The Strand Magazine, Vol. 27, Issue 160, April, 1904

by Various

THE OPINION OF HUMOROUS ARTISTS.

Humour is such an elusive quality, depending so much upon individual temperament, that it is difficult to say in what consists its absolute perfection. We know what makes us laugh most; but do we know what will make another laugh most? Yet after all this is true of every art. Why should we not have chefs d'œvure of pictorial comedy?

Suppose any reader of The Strand Magazine with a normal sense of humour were asked, "What is the funniest picture you remember ever to have seen?" Would he not ransack his memory—would he not turn to the files of Punch, to the comic almanacs, to such examples of foreign pictorial humour as had chanced to come in his way—and end by declaring that it was impossible to make any selection at all in such a wilderness of mirth-provoking designs, or, having hit upon one, to find it, upon re-inspection, to be no longer as funny as he thought it at the time—years ago?

But in quite a different case is another small class in the community. These are the authors and manufacturers of humorous pictures themselves. They, not only from having a special gift of comedy, but from having presumably studied, or been interested in, the work of other draughtsmen, might confidently be expected to know their own minds. And so to them the writer addressed the question, What was the funniest picture they had ever seen? What had a right to be considered a masterpiece of pictorial comedy?

At the outset the writer must not forget to mention that a few years ago, in a confidential chat he had with the late Mr. Phil May, he was pleasurably surprised to learn the high esteem in which that gifted humorist held one of the earliest and greatest masters of pictorial comedy, James Gillray.

"Company Shocked at a Lady Getting Up to Ring the Bell."—By Gillray.
SELECTED BY THE LATE MR. PHIL MAY AS THE BEST COMIC PICTURE

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"There is nobody to-day to touch him," were May's words. "Look at his sweep of line and his astonishing mastery over the grotesque and ridiculous. There are pictures so extraordinarily funny that you can't laugh—'too funny for words,' if you catch what I mean." As he spoke he turned to a folio containing several specimens of Gillray's drawings. One in particular was, if too funny for words, not too funny to be laughed at, for May's smile broadened enormously as he held it up for inspection—"Company Shocked at a Lady Getting Up to Ring the Bell." "Now, I call that funny," he said, "and it was, perhaps, a hundred times funnier a hundred years ago, when the characters were well-known people. There's nothing 'dates' so much as the average comic picture, especially a social caricature, but the fun of this is pretty fresh still." On the whole, most of Gillray's and Rowlandson's best work is a little too highly flavoured—too broad—for the taste of to-day.

Passing along a half-century we come to John Leech, and thenceforward to a succession of great masters of pictorial fun—Wilhelm Büsch, Charles Keene, Du Maurier, Sambourne, Oberlander, Caran d'Ache, Phil May, Frederick Opper, Zimmerman, and Raven-Hill. To these names many—fully as distinguished—might be added, such as Forain, Gibson, and Graetz, but for pure fun those we have mentioned may be called the masters. Amongst their numerous productions ought to be found some sketch which deserves to be called the very funniest picture or set of pictures delineating a single humorous idea. Each artist has his own followers. We have seen Phil May singling out a drawing by Gillray as appealing to his sense of humour. The draughtsmen of to-day in this line of work in England doubtless count no cleverer men than Raven-Hill, Tom Browne, John Hassall, Leslie Willson, William Parkinson, Louis Wain, and Charles Harrison.

Wilhelm Büsch was for years the chief comic draughtsman of the celebrated Fliegende Blätter—the German Punch. Not all his best work, however, was done for this paper, as Büsch illustrated and occasionally wrote numerous humorous brochures, which enjoyed a wide sale, and in his own opinion—according to one of his intimate friends whom we have consulted—he never achieved anything funnier than the pictures which accompanied a little book called "The Fools' Paradise," and the funniest drawings in that book are those which appear on this page.

"A Pianoforte Performance."—By Wilhelm Büsch.
SELECTED BY MR. LINLEY SAMBOURNE.

But now let us hear what Mr. Linley Sambourne has to say about the work of this artist:—

"To attempt to even indicate the birthplace of the world's masterpiece of pictorial humour is beyond the capacity of a single individual. So very few can see humour with the same eyes or appreciation. What you seek has probably perished in past ages, together with its contemporaneous companions in a higher branch. To me, personally, some of the designs of the late Wilhelm Büsch, of Munich, seem to have more humour, if by that is meant fun, than anything I can remember having seen."

Under Her Breath.—Mrs. Conlan: "Whisht, Pat!"
Pat: "Whisht, Dalia!"
Mrs. Conlan: "Aise yure face. It's an upright we're havin' took."
From the New York "Judge."
SELECTED BY MR. RAVEN-HILL.

Mr. Sambourne's clever colleague, Mr. Leonard Raven-Hill, finds "the very funniest picture" amongst the work of the American artist, Zimmerman.

"For absolute comic humour," he writes, "no one has equalled Zimmerman, of the New York Judge, in my opinion. Charles Keene is, of course, miles ahead of any other man in quiet humour; but I can't think of any particular examples."

Of Zimmerman's drawings Mr. Raven-Hill selects three, of which we herewith present what strikes us as the most comical.

Wife (to lion-tamer, who has been out late): "You coward!"
From "Phil May's Annual."
SELECTED BY MR. TOM BROWNE.

Few comic artists are at once so prolific and so amusing as Mr. Tom Browne, who, in selecting the picture reproduced below, writes to us as follows:—

"I have no hesitation in ascribing to the late Phil May some of the most delightful specimens of illustrated humour that have ever graced the British or any other Press; but to positively indicate what I consider to be that master's choicest joke or drawing is a difficult matter. Phil May had a very keen sense of humour; moreover, he was a master of line. He knew what a line would do better than any man ever did before him. He could seize on the essentials of a subject and adequately represent it in the fewest lines anyone had ever employed before. Yet nothing was lacking. And the lines and the forms they represented were always accurate. There was a lot of humour in the sketch of the lion-tamer which appeared in one of the winter annuals. The tamer of lions had been staying out late, and to avoid the furious attentions of his wrathful spouse had taken refuge in the lions' den. The aforesaid wrathful spouse was shaking her fist in front of the bars and crying out, 'You coward!'

"A Hair-Raising Story."—By Caran D'ache.
From the Caran D'ache Album, by Permission of MM. Plon Nourrit & Co.
SELECTED BY MR. LESLIE WILLSON.

"Quite a little masterpiece in its way was the sketch of the very tipsy newsman, who had the contents-bill of the special edition he was selling stuck on a sandwich board that covered his chest. In large letters on the contents-bill was printed, 'Result of the Cup.'

"And there are others, scores of them, all good because they were Phil May's. In cold type they sound nothing. Phil May's pen made masterpieces of them all."

An English black-and-white draughtsman, with an almost unique experience of pictorial comedy in Germany, America, and this country, is Mr. Leslie Willson, for years one of the chief artists of the New York Judge, and latterly art editor of Pick-Me-Up. Mr. Willson, with his wide experience of comic achievements, says:—

"The very funniest pictures I ever saw were by that astonishingly clever Franco-Russian, Emmanuel Poiré, otherwise 'Caran d'Ache.' The particular set I have in mind depicted a scene in a barber's shop, where the customer's hair, standing on end from horror, defies all the barber's attempts to curl it. There are other funny things from Caran d'Ache's pencil, but this, I think, is the funniest." These are the drawings reproduced on the opposite page.

Parrot: "Here he comes again. If he pulls another feather out I'll fly away!"
By H. Grattan in the "Pelican."
SELECTED BY MR. JOHN HASSALL.

Mr. John Hassall, whose work is familiar to all, writes to say:—

"The most humorous drawing I have ever seen was in the Christmas number of the Pelican, some few years back, of a parrot with one feather sticking out of its tail—the rest bare—sitting on its perch, and a pot-boy in the background. Below was the inscription: 'Here he comes again. If he pulls another feather out I'll fly away!' It was by an actor, I fancy. For the most humorous artist I should plump for Zim. Zimmerman, who draws for New York Judge. About ten years ago his work was, to my mind, always exceedingly humorous."

"An Incident in the Middle Ages."—By Linley Sambourne in "Punch."
SELECTED BY MR. WILLIAM PARKINSON.

A draughtsman with a keen sense of humour is Mr. William Parkinson. He writes:—

"For real funniness, I think A. B. Frost, the American, is very hard to beat; especially in some of his picture-stories in the last pages of Scribner or the Century. I should call his book of drawings, 'The Good-Natured Man and the Bull Calf,' a masterpiece of humour. Linley Sambourne also is a master and an artist too, and some of his drawings for Punch's Almanacks are real masterpieces. 'An Incident in the Middle Ages,' where a poor knight in armour is tormented under his mail shirt by a persistent——Well, the fancy is tickled as much as was the poor knight."

An ensign who thought he would wake up another ensign for a lark—But he mistook the tent.
From the "Graphic."—By A. C. Corbould.
SELECTED BY MR. LOUIS WAIN.

There are not many pictorial comedians with a larger following than Mr. Louis Wain, who tells us:—

"I like one of Corbould's drawings best which appeared in the Graphic of some eighteen years back. A subaltern with a broom over his head was hitting out at a military tent with it where there appeared to be a protuberance. A second picture showed a fat general sitting up in bed rubbing his head and looking furiously mad. (He had had the broom on it.) This drawing has kept me happy through many a gloomy period, and set my own work going again."

The Moustache Movement.—Old Mr. What's-His-Name: "Egad, I don't wonder at moustaches coming into fashion; for—eh? What? By Jove, it does improve one's appearance."
By John Leech in "Punch's Almanack," 1857.
SELECTED BY MR. CHARLES HARRISON.

"With a pretty extensive knowledge of all the Continental and American artists," writes Mr. Charles Harrison, one of the regular contributors to Punch, "I think I have derived more amusement from John Leech than anyone else. In certain things he is, and so will ever remain, absolutely unapproachable, and I enclose what I consider one of his funniest efforts. At least, there is no effort in it, which is one of the charms in all Leech's work."

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The Country of the Blind.

By H. G. Wells.

Three hundred miles and more from Chimborazo, one hundred from the snows of Cotopaxi, in the wildest wastes of Ecuador's Andes, there lies that mysterious mountain valley, cut off from all the world of men, the Country of the Blind. Long years ago that valley lay so far open to the world that men might come at last through frightful gorges and over an icy pass into its equable meadows, and thither indeed men came, a family or so of Peruvian half-breeds fleeing from the lust and tyranny of an evil Spanish ruler. Then came the stupendous outbreak of Mindobamba, when it was night in Quito for seventeen days, and the water was boiling at Yaguachi and all the fish floating dying even as far as Guayaquil; everywhere along the Pacific slopes there were landslips and swift thawings and sudden floods, and one whole side of the old Arauca crest slipped and came down in thunder, and cut off the Country of the Blind for ever from the exploring feet of men. But one of these early settlers had chanced to be on the hither side of the gorges when the world had so terribly shaken itself, and he perforce had to forget his wife and his child and all the friends and possessions he had left up there, and start life over again in the lower world. He started it again but ill, blindness overtook him, and he died of punishment in the mines; but the story he told begot a legend that lingers along the length of the Cordilleras of the Andes to this day.

He told of his reason for venturing back from that fastness, into which he had first been carried lashed to a llama, beside a vast bale of gear, when he was a child. The valley, he said, had in it all that the heart of man could desire—sweet water, pasture, an even climate, slopes of rich brown soil with tangles of a shrub that bore an excellent fruit, and on one side great hanging forests of pine that held the avalanches high. Far overhead, on three sides, vast cliffs of grey-green rock were capped by cliffs of ice; but the glacier stream came not to them, but flowed away by the farther slopes, and only now and then huge ice masses fell on the valley side. In this valley it neither rained nor snowed, but the abundant springs gave a rich green pasture, that irrigation would spread over all the valley space. The settlers did well indeed there. Their beasts did well and multiplied, and but one thing marred their happiness. Yet it was enough to mar it greatly. A strange disease had come upon them and had made all the children born to them there—and, indeed, several older children also—blind. It was to seek some charm or antidote against this plague of blindness that he had with fatigue and danger and difficulty returned down the gorge. In those days, in such cases, men did not think of germs and infections, but of sins, and it seemed to him that the reason of this affliction must lie in the negligence of these priestless immigrants to set up a shrine so soon as they entered the valley. He wanted a shrine—a handsome, cheap, effectual shrine—to be erected in the valley; he wanted relics and such-like potent things of faith, blessed objects and mysterious medals and prayers. In his wallet he had a bar of native silver for which he would not account; he insisted there was none in the valley with something of the insistence of an inexpert liar. They had all clubbed their money and ornaments together, having little need for such treasure up there, he said, to buy them holy help against their ill. I figure this dim-eyed young mountaineer, sunburnt, gaunt, and anxious, hat brim clutched feverishly, a man all unused to the ways of the lower world, telling this story to some keen-eyed, attentive priest before the great convulsion; I can picture him presently seeking to return with pious and infallible remedies against that trouble, and the infinite dismay with which he must have faced the tumbled vastness where the gorge had once come out. But the rest of his story of mischances is lost to me, save that I know of his evil death after several years. Poor stray from that remoteness! The stream that had once made the gorge now bursts from the mouth of a rocky cave, and the legend his poor, ill-told story set going developed into the legend of a race of blind men somewhere "over there" one may still hear to-day.

And amidst the little population of that now isolated and forgotten valley the disease ran its course. The old became groping and purblind, the young saw but dimly, and the children that were born to them saw never at all. But life was very easy in that snow-rimmed basin, lost to all the world, with neither thorns nor briers, with no evil insects nor any beasts save the gentle breed of llamas they had lugged and thrust and followed up the beds of the shrunken rivers in the gorges up which they had come. The seeing had become purblind so gradually that they scarcely noted their loss. They guided the sightless youngsters hither and thither until they knew the whole valley marvellously, and when at last sight died out among them the race lived on. They had even time to adapt themselves to the blind control of fire, which they made carefully in stoves of stone. They were a simple strain of people at the first, unlettered, only slightly touched with the Spanish civilization, but with something of a tradition of the arts of old Peru and of its lost philosophy. Generation followed generation. They forgot many things; they devised many things. Their tradition of the greater world they came from became mythical in colour and uncertain. In all things save sight they were strong and able, and presently chance sent one who had an original mind and who could talk and persuade among them, and then afterwards another. These two passed, leaving their effects, and the little community grew in numbers and in understanding, and met and settled social and economic problems that arose. Generation followed generation. Generation followed generation. There came a time when a child was born who was fifteen generations from that ancestor who went out of the valley with a bar of silver to seek God's aid, and who never returned. Thereabout it chanced that a man came into this community from the outer world. And this is the story of that man.

He was a mountaineer from the country near Quito, a man who had been down to the sea and had seen the world, a reader of books in an original way, an acute and enterprising man, and he was taken on by a party of Englishmen who had come out to Ecuador to climb mountains, to replace one of their three Swiss guides who had fallen ill. He climbed here and he climbed there, and then came the attempt on Parascotopetl, the Matterhorn of the Andes, in which he was lost to the outer world. The story of that accident has been written a dozen times. Pointer's narrative is the best. He tells how the little party worked their difficult and almost vertical way up to the very foot of the last and greatest precipice, and how they built a night shelter amidst the snow upon a little shelf of rock, and, with a touch of real dramatic power, how presently they found Nuñez had gone from them. They shouted, and there was no reply; shouted and whistled, and for the rest of that night they slept no more.

"THEY FOUND NUÑEZ HAD GONE FROM THEM."

As the morning broke they saw the traces of his fall. It seems impossible he could have uttered a sound. He had slipped eastward towards the unknown side of the mountain; far below he had struck a steep slope of snow, and ploughed his way down it in the midst of a snow avalanche. His track went straight to the edge of a frightful precipice, and beyond that everything was hidden. Far, far below, and hazy with distance, they could see trees rising out of a narrow, shut-in valley—the lost Country of the Blind. But they did not know it was the lost Country of the Blind, nor distinguish it in any way from any other narrow streak of upland valley. Unnerved by this disaster, they abandoned their attempt in the afternoon, and Pointer was called away to the war before he could make another attack. To this day Parascotopetl lifts an unconquered crest, and Pointer's shelter crumbles unvisited amidst the snows.

And the man who fell survived.

At the end of the slope he fell a thousand feet, and came down in the midst of a cloud of snow upon a snow-slope even steeper than the one above. Down this he was whirled, stunned and insensible, but without a bone broken in his body; and then at last came to gentler slopes, and at last rolled out and lay still, buried amidst a softening heap of the white masses that had accompanied and saved him. He came to himself with a dim fancy that he was ill in bed; then realized his position with a mountaineer's intelligence and worked himself loose and, after a rest or so, out until he saw the stars. He rested flat upon his chest for a space, wondering where he was and what had happened to him. He explored his limbs, and discovered that several of his buttons were gone and his coat turned over his head. His knife had gone from his pocket and his hat was lost, though he had tied it under his chin. He recalled that he had been looking for loose stones to raise his piece of the shelter wall. His ice-axe had disappeared.

He decided he must have fallen, and looked up to see, exaggerated by the ghastly light of the rising moon, the tremendous flight he had taken. For a while he lay, gazing blankly at that vast, pale cliff towering above, rising moment by moment out of a subsiding tide of darkness. Its phantasmal, mysterious beauty held him for a space, and then he was seized with a paroxysm of sobbing laughter....

After a great interval of time he became aware that he was near the lower edge of the snow. Below, down what was now a moon-lit and practicable slope, he saw the dark and broken appearance of rock-strewn turf. He struggled to his feet, aching in every joint and limb, got down painfully from the heaped loose snow about him, went downward until he was on the turf, and there dropped rather than lay beside a boulder, drank deep from the flask in his inner pocket, and instantly fell asleep....

He was awakened by the singing of birds in the trees far below.

He sat up and perceived he was on a little alp at the foot of a vast precipice that sloped only a little in the gully down which he and his snow had come. Over against him another wall of rock reared itself against the sky. The gorge between these precipices ran east and west and was full of the morning sunlight, which lit to the westward the mass of fallen mountain that closed the descending gorge. Below him it seemed there was a precipice equally steep, but behind the snow in the gully he found a sort of chimney-cleft dripping with snow-water, down which a desperate man might venture. He found it easier than it seemed, and came at last to another desolate alp, and then after a rock climb of no particular difficulty to a steep slope of trees. He took his bearings and turned his face up the gorge, for he saw it opened out above upon green meadows, among which he now glimpsed quite distinctly a cluster of stone huts of unfamiliar fashion. At times his progress was like clambering along the face of a wall, and after a time the rising sun ceased to strike along the gorge, the voices of the singing birds died away, and the air grew cold and dark about him. But the distant valley with its houses was all the brighter for that. He came presently to talus, and among the rocks he noted—for he was an observant man—an unfamiliar fern that seemed to clutch out of the crevices with intense green hands. He picked a frond or so and gnawed its stalk, and found it helpful.

About midday he came at last out of the throat of the gorge into the plain and the sunlight. He was stiff and weary; he sat down in the shadow of a rock, filled up his flask with water from a spring and drank it down, and remained for a time, resting before he went on to the houses.

They were very strange to his eyes, and indeed the whole aspect of that valley became, as he regarded it, queerer and more unfamiliar. The greater part of its surface was lush green meadow, starred with many beautiful flowers, irrigated with extraordinary care, and bearing evidence of systematic cropping piece by piece. High up and ringing the valley about was a wall, and what appeared to be a circumferential water channel, from which the little trickles of water that fed the meadow plants came, and on the higher slopes above this flocks of llamas cropped the scanty herbage. Sheds, apparently shelters or feeding-places for the llamas, stood against the boundary wall here and there. The irrigation streams ran together into a main channel down the centre of the valley, and this was enclosed on either side by a wall breast high. This gave a singularly urban quality to this secluded place, a quality that was greatly enhanced by the fact that a number of paths paved with black and white stones, and each with a curious little kerb at the side, ran hither and thither in an orderly manner. The houses of the central village were quite unlike the casual and higgledy-piggledy agglomeration of the mountain villages he knew; they stood in a continuous row on either side of a central street of astonishing cleanness, here and there their parti-coloured façade was pierced by a door, and not a solitary window broke their even frontage. They were parti-coloured with extraordinary irregularity, smeared with a sort of plaster that was sometimes grey, sometimes drab, sometimes slate-coloured or dark brown; and it was the sight of this wild plastering first brought the word "blind" into the thoughts of the explorer. "The good man who did that," he thought, "must have been as blind as a bat."

He descended a steep place, and so came to the wall and channel that ran about the valley, near where the latter spouted out its surplus contents into the deeps of the gorge in a thin and wavering thread of cascade. He could now see a number of men and women resting on piled heaps of grass, as if taking a siesta, in the remoter part of the meadow, and nearer the village a number of recumbent children, and then nearer at hand three men carrying pails on yokes along a little path that ran from the encircling wall towards the houses. These latter were clad in garments of llama cloth and boots and belts of leather, and they wore caps of cloth with back and ear flaps. They followed one another in single file, walking slowly and yawning as they walked, like men who have been up all night. There was something so reassuringly prosperous and respectable in their bearing that after a moment's hesitation Nuñez stood forward as conspicuously as possible upon his rock, and gave vent to a mighty shout that echoed round the valley.

"NUÑEZ STOOD FORWARD AS CONSPICUOUSLY AS POSSIBLE UPON HIS ROCK."

The three men stopped, and moved their heads as though they were looking about them. They turned their faces this way and that, and Nuñez gesticulated with freedom. But they did not appear to see him for all his gestures, and after a time, directing themselves towards the mountains far away to the right, they shouted as if in answer. Nuñez bawled again, and then once more, and as he gestured ineffectually the word "blind" came up to the top of his thoughts. "The fools must be blind," he said.

When at last, after much shouting and wrath, Nuñez crossed the stream by a little bridge, came through a gate in the wall, and approached them, he was sure that they were blind. He was sure that this was the Country of the Blind of which the legends told. Conviction had sprung upon him, and a sense of great and rather enviable adventure. The three stood side by side, not looking at him, but with their ears directed towards him, judging him by his unfamiliar steps. They stood close together like men a little afraid, and he could see their eyelids closed and sunken, as though the very balls beneath had shrunk away. There was an expression near awe on their faces.

"A man," one said, in hardly recognisable Spanish. "A man it is—a man or a spirit—coming down from the rocks."

But Nuñez advanced with the confident steps of a youth who enters upon life. All the old stories of the lost valley and the Country of the Blind had come back to his mind, and through his thoughts ran this old proverb, as if it were a refrain:—

"In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King."

"In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King."

And very civilly he gave them greeting. He talked to them and used his eyes.

"Where does he come from, brother Pedro?" asked one.

"Down out of the rocks."

"Over the mountains I come," said Nuñez, "out of the country beyond there—where men can see. From near Bogota—where there are a hundred thousands of people, and where the city passes out of sight."

"Sight?" muttered Pedro. "Sight?"

"He comes," said the second blind man, "out of the rocks."

The cloth of their coats Nuñez saw was curiously fashioned, each with a different sort of stitching.

They startled him by a simultaneous movement towards him, each with a hand outstretched. He stepped back from the advance of these spread fingers.

"Come hither," said the third blind man, following his motion and clutching him neatly.

And they held Nuñez and felt him over, saying no word further until they had done so.

"Carefully," he cried, with a finger in his eye, and found they thought that organ, with its fluttering lids, a queer thing in him. They went over it again.

"A strange creature, Correa," said the one called Pedro. "Feel the coarseness of his hair. Like a llama's hair."

"Rough he is as the rocks that begot him," said Correa, investigating Nuñez's unshaven chin with a soft and slightly moist hand. "Perhaps he will grow finer."

Nuñez struggled a little under their examination, but they gripped him firm.

"Carefully," he said again.

"He speaks," said the third man. "Certainly he is a man."

"Ugh!" said Pedro, at the roughness of his coat.

"And you have come into the world?" asked Pedro.

"Out of the world. Over mountains and glaciers; right over above there, half-way to the sun. Out of the great, big world that goes down, twelve days' journey to the sea."

They scarcely seemed to heed him. "Our fathers have told us men may be made by the forces of Nature," said Correa. "It is the warmth of things, and moisture, and rottenness—rottenness."

"Let us lead him to the elders," said Pedro.

"Shout first," said Correa, "lest the children be afraid. This is a marvellous occasion."

So they shouted, and Pedro went first and took Nuñez by the hand to lead him to the houses.

He drew his hand away. "I can see," he said.

"See?" said Correa.

"Yes; see," said Nuñez, turning towards him, and stumbled against Pedro's pail.

"His senses are still imperfect," said the third blind man. "He stumbles, and talks unmeaning words. Lead him by the hand."

"As you will," said Nuñez, and was led along, laughing.

It seemed they knew nothing of sight.

Well, all in good time he would teach them.

He heard people shouting, and saw a number of figures gathering together in the middle roadway of the village.

"'CAREFULLY,' HE CRIED, WITH A FINGER IN HIS EYE."

He found it tax his nerve and patience more than he had anticipated, that first encounter with the population of the Country of the Blind. The place seemed larger as he drew near to it, and the smeared plasterings queerer, and a crowd of children and men and women (the women and girls he was pleased to note had, some of them, quite sweet faces, for all that their eyes were shut and sunken) came about him, holding on to him, touching him with soft, sensitive hands, smelling at him, and listening at every word he spoke. Some of the maidens and children, however, kept aloof as if afraid, and indeed his voice seemed coarse and rude beside their softer notes. They mobbed him. His three guides kept close to him with an effect of proprietorship, and said again and again, "A wild man out of the rocks."

"Bogota," he said. "Bogota. Over the mountain crests."

"A wild man—using wild words," said Pedro. "Did you hear that—Bogota? His mind has hardly formed yet. He has only the beginnings of speech."

A little boy nipped his hand. "Bogota!" he said, mockingly.

"Aye! A city to your village. I come from the great world—where men have eyes and see."

"His name's Bogota," they said.

"He stumbled," said Correa—"stumbled twice as we came hither."

"Bring him in to the elders."

And they thrust him suddenly through a doorway into a room as black as pitch, save at the end there faintly glowed a fire. The crowd closed in behind him and shut out all but the faintest glimmer of day, and before he could arrest himself he had fallen headlong over the feet of a seated man. His arm, out-flung, struck the face of someone else as he went down; he felt the soft impact of features and heard a cry of anger, and for a moment he struggled against a number of hands that clutched him. It was a one-sided fight. An inkling of the situation came to him and he lay quiet.

"I fell down," he said; "I couldn't see in this pitchy darkness."

There was a pause as if the unseen persons about him tried to understand his words. Then the voice of Correa said: "He is but newly formed. He stumbles as he walks and mingles words that mean nothing with his speech."

Others also said things about him that he heard or understood imperfectly.

"May I sit up?" he asked, in a pause. "I will not struggle against you again."

They consulted and let him rise.

The voice of an older man began to question him, and Nuñez found himself trying to explain the great world out of which he had fallen, and the sky and mountains and sight and such-like marvels, to these elders who sat in darkness in the Country of the Blind. And they would believe and understand nothing whatever that he told them, a thing quite outside his expectation. They would not even understand many of his words. For fourteen generations these people had been blind and cut off from all the seeing world; the names for all the things of sight had faded and changed; the story of the outer world was faded and changed to a child's story; and they had ceased to concern themselves with anything beyond the rocky slopes above their circling wall. Blind men of genius had arisen among them and questioned the shreds of belief and tradition they had brought with them from their seeing days, and had dismissed all these things as idle fancies and replaced them with new and saner explanations. Much of their imagination had shrivelled with their eyes, and they had made for themselves new imaginations with their ever more sensitive ears and fingertips. Slowly Nuñez realized this: that his expectation of wonder and reverence at his origin and his gifts was not to be borne out; and after his poor attempt to explain sight to them had been set aside as the confused version of a new-made being describing the marvels of his incoherent sensations, he subsided, a little dashed, into listening to their instruction. And the eldest of the blind men explained to him life and philosophy and religion, how that the world (meaning their valley) had been first an empty hollow in the rocks, and then had come first inanimate things without the gift of touch, and llamas and a few other creatures that had little sense, and then men, and at last angels, whom one could hear singing and making fluttering sounds, but whom no one could touch at all, which puzzled Nuñez greatly until he thought of the birds.

He went on to tell Nuñez how this time had been divided into the warm and the cold, which are the blind equivalents of day and night, and how it was good to sleep in the warm and work during the cold, so that now, but for his advent, the whole town of the blind would have been asleep. He said Nuñez must have been specially created to learn and serve the wisdom they had acquired, and that for all his mental incoherency and stumbling behaviour he must have courage and do his best to learn, and at that all the people in the doorway murmured encouragingly. He said the night—for the blind call their day night—was now far gone, and it behoved everyone to go back to sleep. He asked Nuñez if he knew how to sleep, and Nuñez said he did, but that before sleep he wanted food. They brought him food, llama's milk in a bowl and rough salted bread, and led him into a lonely place to eat out of their hearing, and afterwards to slumber until the chill of the mountain evening roused them to begin their day again. But Nuñez slumbered not at all.

Instead, he sat up in the place where they had left him, resting his limbs and turning the unanticipated circumstances of his arrival over and over in his mind.

Every now and then he laughed, sometimes with amusement and sometimes with indignation.

"Unformed mind!" he said. "Got no senses yet! They little know they've been insulting their Heaven-sent King and master....

"I see I must bring them to reason.

"Let me think.

"Let me think."

He was still thinking when the sun set.

Nuñez had an eye for all beautiful things, and it seemed to him that the glow upon the snow-fields and glaciers that rose about the valley on every side was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. His eyes went from that inaccessible glory to the village and irrigated fields, fast sinking into the twilight, and suddenly a wave of emotion took him, and he thanked God from the bottom of his heart that the power of sight had been given him.

He heard a voice calling to him from out of the village.

"Yaho there, Bogota! Come hither!"

At that he stood up, smiling. He would show these people once and for all what sight would do for a man. They would seek him, but not find him.

"You move not, Bogota," said the voice.

He laughed noiselessly and made two stealthy steps aside from the path.

"Trample not on the grass, Bogota; that is not allowed."

Nuñez had scarcely heard the sound he made himself. He stopped, amazed.

The owner of the voice came running up the piebald path towards him.

He stepped back into the pathway. "Here I am," he said.

"Why did you not come when I called you?" said the blind man. "Must you be led like a child? Cannot you hear the path as you walk?"

Nuñez laughed. "I can see it," he said.

"There is no such word as see," said the blind man, after a pause. "Cease this folly and follow the sound of my feet."

Nuñez followed, a little annoyed.

"My time will come," he said.

"You'll learn," the blind man answered. "There is much to learn in the world."

"Has no one told you, 'In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King'?"

"What is blind?" asked the blind man, carelessly, over his shoulder.

Four days passed and the fifth found the King of the Blind still incognito, as a clumsy and useless stranger among his subjects.

It was, he found, much more difficult to proclaim himself than he had supposed, and in the meantime, while he meditated his coup d'état, he did what he was told and learnt the manners and customs of the Country of the Blind. He found working and going about at night a particularly irksome thing, and he decided that that should be the first thing he would change.

They led a simple, laborious life, these people, with all the elements of virtue and happiness as these things can be understood by men. They toiled, but not oppressively; they had food and clothing sufficient for their needs; they had days and seasons of rest; they made much of music and singing, and there was love among them and little children. It was marvellous with what confidence and precision they went about their ordered world. Everything, you see, had been made to fit their needs; each of the radiating paths of the valley area had a constant angle to the others, and was distinguished by a special notch upon its kerbing; all obstacles and irregularities of path or meadow had long since been cleared away; all their methods and procedure arose naturally from their special needs. Their senses had become marvellously acute; they could hear and judge the slightest gesture of a man a dozen paces away—could hear the very beating of his heart. Intonation had long replaced expression with them, and touches gesture, and their work with hoe and spade and fork was as free and confident as garden work can be. Their sense of smell was extraordinarily fine; they could distinguish individual differences as readily as a dog can, and they went about the tending of llamas, who lived among the rocks above and came to the wall for food and shelter, with ease and confidence. It was only when at last Nuñez sought to assert himself that he found how easy and confident their movements could be.

He rebelled only after he had tried persuasion.

"THE GLOW UPON THE SNOW-FIELDS AND GLACIERS WAS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THING HE HAD EVER SEEN."

He tried at first on several occasions to tell them of sight. "Look you here, you people," he said. "There are things you do not understand in me."

Once or twice one or two of them attended to him; they sat with faces downcast and ears turned intelligently towards him, and he did his best to tell them what it was to see. Among his hearers was a girl, with eyelids less red and sunken than the others, so that one could almost fancy she was hiding eyes, whom especially he hoped to persuade. He spoke of the beauties of sight, of watching the mountains, of the sky and the sunrise, and they heard him with amused incredulity that presently became condemnatory. They told him there were indeed no mountains at all, but that the end of the rocks where the llamas grazed was indeed the end of the world; thence sprang a cavernous roof of the universe, from which the dew and the avalanches fell; and when he maintained stoutly the world had neither end nor roof such as they supposed, they said his thoughts were wicked. So far as he could describe sky and clouds and stars to them it seemed to them a hideous void, a terrible blankness in the place of the smooth roof to things in which they believed—it was an article of faith with them that the cavern roof was exquisitely smooth to the touch. He saw that in some manner he shocked them, and gave up that aspect of the matter altogether, and tried to show them the practical value of sight. One morning he saw Pedro in the path called Seventeen and coming towards the central houses, but still too far off for hearing or scent, and he told them as much. "In a little while," he prophesied, "Pedro will be here." An old man remarked that Pedro had no business on path Seventeen, and then, as if in confirmation, that individual as he drew near turned and went transversely into path Ten, and so back with nimble paces towards the outer wall. They mocked Nuñez when Pedro did not arrive, and afterwards, when he asked Pedro questions to clear his character, Pedro denied and outfaced him, and was afterwards hostile to him.

Then he induced them to let him go a long way up the sloping meadows towards the wall with one complaisant individual, and to him he promised to describe all that happened among the houses. He noted certain goings and comings, but the things that really seemed to signify to these people happened inside of or behind the windowless houses—the only things they took note of to test him by—and of those he could see or tell nothing; and it was after the failure of this attempt, and the ridicule they could not repress, that he resorted to force. He thought of seizing a spade and suddenly smiting one or two of them to earth, and so in fair combat showing the advantage of eyes. He went so far with that resolution as to seize his spade, and then he discovered a new thing about himself, and that was that it was impossible for him to hit a blind man in cold blood.

He hesitated, and found them all aware that he had snatched up the spade. They stood all alert, with their heads on one side, and bent ears towards him for what he would do next.

"Put that spade down," said one, and he felt a sort of helpless horror. He came near obedience.

Then he had thrust one backwards against a house wall, and fled past him and out of the village.

He went athwart one of their meadows, leaving a track of trampled grass behind his feet, and presently sat down by the side of one of their ways. He felt something of the buoyancy that comes to all men in the beginning of a fight, but more perplexity. He began to realize that you cannot even fight happily with creatures who stand upon a different mental basis to yourself. Far away he saw a number of men carrying spades and sticks come out of the street of houses and advance in a spreading line along the several paths towards him. They advanced slowly, speaking frequently to one another, and ever and again the whole cordon would halt and sniff the air and listen.

The first time they did this Nuñez laughed. But afterwards he did not laugh.

One struck his trail in the meadow grass and came stooping and feeling his way along it.

For five minutes he watched the slow extension of the cordon, and then his vague disposition to do something forthwith became frantic. He stood up, went a pace or so towards the circumferential wall, turned, and went back a little way. There they all stood in a crescent, still and listening.

He also stood still, gripping his spade very tightly in both hands. Should he charge them?

The pulse in his ears ran into the rhythm of "In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King!"

Should he charge them?

He looked back at the high and unclimbable wall behind—unclimbable because of its smooth plastering, but withal pierced with many little doors, and at the approaching line of seekers. Behind these others were now coming out of the street of houses.

Should he charge them?

"Bogota!" called one. "Bogota! where are you?"

He gripped his spade still tighter and advanced down the meadows towards the place of habitations, and directly he moved they converged upon him. "I'll hit them if they touch me," he swore; "by Heaven, I will. I'll hit." He called aloud, "Look here, I'm going to do what I like in this valley! Do you hear? I'm going to do what I like and go where I like."

"THEY WERE MOVING IN UPON HIM QUICKLY."

They were moving in upon him quickly, groping, yet moving rapidly. It was like playing blind man's buff with everyone blind-folded except one. "Get hold of him!" cried one. He found himself in the arc of a loose curve of pursuers. He felt suddenly he must be active and resolute.

"You don't understand," he cried, in a voice that was meant to be great and resolute, and which broke. "You are blind and I can see. Leave me alone!"

"Bogota! Put down that spade and come off the grass!"

The last order, grotesque in its urban familiarity, produced a gust of anger. "I'll hurt you," he said, sobbing with emotion. "By Heaven, I'll hurt you! Leave me alone!"

He began to run—not knowing clearly where to run. He ran from the nearest blind man, because it was a horror to hit him. He stopped, and then made a dash to escape from their closing ranks. He made for where a gap was wide, and the men on either side, with a quick perception of the approach of his paces, rushed in on one another. He sprang forward, and then saw he must be caught, and swish! the spade had struck. He felt the soft thud of hand and arm, and the man was down with a yell of pain, and he was through.

Through! And then he was close to the street of houses again, and blind men, whirling spades and stakes, were running with a sort of reasoned swiftness hither and thither.

He heard steps behind him just in time, and found a tall man rushing forward and swiping at the sound of him. He lost his nerve, hurled his spade a yard wide at this antagonist, and whirled about and fled, fairly yelling as he dodged another.

He was panic-stricken. He ran furiously to and fro, dodging when there was no need to dodge, and, in his anxiety to see on every side of him at once, stumbling. For a moment he was down and they heard his fall. Far away in the circumferential wall a little doorway looked like Heaven, and he set off in a wild rush for it. He did not even look round at his pursuers until it was gained, and he had stumbled across the bridge, clambered a little way among the rocks, to the surprise and dismay of a young llama, who went leaping out of sight, and lay down sobbing for breath.

And so his coup d'état came to an end.

He stayed outside the wall of the valley of the blind for two nights and days without food or shelter, and meditated upon the Unexpected. During these meditations he repeated very frequently and always with a profounder note of derision the exploded proverb: "In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King." He thought chiefly of ways of fighting and conquering these people, and it grew clear that for him no practicable way was possible. He had no weapons, and now it would be hard to get one.

The canker of civilization had got to him even in Bogota, and he could not find it in himself to go down and assassinate a blind man. Of course, if he did that, he might then dictate terms on the threat of assassinating them all. But——Sooner or later he must sleep!...

He tried also to find food among the pine trees, to be comfortable under pine boughs while the frost fell at night, and—with less confidence—to catch a llama by artifice in order to try to kill it—perhaps by hammering it with a stone—and so finally, perhaps, to eat some of it. But the llamas had a doubt of him and regarded him with distrustful brown eyes and spat when he drew near. Fear came on him the second day and fits of shivering. Finally he crawled down to the wall of the Country of the Blind and tried to make his terms. He crawled along by the stream, shouting, until two blind men came out to the gate and talked to him.

"I was mad," he said. "But I was only newly made."

They said that was better.

He told them he was wiser now, and repented of all he had done.

Then he wept without intention, for he was very weak and ill now, and they took that as a favourable sign.

They asked him if he still thought he could "see."

"No," he said. "That was folly. The word means nothing. Less than nothing!"

They asked him what was overhead.

"About ten times ten the height of a man there is a roof above the world—of rock—and very, very smooth. So smooth—so beautifully smooth...." He burst again into hysterical tears. "Before you ask me any more, give me some food or I shall die!"

He expected dire punishments, but these blind people were capable of toleration. They regarded his rebellion as but one more proof of his general idiocy and inferiority, and after they had whipped him they appointed him to do the simplest and heaviest work they had for anyone to do, and he, seeing no other way of living, did submissively what he was told.

He was ill for some days and they nursed him kindly. That refined his submission. But they insisted on his lying in the dark, and that was a great misery. And blind philosophers came and talked to him of the wicked levity of his mind, and reproved him so impressively for his doubts about the lid of rock that covered their cosmic casserole that he almost doubted whether indeed he was not the victim of hallucination in not seeing it overhead.

So Nuñez became a citizen of the Country of the Blind, and these people ceased to be a generalized people and became individualities to him, and familiar to him, while the world beyond the mountains became more and more remote and unreal. There was Yacob, his master, a kindly man when not annoyed; there was Pedro, Yacob's nephew; and there was Medina-saroté, who was the youngest daughter of Yacob. She was little esteemed in the world of the blind, because she had a clear-cut face and lacked that satisfying, glossy smoothness that is the blind man's ideal of feminine beauty, but Nuñez thought her beautiful at first, and presently the most beautiful thing in the whole creation. Her closed eyelids were not sunken and red after the common way of the valley, but lay as though they might open again at any moment; and she had long eyelashes, which were considered a grave disfigurement. And her voice was weak and did not satisfy the acute hearing of the valley swains. So that she had no lover.

There came a time when Nuñez thought that, could he win her, he would be resigned to live in the valley for all the rest of his days.

He watched her; he sought opportunities of doing her little services, and presently he found that she observed him. Once at a rest-day gathering they sat side by side in the dim starlight, and the music was sweet. His hand came upon hers and he dared to clasp it. Then very tenderly she returned his pressure. And one day, as they were at their meal in the darkness, he felt her hand very softly seeking him, and as it chanced the fire leapt then, and he saw the tenderness of her face.

He sought to speak to her.

He went to her one day when she was sitting in the summer moonlight spinning. The light made her a thing of silver and mystery. He sat down at her feet and told her he loved her, and told her how beautiful she seemed to him. He had a lover's voice, he spoke with a tender reverence that came near to awe, and she had never before been touched by adoration. She made him no definite answer, but it was clear his words pleased her.

"HE SAT DOWN AT HER FEET."

After that he talked to her whenever he could take an opportunity. The valley became the world for him, and the world beyond the mountains where men lived by day seemed no more than a fairy tale he would some day pour into her ears. Very tentatively and timidly he spoke to her of sight.

Sight seemed to her the most poetical of fancies, and she listened to his description of the stars and the mountains and her own sweet white-lit beauty as though it was a guilty indulgence. She did not believe, she could only half understand, but she was mysteriously delighted, and it seemed to him that she completely understood.

His love lost its awe and took courage. Presently he was for demanding her of Yacob and the elders in marriage, but she became fearful and delayed. And it was one of her elder sisters who first told Yacob that Medina-saroté and Nuñez were in love.

There was from the first very great opposition to the marriage of Nuñez and Medina-saroté; not so much because they valued her as because they held him as a being apart, an idiot, incompetent thing below the permissible level of a man. Her sisters opposed it bitterly as bringing discredit on them all; and old Yacob, though he had formed a sort of liking for his clumsy, obedient serf, shook his head and said the thing could not be. The young men were all angry at the idea of corrupting the race, and one went so far as to revile and strike Nuñez. He struck back. Then for the first time he found an advantage in seeing, even by twilight, and after that fight was over no one was disposed to raise a hand against him. But they still found his marriage impossible.

Old Yacob had a tenderness for his last little daughter, and was grieved to have her weep upon his shoulder.

"You see, my dear, he's an idiot. He has delusions; he can't do anything right."

"I know," wept Medina-saroté. "But he's better than he was. He's getting better. And he's strong, dear father, and kind—stronger and kinder than any other man in the world. And he loves me—and, father, I love him."

Old Yacob was greatly distressed to find her inconsolable, and, besides—what made it more distressing—he liked Nuñez for many things. So he went and sat in the windowless council-chamber with the other elders and watched the trend of the talk, and said, at the proper time, "He's better than he was. Very likely, some day, we shall find him as sane as ourselves."

Then afterwards one of the elders, who thought deeply, had an idea. He was the great doctor among these people, their medicine-man, and he had a very philosophical and inventive mind, and the idea of curing Nuñez of his peculiarities appealed to him. One day when Yacob was present he returned to the topic of Nuñez. "I have examined Nuñez," he said, "and the case is clearer to me. I think very probably he might be cured."

"That is what I have always hoped," said old Yacob.

"His brain is affected," said the blind doctor.

The elders murmured assent.

"'HIS BRAIN IS AFFECTED,' SAID THE BLIND DOCTOR."

"Now, what affects it?"

"Ah!" said old Yacob.

"This," said the doctor, answering his own question. "Those queer things that are called the eyes, and which exist to make an agreeable depression in the face, are diseased, in the case of Nuñez, in such a way as to affect his brain. They are greatly distended, he has eyelashes, and his eyelids move, and consequently his brain is in a state of constant irritation and distraction."

"Yes?" said old Yacob. "Yes?"

"And I think I may say with reasonable certainty that, in order to cure him completely, all that we need to do is a simple and easy surgical operation—namely, to remove these irritant bodies."

"And then he will be sane?"

"Then he will be perfectly sane, and a quite admirable citizen."

"Thank Heaven for science!" said old Yacob, and went forth at once to tell Nuñez of his happy hopes.

But Nuñez's manner of receiving the good news struck him as being cold and disappointing.

"One might think," he said, "from the tone you take that you did not care for my daughter."

It was Medina-saroté who persuaded Nuñez to face the blind surgeons.

"You do not want me," he said, "to lose my gift of sight?"

She shook her head.

"My world is sight."

Her head drooped lower.

"There are the beautiful things, the beautiful little things—the flowers, the lichens amidst the rocks, the light and softness on a piece of fur, the far sky with its drifting down of clouds, the sunsets and the stars. And there is you. For you alone it is good to have sight, to see your sweet, serene face, your kindly lips, your dear, beautiful hands folded together.... It is these eyes of mine you won, these eyes that hold me to you, that these idiots seek. Instead, I must touch you, hear you, and never see you again. I must come under that roof of rock and stone and darkness, that horrible roof under which your imaginations stoop.... No; you would not have me do that?"

A disagreeable doubt had arisen in him. He stopped and left the thing a question.

"I wish," she said, "sometimes——" She paused.

"Yes?" said he, a little apprehensively.

"I wish sometimes—you would not talk like that."

"Like what?"

"HE HAD A FEW MINUTES WITH MEDINA-SAROTÉ BEFORE SHE WENT APART TO SLEEP."

"I know it's pretty—it's your imagination. I love it, but now——"

He felt cold. "Now?" he said, faintly.

She sat quite still.

"You mean—you think—I should be better, better perhaps——"

He was realizing things very swiftly. He felt anger perhaps, anger at the dull course of fate, but also sympathy for her lack of understanding—a sympathy near akin to pity. "Dear," he said, and he could see by her whiteness how tensely her spirit pressed against the things she could not say. He put his arms about her, he kissed her ear, and they sat for a time in silence.

"If I were to consent to this?" he said at last, in a voice that was very gentle.

She flung her arms about him, weeping wildly. "Oh, if you would," she sobbed, "if only you would!"

---

For a week before the operation that was to raise him from his servitude and inferiority to the level of a blind citizen Nuñez knew nothing of sleep, and all through the warm, sunlit hours, while the others slumbered happily, he sat brooding or wandered aimlessly, trying to bring his mind to bear on his dilemma. He had given his answer, he had given his consent, and still he was not sure. And at last work-time was over, the sun rose in splendour over the golden crests, and his last day of vision began for him. He had a few minutes with Medina-saroté before she went apart to sleep.

"To-morrow," he said, "I shall see no more."

"Dear heart!" she answered, and pressed his hands with all her strength.

"They will hurt you but little," she said; "and you are going through this pain, you are going through it, dear lover, for me.... Dear, if a woman's heart and life can do it, I will repay you. My dearest one, my dearest with the tender voice, I will repay."

He was drenched in pity for himself and her.

He held her in his arms, and pressed his lips to hers and looked on her sweet face for the last time. "Good-bye!" he whispered to that dear sight, "good-bye!"

And then in silence he turned away from her.

She could hear his slow retreating footsteps, and something in the rhythm of them threw her into a passion of weeping.

He walked away.

He had fully meant to go to a lonely place where the meadows were beautiful with white narcissus, and there remain until the hour of his sacrifice should come, but as he walked he lifted up his eyes and saw the morning, the morning like an angel in golden armour, marching down the steeps....

It seemed to him that before this splendour he and this blind world in the valley, and his love and all, were no more than a pit of sin.

He did not turn aside as he had meant to do, but went on and passed through the wall of the circumference and out upon the rocks, and his eyes were always upon the sunlit ice and snow.

He saw their infinite beauty, and his imagination soared over them to the things beyond he was now to resign for ever!

He thought of that great free world that he was parted from, the world that was his own, and he had a vision of those further slopes, distance beyond distance, with Bogota, a place of multitudinous stirring beauty, a glory by day, a luminous mystery by night, a place of palaces and fountains and statues and white houses, lying beautifully in the middle distance. He thought how for a day or so one might come down through passes drawing ever nearer and nearer to its busy streets and ways. He thought of the river journey, day by day, from great Bogota to the still vaster world beyond, through towns and villages, forest and desert places, the rushing river day by day, until its banks receded and the big steamers came splashing by and one had reached the sea—the limitless sea, with its thousand islands, its thousands of islands, and its ships seen dimly far away in their incessant journeyings round and about that greater world. And there, unpent by mountains, one saw the sky—the sky, not such a disc as one saw it here, but an arch of immeasurable blue, a deep of deeps in which the circling stars were floating....

His eyes began to scrutinize the great curtain of the mountains with a keener inquiry.

For example: if one went so, up that gully and to that chimney there, then one might come out high among those stunted pines that ran round in a sort of shelf and rose still higher and higher as it passed above the gorge. And then? That talus might be managed. Thence perhaps a climb might be found to take him up to the precipice that came below the snow; and if that chimney failed, then another farther to the east might serve his purpose better. And then? Then one would be out upon the amber-lit snow there, and half-way up to the crest of those beautiful desolations. And suppose one had good fortune!

He glanced back at the village, then turned right round and regarded it with folded arms.

He thought of Medina-saroté, and she had become small and remote.

He turned again towards the mountain wall down which the day had come to him.

Then, very circumspectly he began his climb.

---

When sunset came he was no longer climbing, but he was far and high. His clothes were torn, his limbs were blood-stained, he was bruised in many places, but he lay as if he were at his ease, and there was a smile on his face.

From where he rested the valley seemed as if it were in a pit and nearly a mile below. Already it was dim with haze and shadow, though the mountain summits around him were things of light and fire. The mountain summits around him were things of light and fire, and the little things in the rocks near at hand were drenched with light and beauty, a vein of green mineral piercing the grey, a flash of small crystal here and there, a minute, minutely-beautiful orange lichen close beside his face. There were deep, mysterious shadows in the gorge, blue deepening into purple, and purple into a luminous darkness, and overhead was the illimitable vastness of the sky. But he heeded these things no longer, but lay quite still there, smiling as if he were content now merely to have escaped from the valley of the Blind, in which he had thought to be King. And the glow of the sunset passed, and the night came, and still he lay there, under the cold, clear stars.

---

Off the Track in London.

By George R. Sims.

I. IN ALIEN-LAND.

It is many a long year since I first began to find delight in wandering through the least-known districts of the capital, in visiting strange quarters inhabited by strange people, in penetrating dim, mysterious regions where thousands of our fellow-citizens live, cut off from the rest of the populace by a network of streets and slums into which it is nobody's business but the inhabitants' to enter, and where a visitor from beyond is rarely seen.

At first my travels were undertaken solely to gratify my own curiosity. Later on, when there came to me an opportunity of exploring with a less selfish end in view, many circumstances combined to give me an insight into the life of the people which I could never have gained as a mere onlooker. So it has come about that to-day I can not only survey the streets of the strange lands in the capital of King Edward, but I can enter the houses and take my notes from the cellar to the roof. I am privileged to sit around the coke fire in lodging-houses where an ordinary stranger would meet with scant courtesy; and the mysteries of "How the Poor Live" are freely unveiled to me. In the vilest of the native quarters, in the queerest of the foreign quarters, I am permitted to spend days and nights, not peeping furtively at the human comedies and tragedies in which the strange men and women are players, but made way for as one entitled to a front place in the local audience.

Of some of the things that I have seen I have written from time to time, but I have always longed for the pencil of the artist to enable the reader to realize what some of the scenes actually mean. And now my wish has been gratified. I have been able to wander off the track in London accompanied by an artist confrère, and to provide him with opportunities for making sketches on the spot.

---

It is four o'clock on Sunday afternoon as we come out of Aldgate Station and in a few minutes turn into Middlesex Street, littered with paper and straw and rubbish, the remains of the great Sunday morning market, which is at its highest at noon and gradually disappears as the afternoon wears on.

The scene is known to most Londoners, for the fame of Petticoat Lane, as the street was formerly called, has spread through the length and breadth of the land.

But we must pass through it to get off the track in the Ghetto, which has burst its old boundaries and now extends over a large area which until lately was a Christian quarter.

It is not till we come to Wentworth Street that the strangeness of the Sunday scene reveals itself. Here all the shops are open and the narrow thoroughfare is packed with the stalls of Jewish hawkers. We hear a little English at the top of Wentworth Street, but as we push our way through the seething crowd and get nearer to Brick Lane the English words become rarer and rarer, and presently only the German Hebrew jargon known as "Yiddish" reaches our ears.

We are in the heart of the old Ghetto. The alien immigrants, many of them fresh from the Pale of Settlement in Russia and the persecutions of Roumania, are chaffering and bargaining with their co-religionists who have been in London long enough to stock a barrow or a stall and start on the path of financial progress, which may lead their sons, if not themselves, viâ Dalston, Canonbury, Maida Vale, and Bayswater, to Kensington, and perhaps Park Lane.

Stop for a moment and gaze at the crowd. A London child seeing it for the first time would look at the faces and recall the Bible pictures. Everywhere the Oriental type predominates. The old, solemn-looking men—the poorest of the hawkers, for they have come to the Land of Promise too late to struggle out of the ruck—have the beards and features of the Patriarchs. They are calling aloud the price of their poor goods in the lachrymose sing-song of the Eastern pedlar. Pious Jews are these aged immigrants, and if you were to follow them to their synagogue you would see them swaying to and fro as they repeat their prayers in the same mournful, wailing voice with which they cry their wares.

"IN WENTWORTH STREET."

The women are as Eastern as the men. The girls are handsome, dark-haired, dark-eyed daughters of Israel, whose type of beauty has not changed in all the thousand years of persecution and exile.

The younger women are well dressed, with a tendency to brilliant colours and the "Paris fashion" that is displayed in the gay millinery shops of the Ghetto. The children, who have been running in and out of the crowd, are neat and clean, their pinafores are white, their boots are good and well-fitting, their hair is bound with bright ribbons, and their frocks are pretty. The first thought of the poorest alien immigrant is for his children, and his pride is to see them well clad and well cared for.

The middle-aged women and the old women are true daughters of the East. They wear coloured shawls over their heads. There is a curious monotony in the coiffure of the women of the Ghetto who have passed their first youth. The woman of thirty and the woman of seventy seem equally well supplied with a head of glossy black hair. The stranger wonders, as he looks into an old, wrinkled face, at the abundance of black hair surmounting it. If he asks the reason he will learn that many of the Russian Jewesses cut their own hair off on the day of their marriage and wear a wig for the rest of their lives. To the Oriental the glory of a woman is her hair. The Jewish bride was expected to sacrifice this attraction in order that she should not entice the eyes of men.

"A CLOTHES AUCTION IN FULL SWING."

It is a custom of long ago and the Russian Jewesses adhere to it. Most of the older women came into the Ghetto straight from the ship that landed them in the Thames, and they rarely go beyond its boundaries. Many of them would not if they had the chance.

Here is a clothes auction in full swing. The sombre shop, the front window of which is pushed half-way up, is packed with ready-made suits. The proprietor is selling them to an eager crowd of men, who, when their bid is accepted, take trousers, coats, and waistcoats over their arm and walk away with their purchase. There is a tailor's shop close at hand where twenty cutters and a large number of hands are employed in preparing suits solely for the Sunday sale in this street.

Within a stone's throw of this street is a great Sunday gold and diamond market. During the morning and early afternoon you may see a number of men with little wash-leather bags or velvet-lined cases displaying their glittering merchandise to one another. The jewel mart and exchange is in progress. Many hundreds of pounds' worth of jewels change hands within a few minutes. In Wentworth Street the buyer will haggle and bargain for half an hour over a few pence. In St. James's Place a transaction involving hundreds of pounds is carried out in a minute with scarcely a superfluous word. The business is conducted with perfect good-humour, but the dealers are among the keenest and cleverest men in the City of London.

But we are still only half off the track, for now and again the Gentile sightseer penetrates as far as this.

As we come out from Wentworth Street into Brick Lane, where there is no market and so no crowd, the long line of open shops and busy warehouses, the hum and bustle of trade and toil in full swing, strike us as peculiar when we remember that it is Sunday. Leaving Brick Lane with its Russian post-office, its Roumanian restaurants, and shop after shop where the young men of the Ghetto take the syrups and temperance drinks that are their principal liquid refreshment, we make our way down Commercial Street and plunge into the new Ghetto, a vast area far more foreign than the old Ghetto, and now entirely given up to the alien immigrant. In the broad main thoroughfare the shops are all open and trade is at its height. The factories are busy, the furniture shops are loading their vans, the shipping agents and bankers are taking money for remittance to relatives abroad who are to leave the Russian Pale and come to the city paved with gold, or booking passages to America and the Colonies for the immigrants who are "moving on."

Here the scene to the unaccustomed Gentile eye is only odd. Directly he turns into the small streets the stranger is filled with absolute astonishment. Many of them are still crowded with dwelling-houses of the poorest class; but where the Gentile dwelt the Jew trades. House after house has been transformed into a shop. Windows have been taken out and living rooms packed with merchandise. Every available corner is used, and one sees the proprietor sitting in a little front room so packed in with rolls of gay-coloured cloths, fancy boxes, and packages that one imagines his only way of getting out must be by a harlequin leap through the window.

You may wander through miles of streets in this quarter and see the same strange sight—the immigrant Jew who has established himself keeping open shop in a dwelling-house all the Sunday through. You may see trade in full tide at eight o'clock in the morning. When midnight has rung out from the churches which still remain as memorials of the vanished Christian population you will still see the shops open and the Rembrandtesque figure of the owner sitting among his wares, waiting for a chance customer. He is perhaps reading a Yiddish paper, printed in Hebrew characters, by the light of a candle, slowly guttering to its last flicker.

"THE ORIENTAL BAZAAR."

But it is not yet night, though the twilight is falling as we turn into Morgan Street, and come suddenly upon a page of the old Orient bound up in the book of modern Western life.

Here is a building which is fitly labelled "The Oriental Bazaar." You are in London, but you might be in Cairo or Mogador. The bazaar or "market" is reached from the street by deep flights of steps. It is open to the sky, and beyond it and above it is a street of houses, and a roadway along which flit now and again Eastern women with gay-coloured shawls over their heads.

The "shops" of the market are built in little recesses. In these sit silent Oriental figures—the dealers. Most of the day's business is over. There are only a few loiterers, and the men and women who keep the little shops sit silent and emotionless as the Arabs among their unsold wares. In one shop the stock has been sold out and the proprietor is sitting in the gloom playing cards with a little party of men friends.

It is a picture for Rembrandt. The only light in the arched recess which forms the shop is that of a candle. Round the candle are grouped half-a-dozen dark, weird-looking men, all intent upon the game.

There is one card to be played. Uttering a little guttural cry, the man who holds it brings it down on the counter with a thud. The game the men are playing is one peculiar to these people. It is called Clabber-yas. The last card played, the ninth trump, adds ten points to the score and wins the game.

And at that moment the distant church bells ring out to call the Christian worshippers to evening prayer.

But the Sabbath evening does not find the Jews undevout. The darkness has fallen now, and we make our way back to the crowded streets of the old Ghetto. Here the long lines of lighted shops are now packed with their evening customers, who are buying meat and groceries and selecting furniture, being measured for new suits, trying on smart hats and cloaks of the latest West-end fashion, and examining the pink and blue and yellow silk petticoats which make such a gay show in the brilliantly-lighted windows of the milliners. We turn into a quiet street where the prevailing note is gloom, and, having secured the friendly escort of a Jewish clergyman's son, without whose presence we should hesitate to intrude, we pass through a dark doorway and find ourselves among a group of men whose features and whose occupations would have delighted the heart of Gustave Doré.

In the hall, or ante-room, of the building are shelves packed with ancient-looking volumes—books of Rabbinic lore and law. Gathered together in groups are a number of Jews, young and old, who are standing around a desk at which an aged man with a long grey beard is reading a well-worn volume and explaining certain passages of it to the men who crowd about him and listen intently to his words.

We are in the ante-room of a building which is known as the "Machazeke Hadass V'Shomrei Shabbas"—that is, "The Strengtheners of the Law and Guardians of the Sabbath." It is known officially as "The Spitalfields Great Synagogue." The members of it, almost all alien immigrants, comprise the ultra-orthodox section of the community. They have their own Chief Rabbi, their own Shechita Board (the board that controls the slaughtering of animals), and their own Beth Din (the court of justice). These pious Jews are distinguished by their scrupulous observance of the Sabbath as a day of rest. They will not even carry their handkerchief on the Sabbath day because it constitutes carrying a burden. That is forbidden, so they tie it round their waist as a girdle, where it becomes part of their clothing and so allowable. They will not carry an umbrella on the Sabbath, not only because it is a burden, but also because the putting up of an umbrella is considered equivalent to the erecting of a tent over the head. And they strictly obey the injunction which says neither thou nor thy servant shall do any manner of work on the Sabbath day. For what is absolutely necessary they employ an occasional servant, who is known as the "Shobbos Goy." They never give him a direct order for the performance of a household task, but they sometimes manage to evade the injunction. For instance, if it is bitterly cold and coals are wanted on the fire, they don't say, "Put more coals on." They shiver and rub their hands and say, "It is terribly cold." Then the Shobbos Goy takes the hint and makes the fire up.

Let us linger for a moment among this strange group of devout Jews, few of whom can speak a word of English, though they are likely to pass the rest of their lives in our midst.

The pious old man who is thumbing the book is displaying his Talmudic erudition to his hearers. The synagogue is open night and day, and this ante-room is always filled with reverent and intelligent loungers, who listen to the exposition of the Talmud and occasionally discuss the affairs of the moment, for the alien Jew has brought with him the old custom of making the synagogue a meeting-place and a club.

In the same room a number of men are swaying to and fro and repeating their prayers in the Oriental fashion. Everywhere there is a note that is a revelation to the Gentile visitor who is privileged to look upon the scene.

"IN THE SYNAGOGUE."

The privilege is not easily gained, for these pious Jews, most of them from the lands of persecution and massacre, are still nervous and fearful. They have not yet learned the true meaning of English freedom, and the Alien Commission is to them a warning note of some new disaster that threatens.

Passing from the Talmud school into the synagogue itself, you are startled to find the Royal Arms of England, elaborately carved and coloured, standing out boldly on the walls.

The mystery is solved when we learn that this was originally a Huguenot chapel, owned by the French refugees who settled in Spitalfields after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. At one time the Huguenots were under special Royal favour, which may account for the display of the Royal Arms in their place of worship. The Jews acquired the building and converted it into a synagogue about ten years ago.

The synagogue is only dimly lighted. Here and there a few worshippers are sitting in the pews repeating their prayers or reading a tattered volume. In one pew sits an old man writing by the aid of a tallow candle, which he has stuck on the little shelf in front of him. He is writing out one of the tiny scrolls which, encased in a capsule of tin or glass, forms the "Mezuzzah," the amulet which every orthodox Jew places on his doors; or perhaps the miniature manuscript is intended to be placed inside the "Tephillin"—that is, the phylacteries which are bound round the head and the left arm for the morning prayers. Remembering that the Mezuzzah and the Tephillin are direct Sinaitic ordinances, we look at the old man writing by the gleam of the candle in the gloomy synagogue with feelings of awe and reverence. Forty centuries ago the injunction was given in the far-off Eastern desert which the Hebrew exile is transcribing to-day in the heart of London.

But, weird and mystic as the scene is, we do not care to linger. Already the uninvited presence of Christian strangers has attracted considerable attention, and the efforts of our artist to sketch unobserved have brought about us a number of the pious and aged aliens, who consult together in Yiddish and eventually put forward a spokesman, who, in broken English, politely asks us what we want.

We make our explanation and assure the head of the little deputation that we have no evil intent, and then as quickly as is consistent with dignity we make our way through the Talmud room, the readers and expounders and the aged men rocking to and fro in prayer, and pass out into the darkness of the night. On the step an old man stands and looks after us. The pale light coming through the open door falls upon his face and shows a deep scar that looks like a sabre cut. The old man is one of the survivors of the massacre of Kischineff.

And now we are back again in the big trading streets, with the yellow blaze of gas and lamp oil showing up the bright costumes of young Jewesses who are on their way to balls and parties and even to theatrical performances, which are frequent Sunday features of this foreign land which is in London but not of it.

Every now and then through the packed streets dashes a carriage with a spanking pair of greys. Sunday is the day for weddings in the Ghetto. The white ribbon on the whip of the coachman catches the eye again and again, and always a little crowd turns to follow the vehicle and take up its station outside the Hall in which the marriage feast is being celebrated. These wedding carriages are to be seen making their way through the narrow streets in every direction. They are picking up the invited guests at their dwellings. As soon as one load has been deposited at the Hall, off the driver hurries in search of another.

All is merriment within, and all is good temper and good order outside. The crowd blocks the pavement to listen and to make critical remarks on the toilettes of the guests as they arrive. One sharp turn out of the gay, crowded street and the scene is changed. Here everything is gloom, and in the gloom is a little group of slouching men and slatternly women loafing at the doors of dark, forbidding-looking houses.

"LOAFING AT THE DOORS OF DARK, FORBIDDING-LOOKING HOUSES."

We are in a quarter that has been rendered notorious by the revelations of coroners' inquests. This is a little bit of the Ghetto that the Jews have not yet taken from the Christians. It is the street of common lodging-houses where strange murders have been done. We pass quickly by the group of loafing tramps who have come out of the lodging-house kitchens to gossip, and make our way up a narrow, tortuous passage to another street of evil fame, where lodging-houses of the lowest class still remain. Battered wrecks of lost humanity, male and female, flit to and fro in the darkness. A woman pauses under the solitary lamp and we see that her face is bruised and her eyes are blackened. The door of one lodging-house stands ajar and the English tongue salutes our ears once more. It is not a welcome relief, for the sentiment of the words is foul and blasphemous. At the top of the court one comes again upon good buildings and light and a sound of childish merriment. A number of little Jewish children are dancing a dance of their own in the lamplight.

"A NUMBER OF LITTLE JEWISH CHILDREN ARE DANCING."

We pass out into a broad main thoroughfare, and still the shops are open and doing a brisk business. Here is a little restaurant with its bill of fare in Hebrew characters. We push the door ajar and enter, for we know that it was once the haunt of the Bessarabians, the formidable gang who had a standing vendetta with the Odessians, and who fought them not long ago outside the Yiddish theatre, the fray ending in a man being stabbed to death.

The room we enter is lighted by a single jet of gas. There are only one or two young fellows sitting about and smoking cigarettes. The proprietor in his shirt sleeves stands behind the counter. At the end of the room is an opening covered with heavy curtains. Now and again a man enters, nods to the proprietor, and passes through them.

We have ordered tea, for which we pay a penny a cup. The proprietor brings it himself, looks at us curiously, and I endeavour to allay his suspicion by speaking to him in German. He replies amiably, and I try to engage him in conversation. I ask him if the Bessarabians still use the house.

His manner alters. He has heard of such people, but they never came to his establishment—never. I ask him if there is another restaurant beyond the curtain. Again he looks at me curiously.

No, there is nothing beyond but his own dwelling rooms. I want to get behind those curtains; but I have not the password, and there is no chance. Some day I hope to be more fortunate. For this café was the meeting-place of the Bessarabians, one of the most dangerous gangs in the East-end, and behind those curtains you passed to a room which was a gambling den. There the quarrel took place which led to midnight murder at the corner of the dark street.

We walk quietly away and in five minutes we are back upon the beaten track. Everywhere are closed shops and the calm of the Christian Sunday night. The householders pass on their homeward way. The sweethearts linger for a while before they part at the door, or separate to go each a different way.

And though they are within a few minutes' walk of the strange scenes we have looked upon by turning a little way off the beaten track, most of these people are as ignorant of their existence as was the great French critic who came for the first time to London and was taken to Piccadilly Circus, was told that it was the famous Whitechapel—and believed it.

---

Artists and Musicians.

By S. K. Ludovic.

The following collection of pictures, in each of which the artist has depicted an event in the lives of the great musicians, can open with nothing more suitably than with the charming picture of "The Child Handel," by Margaret Dicksee. Handel's father strongly opposed the child's passionate love for music, and the more his great gifts developed the more severely was he forbidden to occupy himself with music. The little boy was obliged to have recourse to subterfuge, and when his elders believed him snug in bed he used to steal on tip-toe to the lumber-room, where he had discovered an old spinet, on which he played softly to his heart's content, alone and fancy-free. In one of these moments of enjoyment, when the divine genius spoke to the child, he forgot himself and played louder and louder—all the sound of the old spinet streamed through the silent night, waking the sleepers in the house, who believed that the angels were keeping vigil over the old town of Halle. But little George's father bethought himself of the musical propensities of the boy, and, as the latter was not to be found in his bed, the lantern was lit and a search-party followed where the music led them. Alas! Poor George was found, severely reprimanded, and dismissed to bed. The picture brings the scene so vividly before our minds that we are glad to know the sequel. George was not to be suppressed. A short time afterwards his father went to Weissenfels, where, in consequence of the presence of the music-loving Prince, many concerts were to be held. Little George knew this, and, as his father would not let him go, he ran after the coach so long that his parent was compelled to take him in. The Prince heard of the extraordinary child-musician, and, thanks to his intercession, Handel's father at last gave permission that his son should be taught music.

"THE CHILD HANDEL."
From the Picture by Margaret Dicksee.
By permission of the Berlin Photographic Company, 133, New Bond Street, London, W.
Copyright, 1893, by Photographische Gesellschaft.

The next picture shows us Sebastian Bach, "the father of all music," playing before Frederick the Great. The painter has chosen the moment when the King is giving Bach a theme on which to improvise. This theme, "a right royal one," as Bach called it, was afterwards worked out by him and sent back to the King, under the name of "A Musical Sacrifice." The King, who was himself a remarkable musician, had shown Bach the greatest appreciation, and this visit to Potsdam seems to have been one of the happiest events in Bach's life. Those who are inclined to regard Frederick, in his musical capacity, as no better than a dilettante flute-player would do well to remember that he was among the first to recognise and to encourage the genius of one of the greatest musicians of all time. Yet Bach's greater works remained in manuscript, and it was left to musicians of a later period—especially to Mendelssohn—to unearth and make them known to the world at large.

"FREDERICK THE GREAT AND SEBASTIAN BACH."
From the Picture by Carl Röhling.
By permission of the Berlin Photographic Company, 133, New Bond Street, London, W.
Copyright, 1901, by Photographische Gesellschaft.

Another of our master-musicians, Haydn, unlike Bach, who never left his country, came to England, and reached in this country the summit of his renown. In the picture on the next page we see him on board ship. Well wrapped in his great-coat he stands on deck and seems to enjoy the sea-breezes, unconscious of the curiosity of the other passengers. He is wondering what will await him in that strange country across the sea. Will they understand him and the message he has to deliver to them: harmonies so pure and simple from a heart so kindly and a will so strong? And they did understand him in England; a glorious season of success awaited him. Sympathy met him everywhere, and in such fulness that on returning home to Austria he stopped at the little village of his birth and, kneeling at the threshold of his father's humble cottage, he thanked God for all the happiness which he had known in England.

"HAYDN CROSSING TO ENGLAND." From the Picture by Carl Röhling. By permission of the Berlin Photographic Company, 133, New Bond Street, London, W. Copyright, 1902, by Photographische Gesellschaft.

In his wake followed another and a brighter star. When Haydn was at the zenith of his success all Germany began to talk of the little infant prodigy, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Our first Mozart picture shows him at the epoch of his life when he first fell in love. While on a visit to an uncle he met his fate in the shape of one of his youthful cousins, Aloysia Weber. The two sisters were pretty; the older, whom in the picture we see lingering in the other room, was full of kindness and sweet unselfishness, always putting forward the younger and more talented sister. Aloysia had a beautiful and well-trained voice, and could read a song at first sight. What was more natural than that the two young people who loved music should learn to love each other? Then came the parting hour. Mozart was compelled to go on one of his extensive tours. Two years passed by before he could return to his Aloysia. She had, of course, vowed everlasting love; but, alas for the faithlessness, the vanity of woman! Wolfgang came back, faithful and loving as he had left, to find that Aloysia had grown into a very beautiful girl, who had tasted the joys of celebrity as a singer. Success had turned her head and she had nothing to say to the young musician, who was only on the road to make his fame, and she threw away a treasure which she was too ignorant to prize.

"MOZART AND ALOYSIA WEBER."
From the Picture by Carl Röhling.
By permission of the Berlin Photographic Company, 133, New Bond Street, London, W.
Copyright, 1902 by Photographische Gesellschaft.

"MOZART AND BEETHOVEN."
From the Picture by A. Borckmann.
By permission of the Berlin Photographic Company, 133, New Bond Street, London, W.

In the next picture we see Mozart again when, at the height of his own fame, he listens to one who was destined to be greater even than himself—the young Beethoven. The young musician of sixteen asked him for a theme on which to improvise. Slowly the genius unfolded his wings; the simple theme seemed to grow to a mighty phrase, which was taken up by other voices as the harmony swelled under the fingers of the player who was destined to show the coming generations the power of music at its greatest. Mozart listened more and more attentively, his eyes fixed upon the young musician, his face wearing an almost reverential look under the spell of celestial inspiration, which came now like the rushing of a mighty wind. The music still went on. Beethoven had forgotten that he was not alone; but Mozart turned to his friends. "Listen!" he said. "And remember, of this young man the whole world will speak."

Kaulbach, in his painting, "Mozart's Requiem," has immortalized the moment when fate cut short the life of Mozart. The fire of his genius, the never-ceasing, burning desire to embody the immortal inspirations which floated so richly in his brain, had "fretted the pigmy body to decay." Ill and depressed he was leaning back in his chair, when a stranger was announced, who asked him to compose a Requiem as full of dignity and beauty as his genius could conceive, a work which should be without an equal. He laid down a roll of a thousand ducats on Mozart's table and went away without disclosing his name, saying only that he would call again. Then the master collected his last strength, and a sublime effort resulted in the unique work, before which the world still stands in awe and reverence. He felt from the first moment that he was writing his own Requiem.

The work was finished and now he wished to hear it. Too weak to stir from his room, he summoned his friends to perform the Requiem before him. They came and he listened, still and happy, to those mighty strains of sadness; and, so listening, his own soul flew to Heaven. This is the scene of Kaulbach's picture.

"THE LAST HOUR OF MOZART."
From the Picture by H. Kaulbach.
By permission of the Berlin Photographic Company, 133 New Bond Street, London, W.

The well-known and well-beloved "Moonlight Sonata," whose power and beauty will delight for ages, is the subject of the very pretty story depicted on the next page. It is said that Beethoven passed, in the course of one of his rambling walks, a lonely street in the suburbs of Vienna, and heard from an open window the strains of his own music. The music came from a room on the ground floor, and when he approached he saw a young girl sitting at the piano and a child listening to her, huddled up on a chair near by. Impulsive as he was, he at once entered, saying, "I know that piece. What makes you play it? Does it please you?" "I love all Beethoven's compositions," said the young girl in a sweet, quiet voice, without showing any surprise at being thus interrupted by a stranger. But the child came quickly towards him, saying, "My sister is blind, and music is her only joy. What is it you want, sir?" With that peculiar directness which was so characteristic of his nature, he simply said, "I wish to play to you. I am Beethoven." Then the two girls settled themselves joyfully to listen. The moon had risen, the street was silent, the tears glistened in the blind eyes of the elder girl—and then came the wonderful mysterious song of that Adagio in C sharp minor, which rose and fell and soared again to Heaven. Such revelation of human feeling strained the nerves of these two young beings almost beyond endurance. A slight pause, and the graces of the Minuet played around them, soothed them, brushed the tears away, and spoke of life and youth and gladness. And then it sang on—another rushing storm—and melody after melody followed, and wildest outbreak of the Titan's own rugged nature, and then it cleared up into majestic strength—imposing chords of greatness—then silence. Beethoven turned and went as he had come, and long after he gave to the world what he saw and felt before these two lonely children.

"THE MOONLIGHT SONATA."
From the Picture by Ernst Oppler.
By permission of the Berlin Photographic Company, 133, New Bond Street, London, W.
Copyright, 1900, by Photographische Gesellschaft.

"BEETHOVEN AND GOETHE IN TEPLITZ."
From the Picture by Carl Röhling.
By permission of the Berlin Photographic Company, 133, New Bond Street, London, W.
Copyright, 1901, by Photographische Gesellschaft.

The picture entitled "Beethoven and Goethe in Teplitz" illustrates an episode which shows Beethoven in the company of Germany's greatest poet, for whom he had an enthusiastic admiration. Beethoven's was a proud nature, and he sometimes showed his pride in a manner which had nothing in common with the smooth and polished manners of the aristocratic society in which he and Goethe were wont to move.

Beethoven and Goethe met at Teplitz, a Bohemian watering-place much frequented by Royalties and aristocratic society. They were walking together, when the Emperor and Empress and their suite came towards them. Goethe, standing still, hat in hand, bowed almost to the ground, as it is customary on the Continent. Beethoven pressed his hat tighter on his head, let go Goethe's arm, and tried to elbow his way through the crowd; but the Empress had seen him and greeted him smilingly as she passed on, whilst Goethe received only the courtesy accorded to every unknown person. This is the moment shown us by the artist. The expression of surprise in the faces of the Royal visitors at Goethe's obsequious politeness, the indulgent smiles which follow the irate Beethoven, are very amusing.

Franz Schubert is the creator of the German "Lied." He was the first who gave this kind of music a deeper meaning and a more elevated form, and, guided by his dramatic instinct, produced such masterpieces as the "Erlking" and the "Müller-lieder." The singer is surprised to find most of these songs written in a very high key, and before somebody had taken the trouble to transpose them this was, even in Germany, a drawback to their popularity. The reason was as follows. One of Schubert's best friends was a very popular singer in Vienna, and his tenor voice was of an exceptional compass. Schubert wrote most of his songs for him. The painter has had the happy idea of giving us a portrait of this man in the act of singing, while Schubert himself is playing the accompaniment. The young lady who stands at the other side of the piano is probably the girl of whom Schubert said: "I loved once a girl, she was not beautiful—but, oh, so kind-hearted, good, and loving! And she sang my songs with a most beautiful soprano voice. We loved each other for three years, and we were happy. Then I had to give her up. I could never succeed in getting a post which would have enabled me to marry. I had no right to prevent her from marrying a man who could give her a home and make her happy." It is sad that a man whom we acknowledge as one of the greatest of musicians should be compelled to give up every thought of the happiness which comes to even the simplest worker in another field.

"SCHUBERT AND HIS FRIENDS."
From the Picture by Carl Röhling.
By permission of the Berlin Photographic Company, 133, New Bond Street, London, W.
Copyright, 1903, by Photographische Gesellschaft.

The next painting illustrates a romantic episode of Schumann's life. In 1836 Robena Laidlaw, though only sixteen, was Court pianist of the Queen of Hanover, and her fame had already spread over Germany, England, and Russia. She played his music for him, followed his inspirations, and rejoiced at the flights of his genius. They had tasted to the full the delight of understanding each other in the beautiful language of music.

"SCHUMANN AND ROBENA LAIDLAW."
From the Water-Colour Drawing by J. Raabe.

One day they were wandering in the Rosenau—the rose-gardens of Leipzig. The time of parting had come. His life and hers were unsettled and full of plans and ambitions. She was to start for Paris the next day, and to go from there to Russia to play before the Czar and the Imperial Court. Did they realize their own feelings at the moment, or know how much akin such friendship is to love?

He arranged the cushions around her in the little boat upon the lake and bade her wait for him; he would bring her a rose as a parting gift. She had long to wait, and when he came at last he said, with that melancholy expression which, even in his younger years, was already his: "I searched so long and could after all only find a rose which is not worthy of you. But I will send you a remembrance of the Rosenau."

ROBENA LAIDLAW.
From a Painting.

Surfeited with the triumphs which fall naturally to the share of a great artiste and a beautiful girl, Robena found, on returning from a State concert at St. Petersburg, among many costly gifts of jewels and flowers which awaited her, a simple roll of music with the German postmark. It contained the twelve Phantasiestücke which are now reckoned among the most poetical and beautiful of Schumann's works. He wrote: "I have not asked, before sending them to the printer's, your permission to dedicate these pieces to you. They are yours, and I hope you will accept them. The whole Rosenau with all its romance is in them. Forget me not, and send me your portrait soon, as you promised."

"WAGNER IN HIS HOME AT WAHNFRIED."
From the Picture by W. Beckmann.
By permission of Rud. Ibach Soln, owners of the Original.

Wasielewski tells in his "Schumanniana" that he heard him once, shortly before his last illness, playing in the twilight, as he loved to do. Melodies full of tender beauty floated around; the exquisite piece "des Abends," the first of the Phantasiestücke; then reminiscences of "des Nachts," wild and desperate, as if haunted by loneliness and terror; and then again the sweet and tender song of the evening's silent longing. The listener outside the door felt his heart nearly burst with emotion, but Schumann shut the piano immediately when the door was opened, and no allusion to what had passed was possible. Had he returned in this lonely moment to the memories of youth? Was it a last and loving greeting to the past?

The great composer who gave so much to the world is long laid to rest in the cemetery of Bonn, and the waves of the Rhine sing his eternal slumber-song, but the Phantasiestücke will live on, and sing of the romance which was never told in words.

Robena Laidlaw died only two years ago in London. Among the many souvenirs of this brilliant artiste's career was found a withered rose, and written by her on a leaflet: "Schumann gave me this rose at the Rosenau, 1836."

Beckmann's picture represents the last of the epoch-making musicians, Richard Wagner. We see him discussing "Parsifal," his last and grandest work, with his wife and his two faithful friends, Liszt and Hans von Wolzogen. Wagner was then already living in his own beautiful home in Bayreuth, surrounded by the luxuries he so dearly loved, having as companion the woman who understood him best. His battle had been hard, but his ultimate conquest was decisive, and we may feel contented in the hope that culture is in our days so widespread and advanced that genius is but rarely exposed to pay with a life of misery for the halo of its greatness.

---

If anyone cares to look up the Patriarch in Lloyd's List it will be discovered that the owner of her was T. Tyser, but it matters very little whether she was built of heavier plating than the rules required, or whether she was cemented or built under special survey or what not. For T. Tyser, otherwise Mr. Thomas Tyser, was not only the owner of the Patriarch, but also the owner of a dozen other vessels all beginning with a "P." He was, moreover, the owner of a large block of land in the heart of Melbourne; he had several streets, of which the biggest was Tyser Street, S.E., in London, and his banking account was certainly of heavier metal than he had any personal use for. He was a rough dog from the north country, and in the course of half a century's fight in London he came out top dog in his own line and was more or less of a millionaire.

"And he's my uncle," said Geordie Potts; "his sister was my mother, and here I am before the stick in one of his old wind-jammers and gettin' two-pun-ten in this here Patriarch of his, and hang me if I believe the old bloke has another relation in the world. It's hard lines, mates—it's hard lines. Don't you allow it's hard lines?"

It was Sunday morning in the south-east trades, and every sail was drawing "like a bally droring-master," as Geordie once said, and the "crowd" of the Patriarch were all fairly easy in their minds and ready for a discussion.

"If so be you are 'is nevvy, as you state," said the port watch, cautiously, "we allow it's hard lines."

"I've stated it frequent," said Geordie, "and it's the truth, the whole truth, and nothin' but it, so help me. D'ye think I'd claim to be old Tyser's sister's son if I wasn't? I'd scorn to claim it."

"Any man would scorn to be Tyser's sister's son," said the starboard watch. "He'd scorn to be 'im unless he was, for Tyser's a mean old dog, ain't he, Geordie?"

Geordie thanked his watch-mates for backing him up so.

"That's right, chaps. There's no meaner in the north of England—or the south, for that matter—and the way this ship's found is scandalous."

"The grub's horrid," said both watches.

"And look at the gear," said Geordie; "everything ready to part a deal easier than my uncle is. I never lays hold of a halliard but I'm thinking I'll go on my back if I pulls heavy. Oh, it's a fair scandal!"

He considered the scandal soberly and with some sadness.

"He might leave you some dibs, Geordie," suggested his mate, Jack Braby. "He might, after all."

"Not a solitary dime," said Geordie. "Him and me quarrelled because my father fought him in the street, and I hit the old hunks with a bit of a brick because he got my dad down."

"Wot was the row about?" asked the others, eagerly.

"Nothin' to speak of," said Geordie. "My old man said he was a bloodsucker, and that led to words. And I never hurt him to speak of. And yet I've shipped in one of his ships, and am as poor as he's rich. He allowed none of us would get a farthing; he shouted it out in the market-place and said hospitals would get it, because one of his skippers that he'd sacked cut him up awful with a staysail hank, and they sewed him very neat at one of 'em."

"There's nothin' so good in a fight as a staysail 'ank," said Jack Braby, contemplatively. "I cut a policeman all to rags wiv one once."

"Was that the time you done three months' 'ard?" asked the port watch.

"Six," said Braby, proudly; "and I told the beak I could do it on my 'ead. But, Geordie, if you was owner yourself what would you do?"

"Yes, wot?" asked the rest.

Geordie shook his head and sighed.

"I'd make my ships such that sailormen would be wantin' to pay to go in 'em," said Geordie. "I've laid awake thinkin' of it."

"Oh, tell us," said all hands, with as much unanimity as if they were tailing on to the halliards under the stimulus of "Give us some time to blow the man down." "Tell us, Geordie."

"I'd be friends with all my men, for one thing," said Geordie, "and I'd not have a single Dutchman in a ship of mine."

The three "Dutchmen" on board, one of whom was a Swede, another a German, and the third a Finn, shifted uneasily on their chests, but said nothing.

"And not a Dago," continued the "owner," "and I'd give double wages and grog three times a day and tobacco thrown in. And the cook shouldn't be a hash-spoiler, but what Frenchies call a chef."

"We never heard of that. How d'ye spell it, Geordie?"

"S—H—E—double F," said Geordie; "and it means a man that is known not to spoil vittles, as most sea-cooks does, by the very look of him. And when it was wet or cold the galley fire should be alight all night. And the skipper and the mates should be told by me, and told very stern, that if they vallied their billets a continental they'd behave like gents and not cuss too much. And there shouldn't be no 'working up,' and any officer of mine that was dead on 'dry pulls' on the halliards should have the sack quick. And every time a ship of mine came into dock I'd be there, and I'd see what the crowd's opinion was of the skipper and the mates. Oh, I'd make my ship a Paradise, I would!"

Most of the men nodded approval, but Braby wasn't quite satisfied.

"And would there be grog every time of shortenin' sail, Geordie?"

"Oh, of course," said Geordie, "and every time you made sail too."

But an old seaman shook his head.

"'Tis mighty fine, mates, to 'ear Geordie guff as to what 'e'd do," he growled, "but I ain't young and I've seed men get rich, and they wasn't in the least what they allowed they'd be. Geordie 'ere is one of hus now, and 'e feels where the shoe pinches; but if so be 'e got rotten with money 'e'd be for calling sailormen swine as like as not. And 'e'd wear a topper."

"You're a liar; I wouldn't," roared Geordie.

"Maybe I am a liar," said the old chap, "but I've seen what I've looked at. If you was to learn as your uncle was dead now, you'd go aft and set about on the poop and see hus doin' pulley-hauley, with a seegar in your teeth. Riches spoils a man, and it can't be helped; it 'as to, somehow. I've no fault to find with you now, Geordie Potts; for so young a man you're a good seaman and a good shipmate (though you 'ave called me a liar), but you take my word for it, money would make an 'og of you."

And here was matter for high debate which lasted all through the trades, through the horse latitudes, and into the region of the brave west winds till the Patriarch had made more than half her casting.

"So I'm to be a mean swab and a real swine when I'm rich," said Geordie. "Oh, well, have it your own way. There's times some of you makes me feel I'd like to make you sit up."

"'Ear, 'ear," said the old fo'c's'le man; "there's the very 'aughty richness workin' in his mind, shipmates. What'll the real thing do if 'is huncle pegs out sudden?"

It was curious to note that a certain subdued hostility rose up between most of the men and Geordie. They sat apart and discussed him. Even Jack Braby threw out dark and melancholy hints that they wouldn't be chums any more if old Tyser's money came to his nephew. There were at times faint suggestions that Geordie was getting touched with his possible prosperity.

"I'll live ashore and have a public-house," said Geordie Potts.

And they picked up Cape Otway light in due time, and ran through Port Phillip Heads by-and-by, and came to an anchor off Sandridge. Presently they berthed alongside the pier and began to discharge their cargo; and one hot day went by like another, till they were empty and began to fill up again with wool. In six weeks they were almost ready for sea once more. And the very night before they hauled out from their berth and lay at anchor in the bay, Geordie went ashore at six o'clock "all by his lonesome," as he and Jack Braby had fought over the job which Braby was to get from his mate when old Tyser died intestate. And as he got to the end of the pier he met a young clerk from the agent's office who knew him by sight.

"I say, I'm in a great hurry," said the boy; "my girl's waiting for me. Will you take these letters to Captain Smith, or I'll miss my train back? I'll give you a bob."

"Righto!" said Geordie; and he pouched the shilling and the letters, and the young fellow ran for his train.

"'JERUSH,' SAID GEORDIE, 'THIS CAN'T BE ME!'"

"The letters can wait," said Geordie Potts, "but the bob can't, and I've five more besides. Jack might have had his whack out of it if he hadn't wanted to be my manager when he ain't fit for it."

He put the letters into his pocket and made his way to the Sandridge Arms, where he sat and drank by himself. It was seven o'clock, and he was by then tolerably "full," before it occurred to him to see if he still had the letters. He took them out, and the very first his eyes lighted on was one in a long envelope addressed to

"George Potts, Esq.,
c/o Captain Smith,
Patriarch."

"Jerush," said Geordie, "this can't be me! 'Esq.' is what they puts after names of gents. Even the skipper don't have it after his."

He fingered the long envelope and took another drink to consider the matter on.

"Snakes! it must be me," he said, as he drew confidence out of his glass; "there's no other Potts but me."

He was over-full by now, and he opened the letter and began to read it:—

"My Dear Sir——"

"By all that's living," said Geordie, "me 'my dear sir'!"

He went on reading:—

"My Dear Sir,—We regret to inform you of the sudden death of your uncle, Mr. Thomas Tyser, on the 10th instant. He left no will, and you, as the next of kin and heir-at-law, are entitled to all his real and personal estate, which is, as you are doubtless aware, very large. According to our present estimate it will amount to at least half a million sterling, and as we have been his legal advisers for the last twenty years and know all his affairs we can assure you that with proper management of certain undertakings at present in our hands, it may be much more than our estimate. In order that you may return at once we enclose you a draft on the Union Bank of Australia for two hundred pounds, and have instructed Captain Smith to give you your discharge, which he will, of course, do at once.

"We hope, as we have been so long in the confidence of Mr. Tyser, that you will see no reason to complain of our care of your interests.

"We are, my dear sir,

"Your obedient servants,

"Thomas Wiggs and Co."

"My stars!" said Geordie. And he stared aghast at a square piece of paper, which he had reason to believe represented two hundred pounds. "My stars! what a pot o' money!"

He gasped and took another drink.

"I'm the owner of the Patriarch," he said, and grasping all the letters and his two-hundred-pound draft he rammed them down into the bottom of his inside breast-pocket. "I'm the owner of—hic—the—hic—Patriarch."

He came out of his corner and went to the bar.

"Gimme a drink—an expensive drink, one that'll cost five bob," he demanded of the barman.

"You'd better have a bottle o' brandy," said the barman.

"I wants the best."

"This is Hennessy's forty star brandy," said the liar behind the bar. "There's no better in the world."

And Geordie retreated with the bottle to his corner and took a long drink of a poisonous compound which contained as much insanity in it as a small lunatic asylum. He came back to the bar presently and told the barman that he was a millionaire.

"I own half Newcastle and a lot of Bourke Street, Melbourne, and a baker's dozen of ships, and lumps of London!" said Geordie.

"Lend me a thousand pounds till to-morrow," said the barman.

"I like you—hic—I'll do it," said Geordie, and with that he fell headlong and forgot his wealth. They dragged him outside on the veranda and let him lie in the cool of the evening. He was picked up there two hours later by Jack Braby and some of the starboard watch and taken on board.

"He let on he was a millionaire," said the barman, contemptuously.

Braby shook his head.

"Ah, he's liable to allow that when he's full, sir," said Braby.

But that fatal bottle kept Geordie Potts wholly insensible till they were outside the Heads again and on their way to England, with the smoke of the tug-boat far astern. And presently the second mate, Mr. Brose, who was a very rough sort of dog, and had sweated his way up to his present exalted rank from that of a foremast hand, hauled Geordie out by the collar of his coat, and had him brought to by means of a bucketful of nice Bass's Straits water. Geordie gasped like a dying dolphin, but came to rapidly.

"I'll teach you to get drunk, you swab," said Brose. "Take them wet things off and turn to."

And Geordie obeyed like a child in the presence of force majeure.

"Oh, I've got a head," he told his mates, "and it seems to me that I had a most extraordinary dream."

"Wot did you dream of, old Cocklywax?" asked Braby; "did you dream you'd come in for old Tyser's money?"

And Geordie gasped.

"S'help me," he murmured. "S'help me, did I dream?"

He dropped his marline-spike as if it were red hot and made a break for the fo'c's'le and his wet coat.

"Now if so be I dreamed," he said, "there'll be naught in this pocket. And if I didn't, I'm jiggered."

He put his hand in and brought out a handful of damp and crushed letters, and came out upon deck staggering. Mr. Brose saw him, and was on his tracks like a fish-hawk on a herring-gull. Geordie saw him coming and stood open-mouthed.

"Oh, sir," said Geordie. "Oh, sir——"

"Oh, rot," said Brose; "what's your little shenanakin game? Get to work, or I'll have you soused till you're half dead."

But Geordie could explain nothing.

"Oh, sir," he stammered, and held up his papers, shaking them feebly. And Brose shook him, anything but feebly, so that Geordie's teeth chattered.

"If you please, sir," he cried out at last, "if you please, sir, don't. I owns her."

"You owns wot?" demanded Brose; and the rest of the men edged as near as they dared.

"BROSE SHOOK HIS MATE ONCE MORE."

"He's drunk still," said Braby, as Brose shook his mate once more.

"I owns the bally Patriarch," screamed Geordie, "and all the rest of 'em, and all my uncle's richness, and I won't be shook, I won't!"

And Brose let him go.

"You're mad," said Brose, "you're mad."

"I ain't," roared Geordie, who was fast recovering from the shock, "I ain't. Take these; read 'em—read 'em out; let the skipper read 'em. I owns the Patriarch and the Palermo and the Proosian and the whole line. The lawyer says so!"

He put the lot of damp letters into Mr. Brose's hands and sat down on the spare top-mast lashed under the rail.

"There's letters for the captain 'ere," said Brose, suspiciously; "'ow did you get 'em?"

"'Twas a youngster from the office give 'em me," replied Geordie, "and I took a drink first, and there was one for me, and it said so—said I was the owner, said it plain."

And when Brose had read the opened letter he gasped too and went aft to see the skipper. The rest of the watch gathered round Geordie and spoke in awe-struck whispers.

"Is it true, Geordie?"

"Gospel," said Geordie. "It's swore to. They sends me two hundred quid in a paper."

"Show us," said the starbowlines, "show us."

"'Tis in the paper the second has," said Geordie. "It's wrote, 'Pay George Potts, Esq., two hundred quid on the nail.'"

"I'd never 'ave let the second 'ave it," said Braby. "Like as not 'e'll keep it."

"Then I'll sack him," said Geordie, firmly. "Let him dare try to keep it, and I'll sack him and not pay him no wages."

"This is a very strange game, this is," said Braby. "I never 'eard tell of the likes. Did they put 'Esk' on your letter?"

"They done so," said Geordie. "I've seen uncle's letters and they done so to him."

"Then it must be true," said Braby. "They only puts 'Esk' on gents' letters."

And Williams, the steward, was observed coming for'ard scratching his head.

"Where the deuce am I?" asked Williams, "and wot's the game? I'm sent by the captain to say, 'Will Mr. Potts step into the cabin?'"

They all looked at Geordie.

"Mr. Potts? Why, that's you, Geordie."

"I s'pose it must be," said the owner. "Must I go, mates?"

"Of course," cried Braby.

But Geordie fidgeted.

"I could go in if we were painting of her cabin," he murmured; "but to talk with the skipper——"

That evidently disgruntled him.

"'Tis your own cabin any'ow," said Braby. "I'd walk in like a lord."

"Well, I s'pose I must," said Geordie, reluctantly, and he went aft with Williams.

"And you're the owner?" asked Williams.

Geordie sighed.

"So it seems, stooard," he admitted.

"It licks creation," said Williams.

"So it does," said Geordie, and the next moment he found himself announced as "Mr. Potts," and he stood before the captain with his cap in his hand, looking as if he was about to be put in irons for mutiny; but, as a matter of fact, the old skipper was a deal more nervous than he was.

"This seems all correct, Mr. Potts," said Smith.

"Does it, sir?" asked Geordie. "I'm very sorry, sir, but it ain't my fault, sir. I never meant—at least, I never allowed my uncle would do it, because my father, sir, said he was a bloodsucker, and they fought, and I hit uncle with a brick, sir, to make him let go of father's beard."

"Oh, yes, to be sure," said the captain, nervously, "but I'm thinking what to do. It's a very anomalous situation for you to be here, Potts—Mr. Potts, I mean."

But Geordie held up his hand.

"I'd much rather be Potts, sir, thanking you all the same."

"I couldn't do it," replied the skipper. "I was thinking that you might like me to put back to Melbourne?"

"Wot for, sir?" demanded the owner.

"So that you could go home in a P. and O. boat," said old Smith.

"Thanking you kindly, sir," replied Geordie, "I'd rather stay in the Patriarch. I don't like steamers and never did."

He had a vague notion that the skipper wanted him to go home before the mast in one.

"Then you wish me not to put back, Mr. Potts?" said Smith.

"I'd very much rather not, sir," replied Geordie. "I'm very happy here, sir, and takin' it all round the Patriarch's a comfortable ship, sir. May I go for'ard now, sir?"

He made a step for the cabin door.

"Oh, dear, oh, dear," said old Smith, "you mustn't; you must have a berth here and be a passenger."

The skipper's obvious nervousness was not without its effect upon the new owner. For old Smith knew that if he lost his present billet he was not likely to find another one, and he had nothing saved to speak of. So somehow, and without knowing why, Geordie, without being in the least disrespectful, was more decided in his answer than he would have been if the "old man" had showed himself as hard and severe as usual.

"Not me," said Geordie, "not me, sir; I wouldn't and I couldn't. I'd be that uncomfortable—oh, a passenger, good evings, no!"

"But bein' owner you can't stay for'ard," urged the skipper.

"Oh, yes, I can, sir," said Geordie; "I'd prefer it."

Smith sighed.

"If you prefer it, of course you must. But if you change your mind you'll let me know."

"Right—I will, sir," said Geordie.

The skipper walked with him to the cabin door.

"And if you don't want to work, Mr. Potts, I dare say we can get on without your services, though we shall miss them," he said, anxiously.

"I couldn't lie about and do nix," replied Geordie. "I'd die of it."

And away he went for'ard, while the skipper and Mr. Brose and Mr. Ware, waked out of his watch below to hear the extraordinary news, discussed the situation.

"And 'ave I to call 'im Mr. Potts?" asked Brose, with a pathetic air of disgust.

"I say so," replied the skipper. "I can't afford, Brose, as you know, to lose this job. And old Tyser promised me a kind of marine superintendent's billet when I left the Patriarch, and I dessay this young chap will act decent about it."

"I'm fair knocked," replied Ware. "I'm jolly glad that he ain't in my watch. This is hard lines on you, Brose."

"If you please, Mr. Potts, will you be so good has to be so kind has to be so hobliging as to go and over'aul the gear on the main," piped Brose, in furious mockery, "Oh, this is 'ard!"

"Far from it," said old Smith; "you ought to be proud. It ain't every second mate has a millionaire owner in his watch."

But Brose was sullen.

"You mark me, this josser won't do no 'and's turn that 'e don't like."

And for'ard the crowd said the same. As a result, for at least ten days Geordie Potts worked very well indeed. But, of course, Brose, under the skipper's orders, gave him all the soft jobs that were going. The second mate got into a mode of exaggerated courtesy which was almost painful.

"Be so good, Mr. Potts, as to put a nice, neat Matthew Walker on this 'ere lanyard."

Or—

"Mr. Potts, please be kind enough to go aloft and stop that spilling line to the jack-stay."

And at meal times the port watch mimicked Brose.

"Dear Mr. Potts, howner, be so good as to heat this 'orrid 'ash without growling."

And presently, when the weather began to get cold and the men brought out their Cape Horn pea-jackets and their mitts, Geordie commenced to growl a little.

"'IF YOU DON'T WANT TO WORK, MR. POTTS, I DARESAY WE CAN GET ON WITHOUT YOUR SERVICES,' HE SAID."

"I hates turnin' out in the gravy-eye watch worse and worse," he said. "I've half a mind to let on I'm sick."

"You'd better go haft and tell the old man to 'ave the galley fire kep' alight all night," said the crowd, crossly. "But you dasn't."

"I dast," said Geordie; "why, I owns the bally galley!"

"You dasn't!"

"I will," said Geordie. And next morning he went aft and touched his cap to the skipper and begged to be allowed to speak to him.

"The galley fire at night?" said Smith. "Oh, certainly, Mr. Potts. I never done it because it was against the horders of your late revered huncle, sir."

"He was as mean as mean," said Geordie; "I think I can afford the fire, sir."

The fire was lighted and the crowd said Geordie was the right sort.

"And wot about the gear, Mr. Howner?" asked Jack Braby. "If I was you, before it gets too rotten cold I'd 'ave a real over'aulin' of things."

"I'll think of it," said Geordie. And that very afternoon he tackled Brose.

"The gear's tolerable rotten, sir," he began. And the second greaser knew he was right and yet didn't like to say so. He yearned to curse him. "And I'm thinkin'," said Geordie, "it would be a good thing to get up new stuff and overhaul everything. I risks my life every time I goes aloft. The very reef earings would part if a schoolgirl yanked at 'em."

"You'd better speak to Mr. Ware," said Brose, choking.

And at eight bells Geordie spoke to the chief officer, who was quite as anxious as the skipper to keep his billet.

"It shall be done, Mr. Potts," said Ware.

In the first watch that night Geordie felt very tired, and said so. When it was eight bells in the middle watch he was still asleep, or pretended to be.

"Rouse out, howner," said Braby, and he shook Geordie up.

"I feels tolerable ill," said Geordie; "I don't think I shall turn out."

He didn't, and the rest of the port watch went on deck by themselves. At the muster Mr. Potts didn't answer to his name.

"Mr. Potts is hill, sir," said the obsequious watch; "'e said 'e couldn't turn out."

"I thought it would come soon," said Brose to himself. And he went for'ard to the fo'c's'le.

"Are you very ill?" he asked, drily.

"I don't know quite how I feel," said the owner, "but I thinks a little drop of brandy would do me good."

"I wish I could poison it," said Brose, under his voice. "This is most 'umiliatin' to a man in the persition of an officer."

By noon Geordie was well enough to sit on deck and smoke a pipe. The "old man" came to see him.

"Wouldn't you like a berth aft now, Mr. Potts?" urged the skipper.

"I'll think about it, captain," said Geordie. "And in the meantime I don't think I'll turn to."

The skipper turned to Brose.

"We can dispense with Mr. Potts's services for the time, eh, Mr. Brose?"

"Certingly," said Brose. But he walked to the rail and spat into the great Pacific.

From that time onward Geordie did no work to speak of except to take his trick at the wheel. And when they were south of the Horn he decided to do that no longer.

"If you'll take my wheel for the rest of the passage, I'll double your wages," he said to Braby. And Braby jumped at the offer. In the morning Geordie went to the poop. It was noticeable that he went up the weather poop ladder. Except in cases of hurry and emergency such a thing is next door to gross insubordination at sea.

"I ain't goin' to take no more wheels," said Geordie. "And Braby will take mine. I've doubled his wages."

Even old Smith gasped. As for Brose, he felt sea-sick for the first time since he first went down Channel in an outward-bounder thirty years before.

"I'll make a note of it," said the skipper.

They shortened sail in a quick flurry of a gale out of the south-west later in the day, and as all the topsails were down on the cap at once it was "jump," and no mistake. As an act of kindly condescension the owner went to the wheel and shoved away the Dutchman there, who was congratulating himself on not being on a topsail yard.

"Get aloft, you Dutch swab," said Geordie; "I'll take her for you."

And Mr. Ware bellowed like a bull, for he had a fine foretopsail voice, and when it was a real breeze his language rose with the seas and was fine and flowery, vigorous and ornamental, and magnificent. While he was in the middle of a peroration which would have excited envy in Cicero, or Burke, or a barrister with no case, he heard the owner shouting; for a private interview with the steward had given Geordie great confidence.

"Mr. Ware, Mr. Ware, I'd be glad if you'd cuss the men less. I don't like it."

The chief officer collapsed as if he were a balloon with a hole in it. And for the next minute he and the skipper engaged in an excited conversation.

"I can't—can't stand it," said Ware.

"You must," said old Smith, almost tearfully.

And Ware did stand it. But when the Patriarch was shortened down and he left the deck, he went below and swore very horribly for five minutes by any chronometer.

"Now I know what Brose feels," said Ware. "I've a great sympathy for poor Brose."

The owner ordered a tot for all hands when they came down from aloft. And he called the cook aft and harangued him from the break of the poop.

"Now, Mr. Spoil-Grub, mind you cook better than you've been doin', or I'll have you ducked in a tub and set your mate to do your work."

He turned to the skipper with a beaming smile in his blue eyes.

"I can talk straight, can't I, cap?" he hiccoughed, blandly. "I'm thinkin' I'll lie down in the cabin."

And when the old man went below he found Geordie dossing in his own sacred bunk. The poor old chap went and sat in the cabin and put his head on his hands.

"This is a most horrid experience," he said, mournfully. "I don't like howners on board—I don't like 'em a bit."

But it was not only the after-guard who suffered. Geordie shifted his dunnage aft at last, and though when he was sober he left the skipper's berth, he made himself very comfortable in the steward's. And he loafed about all day on deck with his pipe in his mouth. He began to look at the men with alien eyes.

"I tell you they're loafin'," said he to Ware. "Don't I know 'em? They watches you like cats, and when your eyes are off 'em they do nothin'. I'm payin' 'em to work and I'm payin' you to make 'em. There's a leak somewhere."

And he addressed the crowd from the poop.

"You're a lazy lot," he said, "that's wot you are. For two pins I'd put out the galley fire, and I'd cut off your afternoon watch below."

And next day he raised their wages. A week later he cut them down again. The skipper had a hard job to keep track of what the ship owed them.

"I wish we was home," groaned old Smith. "Oh, he'll be a terror of an owner!"

"I'll murder him," said Brose.

"Wot did I tell you chaps about the 'orrid effecs of sudden richness on a man?" asked the old fo'c's'le man for'ard. "Geordie Potts was a good sort, but Mr. George Potts, Esquire, is an 'oly terror. 'E raises hus hup and cuts hus down like grass."

And it presently came about that the only time they had any peace was when Geordie was very much intoxicated. But when they got into the calms of Capricorn on the home stretch to the north he developed a taste for gambling and made the old skipper sit up all night playing "brag" for huge sums of money.

"I lends you the dibs, and, win or lose, it's all hunky for you," said Geordie. He made out orders to pay the "old man" several thousand pounds, and Smith began to feel rich. Then Geordie raked Ware into the game. At last even Brose succumbed to the lure of "I promises to pay Mr. Brose five hundred on the nail," and joined the gamble.

"This is a dash comfortable ship," said Geordie. "What's a few thousand to me? I don't mind losin'. Stooard, bring rum."

"HE ADDRESSED THE CROWD FROM THE POOP."

By the time they picked up the north-east trades poor old Smith owed the "owner" ten thousand pounds. Ware was five thousand to the good, and Brose, who had played poker in California, was worth fifteen thousand in strange paper. He began to dream of a row of houses with a public-house at each end. He and Geordie grew quite thick and compared public-house ideals.

"I'm goin' to buy a hotel," said Geordie; "there's one in Trafalgar Square, London, as I've in my mind. I'll fit up the bar till it fair blazes with golden bottles."

He borrowed the mate's clothes and had a roaring time, and then they came into the Channel and picked up a tug, and went round the Foreland into London river.

"I'll bet lawyers and so on will be down to meet me," said Geordie. "They'll be full up with gold. To think of it! And to think I hit my poor old uncle with a brick!"

He mourned over his brutality.

"He wasn't half a bad chap," he said, "and I don't see what call my dad had to call him a bloodsucker after all."

They docked in the South-West Dock, and sure enough they had not been alongside their berth five minutes before old Tyser's usual London agent and a very legal-looking person came on board.

"Let me introduce you to the new owner," said the obsequious skipper, as he led up Geordie, who had a smile on him large enough to cut a mainsail out of.

"Oh," said the lawyer, "then this is Mr. Potts?"

"That's me," said Geordie. "Have you brought any money with you? I owes Mr. Ware five thousand and Mr. Brose fifteen."

The lawyer smiled.

"I'm afraid there's some mistake, Mr. Potts. Your uncle left a will after all."

"I'M AFRAID THERE'S SOME MISTAKE, MR. POTTS."

Geordie's jaw dropped and so did Ware's. But Brose's fell as falls the barometer in the centre of a cyclone.

"And me—did he leave me nothin'?" roared Geordie.

"Oh, yes," said the solicitor. "Mr. Gray, will you kindly give me that cash-box you are carrying?"

And the agent handed him the cash-box. "He left you this," said the lawyer. "And in this sealed envelope is the key."

Geordie grabbed the box eagerly.

"It's heavy," he said, "it's tolerable heavy."

And putting it on the rail he opened it with the key.

There was half a brick in it.

---

Detectives at School.