Anything for a Quiet Life

by Laman Blanchard,

Originally published in Ainsworth's Magazine: A Miscellany of Romance (Chapman and Hall) vol.3 #13 (Feb 1843).

Whenever you meet with a poor wretch whose fate it is to be cuffed continually; buffeted by his betters, abused by his fellows, and halloed after in the streets by those free-born Britons, the little boys; tossed up and down like a crazy hull on a rough sea; driven to and fro like a canine lunatic, and assailed from morning to night with thoughts that scold, and words that hit,—whenever you meet with this poor fellow, depend upon it, he is one who, from his very cradle, was fond of a quiet life.
        Is he a fag in a factory when the world of machinery is all at work—is he a porter stationed in the rotunda of the Bank, a waiter at a London chop-house, an usher in a genteel seminary, a drudge to a letter of lodgings, a prime-minister, a curate in a populous metropolitan parish, a clown in the comic pantomime, an engineer on a railway, a cab-driver, or a queen's counsel in full practice,—be sure that his maxim ever has been and ever will be—anything for a quiet life!
        The lovers of quiet lives are rarely to be found at the lakes, or among the hills; in the solitudes of the land, the rustic paradises of nature—amid simple dreamy scenes, far from the noisy haunts of the populace, with all their rabid passions and riotous pursuits;—no, but they are to be met with constantly in Cheapside. They spend their days in a great Babel, hungering after quiet, and fancying eternally that they are just securing it.
        The doctrine laid down in their ever-ready exclamation, "anything for a quiet life," implies the wisdom of making continual sacrifices to attain a desired end, but not the wisdom of previously ascertaining whether it be possible by sacrifices ever to attain it at all.
        It is clear that what seems the shortest road to an object is often no road to it at all. There is an example in the story which the witty moralist relates of the false expedient adopted by a mournful son to procure sorrowful faces at his father's funeral. He gave the mutes crown pieces, to purchase their sad looks; but they seemed now livelier than before, and he accordingly advanced their pay to half-guineas, whereat, instead of sighs and mourning airs, they smiled outright; when, to buy their deepest gloom, he paid them down guineas, at sight of which every vestige of sorrow vanished, and indeed he found that the more money he gave them to look gloomy the more merriment was in their faces.
        In like manner, we may cite the popular practice of calling out in public assemblies, "Silence!" and "Hear, hear!" with sufficient loudness and constancy to ensure the vast and regular increase of the tumult; and it may happen that a continual struggle to secure a quiet life, is the very reason why it is invariably missed. A constant endeavour of any kind is scarcely compatible with the idea of quiet; and a life spent in sacrificing, in giving up every bit of ground, in yielding every point, and in beating an incessant retreat, for the sake of quiet, can hardly perhaps be called a quiet life.
        Squalls was the person who of all others used to act most doggedly upon the principle of sacrifices for the sake of tranquillity. When he first entered the world, he set out on a journey in search of Quiet, and a precious noise he always made about it. His life was a pilgrimage to the shrine of Peace, but he was for ever getting into a "jolly row" on the road; and getting out of it, by a sacrifice that was sure to come too late—a surrender that purchased no quarter—a desire for pacification that only provoked the enemy to further hostilities.
        He never in all his days avoided a quarrel for the sake of quiet—he only avoided, for the sake of quiet, the sole means of bringing the quarrel to a peaceful end. He would begin a contest, but would never fight it out; content, when it was at the highest, when victory was all but his, and the desired calm could be commanded, to give in philosophically, to put on the air of a martyr, and to re-nerve his adversary by an exasperating panegyric on quiet. When the prize contended for was within reach, he would infallibly run away, but not in time to save himself. After an hour's yelping and barking, the dog would lie down, expecting to be allowed to repose because he left off.
        How pleasant it was to obey his social summons, to take one's seat at his round table, and prepare, with three or four kindred spirits, to enjoy what he used to call a quiet evening! What a rare notion Squalls had of a quiet evening! After the toil and hubbub of a day of business, delicious indeed it was to settle down, all peace-lovers together, for a quiet evening!
        The only misfortune was, that Squalls would wrangle; and it is not surprising, therefore, that the instant we had finished the prelude, the little discussion upon the weather, and had agreed that it was a delightfully calm night, a stiff breeze sprang up, and the storm opened upon us. In other words, the moment the contemplated quiet chat commenced, the "argument" began. Start what subject you might, Squalls had just one quiet observation to make, totally objecting. Remind him that the point might hardly be worth a dispute, and he would beg leave quietly to remark that a more vitally important point never could be pointed out. He would advance from an opinion to an allegation, meekly suggesting now, and confidently asserting by and by—combating every principle laid down, resisting every argument raised, and protesting against everything that had been said, until, when he had succeeded, by fierce disputation, in setting us all by the ears, disturbing the peace and endangering the safety of the table, he would discover that the question of vital importance was really not worth talking about.
        "I give in," he would cry; "I yield the point—dare say you're all right—anything for a quiet life; a little quiet is worth all the argument in the world!"
        And even this point, he would at the same moment be ready to defend most turbulently—just as a man might bet you two to one that laying wagers is an insane practice.
        Squalls wrangled by the hour, by the day, week, month, and year; but was all the while in love with nothing but a quiet life. If in the nightly contention for the prize of tranquillity, there were sometimes added to the horrid din of many human voices bellowing for peace and order, the clatter of tongs and poker; or, if a shower of glasses aided their contents in taking a too-powerful effect upon his brain, he rather enjoyed than otherwise his broken head and fever-draughts, with the blinds drawn down, and the kind servant creeping so softly about in thick shoes, and the door creaking so very gently that it only just sufficed to wake him every time it closed or opened.
        "There is something deliciously lulling," he would say, as he rolled his eyes about, "in this profound calm; I hope my head wont be better to-morrow—anything for a quiet life."
        He resided in one of the streets in the Strand, leading to the river, "out of the noise," as he said. But he had a country-house, a most serene and rural retreat, in a district dedicated to silence and solitude, where there was never noise enough in a day to break the flying slumbers of a lynx—a spot where you might hear nothing but

                "The motion of the elements, a song
                Of silence that disposed the listening soul
                To meditative quietness, and lulled
                Not passions only, but the animal powers
                With all their violent feelings.
                                                                So entire
                Was the Dominion of Tranquillity."

        "Come hither," wrote the sympathetic Squalls from his remote retirement; "hither, where peace and I reside, and finish your Ode to Contemplation." Once, and once only, was the invitation accepted. What a dominion of tranquillity it was!
        For the quiet morning, after the early crowing, cawing, and chirping were partly over, there were the ringing of bells, the shouting of children, the clatter of forks and tankards at a neverending breakfast, the barking of dogs, the rolling of wheels, the lowing of cattle, the laughter of rosy girls in-high spirits, the report of firearms, and the loud bawling of divers of the smockfrock-tribe uttering no language at all, though severally convinced that they were all speaking plain English.
        Then for the quiet evening; there were the most riotous rubbers of whist, tumultuous piano-playing, harp-playing, and flute-playing; forfeits, and how-d'ye-like-it; loud haw-hawing at frequent intervals, with songs comic and sentimental, and an occasional ear-splitting "yoicks" from a lively sportsman, when his heavier partner in the field-adventures of the day began to snore a little too vigorously.
        Strolling into the garden to walk off the deafening effects of the day's delights, "How charming is the quiet country!" would Squalls exclaim.
        "Very," was the natural answer, "impressively reminding one of the soothing serenity of Covent-garden Market, and the silent pleasures of Smithfield-bars."
        Quiet to Squalls was what the rasher of ham was to the thunderstricken Jew—a delicacy which he could not enjoy, because there was such a terrible noise about it. At length, by and by, when by a course of accidents, our friend dropped down in the world, and it became necessary to seek some occupation, he made a rather sagacious choice. Far from the neighbourhood of noise he could not prevail upon himself to go; but he nevertheless sought freedom from trouble and tumult. He therefore accepted the office of money-taker at one of the leading theatres. "Here," he said, tranquilly, "I shall have a quiet time of it."
        The desire of peace took a much firmer but scarcely-more consistent hold upon another member of the same circle. Poor Pax! you and your wife, Bella, were an ill-matched pair. How came you to marry her?—it was like going to Donnybrook-fair in search of some New Harmony!
        The truth was, she would have him. She claimed him for her partner in waltz, galope, and quadrille seven times in one evening, and screamed him six bravuras between the dances. She talked him into fits, and assailed his nerves by means of the thundering double-knocks of postmen. The affair began to make a little noise—which he couldn't bear. Anything for a quiet life. It was easier to marry than to escape. He therefore quietly offered her his heart and hand, well knowing that as a wife she would neither want to dance with, nor to sing to him, to pour agreeable nothings in his ear incessantly, nor employ tyrant-postmen to batter at his peace.
        Pax had but a single idea, and a single mode of putting it in action; the idea of quiet, and the giving up everything—but one—in the wide world, to attain it. The one thing excepted was the one thing he should have given up first; but this he never thought of. It was his wife, Bella.
        He was as meek as a mouse, but with a soul so small that a mouse would have been ashamed to be caught in a good-sized trap with it. He would not have dared to nibble cheese, while there was a cat left in Christendom. He would have preferred dying, half a grain a day—anything for a quiet life.
        When he had put on his hat to go to his whist-club for the evening, he was desired to take it off again. Well, quiet was everything to him; so he sat down opposite his wife, to hear the maid-servant rung for every five minutes to be fresh scolded.
        When clad in a new sable suit, just ready to attend the remains of his relative to their last quiet home, he was desired to array himself again in his brown and drab, stay where he was, put some coals on, and keep his feet off the fender. Mrs. Pax "could never see, for her part, why a man should want to follow people to their graves, while he has a quiet home of his own." Well, compliance was easier than resistance; so down he sate, to be lectured in shrill tones, for the remainder of that day.
        But there is always one bright spoke in Fortune's Wheel, and it comes round now and then; in Pax's case the bright spoke consisted in this:—his wife was sometimes sulky, and wouldn't speak to him for days. "How providence tempers the wind to the shorn lamb!" he would cry. "What a blessing it is that even the best of wives has her sulky fit occasionally—one has such a quiet time of it then!"
        The life of Pax was, during many hours of the day, a cool and easy one, in a public office; his official duties were chiefly mechanical, and his mind was generally far away from his desk, deep buried in a monastic seclusion—dim, quiet, and monotonous. He envied the old monks; their repose was true rapture. To do nothing, and be undisturbed, uninterrupted all the while, was an existence more glorious than that of the gods; unless we except the supreme felicity pictured in the line of Keats—

"There sate old Saturn quiet as a stone."

        Quiet, in the mind of Pax, had long been associated with "a stone;" but Bella was not destined to be laid under it yet. So home he daily went, to a tranquil abode, situated between a boarding-school for young gentlemen, and the residence of a "thorough bass" at the Opera. This house Mrs. Pax always refused to quit, because it afforded her the full enjoyment of these two nuisances—of which she approved when he complained, and complained (thus doubling the noisy evil) when he was silent. The thorough bass would have carried him off to the Opera on some occasions, but Bella opposed the proceeding, and—anything for a quiet life—Pax always stayed at home to be soundly "rated."
        Plays of any kind pleased him but little. The comedies were too noisy;and the actors themselves laughed, instead of following the excellent example of the audience; while the tragedies were moving, and he liked everything quiet. Once, when the people applauded, the quiet little soul, not liking the noise, set up a "hish," which being mistaken for a hiss, provoked a desperate assault upon him by a theatrical enthusiast behind. By command of his wife, he had the enthusiast bound over to keep the peace. "Ah!" sighed Pax, "I wish his worship could bind me over, to keep it. Wouldn't I!"
        Of course he never attended a public meeting, except a Quaker's. Of every species of lusus naturæ, the Agitator was the most anomalous to him. How people could delight in excitement, turmoil, and contention, to the total sacrifice of a quiet life, was as mysterious as to hear of fish enjoying the butter they are fried in. Nothing puzzled him more than such political convulsions as the Polish insurrection. Why could not Poles, he wondered, "take things easy," and remain in peace and tranquillity. He conjectured that people lived very quietly in Siberia.
        To the Chinese war he was gently opposed, deeming it lamentable that a breach of the peace should have arisen out of the question of opium—a thing which, if taken in sufficient quantities, was calculated to make people extremely quiet. He gave himself no concern about the matter, but he used to wish, as he passed through the streets, that the mandarins in the grocers' shops would keep their heads still.
        His favourite story-book was "Robinson Crusoe;" although he thought it a pity that Friday should ever have escaped, to interrupt the course of the solitary's remarkably quiet life. His pet poem was the "Prisoner of Chillon," who passed his time—particularly when he had the dungeon all to himself—very quietly.
        It was Bella's pleasure, one day, that he should throw up his snug situation, and open a magnificent hotel at the terminus of a railway. Anything for a quiet life; and he ruined himself accordingly, with more expedition indeed than was strictly consonant with comfort.
        After spending a few weeks in the hot season at Margate, to get a little repose, he began to undergo the exertion of thinking that something must be done to recruit his finances—that some slow, steady, tranquil avocation had become eminently desirable. But what should it be! When a boy, he used to think how he should like to be a London watchman—the watchmen led such quiet lives. But these, to the very last of the roses, were faded and gone; and as cad to an omnibus—for one who along the "sequestered vale of life" would keep the "noiseless tenour of his way," there was small chance perhaps of uninterrupted felicity.
        Happily, in this dilemma, a patron in the post-office proffered a carriership, and Bella determined that it was the very thing. Burthened with a full-sized packet of penny missives, the devotee of quiet and ease went forth on his several daily rounds; but he had a tranquil little spirit, and a snail's pace—he had never hurried himself in his life, and hated loud knocks at the door—so he rapped with extreme gentleness, waited five minutes at every house, and then crept serenely on his way to deliver the next letter.
        A large quantity accumulating daily on his hands, for want of time to complete his rounds, Bella insisted that he should not think of delivering them at all—they should be burnt. He almost ventured to protest audibly against this step, and he did look reluctant, but—anything for a quiet life—they were burnt upon the spot.
        When he sneaked back into the noisy streets again, after his twelvemonth's imprisonment, the last month solitary, "Well," said he, in his small, calm way, "I must say I've had a very quiet time of it there. I'm so glad poor Bella got off!"
        Shortly after, with unexampled serenity, he took leave of these turbulent shores, to settle tranquilly, and secure a quiet life, in a far-distant colony—forgetting however to leave his direction with his amiable wife. It would have been of no service to her; for the ship foundered, and Pax quietly went down with her—in the Pacific Ocean.

My Dream at Hop-Lodge

by Laman Blanchard.

Originally published in Ainsworth's Magazine: A Miscellany of Romance (Chapman and Hall) vol.2 #12 (Jan 1843).

When I was in Kent, last spring, on a visit to the friendly owner of Hop-lodge, in that county, I remarked that all the ladies of the family devoted their leisure hours to the same occupation. In a spirit of unanimity never before seen, except on the stage, all entered with enthusiasm into the same amusement;—it was not scandal.
        My friend's lively, warm-hearted wife—her sister and his sister—together with the little bright-eyed daughter not sixteen, and an ancient dame, distantly related to all the rest—nay, even the governess, at intervals—seemed to take a placid delight, hour by hour, in tearing up old letters, notes, envelopes, and other remnants of manuscript into small pieces, not much larger than a silver penny, and dropping them, by little handfuls, into little baskets beside them.
        Every dull morning after breakfast, and every danceless evening after tea, the conversation was carried on to the monotonous accompaniment of a sharp, quick, rustling sound, produced by the continual tearing up of writing paper, of many qualities and sizes—some so crisp and so substantial that simply unfolding it would elicit a crackling noise, while reducing it to fragments caused a sound equal to that of a fine saw. So loud was it, at times, that the very postman's knock, announcing the arrival of a fresh supply of epistles, to be condemned, in due season, could hardly have been heard.
        Enter the ordinary sitting-room when one would, there sate the lady of the house, emulating upon sheets of paper the experiments of McAdam upon blocks of granite—the McEve, we may designate her, of foolscap and demy. With hands almost as white as the material they demolished, she pleasantly pursued her task of destruction, letting fall into the basket a tiny handful of little pieces every minute. She looked, in her gaiety and beauty, like a laughing Juno, who had resolved to possess herself of a silver shower to match Jove's golden one.
        Chariest of the chary in all matters which relate to ladies, married or single, I should as soon have thought of asking them to let me read one of the letters they were tearing up, as of questioning them as to the intended appropriation of those epistolary particles. So I watched the white hands plying their trade, I listened to the crumpling and crushing of paper day by day, but uttered not a word of inquiry. "It was," as Mr. Pepys remarks, "pretty to see."
        One cannot interrogate a lady as to the destination of that thirty-second bead bag, which she is slowly manufacturing; nor ask the name of the gentleman for whom she is, with heroic fortitude, knitting that extremely protracted purse; nor wonder to her face why on earth she gives herself the trouble of spoiling that velvet by covering it with such crowds of coloured disfigurements. As little could one ask her, when intently and constantly occupied, what she meant to do with those multitudinous scraps of paper. I could, with equal delicacy, have inquired whom the letters came from!
        It was enough that the occupation or the amusement seemed intellectually analogous to the more current performances with garnets and gold thread, in satin-stitch and water-colours, or upon lace-collars and fancy-bags;—idle labours often, and most forlorn recreations, which make so many ladies' lives like unto a gay, light, loosely-knitted silken purse, without any money in it!
        Of course I had my private speculations concerning the ends for which those myriads of minute fragments were provided. I conjectured that some wise man, justly abhorring long epistles, might have devised a plan of administering homeopathic letters, inditing notes infinitesimally. Again, I had a notion that the drama of the "Exiles of Siberia" was about to be revived, and that the young ladies, great admirers of Mr. Macready, were anxious to make that gentleman a present of a severe snow-storm on the occasion.
        On taking my departure, the most elderly of the ladies pleaded for the rest—"Had I any waste sheets of writing paper, outside scraps, useless business-letters, lithographed circulars, fly-leaves of notes, or old envelopes? their stock was running low, and before the fine weather had quite set in, they should be left with nothing in the world to do." Nothing in the world to do but to tear up writing-paper into fragments no larger than silver pennies! Still it remained a question whether the fancy for destroying letters in that way might not be both wiser and pleasanter than a passion for writing them; and as I had recently contributed a large packet of old postage-stamps in aid of the funds for building a new church,^[1] so I resolved to let a huge pile of the letters themselves follow—for which I received a profusion of thanks, and another invitation to Hop-lodge.
        It was in the autumn that I paid my second visit; and arriving at night, after riding some miles, jaded and sleepy, I was truly glad to retire at the earliest moment to rest. Had my pillow been a pillow of flints, the hardness would have been totally unfelt, for both eyes were close-sealed before I could fairly lie down.
        It would be more correct to say that my lids, rather than their tenants, were close-sealed; for the eyes themselves began now to see extremely well—rolling inwardly about in quest of things visionary. Perhaps I was a little too tired for sound and dreamless slumber; my legs, cramped and weary as they were, would be still in motion; and so, like a man upon his oath, I could not lie with any comfort.
        Still I was asleep; but how long sleep's reign, disturbed or not, had lasted, is very doubtful, when I heard, "in my dreaming ear"—the one next the pillow—a little crackling, rustling sound, as of the rending or rumpling of paper, considerably firmer in its texture and substance than bank-notes. Yes, those peculiar noises, whether born in the brain, or having their existence actually within the pillow, as they appeared to have, resembled nothing else out of fairy-land. Millions of full-sized letters, oblong, and swarms of civil little notes, three-cornered, seemed heaped, by supernatural hands, under my head, in pieces equally countless and minute.
        Perfectly still, I lay and listened. My downward ear seemed to draw in the sounds from the very interior of the pillow on which my head was now throbbing with surprise; and at every movement I made, there was an increased rustle; not so sharp, by a thousand degrees, yet in tone not unlike the crashing of tender forest-branches, or the clatter of little shells and pebbles washed upon the beach. Was the magic noise engendered in the air? Was it a most novel and untuneful singing in my own head? Or had the down, wherewith my pillow was filled, acquired that faculty of voice which the birds, from whom it had been plucked, had forfeited? Assuredly I could not have been more startled, had forty flocks of plucked geese come cackling round my bed, crying, "Give us back our feathers!"
        Again, I suspended my breathing, and hushed myself into an intense fit of listening. There, still, were the small crisp noises just under my ear, oozing apparently upward from the pillow as clearly as drops of water would have trickled through it. And it was still a sound as of the tearing and crumpling of many quires of paper. A bank clerk, pulling, pinching, and.whisking about piles of notes, from nine to five daily, would make less noise in a week.
        I began to suspect that the fairies were playing pranks under my head; that Oberon and Titania had been tearing up all the letters which had passed between them during their last quarrel, and that their small-fingered subjects were scrambling for the tiniest pieces, to fold up, three-corner-wise, and send as love-notes or challenges to one another.
        Perplexed past endurance, and finding, upon repeated trials, that either ear, the instant it was placed to the pillow, caught sounds as audibly, as it would through the keyhole of a quiet family's nursery, I changed my position, and dreaming that I was wide awake (perhaps I was), looked desperately upward through the darkness at the invisible ceiling of the room; when what was my amazement to behold, in less than the sixtieth part of an instant, a thick shower of very little bits of paper descending on every side: some of a creamy hue, some bluish, some rather pinky—wire-wove, or glazed, gilt-edged or sable-bordered—but all falling about me like snow-flakes, or hovering over me like white feathers, which rather floated than fell.
        "Did I ever?" was the question which I silently asked myself in my dream.
        My eyes, at this strange spectacle, started far out of my head, and slowed with an unnatural light ;by the aid of which, as by that of a pair of long fours, I was indeed enabled to view the scene. Nor was the fire that burned in them useless, for, as the fragments of paper descended, the more I gazed at them, the plainer I could see that they were all written upon, possibly by that process which requires warmth to give legible effect to it. They were bits of letters—every one; indited by many hands, and addressed to many persons, on subjects without number.
        Fast and faster yet they fell—each one bearing its little word or syllable, or at least the tail of a g, or an i's dot—until presently the room began to fill, and the fragments crowded together seemed to attach themselves to one another. In a few minutes, perhaps fifty of them would have adhered, and formed a sort of sheet; and then another flock of flakes, descending from various points, would get into companionship, and so unite: and thus they floated above me, as I gazed upwards, like fleecy clouds, of a rather square and formal pattern it is true, and scribbled mysteriously all over.
        I could now plainly discern, as they hovered near me, that the mingled multitude of scraps, the tattered and scattered remains of so much correspondence, had again formed themselves into letters—yes, into readable epistles; though they had certainly not re-assumed their original shapes, or revived themselves verbatim et literatim. As on a field of battle, where a gallant soldier's body is apt to be buried with another gallant soldier's head—or, should his legs have been carried away, he is interred haply with the lower extremities of a veteran who belonged to a different regiment, so here I could perceive that many of the fragments had fallen into strange company, and attached themselves to pieces to which they bore no epistolary relation.
        Thus, on one sheet which descended into my hand, I saw that the writing was throughout the same, but the beginning and the end had been written at different periods: the first sentences seemed traced with a quill whose ink was as generous wine to communicate joy; but the latter part had been scrawled with a steel pen dipped in gall. It began with overflowing friendship, wondering what the writer would not gladly sacrifice for him whom he addressed; but it terminated with civil regrets for altered circumstances, and a formal "I have the honour to remain."
        I caught the first lines of a love-letter—they were rapturous. Love was life; it included all of happiness the world contains,—and every word expressed the writer's conviction that wealth is dross, and parental consent a superfluity; but a discrepancy ensued, for there was something at the close about the necessity of an ample fortune, the charm of filial obedience, and the proud duty imposed upon young hearts of tearing themselves asunder, and seeking happiness somewhere else, "remaining ever, &c."
        Here the right persons were associated in the rejoined letters, but with the terrible disadvantage of wrong dates. In other cases, I detected mutilated notes in one hand-writing—a lady's, but evidently addressed to two different persons, thus:—
        "My dearest Jemima,—let nothing prevent you from coming; remember, it is my birthday, and without you what felicity could be mine! How exquisite is a pure sympathy between minds such as ours. Come in your blue lutestring; nothing becomes you half so much. You must forgive me for asking that treacherous thing, Julia—I can't help it. . . . All will go wrong without you, and so I rely. But how should I hesitate at any time to confide in heavenly truth like yours; the worst of it is, that odious Jemima will, I fear, be with us, flirting in her horrid blue lutestring. But let the joy of a friendship like ours be unclouded by a thought "of such intrusions. Ever, my dearest Julia, &c."
        There was one at which, as it caught my eye, I laughed so loudly, as to be in great fear of waking my self. What added to the oddity of it was, that it was addressed to a particular friend of my own, but in two different hands; and thus it ran:—
        "My dear sir, will you give us the pleasure of your company at dinner,—or proceedings will be taken against you without further notice. Yours, &c., Rasp and Clerk."
        The next epistle came fluttering by, as if half ashamed of itself; yet it was full of virtuous sentiments, clad in the best Latin of the best authors, and painted the youthful writer's studious, respectable, and devout college life to the eyes of a liberal, but grave and dignified uncle. It was clear, however, that a wrong postscript had affixed itself to this letter to the tune of—" P.S. Come down, Jack, and blow a cloud with us. I've a case or two of good things, and lots o' tin from Uncle Starch; but come at once, my Flanders brick, for these infernal duns are grabbing at it like blazes."
        A lady's hand-writing again attracted my gaze, but here there was an anomaly relative to dates. "July 20th—As for Adolphus, as you call him, he is detestable. Was there ever such a conceited fright! I would not have him if there were not another man in the world. . . . For I must frankly confess that my whole heart is in this engagement, and that without Adolphus existence would be a blank—August 21st."
        Among the thousands floating about, I caught one in a schoolboy's hand; the first portion written like copper-plate, the latter upon the pothook plan—but the whole addressed to a revered parent:—
        "Honoured father,—The happy season has returned when filial affection finds its proudest gratification in reporting to beloved parents the progress of those intellectual, moral, and religious studies, which it is the blessed privilege of your son to enjoy at Birch-grove. For the bodily as well as mental improvement, which I trust on my return at Christmas you will be able to recognise, I am indebted to that judicious kindness which placed me under the tender and enlightened care of my present preceptor. . . . Aunt will giv you this she sez, and i wish you may git it, for I want some more Marmalaid and also a cake, for thay keep me so Hungrey I cant lern nothing, also a large piece of tinn to put at the back of my Westcot, for I dont like the jolly wackings thats going on here—and I dont mean to come Back I can tell you, and Aunt says I sharnt, but as I have got sum Curran jam I shall conclude, so good by, dear papa, your affectionate son Nixy, short for Nicholas."
        I had another fit of laughter, which nearly woke me, on solving another riddle—a note, commencing with expressions of the most delicate and idolatrous love, suddenly turning into cold business matters, and ending with "now don't make a fool of yourself by sitting up again, for I shall be late." The last lines were part of a letter written after marriage—the first were not. Specimens of this class were plentiful.
        I was also tickled with the absurdity of an aristocratic order to a tradesman to send in his account without delay, terminating with "assurances of most distinguished consideration;" and a note to Mr. Buckstone, requesting orders for the theatre, might be seen gravely commencing with "Reverend sir."
        Of the countless quires of paper which, in separate sheets, fluttered and fell around me, there was not a note without its grave or ridiculous contradiction. Some false fragments had engrafted themselves even on the truest stock, while in others some few scraps were wanting, leaving little holes in the epistle where the sincerity seemed to have dropped out. Here an affecting lecture on the solemn duties and flimsy vanities of life was cut up by an intruding inquiry, "Where the very best green silk twist is to be got," as the writer would "give the world to know;" and two or three lively notes, containing the particulars of a wedding, had been eked out with pieces bearing a mourning border—which possibly might not be altogether misplaced after all.
        Here and there, I perceived a letter, in which the stray scraps and remnants had met together without any order or ceremony, so that there was not the slightest pretension to meaning in the entire document. Yet it did not appear to be much inferior in style to many letters which are daily marked "confidential" or "immediate" by charming correspondents.
        A terrible exposure was going on around me. Every sheet was a witness against somebody. Here Pride was unmasked, by the union of two halves of letters, one dated from a hovel, the other from a hall; there, Honesty was proved a scamp, by confessing in a postscript what the letter denied. Here Sincerity was stamped hypocrite, by the junction of praise and censure under its own hand; and there, Benevolence was convicted of subscribing to a public fund, and having "nothing to give away" in private. In each and all lurked some anomaly—harmless or criminal.
        The confusion at length totally obscured my senses; and I could read no more. The letters broke up again into flakes, the flakes melted into the darkness like snow, and I slept in serene unconsciousness till ten. The secret came out at breakfast in much tender concern about my night's rest. Had I slept? Could I forgive such forgetfulness?
        "The ladies here," said my friend, in explanation, "fear that you may have quarrelled with your pillow. They are fond of making paper pillows for the poor and the invalided; and one of these being placed in readiness upon your bed, nobody remembered it until you were fast asleep."
        A Paper Pillow! And I had been dreaming the family-secrets—reading, in my sleep, the family-correspondence! There was a slumbering indelicacy in the very idea! I uttered no remonstrance against the cheap and charitable invention; but however cool and soothing may be the paper-pillow to some, I reflected, for my own part, that there was much practical wisdom, and a most exact and admirable simile in that pretty saying of King Once-upon-a-time—

"I'll to my couch; like me, a downy one!"

---

        1. Vide newspapers.

The Two Roads

by Mary Anne Hoare (uncredited).

Originally published in Household Words (Bradbury & Evans) vol.3 #55 (12 Apr 1851).

        It was New Year's night. An aged man was standing at a window. He raised his mournful eyes towards the deep blue sky, where the stars were floating like white lilies on the surface of a clear calm lake. Then he cast them on the earth, where few more hopeless beings than himself now moved towards their certain goal—the tomb. Already he had passed sixty of the stages which lead to it, and he had brought from his journey nothing but errors and remorse. His health was destroyed, his mind vacant, his heart sorrowful, and his old age devoid of comfort. The days of his youth rose up in a vision before him, and he recalled the solemn moment, when his father had placed him at the entrance of two roads, one leading into a peaceful sunny land, covered with a fertile harvest, and resounding with soft sweet songs; while the other conducted the wanderer into a deep dark cave, whence there was no issue, where poison flowed instead of water, and where serpents hissed and crawled.
        He looked towards the sky, and cried out in his agony:—"O youth return! O my father, place me once more at the entrance to life, that I may choose the better way!"
        But the days of his youth, and his father had both passed away. He saw wandering lights floating far away over dark marshes, and then disappear—these were the days of his wasted life. He saw a star fall from heaven and vanish in darkness. This was an emblem of himself; and the sharp arrows of unavailing remorse struck home to his heart. Then he remembered his early companions, who entered on life with him, but who, having trod the paths of virtue and of labour, were now happy and honoured on this New Year's night. The clock in the high church tower struck, and the sound, falling on his ear, recalled his parents' early love for him, their erring son; the lessons they had taught him; the prayers they had offered up on his behalf. Overwhelmed with shame and grief, he dared no longer look towards that heaven where his father dwelt; his darkened eyes dropped tears, and with one despairing effort he cried aloud, "Come back, my early days! come back!"
        And his youth did return; for all this was but a dream which visited his slumbers on New Year's night. He was still young; his faults alone were real. He thanked God fervently that time was still his own, that he had not yet entered the deep, dark cavern, but that he was free to tread the road leading to the peaceful land, where sunny harvests wave.
        Ye who still linger on the threshold of life, doubting which path to choose, remember that when years are passed, and your feet stumble on the dark mountain, you will cry bitterly, but cry in vain—"O youth, return! O give me back my early days!"

New Year's Eve in Different Nations

Originally published in Howitt's Journal (William Lovett) vol.3 #53 (01 Jan 1848).

        In most countries New Year's Eve is a festival. In our country the great custom seems to have been drinking from the Wassail Bowl, which was handed down from our Saxon ancestors. This bowl filled with spiced ale, adorned with ribbons and a golden apple at the top, was carried from house to house by young maidens, who sang a wassail song, which may be found in "Brand's Antiquities," or "Hone's Every Day Book." Sir Henry Ellis says in his notes to Brand that this cup in the great monasteries was placed on the Abbot's table, at the upper end of the Refectory or Eating-hall, to be circulated among the community at his discretion, and received the honourable appellation of Poculum Charitatis. This in our Universities is called the Grace-cup. The Poculum Charitatis is well translated by the toast-master of most of the public companies of the city of London by the words "a loving cup." After dinner the Master and Wardens drink "to their visitors in a loving cup, and bid them all heartily welcome." The cup then circulates round the table, the person who pledges standing up whilst his neighbour drinks to him.
        In general society the New Year's Eve is principally marked by social parties, which dance the old year out and the new year in, and drink to each other's health and prosperity through the coming year. The Methodists in their "Watch Night" have seized upon a custom of the ancient church, and have engrafted on modern life one of its most picturesque and solemn practices. They crowd into their chapels for a midnight service, and as the hour of twelve approaches they all kneel down and remain in silence, watching the departing moments of the year, and the instant the clock strikes twelve, they all rise to their feet, and burst forth with a hymn of thanksgiving. From the steeples and towers of all the churches, the whole land over, peal forth the bells ringing the old year out and the new year in. There is something poetically beautiful in the idea, that at the same moment the bells from the proud towers of gay cities and the humble turrets of rural village churches are all ringing forth the great fact of the end of one and the beginning of another year of our lives. There is something still more solemn in the thought of the many thousands of our fellow creatures who, are at the same moment, listening to these bells either amidst the gay scenes of evening festivities, or awoke from their early slumbers, are reflecting on what the past year has brought them of good or evil, and anticipations of what the coming year shall bring. Happy are they who are prepared to solemnize this ancient custom with the great and beautiful sentiment of our ancestors of leaving all the animosities of the past to perish with the past, and to begin the new year with new heart as well as new hope.
        New Year's Day is kept in Germany as a thorough holiday; there is service at the churches; business is at a stand; and, like Christmas-day, it is far more observed than a Sunday. New-year's eve is perhaps the most merry time of the German year. In almost every house are parties met to conduct the old year out with dance and sport. About five o'clock in the evening, the church bells ring, and guns are fired off in all directions. In this respect every town is filled with as much noise of firing and smell of gunpowder as the night of the fifth of November used to be in England. The practice has been forbidden by the authorities; but, except in the chief cities, the authorities are not over active, and the prohibition is little regarded. The police go about the streets; but in all ordinary towns these are so fat and sleepy, that it is only necessary to be quiet just where they are, and everywhere where they are not are guns and pistols discharging.
        It is considered a compliment for young men to go and fire a salute in front of the houses of their friends. In the University towns, the students, a little before twelve o'clock, headed by their clubs, proceed with torches to the house of the Prorector, and by a volley of fire-arms, and a loud vivat, announce the termination of the year, and wish him a happy new one. The Prorector appears at his window, makes there a short speech in acceptance of their compliments, drinks a happy new year to them, and frequently concludes by flinging the glass down upon the pavement, that it may never be used on any other occasion. With loud vivats they echo his good wishes, and march away to pay the same compliment to a few others of their most popular Professors. The scene is wild and peculiar, the troop of students, every one with his torch, forming a train, headed by the seniors of their clubs, in their respective costumes, joined by as many other students as please, with wild looks, flying hair, and torches flaming in the stormy winds, and followed by a crowd of the miscellanea of the city, marching through the wintry streets at midnight, with shouts and scattered discharges of fire-arms—is strange and picturesque. At a distance you see the light of their torch-train, confined by the narrow streets, stream up into the air lice the tail of a comet, while the successive discharges of guns flash across it like lightning.
        Within doors all is mirth and enjoyment. There are games played peculiar to this eve. New Year's-eve is probably acted in a witty and ludicrous charade, which occasions much merriment. In one party where we were, the young men made the charade New Year's-night. They represented the students drinking and singing, from the Burschen Song-book, a New Year's-night song. They then acted them, as pretty well primed with punch and glee-wine, they rushed into the streets. The watchman, against whom they ran, raised his staff, and blew his horn, and said his rhyme, but in vain, being glad to get away from them. Then the scene changed to the room of one of the Professors, who sat at his table waiting for the arrival of the student's torch-train, pretending to be very calm and philosophical, taking up a book to read, but all the while very fidgetty, lest the Burschen should not pay him that compliment, or should go to others before him. At length a volley was discharged before the house. He started up joyfully, exclaiming, "Aha! they are there!" threw up the window, made his speech, and pledging the youngsters, flung his glass into the street.
        There is plenty of dancing going on. Glee wine, a sort of negus, and punch, are brought in after supper, and just before twelve o'clock. Every one is on the watch to win the new year from the others; that is, to announce the New Year first. Accordingly, the instant the city bell is heard to commence tolling. "Prosst Neu Jahr!" starts from every one's lips; and happy is he who is acknowledged to have made the exclamation first, and to have won from all others the New Year. In every house, at that moment, all over the country, is shouted "Prosst Neu Jahr!" prosst being no German word, but a contraction of the Latin prosit. On one occasion, having retired to rest, our servants assembled at our room-door, and awoke us, in order to cry "Prosst Neu Jahr!" On the following morning, every one that meets you salutes you with the same exclamation.
        With the glee-wine are brought in, on a waiter, the New Year wishes of the family and its friends. These are written in verse, generally on very ornamental gilt note paper, and sealed up. When the "Prosst Neu Jahr!" has passed, and all have drunk to one another a Happy New Year, with a general touching of glasses, these are opened and read. For the most part they are without signatures, and occasion much guessing and joking. Under cover of these anonymous epistles, good hints and advice are often administered by parents and friends. Numbers of people, who never on any other occasion write a verse, now try their hands at one; and those who do not find themselves sufficiently inspired, present-ornamental cards, which have all kinds of wishes, to suit all kinds of tastes and circumstances. These are to be purchased of all qualities and prices, and those sent by friends and lovers, generally appear on New Year's Day, and are signed or not, as ts the purpose of the sender.
        After the New Year's wishes have been read, a game of very old standing on this occasion is introduced, a game known to most people in England acquainted with old fashions; that of the flour, the water, and the keys. Three plates are set on a round table in the middle of the room. In one is flour, in another water, in the third a bunch of keys. The young unmarried people are by turns blindfolded, and, walking round the table, pitch upon one of the plates. These have, of course, been shifted while the person about to try his or her chance, has been under the operation of blind-folding, so as to occupy quite different relative positions to what they did before; or are sometimes shifted and then replaced, so that the person, naturally supposing that they have been changed, shall try to avoid the unlucky ones, by aiming at a new point, and thus shall actually have a greater chance of passing the lucky one. The lucky one is that containing the keys. Whoever gets that, is to be married to the person of his own choice; he who pushes his finger into the flour is to marry a widow, or vice versa, and he who dips into the water, shall not be married at all. This simple lottery occasions its share of merriment, and then the dancing goes on again.
        With the punch and the glee-wine, come in also one of those large ornamented and nice cakes, for which the Germans are so famous, and large cakes of gingerbread, in the shape of hearts, with almonds stuck in them. These make an indispensible part of the entertainment of New Year's-Eve; and accordingly you see them reared in and before the bakers' windows, and on stalls, in thousands; some of them at least half-a-yard all, and a foot wide. On this eve, the servants of every house, by right of ancient custom, have their feasts of punch, and their great gingerbread hearts, each servant one.
        The Catholics, according to their custom, close the old year, and open the new one in the churches. They have a sermon as midnight approaches; in many places he lights are extinguished, leaving alone conspicuous, a huge cross reaching from bottom to near the top of the church, illuminated with lamps. When twelve has struck, an anthem of thanksgiving strikes up, and mass is celebrated.
        In Germany, the servants of tradesmen come for New-Year's gifts, as they do for Christmas-boxes with us; and your baker sends you a large cake, like a couple of great serpents wreathed into two connected circles, perhaps originally intended to represent the old year and the new.
        The Dutch, a kindred nation, carried over their national custom to America; but singular enough, one of the chief features of their New Year's-Eve is the arrival of Santa Claus, with gifts for the children, and whose figure as represented by an American artist, and which has been handed to us by an indefatigable American friend we present to our readers at the head of this article.
        Santa Claus is no other than the Pelz Nickel of Germany and the North; he is in fact, the good Saint Nicholas of Russia, the patron-saint of children; he arrives in Germany about a fortnight before Christmas, but as may be supposed from all the visits he has to pay there, and the length of his voyage, he does not arrive in America, until this eve. Here he is, sitting before the empty fire-place of an American house, with his foot on the old fashioned dog, a little after midnight, all the family having retired to bed to be out of his way, and having hung up the stockings that he may fill them with gifts. Here he sits, smoking his pipe, and delighting himself with the thought of what he shall leave for the children, and of the delight and surprise in the morning. But we will now let an American writer speak after his own fashion of the good Santa Claus.
        "Santa Claus has doffed his cocked-hat and assumes one in union with the weather. The sign of the saint is stamped on his forehead as the genuine impress of heaven. He wears his snow-boots and fur-trimmed mantle, which are the very same with which he journeyed over the hills of Holland. The artist has represented him about the midnight hour, on his last call; and, from the position of the saint, we should judge that he had heard, or thought he heard, the cock crow; or the rats, which are the great antipathy of the Dutch.
        Saint Nicholas is smothered with gooderies, and is prepared to be very lavish upon those who live in expectancy of presents. The family has retired, the little ones are dreaming most intensely of crammed stockings, which they have hung so as to attract the attention of the saint. We fancy ourselves looking upon the little, short limbs, on tip-toes, straining to place their hose out of the way of rats. Jane can scarcely reach higher than one of these animals; the larger boys and girls have obtained a better position; and one appears to tower above the rest, who, no doubt, has received the friendly aid of grandfather.
        "The mother has coaxed them off to bed earlier than usual, and has saved a ration of gingerbread. Neither tears, words, sobs, nor petulance disturb them now; they know that the saint visits only good children; and Bob, Sally, and Peter find it difficult to hold their tongues. Their mother promises them, even though they have been violent transgressors throughout the year, that, for one night's peace, she will bribe the saint for them. They fancy they hear the sound of whistles, penny-trumpets, and drums; the cries of dolls, the singing of wooden birds, and the ticking of pewter watches; then boxes of tools are already at work repairing houses built in air; and they fairly stagger under the inheritance of a new year. When sound asleep, emblems of innocence and the kingdom of heaven, they are blessed with a profusion of presents; the morning dawns, and the family are disturbed by their up-risings. On other mornings it may have been difficult to arouse them, but, on the New-Year's, trumpets and drums bring them down, scarcely half awake. John (who is advanced to the age of small boots) takes the lead; he misses his way, or runs against the door. Sally and Mary, aided by the bannisters, come down crying with impatience. The little ones seize their stockings with eagerness, Sally substituting a chair for her grandfather. The day is consumed with comments, eyes sparkle with delight, and the faces of all beam with happiness.
        "What would men do if there were no holidays from one year's end to the other! They are as necessary as landmarks or resting-places for travellers; and, as custom—a good custom, one to be established and perpetuated, a sociable and an endearing one—has thrown this in our way, let us cling to it until the short journey of life is ended.

Stanzas to an Early Friend

by Mrs. Cornwell Baron Wilson.

Originally published in Fraser's Magazine (James Fraser) vol.2 #11 (Dec 1830).

                Dost thou remember, ev'ry closing year,
                We promised to look back upon the past?
                To muse on gone-by hours, to memory dear,
                That were too bright, too beautiful to last?
                True to my promise, as the pealing bells
                Proclaim the dying year, at length set free,
                The lamp of mem'ry burns; and fancy dwells,
                Upon those hours of happiness—and THEE!

                Ah! since that Season! many a mingled thread
                Hath Fate enwoven in MY web of life!
                And often has my heart with anguish bled,
                Crush'd, worn, and wearied in this mortal strife!
                And where art THOU? has Time, on zephyr's wing,
                Pass'd gently o'er Thee, in his restless flight?
                Or, like the sweeping simoom, did he bring,
                To mark his onward progress, storm and blight?

                Ah! doubtless Time hath bent his brows on Thee,
                And shed his snow-flakes;—wherefore do I ask?
                Since thou must share the common destiny
                Of all who wear Life's motley garb and mask!
                The world's wide path hath led us diff'rent ways,
                Amid this busy labyrinth of men;—
                And since youth's cloudless hours and stainless days,
                We ne'er have met;—nor e'er shall meet again!

                Yet never does the closing year depart,
                But faithful Memory, with her golden key,
                Opens the secret casket of my heart,
                Where many a treasured thought is stor'd of THEE!
                And while the sweet and bitter cud I chew,
                Of musing Fancy,—by Time's shroud o'ercast;
                I laugh at Fate—and all her pow'r can do,
                Since nought can rob me of the cherish'd PAST!

                I murmur not at Life's swift-gliding hours,
                Nor would the rapid wing of Time arrest;—
                Alike to me its sunshine, or its show'rs,—
                Since "come what may, I have—I have been blest!"
                To-night, I'll pledge the goblet to a name
                Ne'er by my lips pronounc'd—or heart forgot!
                Some whisperer asks, "Will he, too, do the same?"
                And my true heart still answers, "Doubt it not!"

The Old Year's Last Hour

by J.S.

Originally published in The Leisure Hour (Religious Tract Society) vol.1 #1 (01 Jan 1852).

It was the 31st of December; the cold winter sun had gone down the sky, every crimson streak had for hours vanished, and the heavens looked like a dome of clear blue crystal, from which the stars were shining out as in their youth, not seeming like other things ever to grow old. I looked from my cottage window for a few moments on this scene of calm and melancholy beauty, and watched the lustrous and diamond-like sparkling of those many, many orbs, and then, amidst the deep silence of that last night of the dying year, I was startled by the rich-toned strokes of the village clock, which through the crisp and frosty air tolled out—deliberately pausing between the strokes—ELEvEN. Chilled by the keen and searching atmosphere, I closed the casement, and sat down in the black oaken chair that had stood beside that hearth so many years, and, stirring up the embers of the logwood fire, mused on the curling, quivering sparks which, like the joys of earth, go out the moment after their brightest flashes. The drowsy ticking of the clock beside the door fell on my ears, and seemed to wind round into my eyes with somniferous effect; and after the shadowy and the real had a little while contended for the mastery, the latter retired and left me in the power of the former, whereby I was gently carried into the realm of dreams.
        And I thought I was at sea, on an ocean that was more changeful than even those which roll over so large a portion of this globe—an ocean that strangely passed from calm to storm, and from storm to calm—an ocean, too, that at the same moment presented in close contiguity spaces that were still as an angel's peace, and stormy as a demon's rage. And there were more barques than I could number, some of which were the sport of tempests, and others were sailing over quiet, sunlit waters. But all were moving on--rapidly moving on; and opposite these rose a shore, rock-bound and strong, which spread far away; and on the summit of a bold beetling crag there stood a tower—I never saw a campanelle like that—having a large illuminated dial-plate with stars upon it, and astronomic signs; and as we sailed past it, it struck, and the stroke was startling. It boomed out upon the main like thunder; yet though loud as thunder, it was not rough like thunder, but it had in it a soft melancholy and wailing sound. I wondered greatly at it; and before the echo had died away, I thought I saw with me, in my vessel, another beside myself—not like myself—in form, aspect, and voice far different. Very thoughtful looked he; and gazing in my eyes, he told me that was God's great clock of time, of which the mechanism lay deep in nature, and spread out far and wide with wheels and springs that had been set in motion centuries ago. And he told me how it marked and manifested the flight of years, and months, and days, and hours: how it had been striking so some thousand times at annual intervals: how, while the ocean before it rolled or rested—how, while the ships went fleeting on with music or with mourning—how, while some were wrecked, and others rode out the storm—how, while some were heaving in sight, and others were melting out of view—how, while the heaven changed and the ocean changed—the great old clock went on steadily, sweeping round its iron hand, tolling forth at the end of every three hundred and sixty-fifth day the requiem of that period past, and a solemn welcome to the like period coming. And, he said, so it would go on to strike, how many more times he knew not; but this he knew, that there was One to come, at whose touch that bell tower would fall, and he would stand with one foot on the sea and another on the land, and swear by Him that liveth for ever and ever, that there should be time no longer.
        As I thought on this, my guide steered me near the tower-crowned rock; so near to it did my little boat approach, and so still was all around me at the moment, that I heard the pulsations of the pendulum, and though the sweep was wide, and the motion I was told was hourly, yet did it in my thought seem but like a moment's space. "Hark! to that measured solemn ticking," said my guide; "each sound marks off an hour. God, who made that clock, is thus measuring out time by hours—measuring it out to all mortals, and to you. The deep sonorous stroke on the bell—the voice of years—secures a thousand listeners; but few come hither, and having shut out the solicitation of other sounds, strive to catch the equally steady, but fainter intonations of the voice of hours. Yet it is this latter, which, after all, is most important. The worth of years is not known to him who reckons not the worth of hours. Hours make years. Years are the sum of hours. Vain is it at wide intervals to say, 'I'll save this year;' if at each narrow interval you do not say, 'I'll save this hour.' Time is like a parchment roll, to be written over line by line, word by word. He is a fool who thinks only of paragraphs, not of lines; of sentences, not of words. To save each hour is to save the year. The hours lost, the year is lost."
        And then, methought, I passed into strange regions, and saw strange things; the doors of nature's laboratory were opened, and the mysteries of her mechanism disclosed; and I saw what I cannot utter; but this I learned, that not an atom moves, that not an impulse in the air takes place, that not a fleecy cloud can sail, nor a sleeping infant sigh, but there is left behind it a result—a permanent or still producing result—a consequence that becomes a cause, the parent of a long generation of consequences and causes, that shall go on living and dying to the end of time. "And so," said my grave Mentor, "so is it with time; not an hour is cut off time's web, but it tells for something. Each portion as God measures it out comes charged with power, or is the vehicle or instrument which, passing under the touch of moral creatures, catches power and becomes surcharged with it, and then goes forth to diffuse what it has received—to spend the force it has acquired. Hours are indeed at first blanks, but man writes on them what he will, and they are forthwith missives, delivering a message afterwards, not in this world merely, but the next—carrying a report to the very throne of God, to be written down in books which moth cannot corrupt, nor time moulder. Men cast away hours like dust, but those rich massive golden lives which some have lived, were all made up of these atomic particles. Nay, a single hour may prove a pearl of great price. Each hour has a history. As Time's clock ticks, a zone of hours is belting the world, and receiving from each mortal some mark which shall yield some meaning for good or evil at the end. Multitudes of hours receive a common mark, yet not a few have gathered within them a pregnant and marvellous signification. In an hour, thoughts have been conceived, and purposes have been formed, and deeds have been done, that have changed all afterlife. They have been seeds of sin and death, or of holiness and immortality."
        After he had so spoken I thought I was on the shore, and trees were throwing over me a deep solemn shade, and the sun was going down, and there was a grave-like silence; when there came gliding past me, forms of varied shape and mien, and each I was told was the spirit of an hour. First, there came one who was dark and demon-like, his eye-balls glaring with fire, while his brow was as the thunder-cloud, as if thick with misery and despair; and he told of hours that had been spent in weaving evil purposes under the teaching of accursed passions; how lust had been conceived, and intemperance nursed, and the coals of resentment blown into the flame of revenge, and all manner of impurity, injustice, and violence, brought out into deadly perpetration—within the short period of one sweep performed by the old clock's huge pendulum. And I thought of young souls whom I had known, who in one short hour had been poisoned by temptation, whose beauty like a leaf had all at once been seared as by a scorching sirocco blast. Next there came another, and the form was bowing down, the face was sorrowful, big tears were flowing, the voice was sad, and the step was trembling, but he had a staff like a cross, wherewith he stayed himself; and I heard him speak of hours that had been spent in mourning over other hours—hours of repentance and godly sorrow—of confession, humiliation, and prayer. And I thought of David's psalm which I had read, and which the brokenhearted King of Israel had written in hours of holy sorrow, when he was sowing seeds of immortal joy; and of the hour when Peter went out and wept bitterly; and of the hour when the three thousand were pricked to the heart, and cried out, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" And next appeared one far different; he was like a warrior, his armour flashing with a lustre brighter than steel, while there waved from his helmet a plume as if each feather had been a sunbeam; his shield was broad and embossed, and as to his sword I never saw one like it. And he went on to tell of hours of spiritual warfare and victory, and how by an hour's resolute resistance temptation had been crushed; how by an hour's mortification a lust had been slain; how by an hour's prayer Satan had been vanquished; and I at once thought of Paul, and Luther, and Bunyan, and such men, and of the critical hours in their lives when, by the dexterous use of Faith's shield, or the Spirit's sword, the tide of victory had been turned, and the hosts of darkness had been driven away in utter rout and discomfiture.
        After this I saw one diverse from all the rest; he came down direct from heaven, and was too ethereal for words to describe; his descent was like the gentle fluttering of a dove, fragrance filled the air, there was a halo of light all round about, and a still small voice came from the mysterious presence; and spoke of the great hour of regeneration—of the beginning of spiritual life in man's dead heart—of old things passing away, and all things becoming new; and I began to think of Saul of Tarsus, and of Colonel Gardiner, and of many more whose hour of conversion was so plain and notable; and the thought too came, that though the hour be unknown until after it is past, yet is there an hour in every renewed man's history, when the sun began to rise—the seed to quicken—when the night melted into day, and life triumphed over death.
        And he whom I next saw was like unto the Son of man; yet did I know him to be the Ancient of days, and he proclaimed himself the Lord of all hours; but he spake of some which he had once spent on earth, which had made the hours of man quite different from what otherwise they could have been—which had given birth to the hours of regeneration, and bound a rainbow round the hour of death. The hour in which he was betrayed—the hour and power of darkness—the hour when his soul was troubled—the hour when they crucified him—the hour when he cried, "Father, into thy hand I commit my spirit:" hours were they of love and sorrow, such as none ever spent before, and from which, as from hidden roots that went down deep into a dark soil, there sprung up strong branches and green leaves, and bright fruits of pardon, sanctity, and bliss. And I remembered how, through faith in him, the whole of Time's story had been changed to many a one, and the voyage over human life's uncertain ocean had ended in a landing on the pearly beach of the heavenly country.
        Afterwards, I beheld one more, whose form was changeful; there were crowds of mortals busy about the path along which he moved; and he touched one after another as he went his way, and to some he seemed a ministering angel, and to the rest a king clothed in terror; they who were touched by his mysterious finger were forced to follow him, and he led some through a glorious palace archway, where the sun was shining brighter than on the brightest summer's day; but he thrust the rest through a grim prison gate, where blacker clouds were gathering than ever covered a winter's sky. Perplexed by these visions, I turned to look for my guide and counsellor, who again stood by me, and told me it was the spirit of man's last hour—the hour of dying and of changing worlds; that it was coming soon to me; and he asked how I thought it would look on me, and where it would carry me. Whereupon I recollected what I had often thought, that in every year I spend a day which is of the same date as that which will be hereafter carved on my grave-stone—and that every day, asleep or awake, I cross the hour which corresponds in number with my last.
        And then—there was no more sea—and the stars of heaven fell—and the old clock tower of time crumbled to pieces—and the rocks were as molten lead—and stretching out in august magnificence, while there gathered round it countless hosts, was a great white throne. And now "the hour was come, when the dead that were in their graves heard the voice of the Son of man, and came forth." And all the hours came up for judgment; and every one was examined, and what had been thought and done in each was discovered; it was as a living voice, and there was no secret that it kept, but. with a truthful tongue told all. And I thought I saw the hours of my life, as if borne on wings, come sailing up from the deep ocean of the past, and I looked not for those that would speak of earthly acquisitions and joys, however rich and bright, but for those which would speak of faith and prayer, of love and service—hours spent in musing on the Bible, in communing with and imitating Christ—in mortifying sin—in conquering the world—in making known the Saviour to lost souls. I was beginning to feel agonized that there were so few of these, when, under the influence of my agitation, I awoke.
        The last spark was playing on the perished ember; the parting flame was quivering on the top of the burnt-out lamp—emblem of the passing hour; for amidst the deep silence, just then, there came from the village church clock the knell of the dying year. I slowly counted the twelve strokes, and made the hour they ushered in, an hour of prayer.

The Brilliant Keeper

by the Author of "East Lynne" [Ellen Wood].

Originally published in St. James's Magazine (W. Kent) vol.3 #11 (Feb 1862).

It was a comfortable room, even for the West-end of London. It was not the grand drawing-room of the house; it was not the commodious dining-room, where Sir Philip's patients waited their turn to go in to him; it was only a small, cozy apartment, with a bright fire, easy chairs, and, generally, plenty of litter. For a wonder, it was tidy now; nothing was on the centre table, save Lady Annesley's desk, at which she sat writing—a plain, pleasant woman of forty, wearing weeds yet. The late Sir Robert, a popular and successful physician, had risen in the world and got his baronetcy: but this had been his second wife.
        On a low sofa, near the fire, sat an old lady—a cheerful, nice old lady, in spite of her blindness and her eighty-four years. She would tell you, could you speak with her, that God had seen fit to take her dear son, Sir Robert, and had spared her. Upon her lap was a bag made of white linen, resembling a pillow-case, but not so long; and she was stuffing it with handfuls of paper torn into minute bits. Since she became blind she was wont to employ some of her time in tearing up waste-paper, newspapers and the like, to stuff cushions. Maria Carr, Lady Annesley's niece, was at the far window making the case for this cushion: two square pieces of white velvet, on each of which was painted an exquisite group of flowers, Maria's doing. The cushion was intended for a present for Mary Annesley, who was on the point of marriage with Dr. Scott. She had gone out now with the late Sir Robert Annesley's ward, Georgina Livingston, who lived with them.
        Mrs. Annesley looked up from her cushion and her bits of paper—if it be allowable to say that of one who has no sight; but when she spoke to people, she was in the habit of turning her face in the direction she thought they might be, as she had done before the darkness came on: "What about Charley's going to church? Is it decided?"
        "Well; I suppose—" Lady Annesley stopped. The door had hastily opened, and a gentleman entered—a tall, fine man. But for the sweet smile that frequently parted his lips and lighted up his dark blue eyes, his features might have been deemed plain. And yet, ladies were apt to say that Sir Philip Annesley, being unmarried, was too attractive for a medical man.
        "Is that Philip?"
        "Myself, and nobody else, grandmamma;" for Sir Philip sometimes, half in sport, addressed her by the old familiar title of his boyhood.
        "Who will lend me a finger?"
        "A finger!" echoed Lady Annesley. "What for? Ask Maria."
        Maria laid down her velvet, and came forward. Sir Philip opened a little square box, and, taking out a ring, passed it om to the third, or wedding-finger, of her left hand. She stood before him, perfectly quiet in motion and bearing, but blushing to the very roots of her hair. Two thin chains of gold crossed and re-crossed each other, enclosing a brilliant between each crossing—twelve brilliants in all, small, but of the first water—a jewel of rare beauty, remarkably light and elegant.
        "Philip, what a beautiful ring!" uttered Lady Annesley.
        "Yes; it took my fancy. Mary will like a keeper, and Scott, in his absent fashion, is sure not to think of one. Lucky, I say, if he remembers the wedding-ring. It is too large; is it not, Maria?"
        "Much too large for a keeper. Mary would require another ring to keep this one on."
        "I ought to have chosen the smaller one," said Sir Philip. "There is another, just like it, only less in size. I'll take this one back and change it."
        "It must have cost a good deal?" said Lady Annesley.
        "Pretty well. Forty-eight guineas."
        Mrs. Annesley lifted her hands in dismay. "Oh, Philip! Forty-eight guineas fora ring! It seems next door to a sin. Your father, my dear, would have looked twice at a quarter of the money before giving it."
        He crossed the room, and put the keeper into her hand, bending down to her, and speaking gently. "Feel it, grandmother; it really is a beauty. I know the sum is large;. but we do not give away Mary every day."
        Mrs. Annesley passed her fingers over the ring, after the manner of the blind, and handed it back to him. "Philip, when do you intend to buy a wedding keeper on your own account? Ever?"
        That sweet smile of his rose to his lips, and perhaps the least tinge of colour to his face. "A doctor has no time to think of such things."
        "No time?" returned the old lady, taking the remark literally. "I think he has as much time for it as other people. Where there's a will there's a way. Philip, do you know that you are in your thirty-fifth year?"
        "And do you know also what your patients say?" put in Lady Annesley. "They say —"
        "I can guess: that will do!" interrupted Sir Philip, with a laugh. "If they don't like an unmarried man, they need not come to me. Let them go elsewhere."
        "Not they," said Lady Annesley, significantly. "Philip, you really ought to marry. Delay it another ten years, and your children will be growing up when you are an old man. I wish you would: it would set my mind at rest."
        "At rest from what?" asked Sir Philip, in a hasty and somewhat sharp tone.
        "Oh, well; I am not going to explain," answered Lady Annesley. "At rest in more ways than one."
        "Provided, I presume, that I married to please you," cried Sir Philip, who fully understood the bye-play.
        "Of course not to please me, Philip—I am nobody. To please your sisters, and to please the world."
        "Terrible if I married only to please myself, would it not be, Lady Annesley?" he laughed.
        He had never called her "mother:" at one time had studiously called her "Lady Annesley." Four-and-twenty years of age when his father married this, his second wife, Philip, in his inmost heart, had rebelled at the union. They all had, at first; but they learnt to like her in time. The girls were married now, save Mary, who would be the last.
        "It is no joking matter, Philip. What a nice rose that is in your button-hole!" continued Lady Annesley. "Where did you get it?"
        "Out of Mrs. Leigh's conservatory,"—he replied, taking it from his coat—a magnificent white rose, beautiful as a camellia—"she seduced me into it just now, when I was at her house."
        "Is her daughter better?"
        "No, poor girl. And I fear —"
        Sir Philip did not say what he feared. He was not one to speak, at home, of his patients. In the silence that supervened, a servant appeared.
        "Lady Oliver, Sir."
        Sir Philip nodded; stood a moment or two, as if in thought; then prepared to descend.
        "Will you put this up for me?" he said, giving the diamond keeper to Lady Annesley as he passed her. "I will change it when I go out. There, Maria! a present for you."
        He flung the white rose into Maria's lap. She did not touch it, only let it lie there, her cheeks again growing hot. Lady Annesley knitted her brow. But it cleared as her eyes fell on the ring. "I never did see a greater beauty!" she enthusiastically exclaimed, as she slipped it several times on and off her finger. "But what a judge Philip must have been to get it so large as this! Who is this, coming up?"
        It was Charles Carr, Maria's brother, popularly known in the house as "Charley." A young lieutenant he; gay, careless, and handsome. Often in scrapes, always in trouble; deep in debt, in "bills," in many things that he ought not to be; altogether, a gentleman who was believed to be going to the bad headlong, especially by Lady Annesley. He was her own nephew, her dead brother's son; and he came to the house, presuming upon the relationship and upon Maria's residence in it, oftener than Lady Annesley liked. A great fear was at her heart that he had grown too fond of Georgina Livingston, or that Georgina had of him—perhaps both. Her penniless nephew, who had not cross or coin to bless himself with, steal Georgina and her nine hundred a year! The world would talk then—would say that she, Lady Annesley, had planned it! And Lady Annesley was remarkably sensitive to the world's censure.
        Charley glittered in, in full regimentals; one of the handsomest young fellows that had ever bowed before Her Majesty at St. James's, And he had no objection that somebody else should see him and think so, "Where's Georgina?" asked he.
        "Georgina's out," snappishly replied Lady Annesley. "What are you dressed up for?"
        "I have just come from the Levee. Did you forget it?" he returned, taking up mechanically the little jewel-box and opening it. Charley's fingers had a trick of touching things, and he often got a rap on the knuckles for it, literally and metaphorically, from my lady. "What a splendid ring!" he uttered.
        "Sir Philip's present to Mary. But it is to be changed; it is too large."
        Charley put it on his little finger and turned it round admiringly; as they had all done. "A charming ring!" he repeated. "It is really beautiful."
        "Do you not wish it were yours?" laughed Maria, from her distant window.
        "I wish I had the cost of it," he said. "That would be of more use to me. What was it? Fifty guineas?"
        "Not a bad guess," said Lady Annesley, who really liked Charley, and his good looks, and his good nature, au fond, when she could forget the fear and trouble touching Miss Georgina.
        They stood together, singing praises of the ring; now she had it on—now he. Lady Annesley at length took it from him, and held it over the open box, as if taking a farewell of it before she dropped it in.
        "Oh dear!" cried out Mrs. Annesley.
        Lady Annesley hastily put the lid on, left the box on the table by Charley, and ran to her mother-in-law. The old lady had let the sack fall upon the hearthrug, and some of the ammunition was falling out.
        "Don't trouble yourself, my dear," she said, as Lady Annesley began pushing it in. "Put it on my lap again; I won't be so clumsy a second time. It is nearly full, you see."
        Lady Annesley did as requested, and returned to the table. Charley, restless Charley, was then standing by Maria, and the two were whispering together. Lady Annesley took a sheet of fair white paper and wrapped up the little box, without again looking in it, lighted a wax match, and sealed it.
        "Well, I must be off," cried Charles. "Shall you be at home this evening?"
        "I shall," laughed grandmamma, from her place "on the sofa. "I don't suppose many of the others will be out." She had not penetrated to Lady Annesley's fear; and Charley was a wonderful favourite of hers.
        "Look, Maria," said Lady Annesley, as they heard Charley and his sword clattering down the stairs four at a time—"I will put it here. If Philip should come for it, you can tell him where it is."
        She lifted the lid of her desk and put in the little box. Then approached Mrs. Annesley and took hold of her arm to lead her from the room. "We shall have no drive to-day, unless we make haste. Maria will finish that."
        "It's finished, all but tacking," said the old lady; "it is as full as it ought to be. Maria, my dear, come and do it at once."
        Maria carried her velvet to the sofa, and set about completing the cushion, kneeling down for convenience sake. She had got the velvet cover on to it, and was beginning to put round the gold cord and to sew on the tassels, when Sir Philip entered. He rested his arms on the back of the sofa, and looked down at her and her work—a fair girl she, with a gentle face.
        "I wonder if folks would send me presents if I set up housekeeping on my own score?" cried he.
        "You had better try them," said Maria. But she spoke the words without thought, and felt, the moment they had left her lips, that she had rather have bitten out her tongue than uttered them.
        "But the flitting from the house for all of you, what a trouble it would be!" returned he, in a tone of much remonstrance. "I don't know that every one of you would have to go, though," he continued, while the too-conscious crimson dyed her face, and she played nervously with the gold cord.
        "Certainly not, if Lady Annesley had her way," he resumed. Maria, astonished at the words, glanced at him in amazement. "Don't you see it all, Maria?"
        "See what?" she exclaimed.
        "Nay, I shall not tell you. So much the better if you have not seen it. I thought it had been patent to the house. My vanity may be in error, after all."
        "What do you mean, Sir Philip?"
        He was gazing hard at her with his deep blue eyes—vain and saucy enough they were, just then. She felt completely at sea.
        "Give me your opinion, Maria? If I did resolve to set up housekeeping for myself, do you think that any one of you could be induced to stop and help me in it?"
        Her heart beat violently;—her eyes fell. The gold cord in her fingers was wreathing itself into knots. Sir Philip came round and laid his hand upon her shoulder as she knelt, making her turn her face to him.
        "Because I may be asking the question some day. Do you know Where Lady Annesley put the ring?"
        She sprang up. She opened the desk, and gave the parcel to him, sealed as Lady Annesley had left it. He slipped it into his waistcoat pocket, went down to his brougham, and drove off.
        In less than twenty minutes he was back again, and came flying up the stairs as fast as Charley Carr had flown down them.
        "A pretty simpleton you made of me, Maria!—giving me an empty box!"
        "An empty box!" she echoed.
        He took the box out of his pocket, and held it open before her.
        "I told the man I had brought back the ring to exchange for the smaller one, opened the box, all gingerly, to hand it to him, and behold! there was nothing in it."
        "Did you drop it in the brougham? Did you open it in the brougham?" she reiterated.
        "I never touched it, after you saw me put it in my pocket, until I was in the shop. I unsealed the paper before the shopman's eyes."
        "Then where can it be?" exclaimed Maria. "Lady Annesley certainly sealed it up, and put it, herself, in the desk, ready for you. No one went near the desk afterwards—no one came into the room, or was in the room, but myself."
        "Lady Annesley must have sealed up an empty box, that's clear," said Sir Philip. "I have brought the other ring."
        But Lady Annesley, when she entered, protested that she had not sealed up an empty box—that the ring was in it. And she related the details to Sir Philip, as they have been given above. The box, she said, was not out of her hand a minute altogether. "Are you sure you put it in?—that you did not let it slip aside?" questioned Sir Philip.
        "Sure!" repeated Lady Annesley, half inclined to resent the implied suggestion of carelessness; "I am quite sure. And, had the ring slipped aside, it would only have gone on to the table. I put it in safely, and shut it in."
        "Who was in the room, beside yourselves?" asked Sir Philip.
        "Only Charley Carr. He was standing by me, wishing that the ring were his."
        "No," cried out Mrs. Annesley, innocently; "wishing its value in money was his! The more sensible wish of the two."
        A wild, sickening sensation darted to Maria Carr's brain. It was not yet a suspicion; it was a fear lest suspicion should come: nay, a foreboding that it was coming.
        The suspicion did come: came immediately, to all of them. In vain Sir Philip suggested that Charles must have done it in a joke, to put Lady Annesley in a fright, for he was as full of tricks as a monkey—that he would bring it back with him in the evening. That he had taken the ring from the box there was no doubt whatever; and Lady Annesley, in her anger, refused to be soothed.
        She attacked Charles the moment he made his appearance. "Where's that keeper?" she sternly demanded, without circumlocution.
        "What keeper?" returned Charles.
        "The brilliant keeper, that you made off with to-day."
        "I don't know what you mean, aunt."
        Lady Annesley flew into a rage. "I left the box close to your hands when I turned to pick up the cushion for Mrs. Annesley. How dared you take the ring out?"
        "Let's see whether I have got it about me," retorted Charley, in a careless, indifferent, provoking manner, as he made a show of feeling in all his pockets. "Oh—I must have left it in my regimentals."
        Lady Annesley nearly boiled over. Words led to words; Charles grew angry in his turn; and at length she gave a hint that he must have stolen the ring. He declared he had not touched the box, or the ring; that he had turned from the table when Lady Annesley did, and remained talking to Maria while the cushion was being picked up; and he swore to this with sundry unorthodox words, forgetting that he was not in quarters, but in a lady's drawing-room.
        "If nobody takes his part, I will!" hotly cried Georgina Livingston, after Charles had dashed away from the house, promising that he'd never enter it again; and her countenance was distressed, and her checks were scarlet, as she said it. "Steal a ring! You may just as well accuse me, Lady Annesley, as accuse him; I should be the more likely of the two to do it."
        "Do, pray, recollect yourself, Georgina!" remonstrated my lady. "Is this avowal seemly for a young girl?"
        "I don't care whether it's seemly or unseemly," responded Miss Georgina, dashing away some tears. "You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, all of you! Because Charley happens not to be made of money, you turn against him, and think he'd take it. I'll let him know that I don't."
        Hot words, hotly spoken. A few days, and even Georgina was obliged to judge him less leniently. Sir Philip chose quietly to investigate the suspicion; and he ascertained that Charles had, the very evening subsequent to the loss of the ring, and the following day, paid sundry small debts, for which he had been long dunned. Twenty pounds, at least, of these payments were traced, and then Sir Philip dropped the search. Why pursue it? It was all too clear, for Charles had no resources of his own to draw upon.
        But here Maria stepped in to his defence. She protested with earnestness, with tears, that she had furnished him herself with twenty pounds; that she had given it to him in that moment when they were whispering together. She knew Charles's wants, she said, and had been saving this money up for him. Lady Annesley flatly contradicted Maria. It did not stand to reason, she contended, that Maria, with her poor means, could save up twenty pounds, or even ten. The thing was almost against possibility; and Maria fell under nearly as great a ban as her brother, for attempting to screen him by falsehood. There were moments when, in her own sick heart, Maria did believe him to be guilty. Such things have been heard of in the world—done in the recklessness of necessity.

*                *                *                *                *

        A twelvemonth passed away—and a twelvemonth brings changes. Georgina Livingston was of age now, and at liberty to choose her own residence. She was alone in the drawing-room one April evening. Mrs. Annesley was much confined to her chamber, and Lady Annesley had gone up to her. Sir Philip came in.
        "Alone, Georgina! Why! what is the matter?—crying?"
        "Oh, Lady Annesley set me on!" was the young lady's pettish rejoinder, as she brushed the tears away. "She was angry with me for 'moping,' as she called it; and I told her I would not stay here to be grumbled at."
        "Why do you mope?" he asked.
        "Because I choose," was the wilful retort. "I can leave now if I like you know, Philip."
        "If you like—yes," assented Sir Philip. "Where should you go?"
        "I don't know, and I don't much care," dreamily responded Georgina.
        "Would you like to remain in the house for good?" resumed Sir Philip, after a pause. "I was thinking of asking you to do so."
        A faint blush rose to her face, but she showed no other emotion: and his tone, considering the momentous words, was wonderfully calm. Perhaps both had been conscious for some little time that these words would be spoken. Sir Philip bent his head towards her.
        "The world has reproached me with not marrying. Help me, Georgina, to put the reproach away! There is no one I would ask to be my wife but you."
        "Look here, Philip!" she exclaimed, pushing back her hair, and turning her face, full of its own eager excitement, towards him—excitement not caused by him. "I'll speak out the truth to you; I could not to every one: but you are good, and true, and noble. Were I to say to you 'Yes,' and let you take me believing that I loved you, I should just be acting a lie. I loved some one else; I am trying to forget him with my whole heart and might—but I did love him."
        "Who was this?"
        "Charles Carr."
        Sir Philip's blue eyes flashed with a peculiar light, and he looked into the fire—not at Georgina.
        "That love ought to end," he said. "It can bring you no good."
        "Don't I tell you that it has ended—that I am putting it from me as fast as ever I can? But the remembrance cannot go all at once. I did love him; and I believe it was your generosity, in hushing up his dreadful disgrace, instead of proclaiming it and prosecuting him, that first made me like you more than common."
        "You acknowledge, then, that you do like me?" smiled Sir Philip.
        "Very—very much."
        "Well enough to take me for better and for worse?"
        "Yes; if, after this confession, you would still wish it."
        "I do," he answered, drawing her to him, and taking his first kiss from her lips. Georgina flew to her room, and there burst into a flood of tears.
        Lady Annesley was strangely elated at the news. She had hoped for it in her inmost heart—long and long.
        "You have done well, Philip," she said to her step-son.
        "I shall escape the worrying about not getting married, at any rate," responded Sit Philip.
        "Philip"—lowering her voice confidentially—"do you know, I frightened myself to death, at one time, lest you should marry Maria. I fancied you were growing attached to her; and people would have said I had set it on."
        The red colour flashed into Sir Philip's face. "I should have married her, but for that affair of the diamond keeper."
        Lady Annesley looked blank. "Did you like her so much as that?"
        "Like her!" he echoed, in emotion, "I loved her. I am not sure but I love her still. Why, Lady Annesley, I all but asked her to be my wife the very afternoon that wretched boy did the mischief."
        "I'm sure I am very glad he did do it, if it prevented that," retorted my lady.
        "I might have got over that; his fault; but I could not get over Maria's. To uphold him in his deceit—to invent a falsehood to screen him—how could I make her my wife?"
        "Whatever is there about Maria to like?" fretfully interrupted Lady Annesley.
        "She's more likeable than any one in this world, to my thinking —"
        "Hush, Philip!"
        The news of the engagement went forth to the house. Maria had still remained in it, making herself useful, as she had done before, especially to Mrs. Annesley, for she had no other home. Better she had quitted it: to see Sir Philip daily was not the way to cure her love for him.
        "I hope you will be happy, Sir Philip; I wish you every happiness," she stammered, believing it was incumbent on her to say something to him to that effect. But Sir Philip observed that her face turned ghastly with emotion as she spoke.
        "Thank you; I hope we shall be," he coldly replied; and, since that unhappy episode, he had never spoken to her but coldly. "Georgina Livingston possesses one great essential towards making herself and others happy—truth."
        The preparations for the wedding went briskly on. Lady Annesley would first move into another residence. No change had been made since Sir Robert's death, but Sir Philip must have his house to himself now. One evening Sir Philip was spending an hour with Dr. Scott. A navy surgeon was also there—Mr. Blake, once their chum at Bartholomew's: and Georgina was sitting upstairs with Mary Scott and her baby.
        "Is smoking allowed here?" asked the surgeon—glancing at the elegant sofa on which he sat, where was displayed that beautiful cushion painted by Maria Carr—"I'm half dead without my pipe."
        Receiving assent, he lighted it, and then walked across the room to Sir Philip and the Doctor, who stood at the window. There was some disturbance in the street, and they all three remained there chatting and looking out.
        Suddenly a burst of light shot up in the twilight of the room, and they wheeled round in consternation. A blaze was ascending from the velvet cushion. They caught up the hearthrug and succeeded in putting out the fire. Georgina Livingston, hearing the commotion, came in with a white face.
        In lighting his pipe Mr. Blake must have suffered a spark to fall upon the cushion. There it had smouldered, penetrating at length to the stuffing, which then blazed up. You may remember that it consisted of paper.
        "Oh, that lovely cushion!" lamented Georgina.
        "What's this?" uttered Dr. Scott, picking up something bright and glistening from the ashes. "If I don't believe it's a ring!"
        A ring it was. The lost, the beautiful, the brilliant keeper! The eyes of Sir Philip and Georgina met.
        Maria was, that same evening, sitting alone; she and her breaking heart. It had felt breaking ever since that cloud fell upon it. She heard Sir Philip come home—and she began gathering her work together.
        "Don't run away, Maria; I have something to tell you!"
        She looked at him in wonderment. His voice wore the same loving tone as in days gone by; a tone long past, for her.
        "Lend me your hand, Maria!" And, without waiting for assent, he took it in his, the left hand, and slipped upon the third finger, as he had done once before, the diamond keeper. "Do you recognize it?"
        "It is Mrs. Scott's," replied Maria. "Why have you brought it here, Sir Philip?"
        "It is not Mrs. Scott's: it is larger than hers. Do not remove it, Maria. It shall be your own keeper, if you will let me add the wedding-ring."
        Confused, bewildered, wondering what it meant, wondering at the strangely loving expression that gleamed on her from his dark blue eyes, she burst into tears. Was he saying this to mock her?
        No: not to mock her. No! Sir Philip wound his arms round her as he told the tale; he drew her face to his breast, his eyelashes glistening in the intensity of his emotion. "I can never let you go again, my darling! I do not ask your forgiveness; I know that you will give it me unasked, for you and I have been alike miserable."
        "Charley innocent!—been innocent all this while?" she gasped.
        "He has, in good truth! We must try and make it up to him. I —"
        "Oh, Philip!" she interrupted, with streaming eyes; "you will believe me now! I did give him the twenty pounds—I did, indeed! I had saved in so many trifles; I had made old gowns look like new ones; all for him. You should not have doubted me, if the rest did."
        "My whole life shall atone to you, Maria," he softly whispered. "Georgina —"
        She broke from him, her cheeks flushing crimson. In the moment's bewilderment she had totally forgotten his engagement to Georgina. He laughed merrily, his eyes dancing, and drew her back again.
        "Never fear that I am about to turn Mormon, and marry you both! Georgina has given me up, Maria. In the excitement caused by the discovery, she spoke her mind out to me, that she did not like me, with all her 'trying,' half as well as she did Charley Carr, and that none but Charley should be her husband, Scott has gone to tell Charles the news, and bring him up. If —"
        "What on earth is this?" ejaculated Lady Annesley, as she came in and stood like one petrified.
        "It's this," replied Sir Philip, holding out Maria's hand, on which shone the brilliant keeper. "This mischief-making ring has turned up again. When you held it that day over the open box, and Mrs. Annesley called out, there can be no doubt that you, in the hurry, unconsciously slipped it on your finger, instead of into the box, and lost it off your finger again immediately amidst the paper stuffing. The cushion has just given up its prey."
        Lady Annesley sank upon the first seat, with a very crest-fallen expression. "I never heard of such a thing!" she stammered. "My finger! Whatever will be the consequence? Poor Charley!"
        "The consequence, I expect, will be that you will have two weddings instead of one," laughed Sir Philip. "Georgina has proclaimed her intentions, and I don't suppose Charley will bear malice. I think I ought to have given the ring to him as a memento, instead of to Maria."
        "To Maria!" irascibly returned Lady Annesley, not precisely understanding, but not feeling comfortable. "What in the world need is there to give it to her, Sir Philip?"
        "Great need," he replied, his tone becoming serious. "But it is given with a condition attached to it—that I add one of plain gold. Ah! Lady Annesley, we cannot be false to ourselves, try as we will, Maria has remained my best and dearest love up to this hour, cajole and deceive my heart as I would. And now, I trust, she will remain so, so long as time shall last!"