Shakspeare was wrong in supposing there was any bourne from which no traveller could return. Glorifying the doings of Nares’s band of Arctic explorers, a leader-writer said: ‘From the leader of the expedition, who occupied the crow’s-nest until he was overcome by exhaustion, to the humblest seaman who died from fatigue and cold, all have earned the rewards of heroes, and have come back laden with stores of knowledge.’ An unlucky workman overbalancing himself and tumbling from his airy perch into the street, we read: ‘The deceased was seen to pitch head foremost from the scaffold, and little hopes are entertained of his recovery.’ Perhaps the deceased might have got over it, had his doctor been as devoted as the gentleman called in to do his best for a poor hurt lad, who ‘was in frequent attendance upon him after the inquest.’ Not, it may be hoped, from the remorseful feeling actuating his professional brother into writing: ‘This is to certify that I attended Mrs S. during her last illness, and that she died in consequence thereof.’
Here is a nut for lovers of arithmetical riddles to crack at their leisure; we give it up: ‘The diamond wedding of Major-general Lennox and his wife was celebrated on Saturday, at their house in Kelvinside. The General was born in Scotland in the year 1727, and was married on the 2d of December 1882, in the city of Cawnpore, to Mademoiselle de Laval, born in 1806, who had arrived at the French settlements in India with her parents from Mauritius, when that island passed in 1810 from the hands of the French into the possession of the English. General Lennox served in India for forty-three years. He went through the Cabul wars of 1839-43; assisted at the capture of Ghuznee, Khelat, Kandahar, Cabul, Gwalior, and was present at the battle of Sobraon. With his wife and youngest daughter, he was miraculously preserved during the Indian Mutiny of 1857. General Lennox retired from the service in 1860.’ After that, there is nothing surprising in a certain baronet being ‘born in Paris in 1844, and married in 1827.’
Reporting the death of a cricketer from taking carbolic acid in mistake for black draught, an Irish newspaper said: ‘The shopman filled the draught bottle out of a carbolic acid jar, instead of that marked “Senna Mixture,” though his orders were never to do so unless under supervision.’ Anticipating the death of a whale exhibited at the inaptly named Royal Aquarium at Westminster, a London paper observed: ‘It will make excellent porpoise-skin boots.’ Relating a chase after a native robber, an Indian paper said: ‘A Bheel outlaw, fleeing for the jungle, saw his comrades captured one by one, then followed his horse and his wife, and the wretched man at last found that his only companion was his mother-in-law. He thereupon gave way to despair, and was taken by the police without further trouble.’ Noticing the meeting of a new organisation called the Grand State Defenders, a New York journal said the members were bound by a solemn oath ‘never to leave the state, except in the case of an invasion by a foreign foe.’ In each case the satiric insinuation is plain enough. Whether it is intentional or not, would require some skill at thought-reading to decide.
It is well for an English soldier to be equal to a sea-voyage; but it is not generally known that it is requisite he should be familiar with life on the ocean wave. Such is the case, however, or a journalist protesting against the Duke of Connaught’s promotion to a major-generalship, on the ground that ‘he never went to sea unless it was absolutely necessary,’ is as much out of his reckoning as the correspondent representing M. Paul Bert as telling the people of Grenoble: ‘We have enemies whom their triumph has not satiated. Their appetites command us to be watchful; and once our military education is made, and our army thoroughly organised, we shall be able to say to our foes: “Take care! twelve hundred citizens are arrayed in arms before you. They are all ready; they are all united. Do not touch France!”’
The London shopkeeper’s ‘Boots sold and healed while you wait,’ is not so likely to attract customers as the more pronounced orthographical eccentricities of the Gloucestershire gardener, having ‘sallery plants for zale,’ and ready to supply all comers with kalleflour, brokaler, weentur greens, raggit jak, rottigurs cale, and sprouiting brokla. But it would be hard to resist the temptation of assisting at a dramatic entertainment lightened by the musical performances of ‘a band of amateur gentlemen;’ and still harder to refuse to take a ticket for a cricket-match, knowing ‘the entire proceeds are for the benefit of the late Isaac Johnson, who is totally unprovided for;’ but the loyal natives of the Principality were not to be persuaded into joining a proposed Welsh Land League by the suggestion that they might ‘send in their names anonymously.’
When the inhabitants of a French town complained of being disturbed by the explosion of shells, the discharge of cannon, and the rattle of small-arms at a mimic presentment of the bombardment of Plevna, the authorities sent a written notice to those concerned, informing them that for the future, Plevna must be bombarded at the point of the bayonet. The guardians of public property at Concord, Massachusetts, posted up placards offering a reward for the apprehension and conviction of persons guilty of ‘girdling’ the trees in the school-house yard, and promising the payment of a suitable reward ‘for anything of the kind that may hereafter be done to any of the trees in the streets.’ Of course, they no more meant what they said, than did the Commissioners of National Education in Ireland, when, in a Report, signed by four professors, they stated that the female teachers ‘were instructed in plain cooking, had, in fact, to go through the process of cooking themselves in their turn;’ a specimen of official English upon a par with the inscription telling visitors to Kew: ‘This Gallery, containing studies from Nature, painted by her in various lands, was given in 1882 to these Gardens by Marianne Hope.’
A scientific writer asks us to believe that on placing a decapitated frog at the bottom of a vessel filled with water, the animal rises to the surface, and keeps itself there, with its head in the air; or if the frog be placed in the same vessel, under an inverted glass, filled with water, it behaves in the same manner. Some folks hold novel-reading in contempt, but it is astonishing what a deal of information may be gathered from novels. For instance, we have learned that Scylla was a dandy; that Miss Hardcastle was the heroine of Sheridan’s best comedy; that a haggis is a dish peculiar to Ireland; that it usually snows upon the Derby Day; that lilacs and violets bloom amid the hues of ripening fruit; that heather blooms on the Scottish hills in the month of May; that the drones of the hive are given to toiling overmuch; that ibis-shooting is the favourite pastime of Tyrolese sportsmen; that rising barristers shrug their shoulders under rustling silk gowns; that the Victoria Cross is won by a hundred deeds of disciplined valour; that an officer can draw half-pay after selling out; and that our best bred Englishwomen are very rarely of the same name as the men they have married. One would not care to make the acquaintance of an Olympian girl with pagan eyes full of nocturnal mysteries; or desire the company of a lady ‘only a simulacrum of femininity,’ or of a gentleman deserving to be described as a small Vesuvius tabernacling in corporalities; while a lip that owes no man anything and only bows to its maker, and a castle in the air overstepping all difficulties and all rancour, are altogether beyond appreciation or comprehension. Perhaps the ladies and gentlemen who delight in mystifying such readers as they may have, are urged to it as Balzac was. Asked to explain an abstruse passage in one of his books, he frankly owned it had no meaning at all. ‘You see,’ said he, ‘for the average reader all that is clear seems easy; and if I did not sometimes give him a complicated and meaningless sentence, he would think he knew as much as myself. But when he comes upon something he cannot comprehend, he re-reads it, puzzles over it, takes his head between his hands, and glares at it; and finding it impossible to make head or tail of it, says—“Great man, Balzac; he knows more than I do!”’
CHEWTON-ABBOT.
IN THREE CHAPTERS.—CONCLUSION.
Frank laughed at the idea of Mrs Abbot kneeling at his feet; and had not the least intention of sending Millicent’s address.