten or twelve shillings a hundred, as
Treasury Clerks once luxuriated in their use—an hour’s work, and then a
new one. To mend a pen, is troublesome to the old and even the
middle-aged man who once acquired the art; the young, for the most part,
have not learnt it. The most painstaking and penurious author would
never dream of imitating the wondrous man who translated Pliny with “one
grey goose quill.” Steel pens are so cheap, that if one scratches or
splutters, it may be thrown away, and another may be tried. But when a
really good one is found, we cling to it, as worldly men cling to their
friends; we use it till it breaks down, or grows rusty. We can do no
more; we handle it as Isaak Walton handled the frog upon his hook, “as
if we loved him.” We could almost fancy some analogy between the gradual
and decided improvement of the steel pen—one of the new instruments of
education—and the effects of education itself upon the mass of the
people. An instructed nation ought to present the same gradually
perfecting combination of strength with elasticity. The favourites of
fortune are like the quill, ready made for social purposes, with a
little scraping and polishing. The bulk of the community have to be
formed out of ruder and tougher materials—to be converted, welded, and
tempered into pliancy. The _manners_ of the great British family have
decidedly improved under culture—“_emollit mores_:” may the sturdy
self-respect of the race never be impaired!
TWO CHAPTERS ON BANK NOTE FORGERIES.
CHAPTER I.
Viotti’s division of violin-playing into two great classes—good playing
and bad playing—is applicable to Bank note making. The processes
employed in manufacturing good Bank notes we have already described: we
shall now cover a few pages with a faint outline of the various arts,
stratagems, and contrivances employed in concocting bad Bank notes. The
picture cannot be drawn with very distinct or strong markings. The
tableaux from which it is copied are so intertwisted and complicated
with clever, slippery, ingenious scoundrelism, that a finished chart of
it would be worse than morally displeasing:—it would be tedious.
All arts require time and experience for their development. When
anything great is to be done, first attempts are nearly always failures.
The first Bank note forgery was no exception to this rule, and its story
has a spice of romance in it. The affair has never been circumstantially
told; but some research enables us to detail it:—
In the month of August, 1757, a gentleman living in the neighbourhood of
Lincoln’s Inn Fields named Bliss, advertised for a clerk. There were, as
was usual even at that time, many applicants; but the successful one was
a young man of twenty-six, named Richard William Vaughan. His manners
were so winning and his demeanour so much that of a gentleman (he
belonged indeed to a good county family in Staffordshire, and had been a
student at Pembroke Hall, Oxford), that Mr. Bliss at once engaged him.
Nor had he occasion, during the time the new clerk served him, to repent
the step. Vaughan was so diligent, intelligent, and steady, that not
even when it transpired that he was, commercially speaking, “under a
cloud,” did his master lessen confidence in him. Some enquiry into his
antecedents showed that he had, while at College, been extravagant; that
his friends had removed him thence; set him up in Stafford as a
wholesale linen draper, with a branch establishment in Aldersgate
Street, London; that he had failed, and that there was some difficulty
about his certificate. But so well did he excuse his early failings and
account for his misfortunes, that his employer did not check the regard
he felt growing towards him. Their intercourse was not merely that of
master and servant. Vaughan was a frequent guest at Bliss’s table;
by-and-by a daily visitor to his wife, and—to his ward.
Miss Bliss was a young lady of some attractions, not the smallest of
which was a handsome fortune. Young Vaughan made the most of his
opportunities. He was well-looking, well-informed, dressed well, and
evidently made love well, for he won the young lady’s heart. The
guardian was not flinty hearted, and acted like a sensible man of the
world. “It was not,” he said on a subsequent and painful occasion, “till
I learned from the servants and observed by the girl’s behaviour that
she greatly approved Richard Vaughan, that I consented; but on condition
that he should make it appear that he could maintain her. I had no doubt
of his character as a servant, and I knew his family were respectable.
His brother is an eminent attorney.” Vaughan boasted that his mother
(his father was dead), was willing to re-instate him in business with a
thousand pounds; five hundred of which was to be settled upon Miss Bliss
for her separate use.
So far all went on prosperously. Providing Richard Vaughan could attain
a position satisfactory to the Blisses, the marriage was to take place
on the Easter Monday following, which the Calendar tells us happened
early in April, 1758. With this understanding, he left Mr. Bliss’s
service, to push his fortune.
Months passed on, and Vaughan appears to have made no way in the world.
He had not even obtained his bankrupt’s certificate. His visits to his
affianced were frequent, and his protestations passionate; but he had
effected nothing substantial towards a happy union. Miss Bliss’s
guardian grew impatient; and, although there is no evidence to prove
that the young lady’s affection for Vaughan was otherwise than deep and
sincere, yet even she began to lose confidence in him. His excuses were
evidently evasive, and not always true. The time fixed for the wedding
was fast approaching; and Vaughan saw that something must be done to
restore the young lady’s confidence.
About three weeks before the appointed Easter Tuesday, Vaughan went to
his mistress in high spirits. All was right: his certificate was to be
granted in a day or two; his family had come forward with the money, and
he was to continue the Aldersgate business he had previously carried on
as a branch of the Stafford trade. The capital he had waited so long
for, was at length forthcoming. In fact, here were two hundred and forty
pounds of the five hundred he was to settle on his beloved. Vaughan then
produced twelve twenty-pound notes; Miss Bliss could scarcely believe
her eyes. She examined them. The paper she remarked seemed rather
thicker than usual. “Oh,” said Bliss, “all Bank bills are not alike.”
The girl was naturally much pleased. She would hasten to apprise
Mistress Bliss of the good news.
Not for the world! So far from letting any living soul know he had
placed so much money in her hands, Vaughan exacted an oath of secresy
from her, and sealed the notes up in a parcel with his own seal; making
her swear that she would on no account open it till after their
marriage.
Some days after, that is, “on the twenty-second of March,” (1758) we are
describing the scene in Mr. Bliss’s own words—“I was sitting with my
wife by the fireside. The prisoner and the girl were sitting in the same
room—which was a small one—and although they whispered, I could
distinguish that Vaughan was very urgent to have something returned
which he had previously given to her. She refused, and Vaughan went away
in an angry mood. I then studied the girl’s face, and saw that it
expressed much dissatisfaction. Presently a tear broke out. I then
spoke, and insisted on knowing the dispute. She refused to tell, and I
told her that until she did, I would not see her. The next day I asked
the same question of Vaughan; he hesitated. ‘Oh!’ I said, ‘I dare say it
is some ten or twelve pound matter—something to buy a wedding bauble
with.’ He answered that it was much more than that, it was near three
hundred pounds! ‘But why all this secresy,’ I said; and he answered it
was not proper for people to know he had so much money till his
certificate was signed. I then asked him to what intent he had left the
notes with the young lady? He said, as I had of late suspected him, he
designed to give her a proof of his affection and truth. I said, ‘You
have demanded them in such a way that it must be construed as an
abatement of your affection towards her.’” Vaughan was again exceedingly
urgent in asking back the packet; but Bliss remembering his many
evasions, and supposing that this was a trick, declined advising his
niece to restore the parcel without proper consideration. The very next
day it was discovered that the notes were counterfeits.
This occasioned stricter enquiries into Vaughan’s previous career. It
turned out that he bore the character in his native place of a
dissipated and not very scrupulous person. The intention of his mother
to assist him was an entire fabrication, and he had given Miss Bliss the
forged notes solely for the purpose of deceiving her on that matter.
Meanwhile the forgeries became known to the authorities, and he was
arrested. By what means, does not clearly appear. The “Annual Register”
says that one of the engravers gave information; but we find nothing in
the newspapers of the time to support that statement; neither was it
corroborated at Vaughan’s trial.
When Vaughan was arrested he thrust a piece of paper into his mouth, and
began to chew it violently. It was, however, rescued, and proved to be
one of the forged notes; fourteen of them were found on his person, and
when his lodgings were searched twenty more were discovered.
Vaughan was tried at the Old Bailey on the seventh of April, before Lord
Mansfield. The manner of the forgery was detailed minutely at the
trial:—On the first of March (about a week before he gave the twelve
notes to the young lady) Vaughan called on Mr. John Corbould, an
engraver, and gave an order for a promissory note to be engraved with
these words:—
“No. ——.
“I promise to pay to ——, or Bearer, ——, London ——.”
There was to be a Britannia in the corner. When it was done, Mr. Sneed
(for that was the _alias_ Vaughan adopted) came again, but objected to
the execution of the work. The Britannia was not good, and the words “I
promise” were too near the edge of the plate. Another was in consequence
engraved, and on the fourth of March Vaughan took it away. He
immediately repaired to a printer, and had forty-eight impressions taken
on thin paper, provided by himself. Meanwhile, he had ordered, on the
same morning, of Mr. Charles Fourdrinier, another engraver, a second
plate, with what he called “a direction,” in the words, “For the
Governor and Company of the Bank of England.” This was done, and about a
week later he brought some paper, each sheet “folded up,” said the
witness, “very curiously, so that I could not see what was in them. I
was going to take the papers from him, but he said he must go upstairs
with me, and see them worked off himself. I took him upstairs; he would
not let me have them out of his hands. I took a sponge and wetted them,
and put them one by one on the plate in order for printing them. After
my boy had done two or three of them, I went downstairs, and my boy
worked the rest off, and the prisoner came down and paid me.”
Here the Court pertinently asked, “What imagination had you when a man
thus came to you to print on secret paper, ‘the Governor and Company of
the Bank of England?’”
The engraver’s reply was:—“I then did not suspect anything. But I shall
take care for the future.” As this was the first Bank of England note
forgery that was ever perpetrated, the engraver was held excused.
It may be mentioned as an evidence of the delicacy of the reporters
that, in their account of the trial, Miss Bliss’s name is not mentioned.
Her designation is “a young lady.” We subjoin the notes of her
evidence:—
“A young lady (sworn). The prisoner delivered me some bills; these are
the same (producing twelve counterfeit Bank notes sealed up in a cover,
for twenty pounds each), said they were Bank bills. I said they were
thicker paper—he said all bills are not alike. I was to keep them till
after we were married. He put them into my hands to show he put
confidence in me, and desired me not to show them to any body; sealed
them up with his own seal, and obliged me by an oath not to discover
them to any body. And I did not till he had discovered them himself. He
was to settle so much in Stock on me.”
Vaughan urged in his defence that his sole object was to deceive his
affianced, and that he intended to destroy all the notes after his
marriage. But it had been proved that the prisoner had asked one John
Ballingar to change first one, and then twenty of the notes; but which
that person was unable to do. Besides, had his sole object been to
dazzle Miss Bliss with his fictitious wealth, he would most probably
have entrusted more, if not all the notes, to her keeping.
He was found guilty, and passed the day that had been fixed for his
wedding, as a condemned criminal.
On the 11th May, 1758, Richard William Vaughan was executed at Tyburn.
By his side, on the same gallows, there was another forger: William
Boodgere, a military officer, who had forged a draught on an army agent
named Calcroft, and expiated the offence with the first forger of Bank
of England notes.
The gallows may seem hard measure to have meted out to Vaughan, when it
is considered that none of his notes were negotiated and no person
suffered by his fraud. Not one of the forty-eight notes, except the
twelve delivered to Miss Bliss, had been out of his possession; indeed
the imitation must have been very clumsily executed, and detection would
have instantly followed any attempt to pass the counterfeits. There was
no endeavour to copy the style of engraving on a real Bank note. That
was left to the engraver; and as each sheet passed through the press
twice, the words added at the second printing, “For the Governor and
Company of the Bank of England,” could have fallen into their proper
place on any one of the sheets, only by a miracle. But what would have
made the forgery clear to even a superficial observer was the singular
omission of the second “n” in the word England.[1]
Footnote 1:
Bad orthography was by no means uncommon in the most important
documents at that period; the days of the week, in the day-books of
the Bank of England itself, are spelt in a variety of ways.
The criticism on Vaughan’s note of a Bank clerk examined on the trial
was:—“There is some resemblance, to be sure; but this mote” (that upon
which the prisoner was tried) “is numbered thirteen thousand eight
hundred and forty, and we never reach so high a number.” Besides there
was no water-mark in the paper. The note of which a fac-simile appeared
in our eighteenth number, and dated so early as 1699, has a regular
design in the texture of the paper; showing that the water-mark is as
old as the Bank notes themselves.
Vaughan was greatly commiserated. But despite the unskilfulness of the
forgery, and the insignificant consequences which followed it, the crime
was considered of too dangerous a character not to be marked, from its
very novelty, with exemplary punishment. Hanging created at that time no
remorse in the public mind, and it was thought necessary to set up
Vaughan as a warning to all future Bank note forgers. The crime was too
dangerous not to be marked with the severest penalties. Forgery differs
from other crimes not less in the magnitude of the spoil it may obtain,
and of the injury it inflicts, than in the facilities attending its
accomplishment. The common thief finds a limit to his depredations in
the bulkiness of his booty, which is generally confined to such property
as he can carry about his person; the swindler raises insuperable and
defeating obstacles to his frauds if the amount he seeks to obtain is so
considerable as to awaken close vigilance or enquiry. To carry their
projects to any very profitable extent, these criminals are reduced to
the hazardous necessity of acting in concert, and thus infinitely
increasing the risks of detection. But the forger need have no
accomplice; he is burdened with no bulky and suspicious property; he
needs no receiver to assist his contrivances. The skill of his own
individual right hand can command thousands; often with the certainty of
not being detected, and oftener with such rapidity as to enable him to
baffle the pursuit of justice.
It was a long time before Vaughan’s rude attempt was improved upon: but
in the same year, (1758), another department of the crime was commenced
with perfect success;—namely, an ingenious alteration, for fraudulent
purposes, of real Bank notes. A few months after Vaughan’s execution,
one of the northern mails was stopped and robbed by a highwayman;
several Bank notes were comprised in the spoil, and the robber, setting
up with these as a gentleman, went boldly to the Hatfield Post office,
ordered a chaise and four, rattled away down the road, and changed a
note at every change of horses. The robbery was, of course, soon made
known, and the numbers and dates of the stolen notes were advertised as
having been stopped at the Bank. To the genius of a highwayman this
offered but a small obstacle, and the gentleman-thief changed all the
figures “1” he could find into “4’s.” These notes passed currently
enough; but, on reaching the Bank, the alteration was detected, and the
last holder was refused payment. As that person had given a valuable
consideration for the note, he brought an action for the recovery of the
amount; and at the trial it was ruled by the Lord Chief Justice, that
“any person paying a valuable consideration for a Bank note, payable to
bearer, in a fair course of business, has an understood right to receive
the money of the Bank.”
It took a quarter of a century to bring the art of forging Bank notes to
perfection. In 1779, this was nearly attained by an ingenious gentleman
named Mathison, a watchmaker, from the matrimonial village of Gretna
Green. Having learnt the arts of engraving and of simulating signatures,
he tried his hand at the notes of the Darlington Bank; but, with the
confidence of skill, was not cautious in passing them, was suspected,
and absconded to Edinburgh. Scorning to let his talent be wasted, he
favoured the Scottish public with many spurious Royal Bank of Scotland
notes, and regularly forged his way by their aid to London. At the end
of February he took handsome lodgings in the Strand, opposite Arundel
Street. His industry was remarkable; for, by the 12th of March, he had
planed and polished rough pieces of copper, engraved them, forged the
water-mark, printed and negotiated several impressions. His plan was to
travel and to purchase articles in shops. He bought a pair of
shoe-buckles at Coventry with a forged note, which was eventually
detected at the Bank of England. He had got so bold that he paid such
frequent visits in Threadneedle Street that the Bank clerks became
familiar with his person. He was continually changing notes of one, for
another denomination. These were his originals, which he procured to
make spurious copies of. One day seven thousand pounds came in from the
Stamp Office. There was a dispute about one of the notes. Mathison, who
was present, though at some distance, declared, oracularly, that the
note was a good one. How could he know so well? A dawn of suspicion
arose in the minds of the clerks; one trail led into another, and
Mathison was finally apprehended. So well were his notes forged that, on
the trial, an experienced Bank clerk declared he could not tell whether
the note handed him to examine was forged or not. Mathison offered to
reveal his secret of forging the water-mark, if mercy were shown to him;
this was refused, and he suffered the penalty of his crime.
Mathison was a genius in his criminal way, but a greater than he
appeared in 1786. In that year perfection seemed to have been reached.
So considerable was the circulation of spurious paper-money that it
appeared as if some unknown power had set up a bank of its own. Notes
were issued from it, and readily passed current, in hundreds and
thousands. They were not to be distinguished from the genuine paper of
Threadneedle Street. Indeed, when one was presented there, in due
course, so complete were all its parts; so masterly the engraving; so
correct the signatures; so skilful the water-mark, that it was promptly
paid; and only discovered to be a forgery when it reached a particular
department. From that period forged paper continued to be presented,
especially at the time of lottery drawing. Consultations were held with
the police. Plans were laid to help detection. Every effort was made to
trace the forger. Clarke, the best detective of his day, went, like a
sluth-hound, on the track; for in those days the expressive word
“blood-money” was known. Up to a certain point there was little
difficulty; but beyond that, consummate art defied the ingenuity of the
officer. In whatever way the notes came, the train of discovery always
paused at the lottery-offices. Advertisements offering large rewards
were circulated; but the unknown forger baffled detection.
While this base paper was in full currency, there appeared an
advertisement in the Daily Advertiser for a servant. The successful
applicant was a young man, in the employment of a musical-instrument
maker; who, some time after, was called upon by a coachman, and informed
that the advertiser was waiting in a coach to see him. The young man was
desired to enter the conveyance, where he beheld a person with something
of the appearance of a foreigner, sixty or seventy years old, apparently
troubled with the gout. A camlet surtout was buttoned round his mouth; a
large patch was placed over his left eye; and nearly every part of his
face was concealed. He affected much infirmity. He had a faint hectic
cough; and invariably presented the patched side to the view of the
servant. After some conversation—in the course of which he represented
himself as guardian to a young nobleman of great fortune—the interview
concluded with the engagement of the applicant; and the new servant was
directed to call on Mr. Brank, at 29, Titchfield Street, Oxford Street.
At this interview Brank inveighed against his whimsical ward for his
love of speculating in lottery-tickets; and told the servant that his
principal duty would be to purchase them. After one or two meetings, at
each of which Brank kept his face muffled, he handed a forty and twenty
pound Bank note; told the servant to be very careful not to lose them;
and directed him to buy lottery-tickets at separate offices. The young
man fulfilled his instructions, and at the moment he was returning, was
suddenly called by his employer from the other side of the street,
congratulated on his rapidity, and then told to go to various other
offices in the neighbourhood of the Royal Exchange, and to purchase more
shares. Four hundred pounds in Bank of England Notes were handed him,
and the wishes of the mysterious Mr. Brank were satisfactorily effected.
These scenes were continually enacted. Notes to a large amount were thus
circulated; lottery-tickets purchased; and Mr. Brank—always in a coach,
with his face studiously concealed—was ever ready on the spot to receive
them. The surprise of the servant was somewhat excited; but had he known
that from the period he left his master to purchase the tickets, one
female figure accompanied all his movements; that when he entered the
offices, it waited at the door, peered cautiously in at the window,
hovered around him like a second shadow, watched him carefully, and
never left him until once more he was in the Company of his
employer—that surprise would have been greatly increased.[2] Again and
again were these extraordinary scenes rehearsed. At last the Bank
obtained a clue, and the servant was taken into custody. The directors
imagined that they had secured the actor of so many parts; that the
flood of forged notes which had inundated that establishment would at
length be dammed up at his source. Their hopes proved fallacious, and it
was found that “Old Patch,” (as the mysterious forger was, from the
servant’s description, nick-named) had been sufficiently clever to
baffle the Bank directors. The house in Titchfield Street was searched;
but Mr. Brank had deserted it, and not a trace of a single implement of
forgery was to be seen.
Footnote 2:
Francis’s History of the Bank of England.
All that could be obtained was some little knowledge of “Old Patch’s”
proceedings. It appeared that he carried on his paper coining entirely
by himself. His only confidant was his mistress. He was his own
engraver. He even made his own ink. He manufactured his own paper. With
a private press he worked his own notes; and counterfeited the
signatures of the cashiers, completely. But these discoveries had no
effect; for it became evident that Mr. Patch had set up a press
elsewhere. Although his secret continued as impenetrable, his notes
became as plentiful as ever. Five years of unbounded prosperity ought to
have satisfied him; but it did not. Success seemed to pall him. His
genius was of that insatiable order which demands new excitements, and a
constant succession of new flights. The following paragraph from a
newspaper of 1786 relates to the same individual:—
“On the 17th of December, ten pounds was paid into the Bank, for which
the clerk, as usual, gave a ticket to receive a Bank note of equal
value. This ticket ought to have been carried immediately to the
cashier, instead of which the bearer took it home, and curiously added
an 0 to the original sum, and returning, presented it so altered to the
cashier, for which he received a note of one hundred pounds. In the
evening, the clerks found a deficiency in the accounts; and on examining
the tickets of the day, not only that but two others were discovered to
have been obtained in the same manner. In the one, the figure 1 was
altered to 4, and in another to 5, by which the artist received, upon
the whole, nearly one thousand pounds.”
To that princely felony, Old Patch, as will be seen in the sequel, added
smaller misdemeanors which one would think were far beneath his notice;
except to convince himself and his mistress of the unbounded facility of
his genius for fraud.
At that period the affluent public were saddled with a tax on plate; and
many experiments were made to evade it. Among others, one was invented
by a Mr. Charles Price, a stock-jobber and lottery-office keeper, which,
for a time, puzzled the tax-gatherer. Mr. Charles Price lived in great
style, gave splendid dinners, and did everything on the grandest scale.
Yet Mr. Charles Price had no plate! The authorities could not find so
much as a silver tooth-pick on his magnificent premises. In truth, what
he was too cunning to possess, he borrowed. For one of his sumptuous
entertainments, he hired the plate of a silversmith in Cornhill, and
left the value in bank notes as security for its safe return. One of
these notes having proved a forgery, was traced to Mr. Charles Price;
and Mr. Charles Price was not to be found at that particular juncture.
Although this excited no surprise—for he was often an absentee from his
office for short periods—yet in due course and as a formal matter of
business, an officer was set to find him, and to ask his explanation
regarding the false note. After tracing a man who he had a strong notion
was Mr. Charles Price through countless lodgings and innumerable
disguises, the officer (to use his own expression) “nabbed” Mr. Charles
Price. But, as Mr. Clarke observed, his prisoner and his prisoner’s lady
were even then “too many” for him; for although he lost not a moment in
trying to secure the forging implements, after he had discovered that
Mr. Charles Price, and Mr. Brank, and Old Patch, were all concentrated
in the person of his prisoner, he found the lady had destroyed every
trace of evidence. Not a vestige of the forging factory was left. Not
the point of a graver, nor a single spot of ink, nor a shred of silver
paper, nor a scrap of anybody’s handwriting, was to be met with.
Despite, however, this paucity of evidence to convict him, Mr. Charles
Price had not the courage to face a jury, and eventually he saved the
judicature and the Tyburn executive much trouble and expense, by hanging
himself in Bridewell.
The success of Mr. Charles Price has never been surpassed; and even
after the darkest era in the history of Bank forgeries—which dates from
the suspension of cash payments, in February, 1797, and which will be
treated of in a succeeding paper—“Old Patch” was still remembered as the
Cæsar of Forgers.
THE TWO GUIDES OF THE CHILD.
A spirit near me said, “Look forth upon the Land of Life. What do you
see?”
“Steep mountains, covered by a mighty plain, a table-land of
many-coloured beauty. Beauty, nay, it seems all beautiful at first, but
now I see that there are some parts barren.”
“Are they quite barren?—look more closely still!”
“No, in the wildest deserts, now, I see some gum-dropping acacias, and
the crimson blossom of the cactus. But there are regions that rejoice
abundantly in flower and fruit; and now, O Spirit, I see men and women
moving to and fro.”
“Observe them, mortal.”
“I behold a world of love; the men have women’s arms entwined about
them; some upon the verge of precipices—friends are running to the
rescue. There are many wandering like strangers, who know not their
road, and they look upward. Spirit, how many, many eyes are looking up
as if to God! Ah, now I see some strike their neighbours down into the
dust; I see some wallowing like swine; I see that there are men and
women brutal.”
“Are they quite brutal?—look more closely still.”
“No, I see prickly sorrow growing out of crime, and penitence awakened
by a look of love. I see good gifts bestowed out of the hand of murder,
and see truth issue out of lying lips. But in this plain, O Spirit, I
see regions—wide, bright regions,—yielding fruit and flower, while
others seem perpetually veiled with fogs, and in them no fruit ripens. I
see pleasant regions where the rock is full of clefts, and people fall
into them. The men who dwell beneath the fog deal lovingly, and yet they
have small enjoyment in the world around them, which they scarcely see.
But whither are these women going?”
“Follow them.”
“I have followed down the mountains to a haven in the vale below. All
that is lovely in the world of flowers makes a fragrant bed for the dear
children; birds singing, they breathe upon the pleasant air; the
butterflies play with them. Their limbs shine white among the blossoms,
and their mothers come down full of joy to share their innocent delight.
They pelt each other with the lilies of the valley. They call up at will
fantastic masques, grim giants play to make them merry, a thousand
grotesque loving phantoms kiss them; to each the mother is the one thing
real, the highest bliss—the next bliss is the dream of all the world
beside. Some that are motherless, all mother’s love. Every gesture,
every look, every odour, every song, adds to the charm of love which
fills the valley. Some little figures fall and die, and on the valley’s
soil they crumble into violets and lilies, with love-tears to hang in
them like dew.
“Who dares to come down with a frown into this happy valley? A severe
man seizes an unhappy, shrieking child, and leads it to the roughest
ascent of the mountain. He will lead it over steep rocks to the plain of
the mature. On ugly needle-points he makes the child sit down, and
teaches it its duty in the world above.”
“Its duty, mortal! do you listen to the teacher?”
“Spirit, I hear now. The child is informed about two languages spoken by
nations extinct centuries ago, and something also, O Spirit, about the
base of a hypothenuse.”
“Does the child attend?”
“Not much; but it is beaten sorely, and its knees are bruised against
the rocks, till it is hauled up, woe-begone and weary, to the upper
plain. It looks about bewildered; all is strange,—it knows not how to
act. Fogs crown the barren mountain paths. Spirit, I am unhappy; there
are many children thus hauled up, and as young men upon the plain; they
walk in fog, or among brambles; some fall into pits; and many, getting
into flower-paths, lie down and learn. Some become active, seeking
right, but ignorant of what right is; they wander among men out of their
fog-land, preaching folly. Let me go back among the children.”
“Have they no better guide?”
“Yes, now there comes one with a smiling face, and rolls upon the
flowers with the little ones, and they are drawn to him. And he has
magic spells to conjure up glorious spectacles of fairy land. He frolics
with them and might be first cousin to the butterflies. He wreathes
their little heads with flower garlands, and with his fairy land upon
his lips he walks toward the mountains; eagerly they follow. He seeks
the smoothest upward path, and that is but a rough one, yet they run up
merrily, guide and children, butterflies pursuing still the flowers as
they nod over a host of laughing faces. They talk of the delightful
fairy world, and resting in the shady places learn of the yet more
delightful world of God. They learn to love the Maker of the Flowers, to
know how great the Father of the Stars must be, how good must be the
Father of the Beetle. They listen to the story of the race they go to
labour with upon the plain, and love it for the labour it has done. They
learn old languages of men, to understand the past—more eagerly they
learn the voices of the men of their own day, that they may take part
with the present. And in their study when they flag, they fall back upon
thoughts of the Child Valley they are leaving. Sports and fancies are
the rod and spur that bring them with new vigour to the lessons. When
they reach the plain they cry, ‘We know you, men and women; we know to
what you have aspired for centuries; we know the love there is in you;
we know the love there is in God; we come prepared to labour with you,
dear, good friends. We will not call you clumsy when we see you tumble,
we will try to pick you up; when we fall, you shall pick us up. We have
been trained to love, and therefore we can aid you heartily, for love is
labour!’”
The Spirit whispered, “You have seen and you have heard. Go now, and
speak unto your fellow-men: ask justice for the child.”
To-day should love To-morrow, for it is a thing of hope; let the young
Future not be nursed by Care. God gave not fancy to the child that men
should stamp its blossoms down into the loose soil of intellect. The
child’s heart was not made full to the brim of love, that men should
pour its love away, and bruise instead of kiss the trusting innocent.
Love and fancy are the stems on which we may graft knowledge readily.
What is called by some dry folks a solid foundation may be a thing not
desirable. To cut down all the trees and root up all the flowers in a
garden, to cover walks and flower-beds alike with a hard crust of
well-rolled gravel, that would be to lay down your solid foundation
after a plan which some think good in a child’s mind, though not quite
worth adopting in a garden. O, teacher, love the child and learn of it;
so let it love and learn of you.
CHIPS.
EASY SPELLING AND HARD READING.
An interesting case of educational destitution presents itself in the
following letter. It is written by the son of a poor, but honest,
brickmaker of Hammersmith, who emigrated to Sidney, and is now a
shepherd at Bathurst. While the facts it contains are clearly stated,
and the sentiments expressed are highly creditable to the writer—showing
that his moral training had not been neglected by his parents—the
orthography is such as, we may safely affirm, would not have emanated
from any human being with similar abilities, and in a similar station,
than an Englishman.
England stands pre-eminent in this respect. The parents of this
letter-writer were too poor to _pay_ to have their child taught, and
consequently with the best will in the world to be an ordinary scholar,
he is unable to spell. The clever manner in which such letters are
selected as represent the sounds he is in the habit of giving to each
word, shows an aptitude which would assuredly have made with the
commonest cultivation a literate and useful citizen. More amusing
orthography we have no where met; but the information it conveys is of
the most useful kind. The reader will perceive that the points touched
upon are precisely those respecting which he would wish to be informed;
were he about to emigrate.
The epistle not only gives a truthful picture of an Australian
shepherd’s condition, but is in itself a lesson and a censure on that
want of national means of education from which at least one-third of the
adult population of England suffer, and of which the writer is an
especial victim and example:—
“Deer mother and father and sisters i root thes few lines hooping to
find you All well for I arr in gudd halth my self and i wood root
befor onley i wos very un setled and now i have root i houp you will
rite back as soon as you can and send how you all arr and likwise our
frends and i am hired my self for a sheeprd 12 munts for 19 pound and
my keep too for it wos to soun for our work when i arive in the cuntry
it is a plesent and a helthay cuntry and most peple dows well in it as
liks onley it is a grait cuntry for durnkerds and you do not Xpket for
them to do well no weer i have not got any folt to find of the cuntry
for after few theres man can bee is own master if hee liks for the
wagers is higher then tha arr at hom and the previshen is seeper and
peple do not work so hard as thay do at tom and if any wne wish to com
com at wonce and don with it same as i did and take no feer oof the
see whot ever for i did not see any danger whot ever and it is a
cuntry that puur peapole can get a gud living in hoostlue wich thay
can not at tom i arr vrey well plesed off the cuntry and i should bee
very happy if i had som relishon over with mee and i am 230 miles up
the cuntry and wee had a very plesent voyge over in deed and likwise
luckey and vrey litle sickenss and no deths deer mother and father i
houp you will lett our frends no how i am geeting on and der frends
you take no heed what pepole says about horstler take and past your
own thouths about it and if any body wishes to com i wood swade them
to com con pepole can geet a gud living there wer tha cant at tome and
pepole beter com and geet a belly full then to stop at tome and work
day and night then onely get haf a bely ful and i am shuur that no
body can not find any folt off the cuntry eXcep tis pepole do not now
when tha arr doing well [price of pervison] tee lb 1_s_ to 3_s_ suuger
lb 2_d_ to 6_d_ coofe lb 8_d_ to 1_s_ bred lb 1_d_ to 2_d_ beef lb
1_d_ to 2_d_ mutten ditto baken lb 6_d_ to 1_s._ poork lb 2_d_ to 4_d_
butter lb _6_d to 1_s_ chees lb 4_d_ to 8_d_ pertos price as tome sope
lb 4_d_ to 6_d_ starch and blue and sooder home price candles lb 4_d_
to 6_d_ rice lb 2_d_ to 4_d_ hags hom price trekle lb 4_d_ to 5_d_
solt lb 1_d_ peper nounc 2_d_ tabaker lb 1_s_ to 6_s_ beer 4_d_ pot at
sednay and up in the pool 1_s_ spirts hom price frut happles pars
horengs lemns peshes gusbryes curneth cheerys cokelnut storbyes
rasberys nuts of all sorts vegtbles of all sorts price of cloths much
the same as tome stok very resneble sheep 2_s_ 6_d_ heed wait about 80
pounds fat bullket about 1000 wit 3_l_ pour hors from 2_l_ to 10_l_
ther is wonderful grait many black in the cuntry but tha will not hurt
any one if you will let them aolne.
traitment on bord ship,
wee arive in the 7 febery and sailed to graveshend then wee stop ther
2 days then wee sailed from ther to plymeth and wee stop ther 9 days
and took in loot more emigrant then wee sailed from ther to seednay we
arive to seednay 8 of June wee had it vry ruf in the bay of biskey and
three mor places beside but i did not see any dainger of sinking not
the lest for wee had a vry plesent voyges over in deed the pervison on
bord ship Monday pork haf pound pea haf pint butter 6 ounces weekly
tea 1 ounce per week 9 ounces daily biscuit Tusday beef haf pound rice
4 ounces flour 1 pound per week Wendesday pork haf pound peas haf pint
raisins haf pound per week cooffee 1 ounce and haf per week Thursday
preserved meet haf pound Friday pork haf pound peas haf pint Sadurday
beef haf pound rice 4 ounces sugar three Quarter pound per week Sunday
preserved meat haf pound fresh woter three Quarrts daily vinegar haf
pint per week Mustard haf ounce per week salt tow ounces per week lime
Juse haf pint per week my der sisters i houp you will keep your selvs
from all bad company for it is a disgrace to all frends and likwise
worse for you own sellvs o rember that opinted day to com at last tis
behoups that wee shal bee free from all dets o whot a glorious tirm it
will bee then wee shal feel no more pains nor gref nor sorows nor
sickness nor truble of any cind o whot a glorious term it will bee
then o seeners kip your selvs out off the mire for feer you shuld sink
to the bootem the sarvents wagars of houstler tha geets ges haf as
much mour as tha gets at tome and my sister Maryaan shee kood geet 16
punds a year and Sarah get 20 pound and Marther get 8 or 9 pound and
tha arr not so sharp to the servents as tha arr at tome i houp you
will send word wot the yungest child name is and how it is geeting on
and send the date when it wos born and i houp this will find you all
weel and cumfortble to. J. R.”
A VERY OLD SOLDIER.
The following is a chip from a block whence we have already taken a few
shavings:—“Kohl’s Travels in the Netherlands.” It describes the National
Hospital for the Aged at Brussels. Some of the inmates whom he found in
it, though still alive, belong to history. It must have been with a sort
of archaic emotion that our inquisitive friend found himself speaking to
a man who had escorted Marie Antoinette from Vienna to Paris, on the
occasion of her marriage!
“The magnitude of the _Hospice des Vieillards_ in Brussels,” says Mr.
Kohl, “fully realises the idea of a National establishment. The building
itself fulfils all the required conditions of extent, solidity, and
convenience. The gardens, court-yards, and apartments are spacious and
well arranged. The sleeping and eating rooms are large, and well
furnished; and it is pleasing to observe, here and there, the walls
adorned with pictures painted in oil-colours. The inmates of this
_Hospice_ pass their latter days in the enjoyment of a degree of
happiness and comfort which would be unattainable in their own homes.
The chapel is situated only at the distance of a few paces from the main
building, and is connected with it by means of a roofed corridor; thus
obviating the difficulties which prevent old people from attending
places of public worship when, as it frequently happens, they are
situated at long and inaccessible distances from their dwellings. In
winter the Chapel of the _Hospice_ is carefully warmed and secured
against damp.
“At the time of my visit to the _Hospice des Vieillards_ in Brussels,
the establishment contained about seven hundred inmates, of both sexes,
between the ages of seventy and eighty. Of this number six hundred and
fifteen were maintained at the charge of the establishment, and
seventy-five, being in competent circumstances, defrayed their own
expenses. That the number of those able to maintain themselves should
bear so considerable a relative proportion to the rest, is a fact which
bears strong testimony in favour of the merits of the establishment.
Those who support themselves live in a style more or less costly,
according to the amount of their respective payments. Some of the
apartments into which I was conducted certainly presented such an air of
comfort that persons, even of a superior condition of life, could
scarcely have desired better.
“I learned from the Governor of the _Hospice_ that the average cost of
the maintenance of each individual was about seventy-five centimes per
day, making a total diurnal expenditure of six hundred francs, or of two
hundred thousand francs per annum. But as this estimate includes the
wages of attendants and the expenses consequent on repairs of the
building, it may fairly be calculated that each individual costs about
three hundred francs per annum. The _Hospice_ frequently receives
liberal donations and bequests from opulent private persons.
“For such of the pensioners as are able to work, employment is provided:
others are appointed to fill official posts in the veteran Republic. Now
and then a little task-work is imposed; but the _Hospice_ being rich,
this duty is not exacted with the precision requisite in establishments
for the young, where the inmates having a long worldly career before
them, it is desirable that they should be trained in habits of
regularity and industry. The pensioners of the Brussels _Hospice des
Vieillards_, enjoy much freedom; and they are even allowed some
amusements and indulgences, which it might not be proper to concede to
young persons. For example, they are permitted to play at cards; but it
will scarcely be said there is anything objectionable in such an
indulgence to old persons who have run out their worldly course; for
even were they fated once more to enter into society, their example
could neither be very useful nor very dangerous. Here and there I
observed groups of the pensioners, male and female, seated at cards,
staking their pocket-money, of which each has a small allowance, on the
hazard of the game. The penalties assigned for misdemeanours are very
mild, consisting merely in the offending party being prohibited from
going out, or, as it is called, _la privée de la sortie_. In extreme
cases the delinquent is confined to his or her own apartment.
“It has seldom been my lot to visit a charitable institution, which
created in my mind so many pleasing impressions as those I experienced
in the Hospital for the Old in Brussels. It was gratifying to observe in
the spacious court-yards the cheerful and happy groups of grey-haired
men and women, sunning themselves in the open air. Some were playing at
cards, whilst here and there the females were seated at work, and men
sauntering about smoking their pipes and gossiping. Every now and then I
met an old man whistling or singing whilst he paced to and fro. More
than one of these veterans had been eye-witnesses of interesting
historical events, which now belong to a past age. Several of them had
served as soldiers during the Austrian dominion in Belgium. Of these the
porter of the Hospital was one.
“The most remarkable character in the whole establishment was an old
Dutchman, named Jan Hermann Jankens, who was born at Leyden in the year
1735. At the time when I saw him, he was one hundred and nine years of
age; or, to quote his own description of himself, he was ‘_leste,
vaillant, et sain_.’”
“Il nous rapelle en vain
Apres un siècle de séjour,
Ses plaisirs ainsi que ses amertumes.”
“These lines were inscribed beneath his portrait, which hung in his own
apartment. I remarked that the painter had not flattered him. ‘You are
right, Sir,’ replied he; ‘the fact is, I am much younger than my
portrait,’ and to prove that he was making no vain boast, he sprang up,
and cut several capers, with surprising agility. His faculties were
unimpaired, and he was a remarkable example of that vigorous
organisation which sometimes manifests itself in the human frame; and
which excites our wonder when we find that such delicate structures as
the nerves of sight and hearing may be used for the space of a century
without wearing out. Until within two years of the time when I saw
Jankens, he had been able to work well and actively. His hand was firm
and steady, and he frequently wrote letters to his distant friends. When
in his one hundred and seventh year, he thought, very reasonably, that
he might give up work. ‘And what do you do now?’ I enquired. ‘I enjoy my
life,’ replied he; ‘I saunter about the whole day long, singing,
smoking, and amusing myself. I spend my time very gaily!’
“‘Yes, Sir; he dances, drinks, and sings all day long!’ exclaimed, in a
half-jeering, half-envious tone, another veteran, named Watermans, who
had joined us, and who, though _only_ ninety years of age, was much more
feeble than Jankens.
“I learned from the latter that he had had fifteen children; but that of
all his large family, only one survived, though most of them had lived
to a goodly age. His memory was stored with recollections of events
connected with the marriage of Louis the Sixteenth; for, when a soldier
in the Austrian service, he had formed one of the military escort which
conducted Marie Antoinette into France. He sang me an old song, which
had been composed in honour of the Royal nuptials, and which he said was
very popular at the time. It was in the usual style of such effusions; a
mere string of hyperbolic compliments, in praise of the ‘beauteous
Princess,’ and the ‘illustrious Prince.’ It sounded like an echo from
the grave of old French loyalty. Jankens sang this song in a remarkably
clear, strong voice; but nevertheless, the performance did not give
satisfaction to old Watermans, who, thrusting his fingers into his ears,
said peevishly, ‘What a croaking noise!’
“Heedless of this discouraging remark, the venerable centenarian was
preparing to favour me with another specimen of his vocal ability, when
the great bell in the court-yard rang for supper. ‘Pardon, Sir,’ said
Jankens, with an apologetic bow, ‘but—supper.’ Whereupon he hurried off
in the direction of the refectory, with that sort of eager yearning with
which it might be imagined he turned to his mother’s breast one hundred
and nine years before.
“‘It is amazing that that old fellow should have so sharp an appetite,’
observed the petulant Watermans, hobbling after him in a way which
showed that he too was not altogether unprepared to do honour to the
evening meal.”
This Hospital for the Aged is a sort of National Almshouse not solely
peculiar to Belgium. Private munificence does in England what is done
abroad by Governments; but it is to be deplored that a more general
provision for the superannuated does not exist in this country.
Workhouses are indeed asylums for the old; but for those who are also
decayed in worldly circumstances, they cannot afford those comforts
which old age requires. Except Greenwich Hospital for sailors, and
Chelsea Hospital for soldiers, we have no national institution for old
people.
THE HOUSEHOLD JEWELS.
A Traveller, from journeying
In countries far away,
Re-passed his threshold at the close
Of one calm Sabbath day;
A voice of love, a comely face,
A kiss of chaste delight,
Were the first things to welcome him
On that blest Sabbath night.
He stretched his limbs upon the hearth,
Before its friendly blaze,
And conjured up mixed memories
Of gay and gloomy days;
And felt that none of gentle soul,
However far he roam,
Can e’er forego, can e’er forget,
The quiet joys of home.
“Bring me my children!” cried the sire,
With eager, earnest tone;
“I long to press them, and to mark
How lovely they have grown;
Twelve weary months have passed away
Since I went o’er the sea,
To feel how sad and lone I was
Without my babes and thee.”
“Refresh thee, as ’tis needful,” said
The fair and faithful wife,
The while her pensive features paled,
And stirred with inward strife;
“Refresh thee, husband of my heart,
I ask it as a boon;
Our children are reposing, love;
Thou shalt behold them soon.”
She spread the meal, she filled the cup,
She pressed him to partake;
He sat down blithely at the board,
And all for her sweet sake;
But when the frugal feast was done,
The thankful prayer preferred,
Again affection’s fountain flowed;
Again its voice was heard.
“Bring me my children, darling wife,
I’m in an ardent mood;
My soul lacks purer aliment,
I long for other food;
Bring forth my children to my gaze,
Or ere I rage or weep,
I yearn to kiss their happy eyes
Before the hour of sleep.”
“I have a question yet to ask;
Be patient, husband dear.
A stranger, one auspicious morn,
Did send some jewels here;
Until to take them from my care,
But yesterday he came,
And I restored them with a sigh:
—Dost thou approve, or blame?”
“I marvel much, sweet wife, that thou
Shouldst breathe such words to me;
Restore to man, resign to God,
Whate’er is lent to thee;
Restore it with a willing heart,
Be grateful for the trust;
Whate’er may tempt or try us, wife,
Let us be ever just.”
She took him by the passive hand,
And up the moonlit stair,
She led him to their bridal bed,
With mute and mournful air;
She turned the cover down, and there,
In grave-like garments dressed,
Lay the twin children of their love,
In death’s serenest rest.
“These were the jewels lent to me,
Which God has deigned to own;
The precious caskets still remain,
But, ah, the _gems_ are flown;
But thou didst teach me to resign
What God alone can claim;
He giveth and he takes away,
Blest be His holy name!”
The father gazed upon his babes,
The mother drooped apart,
Whilst all the woman’s sorrow gushed
From her o’erburdened heart;
And with the striving of her grief,
Which wrung the tears she shed,
Were mingled low and loving words
To the unconscious dead.
When the sad sire had looked his fill.
He veiled each breathless face,
And down in self-abasement bowed,
For comfort and for grace;
With the deep eloquence of woe,
Poured forth his secret soul,
Rose up, and stood erect and calm,
In spirit healed and whole.
“Restrain thy tears, poor wife,” he said,
“I learn this lesson still,
God gives, and God can take away,
Blest be His holy will!
Blest are my children, for they _live_
From sin and sorrow free,
And I am not all joyless, wife,
With faith, hope, love, and thee.”
THE LABORATORY IN THE CHEST.
The mind of Mr. Bagges was decidedly affected—beneficially—by the
lecture on the Chemistry of a Candle, which, as set forth in a previous
number of this journal, had been delivered to him by his youthful
nephew. That learned discourse inspired him with a new feeling; an
interest in matters of science. He began to frequent the Polytechnic
Institution, nearly as much as his club. He also took to lounging at the
British Museum; where he was often to be seen, with his left arm under
his coat-tails, examining the wonderful works of nature and antiquity,
through his eye-glass. Moreover, he procured himself to be elected a
member of the Royal Institution, which became a regular house of call to
him, so that in a short time he grew to be one of the ordinary phenomena
of the place.
Mr. Bagges likewise adopted a custom of giving _conversaziones_, which,
however, were always very private and select—generally confined to his
sister’s family. Three courses were first discussed; then dessert; after
which, surrounded by an apparatus of glasses and decanters, Master Harry
Wilkinson was called upon, as a sort of juvenile Davy, to amuse his
uncle by the elucidation of some chemical or other physical mystery.
Master Wilkinson had now attained to the ability of making experiments;
most of which, involving combustion, were strongly deprecated by the
young gentleman’s mamma; but her opposition was overruled by Mr. Bagges,
who argued that it was much better that a young dog should burn
phosphorus before your face than let off gunpowder behind your back, to
say nothing of occasionally pinning a cracker to your skirts. He
maintained that playing with fire and water, throwing stones, and such
like boys’ tricks, as they are commonly called, are the first
expressions of a scientific tendency—endeavours and efforts of the
infant mind to acquaint itself with the powers of Nature.
His own favourite toys, he remembered, were squibs, suckers, squirts,
and slings; and he was persuaded that, by his having been denied them at
school, a natural philosopher had been nipped in the bud.
Blowing bubbles was an example—by-the-bye, a rather notable one—by which
Mr. Bagges, on one of his scientific evenings, was instancing the
affinity of child’s play to philosophical experiments, when he bethought
him Harry had said on a former occasion that the human breath consists
chiefly of carbonic acid, which is heavier than common air. How then, it
occurred to his inquiring, though elderly mind, was it that
soap-bladders, blown from a tobacco-pipe, rose instead of sinking? He
asked his nephew this.
“Oh, uncle!” answered Harry, “in the first place, the air you blow
bubbles with mostly comes in at the nose and goes out at the mouth,
without having been breathed at all. Then it is warmed by the mouth, and
warmth, you know, makes a measure of air get larger, and so lighter in
proportion. A soap-bubble rises for the same reason that a fire-balloon
rises—that is, because the air inside of it has been heated, and weighs
less than the same sized bubbleful of cold air.”
“What, hot breath does!” said Mr. Bagges. “Well, now, it’s a curious
thing, when you come to think of it, that the breath should be
hot—indeed, the warmth of the body generally seems a puzzle. It is
wonderful, too, how the bodily heat can be kept up so long as it is.
Here, now, is this tumbler of hot grog—a mixture of boiling water, and
what d’ye call it, you scientific geniuses?”
“Alcohol, uncle.”
“Alcohol—well—or, as we used to say, brandy. Now, if I leave this
tumbler of brandy-and-water alone——”
“_If_ you do, uncle,” interposed his nephew, archly.
“Get along, you idle rogue! If I let that tumbler stand there, in a few
minutes the brandy-and water—eh?—I beg pardon—the alcohol-and-water—gets
cold. Now, why—why the deuce—if the brandy—the alcohol-and-water cools;
why—how—how is it we don’t cool in the same way, I want to know? eh?”
demanded Mr. Bagges, with the air of a man who feels satisfied that he
has propounded a “regular poser.”
“Why,” replied Harry, “for the same reason that the room keeps warm so
long as there is a fire in the grate.”
“You don’t mean to say that I have a fire in my body?”
“I do, though.”
“Eh, now? That’s good,” said Mr. Bagges. “That reminds me of the man in
love crying, ‘Fire! fire!’ and the lady said, ‘Where, where?’ And he
called out, ‘Here! here!’ with his hand upon his heart. Eh?—but now I
think of it—you said, the other day, that breathing was a sort of
burning. Do you mean to tell me that I—eh?—have fire, fire, as the lover
said, here, here—in short, that my chest is a grate or an Arnott’s
stove?”
“Not exactly so, uncle. But I do mean to tell you that you have a sort
of fire burning partly in your chest; but also, more or less, throughout
your whole body.”
“Oh, Henry!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilkinson, “How can you say such horrid
things!”
“Because they’re quite true, mamma—but you needn’t be frightened. The
fire of one’s body is not hotter than from ninety degrees to one hundred
and four degrees or so. Still it is fire, and will burn some things, as
you would find, uncle, if, in using phosphorus, you were to let a little
bit of it get under your nail.”
“I’ll take your word for the fact, my boy,” said Mr. Bagges. “But, if I
have a fire burning throughout my person—which I was not aware of, the
only inflammation I am ever troubled with being in the great toe—I say,
if my body is burning continually—how is it I don’t smoke—eh? Come,
now!”
“Perhaps you consume your own smoke,” suggested Mr. Wilkinson, senior,
“like every well-regulated furnace.”
“You smoke nothing but your pipe, uncle, because you burn all your
carbon,” said Harry. “But, if your body doesn’t smoke, it steams.
Breathe against a looking-glass, or look at your breath on a cold
morning. Observe how a horse reeks when it perspires. Besides—as you
just now said you recollected my telling you the other day—you breathe
out carbonic acid, and that, and the steam of the breath together, are
exactly the same things, you know, that a candle turns into in burning.”
“But if I burn like a candle—why don’t I burn _out_ like a candle?”
demanded Mr. Bagges. “How do you get over that?”
“Because,” replied Harry, “your fuel is renewed as fast as burnt. So
perhaps you resemble a lamp rather than a candle. A lamp requires to be
fed; so does the body—as, possibly, uncle, you may be aware.”
“Eh?—well—I have always entertained an idea of that sort,” answered Mr.
Bagges, helping himself to some biscuits. “But the lamp feeds on
train-oil.”
“So does the Laplander. And you couldn’t feed the lamp on turtle or
mulligatawny, of course, uncle. But mulligatawny or turtle can be
changed into fat—they are so, sometimes, I think—when they are eaten in
large quantities, and fat will burn fast enough. And most of what you
eat turns into something which burns at last, and is consumed in the
fire that warms you all over.”
“Wonderful, to be sure,” exclaimed Mr. Bagges. “Well, now, and how does
this extraordinary process take place?”
“First, you know, uncle, your food is digested—”
“Not always, I am sorry to say, my boy,” Mr. Bagges observed, “but go
on.”
“Well; when it _is_ digested, it becomes a sort of fluid, and mixes
gradually with the blood, and turns into blood, and so goes over the
whole body, to nourish it. Now, if the body is always being nourished,
why doesn’t it keep getting bigger and bigger, like the ghost in the
Castle of Otranto?”
“Eh? Why, because it loses as well as gains, I suppose. By
perspiration—eh—for instance?”
“Yes, and by breathing; in short, by the burning I mentioned just now.
Respiration, or breathing, uncle, is a perpetual combustion.”
“But if my system,” said Mr. Bagges, “is burning throughout, what keeps
up the fire in my little finger—putting gout out of the question?”
“You burn all over, because you breathe all over, to the very tips of
your fingers’ ends,” replied Harry.
“Oh, don’t talk nonsense to your uncle!” exclaimed Mrs. Wilkinson.
“It isn’t nonsense,” said Harry. “The air that you draw into the lungs
goes more or less over all the body, and penetrates into every fibre of
it, which is breathing. Perhaps you would like to hear a little more
about the chemistry of breathing, or respiration, uncle?”
“I should, certainly.”
“Well, then; first you ought to have some idea of the breathing
apparatus. The laboratory that contains this, is the chest, you know.
The chest, you also know, has in it the heart and lungs, which, with
other things in it, fill it quite out, so as to leave no hollow space
between themselves and it. The lungs are a sort of air-sponges, and when
you enlarge your chest to draw breath, they swell out with it and suck
the air in. On the other hand you narrow your chest and squeeze the
lungs and press the air from them;—that is breathing out. The lungs are
made up of a lot of little cells. A small pipe—a little branch of the
windpipe—opens into each cell. Two blood-vessels, a little tiny artery,
and a vein to match, run into it also. The arteries bring into the
little cells dark-coloured blood, which _has been_ all over the body.
The veins carry out of the little cells bright scarlet-coloured blood,
which _is to go_ all over the body. So all the blood passes through the
lungs, and in so doing, is changed from dark to bright scarlet.”
“Black blood, didn’t you say, in the arteries, and scarlet in the veins?
I thought it was just the reverse,” interrupted Mr. Bagges.
“So it is,” replied Harry, “with all the other arteries and veins,
except those that circulate the blood through the lung-cells. The heart
has two sides, with a partition between them that keeps the blood on the
right side separate from the blood on the left; both sides being hollow,
mind. The blood on the right side of the heart comes there from all over
the body, by a couple of large veins, dark, before it goes to the lungs.
From the right side of the heart, it goes on to the lungs, dark still,
through an artery. It comes back to the left side of the heart from the
lungs, bright scarlet, through four veins. Then it goes all over the
rest of the body from the left side of the heart, through an artery that
branches into smaller arteries, all carrying bright scarlet blood. So
the arteries and veins of the lungs on one hand, and of the rest of the
body on the other, do exactly opposite work, you understand.”
“I hope so.”
“Now,” continued Harry, “it requires a strong magnifying glass to see
the lung-cells plainly, they are so small. But you can fancy them as big
as you please. Picture any one of them to yourself of the size of an
orange, say, for convenience in thinking about it; that one cell, with
whatever takes place in it, will be a specimen of the rest. Then you
have to imagine an artery carrying blood of one colour into it, and a
vein taking away blood of another colour from it, and the blood changing
its colour in the cell.”
“Aye, but what makes the blood change its colour?”
“Recollect, uncle, you have a little branch from the windpipe opening
into the cell which lets in the air. Then the blood and the air are
brought together, and the blood alters in colour. The reason, I suppose
you would guess, is that it is somehow altered by the air.”
“No very unreasonable conjecture, I should think,” said Mr. Bagges.
“Well; if the air alters the blood, most likely, we should think, it
gives something to the blood. So first let us see what is the difference
between the air we breathe _in_, and the air we breathe _out_. You know
that neither we nor animals can keep breathing the same air over and
over again. You don’t want me to remind you of the Black Hole of
Calcutta, to convince you of that; and I dare say you will believe what
I tell you, without waiting till I can catch a mouse and shut it up in
an air-tight jar, and show you how soon the unlucky creature will get
uncomfortable, and begin to gasp, and that it will by-and-by die. But if
we were to try this experiment—not having the fear of the Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, nor the fear of doing wrong,
before our eyes—we should find that the poor mouse, before he died, had
changed the air of his prison considerably. But it would be just as
satisfactory, and much more humane, if you or I were to breathe in and
out of a silk bag or a bladder till we could stand it no longer, and
then collect the air which we had been breathing in and out. We should
find that a jar of such air would put out a candle. If we shook some
lime-water up with it, the lime-water would turn milky. In short, uncle,
we should find that a great part of the air was carbonic acid, and the
rest mostly nitrogen. The air we inhale is nitrogen and oxygen; the air
we exhale has lost most of its oxygen, and consists of little more than
nitrogen and carbonic acid. Together with this, we breathe out the
vapour of water, as I said before. Therefore in breathing, we give off
exactly what a candle does in burning, only not so fast, after the rate.
The carbonic acid we breathe out, shows that carbon is consumed within
our bodies. The watery vapour of the breath is a proof that hydrogen is
so too. We take in oxygen with the air, and the oxygen unites with
carbon, and makes carbonic acid, and with hydrogen, forms water.”
“Then don’t the hydrogen and carbon combine with the oxygen—that is,
burn—in the lungs, and isn’t the chest the fireplace, after all?” asked
Mr. Bagges.
“Not altogether, according to those who are supposed to know better.
They are of opinion, that some of the oxygen unites with the carbon and
hydrogen of the blood in the lungs; but that most of it is merely
absorbed by the blood, and dissolved in it in the first instance.”
“Oxygen absorbed by the blood? That seems odd,” remarked Mr. Bagges,
“How can that be?”
“We only know the fact that there are some things that will absorb
gases—suck them in—make them disappear. Charcoal will, for instance. It
is thought that the iron which the blood contains gives it the curious
property of absorbing oxygen. Well; the oxygen going into the blood
makes it change from dark to bright scarlet; and then this blood
containing oxygen is conveyed all over the system by the arteries, and
yields up the oxygen to combine with hydrogen and carbon as it goes
along. The carbon and hydrogen are part of the substance of the body.
The bright scarlet blood mixes oxygen with them, which burns them, in
fact; that is, makes them into carbonic acid and water. Of course, the
body would soon be consumed if this were all that the blood does. But
while it mixes oxygen with the old substance of the body, to burn it up,
it lays down fresh material to replace the loss. So our bodies are
continually changing throughout, though they seem to us always the same;
but then, you know, a river appears the same from year’s end to year’s
end, although the water in it is different every day.”
“Eh, then,” said Mr. Bagges, “if the body is always on the change in
this way, we must have had several bodies in the course of our lives, by
the time we are old.”
“Yes, uncle; therefore, how foolish it is to spend money upon funerals.
What becomes of all the bodies we use up during our lifetimes? If we are
none the worse for their flying away in carbonic acid and other things
without ceremony, what good can we expect from having a fuss made about
the body we leave behind us, which is put into the earth? However, you
are wanting to know what becomes of the water and carbonic acid which
have been made by the oxygen of the blood burning up the old materials
of our frame. The dark blood of the veins absorbs this carbonic acid and
water, as the blood of the arteries does oxygen,—only, they say, it does
so by means of a salt in it, called phosphate of soda. Then the dark
blood goes back to the lungs, and in them it parts with its carbonic
acid and water, which escapes as breath. As fast as we breathe out,
carbonic acid and water leave the blood; as fast as we breathe in,
oxygen enters it. The oxygen is sent out in the arteries to make the
rubbish of the body into gas and vapour, so that the veins may bring it
back and get rid of it. The burning of rubbish by oxygen throughout our
frames is the fire by which our animal heat is kept up. At least this is
what most philosophers think; though doctors differ a little on this
point, as on most others, I hear. Professor Liebig says, that our carbon
is mostly prepared for burning by being first extracted from the blood
sent to it—(which contains much of the rubbish of the system
dissolved)—in the form of bile, and is then re-absorbed into the blood,
and burnt. He reckons that a grown-up man consumes about fourteen ounces
of carbon a day. Fourteen ounces of charcoal a day, or eight pounds two
ounces a week, would keep up a tolerable fire.”
“I had no idea we were such extensive charcoal-burners,” said Mr.
Bagges. “They say we each eat our peck of dirt before we die—but we must
burn bushels of charcoal.”
“And so,” continued Harry, “the Professor calculates that we burn quite
enough fuel to account for our heat. I should rather think, myself, it
had something to do with it—shouldn’t you?”
“Eh?” said Mr. Bagges; “it makes one rather nervous to think that one is
burning all over—throughout one’s very blood—in this kind of way.”
“It is very awful!” said Mrs. Wilkinson.
“If true. But in that case, shouldn’t we be liable to inflame
occasionally?” objected her husband.
“It is said,” answered Harry, “that spontaneous combustion does happen
sometimes; particularly in great spirit drinkers. I don’t see why it
should not, if the system were to become too inflammable. Drinking
alcohol would be likely to load the constitution with carbon, which
would be fuel for the fire, at any rate.”
“The deuce!” exclaimed Mr. Bagges, pushing his brandy-and-water from
him. “We had better take care how we indulge in combustibles.”
“At all events,” said Harry, “it must be bad to have too much fuel in
us. It must choke the fire I should think, if it did not cause
inflammation; which Dr. Truepenny says it does, meaning, by
inflammation, gout, and so on, you know, uncle.”
“Ahem!” coughed Mr. Bagges.
“Taking in too much fuel, I dare say you know, uncle, means eating and
drinking to excess,” continued Harry. “The best remedy, the doctor says,
for overstuffing is exercise. A person who uses great bodily exertion,
can eat and drink more without suffering from it than one who leads an
inactive life; a foxhunter, for instance, in comparison with an
alderman. Want of exercise and too much nourishment must make a man
either fat or ill. If the extra hydrogen and carbon are not burnt out,
or otherwise got rid of, they turn to blubber, or cause some disturbance
in the system, intended by Nature to throw them off, which is called a
disease. Walking, riding, running, increase the breathing—as well as the
perspiration—and make us burn away our carbon and hydrogen in
proportion. Dr. Truepenny declares that if people would only take in as
much fuel as is requisite to keep up a good fire, his profession would
be ruined.”
“The good old advice—Baillie’s, eh?—or Abernethy’s—live upon sixpence a
day, and earn it,” Mr. Bagges observed.
“Well, and then, uncle, in hot weather the appetite is naturally weaker
than it is in cold—less heat is required, and therefore less food. So in
hot climates; and the chief reason, says the doctor, why people ruin
their health in India is their spurring and goading their stomachs to
crave what is not good for them, by spices and the like. Fruits and
vegetables are the proper things to eat in such countries, because they
contain little carbon compared to flesh, and they are the diet of the
natives of those parts of the world. Whereas food with much carbon in
it, meat, or even mere fat or oil, which is hardly anything else than
carbon and hydrogen, are proper in very cold regions, where heat from
within is required to supply the want of it without. That is why the
Laplander is able, as I said he does, to devour train-oil. And Dr.
Truepenny says that it may be all very well for Mr. M‘Gregor to drink
raw whiskey at deer-stalking in the Highlands, but if Major Campbell
combines that beverage with the diversion of tiger-hunting in the East
Indies, habitually, the chances are that the Major will come home with a
diseased liver.”
“Upon my word, sir, the whole art of preserving health appears to
consist in keeping up a moderate fire within us,” observed Mr. Bagges.
“Just so, uncle, according to my friend the Doctor. ‘Adjust the fuel,’
he says, ‘to the draught—he means the oxygen; keep the bellows properly
at work, by exercise, and your fire will seldom want poking.’ The
Doctor’s pokers, you know, are pills, mixtures, leeches, blisters,
lancets, and things of that sort.”
“Indeed? Well, then, my heart-burn, I suppose, depends upon bad
management of my fire?” surmised Mr. Bagges.
“I should say that was more than probable, uncle. Well, now, I think you
see that animal heat can be accounted for, in very great part at least,
by the combustion of the body. And then there are several facts that—as
I remember Shakespeare says—
“‘help to thicken other proofs,
That do demonstrate thinly.’
“Birds that breathe a great deal are very hot creatures; snakes and
lizards, and frogs and fishes, that breathe but little, are so cold that
they are called cold-blooded animals. Bears and dormice, that sleep all
the winter, are cold during their sleep, whilst their breathing and
circulation almost entirely stop. We increase our heat by walking fast,
running, jumping, or working hard; which sets us breathing faster, and
then we get warmer. By these means we blow up our own fire, if we have
no other, to warm ourselves on a cold day. And how is it that we don’t
go on continually getting hotter and hotter?”
“Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Bagges, “I suppose that is one of Nature’s
mysteries.”
“Why, what happens, uncle, when we take violent exercise? We break out
into a perspiration; as you complain you always do, if you only run a
few yards. Perspiration is mostly water, and the extra heat of the body
goes into the water, and flies away with it in steam. Just for the same
reason, you can’t boil water so as to make it hotter than two hundred
and twelve degrees; because all the heat that passes into it beyond
that, unites with some of it and becomes steam, and so escapes. Hot
weather causes you to perspire even when you sit still; and so your heat
is cooled in summer. If you were to heat a man in an oven, the heat of
his body generally wouldn’t increase very much till he became exhausted
and died. Stories are told of mountebanks sitting in ovens, and meat
being cooked by the side of them. Philosophers have done much the same
thing—Dr. Fordyce and others, who found they could bear a heat of two
hundred and sixty degrees. Perspiration is our animal fire-escape. Heat
goes out from the lungs, as well as the skin, in water; so the lungs are
concerned in cooling us as well as heating us, like a sort of regulating
furnace. Ah, uncle, the body is a wonderful factory, and I wish I were
man enough to take you over it. I have only tried to show you something
of the contrivances for warming it, and I hope you understand a little
about that!”
“Well,” said Mr. Bagges, “breathing, I understand you to say, is the
chief source of animal heat, by occasioning the combination of carbon
and hydrogen with oxygen, in a sort of gentle combustion, throughout our
frame. The lungs and heart are an apparatus for generating heat, and
distributing it over the body by means of a kind of warming pipes,
called blood-vessels. Eh?—and the carbon and hydrogen we have in our
systems we get from our food. Now, you see, here is a slice of cake, and
there is a glass of wine—Eh?—now see whether you can get any carbon and
oxygen out of that.”
The young philosopher, having finished his lecture, applied himself
immediately to the performance of the proposed experiment, which he
performed with cleverness and dispatch.
THE HOME OF WOODRUFFE THE GARDENER.
IN EIGHT CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.
It was observed by Woodruffe’s family, during one week of spring of the
next year, that he was very absent. He was not in low spirits, but
absorbed in thought, and much devoted to making calculations with pencil
and paper. At last, out it came, one morning at breakfast.
“I wonder how we should all like to have Harry Hardiman to work with us
again?”
Every one looked up. Harry! where was Harry? Was he here? Was he coming?
“Why, I will tell you what I have been thinking,” said their father. “I
have thought long and carefully, and I believe I have made up my mind to
send for Harry, to come and work for us as he used to do. We have not
labour enough on the ground. Two stout men to the acre is the smallest
allowance for trying what could be made of the place.”
“That is what Taylor and Brown are employing now on the best part of
their land,” said Allan; “that is, when they can get the labour. There
is such difference between that and one man to four or five acres, as
there was before, that they can’t always get the labour.”
“Just so; and therefore,” continued Woodruffe, “I am thinking of sending
for Harry. Our old neighbourhood was not prosperous when we left it, and
I fancy it cannot have improved since; and Harry might be glad to follow
his master to a thriving neighbourhood; and he is such a careful fellow
that I dare say he has money for the journey,—even if he has a wife by
this time, as I suppose he has.”
Moss looked most pleased, where all were pleased, at the idea of seeing
Harry again. His remembrance of Harry was of a tall young man, who used
to carry him on his shoulders, and wheel him in the empty water-barrel,
and sometimes offer to dip him in it when it was full, and show him how
to dig in the sand-heap with his little wooden spade.
“Your rent, to be sure, is much lower than in the old place,” observed
Abby.
“Why, we must not build upon that,” replied the father; “rent is rising
here, and will rise. My landlord was considerate in lowering mine to
3_l._ per acre, when he saw how impossible it was to make it answer; and
he says he shall not ask more yet, on account of the labour I laid out
at the time of the drainage. But when I have partly repaid myself, the
rent will rise to 5_l._; and, in fact, I have made my calculations, in
regard to Harry’s coming, at a higher rent than that.”
“Higher than that?”
“Yes: I should not be surprised if I found myself paying, as
market-gardeners near London do, ten pounds per acre, before I die.”
“Or rather, to let the ground to me, for that, father,” said Allan,
“when it is your own property, and you are tired of work, and disposed
to turn it over to me. I will pay you ten pounds per acre then, and let
you have all the cabbages you can eat, besides. It is capital land, and
that is the truth. Come—shall that be a bargain?”
Woodruffe smiled, and said he owed a duty to Allan. He did not like to
see him so hard worked as to be unable to take due care of his own
corner of the garden;—unable to enter fairly into the competition for
the prizes at the Horticultural Show in the summer. Becky now, too,
ought to be spared from all but occasional help in the garden. Above
all, the ground was now in such an improving state that it would be
waste not to bestow due labour upon it. Put in the spade where you
would, the soil was loose and well-aired as needs be: the manure
penetrated it thoroughly; the frost and heat pulverised, instead of
binding it; and the crops were succeeding each other so fast, that the
year would be a very profitable one.
“Where will Harry live, if he comes?” asked Abby.
“We must get another cottage added to the new row. Easily done! Cottages
so healthy as these new ones pay well. Good rents are offered for
them,—to save doctors’ bills and loss of time from sickness;—and, when
once a system of house-drainage is set agoing, it costs scarcely more,
in adding a cottage to a group, to make it all right, than to run it up
upon solid clay as used to be the way here. Well, I have good mind to
write to Harry to-day. What do you think,—all of you?”
Fortified by the opinion of all his children, Mr. Woodruffe wrote to
Harry. Meantime, Allan and Becky went to cut the vegetables that were
for sale that day; and Moss delighted himself in running after and
catching the pony in the meadow below. The pony was not very easily
caught, for it was full of spirit. Instead of the woolly insipid grass
that it used to crop, and which seemed to give it only fever and no
nourishment, it now fed on sweet fresh grass, which had no sour stagnant
water soaking its roots. The pony was so full of play this morning that
Moss could not get hold of it. Though much stronger than a year ago, he
was not yet anything like so robust as a boy of his age should be; and
he was growing heated, and perhaps a little angry, as the pony galloped
off towards some distant trees, when a boy started up behind a bush,
caught the halter, brought the pony round with a twitch, and led him to
Moss. Moss fancied he had seen the boy before, and then his white teeth
reminded Moss of one thing after another.
“I came for some marsh plants,” said the boy. “You and I got plenty
once, somewhere hereabouts: but I cannot find them now.”
“You will not find any now. We have no marsh now.”
The stranger said he dared not go back without them: mother wanted them
badly. She would not believe him if he said he could not find any. There
were plenty about two miles off, along the railway, among the clay-pits,
he was told; but none nearer. The boy wanted to know where the clay-pits
hereabouts were. He could not find one of them.
“I will show you one of them,” said Moss; “the one where you and I used
to hunt rats.” And, leading the pony, he showed his old gipsy playfellow
all the improvements, beginning with the great ditch,—now invisible from
being covered in. While it was open, he said, it used to get choked, and
the sides were plastered after rain, and soon became grass-grown, so
that it was found worth while to cover it in; and now it would want
little looking to for years to come. As for the clay-pit, where the rats
used to pop in and out,—it was now a manure-pit, covered in. There was a
drain into it from the pony’s stable and from the pig-styes; and it was
near enough to the garden to receive the refuse and sweepings. A heavy
lid, with a ring in the middle, covered the pit, so that nobody could
fall in, in the dark, and no smell could get out. Moss begged the boy to
come a little further, and he would show him his own flower-bed; and
when the boy was there, he was shown everything else: what a cartload of
vegetables lay cut for sale; and what an arbour had been made of the
pent-house under which Moss used to take shelter, when he could do
nothing better than keep off the birds; and how fine the ducks were,—the
five ducks that were so serviceable in eating off the slugs; and what a
comfortable nest had been made for them to lay their eggs in, beside the
water-tank in the corner; and what a variety of scarecrows the family
had invented,—each having one, to try which would frighten the sparrows
most. While Moss was telling how difficult it was to deal with the
sparrows, because they could not be frightened for more than three days
by any kind of scarecrow, he heard Allan calling him, in a tone of
vexation, at being kept waiting so long. In an instant the stranger boy
was off,—leaping the gate, and flying along the meadow till he was
hidden behind a hedge.
Two or three days after this one of the ducks was missing. The last time
that the five had been seen together was when Moss was showing them to
his visitor. The morning after Moss finally gave up hope, the glass of
Allan’s hotbed was found broken, and in the midst of the bed itself was
a deep foot-track, crushing the cucumber plants, and, with them, Allan’s
hopes of a cucumber prize at the Horticultural Exhibition in the summer.
On more examination, more mischief was discovered, some cabbages had
been stolen, and another duck was missing. In the midst of the general
concern, Woodruffe burst out a-laughing. It struck him that the chief of
the scarecrows had changed his hat; and so he had. The old straw hat
which used to flap in the wind so serviceably was gone, and in its stead
appeared a helmet,—a saucepan full of holes, battered and split, but
still fit to be a helmet to a scarecrow.
“I could swear to the old hat,” observed Woodruffe, “if I should have
the luck to see it on anybody’s head.”
“And so could I,” said Becky, “for I mended it,—bound it with black
behind, and green before, because I had not green ribbon enough. But
nobody would wear it before our eyes.”
“That is why I suspect there are strangers hovering about. We must
watch.”
Now Moss, for the first time, bethought himself of the boy he had
brought in from the meadow; and now, for the first time, he told his
family of that encounter.
“I never saw such a simpleton,” his father declared. “There, go along
and work! Now, don’t cry, but hold up like a man and work.”
Moss did cry; he could not help it; but he worked too. He would fain
have been one of the watchers, moreover; but his father said he was too
young. For two nights he was ordered to bed, when Allan took his dark
lantern, and went down to the pent-house; the first night accompanied by
his father, and the next by Harry Hardiman, who had come on the first
summons. By the third evening, Moss was so miserable that his sisters
interceded for him, and he was allowed to go down with his old friend
Harry.
It was a starlight night, without a moon. The low country lay dim, but
unobscured by mist. After a single remark on the fineness of the night,
Harry was silent. Silence was their first business. They stole round the
fence as if they had been thieves themselves, listened for some time
before they let themselves in at the gate, passed quickly in, and locked
the gate (the lock of which had been well oiled), went behind every
screen, and along every path, to be sure that no one was there, and
finally, perceiving that the remaining ducks were safe, settled
themselves in the darkness of the pent-house.
There they sat, hour after hour, listening. If there had been no sound,
perhaps they could not have borne the effort: but the sense was relieved
by the bark of a dog at a distance; and then by the hoot of the owl that
was known to have done them good service in mousing, many a time; and
once, by the passage of a train on the railway above. When these were
all over, poor Moss had much ado to keep awake, and at last his head
sank on Harry’s shoulder, and he forgot where he was, and everything
else in the world. He was awakened by Harry’s moving, and then
whispering quite into his ear:—
“Sit you still. I hear somebody yonder. No—sit you still. I won’t go
far—not out of call: but I must get between them and the gate.”
With his lantern under his coat, Harry stole forth, and Moss stood up,
all alone in the darkness and stillness. He could hear his heart beat,
but nothing else, till footsteps on the path came nearer and nearer.
They came quite up; they came in, actually into the arbour; and then the
ducks were certainly fluttering. In an instant more, there was a gleam
of light upon the white plumage of the ducks, and then light enough to
show that this was the gipsy boy, with a dark lantern hung round his
neck, and, at the same moment, to show the gipsy boy that Moss was
there. The two boys stood, face to face, motionless from utter
amazement, and the ducks had scuttled and waddled away before they
recovered themselves. Then, Moss flew at him in a glorious passion, at
once of rage and fear.
“Leave him to me, Moss,” cried Harry, casting light upon the scene from
his lantern, while he collared the thief with the other hand. “Let go, I
say, Moss. There, now we’ll go round and be sure whether there is any
one else in the garden, and then we’ll lodge this young rogue where he
will be safe.”
Nobody was there, and they went home in the dawn, locked up the thief in
the shed, and slept through what remained of the night.
It was about Mr. Nelson’s usual time for coming down the line; and it
was observed that he now always stopped at this station till the next
train passed,—probably because it was a pleasure to him to look upon the
improvement of the place. It was no surprise therefore to Woodruffe to
see him standing on the embankment after breakfast; and it was natural
that Mr. Nelson should be immediately told that the gipsies were here
again, and how one of them was caught thieving.
“Thieving! So you found some of your property upon him, did you!”
“Why, no. I thought myself that it was a pity that Moss did not let him
alone till he had laid hold of a duck or something.”
“Pho! pho! don’t tell me you can punish the boy for theft, when you
can’t prove that he stole anything. Give him a whipping, and let him
go.”
“With all my heart. It will save me much trouble to finish off the
matter so.”
Mr. Nelson seemed to have some curiosity about the business; for he
accompanied Woodruffe to the shed. The boy seemed to feel no awe of the
great man whom he supposed to be a magistrate, and when asked whether he
felt none, he giggled and said “No;” he had seen the gentleman more
afraid of his mother than anybody ever was of him, he fancied. On this,
a thought struck Mr. Nelson. He would now have his advantage of the
gipsy woman, and might enjoy, at the same time, an opportunity of
studying human nature under stress—a thing he liked, when the stress was
not too severe. So he passed a decree on the spot that, it being now
nine o’clock, the boy should remain shut up without food till noon, when
he should be severely flogged, and driven from the neighbourhood: and
with this pleasant prospect before him, the young rogue remained,
whistling ostentatiously, while his enemies locked the door upon him.
“Did you hear him shoot the bolt?” asked Woodruffe. “If he holds to
that, I don’t know how I shall get at him at noon.”
“There, now, what fools people are! Why did you not take out the bolt? A
pretty constable you would make! Come—come this way. I am going to find
the gipsy-tent again. You are wondering that I am not afraid of the
woman, I see: but, you observe, I have a hold over her this time. What
do you mean by allowing those children to gather about your door? You
ought not to permit it.”
“They are only the scholars. Don’t you see them going in? My daughter
keeps a little school, you know, since her husband’s death.”
“Ah, poor thing! poor thing!” said Mr. Nelson, as Abby appeared on the
threshold, calling the children in.
Mr. Nelson always contrived to see some one or more of the family when
he visited the station; but it so happened, that he had never entered
the door of their dwelling. Perhaps he was not himself fully conscious
of the reason. It was, that he could not bear to see Abby’s young face
within the widow’s cap, and to be thus reminded that hers was a case of
cruel wrong; that if the most ordinary thought and care had been used in
preparing the place for human habitation, her husband might be living
now, and she the happy creature that she would never be again.
On his way to the gipsies, Mr. Nelson saw some things that pleased him
in his heart, though he found fault with them all. What business had
Woodruffe with an additional man in his garden? It could not possibly
answer. If it did not, the fellow must be sent away again. He must not
burden the parish. The occupiers here seemed all alike. Such a fancy for
new labour! One, two, six men at work on the land within sight at that
moment, over and above what there used to be! It must be looked to.
Humph! he could get to the alders dryshod now; but that was owing solely
to the warmth of the spring. It was nonsense to attribute everything to
drainage. Drainage was a good thing; but fine weather was better.
The gipsy-tent was found behind the alders as before, but no longer in a
swamp. The woman was sitting on the ground at the entrance as before,
but not now with a fevered child laid across her knees. She was weaving
a basket.
“Oh, I see,” said Woodruffe, “This is the way our osiers go.”
“You have not many to lose, now-a-days,” said the woman.
“You are welcome to all the rushes you can find,” said Woodruffe; “but
where is your son?”
Some change of countenance was seen in the woman; but she answered
carelessly that the children were playing yonder.
“The one I mean is not there,” said Woodruffe. “We have him safe—caught
him stealing my ducks.”
She called the boy a villain—disowned him, and so forth; but when she
found the case a hopeless one, she did not, and therefore, probably
could not, scold—that is, anybody but herself and her husband. She
cursed herself for coming into this silly place, where now no good was
to be got. When she was brought to the right point of perplexity about
what to do, seeing that it would not do to stay, and being unable to go
while her boy was in durance, she was told that his punishment should be
summary, though severe, if she would answer frankly certain questions.
When she had once begun giving her confidence, she seemed to enjoy the
license. When her husband came up, he looked as if he only waited for
the departure of his visitors to give his wife the same amount of
thrashing that her son was awaiting elsewhere. She vowed that they would
never pitch their tent here again. It used to be the best station in
their whole round—the fogs were so thick! From sunset to long after
sunrise, it had been as good as a winter night, for going where they
pleased without fear of prying eyes. There was not a poultry-yard or
pig-stye within a couple of miles round, where they could not creep up
through the fog. And they escaped the blame, too; for the swamp and
ditches used to harbour so much vermin, that the gipsies were not always
suspected, as they were now. Till lately, people shut themselves into
their homes, or the men went to the public-house in the chill evenings;
and there was little fear of meeting any one. But now that the fogs were
gone, people were out in their gardens, on these fine evenings, and
there were men in the meadows, returning from fishing; for they could
angle now, when their work was done, without the fear of catching an
ague in the marsh as they went home.
Mr. Nelson used vigorously his last opportunity of lecturing these
people. He had it all his own way, for the humility of the gipsies was
edifying. Woodruffe fancied he saw some finger-talk passing, the while,
though the gipsies never looked at each other, or raised their eyes from
the ground. Woodruffe had to remind the Director that the whistle of the
next train would soon be heard; and this brought the lecture to an
abrupt conclusion. On his finishing off with, “I expect, therefore, that
you will remember my advice, and never show your faces here again, and
that you will take to a proper course of life in future, and bring up
your son to honest industry;” the woman, with a countenance of grief,
seized one hand and covered it with kisses, and the husband took the
other hand and pressed it to his breast.
“We must make haste,” observed Mr. Nelson, as he led the way quickly
back; “but I think I have made some impression upon them. You see now
the right way to treat these people. I don’t think you will see them
here again.”
“I don’t think we shall.”
As he reached the steps the whistle was heard, and Mr. Nelson could only
wave his hand to Woodruffe, rush up the embankment, and throw himself
panting into a carriage. Only just in time!
By an evening train, he re-appeared. When thirty miles off, he had
wanted his purse, and it was gone. It had no doubt paid for the gipsies’
final gratitude.
Of course, a sufficient force was immediately sent to the alder clump;
but there was nothing there but some charred sticks, and some clean pork
bones, this time, instead of feathers of fowls, and a cabbage leaf or
two. The boy had had his whipping at noon, after a conference with his
little brother at the keyhole, which had caused him to withdraw the
bolt, and offer no resistance. Considering his cries and groans, he had
run off with surprising agility, and was now, no doubt, far away.
CHAPTER VIII.
The gipsies came no more. The fogs came no more. The fever came no more;
at least, in such a form as to threaten the general safety. Where it
still lingered, it was about those only who deserved it,—in any small
farm-house, where the dung-yard was too near the house; and in some
cottage where the slatternly inmates did not mind a green puddle or
choked ditch within reach of their noses. More dwellings arose, as the
fertility of the land increased, and invited a higher kind of tillage;
and among the prettiest of them was one which stood in the corner,—the
most sunny corner,—of Woodruffe’s paddock. Harry Hardiman and his wife
and child lived there, and the cottage was Woodruffe’s property.
Yet Woodruffe’s rent had been raised; and pretty rapidly. He was now
paying eight pounds per acre for his garden-ground, and half that for
what was out of the limits of the garden. He did not complain of it; for
he was making money fast. His skill and industry deserved this; but
skill and industry could not have availed without opportunity. His
ground once allowed to show what it was worth, he treated it well; and
it answered well to the treatment. By the railway, he obtained what
manure he wanted from the town; and he sent it back by the railway to
town in the form of crisp celery and salads, wholesome potatoes and
greens, luscious strawberries, and sweet and early peas. He knew that a
Surrey gardener had made his ground yield a profit of two hundred and
twenty pounds per acre. He thought that, with his inferior market, he
should do well to make his yield one hundred and fifty pounds per acre;
and this, by close perseverance, he attained. He could have done it more
easily if he had enjoyed good health; but he never enjoyed good health
again. His rheumatism had fixed itself too firmly to be entirely
removed; and, for many days in the year, he was compelled to remain
within doors, or to saunter about in the sun, seeing his boys and Harry
at work, but unable to help them.
From the time that Allan’s work became worth wages, in addition to his
subsistence, his father let him rent half a rood of the garden-ground
for three years, saying—
“I limit it to three years, my boy, because that term is long enough for
you to show what you can do. After three years, I shall not be able to
spare the ground, at any rent. If you fail, you have no business to rent
ground. If you succeed, you will have money in your pocket wherewith to
hire land elsewhere. Now you have to show us what you can do.”
“Yes, father,” was Allan’s short but sufficient reply.
It was observed by the family that, from this time forward, Allan’s eye
was on every plot of ground in the neighbourhood which could, by
possibility, ever be offered for hire: yet did his attention never
wander from that which was already under his hand. And that which was so
great an object to him became a sort of pursuit to the whole family.
Moss guarded Allan’s frames, and made more and more prodigious
scarecrows. Their father gave his very best advice. Becky, who was no
longer allowed, as a regular thing, to work in the garden, found many a
spare half-hour for hoeing and weeding, and trimming and tying up, in
Allan’s beds; and Abby found, as she sat in her little school, that she
could make nets for his fruit trees. It was thus no wonder that, when a
certain July day in the second year arrived, the whole household was in
a state of excitement, because it was a sort of crisis in Allan’s
affairs.
Though breakfast was early that morning, Becky and Allan and Moss were
spruce in their best clothes. A hamper stood at the door, and Allan was
packing in another, which had no lid, two or three flower-pots, which
presented a glorious show of blossom. Abby was putting a new ribbon on
her sister’s straw bonnet; and Harry was in waiting to carry up the
hampers to the station. It was the day of the Horticultural Show at the
town. Woodruffe had been too unwell to think of going till this morning;
but now the sight of the preparations, and the prospect of a warm day,
inspired him, and he thought he would go. At last he went, and they were
gone. Abby never went up to the station: nobody ever asked her to go
there; not even her own child, who perhaps had not thought of the
possibility of it. But when the train was starting, she stood at the
upper window with her child, and held him so that he might lean out, and
see the last carriage disappear, as it swept round the curve. After that
the day seemed long, though Harry came up at his dinner-hour to say what
he thought of the great gooseberry in particular, and of everything else
that Allan had carried with him. It was holiday time, and there was no
school to fill up the day. Before the evening, the child became
restless, and Abby fell into low spirits, as she was apt to do when left
long alone; so that Harry stopped suddenly at the door when he was
rushing in to announce that the train was within sight.
“Shall I take the child, Miss?” said Harry. (He always called her
“Miss.”) “I will carry him——But, sure, here they come! Here comes
Moss,—ready to roll down the steps! My opinion is that there’s a prize.”
Moss was called back by a voice which everybody obeyed. Allan should
himself tell his sister the fortune of the day, their father said.
There were two prizes, one of which was for the wonderful plate of
gooseberries; and at this news Harry nodded, and declared himself
anything but surprised. If that gooseberry had not carried the day,
there would have been partiality in the judges, that was all; and nobody
could suppose such a thing as that. Yet Harry could have told, if put
upon his honour, that he was rather disappointed that everything that
Allan carried had not gained a prize. When he mentioned one or two, his
master told him he was unreasonable; and he supposed he was.
Allan laid down on the table, for his sister’s full assurance, his
sovereign, and his half-sovereign, and his tickets. She turned away
rather abruptly, and seemed to be looking whether the kettle was near
boiling for tea. Her father went up to her; and on his first whispered
words, the sob broke forth which made all look round.
“I was thinking of one, too, my dear, that I wish was here at this
moment. I can feel for you, my dear.”
“But you don’t know—you don’t know—you never knew——.” She could not go
on.
“What don’t I know, my dear?”
“That he constantly blamed himself for saying anything to bring you
here. He said you had never prospered from the hour you came, and now——”
And now Woodruffe could not speak, as the past came fresh upon him. In a
few moments, however, he rallied, saying,
“But we must consider Allan. He must not think that his success makes us
sad.”
Allan declared that it was not about gaining the prizes that he was
chiefly glad. It was because it was now proved what a fair field he had
before him. There was nothing that might not be done with such a soil as
they had to deal with now.
Harry was quite of this opinion. There were more and more people set to
work upon the soil all about them; and the more it was worked the more
it yielded. He never saw a place of so much promise. And if it had a bad
name in regard to healthiness, he was sure that was unfair,—or no longer
fair. He and his were full of health and happiness, as they hoped to see
everybody else in time; and, for his part, if he had all England before
him, or the whole world, to choose a place to live in, he would choose
the very place he was in, and the very cottage; and the very ground to
work on that had produced such a gooseberry and such strawberries as he
had seen that day.
THE SINGER.
Unto the loud acclaim that rose
To greet her as she came,
She bent with lowly grace that seemed
Such tribute to disclaim;
With arms meek folded on her breast
And drooping head, she stood;
Then raised a glance that seemed to plead
For youth and womanhood;
A soft, beseeching smile, a look,
As if all silently
The kindness to her heart she took,
And put the homage by.
She stood dejected then, methought,
A Captive, though a Queen,
Before the throng, when sudden passed
A change across her mien.
Unto her full, dilating eye,
Unto her slender hand,
There came a light of sovereignty,
A gesture of command:
And, to her lip, an eager flow
Of song, that seemed to bear
Her soul away on rushing wings
Unto its native air;
Her eye was fixed; her cheek flushed bright
With power; she seemed to call
On spirits that around her flocked,
The radiant Queen of all;
There was no pride upon her brow,
No tumult in her breast;
Her soaring soul had won its home,
And smiled there as at rest;
She felt no more those countless eyes
Upon her; she had gained
A region where they troubled not
The joy she had attained!
Now, now, she spoke her native speech,
An utterance fraught with spells
To wake the echoes of the heart
Within their slumber-cells;
For at her wild and gushing strain,
The spirit was led back
By windings of a silver chain,
On many a long-lost track;
And many a quick unbidden sigh,
And starting tear, revealed
How surely at her touch the springs
Of feeling were unsealed;
They who were always loved, seemed now
Yet more than ever dear;
Yet closer to the heart they came,
That ever were so near:
And, trembling to the silent lips,
As if they ne’er had changed
Their names, returned in kindness back
The severed and estranged;
And in the strain, like those that fall
On wanderers as they roam,
The Exiled Spirit found once more
Its country and its home!
She ceased, yet on her parted lips
A happy smile abode,
As if the sweetness of her song
Yet lingered whence it flowed;
But, for a while, her bosom heaved,
She was the same no more,
The light and spirit fled; she stood
As she had stood before;
Unheard, unheeded to her ear
The shouts of rapture came,
A voice had once more power to thrill,
That only spoke her name.
Unseen, unheeded at her feet,
Fell many a bright bouquet;
A single flower, in silence given,
Was once more sweet than they;
_Her_ heart had with her song returned
To days for ever gone,
Ere Woman’s gift of Fame was her’s,
The Many for the One.
E’en thus; O, Earth, before thee
Thy Poet Singers stand,
And bear the soul upon their songs
Unto its native land.
And even thus, with loud acclaim,
The praise of skill, of art,
Is dealt to those who only speak
The language of the heart!
While they who love and listen best,
Can little guess or know
The wounds that from the Singer’s breast
Have bid such sweetness flow;
They know not mastership must spring
From conflict and from strife.
“These, these are but the songs they sing;”
They are the Singer’s life!
A LITTLE PLACE IN NORFOLK.
Theodore Hook’s hero, Jack Bragg, boasted of his “little place in
Surrey.” The Guardians of the Guiltcross poor have good reason to be
proud of _their_ little place in Norfolk. When the Guiltcross Union was
formed, Mr. Thomas Rackham, master of the “house,” set aside a small
estate for the purpose of teaching the Workhouse children how to
cultivate land. This pauper’s patrimony consisted of exactly one acre
one rood and thirty-five poles of very rough “country.” A certain number
of the boys worked upon it so diligently, that it was soon found
expedient to enlarge the domain, by joining to it three acres of “hills
and holes,” which in that state were quite useless for agricultural
purposes. Two dozen spades were purchased at the outset to commence
digging the land with, and six wheel-barrows were made by a pauper, who
was a wheelwright; pickaxes and other tools were also fashioned with the
assistance of the porter, who was a blacksmith. By means of these tools,
and the labour of some fourteen sturdy boys, the whole of this barren
territory was levelled, the top sward being carefully kept uppermost. We
copy these and the other details from Mr. Rackham’s report to the
Guardians, for the information and encouragement of other Workhouse
masters, who may have the will and the power to “go and do likewise.”
It appears then, that by the autumn of 1846 one acre of the new land was
planted with wheat, and two roods twenty three poles of the home
land—the one acre one rood and thirty-five poles mentioned above—was
also planted with wheat, making in all one acre two roods and twenty
three poles under wheat for 1847. This land produced eighteen coombs
three pecks beyond a sufficient quantity reserved for seed for the wheat
crop of 1848. The remainder of the land was planted with Scotch kale,
cabbages, potatoes, &c., &c., which began coming into use in March,
1847. The entire domain is now under fruitful cultivation.
“The quantity of vegetables actually consumed by the paupers according
to the dietary tables only,” says Mr. Rackham, “is charged in the
provision accounts. Persons acquainted with domestic management and the
produce of land are aware that, where vegetables are purchased, a great
deal is paid for that which is useless for cooking purposes. In the
present case this refuse is carefully preserved and used for feeding
pigs, which were first kept in April 1848. This accounts for the large
amount of pork fatted, as compared with the small quantity of corn and
pollard used for the pigs. The leaves, &c., not eaten by the pigs,
become valuable manure. If the Guardians would consent to keep cows,
different roots and vegetables might be grown to feed them with; and
these would produce an increased quantity of manure, whilst an increased
quantity of manure would afford the means of raising a larger amount of
roots and green crops, and secure a more extended routine in cropping
the land. This would add to the profit of the land account, and give
much additional comfort to the aged people and the young children in the
workhouse.” But Mr. Rackham is ambitious of a dairy, chiefly for the
training of dairy-maids: who would become doubly acceptable as farm
servants.
Besides other advantages, the experiment presents one dear to the minds
of rate-payers—it tends to reduce the rates. The average profit per
annum on each of the acres has been fifteen pounds. Here are the
sums:—The profit of the first year was sixty pounds two shillings and
fourpence farthing; second year, fifty-one pounds seventeen shillings
and sixpence; to Christmas, 1849, three-quarters of a year, sixty-seven
pounds two shillings and one penny farthing; total, one hundred and
seventy-nine pounds one shilling and elevenpence halfpenny.
As at the Swinton and other pauper schools, a variety of industrial arts
are taught in the Guiltcross Union house, and the fact that sixty of the
boys and girls who have been trained in it are now earning their own
living, is some evidence of the success of the system pursued there.
Of one of the cultivators of this “little place in Norfolk” (not we
believe an inmate of the Union), an agreeable account was published in a
letter from Miss Martineau lately in the Morning Chronicle. It shows to
what good account a knowledge of small farming may be turned. That lady
having two acres of land, at Ambleside, in Westmoreland, which she
wished to cultivate, sent to Mr. Rackham to recommend her a farm
servant. The man arrived, and his Guiltcross experience in cultivating
small “estates” proved of essential service. He has managed to keep two
cows and a pig, besides himself and a wife, on these narrow confines;
for Miss Martineau calculates that the produce in milk, butter,
vegetables, &c., obtained from his skill and economy for herself and
household, quite pays his wages. This is her account of him:—
“He is a man of extraordinary industry and cleverness, as well as rigid
honesty. His ambition is roused; for he knows that the success of the
experiment mainly depends on himself. He is living in comfort, and
laying by a little money, and he looks so happy that it would truly
grieve me to have to give up; though I have no doubt that he would
immediately find work at good wages in the neighbourhood. His wife and
he had saved enough to pay their journey hither out of Norfolk. I gave
him twelve shillings a week all the year round. His wife earns something
by occasionally helping in the house, by assisting in my washing, and by
taking in washing when she can get it. I built them an excellent cottage
of the stone of the district, for which they pay one shilling and
sixpence per week. They know that they could not get such another off
the premises for five pounds a year.”
This is all very interesting and gratifying, but there are two sides to
every account. Supposing the system of agricultural and other industrial
training were pursued in all Unions in the country (and if it be a good
system, it ought to be so followed), then, instead of boys and girls
being turned out every three years in sixties, there would be accessions
of farmers, tailors, carpenters, dairy-maids, and domestic servants
every year to be reckoned by thousands. Supposing that every fourteen of
the agricultural section of the community had been earning fifteen
pounds a year profit per acre, we should then have a large amount of
produce brought into the market in competition with that of the
independent labourer. When, again, the multitude of boys had passed
their probation, themselves would be thrown in the labour market (as the
sixty Guiltcross boys already have been), so that their older and weaker
competitors would, in their turn, be obliged to retire to the Workhouse,
not only to their own ruin, but to the exceeding mortification of the
entire body of parochial rate-payers. The axiom, that when there is a
glut in a market any additional supply of the same commodity is an evil,
applies most emphatically to labour. In this view, the adoption of the
industrial training system for paupers and criminals would be an evil;
and an evil of the very description it is meant to cure—a pauperising
evil.
The easy and natural remedy is a combination of colonisation, with the
industrial training system. In all our colonies ordinary, merely animal
labour is eagerly coveted, and skilled labour is at a high premium.
There a competition _for_, instead of against, all sorts of labour is
keenly active. Yet great as is the demand, it is curious that no
comprehensive system for the supply of skilled labour has yet been
adopted. Except the excellent farm school of the Philanthropic Society
at Red Hill, no attempt is made to _teach_ colonisation. The majority of
even voluntary colonists are persons utterly ignorant of colonial wants.
They have never learned to dig or to delve. Many clever artists have
emigrated to Australia, where pictures are not wanted; not a few
emigrant ladies, of undoubted talents in Berlin work and crochet, have
always trembled at the approach of a cow, and never made so much as a
pat of butter in their lives. Still they succeed in the end; but only
after much misery and mortification, which would have been saved them if
they had been better prepared for colonial exigencies. The same thing
happens with the humbler classes. Boys, and even men, have been sent out
to Canada and the Southern Colonies (especially from the Irish Unions),
utterly unfitted for their new sphere of life and labour.
If, therefore, the small beginnings at Guiltcross be imitated in other
Unions (and it is much to be wished that they should be), they will be
made to grow into large results. But these results must be applied not
to clog and glut the labour market at home; but to supply the labour
market abroad.
If to every Union were attached an agricultural training school, upon a
plan that would offer legitimate inducements for the pupils to emigrate
when old enough and skilled enough to obtain their own livelihood, this
country would, we are assured, at no distant date be de-pauperised.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
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● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
● The caret (^) is used to indicate superscript, whether applied to a
single character (as in 2^d) or to an entire expression (as in
1^{st}).
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