Novel Notes..........................................................................................................................................................1

Jerome K. Jerome .....................................................................................................................................1

PROLOGUE............................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER I .............................................................................................................................................3

CHAPTER II ..........................................................................................................................................15

CHAPTER III........................................................................................................................................25

CHAPTER IV........................................................................................................................................32

CHAPTER V.........................................................................................................................................40

CHAPTER VI........................................................................................................................................51

CHAPTER VII .......................................................................................................................................61

CHAPTER VIII.....................................................................................................................................68

CHAPTER IX........................................................................................................................................77

CHAPTER X.........................................................................................................................................87

CHAPTER XI........................................................................................................................................95

CHAPTER XII .....................................................................................................................................106

Years ago, when I was very small, we lived in a great house in a long, straight, browncoloured street, in the

east end of London. It was a noisy, crowded street in the daytime; but a silent, lonesome street at night, when

the gaslights, few and far between, partook of the character of lighthouses rather than of illuminants, and the

tramp, tramp of the policeman on his long beat seemed to be ever drawing nearer, or fading away, except for

brief moments when the footsteps ceased, as he paused to rattle a door or window, or to flash his lantern into

The house had many advantages, so my father would explain to friends who expressed surprise at his

choosing such a residence, and among these was included in my own small morbid mind the circumstance

that its back windows commanded an uninterrupted view of an ancient and muchpeopled churchyard. Often

of a night would I steal from between the sheets, and climbing upon the high oak chest that stood before my

bedroom window, sit peering down fearfully upon the aged gray tombstones far below, wondering whether

the shadows that crept among them might not be ghostssoiled ghosts that had lost their natural whiteness

by long exposure to the city's smoke, and had grown dingy, like the snow that sometimes lay there.

I persuaded myself that they were ghosts, and came, at length, to have quite a friendly feeling for them. I

wondered what they thought when they saw the fading letters of their own names upon the stones, whether

they remembered themselves and wished they were alive again, or whether they were happier as they were.

One night, as I sat there watching, I felt a hand upon my shoulder. I was not frightened, because it was a soft,

"What's mumma's naughty boy doing out of bed? Shall I beat him?" And the other hand was laid against my

"Only looking at the ghosts, ma," I answered. "There's such a lot of 'em down there." Then I added, musingly,

My mother said nothing, but took me up in her arms, and carried me back to bed, and then, sitting down

beside me, and holding my hand in hersthere was not so very much difference in the sizebegan to sing

in that low, caressing voice of hers that always made me feel, for the time being, that I wanted to be a good

boy, a song she often used to sing to me, and that I have never heard any one else sing since, and should not

But while she sang, something fell on my hand that caused me to sit up and insist on examining her eyes. She

laughed; rather a strange, broken little laugh, I thought, and said it was nothing, and told me to lie still and go

to sleep. So I wriggled down again and shut my eyes tight, but I could not understand what had made her cry.

Poor little mother, she had a notion, founded evidently upon inborn belief rather than upon observation, that

all children were angels, and that, in consequence, an altogether exceptional demand existed for them in a

certain other place, where there are more openings for angels, rendering their retention in this world difficult

and undependable. My talk about ghosts must have made that foolishly fond heart ache with a vague dread

For some time after this I would often look up to find my mother's eyes fixed upon me. Especially closely did

she watch me at feeding times, and on these occasions, as the meal progressed, her face would acquire an

Once, during dinner, I heard her whisper to my father (for children are not quite so deaf as their elders think),

"Eat!" replied my father in the same penetrating undertone; "if he dies of anything, it will be of eating."

So my little mother grew less troubled, and, as the days went by, saw reason to think that my brother angels

might consent to do without me for yet a while longer; and I, putting away the child with his ghostly fancies,

became, in course of time, a grownup person, and ceased to believe in ghosts, together with many other

But the memory of that dingy graveyard, and of the shadows that dwelt therein, came back to me very vividly

the other day, for it seemed to me as though I were a ghost myself, gliding through the silent streets where

Diving into a long unopened drawer, I had, by chance, drawn forth a dusty volume of manuscript, labelled

upon its torn brown paper cover, NOVEL NOTES. The scent of dead days clung to its dogs'eared pages;

and, as it lay open before me, my memory wandered back to the summer eveningsnot so very long ago,

perhaps, if one but adds up the years, but a long, long while ago if one measures Time by feelingwhen four

friends had sat together making it, who would never sit together any more. With each crumpled leaf I turned,

the uncomfortable conviction that I was only a ghost, grew stronger. The handwriting was my own, but the

words were the words of a stranger, so that as I read I wondered to myself, saying: did I ever think this? did I

really hope that? did I plan to do this? did I resolve to be such? does life, then, look so to the eyes of a young

The book was a compilation, half diary, half memoranda. In it lay the record of many musings, of many talks,

and out of itselecting what seemed suitable, adding, altering, and arrangingI have shaped the chapters

That I have a right to do so I have fully satisfied my own conscience, an exceptionally fussy one. Of the four

joint authors, he whom I call "MacShaughnassy" has laid aside his title to all things beyond six feet of

sunscorched ground in the African veldt; while from him I have designated "Brown" I have borrowed but

little, and that little I may fairly claim to have made my own by reason of the artistic merit with which I have

embellished it. Indeed, in thus taking a few of his bald ideas and shaping them into readable form, am I not

doing him a kindness, and thereby returning good for evil? For has he not, slipping from the high ambition of

his youth, sunk ever downward step by step, until he has become a critic, and, therefore, my natural enemy?

Does he not, in the columns of a certain journal of large pretension but small circulation, call me "'Arry"

(without an "H," the satirical rogue), and is not his contempt for the Englishspeaking people based chiefly

upon the fact that some of them read my books? But in the days of Bloomsbury lodgings and firstnight pits

From "Jephson" I hold a letter, dated from a station deep in the heart of the Queensland bush. "Do what you

like with it, dear boy," the letter runs, "so long as you keep me out of it. Thanks for your complimentary

regrets, but I cannot share them. I was never fitted for a literary career. Lucky for me, I found it out in time.

Some poor devils don't. (I'm not getting at you, old man. We read all your stuff, and like it very much. Time

hangs a bit heavy, you know, here, in the winter, and we are glad of almost anything.) This life suits me

better. I love to feel my horse between my thighs, and the sun upon my skin. And there are the youngsters

growing up about us, and the hands to look after, and the stock. I daresay it seems a very commonplace

unintellectual life to you, but it satisfies my nature more than the writing of books could ever do. Besides,

there are too many authors as it is. The world is so busy reading and writing, it has no time left for thinking.

You'll tell me, of course, that books are thought, but that is only the jargon of the Press. You come out here,

old man, and sit as I do sometimes for days and nights together alone with the dumb cattle on an upheaved

island of earth, as it were, jutting out into the deep sky, and you will know that they are not. What a man

thinksreally thinksgoes down into him and grows in silence. What a man writes in books are the

Poor Jephson! he promised so well at one time. But he always had strange notions.

When, on returning home one evening, after a pipe party at my friend Jephson's, I informed my wife that I

was going to write a novel, she expressed herself as pleased with the idea. She said she had often wondered I

had never thought of doing so before. "Look," she added, "how silly all the novels are nowadays; I'm sure

you could write one." (Ethelbertha intended to be complimentary, I am convinced; but there is a looseness

When, however, I told her that my friend Jephson was going to collaborate with me, she remarked, "Oh," in a

doubtful tone; and when I further went on to explain to her that Selkirk Brown and Derrick MacShaughnassy

were also going to assist, she replied, "Oh," in a tone which contained no trace of doubtfulness whatever, and

from which it was clear that her interest in the matter, as a practical scheme, had entirely evaporated.

I fancy that the fact of my three collaborators being all bachelors diminished somewhat our chances of

success, in Ethelbertha's mind. Against bachelors, as a class, she entertains a strong prejudice. A man's not

having sense enough to want to marry, or, having that, not having wit enough to do it, argues to her thinking

either weakness of intellect or natural depravity, the former rendering its victim unable, and the latter unfit,

"You see," I explained, "in the usual commonplace novel we only get, as a matter of fact, one person's ideas.

Now, in this novel, there will be four clever men all working together. The public will thus be enabled to

obtain the thoughts and opinions of the whole four of us, at the price usually asked for merely one author's

views. If the British reader knows his own business, he will order this book early, to avoid disappointment.

"Besides," I continued, my enthusiasm waxing stronger the more I reflected upon the matter, "this work is

going to be a genuine bargain in another way also. We are not going to put our mere everyday ideas into it.

We are going to crowd into this one novel all the wit and wisdom that the whole four of us possess, if the

book will hold it. We shall not write another novel after this one. Indeed, we shall not be able to; we shall

have nothing more to write. This work will partake of the nature of an intellectual clearance sale. We are

Ethelbertha shut her lips, and said something inside; and then remarked aloud that she supposed it would be a

I felt hurt at the implied sneer. I pointed out to her that there already existed a numerous body of

speciallytrained men employed to do nothing else but make disagreeable observations upon authors and

their worksa duty that, so far as I could judge, they seemed capable of performing without any amateur

assistance whatever. And I hinted that, by his own fireside, a literary man looked to breathe a more

Ethelbertha replied that of course I knew what she meant. She said that she was not thinking of me, and that

Jephson was, no doubt, sensible enough (Jephson is engaged), but she did not see the object of bringing half

the parish into it. (Nobody suggested bringing "half the parish" into it. Ethelbertha will talk so wildly.) To

suppose that Brown and MacShaughnassy could be of any use whatever, she considered absurd. What could a

couple of raw bachelors know about life and human nature? As regarded MacShaughnassy in particular, she

was of opinion that if we only wanted out of him all that HE knew, and could keep him to the subject, we

My wife's present estimate of MacShaughnassy's knowledge is the result of reaction. The first time she ever

saw him, she and he got on wonderfully well together; and when I returned to the drawing room, after

seeing him down to the gate, her first words were, "What a wonderful man that Mr. MacShaughnassy is. He

That describes MacShaughnassy exactly. He does seem to know a tremendous lot. He is possessed of more

information than any man I ever came across. Occasionally, it is correct information; but, speaking broadly, it

is remarkable for its marvellous unreliability. Where he gets it from is a secret that nobody has ever yet been

Ethelbertha was very young when we started housekeeping. (Our first butcher very nearly lost her custom, I

remember, once and for ever by calling her "Missie," and giving her a message to take back to her mother.

She arrived home in tears. She said that perhaps she wasn't fit to be anybody's wife, but she did not see why

she should be told so by the tradespeople.) She was naturally somewhat inexperienced in domestic affairs,

and, feeling this keenly, was grateful to any one who would give her useful hints and advice. When

MacShaughnassy came along he seemed, in her eyes, a sort of glorified Mrs. Beeton. He knew everything

wanted to be known inside a house, from the scientific method of peeling a potato to the cure of spasms in

cats, and Ethelbertha would sit at his feet, figuratively speaking, and gain enough information in one evening

He told her how fires ought to be laid. He said that the way fires were usually laid in this country was

contrary to all the laws of nature, and he showed her how the thing was done in Crim Tartary, or some such

place, where the science of laying fires is alone properly understood. He proved to her that an immense

saving in time and labour, to say nothing of coals, could be effected by the adoption of the Crim Tartary

system; and he taught it to her then and there, and she went straight downstairs and explained it to the girl.

Amenda, our then "general," was an extremely stolid young person, and, in some respects, a model servant.

She never argued. She never seemed to have any notions of her own whatever. She accepted our ideas

without comment, and carried them out with such pedantic precision and such evident absence of all feeling

of responsibility concerning the result as to surround our home legislation with quite a military atmosphere.

On the present occasion she stood quietly by while the MacShaughnassy method of firelaying was

"Yes, Amenda, we'll always have the fires laid like that in future, if you please."

"All right, mum," replied Amenda, with perfect unconcern, and there the matter ended, for that evening.

On coming downstairs the next morning we found the breakfast table spread very nicely, but there was no

breakfast. We waited. Ten minutes went bya quarter of an hourtwenty minutes. Then Ethelbertha rang

"Well, mum," replied Amenda, in a tone of genial frankness, "to tell you the truth, I don't think it ever will."

Amenda never volunteered statements. She answered the question put to her and then stopped dead. I called

downstairs to her on one occasion, before I understood her peculiarities, to ask her if she knew the time. She

replied, "Yes, sir," and disappeared into the back kitchen. At the end of thirty seconds or so, I called down

again. "I asked you, Amenda," I said reproachfully, "to tell me the time about ten minutes ago."

"Oh, did you?" she called back pleasantly. "I beg your pardon. I thought you asked me if I knew itit's

"Oh yes, mum," answered the girl. "I've tried four times." Then she added cheerfully, "I'll try again if you

Ethelbertha said she would step down and light the fire herself, and told Amenda to follow her and watch

how she did it. I felt interested in the experiment, and followed also. Ethelbertha tucked up her frock and set

At the end of half an hour Ethelbertha retired from the contest, hot, dirty, and a trifle irritable. The fireplace

retained the same cold, cynical expression with which it had greeted our entrance.

Then I tried. I honestly tried my best. I was eager and anxious to succeed. For one reason, I wanted my

breakfast. For another, I wanted to be able to say that I had done this thing. It seemed to me that for any

human being to light a fire, laid as that fire was laid, would be a feat to be proud of. To light a fire even under

ordinary circumstances is not too easy a task: to do so, handicapped by MacShaughnassy's rules, would, I

felt, be an achievement pleasant to look back upon. My idea, had I succeeded, would have been to go round

However, I did not succeed. I lit various other things, including the kitchen carpet and the cat, who would

come sniffing about, but the materials within the stove appeared to be fireproof.

Ethelbertha and I sat down, one each side of our cheerless hearth, and looked at one another, and thought of

MacShaughnassy, until Amenda chimed in on our despair with one of those practical suggestions of hers that

"Do, Amenda," said Ethelbertha, rising. And then she added, "I think we'll always have them lighted in the

Another time he showed us how to make coffeeaccording to the Arabian method. Arabia must be a very

untidy country if they made coffee often over there. He dirtied two saucepans, three jugs, one tablecloth, one

nutmeggrater, one hearthrug, three cups, and himself. This made coffee for twowhat would have been

That we did not like the coffee when made, MacShaughnassy attributed to our debased tastethe result of

long indulgence in an inferior article. He drank both cups himself, and afterwards went home in a cab.

He had an aunt in those days, I remember, a mysterious old lady, who lived in some secluded retreat from

where she wrought incalculable mischief upon MacShaughnassy's friends. What he did not knowthe one or

two things that he was NOT an authority uponthis aunt of his knew. "No," he would say with engaging

candour"no, that is a thing I cannot advise you about myself. But," he would add, "I'll tell you what I'll do.

I'll write to my aunt and ask her." And a day or two afterwards he would call again, bringing his aunt's advice

with him; and, if you were young and inexperienced, or a natural born fool, you might possibly follow it.

She sent us a recipe on one occasion, through MacShaughnassy, for the extermination of blackbeetles. We

occupied a very picturesque old house; but, as with most picturesque old houses, its advantages were chiefly

external. There were many holes and cracks and crevices within its creaking framework. Frogs, who had lost

their way and taken the wrong turning, would suddenly discover themselves in the middle of our

diningroom, apparently quite as much to their own surprise and annoyance as to ours. A numerous company

of rats and mice, remarkably fond of physical exercise, had fitted the place up as a gymnasium for

themselves; and our kitchen, after ten o'clock, was turned into a blackbeetles' club. They came up through the

floor and out through the walls, and gambolled there in their lighthearted, reckless way till daylight.

The rats and mice Amenda did not object to. She said she liked to watch them. But against the blackbeetles

she was prejudiced. Therefore, when my wife informed her that MacShaughnassy's aunt had given us an

We purchased the materials, manufactured the mixture, and put it about. The beetles came and ate it. They

seemed to like it. They finished it all up, and were evidently vexed that there was not more. But they did not

We told these facts to MacShaughnassy. He smiled, a very grim smile, and said in a low tone, full of

It appeared that this was one of those slow, insidious poisons. It did not kill the beetle off immediately, but it

undermined his constitution. Day by day he would sink and droop without being able to tell what was the

matter with himself, until one morning we should enter the kitchen to find him lying cold and very still.

So we made more stuff and laid it round each night, and the blackbeetles from all about the parish swarmed

to it. Each night they came in greater quantities. They fetched up all their friends and relations. Strange

beetlesbeetles from other families, with no claim on us whatevergot to hear about the thing, and came in

hordes, and tried to rob our blackbeetles of it. By the end of a week we had lured into our kitchen every

MacShaughnassy said it was a good thing. We should clear the suburb at one swoop. The beetles had now

been eating this poison steadily for ten days, and he said that the end could not be far off. I was glad to hear

it, because I was beginning to find this unlimited hospitality expensive. It was a dear poison that we were

We went downstairs to see how they were getting on. MacShaughnassy thought they seemed queer, and was

of opinion that they were breaking up. Speaking for myself, I can only say that a healthier looking lot of

One, it is true, did die that very evening. He was detected in the act of trying to make off with an unfairly

large portion of the poison, and three or four of the others set upon him savagely and killed him.

But he was the only one, so far as I could ever discover, to whom MacShaughnassy's recipe proved fatal. As

for the others, they grew fat and sleek upon it. Some of them, indeed, began to acquire quite a figure. We

lessened their numbers eventually by the help of some common oilshop stuff. But such vast numbers,

attracted by MacShaughnassy's poison, had settled in the house, that to finally exterminate them now was

I have not heard of MacShaughnassy's aunt lately. Possibly, one of MacShaughnassy's bosom friends has

found out her address and has gone down and murdered her. If so, I should like to thank him.

I tried a little while ago to cure MacShaughnassy of his fatal passion for advicegiving, by repeating to him a

very sad story that was told to me by a gentleman I met in an American railway car. I was travelling from

Buffalo to New York, and, during the day, it suddenly occurred to me that I might make the journey more

interesting by leaving the cars at Albany and completing the distance by water. But I did not know how the

boats ran, and I had no guidebook with me. I glanced about for some one to question. A mildlooking,

elderly gentleman sat by the next window reading a book, the cover of which was familiar to me. I deemed

"I beg your pardon for interrupting you," I said, sitting down opposite to him, "but could you give me any

"Well," he answered, looking up with a pleasant smile, "there are three lines of boats altogether. There is the

Heggarty line, but they only go as far as Catskill. Then there are the Poughkeepsie boats, which go every

He jumped to his feet with a cry, and stood glaring down at me with a gleam in his eyes which was positively

"You villain!" he hissed in low tones of concentrated fury, "so that's your game, is it? I'll give you something

I felt hurt. I also felt that if the interview were prolonged I might feel even more hurt. So I left him without a

word, and drifted over to the other end of the car, where I took up a position between a stout lady and the

I was still musing upon the incident, when, looking up, I observed my elderly friend making towards me. I

rose and laid my hand upon the doorknob. He should not find me unprepared. He smiled, reassuringly,

"I've been thinking," he said, "that maybe I was a little rude just now. I should like, if you will let me, to

explain. I think, when you have heard my story, you will understand, and forgive me."

There was that about him which made me trust him. We found a quiet corner in the smokingcar. I had a

"whiskey sour," and he prescribed for himself a strange thing of his own invention. Then we lighted our

"Thirty years ago," said he, "I was a young man with a healthy belief in myself, and a desire to do good to

others. I did not imagine myself a genius. I did not even consider myself exceptionally brilliant or talented.

But it did seem to me, and the more I noted the doings of my fellowmen and women, the more assured did I

become of it, that I possessed plain, practical common sense to an unusual and remarkable degree. Conscious

of this, I wrote a little book, which I entitled How to be Happy, Wealthy, and Wise, and published it at my

The book did not make the stir that I had anticipated. Some two or three hundred copies went off, and then

I confess that at first I was disappointed. But after a while, I reflected that, if people would not take my

advice, it was more their loss than mine, and I dismissed the matter from my mind.

One morning, about a twelvemonth afterwards, I was sitting in my study, when the servant entered to say that

"He was a common man, but he had an open, intelligent countenance, and his manner was most respectful. I

motioned him to be seated. He selected a chair, and sat down on the extreme edge of it.

"'I hope you'll pard'n this intrusion, sir,' he began, speaking deliberately, and twirling his hat the while; 'but

"I expressed myself as pleased, and he continued: 'They tell me, sir, as you're the gentleman as wrote that

He enumerated the three items slowly, dwelling lovingly on each. I admitted the fact.

"'Ah, that's a wonderful book, sir,' he went on. 'I ain't one of them as has got brains of their ownnot to

speak ofbut I know enough to know them as has; and when I read that little book, I says to myself, Josiah

Hackett (that's my name, sir), when you're in doubt don't you get addling that thick head o' yours, as will only

tell you all wrong; you go to the gentleman as wrote that little book and ask him for his advice. He is a

kindhearted gentleman, as any one can tell, and he'll give it you; and WHEN you've got it, you go straight

ahead, full steam, and don't you stop for nothing, 'cause he'll know what's best for you, same as he knows

what's best for everybody. That's what I says, sir; and that's what I'm here for.'

"He paused, and wiped his brow with a green cotton handkerchief. I prayed him to proceed.

"It appeared that the worthy fellow wanted to marry, but could not make up his mind WHOM he wanted to

marry. He had his eyeso he expressed itupon two young women, and they, he had reason to believe,

regarded him in return with more than usual favour. His difficulty was to decide which of the twoboth of

them excellent and deserving young personswould make him the best wife. The one, Juliana, the only

daughter of a retired seacaptain, he described as a winsome lassie. The other, Hannah, was an older and

altogether more womanly girl. She was the eldest of a large family. Her father, he said, was a Godfearing

man, and was doing well in the timber trade. He asked me which of them I should advise him to marry.

"I was flattered. What man in my position would not have been? This Josiah Hackett had come from afar to

hear my wisdom. He was willingnay, anxiousto entrust his whole life's happiness to my discretion. That

he was wise in so doing, I entertained no doubt. The choice of a wife I had always held to be a matter needing

a calm, unbiassed judgment, such as no lover could possibly bring to bear upon the subject. In such a case, I

should not have hesitated to offer advice to the wisest of men. To this poor, simpleminded fellow, I felt it

"He handed me photographs of both the young persons under consideration. I jotted down on the back of

each such particulars as I deemed would assist me in estimating their respective fitness for the vacancy in

question, and promised to carefully consider the problem, and write him in a day or two.

"His gratitude was touching. 'Don't you trouble to write no letters, sir,' he said; 'you just stick down "Julia" or

"Hannah" on a bit of paper, and put it in an envelope. I shall know what it means, and that's the one as I shall

"I gave a good deal of thought to the selection of Josiah's wife. I wanted him to be happy.

"Juliana was certainly very pretty. There was a lurking playfulness about the corners of Juliana's mouth

which conjured up the sound of rippling laughter. Had I acted on impulse, I should have clasped Juliana in

"But, I reflected, more sterling qualities than mere playfulness and prettiness are needed for a wife. Hannah,

though not so charming, clearly possessed both energy and sensequalities highly necessary to a poor man's

wife. Hannah's father was a pious man, and was 'doing well'a thrifty, saving man, no doubt. He would have

instilled into her lessons of economy and virtue; and, later on, she might possibly come in for a little

something. She was the eldest of a large family. She was sure to have had to help her mother a good deal. She

would be experienced in household matters, and would understand the bringing up of children.

"Julia's father, on the other hand, was a retired seacaptain. Seafaring folk are generally loose sort of fish. He

had probably been in the habit of going about the house, using language and expressing views, the hearing of

which could not but have exercised an injurious effect upon the formation of a growing girl's character.

Juliana was his only child. Only children generally make bad men and women. They are allowed to have their

own way too much. The pretty daughter of a retired seacaptain would be certain to be spoilt.

"Josiah, I had also to remember, was a man evidently of weak character. He would need management. Now,

"At the end of two days my mind was made up. I wrote 'Hannah' on a slip of paper, and posted it.

"A fortnight afterwards I received a letter from Josiah. He thanked me for my advice, but added, incidentally,

that he wished I could have made it Julia. However, he said, he felt sure I knew best, and by the time I

"That letter worried me. I began to wonder if, after all, I had chosen the right girl. Suppose Hannah was not

all I thought her! What a terrible thing it would be for Josiah. What data, sufficient to reason upon, had I

possessed? How did I know that Hannah was not a lazy, illtempered girl, a continual thorn in the side of her

poor, overworked mother, and a perpetual blister to her younger brothers and sisters? How did I know she

had been well brought up? Her father might be a precious old fraud: most seemingly pious men are. She may

"Then also, how did I know that Juliana's merry childishness would not ripen into sweet, cheerful

womanliness? Her father, for all I knew to the contrary, might be the model of what a retired sea captain

should be; with possibly a snug little sum safely invested somewhere. And Juliana was his only child. What

"I took her photo from my desk. I seemed to detect a reproachful look in the big eyes. I saw before me the

scene in the little far away home when the first tidings of Josiah's marriage fell like a cruel stone into the

hitherto placid waters of her life. I saw her kneeling by her father's chair, while the whitehaired, bronzed old

man gently stroked the golden head, shaking with silent sobs against his breast. My remorse was almost more

"I put her aside and took up Hannahmy chosen one. She seemed to be regarding me with a smile of

heartless triumph. There began to take possession of me a feeling of positive dislike to Hannah.

"I fought against the feeling. I told myself it was prejudice. But the more I reasoned against it the stronger it

became. I could tell that, as the days went by, it would grow from dislike to loathing, from loathing to hate.

And this was the woman I had deliberately selected as a life companion for Josiah!

"For weeks I knew no peace of mind. Every letter that arrived I dreaded to open, fearing it might be from

Josiah. At every knock I started up, and looked about for a hidingplace. Every time I came across the

heading, 'Domestic Tragedy,' in the newspapers, I broke into a cold perspiration. I expected to read that

"As the time went by, however, and I heard nothing, my fears began to assuage, and my belief in my own

intuitive good judgment to return. Maybe, I had done a good thing for Josiah and Hannah, and they were

blessing me. Three years passed peacefully away, and I was beginning to forget the existence of the Hacketts.

"Then he came again. I returned home from business one evening to find him waiting for me in the hall. The

moment I saw him I knew that my worst fears had fallen short of the truth. I motioned him to follow me to

my study. He did so, and seated himself in the identical chair on which he had sat three years ago. The

change in him was remarkable; he looked old and careworn. His manner was that of resigned hopelessness.

"We remained for a while without speaking, he twirling his hat as at our first interview, I making a show of

arranging papers on my desk. At length, feeling that anything would be more bearable than this silence, I

"'No, sir,' he replied quietly; 'I can't say as they have, altogether. That Hannah of yours has turned out a bit of

"There was no touch of reproach in his tones. He simply stated a melancholy fact.

"'But she is a good wife to you in other ways,' I urged. 'She has her faults, of course. We all have. But she is

"I owed it to myself to find some good in Hannah, and this was the only thing I could think of at that

"'Oh yes, she's that,' he assented. 'A little too much so for our sized house, I sometimes think.'

"'You see,' he went on, 'she's a bit cornery in her temper, Hannah is; and then her mother's a bit trying, at

"'Well, you see, sir,' he answered, 'she's living with us nowever since the old man went off.'

"'Well, not exactly, sir,' he replied. 'He ran off about a twelvemonth ago with one of the young women who

used to teach in the Sunday School, and joined the Mormons. It came as a great surprise to every one.'

"I groaned. 'And his business,' I inquired'the timber business, who carries that on?'

"'Oh, that!' answered Josiah. 'Oh, that had to be sold to pay his debtsleastways, to go towards 'em.'

"I remarked what a terrible thing it was for his family. I supposed the home was broken up, and they were all

"'No, sir,' he replied simply, 'they ain't scattered much. They're all living with us.'

"'But there,' he continued, seeing the look upon my face; 'of course, all this has nothing to do with you sir.

You've got troubles of your own, I daresay, sir. I didn't come here to worry you with mine. That would be a

"'What has become of Julia?' I asked. I did not feel I wanted to question him any more about his own affairs.

"A smile broke the settled melancholy of his features. 'Ah,' he said, in a more cheerful tone than he had

hitherto employed, 'it does one good to think about HER, it does. She's married to a friend of mine now,

young Sam Jessop. I slips out and gives 'em a call now and then, when Hannah ain't round. Lord, it's like

getting a glimpse of heaven to look into their little home. He often chaffs me about it, Sam does. "Well, you

WAS a sawnyheaded chunk, Josiah, YOU was," he often says to me. We're old chums, you know, sir, Sam

"Then the smile died away, and he added with a sigh, 'Yes, I've often thought since, sir, how jolly it would

"I felt I must get him back to Hannah at any cost. I said, 'I suppose you and your wife are still living in the old

"'Yes,' he replied, 'if you can call it living. It's a hard struggle with so many of us.'

"He said he did not know how he should have managed if it had not been for the help of Julia's father. He

"'I don't say as he's one of your clever sort, you know, sir,' he explained. 'Not the man as one would go to for

"'And that reminds me, sir,' he went on, 'of what I've come here about. You'll think it very bold of me to ask,

"I interrupted him. 'Josiah,' I said, 'I admit that I am much to blame for what has come upon you. You asked

me for my advice, and I gave it you. Which of us was the bigger idiot, we will not discuss. The point is that I

did give it, and I am not a man to shirk my responsibilities. What, in reason, you ask, and I can grant, I will

"He was overcome with gratitude. 'I knew it, sir,' he said. 'I knew you would not refuse me. I said so to

Hannah. I said, "I will go to that gentleman and ask him. I will go to him and ask him for his advice.'"

"'His advice,' repeated Josiah, apparently surprised at my tone, 'on a little matter as I can't quite make up my

"I thought at first he was trying to be sarcastic, but he wasn't. That man sat there, and wrestled with me for

my advice as to whether he should invest a thousand dollars which Julia's father had offered to lend him, in

the purchase of a laundry business or a bar. He hadn't had enough of it (my advice, I mean); he wanted it

again, and he spun me reasons why I should give it him. The choice of a wife was a different thing altogether,

he argued. Perhaps he ought NOT to have asked me for my opinion as to that. But advice as to which of two

trades a man would do best to select, surely any business man could give. He said he had just been reading

again my little book, How to be Happy, etc., and if the gentleman who wrote that could not decide between

the respective merits of one particular laundry and one particular bar, both situate in the same city, well, then,

all he had got to say was that knowledge and wisdom were clearly of no practical use in this world whatever.

"Well, it did seem a simple thing to advise a man about. Surely as to a matter of this kind, I, a professed

business man, must be able to form a sounder judgment than this poor pumpkinheaded lamb. It would be

heartless to refuse to help him. I promised to look into the matter, and let him know what I thought.

"He rose and shook me by the hand. He said he would not try to thank me; words would only seem weak. He

I brought an amount of thought to bear upon this thousanddollar investment sufficient to have floated a

bank. I did not mean to make another Hannah job, if I could help it. I studied the papers Josiah had left with

me, but did not attempt to form any opinion from them. I went down quietly to Josiah's city, and inspected

both businesses on the spot. I instituted secret but searching inquiries in the neighbourhood. I disguised

myself as a simpleminded young man who had come into a little money, and wormed myself into the

confidence of the servants. I interviewed half the town upon the pretence that I was writing the commercial

history of New England, and should like some particulars of their career, and I invariably ended my

examination by asking them which was their favourite bar, and where they got their washing done. I stayed a

fortnight in the town. Most of my spare time I spent at the bar. In my leisure moments I dirtied my clothes so

"As the result of my investigations I discovered that, so far as the two businesses themselves were concerned,

there was not a pin to choose between them. It became merely a question of which particular trade would best

"I reflected. The keeper of a bar was exposed to much temptation. A weakminded man, mingling

continually in the company of topers, might possibly end by giving way to drink. Now, Josiah was an

exceptionally weakminded man. It had also to be borne in mind that he had a shrewish wife, and that her

whole family had come to live with him. Clearly, to place Josiah in a position of easy access to unlimited

"About a laundry, on the other hand, there was something soothing. The working of a laundry needed many

hands. Hannah's relatives might be used up in a laundry, and made to earn their own living. Hannah might

expend her energy in flatironing, and Josiah could turn the mangle. The idea conjured up quite a pleasant

"On the following Monday, Josiah wrote to say that he had bought the laundry. On Tuesday I read in the

Commercial Intelligence that one of the most remarkable features of the time was the marvellous rise taking

place all over New England in the value of hotel and bar property. On Thursday, in the list of failures, I came

across no less than four laundry proprietors; and the paper added, in explanation, that the American washing

industry, owing to the rapid growth of Chinese competition, was practically on its last legs. I went out and got

"My life became a curse to me. All day long I thought of Josiah. All night I dreamed of him. Suppose that,

not content with being the cause of his domestic misery, I had now deprived him of the means of earning a

livelihood, and had rendered useless the generosity of that good old seacaptain. I began to appear to myself

as a malignant fiend, ever following this simple but worthy man to work evil upon him.

"Time passed away, however; I heard nothing from or of him, and my burden at last fell from me.

"He came behind me as I was opening the door with my latchkey, and laid an unsteady hand upon my arm.

It was a dark night, but a gas lamp showed me his face. I recognised it in spite of the red blotches and the

bleary film that hid the eyes. I caught him roughly by the arm, and hurried him inside and up into my study.

"He was about to select his favourite chair. I felt that if I saw him and that particular chair in association for

the third time, I should do something terrible to both. I snatched it away from him, and he sat down heavily

on the floor, and burst into tears. I let him remain there, and, thickly, between hiccoughs, he told his tale.

"The laundry had gone from bad to worse. A new railway had come to the town, altering its whole

topography. The business and residential portion had gradually shifted northward. The spot where the

barthe particular one which I had rejected for the laundry had formerly stood was now the commercial

centre of the city. The man who had purchased it in place of Josiah had sold out and made a fortune. The

southern area (where the laundry was situate) was, it had been discovered, built upon a swamp, and was in a

highly unsanitary condition. Careful housewives naturally objected to sending their washing into such a

"Other troubles had also come. The babyJosiah's pet, the one bright thing in his lifehad fallen into the

copper and been boiled. Hannah's mother had been crushed in the mangle, and was now a helpless cripple,

"Under these accumulated misfortunes Josiah had sought consolation in drink, and had become a hopeless

sot. He felt his degradation keenly, and wept copiously. He said he thought that in a cheerful place, such as a

bar, he might have been strong and brave; but that there was something about the everlasting smell of damp

"I asked him what the captain had said to it all. He burst into fresh tears, and replied that the captain was no

more. That, he added, reminded him of what he had come about. The goodhearted old fellow had

bequeathed him five thousand dollars. He wanted my advice as to how to invest it.

"My first impulse was to kill him on the spot. I wish now that I had. I restrained myself, however, and offered

him the alternative of being thrown from the window or of leaving by the door without another word.

"He answered that he was quite prepared to go by the window if I would first tell him whether to put his

money in the Terra del Fuego Nitrate Company, Limited, or in the Union Pacific Bank. Life had no further

interest for him. All he cared for was to feel that this little nestegg was safely laid by for the benefit of his

"He pressed me to tell him what I thought of nitrates. I replied that I declined to say anything whatever on the

subject. He assumed from my answer that I did not think much of nitrates, and announced his intention of

"He paused, and seemed to be puzzling it out. Then he smiled knowingly, and said he thought he understood

what I meant. It was very kind of me. He should put every dollar he possessed in the Terra del Fuego Nitrate

"He rose (with difficulty) to go. I stopped him. I knew, as certainly as I knew the sun would rise the next

morning, that whichever company I advised him, or he persisted in thinking I had advised him (which was

the same thing), to invest in, would, sooner or later, come to smash. My grandmother had all her little fortune

in the Terra del Fuego Nitrate Company. I could not see her brought to penury in her old age. As for Josiah, it

could make no difference to him whatever. He would lose his money in any event. I advised him to invest in

"The Union Pacific Bank held out for eighteen months. Then it began to totter. The financial world stood

bewildered. It had always been reckoned one of the safest banks in the country. People asked what could be

"The Bank made a gallant fight, but the hand of fate was upon it. At the end of another nine months the crash

"(Nitrates, it need hardly be said, had all this time been going up by leaps and bounds. My grandmother died

worth a million dollars, and left the whole of it to a charity. Had she known how I had saved her from ruin,

"A few days after the failure of the Bank, Josiah arrived on my doorstep; and, this time, he brought his

"What was I to do? I had brought these people step by step to the verge of starvation. I had laid waste alike

their happiness and their prospects in life. The least amends I could make was to see that at all events they did

"That was seventeen years ago. I am still seeing that they do not want for the necessities of existence; and my

conscience is growing easier by noticing that they seem contented with their lot. There are twentytwo of

"That is my story," he said. "Perhaps you will now understand my sudden emotion when you asked for my

I told this tale to MacShaughnassy. He agreed with me that it was instructive, and said he should remember it.

He said he should remember it so as to tell it to some fellows that he knew, to whom he thought the lesson

I can't honestly say that we made much progress at our first meeting. It was Brown's fault. He would begin by

telling us a story about a dog. It was the old, old story of the dog who had been in the habit of going every

morning to a certain baker's shop with a penny in his mouth, in exchange for which he always received a

penny bun. One day, the baker, thinking he would not know the difference, tried to palm off upon the poor

animal a ha'penny bun, whereupon the dog walked straight outside and fetched in a policeman. Brown had

heard this chestnut for the first time that afternoon, and was full of it. It is always a mystery to me where

Brown has been for the last hundred years. He stops you in the street with, "Oh, I must tell you!such a

capital story!" And he thereupon proceeds to relate to you, with much spirit and gusto, one of Noah's best

known jokes, or some story that Romulus must have originally told to Remus. One of these days somebody

will tell him the history of Adam and Eve, and he will think he has got hold of a new plot, and will work it up

He gives forth these hoary antiquities as personal reminiscences of his own, or, at furthest, as episodes in the

life of his second cousin. There are certain strange and moving catastrophes that would seem either to have

occurred to, or to have been witnessed by, nearly every one you meet. I never came across a man yet who had

not seen some other man jerked off the top of an omnibus into a mud cart. Half London must, at one time or

another, have been jerked off omnibuses into mudcarts, and have been fished out at the end of a shovel.

Then there is the tale of the lady whose husband is taken suddenly ill one night at an hotel. She rushes

downstairs, and prepares a stiff mustard plaster to put on him, and runs up with it again. In her excitement,

however, she charges into the wrong room, and, rolling down the bedclothes, presses it lovingly upon the

wrong man. I have heard that story so often that I am quite nervous about going to bed in an hotel now. Each

man who has told it me has invariably slept in the room next door to that of the victim, and has been

awakened by the man's yell as the plaster came down upon him. That is how he (the storyteller) came to

Brown wanted us to believe that this prehistoric animal he had been telling us about had belonged to his

brotherinlaw, and was hurt when Jephson murmured, sotto voce, that that made the twentyeighth man he

had met whose brotherinlaw had owned that dogto say nothing of the hundred and seventeen who had

We tried to get to work afterwards, but Brown had unsettled us for the evening. It is a wicked thing to start

dog stories among a party of average sinful men. Let one man tell a dog story, and every other man in the

There is a story goingI cannot vouch for its truth, it was told me by a judgeof a man who lay dying. The

pastor of the parish, a good and pious man, came to sit with him, and, thinking to cheer him up, told him an

anecdote about a dog. When the pastor had finished, the sick man sat up, and said, "I know a better story than

The effort had proved too much for his strength. He fell back upon the pillows, and the doctor, stepping

The good old pastor rose, and took the poor fellow's hand in his, and pressed it. "We shall meet again," he

"I'm glad to hear you say that," he feebly murmured. "Remind me about that dog."

Brown, who had had his dog story and was satisfied, wanted us to settle our heroine; but the rest of us did not

feel equal to settling anybody just then. We were thinking of all the true dog stories we had ever heard, and

MacShaughnassy, in particular, was growing every moment more restless and moody. Brown concluded a

long discourseto which nobody had listenedby remarking with some pride, "What more can you want?

Then MacShaughnassy gave way. "Talking of plots," he said, hitching his chair a little nearer the table, "that

puts me in mind. Did I ever tell you about that dog we had when we lived in Norwood?"

"Well, it was a bulldog," admitted MacShaughnassy, "but I don't think I've ever told it you before."

We knew, by experience, that to argue the matter would only prolong the torture, so we let him go on.

"A great many burglaries had lately taken place in our neighbourhood," he began, "and the pater came to the

conclusion that it was time he laid down a dog. He thought a bulldog would be the best for his purpose, and

"My mother was alarmed when she saw the dog. 'Surely you're not going to let that brute loose about the

"'I want him to kill somebody,' replied my father; 'I want him to kill burglars.'

"'I don't like to hear you talk like that, Thomas,' answered the mater; 'it's not like you. We've a right to protect

"'Our fellow human creatures will be all rightso long as they don't come into our kitchen when they've no

business there,' retorted my father, somewhat testily. 'I'm going to fix up this dog in the scullery, and if a

"The old folks quarrelled on and off for about a month over this dog. The dad thought the mater absurdly

sentimental, and the mater thought the dad unnecessarily vindictive. Meanwhile the dog grew more

"One night my mother woke my father up with: 'Thomas, there's a burglar downstairs, I'm positive. I

"'Oh, well, the dog's got him by now, then,' murmured my father, who had heard nothing, and was sleepy.

"'Thomas,' replied my mother severely, 'I'm not going to lie here while a fellowcreature is being murdered

"'Oh, bother,' said my father, preparing to get up. 'You're always fancying you hear noises. I believe that's all

you women come to bed forto sit up and listen for burglars.' Just to satisfy her, however, he pulled on his

"Well, sure enough, my mother was right, this time. There WAS a burglar in the house. The pantry window

stood open, and a light was shining in the kitchen. My father crept softly forward, and peeped through the

partly open door. There sat the burglar, eating cold beef and pickles, and there, beside him, on the floor,

gazing up into his face with a bloodcurdling smile of affection, sat that idiot of a dog, wagging his tail.

"'Well, I'm,' and he used a word that I should not care to repeat to you fellows.

"The burglar, hearing him, made a dash, and got clear off by the window; and the dog seemed vexed with my

"'What do you think I wanted this dog for?' asked my father, trying to speak calmly.

"'Exactly so,' answered the dad. 'I didn't ask for a burglar's companion, did I? I didn't say I wanted a dog

who'd chum on with a burglar the first time he ever came to the house, and sit with him while he had supper,

in case he might feel lonesome, did I?' And my father recounted the incidents of the previous night.

"The man agreed that there was cause for complaint. 'I'll tell you what it is, sir,' he said. 'It was my boy Jim as

trained this 'ere dawg, and I guess the young beggar's taught 'im more about tackling rats than burglars. You

"'You'll find 'im game enough now, sir,' said the man. ''E ain't what I call an intellectual dawg, but I think I've

"My father thought he'd like to test the matter, so we hired a man for a shilling to break in through the kitchen

window while the trainer held the dog by a chain. The dog remained perfectly quiet until the man was fairly

inside. Then he made one savage spring at him, and if the chain had not been stout the fellow would have

"The dad was satisfied now that he could go to bed in peace; and the mater's alarm for the safety of the local

"Months passed uneventfully by, and then another burglar sampled our house. This time there could be no

doubt that the dog was doing something for his living. The din in the basement was terrific. The house shook

"My father snatched up his revolver and rushed downstairs, and I followed him. The kitchen was in

confusion. Tables and chairs were overturned, and on the floor lay a man gurgling for help. The dog was

"The pater held his revolver to the man's ear, while I, by superhuman effort, dragged our preserver away, and

"'Good heavens!' exclaimed my father, dropping the revolver, 'however did you come here?'

"''Ow did I come 'ere?' retorted the man, sitting up and speaking in a tone of bitter, but not unnatural,

indignation. 'Why, in the course of my dooty, that's 'ow I come 'ere. I see a burglar getting in through the

"'Did I catch 'im!' almost shrieked the man. "Ow could I catch 'im with that blasted dog of yours 'olding me

"The dog was for sale the next day. The mater, who had grown to like him, because he let the baby pull his

tail, wanted us to keep him. The mistake, she said, was not the animal's fault. Two men broke into the house

almost at the same time. The dog could not go for both of them. He did his best, and went for one. That his

selection should have fallen upon the policeman instead of upon the burglar was unfortunate. But still it was a

"My father, however, had become prejudiced against the poor creature, and that same week he inserted an

advertisement in The Field, in which the animal was recommended as an investment likely to prove useful to

MacShaughnassy having had his innings, Jephson took a turn, and told us a pathetic story about an

unfortunate mongrel that was run over in the Strand one day and its leg broken. A medical student, who was

passing at the time, picked it up and carried it to the Charing Cross Hospital, where its leg was set, and where

The poor thing had quite understood what was being done for it, and had been the most grateful patient they

One morning, a week or two later, the housesurgeon, looking out of the window, saw the dog coming down

the street. When it came near he noticed that it had a penny in its mouth. A cat'smeat barrow was standing

But his nobler nature asserted itself, and, walking straight up to the hospital railings, and raising himself upon

MacShaughnassy was much affected by this story. He said it showed such a beautiful trait in the dog's

character. The animal was a poor outcast, vagrant thing, that had perhaps never possessed a penny before in

all its life, and might never have another. He said that dog's penny seemed to him to be a greater gift than the

The other three were very eager now to get to work on the novel, but I did not quite see the fairness of this. I

I knew a blackandtan terrier years ago. He lodged in the same house with me. He did not belong to any

one. He had discharged his owner (if, indeed, he had ever permitted himself to possess one, which is

doubtful, having regard to his aggressively independent character), and was now running himself entirely on

his own account. He appropriated the front hall for his sleepingapartment, and took his meals with the other

At five o'clock he would take an early morning snack with young Hollis, an engineer's pupil, who had to get

up at halfpast four and make his own coffee, so as to be down at the works by six. At eightthirty he would

breakfast in a more sensible fashion with Mr. Blair, on the first floor, and on occasions would join Jack

From then till about five, when I generally had a cup of tea and a chop, he regularly disappeared. Where he

went and what he did between those hours nobody ever knew. Gadbut swore that twice he had met him

coming out of a stockbroker's office in Threadneedle Street, and, improbable though the statement at first

appeared, some colour of credibility began to attach to it when we reflected upon the dog's inordinate passion

This craving of his for wealth was really quite remarkable. He was an elderly dog, with a great sense of his

own dignity; yet, on the promise of a penny, I have seen him run round after his own tail until he didn't know

He used to teach himself tricks, and go from room to room in the evening, performing them, and when he had

completed his programme he would sit up and beg. All the fellows used to humour him. He must have made

Once, just outside our door, I saw him standing in a crowd, watching a performing poodle attached to a

hurdygurdy. The poodle stood on his head, and then, with his hind legs in the air, walked round on his front

paws. The people laughed very much, and, when afterwards he came amongst them with his wooden saucer

Our dog came in and immediately commenced to study. In three days HE could stand on his head and walk

round on his front legs, and the first evening he did so he made sixpence. It must have been terribly hard

work for him at his age, and subject to rheumatism as he was; but he would do anything for money. I believe

He knew the value of money. If you held out to him a penny in one hand and a threepennybit in the other,

he would snatch at the threepence, and then break his heart because he could not get the penny in as well.

You might safely have left him in the room with a leg of mutton, but it would not have been wise to leave

Now and then he spent a little, but not often. He was desperately fond of spongecakes, and occasionally,

when he had had a good week, he would indulge himself to the extent of one or two. But he hated paying for

them, and always made a frantic and frequently successful effort to get off with the cake and the penny also.

His plan of operations was simple. He would walk into the shop with his penny in his mouth, well displayed,

and a sweet and lamblike expression in his eyes. Taking his stand as near to the cakes as he could get, and

fixing his eyes affectionately upon them, he would begin to whine, and the shopkeeper, thinking he was

To get the cake he was obliged, of course, to drop the penny, and then began a struggle between him and the

shopkeeper for the possession of the coin. The man would try to pick it up. The dog would put his foot upon

it, and growl savagely. If he could finish the cake before the contest was over, he would snap up the penny

and bolt. I have known him to come home gorged with spongecakes, the original penny still in his mouth.

So notorious throughout the neighbourhood did this dishonest practice of his become, that, after a time, the

majority of the local tradespeople refused to serve him at all. Only the exceptionally quick and ablebodied

Then he took his custom further afield, into districts where his reputation had not yet penetrated. And he

They say that the love of money is the root of all evil. It seemed to have robbed him of every shred of

It robbed him of his life in the end, and that came about in this way. He had been performing one evening in

Gadbut's room, where a few of us were sitting smoking and talking; and young Hollis, being in a generous

mood, had thrown him, as he thought, a sixpence. The dog grabbed it, and retired under the sofa. This was an

odd thing for him to do, and we commented upon it. Suddenly a thought occurred to Hollis, and he took out

"By Jove," he exclaimed, "I've given that little beast halfa sovereignhere, Tiny!"

But Tiny only backed further underneath the sofa, and no mere verbal invitation would induce him to stir. So

He came, an inch at a time, growling viciously, and holding Hollis's halfsovereign tight between his teeth.

We tried sweet reasonableness at first. We offered him a sixpence in exchange; he looked insulted, and

evidently considered the proposal as tantamount to our calling him a fool. We made it a shilling, then halfa

"I don't think you'll ever see this halfsovereign again, Hollis," said Gadbut, laughing. We all, with the

exception of young Hollis, thought the affair a very good joke. He, on the contrary, seemed annoyed, and,

Tiny, true to his lifelong principle of never parting if he could possibly help it, held on like grim death, until,

feeling that his little earnings were slowly but surely going from him, he made one final desperate snatch, and

Then we became seriously alarmed for the dog. He was an amusing chap, and we did not want any accident

to happen to him. Hollis rushed into his room and procured a long pair of pincers, and the rest of us held the

But poor Tiny did not understand our intentions. He still thought we were seeking to rob him of his night's

takings, and resisted vehemently. His struggles fixed the coin firmer, and, in spite of our efforts, he

I dreamt a very curious dream about riches once, that made a great impression upon me. I thought that I and a

frienda very dear friendwere living together in a strange old house. I don't think anybody else dwelt in

the house but just we two. One day, wandering about this strange old rambling place, I discovered the hidden

door of a secret room, and in this room were many ironbound chests, and when I raised the heavy lids I saw

And, when I saw this, I stole out softly and closed the hidden door, and drew the worn tapestries in front of it

And the friend that I had loved came towards me, and we walked together with our hands clasped. But I hated

And all day long I kept beside him, or followed him unseen, lest by chance he should learn the secret of that

But one night I sleep, and, when I open my eyes, he is no longer near me. I run swiftly up the narrow stairs

and along the silent corridor. The tapestry is drawn aside, and the hidden door stands open, and in the room

beyond the friend that I loved is kneeling before an open chest, and the glint of the gold is in my eyes.

His back is towards me, and I crawl forward inch by inch. I have a knife in my hand, with a strong, curved

His body falls against the door, and it shuts to with a clang, and I try to open it, and cannot. I beat my hands

against its iron nails, and scream, and the dead man grins at me. The light streams in through the chink

beneath the massive door, and fades, and comes again, and fades again, and I gnaw at the oaken lids of the

Then I awake, and find that I really am hungry, and remember that in consequence of a headache I did not eat

any dinner. So I slip on a few clothes, and go down to the kitchen on a foraging expedition.

It is said that dreams are momentary conglomerations of thought, centring round the incident that awakens us,

and, as with most scientific facts, this is occasionally true. There is one dream that, with slight variations, is

continually recurring to me. Over and over again I dream that I am suddenly called upon to act an important

part in some piece at the Lyceum. That poor Mr. Irving should invariably be the victim seems unfair, but

really it is entirely his own fault. It is he who persuades and urges me. I myself would much prefer to remain

quietly in bed, and I tell him so. But he insists on my getting up at once and coming down to the theatre. I

explain to him that I can't act a bit. He seems to consider this unimportant, and says, "Oh, that will be all

right." We argue for a while, but he makes the matter quite a personal one, and to oblige him and get him out

of the bedroom I consent, though much against my own judgment. I generally dress the character in my

nightshirt, though on one occasion, for Banquo, I wore pyjamas, and I never remember a single word of what

I ought to say. How I get through I do not know. Irving comes up afterwards and congratulates me, but

whether upon the brilliancy of my performance, or upon my luck in getting off the stage before a brickbat is

Whenever I dream this incident I invariably wake up to find that the bedclothes are on the floor, and that I am

shivering with cold; and it is this shivering, I suppose, that causes me to dream I am wandering about the

Lyceum stage in nothing but my nightshirt. But still I do not understand why it should always be the Lyceum.

Another dream which I fancy I have dreamt more than onceor, if not, I have dreamt that I dreamt it before,

a thing one sometimes doesis one in which I am walking down a very wide and very long road in the East

End of London. It is a curious road to find there. Omnibuses and trams pass up and down, and it is crowded

with stalls and barrows, beside which men in greasy caps stand shouting; yet on each side it is bordered by a

strip of tropical forest. The road, in fact, combines the advantages of Kew and Whitechapel.

Some one is with me, but I cannot see him, and we walk through the forest, pushing our way among the

tangled vines that cling about our feet, and every now and then, between the giant treetrunks, we catch

At the end of this road there is a narrow turning, and when I come to it I am afraid, though I do not know why

I am afraid. It leads to a house that I once lived in when a child, and now there is some one waiting there who

I turn to run away. A Blackwall 'bus is passing, and I try to overtake it. But the horses turn into skeletons and

gallop away from me, and my feet are like lead, and the thing that is with me, and that I cannot see, seizes me

It forces me along, and into the house, and the door slams to behind us, and the sound echoes through the

lifeless rooms. I recognise the rooms; I laughed and cried in them long ago. Nothing is changed. The chairs

stand in their places, empty. My mother's knitting lies upon the hearthrug, where the kitten, I remember,

I go up into my own little attic. My cot stands in the corner, and my bricks lie tumbled out upon the floor (I

was always an untidy child). An old man entersan old, bent, withered manholding a lamp above his

head, and I look at his face, and it is my own face. And another enters, and he also is myself. Then more and

more, till the room is thronged with faces, and the stairway beyond, and all the silent house. Some of the

faces are old and others young, and some are fair and smile at me, and many are foul and leer at me. And

I do not know why the sight of myself should alarm me so, but I rush from the house in terror, and the faces

follow me; and I run faster and faster, but I know that I shall never leave them behind me.

As a rule one is the hero of one's own dreams, but at times I have dreamt a dream entirely in the third

persona dream with the incidents of which I have had no connection whatever, except as an unseen and

impotent spectator. One of these I have often thought about since, wondering if it could not be worked up into

I dreamt I saw a woman's face among a throng. It is an evil face, but there is a strange beauty in it. The

flickering gleams thrown by street lamps flash down upon it, showing the wonder of its evil fairness. Then

I see it next in a place that is very far away, and it is even more beautiful than before, for the evil has gone out

of it. Another face is looking down into it, a bright, pure face. The faces meet and kiss, and, as his lips touch

hers, the blood mounts to her cheeks and brow. I see the two faces again. But I cannot tell where they are or

how long a time has passed. The man's face has grown a little older, but it is still young and fair, and when

the woman's eyes rest upon it there comes a glory into her face so that it is like the face of an angel. But at

Then I see clearer. I see the room in which they live. It is very poor. An oldfashioned piano stands in one

corner, and beside it is a table on which lie scattered a tumbled mass of papers round an inkstand. An empty

From far below there rises the sound of a great city. Its lights throw up faint beams into the dark room. The

Every now and again she looks towards the door and listens: then turns to the open window. And I notice that

each time she looks towards the door the evil in her face shrinks back; but each time she turns to the window

Suddenly she starts up, and there is a terror in her eyes that frightens me as I dream, and I see great beads of

sweat upon her brow. Then, very slowly, her face changes, and I see again the evil creature of the night. She

wraps around her an old cloak, and creeps out. I hear her footsteps going down the stairs. They grow fainter

and fainter. I hear a door open. The roar of the streets rushes up into the house, and the woman's footsteps are

Time drifts onward through my dream. Scenes change, take shape, and fade; but all is vague and undefined,

until, out of the dimness, there fashions itself a long, deserted street. The lights make glistening circles on the

wet pavement. A figure, dressed in gaudy rags, slinks by, keeping close against the wall. Its back is towards

me, and I do not see its face. Another figure glides from out the shadows. I look upon its face, and I see it is

the face that the woman's eyes gazed up into and worshipped long ago, when my dream was just begun. But

the fairness and the purity are gone from it, and it is old and evil, as the woman's when I looked upon her last.

The figure in the gaudy rags moves slowly on. The second figure follows it, and overtakes it. The two pause,

and speak to one another as they draw near. The street is very dark where they have met, and the figure in the

gaudy rags keeps its face still turned aside. They walk together in silence, till they come to where a flaring

gaslamp hangs before a tavern; and there the woman turns, and I see that it is the woman of my dream. And

In another dream that I remember, an angel (or a devil, I am not quite sure which) has come to a man and told

him that so long as he loves no living human thingso long as he never suffers himself to feel one touch of

tenderness towards wife or child, towards kith or kin, towards stranger or towards friend, so long will he

succeed and prosper in his dealingsso long will all this world's affairs go well with him; and he will grow

each day richer and greater and more powerful. But if ever he let one kindly thought for living thing come

into his heart, in that moment all his plans and schemes will topple down about his ears; and from that hour

And the man treasures up these words, for he is an ambitious man, and wealth and fame and power are the

sweetest things in all the world to him. A woman loves him and dies, thirsting for a loving look from him;

children's footsteps creep into his life and steal away again, old faces fade and new ones come and go.

But never a kindly touch of his hand rests on any living thing; never a kindly word comes from his lips; never

a kindly thought springs from his heart. And in all his doings fortune favours him.

The years pass by, and at last there is left to him only one thing that he need feara child's small, wistful

face. The child loves him, as the woman, long ago, had loved him, and her eyes follow him with a hungry,

The little face grows thin, and one day they come to him where he sits before the keyboard of his many

enterprises, and tell him she is dying. He comes and stands beside the bed, and the child's eyes open and turn

towards him; and, as he draws nearer, her little arms stretch out towards him, pleading dumbly. But the man's

face never changes, and the little arms fall feebly back upon the tumbled coverlet, and the wistful eyes grow

still, and a woman steps softly forward, and draws the lids down over them; then the man goes back to his

But in the night, when the great house is silent, he steals up to the room where the child still lies, and pushes

"Deaddead," he mutters. Then he takes the tiny corpse up in his arms, and holds it tight against his breast,

and kisses the cold lips, and the cold cheeks, and the little, cold, stiff hands.

And at that point my story becomes impossible, for I dream that the dead child lies always beneath the sheet

in that quiet room, and that the little face never changes, nor the limbs decay.

I puzzle about this for an instant, but soon forget to wonder; for when the Dream Fairy tells us tales we are

only as little children, sitting round with open eyes, believing all, though marvelling that such things should

Each night, when all else in the house sleeps, the door of that room opens noiselessly, and the man enters and

closes it behind him. Each night he draws away the white sheet, and takes the small dead body in his arms;

and through the dark hours he paces softly to and fro, holding it close against his breast, kissing it and

When the first ray of dawn peeps into the room, he lays the dead child back again, and smooths the sheet

And he succeeds and prospers in all things, and each day he grows richer and greater and more powerful.

We had much trouble with our heroine. Brown wanted her ugly. Brown's chief ambition in life is to be

original, and his method of obtaining the original is to take the unoriginal and turn it upside down.

If Brown were given a little planet of his own to do as he liked with, he would call day, night, and summer,

winter. He would make all his men and women walk on their heads and shake hands with their feet, his trees

would grow with their roots in the air, and the old cock would lay all the eggs while the hens sat on the fence

and crowed. Then he would step back and say, "See what an original world I have created, entirely my own

There are many other people besides Brown whose notion of originality would seem to be precisely similar.

I know a little girl, the descendant of a long line of politicians. The hereditary instinct is so strongly

developed in her that she is almost incapable of thinking for herself. Instead, she copies in everything her

elder sister, who takes more after the mother. If her sister has two helpings of rice pudding for supper, then

she has two helpings of rice pudding. If her sister isn't hungry and doesn't want any supper at all, then she

This lack of character in the child troubles her mother, who is not an admirer of the political virtues, and one

"Do try to think for yourself," said she. "Don't always do just what Jessie does, that's silly. Have an idea of

Next morning, for breakfast, a dish of kippers and a dish of kidneys were placed on the table, side by side.

Now the child loved kippers with an affection that amounted almost to passion, while she loathed kidneys

"A kidney or a kipper for you, Jessie?" asked the mother, addressing the elder child first.

Jessie hesitated for a moment, while her sister sat regarding her in an agony of suspense.

"Kipper, please, ma," Jessie answered at last, and the younger child turned her head away to hide the tears.

"You'll have a kipper, of course, Trixy?" said the mother, who had noticed nothing.

"No, thank you, ma," said the small heroine, stifling a sob, and speaking in a dry, tremulous voice, "I'll have a

"'Cos Jessie's going to have one, and you told me to be original," and here the poor mite, reflecting upon the

The other three of us refused to sacrifice ourselves upon the altar of Brown's originality. We decided to be

"Well," replied Jephson, taking the pipe from between his lips, and speaking in that soothingly melancholy

tone of voice that he never varies, whether telling a joke about a wedding or an anecdote relating to a funeral,

"not altogether bad. Bad, with good instincts, the good instincts well under control."

"I wonder why it is," murmured MacShaughnassy reflectively, "that bad people are so much more interesting

"I don't think the reason is very difficult to find," answered Jephson. "There's more uncertainty about them.

They keep you more on the alert. It's like the difference between riding a well broken, steadygoing hack

and a lively young colt with ideas of his own. The one is comfortable to travel on, but the other provides you

with more exercise. If you start off with a thoroughly good woman for your heroine you give your story away

in the first chapter. Everybody knows precisely how she will behave under every conceivable combination of

circumstances in which you can place her. On every occasion she will do the same thingthat is the right

"With a bad heroine, on the other hand, you can never be quite sure what is going to happen. Out of the fifty

or so courses open to her, she may take the right one, or she may take one of the forty nine wrong ones, and

"At intervalswhen they do something wrong," answered Jephson. "A consistently irreproachable heroine is

as irritating as Socrates must have been to Xantippe, or as the model boy at school is to all the other lads.

Take the stock heroine of the eighteenthcentury romance. She never met her lover except for the purpose of

telling him that she could not be his, and she generally wept steadily throughout the interview. She never

forgot to turn pale at the sight of blood, nor to faint in his arms at the most inconvenient moment possible.

She was determined never to marry without her father's consent, and was equally resolved never to marry

anybody but the one particular person she was convinced he would never agree to her marrying. She was an

"Ah, but you're not talking about good women now," I observed. "You're talking about some silly person's

"I quite admit it," replied Jephson. "Nor, indeed, am I prepared to say what is a good woman. I consider the

subject too deep and too complicated for any mere human being to give judgment upon. But I AM talking of

the women who conformed to the popular idea of maidenly goodness in the age when these books were

written. You must remember goodness is not a known quantity. It varies with every age and every locality,

and it is, generally speaking, your 'silly persons' who are responsible for its varying standards. In Japan, a

'good' girl would be a girl who would sell her honour in order to afford little luxuries to her aged parents. In

certain hospitable islands of the torrid zone the 'good' wife goes to lengths that we should deem altogether

unnecessary in making her husband's guest feel himself at home. In ancient Hebraic days, Jael was accounted

a good woman for murdering a sleeping man, and Sarai stood in no danger of losing the respect of her little

world when she led Hagar unto Abraham. In eighteenthcentury England, supernatural stupidity and dulness

of a degree that must have been difficult to attain, were held to be feminine virtuesindeed, they are so

stilland authors, who are always among the most servile followers of public opinion, fashioned their

puppets accordingly. Nowadays 'slumming' is the most applauded virtue, and so all our best heroines go

"How useful 'the poor' are," remarked MacShaughnassy, somewhat abruptly, placing his feet on the

mantelpiece, and tilting his chair back till it stood at an angle that caused us to rivet our attention upon it with

hopeful interest. "I don't think we scribbling fellows ever fully grasp how much we owe to 'the poor.' Where

would our angelic heroines and our noblehearted heroes be if it were not for 'the poor'? We want to show

that the dear girl is as good as she is beautiful. What do we do? We put a basket full of chickens and bottles

of wine on her arm, a fetching little sunbonnet on her head, and send her round among the poor. How do we

prove that our apparent scamp of a hero is really a noble young man at heart? Why, by explaining that he is

"They are as useful in real life as they are in Bookland. What is it consoles the tradesman when the actor,

earning eighty pounds a week, cannot pay his debts? Why, reading in the theatrical newspapers gushing

accounts of the dear fellow's invariable generosity to the poor. What is it stills the small but irritating voice of

conscience when we have successfully accomplished some extra big feat of swindling? Why, the noble

"What does a man do when he finds himself growing old, and feels that it is time for him to think seriously

about securing his position in the next world? Why, he becomes suddenly good to the poor. If the poor were

not there for him to be good to, what could he do? He would be unable to reform at all. It's a great comfort to

think that the poor will always be with us. They are the ladder by which we climb into heaven."

There was silence for a few moments, while MacShaughnassy puffed away vigorously, and almost savagely,

at his pipe, and then Brown said: "I can tell you rather a quaint incident, bearing very aptly on the subject. A

cousin of mine was a landagent in a small country town, and among the houses on his list was a fine old

mansion that had remained vacant for many years. He had despaired of ever selling it, when one day an

elderly lady, very richly dressed, drove up to the office and made inquiries about it. She said she had come

across it accidentally while travelling through that part of the country the previous autumn, and had been

much struck by its beauty and picturesqueness. She added she was looking out for some quiet spot where she

could settle down and peacefully pass the remainder of her days, and thought this place might possibly prove

"My cousin, delighted with the chance of a purchaser, at once drove her across to the estate, which was about

eight miles distant from the town, and they went over it together. My cousin waxed eloquent upon the subject

of its advantages. He dwelt upon its quiet and seclusion, its proximitybut not too close proximityto the

"Everything pointed to a satisfactory conclusion of the business. The lady was charmed with the situation and

the surroundings, and delighted with the house and grounds. She considered the price moderate.

"'And now, Mr. Brown,' said she, as they stood by the lodge gate, 'tell me, what class of poor have you got

"'No poor!' exclaimed the lady. 'No poor people in the village, or anywhere near?'

"'You won't find a poor person within five miles of the estate,' he replied proudly. 'You see, my dear madam,

this is a thinly populated and exceedingly prosperous county: this particular district especially so. There is not

"'I'm sorry to hear that,' said the lady, in a tone of disappointment. 'The place would have suited me so

"'But surely, madam,' cried my cousin, to whom a demand for poor persons was an entirely new idea, 'you

don't mean to say that you WANT poor people! Why, we've always considered it one of the chief attractions

of the propertynothing to shock the eye or wound the susceptibilities of the most tenderhearted occupant.'

"'My dear Mr. Brown,' replied the lady, 'I will be perfectly frank with you. I am becoming an old woman, and

my past life has not, perhaps, been altogether too well spent. It is my desire to atone for theerfollies of

my youth by an old age of welldoing, and to that end it is essential that I should be surrounded by a certain

number of deserving poor. I had hoped to find in this charming neighbourhood of yours the customary

proportion of poverty and misery, in which case I should have taken the house without hesitation. As it is, I

"My cousin was perplexed, and sad. 'There are plenty of poor people in the town,' he said, 'many of them

most interesting cases, and you could have the entire care of them all. There'd be no opposition whatever, I'm

"'Thank you,' replied the lady, 'but I really couldn't go as far as the town. They must be within easy driving

"My cousin cudgelled his brains again. He did not intend to let a purchaser slip through his fingers if he could

help it. At last a bright thought flashed into his mind. 'I'll tell you what we could do,' he said. 'There's a piece

of waste land the other end of the village that we've never been able to do much with, in consequence of its

being so swampy. If you liked, we could run you up a dozen cottages on that, cheapit would be all the

better their being a bit ramshackle and unhealthyand get some poor people for you, and put into them.'

"'You see,' continued my cousin, pushing his advantage, 'by adopting this method you would be able to select

your own poor. We would get you some nice, clean, grateful poor, and make the thing pleasant for you.'

"It ended in the lady's accepting my cousin's offer, and giving him a list of the poor people she would like to

have. She selected one bedridden old woman (Church of England preferred); one paralytic old man; one blind

girl who would want to be read aloud to; one poor atheist, willing to be converted; two cripples; one drunken

father who would consent to be talked to seriously; one disagreeable old fellow, needing much patience; two

"My cousin experienced some difficulty in securing the drunken father. Most of the drunken fathers he

interviewed upon the subject had a rooted objection to being talked to at all. After a long search, however, he

discovered a mild little man, who, upon the lady's requirements and charitable intentions being explained to

him, undertook to qualify himself for the vacancy by getting intoxicated at least once a week. He said he

could not promise more than once a week at first, he unfortunately possessing a strong natural distaste for all

alcoholic liquors, which it would be necessary for him to overcome. As he got more used to them, he would

"Over the disagreeable old man, my cousin also had trouble. It was hard to hit the right degree of

disagreeableness. Some of them were so very unpleasant. He eventually made choice of a decayed cab

"The plan worked exceedingly well, and does so, my cousin tells me, to this day. The drunken father has

completely conquered his dislike to strong drink. He has not been sober now for over three weeks, and has

lately taken to knocking his wife about. The disagreeable fellow is most conscientious in fulfilling his part of

the bargain, and makes himself a perfect curse to the whole village. The others have dropped into their

respective positions and are working well. The lady visits them all every afternoon, and is most charitable.

Brown rose as he finished speaking, and mixed himself a glass of whisky and water with the selfsatisfied air

of a benevolent man about to reward somebody for having done a good deed; and MacShaughnassy lifted up

"I know a story bearing on the subject, too," he said. "It happened in a tiny Yorkshire villagea peaceful,

respectable spot, where folks found life a bit slow. One day, however, a new curate arrived, and that woke

things up considerably. He was a nice young man, and, having a large private income of his own, was

altogether a most desirable catch. Every unmarried female in the place went for him with one accord.

"But ordinary feminine blandishments appeared to have no effect upon him. He was a seriously inclined

young man, and once, in the course of a casual conversation upon the subject of love, he was heard to say that

he himself should never be attracted by mere beauty and charm. What would appeal to him, he said, would be

"Well, that set the petticoats all thinking. They saw that in studying fashion plates and practising expressions

they had been going upon the wrong tack. The card for them to play was 'the poor.' But here a serious

difficulty arose. There was only one poor person in the whole parish, a cantankerous old fellow who lived in

a tumbledown cottage at the back of the church, and fifteen ablebodied women (eleven girls, three old

"Miss Simmonds, one of the old maids, got hold of him first, and commenced feeding him twice a day with

beeftea; and then the widow boarded him with port wine and oysters. Later in the week others of the party

The old man couldn't understand it. He was accustomed to a small sack of coals now and then, accompanied

by a long lecture on his sins, and an occasional bottle of dandelion tea. This sudden spurt on the part of

Providence puzzled him. He said nothing, however, but continued to take in as much of everything as he

could hold. At the end of a month he was too fat to get through his own back door.

"The competition among the womenfolk grew keener every day, and at last the old man began to give

himself airs, and to make the place hard for them. He made them clean his cottage out, and cook his meals,

and when he was tired of having them about the house, he set them to work in the garden.

"They grumbled a good deal, and there was a talk at one time of a sort of a strike, but what could they do? He

was the only pauper for miles round, and knew it. He had the monopoly, and, like all monopolises, he abused

"He made them run errands. He sent them out to buy his 'baccy,' at their own expense. On one occasion he

sent Miss Simmonds out with a jug to get his supper beer. She indignantly refused at first, but he told her that

if she gave him any of her stuckup airs out she would go, and never come into his house again. If she

"They had been in the habit of reading to himgood books with an elevating tendency. But now he put his

foot down upon that sort of thing. He said he didn't want Sundayschool rubbish at his time of life. What he

liked was something spicy. And he made them read him French novels and seafaring tales, containing

realistic language. And they didn't have to skip anything either, or he'd know the reason why.

"He said he liked music, so a few of them clubbed together and bought him a harmonium. Their idea was that

they would sing hymns and play highclass melodies, but it wasn't his. His idea was 'Keeping up the old

girl's birthday' and 'She winked the other eye,' with chorus and skirt dance, and that's what they sang.

"To what lengths his tyranny would have gone it is difficult to say, had not an event happened that brought

his power to a premature collapse. This was the curate's sudden and somewhat unexpected marriage with a

very beautiful burlesque actress who had lately been performing in a neighbouring town. He gave up the

Church on his engagement, in consequence of his fiancee's objection to becoming a minister's wife. She said

"With the curate's wedding the old pauper's brief career of prosperity ended. They packed him off to the

At the end of the telling of his tale, MacShaughnassy lifted his feet off the mantelpiece, and set to work to

But none of us felt inclined to laugh at Jephson's stories, for they dealt not with the goodness of the rich to the

poor, which is a virtue yielding quick and highly satisfactory returns, but with the goodness of the poor to the

poor, a somewhat less remunerative investment and a different matter altogether.

For the poor themselvesI do not mean the noisy professional poor, but the silent, fighting poorone is

bound to feel a genuine respect. One honours them, as one honours a wounded soldier.

In the perpetual warfare between Humanity and Nature, the poor stand always in the van. They die in the

ditches, and we march over their bodies with the flags flying and the drums playing.

One cannot think of them without an uncomfortable feeling that one ought to be a little bit ashamed of living

in security and ease, leaving them to take all the hard blows. It is as if one were always skulking in the tents,

They bleed and fall in silence there. Nature with her terrible club, "Survival of the Fittest"; and Civilisation

with her cruel sword, "Supply and Demand," beat them back, and they give way inch by inch, fighting to the

end. But it is in a dumb, sullen way, that is not sufficiently picturesque to be heroic.

I remember seeing an old bulldog, one Saturday night, lying on the doorstep of a small shop in the New Cut.

He lay there very quiet, and seemed a bit sleepy; and, as he looked savage, nobody disturbed him. People

stepped in and out over him, and occasionally in doing so, one would accidentally kick him, and then he

At last a passerby, feeling something wet beneath his feet, looked down, and found that he was standing in a

pool of blood, and, looking to see where it came from, found that it flowed in a thick, dark stream from the

Then he stooped down and examined the dog, and the dog opened its eyes sleepily and looked at him, gave a

grin which may have implied pleasure, or may have implied irritation at being disturbed, and died.

A crowd collected, and they turned the dead body of the dog over on its side, and saw a fearful gash in the

groin, out of which oozed blood, and other things. The proprietor of the shop said the animal had been there

I have known the poor to die in that same grim, silent waynot the poor that you, my delicatelygloved

Lady Bountiful and my very excellent Sir Simon DoGood, know, or that you would care to know; not the

poor who march in processions with banners and collection boxes; not the poor that clamour round your

soup kitchens and sing hymns at your tea meetings; but the poor that you don't know are poor until the tale is

told at the coroner's inquestthe silent, proud poor who wake each morning to wrestle with Death till night

time, and who, when at last he overcomes them, and, forcing them down on the rotting floor of the dim attic,

There was a boy I came to know when I was living in the East End of London. He was not a nice boy by any

means. He was not quite so clean as are the good boys in the religious magazines, and I have known a sailor

He and his mother and the baby, a sickly infant of about five months old, lived in a cellar down a turning off

Three Colt Street. I am not quite sure what had become of the father. I rather think he had been "converted,"

and had gone off round the country on a preaching tour. The lad earned six shillings a week as an

errandboy; and the mother stitched trousers, and on days when she was feeling strong and energetic would

often make as much as tenpence, or even a shilling. Unfortunately, there were days when the four bare walls

would chase each other round and round, and the candle seem a faint speck of light, a very long way off; and

the frequency of these caused the family income for the week to occasionally fall somewhat low.

One night the walls danced round quicker and quicker till they danced away altogether, and the candle shot

up through the ceiling and became a star and the woman knew that it was time to put away her sewing.

"Jim," she said: she spoke very low, and the boy had to bend over her to hear, "if you poke about in the

middle of the mattress you'll find a couple of pounds. I saved them up a long while ago. That will pay for

burying me. And, Jim, you'll take care of the kid. You won't let it go to the parish."

Then the woman, having arranged her worldly affairs, lay back ready, and Death struck.

Jim kept his oath. He found the money, and buried his mother; and then, putting his household goods on a

barrow, moved into cheaper apartmentshalf an old shed, for which he paid two shillings a week.

For eighteen months he and the baby lived there. He left the child at a nursery every morning, fetching it

away each evening on his return from work, and for that he paid fourpence a day, which included a limited

supply of milk. How he managed to keep himself and more than half keep the child on the remaining two

shillings I cannot say. I only know that he did it, and that not a soul ever helped him or knew that there was

help wanted. He nursed the child, often pacing the room with it for hours, washed it, occasionally, and took it

Notwithstanding all which care, the little beggar, at the end of the time above mentioned, "pegged out," to use

The coroner was very severe on Jim. "If you had taken proper steps," he said, "this child's life might have

been preserved." (He seemed to think it would have been better if the child's life had been preserved.

"'Cos I didn't want no relief," replied Jim sullenly. "I promised my mother it should never go on the parish,

The incident occurred, very luckily, during the dead season, and the evening papers took the case up, and

made rather a good thing out of it. Jim became quite a hero, I remember. Kindhearted people wrote, urging

that somebodythe ground landlord, or the Government, or some one of that sortought to do something

for him. And everybody abused the local vestry. I really think some benefit to Jim might have come out of it

all if only the excitement had lasted a little longer. Unfortunately, however, just at its height a spicy divorce

I told the boys this story of mine, after Jephson had done telling his, and, when I had finished, we found it

was nearly one o'clock. So, of course, it was too late to do any more work to the novel that evening.

We held our next business meeting on my houseboat. Brown was opposed at first to my going down to this

houseboat at all. He thought that none of us should leave town while the novel was still on hand.

MacShaughnassy, on the contrary, was of opinion that we should work better on a houseboat. Speaking for

himself, he said he never felt more like writing a really great work than when lying in a hammock among

whispering leaves, with the deep blue sky above him, and a tumbler of iced claret cup within easy reach of

his hand. Failing a hammock, he found a deck chair a great incentive to mental labour. In the interests of the

novel, he strongly recommended me to take down with me at least one comfortable deck chair, and plenty of

I could not myself see any reason why we should not be able to think as well on a houseboat as anywhere

else, and accordingly it was settled that I should go down and establish myself upon the thing, and that the

others should visit me there from time to time, when we would sit round and toil.

This houseboat was Ethelbertha's idea. We had spent a day, the summer before, on one belonging to a friend

of mine, and she had been enraptured with the life. Everything was on such a delightfully tiny scale. You

lived in a tiny little room; you slept on a tiny little bed, in a tiny, tiny little bedroom; and you cooked your

little dinner by a tiny little fire, in the tiniest little kitchen that ever you did see. "Oh, it must be lovely, living

on a houseboat," said Ethelbertha, with a gasp of ecstasy; "it must be like living in a doll's house."

Ethelbertha was very youngridiculously young, as I think I have mentioned beforein those days of

which I am writing, and the love of dolls, and of the gorgeous dresses that dolls wear, and of the

manywindowed but inconveniently arranged houses that dolls inhabit or are supposed to inhabit, for as a

rule they seem to prefer sitting on the roof with their legs dangling down over the front door, which has

always appeared to me to be unladylike: but then, of course, I am no authority on doll etiquettehad not yet,

I think, quite departed from her. Nay, am I not sure that it had not? Do I not remember, years later, peeping

into a certain room, the walls of which are covered with works of art of a character calculated to send any

aesthetic person mad, and seeing her, sitting on the floor, before a red brick mansion, containing two rooms

and a kitchen; and are not her hands trembling with delight as she arranges the three real tin plates upon the

dresser? And does she not knock at the real brass knocker upon the real front door until it comes off, and I

Perhaps, however, it is unwise for me to recall these things, and bring them forward thus in evidence against

her, for cannot she in turn laugh at me? Did not I also assist in the arrangement and appointment of that house

beautiful? We differed on the matter of the drawingroom carpet, I recollect. Ethelbertha fancied a dark blue

velvet, but I felt sure, taking the wallpaper into consideration, that some shade of terracotta would

harmonise best. She agreed with me in the end, and we manufactured one out of an old chest protector. It had

a really charming effect, and gave a delightfully warm tone to the room. The blue velvet we put in the

kitchen. I deemed this extravagance, but Ethelbertha said that servants thought a lot of a good carpet, and that

The bedroom had one big bed and a cot in it; but I could not see where the girl was going to sleep. The

architect had overlooked her altogether: that is so like an architect. The house also suffered from the

inconvenience common to residences of its class, of possessing no stairs, so that to move from one room to

another it was necessary to burst your way up through the ceiling, or else to come outside and climb in

through a window; either of which methods must be fatiguing when you come to do it often.

Apart from these drawbacks, however, the house was one that any doll agent would have been justified in

describing as a "most desirable family residence"; and it had been furnished with a lavishness that bordered

on positive ostentation. In the bedroom there was a washingstand, and on the washingstand there stood a

jug and basin, and in the jug there was real water. But all this was as nothing. I have known mere ordinary,

middleclass dolls' houses in which you might find washingstands and jugs and basins and real wateray,

and even soap. But in this abode of luxury there was a real towel; so that a body could not only wash himself,

but wipe himself afterwards, and that is a sensation that, as all dolls know, can be enjoyed only in the very

Then, in the drawingroom, there was a clock, which would tick just so long as you continued to shake it (it

never seemed to get tired); also a picture and a piano, and a book upon the table, and a vase of flowers that

would upset the moment you touched it, just like a real vase of flowers. Oh, there was style about this room, I

But the glory of the house was its kitchen. There were all things that heart could desire in this kitchen,

saucepans with lids that took on and off, a flatiron and a rollingpin. A dinner service for three occupied

about half the room, and what space was left was filled up by the stovea REAL stove! Think of it, oh ye

owners of dolls' houses, a stove in which you could burn real bits of coal, and on which you could boil real

bits of potato for dinnerexcept when people said you mustn't, because it was dangerous, and took the grate

I never saw a house more complete in all its details. Nothing had been overlooked, not even the family. It lay

on its back, just outside the front door, proud but calm, waiting to be put into possession. It was not an

extensive family. It consisted of four papa, and mamma, and baby, and the hired girl; just the family for a

It was a welldressed family toonot merely with grand clothes outside, covering a shameful condition of

things beneath, such as, alas! is too often the case in doll society, but with every article necessary and proper

to a lady or gentleman, down to items that I could not mention. And all these garments, you must know,

could be unfastened and taken off. I have known dollsstylish enough dolls, to look at, some of themwho

have been content to go about with their clothes gummed on to them, and, in some cases, nailed on with

tacks, which I take to be a slovenly and unhealthy habit. But this family could be undressed in five minutes,

Not that it was advisable from an artistic point of view that any of them should. They had not the figure that

looks well in its natural statenone of them. There was a want of fulness about them all. Besides, without

their clothes, it might have been difficult to distinguish the baby from the papa, or the maid from the mistress,

When all was ready for their reception we established them in their home. We put as much of the baby to bed

as the cot would hold, and made the papa and mamma comfortable in the drawingroom, where they sat on

the floor and stared thoughtfully at each other across the table. (They had to sit on the floor because the chairs

were not big enough.) The girl we placed in the kitchen, where she leant against the dresser in an attitude

suggestive of drink, embracing the broom we had given her with maudlin affection. Then we lifted up the

house with care, and carried it cautiously into another room, and with the deftness of experienced

conspirators placed it at the foot of a small bed, on the southwest corner of which an absurdly small

To return to our own doll's house, Ethelbertha and I, discussing the subject during our return journey in the

train, resolved that, next year, we ourselves would possess a houseboat, a smaller houseboat, if possible, than

even the one we had just seen. It should have artmuslin curtains and a flag, and the flowers about it should

be wild roses and forgetmenots. I could work all the morning on the roof, with an awning over me to keep

off the sun, while Ethelbertha trimmed the roses and made cakes for tea; and in the evenings we would sit out

on the little deck, and Ethelbertha would play the guitar (she would begin learning it at once), or we could sit

For, when you are very, very young you dream that the summer is all sunny days and moonlight nights, that

the wind blows always softly from the west, and that roses will thrive anywhere. But, as you grow older, you

grow tired of waiting for the gray sky to break. So you close the door and come in, and crouch over the fire,

wondering why the winds blow ever from the east: and you have given up trying to rear roses.

I knew a little cottage girl who saved up her money for months and months so as to buy a new frock in which

to go to a flowershow. But the day of the flowershow was a wet day, so she wore an old frock instead. And

all the fete days for quite a long while were wet days, and she feared she would never have a chance of

wearing her pretty white dress. But at last there came a fete day morning that was bright and sunny, and then

the little girl clapped her hands and ran upstairs, and took her new frock (which had been her "new frock" for

so long a time that it was now the oldest frock she had) from the box where it lay neatly folded between

lavender and thyme, and held it up, and laughed to think how nice she would look in it.

But when she went to put it on, she found that she had outgrown it, and that it was too small for her every

Things happen that way, you know, in this world. There were a boy and girl once who loved each other very

dearly. But they were both poor, so they agreed to wait till he had made enough money for them to live

comfortably upon, and then they would marry and be happy. It took him a long while to make, because

making money is very slow work, and he wanted, while he was about it, to make enough for them to be very

happy upon indeed. He accomplished the task eventually, however, and came back home a wealthy man.

Then they met again in the poorlyfurnished parlour where they had parted. But they did not sit as near to

each other as of old. For she had lived alone so long that she had grown oldmaidish, and she was feeling

vexed with him for having dirtied the carpet with his muddy boots. And he had worked so long earning

money that he had grown hard and cold like the money itself, and was trying to think of something

So for a while they sat, one each side of the paper "firestove ornament," both wondering why they had shed

such scalding tears on that day they had kissed each other goodbye; then said "goodbye" again, and were

There is another tale with much the same moral that I learnt at school out of a copybook. If I remember

Once upon a time there lived a wise grasshopper and a foolish ant. All through the pleasant summer weather

the grasshopper sported and played, gambolling with his fellows in and out among the sunbeams, dining

sumptuously each day on leaves and dewdrops, never troubling about the morrow, singing ever his one

But there came the cruel winter, and the grasshopper, looking around, saw that his friends, the flowers, lay

Then he felt glad that he had been so happy, and had not wasted his life. "It has been very short," said he to

himself; "but it has been very pleasant, and I think I have made the best use of it. I have drunk in the

sunshine, I have lain on the soft, warm air, I have played merry games in the waving grass, I have tasted the

juice of the sweet green leaves. I have done what I could. I have spread my wings, I have sung my song. Now

Saying which, he crawled under a brown leaf, and met his fate in the way that all brave grasshoppers should;

Now when the foolish ant saw this, she was greatly puffed up with Pharisaical conceit. "How thankful I ought

to be," said she, "that I am industrious and prudent, and not like this poor grasshopper. While he was flitting

about from flower to flower, enjoying himself, I was hard at work, putting by against the winter. Now he is

dead, while I am about to make myself cosy in my warm home, and eat all the good things that I have been

But, as she spoke, the gardener came along with his spade, and levelled the hill where she dwelt to the

Then the same kind little bird that had buried the grasshopper came and picked her out and buried her also;

and afterwards he composed and sang a song, the burthen of which was, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may."

It was a very pretty song, and a very wise song, and a man who lived in those days, and to whom the birds,

loving him and feeling that he was almost one of themselves, had taught their language, fortunately overheard

Unhappily for us, however, Fate is a harsh governess, who has no sympathy with our desire for rosebuds.

"Don't stop to pick flowers now, my dear," she cries, in her sharp, cross tones, as she seizes our arm and jerks

us back into the roadway; "we haven't time today. We will come back again tomorrow, and you shall pick

And we have to follow her, knowing, if we are experienced children, that the chances are that we shall never

Fate would not hear of our having a houseboat that summer,which was an exceptionally fine

summer,but promised us that if we were good and saved up our money, we should have one next year; and

Ethelbertha and I, being simpleminded, inexperienced children, were content with the promise, and had

As soon as we reached home we informed Amenda of our plan. The moment the girl opened the door,

"No, mum," answered Amenda, with entire absence of curiosity as to why such a question had been

"Well, you'll have to make haste and learn, then," continued Ethelbertha, "because you won't be able to walk

out with your young man, you'll have to swim out. We're not going to live in a house any more. We're going

Ethelbertha's chief object in life at this period was to surprise and shock Amenda, and her chief sorrow that

she had never succeeded in doing so. She had hoped great things from this announcement, but the girl

remained unmoved. "Oh, are you, mum," she replied; and went on to speak of other matters.

I believe the result would have been the same if we had told her we were going to live in a balloon.

I do not know how it was, I am sure. Amenda was always most respectful in her manner. But she had a knack

of making Ethelbertha and myself feel that we were a couple of children, playing at being grown up and

Amenda stayed with us for nearly five yearsuntil the milkman, having saved up sufficient to buy a "walk"

of his own, had become practicablebut her attitude towards us never changed. Even when we came to be

really important married people, the proprietors of a "family," it was evident that she merely considered we

had gone a step further in the game, and were playing now at being fathers and mothers.

By some subtle process she contrived to imbue the baby also with this idea. The child never seemed to me to

take either of us quite seriously. She would play with us, or join with us in light conversation; but when it

came to the serious affairs of life, such as bathing or feeding, she preferred her nurse.

Ethelbertha attempted to take her out in the perambulator one morning, but the child would not hear of it for a

"It's all right, baby dear," explained Ethelbertha soothingly. "Baby's going out with mamma this morning."

"Oh no, baby ain't," was baby's rejoinder, in effect if not in words. "Baby don't take a hand in

Poor Ethel! I shall never forget how heartbroken she was. It was the want of confidence that wounded her.

But these are reminiscences of other days, having no connection with the days of which I amor should

bewriting; and to wander from one matter to another is, in a teller of tales, a grievous sin, and a growing

custom much to be condemned. Therefore I will close my eyes to all other memories, and endeavour to see

only that little white and green houseboat by the ferry, which was the scene of our future collaborations.

Houseboats then were not built to the scale of Mississippi steamers, but this boat was a small one, even for

that primitive age. The man from whom we hired it described it as "compact." The man to whom, at the end

of the first month, we tried to sublet it, characterised it as "poky." In our letters we traversed this definition.

At first, however, its sizeor, rather, its lack of sizewas one of its chief charms in Ethelbertha's eyes. The

fact that if you got out of bed carelessly you were certain to knock your head against the ceiling, and that it

was utterly impossible for any man to put on his trousers except in the saloon, she regarded as a capital joke.

That she herself had to take a lookingglass and go upon the roof to do her back hair, she thought less

Amenda accepted her new surroundings with her usual philosophic indifference. On being informed that what

she had mistaken for a linenpress was her bedroom, she remarked that there was one advantage about it, and

that was, that she could not tumble out of bed, seeing there was nowhere to tumble; and, on being shown the

kitchen, she observed that she should like it for two thingsone was that she could sit in the middle and

reach everything without getting up; the other, that nobody else could come into the apartment while she was

"You see, Amenda," explained Ethelbertha apologetically, "we shall really live outside."

"Yes, mum," answered Amenda, "I should say that would be the best place to do it."

If only we could have lived more outside, the life might have been pleasant enough, but the weather rendered

it impossible, six days out of the seven, for us to do more than look out of the window and feel thankful that

I have known wet summers before and since. I have learnt by many bitter experiences the danger and

foolishness of leaving the shelter of London any time between the first of May and the thirtyfirst of October.

Indeed, the country is always associate in my mind with recollections of long, weary days passed in the

pitiless rain, and sad evenings spent in other people's clothes. But never have I known, and never, I pray night

and morning, may I know again, such a summer as the one we lived through (though none of us expected to)

In the morning we would be awakened by the rain's forcing its way through the window and wetting the bed,

and would get up and mop out the saloon. After breakfast I would try to work, but the beating of the hail

upon the roof just over my head would drive every idea out of my brain, and, after a wasted hour or two, I

would fling down my pen and hunt up Ethelbertha, and we would put on our mackintoshes and take our

umbrellas and go out for a row. At midday we would return and put on some dry clothes, and sit down to

In the afternoon the storm generally freshened up a bit, and we were kept pretty busy rushing about with

towels and cloths, trying to prevent the water from coming into the rooms and swamping us. During teatime

the saloon was usually illuminated by forked lightning. The evenings we spent in baling out the boat, after

which we took it in turns to go into the kitchen and warm ourselves. At eight we supped, and from then until

it was time to go to bed we sat wrapped up in rugs, listening to the roaring of the thunder, and the howling of

the wind, and the lashing of the waves, and wondering whether the boat would hold out through the night.

Friends would come down to spend the day with uselderly, irritable people, fond of warmth and comfort;

people who did not, as a rule, hanker after jaunts, even under the most favourable conditions; but who had

been persuaded by our silly talk that a day on the river would be to them like a Saturday to Monday in

They would arrive soaked; and we would shut them up in different bunks, and leave them to strip themselves

and put on things of Ethelbertha's or of mine. But Ethel and I, in those days, were slim, so that stout,

Upon their emerging we would take them into the saloon and try to entertain them by telling them what we

had intended to do with them had the day been fine. But their answers were short, and occasionally snappy,

and after a while the conversation would flag, and we would sit round reading last week's newspapers and

The moment their own clothes were dry (we lived in a perpetual atmosphere of steaming clothes) they would

insist upon leaving us, which seemed to me discourteous after all that we had done for them, and would dress

themselves once more and start off home, and get wet again before they got there.

We would generally receive a letter a few days afterwards, written by some relative, informing us that both

patients were doing as well as could be expected, and promising to send us a card for the funeral in case of a

Our chief recreation, our sole consolation, during the long weeks of our imprisonment, was to watch from our

windows the pleasureseekers passing by in small open boats, and to reflect what an awful day they had had,

In the forenoon they would head up streamyoung men with their sweethearts; nephews taking out their rich

old aunts; husbands and wives (some of them pairs, some of them odd ones); stylishlooking girls with

cousins; energeticlooking men with dogs; highclass silent parties; lowclass noisy parties; quarrelsome

family parties boatload after boatload they went by, wet, but still hopeful, pointing out bits of blue sky to

In the evening they would return, drenched and gloomy, saying disagreeable things to one another.

One couple, and one couple only, out of the many hundreds that passed under our review, came back from

the ordeal with pleasant faces. He was rowing hard and singing, with a handkerchief tied round his head to

keep his hat on, and she was laughing at him, while trying to hold up an umbrella with one hand and steer

There are but two explanations to account for people being jolly on the river in the rain. The one I dismissed

as being both uncharitable and improbable. The other was creditable to the human race, and, adopting it, I

took off my cap to this damp but cheerful pair as they went by. They answered with a wave of the hand, and I

I am inclined to think that those young people, if they be still alive, are happy. Maybe, fortune has been kind

to them, or maybe she has not, but in either event they are, I am inclined to think, happier than are most

Now and again, the daily tornado would rage with such fury as to defeat its own purpose by prematurely

exhausting itself. On these rare occasions we would sit out on the deck, and enjoy the unwonted luxury of

I remember well those few pleasant evenings: the river, luminous with the drowned light, the dark banks

where the night lurked, the stormtossed sky, jewelled here and there with stars.

It was delightful not to hear for an hour or so the sullen thrashing of the rain; but to listen to the leaping of the

fishes, the soft swirl raised by some waterrat, swimming stealthily among the rushes, the restless twitterings

An old corncrake lived near to us, and the way he used to disturb all the other birds, and keep them from

going to sleep, was shameful. Amenda, who was townbred, mistook him at first for one of those cheap

alarm clocks, and wondered who was winding him up, and why they went on doing it all night; and, above

He would begin his unhallowed performance about dusk, just as every respectable bird was preparing to settle

down for the night. A family of thrushes had their nest a few yards from his stand, and they used to get

"There's that fool at it again," the female thrush would say; "why can't he do it in the daytime if he must do

it at all?" (She spoke, of course, in twitters, but I am confident the above is a correct translation.)

After a while, the young thrushes would wake up and begin chirping, and then the mother would get madder

"Can't you say something to him?" she would cry indignantly to her husband. "How do you think the children

can get to sleep, poor things, with that hideous row going on all night? Might just as well be living in a

Thus adjured, the male thrush would put his head over the nest, and call out in a nervous, apologetic

"I say, you know, you there, I wish you wouldn't mind being quiet a bit. My wife says she can't get the

"Gor on," the corncrake would answer surlily. "You keep your wife herself quiet; that's enough for you to

"Ah, it's a good hiding he wants, not a talking to. And if I was a cock, I'd give it him." (This remark would be

made in a tone of withering contempt, and would appear to bear reference to some previous discussion.)

"You're quite right, ma'am," Mrs. Thrush would reply. "That's what I tell my husband, but" (with rising

inflection, so that every lady in the plantation might hear) "HE wouldn't move himself, bless you no, not if

"Ah, he ain't the only one, my dear," the blackbird would pipe back, "they're all alike"; then, in a voice more

of sorrow than of anger: "but there, it ain't their fault, I suppose, poor things. If you ain't got the spirit of a

I would strain my ears at this point to hear if the male blackbird was moved at all by these taunts, but the only

sound I could ever detect coming from his neighbourhood was that of palpably exaggerated snoring.

By this time the whole glade would be awake, expressing views concerning that corncrake that would have

"Blow me tight, Bill," some vulgar little hedgesparrow would chirp out, in the midst of the hubbub, "if I

"'Tain't 'is fault," Bill would reply, with mock sympathy. "Somebody's put a penny in the slot, and 'e can't

Irritated by the laugh that this would call forth from the younger birds, the corncrake would exert himself to

be more objectionable than ever, and, as a means to this end, would commence giving his marvellous

And then would follow silence for a quarter of an hour, after which the whole thing would begin again.

Brown and MacShaughnassy came down together on the Saturday afternoon; and, as soon as they had dried

Jephson had written that he would not be able to be with us until late in the evening, and Brown proposed that

"Let each of us," said he, "sketch out a plot. Afterwards we can compare them, and select the best."

This we proceeded to do. The plots themselves I forget, but I remember that at the subsequent judging each

man selected his own, and became so indignant at the bitter criticism to which it was subjected by the other

two, that he tore it up; and, for the next halfhour, we sat and smoked in silence.

When I was very young I yearned to know other people's opinion of me and all my works; now, my chief aim

is to avoid hearing it. In those days, had any one told me there was half a line about myself in a newspaper, I

should have tramped London to obtain that publication. Now, when I see a column headed with my name, I

hurriedly fold up the paper and put it away from me, subduing my natural curiosity to read it by saying to

In my cubhood I possessed a friend. Other friends have come into my life sincevery dear and precious

friendsbut they have none of them been to me quite what this friend was. Because he was my first friend,

and we lived together in a world that was much bigger than this worldmore full of joy and of grief; and, in

that world, we loved and hated deeper than we love and hate in this smaller world that I have come to dwell

He also had the very young man's craving to be criticised, and we made it our custom to oblige each other.

We did not know then that what we meant, when we asked for "criticism," was encouragement. We thought

that we were strongone does at the beginning of the battle, and that we could bear to hear the truth.

Accordingly, each one pointed out to the other one his errors, and this task kept us both so busy that we had

never time to say a word of praise to one another. That we each had a high opinion of the other's talents I am

convinced, but our heads were full of silly saws. We said to ourselves: "There are many who will praise a

man; it is only his friend who will tell him of his faults." Also, we said: "No man sees his own shortcomings,

but when these are pointed out to him by another he is grateful, and proceeds to mend them."

As we came to know the world better, we learnt the fallacy of these ideas. But then it was too late, for the

When one of us had written anything, he would read it to the other, and when he had finished he would say,

Those were his words. But his thoughts, though he may not have known them, were:

"Tell me it is clever and good, my friend, even if you do not think so. The world is very cruel to those that

have not yet conquered it, and, though we keep a careless face, our young hearts are scored with wrinkles.

Often we grow weary and fainthearted. Is it not so, my friend? No one has faith in us, and in our dark hours

we doubt ourselves. You are my comrade. You know what of myself I have put into this thing that to others

will be but an idle half hour's reading. Tell me it is good, my friend. Put a little heart into me, I pray you."

But the other, full of the lust of criticism, which is civilisation's substitute for cruelty, would answer more in

frankness than in friendship. Then he who had written would flush angrily, and scornful words would pass.

One evening, he read me a play he had written. There was much that was good in it, but there were also faults

(there are in some plays), and these I seized upon and made merry over. I could hardly have dealt out to the

As soon as I paused from my sport he rose, and, taking his manuscript from the table, tore it in two, and flung

it in the fire he was but a very young man, you must rememberand then, standing before me with a

white face, told me, unsolicited, his opinion of me and of my art. After which double event, it is perhaps

I did not see him again for years. The streets of life are very crowded, and if we loose each other's hands we

I had left the Whitehall Rooms after a public dinner, and, glad of the cool night air, was strolling home by the

"You couldn't oblige me with a light, could you, guv'nor?" he said. The voice sounded strange, coming from

I struck a match, and held it out to him, shaded by my hands. As the faint light illumined his face, I started

He answered with a short dry laugh. "I didn't know it was you," he said, "or I shouldn't have stopped you."

"How has it come to this, old fellow?" I asked, laying my hand upon his shoulder. His coat was unpleasantly

greasy, and I drew my hand away again as quickly as I could, and tried to wipe it covertly upon my

"Oh, it's a long, story," he answered carelessly, "and too conventional to be worth telling. Some of us go up,

"I suppose so," I replied; "I've climbed a few feet up a greasy pole, and am trying to stick there. But it is of

We were passing under a gaslamp at the moment. He thrust his face forward close to mine, and the light fell

We walked on in silence side by side, I casting about for words that might seize hold of him.

"You needn't worry about me," he continued after a while, "I'm comfortable enough. We take life easily down

"Why did you give up like a weak coward?" I burst out angrily. "You had talent. You would have won with

"Maybe," he replied, in the same even tone of indifference. "I suppose I hadn't the grit. I think if somebody

had believed in me it might have helped me. But nobody did, and at last I lost belief in myself. And when a

I listened to his words in indignation and astonishment. "Nobody believed in you!" I repeated. "Why, I

In the course of our Strandward walking we had come to the neighbourhood of the Savoy, and, as he spoke,

I hastened after him, calling him by name, but though I heard his quick steps before me for a little way, they

were soon swallowed up in the sound of other steps, and, when I reached the square in which the chapel

A policeman was standing by the churchyard railings, and of him I made inquiries.

"Ah, there's a good many of that sort living in this town," replied the man. "I'm afraid you'll have some

Thus for a second time had I heard his footsteps die away, knowing I should never listen for their drawing

I wondered as I walked onI have wondered before and sincewhether Art, even with a capital A, is quite

worth all the suffering that is inflicted in her behalfwhether she and we are better for all the scorning and

Jephson arrived about nine o'clock in the ferryboat. We were made acquainted with this fact by having our

Somebody or other always had their head bumped whenever the ferry boat arrived. It was a heavy and

cumbersome machine, and the ferry boy was not a good punter. He admitted this frankly, which was

creditable of him. But he made no attempt to improve himself; that is, where he was wrong. His method was

to arrange the punt before starting in a line with the point towards which he wished to proceed, and then to

push hard, without ever looking behind him, until something suddenly stopped him. This was sometimes the

bank, sometimes another boat, occasionally a steamer, from six to a dozen times a day our riparian dwelling.

That he never succeeded in staving the houseboat in speaks highly for the man who built her.

One day he came down upon us with a tremendous crash. Amenda was walking along the passage at the

moment, and the result to her was that she received a violent blow first on the left side of her head and then

She was accustomed to accept one bump as a matter of course, and to regard it as an intimation from the boy

that he had come; but this double knock annoyed her: so much "style" was out of place in a mere ferryboy.

"What do you think you are?" she cried, balancing accounts by boxing his ears first on one side and then on

"I don't want nothin'," explained the boy, rubbing his head; "I've brought a gent down."

"A stout gent in a straw 'at," answered the boy, staring round him bewilderedly.

"I dunno," replied the boy, in an awed voice; "'e was astandin' there, at the other end of the punt, asmokin'

Just then a head appeared above the water, and a spent but infuriated swimmer struggled up between the

"Oh, there 'e is!" cried the boy delightedly, evidently much relieved at this satisfactory solution of the

"You're quite right, my lad, that's just what he did do, and there's your fee for assisting him to do it." Saying

which, my dripping friend, who had now scrambled upon deck, leant over, and following Amenda's excellent

There was one comforting reflection about the transaction as a whole, and that was that the ferryboy had at

last received a fit and proper reward for his services. I had often felt inclined to give him something myself. I

think he was, without exception, the most clumsy and stupid boy I have ever come across; and that is saying a

His mother undertook that for threeandsixpence a week he should "make himself generally useful" to us

Those were the old lady's very words, and I repeated them to Amenda when I introduced the boy to her.

"This is James, Amenda," I said; "he will come down here every morning at seven, and bring us our milk and

"It will be a change of occupation for him, sir, I should say, by the look of him," she remarked.

After that, whenever some more than usually stirring crash or blood curdling bump would cause us to leap

from our seats and cry: "What on earth has happened?" Amenda would reply: "Oh, it's only James, mum,

Whatever he lifted he let fall; whatever he touched he upset; whatever he came nearthat was not a

fixturehe knocked over; if it was a fixture, it knocked HIM over. This was not carelessness: it seemed to be

a natural gift. Never in his life, I am convinced, had he carried a bucketful of anything anywhere without

tumbling over it before he got there. One of his duties was to water the flowers on the roof. Fortunatelyfor

the flowersNature, that summer, stood drinks with a lavishness sufficient to satisfy the most confirmed

vegetable toper: otherwise every plant on our boat would have died from drought. Never one drop of water

did they receive from him. He was for ever taking them water, but he never arrived there with it. As a rule he

upset the pail before he got it on to the boat at all, and this was the best thing that could happen, because then

the water simply went back into the river, and did no harm to any one. Sometimes, however, he would

succeed in landing it, and then the chances were he would spill it over the deck or into the passage. Now and

again, he would get halfway up the ladder before the accident occurred. Twice he nearly reached the top; and

once he actually did gain the roof. What happened there on that memorable occasion will never be known.

The boy himself, when picked up, could explain nothing. It is supposed that he lost his head with the pride of

the achievement, and essayed feats that neither his previous training nor his natural abilities justified him in

attempting. However that may be, the fact remains that the main body of the water came down the kitchen

chimney; and that the boy and the empty pail arrived together on deck before they knew they had started.

When he could find nothing else to damage, he would go out of his way to upset himself. He could not be

sure of stepping from his own punt on to the boat with safety. As often as not, he would catch his foot in the

Amenda used to condole with him. "Your mother ought to be ashamed of herself," I heard her telling him one

He was a willing lad, but his stupidity was supernatural. A comet appeared in the sky that year, and

"There's a comet coming, ain't there, sir?" He talked about it as though it were a circus.

"Go! You don't want to go anywhere. You'll see it in your own garden at ten o'clock."

He thanked me, and, tumbling over a sack of potatoes, plunged head foremost into his punt and departed.

"How on earth did you manage to miss it then?" I exclaimed. "It was a clear enough night. Where did you

"Whereabouts in the garden?" chimed in Amenda, who happened to be standing by; "under the gooseberry

That is what he had done: he had taken the stable lantern and searched the garden for it.

But the day when he broke even his own record for foolishness happened about three weeks later.

MacShaughnassy was staying with us at the time, and on the Friday evening he mixed us a salad, according

to a recipe given him by his aunt. On the Saturday morning, everybody was, of course, very ill. Everybody

always is very ill after partaking of any dish prepared by MacShaughnassy. Some people attempt to explain

this fact by talking glibly of "cause and effect." MacShaughnassy maintains that it is simply coincidence.

"How do you know," he says, "that you wouldn't have been ill if you hadn't eaten any? You're queer enough

now, any one can see, and I'm very sorry for you; but, for all that you can tell, if you hadn't eaten any of that

stuff you might have been very much worseperhaps dead. In all probability, it has saved your life." And

for the rest of the day, he assumes towards you the attitude of a man who has dragged you from the grave.

"Jimmy," I said, "you must rush off to the chemist's immediately. Don't stop for anything. Tell him to give

you something for colic the result of vegetable poisoning. It must be something very strong, and enough

for four. Don't forget, something to counteract the effects of vegetable poisoning. Hurry up, or it may be too

My excitement communicated itself to the boy. He tumbled back into his punt, and pushed off vigorously. I

Half an hour passed, but Jimmy did not return. No one felt sufficiently energetic to go after him. We had only

just strength enough to sit still and feebly abuse him. At the end of an hour we were all feeling very much

better. At the end of an hour and a half we were glad he had not returned when he ought to have, and were

In the evening, strolling through the village, we saw him sitting by the open door of his mother's cottage, with

"Why, Jimmy," I said, "what's the matter? Why didn't you come back this morning?"

"I told 'im what you said, sir, that 'e was to give me something to counteract the effects of vegetable

"'E said that was only your nonsense, sir, and that I'd better have enough for one to begin with; and then 'e

"Yees, sir, I told 'im I'd 'ad a few, and 'e said it served me right, and that 'e 'oped it would be a warning to me.

"It never occurred to you, Jimmy, that there was nothing the matter with youthat you were never feeling

"Did one single scintilla of thought of any kind occur to you in connection with the matter, Jimmy, from

People who never met Jimmy disbelieve this story. They argue that its premises are in disaccord with the

known laws governing human nature, that its details do not square with the average of probability. People

The advent of Jephsonwhich I trust the reader has not entirely forgottencheered us up considerably.

Jephson was always at his best when all other things were at their worst. It was not that he struggled in Mark

Tapley fashion to appear most cheerful when most depressed; it was that petty misfortunes and mishaps

genuinely amused and inspirited him. Most of us can recall our unpleasant experiences with amused

affection; Jephson possessed the robuster philosophy that enabled him to enjoy his during their actual

progress. He arrived drenched to the skin, chuckling hugely at the idea of having come down on a visit to a

Under his warming influence, the hard lines on our faces thawed, and by supper time we were, as all

Englishmen and women who wish to enjoy life should be, independent of the weather.

Later on, as if disheartened by our indifference, the rain ceased, and we took our chairs out on the deck, and

sat watching the lightning, which still played incessantly. Then, not unnaturally, the talk drifted into a sombre

channel, and we began recounting stories, dealing with the gloomy and mysterious side of life.

Some of these were worth remembering, and some were not. The one that left the strongest impression on my

I had been relating a somewhat curious experience of my own. I met a man in the Strand one day that I knew

very well, as I thought, though I had not seen him for years. We walked together to Charing Cross, and there

we shook hands and parted. Next morning, I spoke of this meeting to a mutual friend, and then I learnt, for

The natural inference was that I had mistaken one man for another, an error that, not having a good memory

for faces, I frequently fall into. What was remarkable about the matter, however, was that throughout our

walk I had conversed with the man under the impression that he was that other dead man, and, whether by

As soon as I finished, Jephson, who had been listening very thoughtfully, asked me if I believed in

"That is rather a large question," I answered. "What do you mean by 'spiritualism to its fullest extent'?"

"Well, do you believe that the spirits of the dead have not only the power of revisiting this earth at their will,

but that, when here, they have the power of action, or rather, of exciting to action? Let me put a definite case.

A spiritualist friend of mine, a sensible and by no means imaginative man, once told me that a table, through

the medium of which the spirit of a friend had been in the habit of communicating with him, came slowly

across the room towards him, of its own accord, one night as he sat alone, and pinioned him against the wall.

"I could," Brown took it upon himself to reply; "but, before doing so, I should wish for an introduction to the

friend who told you the story. Speaking generally," he continued, "it seems to me that the difference between

what we call the natural and the supernatural is merely the difference between frequency and rarity of

occurrence. Having regard to the phenomena we are compelled to admit, I think it illogical to disbelieve

"For my part," remarked MacShaughnassy, "I can believe in the ability of our spirit friends to give the quaint

entertainments credited to them much easier than I can in their desire to do so."

"You mean," added Jephson, "that you cannot understand why a spirit, not compelled as we are by the

exigencies of society, should care to spend its evenings carrying on a laboured and childish conversation with

"Nor I, either," said Jephson. "But I was thinking of something very different altogether. Suppose a man died

with the dearest wish of his heart unfulfilled, do you believe that his spirit might have power to return to earth

"Well," answered MacShaughnassy, "if one admits the possibility of spirits retaining any interest in the

affairs of this world at all, it is certainly more reasonable to imagine them engaged upon a task such as you

suggest, than to believe that they occupy themselves with the performance of mere drawingroom tricks. But

"Why, to this," replied Jephson, seating himself straddlelegged across his chair, and leaning his arms upon

the back. "I was told a story this morning at the hospital by an old French doctor. The actual facts are few and

simple; all that is known can be read in the Paris police records of sixtytwo years ago.

"The most important part of the case, however, is the part that is not known, and that never will be known.

"The story begins with a great wrong done by one man unto another man. What the wrong was I do not

know. I am inclined to think, however, it was connected with a woman. I think that, because he who had been

wronged hated him who had wronged him with a hate such as does not often burn in a man's brain, unless it

"Still that is only conjecture, and the point is immaterial. The man who had done the wrong fled, and the

other man followed him. It became a pointtopoint race, the first man having the advantage of a day's start.

"Travellers were few and far between in those days, and this made the trail easy to follow. The first man,

never knowing how far or how near the other was behind him, and hoping now and again that he might have

baffled him, would rest for a while. The second man, knowing always just how far the first one was before

him, never paused, and thus each day the man who was spurred by Hate drew nearer to the man who was

"'Sevenah; eighteen hours. Give me something to eat, quick, while the horses are being put to.'

"'Thanks, drive on, a hundred francs apiece if you are through the pass before daybreak.'

"One day the man who was ridden by Fear looked up, and saw before him the open door of a cathedral, and,

passing in, knelt down and prayed. He prayed long and fervently, for men, when they are in sore straits,

clutch eagerly at the straws of faith. He prayed that he might be forgiven his sin, and, more important still,

that he might be pardoned the consequences of his sin, and be delivered from his adversary; and a few chairs

"But the second man's prayer, being a thanksgiving merely, was short, so that when the first man raised his

eyes, he saw the face of his enemy gazing at him across the chairtops, with a mocking smile upon it.

"He made no attempt to rise, but remained kneeling, fascinated by the look of joy that shone out of the other

man's eyes. And the other man moved the highbacked chairs one by one, and came towards him softly.

"Then, just as the man who had been wronged stood beside the man who had wronged him, full of gladness

that his opportunity had come, there burst from the cathedral tower a sudden clash of bells, and the man,

whose opportunity had come, broke his heart and fell back dead, with that mocking smile still playing round

"What became of the body of the other man is not known. It was the body of a stranger who had died

"Years passed away, and the survivor in the tragedy became a worthy and useful citizen, and a noted man of

"In his laboratory were many objects necessary to him in his researches, and, prominent among them, stood

in a certain corner a human skeleton. It was a very old and muchmended skeleton, and one day the

"The man of science visited a dealer he well knewa little parchmentfaced old man who kept a dingy shop,

"The little parchmentfaced old man had just the very thing that Monsieur wanteda singularly fine and

wellproportioned 'study.' It should be sent round and set up in Monsieur's laboratory that very afternoon.

"The dealer was as good as his word. When Monsieur entered his laboratory that evening, the thing was in its

"Monsieur seated himself in his highbacked chair, and tried to collect his thoughts. But Monsieur's thoughts

"Monsieur opened a large volume and commenced to read. He read of a man who had wronged another and

fled from him, the other man following. Finding himself reading this, he closed the book angrily, and went

and stood by the window and looked out. He saw before him the sunpierced nave of a great cathedral, and

"Cursing himself for a fool, he turned away with a laugh. But his laugh was shortlived, for it seemed to him

that something else in the room was laughing also. Struck suddenly still, with his feet glued to the ground, he

stood listening for a while: then sought with starting eyes the corner from where the sound had seemed to

"For a couple of days he did not enter the room again. On the third, telling himself that his fears were those of

a hysterical girl, he opened the door and went in. To shame himself, he took his lamp in his hand, and

crossing over to the far corner where the skeleton stood, examined it. A set of bones bought for three hundred

"He held his lamp up in front of the thing's grinning head. The flame of the lamp flickered as though a faint

"The man explained this to himself by saying that the walls of the house were old and cracked, and that the

wind might creep in anywhere. He repeated this explanation to himself as he recrossed the room, walking

backwards, with his eyes fixed on the thing. When he reached his desk, he sat down and gripped the arms of

"He tried to work, but the empty sockets in that grinning head seemed to be drawing him towards them. He

rose and battled with his inclination to fly screaming from the room. Glancing fearfully about him, his eye

fell upon a high screen, standing before the door. He dragged it forward, and placed it between himself and

the thing, so that he could not see itnor it see him. Then he sat down again to his work. For a while he

forced himself to look at the book in front of him, but at last, unable to control himself any longer, he

"It may have been an hallucination. He may have accidentally placed the screen so as to favour such an

illusion. But what he saw was a bony hand coming round the corner of the screen, and, with a cry, he fell to

"The people of the house came running in, and lifting him up, carried him out, and laid him upon his bed. As

soon as he recovered, his first question was, where had they found the thing where was it when they

entered the room? and when they told him they had seen it standing where it always stood, and had gone

down into the room to look again, because of his frenzied entreaties, and returned trying to hide their smiles,

he listened to their talk about overwork, and the necessity for change and rest, and said they might do with

"So for many months the laboratory door remained locked. Then there came a chill autumn evening when the

"He lighted his lamp, and gathered his instruments and books around him, and sat down before them in his

"But this time he meant to conquer himself. His nerves were stronger now, and his brain clearer; he would

fight his unreasoning fear. He crossed to the door and locked himself in, and flung the key to the other end of

"Later on, his old housekeeper, going her final round, tapped at his door and wished him goodnight, as was

her custom. She received no response, at first, and, growing nervous, tapped louder and called again; and at

"She thought little about it at the time, but afterwards she remembered that the voice that had replied to her

had been strangely grating and mechanical. Trying to describe it, she likened it to such a voice as she would

"Next morning his door remained still locked. It was no unusual thing for him to work all night and far into

the next day, so no one thought to be surprised. When, however, evening came, and yet he did not appear, his

servants gathered outside the room and whispered, remembering what had happened once before.

"They listened, but could hear no sound. They shook the door and called to him, then beat with their fists

"Becoming alarmed, they decided to burst open the door, and, after many blows, it gave way, and they

He sat bolt upright in his highbacked chair. They thought at first he had died in his sleep. But when they

drew nearer and the light fell upon him, they saw the livid marks of bony fingers round his throat; and in his

Brown was the first to break the silence that followed. He asked me if I had any brandy on board. He said he

felt he should like just a nip of brandy before going to bed. That is one of the chief charms of Jephson's

"Cats," remarked Jephson to me, one afternoon, as we sat in the punt discussing the plot of our novel, "cats

are animals for whom I entertain a very great respect. Cats and Nonconformists seem to me the only things in

this world possessed of a practicable working conscience. Watch a cat doing something mean and wrongif

ever one gives you the chance; notice how anxious she is that nobody should see her doing it; and how

prompt, if detected, to pretend that she was not doing itthat she was not even thinking of doing itthat, as

a matter of fact, she was just about to do something else, quite different. You might almost think they had a

"Only this morning I was watching that tortoiseshell of yours on the houseboat. She was creeping along the

roof, behind the flower boxes, stalking a young thrush that had perched upon a coil of rope. Murder

gleamed from her eye, assassination lurked in every twitching muscle of her body. As she crouched to spring,

Fate, for once favouring the weak, directed her attention to myself, and she became, for the first time, aware

of my presence. It acted upon her as a heavenly vision upon a Biblical criminal. In an instant she was a

changed being. The wicked beast, going about seeking whom it might devour, had vanished. In its place sat a

longtailed, furry angel, gazing up into the sky with an expression that was onethird innocence and

twothirds admiration of the beauties of nature. What was she doing there, did I want to know? Why, could I

not see, playing with a bit of earth. Surely I was not so evilminded as to imagine she wanted to kill that dear

"Then note an old Tom, slinking home in the early morning, after a night spent on a roof of bad repute. Can

you picture to yourself a living creature less eager to attract attention? 'Dear me,' you can all but hear it

saying to itself, 'I'd no idea it was so late; how time does go when one is enjoying oneself. I do hope I shan't

"In the distance it sees a policeman, and stops suddenly within the shelter of a shadow. 'Now what's he doing

there,' it says, 'and close to our door too? I can't go in while he's hanging about. He's sure to see and recognise

"It hides itself behind a post and waits, peeping cautiously round the corner from time to time. The

policeman, however, seems to have taken up his residence at that particular spot, and the cat becomes worried

"'What's the matter with the fool?' it mutters indignantly; 'is he dead? Why don't he move on, he's always

"Just then a faroff cry of 'milk' is heard, and the cat starts up in an agony of alarm. 'Great Scott, hark at that!

Why, everybody will be down before I get in. Well, I can't help it. I must chance it.'

"He glances round at himself, and hesitates. 'I wouldn't mind if I didn't look so dirty and untidy,' he muses;

"'Ah, well,' he adds, giving himself a shake, 'there's nothing else for it, I must put my trust in Providence, it's

"He assumes an aspect of chastened sorrow, and trots along with a demure and saddened step. It is evident he

wishes to convey the idea that he has been out all night on work connected with the Vigilance Association,

"He squirms in, unnoticed, through a window, and has just time to give himself a hurried lick down before he

hears the cook's step on the stairs. When she enters the kitchen he is curled up on the hearthrug, fast asleep.

The opening of the shutters awakes him. He rises and comes forward, yawning and stretching himself.

"'Dear me, is it morning, then?' he says drowsily. 'Heighho! I've had such a lovely sleep, cook; and such a

"Cats! do you call them? Why, they are Christians in everything except the number of legs."

"They certainly are," I responded, "wonderfully cunning little animals, and it is not by their moral and

religious instincts alone that they are so closely linked to man; the marvellous ability they display in taking

care of 'number one' is worthy of the human race itself. Some friends of mine had a cat, a big black Tom: they

have got half of him still. They had reared him from a kitten, and, in their homely, undemonstrative way, they

"One day a Chinchilla came to live in the neighbourhood, under the charge of an elderly spinster, and the two

"'Oh, the usual thing, you know, bones and scraps, and a bit of dog biscuit now and then for a change.'

"'Shade of Egyptian Isis, bones and dogbiscuits! Don't you ever get any spring chickens, or a sardine, or a

"'What are sardines! Oh, my dear child (the Chinchilla was a lady cat, and always called gentlemen friends a

little older than herself 'dear child'), these people of yours are treating you just shamefully. Come, sit down

"'Anybody, if you go the right way to work. How many times do you think I've changed my people?

Seven!and bettered myself on each occasion. Why, do you know where I was born? In a pigsty. There

were three of us, mother and I and my little brother. Mother would leave us every evening, returning

generally just as it was getting light. One morning she did not come back. We waited and waited, but the day

passed on and she did not return, and we grew hungrier and hungrier, and at last we lay down, side by side,

"'In the evening, peeping through a hole in the door, we saw her coming across the field. She was crawling

very slowly, with her body close down against the ground. We called to her, and she answered with a low

"'She crept in and rolled over on her side, and we ran to her, for we were almost starving. We lay long upon

"'I dropped asleep upon her, and in the night I awoke, feeling cold. I crept closer to her, but that only made

me colder still, and she was wet and clammy with a dark moisture that was oozing from her side. I did not

"'That was when I could hardly have been four weeks old, and from that day to this I've looked after myself:

you've got to do that in this world, my dear. For a while, I and my brother lived on in that sty and kept

ourselves. It was a grim struggle at first, two babies fighting for life; but we pulled through. At the end of

about three months, wandering farther from home than usual, I came upon a cottage, standing in the fields. It

looked warm and cosy through the open door, and I went in: I have always been blessed with plenty of nerve.

Some children were playing round the fire, and they welcomed me and made much of me. It was a new

"'I might have gone on thinking so if it had not been that, passing through the village one day, I happened to

catch sight of a room behind a shop. There was a carpet on the floor, and a rug before the fire. I had never

known till then that there were such luxuries in the world. I determined to make that shop my home, and I did

"'By the simple process of walking in and sitting down. My dear child, cheek's the "Open sesame" to every

door. The cat that works hard dies of starvation, the cat that has brains is kicked downstairs for a fool, and the

cat that has virtue is drowned for a scamp; but the cat that has cheek sleeps on a velvet cushion and dines on

cream and horseflesh. I marched straight in and rubbed myself against the old man's legs. He and his wife

were quite taken with what they called my "trustfulness," and adopted me with enthusiasm. Strolling about

the fields of an evening I often used to hear the children of the cottage calling my name. It was weeks before

they gave up seeking for me. One of them, the youngest, would sob herself to sleep of a night, thinking that I

"'I boarded with my shopkeeping friends for nearly a year, and from them I went to some new people who

had lately come to the neighbourhood, and who possessed a really excellent cook. I think I could have been

very satisfied with these people, but, unfortunately, they came down in the world, and had to give up the big

house and the cook, and take a cottage, and I did not care to go back to that sort of life.

"'Accordingly I looked about for a fresh opening. There was a curious old fellow who lived not far off.

People said he was rich, but nobody liked him. He was shaped differently from other men. I turned the matter

over in my mind for a day or two, and then determined to give him a trial. Being a lonely sort of man, he

"'My surmise proved correct. I have never been more petted than I was by "Toady," as the village boys had

dubbed him. My present guardian is foolish enough over me, goodness knows, but she has other ties, while

"Toady" had nothing else to love, not even himself. He could hardly believe his eyes at first when I jumped

up on his knees and rubbed myself against his ugly face. "Why, Kitty," he said, "do you know you're the first

living thing that has ever come to me of its own accord." There were tears in his funny little red eyes as he

"'I remained two years with "Toady," and was very happy indeed. Then he fell ill, and strange people came to

the house, and I was neglected. "Toady" liked me to come up and lie upon the bed, where he could stroke me

with his long, thin hand, and at first I used to do this. But a sick man is not the best of company, as you can

imagine, and the atmosphere of a sick room not too healthy, so, all things considered, I felt it was time for me

"'I had some difficulty in getting away. "Toady" was always asking for me, and they tried to keep me with

him: he seemed to lie easier when I was there. I succeeded at length, however, and, once outside the door, I

put sufficient distance between myself and the house to ensure my not being captured, for I knew "Toady" so

"'Where to go, I did not know. Two or three homes were offered me, but none of them quite suited me. At

one place, where I put up for a day, just to see how I liked it, there was a dog; and at another, which would

otherwise have done admirably, they kept a baby. Whatever you do, never stop at a house where they keep a

baby. If a child pulls your tail or ties a paper bag round your head, you can give it one for itself and nobody

blames you. "Well, serve you right," they say to the yelling brat, "you shouldn't tease the poor thing." But if

you resent a baby's holding you by the throat and trying to gouge out your eye with a wooden ladle, you are

called a spiteful beast, and "shoo'd" all round the garden. If people keep babies, they don't keep me; that's my

"'After sampling some three or four families, I finally fixed upon a banker. Offers more advantageous from a

worldly point of view were open to me. I could have gone to a publichouse, where the victuals were simply

unlimited, and where the back door was left open all night. But about the banker's (he was also a

churchwarden, and his wife never smiled at anything less than a joke by the bishop) there was an atmosphere

of solid respectability that I felt would be comforting to my nature. My dear child, you will come across

cynics who will sneer at respectability: don't you listen to them. Respectability is its own rewardand a very

real and practical reward. It may not bring you dainty dishes and soft beds, but it brings you something better

and more lasting. It brings you the consciousness that you are living the right life, that you are doing the right

thing, that, so far as earthly ingenuity can fix it, you are going to the right place, and that other folks ain't.

Don't you ever let any one set you against respectability. It's the most satisfying thing I know of in this

"'I was nearly three years with this family, and was sorry when I had to go. I should never have left if I could

have helped it, but one day something happened at the bank which necessitated the banker's taking a sudden

journey to Spain, and, after that, the house became a somewhat unpleasant place to live in. Noisy,

disagreeable people were continually knocking at the door and making rows in the passage; and at night folks

"'I was in a delicate state of health at the time, and my nerves could not stand it. I said goodbye to the town,

"'They were great swells, but I should have preferred them had they been more homely. I am of an

affectionate disposition, and I like every one about me to love me. They were good enough to me in their

distant way, but they did not take much notice of me, and I soon got tired of lavishing attentions on people

"'From these people I went to a retired potato merchant. It was a social descent, but a rise so far as comfort

and appreciation were concerned. They appeared to be an exceedingly nice family, and to be extremely fond

of me. I say they "appeared" to be these things, because the sequel proved that they were neither. Six months

after I had come to them they went away and left me. They never asked me to accompany them. They made

no arrangements for me to stay behind. They evidently did not care what became of me. Such egotistical

indifference to the claims of friendship I had never before met with. It shook my faithnever too robustin

human nature. I determined that, in future, no one should have the opportunity of disappointing my trust in

them. I selected my present mistress on the recommendation of a gentleman friend of mine who had formerly

lived with her. He said she was an excellent caterer. The only reason he had left her was that she expected

him to be in at ten each night, and that hour didn't fit in with his other arrangements. It made no difference to

meas a matter of fact, I do not care for these midnight reunions that are so popular amongst us. There are

always too many cats for one properly to enjoy oneself, and sooner or later a rowdy element is sure to creep

in. I offered myself to her, and she accepted me gratefully. But I have never liked her, and never shall. She is

a silly old woman, and bores me. She is, however, devoted to me, and, unless something extra attractive turns

"'That, my dear, is the story of my life, so far as it has gone. I tell it you to show you how easy it is to be

"taken in." Fix on your house, and mew piteously at the back door. When it is opened run in and rub yourself

against the first leg you come across. Rub hard, and look up confidingly. Nothing gets round human beings, I

have noticed, quicker than confidence. They don't get much of it, and it pleases them. Always be confiding.

At the same time be prepared for emergencies. If you are still doubtful as to your reception, try and get

yourself slightly wet. Why people should prefer a wet cat to a dry one I have never been able to understand;

but that a wet cat is practically sure of being taken in and gushed over, while a dry cat is liable to have the

garden hose turned upon it, is an undoubted fact. Also, if you can possibly manage it, and it is offered you,

eat a bit of dry bread. The Human Race is always stirred to its deepest depths by the sight of a cat eating a bit

"My friend's black Tom profited by the Chinchilla's wisdom. A catless couple had lately come to live next

door. He determined to adopt them on trial. Accordingly, on the first rainy day, he went out soon after lunch

and sat for four hours in an open field. In the evening, soaked to the skin, and feeling pretty hungry, he went

mewing to their door. One of the maids opened it, he rushed under her skirts and rubbed himself against her

legs. She screamed, and down came the master and the mistress to know what was the matter.

"'Try it with a bit of dry bread,' sneered the master, who wrote for the newspapers, and thought he knew

"A stale crust was proffered. The cat ate it greedily, and afterwards rubbed himself gratefully against the

"This made the man ashamed of himself, likewise of his trousers. 'Oh, well, let it stop if it wants to,' he said.

"Meanwhile its own family were seeking for it high and low. They had not cared over much for it while they

had had it; now it was gone, they were inconsolable. In the light of its absence, it appeared to them the one

thing that had made the place home. The shadows of suspicion gathered round the case. The cat's

disappearance, at first regarded as a mystery, began to assume the shape of a crime. The wife openly accused

the husband of never having liked the animal, and more than hinted that he and the gardener between them

could give a tolerably truthful account of its last moments; an insinuation that the husband repudiated with a

"The bullterrier was had up and searchingly examined. Fortunately for him, he had not had a single fight for

two whole days. Had any recent traces of blood been detected upon him, it would have gone hard with him.

"The person who suffered most, however, was the youngest boy. Three weeks before, he had dressed the cat

in doll's clothes and taken it round the garden in the perambulator. He himself had forgotten the incident, but

Justice, though tardy, was on his track. The misdeed was suddenly remembered at the very moment when

unavailing regret for the loss of the favourite was at its deepest, so that to box his ears and send him, then and

"At the end of a fortnight, the cat, finding he had not, after all, bettered himself, came back. The family were

so surprised that at first they could not be sure whether he was flesh and blood, or a spirit come to comfort

them. After watching him eat half a pound of raw steak, they decided he was material, and caught him up and

hugged him to their bosoms. For a week they overfed him and made much of him. Then, the excitement

cooling, he found himself dropping back into his old position, and didn't like it, and went next door again.

"The next door people had also missed him, and they likewise greeted his return with extravagant ebullitions

of joy. This gave the cat an idea. He saw that his game was to play the two families off one against the other;

which he did. He spent an alternate fortnight with each, and lived like a fighting cock. His return was always

greeted with enthusiasm, and every means were adopted to induce him to stay. His little whims were

"The destination of his goings leaked out at length, and then the two families quarrelled about him over the

fence. My friend accused the newspaper man of having lured him away. The newspaper man retorted that the

poor creature had come to his door wet and starving, and added that he would be ashamed to keep an animal

merely to illtreat it. They have a quarrel about him twice a week on the average. It will probably come to

Jephson appeared much surprised by this story. He remained thoughtful and silent. I asked him if he would

like to hear any more, and as he offered no active opposition I went on. (Maybe he was asleep; that idea did

I told him of my grandmother's cat, who, after living a blameless life for upwards of eleven years, and

bringing up a family of something like sixtysix, not counting those that died in infancy and the waterbutt,

took to drink in her old age, and was run over while in a state of intoxication (oh, the justice of it! ) by a

brewer's dray. I have read in temperance tracts that no dumb animal will touch a drop of alcoholic liquor. My

advice is, if you wish to keep them respectable, don't give them a chance to get at it. I knew a pony But

A leaky beertap was the cause of her downfall. A saucer used to be placed underneath it to catch the

drippings. One day the cat, coming in thirsty, and finding nothing else to drink, lapped up a little, liked it, and

lapped a little more, went away for half an hour, and came back and finished the saucerful. Then sat down

From that day till the hour she died, I don't believe that cat was ever once quite sober. Her days she passed in

a drunken stupor before the kitchen fire. Her nights she spent in the beer cellar.

My grandmother, shocked and grieved beyond expression, gave up her barrel and adopted bottles. The cat,

thus condemned to enforced abstinence, meandered about the house for a day and a half in a disconsolate,

quarrelsome mood. Then she disappeared, returning at eleven o'clock as tight as a drum.

Where she went, and how she managed to procure the drink, we never discovered; but the same programme

was repeated every day. Some time during the morning she would contrive to elude our vigilance and escape;

and late every evening she would come reeling home across the fields in a condition that I will not sully my

It was on Saturday night that she met the sad end to which I have before alluded. She must have been very

drunk, for the man told us that, in consequence of the darkness, and the fact that his horses were tired, he was

I think my grandmother was rather relieved than otherwise. She had been very fond of the cat at one time, but

its recent conduct had alienated her affection. We children buried it in the garden under the mulberry tree, but

the old lady insisted that there should be no tombstone, not even a mound raised. So it lies there, unhonoured,

I also told him of another cat our family had once possessed. She was the most motherly thing I have ever

known. She was never happy without a family. Indeed, I cannot remember her when she hadn't a family in

one stage or another. She was not very particular what sort of a family it was. If she could not have kittens,

then she would content herself with puppies or rats. Anything that she could wash and feed seemed to satisfy

her. I believe she would have brought up chickens if we had entrusted them to her.

All her brains must have run to motherliness, for she hadn't much sense. She could never tell the difference

between her own children and other people's. She thought everything young was a kitten. We once mixed up

a spaniel puppy that had lost its own mother among her progeny. I shall never forget her astonishment when

it first barked. She boxed both its ears, and then sat looking down at it with an expression of indignant sorrow

"You're going to be a credit to your mother," she seemed to be saying "you're a nice comfort to any one's old

age, you are, making a row like that. And look at your ears flopping all over your face. I don't know where

He was a good little dog. He did try to mew, and he did try to wash his face with his paw, and to keep his tail

still, but his success was not commensurate with his will. I do not know which was the sadder to reflect upon,

his efforts to become a creditable kitten, or his fostermother's despair of ever making him one.

Later on we gave her a baby squirrel to rear. She was nursing a family of her own at the time, but she adopted

him with enthusiasm, under the impression that he was another kitten, though she could not quite make out

how she had come to overlook him. He soon became her prime favourite. She liked his colour, and took a

mother's pride in his tail. What troubled her was that it would cock up over his head. She would hold it down

with one paw, and lick it by the halfhour together, trying to make it set properly. But the moment she let it

One day a neighbouring cat came to see her, and the squirrel was clearly the subject of their talk.

"It's a good colour," said the friend, looking critically at the supposed kitten, who was sitting up on his

haunches combing his whiskers, and saying the only truthfully pleasant thing about him that she could think

"No," responded his mother thoughtfully, "you're right there. His legs are his weak point. I can't say I think

"Oh, I hope so," replied the mother, regaining her momentarily dashed cheerfulness. "Oh yes, they'll come all

right in time. And then look at his tail. Now, honestly, did you ever see a kitten with a finer tail?"

"Yes, it's a good tail," assented the other; "but why do you do it up over his head?"

"I don't," answered our cat. "It goes that way. I can't make it out. I suppose it will come straight as he gets

"Oh, but I'm sure it will," replied our cat. "I must lick it more. It's a tail that wants a good deal of licking, you

And for hours that afternoon, after the other cat had gone, she sat trimming it; and, at the end, when she lifted

her paw off it, and it flew back again like a steel spring over the squirrel's head, she sat and gazed at it with

feelings that only those among my readers who have been mothers themselves will be able to comprehend.

"What have I done," she seemed to say"what have I done that this trouble should come upon me?"

"You and your friends appear to have been the possessors of some very remarkable cats," he observed.

"Singularly so," agreed Jephson; "I have never met but one man from whom I have heard more wonderful cat

"Oh," I said, not, perhaps without a touch of jealousy in my voice, "and who was he?"

"He was a seafaring man," replied Jephson. "I met him on a Hampstead tram, and we discussed the subject of

"'Yes, sir,' he said, 'monkeys is cute. I've come across monkeys as could give points to one or two lubbers I've

sailed under; and elephants is pretty spry, if you can believe all that's told of 'em. I've heard some tall tales

about elephants. And, of course, dogs has their heads screwed on all right: I don't say as they ain't. But what I

do say is: that for straightfor'ard, levelheaded reasoning, give me cats. You see, sir, a dog, he thinks a

powerful deal of a mannever was such a cute thing as a man, in a dog's opinion; and he takes good care

that everybody knows it. Naturally enough, we says a dog is the most intellectual animal there is. Now a cat,

she's got her own opinion about human beings. She don't say much, but you can tell enough to make you

anxious not to hear the whole of it. The consequence is, we says a cat's got no intelligence. That's where we

let our prejudice steer our judgment wrong. In a matter of plain common sense, there ain't a cat living as

couldn't take the lee side of a dog and fly round him. Now, have you ever noticed a dog at the end of a chain,

trying to kill a cat as is sitting washing her face threequarters of an inch out of his reach? Of course you

have. Well, who's got the sense out of those two? The cat knows that it ain't in the nature of steel chains to

stretch. The dog, who ought, you'd think, to know a durned sight more about 'em than she does, is sure they

"'Then again, have you ever been made mad by cats screeching in the night, and jumped out of bed and

opened the window and yelled at them? Did they ever budge an inch for that, though you shrieked loud

enough to skeer the dead, and waved your arms about like a man in a play? Not they. They've turned and

looked at you, that's all. "Yell away, old man," they've said, "we like to hear you: the more the merrier." Then

what have you done? Why, you've snatched up a hairbrush, or a boot, or a candlestick, and made as if you'd

throw it at them. They've seen your attitude, they've seen the thing in your hand, but they ain't moved a point.

They knew as you weren't going to chuck valuable property out of window with the chance of getting it lost

or spoiled. They've got sense themselves, and they give you credit for having some. If you don't believe that's

the reason, you try showing them a lump of coal, or half a brick, next timesomething as they know you

"'Then as to judgment and knowledge of the world, why dogs are babies to 'em. Have you ever tried telling a

"I replied that cats had often been present during anecdotal recitals of mine, but that, hitherto, I had paid no

"'Ah, well, you take an opportunity of doing so one day, sir,' answered the old fellow; 'it's worth the

experiment. If you're telling a story before a cat, and she don't get uneasy during any part of the narrative, you

can reckon you've got hold of a thing as it will be safe for you to tell to the Lord Chief Justice of England.

"'I've got a messmate,' he continued; 'William Cooley is his name. We call him Truthful Billy. He's as good a

seaman as ever trod quarterdeck; but when he gets spinning yarns he ain't the sort of man as I could advise

you to rely upon. Well, Billy, he's got a dog, and I've seen him sit and tell yarns before that dog that would

make a cat squirm out of its skin, and that dog's taken 'em in and believed 'em. One night, up at his old

woman's, Bill told us a yarn by the side of which salt junk two voyages old would pass for spring chicken. I

watched the dog, to see how he would take it. He listened to it from beginning to end with cocked ears, and

never so much as blinked. Every now and then he would look round with an expression of astonishment or

delight that seemed to say: "Wonderful, isn't it!" "Dear me, just think of it!" "Did you ever!" "Well, if that

don't beat everything!" He was a chuckle headed dog; you could have told him anything.

"'It irritated me that Bill should have such an animal about him to encourage him, and when he had finished I

"'Oh, it's just a fancy of mine,' I says. I didn't tell him I was wanting my old cat to hear it.

"'Next night but one he slings himself up in my cabin, and I does so. Nothing loth, off he starts. There was

about halfadozen of us stretched round, and the cat was sitting before the fire fussing itself up. Before Bill

had got fairly under weigh, she stops washing and looks up at me, puzzled like, as much as to say, "What

have we got here, a missionary?" I signalled to her to keep quiet, and Bill went on with his yarn. When he got

to the part about the sharks, she turned deliberately round and looked at him. I tell you there was an

expression of disgust on that cat's face as might have made a travelling Cheap Jack feel ashamed of himself.

It was that human, I give you my word, sir, I forgot for the moment as the poor animal couldn't speak. I could

see the words that were on its lips: "Why don't you tell us you swallowed the anchor?" and I sat on

tenterhooks, fearing each instant that she would say them aloud. It was a relief to me when she turned her

"'For a few minutes she sat very still, and seemed to be wrestling with herself like. I never saw a cat more set

on controlling its feelings, or that seemed to suffer more in silence. It made my heart ache to watch it.

"'At last Bill came to the point where he and the captain between 'em hold the shark's mouth open while the

cabinboy dives in head foremost, and fetches up, undigested, the gold watch and chain as the bo'sun was

awearing when he fell overboard; and at that the old cat giv'd a screech, and rolled over on her side with her

"'I thought at first the poor thing was dead, but she rallied after a bit, and it seemed as though she had braced

"'But a little further on, Bill got too much for her again, and this time she owned herself beat. She rose up and

looked round at us: "You'll excuse me, gentlemen," she saidleastways that is what she said if looks go for

anything"maybe you're used to this sort of rubbish, and it don't get on your nerves. With me it's different. I

guess I've heard as much of this fool's talk as my constitution will stand, and if it's all the same to you I'll get

"'With that she walked up to the door, and I opened it for her, and she went out.

Does man ever reform? Balzac says he doesn't. So far as my experience goes, it agrees with that of

Balzaca fact the admirers of that author are at liberty to make what use of they please.

When I was young and accustomed to take my views of life from people who were older than myself, and

who knew better, so they said, I used to believe that he did. Examples of "reformed characters" were

frequently pointed out to meindeed, our village, situate a few miles from a small seaport town, seemed to

be peculiarly rich in such. They were, from all accounts, including their own, persons who had formerly

behaved with quite unnecessary depravity, and who, at the time I knew them, appeared to be going to equally

objectionable lengths in the opposite direction. They invariably belonged to one of two classes, the

lowspirited or the aggressively unpleasant. They said, and I believed, that they were happy; but I could not

One of them, a small, meekeyed old man with a piping voice, had been exceptionally wild in his youth.

What had been his special villainy I could never discover. People responded to my inquiries by saying that he

had been "Oh, generally bad," and increased my longing for detail by adding that little boys ought not to want

to know about such things. From their tone and manner I assumed that he must have been a pirate at the very

Whatever it was, he had been saved from it by his wife, a bony lady of unprepossessing appearance, but

One day he called at our house for some purpose or other, and, being left alone with him for a few minutes, I

"You were very wicked once, weren't you?" I said, seeking by emphasis on the "once" to mitigate what I felt

To my intense surprise, a gleam of shameful glory lit up his wizened face, and a sound which I tried to think

The term "spanker" in such connection puzzled me. I had been hitherto led to regard a spanker as an

eminently conscientious person, especially where the shortcomings of other people were concerned; a

person who laboured for the good of others. That the word could also be employed to designate a sinful party

"But you are good now, aren't you?" I continued, dismissing further reflection upon the etymology of

"Ay, ay," he answered, his countenance resuming its customary aspect of resigned melancholy. "I be a brand

plucked from the burning, I be. There beant much wrong wi' Deacon Sawyers, now."

"And it was your wife that made you good, wasn't it?" I persisted, determined, now that I had started this

At the mention of his wife his features became suddenly transformed. Glancing hurriedly round, to make

sure, apparently, that no one but myself was within hearing, he leaned across and hissed these words into my

earI have never forgotten them, there was a ring of such evident sincerity about them

It struck me, even in the light of my then limited judgment, as an unregenerate wish; and thus early my faith

in the possibility of man's reformation received the first of those many blows that have resulted in shattering

Nature, whether human or otherwise, was not made to be reformed. You can develop, you can check, but you

You can take a small tiger and train it to sit on a hearthrug, and to lap milk, and so long as you provide it with

hearthrugs to lie on and sufficient milk to drink, it will purr and behave like an affectionate domestic pet. But

it is a tiger, with all a tiger's instincts, and its progeny to the end of all time will be tigers.

In the same way, you can take an ape and develop it through a few thousand generations until it loses its tail

and becomes an altogether superior ape. You can go on developing it through still a few more thousands of

generations until it gathers to itself out of the waste vapours of eternity an intellect and a soul, by the aid of

which it is enabled to keep the original apish nature more or less under control.

But the ape is still there, and always will be, and every now and again, when Constable Civilisation turns his

back for a moment, as during "Spanish Furies," or "September massacres," or Western mob rule, it creeps out

and bites and tears at quivering flesh, or plunges its hairy arms elbow deep in blood, or dances round a

I knew a man onceor, rather, I knew of a manwho was a confirmed drunkard. He became and continued

a drunkard, not through weakness, but through will. When his friends remonstrated with him, he told them to

mind their own business, and to let him mind his. If he saw any reason for not getting drunk he would give it

up. Meanwhile he liked getting drunk, and he meant to get drunk as often as possible.

He went about it deliberately, and did it thoroughly. For nearly ten years, so it was reported, he never went to

bed sober. This may be an exaggerationit would be a singular report were it notbut it can be relied upon

Then there came a day when he did see a reason for not getting drunk. He signed no pledge, he took no oath.

He said, "I will never touch another drop of drink," and for twentysix years he kept his word.

At the end of that time a combination of circumstances occurred that made life troublesome to him, so that he

desired to be rid of it altogether. He was a man accustomed, when he desired a thing within his reach, to

stretch out his hand and take it. He reviewed the case calmly, and decided to commit suicide.

If the thing were to be done at all, it would be best, for reasons that if set forth would make this a long story,

that it should be done that very night, and, if possible, before eleven o'clock, which was the earliest hour a

It was then four in the afternoon. He attended to some necessary business, and wrote some necessary letters.

This occupied him until seven. He then called a cab and drove to a small hotel in the suburbs, engaged a

private room, and ordered up materials for the making of the particular punch that had been the last beverage

For three hours he sat there drinking steadily, with his watch before him. At halfpast ten he rang the bell,

For a quarter of a century people had been calling that man a "reformed character." His character had not

reformed one jot. The craving for drink had never died. For twentysix years he had, being a great man, held

it gripped by the throat. When all things became a matter of indifference to him, he loosened his grasp, and

the evil instinct rose up within him as strong on the day he died as on the day he forced it down.

That is all a man can do, pray for strength to crush down the evil that is in him, and to keep it held down day

after day. I never hear washy talk about "changed characters" and "reformed natures" but I think of a sermon

"Ah! my friends, we've all of us got the devil inside us. I've got him, you've got him," cried the preacherhe

was an old man, with long white hair and beard, and wild, fighting eyes. Most of the preachers who came

"reviving," as it was called, through that district, had those eyes. Some of them needed "reviving" themselves,

in quite another sense, before they got clear out of it. I am speaking now of more than thirty years ago.

"Not of oursel's," ejaculated a fervent voice at the end of the room, "but the Lord will help us."

"But th' Lord woan't," he shouted; "doan't 'ee reckon on that, lad. Ye've got him an' ye've got ta keep him. Ye

Here there broke forth murmurs of angry disapproval, but the old fellow went on, unheeding:

"It arn't good for 'ee to get rid of him. Ye've just got to hug him tight. Doan't let him go. Hold him fast,

We had been discussing the subject with reference to our hero. It had been suggested by Brown as an

unhackneyed idea, and one lending itself, therefore, to comparative freshness of treatment, that our hero

Jephson seconded the proposal, for the reason that it would the better enable us to accomplish artistic work.

He was of opinion that we should be more sure of our ground in drawing a villain than in attempting to

MacShaughnassy thirded (if I may coin what has often appeared to me to be a muchneeded word) the

motion with ardour. He was tired, he said, of the crystalhearted, noblethinking young man of fiction.

Besides, it made bad reading for the "young person." It gave her false ideas, and made her dissatisfied with

And, thereupon, he launched forth and sketched us his idea of a hero, with reference to whom I can only say

Brown, our one earnest member, begged us to be reasonable, and reminded us, not for the first time, and not,

perhaps, altogether unnecessarily, that these meetings were for the purpose of discussing business, not of

Brown's idea was that the man should be an outandout blackguard, until about the middle of the book,

when some event should transpire that would have the effect of completely reforming him. This naturally

brought the discussion down to the question with which I have commenced this chapter: Does man ever

reform? I argued in the negative, and gave the reasons for my disbelief much as I have set them forth here.

MacShaughnassy, on the other hand, contended that he did, and instanced the case of himselfa man who,

in his early days, so he asserted, had been a scatterbrained, impracticable person, entirely without stability.

I maintained that this was merely an example of enormous willpower enabling a man to overcome and rise

"My opinion of you," I said, "is that you are naturally a hopelessly irresponsible, wellmeaning ass. But," I

continued quickly, seeing his hand reaching out towards a complete Shakespeare in one volume that lay upon

the piano, "your mental capabilities are of such extraordinary power that you can disguise this fact, and make

Brown agreed with me that in MacShaughnassy's case traces of the former disposition were clearly apparent,

but pleaded that the illustration was an unfortunate one, and that it ought not to have weight in the discussion.

"Seriously speaking," said he, "don't you think that there are some experiences great enough to break up and

"To break up," I replied, "yes; but to reform, no. Passing through a great experience may shatter a man, or it

may strengthen a man, just as passing through a furnace may melt or purify metal, but no furnace ever lit

upon this earth can change a bar of gold into a bar of lead, or a bar of lead into one of gold."

I asked Jephson what he thought. He did not consider the bar of gold simile a good one. He held that a man's

character was not an immutable element. He likened it to a drugpoison or elixir compounded by each

man for himself from the pharmacopoeia of all things known to life and time, and saw no impossibility,

though some improbability, in the glass being flung aside and a fresh draught prepared with pain and labour.

"Well," I said, "let us put the case practically; did you ever know a man's character to change?"

"Yes," he answered, "I did know a man whose character seemed to me to be completely changed by an

experience that happened to him. It may, as you say, only have been that he was shattered, or that the lesson

may have taught him to keep his natural disposition ever under control. The result, in any case, was striking."

"He was a friend of some cousins of mine," Jephson began, "people I used to see a good deal of in my

undergraduate days. When I met him first he was a young fellow of twentysix, strong mentally and

physically, and of a stern and stubborn nature that those who liked him called masterful, and that those who

disliked hima more numerous bodytermed tyrannical. When I saw him three years later, he was an old

man of twentynine, gentle and yielding beyond the borderline of weakness, mistrustful of himself and

considerate of others to a degree that was often unwise. Formerly, his anger had been a thing very easily and

frequently aroused. Since the change of which I speak, I have never known the shade of anger to cross his

face but once. In the course of a walk, one day, we came upon a young rough terrifying a small child by

pretending to set a dog at her. He seized the boy with a grip that almost choked him, and administered to him

a punishment that seemed to me altogether out of proportion to the crime, brutal though it was.

"'Yes,' he replied apologetically; 'I suppose I'm a hard judge of some follies.' And, knowing what his haunted

"He was junior partner in a large firm of tea brokers in the City. There was not much for him to do in the

London office, and when, therefore, as the result of some mortgage transactions, a South Indian tea plantation

fell into the hands of the firm, it was suggested that he should go out and take the management of it. The plan

suited him admirably. He was a man in every way qualified to lead a rough life; to face a by no means

contemptible amount of difficulty and danger, to govern a small army of native workers more amenable to

fear than to affection. Such a life, demanding thought and action, would afford his strong nature greater

interest and enjoyment than he could ever hope to obtain amid the cramped surroundings of civilisation.

"Only one thing could in reason have been urged against the arrangement, that thing was his wife. She was a

fragile, delicate girl, whom he had married in obedience to that instinct of attraction towards the opposite

which Nature, for the purpose of maintaining her average, has implanted in our breastsa timid, meekeyed

creature, one of those women to whom death is less terrible than danger, and fate easier to face than fear.

Such women have been known to run screaming from a mouse and to meet martyrdom with heroism. They

can no more keep their nerves from trembling than an aspen tree can stay the quivering of its leaves.

"That she was totally unfitted for, and would be made wretched by the life to which his acceptance of the post

would condemn her might have readily occurred to him, had he stopped to consider for a moment her feelings

in the matter. But to view a question from any other standpoint than his own was not his habit. That he loved

her passionately, in his way, as a thing belonging to himself, there can be no doubt, but it was with the love

that such men have for the dog they will thrash, the horse they will spur to a broken back. To consult her on

the subject never entered his head. He informed her one day of his decision and of the date of their sailing,

and, handing her a handsome cheque, told her to purchase all things necessary to her, and to let him know if

she needed more; and she, loving him with a doglike devotion that was not good for him, opened her big

eyes a little wider, but said nothing. She thought much about the coming change to herself, however, and,

when nobody was by, she would cry softly; then, hearing his footsteps, would hastily wipe away the traces of

"Now, her timidity and nervousness, which at home had been a butt for mere chaff, became, under the new

circumstances of their life, a serious annoyance to the man. A woman who seemed unable to repress a scream

whenever she turned and saw in the gloom a pair of piercing eyes looking out at her from a dusky face, who

was liable to drop off her horse with fear at the sound of a wild beast's roar a mile off, and who would turn

white and limp with horror at the mere sight of a snake, was not a companionable person to live with in the

"He himself was entirely without fear, and could not understand it. To him it was pure affectation. He had a

muddled idea, common to men of his stamp, that women assume nervousness because they think it pretty and

becoming to them, and that if one could only convince them of the folly of it they might be induced to lay it

aside, in the same way that they lay aside mincing steps and simpering voices. A man who prided himself, as

he did, upon his knowledge of horses, might, one would think, have grasped a truer notion of the nature of

"The thing that vexed him most was her horror of snakes. He was unblessedor uncursed, whichever you

may preferwith imagination of any kind. There was no special enmity between him and the seed of the

serpent. A creature that crawled upon its belly was no more terrible to him than a creature that walked upon

its legs; indeed, less so, for he knew that, as a rule, there was less danger to be apprehended from them. A

reptile is only too eager at all times to escape from man. Unless attacked or frightened, it will make no onset.

Most people are content to acquire their knowledge of this fact from the natural history books. He had proved

it for himself. His servant, an old sergeant of dragoons, has told me that he has seen him stop with his face six

inches from the head of a hooded cobra, and stand watching it through his eyeglass as it crawled away from

him, knowing that one touch of its fangs would mean death from which there could be no possible escape.

That any reasoning being should be inspired with terrorsickening, deadly terrorby such pitifully

harmless things, seemed to him monstrous; and he determined to try and cure her of her fear of them.

"He succeeded in doing this eventually somewhat more thoroughly than he had anticipated, but it left a terror

"One evening, riding home through a part of the jungle not far from his bungalow, he heard a soft, low hiss

close to his ear, and, looking up, saw a python swing itself from the branch of a tree and make off through the

long grass. He had been out antelopeshooting, and his loaded rifle hung by his stirrup. Springing from the

frightened horse, he was just in time to get a shot at the creature before it disappeared. He had hardly

expected, under the circumstances, to even hit it. By chance the bullet struck it at the junction of the vertebrae

with the head, and killed it instantly. It was a wellmarked specimen, and, except for the small wound the

bullet had made, quite uninjured. He picked it up, and hung it across the saddle, intending to take it home and

"Galloping along, glancing down every now and again at the huge, hideous thing swaying and writhing in

front of him almost as if still alive, a brilliant idea occurred to him. He would use this dead reptile to cure his

wife of her fear of living ones. He would fix matters so that she should see it, and think it was alive, and be

terrified by it; then he would show her that she had been frightened by a mere dead thing, and she would feel

ashamed of herself, and be healed of her folly. It was the sort of idea that would occur to a fool.

"When he reached home, he took the dead snake into his smokingroom; then, locking the door, the idiot set

out his prescription. He arranged the monster in a very natural and lifelike position. It appeared to be

crawling from the open window across the floor, and any one coming into the room suddenly could hardly

"That finished, he picked out a book from the shelves, opened it, and laid it face downward upon the couch.

When he had completed all things to his satisfaction he unlocked the door and came out, very pleased with

"'Only my novel that I was reading. I left it in my den. Do you mind? You will find it open on the couch.'

"As she paused there for a moment to look back at him and ask the name of the book, he thought how pretty

and how sweet she was; and for the first time a faint glimmer of the true nature of the thing he was doing

"'Never mind,' he said, half rising, 'I'll'; then, enamoured of the brilliancy of his plan, checked himself; and

"He heard her footsteps passing along the matted passage, and smiled to himself. He thought the affair was

going to be rather amusing. One finds it difficult to pity him even now when one thinks of it.

"The smokingroom door opened and closed, and he still sat gazing dreamily at the ash of his cigar, and

"One moment, perhaps two passed, but the time seemed much longer. The man blew the gray cloud from

before his eyes and waited. Then he heard what he had been expecting to heara piercing shriek. Then

another, which, expecting to hear the clanging of the distant door and the scurrying back of her footsteps

"The native servant, gliding noiselessly about the room, laid down the thing that was in his hand and moved

"'Keep where you are,' he said hoarsely. 'It is nothing. Your mistress is frightened, that is all. She must learn

to get over this folly.' Then he listened again, and the shrieks ended with what sounded curiously like a

"And out of that bottomless silence, Fear for the first time in his life came to the man, and he and the dusky

servant looked at each other with eyes in which there was a strange likeness; and by a common instinct

"When the man opened the door he saw three things: one was the dead python, lying where he had left it; the

second was a live python, its comrade apparently, slowly crawling round it; the third a crushed, bloody heap

"He himself remembered nothing more until, weeks afterwards, he opened his eyes in a darkened, unfamiliar

place, but the native servant, before he fled screaming from the house, saw his master fling himself upon the

living serpent and grasp it with his hands, and when, later on, others burst into the room and caught him

"That is the incident that changed the character of my manif it be changed," concluded Jephson. "He told it

me one night as we sat on the deck of the steamer, returning from Bombay. He did not spare himself. He told

me the story, much as I have told it to you, but in an even, monotonous tone, free from emotion of any kind. I

"'Recall it!' he replied, with a slight accent of surprise; 'it is always with me.'"

One day we spoke of crime and criminals. We had discussed the possibility of a novel without a villain, but

"It is a terribly sad reflection," remarked MacShaughnassy, musingly; "but what a desperately dull place this

earth would be if it were not for our friends the bad people. Do you know," he continued, "when I hear of

folks going about the world trying to reform everybody and make them good, I get positively nervous. Once

do away with sin, and literature will become a thing of the past. Without the criminal classes we authors

"I shouldn't worry," replied Jephson, drily; "one half mankind has been 'reforming' the other half pretty

steadily ever since the Creation, yet there appears to be a fairly appreciable amount of human nature left in it,

notwithstanding. Suppressing sin is much the same sort of task that suppressing a volcano would

"I cannot take your optimistic view of the case," answered MacShaughnassy. "It seems to me that crimeat

all events, interesting crimeis being slowly driven out of our existence. Pirates and highwaymen have been

practically abolished. Dear old 'Smuggler Bill' has melted down his cutlass into a pintcan with a false

bottom. The pressgang that was always so ready to rescue our hero from his approaching marriage has been

disbanded. There's not a lugger fit for the purposes of abduction left upon the coast. Men settle their 'affairs

of honour' in the law courts, and return home wounded only in the pocket. Assaults on unprotected females

are confined to the slums, where heroes do not dwell, and are avenged by the nearest magistrate. Your

modern burglar is generally an outof work greengrocer. His 'swag' usually consists of an overcoat and a

pair of boots, in attempting to make off with which he is captured by the servantgirl. Suicides and murders

are getting scarcer every season. At the present rate of decrease, deaths by violence will be unheard of in

another decade, and a murder story will be laughed at as too improbable to be interesting. A certain section of

busybodies are even crying out for the enforcement of the seventh commandment. If they succeed authors

will have to follow the advice generally given to them by the critics, and retire from business altogether. I tell

you our means of livelihood are being filched from us one by one. Authors ought to form themselves into a

MacShaughnassy's leading intention in making these remarks was to shock and grieve Brown, and in this

object he succeeded. Brown is or was, in those daysan earnest young man with an exaltedsome were

inclined to say an exaggeratedview of the importance and dignity of the literary profession. Brown's notion

of the scheme of Creation was that God made the universe so as to give the literary man something to write

about. I used at one time to credit Brown with originality for this idea; but as I have grown older I have

Brown expostulated with MacShaughnassy. "You speak," he said, "as though literature were the parasite of

"And what else is she?" replied the MacShaughnassy, with enthusiasm. "What would become of literature

without folly and sin? What is the work of the literary man but raking a living for himself out of the

dustheap of human woe? Imagine, if you can, a perfect worlda world where men and women never said

foolish things and never did unwise ones; where small boys were never mischievous and children never made

awkward remarks; where dogs never fought and cats never screeched; where wives never henpecked their

husbands and mothers inlaw never nagged; where men never went to bed in their boots and seacaptains

never swore; where plumbers understood their work and old maids never dressed as girls; where niggers

never stole chickens and proud men were never seasick! where would be your humour and your wit?

Imagine a world where hearts were never bruised; where lips were never pressed with pain; where eyes were

never dim; where feet were never weary; where stomachs were never empty! where would be your pathos?

Imagine a world where husbands never loved more wives than one, and that the right one; where wives were

never kissed but by their husbands; where men's hearts were never black and women's thoughts never impure;

where there was no hating and no envying; no desiring; no despairing! where would be your scenes of

passion, your interesting complications, your subtle psychological analyses? My dear Brown, we

writersnovelists, dramatists, poets we fatten on the misery of our fellowcreatures. God created man

and woman, and the woman created the literary man when she put her teeth into the apple. We came into the

world under the shadow of the serpent. We are special correspondents with the Devil's army. We report his

victories in our threevolume novels, his occasional defeats in our fiveact melodramas."

"All of which is very true," remarked Jephson; "but you must remember it is not only the literary man who

traffics in misfortune. The doctor, the lawyer, the preacher, the newspaper proprietor, the weather prophet,

will hardly, I should say, welcome the millennium. I shall never forget an anecdote my uncle used to relate,

dealing with the period when he was chaplain of the Lincolnshire county jail. One morning there was to be a

hanging; and the usual little crowd of witnesses, consisting of the sheriff, the governor, three or four

reporters, a magistrate, and a couple of warders, was assembled in the prison. The condemned man, a brutal

ruffian who had been found guilty of murdering a young girl under exceptionally revolting circumstances,

was being pinioned by the hangman and his assistant; and my uncle was employing the last few moments at

his disposal in trying to break down the sullen indifference the fellow had throughout manifested towards

My uncle failing to make any impression upon him, the governor ventured to add a few words of exhortation,

"'Go to hell,' he cried, 'with your snivelling jaw. Who are you, to preach at me? YOU'RE glad enough I'm

hereall of you. Why, I'm the only one of you as ain't going to make a bit over this job. Where would you

all be, I should like to know, you canting swine, if it wasn't for me and my sort? Why, it's the likes of me as

KEEPS the likes of you,' with which he walked straight to the gallows and told the hangman to 'hurry up' and

MacShaughnassy puffed a mouthful of smoke over a spider which was just about to kill a fly. This caused the

spider to fall into the river, from where a supperhunting swallow quickly rescued him.

"You remind me," he said, "of a scene I once witnessed in the office of The Dailywell, in the office of a

certain daily newspaper. It was the dead season, and things were somewhat slow. An endeavour had been

made to launch a discussion on the question 'Are Babies a Blessing?' The youngest reporter on the staff,

writing over the simple but touching signature of 'Mother of Six,' had led off with a scathing, though

somewhat irrelevant, attack upon husbands, as a class; the Sporting Editor, signing himself 'Working Man,'

and garnishing his contribution with painfully elaborated orthographical lapses, arranged to give an air of

verisimilitude to the correspondence, while, at the same time, not to offend the susceptibilities of the

democracy (from whom the paper derived its chief support), had replied, vindicating the British father, and

giving what purported to be stirring midnight experiences of his own. The Gallery Man, calling himself, with

a burst of imagination, 'Gentleman and Christian,' wrote indignantly that he considered the agitation of the

subject to be both impious and indelicate, and added he was surprised that a paper holding the exalted, and

deservedly popular, position of Theshould have opened its columns to the brainless vapourings of 'Mother

"The topic had, however, fallen flat. With the exception of one man who had invented a new feedingbottle,

and thought he was going to advertise it for nothing, the outside public did not respond, and over the editorial

"One evening, as two or three of us were mooning about the stairs, praying secretly for a war or a famine,

Todhunter, the town reporter, rushed past us with a cheer, and burst into the Sub editor's room. We

followed. He was waving his notebook above his head, and clamouring, after the manner of people in French

"'Better than that!' shouted Todhunter. 'Excursion steamer run down, a hundred and twentyfive lives

"'By Jove!' said the Sub, 'couldn't have happened at a better time either'and then he sat down and dashed

off a leaderette, in which he dwelt upon the pain and regret the paper felt at having to announce the disaster,

and drew attention to the exceptionally harrowing account provided by the energy and talent of 'our special

"It is the law of nature," said Jephson: "we are not the first party of young philosophers who have been struck

I was thinking of an incident told me by a nurse. If a nurse in fair practice does not know more about human

naturedoes not see clearer into the souls of men and women than all the novelists in little Bookland put

togetherit must be because she is physically blind and deaf. All the world's a stage, and all the men and

women merely players; so long as we are in good health, we play our parts out bravely to the end, acting

them, on the whole, artistically and with strenuousness, even to the extent of sometimes fancying ourselves

the people we are pretending to be. But with sickness comes forgetfulness of our part, and carelessness of the

impression we are making upon the audience. We are too weak to put the paint and powder on our faces, the

stage finery lies unheeded by our side. The heroic gestures, the virtuous sentiments are a weariness to us. In

the quiet, darkened room, where the footlights of the great stage no longer glare upon us, where our ears are

no longer strained to catch the clapping or the hissing of the town, we are, for a brief space, ourselves.

This nurse was a quiet, demure little woman, with a pair of dreamy, soft gray eyes that had a curious power

of absorbing everything that passed before them without seeming to look at anything. Gazing upon much life,

laid bare, had given to them a slightly cynical expression, but there was a background of kindliness behind.

During the evenings of my convalescence she would talk to me of her nursing experiences. I have sometimes

thought I would put down in writing the stories that she told me, but they would be sad reading. The majority

of them, I fear, would show only the tangled, seamy side of human nature, and God knows there is little need

for us to point that out to each other, though so many nowadays seem to think it the only work worth doing.

A few of them were sweet, but I think they were the saddest; and over one or two a man might laugh, but it

"I never enter the door of a house to which I have been summoned," she said to me one evening, "without

wondering, as I step over the threshold, what the story is going to be. I always feel inside a sickroom as if I

were behind the scenes of life. The people come and go about you, and you listen to them talking and

laughing, and you look into your patient's eyes, and you just know that it's all a play."

The incident that Jephson's remark had reminded me of, she told me one afternoon, as I sat propped up by the

fire, trying to drink a glass of port wine, and feeling somewhat depressed at discovering I did not like it.

"One of my first cases," she said, "was a surgical operation. I was very young at the time, and I made rather

an awkward mistakeI don't mean a professional mistakebut a mistake nevertheless that I ought to have

"My patient was a goodlooking, pleasantspoken gentleman. The wife was a pretty, dark little woman, but I

never liked her from the first; she was one of those perfectly proper, frigid women, who always give me the

idea that they were born in a church, and have never got over the chill. However, she seemed very fond of

him, and he of her; and they talked very prettily to each othertoo prettily for it to be quite genuine, I should

"The operation was a difficult and dangerous one. When I came on duty in the evening I found him, as I

expected, highly delirious. I kept him as quiet as I could, but towards nine o'clock, as the delirium only

increased, I began to get anxious. I bent down close to him and listened to his ravings. Over and over again I

heard the name 'Louise.' Why wouldn't 'Louise' come to him? It was so unkind of herthey had dug a great

pit, and were pushing him down into it oh! why didn't she come and save him? He should be saved if she

"His cries became so pitiful that I could bear them no longer. His wife had gone to attend a prayermeeting,

but the church was only in the next street. Fortunately, the daynurse had not left the house: I called her in to

watch him for a minute, and, slipping on my bonnet, ran across. I told my errand to one of the vergers and he

took me to her. She was kneeling, but I could not wait. I pushed open the pew door, and, bending down,

whispered to her, 'Please come over at once; your husband is more delirious than I quite care about, and you

"She whispered back, without raising her head, 'I'll be over in a little while. The meeting won't last much

"Her answer surprised and nettled me. 'You'll be acting more like a Christian woman by coming home with

me,' I said sharply, 'than by stopping here. He keeps calling for you, and I can't get him to sleep.'

"She raised her head from her hands: 'Calling for me?' she asked, with a slightly incredulous accent.

"'Yes,' I replied, 'it has been his one cry for the last hour: Where's Louise, why doesn't Louise come to him.'

"Her face was in shadow, but as she turned it away, and the faint light from one of the turneddown gasjets

fell across it, I fancied I saw a smile upon it, and I disliked her more than ever.

"'I'll come back with you,' she said, rising and putting her books away, and we left the church together.

"She asked me many questions on the way: Did patients, when they were delirious, know the people about

them? Did they remember actual facts, or was their talk mere incoherent rambling? Could one guide their

"The moment we were inside the door, she flung off her bonnet and cloak, and came upstairs quickly and

"She walked to the bedside, and stood looking down at him, but he was quite unconscious of her presence,

and continued muttering. I suggested that she should speak to him, but she said she was sure it would be

"Seeing she was no good to him, I tried to persuade her to go to bed, but she said she would rather stop, and I,

being little more than a girl then, and without much authority, let her. All night long he tossed and raved, the

one name on his lips being ever LouiseLouiseand all night long that woman sat there in the shadow,

never moving, never speaking, with a set smile on her lips that made me long to take her by the shoulders and

"At one time he imagined himself back in his courting days, and pleaded, 'Say you love me, Louise. I know

you do. I can read it in your eyes. What's the use of our pretending? We KNOW each other. Put your white

arms about me. Let me feel your breath upon my neck. Ah! I knew it, my darling, my love!'

"The whole house was deadly still, and I could hear every word of his troubled ravings. I almost felt as if I

had no right to be there, listening to them, but my duty held me. Later on, he fancied himself planning a

holiday with her, so I concluded. 'I shall start on Monday evening,' he was saying, and you can join me in

"His voice grew a little faint, and his wife moved forward on her chair, and bent her head closer to his lips.

"'No, no,' he continued, after a pause, 'there's no danger whatever. It's a lonely little place, right in the heart of

the Galway MountainsO'Mullen's Halfway House they call itfive miles from Ballynahinch. We shan't

meet a soul there. We'll have three weeks of heaven all to ourselves, my goddess, my Mrs. Maddox from

"He laughed in his delirium; and the woman, sitting by his side, laughed also; and then the truth flashed

"I ran up to her and caught her by the arm. 'Your name's not Louise,' I said, looking straight at her. It was an

"'No,' she replied, very quietly; 'but it's the name of a very dear school friend of mine. I've got the clue

tonight that I've been waiting two years to get. Goodnight, nurse, thanks for fetching me.'

"She rose and went out, and I listened to her footsteps going down the stairs, and then drew up the blind and

"I've never told that incident to any one until this evening," my nurse concluded, as she took the empty port

wine glass out of my hand, and stirred the fire. "A nurse wouldn't get many engagements if she had the

Another story that she told me showed married life more lovelit, but then, as she added, with that cynical

twinkle which glinted so oddly from her gentle, demure eyes, this couple had only very recently been

They had been travelling on the Continent, and there had both contracted typhoid fever, which showed itself

"I was called in to them on the very day of their arrival," she said; "the husband was the first to take to his

bed, and the wife followed suit twelve hours afterwards. We placed them in adjoining rooms, and, as often as

"Poor things! They were little else than boy and girl, and they worried more about each other than they

thought about themselves. The wife's only trouble was that she wouldn't be able to do anything for 'poor

Jack.' 'Oh, nurse, you will be good to him, won't you?' she would cry, with her big childish eyes full of tears;

and the moment I went in to him it would be: 'Oh, don't trouble about me, nurse, I'm all right. Just look after

"I had a hard time between the two of them, for, with the help of her sister, I was nursing them both. It was an

unprofessional thing to do, but I could see they were not well off, and I assured the doctor that I could

manage. To me it was worth while going through the double work just to breathe the atmosphere of

unselfishness that sweetened those two sickrooms. The average invalid is not the patient sufferer people

imagine. It is a fretful, querulous, self pitying little world that we live in as a rule, and that we grow hard in.

"The man pulled through, and began steadily to recover, but the wife was a wee slip of a girl, and her

strengthwhat there was of it ebbed day by day. As he got stronger he would call out more and more

cheerfully to her through the open door, and ask her how she was getting on, and she would struggle to call

back laughing answers. It had been a mistake to put them next to each other, and I blamed myself for having

done so, but it was too late to change then. All we could do was to beg her not to exhaust herself, and to let

us, when he called out, tell him she was asleep. But the thought of not answering him or calling to him made

"Her one anxiety was that he should not know how weak she was. 'It will worry him so,' she would say; 'he is

"One morning he called out to her, as usual, asking her how she was, and she answered, though she had to

wait for a few seconds to gather strength to do so. He seemed to detect the effort, for he called back

"'I thought your voice sounded a little weak, dear,' he answered; 'don't call out if it tries you.'

"Then for the first time she began to worry about herselfnot for her own sake, but because of him.

"'Do you think I AM getting weaker, nurse?' she asked me, fixing her great eyes on me with a frightened

"'You're making yourself weak by calling out,' I answered, a little sharply. 'I shall have to keep that door

"'Oh, don't tell him'that was all her thought'don't let him know it. Tell him I'm strong, won't you, nurse?

"I was glad when her sister came up, and I could get out of the room, for you're not much good at nursing

when you feel, as I felt then, as though you had swallowed a tablespoon and it was sticking in your throat.

"Later on, when I went in to him, he drew me to the bedside, and whispered me to tell him truly how she was.

If you are telling a lie at all, you may just as well make it a good one, so I told him she was really

wonderfully well, only a little exhausted after the illness, as was natural, and that I expected to have her up

"Poor lad! that lie did him more good than a week's doctoring and nursing; and next morning he called out

more cheerily than ever to her, and offered to bet her a new bonnet against a new hat that he would race her,

"She laughed back quite merrily (I was in his room at the time). 'All right,' she said, 'you'll lose. I shall be

"Her laugh was so bright, and her voice sounded so much stronger, that I really began to think she had taken

a turn for the better, so that when on going in to her I found her pillow wet with tears, I could not understand

"'Oh, poor Jack!' she moaned, as her little, wasted fingers opened and closed upon the counterpane. 'Poor

"It was no good my saying anything. There comes a moment when something tells your patient all that is to

be known about the case, and the doctor and the nurse can keep their hopeful assurances for where they will

be of more use. The only thing that would have brought comfort to her then would have been to convince her

that he would soon forget her and be happy without her. I thought it at the time, and I tried to say something

of the kind to her, but I couldn't get it out, and she wouldn't have believed me if I had.

"So all I could do was to go back to the other room, and tell him that I wanted her to go to sleep, and that he

"She lay very still all day. The doctor came at his usual hour and looked at her. He patted her hand, and just

"Towards evening she opened her eyes, and beckoned to her sister, who was standing by the bedside, to bend

"'Jeanie,' she whispered, 'do you think it wrong to deceive any one when it's for their own good?'

"'I don't know,' said the girl, in a dry voice; 'I shouldn't think so. Why do you ask?'

"'Jeanie, your voice was always very much like minedo you remember, they used to mistake us at home.

"They had loved each other, those two, more than is common among sisters. Jeanie could not answer, but she

"Then, drawing all her little stock of life together for one final effort, the child raised herself in her sister's

"'Goodnight, Jack,' she called out, loud and clear enough to be heard through the closed door.

"Her little, wornout frame dropped back upon the bed, and the next thing I remember is snatching up a

pillow, and holding it tight pressed against Jeanie's face for fear the sound of her sobs should penetrate into

the next room; and afterwards we both got out, somehow, by the other door, and rushed downstairs, and

"How we two women managed to keep up the deceit, as, for three whole days, we did, I shall never myself

know. Jeanie sat in the room where her dead sister, from its head to its stickingup feet, lay outlined under

the white sheet; and I stayed beside the living man, and told lies and acted lies, till I took a joy in them, and

"He wondered at what he thought my 'new merry mood,' and I told him it was because of my delight that his

wife was out of danger; and then I went on for the pure devilment of the thing, and told him that a week ago,

when we had let him think his wife was growing stronger, we had been deceiving him; that, as a matter of

fact, she was at that time in great peril, and I had been in hourly alarm concerning her, but that now the strain

was over, and she was safe; and I dropped down by the foot of the bed, and burst into a fit of laughter, and

"He had started up in bed with a wild white face when Jeanie had first answered him from the other room,

though the sisters' voices had been so uncannily alike that I had never been able to distinguish one from the

other at any time. I told him the slight change was the result of the fever, that his own voice also was changed

a little, and that such was always the case with a person recovering from a long illness. To guide his thoughts

away from the real clue, I told him Jeanie had broken down with the long work, and that, the need for her

being past, I had packed her off into the country for a short rest. That afternoon we concocted a letter to him,

and I watched Jeanie's eyes with a towel in my hand while she wrote it, so that no tears should fall on it, and

that night she travelled twenty miles down the Great Western line to post it, returning by the next uptrain.

"No suspicion of the truth ever occurred to him, and the doctor helped us out with our deception; yet his

pulse, which day by day had been getting stronger, now beat feebler every hour. In that part of the country

where I was born and grew up, the folks say that wherever the dead lie, there round about them, whether the

time be summer or winter, the air grows cold and colder, and that no fire, though you pile the logs halfway

up the chimney, will ever make it warm. A few months' hospital training generally cures one of all fanciful

notions about death, but this idea I have never been able to get rid of. My thermometer may show me sixty,

and I may try to believe that the temperature IS sixty, but if the dead are beside me I feel cold to the marrow

of my bones. I could SEE the chill from the dead room crawling underneath the door, and creeping up about

"Jeanie and I redoubled our efforts, for it seemed to us as if Death were waiting just outside in the passage,

watching with his eye at the keyhole for either of us to make a blunder and let the truth slip out. I hardly ever

left his side except now and again to go into that next room, and poke an imaginary fire, and say a few

chaffing words to an imaginary living woman on the bed where the dead one lay; and Jeanie sat close to the

corpse, and called out saucy messages to him, or reassuring answers to his anxious questions.

"At times, knowing that if we stopped another moment in these rooms we should scream, we would steal

softly out and rush downstairs, and, shutting ourselves out of hearing in a cellar underneath the yard, laugh

till we reeled against the dirty walls. I think we were both getting a little mad.

"One dayit was the third of that nightmare life, so I learned afterwards, though for all I could have told

then it might have been the three hundredth, for Time seemed to have fled from that house as from a dream,

so that all things were tangledI made a slip that came near to ending the matter, then and there.

"I had gone into that other room. Jeanie had left her post for a moment, and the place was empty.

"I did not think what I was doing. I had not closed my eyes that I can remember since the wife had died, and

my brain and my senses were losing their hold of one another. I went through my usual performance of

talking loudly to the thing underneath the white sheet, and noisily patting the pillows and rattling the bottles

"On my return, he asked me how she was, and I answered, half in a dream, 'Oh, bonny, she's trying to read a

little,' and he raised himself on his elbow and called out to her, and for answer there came back silencenot

the silence that IS silence, but the silence that is as a voice. I do not know if you understand what I mean by

"I darted to the door and pretended to look in. 'She's fallen asleep,' I whispered, closing it; and he said

"That night, Jeanie and I stood in the hall talking. He had fallen to sleep early, and I had locked the door

between the two rooms, and put the key in my pocket, and had stolen down to tell her what had happened,

"'What can we do! God help us, what can we do!' was all that Jeanie could say. We had thought that in a day

or two he would be stronger, and that the truth might be broken to him. But instead of that he had grown so

weak, that to excite his suspicions now by moving him or her would be to kill him.

"We stood looking blankly in each other's faces, wondering how the problem could be solved; and while we

"The one womanservant had gone out, and the house was very silent so silent that I could hear the ticking

of Jeanie's watch inside her dress. Suddenly, into the stillness there came a sound. It was not a cry. It came

from no human voice. I have heard the voice of human pain till I know its every note, and have grown

careless to it; but I have prayed God on my knees that I may never hear that sound again, for it was the sob of

"At length, with the return of the blood to our veins, we went upstairs together. He had crept from his own

room along the passage into hers. He had not had strength enough to pull the sheet off, though he had tried.

My nurse sat for a while without speaking, a somewhat unusual thing for her to do.

"Ah!" she said, giving the fire a contemplative poke, "if you'd seen as much sorrow in the world as I have,

"I think," she added, after a long pause, with the poker still in her hand, "it can only be the people who have

never KNOWN suffering who can care to read of it. If I could write a book, I should write a merry booka

The discussion arose in this way. I had proposed a match between our villain and the daughter of the local

chemist, a singularly noble and pureminded girl, the humble but worthy friend of the heroine.

Brown had refused his consent on the ground of improbability. "What in thunder would induce him to marry

"Love!" I replied; "love, that burns as brightly in the meanest villain's breast as in the proud heart of the good

"Are you trying to be light and amusing," returned Brown, severely, "or are you supposed to be discussing

the matter seriously? What attraction could such a girl have for such a man as Reuben Neil?"

"Every attraction," I retorted. "She is the exact moral contrast to himself. She is beautiful (if she's not

beautiful enough, we can touch her up a bit), and, when the father dies, there will be the shop."

"Besides," I added, "it will make the thing seem more natural if everybody wonders what on earth could have

"Can YOU imagine our friend Reuben seized with a burning desire to marry Mary Holme?" he asked, with a

"Of course I can," said MacShaughnassy; "I can imagine anything, and believe anything of anybody. It is

only in novels that people act reasonably and in accordance with what might be expected of them. I knew an

old seacaptain who used to read the Young Ladies' Journal in bed, and cry over it. I knew a bookmaker who

always carried Browning's poems about with him in his pocket to study in the train. I have known a Harley

Street doctor to develop at fortyeight a sudden and overmastering passion for switchbacks, and to spend

every hour he could spare from his practice at one or other of the exhibitions, having threepen'orths one

after the other. I have known a bookreviewer give oranges (not poisoned ones) to children. A man is not a

character, he is a dozen characters, one of them prominent, the other eleven more or less undeveloped. I knew

a man once, two of whose characters were of equal value, and the consequences were peculiar."

"He was a Balliol man," said MacShaughnassy, "and his Christian name was Joseph. He was a member of the

'Devonshire' at the time I knew him, and was, I think, the most superior person I have ever met. He sneered at

the Saturday Review as the pet journal of the suburban literary club; and at the Athenaeum as the trade organ

of the unsuccessful writer. Thackeray, he considered, was fairly entitled to his position of favourite author to

the cultured clerk; and Carlyle he regarded as the exponent of the earnest artisan. Living authors he never

read, but this did not prevent his criticising them contemptuously. The only inhabitants of the nineteenth

century that he ever praised were a few obscure French novelists, of whom nobody but himself had ever

heard. He had his own opinion about God Almighty, and objected to Heaven on account of the strong

Clapham contingent likely to be found in residence there. Humour made him sad, and sentiment made him ill.

Art irritated him and science bored him. He despised his own family and disliked everybody else. For

exercise he yawned, and his conversation was mainly confined to an occasional shrug.

"Nobody liked him, but everybody respected him. One felt grateful to him for his condescension in living at

"One summer, I was fishing over the Norfolk Broads, and on the Bank Holiday, thinking I would like to see

the London 'Arry in his glory, I ran over to Yarmouth. Walking along the seafront in the evening, I suddenly

found myself confronted by four remarkably choice specimens of the class. They were urging on their wild

and erratic career arminarm. The one nearest the road was playing an unusually wheezy concertina, and

the other three were bawling out the chorus of a musichall song, the heroine of which appeared to be

They spread themselves right across the pavement, compelling all the women and children they met to step

into the roadway. I stood my ground on the kerb, and as they brushed by me something in the face of the one

"I turned and followed them. They were evidently enjoying themselves immensely. To every girl they passed

they yelled out, 'Oh, you little jam tart!' and every old lady they addressed as 'Mar.' The noisiest and the most

"I followed them on to the pier, and then, hurrying past, waited for them under a gaslamp. When the man

with the concertina came into the light and I saw him clearly I started. From the face I could have sworn it

was Joseph; but everything else about him rendered such an assumption impossible. Putting aside the time

and the place, and forgetting his behaviour, his companions, and his instrument, what remained was sufficient

to make the suggestion absurd. Joseph was always clean shaven; this youth had a smudgy moustache and a

pair of incipient red whiskers. He was dressed in the loudest check suit I have ever seen, off the stage. He

wore patentleather boots with motherofpearl buttons, and a necktie that in an earlier age would have

called down lightning out of Heaven. He had a lowcrowned billycock hat on his head, and a big

"Argue as I would, however, the face was the face of Joseph; and, moved by a curiosity I could not control, I

"Once, for a little while, I missed him; but there was not much fear of losing that suit for long, and after a

little looking about I struck it again. He was sitting at the end of the pier, where it was less crowded, with his

arm round a girl's waist. I crept close. She was a jolly, redfaced girl, goodlooking enough, but common to

the last degree. Her hat lay on the seat beside her, and her head was resting on his shoulder. She appeared to

"She gave him an affectionate slap, but he did not respond, and a few minutes afterwards, muttering some

excuse, he rose and left her, and I followed him as he made his way towards the refreshmentroom. At the

"'Oh, I carn't stand 'er,' was his reply; 'she gives me the bloomin' 'ump. You 'ave a turn with 'er.'

"His friend disappeared in the direction of 'Liza, and Joe pushed into the room, I keeping close behind him.

Now that he was alone I was determined to speak to him. The longer I had studied his features the more

"He was leaning across the bar, clamouring for two of gin, when I tapped him on the shoulder. He turned his

"'Who's Mr. Joseph Smythe?' he answered hoarsely; 'my name's Smith, I ain't no bloomin' Smythe. Who are

"As he spoke, my eyes rested upon a curious gold ring of Indian workmanship which he wore upon his left

hand. There was no mistaking the ring, at all events: it had been passed round the club on more than one

occasion as a unique curiosity. His eyes followed my gaze. He burst into tears, and pushing me before him

"'Don't give me away, old man,' he whimpered; 'for Gawd's sake, don't let on to any of the chaps 'ere that I'm

a member of that blessed old waxwork show in Saint James's: they'd never speak to me agen. And keep yer

mug shut about Oxford, there's a good sort. I wouldn't 'ave 'em know as 'ow I was one o' them college blokes

"I sat aghast. I had listened to hear him entreat me to keep 'Smith,' the rorty 'Arry, a secret from the

acquaintances of 'Smythe,' the superior person. Here was 'Smith' in mortal terror lest his pals should hear of

his identity with the aristocratic 'Smythe,' and discard him. His attitude puzzled me at the time, but, when I

"'I carn't 'elp it,' he went on; 'I 'ave to live two lives. 'Arf my time I'm a stuckup prig, as orter be jolly well

"'At which times,' I interrupted, 'I have heard you express some extremely uncomplimentary opinions

"'I know,' he replied, in a voice betraying strong emotion; 'that's where it's so precious rough on me. When

I'm a toff I despises myself, 'cos I knows that underneath my sneering phiz I'm a bloomin' 'Arry. When I'm an

"'No,' he answered, 'I carn't. It's a rum thing, but whichever I am, sure as fate, 'bout the end of a month I begin

"'I can quite understand it,' I murmured; 'I should give way myself in a fortnight.'

"'I've been myself, now,' he continued, without noticing my remark, 'for somethin' like ten days. One mornin',

in 'bout three weeks' time, I shall get up in my diggins in the Mile End Road, and I shall look round the room,

and at these clothes 'angin' over the bed, and at this yer concertina' (he gave it an affectionate squeeze), 'and I

shall feel myself gettin' scarlet all over. Then I shall jump out o' bed, and look at myself in the glass. "You

howling little cad," I shall say to myself, "I have half a mind to strangle you"; and I shall shave myself, and

put on a quiet blue serge suit and a bowler 'at, tell my landlady to keep my rooms for me till I comes back,

slip out o' the 'ouse, and into the fust 'ansom I meets, and back to the Halbany. And a month arter that, I shall

come into my chambers at the Halbany, fling Voltaire and Parini into the fire, shy me 'at at the bust of good

"'Oh, that's simple enough,' he replied. 'I just tells my 'ousekeeper at the Halbany as I'm goin' on the

"'Nobody misses me much,' he added, pathetically; 'I hain't a partic'larly fetchin' sort o' bloke, either of me.

I'm sich an out andouter. When I'm an 'Arry, I'm too much of an 'Arry, and when I'm a prig, I'm a reg'lar

fust prize prig. Seems to me as if I was two ends of a man without any middle. If I could only mix myself up

"He sniffed once or twice, and then he laughed. 'Ah, well,' he said, casting aside his momentary gloom; 'it's

"I declined the wet, and left him playing sentimental airs to himself upon the concertina.

"One afternoon, about a month later, the servant came to me with a card on which was engraved the name of

'Mr. Joseph Smythe.' I requested her to show him up. He entered with his usual air of languid

"'Well,' I said, as soon as the girl had closed the door behind her, 'so you've got rid of Smith?'

"A sickly smile passed over his face. 'You have not mentioned it to any one?' he asked anxiously.

"'I sincerely trust you never will,' he said, in a tone of alarm. 'You can have no conception of the misery the

whole thing causes me. I cannot understand it. What possible affinity there can be between myself and that

disgusting little snob passes my comprehension. I assure you, my dear Mac, the knowledge that I was a

ghoul, or a vampire, would cause me less nausea than the reflection that I am one and the same with that

"'Don't think about him any more,' I interrupted, perceiving his stronglysuppressed emotion. 'You didn't

"'Well,' he replied, 'in a certain roundabout way it is slightly connected with him. That is really my excuse for

inflicting the subject upon you. You are the only man I CAN speak to about itif I shall not bore you?'

"'Not in the least,' I said. 'I am most interested.' As he still hesitated, I asked him pointblank what it was.

"He appeared embarrassed. 'It is really very absurd of me,' he said, while the faintest suspicion of pink

crossed his usually colourless face; 'but I feel I must talk to somebody about it. The fact is, my dear Mac, I

"'Capital!' I cried; 'I'm delighted to hear it.' (I thought it might make a man of him.) 'Do I know the lady?'

"'I am inclined to think you must have seen her,' he replied; 'she was with me on the pier at Yarmouth that

"'That was she,' he answered; 'Miss Elizabeth Muggins.' He dwelt lovingly upon the name.

"'But,' I said, 'you seemedI really could not help noticing, it was so pronouncedyou seemed to positively

dislike her. Indeed, I gathered from your remark to a friend that her society was distinctly distasteful to you.'

"'To Smith,' he corrected me. 'What judge would that howling little blackguard be of a woman's worth! The

"'She is not, perhaps, what the world would call a lady,' he admitted; 'but then, my dear Mac, my opinion of

the world is not such as to render ITS opinion of much value to me. I and the world differ on most subjects, I

"'She's a jolly enough little girl,' I replied, 'and, I should say, affectionate; but have you considered, Smythe,

whether she is quite what shall we sayquite as intellectual as could be desired?'

"'Really, to tell the truth, I have not troubled myself much about her intellect,' he replied, with one of his

sneering smiles. 'I have no doubt that the amount of intellect absolutely necessary to the formation of a

British home, I shall be able to supply myself. I have no desire for an intellectual wife. One is compelled to

"'No,' he continued, reverting to his more natural tone; 'the more I think of Elizabeth the more clear it

becomes to me that she is the one woman in the world for whom marriage with me is possible. I perceive that

to the superficial observer my selection must appear extraordinary. I do not pretend to explain it, or even to

understand it. The study of mankind is beyond man. Only fools attempt it. Maybe it is her contrast to myself

that attracts me. Maybe my, perhaps, too spiritual nature feels the need of contact with her coarser clay to

perfect itself. I cannot tell. These things must always remain mysteries. I only know that I love her that, if

any reliance is to be placed upon instinct, she is the mate to whom Artemis is leading me.'

"It was clear that he was in love, and I therefore ceased to argue with him. 'You kept up your

acquaintanceship with her, then, after you'I was going to say 'after you ceased to be Smith,' but not

wishing to agitate him by more mention of that person than I could help, I substituted, 'after you returned to

"'Not exactly,' he replied; 'I lost sight of her after I left Yarmouth, and I did not see her again until five days

ago, when I came across her in an aerated bread shop. I had gone in to get a glass of milk and a bun, and SHE

brought them to me. I recognised her in a moment.' His face lighted up with quite a human smile. 'I take tea

"'There's not much need to ask HER views on the subject,' I said, laughing; 'her feelings towards you were

"'Well, that is the curious part of it,' he replied, with a return to his former embarrassment; 'she does not seem

to care for me now at all. Indeed, she positively refuses me. She saysto put it in the dear child's own racy

languagethat she wouldn't take me on at any price. She says it would be like marrying a clockwork figure

"'Wait a minute,' I said; 'an idea occurs to me. Does she know of your identity with Smith?'

"'No,' he replied, alarmed, 'I would not have her know it for worlds. Only yesterday she told me that I

reminded her of a fellow she had met at Yarmouth, and my heart was in my mouth.'

"'Well,' he replied, 'now I come to think of it, she did seem to soften a bit just then.'

"'My dear boy,' I said, 'the case is as clear as daylight. She loves Smith. No girl who admired Smith could be

attracted by Smythe. As your present self you will never win her. In a few weeks' time, however, you will be

Smith. Leave the matter over until then. Propose to her as Smith, and she will accept you. After marriage you

"'By Jove!' he exclaimed, startled out of his customary lethargy, 'I never thought of that. The truth is, when I

am in my right senses, Smith and all his affairs seem like a dream to me. Any idea connected with him would

"He rose and held out his hand. 'I am so glad I came to see you,' he said; 'your suggestion has almost

reconciled me to my miserable fate. Indeed, I quite look forward to a month of Smith, now.'

"'I'm so pleased,' I answered, shaking hands with him. 'Mind you come and tell me how you get on. Another

man's love affairs are not usually absorbing, but there is an element of interest about yours that renders the

"We parted, and I did not see him again for another month. Then, late one evening, the servant knocked at my

"'No, sir,' answered the girl; 'he doesn't look the sort that would have a card. He's not a gentleman, sir; but he

says you'll know him.' She evidently regarded the statement as an aspersion upon myself.

"I was about to tell her to say I was out, when the recollection of Smythe's other self flashed into my mind,

"A minute passed, and then he entered. He was wearing a new suit of a louder pattern, if possible, than

before. I think he must have designed it himself. He looked hot and greasy. He did not offer to shake hands,

but sat down awkwardly on the extreme edge of a small chair, and gaped about the room as if he had never

"He communicated his shyness to myself. I could not think what to say, and we sat for a while in painful

"'Well,' I said, at last, plunging headforemost into the matter, according to the method of shy people, 'and

He seemed unwilling to explain matters of his own accord. I had to put the conversation into the form of a

He burst into a harsh laugh. 'There ain't much fear o' that,' he said; 'it's like 'aving an Alcock's porous plaster

mashed on yer, blowed if it ain't. There's no gettin' rid of 'er. I wish she'd giv' somebody else a turn. I'm fair

"'But you were enthusiastic about her a month ago!' I exclaimed in astonishment.

"'Smythe may 'ave been,' he said; 'there ain't no accounting for that ninny, 'is 'ead's full of starch. Anyhow, I

"'That sort o' gal's all right enough to lark with,' he continued; 'but yer don't want to marry 'em. They don't do

yer no good. A man wants a wife as 'e can respectsome one as is a cut above 'imself, as will raise 'im up a

peg or twosome one as 'e can look up to and worship. A man's wife orter be to 'im a gawddessa hangel,

"He blushed scarlet, and became suddenly absorbed in the pattern of the carpet. But the next moment he

"'Oh! Mr. MacShaughnassy,' he burst out, with a ring of genuine manliness in his voice, 'you don't know 'ow

good, 'ow beautiful she is. I ain't fit to breathe 'er name in my thoughts. An' she's so clever. I met 'er at that

Toynbee 'All. There was a party of toffs there all together. You would 'ave enjoyed it, Mr. MacShaughnassy,

if you could 'ave 'eard 'er; she was makin' fun of the pictures and the people round about to 'er pasuch wit,

such learnin', such 'aughtiness. I follered them out and opened the carriage door for 'er, and she just drew 'er

skirt aside and looked at me as if I was the dirt in the road. I wish I was, for then perhaps one day I'd kiss 'er

"His emotion was so genuine that I did not feel inclined to laugh at him. 'Did you find out who she was?' I

"'Yes,' he answered; 'I 'eard the old gentleman say "'Ome" to the coachman, and I ran after the carriage all the

"'Miss Trevior!' I cried, 'a tall, dark girl, with untidy hair and rather weak eyes?'

"'Tall and dark,' he replied 'with 'air that seems tryin' to reach 'er lips to kiss 'em, and heyes, light blue, like a

"'That's right,' I said; 'my dear Smith, this is becoming complicated. You've met the lady and talked to her for

"'No,' he said, after cogitating for a minute, 'carn't say I do; I never can remember much about Smythe. He

"'Well, you met her,' I said; 'I'm positive. I introduced you to her myself, and she confided to me afterwards

"'Nodid she?' he remarked, evidently softening in his feelings towards Smythe; 'and did I like 'ER?'

"'Well, to tell the truth,' I answered, 'I don't think you did. You looked intensely bored.'

"'The Juggins,' I heard him mutter to himself, and then he said aloud: 'D'yer think I shall get a chance o' seein'

"'Of course,' I said, 'I'll take you round myself. By the bye,' I added, jumping up and looking on the

mantelpiece, 'I've got a card for a Cinderella at their placesomething to do with a birthday. Will you be

"'Very well, then,' I said, 'I'll call round for you at the Albany, and we'll go together.'

"He rose and stood smoothing his hat with his sleeve. 'Fust time I've ever looked for'ard to bein' that

hanimated corpse, Smythe,' he said slowly. 'Blowed if I don't try to 'urry it up'pon my sivey I will.'

"'He'll be no good to you till the twentieth,' I reminded him. 'And,' I added, as I stood up to ring the bell,

"'Oh, don't talk 'bout 'Liza in the same breath with Hedith,' he replied, 'it sounds like sacrilege.'

"He stood hesitating with the handle of the door in his hand. At last, opening it and looking very hard at his

hat, he said, 'I'm goin' to 'Arley Street now. I walk up and down outside the 'ouse every evening, and

sometimes, when there ain't no one lookin', I get a chance to kiss the doorstep.'

"On November twentieth, I called for him according to promise. I found him on the point of starting for the

club: he had forgotten all about our appointment. I reminded him of it, and he with difficulty recalled it, and

consented, without any enthusiasm, to accompany me. By a few artful hints to her mother (including a casual

mention of his income), I manoeuvred matters so that he had Edith almost entirely to himself for the whole

evening. I was proud of what I had done, and as we were walking home together I waited to receive his

"'Why, getting you and Miss Trevior left together for such a long time in the conservatory,' I answered,

"I stopped dead in the middle of the pavement, and faced him. 'Don't you love her?' I said.

"'Love her!' he repeated, in the utmost astonishment; 'what on earth is there in her to love? She's nothing but a

"This 'tired' meto use an Americanism. 'You came to me a month ago,' I said, 'raving over her, and talking

"He turned very red. 'I wish, my dear Mac,' he said, 'you would pay me the compliment of not mistaking me

for that detestable little cad with whom I have the misfortune to be connected. You would greatly oblige me

if next time he attempts to inflict upon you his vulgar drivel you would kindly kick him downstairs.'

"'No doubt,' he added, with a sneer, as we walked on, 'Miss Trevior would be his ideal. She is exactly the type

of woman, I should say, to charm that type of man. For myself, I do not appreciate the artistic and literary

"'Besides,' he continued, in a deeper tone, 'you know my feelings. I shall never care for any other woman but

"'I cannot,' he replied, 'not even to win her. Besides, she would not believe me.'

"We said goodnight at the corner of Bond Street, and I did not see him again till one afternoon late in the

following March, when I ran against him in Ludgate Circus. He was wearing his transition blue suit and

"'Neither, for the moment,' he replied, 'thank God. Half an hour ago I was Smythe, half an hour hence I shall

"There was a pleasant, hearty ring in his voice, and a genial, kindly light in his eyes, and he held himself like

"He laughed a sunny laugh, with just the shadow of sadness dashed across it. 'Do you know my idea of

"'Ludgate Circus,' was the answer. 'The only really satisfying moments of my life,' he said, 'have been passed

in the neighbourhood of Ludgate Circus. I leave Piccadilly an unhealthy, unwholesome prig. At Charing

Cross I begin to feel my blood stir in my veins. From Ludgate Circus to Cheapside I am a human thing with

human feeling throbbing in my heart, and human thought throbbing in my brainwith fancies, sympathies,

and hopes. At the Bank my mind becomes a blank. As I walk on, my senses grow coarse and blunted; and by

the time I reach Whitechapel I am a poor little uncivilised cad. On the return journey it is the same thing

"'My dear Mac,' said he, laying his hand upon my shoulder, 'there is only one good thing about me, and that is

a moral. Man is as God made him: don't be so sure that you can take him to pieces and improve him. All my

life I have sought to make myself an unnaturally superior person. Nature has retaliated by making me also an

unnaturally inferior person. Nature abhors lopsidedness. She turns out man as a whole, to be developed as a

whole. I always wonder, whenever I come across a supernaturally pious, a supernaturally moral, a

"I was shocked at his suggested argument, and walked by his side for a while without speaking. At last,

feeling curious on the subject, I asked him how his various love affairs were progressing.

"'Oh, as usual,' he replied; 'in and out of a cul de sac. When I am Smythe I love Eliza, and Eliza loathes me.

When I am Smith I love Edith, and the mere sight of me makes her shudder. It is as unfortunate for them as

for me. I am not saying it boastfully. Heaven knows it is an added draught of misery in my cup; but it is a fact

that Eliza is literally pining away for me as Smith, andas Smith I find it impossible to be even civil to her;

while Edith, poor girl, has been foolish enough to set her heart on me as Smythe, and as Smythe she seems to

me but the skin of a woman stuffed with the husks of learning, and rags torn from the corpse of wit.'

"I remained absorbed in my own thoughts for some time, and did not come out of them till we were crossing

"'Why don't you get a new girl altogether? There must be medium girls that both Smith and Smythe could

"'No more girls for this child,' he answered 'they're more trouble than they're worth. Those yer want yer carn't

"I started, and looked up at him. He was slouching along with his hands in his pockets, and a vacuous look in

"A sudden repulsion seized me. 'I must go now,' I said, stopping. 'I'd no idea I had come so far.'

"He seemed as glad to be rid of me as I to be rid of him. 'Oh, must yer,' he said, holding out his hand. 'Well,

"We shook hands carelessly. He disappeared in the crowd, and that is the last I have ever seen of him."

"Well, I've altered the names and dates," said MacShaughnassy; "but the main facts you can rely upon."

The final question discussed at our last meeting been: What shall our hero be? MacShaughnassy had

suggested an author, with a critic for the villain. My idea was a stockbroker, with an undercurrent of romance

in his nature. Said Jephson, who has a practical mind: "The question is not what we like, but what the female

"That is so," agreed MacShaughnassy. "I propose that we collect feminine opinion upon this point. I will

write to my aunt and obtain from her the old lady's view. You," he said, turning to me, "can put the case to

your wife, and get the young lady's ideal. Let Brown write to his sister at Newnham, and find out whom the

intellectual maiden favours, while Jephson can learn from Miss Medbury what is most attractive to the

This plan we had adopted, and the result was now under consideration. MacShaughnassy opened the

"I think, if I were you, my dear boy, I should choose a soldier. You know your poor grandfather, who ran

away to America with that WICKED Mrs. Featherly, the banker's wife, was a soldier, and so was your poor

cousin Robert, who lost eight thousand pounds at Monte Carlo. I have always felt singularly drawn towards

soldiers, even as a girl; though your poor dear uncle could not bear them. You will find many allusions to

soldiers and men of war in the Old Testament (see Jer. xlviii. 14). Of course one does not like to think of their

fighting and killing each other, but then they do not seem to do that sort of thing nowadays."

"So much for the old lady," said MacShaughnassy, as he folded up the letter and returned it to his pocket.

Brown produced from his cigarcase a letter addressed in a bold round hand, and read as follows:

"What a curious coincidence! A few of us were discussing this very subject last night in Millicent

Hightopper's rooms, and I may tell you at once that our decision was unanimous in favour of soldiers. You

see, my dear Selkirk, in human nature the attraction is towards the opposite. To a milliner's apprentice a poet

would no doubt be satisfying; to a woman of intelligence he would he an unutterable bore. What the

intellectual woman requires in man is not something to argue with, but something to look at. To an

emptyheaded woman I can imagine the soldier type proving vapid and uninteresting; to the woman of mind

he represents her ideal of mana creature strong, handsome, welldressed, and not too clever."

"That gives us two votes for the army," remarked MacShaughnassy, as Brown tore his sister's letter in two,

and threw the pieces into the wastepaper basket. "What says the commonsensed girl?"

"First catch your commonsensed girl," muttered Jephson, a little grumpily, as it seemed to me. "Where do

As a rule, the mention of Miss Medbury's name brings a flush of joy to Jephson's face; but now his features

"Oh!" he replied, "did you? Well, then, the commonsensed girl loves the military also."

"By Jove!" exclaimed MacShaughnassy, "what an extraordinary thing. What reason does she give?"

"That there's a something about them, and that they dance so divinely," answered Jephson, shortly.

There was silence for the next few minutes, while we smoked and thought. I fancy we were all wishing we

That four distinctly different types of educated womanhood should, with promptness and unanimity quite

unfeminine, have selected the soldier as their ideal, was certainly discouraging to the civilian heart. Had they

been nursemaids or servant girls, I should have expected it. The worship of Mars by the Venus of the white

cap is one of the few vital religions left to this devoutless age. A year or two ago I lodged near a barracks, and

the sight to be seen round its huge iron gates on Sunday afternoons I shall never forget. The girls began to

assemble about twelve o'clock. By two, at which hour the army, with its hair nicely oiled and a cane in its

hand, was ready for a stroll, there would be some four or five hundred of them waiting in a line. Formerly

they had collected in a wild mob, and as the soldiers were let out to them two at a time, had fought for them,

as lions for early Christians. This, however, had led to scenes of such disorder and brutality, that the police

had been obliged to interfere; and the girls were now marshalled in QUEUE, two abreast, and compelled, by

a force of constables specially told off for the purpose, to keep their places and wait their proper turn.

At three o'clock the sentry on duty would come down to the wicket and close it. "They're all gone, my dears,"

he would shout out to the girls still left; "it's no good your stopping, we've no more for you today."

"Oh, not one!" some poor child would murmur pleadingly, while the tears welled up into her big round eyes,

"Can't help that," the honest fellow would reply, gruffly, but not unkindly, turning aside to hide his emotion;

"you've had 'em all between you. We don't make 'em, you know: you can't have 'em if we haven't got 'em, can

Then he would hurry away to escape further importunity; and the police, who appeared to have been waiting

for this moment with gloating anticipation, would jeeringly hustle away the weeping remnant. "Now then,

pass along, you girls, pass along," they would say, in that irritatingly unsympathetic voice of theirs. "You've

had your chance. Can't have the roadway blocked up all the afternoon with this 'ere demonstration of the

In connection with this same barracks, our charwoman told Amenda, who told Ethelbertha, who told me a

Into a certain house, in a certain street in the neighbourhood, there moved one day a certain family. Their

servant had left them most of their servants did at the end of a weekand the day after the movingin an

advertisement for a domestic was drawn up and sent to the Chronicle. It ran thus:

WANTED, GENERAL SERVANT, in small family of eleven. Wages, 6 pounds; no beer money. Must be

early riser and hard worker. Washing done at home. Must be good cook, and not object to window cleaning.

That advertisement was sent off on Wednesday afternoon. At seven o'clock on Thursday morning the whole

family were awakened by continuous ringing of the streetdoor bell. The husband, looking out of window,

was surprised to see a crowd of about fifty girls surrounding the house. He slipped on his dressinggown and

went down to see what was the matter. The moment he opened the door, fifteen of them charged

tumultuously into the passage, sweeping him completely off his legs. Once inside, these fifteen faced round,

fought the other thirtyfive or so back on to the doorstep, and slammed the door in their faces. Then they

picked up the master of the house, and asked him politely to conduct them to A. B."

At first, owing to the clamour of the mob outside, who were hammering at the door and shouting curses

through the keyhole, he could understand nothing, but at length they succeeded in explaining to him that they

were domestic servants come ill answer to his wife's advertisement. The man went and told his wife, and his

Which one should have audience first was a delicate question to decide. The man, on being appealed to, said

he would prefer to leave it to them. They accordingly discussed the matter among themselves. At the end of a

quarter of an hour, the victor, having borrowed some hairpins and a lookingglass from our charwoman,

who had slept in the house, went upstairs, while the remaining fourteen sat down in the hall, and fanned

"A. B." was a good deal astonished when the first applicant presented herself. She was a tall, genteellooking

girl. Up to yesterday she had been head housemaid at Lady Stanton's, and before that she had been

"Yes, mum. I think it so much better to do it at home. Those laundries ruin good clothes. They're so careless."

The next applicant offered to come for three poundsthought six pounds too much. She expressed her

willingness to sleep in the back kitchen: a shakedown under the sink was all she wanted. She likewise had

The third girl did not require any wages at allcould not understand what servants wanted with

wagesthought wages only encouraged a love of foolish finerythought a comfortable home in a Unitarian

This girl said there was one stipulation she should like to make, and that was that she should be allowed to

pay for all breakages caused by her own carelessness or neglect. She objected to holidays and evenings out;

The fourth candidate offered a premium of five pounds for the place; and then "A. B." began to get

frightened, and refused to see any more of the girls, convinced that they must be lunatics from some

Later in the day, meeting the nextdoor lady on the doorstep, she related her morning's experiences.

"Oh, that's nothing extraordinary," said the nextdoor lady; "none of us on this side of the street pay wages;

and we get the pick of all the best servants in London. Why, girls will come from the other end of the

kingdom to get into one of these houses. It's the dream of their lives. They save up for years, so as to be able

"Why, don't you see," explained the next door lady, "our back windows open upon the barrack yard. A girl

living in one of these houses is always close to soldiers. By looking out of window she can always see

soldiers; and sometimes a soldier will nod to her or even call up to her. They never dream of asking for

wages. They'll work eighteen hours a day, and put up with anything just to be allowed to stop."

"A. B." profited by this information, and engaged the girl who offered the five pounds premium. She found

her a perfect treasure of a servant. She was invariably willing and respectful, slept on a sofa in the kitchen,

The truth of this story I cannot vouch for. Myself, I can believe it. Brown and MacShaughnassy made no

attempt to do so, which seemed unfriendly. Jephson excused himself on the plea of a headache. I admit there

are points in it presenting difficulties to the average intellect. As I explained at the commencement, it was

told to me by Ethelbertha, who had it from Amenda, who got it from the charwoman, and exaggerations

may have crept into it. The following, however, were incidents that came under my own personal

observation. They afforded a still stronger example of the influence exercised by Tommy Atkins upon the

"The heroine of them," I said, "is our Amenda. Now, you would call her a tolerably wellbehaved, orderly

"That was my opinion also," I replied. "You can, therefore, imagine my feelings on passing her one evening

in the Folkestone High Street with a Panama hat upon her head (MY Panama hat), and a soldier's arm round

her waist. She was one of a mob following the band of the Third Berkshire Infantry, then in camp at

Sandgate. There was an ecstatic, faraway look in her eyes. She was dancing rather than walking, and with

"Ethelbertha was with me at the time. We stared after the procession until it had turned the corner, and then

"The moment we reached home Ethelbertha looked for Amenda, and I looked for my hat. Neither was to be

"Nine o'clock struck, ten o'clock struck. At halfpast ten, we went down and got our own supper, and had it

in the kitchen. At a quarterpast eleven, Amenda returned. She walked into the kitchen without a word, hung

"'Gadding half over the county with a lot of low soldiers,' answered Amenda, continuing her work.

"'Yes, sir,' replied Amenda, still continuing her work, 'it was the first thing that came to hand. What I'm

"Whether Ethelbertha was mollified by the proper spirit displayed in this last remark, I cannot say, but I think

it probable. At all events, it was in a voice more of sorrow than of anger that she resumed her examination.

"'You were walking with a soldier's arm around your waist when we passed you, Amenda?' she observed

"'I know, mum,' admitted Amenda, 'I found it there myself when the music stopped.'

"Ethelbertha looked her inquiries. Amenda filled a saucepan with water, and then replied to them.

"'I'm a disgrace to a decent household,' she said; 'no mistress who respected herself would keep me a moment.

"'Because I'm a helpless ninny, mum. I can't help myself; if I see soldiers I'm bound to follow them. It runs in

our family. My poor cousin Emma was just such another fool. She was engaged to be married to a quiet,

respectable young fellow with a shop of his own, and three days before the wedding she ran off with a

regiment of marines to Chatham and married the coloursergeant. That's what I shall end by doing. I've been

all the way to Sandgate with that lot you saw me with, and I've kissed four of themthe nasty wretches. I'm

"She was so deeply disgusted with herself that it seemed superfluous for anybody else to be indignant with

"'Oh, you'll get over all that nonsense, Amenda,' she said, laughingly; 'you see yourself how silly it is. You

"'Ah, I can't look at it in the same light way that you do, mum,' returned Amenda, somewhat reprovingly; 'a

girl that can't see a bit of red marching down the street without wanting to rush out and follow it ain't fit to be

anybody's wife. Why, I should be leaving the shop with nobody in it about twice a week, and he'd have to go

the round of all the barracks in London, looking for me. I shall save up and get myself into a lunatic asylum,

"Ethelbertha began to grow quite troubled. 'But surely this is something altogether new, Amenda,' she said;

"'Oh yes, one or two at a time, walking about anyhow, I can stand that all right. It's when there's a lot of them

"'You don't know what it's like, mum,' she added, noticing Ethelbertha's puzzled expression; 'you've never

"We kept a careful watch over Amenda during the remainder of our stay at Folkestone, and an anxious time

we had of it. Every day some regiment or other would march through the town, and at the first sound of its

music Amenda would become restless and excited. The Pied Piper's reed could not have stirred the Hamelin

children deeper than did those Sandgate bands the heart of our domestic. Fortunately, they generally passed

early in the morning when we were indoors, but one day, returning home to lunch, we heard distant strains

dying away upon the Hythe Road. We hurried in. Ethelbertha ran down into the kitchen; it was empty!up

"'That miserable girl has gone off again,' said Ethelbertha. 'What a terrible misfortune it is for her. It's quite a

"Ethelbertha wanted me to go to Sandgate camp and inquire for her. I was sorry for the girl myself, but the

picture of a young and innocentlooking man wandering about a complicated camp, inquiring for a lost

Ethelbertha thought me heartless, and said that if I would not go she would go herself. I replied that I thought

one female member of my household was enough in that camp at a time, and requested her not to. Ethelbertha

expressed her sense of my inhuman behaviour by haughtily declining to eat any lunch, and I expressed my

sense of her unreasonableness by sweeping the whole meal into the grate, after which Ethelbertha suddenly

developed exuberant affection for the cat (who didn't want anybody's love, but wanted to get under the grate

after the lunch), and I became supernaturally absorbed in the daybeforeyesterday's newspaper.

"In the afternoon, strolling out into the garden, I heard the faint cry of a female in distress. I listened

attentively, and the cry was repeated. I thought it sounded like Amenda's voice, but where it came from I

could not conceive. It drew nearer, however, as I approached the bottom of the garden, and at last I located it

in a small wooden shed, used by the proprietor of the house as a dark room for developing photographs.

"'Yes, sir,' came back the muffled answer. 'Will you please let me out? you'll find the key on the ground near

"I discovered it on the grass about a yard away, and released her. 'Who locked you in?' I asked.

"'I did, sir,' she replied; 'I locked myself in, and pushed the key out under the door. I had to do it, or I should

"'I hope I haven't inconvenienced you, sir,' she added, stepping out; 'I left the lunch all laid.'"

Amenda's passion for soldiers was her one tribute to sentiment. Towards all others of the male sex she

maintained an attitude of callous unsusceptibility, and her engagements with them (which were numerous)

were entered into or abandoned on grounds so sordid as to seriously shock Ethelbertha.

When she came to us she was engaged to a pork butcherwith a milkman in reserve. For Amenda's sake we

dealt with the man, but we never liked him, and we liked his pork still less. When, therefore, Amenda

announced to us that her engagement with him was "off," and intimated that her feelings would in no way

"I am confident you have done right, Amenda," said Ethelbertha; "you would never have been happy with

"No, mum, I don't think I ever should," replied Amenda. "I don't see how any girl could as hadn't the

Ethelbertha looked puzzled. "But what has digestion got to do with it?" she asked.

"A pretty good deal, mum," answered Amenda, "when you're thinking of marrying a man as can't make a

"But, surely," exclaimed Ethelbertha, "you don't mean to say you're breaking off the match because you don't

"What an awful idea!" sighed poor Ethelbertha, after a long pause. "Do you think you ever really loved him?"

"Oh yes," said Amenda, "I loved him right enough, but it's no good loving a man that wants you to live on

"Oh, he doesn't say anything about it," explained Amenda; "but you know what it is, mum, when you marry a

pork butcher; you're expected to eat what's left over. That's the mistake my poor cousin Eliza made. She

married a muffin man. Of course, what he didn't sell they had to finish up themselves. Why, one winter, when

he had a run of bad luck, they lived for two months on nothing but muffins. I never saw a girl so changed in

But the most shamefully mercenary engagement that I think Amenda ever entered into, was one with a 'bus

conductor. We were living in the north of London then, and she had a young man, a cheesemonger, who kept

a shop in Lupus Street, Chelsea. He could not come up to her because of the shop, so once a week she used to

go down to him. One did not ride ten miles for a penny in those days, and she found the fare from Holloway

to Victoria and back a severe tax upon her purse. The same 'bus that took her down at six brought her back at

ten. During the first journey the 'bus conductor stared at Amenda; during the second he talked to her, during

the third he gave her a cocoanut, during the fourth he proposed to her, and was promptly accepted. After that,

He was a quaint character himself, this 'bus conductor. I often rode with him to Fleet Street. He knew me

quite well (I suppose Amenda must have pointed me out to him), and would always ask me after heraloud,

before all the other passengers, which was trying and give me messages to take back to her. Where women

were concerned he had what is called "a way" with him, and from the extent and variety of his female

acquaintance, and the evident tenderness with which the majority of them regarded him, I am inclined to hope

that Amenda's desertion of him (which happened contemporaneously with her jilting of the cheesemonger)

He was a man from whom I derived a good deal of amusement one way and another. Thinking of him brings

One afternoon, I jumped upon his 'bus in the Seven Sisters Road. An elderly Frenchman was the only other

occupant of the vehicle. "You vil not forget me," the Frenchman was saying as I entered, "I desire Sharing

"I won't forget yer," answered the conductor, "you shall 'ave yer Sharing Cross. Don't make a fuss about it."

"That's the third time 'ee's arst me not to forget 'im," he remarked to me in a stentorian aside; "'ee don't giv'

At the corner of the Holloway Road we drew up, and our conductor began to shout after the manner of his

species: "Charing Cross Charing Cross'ere yer areCome along, ladyCharing Cross."

The little Frenchman jumped up, and prepared to exit; the conductor pushed him back.

The Frenchman looked puzzled, but collapsed meekly. We picked up a few passengers, and proceeded on our

way. Half a mile up the Liverpool Road a lady stood on the kerb regarding us as we passed with that pathetic

mingling of desire and distrust which is the average woman's attitude towards conveyances of all kinds. Our

The Frenchman did not hear or did not understand the first part of the speech, but he caught the words

"Charing Cross," and bounced up and out on to the step. The conductor collared him as he was getting off,

"Carn't yer keep still a minute," he cried indignantly; "blessed if you don't want lookin' after like a bloomin'

"You vont to be put down at Sharing Cross," repeated the other bitterly, as he led him back to his seat. "I

shall put yer down in the middle of the road if I 'ave much more of yer. You stop there till I come and sling

yer out. I ain't likely to let yer go much past yer Sharing Cross, I shall be too jolly glad to get rid o' yer."

The poor Frenchman subsided, and we jolted on. At "The Angel" we, of course, stopped. "Charing Cross,"

"Oh, my Gawd," said the conductor, taking him by the shoulders and forcing him down into the corner seat,

He held him firmly down until the 'bus started, and then released him. At the top of Chancery Lane the same

"He keep saying Sharing Cross, Sharing Cross," he exclaimed, turning to the other passengers; "and it is NO

"Carn't yer understand," retorted the conductor, equally indignant; "of course I say Sharing CrossI mean

Charing Cross, but that don't mean that it IS Charing Cross. That means" and then perceiving from the

blank look on the Frenchman's face the utter impossibility of ever making the matter clear to him, he turned

"Well," I asked him, "did you get your French friend to Charing Cross all right?"

"No, sir," he replied, "you'll 'ardly believe it, but I 'ad a bit of a row with a policeman just before I got to the

corner, and it put 'im clean out o' my 'ead. Blessed if I didn't run 'im on to Victoria."

Jephson was standing before the fire lighting his pipe. He puffed the tobacco into a glow, threw the match

"Sit down and get on with your work," said MacShaughnassy from the sofa where he lay at full length with

his heels on a chair; "we're discussing the novel. Paradoxes not admitted during business hours."

"Selfishness," he continued, "is merely another name for Will. Every deed, good or bad, that we do is

prompted by selfishness. We are charitable to secure ourselves a good place in the next world, to make

ourselves respected in this, to ease our own distress at the knowledge of suffering. One man is kind because it

gives him pleasure to be kind, just as another is cruel because cruelty pleases him. A great man does his duty

because to him the sense of duty done is a deeper delight than would be the case resulting from avoidance of

duty. The religious man is religious because he finds a joy in religion; the moral man moral because with his

strong self respect, viciousness would mean wretchedness. Selfsacrifice itself is only a subtle selfishness:

we prefer the mental exaltation gained thereby to the sensual gratification which is the alternative reward.

Man cannot be anything else but selfish. Selfishness is the law of all life. Each thing, from the farthest fixed

star to the smallest insect crawling on the earth, fighting for itself according to its strength; and brooding over

"Have some whisky," said MacShaughnassy; "and don't be so complicatedly metaphysical. You make my

"If all action, good and bad, spring from selfishness," replied Brown, "then there must be good selfishness

and bad selfishness: and your bad selfishness is my plain selfishness, without any adjective, so we are back

where we started. I say selfishnessbad selfishnessis the root of all evil, and there you are bound to agree

"Not always," persisted Jephson; "I've known selfishness selfishness according to the ordinarily accepted

meaning of the termto be productive of good actions. I can give you an instance, if you like."

Jephson mused a moment. "Yes," he said at length; "a very practical moraland one very useful to young

"That's the sort of story we want," said the MacShaughnassy, raising himself into a sitting position. "You

Jephson seated himself upon a chair, in his favourite attitude, with his elbows resting upon the back, and

"There are three people in this story," he began; "the wife, the wife's husband, and the other man. In most

dramas of this type, it is the wife who is the chief character. In this case, the interesting person is the other

"The wifeI met her once: she was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, and the most

wickedlooking; which is saying a good deal for both statements. I remember, during a walking tour one

year, coming across a lovely little cottage. It was the sweetest place imaginable. I need not describe it. It was

the cottage one sees in pictures, and reads of in sentimental poetry. I was leaning over the neatlycropped

hedge, drinking in its beauty, when at one of the tiny casements I saw, looking out at me, a face. It stayed

there only a moment, but in that moment the cottage had become ugly, and I hurried away with a shudder.

"That woman's face reminded me of the incident. It was an angel's face, until the woman herself looked out of

it: then you were struck by the strange incongruity between tenement and tenant.

"That at one time she had loved her husband, I have little doubt. Vicious women have few vices, and

sordidness is not usually one of them. She had probably married him, borne towards him by one of those

waves of passion upon which the souls of animal natures are continually rising and falling. On possession,

however, had quickly followed satiety, and from satiety had grown the desire for a new sensation.

"They were living at Cairo at the period; her husband held an important official position there, and by virtue

of this, and of her own beauty and tact, her house soon became the centre of the Anglo Saxon society ever

drifting in and out of the city. The women disliked her, and copied her. The men spoke slightingly of her to

their wives, lightly of her to each other, and made idiots of themselves when they were alone with her. She

laughed at them to their faces, and mimicked them behind their backs. Their friends said it was clever.

"One year there arrived a young English engineer, who had come out to superintend some canal works. He

brought with him satisfactory letters of recommendation, and was at once received by the European residents

as a welcome addition to their social circle. He was not particularly goodlooking, he was not remarkably

charming, but he possessed the one thing that few women can resist in a man, and that is strength. The

woman looked at the man, and the man looked back at the woman; and the drama began.

"Scandal flies swiftly through small communities. Before a month, their relationship was the chief topic of

conversation throughout the quarter. In less than two, it reached the ears of the woman's husband.

"He was either an exceptionally mean or an exceptionally noble character, according to how one views the

matter. He worshipped his wifeas men with big hearts and weak brains often do worship such

womenwith doglike devotion. His only dread was lest the scandal should reach proportions that would

compel him to take notice of it, and thus bring shame and suffering upon the woman to whom he would have

given his life. That a man who saw her should love her seemed natural to him; that she should have grown

tired of himself, a thing not to be wondered at. He was grateful to her for having once loved him, for a little

"As for 'the other man,' he proved somewhat of an enigma to the gossips. He attempted no secrecy; if

anything, he rather paraded his subjugationor his conquest, it was difficult to decide which term to apply.

He rode and drove with her; visited her in public and in private (in such privacy as can be hoped for in a

house filled with chattering servants, and watched by spying eyes); loaded her with expensive presents, which

she wore openly, and papered his smokingden with her photographs. Yet he never allowed himself to appear

in the least degree ridiculous; never allowed her to come between him and his work. A letter from her, he

would lay aside unopened until he had finished what he evidently regarded as more important business. When

"The woman chafed under his selfcontrol, which stung her like a lash, but clung to him the more abjectly.

"'Tell me you love me!' she would cry fiercely, stretching her white arms towards him.

"'I want to hear you tell it me again,' she would plead with a voice that trembled on a sob. 'Come close to me

"Then, as she lay with halfclosed eyes, he would pour forth a flood of passionate words sufficient to satisfy

even her thirsty ears, and afterwards, as the gates clanged behind him, would take up an engineering problem

at the exact point at which half an hour before, on her entrance into the room, he had temporarily dismissed it.

"One day, a privileged friend put bluntly to him this question: 'Are you playing for love or vanity?'

"To which the man, after long pondering, gave this reply: ''Pon my soul, Jack, I couldn't tell you.'

"Now, when a man is in love with a woman who cannot make up her mind whether she loves him or not, we

call the complication comedy; where it is the woman who is in earnest the result is generally tragedy.

"They continued to meet and to make love. They talkedas people in their position are prone to talkof the

beautiful life they would lead if it only were not for the thing that was; of the earthly paradiseor, maybe,

'earthy' would be the more suitable adjective they would each create for the other, if only they had the right

"In this work of imagination the man trusted chiefly to his literary faculties, which were considerable; the

woman to her desires. Thus, his scenes possessed a grace and finish which hers lacked, but her pictures were

the more vivid. Indeed, so realistic did she paint them, that to herself they seemed realities, waiting for her.

Then she would rise to go towards them only to strike herself against the thought of the thing that stood

between her and them. At first she only hated the thing, but after a while there came an ugly look of hope into

"The time drew near for the man to return to England. The canal was completed, and a day appointed for the

letting in of the water. The man determined to make the event the occasion of a social gathering. He invited a

large number of guests, among whom were the woman and her husband, to assist at the function. Afterwards

the party were to picnic at a pleasant wooded spot some threequarters of a mile from the first lock.

"The ceremony of flooding was to be performed by the woman, her husband's position entitling her to this

distinction. Between the river and the head of the cutting had been left a strong bank of earth, pierced some

distance down by a hole, which hole was kept closed by means of a closelyfitting steel plate. The woman

drew the lever releasing this plate, and the water rushed through and began to press against the lock gates.

When it had attained a certain depth, the sluices were raised, and the water poured down into the deep basin

"It was an exceptionally deep lock. The party gathered round and watched the water slowly rising. The

"'It would not do for it to come in too quickly,' he explained; 'we shall half fill this lock, and then open the

"'I wonder what a man would do,' she said, 'if he fell in, and there was no one near to help him?'

"The man laughed. 'I think he would stop there,' he answered. 'Come, the others are waiting for us.'

"He lingered a moment to give some final instructions to the workmen. 'You can follow on when you've

made all right,' he said, 'and get something to eat. There's no need for more than one to stop.' Then they

joined the rest of the party, and sauntered on, laughing and talking, to the picnic ground.

After lunch the party broke up, as is the custom of picnic parties, and wandered away in groups and pairs.

The man, whose duty as host had hitherto occupied all his attention, looked for the woman, but she was gone.

"A friend strolled by, the same that had put the question to him about love and vanity.

"'I fancied you had,' said the other. 'I met her just now walking with her husband, of all men in the world, and

"The friend strolled on, and the man sat down on a fallen tree, and lighted a cigar. He smoked and thought,

"After a while he heard a faint rustling of the branches behind him, and peering between the interlacing

leaves that hid him, saw the crouching figure of the woman creeping through the wood.

"His lips were parted to call her name, when she turned her listening head in his direction, and his eyes fell

full upon her face. Something about it, he could not have told what, struck him dumb, and the woman crept

"Gradually the nebulous thoughts floating through his brain began to solidify into a tangible idea, and the

man unconsciously started forward. After walking a few steps he broke into a run, for the idea had grown

clearer. It continued to grow still clearer and clearer, and the man ran faster and faster, until at last he found

himself racing madly towards the lock. As he approached it he looked round for the watchman who ought to

have been there, but the man was gone from his post. He shouted, but if any answer was returned, it was

"He reached the edge and looked down. Fifteen feet below him was the reality of the dim vision that had

come to him a mile back in the woods: the woman's husband swimming round and round like a rat in a pail.

"The river was flowing in and out of the lock at the same rate, so that the level of the water remained

constant. The first thing the man did was to close the lower sluices and then open those in the upper gate to

"The drowning man turned to him a face already contorted by the agony of exhaustion, and answered with a

"He looked around for something to throw to the man. A plank had lain there in the morning, he remembered

stumbling over it, and complaining of its having been left there; he cursed himself now for his care.

"A hut used by the navvies to keep their tools in stood about two hundred yards away; perhaps it had been

"But the other did not hear him. The feeble struggles ceased. The face fell back upon the water, the eyes half

closed as if with weary indifference. There was no time for him to do more than kick off his riding boots and

"Down there, in that walledin trap, he fought a long fight with Death for the life that stood between him and

the woman. He was not an expert swimmer, his clothes hampered him, he was already blown with his long

race, the burden in his arms dragged him down, the water rose slowly enough to make his torture fit for

"At first he could not understand why this was so, but in glancing down he saw to his horror that he had not

properly closed the lower sluices; in each some eight or ten inches remained open, so that the stream was

passing out nearly half as fast as it came in. It would be another fiveandtwenty minutes before the water

"He noted where the line of wet had reached to, on the smooth stone wall, then looked again after what he

thought must be a lapse of ten minutes, and found it had risen half an inch, if that. Once or twice he shouted

for help, but the effort taxed severely his already failing breath, and his voice only came back to him in a

"Inch by inch the line of wet crept up, but the spending of his strength went on more swiftly. It seemed to him

as if his inside were being gripped and torn slowly out: his whole body cried out to him to let it sink and lie in

"At length his unconscious burden opened its eyes and stared at him stupidly, then closed them again with a

"'Keep still, you fool!' he hissed; 'you're going to get out of this with me, or I'm going down with you.'

"So the grim struggle went on in silence, till the man, looking up, saw the stone coping just a little way above

his head, made one mad leap and caught it with his fingertips, held on an instant, then fell back with a

'plump' and sank; came up and made another dash, and, helped by the impetus of his rise, caught the coping

firmly this time with the whole of his fingers, hung on till his eyes saw the stunted grass, till they were both

able to scramble out upon the bank and lie there, their breasts pressed close against the ground, their hands

"'Yes,' answered the husband, 'beastly awkward not being a good swimmer. How did you know I had fallen

"The husband sat staring at a point in the horizon for some minutes. 'Do you know what I was wondering this

"'They told me,' he continued, after a pause, 'a lot of silly gossip which I was cad enough to believe. I know

now it wasn't true, becausewell, if it had been, you would not have done what you have done.'

"'I beg yours,' said the other man, rising and taking it; 'do you mind giving me a hand with the sluices?'

"'How did you manage to fall in?' asked the other man, who was raising one of the lower sluices, without

"The husband hesitated, as if he found the explanation somewhat difficult. 'Oh,' he answered carelessly, 'the

wife and I were chaffing, and she said she'd often seen you jump it, and'he laughed a rather forced

"A few days afterwards the man and woman met at a reception. He found her in a leafy corner of the garden

talking to some friends. She advanced to meet him, holding out her hand. 'What can I say more than thank

"The others moved away, leaving them alone. 'They tell me you risked your life to save his?' she said.

"She raised her eyes to his, then struck him across the face with her ungloved hand.

"He seized her by her white arms, and forced her back behind the orange trees. 'Do you know why?' he said,

speaking slowly and distinctly; 'because I feared that, with him dead, you would want me to marry you, and

that, talked about as we have been, I might find it awkward to avoid doing so; because I feared that, without

him to stand between us, you might prove an annoyance to meperhaps come between me and the woman I

"But there are only two people," concluded Jephson, "who do not regard his saving of the husband's life as a

We thanked Jephson for his story, and promised to profit by the moral, when discovered. Meanwhile,

MacShaughnassy said that he knew a story dealing with the same theme, namely, the too close attachment of

a woman to a strange man, which really had a moral, which moral was: don't have anything to do with

Brown, who had patented a safety gun, which he had never yet found a man plucky enough to let off, said it

"This story," commenced MacShaughnassy, "comes from Furtwangen, a small town in the Black Forest.

There lived there a very wonderful old fellow named Nicholaus Geibel. His business was the making of

mechanical toys, at which work he had acquired an almost European reputation. He made rabbits that would

emerge from the heart of a cabbage, flap their ears, smooth their whiskers, and disappear again; cats that

would wash their faces, and mew so naturally that dogs would mistake them for real cats, and fly at them;

dolls, with phonographs concealed within them, that would raise their hats and say, 'Good morning; how do

"But he was something more than a mere mechanic; he was an artist. His work was with him a hobby, almost

a passion. His shop was filled with all manner of strange things that never would, or could, be soldthings

he had made for the pure love of making them. He had contrived a mechanical donkey that would trot for two

hours by means of stored electricity, and trot, too, much faster than the live article, and with less need for

exertion on the part of the driver; a bird that would shoot up into the air, fly round and round in a circle, and

drop to earth at the exact spot from where it started; a skeleton that, supported by an upright iron bar, would

dance a hornpipe; a lifesize lady doll that could play the fiddle; and a gentleman with a hollow inside who

could smoke a pipe and drink more lager beer than any three average German students put together, which is

"Indeed, it was the belief of the town that old Geibel could make a man capable of doing everything that a

respectable man need want to do. One day he made a man who did too much, and it came about in this way.

"Young Doctor Follen had a baby, and the baby had a birthday. Its first birthday put Doctor Follen's

household into somewhat of a flurry, but on the occasion of its second birthday, Mrs. Doctor Follen gave a

ball in honour of the event. Old Geibel and his daughter Olga were among the guests.

"During the afternoon of the next day, some three or four of Olga's bosom friends, who had also been present

at the ball, dropped in to have a chat about it. They naturally fell to discussing the men, and to criticising their

dancing. Old Geibel was in the room, but he appeared to be absorbed in his newspaper, and the girls took no

"'There seem to be fewer men who can dance, at every ball you go to,' said one of the girls.

"'Yes, and don't the ones who can, give themselves airs,' said another; 'they make quite a favour of asking

"'And how stupidly they talk,' added a third. 'They always say exactly the same things: "How charming you

are looking tonight." "Do you often go to Vienna? Oh, you should, it's delightful." "What a charming dress

you have on." "What a warm day it has been." "Do you like Wagner?" I do wish they'd think of something

"'Oh, I never mind how they talk,' said a fourth. 'If a man dances well he may be a fool for all I care.'

"'I go to a ball to dance,' continued the previous speaker, not noticing the interruption. 'All I ask of a partner is

that he shall hold me firmly, take me round steadily, and not get tired before I do.'

"'A clockwork figure would be the thing for you,' said the girl who had interrupted.

"'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down.'

"'Oh, what a lovely partner he would make,' said one; 'he would never kick you, or tread on your toes.'

"'And he would never want to mop his face with his handkerchief. I do hate to see a man do that after every

"'Why, with a phonograph inside him to grind out all the stock remarks, you would not be able to tell him

"Old Geibel had laid down his paper, and was listening with both his ears. On one of the girls glancing in his

"After the girls were gone, he went into his workshop, where Olga heard him walking up and down, and

every now and then chuckling to himself; and that night he talked to her a good deal about dancing and

dancing menasked what they usually said and didwhat dances were most popularwhat steps were

"Then for a couple of weeks he kept much to his factory, and was very thoughtful and busy, though prone at

unexpected moments to break into a quiet low laugh, as if enjoying a joke that nobody else knew of.

"A month later another ball took place in Furtwangen. On this occasion it was given by old Wenzel, the

wealthy timber merchant, to celebrate his niece's betrothal, and Geibel and his daughter were again among

"When the hour arrived to set out, Olga sought her father. Not finding him in the house, she tapped at the

door of his workshop. He appeared in his shirtsleeves, looking hot, but radiant.

"'Don't wait for me,' he said, 'you go on, I'll follow you. I've got something to finish.'

"As she turned to obey he called after her, 'Tell them I'm going to bring a young man with mesuch a nice

young man, and an excellent dancer. All the girls will like him.' Then he laughed and closed the door.

"Her father generally kept his doings secret from everybody, but she had a pretty shrewd suspicion of what he

had been planning, and so, to a certain extent, was able to prepare the guests for what was coming.

Anticipation ran high, and the arrival of the famous mechanist was eagerly awaited.

"At length the sound of wheels was heard outside, followed by a great commotion in the passage, and old

Wenzel himself, his jolly face red with excitement and suppressed laughter, burst into the room and

"Herr Geibel and his 'friend' entered, greeted with shouts of laughter and applause, and advanced to the centre

"'Allow me, ladies and gentlemen,' said Herr Geibel, 'to introduce you to my friend, Lieutenant Fritz. Fritz,

"Geibel placed his hand encouragingly on Fritz's shoulder, and the lieutenant bowed low, accompanying the

action with a harsh clicking noise in his throat, unpleasantly suggestive of a death rattle. But that was only a

"'He walks a little stiffly' (old Geibel took his arm and walked him forward a few steps. He certainly did walk

stiffly), 'but then, walking is not his forte. He is essentially a dancing man. I have only been able to teach him

the waltz as yet, but at that he is faultless. Come, which of you ladies may I introduce him to, as a partner? He

keeps perfect time; he never gets tired; he won't kick you or tread on your dress; he will hold you as firmly as

you like, and go as quickly or as slowly as you please; he never gets giddy; and he is full of conversation.

"The old gentleman twisted one of the buttons of his coat, and immediately Fritz opened his mouth, and in

thin tones that appeared to proceed from the back of his head, remarked suddenly, 'May I have the pleasure?'

"That Lieutenant Fritz had made a strong impression on the company was undoubted, yet none of the girls

seemed inclined to dance with him. They looked askance at his waxen face, with its staring eyes and fixed

smile, and shuddered. At last old Geibel came to the girl who had conceived the idea.

"'It is your own suggestion, carried out to the letter,' said Geibel, 'an electric dancer. You owe it to the

"She was a bright saucy little girl, fond of a frolic. Her host added his entreaties, and she consented.

"Herr Geibel fixed the figure to her. Its right arm was screwed round her waist, and held her firmly; its

delicately jointed left hand was made to fasten itself upon her right. The old toymaker showed her how to

"'It will take you round in a complete circle,' he explained; 'be careful that no one knocks against you, and

"The music struck up. Old Geibel put the current in motion, and Annette and her strange partner began to

"For a while every one stood watching them. The figure performed its purpose admirably. Keeping perfect

time and step, and holding its little partner tightly clasped in an unyielding embrace, it revolved steadily,

pouring forth at the same time a constant flow of squeaky conversation, broken by brief intervals of grinding

"'How charming you are looking tonight,' it remarked in its thin, faraway voice. 'What a lovely day it has

been. Do you like dancing? How well our steps agree. You will give me another, won't you? Oh, don't be so

cruel. What a charming gown you have on. Isn't waltzing delightful? I could go on dancing for everwith

"As she grew more familiar with the uncanny creature, the girl's nervousness wore off, and she entered into

"'Oh, he's just lovely,' she cried, laughing, 'I could go on dancing with him all my life.'

"Couple after couple now joined them, and soon all the dancers in the room were whirling round behind

them. Nicholaus Geibel stood looking on, beaming with childish delight at his success,

"Old Wenzel approached him, and whispered something in his ear. Geibel laughed and nodded, and the two

"'This is the young people's house tonight,' said Wenzel, as soon as they were outside; 'you and I will have a

"Meanwhile the dancing grew more fast and furious. Little Annette loosened the screw regulating her

partner's rate of progress, and the figure flew round with her swifter and swifter. Couple after couple dropped

out exhausted, but they only went the faster, till at length they were the only pair left dancing.

"Madder and madder became the waltz. The music lagged behind: the musicians, unable to keep pace,

ceased, and sat staring. The younger guests applauded, but the older faces began to grow anxious.

"'Hadn't you better stop, dear,' said one of the women, 'You'll make yourself so tired.'

"'I believe she's fainted,' cried out a girl, who had caught sight of her face as it was swept by.

"One of the men sprang forward and clutched at the figure, but its impetus threw him down on to the floor,

where its steelcased feet laid bare his cheek. The thing evidently did not intend to part with its prize easily.

"Had any one retained a cool head, the figure, one cannot help thinking, might easily have been stopped. Two

or three men, acting in concert, might have lifted it bodily off the floor, or have jammed it into a corner. But

few human heads are capable of remaining cool under excitement. Those who are not present think how

stupid must have been those who were; those who are, reflect afterwards how simple it would have been to

"The women grew hysterical. The men shouted contradictory directions to one another. Two of them made a

bungling rush at the figure, which had the result of forcing it out of its orbit in the centre of the room, and

sending it crashing against the walls and furniture. A stream of blood showed itself down the girl's white

frock, and followed her along the floor. The affair was becoming horrible. The women rushed screaming

"No one had noticed him leave the room, no one knew where he was. A party went in search of him. The

others, too unnerved to go back into the ballroom, crowded outside the door and listened. They could hear the

steady whir of the wheels upon the polished floor, as the thing spun round and round; the dull thud as every

now and again it dashed itself and its burden against some opposing object and ricocheted off in a new

"And everlastingly it talked in that thin ghostly voice, repeating over and over the same formula: 'How

charming you are looking to night. What a lovely day it has been. Oh, don't be so cruel. I could go on

"Of course they sought for Geibel everywhere but where he was. They looked in every room in the house,

then they rushed off in a body to his own place, and spent precious minutes in waking up his deaf old

housekeeper. At last it occurred to one of the party that Wenzel was missing also, and then the idea of the

countinghouse across the yard presented itself to them, and there they found him.

"He rose up, very pale, and followed them; and he and old Wenzel forced their way through the crowd of

"From within there came the muffled sound of low voices and quick steps, followed by a confused scuffling

"After a time the door opened, and those near it pressed forward to enter, but old Wenzel's broad shoulders

"'I want youand you, Bekler,' he said, addressing a couple of the elder men. His voice was calm, but his

face was deadly white. 'The rest of you, please goget the women away as quickly as you can.'

"From that day old Nicholaus Geibel confined himself to the making of mechanical rabbits and cats that

How much more of ourfortunately not very valuabletime we devoted to this wonderful novel of ours, I

cannot exactly say. Turning the dogs'eared leaves of the dilapidated diary that lies before me, I find the

record of our later gatherings confused and incomplete. For weeks there does not appear a single word. Then

comes an alarmingly businesslike minute of a meeting at which there were "Present: Jephson,

MacShaughnassy, Brown, and Self"; and at which the "Proceedings commenced at 8.30." At what time the

"proceedings" terminated, and what business was done, the chronicle, however, sayeth not; though, faintly

pencilled in the margin of the page, I trace these hieroglyphics: "3.14.92.6.7," bringing out a result of

On September 13th we seem to have become suddenly imbued with energy to a quite remarkable degree, for I

read that we "Resolved to start the first chapter at once""at once" being underlined. After this spurt, we

rest until October 4th, when we "Discussed whether it should be a novel of plot or of character," withoutso

far as the diary affords indicationarriving at any definite decision. I observe that on the same day "Mac

told a story about a man who accidentally bought a camel at a sale." Details of the story are, however,

On the 16th, we were still debating the character of our hero; and I see that I suggested "a man of the Charley

Poor Charley, I wonder what could have made me think of him in connection with heroes; his lovableness, I

supposecertainly not his heroic qualities. I can recall his boyish face now (it was always a boyish face), the

tears streaming down it as he sat in the schoolyard beside a bucket, in which he was drowning three white

mice and a tame rat. I sat down opposite and cried too, while helping him to hold a saucepan lid over the poor

Over the grave of these murdered rodents, he took a solemn oath never to break school rules again, by

keeping either white mice or tame rats, but to devote the whole of his energies for the future to pleasing his

masters, and affording his parents some satisfaction for the money being spent upon his education.

Seven weeks later, the pervadence throughout the dormitory of an atmospheric effect more curious than

pleasing led to the discovery that he had converted his box into a rabbit hutch. Confronted with eleven

kicking witnesses, and reminded of his former promises, he explained that rabbits were not mice, and seemed

to consider that a new and vexatious regulation had been sprung upon him. The rabbits were confiscated.

What was their ultimate fate, we never knew with certainty, but three days later we were given rabbitpie for

dinner. To comfort him I endeavoured to assure him that these could not be his rabbits. He, however,

convinced that they were, cried steadily into his plate all the time that he was eating them, and afterwards, in

the playground, had a standup fight with a fourth form boy who had requested a second helping.

That evening he performed another solemn oathtaking, and for the next month was the model boy of the

school. He read tracts, sent his spare pocketmoney to assist in annoying the heathen, and subscribed to The

Young Christian and The Weekly Rambler, an Evangelical Miscellany (whatever that may mean). An

undiluted course of this pernicious literature naturally created in him a desire towards the opposite extreme.

He suddenly dropped The Young Christian and The Weekly Rambler, and purchased penny dreadfuls; and

taking no further interest in the welfare of the heathen, saved up and bought a secondhand revolver and a

hundred cartridges. His ambition, he confided to me, was to become "a dead shot," and the marvel of it is that

Of course, there followed the usual discovery and consequent trouble, the usual repentance and reformation,

Poor fellow, he lived "starting a new life." Every New Year's Day he would start a new lifeon his

birthdayon other people's birthdays. I fancy that, later on, when he came to know their importance, he

extended the principle to quarter days. "Tidying up, and starting afresh," he always called it.

I think as a young man he was better than most of us. But he lacked that great gift which is the distinguishing

feature of the English speaking race all the world over, the gift of hypocrisy. He seemed incapable of doing

the slightest thing without getting found out; a grave misfortune for a man to suffer from, this.

Dear simplehearted fellow, it never occurred to him that he was as other menwith, perhaps, a dash of

straightforwardness added; he regarded himself as a monster of depravity. One evening I found him in his

chambers engaged upon his Sisyphean labour of "tidying up." A heap of letters, photographs, and bills lay

I came towards him, but he stopped me. "Don't come near me," he cried, "don't touch me. I'm not fit to shake

It was the sort of speech to make one feel hot and uncomfortable. I did not know what to answer, and

"Don't talk like that," he answered excitedly; "you say that to comfort me, I know; but I don't like to hear it. If

I thought other men were like me I should be ashamed of being a man. I've been a blackguard, old fellow,

He finished his work of destruction, and then rang the bell, and sent his man downstairs for a bottle of

"My last drink," he said, as we clicked glasses. "Here's to the old life out, and the new life in."

He took a sip and flung the glass with the remainder into the fire. He was always a little theatrical, especially

For a long while after that I saw nothing of him. Then, one evening, sitting down to supper at a restaurant, I

He flushed and came over to me. "I've been an old woman for nearly six months," he said, with a laugh. "I

"After all," he continued, "what is life for but to live? It's only hypocritical to try and be a thing we are not.

And do you know"he leant across the table, speaking earnestly"honestly and seriously, I'm a better

manI feel it and know itwhen I am my natural self than when I am trying to be an impossible saint."

That was the mistake he made; he always ran to extremes. He thought that an oath, if it were only big enough,

would frighten away Human Nature, instead of serving only as a challenge to it. Accordingly, each

reformation was more intemperate than the last, to be duly followed by a greater swing of the pendulum in

Being now in a thoroughly reckless mood, he went the pace rather hotly. Then, one evening, without any

previous warning, I had a note from him. "Come round and see me on Thursday. It is my wedding eve."

I went. He was once more "tidying up." All his drawers were open, and on the table were piled packs of

cards, betting books, and much written paper, all, as before, in course of demolition.

I smiled: I could not help it, and, no way abashed, he laughed his usual hearty, honest laugh.

Then, laying his hand on my shoulder, and speaking with the sudden seriousness that comes so readily to

shallow natures, he said, "God has heard my prayer, old friend. He knows I am weak. He has sent down an

He took her portrait from the mantelpiece and handed it me. It seemed to me the face of a hard, narrow

As he talked, there fluttered to the ground from the heap before him an old restaurant bill, and, stooping, he

"Have you ever noticed how the scent of the champagne and the candles seems to cling to these things?" he

"My God!" he cried vehemently, "when I think of all the wrong I have donethe irreparable, everwidening

ruin I have perhaps brought into the worldO God! spare me a long life that I may make amends. Every

As he stood there, with his eager boyish eyes upraised, a light seemed to fall upon his face and illumine it. I

had pushed the photograph back to him, and it lay upon the table before him. He knelt and pressed his lips to

The next morning he was married. She was a wellmeaning girl, though her piety, as is the case with most

people, was of the negative order; and her antipathy to things evil much stronger than her sympathy with

things good. For a longer time than I had expected she kept him straightperhaps a little too straight. But at

I called upon him, in answer to an excited message, and found him in the depths of despair. It was the old

story, human weakness, combined with lamentable lack of the most ordinary precautions against being found

out. He gave me details, interspersed with exuberant denunciations of himself, and I undertook the delicate

It was a weary work, but eventually she consented to forgive him. His joy, when I told him, was boundless.

"How good women are," he said, while the tears came into his eyes. "But she shall not repent it. Please God,

He stopped, and for the first time in his life the doubt of himself crossed his mind. As I sat watching him, the

"I seem to have been 'tidying up and starting afresh' all my life," he said wearily; "I'm beginning to see where

I did not understand the meaning of his words at the time, but learnt it later on.

He strove, according to his strength, and fell. But by a miracle his transgression was not discovered. The facts

It was his last failure. Late one evening I received a hurriedly scrawled note from his wife, begging me to

"A terrible thing has happened," it ran; "Charley went up to his study after dinner, saying he had some

'tidying up,' as he calls it, to do, and did not wish to be disturbed. In clearing out his desk he must have

handled carelessly the revolver that he always keeps there, not remembering, I suppose, that it was loaded.

We heard a report, and on rushing into the room found him lying dead on the floor. The bullet had passed

Hardly the type of man for a hero! And yet I do not know. Perhaps he fought harder than many a man who

conquers. In the world's courts, we are compelled to judge on circumstantial evidence only, and the chief

I remember the subject of bravery being discussed one evening at a dinner party, when a German gentleman

"I cannot give you his name," our German friend explained"the man himself told me the story in

confidence; and though he personally, by virtue of his after record, could afford to have it known, there are

"How I learnt it was in this way. For a dashing exploit performed during the brief war against Austria he had

been presented with the Iron Cross. This, as you are well aware, is the most highlyprized decoration in our

army; men who have earned it are usually conceited about it, and, indeed, have some excuse for being so. He,

on the contrary, kept his locked in a drawer of his desk, and never wore it except when compelled by official

etiquette. The mere sight of it seemed to be painful to him. One day I asked him the reason. We are very old

"The incident occurred when he was a young lieutenant. Indeed, it was his first engagement. By some means

or another he had become separated from his company, and, unable to regain it, had attached himself to a line

"The enemy's effort was mainly directed against the left centre, and for a while our young lieutenant was

nothing more than a distant spectator of the battle. Suddenly, however, the attack shifted, and the regiment

found itself occupying an extremely important and critical position. The shells began to fall unpleasantly

"The men fell upon their faces and waited. The shells ploughed the ground around them, smothering them

with dirt. A horrible, griping pain started in my young friend's stomach, and began creeping upwards. His

head and heart both seemed to be shrinking and growing cold. A shot tore off the head of the man next to

him, sending the blood spurting into his face; a minute later another ripped open the back of a poor fellow

"His body seemed not to belong to himself at all. A strange, shrivelled creature had taken possession of it. He

raised his head and peered about him. He and three soldiersyoungsters, like himself, who had never before

been under fireappeared to be utterly alone in that hell. They were the end men of the regiment, and the

"They glanced at each other, these four, and read one another's thoughts. Leaving their rifles lying on the

grass, they commenced to crawl stealthily upon their bellies, the lieutenant leading, the other three following.

"Some few hundred yards in front of them rose a small, steep hill. If they could reach this it would shut them

out of sight. They hastened on, pausing every thirty yards or so to lie still and pant for breath, then hurrying

"At last they reached the base of the slope, and slinking a little way round it, raised their heads and looked

back. Where they were it was impossible for them to be seen from the Prussian lines.

"They sprang to their feet and broke into a wild race. A dozen steps further they came face to face with an

"The demon that had taken possession of them had been growing stronger the further they had fled. They

were not men, they were animals mad with fear. Driven by the same frenzy that prompted other

panicstricken creatures to once rush down a steep place into the sea, these four men, with a yell, flung

themselves, sword in hand, upon the whole battery; and the whole battery, bewildered by the suddenness and

unexpectedness of the attack, thinking the entire battalion was upon them, gave way, and rushed pellmell

"With the sight of those flying Austrians the fear, as independently as it had come to him, left him, and he felt

only a desire to hack and kill. The four Prussians flew after them, cutting and stabbing at them as they ran;

and when the Prussian cavalry came thundering up, they found my young lieutenant and his three friends had

"'Will you be good enough to remember for the future, sir,' said the Chief of the Staff, 'that His Majesty does

not require his lieutenants to execute manoeuvres on their own responsibility, and also that to attack a battery

with three men is not war, but damned tomfoolery. You ought to be courtmartialled, sir!'

"Then, in somewhat different tones, the old soldier added, his face softening into a smile: 'However, alertness

and daring, my young friend, are good qualities, especially when crowned with success. If the Austrians had

once succeeded in planting a battery on that hill it might have been difficult to dislodge them. Perhaps, under

"'His Majesty not only overlooked it, but bestowed upon me the Iron Cross,' concluded my friend. 'For the

credit of the army, I judged it better to keep quiet and take it. But, as you can understand, the sight of it does

To return to my diary, I see that on November 14th we held another meeting. But at this there were present

only "Jephson, MacShaughnassy, and Self"; and of Brown's name I find henceforth no further trace. On

Christmas eve we three met again, and my notes inform me that MacShaughnassy brewed some

whiskeypunch, according to a recipe of his own, a record suggestive of a sad Christmas for all three of us.

Then there is a break until February 8th, and the assemblage has shrunk to "Jephson and Self." With a final

flicker, as of a dying candle, my diary at this point, however, grows luminous, shedding much light upon that

Our talk seems to have been of many thingsof most things, in fact, except our novel. Among other subjects

"I am tired of this eternal cackle about books," said Jephson; "these columns of criticism to every line of

writing; these endless books about books; these shrill praises and shrill denunciations; this silly worship of

novelist Tom; this silly hate of poet Dick; this silly squabbling over playwright Harry. There is no soberness,

no sense in it all. One would think, to listen to the High Priests of Culture, that man was made for literature,

not literature for man. Thought existed before the Printing Press; and the men who wrote the best hundred

books never read them. Books have their place in the world, but they are not its purpose. They are things side

by side with beef and mutton, the scent of the sea, the touch of a hand, the memory of a hope, and all the

other items in the sum total of our threescore years and ten. Yet we speak of them as though they were the

voice of Life instead of merely its faint echo. Tales are delightful AS talessweet as primroses after the long

winter, restful as the cawing of rooks at sunset. But we do not write 'tales' now; we prepare 'human

He broke off abruptly in the midst of his tirade. "Do you know what these 'psychological studies,' that are so

fashionable just now, always make me think of?" he said. "One monkey examining another monkey for fleas.

"And what, after all, does our dissecting pen lay bare?" he continued. "Human nature? or merely some more

or less unsavoury undergarment, disguising and disfiguring human nature? There is a story told of an elderly

tramp, who, overtaken by misfortune, was compelled to retire for a while to the seclusion of Portland. His

hosts, desiring to see as much as possible of their guest during his limited stay with them, proceeded to bath

him. They bathed him twice a day for a week, each time learning more of him; until at last they reached a

flannel shirt. And with that they had to be content, soap and water proving powerless to go further.

"That tramp appears to me symbolical of mankind. Human Nature has worn its conventions for so long that

its habit has grown on to it. In this nineteenth century it is impossible to say where the clothes of custom end

and the natural man begins. Our virtues are taught to us as a branch of 'Deportment'; our vices are the

recognised vices of our reign and set. Our religion hangs readymade beside our cradle to be buttoned upon

us by loving hands. Our tastes we acquire, with difficulty; our sentiments we learn by rote. At cost of infinite

suffering, we study to love whiskey and cigars, high art and classical music. In one age we admire Byron and

drink sweet champagne: twenty years later it is more fashionable to prefer Shelley, and we like our

champagne dry. At school we are told that Shakespeare is a great poet, and that the Venus di Medici is a fine

piece of sculpture; and so for the rest of our lives we go about saying what a great poet we think Shakespeare,

and that there is no piece of sculpture, in our opinion, so fine as the Venus di Medici. If we are Frenchmen we

adore our mother; if Englishmen we love dogs and virtue. We grieve for the death of a near relative twelve

months; but for a second cousin we sorrow only three. The good man has his regulation excellencies to strive

after, his regulation sins to repent of. I knew a good man who was quite troubled because he was not proud,

and could not, therefore, with any reasonableness, pray for humility. In society one must needs be cynical and

mildly wicked: in Bohemia, orthodoxly unorthodox. I remember my mother expostulating with a friend, an

actress, who had left a devoted husband and eloped with a disagreeable, ugly, little low comedian (I am

"'You must be mad,' said my mother; 'what on earth induced you to take such a step?'

"'My dear Emma,' replied the lady; 'what else was there for me? You know I can't act. I had to do

"We are dressedup marionettes. Our voice is the voice of the unseen showman, Convention; our very

movements of passion and pain are but in answer to his jerk. A man resembles one of those gigantic bundles

that one sees in nursemaids' arms. It is very bulky and very long; it looks a mass of delicate lace and rich fur

and fine woven stuffs; and somewhere, hidden out of sight among the finery, there is a tiny red bit of

"There is but one story," he went on, after a long pause, uttering his own thoughts aloud rather than speaking

to me. "We sit at our desks and think and think, and write and write, but the story is ever the same. Men told

it and men listened to it many years ago; we are telling it to one another today; we shall be telling it to one

another a thousand years hence; and the story is: 'Once upon a time there lived a man, and a woman who

loved him.' The little critic cries that it is not new, and asks for something fresh, thinkingas children

At that point my notes end, and there is nothing in the book beyond. Whether any of us thought any more of

the novel, whether we ever met again to discuss it, whether it were ever begun, whether it were ever

abandonedI cannot say. There is a fairy story that I read many, many years ago that has never ceased to

haunt me. It told how a little boy once climbed a rainbow. And at the end of the rainbow, just behind the

clouds, he found a wondrous city. Its houses were of gold, and its streets were paved with silver, and the light

that shone upon it was as the light that lies upon the sleeping world at dawn. In this city there were palaces so

beautiful that merely to look upon them satisfied all desires; temples so perfect that they who once knelt

therein were cleansed of sin. And all the men who dwelt in this wondrous city were great and good, and the

women fairer than the women of a young man's dreams. And the name of the city was, "The city of the things