THE BED-BOOK OF HAPPINESS (continued 6)

Pretty soon after this a long, cadaverous creature, with lanky locks hanging down to his shoulders, and a week's stubble bristling from the hills and valleys of his face, darted within the door, and halted motionless with finger on lip, and head and body bent in listening attitude. No sound was heard. Still he listened. No sound. Then he turned the key in the door, and came elaborately tip-toeing toward me till he was within long reaching distance of me, when he stopped, and, after scanning my face with intense interest for a while, drew a folded copy of our paper from his bosom, and said:

"There, you wrote that. Read it to me—quick! Relieve me. I suffer."

I read as follows: and, as the sentences fell from my lips, I could see the relief come, I could see the drawn muscles relax, and the anxiety go out of the face, and rest and peace steal over the features like the merciful moonlight over a desolate landscape:

"The guano is a fine bird, but great care is necessary in rearing it. It should not be imported earlier than June or later than September. In the winter it should be kept in a warm place, where it can hatch out its young.

"It is evident that we are to have a backward season for grain. Therefore it will be well for the farmer to begin setting out his corn-stalks and planting his buckwheat cakes in July instead of August.

"Concerning the Pumpkin.—This berry is a favourite with the natives of the interior of New England, who prefer it to the gooseberry for the making of fruit-cake, and who likewise give it the preference over the raspberry for feeding cows, as being more filling and fully as satisfying. The pumpkin is the only esculent of the orange family that will thrive in the North, except the gourd and one or two varieties of the squash. But the custom of planting it in the front yard with the shrubbery is fast going out of vogue, for it is now generally conceded that the pumpkin as a shade tree is a failure.

"Now, as the warm weather approaches, and the ganders begin to spawn—"

The excited listener sprang toward me to shake hands, and said:

"There, there—that will do. I know I am all right now, because you have read it just as I did, word for word. But, stranger, when I first read it this morning, I said to myself, I never, never believed it before, notwithstanding my friends kept me under watch so strict, but now I believe I am crazy; and with that I fetched a howl that you might have heard two miles, and started out to kill somebody—because, you know, I knew it would come to that sooner or later, and so I might as well begin. I read one of them paragraphs over again, so as to be certain, and then I burned my house down and started. I have crippled several people, and have got one fellow up a tree, where I can get him if I want him. But I thought I would call in here as I passed along, and make the thing perfectly certain; and now it is certain, and I tell you it is lucky for the chap that is in the tree. I should have killed him, sure, as I went back. Good-bye, sir, good-bye; you have taken a great load off my mind. My reason has stood the strain of one of your agricultural articles, and I know that nothing can ever unseat it now. Good-bye."

I felt a little uncomfortable about the cripplings and arsons this person had been entertaining himself with, for I could not help feeling remotely accessory to them. But these thoughts were quickly banished, for the regular editor walked in! (I thought to myself, Now if you had gone to Egypt, as I recommended you to, I might have had a chance to get my hand in; but you wouldn't do it, and here you are. I sort of expected you.)

The editor was looking sad and perplexed and dejected.

He surveyed the wreck which that old rioter and those two young farmers had made, and then said: "This is a sad business—a very sad business. There is the mucilage bottle broken, and six panes of glass, and a spittoon and two candlesticks. But that is not the worst. The reputation of the paper is injured—and permanently, I fear. True, there never was such a call for the paper before, and it never sold such a large edition or soared to such celebrity;—but does one want to be famous for lunacy, and prosper upon the infirmities of his mind? My friend, as I am an honest man, the street out here is full of people, and others are roosting on the fences, waiting to get a glimpse of you, because they think you are crazy. And well they might, after reading your editorials. They are a disgrace to journalism. Why, what put it into your head that you could edit a paper of this nature? You do not seem to know the first rudiments of agriculture. You speak of a furrow and a harrow as being the same thing; you talk of the moulting season for cows; and you recommend the domestication of the polecat on account of its playfulness and its excellence as a ratter! Your remark that clams will lie quiet if music be played to them was superfluous—entirely superfluous. Nothing disturbs clams. Clams always lie quiet. Clams care nothing whatever about music. Ah, heaven and earth, friend! if you had made the acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have graduated with higher honour than you could to-day. I never saw anything like it. Your observation that the horse-chestnut as an article of commerce is steadily gaining in favour is simply calculated to destroy this journal. I want you to throw up your situation and go. I want no more holiday—I could not enjoy it if I had it. Certainly not with you in my chair. I would always stand in dread of what you might be going to recommend next. It makes me lose all patience every time I think of your discussing oyster-beds under the head of 'Landscape Gardening.' I want you to go. Nothing on earth could persuade me to take another holiday. Oh! why didn't you tell me you didn't know anything about agriculture?"

"Tell you, you cornstalk, you cabbage, you son of a cauliflower? It's the first time I ever heard such an unfeeling remark. I tell you I have been in the editorial business going on fourteen years, and it is the first time I ever heard of a man's having to know anything in order to edit a newspaper. You turnip! Who write the dramatic critiques for the second-rate papers? Why, a parcel of promoted shoemakers and apprentice apothecaries, who know just as much about good acting as I do about good farming, and no more. Who review the books? People who never wrote one. Who do up the heavy leaders on finance? Parties who have had the largest opportunities for knowing nothing about it. Who criticise the Indian campaigns? Gentlemen who do not know a war-whoop from a wigwam, and who never have had to run a footrace with a tomahawk, or pluck arrows out of the several members of their families to build the evening camp-fire with. Who write the temperance appeals, and clamour about the flowing bowl? Folks who will never draw another sober breath till they do it in the grave. Who edit the agricultural papers, you—yam? Men, as a general thing, who fail in the poetry line, yellow-coloured novel line, sensation-drama line, city-editor line, and finally fall back on agriculture as a temporary reprieve from the poorhouse. You try to tell me anything about the newspaper business! Sir, I have been through it from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands. Heaven knows if I had but been ignorant instead of cultivated, and impudent instead of diffident, I could have made a name for myself in this cold, selfish world. I take my leave, sir. Since I have been treated as you have treated me, I am perfectly willing to go. But I have done my duty. I have fulfilled my contract as far as I was permitted to do it…. I said I could run your circulation up to twenty thousand copies, and if I had had two more weeks I'd have done it. And I'd have given you the best class of readers that ever an agricultural paper had—not a farmer in it, nor a solitary individual who could tell a water-melon tree from a peach-vine to save his life. You are the loser by this rupture, not me, Pie-plant. Adios."

I then left.

A TUR'BLE CHAP [Sidenote: Anon.]

If all t' kisses as Oi ha' tuke Wuz zet down vair an' square inter buke, Lard! Lard! 'twud make t' greaät volk say: "What a tur'ble chap is ole Joe Gay!" Vor it du zet ma brain a-swimmin' Tu think o' all t' hundered wimmin As Oi ha' bussed 'hind hedge an' door Zince vust Oi cuddled dree or vour. Polly Potter, Trixie Trotter, Gertie Gillard, Zairy Zlee, Zusan Zettle, Connie Kettle, Daisy Doble, La'ra Lee, Hesther Holley, Jinny Jolly, Nelly Northam, Vanny Vail, Ivery maid in Coompton Regis—dang it, whoy, Oi've bussed 'em all!

When Oi vust went to Zunday skule, Passen's darter, on greaät high stule, Taakes me oop on 'ur lady knee, An' kissed ov Oi, zo Oi kissed ov she! An', arter skule, zure-ly, Oi vollers T' little blushin' vemale scholars All round t' orchards, an' under stacks, Oi bussed t' lot, an' yew can ax— Polly Potter, Trixie Trotter, Gertie Gillard, Zairy Zlee, Zusan Zettle, Connie Kettle, Daisy Doble, La'ra Lee, Hesther Holley, Jinny Jolly, Nelly Northam, Vanny Vall, Ivery gal in Coompton Regis—ax the lot, Oi've kissed 'em all!

Thur's not a lane vur moiles around But hassen heerd ma kisses zound, Nor dru t' parish will 'ee vind A door Oi hanna kissed behind; An' now, wid crutch, an' back bent double, T' rheumatiz doän't gie naw trouble, Vor all t' ould grannies handy-boi Iz mazed, vair mazed, on cuddlin' Oi! Pore-house Potter, toothless Trotter, gouty Gillard, splea-foot Zlee, Zilly Zettle, cock-eyed Kettle, deaf ould Doble, limpin' Lee, Husky Holley, jaundy Jolly, Nanny Northam, vractious Vall, All t' ould gals in Coompton Regis, bless their hearts, Oi love 'em all!

MR. BROOKFIELD IN HIS YOUTH [Sidenote: W.H. Brookfield]

My Dear Venables,

Notwithstanding the proverbial irregularity of the English mails and the infamous practice of Government in embezzling all private letters for the King's private reading, yours of the 17th eluded observation at the post office so as to reach me; and was as acceptable as, considering the wearisome frequency of your communications lately, could possibly be expected.

My last was a scrawl from Althorp—where we spent six weeks. That there are 60,000 volumes you know. I read them all, excepting a pamphlet in a patois of the Sanscrit, written by a learned, but, I regret to add, profane Hindoo Sectarian, the blasphemous drift of which was to prove that Bramah's locks were not all patent.

We went to town to the fiddling[9] which it was the pill[10] of the day to cry down. I was much gratified by the show and altogether. I sate by the Duke of Wellington, who was good enough to go out to fetch me a pot of porter. When "See the Conquering Hero comes" was sung in Judas Maccabeus, all eyes were turned upon me. I rose and bowed—but did not think the place was suited for any more marked acknowledgment. The King sang the Coronation Anthem exceedingly well, and Princess Victoria whistled the "Dead March" in Saul with, perhaps, rather less than her usual effect. But the chef d'oeuvre was confessed by all to be Macaulay in "The Praise of God and of the Second Day." I rose a wiser, and, I think, a sadder man.

Bishop of Worcester spent two days here last week. He begged me with tears in his eyes to be Bishop instead of him. I took a night to consider of it and to examine into my fitness for such a charge—but in the morning gave answer with the elaborateness which the occasion demanded that I would see him … first.

THE AUTHOR OF "ALICE" [Sidenote: Lewis Carroll]

DEAR SENIOR CENSOR,—In a desultory conversation on a point connected with the dinner at our high table, you incidentally remarked to me that lobster-sauce, "though a necessary adjunct to turbot, was not entirely wholesome."

It is entirely unwholesome. I never ask for it without reluctance; I never take a second spoonful without a feeling of apprehension on the subject of a possible nightmare. This naturally brings me to the subject of Mathematics, and of the accommodation provided by the University for carrying on the calculations necessary in that important branch of Science.

As Members of Convocation are called upon (whether personally, or, as is less exasperating, by letter) to consider the offer of the Clarendon Trustees, as well as every other subject of human or inhuman, interest, capable of consideration, it has occurred to me to suggest for your consideration how desirable roofed buildings are for carrying on mathematical calculations; in fact, the variable character of the weather in Oxford renders it highly inexpedient to attempt much occupation, of a sedentary nature, in the open air.

Again, it is often impossible for students to carry on accurate mathematical calculations in close contiguity to one another, owing to their mutual conversation; consequently these processes require different rooms in which irrepressible conversationalists, who are found to occur in every branch of Society, might be carefully and permanently fixed.

It may be sufficient, for the present, to enumerate the following requisites—others might be added as funds permit:

A. A very large room for calculating Greatest Common Measure. To this a small one might be attached for Least Common Multiple: this, however, might be dispensed with.

B. A piece of open ground for keeping Roots and practising their extraction: it would be advisable to keep Square Roots by themselves, as their corners are apt to damage others.

C. A room for reducing Fractions to their Lowest Terms. This should be provided with a cellar for keeping the Lowest Terms when found, which might also be available to the general body of Undergraduates, for the purpose of "keeping Terms."

D. A large room which might be darkened, and fitted up with a magic-lantern, for the purpose of exhibiting circulating Decimals in the act of circulation. This might also contain cupboards, fitted with glass doors, for keeping the various Scales of Notation.

E. A narrow strip of ground, railed off and carefully levelled for investigating the properties of Asymptotes, and testing practically whether Parallel Lines meet or not: for this purpose it should reach, to use the expressive language of Euclid, "ever so far."

This last process of "continually producing the lines," may require centuries or more; but such a period, though long in the life of an individual, is as nothing in the life of the University.

As Photography is now very much employed in recording human expression, and might possibly be adapted to Algebraical Expressions, a small photographic room would be desirable, both for general use and for representing the various phenomena of Gravity, Disturbance of Equilibrium, Resolution, etc., which affect the features during severe mathematical operations.

May I trust that you will give your immediate attention to this most important subject?

Believe me, Sincerely yours, MATHEMATICUS….

[Sidenote: Miss E.G. Thomson]

It was at the end of December, 1878, that a letter, written in a singularly legible and rather boyish-looking hand, came to me from Christ Church, Oxford, signed "C.L. Dodgson." The writer said that he had come across some fairy designs of mine, and he should like to see some more of my work. By the same post came a letter from my London publisher (who had supplied my address) telling me that the "Rev. C.L. Dodgson" was "Lewis Carroll."

"Alice in Wonderland" had long been one of my pet books, and, as one regards a favourite author as almost a personal friend, I felt less restraint than one usually feels in writing to a stranger, though I carefully concealed my knowledge of his identity, as he had not chosen to reveal it.

This was the beginning of a frequent and delightful correspondence, and, as I confessed to a great love for fairy lore of every description, he asked me if I would accept a child's fairytale book he had written, called "Alice in Wonderland." I replied that I knew it nearly all off by heart, but that I should greatly prize a copy given to me by himself. By return came "Alice," and "Through the Looking-glass," bound most luxuriously in white calf and gold. And this is the grateful and kindly note that came with them: "I am now sending you 'Alice,' and the 'Looking-glass' as well. There is an incompleteness about giving only one, and besides, the one you bought was probably in red, and would not match these. If you are at all in doubt as to what to do with the (now) superfluous copy, let me suggest your giving it to some poor sick child. I have been distributing copies to all the hospitals and convalescent homes I can hear of, where there are sick children capable of reading them, and though, of course, one takes some pleasure in the popularity of the books elsewhere, it is not nearly so pleasant a thought to me as that they may be a comfort and relief to children in hours of pain and weariness. Still, no recipient can be more appropriate than one who seems to have been in fairyland herself, and to have seen, like the 'weary mariners' of old—

"Between the green brink and the running foam White limbs unrobèd to a crystal air, Sweet faces, rounded arms, and bosoms prest To little harps of gold."

"Do you ever come to London?" he asked in another letter; "if so, will you allow me to call upon you?"

Early in the summer I came up to study, and I sent him word that I was in town. One night, coming into my room after a long day spent at the British Museum, in the half-light I saw a card lying on the table: "Rev. C.L. Dodgson." Bitter, indeed, was my disappointment at having missed him, but, just as I was laying it sadly down, I spied a small T.O. in the corner. On the back I read that he couldn't get up to my rooms early or late enough to find me, so would I arrange to meet him at some museum or gallery the day but one following? I fixed the South Kensington Museum, by the "Schliemann" collection, at twelve o'clock.

A little before twelve I was at the rendezvous, and then the humour of the situation suddenly struck me, that I had not the ghost of an idea what he was like, nor would he have any better chance of discovering me! The room was fairly full of all sorts and conditions, as usual, and I glanced at each masculine figure in turn, only to reject it as a possibility of the one I sought. Just as the big clock had clanged out twelve, I heard the high, vivacious voices and laughter of children sounding down the corridor.

At that moment a gentleman entered, two little girls clinging to his hands, and, as I caught sight of the tall, slim figure, with the cleanshaven, delicate, refined face, I said to myself, "That's Lewis Carroll." He stood for a moment, head erect, glancing swiftly over the room, then, bending down, whispered something to one of the children; she, after a moment's pause, pointed straight at me.

Dropping their hands, he came forward, and, with that winning smile of his that utterly banished the oppressive sense of the Oxford don, said simply, "I am Mr. Dodgson; I was to meet you, I think?" To which I as frankly smiled, and said, "How did you know me so soon?"

"My little friend found you. I told her I had come to meet a young lady who knew fairies, and she fixed on you at once. But I knew you before she spoke."

The Gentleman, January 29, 1898.

AFTER MR. MASEFIELD [Sidenote: Anon.]

From '41 to '51 I was an almost model son.

From '51 to '62 I wished to, but I didn't do.

From '62 to '67 I took the shortest cut to heaven.

From '67 to '79 I only drank one glass of wine.

From '79 to '84 I felt that I could do with more.

From '84 to '96 I found how hard it is to mix.

From '96 to Nineteen-odd Quod:

MISS STIPP OF PLOVER'S COURT [Sidenote: H.B.]

In a neighbourhood of narrow streets and tunnelling alleys, where there are few lamps and the policemen go two and two, where all day long you see fierce-eyed women hooded with shawls coming out of greasy street-doors with jugs in their hands, and where all day long sullen men stand at the dark entry to court and alley with pipes in their mouths and their hands in their pockets, and where the little children "awfully reverse our Saviour's words, and are not of the Kingdom of Heaven, but of the Kingdom of Hell"—in this dark, dangerous riverside neighbourhood, with its foul odours and its filthy gutters, lives one of the most defenceless women who ever came into human existence.

I knock at a door in Plover's Court, and a half-dressed, half-starved, and wholly dirty child, with no boots to her feet, opens to me; and when this miserable heir of the ages, after she has stared at me like a famished animal, learns that I wish to see Miss Stipp, she bids me "go up." The narrow passage is hung with two lines of washing; and, pushing through the avenue formed by these dank garments, I catch sight in the stone-paved kitchen beyond of a big-headed, whitewashed-looking infant sprawling on the floor collecting soap-suds, and a woman in the midst of voluminous steam working her arms about in a dripping wash tub.

The stairs up which I make my difficult way are strung with washing as far as the first bend. The dampness of the atmosphere has converted the dust and grime on banisters, wall, and stairs into a muddy dew. The little doll's-house of a place reeks with the suffocating odour of gas, fried fish, onions, and steam. In one of the two rooms on the first floor, the door of which stands open, I see—and myself am seen, not to say scowled at, by a couple of pipe-smoking navvies, three or four ragged children, and a little rabbit of a flat-chested woman whose complexion and the colour of her garments bear a striking resemblance to moleskin, and whose thin hair is twisted up in front and held comfortably in its place by a single steel curling-pin which seems to occupy the whole breadth of her forehead.

My rap on the panel of the other door is soon answered by a shrill, cracked voice like the sputtering of a cheap phonograph, and opening the flimsy door I find myself in a tiny topsy-turvy chamber, with all its furniture dragged out of place, a pail of water in the centre of the floor, a piece of scrubbing-soap on the table, and an unwrung house-flannel soaking on the seat of a wooden chair. There is a nice, old-fashioned, round-fronted chest-of-drawers with brass handles in the room, but the most striking detail of its equipment is a stumpy and amazingly abrupt bedstead against the wall, which is just big enough for a big doll. The bedclothes of this eerie little cot are thrown back, and in the centre of the rumpled mattress, in the hollow made by my heroine's recumbent form, curled up in a sublime indifference to the puffing and blowing of its mistress on the hearth, lies a shabby, emaciated, and disgusting cat.

At first I suppose Miss Stipp—Miss Emma Jane Stipp—who is polishing the grate, to be kneeling on the hearthstone; but when a bird-like claw is stretched out to me, and the shrill, cracked voice says, "I'm dirty, but hearty; sit down and enjoy yourself," I observe that the little dwarf is actually standing on the hearthstone, although her big head does not come within several inches of the mantelpiece. Indeed, with her twisted feet crossed over one another, so that the left foot appears to be kicking and worrying the right foot, in order to take its place, and the right foot, which turns upward, appears to be trying to creep away from its enemy, as though it wanted to crawl up that enemy's leg to laugh at it from the mocking vantage of its own knee—the little old lady walks up and down on the hearthstone, her hand blacking and polishing the grate as she goes, just as you may see another lady walking up and down and taking the air on her doorstep.

* * * * *

The little dwarf is familiar to hundreds of Londoners. Always nursing the wall, and using a miniature crooked stick exactly like a question-mark, she hobbles through the streets like a half-human beetle, until she reaches some such place as the approach to a railway station, where she finds it profitable to stand as though in great pain, rolling sheep's eyes at the hurrying crowd. And many of those tenderhearted gentlemen and kind old ladies, and dear little overdressed children returning from a visit to Old Drury or the Tower of London, who have slipped a penny or a sixpenny-bit into the claw of the dwarf, must often have asked themselves at the time what manner of woman she is, and bothered themselves to imagine how on earth she lives. The old creature—for she is over seventy—is counted in statistics among the proud population of this Seat of Empire, and she is as much subject to the cosmic laws and as much a member of the human family as the tallest and most swaggering Lifeguards-man who ever had "Cook's Son!" shouted at him by irreverent urchin.

How she views the universe from her altitude of a yard, or a yard and three inches; what her attitude is to God and man, and how life goes with the old veteran after seventy odd years of its buffeting—these were some of the mysteries which I brought with me into her back room by the riverside for their unveiling by Miss Emma Stipp herself.

* * * * *

"I'm late this mornin', I am," she says, in her shrill fashion, standing right against the fire like a demon that no flame can consume, and vigorously rubbing at the grate with her black-lead brush. "The cause is 'im," she continues, turning to point the brush at the cat sleeping on her bed, after she has rubbed the red tip of her long nose with a portion of her knuckles and a portion of the brush. "Oh, he's a villain, a dreadful villain he is," she cries, with exasperation, returning to her work; "he worries my life out, he do, the 'orrid varmint. Last night he didn't come home, he didn't. I set up for him, but he didn't come. 'Oh,' I says, 'if you're keepin' low company again,' I says, 'you can stop out all night,' I says, 'for I'll sit up for you no longer; so there, my ugly beauty.' And then in the middle of the night I wake up, I do, feeling that cold, and sneezin' and snuffin', and irritatin' I was from top to toe; and blest if Master Tom hadn't got upon the window-sill, bust open that there piece of brown paper I had pasted over the broken pane, I had, and let hisself in Yankee-doodle fashion, and left me to perish with the cold."

Her lined and wrinkled face, when she turns it to us, is not without the vestiges of attraction. The head, with its grey hair parted down the centre, is well-shaped; the forlorn-looking eyes are a pale-blue, like faded forget-me-nots; the thin, flexible nose, which is always moist, and the long, firm chin incline towards the formation known as the nut-cracker. But for her abbreviated trunk, and those few pathetic inches of twisted leg—chiefly feet—she might have passed for a matronly-looking and rather handsome old harridan, half Scotch and half Irish.

"What with the cat," she says, and then, letting her voice run up to a screech, she proceeds furiously, "and that devil of a woman downstairs! Oh! she's a wicked woman, she is, a wicked woman, a very wicked woman; she's got some of my things because I'm behind-hand in my rent, and she says she won't give them up; but she shall. I'll see that she do. Ah! I'll have the law on her—the nasty, swearing, beastly—Oh! she's a wicked woman."

* * * * *

Think of the majesty of the English law which enables this pathetic yard of twisted womanhood to hold her own in a foul court against "a wicked woman" with arms like a bluejacket! But Miss Stipps is used to fighting her own battles. When children yell after her, "Old Goody Witch!" she swings about and takes her stick to them, pouring out such a flow of imprecation upon their young heads that they run away in a panic of alarm. Moreover, I have it on reliable authority that when Miss Stipps steps over the way with her jug for a pint of porter, she is in the habit, after reaching up her arm to receive the jug back from the barman, of telling the young man pretty sharply that she isn't buying froth, and that she'll trouble him to do a blow at the jug and to give another pull to his tap, which won't hurt him, it won't, as he ain't yet the proprietor of the place, and not likely to be, neither, if he treats poor ladies in sich a wulgar and Sheeny fashion.

I beg Miss Stipp to desist from her labour of dabbing the grate with streaky spots of black-lead, and implore her to take a seat and indulge herself for an easy hour in anecdotal reminiscences. Miss Stipp yields to my blandishments—that is to say, she backs against a little cobbler's stool, a stool which the Baby Bear in that immortal legend of "The Three Bears" would have found several sizes too small for it, and appears to slope half an inch to the rear. By the action of crossing her hands in her lap, and by the society smile on her face as she turns her dewy nose in my direction, I gather, though I should never have discovered it for myself, that Miss Stipp is seated.

We are now in for a thoroughly comfortable and intimate conversation. The cat is fast asleep. The spinster's mantelpiece, which is decorated with pictorial advertisements of such highly inappropriate commodities as baby's food and tobacco, wears an aspect which I am content to regard as social. And the cupboard beside the fireplace, although the bottom floor is used as a coal-cellar, suggests, with its crowded shelves of dishes, egg-cups, plates, biscuit-boxes, and paper bags, that we are in for a little friendly banquet, which, if not good enough for his Grace of Canterbury, might yet have inspired him of Assisi to ask a blessing.

* * * * *

"Well, you must know," says Miss Stipp, looking at the fire, and nodding her head as she speaks, "that I am one of ten, that I was born in Blackfriars—born in Blackfriars, I was—and that all the boys died, and that only me, who was born a cripple—born a cripple, I was—and my two sisters ever grew up to be a comfort to my poor mother. What father was, if ever he was anythin' at all, I don't know; and if I ever did know I think it was somethin' connected in some roundabout fashion, it was, with drains. But he died early, and that was an end of him. My poor mother, she was a laundress—a beautiful laundress she was, a very beautiful laundress—and she used to do for a gentleman who was a dissentin' minister—a dissentin' minister he was—and most particular about his linen, and lived in the big square just by the church at the corner, number five; and I've knowed my poor mother fret herself almost to death, she would, if one of them little blisters ever come up on the gentleman's shirt-fronts. And I used to help my poor mother, I did, by carryin' the gentleman's linen to number five in the big square, and that was the fust job I ever did for my poor mother, and proud she was, and proud I was, too, that I could be sich a help to her.

"We was poorer than 'most anybody in Blackfriars, where we lived, and a terribly poor neighbourhood it were—terribly poor; and so one of my sisters got married, she did, and a wonderfully big family she had, but most of 'em died sharp, so that was all right, excep' that the berryin' cost a tidy bit of money, it did. Then my other sister went out to service in Brixton. I useter go there one day a week—Toosday it was—to clean the silver and the soup tureens, and they give me a shillin', they did, I useter help sister in the kitchen—not a cook I wasn't, you must understand, but I useter help with the vegetables and the dishin'-up, and they give me a shillin'. It was a very nice house; a nice house, and no mistake about it. The lady had married a gardener—a gentleman's gardener, he was; and there was a carpet all over the dining-room floor—a nice carpet, a Brussels carpet, an ol' Brussels carpet; and she kep' a parrot—oh, a nasty, spiteful parrot, it was—I useter hate it, I did, the nasty, squawlin' beast; and it was more to her than any baby; and I useter clean the silver and the soup tureens, and do the vegetables and dish-up, Toosdays it was; and they give me a shillin'.

"All by meself I useter go, there and back, and one night"—she lifts her claws and gurgles at the memory, with a slow smile creepin' gradually through all the wrinkles on her face—"Oh, didn't I give my poor mother a fright, and no mistake about it! It was one of them nasty, stinkin' cold, freezin' nights; the streets like ice, they was, and the 'bus horses couldn't get along nohow, for all they was roughed; and it was past eleven o'clock, it was—yes, past eleven o'clock, it was—before ever I got home; and there was my poor mother standing at the door of the alms-house where we was livin' in Blackfriars—my poor mother and me—and cryin' and wringin' her hands and makin' a to-do, she was, thinking as how she had lost me altogether.

* * * * *

"Then my poor mother died," says Miss Stipp sadly, drawing her hand across the end of her nose. "I forgit the year, but it was the fust year that ever there come a August Bank Holiday. And she died on that day, my poor mother did. Yuss, she died on that day. She didn't seem like dyin' at all that there mornin,' she didn't. She eat a beautiful dinner, a bit of boiled meat—I forgit whether it was beef or mutton—mutton, I think it was, but anyway boiled meat; and she eat a beautiful dinner, my poor mother did—boiled meat, greens, and pertaters; and she eat a nice tea—well, nothin' partickler in the way of a tea, but a comfortable tea; and when I came home, 'Oh Emma Jane,' she says, 'I wish I hadn't never let you go to church this day; for this here,' she says, 'is my very last day on earth,' she says, 'and I'm goin',' she says, 'to your father in heaven, to take care of him, and I shall have to leave you all alone,' she says, 'to look after yourself; and I'm most afeard,' my poor mother said, 'what'll become of you,' she says; 'and don't forgit,' she says, 'to say your prayers, and go reggeler to the Communion, and always be good and obedient, and don't git doin' no vile sin, and please God we'll all meet in heaven,' she says, 'and be more happy,' she says, 'nor what we have ever been here in Blackfriars.' And it was August Bank Holiday, the first August Bank Holiday that ever was; and it was a beautiful day, lovely weather it was, and my poor mother had a fit, and never was quite the same; and she died."

Miss Stipp fetches a sigh, and shakes her head at the fire. She has been living in the past, watching with the mind's eye her poor mother fade slowly into eternity on that beautiful August day—the little almshouse bedroom flooded, let us hope, with golden light, for all it was in Blackfriars. She comes to herself with a little jerk, turns her head slowly round to us, and smiles one of her poor, pathetic, half-entreating smiles which make her seem like another Maggie.

And, strange to relate, Miss Stipp was confirmed in St. George's Church, on whose muddied steps Little Dorrit, Little Mother, sat in far-off days with the big head of poor Maggie on her lap. "It was beautiful, beautiful it was, that there Confirmation," says Miss Stipp. "The bishop, he put his hands on my head, just there he did, put 'em on, and I was kneelin' at his feet, and he said the words, whatever they was, and I felt his hands pressin' on my hair; of course, I had done it werry nice for the occasion; and I was quite a public character; yuss! and many's the time I've been up to St. George's Church since those days and fancied to myself that I was actin' the part again."

* * * * *

Upon the death of her mother the orphan went to live with her married sister, whose large family was always reducing itself by the most surprising feats in infant mortality. She helped in the house. She earned her keep by doing little things for the dying babies, and interviewing the undertaker and bargaining for special terms, seeing what a good customer her sister was, when those poor babies were dead. But that great source of crisis in the households of the poor—the mother-in-law—came to live in the Herodian household, and Emma Jane had such a warm time of it with this old Tartar of a woman that she determined to "get out of it" as soon as possible.

"So I had a letter wrote," she says, getting up to scrub the hearthstone, a feat she performs without kneeling, for the merest forward tilt of her body brings her hands upon the floor. "Yuss, I had a letter wrote, for I'm not much of a writer myself, I ain't—a letter wrote to my other sister what was out in service in the country, down Brockley way, and then I went to live with her."

"In the house where she was a servant?" I inquire.

"Yuss. That was it. I went to live with her. I was like a little servant. Blacked the boots, peeled the pertaters, washed the dishes, cleaned the grates, scrubbed the door-step, polished here, polished there, helped to dish up, and they give me two shillin's a week. I was like a little servant."

I remind her of her promise to forgo work and to be a little social, and, after another rub or two, she wrings out the sopping cloth, lets it drop on the hearthstone, and then, backing once more to the stool, leans back and smiles at me, with her wet hands folded in her lap.

* * * * *

"The fam'ly where my sister lived in the country," she says, taking up her tale, "was a large family—five or six sons there was—sich nice fellers they were! But—ain't it strange?—I never see any think on 'em now though they come reggeler to London Bridge every day of their lives, they do. They was Roman Cawtholic—boys and girls alike; but, for all that, they was good-livin' people, and they was religious in their own way. And one day a week comes the priest, and that day me and my sister wasn't allowed to enter the dinin'-room all the mornin', where the breakfast things was and where the priest was what he useter call confessin' the young ladies of their sins and givin' 'em what he called absolution, summat like that, for all they'd been doin' wrong since last time. Oh my! You never knew such goings on, not in England, you didn't. But mind, they was good-livin' people. They was Cawtholics, and they give me two shillin's a week; and I was like a little servant. Kind, good, religious people they was; and the beetles and the crickets in the house was somethink beastly. Oh, I do hate they nasty stinkin' things; hate 'em I do! And they had a garden, a beautiful garden, and it was full of flowers it was, but I don't remember the names of them, excep' that I know it was full of flowers—all the colours you can think of—and that garden was a god to them poor Cawtholics, it really was. The boys worked in it before they went to the City, and the young ladies messed about with it all day; and then they all went chipping and choppin' in it of a evenin', and me and my sister wasn't hardly allowed to look at the flowers, we wasn't, for it was like a god to them."

Her sister's health began to fail. The housework of the large family became too much for her, and the brave maid-of-all-work, accompanied by Emma Jane, was obliged to return to London. They sought the advice of that dissenting minister whose shirt-fronts, if ever they showed a blister, had been so frightful a terror to Emma Jane's poor mother. By the great kindness of this good man—his wisdom is not my concern—- the invalid maid-of-all-work and the indefatigable dwarf who had been like a little servant, and who has already confessed to us that she is not much of a writer herself—were established in Blackfriars as schoolmistresses!

"We hired a little room—in Green-street, it was—me and my sister, and we had a few little scholars—oh, yuss, and a tidy lot of good-sized boys and girls, besides the little 'uns—and they paid us 6d., 4d., and 2d. a week, or whatever they liked; and we done werry well with that school, and always taught religion and the catechism; and I might have been continuin' of it now if that nasty, pokin', competitionin' Board School hadn't come along, which it finished our little lot—pretty sharp it did—and left us starvin'."

The sister, shortly after this terrific crisis in their affairs, was carried into the hospital, and, after three months of terrible pain, which she bore like a martyr, went to join in heavenly places the "poor mother" and the father who had been in some elusive fashion connected with sublunary drains.

"And after that," says Miss Stipp, getting up and resting her hands on the pail of dirty water, and looking down into it as if she saw the faces of her poor mother, her sister, and all the dead babies of the other sister shining up at her from the muddy bottom, "I came on the parish, and I've been on it ever since, and nice kind gentlemen they are, and I couldn't be treated better."

"People are kind to you?" I inquire.

"Very kind to me they are," she answers. "I often get a shillin' given to me in the street, and the other evenin' a lady in the Boro'—nicely dressed, she was, in black—asked me if I wouldn't like a New Testament, and I said, 'Yuss, I would,' and she give me one; and I told her that I was converted, not when I was born, but when I was confirmed in St. George's Church; and the bishop gave us a beautiful address he did, and I felt werry much better when he laid his hands on my head, and after he give us the blessin'. If my hands wasn't so black, I'd show you the cards and things. I've kep 'em ever since—yuss. I've still got 'The Vow Performed,' or whatever it is called. The wicked woman downstairs, she hasn't taken that. Oh, a wicked woman she is, a very wicked woman; but I'll have the law on her. Ah!"

* * * * *

I ask her if—what with the cat and the woman downstairs, and all her relatives in heaven—she does not sometimes sigh for the next world.

"I'll be ready when my time comes," she replies confidently, and with rather a sly grin, "but I'm werry well content to stay where I am till I'm called, I am. I don't complain of nothink, I don't, excep' this beastly winder-pane which lets the draught in somethink cruel, it does, enough it is to blow me out of bed; and that awful devil of a woman downstairs; and the crossin' at the Elephant and Castle, which tries my nerves dreadful it does, and oughter be put a stop to, for it ain't safe for nobody, let alone a cripple. Then there's the children," she cries fiercely. "Oh, they are dreadful! You never heard sich language. Foul-mouthed!—oh, it's awful; I never did in all my life hear sich disgustin' language. And they tease me dreadful, they do, and call after me, and follow me into shops, and throw muck at me, the dirty little blasphemin' devils."

She tells me, in conclusion, of a milliner's shop where she goes for oddments, and where the young ladies sometimes give her a bit of trimming for her bonnet. Her last action is to drop the scrubbing-brush into the pail of water, to reach out an arm, and grab with one of her claws a piece of dirty black ribbon, sticking like an old book-marker from under a pile of rubbish beside the hearth, and then to pull at the string till presently there drops upon the floor a small and battered black bonnet with another string trailing behind it in the heap of rubbish.

"There!" says Miss Stipp, holding up the fusty old bonnet, "with a bit of black velvet," she continues, studying the flat bonnet with critical eyes, "and a nob of jet, and a orstrich feather stuck into it somewhere about there, or there perhaps, it will last me many a long day yet, and always look nice and fashionable when I go for my walks about London Bridge of a evenin'."

She is still holding the bonnet when I stoop down to take my leave. The beautiful address of the bishop who confirmed her so many years ago in Little Dorrit's church is not, my life for it, half so urgent and absorbing a matter for Miss Stipp as the latest fashion.

MUSIC [Sidenote: Samuel Johnson]

"Upon hearing a celebrated performer go through a hard composition, and hearing it remarked that it was very difficult, Dr. Johnson said, 'I would it had been impossible.'"

NEATNESS IN EXCESS [Sidenote: Samuel Johnson]

"I asked Mr. Johnson if he ever disputed with his wife. 'Perpetually,' said he; 'my wife had a particular reverence for cleanliness, and desired the praise of neatness in her dress and furniture, as many ladies do, till they become troublesome to their best friends, slaves to their own besoms, and only sigh for the hour of sweeping their husbands out of the house as dirt and useless lumber. A clean floor is so comfortable, she would say sometimes by way of twitting; till at last I told her that I thought we had had talk enough about the floor, we would now have a touch at the ceiling.' I asked him if he ever huffed his wife about his dinner. 'So often,' replied he, 'that at last she called to me and said, "Nay, hold, Mr. Johnson, and do not make a farce of thanking God for a dinner which in a few minutes you will protest not eatable."'"

A YOUNG LADY'S "NEEDS" [Sidenote: Samuel Johnson]

"During a visit of Miss Brown's to Streatham, Dr. Johnson was inquiring of her several things that she could not answer; and, as he held her so cheap in regard to books, he began to question her concerning domestic affairs,—puddings, pies, plain work, and so forth. Miss Brown, not at all more able to give a good account of herself in these articles than in the others, began all her answers with 'Why, sir, one need not be obliged to do so,—or so,' whatever was the thing in question. When he had finished his interrogatories, and she had finished her 'need nots,' he ended the discourse with saying, 'As to your needs, my dear, they are so very many that you would be frightened yourself if you knew half of them.'"

"IRENE" [Sidenote: Samuel Johnson]

"I was told," wrote Sir Walter Scott, "that a gentleman called Pot, or some such name, was introduced to Johnson as a particular admirer of his. The doctor growled and took no further notice. "He admires in especial your Irene as the finest tragedy of modern times;" to which the Doctor replied: "If Pot says so, Pot Lies!" and relapsed into his reverie.

ODE TO PEACE [Sidenote: Hood]

WRITTEN ON THE NIGHT OF MY MISTRESS'S GRAND ROUT

O Peace! oh come with me and dwell— But stop, for there's the bell. O peace! for thee I go and sit in churches, On Wednesday, when there's very few In loft or pew— Another ring, the tarts are come from Birch's. O Peace! for thee I have avoided marriage— Hush! there's a carriage. O Peace! thou art the best of earthly goods— The five Miss Woods. O Peace! thou art the goddess I adore— There come some more. O Peace! thou child of solitude and quiet— That's Lord Drum's footman, for he loves a riot.

O Peace!— Knocks will not cease. O Peace! thou wert for human comfort planned— That's Weippert's band. O Peace! how glad I welcome thy approaches— I hear the sound of coaches. O Peace! O Peace!—another carriage stops— It's early for the Blenkinsops.

O Peace! with thee I love to wander, But wait till I have showed up Lady Squander; And now I've seen her up the stair, O Peace!—but here comes Captain Hare. O Peace! thou art the slumber of the mind, Untroubled, calm, and quiet, and unbroken— If that is Alderman Guzzle from Portsoken, Alderman Gobble won't be far behind. O Peace! serene in worldly shyness— Make way there for his Serene Highness!

O Peace! if you do not disdain To dwell amongst the menial train, I have a silent place, and lone, That you and I may call our own, Where tumult never makes an entry— Susan, what business have you in my pantry?

O Peace!—but there is Major Monk, At variance with his wife. O Peace!— And that great German, Van der Trunk, And that great talker, Miss Apreece. O Peace! so dear to poets' quills— They're just beginning their quadrilles. O Peace! our greatest renovator— I wonder where I put my waiter. O Peace!—but here my ode I'll cease! I have no peace to write of Peace.

LETTERS FROM THACKERAY [Sidenote: Thackeray]

Tuesday, November 1848.

GOOD-NIGHT, MY DEAR MADAM,

Since I came home from dining with Mr. Morier, I have been writing a letter to Mr. T. Carlyle and thinking about other things as well as the letter all the time; and I have read over a letter I received to-day which apologizes for everything and whereof the tremulous author ceaselessly doubts and misgives. Who knows whether she is not converted by Joseph Bullar by this time. She is a sister of mine, and her name is God bless her.

Wednesday.—I was at work until seven o'clock; not to very much purpose, but executing with great labour and hardship the day's work. Then I went to dine with Dr. Hall, the crack doctor here, a literate man, a traveller, and otherwise a kind bigwig. After dinner we went to hear Mr. Sortain lecture, of whom you may perhaps have heard me speak, as a great, remarkable orator and preacher of the Lady Huntingdon Connexion. (The paper is so greasy that I am forced to try several pens and manners of handwriting, but none will do.) We had a fine lecture, with brilliant Irish metaphors and outbursts of rhetoric, addressed to an assembly of mechanics, shopboys, and young women, who could not, and perhaps had best not, understand that flashy speaker. It was about the origin of nations he spoke, one of those big themes on which a man may talk eternally and with a never-ending outpouring of words; and he talked magnificently, about the Arabs for the most part, and tried to prove that because the Arabs acknowledged their descent from Ishmael, or Esau, therefore the Old Testament history was true. But the Arabs may have had Esau for a father and yet the bears may not have eaten up the little children for quizzing Elisha's bald head. As I was writing to Carlyle last night (I haven't sent the letter as usual, and shall not most likely), Saint Stephen was pelted to death by Old Testaments, and our Lord was killed like a felon by the law, which He came to repeal. I was thinking about Joseph Bullar's doctrine after I went to bed, founded on what I cannot but think a blasphemous asceticism, which has obtained in the world ever so long, and which is disposed to curse, hate, and undervalue the world altogether. Why should we? What we see here of this world is but an expression of God's will, so to speak—a beautiful earth and sky and sea—beautiful affections and sorrows, wonderful changes and developments of creations, suns rising, stars shining, birds singing, clouds and shadows changing and fading, people loving each other, smiling and crying, the multiplied phenomena of Nature, multiplied in fact and fancy, in Art and Science, in every way that a man's intellect or education or imagination can be brought to bear.—And who is to say that we are to ignore all this, or not value them and love them, because there is another unknown world yet to come? Why, that unknown future world is but a manifestation of God Almighty's Will, and a development of Nature, neither more nor less than this in which we are, and an angel glorified or a sparrow on a gutter are equally parts of His creation. The light upon all the saints in heaven is just as much and no more God's work, as the sun which shall shine to-morrow upon this infinitesimal speck of creation, and under which I shall read, please God, a letter from my kindest Lady and friend. About my future state I don't know; I leave it in the disposal of the awful Father—but for to-day I thank God that I can love you, and that you yonder and others besides are thinking of me with a tender regard. Hallelujah may be greater in degree than this, but not in kind, and countless ages of stars may be blazing infinitely, but you and I have a right to rejoice and believe in our little part and to trust in to-day as in to-morrow. God bless my dear lady and her husband. I hope you are asleep now, and I must go too, for the candles are just winking out.

Thursday.—I am glad to see among the new inspectors, in the Gazette in this morning's papers, my old acquaintance Longueville Jones, an excellent, worthy, lively, accomplished fellow, whom I like the better because he flung up his fellow and tutorship at Cambridge in order to marry on nothing a year. He worked in Galignani's newspaper for ten francs a day, very cheerfully, ten years ago, since when he has been a schoolmaster, taken pupils, or bid for them, and battled manfully with fortune. William will be sure to like him, I think, he is so honest and cheerful. I have sent off my letters to Lady Ashburton this morning, ending with some pretty phrases about poor old C.B., whose fate affects me very much, so much that I feel as if I were making my will and getting ready to march too. Well, ma'am, I have as good a right to presentiments as you have, and to sickly fancies and despondencies; but I should like to see before I die, and think of it daily more and more, the commencement of Jesus Christ's Christianism in the world, where I am sure people may be made a hundred times happier than by its present forms, Judaism, asceticism, Bullarism. I wonder will He come again and tell it us? We are taught to be ashamed of our best feelings all our life. I don't want to blubber upon everybody's shoulders; but to have a good will for all, and a strong, very strong regard for a few, which I shall not be ashamed to own to them…. It is near upon three o'clock, and I am getting rather anxious about the post from Southampton via London. Why, if it doesn't come in, you won't get any letter to-morrow, no, nothing—and I made so sure. Well, I will try and go to work, it is only one more little drop. God bless you, dear lady.

Friday.—I have had a good morning's work, and at two o'clock comes your letter; dear friend, thank you. What a coward I was! I will go and walk and be happy for an hour, it is a grand frosty sunshine. To-morrow morning early back to London.

* * * * *

Madam's letter made a very agreeable appearance upon the breakfast-table this morning when I entered that apartment at eleven o'clock. I don't know how I managed to sleep so much, but such was the fact—after a fine broiling hot day's utter idleness, part of which was spent on a sofa, a little in the Tuillery gardens, where I made a sketch that's not a masterpiece, but p'raps Madam will like to see it: and the evening very merrily with the Morning Chronicle, the Journal des Débats, and Jules Janin at a jolly little restaurateur's at the Champs Elysées at the sign of the Petit Moulin Rouge. We had a private room and drank small wine very gaily, looking out into a garden full of green arbours, in almost every one of which were gentlemen and ladies in couples come to dine au frais, and afterwards to go and dance at the neighbouring dancing garden of Mabille. Fiddlers and singers came and performed for us: and who knows I should have gone to Mabille too, but there came down a tremendous thunderstorm, with flashes of lightning to illuminate it, which sent the little couples out of the arbours, and put out all the lights of Mabille. The day before I passed with my aunt and cousins, who are not so pretty as some members of the family, but are dear good people, with a fine sense of fun, and we were very happy until the arrival of two newly married snobs, whose happiness disgusted me and drove me home early to find three acquaintances smoking in the moonlight at the hotel door, who came up and passed the night in my rooms. No, I forgot, I went to the play first; but only for an hour—I couldn't stand more than an hour of the farce, which made me laugh while it lasted, but left a profound black melancholy behind it. Janin said last night that life was the greatest of pleasures to him; that every morning, when he woke, he was thankful to be alive; that he was always entirely happy, and had never known any such thing as blue devils, or repentance, or satiety. I had great fun giving him authentic accounts of London. I told him that to see the people boxing in the streets was a constant source of amusement to us; that in November you saw every lamp-post on London Bridge with a man hanging from it who had committed suicide—and he believed everything. Did you ever read any of the works of Janin?—No? well, he has been for twenty years famous in France, and he on his side has never heard of the works of Titmarsh, nor has anybody else here, and that's a comfort. I have got very nice rooms, but they cost ten francs a day: and I began in a dignified manner with a domestique de place, but sent him away after two days: for the idea that he was in the anteroom ceaselessly with nothing to do made my life in my own room intolerable, and now I actually take my own letters to the post. I went to the exhibition: it was full of portraits of the most hideous women, with inconceivable spots on their faces, of which I think I've told you my horror, and scarcely six decent pictures in the whole enormous collection; but I had never been in the Tuilleries before, and it was curious to go through the vast dingy rooms by which such a number of dynasties have come in and gone out—Louis XVI., Napoleon, Charles X., Louis Philippe, have all marched in state up the staircase with the gilt balustrades, and come tumbling down again presently.—Well, I won't give you an historical disquisition in the Titmarsh manner upon this, but reserve it for Punch—for whom on Thursday an article that I think is quite unexampled for dullness even in that journal, and that beats the dullest Jerrold. What a jaunty, off-hand, satiric rogue I am to be sure—and a gay young dog! I took a very great liking and admiration for Clough. He is a real poet, and a simple, affectionate creature. Last year we went to Blenheim—from Oxford (it was after a stay at Cl——ved——n C——rt, the seat of Sir C—— E——n B——t), and I liked him for sitting down in the inn yard and beginning to teach a child to read off a bit of Punch, which was lying on the ground. Subsequently he sent me his poems, which were rough but contain the real, genuine, sacred flame I think. He is very learned: he has evidently been crossed in love: he gave up his fellowship and university prospects on religious scruples. He is one of those thinking men who, I dare say, will begin to speak out before many years are over, and protest against Gothic Christianity—that is, I think he is. Did you read in F. Newman's book? There speaks a very pious, loving, humble soul I think, with an ascetical continence too—and a beautiful love and reverence. I'm a publican and sinner, but I believe those men are on the true track.

* * * * *

And is W. Bullar going to work upon you with his "simple mysticism"? I don't know about the unseen world; the use of the seen world is the right thing I'm sure!—it is just as much God's world and creation as the Kingdom of Heaven with all the angels. How will you make yourself most happy in it? How secure at least the greatest amount of happiness compatible with your condition? by despising to-day, and looking up cloudward? Pish. Let us turn God's to-day to its best use, as well as any other part of the time He gives us. When I am on a cloud a-singing, or a pot boiling—I will do my best, and, if you are ill, you can have consolations; if you have disappointments, you can invent fresh sources of hope and pleasure. I'm glad you saw the Crowes, and that they gave you pleasure;—and that noble poetry of Alfred's gives you pleasure (I'm happy to say, ma'am, I've said the very same thing in prose that you like—the very same words almost). The bounties of the Father I believe to be countless and inexhaustible for most of us here in life; Love the greatest. Art (which is an exquisite and admiring sense of nature) the next.—- By Jove! I'll admire, if I can, the wing of a cock-sparrow as much as the pinion of an archangel; and adore God, the Father of the earth, first; waiting for the completion of my senses, and the fulfilment of His intentions towards me afterwards, when this scene closes over us. So, when Bullar turns up his eye to the ceiling, I'll look straight at your dear, kind face and thank God for knowing that, my dear; and, though my nose is a broken pitcher, yet, Lo and behold, there's a well gushing over with kindness in my heart where my dear lady may come and drink. God bless you,—and William and little Magdalene.

ODOURS AND MOUSTACHES [Sidenote: Montaigne]

The simplest and merely natural smells are most pleasing unto me; which care ought chiefly to concerne women. In the verie heart of Barbarie, the Scithian women, after they have washed themselves, did sprinkle, dawbe, and powder all their bodies and faces over with a certain odoriferous drug that groweth in their countrie: which dust and dawbing being taken away, when they come neere men, or their husbands, they remaine verie cleane, and with a verie sweet savouring perfume. What odour soever it be, it is strange to see what hold it will take on me, and how apt my skin is to receive it. He that complaineth against nature, that she hath not created man with a fit instrument, to carrie sweet smells fast-tied to his nose, is much to blame; for they carrie themselves. As for me in particular, my mostachoes, which are verie thick, serve me for that purpose. Let me but approach my gloves or my hand kercher to them, their smell will sticke upon them a whole day. They manifest the place I come from. The close-smacking, sweetnesse-moving, love-alluring, and greedi-smirking kisses of youth, were heretofore wont to sticke on them many houres after; yet I am little subject to those popular diseases that are taken by conversation and bred by the contagion of the ayre: And I have escaped those of my time of which there hath beene many and severall kinds, both in the Townes, about me, and in our Armie: We read of Socrates that during the time of many plagues and relapses of the pestilence, which so often infested the Citie of Athens, he never forsooke or went out of the Towne: yet was he the only man that was never infected, or that felt any sickness.

FROM THE BALLAD À-LA-MODE [Sidenote: Austin Dobson]

"Ah, Phillis! cruel Phillis! (I heard a shepherd say) You hold me with your eyes, and yet You bid me—Go my way!"

"Ah, Colin! foolish Colin! (The maiden answered so) If that be all, the ill is small, I close them—You may go!"

But when her eyes she opened (Although the sun it shone), She found the shepherd had not stirred— "Because the light was gone!"

Ah, Cupid! wanton Cupid! 'Twas ever thus your way: When maids would bid you ply your wings, You find excuse to stay!

DREAMTHORP [Sidenote: Alexander Smith]

I do not think that Mr. Buckle could have written his "History of Civilisation" in Dreamthorp, because in it books, conversation, and the other appurtenances of intellectual life are not to be procured. I am acquainted with birds, and the building of nests—with wildflowers, and the seasons in which they blow,—but with the big world far away, with what men and women are thinking, and doing, and saying, I am acquainted only through the Times, and the occasional magazine or review, sent by friends whom I have not looked upon for years, but by whom, it seems, I am not yet forgotten. The village has but few intellectual wants, and the intellectual supply is strictly measured by the demand. Still, there is something. Down in the village, and opposite the curiously carved fountain, is a schoolroom which can accommodate a couple of hundred people on a pinch. There are our public meetings held. Musical entertainments have been given there by a single performer. In that schoolroom last winter an American biologist terrified the villagers, and, to their simple understandings, mingled up the next world with this. Now and again some rare bird of an itinerant lecturer covers dead walls with posters, yellow and blue, and to that schoolroom we flock to hear him. His rounded periods the eloquent gentleman devolves amidst a respectful silence. His audience do not understand him, but they see that the clergyman does, and the doctor does; and so they are content, and look as attentive and wise as possible. Then, in connection with the schoolroom, there is a public library, where books are exchanged once a month. This library is a kind of Greenwich Hospital for disabled novels and romances. Each of these books has been in the wars; some are unquestionably antiques. The tears of three generations have fallen upon their dusky pages. The heroes and the heroines are of another age than ours. Sir Charles Grandison is standing with his hat under his arm. Tom Jones plops from the tree into the water, to the infinite distress of Sophia. Moses comes home from market with his stock of shagreen spectacles. Lovers, warriors, and villains,—as dead to the present generation of readers as Cambyses,—are weeping, fighting, and intriguing. These books, tattered and torn as they are, are read with delight to-day. The viands are celestial, if set forth on a dingy table-cloth. The gaps and chasms which occur in pathetic or perilous chapters are felt to be personal calamities. It is with a certain feeling of tenderness that I look upon these books; I think of the dead fingers that have turned over the leaves, of the dead eyes that have travelled along the lines. An old novel has a history of its own. When fresh and new, and before it had breathed its secret, it lay on my lady's table. She killed the weary day with it, and when night came it was placed beneath her pillow. At the sea-side a couple of foolish heads have bent over it, hands have touched and tingled, and it has heard vows and protestations as passionate as any its pages contained. Coming down in the world, Cinderella in the kitchen has blubbered over it by the light of a surreptitious candle, conceiving herself the while the magnificent Georgiana, and Lord Mordaunt, Georgiana's lover, the pot-boy round the corner. Tied up with many a dingy brother, the auctioneer knocks the bundle down to the bidder of a few pence, and it finds its way to the quiet cove of some village library, where with some difficulty—as if from want of teeth—and with numerous interruptions—as if from lack of memory—it tells its old stories, and wakes tears, and blushes, and laughter as of yore. Thus it spends its age, and in a few years it will become unintelligible, and then, in the dust-bin, like poor human mortals in the grave, it will rest from all its labours. It is impossible to estimate the benefit which such books have conferred. How often have they loosed the chain of circumstances! What unfamiliar tears—what unfamiliar laughter they have caused! What chivalry and tenderness they have infused into rustic lovers! Of what weary hours they have cheated and beguiled their readers! The big, solemn history-books are in excellent preservation; the story-books are defaced and frayed, and their out-of-elbows condition is their pride, and the best justification of their existence.

In this pleasant summer weather I hold my audience in my garden rather than in my house. In all my interviews the sun is a third party. Every village has its Fool, and of course Dreamthorp is not without one. Him I get to run my messages for me, and he occasionally turns my garden borders with a neat hand enough. He and I hold frequent converse, and people here, I have been told, think we have certain points of sympathy. Although this is not meant for a compliment, I take it for one. The poor, faithful creature's brain has strange visitors: now 'tis fun, now wisdom, and now something which seems in the queerest way a compound of both. He lives in a kind of twilight which observes objects, and his remarks seem to come from another world than that in which ordinary people live. He is the only original person of my acquaintance; his views of life are his own, and form a singular commentary on those generally accepted. He is dull enough at times, poor fellow; but anon he startles you with something, and you think he must have wandered out of Shakespeare's plays into this out-of-the-way place. Up from the village now and then comes to visit me the tall, gaunt, atrabilious confectioner, who has a hankering after Red-republicanism, and the destruction of Queen, Lords, and Commons. Guy Fawkes is, I believe, the only martyr in his calendar. The sourest-tempered man, I think, that ever engaged in the manufacture of sweetmeats. I wonder that the oddity of the thing never strikes himself. To be at all consistent, he should put poison in his lozenges, and become the Herod of the village innocents. One of his many eccentricities is a love for flowers, and he visits me often to have a look at my greenhouse and my borders. I listen to his truculent and revolutionary speeches, and take my revenge by sending the gloomy egotist away with a nosegay in his hand, and a gay-coloured flower stuck in a button-hole. He goes quite unconscious of my floral satire.

The village clergyman and the village doctor are great friends of mine; they come to visit me often, and smoke a pipe with me in my garden. The twain love and respect each other, but they regard the world from different points of view, and I am now and again made witness of a good-humoured passage of arms. The clergyman is old, unmarried, and a humorist. His sallies and his gentle eccentricities seldom provoke laughter, but they are continually awakening the pleasantest smiles. Perhaps what he has seen of the world, its sins, its sorrows, its death-beds, its widows and orphans, has tamed his spirit, and put a tenderness into his wit. I do not think I have ever encountered a man who so adorns his sacred profession. His pious, devout nature produces sermons just as naturally as my apple-trees produce apples. He is a tree that flowers every Sunday. Very beautiful is his reverence for the Book, his trust in it; through long acquaintance, its ideas have come to colour his entire thought, and you come upon its phrases in his ordinary speech. He is more himself in the pulpit than anywhere else, and you get nearer him in his sermons than you do sitting with him at his tea-table, or walking with him on the country roads. He does not feel confined in his orthodoxy; in it he is free as a bird in the air. The doctor is, I conceive, as good a Christian as the clergyman, but he is impatient of pale or limit; he never comes to a fence without feeling a desire to get over it. He is a great hunter of insects, and he thinks that the wings of his butterflies might yield very excellent texts; he is fond of geology, and cannot, especially when he is in the company of the clergyman, resist the temptation of hurling a fossil at Moses. He wears his scepticism as a coquette wears her ribbons—to annoy if he cannot subdue—and, when his purpose is served, he puts his scepticism aside—as the coquette puts her ribbons. Great arguments arise between them, and the doctor loses his field through his loss of temper, which, however, he regains before any harm is done. For the worthy man is irascible withal, and opposition draws fire from him.

TWO OLD GENTLEMEN [Sidenote: H.B.]

Old Joe, who has been a pirate, a buffalo-hunter, a soldier, a pastrycook, and a seller of bootlaces, collar-studs, and tie-clips in the London gutters, sits paralysed in his grandfather chair, which has a thin pad strung to the back and a flattened cushion on the seat, and declares, vainly trying to keep his tongue inside his mouth, and with his whole body shaken by paralysis, that he is happy and jolly.

"Happy and jolly," roars Joe, struggling with his frightful stammer. "It 'tain't no good bein' nuffin kelse. Why, I've been dead and pretty near buried. In Charing-crost 'orspital; yerse! I heard 'em say, 'He's a gonner,' and I couldn't give 'em the lie. I come to, wrapped up like a mummy, and hollered so as they pretty near 'opped out of their skins! Ho, I've had a terrible life! Run over by a horse and van. Knocked all to pieces. Been to the bottom of the sea! Many a time. But here I am, happy and jolly. What's the odds?" He goes off into such a fit of laughter that the chair is shaken and he himself nearly suffocated by a cough like an earthquake.

He looks extremely like one of those lay figures employed by ventriloquists. He is a thin, flat, pasteboard-looking old fellow; his trousers hang over the edge of his chair apparently empty of legs, and his shirt and open waistcoat (he never wears a coat) are pressed flat against the high back of the chair, apparently empty of trunk. His body and his features are for ever on the jerk. His shoulders twitch. He is for ever laughing and gurgling. He is for ever struggling to say something important, ending in a great spluttering stammer and a roar of tremendous laughter.

For all he is eighty-two years of age, his hair is yet thick, and the blackness of it is of too stubborn an order ever to go more than iron-grey. He has glassy eyes, puffed and bagged with flesh; heavy black eyebrows half-way up his sloping forehead; a heavy black moustache under his strong nose; a tongue several sizes too large for his mouth; and under the mouth a chin which recedes so sharply that it becomes neck before you are really aware that it is chin. He reminds us a little, as he sits there laughing and chuckling, of early caricatures of Sir Redvers Buller.

Opposite Old Joe sits Mr. Wells, a little old white-haired gentleman, very spruce and tidy, with neatly clipped moustache and neatly pointed beard, and peering little cloudy eyes which are sightless.

* * * * *

The two old gentlemen, as they are called, live together in a tiny two-roomed house in a narrow flagged court which is generally strung with washing. The low-roofed kitchen is their sitting-room, and its smoky-panelled walls are decorated only with church almanacs and a few faded photographs.

The room is beautifully clean, and so is the bedroom above, where the two pensioners sleep in neat little beds. Out of the money allowed them by a neighbouring church—some nine shillings a week between the two—they pay a woman five shillings a week "to do for them." As for themselves, they smoke their pipes in front of the fire, and laugh to find themselves, after much rough work on the high seas, so happy and jolly at the end of their days.

"It wasn't always as clean as this, you must understand," says Mr. Wells confidentially, his sightless eyes blinking with amusement. "When we first come here the place was simply swarming; swarming it was—you know, gentlemen in the overcoats we call 'em down here. And the amusing thing was—there, I did laugh!—Joe could see 'em but couldn't catch 'em, and I, who might have caught 'em, couldn't see 'em." He leans over to Joe and shouts, "I was telling the genneman about the bugs when we first came here!" And Joe lifts his eyebrows, rubs his shoulder against his chair, and laughs, and says with his pipe in his mouth, "Ess, sir!" making a pantomimic gesture supposed to represent the slaughter of vermin.

Little Mr. Wells has a great and fundamental pride in the fact that he is "eight year younger nor what Joe is." He tells you this interesting fact more than once, speaking in his wonted low tone of voice, reaching out with his pipe between his fingers to touch you lightly with his elbow, and always concluding with the appeal, "You wouldn't think so, would you?" And then, as the pipe goes back to his mouth, "Well, it is so," he says, and nods his head at the fire. And Old Joe, who doesn't care a brass farden, or a bone button for that matter, whether he is eighty-two or one hundred and eighty-two, has his point of pride in the certain conviction that if only he had the use of his legs he would be as strong now as ever he was.

* * * * *

Now, old Joe, for all he is paralysed, has the use of his eyes, whereas Mr. Wells, who can and does shuffle about pretty freely on his feet, has not got the use of his.

Joe's sight is a great blessing to him; he can read. He has a sturdy taste in literature, and will stand none of your milk-and-water stuff. He likes fighting, plenty of that: and Red Indians, and duels, and murders, and shipwrecks, and fires, and sudden deaths. He requires of his author that he keep his mind steeped perpetually in blood and thunder. You will always find that Old Joe is sitting on a penny novelette, open at the place, and but little crumpled or creased from the impress of his skeleton of a body. He is a great reader, one of the greatest readers in London; and, perhaps, to no man in all the world more than to Joe has literature brought so complete an escape from the pressing demands of self-consciousness and the inconvenient emphasis of personality.

It is at this point that we reach, by the reader's leave, the psychological interest of this our simple story. For the problem presents itself to Mr. Wells, as well as to me, whether all this violent reading has not created in Joe's mind the impression of a Joe who never was on sea or land. In other words: in the tale which Joe tells of his own life, is any part of it fact, or is it not all a figment of his brain, the creation of his bloody-minded authors? Joe himself believes every word of it; Joe believes he was the Joe he tells you about, and his face grows purple, and his glassy eyes dart fire out of their baggy flesh, if you insinuate never so delicately that one of his stories is in the very smallest detail just a little difficult of belief.

Mr. Wells never contradicts Joe; but every now and then (forgetting that Joe can see) he shakes a sceptic head, and, leaning towards you, whispers (forgetting that Joe can only hear when you shout at him) that you must be pleased to remember that "that's what he thinks he done; and no doubt he thinks that it was so; and it may be it was, and I should never think of contradicting, not no man; but I has my own opinion in the matter. I don't think it was so. I think he's half dreaming and half telling a tale. That's what I think."

"But," you inquire, "is it not true that Joe was once a pirate?"

"Oh, yes," he cries at once, smiling proudly; "Oh, yes. Joe was a pirate right enough. What, haven't you heard him tell how they boarded a Spanish ship, and cut the throats and broke the heads of the swarthy crew? Oh, you ought to hear him tell that. It's as good as a play." And here he leans forward, and calls across to chuckling and gurgling Joe. "Joe! Tell the genneman how you boarded that Spanish ship, and cut the throats of them there swarthy Spaniards."

* * * * *

At this Old Joe seems to be smitten with a sudden frenzy. I have never seen anything like it. After a preliminary canter in the laughing line he suddenly makes taut his body; his eyes bulge from his head; his face becomes crimson and his nose blue; then, with his mouth open, while he hisses like a steam-saw and roars like a bull and sends the most extraordinary imitation of throat-cutting spluttering wetly from his distended lips, he waves his right arm madly and frantically in the air, makes imaginary stabs in front of him, draws imaginary knives across his throat, and brings down the butt ends of imaginary carbines on the supposititious heads of the swarthy crew unkindly resurrected to be slain again.

It is plain that the poor old paralysed fellow is lost to the Present. He is back in the Past—or in one of his novelettes; and in front of him, begging for mercy, as he slits their throats, or cracks open their skulls, are, indeed, hundreds of real and living men. His acting is superb. It is only made comical by the hanging legs, the fixture of the body to the seat of the chair, and the furious spluttering of his frenzied mouth.

When he has quite finished, thoroughly exhausted, he leans back in his chair, sticks his pipe into his face, strikes a match with his shaking hands, and covers his laughing face in a wreath of tobacco-smoke.

"Arst him," whispers Mr. Wells, "how many he killed? Go on; you arst him."

* * * * *

So you lean across to Old Joe, who shoots forward to meet your lips half-way with his left ear, and you calmly, and without dread or horror, ask the gurgling and chuckling veteran how many men he has killed.

As soon as he has caught your question he bursts out laughing, flings himself suddenly back, and exclaims, with a splutter: "How many ha' I killed? How many? I couldn't say. Too many on 'em. Hundreds! Hundreds! Hundreds of 'em!" Back goes the pipe, and, wreathed in proud smiles, his shoulders twitching, his hands never still for a moment, he sits square back in his chair and looks at you proudly, as much as to say:

"Ain't I a devil of a feller? Ain't I a monster? Ho, I've had a terrible life. You just arst me another!"

Well, I know not how true is the story told by Old Joe of his own wickedness.

But, however this may be—and it is not the province of Old Joe's humble historian to speculate—let us be content with the picture of these two old pensioners from the high seas, living together in the evening of their days in a narrow court in a London slum, the one paralysed and the other blind; the one a most brilliant and imaginative story-teller, the other a most cautious, modest, tentative, and genial critic. And let us sit between their two chairs for a moment and listen to the moving story of Old Joe, believing it with all the simplicity, if not with all the stupefied, admiration of the little slum children who gaze at the pirate when his chair is moved out into the court that he may warm his old bones in the sun.

[In brackets, let me say that I have come upon Old Joe literally posing in the court as a most ferocious pirate before an audience of toddling infants not more than four years of age.]

Eighty-two years ago Old Joe, surnamed Ridley, was born in the neighbourhood of the Barbican. He remembers how murderers and highwaymen used to come and hide in the court where he was born, "because, don't you see, the police daren't come where we was living." He went to a school in Charterhouse-square. "Charterhouse School," he says. But Mr. Wells nudges us with his pipe hand. "That's a mistake," he says. "There wasn't never no school in Charterhouse Square, in those days. But never mind; let him go on. Only you must make allowance, you know."

His father was a carman who could drink porter by the two-gallon, and had an arm like a leg of mutton. But this great, lusty carman found himself ruled with a rod of iron by the little spitfire he took for his second wife. She managed the carman, and she managed his brats of children. She particularly managed Joe because he particularly disliked being managed.

* * * * *

So it came about that Joe found the streets pleasanter than his home, and took to slouching about with his hands in his pockets, feeling hungry and sometimes a little concerned, perhaps, as to what was to become of him. One day, as he was wasting time at a street-corner in Aldersgate, there came up to him a broad-shouldered, sandy-haired man in a blue reefer suit, who showed all his teeth when he smiled and whose voice had a sharp rattle in it like a bag full of gold coins. This noticeable man hailed Joe as a fine fellow, and asked the fine fellow whether he wouldn't step with him into a convenient tavern and wet his whistle with a glass of the best brandy.

The broad-shouldered, easy-smiling gentleman in the reefer suit told Joe, over a glass of brandy in the sanded-floor parlour of a neat tavern, that he was a rich man, with a hobby on which he spent a great deal of money. "It's a hobby of mine," he said, laughing, "to put down the slave-trade. I don't like it, and so I put it down. Now, a fine young likely fellow, such as you, is just the man I want for my ship. How would you like to go sailing the lovely seas catching slave-dealers, and giving them what-for with the best steel and gunpowder that money can buy?"

Joe said he could put up with it if the money was all right. And, being assured that the money was more than all right, he agreed to go down to Plymouth with a party of the gentleman's friends and try his hand for a year or two at laying pirates by the heel.

But when our Joe got out to sea and awoke from a terrible bout of intoxication on the schooner sailed by the gentleman with a hobby, he discovered that, instead of being on the ocean to catch pirates, he was there as a pirate himself. The boy had run away from home to make a fortune catching wicked men; he now found that his bread and butter depended upon his ability in cracking the heads of perfectly honest men. Some of the new hands wanted to be put back when the situation was explained to them, but Joe was among those who felt respect for the villainous seamen on board (the ship carried 130 men, he says,) who declared that they had as lief be pirates as catch pirates, and it was no odds to them what flag they sailed under or for what purpose.

"On board," splutters Joe, striking another match, "there was a turr'ble fellow—Jack Armstrong—six foot five in socks, strong's a lion, brave's a tiger. He and me use to fight—every day, pretty near. Bang! crack! g-r-r-r-r-r! I used to beat him—easy! I was turr'bly strong. Make's nose bleed—bung's eyes up—split's lips. Ess! And there was a mulatto aboard. Metsi-metsi-metsi-can, he was."

"He means Mexican," whispers Mr. Wells behind his hand. "That's what Joe means. A Mexican." And then he gets up from his chair and shouts into Joe's ear, "You mean a Mex-i-can, Joe."

"Ess; a Metsican," splutters Joe, getting purple in the face under the impression of a contradiction. "That's what I said—Metsican. Used to call him Black Peter. I've seen him eat rattlesnake. Swallow him clean down. Like this, he would—Gollop!" Here Mr. Wells goes off into a quiet chuckle of scepticism, one finger crooked over his pipe-stem, his sightless eyes blinking at the coals. "Great big bull of a feller. 'Normous chest. Legs o' granite. Used ter fight wi' bar o' iron. Ho! Ho! Weighed half a hunded. Tremenjus weapon! If he hit you, you know—dash!—out go your brains. Ho! ho! He was fond o' me. If I saw him sulky, or anythin', up I'd go, an' 'What's matter?' I'd say. Peter'd say, 'So-a-so.' 'Oh blow,' I'd say, and walk off. He looked up to me. R'spected me. Peter was always behind me in action. Always. Never let me be killed. Never! Bang! Crack! Brain any man who come near me. Fond o' me."

Joe, we gather, was fourteen years at sea without ever coming home. He was a pirate in the China seas for years. He was in the Baltic during the Crimea. He has been to the bottom of the sea two or three times. He has fought hand-to-hand with many a shark. He has been shipwrecked a score of times. The experience of St. Paul in a good cause hardly exceeds for suffering the experience of Old Joe in a bad one. For six days and seven nights he and seven others were tossed about the sea without food in a row-boat. Two of the men died, and were eaten by the rest, with the exception of Joe, who could not stomach cannibalism for all he was such a terrible fellow. Then they were picked up by the famous Alabama, and Joe fought in the great American War of North versus South.

"I was put in prison," he says, with a roar of laughter. "Two years. In Allybammer. Two years in dungeon. In the Harbour there. Allybammer Harbour."

"Alabama, he means," whispers Mr. Wells. "You've heard of Alabama, I dare say? Somewhere in Ameriky, isn't it? Ah! Well, that's what Joe means—Alabama."

"Two years!" laughed Joe; and then, with a great roar of delight, he adds, "Went off my nut! In dungeon. Clean off my nut!"

"What Joe means," whispers Mr. Wells, slowly and dogmatically, "is that, while he was in prison in Alabama Harbour, he lost his reason: 'Off his nut' is slang for losing his reason. Now, I dare say that that is true. I shouldn't be surprised if it was."

"Then I went Canada," bellows Joe, striking a fresh match. "Buff'lo hunter! Ho! Ho! Fought the Injuns. Red Injuns. Killed hundreds. Slish! C-r-r-r-r! Bang! Dash! Gurrrr! Hundreds. Red Injuns! I killed hundreds myself. Ho! Ho! I dashed their brains out. Ho! Ho! Injuns. Red Injuns!"