The marriage duly takes place, but it is soon evident that the poor Lady Bountiful will not allow her change of condition to make any difference to the vigour and persistency of her charitable appeals. She continues the old firm and the old business under a new name, and takes advantage of her independence to enlarge immensely the field of her operations. No bazaar can be organised without her and as a stall-holder she is absolutely unrivalled. Missions, teas, treats, penny dinners, sea-side excursions, the building of halls, the endowment of a bishopric, the foundation of a flannel club, all depend upon her inexhaustible energy in begging. Nor is she satisfied with public institutions. Private applicants of all kinds gather about her. Destitute but undeserving widows, orphans who have brought the grey hairs of their parents to the grave, old soldiers and stranded foreigners batten upon her capacity for taking advantage of her friends. For it must be well understood that the restricted limits of her husband's means and his parsimony prevent her from contributing anything herself to her innumerable schemes except a lavish expenditure of pens and ink and paper with which to set forth her appeals. Yet in this she is a true altruist. For she knows and tells everybody how delightful and blessed it is to give, and accordingly in the purest spirit of self-denial she permits her friends to dispense the cash, whilst she herself is satisfied with the credit.
Like a mighty river, she receives the offerings of innumerable tributary streams, which lose their identity in hers, and are swept away under her name, to be finally merged in the great ocean of charitable effort. Who does not know, that it was mainly owing to her indefatigable efforts, that the new wing was added to the Disabled District Visitors' Refuge, and who has not seen at least one of the many subscription lists to which "per Mrs. So-and-So" invariably contributed the largest amount? Is it not also on record that at the reception which followed the public opening of this wing, when the collecting ladies advanced to deposit their collections at the feet of presiding Royalty, it was the Poor Lady Bountiful who brought the largest, the most beautifully embroidered and the fullest purse? It was felt on all hands, that "the dear Princess" had only done what an English Princess might properly be expected to do, when she afterwards, under the inspiration of the cunning Vicar, showered a few words of golden public praise into the palpitating bosom of the champion purse-bearer.
And thus her time is spent. When she is not organising a refuge she is setting on its legs a dinner fund, when she has exhausted the patience of her friends on behalf of her particular tame widow, she can always begin afresh with a poverty-stricken refugee, and if the delights of the ordinary subscription-card should ever pall, she can fly for relaxation to the seductive method of the snowball, which conceals under a cloak of geometrical progression and accuracy, the most comprehensive uncertainty in its results. One painful incident in her career must be chronicled. Fired by her example, but without her knowledge, a friend of hers from whom she is accustomed to solicit subscriptions, steps down to do battle on her own account in the charitable arena. And thus, when next the Poor Lady Bountiful makes an appeal in this quarter on behalf of a Siberian Count, whom she declares to be quite a gentleman in his own country, she is met by the declaration, that further relief is impossible, as her friend has a Bulgarian of her own to attend to. Thus there is an end of friendship, and both parties scatter dreadful insinuations as to the necessity for an audit of accounts. Eventually it happens that a rich and distant relation of her husband dies, and leaves him unexpectedly an income of several thousands a-year. Having thus lost all her poverty, she retires from the fitful fever of charitable life to the serene enjoyment of a substantial income, and awaits, with a fortitude that no collector is suffered to disturb, the approach of a non-subscribing and peaceful old age.
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
Hard Luck, by Arthur à Beckett, begins a trifle slow, but works up to an exciting climax, of which the secret is so profoundly kept, up till the very last moment, that not the most experienced in sensational plots would discover it. Capitally managed. It is one of the Arrowsmith Series, and a genuinely artistic shilling shocker.
A Black Business. By Hawley Smart. Uncommonly smart of him bringing it out just at this time, when the talk everywhere is about the Slave Trade, the struggle for Colonial life, Stanley, and the Very Darkest Africa. There's Black Business enough about. Smart chap Hawley.
The only thing I've to say against the Remarks of Bill Nye, in one volume, says the Baron, is the size of the book, which is as big as a family Bible. Nowadays, when busy men can only snatch a few seconds en route, the handy volume is the only really practicable form of literature. I'd rather have three small pocketable volumes of Bill Nye's essays and stories than this one cumbersome work, which, once on the shelf, runs a pretty good chance of being left there. The majority of Bill Nye's sayings are very amusing, and one of his short papers shows that the humorist can be pathetic on occasion without falling into mock sentiment. It is published by Neely, of New York, and, if reduced in bulk, the Remarks of Bill Nye ought to do very well here, even among those who, for want of familiarity with American slang, do not keenly appreciate American humour. The Baron does appreciate it when it is genuine American humour, but when the peculiar style is only copied by a journalistic 'arry, with whom the stupidest and most vulgar Yankeeisms pass for the highest wit, simply because they are Yankeeisms, then for this sort of imitation the Baron has no criticism sufficiently severe.
Baron de Book-Worms.