3 1; B _ S-o d g ill | Orq 5 2 £t a hTcq _ 0". CQ* flg * so ?•» g-tt 2 ft** 5* o o S 3 Li S3- ^5 o < jj fr if O O 5 js ■g £ 90 £ 2 *+Ul *< CO (p 1 — 1 h- 1 ~ Next day, notwithstanding, she was back at the window. A LADY'S SHOE. 117 Nevertheless, these two loved each other, and Will would have liked his sister to get the shoes, if only he could get the knife as well. The little dress- maker loved Will even more than that, and was de- termined that he should have the knife, though she had to give up the shoes. Can you see her at the shoemaker's window, look- ing at the shoes, and then at her own feet, until she felt certain that all the Strand was laughing at her ? Once she went into the shop and asked the price of the shoes. She came out scared. Next day, not- withstanding, she was back at the window, with the money in her possession, and it almost compelled her to go in and buy. She had to run away. After that she left the money at home, lest it should some day drag her into the shop. She tried to avoid the Strand altogether, but still her feet took her there against her will, for you can- not conceive how anxious they were to step into those little bronze shoes. The little dressmaker, who was the most unselfish of women, despised herself for her vanity, and thought to be happy again by buying the knife without delay. Then the shoes would be beyond her reach as completely as if some great lady had bought them. " Here is the money for the knife, Will," she said, bravely, one day, and Will grasped the money, which was in many pieces, all earned with toil. 118 A LADY'S SHOE. " But the shoes ? " Will said, repressing his desire to rush out for the knife. " I don't care about them," his sister said, turning her head away. " It is not," Will said, uncomfortably, " as if you had no shoes. Those are nice ones you are wearing now." They were not really nice ones. It was quite a shame that such pretty feet should be libelled by them. But these. were matters Will did not under- stand. "All one wants of shoes," he said, "is that they should have no holes in them." u That is all," answered the little dressmaker, with a courageous smile, and she spoke of the knife with such interest that Will set off to buy it, convinced that she no longer cared about the shoes. Forget- ting something, however, he turned back for it, and behold, he found the little dressmaker in tears. You must not blame her. It was quite a big sacrifice she had made, and therefore, though she was cry- ing, she was not very unhappy. Unselfishness is the best cure for trouble. Will, of course, did not realize this. He suddenly remembered that, though they were so poor, he seemed to get everything he wanted very much, while she seemed to get nothing. He was stricken with remorse, and said craftily that he wanted her to come with him to buy the knife. Well, she went with him, and presently she A LADY'S SHOE. 119 discovered that it was not the knife he meant to buy. " Oh, Will," she whispered, trembling, " I won't have the shoes. I want you to get the knife." " Pooh," said Will, grandly, " I don't care to have the knife. What use do I have for it ? " "You will make me wretched, Will," the little dressmaker said, " if you buy the shoes. These I have are quite nice ones." " You are to have the shoes," replied Will, firmly. " No one could look so pretty in them as you will do." " Oh, Will, have you noticed \ " faltered the little dressmaker, meaning had Will noticed that her feet really were made for lovely shoes. " Of course I have," answered Will, not at all understanding what she was referring to. "But I can't spend so much money on myself," she said. " It is my money now," said Will, triumphantly, " and I am to give you the shoes as a present." Feeling like a man, he requested her to take his arm, and so they advanced along the Strand, making quite a gallant show for such wayfarers as could read faces. Alas! they reached the shop too late. The shoes were gone. An hour earlier they had been bought by an heiress, for whom they were too small. The shopkeeper had pointed this out to her courteously, but she, too, had fallen in love with the 120 A LADY'S SHOE. pretty shoes, and her only answer to him was, " I buy them : I undertake to get into them." Now we must leave the sad little dressmaker and follow the fortunes of the shoes. III. I interrupted my friend at this point, saying, " It is the little dressmaker I am interested in ; not the shoes. Tell me more of her." " She vanished out of my knowledge at that point in her history," he answered, " I don't know what became of her." " A story-teller," I complained, " has no right to close his tale so abruptly. It is his duty to leave nothing to the public's imagination." " Mine," he said, " is not a story, it is only some- thing that happened, and I warned you that I did not know the end. In real life you never get the end of a story, but you can guess it if you will." "Then," I said, "I guess that the little gover- ness " " Had more severe disappointments in after life than the loss of a pair of shoes," he said. " But had a happy future," I broke in, almost en- treating him to say the words. " When her brother became a man he gave her a pretty house in the suburbs to be mistress of, and she was as happy as ." " As Kuth Pinch," he suggested ; " no, I think Will A LADY'S SHOE. 121 married, and left the little dressmaker alone in the shabby room." " Until she married, you mean ? " " Or until," said my friend, .very sadly, " she was damned to all eternity that a gentleman might have his pleasure." " Don't say that," I implored. "The little dressmaker is dead," he answered, " and the worms have eaten her long ago, so it does not matter much." Then he looked at me sharply: " If I cannot give the story an end," he said, " I can at least give it a moral. When I was in your house yesterday I found a pale little governess teaching your children, and I thought (forgive me) that you were somewhat brusque to her. She was the little dressmaker over again. Ah, sir, that is what I mean when I say that the stories in real life have no end- ing ! The brave little dressmaker is still in London ; you brush against her in every street, you meet her in scores of houses. Eemember that little bit of her history, and you will help to make her next scene brighter. And now I must tell you of her who bought the shoes and took them to Gretna Green, and of how they entirely altered her future because they were a size too small. This time the story has an ending, or what passes for such in a world of make-believe. It is about a grandfather of mine, too, whose marriage, as you shall hear, was entirely arranged by this shoe." 122 A LADY'S SHOE. TV. Miss May Gkegoky, the heiress into whose pos- session the shoes passed, was a lovely creature on a somewhat large scale, and having only lately left school, she was desperately anxious to be married. So anxious was she, that matrimony was the first consideration, and the man only the second. She had two lovers, whom she called Jack and Tom, and she was so fond of both that she would have married either. Her papa, who knew her pretty well, said she was a sentimental goose, and he was so feared by both Jack and Tom, that when they heard his voice in the stilly night asking who that was play- ing the guitar beneath his daughter's window, they leaped the orchard wall and ran. " You can't marry both," Mr. Gregory explained to Miss May ; " and as they would only make a man between them, it is obvious that you marry neither. No tears, please, and let me hear less nonsense about love ; whoever heard of a girl's loving two men at once ! " Miss May thought her papa very unfeeling, and pointed out that, of course she only loved one of them. Her tragedy was that she could not decide which one. My own idea is that they were so very much alike that a lady could not be indifferent to the one and A LADY'S SHOE. 123 love the other. But I am a bachelor, and often wonder how young ladies can choose a young man out of so many young men of the same pattern and hold him higher than the rest. Financially Jack and Tom were easily distinguished, however. Jack had ready money but no prospects ; Tom had pros- pects (he said) but no ready money. You may be sure that Miss May considered this no difference at all. She had sufficient money and prospects for both herself and her husband, whichever one he should prove to be. Though it was in London that Miss May bought the shoes, it was in a provincial town that she first tried to get into them, the town where she and her severe papa lived. She was going to the theatre that night, and to Gretna Green afterward, if the fates proved friendly. It was her father who was to take her to the theatre, and Jack who was to take her to Gretna Green. The arrangements had been made cleverly, as you will see. For nearly half an hour did the carriage wait at the door before Miss May was ready to step into it. When she at last joined her father, who was fuming, for he detested being late for the play, her face was red. I wish I could say that this was because she was blushing or had been crying over the impropri- ety of the contemplated runaway marriage. But it was not. Miss May was merely red in the face be- cause her fight with the shoes had been protracted. 124 A LADY'S SHOE. She had gained a momentary triumph, however, for, in her own words, she had " got into them." True they pinched and made her stumble in her walk, but she had only to walk a few yards to the carriage and another few yards from the playhouse door to a box. I have forgotten what the play was ; it was, proba- bly, one of the dull comedies that are now es- teemed and edited because they are old. Many people were crowding into the house, and in the vestibule stood Jack, who made a sign to his lady that all was well. Then he disappeared without be- ing seen by the father he was hoodwinking. Tom was less fortunate. That is to say, the father did see him. He was also more fortunate, however, for he had a few moments' talk with Miss May. That lady ought not, perhaps, to have let Tom know that she was coming to the play to-night. She was really Jack's now, or about to be, if the plot did not miscarry. But was it not natural that she should feel sorry for Tom ! That day she had sent him back his letters (he used to slip them into her hands, and she kept them in a box beside Jack's letters), with an intimation that all was now over between them. She had also added that she was going to the play that night, and I suppose her reason for this injudicious act was that she looked forward to a delightfully sad parting with him. But Miss May had not quite understood Tom. In the crush at the A LADY'S SHOE. 125 theatre she held out her hand (the one further from her papa) that Tom might squeeze it surreptitiously. Thus did she hope to break the blow. But frantic Tom would have none of her hand. He stalked after her into the box, and in the presence of her father demanded an explanation. Miss May, who was al- ready beginning to wish that she had never seen those lovely little bronze shoes — they were hurting her so much — wept at Tom's grief and admired him for his vehemence. As for the father, he was first amazed, secondly delighted, and thirdly afraid. It was pleasant to him to hear that his daughter was determined to be done with the youth, but disquiet- ing to observe that the whole house was listening to Tom's declamation. Tom promising to lower his voice, papa consented to leave the box for five min- utes that the farewells might take place in privacy. In that five minutes the second last act of a tragedy was [played in the back of the box. Tom announced that his prospects were now death by his own pistol. Miss May, in terror, put her hands on his shoulders ; and then, remembering Jack, with- drew them. She had promised Jack not to say a word of the conspiracy to Tom, but now it all came out. At half-past nine a written note was to be handed in to Miss May, purporting to come from an aunt of hers who was in a box beneath. The note was to ask her and her papa to join the aunt. Papa loathed the aunt, and was therefore certain to 126 A LADY'S SHOE. refuse; but he would let Miss May go. In the lobby she was to be joined by Jack, whisked into a carriage that was already waiting near the theatre door, and borne off in the direction of Gretna Green. There was quite a chance of the runaways being twenty miles off before the chase began. "So farewell, Tom, dear Tom," said Miss May. But dear Tom, forgetting his promise to papa, be- gan to stamp, calling her the most horrid names, and thus delighting her. " You know how I could love you," she said, pick- ing her tenses carefully. "But am I to blame if you are so poor 1 " " You could wait for me. My prospects " " I can't wait, Tom ; good-by. Kiss me, Tom, for the last time." " I won't. You are a heartless coquette. May, if that carriage had been mine, would you have come with me ? " "I— I don't know." Men should not distress women with such diffi- cult questions. " Kiss me, Tom, for the last time." * I won't." Then, like a sensible man, Tom changed his mind, and kissed her passionately. "It is not for the last time," he said, fiercely. " May, you love me, and me alone, and Jack shall A LADY'S SHOE. 127 not have you ; he shall not. I have an idea ; quick, tell me how I shall know Jack's carriage ? " Miss May, wondering, had just began to answer him, when papa reappeared. Tom departed, but not with the look of a hopeless man on his face. As for the young lady, having treated dear Tom so kindly, she naturally began to think lovingly of dear Jack. The ruse with the letter succeeded. Miss May was trembling a little when she left the box. Had her papa flung her a kind word just then she might have postponed the elopement ; but he asked her grumpily why she was looking at him so sentiment- ally, and, of course, after that she hesitated no longer. He little thought as the door closed on her that the next time they met she would be a married woman. Miss May always maintained afterward that from the moment when she left her father's box until she realized that she was in a carriage beside Jack, all was a blank to her. The theatre attendant, however, who saw the carriage drive off, and described the scene subsequently to the infuriated father, declared that she was less agitated than her lover. " I suppose Jack carried me down that dark street to the carriage," was Miss May's surmise. " The gentleman was a little excited-like, but the 128 A LADY'S SHOE. lady she were wonderful cool," was the attendant's declaration. His story ended thus : "They had started, when the lady she gave a scream, and the carriage stopped, and the gentle- man he jumped out and looked for something in the street. He got it, too, and then he jumps in beside her again, and off they go at a spanking rate. I don't know what it was ; something she had dropped, most likely." To his dying day this man was denied the small pleasure of knowing what Jack jumped out of the carriage to pick up. It was one of the shoes. Miss May's feet had been protesting so vigorously in the theatre against further confinement in their narrow prison house that with one foot she had pressed the shoe half off the other. In the street the shoe fell off and Jack had to find it, for although in Scotland one may marry in a hurry, one's feet must be prop- erly shod. So Miss May thought then, but she was presently to discover that a pair of shoes are a con- venient possession rather than indispensable. Through the greater part of the night the car- riage rolled northward, but at last an inn (now, I believe, a private house) was reached, where they had to wait three hours for fresh horses. Miss May had a bedroom, but did not sleep a wink (she said), while the nervous Jack paced up and down in front of the inn, listening for horses in pursuit, and think- ing he heard them every five minutes. A LADY'S SHOE. 129 If a man can be too gentlemanly, that man seems to have been Jack throughout this escapade. Until he could claim her as his wife, he would not take even what she called formal liberties. He sat on the seat opposite her. He paid her no compli- ments ; he addressed her as Miss Gregory, which had not been his custom. Of course, she admired this delicacy, but still The journey was resumed with early light, and now, as they stepped once more into their carriage, both of the runaways looked hard at one of the postilions. " Surely, you are not the man I engaged yester- day ? " Jack said to him. " No, my lord/' answered the fellow, composedly ; "he were took ill, and offered me his place. No offence intended, my lord. I have been on this here kind of job before." " You have been to Gretna Green before ? " " Kayther." " You will do as well as another. Drive on." Miss May said nothing to the man, but she thought a good deal about him. Despite his dark hair and sallow complexion, despite his boorish manners, she thought him very like Tom. It was Tom in disguise. He had bribed the real postilion, and here he was on his way to Scotland with the woman he wanted to marry, but by no means certain how he was to get her. 9 130 A LADY'S SHOE. Within twenty miles of the border there is a hillock which commands an extensive view. It is close to the old high road, and many a man bound for Gretna Green has run up it to see whether his pursuers were in sight. Jack was one of the num- ber. He was not gone many minutes, but in the meantime Tom had found an opportunity of reveal- ing himself to the lady. " May," he said, appearing so suddenly by her side that she screamed, " don't you know me ? I am Tom. May, dearest, you said you would marry me if I could take you to Scotland. I am doing it." " Oh, Tom ! " wailed Miss May, all in a tremble (as she said afterwards), "I never made any such promise. I am to marry Jack." " Never ! " cried Tom. " May, darling May " " Tom, Tom ! " said Miss May, reproachfully, " why did you come to disturb my peace of mind, when everything was going on so nicely ? " " Love of my life ! " began Tom, then kissed her hand and resumed his seat beside the other pos- tilion. He had seen Jack running back. " We are pursued," Jack said, as he drew near, panting, "by two men on horseback, and one of them, I am convinced, is your father." The carriage rolled on more quickly now than ever, and for the next half-hour Miss May thought little of which of her lovers she should marry. Her new fear was that she would not be able to marry at 44 Love of my life," began Tom, then kissed her hand. A LADY'S SUOE. 131 all. Jack was as polite as ever. Certainly Tom had been less delicate. He had called her his dar- ling, he had kissed her hand. He should not have taken these liberties, but still ■ In vain were the jaded horses of the runaways whipped up. The pursuers gained on the carriage until, when the latter was within half a mile of the border, they were not four hundred yards behind. 11 There is only one chance for us, May," said poor Jack, forgetting in his excitement that she was not May, but Miss Gregory ; " we must leave the car- riage at the next turn of the road which hides us from view." * And be overtaken in a moment ! " cried Miss May, aghast. " I hope not," said Jack. " Listen, dear, to what I propose. At the next turn I will stop the car- riage, and you will at once jump out with me. I will tell our fellows to drive on as fast as they can, and you and I will conceal ourselves until your father and his companion have galloped past. They will pursue the carriage. In the meantime you and I will cross these fields to the village, whose lights I see plainly, and there the blacksmith will marry us." " They will overtake the carriage in a few min- utes," the lady said, " and finding it empty, hurry on to Gretna Green. Why, we shall find them wait- ing for us there." . -- 132 A LADY'S SHOE. "We shall not," answered Jack, triumphantly, with his head out at the window. " I see two roads before us, of which the one evidently leads to Gretna Green, and the other to the right. I will tell our fellows to take the latter ; that will give us a good start." Jack stopped the carriage and assisted his lady out, at the same time shouting directions to the two men. " Stop ! " he cried to them, as they were driv- ing off. " One of you come with me ; we may need a witness." Tom jumped down. The carriage drove on. The two men and the woman hid. The horse- men, of whom Mr. Gregory was purple with passion, raced by them. " And now for Gretna Green on foot ! " said Jack, giving Miss May his arm. They hurried on, but — the shoe ! Miss May had this time no maid to help her, and the shoe was but half on. She was sliding her foot along the ground, rather than lifting it. By and by, when they were not a hundred yards from the old toll-house, which is just on the other side of the border, Miss May sank to the ground, crying, " I can go no further ; I have lost one of my shoes ! " There was no time to look for the shoe in the twi- light. "Assist her to that cottage," said Jack to the sup- posed postilion, pointing to the toll-house, " and I will hasten on to the village and bring the black- A LADY'S SHOE. 133 smith back with me. Ask them to hide her, if need be. You will be well paid." So saying, Jack ran on, while Tom obeyed his in- junctions to the letter. With Miss May's assistance he explained the position to the toll-keeper, who grinned when he heard that the bridegroom was running to Gretna Green for the blacksmith. " You English," he said, " think that there is but one man in broad Scotland who can make a couple one in a hurry, and you call him the blacksmith, though }ie is no blacksmith at all. If your lover, honey, had stopped here, I should have had you spliced by this time." "Is that true?" cried Tom, while Miss May stared. " I have married scores in my time," the old man answered. " Why, I married half-a-dozen this week." " But is it legal ? " asked May. The toll -keeper smiled. " Try it, honey," he suggested. Then it was Tom's turn to speak. " May," he said, in a tone of conviction, cc this is providential. Old gentleman, marry us as quickly as you can. Get your family as witnesses, if wit- nesses are necessary." The toll-keeper looked at the lady. " No, no," she said, " I promised Jack. Oh, Tom, how I wish there had been only one of you ! " For half an hour did Miss May refuse to listen to 134 A LADY'S SHOE. what Tom called reason. Then she started up, for she was sure she heard the gallop of horses. " Tom ! " she cried. So she and Tom were married. Jack and Mr. Gregory arrived at the toll-house five minutes after- ward, but it was all over by that time. VI. Thus my friend ended his story, adding that his grandfather had come out of the affair victorious. " So that your grandfather was Tom ? " I said. "If," he replied, coolly, " you think Tom was the victor." "Well, he got her." " And Jack did not. But perhaps Jack was the luckier man of the two." " Then was Jack your grandfather ? " " I won't say. I leave it to you to decide which was victorious, the one who got her or the one who lost her." " It must have been Tom. You told me that your grandfather's marriage was entirely arranged by a shoe/' " Yes, I said so, but both of their marriages were arranged by a shoe, for Jack subsequently married another lady, and, of course, it was the shoe that led to his marrying her instead of Miss May." A LADY'S SHOE. 135 "At least/' I said, "Tell me which of the two shoes this is." " That would be telling" all," he replied, " for Tom retained possession of the shoe in which Miss May was married, and Jack found the other one next morning. To tell you which shoe this is would be to tell you which man was my grandfather. Can't you guess ? I have told you he was the one who had reason to be thankful that the lady became Mrs. Tom. Now, which one was that ? " Eeader, which do you think % WAS IT A WATCH? Even before my trouble with it, Farquhar' s was no ordinary watch, dimming- expressed the general opinion when he said it was a watch that would make any man thoughtful. Without going into its history, I may say that Farquhar got it originally from a deputation of another man's admirers, who presented it to him by mistake. From the first it seems to have required a good deal of study. Although he had a pride in it that would have been beautiful had the object been more worthy, Farquhar was not given to ostentatious boasting about his watch. Until it became the subject of common talk, he never knew, I am convinced, that it was different from other people's watches. He had owned it for some time before I became cogni- zant of its remarkable properties. One day Farquhar and I took such a long walk that we had to remain in a village all night. We had a double-bedded room. Some time after midnight I was awakened by strange noises, and thought at first that Farquhar was groaning in his sleep. I shouted out to him to sleep like a Christian or leave the room. He made WAS IT A WATCH ? 137 no answer, but the noise stopped, and I fell over again. In a short time I was again wide awake. There was no noise, but I was sure that something in the room had wakened me. Instead of address- ing Farquhar once more I lay very still, and by and by the noises were resumed. They resembled the distant creaking of chains, and came in jerks with intervals of half a minute between them. The room was in the blackness of night, but I still felt sure that Farquhar was the offender, and from the noise I thought I could calculate the place where he was lying. I reached my arm down to the floor and at last my groping fingers touched a slipper. This I flung, as I believed, at Farquhar as hard as I could. Then I listened. The slipper hit some hard object and fell on the floor, but Farquhar did not waken. The noise had ceased. As I lay listening I gradually became aware of another sound from the opposite side of the room. Undoubtedly it was Farquhar breathing heavily. This made me sit up. Evidently Farquhar's bed was not where I thought. As a consequence Farquhar was not responsible for these maddening sounds. No cat could have made them. While I sat pondering the creaking began again. I became nervous, but jumped out of bed and made my way to Farquhar's head. I shook him awake, and then told him to listen. He listened. The noise stopped, began again, stopped, began again. "I don't hear anything," said Farquhar, 138 WAS IT A WATCH? but lie spoke sulkily, and I had to think that either I was a fool or he was shamming. I preferred to disbelieve Farquhar. However, he insisted that he heard nothing, and as neither of us had any matches, I had to grope my way back to bed. I thought I might stifle the noise by burying my head in the blankets, but I was too wide awake for that. Every few minutes I uncovered my head to listen, and soon again I heard the creak, creak. Farquhar was either asleep again, or pretended to be so, for I spoke to him in vain. At last I got up, put one foot into the remaining slipper, and, with the other foot bare, began to search for the culprit. The room was mostly carpeted with wax-cloth, but my wrath kept me warm. I felt my way to the spot from which the noise seemed to proceed, and soon I was passing my fingers over a chest of drawers. It was a fearsome hunt, but I was not in the mood to be alarmed. Putting my ear to the drawers I listened, and in this way I came in time to the conclusion that the noise proceeded from a top drawer. I pulled it out and heard a very loud creak, creak. For a moment I hesitated about putting in my hand, but courage came to me. The drawer was empty except for one object. I took a firm grip of it. It was a watch. It must be Farquhar's watch. Soon I was at Far- quhar's bed, shaking him again, and now he con- fessed. "I put it into the drawer to deaden the sound," he said, " because I thought it might disturb WAS IT A WATCH? 139 you. I never hear it myself, but other men have been disturbed by it in the night." He would give me no more satisfaction, and at last went off to sleep again. I stood wondering what I should do with the watch, and at one time I thought of flinging it out of the window. In the end, however, I put it out at the door, and after that I had some sleep. Since then I have seldom talked to Farquhar about his watch when he and I were alone. If there are a number of us together, however, we ask him the time. He would hand the watch round if in a sociable mood. It was a silver watch, and many persons who have examined it are of opinion that it was the first watch. Farquhar has been advised to take it to the British Museum. Of the various theories propounded with regard to it, one of the most curious was that it was not a watch at all. This was the suggestion of a foreigner who has travelled over nearly all the earth and has seen queer things. Very possibly, he says, it is only something made in the form of a watch, and what that something is Farquhar may discover unexpect- edly any day. My own opinion, however, is that it is a watch. Perhaps because he never had any other watch, Farquhar would not have recognized that there was anything peculiar about his watch had not his friends made it the subject of so much discussion. 140 WAS IT A WATCH* When we asked him, in a matter-of-fact voice, what time it was, he pulled out his watch and began his calculations cheerfully. He never knew precisely how he arrived at his conclusions, for we were not in the secrets of his watch. While he gazed at it, how- ever, he murmured things to himself, which some took for incantations, although the better informed recognized them as arithmetical problems. I knew, though I cannot say how I knew it, that he had first to decide whether his watch was slow or fast to-day. Some held that it was fast on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, and slow on the other days of the week, but the calculation, I am convinced, was more elaborate than that. At such a time he would glare fixedly into vacancy, as if trying to tame a wild beast by the power of the human eye. He was really thinking back to the key, so to speak, to his watch. I have never seen anyone so distressed with thought, unless perhaps a man who has offered to show the company a trick with cards and suddenly fears that he has forgotten the way. Once Farquhar knew whether his watch was fast or slow, his face cleared, and we were aware that he had reached compara- tively smooth water. It was now merely a question of addition and subtraction, and he would even ask us how much twenty-five and seventeen made, or what was over after you took eighteen from forty. Despite these questions, however, his method was always a mystery, and we could not help feeling WAS IT A WAT Oil? 141 proud of him, when ultimately he gave us the time to a minute. There was no vulgar ostentation about him when he gave us the solution. He went through his calculations as if all watches were like his, and it was only when we raised a slight cheer that he realized that we had been getting up an entertain- ment. Then, indeed, he became as indignant as a sensi- tive man might be whose pipe had been held up to derision. Light talk about his watch he took as an insult to himself, and sometimes he would not argue. He could argue, however, about his watch, generally in a series of angry barks. The curse of life, he said, was that nowadays it had no variety. We (his hearers) were so much alike that he could only distinguish us by our clothes. He said we did the same things in the same way ; he knew what to expect of us with as much certainty as he knew that the bell would ring if he pulled the cord. In short, we were like our watches, all on the same plan, all going one way, and all going at the same rate. It was very different with his watch. It pos- sessed a distinct individuality. Who, he would like to know, cared for a dog that would answer any stranger's call ! Yet our watches were like such a dog. They would be as true to any other owner as to us ; the moment they changed pockets they were subservient to a new master. His watch, on the other hand, was part of himself. His forefingers 142 WAS IT A WATCH? were of immense use to him, but suppose them cut off, would they be an atom of service to any other body ? It was exactly so with his watch. If it were stolen, he would at least have the satisfaction of knowing that the thief could make nothing of it. It may have been noticed that I have spoken of Farquhar's watch in the past tense. This is because he has another watch now. I have also said that I had a little trouble with the watch. It was in this way. Farquhar had never let us open his watch to examine the works, or to see if it had any, and, though I am not inquisitive about other people's affairs, I thought I would like to look into the watch. I got my opportunity one evening in his rooms, when he fell asleep while I was talking to him. Very softly I got his watch out of his pocket and off the chain, and opened it with the point of his bread knife, and was trying to bend one of the wheels into its proper place — for I understand watches — when something went wrong,, There was a whirring of wheels, as if the watch were at last giving vent to its pent-up emotion. I laid it down in alarm, and then observed that the hands were going back and forward, gesticulating violently, like a man hailing a bus. When the watch had subsided a little, I thought I might venture on winding it up. Unfortunately while I wound I was watching the sleeper, and suddenly something went crack in the inside of the watch. I put it to my ear. It had WAS IT A WATCH? U3 stopped, and though I tried it with marmalade and struck it, nothing would make it go again. I paused to think. Knowing Farquhar well, I was aware that if he knew the particulars he would not scruple to say that I had broken the main-spring. To obviate all unpleasantness I thought the wisest course would be to replace the watch in his pocket, from which he thinks it has never been removed ex- cept by himself. Farquhar has never worn his watch since, none of us can tell why. He has an idea that something must have happened to it, but he avoids the subject. He has bought a gold watch that keeps excellent time, and though formerly he was never too early or too late for an appointment, he now misses his train at least twice a week. "THE MAN FKOM NOWHERE." In his delightful book, " The Trials of a Country Parson/' Dr. Jessop says : " I cannot expect to be envied ; but surely it is not such a very heavy ca- lamity for a man never to catch sight of Truth or the World, or to find that there is not such a thing as an oyster-knife in his parish.' , Dr. Jessop, therefore, does not know — and there must be many . others in his happy plight — that these two society papers made themselves at one time a debating society for discussing Mr. Eudyard Kipling, " The Man from Nowhere," as he then called himself. " That every- body knows Mr. Kipling's books " was the World's argument, and " That nobody ever heard of Mr. Kip- ling" was Truth's. As a result, while the World and other papers thought Mr. Kipling such a ce- lebrity that they vied with each in describing the tags of his bootlaces, Truth and other papers talked contemptuously of log-rolling. At the time of the World- Truth debate Mr. Kip- ling was a novelist who, six months previous, was almost quite unknown in this country. Therefore, his detractors seemed to urge, it is absurd that he can be a great man already. No, said his admirers, " THE MAN FROM NOWHERE.'' 145 it is only remarkable, and therefore worth making* a greater shout over. They certainly shouted so loudly as to justify the other side in calling him, not the Man from Nowhere, but the Man with many Friends. But to his friends let this folly be charged, not to him. Even if he did take their indiscriminate eulogies a little complacently, can we, with any generosity, blame a young man for liking to hear his work extolled? Whether Mr. Kipling has influential friends is a small matter. The great question is, Can he write ? To which my own answer is that no young man of such capacity has appeared in our literature for years. The suddenness of Mr. Kipling's rise is to be accounted for by the circumstances in which his books were written. He is an Anglo-Indian, and in India the stories which we have only now an oppor- tunity of reading have been known for a long time. Anglo-Indians were revelling — or should have been — in Mulvaney and Ortheris years before we ever heard of them. So prolific was Mr. Kipling, while still little more than a boy, that he came to Eng- land the other day the author of eight books. Not all of these are as yet accessible to our public, but we have only to take up any one of them to realize that there are two Bret Hartes in the world. One of them is a book of verses, called " Depart- mental Ditties," and it is not the best. Mr. Kipling is too much of a cynic (as yet) to be a poet, and 10 146 " THE MAN FROM NOWHERE." a good many of his ditties are only spirited dog- gerel. His political verse is chiefly remarkable for bad taste, which unfortunately characterizes (as yet) even his prose productions. The latter are pub- lished in a somewhat unfortunate form which shows them to the least possible advantage. The largest of his books published is " Plain Tales from the Hills," and it is a collection of many stories, the scene of which is always laid in India. About half of this book would be better cut out, not because it is without merit, but because the other half is too good to be weighted by matter indifferent by com- parison. Mr. Kipling is at his best when treating of Tommy Atkins in India, and of the natives. He shows meanly when writing cynical little tales of Anglo-Indian life, for though these are well enough for the columns of society journals, their view of life is contemptible, and their insight into the springs of human action seldom rises above " smart- ness." The native sketches, which read marvel- lously true, ought to go into the book " In Black and White," and the stories about Mulvaney and Or- theris, with " Soldiers Three," and some charming stories in Macmillarts, should make a book by them- selves. Then, instead of having to look here and there for it, we would have the best of Mr. Kipling in two volumes. But it will well repay anyone who appreciates a brilliant style, masterly character-sketching, and " THE MAN FROM NOWHERE." 147 quaint humor, together with a pronounced gift of story-telling, to read the books as they are. Some of Mulvaney's reminiscences and reflections are worth turning a whole library upside down to get at. Mulvaney is a private of enormous experience, the sworn friend of two other privates, Ortheris, a cockney, and Leeroyd from Yorkshire. Had he been able to keep from " the dhrink " he would cer- tainly have got his commission, for he is a man of parts ; as it is, he is an inimitable story-teller — always a fine animal, and for moments something better. One may question whether Lever ever drew such a jewel of an Irishman, for even Mickey Free is only a glorious caricature, and Mr. Kipling avoids burlesque. Mulvaney is obviously the author's fa- vorite among his characters, but Ortheris is not drawn with less skill ; indeed, out of Dickens, there is hardly a cockney of the costermonger class to place beside him. One of Mr. Kipling's complete triumphs, too, is gained with Ortheris. Now and again he seeks to give a touch of pathos to Mul- vaney, but Mr. Kipling is too cynical to be sure of himself when he would be tender, and Mulvaney's sentiment scarcely rings true. But there is genu- ine pathos walking hand in hand with humor in " The Madness of Private Ortheris," a gem of a story, in which the cockney loses his head as he thinks of the delights of low life in London, among which (for he is far away in India) is the smell of rotten fish. 148 tf THE MAN FROM NOWHERE." Here we have a flash into the causes that may make deserters of brave soldiers. It is only one of a hun- dred fine touches. Leeroyd is not drawn with much subtlety. He is only a stolid block, useful as a butt, but we never see the man inside the animal's body. Mulvaney and Ortheris are undoubtedly Mr. Kip- ling's chief achievement as yet, and he cannot go on writing of them forever. Will he last ! some critics are asking, and for my part I think he will. One would be reluctant to believe that a writer could be- gin so well, and then stop. It may be hoped that his cynicism (which is not Thackeray's, but rather that of one who rejoices in being a cynic) will be shaken off, and that then his characters will have souls. Though his style is most picturesque and ef- fective, it runs riot at times, and he is so anxious to be startling that he is occasionally disgusting. " Whin I roused, the dhrink was dyin' out in me, an* I felt as tho' a she-cat had littered in my mouth," is one of many phrases that should not appear in the collected edition of his works. Yet a young writer of Mr. Kipling's capacity is more hopeful when he errs on the side of extravagant realism than when he is content to be inartistically conventional. He has not as yet drawn a lady with much success. On the whole, all we can say as yet — but it is a great deal — is that few, if any, novelists who have become great did such promising work at his age. A HOLIDAY IN BED. Now is the time for a real holiday. Take it in bed, if you are wise. People have tried a holiday in bed before now, and found it a failure, but that was because they were ignorant of the rules. They went to bed with the open intention of staying- there, say, three days, and found to their surprise that each morning they wanted to get up. This was a novel experience to them, they flung about restlessly, and probably shortened their holiday. The proper thing is to take your holiday in bed with a vague intention of getting up in another quarter of an hour. The real pleasure of lying in bed after you are awake is largely due to the feeling that you ought to get up. To take another quarter of an hour then becomes a luxury. You are, in short, in the position of the man who dined on larks. Had he seen the hundreds that were ready for him, all set out on one monster dish, they would have turned his stomach ; but get- ting them two at a time, he went on eating till all the larks were exhausted. His feeling of uncer- tainty as to whether these might not be his last two larks is your feeling that, perhaps, you will have to 150 A HOLIDAY IN BED. get up in a quarter of an hour. Deceive yourself in this way, and your holiday in bed will pass only too quickly. Sympathy is what all the world is craving for, and sympathy is what the ordinary holiday-maker never gets. How can we be expected to sympathize with you when we know you are off to Perthshire to fish ? No ; we say we wish we were you, and forget that your holiday is sure to be a hollow mockery ; that your child will jam her finger in the railway car- riage, and scream to the end of the journey ; that you will lose your luggage ; that the guard will notice your dog beneath the seat, and insist on its being paid for ; that you will be caught in a Scotch mist on the top of a mountain, and be put on gruel for a fortnight ; that your wife will fret herself into a fever about the way the servant, who has been left at home, is carrying on with her cousins, the milk- man, and the policeman ; and that you will be had up for trespassing. Yet, when you tell us you are off to-morrow, we have never the sympathy to say, " Poor fellow, I hope you'll pull through somehow." If it is an exhibition you go to gape at, we never picture you dragging your weary legs from one department to another, and wondering why your back is so sore. Should it be the seaside, we talk heartlessly to you about the "briny," though we must know, if we would stop to think, that if there is one holiday more miserable than all the others, it A HOLIDAY IN BED. 151 is that spent at the seaside, when you wander along the weary beach and fling pebbles at the sea, and wonder how long it will be till dinner-time. Were we to come down to see you, we would probably find you, not on the beach, but moving slowly through the village, looking in at the one milliner's window, or laboriously reading what the one grocer's labels say on the subject of pale ale, compressed beef, or vinegar. There was never an object that called aloud for sympathy more than you do, but you get not a jot of it. You should take the first train home and go to bed for three days. To enjoy your holiday in bed to the full, you should let it be vaguely understood that there is something amiss with you. Don't go into details, for they are not necessary ; and, besides, you want to be dreamy more or less, and the dreamy state is not consistent with a definite ailment. The moment one takes to bed he gets sympathy. He may be suffering from a tearing headache or a tooth that makes him cry out ; but if he goes about his busi- ness, or even flops in a chair, true sympathy is denied him. Let him take to bed with one of those illnesses of which he can say with accuracy that he is not quite certain what is the matter with him, and his wife, for instance, will want to bathe his brow. She must not be made too anxious. That would not only be cruel to her, but it would wake you from the dreamy state. She must simply see that you are 152 A HOLIDAY IN BED. "not yourself." Women have an idea that unless men are " not themselves " they will not take to bed, and as a consequence your wife is tenderly thought- ful of you. Every little while she will ask you if you are feeling any better now, and you can reply, with the old regard for truth, that you are " much about it." You may even (for your own pleasure) talk of getting up now, when she will earnestly urge you to stay in bed until you feel easier. You con- sent ; indeed, you are ready to do anything to please her. The ideal holiday in bed does not require the presence of a ministering angel in the room all day. You frequently prefer to be alone, and point out to your wife that you cannot have her trifling with her health for your sake, and so she must go out for a walk. She is reluctant, but finally goes, protesting that you are the most unselfish of men, and only too good for her. This leaves a pleasant aroma behind it, for even when lying in bed, we like to feel that we are uncommonly fine fellows. After she has gone you get up cautiously, and, walking stealthily to the wardrobe, produce from the pocket of your greatcoat a good novel. A holiday in bed must be arranged for beforehand. With a gleam in your eye you slip back to bed, double your pillow to make it higher, and begin to read. You have only got to the fourth page, when you make a horrible discov- ery — namely, that the book is not cut. An experi- A HOLIDAY IN BED. 153 enced holiday-maker would have had it cut the night before, but this is your first real holiday, or perhaps you have been thoughtless. In any case you have now matter to think of. You are torn in two different ways. There is your coat on the floor with a knife in it, but you cannot reach the coat without getting up again. Ought you to get the knife or to give up reading? Perhaps it takes a quarter of an hour to decide this question, and you decide it by discovering a third course. Being a sort of an invalid, you have certain privileges which would be denied you if you were merely sitting in a chair in the agonies of neuralgia. One of the glori- ous privileges of a holiday in bed is that you are entitled to cut books with your fingers. So you cut the novel in this way, and read on. Those who have never tried it may fancy that there is a lack of incident in a holiday in bed. There could not be a more monstrous mistake. You are in the middle of a chapter, when suddenly you hear a step upon the stair. Your loving ears tell you that your wife has returned, and is hasten- ing to you. Now, what happens? The book dis- appears beneath the pillow, and when she enters the room softly you are lying there with your eyes shut. This is not merely incident ; it is drama. What happens next depends on circumstances. She says, in a low voice : " Are you feeling any easier now, John ? " 154 A HOLIDAY IJV BED. No answer. " Oh, I believe lie is sleeping.'' Then she steals from the room, and you begin to read again. During a holiday in bed one never thinks, of course, of analyzing his actions. If you had done so in this instance, you would have seen that you pretended sleep because you had got to an exciting passage. You love your wife, but, wife or no wife, you must see how the passage ends. Possibly the little scene plays differently, as thus : " John, are you feeling any easier now ? " No answer. " Are you asleep f " No answer. " What a pity ! I don't want to waken him, and yet the fowl will be spoilt." " Is that you back, Marion ? " " Yes, dear ; I thought you were asleep." " No, only thinking." "You think too much, dear. I have cooked a chicken for you." " I have no appetite." "I'm so sorry, but I can give it to the children." "Oh, as it's cooked, you may as well bring it up." In that case the reason of your change of action is obvious. But why do you not let your wife know that you have been reading ? This is another matter A HOLIDAY IN BED. 155 that you never reason about. Perhaps it is because of your craving for sympathy, and you fear that if you were seen enjoying a novel the sympathy would go. Or perhaps it is that a holiday in bed is never perfect without a secret. Monotony must be guard- ed against, and so long as you keep the book to your- self your holiday in bed is a healthy excitement. A stolen book (as we may call it) is like stolen fruit, sweeter than what you can devour openly. The boy enjoys his stolen apple because at any moment he may have to slip it down the leg of his trousers and pretend that he has merely climbed the tree to enjoy the scenery. You enjoy your book doubly because you feel that it is a forbidden pleasure. Or do you conceal the book from your wife lest she should think that you are over-exerting your- self ? She must not to be made anxious on your account. Ah, that is it. People who pretend (for it must be pretence) that they enjoy their holiday in the country, explain that the hills or the sea gave them such an appetite. I could never myself feel the delight of being able to manage an extra herring for breakfast, but it should be pointed out that neither mountains nor oceans give you such an appetite as a holiday in bed. What makes people eat more anywhere is that they have nothing else to do, and in bed you have lots of time for meals. As for the quality of the food supplied, there is no comparison. In the 156 A HOLIDAY IJV BED. Highlands it is ham and eggs all day till you sicken. At the seaside it is fish till the bones stick in your mouth. But in bed — oh, there you get something worth eating. You don't take three big meals a day, but twelve little ones, and each time it is something different from the last. There are delicacies for breakfast, for your four luncheons and your five dinners. You explain to your wife that you have lost your appetite, and she believes you, but at the same time she has the sense to hurry on your dinner. At the clatter of dishes (for which you have been lying listening) you raise your poor head, and say faintly : " Really, Marion, I can't touch food." " But this is nothing," she says, " only the wing of a partridge." You take a side glance at it, and see that there is also the other wing and the body and two legs. Your alarm thus dispelled, you say : "I really can't." " But, dear, it is so beautifully cooked." " Yes, but I have no appetite." " But try to take it, John, for my sake." Then for her sake you say she can leave it on the chair, and perhaps you will just taste it. As soon as she has gone you devour that partridge, and when she comes back she has the sense to say : "Why you have scarcely eaten anything. What could you take for supper ? " A HOLIDAY IJST BED. 157 You say you can take nothing, but if she likes she can cook a large sole, only you won't be able to touch it. " Poor dear ! " she says, " your appetite has com- pletely gone," and then she rushes to the kitchen to cook the sole with her own hands. In half an hour she steals into your room with it, and then you (who have been wondering why she is such a time) start up protesting : " I hope, Marion, this is nothing for me." " Only the least bit of a sole, dear." " But I told you I could eat nothing." " Well, this is nothing, it is so small." You look again, and see with relief that it is a large sole. u I would much rather that you took it away." "But, dear " " I tell you I have no appetite." " Of course I know that ; but how can you hope to preserve your strength if you eat so little ! You have had nothing all day." You glance at her face to see if she is in earnest, for you can remember three breakfasts, four lunch- eons, two dinners, and sandwiches between ; but evi- dently she is not jesting. Then you yield. " Oh, well, to keep my health up I may just put a fork into it." " Do, dear ; it will do you good, though you have no caring for it." 158 A HOLIDAY IJST BED. Take a holiday in bed, if only to discover what an angel your wife is. There is one thing to guard against. Never call it a holiday. Continue not to feel sure what is wrong with you, and to talk vaguely of getting up presently. Your wife will suggest calling in the doctor, but pooh-pooh him. Be firm on that point. The chances are that he won't understand your case. a a .3 o ^ 2 2 ^5 IS IT A MAN? I. I came upon his grave accidentally a few weeks ago while taking a short cut through the cemetery of an unlovely provincial town. His name I had forgotten the night I heard it years ago : had flung it away, so to speak, with the handbills he gave me at the same time, but the wording on the tomb- stone recalled his story to me as vividly as if it was a long lost friend whom I had suddenly struck against. I laughed at the story when he told it to me, but when I read it in brief on the tombstone I wondered why I had laughed. We only met once, and it was in London at the theatre. His stall adjoined mine. When his lips were at rest he was a melancholy looking little man, but frequently he spoke to himself, and then all character went out of his face. For a time he paid no attention to the acting, but by and by he sat up excitedly in his seat, rubbed his hands nervously on his trousers, and leaning in my direction, peered, not at the stage, but at the wings. I heard him mutter, "Her cue in a moment, and I don't see 160 18 IT A JdANt her ! " He looked around the house as if to signal to everybody that something was about to happen, and then I noticed his feet begin to beat the floor instinctively, and his one palm run to the other. Next moment the heavy father whispered to the old, and therefore comic spinster, " But not a word of this to my daughter, here she comes.'' The heroine of the piece sailed on to the stage, with tears for her father and smiles for the audience, and, as I thought, one quick glance for my neighbor. His feet pattered softly on the floor, as a sign to the audience to cheer, but they were reluctant, and after she had given them an imploring glance, she began to speak slowly, as one saying to herself between her spoken words, " I am still quite willing to stop if you will applaud me." And she was applauded, for my neighbor's feet at last set others a-going, and then she courtesied and waited for more, and then we all became energetic. The little man had been breathing quick in his excitement, but now he heaved a great sigh of relief, and whispered to me, in exultation, " What a reception the O'Eeilly has got, sir, and quite spontaneous. The same thing occurs every night, every night, every night ! Hush ! you will see acting now." He had silenced me when I was about to ask him if he was here every night. I judged him an ardent admirer of Miss O'Eeilly, and had further evidence during the first act that one man may lead the IS IT A MAN? 161 applause as a conductor leads the orchestra. When Miss Helmsley entered, and some pittites began to cheer, my neighbor cried " Sh-sh " so fiercely that the demonstration stopped abruptly, and Miss Helmsley withdrew her courtesy. When the heavy father stopped in the middle of his long speech for a "hand" to help him on his way, he would have got it but for the " Sh-sh " of the little man. When the comedian nudged the elderly spinster in the ribs, which is how elderly spinsters are made love to on the stage, some ladies giggled, but my neighbor looked at them with a face that said, " There is nothing funny in that," and they restrained their mirth. But when Miss O'Eeilly snatched the smoking cap from Leonard and put it on her own flaxen head, he chuckled till the whole audience admitted the fun of it, and when Miss O'Reilly told Lord John to stand back and let her pass, my neighbor brought down the house ; and when she made her reluctant exit he brought down the house again ; and when the curtain fell on the first act he shouted " O'Eeilly " until we were all infected. Not until he had her before the curtain would he retire, and then it was to speak about her to me. The exchange of a vesta introduced us to each other. " You have seen the piece before 1 " I asked, with the good-nature that is born of a cigarette. I had already sufficient interest in him to wonder who he was. 11 162 18 IT A MAN? " The piece ? H he echoed, indifferently. " Oh, yes ; I have seen the greater part of it frequently." " How does it end ! " He shrugged his shoulders. " I don't know," he answered, contemptuously, " I always walk out of the house just before the last tableau." "Is Miss O'Eeilly not on the stage in that tableau ! " I asked. " She is not," he replied, rapping out an oath or two, and trembling with rage. " Did you ever hear of anything so monstrous ? She is leading lady, the idol of the town, and yet she is not on at the end. Excuse me, sir. I am always taken in this way when I think of it." He bit his cigarette in two and asked for another vesta. Then he explained. " She dies, you know, in the middle of the act." " Ah, that accounts for it," I said. " Not at all," he retorted, " she ought not to die until the tableau. And if she had to die then, that should have been the tableau. What do people come to the theatre to see ? " " The play," I suggested. " Pooh, the play ! " he sneered. " There are twenty plays to be seen nightly at West End thea- tres, but only one O'Reilly. They come to see the O'Reilly, sir, and it is defrauding the public to let her die a moment before the end." 18 IT A MAN? 163 "Still," I said, " the author " u Pshaw ! " he broke in, " who thinks of the author ? He could have easily have brought down the curtain on^the O'Eeilly's death, and I am confident he meant to do it. But Helmsley is the management's niece, and insisted on being the only lady in the tableau. You noticed that Helmsley was a complete frost ! I distinctly heard someone hissing her." " So did I," I said, smiling, for the someone had been himself. " You heard it, too," he cried, audaciously. " Thank you sir," he said, and shook me warmly by the hand. "The O'Beilly herself," he added, "had no wish to be in the tableau, but she knew the public would expect it. She is a woman, that, sir ! " "She is," I agreed. " Ha ! " he exclaimed. " You, too, were struck by it ? But she impresses everyone in the same way. The management pay her a princely salary, but she is worth it. Did you hear how that man in the pit laughed over her lines about bread and cheese and kisses ? I wonder who he is ? " "What salary does she get?" I asked, with the curiosity of a theatre-goer. " They say," he replied, looking at me sharply, "that she gets eighty pounds a week." " Hem ! " I said. He coughed. " What a carriage she has ! " he ex- claimed ; and then waited for me to agree. 164 IS IT A MAN? " Wonderful ! " I said, for I never contradict a man who is in love. " You think she has a wonderful carriage ? " he asked, as if I had put the idea into his head. " Yes, you are quite right. I will tell her you remarked on it." " You know her personally ? N " I have that honor," he replied, with dignity. " Candidly now, is not her elocution superb ? " "It is," I said. " I agree with you," he answered, " and you have used the one word that properly describes it. Superb ! Yes, that is the very word. I will tell her you said superb. I see you know acting, sir, when you see it. Not that I would call it acting. Would you call it acting ! " "Certainly not," I answered recklessly, but hop- ing he would not ask me to give it a name. " No," he said, " it is not acting. It is simply genius." " Genius," I said from memory, " is all the talents in a nutshell." " Ha ! " he cried, " that is how you would describe her ? All the talents in a nutshell ! What a capital line for the advertisements. All the talents in a nut- shell! I will tell her you said that about her." He lowered his voice. " Press ? " he asked with some awe. I shook my head. " Got friends on the press ? " he next inquired. IS IT A MAN? 165 " Yes," I said, remembering that a pressman owed me five pounds. "Critics?" " I shouldn't wonder." "Then," he said, eagerly, "put them up to that line, ' all the talents in a nutshell,' or stop, would you mind giving me their private address ? " " Unfortunately, I cannot." " That is a pity, because if you could see your way to a ' par/ I think I might be able to introduce you to the O'Eeilly. But she is very particular." " You are an enthusiast about her," I remarked. "Who could help it?" he answered. "I have watched her career since she was — on my soul, sir, since she was nobody in particular. There was a time when that woman was no more famous than you are. You were speaking of her genius a min- ute ago, but, would you believe it, she rose from the ranks, positively from the ranks." If I had swooned at this, his hands would have been ready to catch me ; but I kept my senses. " Your interest in her," I ventured to say, " was very natural, but it must have taken up a good deal of your time." " All my time," he said. " Except during business hours, of course." " From the time I rise until midnight." " Then you have no profession ? " " That is my profession." 166 18 IT A MAN? "What?" " The interest I take in her." a And did you never do anything else ? " I asked, beginning to envy the little man his father. At once the melancholy look, of which I have spoken, came back to his face. " I used to be in the profession myself," he said, sighing, " I am Jolly Little Jim." He did not look it at that moment. " You have forgotten me, T see," he said, dolefully. " Think a moment. Jolly Little Jim was the name." " I am afraid I never heard it," I had to admit. "Nonsense," he answered, testily. "Everybody knew that name once. I got no other, though my real name is James Thorpe. Why, I advertised as Jolly Little Jim. You must have heard it." " Perhaps I have," I replied, pitying his distress. " If you would care to read my press notices," he began putting his hand into his pocket, "I can " " Not to night," I interposed, hurriedly. " I can repeat most of them," he said, brightly. " Rather tell me why you gave up a profession," I said, "which you doubtless adorned." " Thank you," he answered, again pressing my hand. " Well, sir, the O'Reilly has the responsibility for that." "You gave up acting because it interfered with your interest in her ? " " You may put it in that way. I gave up every- u I used to be in the profession myself," he said, sighing, " I am Jolly Little Jim." IS IT A MAN? 167 thing for her. If that woman, sir, had asked me to choose between her and my press notices, I believe I would have burned them." " How has she rewarded you ! " I asked, seeing that he was of a communicative nature. " She married me," he answered, drawing himself up to his full height. " Yes, I am her husband !" It was I who shook his hand this time. I could think of nothing else to do. He was beginning his story, when the bell tinkled, warning us to return to our seats. " She is on immediately," he said, " so we must go back and give her a hand. I'll meet you here again after the second act." II. Dubing the second act Mr. Thorpe behaved as previously, drinking in Miss O'Reilly's every word, cheering her comings and goings, and yawning, and even reading a newspaper, when he should have been listening to Miss Helmsley. Once I saw him make a note on his programme, and felt sure it was " All the talents in a nut-shell." I started him on his story as soon as he joined me in the smoking- room. (He had remained in his seat to shout " O'Reilly.") " The first time I ever set eyes on her," he began, " was at Dublin, where we had both been engaged 168 IS IT A MAN? for pantomime. Yes, that woman once played in pantomime ; and, what is more, she was only second girl. That is a strange thing to think of. I was the first villain, Deepdyeo, and the Shamrock said of my creation, 'Another part admirably rendered is the Deepdyeo of Mr. James Thorpe, better known to fame as Jolly Little Jim. Mr. Thorpe, who was re- ceived with an ovation ' " " But you were to tell me of Miss O'Beilly," I re- minded him . "Ah," he said, "I shall never forget that first meeting. It took place at rehearsal, and when I left the theatre that afternoon I was a changed man." " You fell in love with her at first sight ? " " Not absolutely at first sight. You see I was in- troduced to her before the rehearsal began, and there was no opportunity of falling in love with her then." " Still, she had impressed you ? " " How could she impress me before I had seen her do anything ? What is it in a woman that one falls in love with ? " "Who can tell? "I said. "Anybody can tell," he answered, putting me down for a bachelor. " It is the genius in her, or rather what we consider genius, for many men make a mistake about that." " So you loved her for her genius ? " * What first struck me was her exit. I suppose I IS IT A MAN? 169 may say that I fell in love with it at once. Then she sang* ; only a verse, but it was enough. Later she danced, and that, sir, was a revelation. I knew the woman was a genius. By the time the panto- mime was in full swing, she was the one woman in the world for me." "And she had fallen in love with your genius, too ? " " I could not be certain. You see we were not on speaking terms ; she was so jealous." " But that," I said, " is recognized as a sign of love. No doubt she wanted you entirely to herself. Who was the lady ? " "What lady ? " he asked, in surprise. " The lady Miss O'Reilly was jealous of," I said. " I never said she was jealous of a lady ; though, of course, she would be jealous of the principal girl. I spoke of myself." " But how," I questioned, " could she be jealous unless she thought you were paying attention to some other woman." " Oh ! " he said, with slow enlightenment, " I see what you mean, but you don't see what I mean. It was of me that she was jealous, or rather of my song. You may not be aware that in pantomime we are allowed to choose our own songs. Well, it so happened that she and I both wanted to sing the same song. It was an exquisite thing, called, ' Do you think when you wink ? ' and as I had applied for 170 18 IT A MAN? permission to sing it first she was told to select something else. That was why we did not speak." " But if you loved her," I said, speaking, it is true, on a subject of which I knew little, "you would surely have consented to waive your rights to the song. Love, it is said, delights in self-sacrifice." " No doubt," he admitted, " but you know the lines, ' I could not love you, dear, so much, loved I not honor more.' Well, my honor was at stake, for I had promised my admirers in Dublin — and they were legion (see the Shamrock for January 12, 1883) — to sing that song. And my fame was at stake as well as my honor, for I created quite a furore with 1 Do you think when you wink ? ' " " Still," I insisted, " love is all powerful." " I admit it," he answered, " and, what is more, I proved it, for after I had sung the song a week, I transferred it to her." " Did she sing it as well as you had done ? " There was a mighty struggle within him before he could reply, but when he did speak he was mag- nificent. " She sang it far better than I," he said, firmly, and then winced. " It was a great sacrifice you made," I said, gently, " but doubtless it had its reward. Did she give you her hand in exchange for the song ? " " No," he answered, " we were not married until a year after that. She was grateful to me, but soon IS IT A MAN? 171 we quarrelled again. The fact is that I took a ' call ' which she insisted was meant for her. She felt that disappointment terribly ; indeed she has not got over it yet. She cannot speak about it without crying." " You mean," I said, u that you years ago deprived her of the privilege of courtesying to an audience ? Surely she would not let that prey on her mind ? " " You don't understand," he replied, " that fame is food and drink to an artist. It was months before she forgave me that, though she is naturally the most tender-hearted creature. Our baggage man stole fifty pounds from her, and she would not pros- ecute him because she knew his sister. But you see it was not money that I deprived her of, it was fame." " And did you win your way back into her favor," I asked, " by letting her take a ' call ' that was meant for you ! " " No," he said ; " several times I determined to do so, but when the moment came I could not make the sacrifice. I spent about half my salary in pres- ents to her, but, although she took them, she refused to listen to any proposal of marriage. By this time I had confessed my love for her. Well, we parted, and soon afterward I got an engagement as chief comedian in the ' Powder Monkey ' Company, which was then on tour. She was playing chambermaid in it. Fancy that woman flinging herself away on 172 IS IT A MAN? chambermaids ! I made a big hit in my part. The Lincoln Observer said, ' Mr. James Thorpe, the cele- brated Jolly Little Jim, created a ' " " But about Miss O'Eeilly," I asked. " "We got on swimmingly at first," he said. " She had decided to forgive you 1 H " No, she was stiff the first day, but I put her up to a bit of business, that used to be encored nightly, and then she accepted my offer of marriage. But a week after I had given her the engagement ring she returned it to me. I don't blame her." " You admit that she had just cause of complaint against you?" " Yes, no woman who was an artist could have stood it. The fact is, that one night I took the ' up ' side of her in our comic love scene. That is to say, I had my face to the audience, and so she was forced to turn her back to them. I had no right to do it, but a sort of madness came over me, and I yielded to the impulse. As soon as we had made our exits she flung the ring in my — ah, she gave me back the ring, and, for the remainder of the tour she was not civil to me. The tour ended abruptly ; indeed, the man- ager decamped, owing us all a fortnight's salary, and we were stranded in Bootle without money to pay for our lodgings, not to speak of our tickets back to London. I pawned my watch and sold my fur coat, and shared what I got for them with her/' " And so the engagement was resumed? " IS IT A MAN? 173 11 No, no ; that was merely a friendly act, and it was accepted as such. The engagement was not re- sumed until I got a ' par ' about her into a Sunday paper. But that is the bell again. Ill tell you the rest after her death-scene." in. Miss O'Eeilly died as slowly as the management would allow her, and, when she had gasped her last gasp with her hair down, Jolly Little Jim, that was, led the tears and the cheers, cried out, " Superb, by Jove ! that woman has all the talents in a nutshell," and strutted from the stalls in a manner that invit- ed the rest of the audience to follow. But every- body, save Mr. Thorpe and myself, remained to see the comic man produce the missing will, and so my little friend and I got the smoking-room to our- selves. "The next time we were on tour together," he con- tinued, after I had given the death-scene a testimo- nial, " was in ' Letters of Fire,' with a real steam en- gine. I was Bill Body, the returned convict, and the Bochester Age said, ' Mr. Thorpe, who, as Jolly Little Jim, made such a ' " " The engagement was resumed by this time ? " I asked. " I told you the ' par ' had done that. However, we had another tiff during rehearsals, because I got 174 IS IT A MAN? the epilogue to speak. I daresay that would have led to a rupture had not " "Had not she loved you so deeply," I suggested. " She loved me fondly," he replied, " but she loved fame more. Every true genius does. No, the reason she did not break with me then was that I was * on - in her great scene in the fourth act. You see, as chief comedian I had a right to .a little comic by- play in that scene, and if I had exercised that right I should have drawn away attention from herself. Thus I had the whip hand of her. I am inclined to think that had I pressed the point I could have married her during the run of that piece." " By threatening, if she delayed the wedding, to introduce comic business into her great scene ? " " Yes, but I did not, and you are no doubt wonder- ing why. The fact is, I thought my self-denial would soften her heart and so bring about the results I was pining for. Perhaps it would have done so, but, unfortunately, ' Letters of Fire ' did not draw (though a great success artistically), and we had to put ' London Slums ' on in its place. In that piece the leading juvenile played up to her so well that she began to neglect me. I was in despair, and so not quite accountable for my actions. Nevertheless, you will think the revenge I took as cold-blooded as it seemed to her. You must understand that, though our pieces were splendidly billed, the O'Reilly had fifty chromos of herself, done at her own expense, IS IT A MAN? 175 and all framed. These she got our agent in ad- vance to exhibit in the best places in the best shops, and undoubtedly they added to her fame. They pre- ceded us by a week, and so she was always well- known before we opened anywhere. Well, sir, I got fifty chromos of myself framed, and ten days before we were due at Sheffield I had them put into fifty barbers' shops there. " Why barbers' shops ? " I interposed. "Because they are most seen and discussed there," he explained. "It comes natural to a man when he is being shaved to talk about what is on at the theatres. I can't say why that is so, but so it is. Perhaps one reason is that barbers are nearly always enthusiasts on matters of art. Well, if there is a good chromo in the shop, of course it comes in for its share of discussion, and the barber tells what parts you have played before, and so on. It is a great help. However, the O'Reilly no sooner heard what I had done than she told me all was over be- tween us." " Still," I said, " the barbers would have had room for her pictures as well as for yours." "I got the best places," he answered, "and there is this, too, to consider. The more chromos there are to look at, the less attention does any particu- lar one get; and she held that if I loved her truly I would not have stepped in, as it were, between her and the public. She did not get a reception that 176 IS IT A MAN? opening night at Sheffield, and, of course, she gave me the blame. It seriously affected her health." " But you made that quarrel up ? " " Not for three weeks. Then she gave in. Instead of my going to her, she came to me and offered to renew the engagement if I would withdraw my chromos." " Which you did gladly, of course ! " " I took a night to think of it. You who are not an artist cannot conceive how I loved my chromos. Did I tell you that I had printed beneath them 1 Yours very sincerely, Jolly Little Jim ? ' However, I did yield to her wishes, and we were to be married at Newcastle, when a terrible thing happened. We have now come to the turning-point of my life. At Newcastle, sir, I made my last appearance on the stage." Mr. Thorpe turned his face from me until he re- covered command of it. Then he resumed. " Two days before the marriage was to take place a Newcastle paper slated her and praised me. It said, 'Miss O'Beilly ought to take a page out of Mr. Thorpe's book. She should learn from him that the action should suit the word, not precede it. She should note his facial expression, which is comedy in picture, and control her own tendency to let her face look after itself. She should take note of his clear pronunciation and model her somewhat snappy de- livery on it.' Sir, I read that notice with mixed IS IT A MAN? 177 feelings. As an artist I could not but delight in its complimentary references to myself, but as a lover I dreaded its effect on the O'Eeilly. After breakfast I went to call on her at her lodgings, and happening to pass a number of news-shops on the way I could not resist the temptation to buy at each a paper with the notice. I concealed the papers about my person, and as I approached her door I tried to look downcast. But I fear my step was springy. Per- haps she saw me from her window. At all events her landlady informed me that Miss O'Eeilly de- clined to see me. ' Here is something I was told to give you,' said the woman, handing me a pill-box. It contained the ring ! I compelled the O'Eeilly to listen to me that night at the theatre, and she al- lowed that I was not to blame for the notice. But she pointed out that there could be no chance of happiness for a husband and wife whose interests were opposed, and I saw that it was true. I walked about the streets of Newcastle all that night, such was my misery, such the struggle in my breast be- tween love and fame. Well, sir, love conquered, as it never could have conquered her, for she was a great artist, and I only a small one, though the Basingstoke Magpie said of me, ' The irresistibly droll Mr. Thorpe, better known as ' " "The play will end in a minute," I said; "how did you win her ! * " I offered," he replied, with emotion, " to give up 12 178 IS IT A MAN? my profession and devote myself to furthering her fame." " And to live on her ? " I said, aghast. "You who do not understand art may put it in that way," he replied, " but she realized the sacrifice I was making for her sake and doubted my love no longer. Was it nothing, sir, to give up my fame, to give up the name I was known by all over England (as the Torquay Chat said), and sink to the level of those who have never been mentioned in the pa- pers ! Why, you yourself had forgotten the famous Jolly Little Jim." His voice was inexpressibly mournful, and I felt that I really had been listening to a love romance. The last three hours, too, had shown me that Mr. Thorpe was responsible for some of the fame of his wife. "The management," he went on, bravely, "al- lowed me to retire without the usual fortnight's notice, and so the marriage took place on the day we had previously arranged for it." " Had you a pleasant honeymoon VI asked. "In one sense," he replied, "we had no honey- moon, for she played that night as usual ; but in another sense it has been a honeymoon ever since, for we have the same interests, the same joys, the same sorrows." "That is to say, you have both only her fame to think of now? May I ask, did she, for whom 18 IT A MAFf 179 you made such a sacrifice, make any sacrifice for you?" " She did, indeed," he answered. " For four weeks she let her name be printed in the bills thus : ' Miss O'Reilly (Mrs. James Thorpe),' though to have it known by the public that she is married is against an actress." " And you are happy in your new occupation ? " "Very happy," he answered, cheerfully, "and very proud." Then with a heavy sigh he added, "But I wish people would remember Jolly Little Jim." There was really something pathetic about the man ; but before I could tell a lie and say that I now remembered Jolly Little Jim perfectly, the audience began to applaud, and Mr. Thorpe, thrust- ing some bills into my hands, hurried back to the stalls to shout " O'Eeilly." As I have said, I never met him again, nor thought of him, until I found myself at his grave. This is the inscription on the tombstone : ERECTED TO THE MEMORY OF JAMES THORPE, AGED 38, BY HIS SORROWING WIFE, THE FAMOUS MAY O'REILLY (Of the principal theatres). 180 18 IT A MAN? Poor Mr. Thorpe ! There was something lovable about him. The O'Keilly might have put on the ' tombstone : " Better known as Jolly Little Jim." It would have gratified him. A WOODLAND PATH. The rose-bush that taps on my window at night, as if entreating me to let it in out of the cold, hangs motionless to-day, a drop of water on the tips of many of its leaves. The paling a few yards away is a dank green, on which I could draw pictures with a stick. On the dyke six sparrows— no, seven, for another has arrived — sit in a row, at their wits' end what to do next. A black hen seems to have lost something in the garden. Fifty yards ahead the fields fade into mist. But it is not raining, so let us go into the wood. The high road is sloppy and has lost its grip. To jump from side to side of it in search of hard places is only to send the wood farther away. We must plod on doggedly, seeing to it that we do not leave our boots in the mud. Here is the wood, with only a ditch and a dyke between it and you. The path begins, like so many of its kind, with a gap in the dyke that the farmer fills now and again with whins. Some say that walking in a wood stifles them, but even in summer I prefer it to fields and commons, and in winter it draws me out-of-doors, despite the muddy highway. 182 A WOODLAND PATH. When the rest of the world hereabouts is carpeted with mud, the path through the wood is hard and springy, in most parts green, with here and there a little morass that I can walk around. If we plunged into that deceptive grass we would squirt up water into our faces. Here is a lump of snow that has forgotten to go with the thaw, and we even come to a pool with ice on it. Over the ice is a film of water. Push your stick into the pool, and the ice breaks without a sound. The crispness has gone from it, and if we take it in our hands pieces fall off and are water almost as soon as they touch the grass. The path does not make the most of the wood by twisting through it. It grew under the feet of per- sons anxious to reach their destination ; as I under- stand, they used to walk briskly along the path with milk-cans in their hands. The ploughmen delve through it heavily still, and in summer boys are to be seen. They are not, however, to be met with. We hear in the distance the cry of one boy to an- other, and think as little of it as though we were lis- tening to the mavis, for boys and girls are equally at home in woods, and I would drive neither from them. But, like the mavis, the boy promptly hops out of sight, regarding us as intruders, and watching us furtively from behind trees. The birds, I believe, have the same opinion of us, but look on boys as larger birds than themselves, not to be trusted, but " A WOODLAND PATH. 183 with a right to be there. In summer I creep upon the boys, and sink into the heather where I can ob- serve them unseen. They have sharp ears, and if I tread on a brittle twig I am discovered. One gives a shrill cry, another whistles, and a third drops from his tree like an apple. They pick up their ragged jackets, and in a moment I am alone in the wood. They seem to sink into the ground, and I, the enemy, am left behind. But at times I succeed in approach- ing within earshot ; then I see them at games in no way dissimilar to those of monkeys, and quite as mischievous. Or they are here on business, after a nest. One climbs on to the back of the other as the first step toward ascending the tree, then the sup- port gives way, and the climber tumbles to the ground on his head. He sits there dazed for a mo- ment, and then, without a word, the ascending be- gins again. This time the little villain is suc- cessful. He disappears among the branches, and by and by slides down the trunk with three or four eggs in his mouth. If he comes whack upon the ground the eggs break in his mouth, and he screams reproaches at his friend. But if all goes well, they search for a thorn with which to make holes in their spoil. They blow the eggs, put them in their caps, and saunter home unconscious of their torn sleeves. Care has found no resting-place in their buoyant hearts yet, and the holes and rents in their ragged garments are mended by hands, and 184 A WOODLAND PATH. scanned tenderly by eyes, learned in love's ways, if careworn and tired. But boys come seldom into the wood at this time of year, and I am looking for squirrels. That bun- dle of firewood resting- against a tree is a likely place, so you may shove your stick into it. Squirrels may be anywhere, however, and all we are sure of is that they will come upon us suddenly. Not one is to be seen from here, but it is a capital place to stop a moment at if you would carry away in your mind a fair sample of the wood. The trees are nearly all pines and beeches, two kinds that grow side by side, though they have nothing in common. All summer the beeches in their gay dress laugh at the sombre pines. But with winter the beeches are stripped bare in a few nights, and then the pine can give them a piece of its mind. Some of us are beeches that forget the winter while we can be gay in summer, and others are pines, who think less of show than wear. But I would rather be a beech than a pine, and so know the extremes of delight and despair. The children of the beech have kept their leaves longer than their mother. They are mere twigs sprouting up among the grass, and the wind has not been able to get down to them. But their leaves are a brown-red, only warm when the sun shines on them, and to-day there is no sun. The grass is green, with tufts of hay among it ; and if we leave the path we shall soon stumble over A WOODLAND BATH. . 185 heather roots. Those dark green spots in the dis- tance are broom, but they are too dark in color to show well in winter in a pine-wood. ■No, don't stone him; stand quietly, and watch. We have, if will be seen, come upon a squirrel. The mildest of men looks for a stone when he sees a squirrel laughing at him or a bottle bobbing up and down in the water. But, of course, if you did strike the squirrel — not that I believe you could do so — you would go home distressed, all pleasure in the walk lost. Besides, if you frighten the squirrel, he will simply climb out of sight; while if we only arouse his suspicions, he may take us for a walk. See, he has leaped to the beech ; now he is on the fir ; now where is he ! There, two trees ahead. The squirrel, once he has set off in a straight line, will continue on it though nature be against him. He runs along the trees. Though I have seen the squirrel miss his jump, I never saw him fall to the ground. Ninety-nine times in a hundred he leaps correctly, dropping on the exact centre of the branch, and running along it without a pause. When he is out in his reckoning, he always succeeds in catching at some other branch. We walk at an ordinary pace beneath and keep up with him, for he never stops, except for a moment now and again to cock his head at us. If we are coming, he is willing to go on ; but if not, he will rest. My reason for following him still is that I want to see how he will 186 A WOODLAND PATH. act when he comes to the end of the wood. But he has often raced me to this point before, and I can guess what he will do. One would expect him to turn back, or to skurry off to the right or left ; but no, he goes straight on, and when he reaches the last tree never hesitates a moment as to what he ought to do next. He slides down the trunk at the other side from you, darts across the road, and is up a tree again, asking if you have had enough of it. He has made us stray from the path at all events, and our boots are beginning to chirp. If we follow the squirrel farther we shall probably slip on the roots of trees to which the rain has given a polish. That was not rain you felt just now ; it was only a drop from a leaf. But the rain will be on before we reach home. WOMAN AND THE PRESS. Fortunately for the ladies who are now making or half making a livelihood by journalism, the rank and file of them are not to be measured by the noto- rieties. Many lady- journalists whose names are in no one's mouth are already proving that the press affords a calling in every way as honorable for them as for men. Until the other day the opinion was al- most universal in this country that a lady could not earn her living modestly unless she followed some down-trodden profession such as that of the gover- ness, in which she retained her modesty because she could not become brazen at the salary. With inde- pendence her womanliness would take flight. These chains of prejudice are breaking, and by the begin- ning of next century we shall doubtless find that the lady -journalist, by the example of her life, has done something to break them. Even those who sigh over the lady -politician, or put out their tongue (un- invited) to the lady-doctor, or shake their heads at the actress, will be able to condemn journalism as an unwomanly profession because of its publicity. The journalism best suited to ladies can be done at home and anonymously, which is one of its advantages. 188 WOMAN AND THE PRESS. As it happens, however — though this is only an ac- cident of the moment — the most prominent lady journalists are doing their best to weaken these arguments by making themselves as noisy as street organs. The New Journalism has discovered that some of the ladies whom it finds useful are prepared to " go a considerable length." Here is this Miss Nellie Something of America, for instance ; one of a type that has sprung up since Martin Chuzzlewit was requested to gaze upon the celebrated characters of that country. Miss Nellie has been shot round the world by a New York paper, which holds — perhaps rightly — that because she has beaten Jules Verne's " record," an American lady has gone around the world in less than eighty days. Sensible people, however — those who can keep their heads when a hero goes over Niagara in a barrel, and see that the barrel only is worthy of admiration — will agree that if this is the kind of thing expected of lady journalists, journalism is scarcely a sphere for their sisters. Miss Nellie, of course, so far as we on this side know, is not a journalist at all. She has been behaving as a music-hall " artiste " and is only com- parable to the lady who walks the tight-rope or ex- cels at " high-kicking." Like these, her rivals, she is very plucky, and no more need be said of her. Scores of high -kickers and male-impersonators in this country are ready to start round the world to- WOMAN AND THE PRESS. 189 morrow " in costume " in the attempt to beat Miss Nellie's record, if our New Journalism will send them. But, fortunately, the New Journalism of this country has not as yet been a financial success. Nevertheless, whatsoever is specially objection- able in the ways of the New Journalism ladies can be found to do. It is well known that they are the best interviewers, because they can go where men are not admitted and ask questions at which even the male interviewer would blush. The celebrity into whose study the lady interviewer pushes her way is in an awkward position. It is quite within his right to tell his servants to remove the male in- terviewer with their feet ; but the lady is here, and the question is how to get her out. How did she get in ? Probably by pretending to be somebody else, if indeed she has not tripped in behind some visitor. She may have been despatched to the work after the other sex has failed to gain an entrance, and she is determined to succeed. She may wait calmly for hours until she sees the door ajar. If her victim is a lawyer she will take the name of one of his clients ; if a doctor she will call herself a pa- tient ; if a politician she pretends to be the wife of his agent. In short, there is no lie to which she will not resort, and her conscience is so dead that she boasts of her methods when they have suc- ceeded. Now she has borne down on her victim, and he tells her politely that he must decline to be 190 WOMAN AND THE PRESS. interviewed. She then takes a chair and insists on in- terviewing him. His wisest course is not to answer any question ; but it is a course not easy to pursue, for she is an adept at exasperating. Even if he is dumb to her she examines the room. She " takes in " the furniture, and her " host's " dress, and pounces on the papers that litter his writing-table. On her way out she may have the good fortune to see her victim's little boy, and him she at once cross- examines. The servants are also pressed. It is the lady interviewers who ask their victim whether it be true that he is applying for a divorce, and what his proof is, and which is the stool his wife flung at him. This would read like exaggeration were it not notorious that the New Journalism is ever on the scent of scandals, and that the ladies are its best servants. Less discreditable to their calling are the lady- journalists who frequent " private views " and " first nights/' in order to say at great length who were present and what they wore. This sort of thing is carried by some of them to impertinence ; but they are at least comparatively harmless, and they look so happy while plying their vocation that it would be cruel to frown at them. They provide gossip for the society journals and such x)rovincial papers as fill their London letter with personalities. The personalities are usually inaccurate, but, like quack pills, do no perceptible harm. Of some of the WOMAN AND THE PRESS. 191 ladies, too, it may be said that they write capital letters — usually in weekly journals — for their own sex. But journalism offers an excellent profession for ladies who do not want either to gossip or inter- view or be reporters. All the leading papers now- adays are to some extent magazines, and devote space to short leaders or essays on social, literary, or artistic subjects. As it is, a number of these are written by ladies, and no doubt ladies will write more of them in future. Many men of some mark write little else, and find the work pleasant. It can be done anywhere, and the writer is his own master. Editors have not yet educated themselves up to the point of having women on their night-staff, and there is in newspaper offices a prejudice — if such it should be called — against " petticoats." But any editor not a ninny is as willing to print articles from the outside by women as by men, and judges these articles entirely by their merit. Women with some literary faculty have thus a lucrative profes- sion upon which they can enter any day they choose with the certainty that they are not handicapped by their sex. There are thousands of subjects ready to their hands, and they can do the work when and where they like. A PLEA FOE SMALLER BOOKS. An author advises us to publish weekly a list of selected books, for which he proposes the title, " Books to Borrow." The British public, he thinks, is still wondering what Mr. Mark Pattison meant by- saying that men, to respect themselves, must own at least a thousand volumes. Not only does the public shun the bookseller; like the Argyllshire dairymaid, who stipulates that she shall not dine on salmon oftener than four times a week, it has be- come fastidious, and will not now even borrow lightly. It must have its library fiction hot from the press, as if novels, like milk, turned sour with keeping ; and it declines to gorge on memoirs that are not as fashionable as the last thing in bonnets. Mr. Macniven must not send " Pride and Prejudice " to his subscribers, the Misses Insatiable — they know it is not new by the cover. Messrs. Douglas & Foulis will not impose upon Mrs. Uptodate with the " Life of Macaulay," which is an achievement, when she can have Mr. Hatton's " Toole," which may be mostly drivel, but was only issued yesterday. Such, we must agree with our cynical novelist, are among the ways of the " reading public," which, how- A PLEA FOR SMALLER BOOKS. 193 ever, seldom buys, borrows, or gets from the library so long as newspapers or magazines will condense the new tome into an article. Authors and pub- lishers complain, but the public is not the only sinner. The bane of British literature at present is its bulk. The law of the land is as much that novels should be in three volumes as that there must be a public-house at every street-corner. " 924 pages " is advertised as a recommendation. As for the biographies of Undistinguished Persons and the Eeminiscences of Men I Have Known for Five Min- utes, they seem to be manufactured for sale by weight. Like the epistles Gabrielissime Harvey sent to Tom Nash, they would break the wheels of a carrier's cart, and could be hurled forth at arm's- length for a wager. If the public is to keep up with current literature it must take all the short cuts. We need a poet to sing the praises of little books. Our literature lies crushed beneath its load of "padding." Take the novelists— the four-in-hand popular novelists, most prolific of writers, if we ex- cept the book-makers who cook with other men's brains. The critic, with spade, buries rows of new novelists weekly. They may have merit, but he gazes at the piles of three-volumes until his one ambition is to make them corpses. Novelists who have refused to die in the bud he leaves to wither in flower. They are nearly all able, entertaining writers ; but fiction is their means of livelihood, and 13 194 A PLEA FOE SMALLER BOOKS. were they to cram all their best into one book they would soon be empty. They must not be too prod- igal of either character or plot, and consequently their story would generally reach its natural end in a single volume. Having to run three times round the course, however, instead of once, they must not " spurt " at the start. Padding is of various merits and many kinds. We have a distinguished novelist who can become a landscape painter by sending anyone of his characters to the window. There is philosophical padding, which is usually the cheapest of all. When a lady-novelist thinks she is getting along too quickly she arranges for another ball, or sends Claude and Emmeline back to the conserv- atory. The smoking-room, with cigars and gossip, or what they think of the situation in the kitchen, is another reserve that may be drawn upon ; and there are hardened novelists who do not hesitate to write " Retrospective " at the head of several chap- ters in volume two. Thus novels become paper bags blown out with wind. Often it is cleverly done, but at its best the sand can be detected in the sugar ; and at its second-best, which is not the lowest degree of comparison, it is an attempt to stock a whole house with the drawing-room fur- niture. It spoils the style of the rare writer who has any. Probably the novels of the present year that do not suffer from length could be counted on the fingers of a one-armed man. Mr. Stevenson is a A PLEA FOR SMALLER BOOKS. 195 brave exception to the rule ; but the shilling novels, now so popular, being mostly refuse, need not be considered. It remains a fact that few novels pub- lished nowadays are not at least twice as long as " Silas Marner." One of the fine things to remem- ber about George Eliot is that she was offered a tempting sum to lengthen one of her books, and declined it. Curiously, while all see what is wrong, no one pro- poses a remedy. The public blames the author, the author the publisher, the publisher the public ; but they are as helpless as the lady who complained of the heat, yet never thought of sitting further away from the fire. It is a commercial question. The authors, who are no doubt in most cases their own severe critics, say that the publishers look askance at one volume. The publishers say they must pro- duce what pays. Yet the public is all the time point- ing out that it cannot pay, and its shelves show that it does not. In short, the publisher's appeal is to the library, which prefers books to be in several volumes, thus tempting the public to become heavy sub- scribers. The publisher flourishes moderately with- out much risk under this arrangement, for the libraries take as many copies of an average book as will at least secure him against loss. He also bears in mind that a twenty-shilling book's cost of pro- duction may be little more than that of a six-shilling book. To appeal direct to the public with cheap 196 A PLEA FOR SMALLER BOOKS. single volumes might mean a much greater sale, but it would be more risky. The gain to literature would be certain. Many books which now get a library circulation would never be printed, and the better books would drop the ballast that now keeps them trailing to earth, for padding would be at a discount. As it is, books of merit, when offered, years after their first publication, in one volume, have a considerable sale, which would doubtless have been much greater had they been published originally at the same price, and without their superfluous chapters. We ought to take a lesson from France. With so many books to choose be- tween, we have not the appetite of the boy at a public dinner, who, when told by his father to eat for to-morrow and the next day, replied that he must first eat for yesterday and the day before. The public should be denied no opportunity of becoming its own critic. As it passes saner judgments, the standard of contemporary literature will rise. BOYS' BOOKS : THEIR GLORIFICA- TION. Those of us who were boys not so very long ago rather resent the knowledge that our favorite au- thors are now writing for another generation. "We used to conceive them very old fellows, who would die off as we grew up ; yet here is Ballantyne with another book for boys this winter, and as for Hope, I met him lately, hardly middle-aged yet. I used to think that Hope (or else Ballantyne or Marryat) ought to be made King of England, and after over a dozen years I found I remember his " My School- boy Friends" better than he did himself. He couldn't remember the two tutors, Paddy "William- son and Vials, and when I said there were two boys called Abbing and Lessing at Whiteminster, which is the school he writes about, he said, rather indif- ferently, " very likely." I would let no other man talk slightingly of that book, which is in some ways more delightful than " Tom Brown's School- days." When the boys at the school at which I looked in now and then should have been fol- lowing Balbus building his eternal walls, or with Oaius flying from the city, they were sitting on a 198 BOYS' BOOKS: THEIR GLORIFICATION. wall frequently, arguing the question whether Mr. Hope did right in killing off Harry Kennedy. I always thought that young-ladyish, and I am glad to know now that the author thinks so too. " My Schoolboy Friends " was one of his earliest efforts, and he feared breaking away altogether from tradition, so he introduced this little bit of senti- ment. The success of Farrar's " Eric " and " St. Winifred's " made him take his one false step. To speak disrespectfully of " Eric " is to be bold ; for are there not thousands of ladies, and girls who will be ladies shortly, that " love " the book ? Hun- dreds of boys' books have been written for girls, and Farrar wrote the best of them. His boys are girls in knickerbockers. Mention them not in the same breath with " My Schoolboy Friends." If there are any boys to-day who have not read that book, let them see to it that it is put into their hands at Christmas. They need not be so particular about having the continuation of it, called " George's Enemies." Hope writes at his fireside with his paper on his knees, which must be almost as pleas- ant as the method of a distinguished lady-novelist who finds that she writes best in bed. About fifteen years ago I heard that E. M. Ballan- tyne lived in Edinburgh. Then I wanted to see Edinburgh. Though a dozen years at least have passed since I read any of his books, I could sit down to-day and write out the story of nearly every BOYS' BOOKS: THEIR GLORIFICATION. 199 one of them that had been written up to that time. No books take such a hold upon one as the stories he reads in his boyhood, and the more reason, there- fore, have we to be proud that there are such manly boys' books in the land. Ballantyne was always delightful. " Shifting Winds," with the stout gentle- man under whom the boudoir chairs came to grief; " Gascoigne, the Sandal- Wood Trader," with its glorious race ; " Ungava," with its never-to-be-for- gotten end of Brave Dick Prince — how they all come back to one when he recalls his school days ! Best of all (how solemnly we discussed which was best of all ! ) was " The Coral Island." Many writers of romances have had romantic notions, but you can't do better than wreck your hero on an island. To this day I could not pass a book by in which there was a desert island. The Spectator said that Mr. Stevenson's " Black Arrow " (his only poor book) stands as a tale for boys next to " Ivanhoe." I scorn this. What about " Robinson Crusoe ? " Yes, and what about " The Coral Island," and Jules Verne's masterpiece, " The Mysterious Island ! " Ballan- tyne's is the most fascinating idea. Three boys are wrecked on an island. One of them, I remember, is called Balph, and another Peterkin. Who that has read the story will ever forget how they emptied their pockets to count their worldly possessions, or the cave which was reached by diving? "Tlis Swiss Family Robinson," though I remember Fritz 200 BOYS' BOOKS: THEIR GLORIFICATION. and Ernest, does not compare with " The Coral Island," which is worth a thousand of "King Solomon's Mines." No boy could be expected to respect another boy who had not read Ballantyne's bewitching book. Even "Ivanhoe" I could only put second to " Robinson Crusoe." It is to rob a boy of his birth- right to keep him from either of them. Thinking it over now, there can be no doubt that Rebecca was very superior to Rowena, but in the old days when we really lived, that was not an important point. Ivanhoe licked the Templar, and Rowena was the girl he wanted, therefore Scott had to see to it that Ivanhoe got Rowena. We thought Bois-Gilbert a villain from beginning to end, though we admired the way he ran off with Rebecca in his arms, with- out noticing that she was heavy. Really we had not time to devote much attention to the girls. Who could think of them when Robin Hood was waiting round the corner ? The Black Knight, too, what a superb creation he is ! From the boy's point of view, " Ivanhoe " has only one blot ! That is when Ivanhoe goes out to fight Bois-Gilbert over the affair of Rebecca, and the Templar is getting the best of it when he has a stroke. Ivanhoe was unwell at the time, but we resented the manner of his victory. Well or ill, it was a duty as a hero to go in and lick Bois-Gilbert in a fair, legitimate manner. BOYS' BOOKS: THEIR GLORIFICATION. 201 " Quentin Durward n is Scott's second best book for boys, though it is not so very much better than " The Abbot." The way Scott's boys ran their swords into all impertinent persons is grand. Schoolmasters would have had to be careful with them. Just as the boy has his desert island period, there comes a time when, in imagination, he must take to the backwoods. He wants scalps. Kingston was of some assistance to boys in this condition; but Kingston, though he wrote, perhaps, more books than any other man of his day, had little humor, and if he finished one story at eight o'clock, was ready to begin another at half-past. He produced all kinds of boys' books of fair merit, but none that made one wonder why the Government did not name a star after him. Captain Mayne Eeid was exciting, with his headless horseman, but he was lurid, dragged in horrors, had little of the true boyish spirit. They must both be waved aside to allow of the entrance of a quiet-looking backwoodsman, with an eagle eye, who chuckles to himself, but never laughs. Off with your hats, for you are in the pres- ence of him who was called severally Deerslayer, Hawkeye, Pathfinder. This is one of the two or three really great figures in boys' books. Some think Hawthorne, some Mrs. Beecher Stowe, some Mr. Howells, the greatest American writer of fiction. For my part, I declare for Fenimore Cooper. He 202 BOYS' BOOKS: THEIR GLORIFICATION. alone has produced characters that will live. Scott never had a better than the Pathfinder. Have we not all lain in the long grass with the hawk-eyed man of the unerring rifle ? We have sat round his fire, the Serpent in our company. We have been on a boat with him on queer moonlight nights, when he was the deerslayer ; we have been with him at the burial of the last of the Mohicans; we have seen him old and done in " The Prairie." To me he is one of the immortals. Before or after he has been on the warpath with the Mohicans, the boy bethinks himself of a life on the ocean wave. Then it is time to ask at the li- brary for " one of Marryat's ; " any one will do, so long as you can get all the others by and by. Mr. David Hannay, son of a brilliant father not soon to be forgotten in Edinburgh — the late James Hannay, of the Courant — was complaining the other day that Marry at has hardly the position in literature that he deserves. This is, perhaps, true. One hears more nowadays of smaller men ; but among boys, it may be presumed, Marryat is as popular as ever. He is one of the happy authors who can be got at six- pence. I was lately told that Marryat was coarse, which so amazed me that I re-read some of his books. I found things in them that the boy sees not at all. The coarseness is of the rough-and-ready kind, put in hurriedly — for Marryat was a careless writer — but the books are essentially manly, and breed brave BOYS' BOOKS: THEIR GLORIFICATION. 203 boys. Which is your favorite ? I believe I have a special weakness for " Percival Keene," whose prac- tical jokes stick to the memory. But what of its kind could be better than " Jacob Faithful/' with old Stapleton and his daughter, and old Tom and young Tom ? " Peter Simple " would always be a favorite, though it contained nothing but the escape from the French prison, and most of us have revelled in the three-cornered duel in " Midshipman Easy." " Tom Cringle's Log " should be remembered with Marryat. The only sea-writer of to-day to mention with them is Mr. Clark Russell, and his delightful early books were much his best. He always has a sentimental mate and a beautiful girl on board. THE LOST WORKS OF GEORGE MEREDITH. " Chloe, and Other Tales $ with an Essay on the Comic Spirit/' by George Meredith, is a book pub- lishers have owed the world for nearly ten years. Since the' early summer of 1879 Mr. Meredith has written no short stories, and apparently he has per- manently stayed his hand. The whole of the book, without which the new edition of his works is seri- ously incomplete, lies buried in a defunct magazine. The essay " On the Idea of Comedy, and of the Uses of the Comic Spirit," is a lecture delivered by Mr. Meredith at the London Institution in 1877, and is so much the most brilliant and suggestive exposition of his idea of comedy that beside it the criticisms of other writers are of little account. There are three stories, one of them a pure comedy in Mr. Meredith's best manner ; the second he calls " a realistic tale ; " while the third and greatest, an episode in the history of Beau Beamish, is a noble tragedy that ends the life of one of the most lovable women this author has ever drawn. Are a hundred thousand words of a master's writings to perish of THE LOST WORKS OF GEORGE MEREDITH. 205 neglect? Although the magazine is dead, why- should all its trophies be buried with it ? Here there is no intention to discuss Mr. Mere- dith's position in letters, only an argument that these three stories have almost as much title to represent him as his longer novels. The comedy is "The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper." Of these two delightfully contrasted characters it may be said, as Mr. Meredith has himself written of Miss Austen's Emma and her lover, that they " might walk straight into a comedy, were the plot arranged for them ; " indeed, there is scene after scene in the story which leaves the vivid impression of an acted play. Cut out the author's comments, and a com- edy for the stage remains, though not probably a comedy with sufficient guffaw in it to command suc- cess. The central idea is intensely comic. General Ople, having retired from the army, buys a riverside house, which he likes to call a " gentlemanly resi- dence." His daughter, eighteen years old, keeps his house for him, and by and by he has for a neigh- bor an eccentric person, Lady Camper. The gen- eral puts her age down at forty, Elizabeth says fifty, and soon Ople is so interested in her ladyship (and himself) that he has no eyes for the love-affair growing up between his daughter and Lady Cam- per's nephew. He admires wealth, titles, and his own gallant way with ladies ; soon his neighbor is his touchstone. Her attic is the only window that 206 THE LOST WORKS OF GEORGE MEREDITH. has a view of his garden, so she asks him to lop a branch off one of his trees that she may spy into his grounds without having to ascend. Her object is to watch the meetings of her nephew and Elizabeth, but the blind general thinks he has made another conquest. She fancies he has come to talk of the young people, when he is really dressed for a pro- posal. But Lady Camper is quick, and can be outspoken. He compliments her on her morning bloom. "It can hardly be visible," she replies; "I have not painted yet." The infatuated man asks her hand in marriage, whereupon she informs him that she is seventy, the effect of which announce- ment on the general is " to raise him from his chair in a sitting posture as if he had been blown up." He is fifty -five. Being a fine gentleman, the general will not draw back, yet the young-looking old lady is not affected to sentiment. She will not suffer him to speak of his " gentlemanly residence," nor to say it is a "Bijou" (as if he were swearing) ; she shud- ders at such a word as " lady-friend " or " female," and is sarcastic when he clips " Thank you " down to " Thanks." They quarrel over the loves of Eliza- beth and her officer, and the engagement is ended. The general is free again. "Now," he murmurs, with a sigh of relief, "I know the worst ! "—but he does not. Her terrible ladyship goes abroad, and sends him from time to time a series of maddening sketches. They are satires on his self-contempla- THE LOST WORKS OF GEORGE MEREDITH. 207 tion and on certain of his mannerisms. One cartoon represents him in a sentry-box, and while the Eng- lish flag is borne along by a troop of shadows he is saying, " I say I should be very happy to carry it, but I cannot quit this gentlemanly residence." There are scenes between him and the moon, whom he tells of his amorous triumphs, asking her to say whether she is a " female," that she may be tri- umphed over. While he courts the moon he says, " In spite of her paint, I could not have conceived her age to be so enormous." He sends her his " thanks " for a piece of lunar green cheese, and points her out as " my lady-friend." Even when she returns home Lady Camper draws pictures of her lover in church, and then he is so heart-broken that he, the best-dressed of men, goes to a garden-party without a collar or necktie. Tragedy is averted by their getting married, her ladyship now explaining that she is little over forty. To shame him of self- ishness she has forced him to think of himself night and day — a homoeopathic cure; She is as complex as he is simple, but she accepts him because she is an artist and he is picturesque. Want of space compels us to pass by " The House on the Beach," which contains one striking figure, a former shopkeeper, who, like the immortal "old Mel," wants to be a gentleman. But, unlike the tailor, he would be a gentleman on the cheap. The closing scene is great. This hero has been " pre- 208 THE LOST WORKS OF GEORGE MEREDITH. \ sented." He loves to don his court dress in private, and he has it on when he is rescued from a flood that ruins him. The contrast between the costume and the wearer's condition haunts the memory; otherwise this is the least important story of the three. " The Tale of Chloe " gives a picture of the wells as vivid as the pump-room scenes in " Harry Eich- mond." Beau Beamish is king at the wells when a great and aged nobleman arrives to ask his aid. His Grace had married lately a beautiful dairymaid, who wants to see life. The duke is willing to leave her at the wells under Mr. Beamish's protection, for of late she has yawned occasionally, and than that earthquake and saltpetre are less threatening. Mr. Beamish consents to put her in charge of one Chloe, who had loved a villain, named Caseldy, so well that she had impoverished herself to save him from prison. He has gone away, but she loves him still, and Beau Beamish speaks so enthusiastically of her virtue that the duke says, " She has, I see, preserved her comeliness." One of the wittiest scenes in the story shows Mr. Beamish and the exquisite Chloe bringing the duchess to the wells. They have met her outside the town, and seen her parting with a gallant, who turns out to be the faithless Caseldy. This gentleman appears at the wells to further his love affair with the duchess from the milk-pails, and as Chloe realizes what is going on she dies slowly THE LOST WORKS OF GEORGE MEREDITH. 209 before our eyes, as it were, though the others under- stand nothing. The duchess agrees to elope with Caseldy. It is night, and Chloe is supposed to have retired to rest. Early morn finds the duchess ready, and, looking from her window, she can discern a coach in shadow in the street. In the dark room she feels her way toward the door. Her hand touches something that is not the handle. It hangs heavily like a gown. " Before any other alarm had struck her brain, the hand she felt with was in a palsy, her mouth gaped, her throat thickened, the dust-ball rose in her throat, and the effort to swallow it down and get breath kept her from acute specu- lation while she felt again, pinched, plucked at the thing, ready to laugh, ready to shriek. Above her head, all on one side, the thing had a round white top. Could it be a hand that her touch had slid across ? An arm too ! this was an arm ! She clutched it, imagining that it clung to her. She pulled it to release herself from it, desperately she pulled, and a lump descended, and a flash of all the torn nerves of her body told her that a dead human body was upon her." That is how Chloe died. The author strikes a real tragic note ; Beau Beamish is a memorable comedy figure, but Mr. Meredith could not have created Chloe had he not dug down to the very roots of human nature. Is she to be lost to posterity because the story of her life would only fill a hundred pages ? 14 THE HUMOR OF DICKENS. We have still with us in this country two novelists who may be called great a hundred years hence, and a few months ago one of them explained oddly why there is no Dickens nowadays. Even though I could write a " Martin Chuzzlewit," he said in effect, no magazine would print it. The editor would write to me saying that Mrs. Gamp, for instance, was vulgar, or worse, and must be struck out. If he was a good- natured editor, he would add that he did not object to her himself, but had to consider his public. Another reason why there is no second Dickens is that immortals are always scarce. Despite those careful editors, many writers have attempted to be Dickens over again, and only very lately have they realized that if they are to be great they must find out a way for themselves. Imitation of Dickens lasted long, but it seemed to have gone out, which is well, for the trick was easy to writers and exasper- ating to readers. It did Dickens harm. Who has not read a capital imitation of Dickens's humor that nevertheless did not make him laugh ? Who has not read a beautiful imitation of Dickens's pathos that nevertheless did not make him cry? Yet the THE HUMOR OF DICKENS. 211 man or woman who has neither laughed nor cried with Dickens has missed a birthright. By all means imitate Dickens, one might say to young novelists, if you can. This, be it noted, however, is only an- other way of saying, " I have no objection, sir, to your being a genius." Imitation would be an ad- mirable thing if it took you all the way. So far it has only helped small writers to repeat the manner- isms of great writers. You are not really another Stevenson, though you wear a velvet coat. It is more difficult than this. Of all the novelists that ever lived Dickens was the keenest observer. If he and Scott and Thack- eray and George Meredith had gone out for a stroll together, he would have seen more that was worth taking note of than any of them, though he could not always have used it to more effect. Scott would have seen its picturesque side best. Thack- eray would have sighed to observe that it would not have happened had not some lady pretended to have three servants when she had only one, and Mr. Meredith would have had it inside out. But Dickens would have felt it most, and would have missed nothing in it that was on the surface. Its comic aspect would have been more to him than to the others, and its pathetic side, too. Probably if you had been a witness of the incident which all four writers subsequently introduced into a story, you would decide that Dickens's picture was the 212 THE HUMOR OF DICKENS. truest, and hence the best. Probably, too, you would be quite wrong. There is a general notion that we meet Dickens's characters more frequently in real life than the characters of any other nov- elist. Few of us have not had occasion to say at some period of our life that we knew a Pecksniff. The leader-writers are constantly calling certain politicians Micawbers, and at general elections the candidates who win only moral victories are all Mark Tapleys. Silas Marners are uncommon. "We seldom call our friends (even behind their backs) Joseph Sedley, and we could call them Sir Wil- loughby Patterne to their face, for they would not understand the inference. Yet are there many Mar- ners, Sedleys, and Patternes in the world, and not one Micawber. With very few exceptions, Dickens's best characters are caricatures. They are not nearly so human as the Marners, and therefore to the hasty reader they are much more real. This seems curious reasoning, but it is true. Of Dickens it has been said that his characters are only characteristics. He introduces to us a man who shows his teeth, and henceforth the teeth are the man. When we see a man showing his teeth, we remember Carker. Dickens was also fond of ticketing his characters with a catch-phrase, often repeated with quaint effect, often merely an irritation. It is Micawber's favorite remark that we recall him by, and the same can be said of Mr. Toots. Take away many of the THE HUMOR OF DICKENS. 213 Dickens catch-phrases, and you kill the man who uses them. This is because he never was a man, but only the thousandth part of one. Micawber is no more a complete human being than a button is a suit of clothes. Fielding gives us the whole man, and for that very reason his characters do not take such grip of the memory. It is only to the superficial observer that we can be distinguished from each other by hard and fast lines. The one of us is not black and the other white, and a third and fourth red and blue, as Dickens paints us. For every point of difference we have a dozen in common, and thus the novelist who draws a complete man never creates a figure that stands out from all other figures. He aims not at producing beings theatrically effective, less at representing a man indeed than at represent- ing man. This is the difference in object between Dickens and Mr. Meredith. Dickens's method suited him because he had humor sufficient to supply a nation. All of us have some foible (which may be what makes us lovable), and Dickens saw it, and made a man of it. Where he misses its comic aspect his failure is utter, and now and again he does fail dolefully, through in- sisting on making that comic which is not comic. His humorous way of looking at things, which has been the joy of millions, occasionally undid him. He felt compelled to produce comic copy, and when he had no milk he sold water. The first chapter of 214 THE HUMOR OF DICKENS. " Martin Chuzzlewit " is about the most melancholy reading in fiction. In all Dickens there is nothing else quite so forced, though often we are asked to laugh and cannot. To dwell on the occasions where Dickens's humor failed him is, however, to waste our words, for he succeeds a hundred times for every failure. But few seek to dispute Dickens's pre-eminence as a humorist, except such as do not know how to laugh. It is only to be noted in passing that per- haps once a year a man is born who has the sense of humor and yet does not enjoy Dickens. Disraeli was one of these. When we come, however, to the discussion of Dickens's pathos we take sides. We may revel in " Pickwick," and yet find Paul Dom- bey sickening. Dickens's pathos, indeed, is usually of the cheapest kind, for it is forced and deliberate, because he is determined to make us cry as loud as he can make us laugh. He introduces children into his stories that he may kill them to slow music. He may be compared to the actors who, if they think they are good at dying, insist on making an act of it. He tells us himself that he wept over lit- tle Paul's death, and it is certain that thousands have wept over it since, especially if it was read aloud by some skilled reader who knew when to let his voice break. But it is a maudlin chapter, and betrays a weakness in the author who shows a readi- ness to dabble in this morbid manner. We would THE HUMOR OF DICKENS. 215 not think the better of a doctor who invited us, for a treat, to step into an infirmary and watch a little boy dying". This is what Dickens does, and he also requests us to observe how prettily he can drop into poetry over the bedside. Here essentially you find a wide divergence in the novels of Sir Walter Scott. The Wizard of the North was naturally in- capable of the sickly sentimentality which casts a blemish on many of Dickens's pages. A healthy nature rebels against it, and there is certainly something unmanly in Dickens's fondness for such scenes. Many times, of course, Dickens is most tender, as in numberless passages in the boyhood of David Copperfield. Were he not, we would have to allow that the connection between humor and pathos is less close than had been thought. It is only the punsters of the comic papers who can be funny often and serious never. They are not real humor- ists ; at the best they are merely wits. Humor and pathos are the children of sympathy (which only produces twins), and Dickens was one of the most sympathetic of men ; certainly the most sympa- thetic of the great English novelists. The reason why his humor is better than his pathos is that he was a caricaturist. With him everything is larger than life. Now humor may be of the best kind though it exaggerates, but pathos can never be larger than life - size. Where Dickens's pathos 21 G THE HUMOR OF DIG KENS. is subdued it rings true, but where he casts a strong light on it it is lurid in the colors of melo- drama. The later works of Dickens are much better constructed than their predecessors ; the writing is more artistic, and the thread of the story less broken. They are, therefore, some hold, better books. But surely this is not true. " Pickwick " is flung together u anyhow," so that we could still enjoy it though we began at the last chapter and journeyed onward to the first. There are hundreds of pages in " Martin Chuzzlewit " and " Nicholas Nickleby " that could be cut out without interfering with the plot. But it is these incidental details that give us Dickens at his best. They are the immortal part of him. What the hostler at the inn or the man on the coach said is for reading every year, while the murder and what led to it in- terest us but once. Jonas Chuzzlewit gives us sen- sation and a headache, but Mark Tapley gives us a friend for life and Pecksniff haunts our mirthful moments in common with Pickwick. Thus, though as stories the later books are more ingenious, they do not compensate for the lack of humorous detail. The earlier novels had less art, but they were fresher. In one respect Dickens and Scott may be com- pared. They are the most wholesome of the novelists. No other writers of fiction in this country THE HUMOR OF DICKENS. 217 have done so much good. Neither was "deep." Their optimism was at times, doubtless, somewhat shallow, but they were great men, who loved their fellow-creatures and ever used their capacities to a noble purpose. GKETNA GKEEN KEVISITED. The one bumpy street of Springfield, despite its sparse crop of grass, presents to this day a depressed appearance, a relic of the time when it doubled up under a weight of thundering chariots. At the well- remembered, notorious Queen's Head I stood in the gathering gloaming, watching the road run yellow, until the last draggled hen had spluttered through the pools to roost, and the mean row of whitewashed, shrunken houses across the way had sunk into the sloppy ground, as they have been doing slowly for half a century 3 or were carried away in a rush of rain. Soaking weed hung in lifeless bunches over the hedges of spears that line the road from Gretna ; on sodden Canobie Lea, where Lochinvar's steed would to-day have had to wade through yielding slush, dirty piles of congealed snow were still reluctant to be gone ; and gnarled tree-trunks, equally with pal- ings that would have come out of the ground with a sloppy gluck, showed a dank and cheerless green. Yesterday the rooks dinned the air, and the parish of Gretna witnessed such a marrying and giving in mairiage as might have flung it back fifty years. Elsewhere such a solemn cawing round the pulpit GRETNA GREEK REVISITED. 219 on the tree-tops would denote a court of justice, but in the vicinity of Spring-field, it may be presumed, the thoughts of the very rooks run on matrimony. A little while ago Willum Lang", a postman's empty letter-bag- on his back, and a glittering drop trembling from his nose, picked his way through the puddles, his lips pursed into a portentous frown, and his gray head bowed professionally in contem- plation of a pair of knock-kneed but serviceable shanks. A noteworthy man Willum, son of Si- mon, son of David, grandson by marriage of Jos- eph Paisley, all famous " blacksmiths " of Gretna Green. For nigh a century Springfield has marked time by the Langs, and still finds " In David Lang's days" as forcible as "when Plancus was consul." Willum's predecessors in office reserved themselves for carriage runaways, and would shake the lids from their coffins if they knew that Willum had to marry the once despised "pedestrians." "Even Elliot," David Lang would say, " could join couples who came on foot," and that, of course, was very hard on the poor pedestrian, for greater contempt no man ever had for rival than David for Elliot, unless, indeed, it was Elliot's for David. But those were the great clattering days, when there were four famous marrying shops : the two rival inns of Spring- field, that washed their hands of each other across the street ; Mr. Linton's aristocratic quarters at Gretna Hall, and the toll-bar on the right side of the 220 GRETNA GREEN REVISITED. Sark. A gentleman who had requisitioned the ser- vices of the toll-keeper many years ago recently made a journey across the border to shake his fist at the bar, and no one in Gretna Green can at all guess why. Far-seeing Murray, the sometime priest of Gretna Hall, informed me, succeeded Beattie at the toll-house in 1843, and mighty convenient friends in need they both proved for the couples who dashed across the border with foaming fathers at their coaches' wheels. The stone bridge flashed fire to rushing hoofs, the exulting pursuers, knowing that a half-mile brae still barred the way to Springfield, saw themselves tearing romantic maidens from ad- venturers' arms, when Beattie's lamp gleamed in the night, the horses stopped as if an invisible sword had cleft them in twain, the maid was whisked like a bun- dle of stolen goods into the toll-bar, and her father flung himself in at the door in time to be introduced to his son-in-law. Oh, Beattie knew how to do his work expeditiously, and fat he waxed on the proceeds. In his later days marrying became the passion of his life, and he never saw a man and a maid together without creeping up behind them and beginning the marriage service. In Springfield there still are men and women who have fled from him for their celibacy, marriage in Scotland being such an easy matter that you never know when they may not have you. In joining couples for the mere pleasure of the thing, Simon brought high fees into disrepute, GRETNA GREEN REVISITED. 221 and was no favorite with the rest of the priesthood. That half-mile nearer the border, Jardine admits, gave the toll-bar a big advantage, but for runaways who could risk another ten minutes, Gretna Hall was the place to be married at. Willum Lang's puckered face means business. He has been sent for by a millworker from Lang- holm, who, having an hour to spare, thinks he may as well drop in at the priest's and get spliced ; or by an innocent visitor wandering through the vil- lage in search of the mythical smithy; or by a lawyer who shakes his finger threateningly at Wil- lum (and might as well have stayed at home with his mother). From the most distant shores letters reach him regarding Gretna marriages, and if Wil- lum dislikes monotony he must be getting rather sick of the stereotyped beginning, "I think your charges very extortionate." The stereotyped end- ing, "but the sum you asked for is enclosed," is another matter. It is generally about midnight that the rustics of the county rattle Willum's door off it's snib and, bending over his bed, tell him to arise and marry them. His hand is crossed with silver coin, for gone are the bridegrooms whose gold dribbled in a glittering cascade from fat purses to a horny palm; and then, with a sleepy neighbor, a cold hearth, and a rattling cynic of a window for witnesses, he does the deed. Elsewhere I have used these words to describe the scene : " The room ik 222 GRETNA GREEN REVISITED. which the Gretna Green marriages have been cele- brated for many years is a large rude kitchen, but dimly lighted by a small 'bole' window of lumpy glass that faces an ill-fitting back door. The draught generated between the two cuts the spot where the couples stand, and must prove a godsend to flushed and flurried bridegrooms. A bed — wooden and solid, ornamented with divers shaped and divers colored clothes dependent from its woodwork like linen hung on a line to dry — fills a lordly space. The monster fireplace retreats bashfully before it into the oppo- site wall, and a grimy cracked ceiling looks on a bumpy stone floor, from which a cleanly man could eat his porridge. One shabby wall is happily hid by the drawers in which Lang keeps his books; and against the head of the bed an apoplectic Mrs. Langtry in a blue dress and yellow stockings, re- minding the public that Simon Lang's teas are the best, shudders at her reflection in the looking glass that dangles opposite her from a string." The signboard over a snuffy tavern that attempted to enter into rivalry with the Queen's Head depicts the priest on his knees going through the church marriage services, but the Langs have alwa}^s kept their method of performing the ceremony a secret between themselves and the interested persons, and the artist in this case was doubtless drawing on his imagination. The picture is discredited by the scene of the wedding being made in a smithy, when GRETNA GREEN REVISITED. 223 it is notorious that the " blacksmith " has cut the tobacco plug, and caught fish in the Solway, and worked at' the loom, the last, and the toll-bar, but never wielded Vulcan's hammer. The popular term is thus a mystery, though a witness once explained, in a trial, to Brougham, that Gretna marriages were a welding of heat. Now the welding of heat is part of a blacksmith's functions. It is not for Willuni Lang to censure the Lang- holm millworkers, without whose patronage he would be as a priest superannuated, but if they could be got to remember whom they are married to, it would greatly relieve his mind. When stand- ing before him they are given to wabbling un- steadily on their feet, and to taking his inquiry whether the maiden on their right is goodly in their sight for an offer of another "mutchkin:'' and next morning they sometimes mistake somebody else's maiden for their own. When one of the youth of the neighborhood takes to him a helpmate at Springfield his friend often whiles away the time by courting another, and when they return to Lang- holm things are sometimes a little mixed up. The priest, knowing what is expected of him, is general- ly able when appealed to, to " assign to each bride- groom his own;" but one shudders to think what complications may arise when Willum's eyes and memory go. These weddings are, of course, as legal as though Lang were Archbishop of Canterbury, 224 GRETNA GREEN REVISITED. but the clergymen shake their heads, and sometimes — as indeed was the case even in the great days — a second marriage by a minister is not thought amiss. About the year 1826, the high road to Scotland ran away from Springfield. Weeds soon afterward sprouted in the street, and though the place's repu- tation died hard, its back had been broken. Run- aways skurried by oblivious of its existence, and at a convenient point on the new road shrewd John Linton dropped Gretna Hall. Springfield's con- venient situation had been its sole recommendation, and when it lost that it was stranded. The first entry in the Langs' books dates back to 1771, when Joseph Paisley represented the priesthood, but the impetus to Gretna marriages had been given by the passing of Lord Hardwicke's act, a score of }^ears before. Legend speaks of a Solway fisherman who taught tobacconist Paisley the business. Prior to 1754, when the law put its foot down on all unions not celebrated by ministers of the Church of Eng- land, there had been no need to resort to Scotland, for the chaplains of the fleet were anticipating the priests of Gretna Green, and doing a roaring trade. Broadly speaking, it was as easy between the Refor- mation and 1745 to get married in the one country as in the other. The Marriage Act changed all that. It did a real injustice to non-members of the Es- tablished Church, and only cured the disease in one place to let it break out in another. Lord Hard- GRETNA GREEN REVISITED. 225 wicke might have been a local member of Parlia- ment, pushing* a bill through the House " for the promotion of Larceny and Eowdyism at Gretna Green." For the greater part of a century, there was a whirling of coaches and a clattering of horses across the border, after which came marriage in England before a registrar, and an amendment of the Scotch law that required residence north of the Sark, on the part of one of the parties, for twenty- one days before the ceremony took place. After that the romance of Gretna Green was as a tale that was told. The latter half of the last century, and the first twenty years of this, were thus the palmy days of Springfield, for after Gretna Hall hung out its signboard, the Langs were oftener seen at the " big house " than in the double-windowed parlor of the Queen's Head. The present landlord of this hostelry, a lightsome host, troubled with corns, who passes much of his time with a knife in one hand and his big toe in the other, is nephew of that Beattie who saw his way to bed by the gleam of post-boy's lamps, and spent his days unsnibbing the Queen's Head door to let run- aways in, and barring it to keep their pursuers out. Much depends on habit, and Beattie slept most soundly to the drone of the priest in his parlor, and the rub-a-dub of baffled parents on his window-sills. His nephew, also a Beattie, brings his knife with him into the immortal room, where peers of the 15 226 GRETNA GREEN REVISITED. realm have mated with country wenches, and line ladies have promised to obey their father's stable- boys, and two Lord Chancellors of England with a hundred others have blossomed into husbands, and one wedding was celebrated of which neither Beattie nor the world takes any account. There are half a dozen tongues in the inn — itself a corpse now that wearily awaits interment — to show you where Lord Erskine gambolled in a table-cloth, while David Lang united him in the bonds of matrimony with his housekeeper, Sarah Buck. There is the table at which he composed some Latin doggerel in honor of the event, and the doubtful signature on a cracked pane of glass. A strange group they must have made — the gaping landlord at the door, Mrs. Buck, the superstitious, with all her children in her arms, David Lang rebuking the Lord Chancellor for pos- ing in the lady's bonnet, Erskine in his table-cloth skipping around the low-roofed room in answer, and Christina Johnstone, the female witness, thinking sadly that his lordship might have known better. Here, too, Lord Eldon galloped one day with his " beloved Bessy ; " and it is not uninteresting to note that though he came into the world eighteen months after Lord Erskine, he paid Gretna Green a business visit nearly fifty years before him. Lang's books are a veritable magic-lantern, and the Queen's Head the sheet on which he casts his figures. The slides change. Joseph Paisley sees his shrewd assistant, GRETNA GREEN REVISITED. 227 David Lang-, marry his granddaughter, and dies characteristically across the way. David has his day, and Simon, his son, succeeds him ; and in the meantime many a memorable figure glides shadow- like across the screen. The youth with his heart in his mouth is Lord George Lambton. It is an Earl of Westmoreland that plants his shoulders against the door, and tells the priest to hurry. The foot that drums on the floor is Lady Alicia Parson's. A son of Lord Chief Justice Ellenborough makes way for his own son ; a daughter follows in the very foot- steps of her father, only a few hours between them. A daughter of Archdeacon Philpot arrives at four o'clock in the morning, and her companion forgets to grease the landlord's hand. The Hon. Charles Law just misses Lord Deerhurst. There are ghosts in cocked hats, and naval and military uniform, in mus- lin, broadcloth, tweed and velvet, gold lace and pig- skin ; swords flash, pistols smoke, steaming horses bear bleeding riders out of sight, and a thousand forms flit weird and shadowy through the stifling room. The dinner of the only surviving priest of Gretna Hall frizzled under the deft knife of his spouse as he rubbed his hands recently over the reminiscences of his youth. Willum Lang never officiated at the Hall. Intelligent Jardine, full of years and honors, now enjoys his ease, not without a priestly dignity, on a kitchen sofa, in his pocket edition of a home at 228 GRETNA GREEN REVISITED. Springfield, and it is perhaps out of respect to his visitor that he crowns his hoary head with a still whiter hat. His arms outstretched to the fire, he looks, by the flashes of light, in his ingle-nook a Shakespearian spirit crouching over an unholy pot, but his genial laugh betrays him, and his comely wife does not scruple to recall him to himself when he threatens to go off in an eternal chuckle. A stal- wart border-woman she, in short petticoats and de- lightful cap, such as in the killing times of the past bred the Johnny Armstrongs and the terrible moss- troopers of the border. A storehouse of old ballads, and a Scotchwoman after Scott's own heart. The day that Gretna Hall became an inn, its land- lord felt himself called to the priesthood, and as long as he and his son remained above ground, mar- riage was the heaviest item in their bills. But when Gretna knew them no more, Jardine's chance had come. Even at Springfield the line has always been drawn at female priests, and from the "big house " used to come frequent messages to the shoe- maker with its mistress's compliments, and would he step up at once. The old gentleman is a bit of a dandy in his way, and it is pleasant to know that Nat- ure herself gave him on those occasions a hint when it was time to dress. The rush for him down dark fields and across the Headless Cross was in a flurry of haste, but in the still night the rumble of a dis- tant coach had been borne to him over the howes GRETNA GREEN REVISITED. 229 and meadows, and Jardine knew what that meant as well as the marriage service. Sometimes the coaches came round by Springfield, when the hall was full, and there was a tumbling out and in again by trembling runaways at rival inns. Even the taverns have run couples, and up and down the sleety street horses pranced and panted in search of an idle priest. Jardine remembers one such night- mare time when the clatter of a pursuing vehicle came nearer and nearer, and a sweet young lady in the Queen's Head flung up her hands to heaven. Crash went her true lover's fist through a pane of glass to awaken the street (which always slept with one eye open) with the hoarse wail, " A hundred pounds to the man that marries me ! " But big as was the bribe, the speed of the pursuers was greater, and the maiden's father looking in at the inn at an inconvenient moment called her away to fulfil another engagement. The Solway lies white from Gretna Hall like a sheet of mourning paper, between edges of black trees and hills. The famous long, low room still looks out on an ageing park, but they are only ghosts that join hands in it now, and it is a clinging to old days that makes the curious moon peep beneath the blind. The priest and the unbidden witness still are, but brides and bridegrooms come no more. To the days of his youth Jardine had to fling back his memory to re- call the gravel springing from the wheels of Wake- 230 GRETNA GREEN REVISITED. field's flying chariot. The story is told in Hutchin- son's " Chronicles of Gretna Green," the first volume of which leads up to but does not broach the subject, and is common property at Springfield. The adven- turer's dupe was an affectionate schoolgirl, on whose feelings he worked by representing himself as the one friend who could save her father from ruin and disgrace. The supposed bankrupt was said to have taken flight to Scotland, and the girl of fifteen, jump- ing into Wakefield's coach at Liverpool, started with him in pursuit. A more graceless rascal never was, for at Carlisle the adventurer swore that he had talked with Miss Turner's father in a hotel where he was lying hidden from the sheriff's officers, and that the fugitive's wish was that she should, with- out delay, accept Mr. "Wakefield's hand. The poor lassie, frantic with anxiety, was completely gulled, and on March 8, 1826, Wakefield's coach drew up at Gretna Hall. Too late came the pursuit to stop the marriage, but the runaways were traced to France, and the law soon had the husband of a week by the heels. He had trusted, like all his brotherhood, to the lady's father making the best of it ; and so, perhaps, he did ; for the adventurer's address for the next three years was— Newgate, London. Spiders of both sexes kept their nets at Gretna Green, but a tragedy was only enacted at the hall between a score of comedies ; and they were gener- GRETNA GREEN REVISITED. 231 ally love-sick youths and maidens who interrupted the priest to ask if that was not the " so — sound of wh — wheels on the gravel walk ? " A couple whom it would almost have been a satisfaction to marry without a fee (for the mere example of the thing) was that which raced from the south of England with the lady's father. When they reached the top of a hill his arms were gesticulating at the bottom, and they never turned one corner without seeing his steaming horse take another. Poor was the fond lover (dark his prospects at Gretna Green in conse- quence) but brave the maid, to whom her friends would insist on leaving money, which was the cause of the whole to-do. The father, looking on the swain with suspicious eye, took to dreaming of pos- tilions, high-roads, blacksmiths and Gretna Green, He would not suffer his daughter to move from his sight, and even to dances he escorted her in his private carriage, returning for her (for he was a busy man) at night. Quick of invention were the infuri- ated lovers. Threading the mazes of a dance, the girl was one evening snatched from her partner's arms by the announcement that her father's carriage barred the way below. A hurried explanation of why he had come so soon, a tripping down the stairs with trembling limbs into a close coach, a maiden in white in her lover's arms, and hey-ho for Gretna Green. Jardine is mellowed with a gentle cynicism, and sometimes he breaks off in his reminiscences to 232 GRETNA GREEN REVISITED. wonder what people want to be married for. The Springfield priest, he chuckles, is a blacksmith at whom love cannot afford to laugh. Ay, friend Jar- dine, but what about the blacksmith who laughs at love? Half a century ago Mr. McDiarmid, a Scotch jour- nalist of repute, loosened the tongue of a Springfield priest with a bowl of toddy. The result was as if the sluice had been lifted bodily from a dam, and stories (like the whiskey) flowed like water. One over-curious paterfamilias there was who excused his visit to the village of weddings on the ground that he wished to introduce to the priest a daughter who might one day require his services. " And sure enough," old Elliot, who entered into partnership with Simon Lang, crowed to his toddy -ladle, " I had her back with a younger man in the matter of three months ! " There lives, too, in Springfield's memory the tale of the father who bolted with an elderly spinster, and returning to England passed his daughter and her lover on the way. Dark and win- try was the night, the two coaches rattled by, and next morning four persons who had gone wrong opened the eyes of astonishment. When David Lang was asked during Wakefield's trial how much he had been paid for discharging the duties of priest, he replied, pleasantly, " £20 or £30, or perhaps £40; I cannot say to a few pounds." This was pretty well, but there are authenticated GRETNA GREEN REVISITED. 233 cases in which £100 was paid. The priests had no fixed fee, and charged according to circumstances. If business was slack and the bridegroom not press- ing, they lowered their charges, but where the bribed post-boys told them of high rank, hot pursuit, and heavy purses, they squeezed their dupes remorse- lessly. It is told of Joseph Paisley that when on his death-bed he heard the familiar rumble of coaches into the village, he shook death from him, ordered the runaways to approach his presence, married three couples from his bed, and gave up the ghost with three hundred pounds in his palsied hands. Beattie at the toll-bar, on the other hand, did not scorn silver fees, and as occasion warranted the priests have doubtless ranged in their charges from half-a-crown and a glass of whiskey to a hundred pounds. Though the toll-bar only at rare intervals got wealthy pairs into its clutches, Murray had not been long installed in office when pockets crammed with fees made him waddle as heavily as a duck. Fifty marriages a month was no uncommon occur- rence at Gretna at that time, and it was then that the mansion was built which still stands about a hundred yards on the English side of the Sark. The toll-keeper, to whom it owes its existence, erected it for a hotel that would rival Gretna Hall, and prove irresistible to the couples who, on getting married on the Scotch side, would have to pass it 234 GRETNA GREEN REVISITED. on their return journey. But the alterations in the Marriage Laws marred the new hotel's chances, and Murray found that he had over-reached himself. Perhaps one reason why he no longer prospered was because he pursued a niggardly policy with the postilions, ostlers, and other rapscallions who demanded a share of the booty. The Langs knew what they were about far too well to quarrel with the post-boys, and stories are still current in Spring- field of these faithful youths tumbling their em- ployers into the road rather than take them to a " blacksmith " with whom they did not deal. There is no hope for Gretna. Springfield was and is the great glory of its inhabitants. Here ran the great wall of Adrian, the scene of many a tough fight in the days of stone weapons and skin-clad Picts. The Debatable Land, sung by Trouvere and Troubadour, is to-day but a sodden moss, in which no King Arthur strides fearfully away from the " grim lady " of the bogs ; and moss-troopers, grim and gaunt and terrible, no longer whirl with lighted firebrands into England. With a thousand stars the placid moon lies long drawn out and drowned at the bottom of the Solway, without a lovesick maid to shed a tear ; the chariots that once rattled and flashed along the now silent road were turned into firewood decades ago, and the runaways, from a Prince of Capua to a beggar-maid, are rotten and forgotten. THOUGHTFUL BOYS MAKE THOUGHTFUL MEN. TJrquhart is a boy who lives in fear that his friends and relations will send him the wrong birth- day presents. Before his birthday came round this year, he dropped them pretty broad hints as to the kind of gifts he would prefer, supposing they meant to remember the occasion. He worked his people differently, according to the relationship that ex- isted between him and them. Thus to his mother he simply wrote, " A fishing-rod is what I want ; '* but to an uncle, from whom there was only the possibility of the present, he said, " By the way, next Monday week is my birthday, and my mother is going to send me a fishing-rod. Wouldn't it be jolly rot if any other body sent me a fishing-rod 1 — Your affectionate and studious nephew, Thomas Urquhart." To an elderly lady, with whom he had once spent part of his summer holiday, he wrote " By the bye " (he always came to the point with by the bye) "next Monday week is my birthday. I am wondering if anybody will send me a cake like the ones you bake so beautifully." That lady should, of course, figuratively have 236 THOUGHTFUL BOYS. punched Urquhart's head, but his communication charmed her. She did not, however, send him a cake. He had a letter from her in a few days, in which, without referring to his insinuating remarks about his birthday and her cakes, she expressed a hope that he was working hard. Urquhart thought this very promising, and sent a reply that undid him. "I am sweating," he said, "no end; and I think there is no pleasure like perusing books. When the other chaps go away to play, I stay at the school and peruse books." After that Urquhart counted the old lady among his certainties, and so she was, after a manner. On his birthday he re- ceived a gift from her, and also a letter, in which she said that her original intention had been to send him a cake. " But your nice letter,'' she went on, " in which you say you are fond of reading, re- minds me that you are getting to be a big boy, so I send you a book instead." Urquhart anx- iously undid the brown paper in which the book was wrapped. It was a volume of mild biogra- phies, entitled, " Thoughtful Boys Make Thoughtful Men." From its first appearance among us, this book caused a certain amount of ill-feeling. I learned by accident that Urquhart, on the strength of the lady's letter, had stated for a fact to his comrades that she was going to send him a cake. He had also taken Fleming Secundus to a pastry-cook's in the vicinity THOUGHTFUL BOYS. 237 of the school, and asked him to turn his eyes upon a cake which had the place of honor in the centre of the window. Secundus admitted with a sigh that it was a beauty. Without comment Urquhart led him to our local confectioner's, and pointed out another cake. Secundus again passed favorable criticism, the words he used, I have reason to believe, being " Oh, Crikey ! " By this time Urquhart had ex- hausted the shops of an interesting kind in our neighborhood, and he and his companion returned to the school. For a time Urquhart said nothing, but at last he broke the silence. " You saw yon two cakes ? " he asked Secundus, who replied, with a smack of the lips, in the affirmative. " Then let me tell you/' said Urquhart, solemnly, " that the two of them rolled together don't come within five miles of the cake I'm to get on my birthday." Tremendous news like this spreads through a school like smoke, and Urquhart was courted as he had never been before. One of the most pitiful cases of toadyism known to me was witnessed that very day in the foot-ball field. I was playing in a school match on the same side as Urquhart and a boy called .Cocky Jones by his associates because of his sublime impertinence to his master. While Urquhart was playing his shoe-lace became loosened, and he stooped to tie it. " I say, Urquhart," cried Cocky, 11 let me do that for you I " It will thus be seen, taking one thing with another, that Urquhart's con- 238 THOUGHTFUL BOYS. fidence in the old lady had raised high hopes. " Is this the day Urquhart gets his cake ! " the " fellows " asked each other. Consider their indignation when he got, instead, " Thoughtful Boys Make Thoughtful Men." Secundus refused to speak to him ; William- son, Green, Bobbins, Tosh, and others scowled as if he had stolen their cake ; Cocky Jones kicked him and bolted. The boy who felt the disappointment most was, however, Urquhart himself. He has never been a shining light in his classes, but that day he stum- bled over the Latin grammar at every step. From nine to ten he was quiet and sullen, like one felled by the blow. It is, I believe, notorious that in a fair fight Cocky Jones could not stand up before Ur- quhart for a moment ; yet, when Cocky kicked, Urquhart did not pursue him. Between ten and eleven Urquhart had a cynical countenance, which implied that his faith in humanity was gone. By twelve he looked fierce, as if he meant to write his benefactress, and give her a piece of his mind. I saw him during the dinner-hour in hot controversy with Green and Tosh, who were evidently saying that he had deceived them. From this time he was pugnacious, like one determined to have it out with somebody, and as he can use his fists, this mood made his companions more respectful. Fleming Secundus is his particular chum, and after the first bitterness of disappointment, Secundus returned to THOUGHTFUL BOYS. 239 his allegiance. He offered to mark Cocky Jones's face, I fancy, for I saw him in full pursuit of Cocky in the playground. Having made it up, he and Ur- quhart then discussed the matter calmly in a corner. They had several schemes before them. One was to send the book back, saying that Urquhart had already a copy of it. " But, I haven't," said Urquhart. " Williamson has read it, though," said Secundus, as if that was much the same thing. " But though we did send it back," Urquhart re- monstrated, " the chances are that she would send me another book in its place." His faith, you see, had quite gone. "You could tell her you had got such a lot of books that you would prefer a cake for a change." Urquhart said that would be putting it too plain. " "Well, then," said Secundus, " even though she did send you another book, it would perhaps be a better one than that. Tell her to send 'The Boy Crusoes.' I haven't read it." " I have, though," said Urquhart. " Well, she could send ' The Prairie Hunters.' " " She's not the kind," said Urquhart. " It's always these improving books she buys." Ultimately the two boys agreed upon a line of action which was hardly what the reader might ex- pect. Urquhart wrote letters of thanks to all those who had remembered his birthday, and to the old 240 THOUGHTFUL BOYS. lady the letter which passed through my hands read as follows : "Deak Miss : I sit down to thank you very faithfully for your favor, namely, the book entitled ' Thoughtful Boys Make Thoughtful Men.' It is a jolly book, and I like it no end better than a cake, which would soon be ate up, and then nothing to show for it. I am reading your beautiful present regular, and hoping it will make me a thoughtful boy so as I may be a thoughtful man, no more at present, " I am, Dear Miss , "Your very sincere friend, " Thomas Ukquhakt." Our boys generally end up their letters in some such way as that, it being a method of making their epistles cover a little more paper. As I feared, Urquhart's letter was merely diplomatic. He had not come around to the opinion that after all a book was better than the cake, but he had seen the point of Fleming's sudden suggestion, that the best plan would be to " keep in " with his benefactress. Secundus had shown that if Miss M was both- ered about this year's present, she would be less like- ly to send anything next year, and this sank into Urquhart's mind. Hence the tone of his letter of thanks. It remains to follow the inglorious career of this copy of " Thoughtful Boys Make Thoughtful Men." THOUGHTFUL BOYS. 241 First, Urquhart was openly contemptuous of it, and there seemed a probability of its only being used as a missile. Soon, however, he dropped hints that it was a deeply interesting story, following these hints up with the remark that he was open to offers. He and Fleming Secundus had quite a tiff about it, though they are again good friends. Secundus, it appears, had gone the length of saying that it was worth a shilling, and had taken it to his bed to make sure of this. Urquhart considered it as good as bought, but Secundus returned it to him next day. Examination of the book roused the suspicions of Urquhart, who charged Secundus with having read it by peeping between the pages, which, to enhance its commercial value, had remained uncut. This Secundus denied, but he had left the mark of his thumb on it. Eventually the book was purchased by Cocky Jones, but not without a row. Cocky went up to Urquhart one day and held out a shilling, saying that he would give it for " Thoughtful Boys Make Thoughtful Men." The owner wanted to take the shilling at once, and give up the book later in the day, but Cocky insisted on its being put into his hands immediately. That Jones should be anxious to become the possessor of an improving book sur- prised Urquhart, but in his haste to make sure of the shilling, he handed over " Thoughtful Boys Make Thoughtful Men." "Within an hour of the striking of this bargain a rumor reached Urquhart's 10 242 THOUGHTFUL BOYS. ears that Cocky had resold the work for one and sixpence. Inquiries were instituted, which led to a discovery. At our school there is a youth called Dicky Jenkinson, who, though not exactly a thought- ful boy, has occasional aspirations in that direction. Being for the moment wealthy, Jenkinson had re- marked, in the presence of Cocky, that one and six- pence would not be too much to give for Urquhart's copy of " Thoughtful Boys Make Thoughtful Men. 5 ' Feeling his way cautiously, Cocky asked whether he meant that the book would be cheap at one and six- pence to anybody who wanted it, or whether he (Dicky) was willing and able to expend that sum on it. Thus brought to bay, Jenkinson solemnly declared that he meant to make Urquhart an offer that very day. Cocky made off to think this matter over, for he was aware that the book had been already offered to Fleming Secundus for a shilling. He saw that by taking prompt action he might clear sixpence before bedtime. Unfortunately, he was not able to buy the book from Urquhart, for he was destitute of means, and he knew it would be mere fol- ly to ask Urquhart for credit. In these painful cir- cumstances he took Bobbins into his confidence. At first he merely asked Bobbins to lend him a shilling, and Bobbins merely replied that he would do no such thing. To show that the money would be returned promptly, Cocky then made a clean breast of it, after which Bobbins was ready to lend THOUGHTFUL BOYS. 243 him an ear. Eobbins, however, stipulated that he should get half of the spoils. Cocky, as has been seen, got the book from Urquhart, but when it came to the point, Jenkinson was reluctant to part with the one and sixpence. In this extremity Cocky appealed to Eobbins, who at once got hold of Dicky and threatened to slaugh- ter him if he did not keep to his bargain. Thus frightened, Jenkinson bought the book. On hearing of this, Urquhart considered that he had been swindled, and set off in quest of Cocky. That boy was not to be found, however, until his threepence had disappeared in tarts. I got to know of this affair through Bobbins' backing up of Cocky, and telling Urquhart that nobody was afraid of him. A ring was immediately formed round Urquhart and Eobbins, which I had the pleasure of breaking up. Since I sat down to write the adventures of " Thoughtful Boys Make Thoughtful Men," I have looked through the book. Jenkinson read several chapters of it, and then offered it for next to noth- ing to anybody who had a fancy for being thought- ful. As no bidder was forthcoming, he in the end lost heart and presented it to the school library. A gentleman who visited us lately, and looked through the library, picked it up, and said that he was delighted to observe that the boys kept their books so clean. Yet not so long ago he was a boy at our school himself. NDINTPILE PONT(?). "What would you say," wrote a certain editor to me last Friday, * to doing next a paper on Ndint- pile Pont ! " I like the suggestion, but I can't make out wliat Ndintpile Pont is. This rather handicaps me, es- pecially as I have a presentiment that it is not Ndintpile Pont at all. It looks like Ndintpile Pont. The editor in. question's writing appears very easy to decipher if you hold it a little bit away, but, like the multiplication table, it is not so simple as it looks. The annoying thing is that he has written Ndintpile Pont with one dash of the pen, as if it were so well known that I could not possibly go wrong with it. Thus I have felt reluctant to write and ask him whether it really is Ndintpile Pont. I don't want him to think that I am not well up in the topics of the day. It would be injurious to my standing in the profession and might affect my balance at the bank. Always make it a rule, never to show your ignorance ; wear a confident air, and convince the editor that you are just the man he is looking for. But this unfortunate affair threatens to prove too NDINTPILE POJSfT(f). 245 much for me. I have shown the editor's letter to several of my friends. I do this with a craft that is not natural to me. Instead of asking them openly if they can make out what these words are that look like Ndintpile Pont, I fling them the letter with af- fected carelessness, and say, " By the way, what do you think of that for the subject of an article ! " While they read I put my hands over my face, as if I were thinking about something else, and watch them through my fingers. They take Ndintpile Pont in different ways. Sometimes they turn the letter upside down (after carefully glancing at me to see if I am observing them) or they try to read it sideways. This is satisfactory so far, for it shows that they are as much puzzled as I am, but it is no assistance. They end by asking me what this sub- ject is that the editor proposes. Of course this foils me, and I have to reply in a careless tone, " Oh, Ndintpile Pont," implying that they must know what Ndintpile Pont is. One had the honesty to say he never heard of it, but most of them say, 44 Oh," or " Ah," as if they understood thoroughly, and a few have had the hardihood to ask me how I meant to treat it. I reply, blandly, " In the usual way," and that seems to satisfy them. Others to whom I have shown the letter say it is not u Ndint- pile Pont," but 44 Henderson's Book," and that has rather startled me, for on re-examination a Pont" might be 4< Book," and as for 44 Ndintpile " it might 246 NBINTPILE PONT ( f ). be anything. The more you look at it the more yon feel this. Suppose it is Henderson's Book, who is Henderson, and where is his book 1 When they ask me this, I say that Henderson is a rising writer, but I am less ready with an answer when I put the question to myself. One acquaintance, after reading the letter, said that he remembered an article on the same subject the week before in the Daily News. I brightened up at this, and asked him what point of view the Daily News looked at it from. His way of taking my question made me suspect that he was like the others, too self-satisfied to admit that he could not make the writing out. He replied, however, that the Daily Neivs treated it, so far as he could recol- lect, in its political aspect, and presumed that I would discuss it rather in its social bearing. I ad- mitted that that was my intention, and after he had gone I went to the office of the Daily Neivs and ex- amined the file. I could not, however, discover an article on Ndintpile Pont, or on anything at all like it. Had I been able to trust my friend, my position would now have been improved, for I would at least have known that the subject was one which could be treated from both a political and a social stand- point. On returning home I spread the letter out before me, and after looking at it for a long time, made up my mind that it was not "Pont," but " Polit." This doubtless was short for " Political." NDINTPIL E PONT ( f ). 247 Next morning' I looked at it again, and then it seemed more like " Punt." The last man I showed the letter to must have thought it was a lady's name, for he said, " Do you think she'll be pleased at your writing an article on her *? " Though this question took me aback, I re- plied, with considerable presence of mind, that I was sure she would like it ; and then he asked me if I knew her personally. I said I had known her intimately for years, and he said was she not a bit of an invalid, and I said one of her lungs was com- pletely gone. That evening I drew up a list of all the celebrated women still alive that I could think of, and compared the names with Ndintpile Pont. The one that came nearest it was Mrs. Oliphant. The last four letters of her name are not so unlike Pont when you examine them with a hope that they are like it. Tack the " ile " of what seems to be the first word on to the " Pont," and you get " Ilepont." Then look at Ilepont as the editor has written it, and it might easily be Oliphant. That leaves " Ndintp " unaccounted for ; but, after all, is it Nclintp? Is it not more like Margaret, which is Mrs. Oliphant's Christian name t I sat down to write about Mrs. Oliphant with a light heart, but before the first paragraph was finished I became doubtful again. Was Mrs. Oliphant an invalid ? She is not, so far as I know; indeed, if she were, she could not write so much. On the whole, it 248 NDINTPILE PONT {?). seemed rather a risky thing to trust to its being Mrs. Oliphant. More likely Ndintpile Pont is the name assumed by some lady writer. If so, it is a striking pseudonym. I could, of course, write a fancy article about her, remarking that it is quite unnecessary to tell the intelligent reader what Ndintpile Pont's real name is, for that is an open secret. Writers do such things, I am told, and it always flatters a reader to call him intelligent and take for granted that he knows what he does not know. Having become despondent, I have confessed to a few particular friends that the editor has contrived to puzzle me. Looking at his suggestion in the light of that admission, they have all agreed on one point, that, whatever it is, it is certainly not Ndint- pile Pont. One suggests that it is something Pond, and asks if I know anything about a pond. I re- member once falling into one, so he thinks the editor wants me to describe what it felt like. De- pend upon it, he says, the editor wants to know from one who has really gone through the experi- ence what the sensation of being nearly drowned is like. They say it is a delightful death, but is it * I cannot think it is Pond, however, for, in the first place, the editor does not know that I once fell into one, and, besides, I was not nearly drowned. It was a mere puddle of water, and I was quite surprised to learn afterward that it was a pond. NDINTPILE PONT ( ? ). 249 It might certainly be Punt. I am living in a houseboat at present, and, of course, am frequently in punts. Is it " Fishing off a Punt," or " A Day in a Punt," or " Our Houseboat Punt ? " Somehow it is difficult to feel certain that it is. There are points of view from which it looks not unlike the name of a quack medicine for restoring the hair or making your child cry out in the night. Or is it a new soap 1 If so, I prefer it to any other, and it is matchless for the hands and complexion. At all events, I hope there is nothing wrong about it. It sounds rather like treason. Probably I had better leave it alone. I have thought it over until the houseboat is going round and round, so my most honest course seems now to be to write to the editor, saying that I won't be able to do an article this month, as I can't make out the subject. TO THE INFLUENZA. The time has come for you to leave this house. Seventeen days ago you foisted yourself upon me, and since then we have been together night and day. You were unwelcome and uninvited, and you made yourself intensely disagreeable. We wrestled, you and I, but you attacked me unawares in the back, and you threw me. Then, like the ungenerous foe that you are, you struck me while I was down. How- ever, your designs have failed. I struggle to my feet and order you to withdraw. Nay, withdraw is too polite a word. Your cab is at the door ; get out. But, stop, a word with you before you go. Most of your hosts, I fancy, run you out of their houses without first saying what they think of you. Their one desire is to be rid of you. Perhaps they are afraid to denounce you to your face. I want, however, to tell you that I have been looking for- ward to this moment ever since you put me to bed. I said little while I was there, but I thought a good deal, and most of my thoughts were of you. You fancied yourself invisible, but I saw you glaring at me, and I clenched my fists beneath the blankets. I could paint your portrait. You are very tall and TO THE INFLUENZA. 251 stout, with a black beard, and a cruel, unsteady eye, and you have a way of crackling your fingers while you exult in your power. I used to lie watching you as you lolled in my cane-chair. At first it was empty, but I felt that you were in it, and gradually you took shape. I could hear your fingers crackling and the chair creak as you moved in it. If I sat up in fear, you disappeared, but as soon as I lay back, there you were again. I know now that in a sense you were a creature of my imagination. I have dis- covered something more. I know why you seemed tall and stout and bearded, and why I heard your fingers crackling. Fever — one of your dastard weapons — was no doubt what set me drawing portraits, but why did I see you a big man with a black beard ? Because long ago, when the world was young, I had a school- master of that appearance. He crackled his fingers too. I had forgotten him utterly. He had gone from me with the love of climbing for crows' nests — which I once thought would never die — but during some of these seventeen days of thirty-six hours each I suppose I have been a boy again. Yet I had many schoolmasters, all sure at first that they could make something of me, all doleful when they found that I had conscientious scruples against learning. Why do I merge you into him of the crackling fingers ? I know. It is because in mediaeval times I hated him as I hate you. No others have I loathed with any 252 TO THE INFLUENZA. intensity, but he alone of my masters refused to be reconciled to my favorite method of study, which consisted, I remember (without shame) in glancing at my tasks, as I hopped and skipped to school. Sometimes I hopped and skipped, but did not arrive at school in time to take solid part in lessons, and this grieved the soul of him who wanted to be my instructor. So we differed, as Gladstonian and Con- servative on the result of the Parnell Commission, and my teacher, being in office, troubled me not a little. I confess I hated him, and while I sat glumly in his room, whence the better boys had retired, much solace I found in wondering how I would slay him, supposing I had a loaded pistol, a sword, and a hatchet, and he had only one life. I schemed to be a dark, morose pirate of fourteen, so that I might capture him, even at his black-board, and make him walk the plank. I was Judge Lynch, and he was the man at the end of the rope. I charged upon him on horseback, and cut him down. I challenged him to single combat, and then I was Ivanhoe. I even found pleasure in conceiving myself shouting " Crackle-fingers " after him, and then bolting round a corner. You must see now why I pictured you heavy and dark and bearded. You are the school- master of my later years. I lay in bed and gloried in the thought that presently I would be up, and fall upon you like a body of cavalry. What did you think of my doctor 1 You need not TO THE INFLUENZA. 253 answer, for I know that you disliked him. You and I were foes, and I was getting the worst of it when he walked in and separated the combatants. His entrance was pleasant to me. He showed a con- tempt for you that perhaps he did not feel, and he used to take your chair. There were days when I wondered at his audacity in doing that, but I liked it, too, and by and by I may tell him why I often asked him to sit there. He was your doctor as well as mine, and every time he said that I was a little bettor, I knew he meant that you were a little weak- er. You knew it, too, for I saw you scowling after he had gone. My doctor is also my friend, and so, when I am well, I say things against him behind his back. Then I see his weaknesses and smile comfort- ably at them with his other friends — whom I also discuss with him. But while you had me down he was another man. He became, as it were, a foot taller, and I felt that he alone of men had anything to say that was worth listening to. Other friends came to look curiously at me and talk of politics, or Stanley, or on other frivolous topics, but he spoke of my case, which was the great affair. I was not, in my own mind, a patient for whom he was merely doing his best ; I was entirely in his hands. I was a business, and it rested with him whether I was to be wound up or carried on as usual. I daresay I tried to be pleasant with him — which is not my way — took his prescriptions as if I rather enjoyed them, 254 TO THE INFLUENZA. and held his thermometer in my mouth as though it were a new kind of pipe. This was diplomacy. I have no real pleasure in being fed with a spoon, nor do I intend in the future to smoke thermometers. But I knew that I must pander to my doctor's weak- ness if he was to take my side against you. Now that I am able to snap my fingers at you I am look- ing forward to sneering once more at him. Just at this moment, however, I would prefer to lay a sword flat upon his shoulders, and say, gratefully, " Arise, Sir James." He has altered the faces of the various visitors who whispered to each other in my presence, and nodded at me and said aloud that I would soon be right again, and then said something else on the other side of the door. He has opened my windows and set the sparrows a-chirping again, and he has turned on the sunshine. Lastly, he has enabled me to call your cab. I am done. Get out. FOUR-IN-HAND NOVELISTS. The following is a word-puzzle. It narrates the adventures of a four-in-hand novelist while trying to lose his reputation. Competitors do not require to be told that a four-in-hand novelist is a writer of fiction who keeps four serial tales running abreast in the magazines. The names of specimen four-in- hand novelists will recur readily to every one. The puzzle is to discover who this particular novelist is ; the description, as will be observed, answering to quite a number of them. A few years ago, if any one in Fleet Street had said that the day would come when I would devote my time in trying to lose my reputation, I would have smiled incredulously. That was before I had a reputation. To be as statistical as time will allow — for before I go to bed I have seven and a half yards of fiction to write— it took me fifteen years' hard work to acquire a reputation. For two years after that I worked as diligently to retain it, not being quite certain whether it was really there, and for the last five years I have done my best to get rid of it. Mr. R. L. Stevenson has a story of a dyna- 256 FOUR-IN-HAND NOVELISTS. miter who tried in vain to leave an infernal machine anywhere. It was always returned to him as soon as he dropped it, or just as he was making off. My reputation is as difficult to lose. I have not given up the attempt yet, but I am already of opinion that it is even harder to lose a reputation in letters than to make one. My colleagues will bear me out in this. If I recollect aright — for I have published so much that my works are now rather mixed up in my mind, and I have no time to verify anything — the first place I thought to leave my reputation in was a volume of pot-boilers, which I wrote many years ago^ for an obscure publication. At that time I was work- ing hard for a reputation elsewhere, and these short stories were only scribbled off for a livelihood. My publisher heard of them recently, and offered me a hundred pounds for liberty to republish them in book form. I pointed out to him that they were very poor stuff, but he said that that had nothing to do with it ; I had a reputation now, and they would sell. With certain misgivings— for I was not hard- ened yet — I accepted my publisher's terms, and the book was soon out. The first book I published, which was much the best thing I ever wrote, was only reviewed by three journals, of which two were provincial weeklies. They said it showed signs of haste, though every sentence in it was a labor. I sent copies of it to six or seven distinguished liter- ' FOUR-IN-HAND NOVELISTS. 257 ary men — some of whom are four-in-hand now — and two of them acknowledged receipt of it, though neither said he had read it. My pot-boilers, how- ever, had not been out many weeks before the first edition was exhausted. The book was reviewed everywhere, and, in nine cases out of ten, enthusias- tically lauded. It showed a distinct advance on all my previous efforts. They were model stories of their kind. They showed a mature hand. The wit was sparkling. There were pages in the book that no one could read without emotion. In the old days I was paid for these stories at the rate of five shil- lings the thousand words ; but they would make a reputation in themselves now. It has been thus all along. I drop my reputation into every book I write now, but there is no getting rid of it. The critics and the public return it to me, remarking that it grows bigger. I tried to lose my reputation in several other books of the same kind, and always with the same result. Barnacles are nothing to a literary repu- tation. Then I tried driving four-in-hand. There are now only five or six of us who are four-in-hand novelists, but there are also four-in-hand essayists, four-in-hand critics, etc., and we all work on the same principle. Every one of us is trying to shake himself free of his reputation. We novelists have, perhaps, the best chance, for there are so few writers of fiction who have a reputation to lose that 17 258 FOUR-IN-HAND NOVELISTS. all the magazine editors come to us for a serial tale. Next year I expect to be six-in-hand, for the pro- vincial weeklies want me as well as the magazines. Any mere outsider would say I was safe to get rid of my reputation this year, for I am almost beating the record in the effort. A novelist of repute, who did not want to lose his reputation, would not think of writing more than one story at a time, and he would take twelve months, at least, to do it. That is not my way. Hitherto, though I have been a member of the literary four-in-hand club, I have always been some way ahead with at least two of my tales before they begin to appear in serial form. You may give up the attempt to lose your reputation, however, if you do not set about it more thoroughly than that ; and the four novels which I began in January in two English maga- zines, one American magazine, and an illustrated paper, were all commenced in the second week of December (I had finished two novels in the last week of November). My original plan was to take them day about, doing about four chapters of each a month ; but to give my reputation a still better chance of absconding, I now write them at any time. Nowadays I would never think of working out my plot beforehand. My thinking begins when I take up my pen to write, and ends when I lay it down, or even before that. In one of my stories this year I made my hero save the heroine FOUR-IN-HAND NOVELISTS. 259 from a burning house. Had I done that in the old days they would have ridiculed me, but now they say I reveal fresh talent in the delightful way in which I retell a story that has no doubt been told before. The beaten tracks, it is remarked, are the best to tread when the public has such a charming guide as myself. My second novel opens with a shipwreck, and I am nearly three chapters in getting my principal characters into the boats. In my first books I used to guard carefully against the introduction of material that did not advance the story, yet at that time I was charged with "pad- ding." In this story of the shipwreck there is so much padding that I could blush — if I had not given all that up — to think of it. Instead of con- fining myself to my own characters, I describe all the passengers in the vessel — telling what they were like in appearance, and what was their occu- pation, and what they were doing there. Then, when the shipwreck comes, I drown them one by one. By one means or another, I contrive to get six chapters out of that shipwreck, which is fol- lowed by two chapters of agony in an open boat, which I treat as if it were a novelty in fiction, and that, again, leads up to a chapter on the uncertainty of life. Most flagrant padding of all is the con- versation. It always takes my characters at least two pages to say anything. They approach the point in this fashion : 260 FOUR-IN-HAND NOVELISTS. Tom walked excitedly into the room, in which Peter was awaiting him. The two men looked at each other. " You wanted to see me ? " Tom said at last. " Yes," said Peter, slowly, " I wanted to see you." Tom looked at the other uneasily. " Why did you want to see me 1 " he asked, after a pause. "I shall tell you," replied Peter, pointing to a chair. Tom sat down, and seemed about to speak. But he changed his mind. Peter looked at him curi- ously. " Perhaps," Peter said at last, " you know my rea- sons for requesting an interview with you here ? " " I cannot say that I do," answered Tom. There was another pause, during which the ticking of the clock could be distinctly heard. " You have no idea ? " inquired Peter. " I have no idea," replied Tom. " Do you remember," asked the older man, a little nervously, "that when old John Vansittart disap- peared so suddenly from the Grange there were some persons who believed that he had been foully mur- dered?" Tom passed his hand through his hair. "John Vansittart," he muttered to himself. " The affair," continued Peter, " was never cleared up." FOUR-IN-HAND NOVELISTS. 261 " It was never cleared up," said Tom. " But why/' he added, " do you return to this subject ? " " You may well ask," said Peter, " why I return to it." And so on. There is so much of this kind of thing in my recent novels that if all the lines of it were placed on end I daresay they would reach round the world. Yet I am never charged with padding now. My writing is said to be beautifully lucid. My shipwreck has made several intelligent critics ask if I have ever been a sailor, though I don't mind saying here, that, like Douglas Jerrold, I only dote upon the sea from the beach. I have been to Dover, but no further, and you will find my shipwreck told (more briefly) in Marryat. I dashed it off less than two months ago, but for the life of me I could not say whether my ship was scuttled, or went on fire, or sprang a leak. Henceforth I shall only refer to it as the shipwreck, and my memory will do all that is required of it if it prevents my mistaking the novel that contains the shipwreck. Even if I did that, however, I know from experience that my repu- tation would be as safe as the lives of my leading characters. I began my third novel, meaning to make my hero something of a coward, but though I worked him out after that pattern for a time, I have changed my plan. He is to be peculiarly heroic henceforth. This will not lose me my reputation. It will be said of my hero that he is drawn with no 262 FOUR-IN-HAND NOVELISTS. ordinary skill, and that the author sees the two-sided- ness of every man's character. As for the fourth story, it is the second one over again, with the ship- wreck omitted. One night when I did not have a chapter to write — a rare thing with me — I read over the first part of this fourth tale — another rare thing — and found it so slip-shod as to be ungrammatical. The second chapter is entirely taken up with a dis- quisition on bald heads, but the humor of it will be said to increase my reputation. Sometimes when I become despondent of ever losing my reputation, I think of taking a whole year to write one novel in, just to see what I really could do. I wonder whether the indulgent public would notice any difference? Perhaps I could not write carefully now if I tried. The small section of the public that guesses which of the four-in-hand writers I am may think for a mo- ment that this story of how I tried in vain to lose my reputation will help me toward the goal. They are wrong, however. The public will stand anything from us now — or they would get something better. «Q." A yeae or two ago it was observed that three writers were using the curiously popular signature " Q." This was hardly less confusing than that one writer should use three signatures (Grant Allen, Arbuthnot Wilson, and Anon), but as none of the three was willing to try another letter, they had to leave it to the public (whose decision in such mat- ters is final) to say who is Q to it. The public said, " Let him wear this proud letter who can win it," and for the present at least it is in the possession of the author of "The Splendid Spur" and "The Blue Pavilions." It would seem, too, as if it were his "to keep," for £C Q" is like the competition cups that are only yours for a season, unless you manage to carry them three times in succession. Mr. Quiller - Couch has been champion Q since 1890. The interesting question is not so much, What has he done to be the only prominent Q of these years ! as Is he to be the Q of all time % If so, he will do better work than he has yet done, though several of his latest sketches — and one in particu- 264 " Q." lar— are of very uncommon merit. Mr. Quiller- Couch is so unlike Mr. Kipling that one immediately wants to compare them. They are both young, and they have both shown such promise that it will be almost sad if neither can write a book to live— as, of course, neither has done as yet. Mr. Kipling is the more audacious, which is probably a matter of train- ing. He was brought up in India, where one's beard grows much quicker than at Oxford, and where you not only become a man (and a cynic) in a hurry, but see and hear strange things (and print them) such as the youth of Oxford miss, or, becom- ing acquainted with, would not dare insert in the local magazine of the moment. So Mr. Kipling's first work betokened a knowledge of the world that is by no means to be found in " Dead Man's Bock," the first book published by Mr. Quiller-Couch. On the other hand, it cannot truly be said that Mr. Kip- ling's latest work is stronger than his first, while the other writer's growth is the most remarkable thing about him. It is precisely the same Mr. Kip- ling who is now in the magazines that was writing some years ago in India (and a rare good Mr. Kip- ling, too), but the Mr. Quiller-Couch of to-day is the Quiller-Couch of " Dead Man's Eock " grown out of recognition. To compare their styles is really to compare the men. Mr. Kipling's is the more start- ling, the stronger (as yet), and the more mannered. Mark Twain, it appears, said he reads Mr. Kipling " <2." 265 for his style, which is really the same thing as saying you read him for his books, though the American seems only to have meant that he eats the beef be- cause he likes the salt. It is a journalistic style, aiming too constantly at sharp effects, always suc- ceeding in getting them. Sometimes this is con- trived at the expense of grammar, as when (a com- mon trick with the author) he ends a story with such a paragraph as " Which is manifestly unfair." Mr. Quiller-Couch has never sinned in this way, but his first style was somewhat turgid, even melodramatic, and compared with Mr. Kipling's, lacked distinction. From the beginning Mr. Kipling had the genius for using the right word twice in three times (Mr. Stevenson only misses it about once in twelve), while Mr. Quiller-Couch not only used the wrong word, but weighted it with adjectives. The charge, however, cannot be brought against him to-day, for having begun by writing like a Mr. Haggard not quite sure of himself (if one can imagine such a Mr. Haggard), and changing to an obvious imitation of Mr. Stevenson, he seems now to have made a style for himself. It is clear and careful, but not as yet strong-winged. Its distinctive feature is that it is curiously musical. "Dead Man's Bock" is a capital sensational story to be read and at once forgotten. It was followed by "The Astonishing History of Troy Town," which was humorous, and proved that the author owed a 266 " q." debt to Dickens. But it was not sufficiently humor- ous to be remarkable for its humor, and it will go hand in hand with " Dead Man's Eock " to oblivion. Until "The Splendid Spur" appeared Mr. Quiller- Couch had done little to suggest that an artist had joined the ranks of the story-tellers. It is not in any way a great work, but it was among the best dozen novels of its year, and as the production of a new writer it was one of the most notable. About the same time was published another historical ro- mance of the second class (for to nothing short of Sir Walter shall we give a first-class in this depart- ment), "Micah Clarke," by Mr. Conan Doyle. It was as inevitable that the two books should be com- pared as that he who enjoyed the one should enjoy the other. In one respect " Micah Clarke " is the better story. It contains one character, a soldier of fortune, who is more memorable than any single fig- ure in " The Splendid Spur." This, however, is effected at a cost, for this man is the book. It con- tains, indeed, two young fellows, one of them a John Ridd, but no Diana Vernon would blow a kiss to either. Both stories are weak in pathos, despite Joan, but there are a score of humorous situations in " The Splendid Spur" that one could not forget if he would — which he would not — as, for instance, where hero and heroine are hidden in barrels in a ship, and hero cries through his bunghole, " Wilt marry me, sweetheart ? " to which heroine replies, " Q." 267 " Must get out of this cask first." Better still is the scene in which Captain Billy expatiates, with a mop and a bucket, on the merits of his crew. But the passages are for reading, not for hearing about. Of the characters, this same Captain Billy is not the worst, but perhaps the best is Joan, Mr. Quiller- Couch's first successful picture of a girl. A capital eccentric figure is killed (some good things are squandered in this book) just when we are begin- ning to find him a genuine novelty. Anything that is ready to leap into danger seems to be thought good enough for the hero of a fighting romance, so that Jack Marvel will pass (though Delia, as is right and proper, is worth two of him, despite her coming- on disposition). The villain is a failure, and the plot poor. Nevertheless there are some ingenious complications in it. Jack's escape by means of the hangman's rope, which was to send him out of the world in a few hours, is a fine rollicking bit of sen- sation. Where Mr. Quiller-Couch and Mr. Conan Doyle both fail as compared with the great master of romance is in the introduction of historical fig- ures and episodes. Scott would have been a great man ii he had written no novel but " The Abbot " (one of his second best), and no part of " The Abbot " but the scene in which Mary signs away her crown. Mr. Quiller-Couch almost entirely avoids such attempts, and even Mr. Conan Doyle only dips into them timidly. There is, one has been told, a theory 268 "Q." that the romancist has no right to picture history in this way. But he makes his rights when he does it as Scott did it. Since "The Splendid Spur," Mr. Quiller-Couch has published nothing in book form which can be considered an advance on his best novel, but there have appeared by him a number of short Cornish sketches, which are perhaps best considered as ex- periments. They are perilously slight, and where they are successful one remembers them as sweet dreams or like a bar of music. All aim at this effect, so that many should not be taken at a time, and some (as was to be expected with such delicate work) miss their mark. It might be said that in several of these melodies Mr. Quiller-Couch has been writing the same thing again and again, deter- mined to succeed absolutely, if not this time then the next, and if not the next then the time after. In one case he has succeeded absolutely. " The Small People " is a prose " Song of the Shirt." To my mind this is a rare piece of work, and the biggest thing for its size that has been done in English fiction for some years. These sketches have been called experiments. They show (as his books scarcely show) that Mr. Quiller-Couch can feel. They suggest that he may be able to do for Cornwall what Mr. Hardy has done for Dorset— though the methods of the two writers are as unlike as their counties. But that can only " ©." 269 be if in filling his note-book with these little come- dies and tragedies Mr. Quiller-Couch is preparing for more sustained efforts. 11 Our hope and heart is with thee We will stand and mark." RULES FOR CARVING. Rule I. — It is not good form to climb onto the table. There is no doubt a great temptation to this. When you are struggling with a duck, and he wob- bles over just as you think you have him, you for- get yourself. The common plan is not to leap upon the table all at once. This is the more usual pro- cess : The carver begins to carve sitting. By and by he is on his feet, and his brow is contracted. His face approaches the fowl, as if he wanted to inquire within about everything except that the duck is reluctant to yield any of its portions. One of his feet climbs into his chair, then the other. His knees are now resting against the table, and, in his excitement, he, so to speak, flings himself upon the fowl. This brings us to Rule II — Carving should not be made a matter of brute force. It ought from the outset to be kept in mind that you and the duck are not pitted against each other in mortal combat. Never wrestle with any dish whatever ; in other words, keep your head, and if you find yourself becoming excited, stop and count a hundred. This will calm you, when you can begin again. RULES FOR CARVING. 271 Rule III. — It will not assist you to call the fowl names. This rule is most frequently broken by a gentleman carving for his own family circle. If there are other persons present, he generally man- ages to preserve a comparatively calm exterior, just as the felon on the scaffold does ; but in privacy he breaks out in a storm of invective. If of a sarcastic turn of mind, he says that he has seen many a duck in his day, but never a duck like this. It is double- jointed. It is so tough that it might have come over to England with the Conqueror. Rule IV. — Don't boast ivhen it is all over. You must not call the attention of the company to the fact that you have succeeded. Don't exclaim exult- ingly, " I knew I would manage it," or " I never yet knew a duck that I couldn't conquer somehow." Don't exclaim in a loud gratified voice how you did it, nor demonstrate your way of doing it by point- ing to the debris with the carving knife. Don't even be mock-modest, and tell everybody that carving is the simplest thing in the world. Don't wipe your face repeatedly with your napkin, as if you were in a state of perspiration, nor talk excitedly, as if your success had gone to your head. Don't ask your neighbors what they think of your carving. Your great object is to convince them that you look upon carving as the merest bagatelle, as something that you do every day and rather enjoy. WHAT IS SCOTT'S BEST NOVEL? Mr. Gladstone, I think, pronounces in favor of " Kenilworth." It is a splendid pageant, and per- haps, of all the Waverleys, tells the most touching story, yet none of the characters is of the first order, and Varney makes it a melodrama. We are only told of Leicester's accomplishments. Alasco is not great until he reappears in " Quentin Durward " as Galeotti. Mike Lambourne is good if we can for- get other soldiers of fortune who are better (Dal- getty, of course, heads the list). Wayland is not one man, but several. Raleigh is merely a smart courtier. In this novel, indeed, Scott only rises to his highest for five minutes. Elizabeth all but ac- cepting Leicester's hand, and next moment all but sending him to the Tower, is as immortal as the de- feat of the Armada. Compare with it the chapter in " The Abbot " in which Mary is forced to resign her crown. These are two of the sublime scenes in fic- tion, but we cannot estimate Scott without consider- ing them together. That the man who can give us such a Queen Mary should also have sufficient sym- pathy with her rival to give us such a Queen Eliza- beth, is astonishing. This is what it is to have a WHAT IS SCOTT'S BEST NOVEL? 273 well-balanced mind as well as to be a genius. Per- haps Mary is the finest of all Scott's historical char- acters, though few will call * The Abbot " his best novel. The first third of it is dull and about nothing in particular. Until he gets away from the atmos- phere of " The Monastery " the author seems to have lost the knack. To me " The Abbot " opens with Roland's arrival in Edinburgh, or, if a little before that, with the damsel he met on the way. " Woodr stock " is by no means in the first class, yet it, like " Kenilworth," has its great moment : where Charles consents to fight' the duel. An author's great mo- ments are great moments to his readers also. Sud- denly we know what is coming, and our blood runs quicker, and we are as delighted as if it was we who had done it. No other British novelist produces these effects more than once or twice. Thackeray does it, as has been pointed out often, in the scene where Becky admires Bawdon for knocking Lord Steyne down. He does it again in the last chapter of " Esmond." Many will say that the greatest of the "Waverleys is Scotch. Yet though five out of every six of Scott's best characters are Scotchmen, it does not follow that any one of the Scotch novels is greater than any one of the other novels. " Waverley " itself only becomes a novel by losing its way, so to speak. It starts off with the intention of being little more than a record of travel. The hero, too, is even more 18 274 WHAT IS SCOTT'S BEST NOVEL? of a prig than usual. " Guy Mannering " and " The Antiquary " are probably the two Scotch novels that would receive the largest number of votes from the public. Of these I think the second much the bet- ter, though it has less of the glamour of romance. Dominie Sampson is a caricature with a catchword, as they say on the stage. He has wandered into Scott out of Dickens. Meg Merrilies was a favorite type of character with the author, but she is, to be blunt, something of a bore. She belongs to the footlights. But think of the Edinburgh scenes ! It was impos- sible for Scott to write about Edinburgh without at once becoming inspired. The name was enough. It was charged with romance. It wrought on his spirit like wine. Down he sat, and turned off reams of delight. Nevertheless, though the Edinburgh of * Waverley," " The Abbot," and " The Heart of Mid- lothian " is for reading about at least once a year, it is ill-treating one's self not to turn to the Edinburgh of " Guy Mannering" every six months. But I am not giving up " The Antiquary." It is the best of the Scotch Waverleys. Monkbarns and Edie, and the sis- ter of Monkbarns, and a certain fish-wife, and the post- office of Fairport — where shall we find the like in one book ? Lovel's history and Dousterswivel's schemes are of no account, but no effort is required to forget them. Think of Steenie's death, and it is done. Nearly every year Scottish theatre-managers "put on " a semi-operatic adaptation of " Rob Roy," and WHAT IS SCOTT'S BUST NOVEL? 275 the piece never fails to attract. This is so much the most popular of Scott's novels when deformed into acts, that there may be a public which con- siders " Rob Roy " his masterpiece. Certainly others of his stories would adapt as well, or as ill. But probably it is Rob's personality that takes the hearts of theatre-goers. The book is hardly among the author's six best, though it is better than " The Bride of Lammermoor," which is second favorite with the playwrights. There are two figures in " Old Mortality " quite good enough to be in " The Antiquary," Mause Headrigg and Cuddie. I would not complain if told that Mause was one mark better than even Edie Ochiltree. But, like " The Heart of Midlothian," the story suffers by its long-drawn- out ending. u The Heart of Midlothian " has one claim for first place. It contains Scott's only heroine — if by heroine we mean the young woman who is loved by the nominal hero. " The Fair Maid of Perth," again, contains Scott's only interesting hero. Jeanie Deans and Hal o ■ the Wynd are of lower social rank than any others of Scott's heroines and heroes. They are almost the only ones who do not speak of their ancestors. As a recompense, they are human. To Scott it is usually enough if his hero is a pretty fighter, of a daring temper, or a melancholy cast of countenance. He seems to fear getting upon intimate terms with these heroes. Or perhaps he had a notion that high-spirited young 276 WHAT IS SCOTT'S BEST NOVEL* gentlemen are much alike. His heroines are beau- tiful, and what more can a hero want 1 But Jeanie and Hal are treated with humor, and we know them as a consequence as well as if they were only people whom the hero and heroine had met on the road. Obviously, then, not even Scott's greatest novel is perfect. Each of the dozen chief ones has its out- standing merits, and fails where some other is strongest. If there is an exception it is "The Legend of Montrose." It is only a sketch, perhaps, but what would one like to see out of it ? " Ivanhoe " is best. It contains characters nearly as good as Monkbarns and the rest, the story is nearly as interesting as "Kenil worth." Together these are the most brilliant historical novels ever written. Eichard is nearly as good as Queen Mary. But Ivanhoe stands apart. On the whole it is the most delightful thing in English fiction. Who would dare to draw a tournament after that one of Scott's ? He has stopped the attempt as thoroughly as by act of Parliament. And even as tournaments are his, so are Kobin Hood and his merry men. As if the Saxons and Isaac of York and Eichard and the siege of Torquilstone were not enough, he has flung in Eebecca and the Templar, to show that he is not " subjective " merely because to be u ob- jective " is better. Scott's greatest day was when he decided to finish " Waverley." Next comes the day when he sat down to write " Ivanhoe." MY FAVORITE AUTHORESS. Just out of the four-mile radius — to give the cabby his chance — is a sleepy lane, lent by the country to the town, and we have only to open a little gate off it to find ourselves in an old-fashioned garden. The house, with its many quaint windows, across which evergreens spread their open fingers as a child makes believe to shroud his eyes, has a literary look — at least, so it seems to me, but per- haps this is because I know the authoress who is at this moment advancing down the walk to meet me. She has hastily laid aside her hoop, and crosses the grass with the dignity that becomes a woman of letters. Her hair falls over her forehead in an at- tractive way, and she is just the proper height for an authoress. The face, so open that one can watch the process of thinking out a new novel in it, from start to finish, is at times a little careworn,' as if it found the world weighty, but at present there is a gracious smile on it, and she greets me heartily with one hand, while the other strays to her neck, to make sure that her lace collar is lying nicely. It would be idle to pretend that she is much more than eight years old, " but then Maurice is only six." 278 MY FAVORITE AUTHORESS. Like most literary people who put their friends into books, she is very modest, and it never seems to strike her that I would come all this way to see her. "Mamma is out," she says simply, "but she will be back soon ; and papa is at a meeting, but he will be back soon, too." I know what meeting her papa is at. He is crazed with admiration for Stanley, and can speak of noth- ing but the Emin Relief Expedition. While he is away proposing that Stanley should get the free- dom of Hampstead, now is my opportunity to inter- view the authoress. " Won't you come into the house ? " I accompany the authoress to the house, while we chat pleasantly on literary topics. " Oh, there is Maurice, silly boy ! " Maurice is too busy shooting arrows into the next garden to pay much attention to me ; and the authoress smiles at him good-naturedly. "I hope you'll stay to dinner," he says to me, "because then we'll have two kinds of pudding." The authoress and I give each other a look which means that children will be children, and then we go indoors. " Are you not going to play any more ? " cries Maurice to the authoress. She blushes a little. "I was playing with him," she explains, " to keep him out of mischief till mamma comes back." MY FAVORITE AUTHORESS. 279 In the drawing-room we talk for a time of ordi- nary matters — of the allowances one must make for a child like Maurice, for instance — and gradually we drift to the subject of literature. I know literary people sufficiently well to be aware that they will talk freely — almost too freely — of their work if ap- proached in the proper spirit. " Are you busy just now ? " I ask, with assumed carelessness, and as if I had not been preparing the question since I heard papa was out. She looks at me, suspiciously, as authors usually do when asked such a question. They are not cer- tain whether you are really sympathetic. However, she reads honesty in my eyes. " Oh, well, I am doing a little thing." (They al- ways say this.) " A story or an article ? " "A story." " I hope it will be good." " I don't know. I don't like it much." (This is another thing they say, and then they wait for you to express incredulity.) " I have no doubt it will be a fine thing. Have you given it a name ? " " Oh, yes ; I always write the name. Sometimes I don't write any more." As she was in a confidential mood this seemed an excellent chance for getting her views on some of the vexed literary questions of the day. For in- 280 MY FA VOBITE A UTHORESS. stance, everybody seems to be more interested in hearing during what hours of the day an author writes than in reading his book. " Do you work best in the early part of the day or at night?" " I write my stories just before tea." " That surprises me. Most writers, I have been told, get through a good deal of work in the morn- ing." " Oh, but I go to school as soon as breakfast is over." " And you don't write at night ? " " No ; nurse always turns the gas down." I had read somewhere that among the novelist's greatest difficulties is that of sustaining his own in- terest in a novel day by day until it is finished. " Until your new work is completed do you fling your whole heart and soul into it ? I mean, do you work straight on at it, so to speak, until you have finished the last chapter ? " " Oh, yes." The novelists were lately reproved in a review for working too quickly, and it was said that one wrote a whole novel in two months. " How long does it take you to write a novel ? " " Do you mean a long novel ? " " Yes." " It takes me nearly an hour." " For a really long novel 1 " MY FAVORITE AUTHORESS. 2S1 " Yes, in three volumes. I write in three exercise- books — a volume in each." " You write very quickly." " Gf course, a volume doesn't fill a whole exercise- book. They are penny exercise-books. I have a great many three-volume stories in the three exer- cise-books." " But are they really three-volume novels ? " " Yes, for they are in chapters, and one of thorn has twenty chapters." " And how many chapters are there in a page ? " " Not very many." Some authors admit that they take their charac- ters from real life, while others declare that they draw entirely upon their imagination. "Do you put real people into your novels ? " "Yes, Maurice and other people, but generally Maurice." " I have heard that some people are angry with authors for putting them into books." " Sometimes Maurice is angry, but I can't always make him an engine-driver, can I ? " " No. I think it is quite unreasonable on his part to expect it. I suppose he likes to be made an en- gine-driver'?" "■He is to be an engine-driver when he grows up, he says. He is a silly boy, but I love him." "What else do you make him in your books ? " " To-day I made him like Stanley, because I think 282 MY FAVORITE AUTHORESS. that is what papa would like him to be ; and yester- day he was papa, and I was his coachman." " He would like that ? " " No, he wanted me to be papa and him the coach- man. Sometimes I make him a pirate, and he likes that, and once I made him a girl." " He would be proud ? " "That was the day he hit me. He is awfully angry if I make him a girl, silly boy. Of course he doesn't understand." " Obviously not. But did you not punish him for being so cruel as to hit you ? " " Yes, I turned him into a cat, but he said he would rather be a cat than a girl. You see he's not much more than a baby — though I was writing books at his age." "Were you ever charged with plagiarism? I mean with copying your books out ot other people's books." " Yes, often." Si I suppose that is the fate of all authors. I am told that literary people write best in an old coat " " Oh, I like to be nicely dressed when I am writ- ing. Here is papa, and I do believe he has another portrait of Stanley in his hand. Mamma will be so annoyed." Marie Corellts Works. " An author exhibiting rare skill as a fascinating and highly instructive writer on the profoundest themes which can engage human attention." A POWERFUL PSYCHOLOGICAL ROMANCE. THE SOUL OF LILITH. By MARIE CORELLI, author of " Ardath," " Wormwood," etc. 1 2 mo, cloth, gilt, $1.25. •' A novel of high purpose and artistic execution, chaste and elevating in tone." —New York World. "The best mystical story that has appeared since the days of Bulwer's * Zanoni.' " — Philadelphia Public Ledger. " Original in essence, radical in suggestion, startling in development. * The^oul of Lilith' is not a book to hurry through and dismiss. It deserves and demands thought and repays it. There must be many who are waiting for such a vindication of the ways of God to men, and to those the book will bring a strength and comfort that no words can express."— Boston Times. WORMWOOD. By MARIE CORELLI, author of ■" A Romance of Two Worlds," "Ardath," etc. i2mo, cloth, gilt, $1.00. ** A strange and fascinating book." — New York World. ** The work thrills with the intellectual energy of a brilliant woman." — Detroit Tribune. " This strong romance is an extremely realistic study of the horrible demorali- zation caused by the absinthe habit. Miss Corelli has handled her terrible theme with true vigor and efficiency, together with artistic reserve and moderation. In * Wormwood ' Miss Corelli has scored a real success, employing to a worthy end an art in the line of the most popular French writers." — Boston Literary World. THELMA. A Norwegian Princess. By MARIE CORELLI, author of "A Romance of Two Worlds," "Wormwood," etc. i2mo, cloth, gilt, $1.00; paper, 50 cents. " 'Thelma' is a beautiful creation, and the portion of the romance which deals with Norwegian life is full of charm and interest." — Charleston News and Courier. "One of the strongest stories that has appeared this season. It is laid in Norway and the field in itself adds interest to the story, but outside from this, it is delightfully written and is altogether a charming tale. ' — Minneapolis Commercial Bulletin. M A novel that should be read when appreciation needs no spur, for it is one that will engage the reader's best attention. The characters have been carefully studied and are pictured with equal care and an effect of reality." — Boston Times. Lovell, Coryell & Company, Publishers, New York. Marie Corellfs Works. VENDETTA, AND MY WONDERFUL WIFE. By MARIE CORELLI, author of "The Soul of Lilith," " Wormwood, " etc. i2mo, cloth, gilt, $1.00 ; paper, 50 cents. In all of Marie Corelli's writings there is a vein of weird mysticism which sug- gests the fascination which the snake is said to exercise over a bird. This is particularly true of " Vendetta." The reader is unconsciously drawn on from page to page by an absorbing interest which is so intense that an interruption is almost like an awakening from the dreams of sleep. A ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS. By MARIE CORELLI, author of M Wormwood, " "The Soul of Lilith, " etc. i2mo, cloth, gilt, $1.00 ; paper, 50 cents. " A Romance of Two Worlds " by Marie Corelli has been one of the most suc- cessful novels published in America during the last five years The field of occultism is invaded by this most delightful author and it is with difficulty that one prevents the belief that actual experiences are being related. It would seem from the text that there are those who have received the gift of peering into the mysteries of the future and depicting its events as graphically as does the historian the events of the past. ARDATH. By MARIE CORELLI, author of "The Soul of Lilith," "Wormwood," etc. i2mo, cloth, gilt, $1.00; paper, 50 cents. One of the most popular of the works of Marie Corelli is " Ardath," a new and pleasing edition of which is now ready. It seems almost incredible that an author of such comparative youth should have written so many works of such universally high order. COMPLETE WORKS OF MARIE CORELLI. In sets, i2mo, cloth, 6 vols., $6.00. Same, half calf, $12.00. H \*For sale by all booksellers, or sent, post-paid, on receipt of price, by tht Publishers. % m m Send for complete catalogue of new and standard publications, Lovell, Coryell & Company, PUBLISHERS, 43, 45 and 47 East Tenth Street, NEW YORK. The Works of J. M. Barrie, 44 Gbe SMcfcens of Scotland" WHEN A MAN'S SINGLE. By J. M. Barrie. l2mo, cloth, gilt top, #1.00; paper, 50 cents. " A remarkably interesting novel because of its vivid character-drawing and the skill with which a scene is brought before the eye by a few sharp touches." — Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. 14 A budget of quaint conceits, witty epigrams, and Barrie's own peculiar humor." — New York World. M The language in v When a Man's Single ' is undefiled by one extravagance or indifference, and his delicious sketches of English newspaper routine are brimful of life-like color and rich humor." — Chicago News. AN EDINBURGH ELEVEN. Pencil Portraits from College Life. By J. M. Barrie. 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00. A series of delightful character sketches, in the reminiscent vein, of university professors identified with Barrie's college life. All the charming characteristics of the author are present in this volume without the stumbling block of the Scottish dialect. BETTER DEAD, and MY LADY NICOTINE. By J. M. Barrie. l2mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.00. The same delicacy of touch, the same multiplicity of ideas, presented in short, pregnant sentences, clear cut and telling to a marked degree, is conspicuous in Barrie's first work as well as in his last. •' Better Dead," a strong character sketch, gives evidence of this, and from those who read the story, it will call forth another vote of praise for the author of "'The Little Minister." " My Lady Nicotine " is a veritable " study in smoke," and will therefore appeal the more strongly to those who are lovers of the weed. Yet in no sense are these delightful essays for one class only, for no one can fail to appreciate their delicate humor and fine character sketching, as well as their unmistakable literary value. H BARRIE'S COMPLETE WORKS. In a neat box, 6 vols., beveled cloth, gilt top, #6.25 ; half calf, #12.00. For sale by all booksellers, or sent, upon receipt of price, by the publishers* Send for complete catalogue of standard works and recent issues* Lovell, Coryell & Company, Publishers, New York. The Works of J. M. Barrie, "Zbe Dickens of Scotland." " Mr. Barrie is dowered with a photographic power of reproducing what he sees, a humor which plays gently around whatever topic it touches, and a style distinctive in the possession of certain qualities as irresistible as they are delightful." — Philadelphia Press. " His humor is as fresh as his pathos, and his knowledge of the subtle complexi- ties of Scotch character go far beyond that of his predecessors." —BqsAqv, Literary World* THE LITTLE MINISTER. By J. M. Barrie. New edition, with full-page illustrations. 12mo, cloth, gilt, $1.25 ; paper, 50 cents. " ' The Little Minister ! is a great novel." — New York Press. " The story is sweet and human from the first word to the last." — SI. Paul Globe. "A work of front-rank importance."— Philadelphia Press. " ' The Little Minister ' is a masterpiece. There is not a mistake in it. Every character is perfectly natural, not a word nor an action is artificial." — Kansas City Star. M An uncommonly strong novel, full of the most effective con- trasts and tb>e most piquant scenes of Scotch life." — New York Tribune. A LITERARY MARVEL. A WINDOW IN THRUMS. By J. M. Barrie. l2mo, cloth, gilt top, #1.00; paper, 50 cents. M A work which will long retain many admirers, for its cleverness, delightful character-drawing, and freshness are more than fleeting."— Boston Times. " The simplicity which marks ■ A Window in Thrums ' is delightful. The quaint Scotch dialect adds to its pathos and dignity, and it is full of homely wit and sym- pathy in its simple annals.*— Boston Globe. AULD LICHT IDYLLS. By J. M. Barrie. i2mo, cloth, gilt top, #1.00; paper, 50 cents. '• A charming collection of studies of Scotch peasant character written in a delightful manner. There is uncommon power in the delineation of character, and the pathos and humor of the book are in Barrie's best vein. In brief, these studies are of exceptional merit ; remarkable for their vivid word picturing and fidelity to nature." — Providence Journal. Lovell, Coryell & Company, Publishers, New York.