Household words, No. 25, September 14, 1850 : A weekly journal

By Charles Dickens

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Title: Household words, No. 25, September 14, 1850
        A weekly journal

Editor: Charles Dickens


        
Release date: March 11, 2026 [eBook #78195]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Bradbury & Evans, 1850

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78195

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. 25, SEPTEMBER 14, 1850 ***


     “_Familiar in their Mouths as HOUSEHOLD WORDS._”—SHAKESPEARE.




                            HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
                           A WEEKLY JOURNAL.


                     CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.


    N^{o.} 25.]      SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1850.      [PRICE 2_d._




                      THREE “DETECTIVE” ANECDOTES.


                         I.—THE PAIR OF GLOVES.

“It’s a singler story, Sir,” said Inspector Wield, of the Detective
Police, who, in company with Sergeants Dornton and Mith, paid us another
twilight visit, one July evening; “and I’ve been thinking you might like
to know it.

“It’s concerning the murder of the young woman, Eliza Grimwood, some
years ago, over in the Waterloo Road. She was commonly called The
Countess, because of her handsome appearance and her proud way of
carrying of herself; and when I saw the poor Countess (I had known her
well to speak to), lying dead, with her throat cut, on the floor of her
bedroom, you’ll believe me that a variety of reflections calculated to
make a man rather low in his spirits, came into my head.

“That’s neither here nor there. I went to the house the morning after
the murder, and examined the body, and made a general observation of the
bedroom where it was. Turning down the pillow of the bed with my hand, I
found, underneath it, a pair of gloves. A pair of gentleman’s dress
gloves, very dirty; and inside the lining, the letters TR, and a cross.

“Well, Sir, I took them gloves away, and I showed ’em to the magistrate,
over at Union Hall, before whom the case was. He says, ‘Wield,’ he says,
‘there’s no doubt this is a discovery that may lead to something very
important; and what you have got to do, Wield, is, to find out the owner
of these gloves.’

“I was of the same opinion, of course, and I went at it immediately. I
looked at the gloves pretty narrowly, and it was my opinion that they
had been cleaned. There was a smell of sulphur and rosin about ’em, you
know, which cleaned gloves usually have, more or less. I took ’em over
to a friend of mine at Kennington, who was in that line, and I put it to
him. ‘What do you say now? Have these gloves been cleaned?’ ‘These
gloves have been cleaned,’ says he. ‘Have you any idea who cleaned
them?’ says I. ‘Not at all,’ says he; ‘I’ve a very distinct idea who
_didn’t_ clean ’em, and that’s myself. But I’ll tell you what, Wield,
there ain’t above eight or nine reg’lar glove cleaners in London,’—there
were not, at that time, it seems—‘and I think I can give you their
addresses, and you may find out, by that means, who did clean ’em.’
Accordingly, he gave me the directions, and I went here, and I went
there, and I looked up this man, and I looked up that man; but, though
they all agreed that the gloves had been cleaned, I couldn’t find the
man, woman, or child, that had cleaned that aforesaid pair of gloves.

“What with this person not being at home, and that person being expected
home in the afternoon, and so forth, the inquiry took me three days. On
the evening of the third day, coming over Waterloo Bridge from the
Surrey side of the river, quite beat, and very much vexed and
disappointed, I thought I’d have a shilling’s worth of entertainment at
the Lyceum Theatre to freshen myself up. So I went into the Pit, at
half-price, and I sat myself down next to a very quiet, modest sort of
young man. Seeing I was a stranger (which I thought it just as well to
appear to be) he told me the names of the actors on the stage, and we
got into conversation. When the play was over, we came out together, and
I said, ‘We’ve been very companionable and agreeable, and perhaps you
wouldn’t object to a drain?’ ‘Well, you’re very good,’ says he; ‘I
_shouldn’t_ object to a drain.’ Accordingly, we went to a public house,
near the Theatre, sat ourselves down in a quiet room upstairs on the
first floor, and called for a pint of half-and-half, a piece, and a
pipe.

“Well, Sir, we put our pipes aboard, and we drank our half-and-half, and
sat a talking, very sociably, when the young man says, ‘You must excuse
me stopping very long,’ he says, ‘because I’m forced to go home in good
time. I must be at work all night.’ ‘At work all night?’ says I. ‘You
ain’t a Baker?’ ‘No,’ he says, laughing, ‘I ain’t a baker.’ ‘I thought
not,’ says I, ‘you haven’t the looks of a baker.’ ‘No,’ says he, ‘I’m a
glove-cleaner.’

“I never was more astonished in my life, than when I heard them words
come out of his lips. ‘You’re a glove-cleaner, are you?’ says I. ‘Yes,’
he says, ‘I am.’ ‘Then, perhaps,’ says I, taking the gloves out of my
pocket, ‘you can tell me who cleaned this pair of gloves? It’s a rum
story,’ I says. ‘I was dining over at Lambeth, the other day, at a
free-and-easy—quite promiscuous—with a public company—when some
gentleman, he left these gloves behind him! Another gentleman and me,
you see, we laid a wager of a sovereign, that I wouldn’t find out who
they belonged to. I’ve spent as much as seven shillings already, in
trying to discover; but, if you could help me, I’d stand another seven
and welcome. You see there’s TR and a cross, inside.’ ‘_I_ see,’ he
says. ‘Bless you, _I_ know these gloves very well! I’ve seen dozens of
pairs belonging to the same party.’ ‘No?’ says I. ‘Yes,’ says he. ‘Then
you know who cleaned ’em?’ says I. ‘Rather so,’ says he. ‘My father
cleaned ’em.’

“‘Where does your father live?’ says I. ‘Just round the corner,’ says
the young man, ‘near Exeter Street, here. He’ll tell you who they belong
to, directly.’ ‘Would you come round with me now?’ says I. ‘Certainly,’
says he, ‘but you needn’t tell my father that you found me at the play,
you know, because he mightn’t like it.’ ‘All right!’ We went round to
the place, and there we found an old man in a white apron, with two or
three daughters, all rubbing and cleaning away at lots of gloves, in a
front parlour. ‘Oh, Father!’ says the young man, ‘here’s a person been
and made a bet about the ownership of a pair of gloves, and I’ve told
him you can settle it.’ ‘Good evening, Sir,’ says I to the old
gentleman. ‘Here’s the gloves your son speaks of. Letters TR, you see,
and a cross.’ ‘Oh yes,’ he says, ‘I know these gloves very well; I’ve
cleaned dozens of pairs of ’em. They belong to Mr. Trinkle, the great
upholsterer in Cheapside.’ ‘Did you get ’em from Mr. Trinkle, direct,’
says I, ‘if you’ll excuse my asking the question?’ ‘No,’ says he; ‘Mr.
Trinkle always sends ’em to Mr. Phibbs’s, the haberdasher’s, opposite
his shop, and the haberdasher sends ’em to me.’ ‘Perhaps _you_ wouldn’t
object to a drain?’ says I. ‘Not in the least!’ says he. So I took the
old gentleman out, and had a little more talk with him and his son, over
a glass, and we parted excellent friends.

“This was late on a Saturday night. First thing on the Monday morning, I
went to the haberdasher’s shop, opposite Mr. Trinkle’s, the great
upholsterer’s in Cheapside. ‘Mr. Phibbs in the way?’ ‘My name is
Phibbs.’ ‘Oh! I believe you sent this pair of gloves to be cleaned?’
Yes, I did, for young Mr. Trinkle over the way. There he is, in the
shop!’ ‘Oh! that’s him in the shop, is it? Him in the green coat?’ ‘The
same individual.’ ‘Well, Mr. Phibbs, this is an unpleasant affair; but
the fact is, I am Inspector Wield of the Detective Police, and I found
these gloves under the pillow of the young woman that was murdered the
other day, over in the Waterloo Road?’ ‘Good Heaven!’ says he. ‘He’s a
most respectable young man, and if his father was to hear of it, it
would be the ruin of him!’ ‘I’m very sorry for it,’ says I, ‘but I must
take him into custody.’ ‘Good Heaven!’ says Mr. Phibbs, again; ‘can
nothing be done?’ ‘Nothing,’ says I. ‘Will you allow me to call him over
here,’ says he, ‘that his father may not see it done?’ ‘I don’t object
to that,’ says I; ‘but unfortunately, Mr. Phibbs, I can’t allow of any
communication between you. If any was attempted, I should have to
interfere directly. Perhaps you’ll beckon him over here?’ Mr. Phibbs
went to the door and beckoned, and the young fellow came across the
street directly; a smart, brisk young fellow.

“‘Good morning, Sir,’ says I. ‘Good morning, Sir,’ says he. ‘Would you
allow me to inquire, Sir,’ says I, ‘if you ever had any acquaintance
with a party of the name of Grimwood?’ ‘Grimwood! Grimwood!’ says he,
‘No!’ ‘You know the Waterloo Road?’ ‘Oh! of course I know the Waterloo
Road!’ ‘Happen to have heard of a young woman being murdered there?’
‘Yes, I read it in the paper, and very sorry I was to read it.’ ‘Here’s
a pair of gloves belonging to you, that I found under her pillow the
morning afterwards!’

“He was in a dreadful state, Sir; a dreadful state! ‘Mr. Wield,’ he
says, ‘upon my solemn oath I never was there. I never so much as saw
her, to my knowledge, in my life!’ ‘I am very sorry,’ says I. ‘To tell
you the truth; I don’t think you _are_ the murderer, but I must take you
to Union Hall in a cab. However, I think it’s a case of that sort, that,
at present, at all events, the magistrate will hear it in private.’”

A private examination took place, and then it came out that this young
man was acquainted with a cousin of the unfortunate Eliza Grimwoods, and
that, calling to see this cousin a day or two before the murder, he left
these gloves upon the table. Who should come in, shortly afterwards, but
Eliza Grimwood! ‘Whose gloves are these?’ she says, taking ’em up.
‘Those are Mr. Trinkle’s gloves,’ says her cousin. ‘Oh!’ says she, ‘they
are very dirty and of no use to him, I am sure. I shall take ’em away
for my girl to clean the stoves with.’ And she put ’em in her pocket.
The girl had used ’em to clean the stoves, and, I have no doubt, had
left ’em lying on the bedroom mantel-piece, or on the drawers, or
somewhere; and her mistress, looking round to see that the room was
tidy, had caught ’em up and put ’em under the pillow where I found ’em.

“That’s the story, Sir.”


                         II. THE ARTFUL TOUCH.

“One of the most _beautiful_ things that ever was done, perhaps,” said
Inspector Wield, emphasising the adjective, as preparing us to expect
dexterity or ingenuity rather than strong interest, “was a move of
Serjeant Witchem’s. It was a lovely idea!

“Witchem and me were down at Epsom one Derby Day, waiting at the station
for the Swell Mob. As I mentioned, when we were talking about these
things before, we are ready at the station when there’s races, or an
Agricultural Show, or a Chancellor sworn in for an university, or Jenny
Lind, or any thing of that sort; and as the Swell Mob come down, we send
’em back again by the next train. But some of the Swell Mob, on the
occasion of this Derby that I refer to, so far kiddied us as to hire a
horse and shay; start away from London by Whitechapel, and miles round;
come into Epsom from the opposite direction; and go to work, right and
left, on the course, while we were waiting for ’em at the Rail. That,
however, ain’t the point of what I’m going to tell you.

“While Witchem and me were waiting at the station, there comes up one
Mr. Tatt; a gentleman formerly in the public line, quite an amateur
Detective in his way, and very much respected. ‘Halloa, Charley Wield,’
he says. ‘What are you doing here? On the look out for some of your old
friends?’ ‘Yes, the old move, Mr. Tatt.’ ‘Come along,’ he says, ‘you and
Witchem, and have a glass of sherry.’ ‘We can’t stir from the place,’
says I, ‘till the next train comes in; but after that, we will with
pleasure.’ Mr. Tatt waits, and the train comes in, and then Witchem and
me go off with him to the Hotel. Mr. Tatt he’s got up quite regardless
of expense, for the occasion; and in his shirt-front there’s a beautiful
diamond prop, cost him fifteen or twenty pound—a very handsome pin
indeed. We drink our sherry at the bar, and have had our three or four
glasses, when Witchem cries, suddenly, ‘Look out, Mr. Wield! stand
fast!’ and a dash is made into the place by the swell mob—four of
’em—that have come down as I tell you, and in a moment Mr. Tatt’s prop
is gone! Witchem, he cuts ’em off at the door, I lay about me as hard as
I can, Mr. Tatt shows fight like a good ‘un, and there we are, all down
together, heads and heels, knocking about on the floor of the
bar—perhaps you never see such a scene of confusion! However, we stick
to our men (Mr. Tatt being as good as any officer), and we take ’em all,
and carry ’em off to the station. The station’s full of people, who have
been took on the course; and it’s a precious piece of work to get ’em
secured. However, we do it at last, and we search ’em; but nothing’s
found upon ’em, and they’re locked up; and a pretty state of heat we are
in by that time, I assure you!

“I was very blank over it, myself, to think that the prop had been
passed away; and I said to Witchem, when we had set ’em to rights, and
were cooling ourselves along with Mr. Tatt, ‘we don’t take much by
_this_ move, anyway, for nothing’s found upon ’em, and it’s only the
braggadocia[1] after all.’ ‘What do you mean, Mr. Wield?’ says Witchem.
‘Here’s the diamond pin!’ and in the palm of his hand there it was, safe
and sound! ‘Why, in the name of wonder,’ says me and Mr. Tatt, in
astonishment, ‘how did you come by that?’ ‘I’ll tell you how I come by
it,’ says he. ‘I saw which of ’em took it; and when we were all down on
the floor together, knocking about, I just gave him a little touch on
the back of his hand, as I knew his pal would; and he thought it WAS his
pal; and gave it me!’ It was beautiful, beau-ti-ful!

Footnote 1:

  Three months’ imprisonment as reputed thieves.

“Even that was hardly the best of the case, for that chap was tried at
the Quarter Sessions at Guildford. You know what Quarter Sessions are,
Sir. Well, if you’ll believe me, while them slow justices were looking
over the Acts of Parliament, to see what they could do to him, I’m
blowed if he didn’t cut out of the dock before their faces! He cut out
of the dock, Sir, then and there; swam across a river; and got up into a
tree to dry himself. In the tree he was took—an old woman having seen
him climb up—and Witchem’s artful touch transported him!”


                             III.—THE SOFA.

“What young men will do, sometimes, to ruin themselves and break their
friends’ hearts,” said Serjeant Dornton, “it’s surprising! I had a case
at Saint Blank’s Hospital which was of this sort. A bad case, indeed,
with a bad end!

“The Secretary, and the House-Surgeon, and the Treasurer, of Saint
Blank’s Hospital, came to Scotland Yard to give information of numerous
robberies having been committed on the students. The students could
leave nothing in the pockets of their great-coats, while the great-coats
were hanging at the Hospital, but it was almost certain to be stolen.
Property of various descriptions was constantly being lost; and the
gentlemen were naturally uneasy about it, and anxious, for the credit of
the Institution, that the thief or thieves should be discovered. The
case was entrusted to me, and I went to the Hospital.

“‘Now, gentlemen,’ said I, after we had talked it over, ‘I understand
this property is usually lost from one room.’

“Yes, they said. It was.

“‘I should wish, if you please,’ said I, ‘to see that room.’

“It was a good-sized bare room downstairs, with a few tables and forms
in it, and a row of pegs, all round, for hats and coats.

“‘Next, gentlemen,’ said I, ‘do you suspect anybody?’

“Yes, they said. They did suspect somebody. They were sorry to say, they
suspected one of the porters.

“‘I should like,’ said I, ‘to have that man pointed out to me, and to
have a little time to look after him.’

“He was pointed out, and I looked after him, and then I went back to the
Hospital, and said, ‘Now, gentlemen, it’s not the porter. He’s,
unfortunately for himself, a little too fond of drink, but he’s nothing
worse. My suspicion is, that these robberies are committed by one of the
students; and if you’ll put me a sofa into that room where the pegs
are—as there’s no closet—I think I shall be able to detect the thief. I
wish the sofa, if you please, to be covered with chintz, or, something
of that sort, so that I may lie on my chest, underneath it, without
being seen.’

“The sofa was provided, and next day at eleven o’clock, before any of
the students came, I went there, with those gentlemen, to get underneath
it. It turned out to be one of those old-fashioned sofas with a great
cross beam at the bottom, that would have broken my back in no time if I
could ever have got below it. We had quite a job to break all this away
in the time; however, I fell to work, and they fell to work, and we
broke it out, and made a clear place for me. I got under the sofa, lay
down on my chest, took out my knife, and made a convenient hole in the
chintz to look through. It was then settled between me and the gentlemen
that when the students were all up in the wards, one of the gentlemen
should come in, and hang up a great-coat on one of the pegs. And that
that great-coat should have, in one of the pockets, a pocket-book
containing marked money.

“After I had been there some time, the students began to drop into the
room, by ones, and twos, and threes, and to talk about all sorts of
things, little thinking there was anybody under the sofa—and then to go
upstairs. At last there came in one who remained until he was alone in
the room by himself. A tallish, good-looking young man of one or two and
twenty, with a light whisker. He went to a particular hat-peg, took off
a good hat that was hanging there, tried it on, hung his own hat in its
place, and hung that hat on another peg, nearly opposite to me. I then
felt quite certain that he was the thief, and would come back
by-and-bye.

“When they were all upstairs, the gentleman came in with the great-coat.
I showed him where to hang it, so that I might have a good view of it;
and he went away; and I lay under the sofa on my chest, for a couple of
hours or so, waiting.

“At last, the same young man came down. He walked across the room,
whistling—stopped and listened—took another walk and whistled—stopped
again, and listened—then began to go regularly round the pegs, feeling
in the pockets of all the coats. When he came to THE great-coat, and
felt the pocket-book, he was so eager and so hurried that he broke the
strap in tearing it open. As he began to put the money in his pocket, I
crawled out from under the sofa, and his eyes met mine.

“My face, as you may perceive, is brown now, but it was pale at that
time, my health not being good; and looked as long as a horse’s. Besides
which, there was a great draught of air from the door, underneath the
sofa, and I had tied a handkerchief round my head; so what I looked
like, altogether, I don’t know. He turned blue—literally blue—when he
saw me crawling out, and I couldn’t feel surprised at it.

“‘I am an officer of the Detective Police,’ said I, ‘and have been lying
here, since you first came in this morning. I regret, for the sake of
yourself and your friends, that you should have done what you have; but
this case is complete. You have the pocket-book in your hand and the
money upon you; and I must take you into custody!’

“It was impossible to make out any case in his behalf, and on his trial
he pleaded guilty. How or when he got the means I don’t know; but while
he was awaiting his sentence, he poisoned himself in Newgate.”


“We inquired of this officer, on the conclusion of the foregoing
anecdote, whether the time appeared long, or short, when he lay in that
constrained position under the sofa?

“‘Why, you see, Sir,’ he replied, ‘if he hadn’t come in, the first time,
and I had not been quite sure he was the thief, and would return, the
time would have seemed long. But, as it was, I being dead-certain of my
man, the time seemed pretty short.’”




                “EVIL IS WROUGHT BY WANT OF THOUGHT.”[2]


Footnote 2:

  THOMAS HOOD.

“It must come some day; and come when it will, it will be hard to do, so
we had best go at once, Sally. I shall have more trouble with Miss
Isabel than you will with Miss Laura; for I am twice the favourite you
are.”

So said Fanny to her cousin, who had just turned to descend the
staircase of Aldington Hall, where they had both lived since they were
almost children, in attendance on the two daughters of the old baronet,
who were near their own ages, and had always treated them with great
kindness.

“I am not sure of that,” replied Sally, “for Miss Laura is so seldom put
out, that when once she is vexed, she will be hard to comfort; and I am
sure, Fanny, she loves me every bit as well as Miss Isabel does you,
though it is her way to be so quiet. I dare say she will cry when I say
I must go; but then John would be like to cry too, if I put him off
longer.”

This consideration restored Sally’s courage, and she proceeded with
Fanny to the gallery into which the rooms of their young mistresses
opened; but here Fanny’s heart failed her; and, stopping short, she
said,

“Suppose we tell them to wait awhile longer, as the young ladies are
going to travel. We might as well see the world first, and marry in a
year or two. But still” added she, after a pause, “I could not find it
in my heart to say so to Thomas; and I promised him to speak to-day.”

Each cousin then knocked at the door of her mistress. Laura was not in
her room, and Sally went to seek her below stairs; but Isabel called to
Fanny to go in.

Fanny obeyed, and walking forward a few steps, faltered out, with many
blushes, that as young Thomas had kept company with her for nearly a
twelvemonth, and had taken and furnished a little cottage, and begged
hard to take her home to it. She was sorry to say, that if Miss Isabel
would give her leave, she wished to give warning and to go from her
service in a month.

Fanny’s most sanguine wishes or fears, must have been surpassed by the
burst of surprise and grief that followed her modest statement. Isabel
reproached her; refused to take her warning; declared she would never
see her again if she left the Hall, and that rather than be served by
any but her dear Fanny, she would wait upon herself all her life. Fanny
expostulated, and told her mistress that, foreseeing her unwillingness
to lose her, she had already put Thomas off several months; and that at
last, to gain further delay, she had run the risk of appearing selfish,
by refusing to marry him till he had furnished a whole cottage for her.
This, she said he had—by working late and early—accomplished in a
surprisingly short time, and had the day before, claimed the reward of
his industry. “And now, Miss,” added she, “he gets quite pale, and
begins to believe I do not love him, and yet I do, better than all the
world, and could not find it in my heart to vex him, and make him look
sad again. Yesterday he seemed so happy, when I promised to be his wife
in a month.” Here Fanny burst into tears. Her sobs softened Isabel, who
consented to let her go; and after talking over her plans, became as
enthusiastic in promoting, as she had at first been, in opposing them.
Thomas was to take Fanny over to see the cottage, that evening, and
Isabel, in the warmth of her heart, promised to accompany them. Fanny
thanked her with a curtsey, and thought how pleased she ought to be at
such condescension in her young mistress, but could not help fearing
that her sweetheart would not half appreciate the favour.

After receiving many promises of friendship and assistance, Fanny
hastened to report to Sally the success of her negotiation. Sally was
sitting in their little bedroom, thoughtful, and almost sad. She
listened to Fanny’s account; and replied in answer to her questions
concerning Miss Laura’s way of taking her warning, “I am afraid, Fanny,
you were right in thinking yourself the greatest favourite, for Miss
Laura seemed almost pleased at my news; she shook me by the hand, and
said, ‘I am very glad to hear you are to marry such a good young man as
everyone acknowledges John Maythorn to be, and you may depend upon my
being always ready to help you, if you want assistance.’ She then said a
deal about my having lived with her six years, and not having once
displeased her, and told me that master had promised my mother and yours
too, that his young ladies should see after us all our lives. This was
very kind, to be sure; but then Miss Isabel promised you presents
whether you wanted assistance or not, and is to give you a silk gown and
a white ribbon for the wedding, and is to go over to the cottage with
you: now Miss Laura did not say a word of any such thing.”

Fanny tried to comfort her cousin by saying it was Miss Laura’s quiet
way; but she could not help secretly rejoicing that her own mistress was
so generous and affectionate.

In the evening the two sweethearts came to lead their future wives to
the cottages, which were near each other, and at about a mile from the
Hall. John had a happy walk. He learned from Sally that he was to “take
her home” in a month, and was so pleased at the news, that he could
scarcely be happier when she bustled about, exclaiming at every new
sight in the pretty bright little cottage. The tea-caddy, the cupboard
of china, and a large cat, each called forth a fresh burst of joy. Sally
thought everything “the prettiest she had ever seen;” and when John made
her sit in the arm-chair and put her foot on the fender, as if she were
already mistress of the cottage, she burst into sobs of joy. We will not
pause to tell how her sobs were stopped, nor what promises of unchanging
kindness, were made in that bright little kitchen; but we may safely
affirm that Sally and John were happier than they had ever been in their
lives, and that old Mrs. Maythorn, who was keeping the cottage for
Sally, felt all her fondest wishes were fulfilled as she saw the two
lovers depart.

Fanny and Thomas, who had left them at the cottage door, walked on to
their own future home, quite overwhelmed by the honour Miss Isabel was
conferring on them by walking at their side.

“You see, Miss,” said Thomas, as he turned the key of his cottage door,
“there is nothing to speak of here, only such things as are necessary,
and all of the plainest; but it will do well enough for us poor folks:”
and as he threw open the door, he found to his surprise that what had
seemed to him yesterday so pretty and neat, now looked indeed “all of
the plainest.” The very carpet, and metal teapot, which he had intended
as surprises for Fanny, he was now ashamed of pointing out to her, and
he apologised to Isabel for the coarse quality of the former, telling
her it was only to serve till he could get a better.

“Yes,” answered she, “this is not half good enough for my little Fanny,
she must have a real Brussels carpet. I will send her one. I will make
your cottage so pretty, Fanny, you shall have a nice china tea set, not
these common little things, and I will give you some curtains for the
window.” Thomas blushed as this deficiency was pointed out. “Why, Miss,”
said he, “I meant to have trained the rose tree over the window, I
thought that would be shady, and sweet in the summer, and in the winter,
why, we should want all the day-light; but then to be sure, curtains
will be much better.”

“Yes, Thomas,” replied the young lady, “and warm in the winter; you
could not be comfortable with a few bare rose stalks before your window,
when the snow was on the ground.” This had not occurred to Thomas, who
now said faintly, “Oh no, Miss,” and felt that curtains were
indispensable to comfort.

Similar deficiencies or short-comings were discovered everywhere, so
that even Fanny, who would at first be pleased with all she saw, in
spite of the numerous defects that seemed to exist everywhere, gradually
grew silent and ashamed of her cottage. She did her utmost to conceal
from Thomas how entirely she agreed with her mistress, and as this
generous young lady finished every remark, by saying “I will get you
one,” or, “I will send you another,” she felt that all would be right
before long.

As Thomas closed the door, he wondered how in his wish to please Fanny
he could have deceived himself so completely as to the merits of his
cottage and furniture; but he too comforted himself by remembering how
his kind patroness was to remedy all the defects; “though,” thought he,
“I should have liked better to have done it all well myself.”

The lady and the two lovers walked homewards, almost without speaking
till they overtook John and Sally, who were whispering and laughing,
talking of their cottage, Mrs. Maythorn’s joy at seeing them happy,
their future plans for themselves and her, and all in so confused a way,
that though twenty new subjects were started and discussed, none came to
any conclusion, but that John and Sally loved each other and were very,
very happy.

“What ails you, Thomas?” said John, “Has any one robbed your house? I
told you it was not safe to leave it,” but seeing Miss Isabel, he
touched his hat and fell back to where Fanny was talking to her cousin.
Isabel, however, left them that she might take a short cut through the
park, while they went round by the road.

At the end of the walk, Sally was half inclined to be dissatisfied with
her furniture, so much had Fanny boasted of the improvements that were
to be made in her own, but she could not get rid of the first impression
it had made on her, and in a few days she quite forgot the want of
curtains and carpet, and could only remember the happy time when she sat
in the arm-chair with her foot on the fender.

As the month drew to a close, the two sisters made presents to their
maids. Laura gave Sally a merino dress, a large piece of linen, a cellar
full of coals, and a five pound note. Isabel gave Fanny a silk gown that
cost three guineas, a beautiful white bonnet ribbon, a small chimney
glass (for which she kindly went into debt), three left-off muslin
dresses, a painting done by her own hand, in a handsome gilt frame, and
a beautiful knitted purse. Besides all this, she told Fanny it was still
her intention to get the other things she had promised for the cottage,
as soon as she had paid for the chimney glass. “I am very sorry,” she
said, “that just now I am so poor, for unfortunately, as you know, I
have had to pay for those large music volumes I ordered when I was in
London, and which after all I never used. It always happens that I am
poor when I want to make presents.”

Fanny stopped her mistress with abundant thanks for the beautiful things
she had already given her. “I am sure, Miss,” said she, “I shall
scarcely dare wear these dresses, they look so lady-like and fine; Sally
will seem quite strange by me. And this purse too, Miss; I never saw
anything so smart.”

Isabel was quite satisfied that she had eclipsed her sister in the
number and value of her gifts, but she still assured Fanny she had but
made a beginning. Large and generous indeed, were this young lady’s
intentions.

On the wedding morning Isabel rose early and dressed herself without
assistance, then crossing to the room of the two cousins, she entered
without knocking. Sally was gone, and Fanny lay sleeping alone.

“How pretty she is!” said Isabel to herself. “She ought to be dressed
like a lady to day. I will see to it;” then glancing proudly at the silk
gown, which was laid out with all the other articles of dress, ready for
the coming ceremony, her heart swelled with consciousness of her own
generosity. “I have done nothing yet,” continued she; “she has been with
me nearly six years, and always pleased me entirely, then papa promised
her mother that he should befriend her as long as we both lived, and he
has charged us both to do our utmost for our brides. Laura has bought
Sally a shawl, I ought to give one too—what is this common thing? Fanny!
Fanny! wake up. I am come to be your maid to day, for you shall be
mistress on your wedding morning and have a lady to dress you. What is
this shawl? It will not do with a silk dress, wait a minute,” and off
she darted, leaving Fanny sitting up and rubbing her eyes trying to
remember what her young mistress had said. Before she was quite
conscious, Isabel returned with a Norfolk shawl of fine texture and
design, but somewhat soiled. “There,” said she, throwing it across the
silk gown, “those go much better together. I will give it you, Fanny.”

“Thank you, Miss,” said Fanny, in a tone of hesitation; “but—but
suppose, Miss, I was to wear Thomas’ shawl just to-day, as he gave it me
for the wedding, and John got Sally one like it—I think, Miss—don’t you
think, Miss, it might seem unkind to wear another just to-day?”

“Why, it is just to-day I want to make you look like a lady, Fanny; no,
no, you must not put on that white cotton-looking shawl with a silk
dress, and this ribbon,” said Isabel, taking up the bonnet, proudly.
Fanny looked sad, but the young mistress did not see this, for she was
examining the white silk gloves, that lay beside the bonnet. “These,”
thought she, “are not quite right, they look servantish, but my kid
gloves would not fit her, besides, I have none clean, and it is well,
perhaps, that she should have a few things to mark her rank. Yes, they
will do.”

There was so much confusion between the lady’s offering help, and the
maid’s modestly refusing it, that the toilette was long in completing.
At last, however, Isabel was in ecstasies. “Look,” said she, “how the
bonnet becomes you! and the Norfolk shawl, too, no one would think you
were only a lady’s-maid, Fanny. Stop, I will get a ribbon for your
throat.” Off she flew, and was back again in five minutes. “But what is
that for, Fanny? Are you afraid it will rain, this bright morning?”

Fanny had, in Isabel’s absence, folded Thomas’ shawl, and hung it across
her arm. “I thought, Miss,” answered she, blushing, “that I might just
carry it, to show Thomas that I did not forget his present, or think it
too homely to go to church with me.”

“Impossible,” said Isabel, who, to do her justice, we must state, was
far too much excited to suspect that she was making Fanny uncomfortable;
“you will spoil all. There, put the shawl away,—that’s right, you look
perfect. Go down to your bridegroom, I hear his voice in the hall, I
will not come too, though I should like above all things to see his
surprise, but I should spoil your meeting, and I am the last person in
the world to do anything so selfish. One thing more, Fanny: I shall give
you two guineas, that you may spend three or four days at L——, by the
seaside; no one goes home directly, you would find it very dull to
settle down at once in your cottage; tell Thomas so.” Isabel then
retired to her room, wishing heartily that she could part with half her
prettiest things, that she might heap more favours on the interesting
little bride.

Laura’s first thought that morning had also been of the little orphan,
who had served her so long and faithfully, and whom her father had
commended to her special care. She, too, had risen early, but without
dressing herself, she went across to Sally. Sally was asleep, with the
traces of tears on her cheeks; Laura looked at her for a few moments,
and remembered how, when both were too young to understand the
distinction of rank, they had been almost playmates; she wiped from her
own eyes a little moisture that dimmed them, then putting her hand
gently on Sally’s shoulder, she said, “Wake, Sally, I call you early
that you may have plenty of time to dress me first and yourself
afterwards. I know you would not like to miss waiting on me, or to do it
hurriedly for the last time. You have been crying, Sally, do not colour
about it, I should think ill of you if you were not sorry to leave us,
you cannot feel the parting more than I do. I dare say I shall have hard
work to keep dry eyes all day, but we must do our best, Sally, for it
will not do for John to think I grudge you to him, or that you like me
better than you do him.”

“Oh no, Miss!” replied Sally, who felt at that moment that she could
scarcely love any one better than her kind mistress. “Still John will
not be hard upon me for a few tears,” added she, putting the sheet to
her eyes.

“Come, come, Sally, this will not do, jump up and dress yourself
quickly, that you may be ready to brush my hair when I return from the
dressing-room; you must do it well to day, for you know I am not yet
suited with a maid, and must do it myself to-morrow.”

This roused Sally, who dressed in great haste and was soon at her post.
Laura asked her many questions about her plans for the future, and found
with pleasure that most things had been well considered and arranged.
“There is only one thing, Miss,” said Sally in conclusion, “that we are
sorry for, and it is that we cannot offer old Mrs. Maythorn a home. She
has no child but John, and will sadly feel his leaving her.”

“But why cannot she live with you and work as she does now, so as to pay
you for what she costs?”

“Why, Miss, where she is she works about the house for her board, and
does a trifle outdoors besides, that gets her clothing. John says it
makes him feel quite cowardly, as it were, to see his old mother working
at scrubbing and scouring, making her poor back ache, when he is so
young and strong; yet we scarcely know if we could undertake for her
altogether. I wish we could.”

“How much would it cost you?”

“A matter of four shillings a week; besides, we must get a bed and
bedding. That we could put up in the kitchen, if we bought it to shut up
in the day-time, and, as John says, Mrs. Maythorn would help us nicely
when we get some little ones. But it would cost a deal of money to begin
and go on with.”

“I will think of this for you, Sally. It would be easy for me to give
you four shillings a week now, but I may not always be able to do it. I
may marry a poor man, or one who will not allow me to spend my money as
I please, and were Mrs. Maythorn to give up her present employments, she
would not be able to get them back again three or four years hence, nor
would she, at her age, be able to meet with others; and if you would
find it difficult to keep her now, you would much more when you have a
little family; so we must do nothing hastily. I will consult Papa; he
will tell me directly whether I shall be right in promising you the four
shillings a week. If I do promise it, you may depend on always having
it.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you, Miss, for the thought: I will tell John
directly I see him; the very hope will fill him with joy.”

“No,” said Laura, “do not tell him yet, Sally, for you would be sorry to
disappoint him afterwards, if I could not undertake it. Wait a day or
two, and I will give you an answer; or, if possible, it shall be sooner.
Now, thank you for the nice brushing: I will put up my hair while you go
and dress; it is getting late. If you require assistance, and Fanny is
not in your room, tap at my door, for I shall be pleased to help you
to-day.”

Laura was not called in; but when she thought the toilette must be
nearly completed, went to Sally with the shawl which she had bought for
her the day before. As she entered, Sally was folding the white one John
had given her. “I have brought you a shawl,” said Laura, “which I want
you to wear to-day; it is much handsomer than that you are folding. See,
do you like it?”

“Yes, Miss,” said Sally, “It is a very good one, I see,” and she began
to re-fold the other; but Laura noticed the expression of disappointment
with which she made the change, and taking up the plain shawl, said, “I
do not know whether this does not suit your neat muslin dress better
than mine. Did you buy it yourself, Sally?”

“No, Miss, it was John’s present; but I will put on yours this morning,
if you please, Miss, and I can wear John’s any day.”

“No, no,” replied Laura, “you must put on John’s to-day. It matters but
little to me when you wear mine, so long as it does you good service;
but John will feel hurt if you cast his present aside on your
wedding-day, because some one else has given you a shawl worth a few
shillings more.” So Laura put the white shawl on the shoulders of Sally,
who valued it more than the finest Cashmere in the world.

As Sally went down stairs, she saw Fanny in tears on the landing. “I
cannot think how it is,” answered she, in reply to Sally’s questioning,
“but just on this day, when I thought to feel so happy, I am quite low.
Miss Isabel has been so kind, she has dressed me, and quite flustered me
with her attentions. See what nice things she has given me—this
shawl—though for that matter, I’d rather have worn Thomas’s. Oh, how
nice you look. Dear, so neat and becoming your station, and with John’s
shawl, too, but then Miss Laura has made you no present.”

“Yes, a good shawl, and a promise besides, but I will tell you about
that another time. Let us go in now, they must be waiting for us.”

Fanny felt so awkward in her fine clothes, that she could scarcely be
prevailed on to encounter the gaze of the servants; but her good-natured
cousin promising to explain that all her dress was given and chosen by
her mistress, she at last went into the hall. Sally’s explanation was
only heard by a few of the party, and as Fanny, in trying to conceal
herself from the gaze of the astonished villagers, slunk behind old Mrs.
Maythorn, she had the mortification of hearing her say to John, in the
loud whisper peculiar to deaf people, “I am so glad, John, the neat one
is yours; I should be quite frightened to see you take such a fine lady
as Fanny to the altar; it makes me sorry for Thomas to see her begin so
smart.”

When the ceremony was over, the party returned to the Hall, where an
hospitable meal had been provided for all the villagers of good
character who chose to partake of it. It was a merry party, for even
Fanny, when every one had seen her finery long enough to forget it,
forgot it herself. Thomas was very good-natured about the shawl, and
delighted at the prospect of spending a few days at L——. He and Fanny
talked of the boat-excursions they would have, the shells they would
gather for a grotto in their garden, and the long rambles they would
take by the seaside, till they wondered how ever they could have been
contented with the prospect of going to their cottage at once.

As the pony chaise which the good baronet had lent for the day, drove up
to take the bridal party to L——, for John and Sally were also to spend
one day there, the two young ladies came to take leave of their
_protégées_. Laura said, “Good bye, Sally, I have consulted Papa and
will undertake to allow you four shillings a week as long as Mrs.
Maythorn lives. Here is a sovereign towards expenses; you will not, I am
sure, mind changing your five pound note for the rest.”

Isabel said, “Good bye, Fanny. I am very, very sorry to disappoint you
of your treat at L——, but I intended to have borrowed the two pounds of
Miss Laura, and I find she cannot lend them to me. Never mind, I am sure
you will be happy enough in your little cottage. I never saw such a
sweet little place as it is.” So the bridal party drove away.

In less than a week the cousins were established in their new abode.
Sally settled and happy; but Fanny, unsettled, always expected the new
carpet, the china tea set, and the various other alterations that Isabel
had suggested and promised to make. The young lady was, however,
unfortunate with her money. At one time she lost a bank-note; at
another, just as she was counting out money for the Brussels carpet, the
new maid entered to tell her that sundry articles of dress were “past
mending,” and must be immediately replaced. One thing after another
nipped her generous intentions in the bud, and at last she was obliged
to set out for her long-expected journey to France, without having done
more towards the fulfilment of her promises than call frequently on
Fanny, to remind her that all her present arrangements were temporary,
and that she should shortly have almost everything new.

“Good bye, Fanny,” said she at parting; “I shall often write to you, and
send you money. I will not make any distinct promise, for I daresay I
shall be able to do more than I should like to say now.”

Laura had given Sally a great many useful things for her cottage, but
made no promise at parting. She said, “Be sure you write to me, Sally,
from time to time, to say how you are going on, and tell me if you want
help.”

When Isabel was gone, Fanny saw that she must accustom herself to her
cottage as it was, and banish from her mind the idea of the
long-anticipated improvements. It was, however, no easy task. The window
once regarded as bare and comfortless still seemed so, in spite of
Fanny’s reasoning that it was no worse than Sally’s, which always looked
cheerful and pretty. To be sure, John, who did not think of getting
curtains, had trained a honeysuckle over it, still that made but little
show at present. The carpet, too, so long regarded as a coarse temporary
thing, never regained the beauty it first had to the eye of Thomas, as
he laid it down the evening before he took Fanny to the cottage; and
Fanny could never forget, as she arranged her tea-things, that Miss
Isabel had called them “common little things;” so of all the other
pieces of furniture that the young lady had remarked upon. Sally’s house
was, in reality, more homely than her cousin’s, yet as she had never
entertained a wish that it should be better, and as Laura had been
pleased with all its arrangements, she bustled about it with perfect
satisfaction; and even to Fanny it seemed replete with the comfort her
own had always wanted.

At the end of three months Isabel enclosed an order for three pounds to
Fanny, desiring her to get a Brussels carpet, and if there was a
sufficient remainder, to replace the tea set.

“I would rather,” said Fanny to her cousin, “put up with the old carpet
and china, and get a roll of fine flannel, some coals, an extra blanket
or two, and a cradle for the little one that’s coming, for it will be
cold weather when I am put to bed; but I suppose as Miss Isabel has set
her mind on the carpet and china, I must get them.”

A week or two after John was invited, with his wife and mother, to drink
tea from Fanny’s new china. It was very pretty, so was the carpet, and
so was Fanny making tea, elated with showing her new wealth.

“Is not Miss Isabel generous?” asked she, as she held the milk-pot to be
admired.

“I sometimes wish Miss Laura had as much money to spare,” replied Sally;
“for she lets me lay it out as I please, and I could get a number of
things for three guineas.”

“Fie, Sally,” said her husband; “are not three shillings to spend as one
pleases, better than three guineas laid out to please some one else?”

“Nonsense, John,” said Fanny, pettishly; “how can a carpet for my
kitchen be bought to please any one but me?”

“John isn’t far wrong either,” answered her husband; “but the carpet is
very handsome, and does please you and me too, now it is here.”

Time passed on, and Fanny gave birth to a little girl. Isabel stood
sponsor for her by proxy, sending her an embroidered cloak and lace cap,
and desiring that she should be called by her own name. Little Bella was
very sickly, and as her mother had not been able to procure her good
warm clothing, or lay in a large stock of firing, she suffered greatly
from cold during the severe winter that followed her birth. The spring
and summer did not bring her better health; and as Fanny always
attributed her delicacy to the want of proper warmth in her infancy, she
took a great dislike to the Brussels carpet, which now lay in a roll
behind a large chest, having been long ago taken up as a piece of
inconvenient luxury in a kitchen. “I wish you could find a corner for it
in your cottage, Sally,” said she, “for I never catch a sight of it
without worrying myself to think how much flannels and coals I might
have bought with the money it cost.”

Laura frequently sent Sally small presents of money, but Isabel, though
not so regular as her sister, surprised every one by the splendour of
her presents, when they did come. As Bella entered her second year, she
received from her godmother a beautiful little carriage, which Thomas
said must have “spoilt a five pound note.” This was Isabel’s last gift,
for it was at about this time that she accepted an offer from a French
count, and became so absorbed in her own affairs, that she forgot Fanny
and Bella too. Poor Bella grew more and more sickly every month; the
apothecary ordered her beef tea, arrowroot, and other strengthening
diet, but work was slack with Thomas, and it was with difficulty that he
could procure her the commonest food. “I am sure,” said Fanny to her
cousin, as little Bella was whining on her knee, “that if only Miss
Isabel were here, she would set us all right. She never could bear to
see even a stranger in distress.”

“I wish,” said Thomas, “that great folks would think a little of what
they don’t see. I’ll lay anything Miss Isabel gives away a deal of
money, more than enough to save our little one, to a set of French
impostors that cry after her in the street, and yet, when she knows our
child is ill, she never cares, because she can’t see it grow thin, or
hear it cry.”

“For shame, Thomas,” said his wife, “do not speak so rudely of the young
lady. Have you forgotten the pretty carriage she sent Bella, and how
pleased we were when it came?”

“I don’t mean any harm,” answered her husband; “only it strikes me that
Miss was pleased to buy the carriage because it was pretty, and seemed a
great thing to send us, and that she would ’nt have cared a straw to
give us a little each, that would have served us every bit as well.”

“I never heard you so ungrateful, Thomas. Of course she would ’nt,
because she wished to please us.”

“Or herself, as John said; but may be I am wrong; only it goes to my
heart to see the child want food while there is a filagree carriage in
the yard that cost more than would keep her for six months.”

“Well, cheer up,” said Sally; “Miss Laura will be coming home soon, and
I’ll lay anything she won’t let Bella die of want.”

“I’m afraid she won’t think of giving to me, Sally,” said Fanny
despondingly; “I was never her maid, you know.”

“You would ’nt fear, if you knew Miss Laura as I do, Fanny; she never
cares who she helps so long as the person is deserving, and in want. She
has no pride of that sort.”

Isabel’s marriage was put off, and Laura’s return, consequently,
postponed. As Bella grew worse every day, and yet no help came, the
unselfish Sally wrote to her patroness, telling her of poor Fanny’s
distress, and begging her either to send her help, or speak on her
behalf to her sister.

Isabel was dressing for a party when Laura showed her Sally’s letter.
“Poor Fanny,” said she, “I wish I had known it before I bought this
wreath. I have, absolutely, not a half-franc in the world. Will you buy
the wreath of me at half-price, it has not even been taken from its
box.”

“I do not want it,” said Laura, “but I will lend you some money.”

“No, I cannot borrow more,” said her sister despondingly. “I owe you
already for the flowers, the brooch, the bill you paid yesterday, and I
know not what else besides; but I will tell Eugène there is a poor
Englishwoman in distress, I am sure he will send her something.”

Eugène gave a five-franc piece.

It was late one frosty evening when Sally ran across to her cousin’s
cottage, delighted to be the bearer of the long hoped-for letter. Fanny
was sitting on the fender before a small fire, hugging her darling to
her breast, and breathing on its little face to make the air warmer.
“I’m afraid,” said she, in answer to Sally’s inquiries, “that the child
won’t be here long;” and she wiped away a few hot tears that had forced
their way as she sat listening to the low moans of the little sufferer.

“But I have good news for you,” said her cousin, cheerfully. “Here is a
letter from Miss Isabel at last. I would not tell you before, but I
wrote to Miss Laura, saying how you were expecting every week to be put
to bed again, and how Bella was wasting away, and see, I was right about
her, she has sent you a sovereign, and her sister’s letter, no doubt,
contains a pretty sum.”

Fanny started up, and could scarcely breathe as she broke the seal. What
was her disappointment on seeing an order for five shillings!

“I am very sorry, my good Fanny,” said Isabel, “that just now I have no
money. A charitable gentleman sends you five shillings, and as soon as I
possibly can, I will let you have a large sum. I have not yet paid for
the carriage I sent you, and as the bill has been given me several
times, I must discharge it before I send away more money. I hope that by
this time, little Bella is better.”

Fanny laid her child upon the bed, and putting her face by its side,
shed bitter tears. Sally did not speak, and so both remained till Thomas
came in from his work. Fanny would have hidden the letter from him, but
he saw and seized it in a moment.

“Five guineas for a carriage, and five shillings for a child’s life,”
said he with a sneer, as he laid it down. “Do not look for the large
sum, Fanny, you won’t get it; but I will work hard, and bury the child
decently.”

Fanny felt no inclination to defend her mistress. For the first time, it
occurred to her that Thomas and John might be right in their judgment of
her. She raised Bella, as Thomas, who had been twisting up the money
order, was about to throw it in the fire. He caught a sight of the
child’s wan face, and, advancing to the bed, said, in a softened tone,
“Do you know father, pretty one?” and as Bella smiled, faintly, he
added, “I will do anything for your sake. Here, Fanny, take the money,
and get the child something nourishing.”

Bella seemed to revive from getting better food; and the apothecary held
out great hope of her ultimate recovery, if the improved diet could be
continued; but expenses fell heavily on Thomas, Fanny was put to bed
with a fine strong little boy, and, though Sally and Mrs. Maythorn
devoted themselves to her and Bella, the anxiety she suffered from being
separated from her invalid child, added to her former constant
uneasiness, and want of proper food, brought on a fever that threatened
her life. In a few days she became quite delirious. During this time
Isabel was married, and Laura returned to England.

When Fanny regained her consciousness she was in the dark, but she could
see someone standing by the window. On her speaking the person advanced
to her side. “Do not be startled to find me here,” said a sweet soft
voice. “Sally has watched by your side for three nights, and when I came
this evening she looked so ill that I insisted on her going to bed;
then, as we could find no one on whose care and watchfulness we could
depend, I took her place. You have been in a sound sleep Dr. Hart said
you would wake up much better. Are you better?”

“Yes, ma’am, a deal better; but where am I, and who is it with me?”

“You are in your own pretty cottage, and Miss Laura is with you. You
expected me home, did you not?”

“Oh thank God; who sent you, dear Miss Laura? How is—but may be I had
best not ask just while I am so weak. Is the dear boy well?”

“Yes, quite well; and Bella is much better. I have sent her for a few
days to L——, with Mrs. Maythorn; the sea air will do her good.”

“Oh, thank you—thank you—dear young lady for the thought. I seem so
bound up in that dear child, that nothing could comfort me for her loss.
How good and kind you are, Miss—you do all so well and so quietly!”

“Yes, Fanny, dear,” said Thomas, coming from behind the curtain and
stooping to kiss his wife. “Miss Laura has saved you and Bella, and me
too, for I could’nt have lived if you had died; and has found me work;
and all without making one great present, or doing anything one could
speak about. I’ll tell you what it is, wife, dear, Miss Isabel does all
for the best, but it is just as she feels at the moment. Now Miss
Laura—if I may be so bold to speak, Miss—Miss Laura does not give to
please her own feelings, but to do good. I can’t say it well, but do you
say it for me, Miss; I want Fanny to know the right words, to teach the
little ones by-and-bye. You know what I wish to say, Miss Laura.”

“Yes Thomas,” said Laura, blushing, “but I do not say you are right. You
mean, I think, that my sister acts from impulse, and I from principle.
Is that it?”

“I suppose that’s it, Miss,” said Thomas, considering, and apparently
not quite satisfied.

“You have no harder meaning, I am sure,” said Laura, quietly, “because I
love my sister very much.”

“Certainly not, Miss,” returned Thomas. “But, myself, if I may take the
liberty of gratefully saying so, I prefer to be acted to on principle,
and think it a good deal better than impulse.”




                                 CHIPS.


                    TORTURE IN THE WAY OF BUSINESS.

The mention in a recent number of the extreme cruelty practised on
calves, has drawn forth the following statement from a correspondent,—a
clergyman in Bedfordshire:—

“A member of my family was witness to the following act of barbarity,
viz., that of plucking the feathers from a duck while yet alive. Upon
being expostulated with, the man replied that it was a common
practice,—‘we _half_ break their necks, then pluck them while they are
warm, and then finish them off.’ This act of cruelty was witnessed in
Brighton Market. If the above will at all assist you in exposing the
atrocities which are practised on the brute creation, I shall be
thankful. The public generally (save a few gross sensualists) have only,
it is to be hoped, to be told what is practised on many articles of
consumption, to make them protest against such wanton insults on God’s
workmanship.”

The only means of accounting for such irrational cruelty, is the
supposition that the offending poulterers imagine ducks to be endowed by
nature with no more feeling than feather-beds.

The savage indifference with which unappreciable agonies are
systematically inflicted upon sentient creatures, strikes us
occasionally with wonder. The police reports have lately revealed a case
which nothing but the best testimony could render credible. A
correspondent of the Times Newspaper was some weeks since walking in the
Walworth Road, when he saw several persons assembled round the shop of a
butcher; half a dozen men were endeavouring to force two bullocks into a
slaughter-house. The butcher’s journeyman struck one of the animals on
the legs with a broom handle, which had a sharp pointed spike. The door
of the slaughter-house was very narrow; the man got a rope and fixed it
tightly round the horns of the bullock, and some of them then pulled
this from the inside of the slaughter-house; the others were beating the
brute behind and pushing it on. He saw one of the butchers twisting the
animal’s tail till he doubled it up, and the bones were dislocated—at
least, he was led to think so by the right angle formed by the two
portions of the tail. The man’s hands were covered with blood which
flowed from the tail; and he rubbed the dislocated parts together, which
caused the poor animal to moan most piteously. Several of the bystanders
expressed their disgust.

The fellows were brought before the Lambeth magistrate by the Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals; but unfortunately the
principal witness mistook one of the offenders for another person—his
brother. The complaint, therefore, from that legal informality, broke
down.

The defendants appeared to treat the mere pulling a bullock through a
passage too small for its comfortable admission, with ropes tied to its
horns; the pushing it with goads from behind; the agonising twisting of
its tail; as matters of the most perfect indifference. In his exultation
at getting off, one of them facetiously promised the magistrate, in
answer to an expostulation as to the narrowness of the passage, “that,
to oblige his Worship, he would make the place big enough to admit a
full-grown elephant, or a hippopotamus.”

We have in former articles shown that this sort of brutality is of
everyday occurrence, and perpetrated in the regular way of business. Use
begets insensibility. We have no doubt that the poulterer and butchers
concerned in the atrocities we have detailed, are worthy men enough in
their families. They would not tear the hair out of the head of a child,
or goad a wife with a broomstick, for the world. They are most likely
tender fathers and affectionate husbands; but in the way of business, as
poulterers, and butchers, what can exceed, or what censure can be too
sharp for, their cruelty? Exposure is the only cure; and this we will
always do our part in administering.




                           A COTTAGE MEMORY.


      In that far foreign country, the dream of old days
      And old haunts often bears me to Anthony Wray’s;
      The white little cottage with nest-crowded eaves,
      Peeping out half the year from an ambush of leaves.

      And now once again have my footsteps been there,
      And have found it—deserted, dismantled, and bare;
      Except where the wall-flow’rs still cluster and wave
      On the gable: they now are like flow’rs on a grave.

      At that window, I thought as I passed through the door,
      Where the late sunbeam strikes down the weed-covered floor,
      How often the sunlight and moonlight have shone
      Upon bright, living faces, that now are all gone.

      In the choice ingle-nook stood no Martha’s arm-chair,
      But a heap of dead leaves which the wind had swept there;
      The low-talking wind that breathed thoughts of the time
      When young voices rang round like a holiday chime.

      And the hearth had become like a cold churchyard stone,
      Encrusted with mould and with moss overgrown,
      That had glowed through so many a long winter night,
      The heart of the cottage, a core of warm light.

      What talk and what mirth there! what tales told or read
      To the children that listened in joy tinged with dread!
      A storm shakes the window; they solemnly gaze
      On each other, and draw their stools nearer the blaze.

      Their father is drowsy with labour gone through,
      And the deep satisfaction of nothing to do;
      The woof of light sleep in its network has bound him,
      And home mildly shines through the mist that’s around him.

      The mother sits knitting and smiling fond praise;
      The cheek of the youngest shines warm in the blaze
      As he rests his white head on his grandmother’s knee;
      Alas! that these pictures mere phantoms should be.

      As ghosts of burnt roses cloud up from their ashes,
      Rise scenes from the past in these transient flashes;
      Thin visions, soon melted, which leave the heart sore,
      By half-showing that which they will not restore.

      Could it be that this Household was gone, and for ever?
      The wood looked unchanged, and the fields, and the river;
      Co-tenants of time, even part did these seem
      Of beings who now are but shapes of a dream.

      The broad-leaved horse-chesnut my thoughts used to wed
      With those for whose shelter its boughs seemed to spread,
      Dipped slowly in sunlight its fans as of old,
      But beneath, all had passed “like a tale that is told.”

      Long I stood, and had no word of comfort to say
      Yet not unconsoled did I turn me away:
      Thank God for the faith that is stronger than grief,
      The fountain that springs to the parched soul’s relief.

      The whispered assurance which raises and soothes,
      That these are the phantoms, and those still the truths;
      And their trials and virtues, their tears and their mirth
      _Not_ faded like yesterday’s light from the earth!




                            “CAPE” SKETCHES.


There is a peculiarity evinced by such of the advocates of colonisation
as have acquainted themselves personally with colonial life, which puts
in a strong light the adaptability of most of our territories beyond sea
for bettering the condition of enterprising emigrants. It is this:—each
man vaunts loudly the superiority of the colony he has visited over all
the others. “How is it possible,” writes a settler in New Zealand to us,
“that people will be so blind as to risk their capital in Australia
while there is New Zealand, the finest country, with the finest climate
in the world!” The friend, who occasionally amuses and instructs us with
his vivid sketches of Australian life, exclaims—“New Zealand!—Where are
its markets?—What is a farmer to do with his produce when he has got
it?—No, no; my advice is Sydney.” “By no means,” ejaculates a third,
just home from Port Philip, “South Australia is the country for an
energetic man to gain independence and wealth.” A successful emigrant,
hot from Hobart Town, vaunts the advantages of Van Dieman’s Land. Our
friend from Canada over-rides all these opinions. “Why,” he argues, “go
to uncivilised, uncultivated, and far-off countries, when you can, at
once, join established communities, and enjoy regular British
institutions, only a three weeks’ sail distant; where markets are
regular, food cheap, and where (on account of the intense cold) there is
nothing to do for one-third of the year?” Lastly, we are favoured with
the opinion of a five years’ resident in South Africa:—“Truly,” he says,
“people who brave the regions of a northern climate, who expose their
lives in dangerous proximity to savages, who heed not agues in swamps,
nor thirst in deserts, forget there is such a place as the Cape of Good
Hope.”

Although all this one-sided enthusiasm does not prove either of the
respective cases argued by the different advocates; yet it shows in a
broad light the certain advantages of emigration in general. To whatever
quarter of the globe the observer turns, he sees, amidst occasional
instances of disappointment and loss, that emigration has, in general,
answered the expectations of the emigrants. But this general success he
does not attribute to the soundness of the principle in the abstract,
but to the advantages of the particular country in which he has
witnessed the most prosperity.

In, therefore, sifting and comparing with other evidence the numerous
papers which we receive from, and relative to, the various colonies, it
is our aim to give such true pictures of colonial life as enable the
reader to judge fairly of the pains, pleasures, losses and gains of all
the new homes which have been established by and for Englishmen in
various parts of the globe.

We have been led into these remarks by a communication now before us
from the gentleman already mentioned who has passed five active years in
the colony of the Cape of Good Hope. His characteristic preface to the
amusing and instructive sketches of Cape Life is as follows:—

  “I cannot but think, that, in the present rage for promoting
  emigration, too much attention is paid to new and untried countries
  whose resources are as yet doubtful and undeveloped, to the detriment
  of the old established colonies, whose constant cry is for ‘labour,
  labour, labour.’ Amongst the least popular of our old colonies is the
  Cape of Good Hope. Yet I think, that most, if not all, the objections
  usually raised against it are erroneous; while many of its undoubted
  advantages are overlooked. It is my desire, if possible, to remove
  some of the prejudices entertained against a land where I spent five
  happy years of my life. My intention is simply to give a few
  travelling sketches, and to portray some of the characteristic
  features of the country and its inhabitants.”

Cape Wine enjoys a very unenviable notoriety in England. Order a glass
of sherry at a fourth-rate tavern: taste it—it is _very_ bad—you turn up
your nose and cry “Cape!” Mr. Lazarus, a Hebrew dealer in wine and
money, “does a little bill” for you, and sends you home as part payment
a few dozen of “excellent Madeira.” Are you rash enough to taste it? If
so, as soon as you have recovered from the sputtering caused by its
fearful acidity, you mutter a phrase never mentioned to ears polite, and
say again—“Cape!” In fact, whenever you drink any vile compound, under
the name of wine, to which you are at a loss to ascribe a native land,
you cry—“Cape!”

The old adage of “give a dog a bad name and hang him,” is fully
exemplified here. Still it must be admitted that the dog must first have
_earned_ his bad name. So it is with Cape Wine. It _was_ very bad, and a
great part of it is so still; while decidedly the worst of it is sent to
England. I have often endeavoured to persuade the wine farmers that this
is bad policy on their part; but they will not be convinced. They say
that Cape Wine has a bad name in the market; that it is bought only as
“Cape Wine,” without any distinction of vintage or class; and that the
worst of it brings them as good a price as the best. And yet there is a
vast difference in the various qualities; and even the best of them are
still susceptible of wonderful improvement.

There is a similarity between the Cape and the Madeira grape. Both are
cultivated very much in the same manner, but the grand point of
difference between the two is the time of gathering the grapes. In
Madeira they are not gathered till so ripe that many begin to fall, and
many are withered from over ripeness; these are of course rejected. By
this means a smaller amount of wine is obtained from a vineyard than
would have been produced had the grapes been gathered earlier: but the
quality of the wine is improved beyond conception. Every grape is full,
ripe, and luscious, and the wine partakes of its quality. Nothing can
prove more clearly the necessity of the grape being fully, and rather
_over_ ripe, than the difference of the wine produced on the north side
of the Island of Madeira, where this perfection of the grape can
scarcely be attained, and that grown on the south side: the latter is
Nectar; the former Cape; or little better.

Now at _the_ Cape the object of the farmer is always to get the greatest
_quantity_ of wine from his vineyard; and consequently he gathers his
grapes when they are barely ripe, and none have fallen or withered;
whereby he fills his storehouses with wine full of acidity and of that
vile twang which all who have tasted shudder to recal.

Some of the wine-growers in the colony have lately pursued a different
plan, and with vast success. This has been chiefly among the English
colonists; for a Dutch boor at the Cape is a very intractable animal,
and not easily induced to swerve from old systems, be they ever so bad.
Probably, the principal reason why the colony produced from the very
first such bad wines, was its having been colonised by Dutchmen, who
could have had no experience at home in wine-growing.

Who knows what might have been the case had a colony from the plains of
Champagne or Bordeaux first settled there? Apropos of this, I may
mention that a fellow passenger of mine was a Frenchman from Champagne.
At the Cape he entered into partnership with a young Englishman (also a
fellow passenger), and agreed to take a wine farm. The Englishman was to
supply capital—the Frenchman knowledge. Monsieur had determined to make
“Cape Champagne;” and remarkably well he succeeded. Often at public and
even at private dinners, when swallowing something dignified with the
name of that right-royal wine, have I sighed to think how far more
palatable would be a bottle of Monsieur L——’s vintage.

It perhaps requires a greater outlay of capital to be a successful
wine-grower than almost anything else in the colony. There are, in
addition to the purchase of land and vines, the expenses of storehouses,
casks, and, above all, that most difficult commodity to attain—labour.
So great is the want of the latter, and so uncertain the supply of even
that which is attainable, that he is a bold man who ventures on
wine-farming at the Cape.

The wine-growers are generally wealthy men, for, in spite of all
obstacles, their profits are very large. Few people who even touch at
the Cape fail to visit the Constantia wine farms, producing the
delicious sweet wine of that name. It is grown on a mountain named after
the wife of one of the former Governors of the Cape—whether in
compliment to the lady’s sweetness of disposition, or her love for the
wine then produced, I know not. Three farms monopolise this mountain.
Even half a mile from them, the wine produced is of a very inferior
flavour. They live in excellent style, these Constantia wine-growers.
When first I visited one of them, a carriage-and-four and two buggies,
conveying a party of Indian visitors, had just drawn up at the door. A
_déjeûner_ was spread in a long, handsome, and elegantly-furnished
apartment, for the entertainment of any one who might chance to come and
visit the farm. Two or three superintendents were ready to show the
“lions” of the place to visitors, and to give them samples of the wine
to taste. There are many varieties of it. And, oh, how seductive that
same Constantia is! Who can resist it in all its delicious varieties?

I recollect that as I rode towards the farm I passed a toll-gate, and
looking, I suppose, extremely like a “griffin” (for I had only been a
week in the colony), the “pikeman” observed, as he took my twopence, and
handed me the ticket, “Hopes you’ll be able to read it as you comes
back, Sir!”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“No offence, Sir,” said the man with a grin; “only I’ve seed a many as
_couldn’t_—that’s all.”

The three Constantia wine-growers are Dutchmen; and so, in fact, are
nearly all the wine farmers throughout the colony. Englishmen who go out
there generally take to trade or sheep-farming; and they are right,—for
it requires far less experience, less capital, and less labour, to
follow almost any calling at the Cape than that of a wine-grower. I
think, however, that a Company might be profitably established here or
in the colony, for cultivating the vine there and importing its produce
to Europe. For this purpose, they should send out labourers and
superintendents, carefully selected from the wine districts of France
and Germany; and take care that the Madeira plan of gathering the grapes
be adopted. They should agitate, too, for a reduction of the duty on the
wine: at present it is far too high. Perhaps the profits would not at
first be great, for there is a serious obstacle to be overcome,—a bad
name in the market; but eventually I believe that the speculation would
be a lucrative one, and that it would in time remove the unfortunate
stigma now affixed to Cape wine.


In these days of railroad travelling, when twenty miles an hour would be
considered slow enough to justify a letter of complaint from “Viator” to
the editor of the Times, it may rather astonish my readers to learn that
twenty miles is considered a fair day’s journey at the Cape. Yet so it
is.

Unless you amble on horseback, which only men and _young_ men can
undertake, the sole and universal method of travelling is by an
ox-wagon. Just go and see the wagon exhibited by Cumming in his
South-African Exhibition, at Hyde Park corner! Imagine such a machine,
with twelve or fourteen oxen attached to it by a long rope of plaited
hide (called a treck-tow) attached to the pole, and to which are
fastened the yokes of the oxen. Then fancy a little Hottentot lad, very
much like one of the Bushmen lately exhibited in London (but, perhaps,
hardly so handsome,) leading the two front oxen by a strip of hide
fastened to their horns (called a reim), and a full-grown Hottentot
seated on the driving-seat, in the front of the wagon, with an enormous
whip in his hands formed of a long bamboo handle and a lash of plaited
thongs, with which he can, from his seat, reach the leaders of his team;
and you have the “travelling carriage” of South Africa complete before
your eyes.

The same team (or “span” in South-African phraseology) of oxen take you
the whole journey, whether it be twenty or two hundred miles; and as
they have no other food on the way, nor indeed at any other time, than
the grass and water on the roadside, you may imagine that twenty or
twenty-five miles a day is quite work enough for them. The journey is,
however, by no means so tedious or uninteresting an affair as might be
supposed. It is like so many days of pic-nic-ing, with new scenery each
day, and in a glorious climate. The wagon is of course well furnished
with tea, sugar, coffee, wine, flour, eggs, fresh and preserved meat,
vegetables, and in fact all that refreshes and cheers the inward man:
for, be it recollected, that there are no inns, or at least the very few
there are are scattered at such great distances apart over the country
that no wagon traveller thinks of visiting them. The wagon in fact
becomes your home and your store-house as well as your travelling
carriage. A long stretcher is slung in it, on which is placed your bed,
which serves for a lounging couch by day. Some people travel with a
tent, but this is unnecessary when the party does not exceed two or
three, besides the Hottentots, who sleep under the wagon, or under a
bush or anywhere else on the ground, as soundly as their masters in
their beds.

Travellers generally take their guns with them, as they may chance to
get a little sport on the road. At six in the morning we will suppose
the carriage to start; at about ten you will “outspan”—that is, take out
the oxen and let them feed, and prepare for breakfast. Your Hottentots
soon collect fuel, the wagon is drawn up close by a mimosa or some other
bush, a fire is lighted, the kettle set to boil, the coffee prepared,
the steaks cooked in a frying-pan, and perhaps some hot cakes made of
meal baked for you; and with a beautiful country round you, and a
magnificent sky above you, if you cannot make a good breakfast, and feel
a light heart, I fear that you must be terribly “used up.”

Then comes a stroll through the bush with your double-barrel on your
shoulder, in search of a partridge or a Guinea fowl, or a stray
antelope; and back to the wagon, now ready for another start.

Forward, again, till dinner-time, when the same process is gone through.
After dinner, perhaps you will go forward another four or five miles,
and then “outspan” for the night.

The nights of the Cape climate are glorious! I can scarcely imagine
anything more beautiful. The sky of that deep, dark blue, which we never
see in northern climates; the moon shining as she only can in such a
sky, the stars so bright and distinct, with the beautiful southern cross
in all its brilliancy, among them; the perfect stillness of everything
around; the lofty and rugged mountains where the foot of man has never
trodden; the thick dark bush, penetrable only by the wild beast or the
savage; the broad plain covered with Aloes, Cape Heaths, Wild Stocks,
and the ten thousand variegated shrubs which make a carpet beneath your
feet as beautiful as the canopy of heaven above your head; and that
little spot worthy the pencil of Salvator Rosa—the dark foliage of the
bush lighted up by your fire, and around it the dusky forms of your
Hottentots stretched at their ease, and enjoying, as none but a half
savage knows how thoroughly to enjoy, the requisite delight of the
“Dolce far niente.”

No doubt railroads are glorious inventions. All honour, too, to Macadam,
and to stagecoaches and post-chaises; all praise to the comforts and
convenience of a good English Inn. But if you have a spark of native
poetry in your composition, in spite of bad roads, slow travelling,
rough fare, and a bed “al fresco,” you will enjoy one of these South
African journeys more than any trip you ever took in Europe. You have no
other travelling companions than the beauties of Nature’s works around
you, fresh as from the hands of their Creator, and the thoughts and
reflections high and holy, as such scenes and such companionship will
not fail to call forth.




                        CHEMICAL CONTRADICTIONS.


Science, whose aim and end is to prove the harmony and “eternal fitness
of things,” also proves that we live in a world of paradoxes; and that
existence itself, is a whirl of contradictions. Light and darkness,
truth and falsehood, virtue and vice, the negative and positive poles of
galvanic or magnetic mysteries, are evidences of all-pervading
antitheses, which acting like the good and evil genii of Persian
Mythology, neutralise each other’s powers when they come into collision.
It is the office of science to solve these mysteries. The appropriate
symbol of the lecture-room is a Sphinx; for a scientific lecturer is but
a better sort of unraveller of riddles.

Who would suppose, for instance, that water—which everybody knows,
extinguishes fire—may, under certain circumstances, add fuel to flame,
so that the “coming man” who is to “set the Thames on fire,” may not be
far off. If we take some mystical grey-looking globules of potassium
(which is the metallic basis of common pearl-ash) and lay them upon
water, the water will instantly appear to ignite. The globules will swim
about in flames, reminding us of the “death-fires” described by the
Ancient Mariner, burning “like witches’ oil” on the surface of the
stagnant sea. Sometimes even, without any chemical ingredient being
added, Fire will appear to spring spontaneously from water; which is not
a simple element, as Thales imagined, when he speculated upon the origin
of the Creation, but two invisible gases—oxygen and hydrogen, chemically
combined. During the electrical changes of the atmosphere in a
thunder-storm, these gases frequently combine with explosive violence,
and it is this combination which takes place when “the big rain comes
dancing to the earth.” These fire-and-water phenomena are thus accounted
for; certain substances have peculiar affinities or attractions for one
another; the potassium has so inordinate a desire for oxygen, that the
moment it touches, it decomposes the water, abstracts all the oxygen,
and sets free the hydrogen or inflammable gas. The potassium, when
combined with the oxygen, forms that corrosive substance known as
caustic potash, and the heat disengaged during this process, ignites the
hydrogen. Here the mystery ends; and the contradictions are
solved;—Oxygen and hydrogen when combined, become water; when separated
the hydrogen gas burns with a pale lambent flame. Many of Nature’s most
delicate deceptions are accounted for by a knowledge of these laws.

Your analytical chemist sadly annihilates, with his scientific
machinations, all poetry. He bottles up at pleasure the Nine Muses, and
proves them—as the fisherman in the Arabian Nights did the Afrite—to be
all smoke. Even the Will o’ the Wisp cannot flit across its own morass
without being pursued, overtaken, and burnt out by this scientific
detective policeman. He claps an extinguisher upon Jack o’ Lanthorn
thus:—He says that a certain combination of phosphorus and hydrogen,
which rises from watery marshes, produces a gas called phosphuretted
hydrogen, which ignites spontaneously the moment it bubbles up to the
surface of the water and meets with atmospheric air. Here again, the
Ithuriel wand of science dispels all delusion, pointing out to us, that
in such places animal and vegetable substances are undergoing constant
decomposition; and as phosphorus exists under a variety of forms in
these bodies, as phosphate of lime, phosphate of soda, phosphate of
magnesia, &c., and as furthermore the decomposition of water itself is
the initiatory process in these changes, so we find that phosphorus and
hydrogen are supplied from these sources; and we may therefore easily
conceive the consequent formation of phosphuretted hydrogen. This gas
rises in a thin stream from its watery bed, and the moment it comes in
contact with the oxygen of the atmosphere, it bursts into a flame so
buoyant, that it flickers with every breath of air, and realises the
description of Goëthe’s Mephistopheles, that the course of
Jack-o’-lantern is generally “zig-zag.”

Who would suppose that absolute darkness may be derived from two rays of
light! Yet such is the fact. If two rays proceed from two luminous
points very close to each other, and are so directed as to cross at a
given point on a sheet of white paper in a dark room, their united light
will be twice as bright as either ray singly would produce. But if the
difference in the distance of the two points be diminished only one
half, the one light will extinguish the other, and produce absolute
darkness. The same curious result may be produced by viewing the flame
of a candle through two very fine slits near to each other in a card.
So, likewise, strange as it may appear, if two musical strings be so
made to vibrate, in a certain succession of degrees, as for the one to
gain half a vibration on the other, the two resulting sounds will
antagonise each other and produce an interval of perfect silence. How
are these mysteries to be explained? The Delphic Oracle of science must
again be consulted, and among the high priests who officiate at the
shrine, no one possesses more recondite knowledge, or can recal it more
instructively, than Sir David Brewster. “The explanation which
philosophers have given,” he observes, “of these remarkable phenomena,
is very satisfactory, and may easily be understood. When a wave is made
on the surface of a still pool of water by plunging a stone into it, the
wave advances along the surface, while the water itself is never carried
forward, but merely rises into a height and falls into a hollow, each
portion of the surface experiencing an elevation and a depression in its
turn. If we suppose two waves equal and similar, to be produced by two
separate stones, and if they reach the same spot at the same time, that
is, if the two elevations should exactly coincide, they would unite
their effects, and produce a wave twice the size of either; but if the
one wave should be put so far before the other, that the hollow of the
one coincided with the elevation of the other, and the elevation of the
one with the hollow of the other, the two waves would obliterate or
destroy one another; the elevation as it were of the one filling up half
the hollow of the other, and the hollow of the one taking away half the
elevation of the other, so as to reduce the surface to a level. These
effects may be exhibited by throwing two equal stones into a pool of
water; and also may be observed in the Port of Batsha, where the two
waves arriving by channels of different lengths actually obliterate each
other. Now, as light is supposed to be produced by waves or undulations
of an ethereal medium filling all nature, and occupying the pores of the
transparent bodies; and as sound is produced by undulations or waves in
the air: so the successive production of light and darkness by two
bright lights, and the production of sound and silence by two loud
sounds, may be explained in the very same manner as we have explained
the increase and obliteration of waves formed on the surface of water.”

The apparent contradictions in chemistry are, indeed, best exhibited in
the lecture-room, where they may be rendered visible and tangible, and
brought home to the general comprehension. The Professor of Analytical
Chemistry, J. H. Pepper, who demonstrates these things in the Royal
Polytechnic Institution, is an expert manipulator in such mysteries;
and, taking a leaf out of his own magic-book, we shall conjure him up
before us, standing behind his own laboratory, surrounded with all the
implements of his art. At our recent visit to this exhibition we
witnessed him perform, with much address, the following experiments:—He
placed before us a pair of tall glass vessels, each filled, apparently,
with water;—he then took two hen’s eggs, one of these he dropped into
one of the glass vessels, and, as might have been expected, it
immediately sank to the bottom. He then took the other egg, and dropped
it into the other vessel of water, but, instead of sinking as the other
had done, it descended only half way, and there remained suspended in
the midst of the transparent fluid. This, indeed, looked like magic—one
of Houdin’s sleight-of-hand performances—for what could interrupt its
progress? The water surrounding it appeared as pure below as around and
above the egg, yet there it still hung like Mahomet’s coffin, between
heaven and earth, contrary to all the well established laws of gravity.
The problem, however, was easily solved. Our modern Cagliostro had
dissolved in one half of the water in this vessel as much common salt as
it would take up, whereby the density of the fluid was so much augmented
that it opposed a resistance to the descent of the egg after it had
passed through the unadulterated water, which he had carefully poured
upon the briny solution, the transparency of which, remaining
unimpaired, did not for a moment suggest the suspicion of any such
impregnation. The good housewife, upon the same principle, uses an egg
to test the strength of her brine for pickling.

Every one has heard of the power which bleaching gas (chlorine)
possesses in taking away colour, so that a red rose held over its fumes
will become white. The lecturer, referring to this fact, exhibited two
pieces of paper; upon one was inscribed, in large letters, the word
“PROTEUS;” upon the other no writing was visible; although he assured us
the same word was there inscribed. He now dipped both pieces of paper in
a solution of bleaching-powder, when the word “Proteus” disappeared from
the paper upon which it was before visible; whilst the same word
instantly came out, sharp and distinct, upon the paper which was
previously a blank. Here there appeared another contradiction: the
chlorine in the one case obliterating, and in the other reviving the
written word; and how was this mystery explained? Easily enough! Our
ingenious philosopher, it seems, had used indigo in penning the one word
which had disappeared; and had inscribed the other with a solution of a
chemical substance, iodide of potassium and starch; and the action which
took place was simply this: the chlorine of the bleaching solution set
free the iodine from the potassium, which immediately combined with the
starch, and gave colour to the letters which were before invisible.
Again—a sheet of white paper was exhibited, which displayed a broad and
brilliant stripe of scarlet—(produced by a compound called the
bin-iodide of mercury)—when exposed to a slight heat the colour changed
immediately to a bright yellow, and, when this yellow stripe was crushed
by smartly rubbing the paper, the scarlet colour was restored, with all
its former brilliancy. This change of colour was effected entirely by
the alteration which the heat, in the one case, and the friction, in the
other, produced in the particles which reflected these different
colours;—and, upon the same principle, we may understand the change of
the colour in the lobster-shell, which burns from black to red in
boiling; because the action of the heat produces a new arrangement in
the particles which compose the shell.

With the assistance of water and fire, which have befriended the
magicians of every age, contradictions of a more marvellous character
may be exhibited, and even the secret art revealed of handling red hot
metals, and passing through the fiery ordeal. If we take a platinum
ladle, and hold it over a furnace until it becomes of a bright red heat,
and then project cold water into its bowl, we shall find that the water
will remain quiescent and give no sign of ebullition—not so much as a
single “fizz;” but, the moment the ladle begins to cool, it will boil up
and quickly evaporate. So also, if a mass of metal, heated to whiteness,
be plunged in a vessel of cold water, the surrounding fluid will remain
tranquil so long as the glowing white heat continues; but, the moment
the temperature falls, the water will boil briskly. Again—if water be
poured upon an iron sieve, the wires of which are made red hot, it will
not run through; but, on the sieve cooling, it will run through rapidly.
These contradictory effects are easily accounted for. The repelling
power of intense heat keeps the water from immediate contact with the
heated metal, and the particles of the water, collectively, retain their
globular form; but, when the vessel cools, the repulsive power
diminishes, and the water coming into closer contact with the heated
surface its particles can no longer retain their globular form, and
eventually expand into a state of vapour. This globular condition of the
particles of water will account for many very important phenomena;
perhaps it is best exhibited in the dew-drop, and so long as these
globules retain their form, water will retain its fluid properties. An
agglomeration of these globules will carry with them, under certain
circumstances, so much force that it is hardly a contradiction to call
water itself a solid. The water-hammer, as it is termed, illustrates
this apparent contradiction. If we introduce a certain quantity of water
into a long glass tube, when it is shaken, we shall hear the ordinary
splashing noise as in a bottle; but, if we exhaust the air, and again
shake the tube, we shall hear a loud ringing sound, as if the bottom of
the tube were struck by some hard substance—like metal or wood—which may
fearfully remind us of the blows which a ship’s side will receive from
the waves during a storm at sea, which will often carry away her
bulwarks.

It is now time to turn to something stronger than water for more
instances of chemical contradictions. The chemical action of certain
poisons (the most powerful of all agents,) upon the human frame, has
plunged the faculty into a maze of paradoxes; indeed there is actually a
system of medicine, advancing in reputation, which is founded on the
principle of contraries. The famous Doctor Hahnemann, who was born at
Massieu in Saxony, was the founder of it, and, strange to say, medical
men, who are notorious for entertaining contrary opinions, have not yet
agreed among themselves whether he was a very great quack or a very
great philosopher. Be this as it may, the founder of this system, which
is called HOMŒOPATHY, when translating an article upon bark in Dr.
Cullen’s Materia Medica, took some of this medicine, which had for many
years been justly celebrated for the cure of ague. He had not long taken
it, when he found himself attacked with agueish symptoms, and a light
now dawned upon his mind, and led him to the inference that medicines
which give rise to the symptoms of a disease, are those which will
specifically cure it, and however curious it may appear, several
illustrations in confirmation of this principle were speedily found. If
a limb be frost-bitten, we are directed to rub it with snow; if the
constitution of a man be impaired by the abuse of spirituous liquors,
and he be reduced to that miserable state of enervation when the limbs
tremble and totter, and the mind itself sinks into a state of low
muttering delirium, the physician to cure him must go again to the
bottle and administer stimulants and opiates.

It was an old Hippocratic aphorism that two diseases cannot co-exist in
the same body; wherefore, gout has actually been cured by the afflicted
person going into a fenny country and catching the ague. The fatality of
consumption is also said to be retarded by a common catarrh; and upon
this very principle depends the truth of the old saying, that ricketty
doors hang long on rusty hinges. In other words, the strength of the
constitution being impaired by one disease has less power to support the
morbid action of another.

We thus live in a world of apparent contradictions; they abound in every
department of science, and beset us even in the sanctuary of domestic
life. The progress of discovery has reconciled and explained the nature
of some of them; but many baffle our ingenuity, and still remain
involved in mystery. This much, however, is certain, that the most
opposed and conflicting elements so combine together as to produce
results, which are strictly in unison with the order and harmony of the
universe.




                         AN IRISH PECULIARITY.


The characteristics attributed by one nation to another are never
patented without some foundation in truth; but, in time, by means of
successive overlays of jest, constant repetition, and the heaping up of
one exaggeration upon another, national portraiture flashes forth into
glaring caricature. If we were to believe old plays and old novels, we
should suppose that, only a half century since, every Englishman fed
exclusively on roast beef and plum-pudding—rattled his guineas in ample
pockets, tightened by the portly protuberance of his figure, and rapped
out oaths against “frog-eating Mounseers” with the same energy with
which, after dinner, he imbibed crusted port to the health and
prosperity of Church and State. On Sunday morning we view him, through
the same medium, standing upright in his red-cushioned pew, pronouncing
the responses with the _ore rotundo_ of Sir Roger de Coverley, and, like
that worthy baronet, looking daggers at little boys whom he catches
napping.

The Scotchman of the same authorities was invariably a long, lean,
raw-boned, hungry, grey-eyed Sawney, with high cheek-bones, reddish
hair, and a diffused aroma of brimstone pervading his threadbare
garments. Pertaining to him also, by inalienable birth-right, was an
insatiable appetite for oaten-cakes, haggis, and singed sheep’s head; of
which viands the supply usually fell very far short of the demand. No
matter what his rank in life might be, he was forced, as a necessary
condition of his existence, to talk “braid scots,” and to look sharply
after the “siller.” Somehow, he regularly found his way to London, where
a lucrative place, and a rich wife, to whom he continually proclaimed
the glories of the “Land o’ Cakes,” gratified and rewarded his cautious
persevering endeavours to replenish his “pouch and sporran;” for all
Scotchmen were Highlanders, and were supposed only to have abandoned
their kilts in deference to decency and English prejudice while in the
act of crossing the border.

The Irishman of novel, tale, or comedy, was a Phelim or a Patrick,
always either immersed in love or drink and often the victim of both
these exciting predicaments:—telling humorous lies, making unheard-of
blunders, winning money by his tricking cleverness, and losing it by his
unaccountable folly; leading a good-humoured, reckless, rollicking life,
breaking the hearts and emptying the purses of maid, wife, and widow;
and carrying off every shade of embarrassment with the cut-and-dry
exclamation, “By the powers!”—“Arrah, honey!”—or, “Och, my jewel!”

All this served very well to amuse the juvenile minds of our grand
parents, but in these days when the wandering jewish propensity to
travel over the face of the earth, has attained its full development, we
find it to be a well-ascertained fact that there are Englishmen who
affect fricassees more than roast beef, drink French wines, and dress in
the French fashion; that Scotchmen may be found, even in Scotland, who
have neither caution in their heads, avarice in their hearts, nor kilts
round their bodies. Facility of intercourse has done this. The ancient
prophecy is being daily fulfilled:—“Many shall run to and fro, and
knowledge shall be increased.” Railways have rounded off the sharp
angles of national dislikes, by promoting social attrition. The
locomotive engine is the steam-plough which tears up local prejudices by
the roots.

Thus the Rose and the Thistle are vindicated, but the tiny shamrock
still droops its green leaf in the atmosphere of public estimation. In
judging of Irish character, a very useful distinction drawn in the days
of good Queen Bess is overlooked. It divided the nation into “the Irish,
the wild Irish, and the extreme wild Irish.” In justice, these
distinctions ought to be preserved; for the “Irish” of the present day
are, upon the whole, pretty much like other well-bred, well-educated
members of the civilised world; eating, drinking, sleeping, dressing,
and living much as their neighbours do. But it must be owned that the
lower orders,—the “wild Irish” of the towns, and the “extreme wild
Irish” of the bogs and mountains,—present some striking and picturesque
peculiarities to justify the conventional Irishman of the old novel: the
most prominent being that mingled love of fun and fighting, which would
make one believe that the atmosphere of the four fair provinces is
compounded in equal portions of inflammable and laughing gas.

Very deplorable, indeed, must be the state of an Irishman—he must “be
gone to the bad entirely,” when he can neither smile nor quarrel; and
often even “under the ribs of death” is “an appetite created” for these
excitements. He loves fun; but fighting is his pride and his glory. For
fighting he forswears name and wealth. You may call him by all the
uncomplimentary names in the vocabulary of censure, and he hears you
meekly; but cast an imputation on his courage or his prowess, and—“Hah!
Whoo!”—you will feel his shillelagh whizzing around your ears like a
fire-work in a state of explosion.

An illustration of this peculiarity, of the ease with which a “wild
Irishman” will forego every prudent consideration in preference to the
disgrace of having been beaten in battle occurred, but a short while
since. In a Union workhouse in the south, some of the able-bodied
paupers came into rather forcible collision with the officials. The
cause of dispute was the supply of “stirabout,” which being deemed
insufficient by a few stout fellows, they marched into the kitchen,
seized ladles and bowls, and proceeded to help themselves. An alarm of
this lawless incursion being given, in rushed to the rescue the master
and his myrmidons. Fast and furious were the blows dealt by both
parties, but the strong hand of the law at length prevailed, the
well-fed officers triumphed over their famine-weakened foes, and the
stalwart master counted his victory by the number of broken heads
prostrated by the huge ladle which he wielded. The proprietors of the
damaged craniums were subsequently conveyed to the surgeon’s room, and
severally bandaged and plastered as their cases required. Most of the
hurts were found to be trifling, but one poor fellow had received a
severe contusion. With the dislike which many of his countrymen feel, to
submit to the prescription of qualified practitioners, Tim Murphy, in a
day or two, asked for his discharge, threw off the well-fixed bandages,
and betook himself to the squalid shelter of a cabin belonging to an
“uncle’s son,” nearly as poor as himself, an unqualified “docther,”
whose unprofessional practice it was to prescribe charms and philtres in
place of physic. This reckless proceeding was followed by its natural
result. The hurt which, with common care, would have readily healed,
became inflamed, fever ensued, and the man died. This melancholy finale
to the workhouse row caused much excitement, and an investigation of the
whole business was instituted by the magistrates. On the day when it
took place, the hall of the workhouse was crowded, and although it was
shown that the master was justified in using force to protect the
kitchen stores from the paupers, and it was also proved that under
proper surgical treatment the patient would, in all human probability,
have recovered, yet the point to be decided was, whether John Minahan,
the master, had used unnecessary violence in the discharge of his duty.
The principal witness against him, was a man who appeared with evident
“tokens of a foughten field” on his forehead, and who indeed had been
the only recipient, besides Tim Murphy, of any serious injury. The
examination proceeded nearly as follows:—

After having deposed readily and clearly to the fact of the combat, and
of John Minahan having rushed to the rescue of the porridge-pots, he was
asked:

“Did you see the master strike any one in particular?”

“Not he, indeed; he was no ways particular; but he murdhered and killed
every one that came in his way.”

“Did he strike you?”

“Did he strike me, is it? Why, then, if he did, I paid it back to him
handsomely.”

“Answer distinctly. Whom did you see him strike?”

“Ah, then, little matter ’twould be who he’d strike, if the boys had his
feeding, and he had theirs to depend on for one month. It’s little good
the son of ould Thady Minahan, the tinker, would do, if he was living on
Ingy male and water.”

“Come, come,” said the magistrate, impatiently, “give me a plain answer
to a plain question. Did Minahan knock _you_ down?”

“Is it the likes of him to knock me down? I’d like to see him try it. He
didn’t, nor couldn’t, your Honour’s glory.”

Up started the accused, and cried; “I _did_ knock you down, and bate you
well, too. Your Honours,” he continued, turning to the bench, “if I’m to
swing for it the next minute, I won’t let _that_ go with the vagabone. I
wouldn’t lave it to him to say that I didn’t knock him down, and murder
him handsomely to his heart’s content.”

The witness had been summoned to prove that the master had used
unnecessary violence; the defendant was there to prove he had not
employed more force than the occasion demanded. But would they establish
such proofs at the expense of their respective reputations? Should it be
said that Tim Murphy’s friend, or John Minahan, were not able to
“murther ach other intirely,” at any given minute’s notice? Never! Tim
Murphy’s friend would starve on “Ingy male,” and John Minahan would lose
his place first.

What became of the witness has not been stated; but the defendant did
lose his situation; the guardians of the Union thought that his national
ideas of honour were undoubtedly more suited to military than to civil
avocations.

Although it is doubtful whether _the_ Irish peculiarity will ever be
totally eradicated from the national character, yet the savage custom of
faction-fighting is becoming each year more rare. Sometimes, indeed, at
the close of a fair a “bit of a fight” does spring up; but the
casualties thence resulting, are seldom of a grave or fatal character;
and the contending parties may frequently be seen proceeding homewards,
with arms lovingly linked together, and tongues vowing eternal
friendship; although this, it must be confessed, is an indication of a
renewal rather than of the end of an Irish fight.

No doubt the process of fusing the national peculiarities of the three
kingdoms is advancing rapidly. It is no wild speculation to anticipate
the probability, that fifty years hence there may be little apparent
difference between an average native of England, Ireland, (always
excepting the “extreme wild Irishman”) or Scotland.




                         WHERE DWELL THE DEAD?


         Where do they dwell? ‘Neath grassy mounts, by daisies,
         Lilies, and yellow-cups of fairest gold;
         Near grey-grown walls, where in wild, tortuous mazes,
         Old clustering ivy wreathes in many a fold:
               Where in red summer noons
               Fresh leaves are rustling,
               Where ’neath large autumn moons
               Young birds are nestling—
                       Do they dwell there?

         Where do they dwell? In sullen waters, lying
         On beds of purple sea-flowers newly sprung;
         Where the mad whirlpool’s wild and ceaseless sighing,
         Frets sloping banks, by dark green reeds o’erhung:
               Where, by the torrent’s swell,
               Crystal stones glitter,
               While sounds the heavy bell
               Over the river—
                       Do they dwell there?

         No: for in these they slumber to decay,
         And their remembrance with their life departs;
         They have a home,—nor dark, nor far away—
         Their proper home.—within our faithful hearts;
               There happy spirits wed,
               Loving for ever;
               There dwell with us, the dead,
               Parting—ah, never—
                       There do they dwell!




                               FATE DAYS.


It is a difficult puzzle to reconcile the existence of certain
superstitions that continue to have wide influence with the
enlightenment of the nineteenth century. When we have read glowing
paragraphs about the wonderful progress accomplished by the present
generation; when we have regarded the giant machinery in operation for
the culture of the people—moved, in great part, by the collective power
of individual charity; when we have examined the stupendous results of
human genius and ingenuity which are now laid bare to the lowliest in
the realm; we turn back, it must be confessed, with a mournful
despondency, to mark the debasing influence of the old superstitions
which have survived to the present time.

The superstitions of the ancients formed part of their religion. They
consulted oracles as now men pray. The stars were the arbiters of their
fortunes. Natural phenomena, as lightning and hurricanes, were, to them,
awful expressions of the anger of their particular deities. They had
their _dies atri_ and their _dies albi_; the former were marked down in
their calendars with a black character, to denote ill-luck, and the
latter were painted in white characters to signify bright and propitious
days. They followed the finger-posts of their teachers. Faith gave
dignity to the tenets of the star-gazer and fire-worshipper.

The priests of old taught their disciples to regard six particular days
in the year as days fraught with unusual danger to mankind. Men were
enjoined not to let blood on these black days, nor to imbibe any liquid.
It was devoutly believed that he who ate goose on one of these black
days would surely die within forty more; and that any little stranger
who made his appearance on one of the _dies atri_ would surely die a
sinful and violent death. Men were further enjoined to let blood from
the right arm on the seventh or fourteenth of March; from the left arm
on the eleventh of April; and from either arm on the third or sixth of
May, that they might avoid pestilential diseases. These barbaric
observances, when brought before people in illustrations of the mental
darkness of the ancients, are considered at once to be proof positive of
their abject condition. We thereupon congratulated ourselves upon living
in the nineteenth century; when such foolish superstitions are laughed
at; and perhaps our vanity is not a little flattered by the contrast
which presents itself, between our own highly cultivated condition, and
the wretched state of our ancestors.

Yet Mrs. Flimmins will not undertake a sea-voyage on a Friday; nor would
she on any account allow her daughter Mary to be married on that day of
the week. She has great pity for the poor Red Indians who will not do
certain things while the moon presents a certain appearance, and who
attach all kinds of powers to poor dumb brutes: yet if her cat purrs
more than usual, she accepts the warning, and abandons the trip she had
promised herself on the morrow.

Miss Nippers subscribes largely to the fund for eradicating
superstitions from the minds of the wretched inhabitants of Kamschatka;
and while she is calculating the advantages to be derived from a mission
to the South Sea Islands, to do away with the fearful superstitious
reverence in which those poor dear islanders hold the native flea: a
coal pops from her fire, and she at once augurs from its shape, an
abundance of money that will enable her to set her pious undertaking in
operation; but on no account will she commence collecting subscriptions
for the anti-drinking-slave-grown-sugar-in-tea society, because she has
always remarked that Monday is her unlucky day. On a Monday her poodle
died, and on a Monday she caught that severe cold at Brighton, from the
effects of which she is afraid she will never recover.

Mrs. Carmine is a very strong-minded woman. Her unlucky day is
Wednesday. On a Wednesday she first caught that flush which she has
never been able to chase from her cheeks, and on one of these fatal days
her Maria took the scarlet fever. Therefore, she will not go to a
pic-nic on a Wednesday, because she feels convinced that the day will
turn out wet, or that the wheel will come off the carriage. Yet the
other morning, when a gipsy was caught telling her eldest daughter her
fortune, Mrs. Carmine very properly reproached the first-born for her
weakness, in giving any heed to the silly mumblings of the old woman.
Mrs. Carmine is considered to be a woman of uncommon acuteness. She
attaches no importance whatever to the star under which a child is
born,—does not think there is a pin to choose between Jupiter and
Neptune; and she has a positive contempt for ghosts; but she believes in
nothing that is begun, continued, or ended on a Wednesday.

Miss Crumple, on the contrary, has seen many ghosts,—in fact, is by this
time quite intimate with one or two of the mysterious brotherhood; but
at the same time she is at a loss to understand how any woman in her
senses, can believe Thursday to be a more fortunate day than Wednesday,
or why Monday is to be black-balled from the Mrs. Jones’s calendar. She
can state, on her oath, that the ghost of her old schoolfellow, Eliza
Artichoke, appeared at her bedside on a certain night and she distinctly
saw the mole on its left cheek, which poor Eliza, during her brief
career, had vainly endeavoured to eradicate, with all sorts of poisonous
things. The ghost, moreover, lisped,—so did Eliza! This was all clear
enough to Miss Crumple, and she considered it a personal insult for
anybody to suggest that her vivid apparitions existed only in her own
over-wrought imagination. She had an affection for her ghostly visitors,
and would not hear a word to their disparagement.

The unearthly warnings which Mrs. Piptoss had received had well-nigh
spoilt all her furniture. When a relative dies, the fact is not
announced to her in the commonplace form of a letter,—no, an invisible
sledgehammer falls upon her Broadwood, an invisible power upsets her
loo-table, all the doors of her house unanimously blow open, or a coffin
flies out of the fire into her lap.

Mrs. Grumple, who is a very economical housewife, looks forward to the
day when the moon re-appears,—on which occasion she turns her money,
taking care not to look at the pale lady through glass. This observance,
she devoutly believes, will bring her good fortune. When Miss Caroline
has a knot in her lace, she looks for a present; and when Miss Amelia
snuffs the candle out, it is her faith that the act defers her marriage
for a twelvemonth. Any young lady who dreams the same dream two
consecutive Fridays, will tell you that her visions will “come true.”

Yet these are exactly the ladies, who most deplore the “gross state of
superstition” in which many “benighted savages” live, and willingly
subscribe their money for its eradication. The superstition so generally
connected with Friday, may easily be traced to its source. It
undoubtedly and confessedly has its origin in scriptural history: it is
the day on which the Saviour suffered. The superstition is the more
revolting from this circumstance; and it is painful to find that it
exists among persons of education. There is no branch of the public
service, for instance, in which so much sound mathematical knowledge is
to be found, as in the Navy. Yet who are more superstitious than
sailors, from the admiral down to the cabin boy? Friday fatality is
still strong among them. Some years ago, in order to lessen this folly,
it was determined that a ship should be laid down on a Friday, and
launched on a Friday; that she should be called “Friday,” and that she
should commence her first voyage on a Friday. After much difficulty a
captain was found who owned to the name of Friday; and after a great
deal more difficulty men were obtained, so little superstitious, as to
form a crew. Unhappily, this experiment had the effect of confirming the
superstition it was meant to abolish. The “Friday” was lost—was never,
in fact, heard of from the day she set sail.

Day-fatality, as Miss Nippers interprets it is simply the expression of
an undisciplined and extremely weak mind; for, if any person will stoop
to reason with her on her aversion to Mondays, he may ask her whether
the death of the poodle, or the catching of her cold, are the two
greatest calamities of her life; and, if so, whether it is her opinion
that Monday is set apart, in the scheme of Nature, so far as it concerns
her, in a black character. Whether for her insignificant self there is a
special day accursed! Mrs. Carmine is such a strong-minded woman, that
we approach her with no small degree; of trepidation. Wednesday is her
_dies ater_, because, in the first place, on a Wednesday she imprudently
exposed herself, and is suffering from the consequences; and, in the
second place, on a Wednesday her Maria took the scarlet fever. So she
has marked Wednesday down in her calendar with a black character; yet
her contempt for stars and ghosts is prodigious. Now there is a
consideration to be extended to the friends of ghosts, which
Day-fatalists cannot claim. Whether or not deceased friends take a more
airy and flimsy form, and adopt the invariable costume of a sheet to
visit the objects of their earthly affections, is a question which the
shrewdest thinkers and the profoundest logicians have debated very
keenly, but without ever arriving at any satisfactory conclusion.

The strongest argument against the positive existence of ghosts, is,
that they appear only to people of a certain temperament, and under
certain exciting circumstances. The obtuse, matter-of-fact man, never
sees a ghost; and we may take it as a natural law, that none of these
airy visitants ever appeared to an attorney. But the attorney, Mr. Fee
Simple, we are assured, holds Saturday to be an unlucky day. It was on a
Saturday that his extortionate bill in poor Mr. G.’s case, was cut down
by the taxing master; and it was on a Saturday that a certain heavy bill
was duly honoured, upon which he had hoped to reap a large sum in the
shape of costs. Therefore Mr. Fee Simple believes that the destinies
have put a black mark against Saturday, so far as he is concerned.

The Jew who thought that the thunder-storm was the consequence of his
having eaten a slice of bacon, did not present a more ludicrous picture,
than Mr. Fee Simple presents with his condemned Saturday.

We have an esteem for ghost-inspectors, which it is utterly impossible
to extend to Day-fatalists. Mrs. Piptoss, too, may be pitied; but Mog,
turning her money when the moon makes her re-appearance, is an object of
ridicule. We shall neither be astonished, nor express condolence, if the
present, which Miss Caroline anticipates from the knot in her lace, be
not forthcoming; and as for Miss Amelia, who has extinguished the
candle, and to the best of her belief lost her husband for a
twelvemonth, we can only wish for her, that when she is married, her
lord and master will shake her faith in the prophetic power of snuffers.
But of all the superstitions that have survived to the present time, and
are to be found in force among people of education and a thoughtful
habit, Day-fatalism is the most general, as it is the most unfounded and
preposterous. It is a superstition, however, in which many great and
powerful thinkers have shared, and by which they have been guided; it
owes much of its present influence to this fact; but reason,
Christianity, and all we have comprehended of the great scheme of which
we form part, alike tend to demonstrate its absurdity, and utter want of
all foundation.




                    A LETTER ABOUT SMALL BEGINNINGS.


SIR,—Fortunate mistakes are by no means uncommon. In your number
seventeen you fall into an error in reference to the Westminster Ragged
Dormitory; in the correction of which I have the good fortune to be able
to give you some interesting information. You stated that the particular
institution there alluded to was founded by Mr. Walker, the city
missionary—that was the error. The credit is due, and should have been
given to Mr. C. Nash, who was formerly a schoolmaster, employed by Mr.
Walker to teach a ragged school which that gentleman had established
before “Ragged Schools” had received their appropriate designation and
wide popularity.

The tact, management, and energy displayed by Mr. Nash in forming and
establishing the St. Ann Street dormitory deserve every praise; but the
ground was in some measure prepared for him by his former principal. The
manner in which this was done shows “the power of small beginnings,”
even in a stronger light than was exhibited in your article with that
title.[3]

Footnote 3:

  At page 407.

In the year 1840 it became my duty to enquire into the condition of what
are but too literally the outcasts of society; and for that purpose
obtained introductions to several city missionaries—adequate description
of the scenes of harrowing want, disease, and crime into which those
gentlemen introduced me, it would be impossible to pen. They alone
seemed able to penetrate the dark moral atmosphere. They were always
welcomed even by the poorest and the worst.

As one specimen of the efforts made by the Westminster missionaries, I
was introduced to a dilapidated shed in New Pye Street. Here I found
several young children of both sexes, in rags, and some nearly naked.
The scene was most grotesque; the clotted hair, the mud-covered hands
and faces, and the haggard countenances, at once told a tale which would
have pierced the coldest heart. They were being taught reading and
needlework. They were not particularly orderly and some showed a quaint,
pantomimic, half-witted disposition to be funny, which pained rather
than amused the spectator. Most of them were the sons and daughters of
thieves. The small beginning which gave rise to the general idea of
Ragged Dormitories took rise in an event for which I can vouch.

The missionary who had formed this school was standing one day, in 1846,
at its door, when two adult thieves appealed to him in behalf of a
wretched boy who had, they said, been cruelly maltreated and kicked out
of doors by his mother, because his day’s prowl for the purpose of
thieving had been unsuccessful. “Why do you not take pity on him
yourselves?”—asked the missionary. “Why!”—one of them answered,—“why, if
you knew what a thief’s life is as well as we do; you would not train a
dog to thieving.” It must have been, thought the missionary, a desperate
case which could have so forcibly excited the sympathies of two hardened
depredators; and he determined to see into it. He soon found the boy;
and his condition was too debased for any description which would not
excite loathing. Having made the lad decent, he took him to the model
lodging-house in Great Peter Street, benevolently commenced and mainly
supported by Lord Kinnaird. The boy was kept there for four months;
supported three out of the four solely out of the missionary’s slender
private funds.

This circumstance forced on his attention the necessity of providing
shelter for such juvenile outcasts, and he drew up an appeal to certain
benevolent persons to that effect. The secretary of the Ragged School
Union immediately promised that if the missionary would find house room,
he would find funds. A house was taken in Old Pye Street, which was soon
afterwards opened as the Westminster Juvenile Refuge and School of
Industry. This establishment was afterwards removed to Duck Lane, where
it now flourishes, under a roof which formerly covered a Thieves’
public-house. The transformation is thus described by the gentleman who
made it, in a pamphlet now before me:—

“Indulge me for a moment,” he says, “with a glance at the old
public-house, (now The Refuge!) Let us look in at the upper room—(now
the girls’ school). Here were fifty youths met around their master (as
able a one in his calling as England could produce), listening with
undivided attention to his instructions on the ‘map,’—(a pair of
trowsers suspended from the ceiling)—on the subject of ‘fob-ology,’ or
pocket-picking. After this course of tuition, the next was the mock
trial—an imitation of the Old Bailey Court, with a _fac-simile_ of its
functionaries and ordeal, done with very great taste, and calculated to
make the young rascal not only expert in extracting from the fob or
pocket, but clever in defence. To train the young novice in his first
essay, he was supplied with a glass, below in the tap—(now the
dining-room of the children). If successful, then he returned for the
purpose of reporting his success, and having a game at skittles in the
skittle ground—(now the boys’ school-room.)”

A concise calculation of the respective expenses entailed on the
country, in the same house, under its former and present destiny, may
here be made. When it was a finishing-school for thieves, each, on
conviction and transportation, cost the community not less than one
hundred and fifty pounds. Comparing fifty thieves in the upper room with
the fifty pupils now in the lower room, we find that, for the first
fifty the cost was five thousand five hundred pounds; for the present
fifty, two hundred and fifty pounds. Had the five thousand five hundred
pounds been used for the preventing instead of the punishing of crime,
what would not have been accomplished for these neglected mortals? It
would have educated eleven hundred youths, many of whom would not only
have been rescued from vice and crime, but have become a blessing
instead of a curse to society.

What I have described, then, is the true origin of the class of
institutions to which that founded by Mr. Nash belongs.

The Duck Lane Ragged School and Dormitory averages at present a daily
attendance of two hundred and twenty children of both sexes, forty have
no fathers, twenty eight have no mothers, eighteen are orphans, six of
the fathers have been transported. Provision is made for ten who are
totally destitute; they are fed and lodged on the premises; twenty-four
thieves and vagrants have been admitted during the year, and many more
refused for want of support; eleven have emigrated, three have been
provided with situations in this country; some of those have spent
three, five, seven, and ten years in a course of crime; who have gone
forth from this Institution after a moral and an industrial training,
and are now doing well.

Three of the emigrants have given an account of themselves in the
following joint epistle to Mr. Walker, their benefactor. It is so
characteristic that we print it almost literally:—

                                 “_B——, July 18th 1850._
                 “Mr. Walker,

  “Dear Sir,—You may wonder how it is that you have not heard from us
  before, but as they that came from Mr. Nash, was going to write, they
  promised Mr. Cain that they would acquaint you of our safe arrival. We
  left Gravesend on the Sunday morning, and sailed out for the great
  depths of the Atlantic, which gave us some _great shakes_ before we
  got to our journey’s end. The vessel proved to be in but a sorry
  condition for passengers, there being hardly any dry berths on board,
  and ours the worst of the whole lot, Mr. Cain and Churn got another
  berth aft, and Fred and me had to take to the sails room aft where we
  stopt during the remainder of the voyage. We had four deaths on board,
  two babies, one old lady, and one of the poor sailors who fell from
  the fore top across the windlass, which killed him instantly. We made
  the passage in about five weeks and five days, as we arrived at New
  York on the 17th of May. We found it to be a place quite different to
  our likeing, and so we left it and proceeded up the country without
  anything in our pockets, for we were determined not to be discouraged,
  though in a strange land, for we knew that we had the same eye
  watching over us here as we had in England so we pushed on, on board
  of a canal boat that was going to Buffalo, but stopping about 2½ Miles
  from the Town of B—— on account of a breakage in the canal, we took
  the opportunity to look round the Town for work and was fortunate
  enough to fall into work, the three of us. Fred is learning the
  harness making, as he did not much care about learning the shoemaking
  over again, as me and Churn has to do, for the work here is as
  different to what we had been accustomed to as light from darkness. I
  do scarcely anything but upper leathers, with now and then a pair or
  two of Boy’s Boots which I make here in about three hours, being all
  pegged work, as for closing you must not take a day to close one pair,
  but must do 16 or 18 pair a day, and 6 or 8 pair of what you call
  Wellingtons. So you will see by this that it is no use coming over
  unless you mean to work in downright ernest, for they think of nothing
  but of making money, up at ½ past 4 four in the morning, begin work at
  five and keep on till seven in the evening, and no time allowed for
  your meals but eat away as fast as you like and then back again to
  work, our breakfast here beats all the dinners in England, for theres
  roast and boil meats, pies, puddings, cakes, salids, tea, coffee,
  bread and butter which latter article comes on at all meals. We had
  grand doings here on the fourth of July, in anniversary of their
  Independence fireworks, Bonfires, Circus, shows, firemen going round
  all the City with the engines decorated out with flowers which look
  very pretty. The President of the united States died at Washington on
  the tenth of this month of Billious Diarrhoæ, he is to be buried on
  Friday the 12th. Twenty years ago this Town was nothing but a low
  swampy mass of Land, with but one house on it, now it is a flourishing
  place with twenty thousand inhabitants, its rise is owing to a salt
  spring about 2 miles off where they make vast quantities of salt,
  indeed it is one of the chief trades here it employs about three
  thousand hands all the summer, but they do not work at it in the
  winter, their weekly earnings are from 4 to 5 Dollars that is 1 pound
  English. It is very hard work I can tell you, in this country were the
  thermometer is never much less than 100 during the summer, where they
  have got to stand over large Furnaces, attending to the boiling of the
  salt. I do not think that I shall rest contended over here longer than
  a few years, for a man earns not a fraction more here than he does in
  England, the only difference is, that he works more hours here than he
  does there and consequently he is glad to get home to rest himself,
  instead of fooling his money away at the pothouse, and then some of
  the things are rather cheaper here, and as I told you before they only
  think of getting money. I shall write and let you know more about it
  when I have been over some time longer, I shall then I guess know more
  about the place. You can tell the others if they come over that I
  should advise them to push up a little higher in the country than stop
  in New York as it is far better, and tell them that they need not mind
  having any money for they will not starve over here for we found the
  people very kind to us here not like they are in England. You must
  excuse this funny letter, as it is the work of several evenings, and
  therefore it may read curious, for I have felt rather unsettled as yet
  being among strangers, but I will write you another shortly, when I
  feel more at home, and will give you a further description of the
  place, so you must excuse all faults. Timothy Case left his place in
  New York, for what reason I do not know further than that he said he
  only was going there till we came that he might go with us, as he felt
  sure when I saw New York that I should not stop in it, and that if we
  would not go with him, he should then have gone by himself. I felt
  very vexed with him at leaving, and tried to persuade to stop but it
  was no use, so Fred and me took him under our care and got our boss to
  take him where he is now learning the harness making. I guess he will
  get about 20 Dollars a year he being hardly an inch taller than he was
  at home. When you return an answer direct to me at Mr. Apples Boot and
  Shoe Store 8 Empire Block B—— Onoydaga County State of New York. They
  don’t say streets, but call them Blocks, and they _guess_ they don’t
  _think_ here so I suppose that I shall get a regular Yankee in time.
  It is tremendous hot here now, and I feel it so when at work very
  much. Tell Mr. Slade that I will write him a letter _soon_. I get
  2_s._ 6_d._ english money a week or 30 Dollars a year of this, board
  lodging and washing which is pretty fair wages here for boys, learning
  pegged work, the general pay being 15 or 18 dollars a year, but as we
  had learned the other work our boss gave us thirty, (boss here is what
  they call the Master in England) Fred and Churn gets the same wages,
  as me, you must give all our best loves and wishes to all the School
  children, and we hope that they will all value their learning, which
  they will find will be a blessing and comfort to them hereafter. You
  can tell them that I often think of them when I sit at work and that I
  almost fancy that I am in the old shop once more hearing their voices
  as they say their lessons showing how strong fancy leads us back again
  to old familiar scenes, I hope that God will bless and prosper them
  all in this life, and that he will take them to his everlasting home
  is the fervent prayer of John Jones. Give our love to all kind friends
  at home, for so I am bound to call it, and receive the same yourself
  with Mrs. W—— and Harriet.

                                “From yours ever affectionate pupils,
                                            “J. J., J. H. C., and F. J.”

Before reception into the Duck Lane School, all these boys had been
thieves. J. J. had lived by plunder for seven years; J. H. C. had been a
thief from early childhood; and F. J. from the age of five years.

                  *       *       *       *       *

  _On the 20th inst. will be published, price 5s. 6d., neatly bound in
                                 Cloth_,

                            THE FIRST VOLUME
                                   OF
                           “HOUSEHOLD WORDS,”

                      _Containing Numbers 1 to 26_.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 Page           Changed from                      Changed to

  581 her with a curtesy, and thought  her with a curtsey, and thought
      how pleased                      how pleased

 ● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.
 ● Renumbered footnotes.
 ● 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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