Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 50, Vol. I, December 13, 1884
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Title: Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, Fifth Series, No. 50, Vol. I, December 13, 1884

Author: Various

Release date: November 3, 2021 [eBook #66659]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART, FIFTH SERIES, NO. 50, VOL. I, DECEMBER 13, 1884 ***

CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

CONTENTS

A GLACIER GARDEN.
ONE WOMAN’S HISTORY.
RECOLLECTIONS OF AN ANGLO-INDIAN CHAPLAIN.
COLONEL REDGRAVE’S LEGACY.
A SAMPLE OF MARSALA.
CONCERNING FLORIDA.
ARSENIC IN DOMESTIC FABRICS.
WASHING BY STEAM.
PARTING WORDS.

No. 50.—Vol. I.

Price 1½d.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1884.

A GLACIER GARDEN.

The glacier garden lies far away on a steep hillside by the Lake of the Forest Cantons. Close to the picturesque town of Lucerne, a little path leads past the sandstone crag on which is hewn Thorwaldsen’s famous monument, to the small inclosed space, overshadowed by trees, where have recently been discovered vestiges of the most remote days in the youth of our old mother-earth. Hidden away amongst tangled fern and bright green grass, we see huge surfaces of native rock, some furrowed with parallel lines, others, with curious petrifactions of the sea; and giant boulders smoothed and polished that do not in the least resemble the surrounding rocks, but which are travellers from the Alps, left stranded here by the glaciers in the last great Ice Age. It is indeed a wonderful garden, with a wonderful history, and although, as unscientific observers, we cannot trace the different phases of its development in the dim geological past, still, standing by these gray old stones on which have been laid the softening and romantic influences of countless ages, it is as if we had pages of the world’s history unrolled before our eyes.

The proofs of past glaciers are all around us in the grindings and scratchings on the rocks—in the ice-worn stones—and still more in the deep smooth circular hollows, which are perhaps the most perfect known specimens of the singular phenomena called glacier-mills. These erosions have been found also in Scandinavia and in the Jura Mountains, and are caused by the rapid whirling of a stone by a stream from the melting ice, which in the course of ages scoops out ever deeper and wider these cavities in the rock. But in this little garden we can trace the origin of the glacier-mills, from the tiny erosion just commenced, to the grand basin, twenty feet in diameter, and more than thirty feet deep, on whose smooth walls are clearly marked the spiral windings caused by the whirling of the stone perpetually from east to west. If you take up the glacier-stone that lies at the bottom of this mill, you will see not only how strangely round and polished it has become, but also that it is composed of totally different rock, and must have been transported hither by the great Reuss glacier from the granite slopes of the St Gothard.

To look at these polished cavities, nobody would dream that they were the mere evidences of the eddying action of an ice-stream upon a small fragment of rock, and yet this is exactly what geology teaches us they really are; indeed, there is no rock or mineral, even the flint and agate, but what is permeable in some degree by the action of water; and like granite and marble, most stones are softer and more easily wrought before they are dried and hardened by air-seasoning. Are not similar effects of the action of torrents in the erosion of rock seen in almost every gorge through which rushes a mountain torrent? It seems all but incredible that to a little rippling rivulet is due the tremendous erosion of many alpine ravines, with their great height and precipitous walls. But science tells us very strange tales, even that the mountain streams in the present day are depressing the ridges of the Alps and the Apennines, raising the plains of Lombardy and Provence, and extending the coasts far into the waters of the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. Thus it is easy to understand how, at that remote period when a vast ice-sheet covered not only our garden but all Switzerland from the Alps to the Jura, the loose stones which had become detached from the moraine, and were met by some barrier in the ice whirled about by rushing water, ground down first the ice, then the rock, and in the wear and tear of unnumbered centuries grew round and smooth like the basins in which they revolved.

It is very seldom that loose fragments of rock exercise a protective power upon the ice; but instances have been met with on the higher glaciers of large stones warding off the rain and the radiation of the sun from the ice immediately beneath them; so that as the glacier wastes and lowers in the course of time, these glacier-tables remain fixed upon elevated pillars of ice, which sometimes reach to a height of ten or twelve feet above the general level.

At Lucerne, it is impossible to forget, as we wander about the paths in this archaic garden, that countless years before the great glaciers planed away the old flora from off the face of the land, there was a period of tropical heat and tropical vegetation which succeeded the earliest epoch in the existence of our globe. Petrifactions of the first stages of life are distinctly visible upon, the rocks—relics of a primeval ocean.

But with the story of the rocks there is mingled no trace of human interest. For them Time has stood still and the seasons brought no change, until a few years ago, when the ground being excavated for the foundations of a new house, these unsuspected relics were brought to light from amongst the sand and pebbles and ice-worn boulders. These relics are unconnected even with the first traditions of the people of the Alps, and had remained in quiet slumber beneath the glacial débris for long ages before the earliest settlers raised their pile-dwellings above the blue waters of the lake. Evidence, indeed, has been afforded that the lacustrine dwelling-places were inhabited by generations of men two thousand, or, as some authorities affirm, six thousand years before the Christian era. Amongst the piles of oak, or beech, or fir wood, rising occasionally in three or four tiers, one above another, in the accumulated waste of animal and vegetable life found at the bottom of the lake, were stone celts and other implements of bone or flint, memorials of a people who perished at a period beyond the reach of the most distant annals; very old, in an historical point of view, although in a geological estimate they are but of yesterday. For what is the antiquity of the earliest of these relics compared with that of the latest records plainly written upon the smooth surface of the rocks?

In the glacier garden we find not only the indefinable charm of a vast antiquity, but a suggestiveness of the strange contrast between the present and the past. On the one hand there is busy life, noise, warmth upon the winding shores of the placid lake, magnificent mountains girdled by forest trees, and woven in and out with verdant pastures and far-off snow—all things lovely of the earth present before our eyes; on the other hand, we have a glimpse into the remote and mysterious past, when the sun shone down upon an illimitable white world of snow and ice.

ONE WOMAN’S HISTORY.

CHAPTER XII.

Miss Gaisford had found a quiet nook in the lower grounds of the hotel, well out of view from the windows, where there was little likelihood of being disturbed by the ordinary run of visitors. Now and then, a newly married couple, or a pair of turtle-doves who were not yet married, but hoped to be before long, would invade her solitude; but such momentary interruptions served rather to amuse her than otherwise. ‘Here comes another peripatetic romance,’ she would remark to herself. ‘Now, if those two young people would only come and sit down beside me, and tell me all about it, first one telling me a bit and then the other, till I knew their story by heart, they would do me a real kindness, and save me a lot of invention. All newly married couples ought to be compelled to write their Love Memoirs, which should afterwards be bound in volumes (calf), and kept in a sort of Record Office, where we poor story-tellers could have access to them whenever we happened to be hard up for a plot.’

To this sheltered nook a table and chair had been brought from the hotel, and here, on this Friday forenoon, Miss Gaisford was busy writing. But she laid down her pen more frequently than was usual with her when so employed, and had little fits of musing between times.

‘I’m not i’ the mood this morning, that’s certain,’ she said at last. ‘My thoughts seem all in a muddle. I can’t get Mora out of my head. She puzzles me and makes me uneasy. It’s mental illness, not bodily, that keeps her to her room. Colonel Woodruffe had a long talk with her on Wednesday, and then drove her back to the hotel, which he would scarcely have done, I think, if he had been decisively and finally rejected. There’s a mystery somewhere; but Mora is a woman whom one cannot question. I have no doubt she will tell me all about it when she feels herself at liberty to do so. Meanwhile, it’s a good lesson in curbing that curiosity which certain cynical moralists of the inferior sex have had the unblushing effrontery to affirm to be the bane of ours.—But this is frivolity.’ She dipped her pen in the inkstand, and running her eyes over the few lines last written, read them half aloud:

‘“Next moment, Montblazon’s equipage, which was drawn by six coal-black steeds, and preceded by two outriders in livery, drew up at the palace gates. As the Duc alighted from his chariot, a woman, young and beautiful, though in rags, pressed through the crowd till she was almost near enough to have touched him. ‘For the love of heaven, monseigneur!’ she cried in piteous accents. A gorgeously attired lackey would have thrust her back, but an imperious gesture of Montblazon’s jewelled hand arrested him. There was something in the expression of the woman’s face which struck him as though it were a face seen in a dream long ago. Montblazon, who knew not what it was to carry money about his person, extracted from the pocket of his embroidered vest a diamond—one of a handful which he was in the habit of carrying loose about him to give away as whim or charity dictated—and dropped it into the woman’s extended palm. Then without waiting for her thanks, he strode forward up the palace stairs, and a few moments later found himself in a saloon which was lighted by myriads of perfumed wax tapers set in sconces of burnished silver. Montblazon, who towered a head taller than any one there, gazed round him with a lurid smile.”’

‘Yes, I think that will do,’ said Miss Pen as she took another dip of ink. ‘“Lurid smile” is not amiss.’

She was interrupted by the sound of footsteps. She looked up, and as she did so, a shade of annoyance flitted across her face. ‘I thought that I was safe from her here. I wonder how she has found me out,’ she said to herself.

The object of these remarks was none other than Lady Renshaw. It was quite by accident that she had discovered Miss Gaisford. The news told her by Mr Etheridge had excited her in no common degree; there was no one in the hotel that she cared to talk to; so, finding it impossible to stay indoors, she had sought relief in the open air. She was expecting Bella and Mr Golightly back every minute; meanwhile, she was wandering aimlessly about the grounds, and brightened up at the sight of Miss Penelope. Here at least was some one she knew—some one to talk to. She advanced smilingly. ‘What a number of correspondents you must have, dear Miss Gaisford,’ said her ladyship after a few words of greeting. ‘You seem to spend half your time in writing.’ She was glancing sharply at Miss Pen’s closely covered sheets of manuscript.

‘Yes, I do write a good deal,’ answered the latter as she began to put her sheets in order. ‘I rather like it. Between you and me, when Septimus is busy other ways, or is enjoying his holiday, I sometimes try my hand at writing a sermon for him.’

‘Really now! And do the congregation never detect the difference between your discourses and his?’

‘I don’t think they trouble their heads a bit about it. So long as we don’t make use of too many hard words, and get the sermon well over in twenty minutes, they are perfectly satisfied.’

Lady Renshaw was in possession of a certain secret, and although she had given her word that she would not reveal it for the present, it was too much to expect of poor human nature that she should not make some allusion to it, if the opportunity were given her, especially in conversation with another of her own sex.

‘I understand that we are likely to have one or two important arrivals at the hotel this evening,’ she remarked with studied indifference, as she shook a little dust off the flounces of her dress.

‘Indeed. A Russian Prince, an Ambassador, an Emperor travelling incog., or whom?’

‘Dear me, no!—nobody of that kind. But my lips are sealed. I must not say more.’

‘Then why did you say anything?’ remarked Miss Pen to herself.

‘Still, when you come to know, I feel sure that you will be surprised—very greatly surprised. Strange events may happen here before to-morrow. But I dare not say more, so you must not press me.’

‘I won’t,’ responded Miss Pen emphatically.

‘Why, I declare, yonder come my darling Bella and Mr Golightly! I’ve been looking out for them this hour or more.—You will excuse me, my dear Miss Gaisford, I’m sure.’

‘Certainly,’ was the uncompromising reply.

Her ladyship smiled and nodded, and then tripped away as lightly and gracefully as a youthful elephant might have done.

‘Now, what can the old nincompoop mean?’ asked Miss Pen of herself. ‘That there is some meaning in her words, I do not doubt. She is no friend of Mora, I feel sure. Can what she said have any reference to her? But I’m altogether in the dark, and it’s no use worrying. If there’s trouble in the wind, we shall know about it soon enough.’

‘He has proposed—I know it from his manner,’ exclaimed Lady Renshaw to her niece as soon as they were alone in the hotel; ‘so it’s no use your telling me that he hasn’t.’

‘I had no intention of telling you anything of the kind,’ answered the girl demurely.

‘What did you say to him in reply?’

‘Very little. You told me not to say much. Besides,’ added Bella slily, ‘he seemed to like to do most of the talking himself.’

‘Men generally do at such times.—But didn’t the young man say anything about speaking to me?’

‘O yes, aunt.’

‘And very properly so, too. But you need not refer him to me just at present; I will give you a hint when the proper time arrives. Meanwhile, I hope you will not allow yourself to get entangled to such an extent that you won’t be able to extricate yourself, should it become necessary to do so.’

Bella was taken with a sudden fit of sneezing.

‘Mr Archie Ridsdale’s affair is by no means a fait accompli,’ continued her ladyship; ‘and we shall see what we shall see in the course of the next few hours.’ She nodded her head with an air of mystery and tried to look oracular.

Presently Bella pleaded a headache and escaped to her own room.

Clarice was at the station at least twenty minutes before the train by which Archie was to travel could by any possibility arrive. It showed great remissness on the part of the railway people, considering how anxious she was for her sweetheart’s arrival, that this very train should be five minutes and fourteen seconds late. Such gross disregard of the feelings of young ladies in love ought to be severely dealt with.

At length the train steamed slowly in, with Archie’s head and half his long body protruding from the window, to the annoyance of every other passenger in the compartment. He was out of the train before any one else, and as it glided slowly forward before coming to a stand, those inside were favoured with a sort of panoramic glimpse of a very pretty girl being seized, hugged, and unblushingly kissed by a young fellow, to whom, at that moment, the code of small social proprieties was evidently a dead letter.

‘What about your father?’ asked Clarice as soon as she had recovered her breath in some measure and had given a tug or two to her disarranged attire.

‘What about him?’ queried Archie, who was looking after his portmanteau.

‘Of course he has not come down by this train, or you would have travelled together. But I suppose you know he’s expected at the Palatine to-night—at least so Mr Etheridge told me.’

‘Etheridge! is he here?’

‘Yes; didn’t you know? He reached here a few hours after you left for London. He brought a letter for you from your father all the way from Spa.’

Archie scratched his head: even heroes go through that undignified process occasionally. ‘Upon my word, I don’t know what to make of the governor,’ he said. ‘He seems to get more crotchety every day. Here, according to what you say, he sends poor Etheridge all the way from Spa as the bearer of a letter which any other man would have intrusted to the post; then he apparently changes his mind and telegraphs for me to meet him in London. To London I go, and there wait, dangling my heels; but no Mr Governor turns up. Then Blatchett receives a telegram from somewhere—by-the-bye, he never told me where he did receive it from—in which I am instructed to return to Windermere immediately, and am told that my long-lost papa will meet his boy there. It’s jolly aggravating, to say the least of it.’

‘Mr Etheridge says that Sir William may perhaps want to see me. O Archie, I was never so frightened in my life!’

He soothed and petted her after the fashion which young men are supposed to find effectual in such cases, and presently they drew up at the hotel.

They went at once to the sitting-room, the only inmates of which they found to be Lady Renshaw, Bella, and Mr Golightly. The last had come to inquire whether Miss Wynter would go for a row on the lake after dinner. If she would, there was a particular boat which he would like to engage beforehand.

Lady Renshaw was doubtful. She was inclined to think that Bella had caught cold on the lake in the morning. She had sneezed more than once. It would scarcely be advisable, her ladyship thought, for Miss Wynter to venture on the water again in the chill of the evening. Besides, the clouds looked threatening, and to be caught in a storm on the lake, she had been told, was dangerous.

In short, without exactly wishing to discourage Mr Golightly, she was desirous of damping his ardour in some measure for the time being. Till she should be able to judge how events were likely to shape themselves, he must not be allowed too many opportunities of being alone with Bella; perhaps even, at the end, it might become necessary to give him the cold shoulder altogether.

Lady Renshaw was in the midst of her platitudes when Archie and Clarice entered the room. On their way from the station Clarice had spoken of her sister’s indisposition, so that Archie was prepared not to find Madame De Vigne downstairs; but probably he had hardly counted upon coming so unexpectedly on her ladyship. As, however, she was there, the only possibility left him was to look as pleasant as possible.

He greeted her with as much cordiality as he could summon up at a moment’s notice, and then he turned to Miss Wynter, whose pretty face he was really pleased to see again. There was a hidden meaning laughing out of his eyes as he shook hands with her. It was as though he had said: ‘You naughty girl, I should like to spoil your little game, just for the fun of the thing, but I won’t.’

He did spoil it, however, a moment later, all unwittingly. Turning to Dick, who appeared to be gazing abstractedly out of one of the windows, he gave him a hearty slap on the shoulder. ‘Dulcimer, old chappie, how are you? Delighted to see you again.’

Next moment he could have bitten his tongue out.

‘Dulcimer!’ shrieked her ladyship, whose ears had caught the name.

The young people turned and stared at each other in blank dismay. Dick shrugged his shoulders, and was the first to recover his sang-froid. The moment had come for him to take the bull by the horns.

‘Dulcimer!’ again exclaimed her ladyship in a tone of hopeless bewilderment, that was at once both ludicrous and pathetic, as she glanced at the dismayed faces around her.

‘Even so, Lady Renshaw. I am Richard Dulcimer, at your service.’ He spoke as quietly as though he were mentioning some fact of everyday occurrence.

‘You, that Richard Dulcimer—that impudent pretender—that—that cockatrice, who used to follow my niece about in London wherever she went! No, no’—peering into his face—‘I cannot believe it. You are amusing yourself at my expense.’

‘Nevertheless, unless I was changed at nurse, I am that cockatrice, Richard Dulcimer. As any further attempt at concealment would be useless, if your ladyship will permit me, I will enlighten you in a few words.’

She only stared at him, breathing very hard, but otherwise showing by no sign that she heard what he was saying.

‘I had the pleasure of meeting Miss Wynter on several occasions in London,’ resumed Dick. ‘Whether your ladyship believes it or not, I fell in love with her, hopelessly and irremediably. I am a poor man, and you scouted my pretensions, and forbade your niece ever to speak to me again. It is not in my province to blame your ladyship for doing that which you deemed to be for Miss Wynter’s advantage; but it by no means followed that I should fall in with your views. I heard that you and Miss Wynter were coming to this place, and I determined to follow you. Had I not made some change in my appearance, you would at once have recognised me, and my plans would have been frustrated. I took off my beard and moustache, dyed my hair and eyebrows, donned a clerical costume which I happened to have by me for another purpose, and trusted to my good fortune to escape detection. The rest is known to your ladyship.’

‘The rest—yes. You said that your name was Golightly, and you introduced yourself to me as the son of the Bishop of Melminster, which shows plainly what a wicked wretch you must be.’

‘Your ladyship must excuse me if I set you right as regards the facts of the case. I said that my name was Golightly. So it is—Richard Golightly Dulcimer; but I never said, nor even hinted, that I was the son of Bishop Golightly. It was your ladyship who arrived at that conclusion by some process of reasoning best known to yourself.’

‘Oh!’ was all that her ladyship could find to say at the moment.

Archie and Clarice stole quietly out of the room.

Lady Renshaw turned to her niece. ‘Am I to presume, Miss Wynter, that you have been a party to this vile fraud?’ she asked in her iciest tones. ‘Am I to understand that you have known all along that this person was Mr Dulcimer, and that you have been cognisant of this wicked conspiracy?’

Bella hung her head.

‘Your silence convicts you. It is even so, then. I have nourished a viper, and knew it not. But, understand me, from this time I discard you; I cast you off; I have done with you for ever!’

Tears sprang to the girl’s eyes. ‘O aunt, forgive me!’ she exclaimed as she sprang forward and tried to clasp her ladyship’s hand.

The latter drew back a step or two and waved her away. ‘Touch me not!’ she said. ‘Henceforth, you and I are strangers. You have chosen to sacrifice me for the sake of this impostor. Marry him—you can do no less now—and become a pauper’s wife for the rest of your days. That is your fate.’

Lady Renshaw turned without another word, drew her skirts closer around her, and stalked slowly out of the room.

The weeping girl would have hurried after her, had not Dick put his arm round her and held her fast.

‘No,’ he said; ‘you shall not go just yet. She wants to make you believe that she is an ill-used victim, whereas it is you who have been the victim all along. Yes, the victim of her greed, her selfishness, and her willingness to sacrifice you for the sake of her own social advancement. What would she have cared whom you married, or whether you were happy or miserable, if only, by your means, she could have climbed one rung higher on the ladder of her ambition! Here is the proof: Now that she finds you are no longer of use to her for the furtherance of her schemes, she casts you off with as little compunction as she would an old glove. Dearest, she is not worth your tears!’

But Bella’s tears were not so readily stanched, and for a time she refused to be comforted.

CHAPTER XIII.

Half an hour later, as Lady Renshaw was sitting alone in her room, musing in bitterness of spirit on the mutability of human affairs, a message was brought her. Sir William Ridsdale’s compliments to Lady Renshaw, and would her ladyship favour him with her company for a few minutes in his apartments?

She rose with a sigh. Her anticipated triumph was shorn of half its glory. Archie Ridsdale might be a free man to-morrow, and it would matter nothing now, as far as she was concerned. Bella had made a fool of herself, and doubtless Archie had all along been a party to the deception. This thought coming suddenly, revived her like a stimulant. What would her disappointment be in comparison with his humiliation when he should learn that which his father had to tell him! Then there was that haughty Madame De Vigne. For her, too, the hour of humiliation was at hand. As she thought of these things, while on her way to Sir William’s room, Lady Renshaw’s spirits rose again. She felt that life had still some compensations for her.

A staid-looking man-servant ushered her into the room. She gazed round; but there was no one to be seen save Colonel Woodruffe, who was a stranger to her, and Mr Etheridge. The latter rose and advanced with his thin, faint smile.

‘I was given to understand that I should find Sir William Ridsdale here,’ said her ladyship in a somewhat aggrieved tone.

‘I am Sir William Ridsdale, very much at your service,’ was the quiet reply of the smiling, white-haired gentleman before her.

Probably in the whole course of her life Lady Renshaw had never been so much taken aback as she was at that moment. She literally gasped for words, but none came.

‘Will you not be seated?’ said the baronet; and with that he led her to a chair, and then he drew up another for himself a little distance away.

‘I will give your ladyship credit for at once appreciating the motives by which I was influenced in acting as I have acted. I came here incognito in order that I might be able to see and judge for myself respecting certain matters which might possibly very materially affect both my son’s future and my own. Archie was got out of the way for a day or two; and the only person who knew me not to be Mr Etheridge was my old friend here, Colonel Woodruffe, to whom, by-the-bye, I must introduce your ladyship.’

‘It was really too bad of you, Sir William, to hoax us all in the way you have done,’ simpered her ladyship when the process of introduction to the colonel was over. She did not forget that elderly baronets have occasionally fallen victims to the wiles of good-looking widows. ‘But for my part, I must confess that from the first I had my suspicions that you were not the person you gave yourself out to be. There was about you a sort of je ne sais quoi, an impalpable something, which caused me more than once to say to myself: “Any one can see that that dear Mr Etheridge is a gentleman born and bred—one who has been in the habit of moving in superior circles. He must have known reverses. Evidently, at one period of his life, he has occupied a position very different from that of an amanuensis.”’

‘Madam, you flatter me,’ replied the baronet with a grave inclination of the head. ‘As I have had occasion to remark before, your ladyship’s acumen is something phenomenal.’

The widow was rather doubtful as to the meaning of ‘acumen;’ but she accepted it as a compliment. ‘And now, dear Sir William, that you have come and seen and judged for yourself, you will have no difficulty in making up your mind how to act.’

‘My mind is already made up, Lady Renshaw.’

‘Ah—just so. Under the painful circumstances of the case, you could have no hesitation as to the conclusion at which you ought to arrive. What a fortunate thing that I happened to find that scrap of paper in the way I did!’

‘Very fortunate indeed, because, as I remarked this morning, it might have fallen into the hands of some one much less discreet than your ladyship. As it happened, however, although I did not say so to you at the time, it told me nothing that I did not know already.’

‘Nothing that you did not know already!’ gasped her ladyship.

‘Nothing. Madame De Vigne, of her own free will, had already commissioned her friend, Colonel Woodruffe, to tell me without reservation the whole history of her most unhappy married life.’

‘What an idiot the woman must be!’ was her ladyship’s unspoken comment; but she only stared into the baronet’s face in blank amazement. Recovering herself with an effort, she said with a cunning smile: ‘People sometimes make a merit of confessing that which they can no longer conceal. You will know how to appraise such a statement at its proper worth. You say that your mind is already made up, Sir William. I think that from the first there could be no doubt as to what the result would be.’

‘Very little doubt, indeed,’ he answered drily. ‘For instance, here is a proof of it.’

He rose as he spoke, and crossed to the opposite side of the room, where was a window set in an alcove, which just at present was partially shrouded by a heavy curtain. With a quick movement of the hand, Sir William drew back the curtain, and revealed, to Lady Renshaw’s astonished gaze, Mr Archie Ridsdale sitting with a skein of silk on his uplifted hands in close proximity to Miss Loraine, who was in the act of winding the silk into a ball. The young people started to their feet in dismay as the curtain was drawn back. It was a pretty picture. ‘There’s no need to disturb yourselves,’ said Sir William smilingly; ‘I only wanted to give her ladyship a pleasant surprise.’ With that he let fall the curtain and went back to his chair.

‘A pleasant surprise, indeed! You don’t mean to say, Sir William’—— Her ladyship choked and stopped.

‘I mean to say, Lady Renshaw, that in Miss Loraine you behold my son’s future wife. He has chosen wisely and well; and that his married life will be a happy one, I do not doubt. In the assumed character of Mr Etheridge, I made the acquaintance of Miss Loraine, so that I am no stranger to her sweet temper and fine disposition. If anything, she is just a leetle too good for Master Archie.’

Lady Renshaw felt as if the ground were heaving under her feet. In fact, at that moment an earthquake would hardly have astonished her. Most truly had Sir William been termed an eccentric man: he was more than eccentric—he was mad! She had only one shaft more left in her quiver, but that was tipped with venom.

‘Then poor Archie, when he marries, will be brother-in-law to a person whose husband was or is a convict,’ she murmured presently, more as if communing sorrowfully with herself, than addressing Sir William. Her eyes were fixed on the cornice pole of one of the windows; and when she shook her head, which she did with an air of profound melancholy, she seemed to be shaking it at that useful piece of furniture. Sir William and Colonel Woodruffe exchanged glances. Then the baronet said: ‘Will you oblige me, Lady Renshaw?’

He led the way to the opposite end of the room, where anything they might say would be less likely to be overheard by the young people behind the curtain. ‘Yes, as your ladyship very justly observes,’ said the baronet, ‘when my son marries Miss Loraine, he will be brother-in-law to an ex-convict—for the fellow is alive—to a man whom I verily believe to be one of the biggest scoundrels on the face of the earth. It will be a great misfortune, I grant you, but one which, under the circumstances, can in nowise be helped.’

‘It will be one that the world will never tire of talking about.’

‘Poor Madame De Vigne! I pity her from the bottom of my heart; and you yourself, as a woman, Lady Renshaw, can hardly fail to do the same.’

Lady Renshaw shrugged her shoulders, but was silent.

‘What a misfortune for her, to be entrapped through a father’s selfishness, when a girl just fresh from school, into marriage with such a villain!’ resumed the baronet. ‘But in what way could she possibly have helped herself? Alas! in such a case there is no help for a woman. When—years after he had robbed and deserted her, and had fallen into the clutches of the law—she received the news of his death, it was impossible that she should feel anything but thankfulness for her release. Time went on, and she had no reason to doubt the fact of her widowhood, when suddenly, only three days ago, her husband turned up—here! I have told you all this, Lady Renshaw, in order that you may know the truth of the case as it now stands, and not be led away by any distorted version of it. Ah, poor Madame De Vigne! How was she to help herself?’

‘That is not a question I am called upon to answer—it is not one that the world will even condescend to ask. The fact still remains that she is a convict’s wife, and as such the world will judge her.’

‘Yes, yes; I know that what we term the world deals very hardly in such matters—that the innocent are too often confounded with the guilty. But in this case at least, the world need never be any wiser than it is now. The secret of Madame De Vigne’s life is known to three people only—to you, whom a singular accident put in possession of part of it; to Colonel Woodruffe; and to myself. Not even her sister is acquainted with the story of her married life. Such being the case, we three have only to keep our own counsel; we have only to determine that not one word of what we know respecting this most unhappy history shall ever pass our lips, and loyally and faithfully carry out that determination, and the world need never know more of the past life of Madame De Vigne than it knows at the present moment. As for the fellow himself, I shall know how to keep his tongue quiet. I am sure that you agree with me, dear Lady Renshaw.’

A vindictive gleam came into her ladyship’s eyes. The time had come for her to show her claws. Such a moment compensated for much that had preceded it.

She laughed a little discordant laugh. ‘Really, Sir William, who would have thought there was so much latent romance in your composition? Who would have dreamt of your setting up as the champion of Beauty in distress? To be sure, if you persevere in your present arrangements, this Madame De Vigne will become a connection of your own, and regarded from that point of view, I can quite understand your anxiety to hush up the particulars of her very ugly story. Family scandals are things always to be avoided, are they not, Sir William?’

‘Always, Lady Renshaw—when practicable.’

‘Just so. But as Madame De Vigne, thank heaven! will be no connection of mine either near or distant, you will pardon me if I hardly see the necessity for such extreme reticence on my part. The world will get to know that I have been mixed up to a certain extent in this affair—somehow, it always does get to know such things—and I shall be questioned on every side. What am I to say? What reply am I to make to such questions? Am I to tell an untruth, and say that I know nothing—that I am in absolute ignorance? Or am I to prevaricate, and insinuate, for instance, that Madame De Vigne is a lady of the highest respectability and of unblemished antecedents—a person, in short, whom any family might be proud to count as one of themselves? You will admit, Sir William, that the position in which I shall be placed will be a most embarrassing one?’

‘Most embarrassing indeed, Lady Renshaw—almost as much so, in fact, as if some one were to say to you: “I was past your grandfather’s shop in Drury Lane the other day. The place looks precisely as it did forty years ago. Nothing is changed except the name over the door.” That might be rather embarrassing to you, might it not?’

All at once Lady Renshaw looked as if she were about to faint. The rouge on her cheeks showed up in ghastly mockery of the death-like pallor which had overspread the rest of her face. Her lips twitched convulsively. She sat staring at Sir William, unable to utter a word.

‘In most families, Lady Renshaw, nay, in most individual lives, there are certain secrets, certain private matters, which concern ourselves alone, and about which we would infinitely prefer that the world, and perhaps even our most intimate friends, should remain in happy ignorance. It could be no gratification to your ladyship, for instance, if the circle of your acquaintance were made aware that your grandfather started in life as a rag and bone merchant in the fashionable locality just named—“Solomon Izzard” was the name painted over his door—and that your ladyship first saw the light under the roof of that unsavoury emporium. No; certainly that could be no gratification to you. Your father at that time was just beginning to lay the foundation of the fortune which he subsequently accumulated as a speculative builder. My father owned certain house property in the neighbourhood, and he employed your father to look after the repairs. Hence it was that, on two occasions when little more than a youth, I was sent with business messages to the Lane, and it was on one of those occasions that I first had the distinguished pleasure of meeting your ladyship. You were a mere child at the time, and your father used to call you “Peggy,” if I mistake not. He was holding you in his arms, and you struggled to get down; but he would not let you go. “She wants to be off with the other children,” he said to me; “and then she gets playing in the gutter, and makes a nice mess of herself.” Those were his exact words. Your ladyship will pardon me for saying that you struck me at the time as being a remarkably pretty child, although it is possible that your face might with advantage have been a little cleaner than it was.’

Never before in the whole course of her life had Lady Renshaw had the tables turned on her in such fashion. Scalding tears of rage and mortification sprang to her eyes, but she bit her lip hard and kept them back. At the moment, she felt as if she could willingly have stabbed Sir William to the heart.

She sat without uttering a word. What, indeed, could she find to say?

‘Come, come, Lady Renshaw,’ resumed Sir William smilingly; ‘there is no occasion for you to be downhearted. The best thing that you and I can do will be to draw up and sign—metaphorically—a treaty of peace, to which Woodruffe here shall act as witness. The terms of the treaty shall be these: you on your part shall promise to keep locked up in your bosom as a sacred secret, not even to be hinted at to your dearest friend, that knowledge respecting the married life of Madame De Vigne which has come so strangely into your possession; while I on my part will promise faithfully to keep undivulged those particulars concerning your ladyship’s early career of which I have just made mention—which, and others too that I could mention, although you could in nowise help them, I feel sure that you would not care to have published on the housetops. Come, what say you, shall it be a compact between us?’

‘As you please,’ she answered sullenly as she rose from her chair, adding with a contemptuous shrug, ‘I have no wish to injure Madame De Vigne.’

‘Nor I the slightest desire to humiliate Lady Renshaw.’

Was it possible that this man, whose tongue knew how to stab so keenly, could really be the same individual as mild-mannered, soft-spoken Mr Etheridge, who had seemed as if he could hardly say Bo to a goose!

Her ladyship seemed to hesitate for a moment or two; then she said: ‘I will see you again to-morrow—when you are alone,’ with a little vindictive glance at the impassive Colonel Woodruffe.

‘I shall be at your ladyship’s command whenever and wherever may suit you best.’

He crossed to the door, opened it, and made her one of his most stately bows as she walked slowly out, with head erect and eyes that stared straight before her, but with rage and bitter mortification gnawing at her heartstrings.

‘We have still that scoundrel of a Laroche to reckon with,’ said Sir William quietly to the colonel as he shut the door upon her ladyship.

RECOLLECTIONS OF AN ANGLO-INDIAN CHAPLAIN.

BANGALORE—THE ENGLISH CANTONMENT.

About a mile distant from the old fort and city of Bangalore are the English cantonment and modern native town. Conceive a field or parade-ground a mile and a half in length and a quarter of a mile in breadth, lined on each side by avenues of large beautiful trees, overshadowing the encircling footpath and carriage-drive. Along the southern boundary of this parade-ground are the houses and shops of the Europeans and Eurasians; whilst to the north are lines of barracks for both European and native troops, from the midst of which rises prominently the tower of St Andrew’s Church, which is, or was, the finest and highest building in Bangalore. Many are the beautiful roads stretching away from this parade-ground into the country, where are the picturesque dwelling-houses of civilians and officers, whose encircling gardens all the year round are in perpetual bloom—for Bangalore, though in a tropical region, has an Italian climate. The fortunate Europeans who are stationed there are not scorched up by the terrible heat under which their unlucky countrymen must swelter at Madras and in the southern plains; and Christmas comes to them at Bangalore, not wreathed with snowflakes and pendent with icicles, as it does to us, but beautiful with roses and variegated garlands of flowers.

It was rather a novel thing for my friends Dr Norman Macleod and Dr Watson to be taken on a New-year’s day, as I took them in 1868, to a magnificent show of flowers and fruits in the ‘Lall-baugh’ Gardens of Bangalore. In his usual happy style, the celebrated Norman thus relates his visit: ‘The European quarter is as different from the Pettah as Belgravia is from the east end of London. Here the houses are in their own compounds with shrubs and flower-gardens quite fresh and blooming. Open park-like spaces meet the eye everywhere, with broad roads as smooth and beautiful as the most finished in England. Equipages whirl along, and ladies and gentlemen ride by on horseback. One catches a glimpse of a church tower or steeple; and these things, together with the genial air, make one feel once more at home; at all events, in a bit of territory which seems cut out of home and settled in India. There are delightful drives, one to the Lall-baugh laid out in the last century by Hyder Ali. Our home feeling was greatly intensified by attending a flower-show. There was the usual military band; and crowds of carriages conveyed fashionable parties to the entrance. Military officers and civil servants of every grade were there, up to Mr Bowring, Chief Commissioner of Mysore. The most remarkable and interesting spectacles to me were the splendid vegetables of every kind, including potatoes which would have delighted an Irishman; leeks and onions to be remembered, like those of Egypt; cabbages, turnips, cauliflowers, peas, beans, such as England could hardly equal; splendid fruit, apples, peaches, oranges, figs, and pomegranates; the display culminating in a magnificent array of flowers, none of which pleased me more than the beautiful roses, so redolent of home. Such were the sights of a winter’s day at Bangalore.’

Around the English cantonment, more especially on the north side of it, is the modern town of Bangalore, containing about sixty or seventy thousand inhabitants, who are chiefly Tamulians, the descendants of those native camp-followers and adherents who accompanied the British forces from Madras and the plains of the Carnatic when they conquered and took possession of the land. There are likewise at Bangalore a goodly number of English and Irish pensioners, who have chosen rather to abide in India than come back to this country; and certainly, with scanty means, they are better off there in a warm and genial clime than they would be here, with our long and dreary cold and icy winters. And when those pensioners are sober and industrious, they have abundant opportunities in India to enable them to support themselves and their families in great comfort, and even to become what we Scotch people call ‘bein folk.’ I could give many pleasing instances from amongst them of ‘success in life.’ I knew three Scotch gentlemen who were highly respected bank agents, and who had gone to India as artillerymen in the Honourable East India Company’s service. But although it be thus a pleasant fact that many of our pensioned soldiers have done well and prospered in India, yet it is melancholy to relate that a goodly portion of them are sadly wanting in sobriety and industry, and consequently their continued stay in that country is not for good, but for evil. So impressed was I with this that, when asked by a high military official for my opinion as to whether the government ought to give greater encouragement to the time-served soldiers to settle permanently in India, I at once and decidedly said No; because, when freed from military discipline, their lives too frequently were such that they lowered the prestige of the English name, and helped to injure the salutary respect which the natives have hitherto had for their white-faced rulers.

In a pretty little village near Madras, called Poonamalee, as well as in Bangalore, there dwell very many of those pensioners with their families. I was wont to pay periodical visits to this place on professional duty; and certainly I found it at first not only strange but grotesque to see young men and maidens and numerous children, with faces as black as a minister’s coat, but yet bearing some good old Scottish name, and speaking the English with an accent as if they had been born and bred in the wilds of Lochaber. My beadle, as sable a youth as could be, was a M‘Cormick, and proudly claimed to be an Inverness-shire man. I remember, towards the close of the Mutiny, of driving with my wife, on a moonlight evening through a beautiful ‘tope’ of palm-trees, when suddenly our ears caught the distant strain of the bagpipes. There was no mistaking it; faint though it was, we could distinguish it floating and wailing through the silent night as M‘Clymont’s Lament. Gradually the music became louder, until we were able to discover whence it emanated. I got out of the carriage before an opening in the trees, and winding my way by a narrow path, I came at last to a small bungalow where a man was strutting up and down the veranda playing on a genuine pair of Scottish bagpipes. His garments were white, but his face was perfectly black. He was astonished at my appearance, and so was I at his; and my astonishment was not diminished when in answer to a question as to his name, he replied to me in a pleasant Argyllshire accent: ‘My name is Coll M‘Gregor, sir; and my father was a piper in the forty-second Highlanders, and I believe he came from a place they called Inveraray.’ Poor M‘Gregor! from that night I knew him well. Black though he was, he was a most worthy man; and one of the last sad duties I performed ere leaving India was to visit him when dying in the hospital, and to bury him when dead amongst the sleeping Scotchmen in St Andrew’s churchyard.

In the Illustrated London News there is a picture entitled ‘Recruits’ which gives a very faithful representation of the composition of the British army. A smart recruiting sergeant is leading away captive a batch of young men—the thoughtless, reckless shopboy, the clownish rustic, the discontented artisan, and the downcast ‘young gentleman’ who has wasted his substance in riotous living. The picture rekindles in my memory several instances of the last-mentioned type. In the following stories, it will be seen, from obvious reasons, that where names are mentioned, these are fictitious.

There is a clump of trees in the immediate vicinity of Bangalore which is known as ‘the Dead-man’s Tope.’ In it there is a solitary grave, that of a young Scotchman. For many years the natives alleged that his ‘ghost’ was to be seen walking mournfully amongst the trees, for they said he could not rest until his appointed years had been fulfilled. He had been a corporal in a Scotch regiment stationed in Bangalore, beloved by all his comrades, but unfortunately hated by the sergeant of his company. At last, goaded by the unjust treatment he received from this sergeant, he struck him down in a moment of passion. In those days, discipline was stern; the young corporal was tried, and condemned to be hanged in the presence of the whole garrison. The execution took place; but so great was the feeling against the sergeant, that he had to be sent away from the regiment down to Madras, protected by a military escort. The general officer who told me this story was a witness of this sad scene, and was the interpreter to the native soldiers of the reason of the execution. That young corporal belonged to Glasgow, and was connected with many respectable families in the city.

Here is a happier tale. John Home, after many years’ service in the Honourable Company’s artillery, retired on a pension, and settled at Bangalore. He became editor of a small local paper, and so for a few years was a prominent member of the community. He married, and had an only son. This boy was but an infant when the father died, his death being hastened by intemperate living. On Home’s private writing-desk being opened, his relations found, to their amazement, a sheet of paper with the handwriting of the deceased telling his real name—for Home was a fictitious one he had assumed on his enlistment—and whence he came, and where his relatives were to be found. These disclosures were made, so the paper said, for the only reason that perhaps on some future day they might benefit his boy; and were it not for this hope, the secret would have gone down with him to the grave. Strange to say, not many months elapsed when an advertisement appeared in an Edinburgh paper signed by a legal firm, asking for information about this very man, giving his real name. Of course the Edinburgh gentlemen were at once communicated with; and after all the evidences were submitted, and no doubt well scrutinised, the claim of the widow and her child was acknowledged. The boy was brought home and educated; and I trust still is, what he was a few years ago, the proprietor of a ‘snug little estate.’ Such is some of the romance of the ‘rank and file’ of our army.

COLONEL REDGRAVE’S LEGACY.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER III.

The spinster sisters held a council of war on the day following the events we have described. They were not disappointed at the failure of the marriage proposals to Miss Fraser; for that young lady was by no means the kind of guardian they would select for their brother as a bulwark against the troubles and vexations of this mortal life. The way was now more clear than ever for the success of their original plan. Septimus had learned their ideas and wishes, and had gradually become more amenable to reason. The beauty and talent of the handsome widow had been fully descanted upon. Nor were her monetary qualifications lost sight of by the practical Penelope. The question of suitability as to age had been delicately but firmly touched upon by both the sisters.

‘Mrs Fraser is only ten years your junior, Septimus, and that is the difference which should always exist between husband and wife. Indeed, I see no objection to even a greater disproportion, but that is the minimum necessary to conjugal happiness. I am certain that Mrs Fraser has a tendresse for you, and that any proposal from you would meet with every encouragement.’

Septimus left the room considerably mollified, and immediately after he had done so, Penelope turned to her sister, and said: ‘I trust, Lavinia, you approve of all I have been saying to dear Septimus?’

‘Entirely, my dear sister; but’—— Lavinia paused.

‘You have always a “but,” Lavinia. Pray, speak out.’

‘Well, I have a suspicion that Mrs Fraser has a lurking sentiment for Mr Lockwood.’

‘Good gracious, Lavinia! you certainly conceive the most extraordinary notions.’

‘I do not say for a single moment that the sentiment is reciprocated,’ replied Lavinia.

‘Why, Frank Lockwood is young enough to be her son!’ indignantly exclaimed Penelope.

‘Hardly, Penelope, unless Mrs Fraser was marriageable at the age of six,’ Lavinia continued. ‘Then I cannot help thinking that Frank is in love with Blanche.’

Penelope made a gesture of assent. ‘That is highly probable, and would account for her rejection of Septimus.’

Finally, the sisters mutually agreed that it would be politic to prepare Mrs Fraser for the possible proposal of their brother.

We trust the reader will not contemptuously label the spinster sisters as ‘matchmakers;’ for surely matchmaking is a fitting task for the angels, if it be true, as we are often told, that marriages are made in heaven.

At this moment the widow chanced to enter the drawing-room where the sisters were sitting. Her features still showed traces of the disappointment she had recently experienced.

‘We have not seen you all the morning, Mrs Fraser.’

‘I awoke with a slight headache, and sought the solitude of the Chine, my sole companion a book,’ replied the widow.

‘I trust you are better?’ said Lavinia.

‘Yes, thanks. I never enjoy Tennyson so much as when surrounded by murmuring foliage, and my ears filled with the sound of falling waters.’

‘How charming to have preserved your sentiment till now,’ said Penelope in marked tones.

This remark may seem ill calculated to put the widow in a good-tempered frame of mind. But Miss Redgrave had uttered it advisedly. The more fully Mrs Fraser was impressed with her own increasing years and fading charms, the more likely she was to listen to the suit of the elderly-looking Septimus.

For a moment the widow coloured, as if in anger. ‘That is not exactly a complimentary remark, my dear Miss Redgrave.—Now, don’t apologise, for I am not in the least offended. How can I be, when I have a daughter, not only marriageable, but actually engaged to be married!’

The sisters simultaneously left off their needlework, and gazing in astonishment at the speaker, sat as mute as the twin sisters carved in stone in the sandy Egyptian desert.

‘Yes; Mr Lockwood has asked my consent to his marriage with Blanche, and I have graciously accorded the same. Heigh-ho! it will be a great trial for me, when the hour of parting comes.’

‘I congratulate you most sincerely, my dear Mrs Fraser,’ exclaimed Penelope. ‘We have known Frank from a child. He is everything that a man should be, clever, accomplished, with good prospects, and of high moral principles.’

The widow sighed. ‘I shall be very lonely. I have not an affectionate sister as you have; and when a woman has once known the happiness of married life, and the comfort and protection of an affectionate husband, life is indeed a blank when she is left utterly alone.’

Like a second Wellington, Penelope saw her chances of a successful attack. In love and war, the occasion is everything. She gently laid her spare fingers on the plump hand of the widow, and softly whispered: ‘Why should you be utterly alone, dear friend?’

Mrs Fraser directed an inquiring glance in response at the speaker.

‘We know of one who would be only too happy to be your companion for life,’ pursued Penelope. ‘Of a suitable age, amiable, and rich.’

The countenance of the widow was suffused with a soft blush as she said: ‘Where shall I find this earthly treasure?’

‘In this house, Mrs Fraser. Our beloved brother, Septimus.’

Mrs Fraser had much ado to avoid making a wry face, as she mentally contrasted the white-haired ‘brother’ with his vacuous expression of countenance, and the black-haired Frank Lockwood, with his bright intelligent glance and fascinating smile. But it was now quite as probable that she would marry the Emperor of China as the solicitor of the Redgrave family; so she softly murmured; ‘I had no suspicion of anything of the kind.’

Rapidly the widow reviewed all the attendant circumstances of the case. Von Moltke himself would have envied her comprehensive glance at the pros and cons of an important conjuncture of events. Septimus was of good family, of suitable age, possessed of ample means, and last, but not least in the eyes of the widow, was not too clever; and therefore, in all probability easily manageable, that indispensable desideratum in a husband. We are not sure that Mrs Fraser was correct in her deduction on this point, for foolish people are frequently obstinate, under the false idea that they are thereby displaying firmness.

‘If I were to accept Mr Redgrave on the instant, in consequence of your recommendation, my dear Penelope, neither he nor his sisters would respect me. I have always found great pleasure in the society of your brother, and have a great respect for his character. More, I am sure, my dear Penelope, you would neither expect, nor wish me to say.’

Both the sisters cordially kissed the blushing widow, and expressed themselves as quite satisfied with the avowal, Penelope adding: ‘I have more than a presentiment that in a few weeks we shall be enabled to give you the kiss of a sister.’

No more was said on the present occasion.

The widow retired to her chamber, and as she contemplated her features in the glass, soliloquised: ‘No—at forty, one must not be too particular; and there are twenty thousand excellent reasons why I should change my name from Fraser to that of Redgrave.’

It is needless to say that the sisters did not allow the grass to grow under their feet with respect to the proposed alliance between the families of Redgrave and Fraser. Much stress was laid by them in their conversations with the widow as to the shyness of their brother, and the necessity of some encouragement being extended to him. At length Septimus screwed his courage to the sticking-place and resolved to learn his fate. By a singular coincidence, he found the widow seated on the identical bench occupied on a similar occasion by her youthful daughter. An involuntary sigh escaped him as he mentally instituted a comparison between the sylph-like figure of Blanche and the more portly form of her mother. As he sat down by her side in response to her invitation, he felt his courage oozing away. On the former occasion, he had been bold as a lion; but in the presence of the keen-witted woman of the world, he fully realised his mental inferiority. Some commonplaces ensued, and then Mrs Fraser, laying down the newspaper which she held in her hand, suddenly observed: ‘What is your opinion of thought-reading, Mr Redgrave? Do you believe in it?’

‘I scarcely know whether I do or not,’ responded Septimus. ‘Do you?’

‘Implicitly,’ replied the widow. ‘Shall I give you a specimen of my powers?’

‘I should be delighted. Can you read my thoughts?’ said Septimus.

‘I can. But you must promise two things: That you won’t be offended at my guess; and that you candidly admit whether I am correct in my guess.’

‘I promise.’

‘Give me your hand.’

Septimus placed his trembling fingers in the strong grasp of the widow. ‘You are at this moment contemplating matrimony.’

‘That is correct,’ said Septimus.

‘The lady is a widow.’

‘Wonderful!’ cried Septimus. ‘Can you tell me her name?’

‘My powers do not extend so far,’ returned Mrs Fraser.

‘Your successful guess, my dear Mrs Fraser, has helped me out of a great difficulty.’

‘How so?’

‘You have half-performed my task for me. Do you think a lady, handsome, rich, and well-bred, and still comparatively young, would consent to unite her fortunes with mine? I am some ten or a dozen years her senior. I have been a bachelor all my life, and may have thus acquired peculiar ways. But I would settle the whole of my cousin’s legacy upon her, if she would take pity on my solitary state. Dear Fanny, can you not guess, without thought-reading, the name of my enslaver?’

The widow looked down and managed to blush becomingly, and impart a slight tremor to the hand which still held that of Septimus.

‘I will not affect to misunderstand you, Mr Redgrave; you are making my unworthy self an offer of marriage.’

‘And you accept it?’

‘I do.’

Septimus sealed the contract by a chaste kiss on the cheek of the widow, and felt a sensation of inexpressible relief that the Rubicon, for good or evil, was passed.

‘I may now tell you, dear Septimus, that Blanche is also engaged.’

‘I know it.’

‘Impossible! I only knew it myself forty-eight hours ago!’

‘Do not ask me at present, dear Fanny. I learned the fact by an accident.’

The widow presently retired to her chamber, under the plea of nervous agitation, but in reality to inform her daughter of her engagement. But it was reserved for Septimus to perform that pleasant duty. Scarcely had Mrs Fraser retired, when Blanche appeared on the terrace. ‘Have you seen mamma, Mr Redgrave?’

‘Mrs Fraser has this moment left me.—Blanche, I have a favour to ask of you.’

‘Of me!’

‘That you will not breathe a syllable to your mamma that I proposed to you three days ago; at least, not for the present.’

‘Certainly, Mr Redgrave.’

‘You will at once see the necessity for my request, when I tell you that I have this day proposed to another lady and been accepted.’

Blanche indulged in a merry peal of laughter, which she found it impossible to repress. ‘Pray, forgive me, Mr Redgrave. I congratulate you that you have so speedily recovered from your late rejection.’

‘Yes, Blanche, as I could not be your husband, I have resolved on being your father.’

Blanche remained petrified with astonishment for a few seconds, then exclaiming: ‘I must go at once to dear mamma and congratulate her,’ prepared to enter the house.

But Septimus seized her hand and said: ‘Now, tell me the name of your future partner. Though I shrewdly suspect, yet I think in my new position as your father I am entitled to know for certain?’

‘Mr Frank Lockwood,’ replied the blushing girl, as she broke away and ran into the house.

There was not a happier circle round a dinner-table in the island than that assembled in Oswald Villa that evening. The engaged couples were mutually satisfied with their matrimonial prospects, while the spinster sisters saw the wish of their hearts gratified in the engagement of their beloved brother with so suitable a person as Mrs Fraser. But at that moment a cloud was forming on the horizon which was destined to effect a great change in the fortunes of the betrothed couples.

A SAMPLE OF MARSALA.

Time was, long ago, when certain of us thought that Spain was the place where the then despised Marsala wine was made. Struggling to obtain the favour and recognition of the public, and held as a kind of humble cousin of sherry, cheaper to buy and meaner in all its conditions, Marsala had no honour in England some thirty years or so ago. Those who gave it gave it for need; and for the most part tried to pawn it off as its more aristocratic relation, thinking that no one would suspect the truth when that silver label, shaped like a vine-leaf with ‘Sherry’ cut out in Roman capitals in the centre, was hung round the neck of the heavy cut-glass bottle. And as sherry was certainly a Spanish wine, the false reasoning born of association of ideas made one think that Marsala also was a Spanish wine.

The way to Marsala from Palermo is exceedingly interesting. The country is beautiful with all the grand Sicilian beauty—broken foregrounds, noble mountain forms, the dark-blue sea, of which the splendour is enhanced by the gray green of the olives and the contrast of the golden hue given by the lemon-trees hanging thick with fruit. All the waysides along the railroad are rich in flowers, making the land look as if enamelled. Rugged capes and fertile plains, small smooth exquisite bays and inland mountains, orange-gardens and vineyards, fields of pale lilac flax, woods of beech and ilex, and rivers running down in song to the sea—there is not a feature of Southern scenery wanting on this lovely way. And the sea, where the white sails of passing ships gleam in the sunlight like the wings of birds, is as beautiful as the land, where here a ruined temple crowns a height, and there a modern mansion stands sheltered on the slopes. Among the beautiful things of the sea is the uninhabited rocky island called ‘The Island of Women’ (L’isola delle femmine). The legend is that in old times, when pirates abounded, the ‘Barbari’ used to seize such hapless Sicilian women as they found wandering by the shore, and lodge them on this island till they had finished their fighting on shore; when they would return and carry off their prey.

In time the beauty of the lovely road fades away, and the country becomes utterly uninteresting. Still, even when there is no more flowery charm and no more golden colour, there is always association, and the way up to Segesta and Solinunto, with the ruined temple visible on the crest of the mountain, brings before the mind the long train of glorious images by which the ancient history of Sicily is thronged. For we are skirting the base of Mount Eryx, now Monte Giuliano, whence Acestes the king came down to meet Æneas when he landed on his return from Carthage; and where Æneas—so they say—founded the town of Acesta, which afterwards became Egesta, and is now Segesta. And all the well-known story repeats itself. ‘Selinus rich in palms,’ and ‘the shallow waters of Lilybæum’ which were ‘left behind;’ the race, and the beauty of the contending youths; poor Dido’s sad story; the death and burial of Anchises, the father whom Æneas saved from burning Troy by carrying on his shoulders—it is all living and palpitating as in those youthful days when imagination touched the pages with light, and made the dead words breathe with love and sorrow and passion. It is worth coming here, if only to realise Virgil and his matchless poem! But we draw up at a station, and the present puts the past to flight—the real blots out the ideal born of imagination and poetry.

Armed carabinieri are at every station. This is not usual either in Sicily or elsewhere in Italy, where soldiers keep order at the stations, but are not so numerous nor so heavily armed as these. The district about Trapani, however, in which we are, has not a good name; and the government knows what it is about when it takes extra measures of precaution for the safety of travellers. That it does take these extra measures insures the safety of the wayfarers. At Marsala itself, the whole train is taken possession of before it has well come to a stand, and long before the passengers have got out. The crowd swarms into all three classes indiscriminately; and there is much rough pushing and hustling, but no actual brutality. Still, it is sufficiently like the return of ’Arry from a Crystal Palace fête to be unpleasant; though for all that, the Italian ’Arry is a good-natured soul, with no malice in him. What he wants in malice, however, he makes up in garlic. There has been an Easter-week procession here—it is ‘Holy Thursday’—and all the neighbourhood has sent its young men, each township and village its quota, till they have come in their hundreds, and have to be taken back again the best way they can.

Near Marsala is one of the three promontories which give Sicily its name of Trinacria—Cape Lilybeo, the very Lilybæum whose ‘shallows blind,’ ‘dangerous through their hidden rocks,’ caused Æneas to land on the ‘unlucky shore’ of Drepanum. Here in calm weather you can see the remains of houses beneath the sea, as at Pozzuoli, near Naples. But the point of the whole visit is the wine-stores of Ingham—the largest and most important of all the Marsala wine-factories. These stores seem to be interminable; and the perspective of arches, from each side of which branch out these huge above-ground cellars, is a sight at once strange and picturesque. The balio or inclosure wherein the whole concern stands—storehouses, workshops, dwelling-house, garden, fields, &c.—is really like a fair-sized estate. To ‘walk in the grounds’ is quite enough exercise for any moderate-minded pedestrian. The oldest two stores date from 1812, and are the parents of all that have come after. They are picturesque little places now, covered with glossy dark-green ivy and flame-coloured bougainvillia; but, like the fathers and mothers of prosperous families, they are set aside as comparatively useless in the presence of their stalwart children.

In going through the stores, one is struck not only with the number, but also with the enormous size of the wine-vats. Some are of huge proportions, not quite equalling the famous Tun of Heidelberg perhaps, but coming pretty close to it, and holding wine to the worth of an astounding figure. The value of one store alone comes up to a moderate fortune; and there are thirty in all. Once a boy went to sleep in one of those weird receptacles, and was not found till the next morning. The fumes had overpowered him, but he came out none the worse. Some of the wine given us to taste is fifty years old, and is delicious in proportion to its age and preciousness; and some of the finer sorts of younger date are unsurpassed in any wine-store extant. Then there is the huge vat of vino cotto or vino madre; and there is the distilling apparatus, which is very beautiful and dainty. The Custom House is jealous and exact. It seals up all with a letter-lock, waxen seals and silken threads; so that no tampering is possible with the retorts or the receivers. The cool obscurity of the cellars, where these immense vats are ranged like so many transformed giants, gives one a sense of restfulness and shelter; while out of doors, the sun, lying keen and bright on wall and pavement, casting shadows as sharply defined as if purple paper had been cut with a pair of scissors and thrown on the ground, has the sentiment of passionate vitality peculiar to Sicily. Men in coloured shirts, with blue or red sashes round their waists, add to the general picturesqueness of the scene; and the white wings of the pigeons shining like silver against the blue sky, complete a chord of colour to be seen only in the South—that fervid South where to live is sufficient enjoyment, and where artificial wants as we have them are neither known nor appreciated, being of the nature of encumbrances and superfluities. For what else is wanted than the sun and the sky, the fruits and the flowers, the charm and the glory of nature? Nevertheless, the material luxury of the North and West is invading the hitherto frugal and, in one way, ascetic South; and France and England both, are being imitated even so far as Marsala, where once the house was held as merely a place of refuge where tired Christians might sleep at noon and at night, but in nowise as a place of enjoyment worth the spending of thought or money to make beautiful.

From the vats full of their golden treasure to the casks in process of making, the transition is natural. Here, again, light and colour give a certain charm, making a novelty of that which is so well known at home. For cask-making in Marsala is very much the same as cask-making in England; and only the men, with very minor details in the method of manipulation, are different. It is the same drying of the wood, the same setting of the staves, the same hammering on of the hoops in regular succession of blows, and we fancy the same kind of white oak, of which the staves are made, shipped from America for England as well as for Marsala. Hans Christian Andersen might have written a sprightly sketch of the oak as it stood in its virgin forest, with grizzlies and panthers, pretty woodchunks and sweet wild birds all about, till it was cut down by the forester; packed into a raft and started down the Big River by the lumberman; brought over to Europe by the huge steamship; made into casks, and filled with the golden juice of grapes beneath the glorious sky of Sicily—the wine to be drunk at the marriage of the bride, the birth of the heir, the death of the master. The place where they clean the barrels, some in the old-fashioned way of hand-rocking, with chains inside; the sheds where they cut the hoops and make the bolts—the drill and the circular saw going through iron and wood like so much butter or cheese; those where they steam the barrels and those where they mark them—these, too, come into the day’s work of visiting and inspection; as well as the cooking-place and the dining-shed for the three hundred men employed.

These men are noticeably clean and smart in appearance; they are, too, as industrious as they look; for no loafers are allowed, and he who does not know how to work with a will soon receives his dismissal. The touch of English energy and English precision is plainly visible throughout—with one result, that, unlike Southern workmen, as generally found, these do not care to keep all the holidays which are so frequent in Roman Catholic countries. They work about ten and a half hours in the day; and each man is searched and numbered on coming in and going out.

The word Marsala recalls the time when the Saracens ruled the land, just as Mongibello for Etna, Gibbel Rossa at Palermo, and all Sicilian agricultural and irrigatory terms recall them. It is really Marsh-Allah, ‘the port of God.’ Round about our balio are many interesting things, principally the caves where, not so long ago, a murderer hid in perfect safety, and where in lawless times brigands and outcasts took refuge and found security. They are interminable, and it is impossible to visit them all; but our guide takes us through some of the most practicable, where we have occasion for a little gymnastic exercise here and there among the broken rocks and steep sharp pitches. An army of brigands might hide away here undetected and unseen. Fortunately, at this time there are none to hide. No organised band of brigands exists anywhere in Sicily, and the stranger is absolutely safe.

Besides these caves, there is a strange folly in the shape of a ballroom and banqueting-room cut out of the living rock. There are tables and the place for the musicians, benches and divisions, all made in the rock underground. These odd rooms have been used, and it is to be supposed enjoyed. When we see them, the only guests are black beetles, a couple of dirty little lads as unkempt as wild Highland cattle, and a half-maniacal shock-headed Dugald kind of creature, with an atmosphere of garlic, which makes us rejoice when we turn out once more into the fresh air blowing over the breezy flower-clad upland, with the blue sea in front and the bright sun overhead.

CONCERNING FLORIDA.

A contributor, who is conversant with his subject, sends us the following important items, which we commend to young men who contemplate emigration.

‘Heads of families,’ says our correspondent, ‘with “little to earn and many to keep,” with several sons growing up and having a desire to go abroad and see the world, will be glad to know that there are ways for providing for the olive branches other than sending them to Australia or Manitoba to earn merely nominal wages as farm-labourers. Until recently, the United States depended almost wholly upon the enterprise of foreigners for their supply of oranges; but, as if by an inspiration, the discovery has been made that they can, amongst the numerous other industries for which they are remarkable, grow their own oranges, and that, too, of better quality, both in size and flavour, than those which are imported. The great and unequalled facilities for cheap and rapid transportation have opened up nearly the whole of the peninsula of Florida to settlement; and what was only recently very correctly described as a vast expanse of swamps, lakes, and sluggish rivers, is now a vast system of drainage-canals and railways.

In Florida, four hundred pounds will buy forty acres of land, ten of which may be cleared, fenced, and planted with orange-trees. A house may be inexpensively erected at an average cost of ten pounds per room. The orange-tree will bear five years from the bud, or ten years from seed; but a man left in charge—say the son of the owner—would have no difficulty in supporting himself by the sale of small fruit, which, coming to perfection in the middle of winter, commands the best prices in the New York and other Northern markets. In ten years, oranges are handsomely remunerative, and the crop steadily increases in value with every succeeding year. For those who cannot wait so long, the lemon and lime may prove more attractive, as they bear much sooner. They are almost as profitable, though not quite so hardy.

The list of things which can be grown profitably in Florida is so long and various as to include such dissimilar articles as potatoes, cocoa-nuts, plantains, guavas, mangoes, tomatoes, pine-apples, pumpkins, water-melons—which frequently weigh a hundredweight—grape-fruit, citron, cotton, sugar, strawberries, coffee, tea, tobacco, mulberries, pears, quinces, apples, Scuppernong grapes, &c. The woods and forests which have been slumbering all these years are now alive with settlers, who are actively employed felling timber, clearing land, erecting fences, planting groves, building houses, and in numerous ways expending their energy on the improvement of the land. The old cry, “Go west,” has been changed to, “Go south;” and now thousands of families from the Northern States are there, having orange and lemon groves, with pretty cottages simply but comfortably furnished, situated on the banks of rivers and lakes.

For the man who is fond of outdoor exercise and has a taste for gardening, the life in Florida has a charm all its own, for fruit-growing is nothing but gardening on an extensive scale. The soil in Florida has the most unpromising appearance, looking like nothing so much as silver sand. Yet what a charm it possesses! Seeds put in this apparently hopeless material spring up almost immediately; and cabbages, lettuces, radishes, and turnips may be eaten three weeks from sowing in the middle of January. Fish of large size, from ten pounds upwards, abound in the rivers and lakes, and being easily caught, make a very welcome addition to the larder. Deer, wild turkeys, quail, and numerous other kinds of game have not yet learned to shun the haunts of men.

Extensive drainage-works have made available for settlement vast tracts of land which have probably been submerged for centuries, but which now, thanks to the remarkable system of drainage-canals, is as dry and firm and as healthy to live upon as the best land in the State. A pretty site judiciously chosen on the banks of a lake will eventually enormously enhance the value of the property when the surrounding country is settled up. The plan suggested for persons of small means is to take up forty acres. Having ten acres cleared and planted at once, the whole might be fenced in, and a comfortable house built in the middle of the allotment. The remaining thirty acres can be brought into cultivation by degrees, and in the meantime will serve to graze cattle and sheep, which, being turned into the grove at night, fertilise it in the most effectual and inexpensive manner.’

Another correspondent has favoured us with the following notes:

‘Upon landing at New York City in the beginning of April of the present year, the weather was particularly disagreeable—cold, rainy, and sleety, and I was only too glad to leave the inclement North for the bright sunny South.

On the morning after landing at New York, I took my ticket for Jacksonville, Florida, and on the journey, stopped a few hours at Washington, and also spent a night at Savannah, Georgia; reaching Florida, the land of flowers, romance, and orange groves, in three days from the time of leaving New York.

Florida was first discovered by Sebastian Cabot in 1497, and after various vicissitudes in its history, became one of the United States in 1845. It is gratifying to know that the undoubted advantages and attractions of this country are becoming better known, and more and more appreciated, by all classes both in the United States and England. A great amount of English capital and English energy is now being attracted to Florida, which is a country offering inducements to the capitalist, sport to the sportsman, novel and romantic scenery to the tourist, health to the invalid, and very considerable advantages to the intelligent emigrant. The area of Florida comprises sixty thousand square miles; and the soil is adapted to an infinite variety of products, such, for instance, as corn, oats, rice, beans, peas, potatoes, turnips, cabbages, strawberries, tomatoes, melons, cucumbers, oranges, lemons, limes, peaches, figs, &c.; and in South Florida, cocoa-nuts, pine-apples, bananas, and other fruits and vegetables too numerous to mention. The climate is charming. In winter, the thermometer seldom goes below thirty degrees, or in summer above ninety; and although the State is the most southern of the United States, hot nights or oppressive days are comparatively rare. This is accounted for by its peculiar position, shape, and surroundings. The constant breezes, either from the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf of Mexico, purify the atmosphere, and render the Floridian climate enjoyable the whole year; and I may add, that after a four years’ residence in the State, I know of no disease that is indigenous or prevalent.

Jacksonville is situated on the grand St John’s River, and is the largest and most important city in Florida. It has a population of over twenty thousand, and will ere long take rank with Savannah or Charleston in commercial importance. This is the point at which all Northern visitors enter the State, and from which they radiate in search of health, work, or sport. Here there are fine buildings, shops, churches, schools, and about one hundred and fifty boarding-houses and hotels, the latter being filled during the winter months with invalids, principally consumptives.

The most absorbing question of interest to the greatest number now, however, is the great money-making business of orange-growing, which is peculiarly adapted to the Florida soil and climate. Since I first visited the State (in 1873), this industry has gone far beyond the commercially experimental stage, and I have been an eye-witness to its undoubted success. It is particularly interesting and instructive to travel over districts now, and observe bearing orange groves, the owners of which are securing handsome incomes, where ten years ago not a tree was planted. In Orange County, many emigrants who first went to Florida for their health, have improved sufficiently to earn their living and raise an orange grove in addition. Many of them took up one hundred and sixty acres of land under the Homestead Law, and selling off portions of it to later comers, have realised enough money to cultivate the balance retained. Others, who knew a trade, worked part of their time for their neighbours, and spent their unemployed hours in planting an orange-tree here or there for themselves, until they finally had a five or ten acre grove, of sixty trees to the acre, which when bearing would give them an annual income of from three hundred to one thousand pounds. Owing to recent railway and shipping facilities, a man nowadays may—if his land is well selected—grow early vegetables, &c., without interfering with his orange-trees, and ship them north to Baltimore, Philadelphia, or New York, and realise profit sufficient to enable him to pay his expenses whilst his grove is coming into bearing; for it must be borne in mind that the Floridians can grow any vegetable in winter which the Northerners grow in summer; and the Northern people are quite willing to pay a high price for such luxuries as peas, tomatoes, or strawberries at Christmas.

These are some of the attractions Florida holds out to the man who has industry, perseverance, and ordinary intelligence.’

ARSENIC IN DOMESTIC FABRICS.

Chronic poisoning by arsenic in domestic fabrics is without doubt an important subject, affecting the public to such an extent as to render attention to the question essential. Serious illness frequently arises from this cause, in some cases even attended by fatal results. A very general effect is a lowered condition of the system, such as to render the individual more susceptible to the attacks of other diseases. Action has been taken by the Medical Society of London, the Society of Arts, and the National Health Society, on the question of the prohibition of arsenic in articles manufactured for domestic use, such as wall-papers, dyed furniture materials, paint, distemper, &c. The fact is remarkable, that although this question has been thus brought prominently before the public, those supposed to be interested in the sale and use of arsenic have hitherto maintained a judicious silence, manufacturers abandoning the use of arsenical colours to a very large extent, instead of defending it. This silence has, however, now been broken by Mr Galloway, M.R.I.A., who deals with the question from a chemical point of view, describing his own special mode of manufacturing emerald green in an article in the Journal of Science. Mr Galloway asks: ‘Has it ever been conclusively proved that persons who inhabit rooms stained with emerald green suffer from arsenical poisoning?’ Notwithstanding the fact that Mr Galloway leaves the question unanswered, as though it were unanswerable, the reply shall now be given—though in certain quarters it is still doubted—that it has been proved, and that by the careful observation of medical men of eminence in all parts of the country.

Proof of the injurious effect of arsenic in domestic fabrics is found in the development of certain symptoms in the patient exposed to an arsenical fabric, followed by recovery on removal of the fabric in question. The occurrence of these circumstances in a sufficient number of cases leads to the conviction that the arsenical fabric was the cause of the malady. We act on similar proof with regard to sewer-gas; no one has ever absolutely seen the injurious action, but the fact of various diseases of a particular character frequently following a discharge of sewer-gas into a residence, has convinced medical men that the gas, or some germ contained in the gas, is the cause of illness, and that it is therefore desirable to exclude it from our homes.

As above stated, the same conclusion is arrived at, from the same line of argument, with regard to arsenic; and this proof alone would be sufficient. But with regard to arsenic, there are opportunities of observing what may be classed as experimental proofs, such as could not possibly occur in illness arising from sewer-gas. This further proof consists in the frequent alternate recurrence of illness and recovery—illness on exposure to, and recovery on removal from, arsenical surroundings, followed by final recovery on substitution of a non-arsenical fabric in place of that containing the poison.

Change of air is in all probability often credited with the benefits arising from removal from some unsanitary condition of residence, office, or workshop.

The effect on men employed in hanging or removing arsenical wall-papers is another proof of their injurious quality: men have frequently to leave their work unfinished, being too ill to continue under the poisonous influence.

Arsenic in domestic fabrics is so easily dispensed with, that there is no valid reason for the continued use of these poisonous colours. Several paper-stainers have for years conscientiously excluded all arsenical colours from their works, yet have still maintained their position in the open market, thus deciding the question both as to cost and quality of non-arsenical wall-papers. It is an interesting question to medical men and chemists, how it is that these minute quantities of arsenic, or of some combination of arsenic with other ingredients, when breathed, should be so injurious, when larger quantities can be taken into the stomach as a medicine with advantage. This question, however, is of no consequence to the patient. His course is simple enough: having found out the cause of illness, get rid of it, and be thankful it can be got rid of at so small a cost.

Arsenic also is found in the dust of rooms papered with arsenical papers, thus proving the presence of arsenic in the atmosphere.

Mr Galloway alludes to a curious and interesting fact, namely, that men can be employed on arsenical works, some without being affected at all, others suffering much less than might be expected. The same singular fact of the immunity of those constantly exposed to evil influences is illustrated in the case of men employed in cleansing sewers; they work continually in the very atmosphere of the sewers, but do not suffer from those diseases which arise from the escape of sewer-gas into houses. No one, however, in consequence of this fact, doubts the importance of good sanitary arrangements, notwithstanding that these involve a considerable outlay. The exclusion of arsenic, on the contrary, costs nothing, and, moreover, there is nothing to be gained by the admission of these poisonous colours into our houses. The simple antidote for arsenic in domestic fabrics is therefore—exclusion.

Those desiring to see further details, illustrative cases, and modes of testing for arsenic, will find them in the pamphlet Our Domestic Poisons (Ridgway), or in the lecture under the same title, delivered at the International Health Exhibition, and published by the Executive Council. For more numerous cases of illness, especially in the families of medical men, see the Report of the Committee of the Medical Society of London.

WASHING BY STEAM.

It may interest many housewives to know that dirty clothes can be thoroughly and effectively washed by means of steam, with a much less expenditure of time and trouble than by the old way of boiling and rubbing. Anything that lessens the labour and discomfort of washing-day will be welcomed as a boon by every housewife. Numerous washing-machines have been before the public for many years, and have been used with more or less success, and we venture to describe one constructed on this principle which has given satisfaction to ourselves. The chief merits of the Steam-washers made by Fletcher of Warrington, and Fingland, Leeds, &c. are—rubbing and boiling of clothes are done away with, and with their method, no servant or housewife need spend more than three hours over a fair fortnight’s washing. Fingland’s Washer (Morton’s patent) consists of a fluted copper cylinder, made to revolve in a strong polished copper case or box. Into the cistern-shaped box, water is put to a depth of three inches, then caused to boil by means of a gas-fire below. The construction of the Washer is based upon the fact of the expansion of the water into steam. The water is continually throwing off a large quantity of steam, which forces its way through all parts of the clothes in the cylinder, and in so doing slackens and carries away the dirt. The articles, duly soaked in water overnight, are put into the cylinder; a few finely cut pieces of soap are laid between each layer; then the lids of cylinder and box are closed, and the handle is turned once or twice. It now stands until the water is boiling, when the handle may be slowly turned for ten or fifteen minutes, reversing the motion occasionally. The steam having permeated the clothes in the cylinder, they may be taken out and rinsed first in cold, and afterwards in blued cold water. The water in the cistern needs to be changed every fourth or fifth boiling. Prints, flannels, and woollens require slightly different treatment. The clothes come out pure and clean after rinsing, and an ordinary washing can be accomplished in one-third of the usual time, and at less expense. Attachment with an india-rubber tube to an ordinary gas-pipe will usually give sufficient gas; but sometimes it is better to have a thicker pipe than usual with a special connection.

PARTING WORDS.

Although my early dream is o’er,
I ask no parting token;
Nor would I clasp thy hand before
My last farewell is spoken.
How coldly fair, thy thrice-false face
Dawns on my sad awaking;
No anguish there mine eyes can trace,
Though this fond heart is breaking.

Be as thou wert before we met;
Heave not one sigh, but leave me;
Those studied looks, that feigned regret,
Can nevermore deceive me.
The faltering tones that mock me so,
Betray the fears that move thee;
Cease to degrade thy manhood.—Go!
I scorn thee while I love thee.

Shall I forget the rapturous hours
Of my too radiant morning—
The hand that culled the dewy flowers
My girlish brow adorning?
Ah, no! for she who scorns thee now,
Will miss its dear caresses;
And sorrow to remember how
It decks another’s tresses.

Alas! this tortured soul of mine,
Though by thy treason riven,
Can never cast thee from its shrine
Unwept, or unforgiven.
Nay, I, when youth and hope depart,
The mournful willow wearing,
Must still deplore that shallow heart
That was not worth the sharing.

And have I sold my peace for this?

Or am I only dreaming?

To wake beneath thy thrilling kiss

From this most cruel seeming.

Oh, bid my fainting heart rejoice;

One word would make it stronger;

Then wherefore mute, thou magic voice?

Say, am I loved no longer?

The world thou hast deceived so long
May smile on thee to-morrow;
While I alone must bear the wrong,
The bitterness and sorrow!
O cruel world! O world unjust!
That passes by unheeding,
Where love betrayed and blasted trust
Low in the dust lies bleeding!

Go thou thy way; deceive it still!

(Its praise is false and hollow);

Ascend to fortune’s loftiest hill,

No ban of mine shall follow.

The memory of these days will be

To me a life’s regretting.

Most faithless lover! what to thee?—

Only an hour’s coquetting.

Shame, shame! to look, to breathe, to live,
To mock my loving madness!
The thought alone that I forgive,
Should fill thy soul with sadness.
No wonder heaven should strike thee blind,
To see me bowed before thee;
Most shameless wretch of all mankind
How, how could I adore thee?

In haste to go! Oh, cruel one!

Stay, stay, a moment only!

How shall I face, when thou art gone,

The world, so vast, so lonely?

Thy words are like my passing knell:

Ah me, and must we sever?

Forget that I have loved thee well—

Adieu! adieu for ever!

Printed and Published by W. & R. Chambers, 47 Paternoster Row, London, and 339 High Street, Edinburgh.

All rights reserved.

[Transcriber’s note—the following changes have been made to this text.

Page 799: arsensic to arsenic—“testing for arsenic”.]

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART, FIFTH SERIES, NO. 50, VOL. I, DECEMBER 13, 1884 ***

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Table of Contents

- CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

- CONTENTS

- A GLACIER GARDEN.

- ONE WOMAN’S HISTORY.

- CHAPTER XII.

- CHAPTER XIII.

- RECOLLECTIONS OF AN ANGLO-INDIAN CHAPLAIN.

- COLONEL REDGRAVE’S LEGACY.

- CHAPTER III.

- A SAMPLE OF MARSALA.

- CONCERNING FLORIDA.

- ARSENIC IN DOMESTIC FABRICS.

- WASHING BY STEAM.

- PARTING WORDS.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE