The Strand 1913-5 Vol_XLV №269 May mich

THE STILLNESS AND THE SILLNCE OF UNIVERSAL DEATH.\" '.'%. (See pape 484.)

THE STRAND MAGAZINE Vol. xlv. MAY, 1913. THE POISON BELT. A. CONAN DOYLE. Illustrated by Harry Rountree. SYNOPSIS OF THE FIRST TWO INSTALMENTS. Professor Challenger has invited his old friends, Lord John Roxton, Professor Summerlee, and E. D. Malone, to spend a day with him at his home in Sussex, and while journeying down they eagerly discuss the news that a mysterious and universal outbreak of illness has occurred among the natives of Sumatra, and that the lighthouses are all dark in the Straits of Sunda. They are doubly interested in the news as Challenger himself has a letler on the subject in that morning's 7'iines. His theory, as he explains when he meets them, is that the world has swum into a stratum, or poison belt, of ether, and that the fate which has befallen the Sumatran natives will quickly overtake the rest of the earth's inhabitants. \" It is,\" he says, \" in my opinion, the end of the world.\" During the morning they learn by telephone that the great shadow is creeping up from the South, leaving in its wake a trail of death—painless but inevitable —over a great portion of the earth. Challenger's home being on an eminence, which, so far, the poisonous vapour has not entirely submerged, he and his friends are able to watch from an upper room, in which they hope to keep the atmosphere pure for a few hours by means of oxygen, the tide of death creeping towards them. CHAPTER III.—(continued). N the immediate foreground, beneath our very eyes, was the small yard with the half- cleaned motor-car standing in it. Austin, the chauffeur, had received his final notice at last, for he was sprawling on his back beside the wheel, with a great black bruise upon his forehead where it had struck the step or mud-guard in falling. He still held in his hand the nozzle of the hose with which he had been washing down his machine. A couple of small plane trees stood in the corner of the yard, and under- neath them lay several pathetic little balls of fluffy feathers, with tiny feet uplifted. The sweep of Death's scythe had included everything great and small within its swathe. Over the wall of the yard we looked down upon the winding road, which led to the station. A group of the reapers whom we had seen running from the fields were lying all pellmell, their bodies crossing each other, at the bottom of it. Farther up the nurse- girl lay with her head and shoulders propped against the slope of the grassy bank. She had taken the baby from the perambulator, and it was a motionless bundle of wraps in her arms. Close behind her a tiny patch upon the roadside showed where the little boy was stretched. Still nearer to us was the dead cab-horse kneeling between the shafts. The old driver was hanging over the splash-board Vol. xlv.—40. Copyright, 1913, by A. Cunan Doyle.

THE STRAND MAGAZINE. like some grotesque scarecrow, his arms dangling absurdly in front of him. Through the window we could dimly discern that a young man was seated inside. The door was swinging open, and his hand was grasping the handle, as if he had attempted to leap forth at the last instant. In the middle distance lay the golf links, dotted as they had been in the morning with the dark figures of the golfers, lying motionless upon the grass of the course, or among the heather which skirted it. On one par- ticular green there were eight bodies stretched where a foursome with its caddies had held to their game to the last. No bird flew in the blue vault of heaven, no man or beast moved upon the vast countryside which lay before us. The evening sun shone its peaceful radiance across it, but there brooded over it all the stillness and the silence of universal death—a death in which we were so soon to join. At the present instant that one frail sheet of glass, by holding in the oxygen, shut us off from the fate of all our kind. For a few short hours the knowledge and foresight of one man could preserve our little oasis of life in the vast desert of death, and save us from participation in the common catastrophe. Then the gas would run low, we, too, should lie gasping upon that cherry-coloured boudoir carpet, and the fate of the human race and of all earthly life would be complete. For a long time, in a mood which was too solemn for speech, we looked out at the tragic world. \" There is a house on fire,\" said Challenger, at last, pointing to a column of smoke which rose above the trees. \" There will, I expect, be many such—possibly whole cities in flames— when we consider how many folk may have dropped with lights in their hands. Ah. there you see another on the top of Crowborough Hill. It is the golf clubhouse, or I am mis- taken. There is the church clock chiming the hour. It would interest our philosophers to know that man-made mechanism has survived the race who made it.\" \" By George ! \" cried Lord John, rising excitedly from his chair. \" What's that puff of smoke ? It's a train.\" We heard the roar of it, and presently it came flying into sight, going at what seemed to me to be a prodigious speed. Whence it had come, or how far, we had no means of knowing. Only by some miracle of luck could it have gone any distance. But now we were to see the terrific end of its career. A train of coal-trucks stood motionless upon the line. We held our breath as the express roared along the same track. The crash was horrible. Engine and carriages piled them- selves into a hill of splintered wood and twisted iron. Red spurts of flame flickered up from the wreckage until it was all ablaze. For half an hour we sat with hardly a word, stunned by the stupendous sight. \" Poor, poor people ! \" cried Mrs. Challenger, at last, clinging with a whimper to her husband's arm.

THE POISON BELT. 485 \"A VISION OK STKANGR HAI'PKNINGS.\" \" Upon my word ! \" said Lord John. \"It would be like you if you used up our last gasp of oxygen in abusing each other. What can it matter whether folk come back or not ? It surely won't be in our time.\" \" In that remark, sir, you betray your own very pronounced limitations,\" said Challenger, severely. \" The true scientific mind is not to be tied down by its own conditions of time and space. It buiids itself an observatory erected upon the border line of present, which separates

486 THE STRAND MAGAZINE. the infinite past from the infinite future. From this sure post it makes its sallies even to the beginning and to the end of all things. As to death, the scientific mind dies a-t its post working in normal and methodic fashion to the end. It disregards so petty a thing as its own physical dissolution as completely as it does all other limitations upon the plane of .matter. Am I right, Professor Summer- lee ? \" Summerlee grumbled an ungracious assent. \" With certain reservations, I agree/' said he. \" The ideal scientific mind,\" continued Challenger—\" I put it in the third person rather than appear to be too self-complacent -—the ideal scientific mind should be capable of thinking out a point of abstract knowledge in the interval between its owner falling from a balloon and reaching the earth. Men of this strong fibre are needed to form the conquerors of Nature and the bodyguard of truth.\" \" It strikes me Nature's on top this time,'' said Lord John, looking out of the window. \" I've read some leadin' articles about you gentlemen controllin' her, but she's gettin' a bit of her own back.\" \" It is but a temporary set-back,\" said Challenger, with conviction. \" The vegetable world has, as you can sec, survived. Look at the leaves of that plane tree. The birds are dead, but .the plant flourishes. From this vegetable life in pond and in marsh will come, in time, the tiny crawling microscopic slugs which are the pioneers of that great army of life in which for the instant we five have the extraordinary duty of serving as rear-guard. Once the lowest form of life has established itself, the final advent of Man is as certain as the growth of the oak from the acorn. The old circle will swing round once more.\" \" But the poison ? \" I asked. \" Will that not nip it in the bud ? \" \" It may be a mere stratum or layer in the ether—a mephitic Gulf Stream across that mighty ocean in which we float. Or tolerance may be established, and life accommodate itself to a new condition. The mere fact that with a comparatively small hyper-oxygena- tion of our blood we can hold out against it is surely a proof in itself that no very great change would be needed to enable animal life to endure it.\" The smoking house beyond the trees had hurst into flames. We could see the high tongues of fire shooting up into the air. \" It's pretty awful,\" muttered Lord John, -\"\"\"re impressed than I had ever seen him. \" Well, after all, what does it matter ? \" I remarked. \" The world is dead. Crema- tion is surely the best burial.\" \" It would shorten us up if this house went ablaze.\" \" I foresaw the danger,\" said Challenger, \" and asked my wife to guard against it.\" \" Everything is quite safe, dear. But my head begins to throb again. What a dreadful

THE POISON BELT. 487 \" Exactly. Our young friend has hit upon an excellent illustration. Let me give you another slice of tongue.\" \" The same with savages,\" said Lord John, cutting away at the beef. \" I've seen them buryin' a chief up the Aruwimi River, and they ate a hippo that must have weighed as much as the tribe. There are some of them down New Guinea way that eat the late- lamented himself, just by way of a last tidy up. Well, of all the funeral feasts on this earth, I suppose the one we are takin' is the queerest.\" \" The strange thing is,\" said Mrs. Challenger, \" that I find it impossible to feel grief for those who are gone. There are my father and mother at Bedford. I know that they are dead, and yet in this tremendous universal tragedy I can feel no sharp sorrow for any individuals, even for them.\" \" And my old mother in her cottage in Ireland,\" said I. \" I can see her in my mind's eye, with her shawl and her lace cap, lying back with closed eyes in the old. high-backed chair near the window, her glasses and her book beside her. Why should I mourn her ? She has passed and I am passing, and I may be nearer her in some other life than England is to Ireland. Yet I grieve to think that that dear body is no more.\" \" As to the body,\" remarked Challenger, \" we do not mourn over the parings of our nails nor the cut locks of our hair, though they were once part of ourselves. Neither does a one-legged man yearn sentimentally over his missing member. The physical body has rather been a source of pain and fatigue to us. It is our constant index of our limitations. Why then should we worry about its detachment from our psychical selves ? \" \" If they can indeed be detached,'' Summer- lee grumbled. \" But, anyhow, universal death is dreadful.\" \"As I have already explained,\" said Challenger, \" a universal death must in its nature be far less terrible than an isolated one.\" \" Same in a battle,\" remarked Lord John. \"If you saw a single man lying on that floor with his chest knocked in and a hole in his face it would turn you sick. But I've seen ten thousand on their backs in the Soudan, and it gave me no such feelin', for when you are makin' history the life of any man is too small a thing to worry over. When a thou- sand million pass over together, same as happened to-day, you can't pick your own partic'lar out of the crowd.\" \" I wish it were well over with us,\" said the lady, wistfully. \" Oh, George, I am so frightened.\" \" You'll be the bravest of us all, little lady, when the time comes. I've been a blusterous old husband to you, dear, but you'll just bear in mind that G. E. C. is as he was made and couldn't help himself. After all, you wouldn't have had anyone else ? \"

488 THE STRAND MAGAZINE. How stranger still that it is I, Edward Malone, who have written them — I who started only some twelve hours ago from my rooms in Streatham without one thought of the marvels which the day was to bring forth ! I look back at the chain of incidents, my inter- view with McArdle. Challenger's first note of alarm in the Times, the absurd journey in the train, the pleasant luncheon, the catas- trophe, and now it has come to this—that we linger alone upon an empty planet, and so sure is our fate that I can regard these lines, written from mechanical professional habit, and never to be seen by human eyes, as the words of one who is already dead, so closely does he stand to the shadow borderland over which all outside this one little circle of friends have already gone. I feel how wise and true were the words of Challenger when he said that the real tragedy would be if we were left behind when all that is noble and good and beautiful had passed. Hut of that there can surely be no danger. Already our second tube of oxygen is drawing to an end. We can count the poor dregs of our lives almost to a minute. We have just been treated to a lecture, a good quarter of an hour long, from Chal- lenger, who was so excited that he roared and bellowed as if he were addressing his old rows of scientific sceptics in the Queen's Hall. He had certainly a strange audience to harangue: his wife perfectly acquiescent and absolutely ignorant of his meaning, Summerlee seated in the shadow, querulous and critical, hut interested, Lord John lounging in a corner somewhat bored by the whole proceeding, and myself beside the window watching the scene with a kind of detached attention as if it were all a dream or something in which I had no personal interest whatever. Chal- lenger sat at the centre table with the electric light illuminating the slide under the micro- scope which he had brought from his dressing- room. The small vivid circle of white light from the mirror left half of his rugged, bearded face in brilliant radiance, and half in deepest shadow. He had, it seems, been working of late upon the lowest forms of life, and what excited him at the present moment was that in the microscopic slide made up the day before he found the amceba to be still alive. \" You can see it for yourselves,\" he kept repeating, in great excitement. \" Summerlee, will you step across and satisfy yourself upon the point ? Malone, will you kindly verify what I say ? The little spindle-shaped things in the centre are diatoms, and may be dis- regarded since they are probably vegetable rather than animal. But at the right-hand side you will see an undoubted amceba, moving sluggishly across the field. The upper screw is the fine adjustment. Look at it for yourselves.\" Summerlee did so. and acquiesced. So did I, and perceived a little creature which looked as if it were made of ground glass flowing in a sticky way across the lighted circle. Lord

THE POISON BELT. 489 hip-hurrah about it,\" said Lord John. \" What does it matter ? \" \" It just matters this, that the world is a living instead of a dead one. If you had the scientific imagination, you would cast your surface of the earth and left only a blackened waste. You would think that it must be for ever desert. Yet the roots of growth have been left behind, and when you pass the place a few years hence you can no longer tell where the black scars used to be. Here in this tiny creature are the roots of growth of the animal world, and by its inherent develop- ment, and evolution, it will surely in time \"'YOU CAN SEE IT FOR YOURSELVES, HE KEPT REPEATING.' \" mind forward from this one fact, and you would see some few millions of years hence— a mere passing moment in the enormous flux of the ages—the whole world teeming once more with the animal and human life which will spring from this tiny root. You have seen a prairie fire, where the flames have swept every trace of grass or plant from the Vol. xJv.-SO. remove every trace of this incomparable crisis in which we are now involved.\" \" Dooced interestin' ! \" said Lord John, lounging across and looking through the microscope. \" Funny little chap to hang number one among the family portraits. Got a fine big shirt-stud on him ! \" \" The dark object is his nucleus,\" said

490 THE STRAND MAGAZINE. Challenger, with the air of a nurse teaching letters to a baby. \" Well, we needn't feel lonely,\" said Lord John, laughing. \" There's somebody livin' besides us on the earth.\" \" You seem to take it for granted, Challenger,\" said Summerlee, \" that the object for which this world was created was that it should produce and sustain human life.\" \" Well, sir, and what object do you suggest ? \" asked Challenger, bristling at the least hint of contradiction. \" Sometimes I think that it is only the monstrous conceit of mankind which makes him think that all this stage w:as erected for him to strut upon.\" \" We cannot be dogmatic about it, but at least without what you have ventured to call monstrous conceit we can surely say that we are the highest thing in Nature.\" \" The highest of which we have cognizance.\" \" That, sir, goes without saying.\" \" Think of all the millions and possibly billions of years that the earth swung empty through space—or, if not empty, at least without a sign or thought of the human race. Think of it, washed by the rain and scorched by the sun, and swept by the wind for those unnumbered ages. Man only came into being yesterday so far as geological time goes. Why, then, should it be taken for granted that all this stupendous preparation was for his benefit?\" \" For whose, then—or for what ? \" Summerlee shrugged his shoulders. \" How can we tell ? For some reason altogether beyond our conception—and man may have been a mere accident, a by-product evolved in the process. It is as if the scum upon the surface of the ocean imagined that the ocean was created in order to produce and sustain it, or a mouse in a cathedral thought that the building was its own proper ordained residence.\" I have jotted down the very words of their argument; but no\\v it degenerates into a mere noisy wrangle with much polysyllabic scientific jargon upon each side. It is no doubt a privilege to hear two such brains discuss the highest questions; but as they are in perpetual disagreement plain folk like Lord John and I get little that is positive from the exhibition. They neutralize each other and we are left as they found us. Now the hubbub has ceased, and Summerlee is coiled up in his chair, while Challenger, still fingering the sciews of his microscope, is keeping up a continual low, deep, inarticulate growl like the sea after a storm. Lord John comes over to me, and we look out together into the night. There is a pale new moon—the last moon that human eyes will ever rest upon—and the stars are most brilliant. Even in the clear plateau air of South America I have never seen them brighter. Possibly this etheric change has some effect upon light. The funeral pyre of Brighton is still blazing,

THE POISON BELT. 491 spondent found the eminent scientist seated upon the roof, whither he had retreated to avoid the crowd of terrified patients who had stormed his dwelling. With a manner which plainly showed his appreciation of the immense gravity of the occasion, the cele- brated physician refused to admit that every avenue of hope had been closed.\" That's how Mac would start. Then there was Bond ; he would probably do St. Paul's. He fancied his own literary touch. My word, what a theme for him ! \" Standing in the little gallery under the dome, and looking down upon that packed mass of despairing humanity, grovelling at this last instant before a Power which they had so persistently ignored, there rose to my ears from the swaying crowd such a low moan of entreaty and terror, such a shuddering cry for help to the unknown, that \" and so forth. Yes, it would be a great end for a reporter, though, like myself, he would die with the treasures still unused. What would Bond not give, poor chap, to see \" J. H. B.\" at the foot of a column like that ? But what drivel I am writing ! It is just an attempt to pass the weary time. Mrs. Challenger has gone to the inner dressing- room, and the Professor says that she is asleep. He is making notes and consulting books at the central table, as calmly as if years of placid work lay before him. Summerlee has dropped off in his chair, and gives from time to time a peculiarly exasperating snore. Lord John lies back with his hands in his pockets, and his eyes closed. How people can sleep under such conditions is more than I can imagine. Three-thirty a.m. I have just wakened with a start. It was five minutes past eleven when I made my last entry. I remember winding up my watch and noting the time. So I have wasted some five hours out of the little span still left to us. Who would have believed it possible ? But I feel very much fresher, and ready for my fate—or try to per- suade myself that I am. And yet, the fitter a man is, and the higher his tide of life, the more must he shrink from death. How wise and how merciful is that provision of Nature by which his earthly anchor is usually loosened by many little imperceptible tugs, until his consciousness has drifted out of its untenable earthly harbour into the great sea beyond ! Mrs. Challenger is still in the dressing-room. Challenger has fallen asleep in his chair. What a picture ! His enormous frame leans back, his huge, hairy hands are clasped across his waistcoat, and his head is so tilted that I can see nothing above his collar save a tangled bristle of luxuriant beard. He shakes with the vibration of his own snoring. Summerlee adds his occasional high tenor to Challenger's sonorous bass. Lord John is sleeping also, his long body doubled up sideways in a basket- chair. The first cold light of dawn is just stealing into the room, and everything is grey and mournful.

492 THE STRAND MAGAZINE. Stoicism of the man of science. Lord John, however, was as cool and alert as if he had just been roused on a hunting morning. \" Fifthly and lastly,\" said he, glancing at the tube. \"Say, young fellah, don't tell me you've been writin' up your impressions in that paper on your knee.\" \" Just a few notes to pass the time.\" \" Well, I don't believe anyone but an Irish- man would have done that. I expect you'll have to wait till little brother amceba gets grown up before you'll find a reader. He don't seem to take much stock of things just at present. Well, Herr Professor, what are the prospects ? \" Challenger was looking out at the great drifts of morning mist which lay over the landscape. Here and there the wooded hills rose like conical islands out of this woolly sea. \" It might be a winding-sheet.\" said Mrs. Challenger, who had entered in her dressing- gown. \" There's that song of yours, George, ' Ring out the old, ring in the new.' It was prophetic. But you are shivering, my poor dear friends. I have been warm under a coverlet all ni;rht, and you cold in your chairs. But I'll soon set you right.\" The brave little creature hurried away, and presently we heard the sizzling of a kettle. She was back soon with five steaming cups of cocoa upon a tray. \" Drink these,\" said she. \" You will feel so much better.\" And we did. Summerlee asked if he might light his pipe, and we all had cigarettes. It steadied our nerves, I think, but it was a mistake, for it made a dreadful atmosphere in that stuffy room. Challenger had to open the ventilator. \" How long, Challenger ? \" asked Lord John. \" Possibly three hours,\" he answered, with a shrug. \" I used to be frightened,\" said his wife. \" But the nearer I get to it, the easier it seems. Don't you think we ought to pray, George ? \" \" You will pray, dear, if you wish,\" the big man answered, very gently. \" We \"all have our own ways of praying. Mine is a complete acquiescence in whatever Fate may send me— a cheerful acquiescence. The highest religion and the highest science seem to unite on that.\" \" I cannot truthfully describe my mental attitude as acquiescence, and far less cheerful acquiescence,\" grumbled Summerlee. over his pipe. \" I submit because I have to. I confess that I should have liked another year of life to finish my classification of the chalk fossils.\" \" Your unfinished work is a small thing,\" said Challenger, pompously, \" when weighed against the fact that my own mc^nwn opus, ' The Ladder of Life,' is still in the first stages. My brain, my reading, my experience-—in fact, my whole unique equipment—were to be condensed into that epoch-making volume. And yet, as I say, I acquiesce.\" \" I expect we've all left some loose ends stickin' out,\" said Lord John. \" What are

THE POISON BELT. 493 \" HE IIURLRI) THK KIKI.U-G1.ASS THROUGH THE WINDOW.\" His wife gave a little groan and sank her face against his leg. \" I've seen the folk bathin' in the Serpentine in winter,\" said Lord John. \" When the rest are in, you see one or two shiverin' on the bank, envyin' the others that have taken the plunge. It's the last that have the worst of it. I'm all for a header and have done with it.\" • \" You would open the window and face the ether ? \" \" Better be poisoned than stifled.\" Summerlee nodded his reluctant acquies- cence, and held out his thin hand to Challenger. \" We've had our quarrels in our time, but that's all over,\" said he. \" We were good friends and had a respect for each other under the surface. Good-bye ! \" \" Good-bye, young fellah ! \" said Lord John. \" The w'indow's plastered up. You can't open it.\" Challenger stooped and raised his wife, pressing her to his breast, while she threw her arms round his neck. \" Give me that field-glass, Malone,\" said he, gravely. i> I handed it to him. \" Into the hands of the Power that made us we render ourselves again ! \" he shouted in his voice of thunder, and at the words he hurled the field-glass through the window. Full in our flushed faces, before the last tinkle of falling fragments had died away, there came the wholesome breath of the wind, blowing strong and sweet. I don't know how long we sat in amazed silence. Then, as in a dream, I heard Challenger's voice once more. \" We are back in normal conditions,\" he cried. \" The world has cleared the poison belt, but we alone of all mankind are saved.\" (To be continued.)

GOOD many people are of the opinion that art and the appreciation of art are making considerable progress in this country, but others (I am one of them) are now and then inclined to be despondent on this subject. What I think is the most disappointing feature in connection with the development of art in the provinces is the lack of interest shown in certain districts in local productions. Quite recently a striking instance of this peculiarity occurred in a southern town. A local artist held a sale exhibition of water- colour drawings of scenes within a radius of six miles. There were, perhaps, thirty of these, and every one of them was good, and every one of them was pleasing. There was no suggestion of slovenliness about any, nor was there a hint of an amateur. They were not the sort of drawings that might be referred to as '' highly creditable.\" Nobody wants to possess \" highly creditable\" things; they must have positive merit, without requiring one to take into consideration the conditions under which they are done, before anyone who knows anything about art would wish to possess them ; and the water-colours in this exhibition could certainly claim to be regarded in this light. Well, cards of invitation were sent to some hundreds of possible buyers and were heartily Arts and the Artful. Extracts from the Note-book of a Collector. By F. FRANKFORT MOORE. Illustrated by Dudley Hardy, ILL responded to, for free exhibitions are very popular in that neighbourhood, especially those that take the form of a demonstration of a new breakfast cereal (with samples gratis). But in the matter of sales the response was not quite so hearty as it might have been. The artist did not clear ten pounds during the fortnight that his exhibition remained open. A month or two later, however, a stranger exhibited a collection of his drawings in the same town, and although they were infinitely inferior in almost every way to those of the local man, they found quite a satisfactory number of purchasers, notwithstanding the fact that there was not a drawing that was not priced at more than double the sum asked by the local artist for his sketches. But before the end of the summer an opportunity was given to connoisseurs in the same town to acquire, at the expenditure of a few pounds, a collection of pictures that would do credit to any private gallery in the kingdom. Announcements appeared placarded on every dead wall that \" by Order of the Sheriff\" a magnificent collection of paintings by Turner, Reynolds. Gainsborough,

ARTS AND THE ARTFUL. 495 'A STKANGKR EXHIBITED A COLLECTION OF HIS DRAWINGS IN TH1C SAMIC TOWN reserve, and the pictures were to be on view in the spacious commercial-room of an hotel. People flocked to the place where these treasures were hung, and as a knowledge of pictures is born with most people, they were not slow to appreciate the fact that at last a chance had come to acquire at a merely nominal cost pictures by artists of world-wide fame. Most persons had read of the enormous prices brought by some prints after pictures by George Morland, but here were the actual pictures themselves, and in frames of the finest Dutch-metal into the bargain— no frames protected the high - priced prints in Christie's. And not merely was Morland highly re- presented here, but quite half-a-dozen e x q u i s i t e genre pictures by Josef Israels were to be seen in a row, and it was whispered among the cogno- scenti that this painter had just died, and the Studio had contained a eulogistic article, with illustrations, on his work. An- other chance! Of course, Sidney Cooper's \" Cows in C a n terbury Meadows\" spoke for itself/ Every tyro knew that no one could ever paint cattle like Sidney Cooper. And Birket Foster — no one could ever approach Birket Foster in showing children swinging on a gate. There was the gate, sure enough, and the children, and the pet lamb — all the genuine Birket Foster properties. And \" by Order of the Sheriff.\" It was a treat to see the cognoscenti examining the pictures, subjecting individual works to the severest tests of light and mag- nifying glasses, and then whispering gravely together in corners on the subject of their merits. Some of them had pencils which they pressed to their lips while they scrutinized the masterpieces, preparatory to making

496 THE STRAND MAGAZINE. And then some fool came into the room and laughed. He was a man who pretended to know a lot about pictures, and he was usually disposed to question the authenticity of things in the possession of everybody but himself. He glanced around the walls, and went away, still laughing, after being in the place no longer than three minutes. That was a trick on his part, the cogno- scenti said. He wished to put them off buying and so make a haul for himself. They were confirmed in this belief when the one dealer in the town told a gentleman who had come to him with a commission to purchase some of the pictures, that the man had just been to caution him against buying any of them on his own account. \" He said that they ere being hawked round from town to town and that they are really all fakes— that there is not a genuine picture among the lot, and that the sheriff's sale is not a bona fide one, but one of the oldest tricks of picture fakers.\" But the knowing person said to the dealer:— \" Does he mean to say that in a town like this any man would dare to put ' by Order of the Sheriff ' at the top of the bill if it was not bona SOME FOOL CAME INTO THIS ROOM AND LAUCHED.\" this particular sale. He could not have given it his personal attention, or perhaps he had never before had a chance of handling the \" fine arts \" on so opulent a scale, or the dealers would certainly not have missed the chance of their lives. However this may be, the pictures were bought by the dozen, as much as six pounds being given for each of the Israels, and a pair of Birket Foster's fetching ten, frames in- cluded in all cases. There was a keen struggle for the Turner, and it was run up to nine pounds—not by any means too much for a Turner as things go nowadays. Altogether I suppose about fifty pictures were sold. At the evening sale the auctioneer an- nounced that a suffi- cient number had been disposed of to

ARTS AND THE ARTFUL. 497 to enable their less alert friends to appreciate the varied charms of the masterpieces, for it was understood in the town that the educa- tional value of great works of art should not be neglected, and at the mayor's reception a short time afterwards two of the pictures were exhibited for the educational benefit of the company, in their original Dutch-metal frames —the sort that one may buy for half a crown in a cash chemist's. In these days the man who had laughed at the pri- vate view was re- ferred to in accents of scorn. But he continued to laugh, even when, in the most kindly spirit, he was advised by one of the successful bidders to remember that it was distinctly slanderous to suggest that a sale conducted under the auspices of the sheriff of the county was a bogus affair. Then it was that the critic laughed loudest, and so far as I can gather he is laughing still. One interesting point was brought out at the trial of the men. It was in respect of the actual manufacturer's price of the fraudulent pictures. The artist who had executed them was put into the box, and stated that he received from five to fifteen shillings for each. The average trade price of a George Morland worked out at a fraction over seven shillings, so that to refer to these works as valueless would be wrong. The purchasers who were fortunate enough to secure good specimens of George Morland at the sale have the satisfaction of dwelling upon their varied beauties and reflecting that the actual value of each work is in the bogus market some- thing between seven shillings and seven and twopence! (The sheriff's auction price of a Morland was six pounds.) I was once present at a picture sale in a mansion some miles from a country town in Vol. xlv. -51. THE ARTIST WHO HAD EXECUTED THE PICTURES which I lived. There were, I think, three full-length Gainsboroughs, five Reynoldses, a few Hoppners, two by Peters, and three or four by Northcote. I was standing in front of a man by the first-named painter, and was lost in admiration of the firm way in which the figure was placed on the floor in the picture, when a local dealer approached, saying :—

THE STRAND MAGAZINE. \"'WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY WILL FETCH?' HE INQUIRED.' \" I admit it,\" said I. \" I should have said a thousand.\" \" But really, sir, how far would we be safe to go for them all ? There are four of us here, and we are ready to make a dash for them if we had your opinion about them.\" \" Look here, my good man,\" said I. \" You may reckon on my giving you five hundred pounds for any picture in this room that is knocked down to you. I'll put that in writing for you if you wish.\" \" It's not necessary, sir,\" he repeated. \" We'll buy the lot of them for you for less money.\" \" Do, and I shall be a rich man after- wards,\" said I. He went away chuckling. The next day the auctioneer, who was an Irishman, after disposing of several lots of ordinary things, reached the pictures. \" I needn't say anything about them,\" he remarked. \" They speak for themselves. I think you'll all agree with me that there's not one of them that isn't a speaking likeness. What shall we say for this one—number one hundred and thirty-seven in the catalogue, ' Lady Betty ,' by Sir Joshua Reynolds ? Look at her, ladies and gentlemen, and tell me if you think there are many artists in this country who could do anything better than this—all hand-painted, and guaranteed. What shall we say ? \" \" A pound,\" suggested my dealer, quite boldly. The auctioneer turned a cold eye upon him for a moment, and then I saw that there was a twinkle on its glossy surface. \" Very well, sir,\" he said. \"A pound is bid for the picture— twenty-five shil- lings, thirty shil- lings, thirty-five, two pounds— thank you, sir; we're getting on — two-ten; I'm obliged to you, ma'am—three pounds — ten — three pounds ten — three pounds ten bid for the portrait of Lady Betty. Oh, ladies and gentlemen, wouldn't it be a shame if such a picture was to be knocked down for seventy shillings, and it's worth nearly as many pounds ? Four pounds —thank you, sir. The bidding is against you, ma'am. Well, if there's no advance \" It was my dealer who had made the last bid, and I must con • fess that for some

ARTS AND THE ARTFUL. 499 guineas, ladies and gentlemen, it's giving the picture away that I am, but still the times are bad. Going at three thousand guineas— going—going Gone to Mr. Colnaghi.\" The hammer fell, and everyone was laugh- ing except the Irish auctioneer and my dealer. \" Perhaps our dashing friend will give me an advance of thirty shillings on the next lot—' Ralph, first Earl of ' ? \" said the auctioneer, glancing towards the dealer with an insinuating smile. The latter forced his way towards the nearest door, leaving lot one hundred and thirty-eight to be started by a London dealer at a thousand pounds. My disappointed friend had never been at a great sale in his life, and he had certainly not suspected that the gentlemen wearing the silk hats were, like himself, dealers—only on perhaps a somewhat more heroic scale. The humours of the auction-room deserve to be dealt with more fully than is in my power to treat them. Though an auctioneer's fun is sometimes a little forced, its aim being to keep his visitors in a good temper with him— for he .knows that every time he knocks some- thing down to one person he hurts the feelings of the runner-up—still, now and again some- thing occurs to call for a witty comment, and occasionally a ludicrous incident may brighten up the monotonous reiteration of slowly increasing sums of money. I have heard that long ago most lords of the rostrum were what used to be called \" characters,\" and got on the friendliest terms with the people on the floor. But now I fear that there is no time for such amenities, though I heard one of the profession say, announcing a new lot:— \" Halloa ! what have we here ? Lot sixty- seven—Adam's bed ! Ladies and gentlemen, there's a genuine antiquity for you—Adam's bed. I shouldn't wonder if the quilt was worked by Eve herself, though I believe she was better at aprons.\" The auctioneers as a rule, however, hurry from lot to lot without wasting time referring to the charm of any one in particular. I can- not understand how they avoid doing so sometimes when a beautiful work of art is brought to the front. But in the old days I believe that now and again a trick was resorted to with a view to arouse the interest of possible purchasers in the business of the day. I knew of such a little comedy being played with a good deal of spirited action in an auction-room in a large town in the Midlands. An Irish dealer was in the habit of sending round from town to town as much stuff as a large furniture-van would hold, to be offered for sale by auction. Of course he placed a reserve on every article, and if this figure was not reached in one town he packed up the thing, to give it a chance in the next; so that within a few weeks he managed to get rid of a large number of things at quite remunerative prices. It so happened, however, that he wanted money badly when he reached the town where

500 THE STRAND MAGAZINE. as possible, though lie kept on shouting as he went reluctantly backwards step by step that the auctioneer was in a conspiracy to ruin him, allowing his goods to be taken away for nothing. At last he was in the street and the door was closed. \" Ladies and gentlemen,\" said the auctioneer, \" I must apologize for this scene. Such a thing never happened in my mart before, and I hope it will never happen again. But I know my position, and I've no intention of breaking faith with the public whatever that man may do or say. I hope you'll excuse him ; he is really the best judge of antiques I ever met, but when he gets a drop of drink there's no holding him in. Now, gentlemen, he'll not disturb us again, and with your leave I'll proceed with the sale. I'll do my duty by you, and I'll do my duty by him, whether he has insulted me or not. He may be an excitable Irishman, but that's no reason why we shouldn't do our best for him. Fair play, ladies and gentle- men, fair play to everybody. We must not allow our prejudices to blind us. You know as well as I do that the stuff is the finest that has ever come to this town, though the vender would be safer in the hands of the police than prowling about as he has been. Now, where were we ? Ah, lot thirteen, Chippendale mirror, carved wood, gilt. There's a work of art for you. Where did he get hold of such a thing, anyway ? What shall we say for it ? \" The thing started at a figure actually above the reserve price that Mr. O'Shaughnessy had placed upon it, and the bidding went on with a rush. The next lot—two ribbon- carved mahogany armchairs seemed to be badly wanted by someone. They were knocked down at a figure twenty-five per cent, beyond the reserve. So it was with everything else in the collection. Never had there been a more successful sale in the same rooms. So at least the auctioneer confessed to the vender as they dined together that evening, and the auctioneer was in private life a truthful man, though not always so rigid in the rostrum. Upon another occasion, in the same town, there was a dealer's sale at an auction mart, and it went off pretty well, though naturally a good many lots remained undisposed of at the close, for on every article there was a reserve price representing the profit to accrue to the vender with the auctioneer's usual ten per cent. One of the unsold pictures had attracted the attention of a gentleman who had bid as far as twelve pounds for it, and when the sale was over he remained in the mart waiting to see if it should be claimed by a dealer, so that he might have a chance of getting it at a slight advance. But the auctioneer very frankly confided in him that it had not been sold. The vende.- unfortunately knew a good deal about pictures

ARTS AND THE ARTFUL. 501 has been nibbling at this ever since it was left with me. Of course, he'll come back for it. He's no fool. He knows a good thing when he sees it.\" The auctioneer strolled down the room to his office, leaving the gentleman to digest the information which he had given him. Now, the gentleman was quite an astute person, and it did not take him long to per- ceive that a picture that is worth twenty- three pounds to a dealer named Gold- stein is certainly worth twenty-five to a layman, so the auctioneer was not surprised when he entered his office, saying :— \" Did you mention that twenty - five pounds was thereserve for that picture ? \" \" That's the ven- der's reserve, sir.\" \"All right, I'll take it at that,\" said the gentleman. \" Very good, sir,\" said the auctioneer, and he smiled know- ingly as he added, \" I may tell you that Goldstein offered me twenty - three for it just now. He'll be back with me for it at twenty-five within the hour. I can imagine his face when he hears that the picture's gone.\" His shrewdness did not deceive him. Mr. Goldstein was back at the mart within half an hour, with inquiries about the picture, and it was with an air of triumph that the auctioneer told him that it had been sold. It is also quite likely that the look which he said he would like to see on Mr. Goldstein's face when he heard that the picture was sold was exactly the one which was worn by Mr. Goldstein, though it might not be just the one which the purchaser of the picture would associate with an expression of chagrin on the face of a person named Goldstein. The truth was that Mr. Goldstein was grinning quite pleasantly, for Mr. Goldstein was the vender of the work of art, which he had bought for four pounds and had disposed of for twenty-five, less auction fees. MR. GOLDSTEIN WAS THE VENDER OF THE WORK OF ART.\" This auctioneer was an unusually clever man. He was heard to confide in a friend his impression that the town he lived in was not sufficiently large to give his genius a chance of being displayed to the full; and that was possibly why a short time afterwards he went to London and started business in

502 THE STRAND MAGAZINE. y century which was guaranteed to prevent earthquakes. Some time ago I heard it seriously urged on behalf of an American patent medicine that when the half of San Francisco had been laid in ruins by the last earthquake, the building where the medicine was manufactured remained undisturbed ! But until recent years a pretty free hand was allowed dealers in works of art. I remember being in a shop—called a '' gallery\" —in a provincial town, in which a good deal of \"restoration \" in the picture way was effected. The pro- prietor had a drawer- ful of labels, each bearing the name of a good old master done in black on a gold ground, and when a work was \" restored \" to his satisfaction he turned over the labels until he found one to suit its style. Then he nailed it very neatly on to the frame, and the picture was ready for sale as a Moroni, a Velazquez, a Tinto- retto, or a Titian, as the case might be. The man was an excellent judge of pictures and prints, and I do not believe that he ever got a picture painted on an old canvas to sell as a genuine work. He simply bought all the good old pictures that he thought worth buying and \" touched them up.\" People bought them on chance, the wise ones asking no questions \" for conscience' sake\" — the conscience of the vender ; and I am pretty sure that many genuine pictures passed through his hands— some that were worth from a hundred to five hundred pounds apiece, for a tenth of the smaller sum. He saw the humour of his labels better than anyone else, I think. He never gave an audible laugh when I used to inquire if he could provide me with a really choice Rembrandt for thirty shillings ; he pretended to take me seriously, and, shaking his head, he would say :— HE TURNED OVER THE LABELS UNTIL HE FOUND ONE TO SUIT ITS STYLE.\" \" Rembrandts with any pedigree are getting scarcer and scarcer every year, sir. You wouldn't feel justified in going as far as two pounds if you saw one that you took a fancy to, I suppose ? No ? Well, I'll see what I can do for you at your price, but

ARTS AND THE ARTFUL, 5°3 know, but all well toned down. Do you know what it is ? I've a great mind to have one, too.\" \" Good ! \" cried the major. \" You really couldn't do better, you know—six guineas, frame included.\" \" I believe you're right. Yes, I'll take one, too,\" said the other, turning to the dealer, who was standing silently by. \" Very good, sir,\" said the dealer. \" I'll look one out for you by to-morrow afternoon, if that would suit you.\" \" Suit me well. Six guineas in the frame, I suppose ? \" \" Yes, sir—-six guineas, unless—would you like a pair of them, sir ? I might be able to take a little off for a pair.\" The grave way in which he suggested a pair of Rubenses as if it were customary to sell Rubenses in braces like pheasants was too much for my nerves. I looked at my watch and made for the door, and I hope that I was well round the corner before I burst out. I heard afterwards that the officer had no use for a brace of Rubenses, but he bought a nice little Dutch village scene by a painter named Teniers for three pounds. It was not signed by the artist, but I have no doubt if he had made a point of having it signed the dealer would have obliged him. The work of restoration frequently includes the restoring of an artist's signature. So it was impressed on me that there is a humorous side even to picture dealing in the provinces. That incident, I repeat, took place in the good old days ; but if one gives some attention to the law courts even nowadays one will find plenty to laugh at in connection with artful transactions in the fine arts. It was certainly very amusing to see some year or two ago the examples of fine old Dresden which were displayed as \" exhibits \" — in the legal, not the exhibition sense—in the law courts, all of which were pronounced spurious by the experts, though sold for many thousand pounds to a wealthy old tradesman, and to follow the story of every transaction. But I found it more amusing still to identify the various <m. pieces with the illus-

Standing in >etween. By EDWARD CECIL. Illustrated ty \"\\V. Dewar. OU'RE a very extravagant cigarette-smoker, Cecil.\" Cecil Farley looked up from the sports page of his penny evening paper with surprise. He detected an unusual note of annoyance in his father's voice. Of an urbane, well- bred, and quiet manner, Mr. Edward Farley was one of those men who, when they feel annoyed, show it rather by withholding praise or by remaining silent than by betray- ing what they feel in the way they speak. His son, therefore, rightly understood that something unusually unpleasant was pending. \" Yes ? \" he asked. \" In what way, dad ? \" \" Well, you waste as much as you smoke. Most men smoke a cigarette to the last inch, or nearly so. In that ash-tray there arc three halves of three good cigarettes. One may take it for granted they are good ones, as you are not the sort of young man who is likely to buy Woodbines.\" Cecil Farley put down his paper and met the challenge. He did not allow his pleasant manner to be ruffled. After all, the matter was not one of very great importance, however important might be the great question underlying it. \" You wouldn't like me to smoke Wood- bines,\" he said. \" No,\" replied his father, closing what, after all, was only the opening to a much more important matter. \" I don't suppose I should. I paid for your Cambridge educa- tion, and expect I must abide by the results. Only your extravagance in cigarettes is a detail which shows how your future is shaping itself.\" \" I will try to be more economical with my cigarettes,\" said Cecil, diplomatically. \" I know it's frightfully wasteful only to smoke them half through. It's a habit I've got into.\" \" Well, please yourself about that. But there's something I wish to tell you to-night. It isn't a pleasant thing to say. It's this. Here, in my house, you are doing something which is not honourable. It's got to stop ! \" Such an accusation was serious, and Cecil Farley knew it, despite the pleasant habit he had acquired of never taking an unpleasant situation seriously if he could possibly help it. He hurriedly wondered whether he had ever heard his father speak so strongly to him before. He braced himself. The quiet smoking-room in which they were alone seemed to become suddenly most unpleasantly quiet. There was a strained and awkward silence. The young Cambridge graduate sat still and waited. After three years' study of games he had been given a degree, humorously enough, not for his knowledge of games, which was great, but for his knowledge of modern languages, which was very small. He had incidentally acquired polish and

STANDING IN BETWEEN. 5°5 turns. There's no chance of your being able to keep her in the comfort in which she has been brought up for the next five years, at any rate—if ever.\" No more damning indictment of his University education could have been cast in Cecil Farley's teeth. It meant, of course, that from the point of view of his earning his living and marrying he was useless. It mattered not at all, it seemed, that he had been within an ace of getting his rowing Blue. It counted for nothing that he might be relied on for a century in the best club them. It was useless to protest that things were not really so bad that his money value in the world was absolutely nil. It was unwise to speak of common interests shared by him and Florence Spearman. It would be mere folly to confess that his most pleasant flirtation had already gone deep. All that would but be justifying his father's charge against him and adding fuel to the fire. Instead of protesting, he accepted the position. He was right in doing so, since he could not prove the contrary to his father's statement that he was not able to earn a cricket. His golf handicap might approxi- mate to scratch, but, for all that, in the real business of life his value was practically nothing at all ! He was twenty-five. He was now told to his face that, whatever else he might do in his father's house, he was not to make love to a girl of whom he was genuinely fond. It was hard, and he felt it to be hard. But, since he was honest, even in that bitter moment of being told the truth he knew that his father spoke justly. It was the hardest moment which had come to him since he had reached manhood. Three or four answers were ready to his lips instantly. But he checked utterance of Vol. xlv.-62. \"YOU ARK POINC, SOMETHING WHICH IS NOT IIONOURAKUi. IT'S GOT TO STOP.\" living good enough to marry on. But he had something to say. \" It was your wish,\" he said, \" that I should go to Cambridge. Since you are frank, dad, let me also be frank. You liked to tell people you had a son at the 'Varsity.\" \"Yes. I admit it. But.I did not know you would pick up only the ornamental side of the life. I hoped you would work and get the habit of work, instead of a distaste for it. You did fairly well at Harrow. You wanted to go.\" \" Yes, of course I did, dad. Can you blame me ? I was fond of my games. But, now I am twenty-five I know this — you shouldn't have let me go to Cambridge.\"

506 THE STRAND MAGAZINE. If Edward Farley, giving vent to long- pent-up disappointment and an honest business man's dislike of an unsound position, had spoken with feeling, it was his son's turn to speak with feeling now. The young man saw plainly that, well qualified to live and enjoy the life lived by men who have not to earn their living, and even to shine creditably in it above the average of his fellows, he was, at the same time, utterly unqualified for the business of doing the world's work, except as a junior schoolmaster, strong in his games. For such as he there was really only that or —the Church. Between the decorative idlers and the workers he stood in between. Or it would be truer to say that he belonged to the idlers, when his place was of cruel necessity outside their pleasant life, for which, in a sort of ironic mockery, he had been exceed- ingly well trained. Arid his father, who had bluntly shown him what his position was, now saw with a flash of insight that there was really very good reason for being sorry for him. \" Is it more than a flirtation, Cecil ? \" he asked. \" Y ;,\" said Cecil. \"Unfortunately, on my side, at any rate, it is a good deal more than a flirtation.\" \" I am very sorry,\" said his father. That was all he could say. Then, after a pause, he spoke again. \" Still, you must see, my boy, that it is as I say. You can't ask her to marry you.\" Cecil Farley stared in front of him. He seemed for a moment to forget that his father was there, and to be oblivious of his surround- ings. All the pleasant trappings had slipped away. The naked facts of his position stood before him gaunt and miserable. He had been wilfully blind to those facts for all that summer. Now they were there before him, and, as it seemed, nothing else. He hardly heard his father speaking when he told him kindly what in truth he must have known for himself—that there was his allowance for him as long as he, his father, lived, but that when he died, and the income of his wrork died with him. there would only be enough to keep his widow and his daughters in decent comfort. And it seemed hard to the lover as he thought of the girl he loved. And the only satisfaction he had was that, in that moment of his facing the facts, he felt that somehow he had never quite realized before how much he really loved Florence Spearman till he saw that life was not altogether the pleasant progress he had imagined it to be. \" I suppose I must give her up,\" he said, dully. And Edward Farley, who knew that to some extent he had brought this suffering on his son, said nothing. Some of us are built on heroic lines. There is, of course, nothing to mark out those who are from their fellows, and the most common- place-looking man may very likely be a shining

STANDING IN BETWEEN. S°7 \" Don't you think, Florrie, you and I have been seeing too much of each other lately ? \" he asked, abruptly. Had the scented darkness suddenly become the clear light of day, Florence Spearman would not have been more surprised than she was. \" Why ? \" she demanded. \" What do you mean ? \" \" Only this,\" he said, throwing away his cigarette, half-smoked : \" people are coupling our names.\" She stopped, and, perforce, he stopped also. He knew that not only was he, in real truth, a lover, but also that he had only to ask the boon to be an accepted lover. It was the moment for him to be heroic. \" People mustn't couple our names,\" he said, with a pleasant smile. \" That is going too far.\" She said nothing, absolutely nothing. It was her silence which made it so abominably hard to be a hero. But Farley had grit, and he stood his ground. \" Don't let us spoil a good thing,\" he said, \" by going too far.\" And he took out his cigarette-case and lighted another cigarette with a steady hand. He did the thing well—so well that Florence, despite all the valid reasons she had for thinking the contrary, thought, in that moment, that while she brought love, Farley merely brought flirtation to their common stock. Well, it had been pleasant, that com- panionship of theirs. She had been foolish enough, it seemed, to make a mistake about it. So much the worse for her. Then she also smiled. \" People talk so easily,\" she remarked. \" Shall we go back to the dancing ? \" He gave her his arm, and they walked back through the gardens without speaking. They had got near to the house when suddenly Florence stopped. \" No,\" she said ; \"we are not going to end like this. There is something I want to know. Is it true that ou are going to emigrate ? \" Farley was taken by surprise. \" This is the first I've heard of it,\" he saH. \" What makes you think it ? \" \" People are saying it, that's all.\" He knew it was not—quite all. \" What people ? \" \" The Robinson-Smiths. Mother and I called there the other afternoon.\" \" Oh, those two cats ! I beg your pardon —those two interfering old maids.\" \" They are pretty shrewd old maids, at any rate. What they said was this. They said the average 'Varsity man has a poor chance of earning a living. And mother, who likes you, you know, joined issue. She said she had often heard that opinion, but that all the 'Varsity men she had known had done very well. Could they give an instance ? Then Mary, the one who prides herself on never shirking the truth, however unpleasant,

5o8 THE STRAND MAGAZINE. By virtue of her husband's income she was living very comfortably in the select suburb of Hampstead. She was mistress of a nice house in a good road. She kept three servants. She had two unmarried daughters, who, however, were still marriageable ; and although she knew that, if she were left a widow and her daughters remained un- married, she would have to live in a smaller house in less select surroundings, she was one of those women who are constitutionally prone to expect the best till the worst hap- pens. She knew that her son, whom she adored, would have to earn his living, but in the meantime she was very content with him as he was. His society was very con- genial to her. Bearing the hall-mark of Cambridge, he was useful both to her and to his sisters in the social life of Hampstead. And some day, of course, as she quite under- stood, in some way or another not yet clear, he would have to make a place for himself in the world. \" I cannot think,\" she said now to her husband, \" that all the money spent on his education can have been wasted.\" He answered her briefly. \" It has been,\" he said. \" I won't consent to his emigrating,\" she announced, in a manner meant to silence argument. Edward Farley shrugged his shoulders. \" My dear Julia,\" he pointed out, \" you have no right to stand in the young man's light, even if he is your son. He must make a start in life. If he can't do it here—and certainly he's not doing it—he must do it in one of the Colonies.\" \" I won't listen to this talk of emigration,\" she said, obstinately. \" It's absurd.\" \" On the contrary,\" returned her husband, nettled, \" it's wise.\" When he switched off the electric light for the night, however, the difference of opinion still remained. This talk of emigration had cut deep. Julia Farley went to sleep blaming her husband, not her son. The next evening the whole thing came to a crisis. Had anyone walked down Grassland Gardens, Hampstead, that evening shortly before nine o'clock, and been able to look into the dining-room of No. 20, a crisis is about the last thing in the world he would have thought of. He would have seen four people enjoying their dessert after a good dinner. At the head of the table sat a man with a well-trimmed grey beard, a keen and yet pleasant face, a well-groomed appearance even though he had passed middle age. Such was Edward Farley, who, after a hard day's work in the City, appreciated a home where each evening he dressed for dinner, enjoyed that meal at leisure, and afterwards smoked a good cigar in pleasant surroundings. He was not a rich man, but, as he was in enjoyment of a good income, he was com- fortably well-to-do. On his left hand sat

STANDING IN BETWEEN. 5°9 ' FARLKY DID NOT BKLIEVB HE HEARD RIGHTLY. THEN HE TOOK HER HAND, RAISED IT TO HIS 111-, AND KISSED IT.\"

THE STRAND MAGAZINE. \" What else am 1 ? '' asked Cecil, cracking a nut. \"You are too absurd,\" said his mother, lightly. \" I don't call a man who has rowed for his college and made several centuries at Fenner's a failure, simply because he has not settled down at twenty-five.\" The lightness with which she treated the subject was somewhat marred by the silence of the other two. She felt this. Why should the matter be fought out as a duel between her and her son ? \" What do you say, Florrie ? \" she asked. \" A man can't earn his living by his games. Mrs. Farley,\" said Florence. \" You would not like Cecil to be a golf professional or a sort of cricket pro. at a good school. He isn't well enough known to run an athletic out- fitter's business.\" Mrs. Farley, who had looked for and ex- pected to find an ally, felt her breath taken away by this brutally frank answer. It was almost as if that charming girl, well bred, well dressed, universally admired for her good looks and healthy outdoor outlook on life, to say nothing of her own prowess both on tennis-courts and golf-links, had struck her a blow. \" Do you mean to say,\" she asked, in amazement, after an awkward pause, \" that you agree with Cecil's emigrating ? I thought \" She stopped and changed her mind. She played her last card. \" Your father can easily get you a good opening in the City,\" she said, turning to Cecil. \" My dear mother,\" he said, at once, \" I know he would. But what use would it be starting me at something at which 1 should be no good ? I could go into his own office, but even there, sooner or later, I should have to stand on my own merits. And in com- peting with any sharp boy from an elementary school I should be handicapped. Think of it. No matter what office I got into, I should be all day hating it and living only for the hours spent outside it. What would be the sense of putting me into the City after training me for fifteen years for anything else in the world but City life ? \" \" There K a good deal of truth in what Cecil says,\" said Edward Farley, from the head of the table. In the pause that followed Florence did something dramatic. She took from the bosom of her dress a handkerchief folded and folded again. She unfolded it very carefully, as if it contained a most precious possession. She took out of it a small half-hoop of diamonds. \" Cecil has given me this ring,\" she said, in a low voice. \" But he told me, Mr. Farley, that you objected to his being engaged to me. I understand why. That is why, as yet, I have not worn it. But I'm going to. So perhaps you'll listen to what I think about his going out to Canada.\" Edward Farley smiled and nodded. His

STANDING IN BETWEEN. them. And, in the end, they can't bear it and come back. Cecil is going out to make a place in the world for me as well as for him- self, and I'm going out to be by his side while he's doing it. It's good, sound common sense, if you think of it. I'm not an only child. If my people object at first, they will give way when they see I've made my mind up. I have made my mind up. It's my own interest that he should succeed as soon as possible as well as his, and I'm going out to see that he does.\" \" Why not try another year in the old country ? \" Mrs. Farley suggested. After all, \" I think,\" said Edward Farley, slowly, \" that all that you say is right. You can both take some capital to the venture. I do not see why it should not succeed. Courage makes success more than anything else. You ought both of you to be very happy.\" \" Thank you,\" said Florence. Then she looked across to Cecil. \" Will you take me out with you now, dear ? \" she asked. \" I think it would be quite safe to do so,\" he said, smiling. \" Don't you, mother ? \" \" I'm sure I don't know,\" said Mrs. Farley. But with her eves she thanked Florence for \"SHE SLIPPED THE RING OX TO HER FINGER. 'THERE.' SHE SAID, 'THAT'S HOW MUCH I BELIEVE IN HIS EMIGRATING!'\" sha would be losing her son. \" You cannot think, I'm sure, how much you are giving up by going out to a country like Canada.\" \" Oh, Mrs. Farley, I have thought it all out,\" said Florence, seriously. \" Here in England Cecil stands in between the -.Yorkers and those who can afford to be idle. It doesn't matter how he has come to stand there, but there he stands. You see, we have shown you how we love each other, so you must not mind my being very frank. His chance is outside England—his chance and my chance also.\" believing so strongly in her son's future. That was all the comfort she got in her hour of failure. The two young people had gone out of the room. It was long past nine, and the servants were wondering why the bell to clear had not besn rung. Edward Farley looked at his wife, and she looked back at him. Without speaking they knew that they had been spectators of that sort of heroism which the best kind of love is always evoking. \" No girl would have talked as she talked

512 THE STRAND MAGAZINE. when I was a girl,\" said Mrs. Farley. \" They would not have dared.\" \" I don't know about that,\" said her husband. \" Of course, the modern girl takes things into her own hands a bit more than her grand- m other would have thought of doing. But the right sort of lover has always been ready to dare any- thing.\" But the ques- tion of how much the modern girl is capable of for good or for evil was not what either Edward Farley or his wife was really think- ing about. They knew, as most people do, that a girl nowadays thinks for herself, takes things into her own hands, and makesherown decisions for her- self. What they could not help seeing was that neither of them had really had enough courage to face the truth about their son. It was Florence Spearman's courage, not their own had laid bare the truth and faced it. \" She's a plucky girl,\" said Edward Farley, warmly. \" In my opinion, she'll be the making of Cecil.\" \" She loves him,\" said Mrs. Farley, gently, as if that explained all. She paused, then spoke again. \" And however great her love,\" she said, \" he's worth it.\" \" I would not have you think otherwise,\" said her husband. They understood each other, those two, and they knew that a great problem had been solved. But somehow there was something more, something not easily defined or even reduced to words at all, something which is constantly inspiring courage and even heroism. which \"'i SUPPOSR YOU WON'T MINH HK.INO JOAN TO MY DARBY?' HE ASKKD. SHE SMII.KI) HAITU.Y AMI OAVK HIM THE RIGHT ANSWER.\" And presently, when he got up, that some- thing made Edward Farley go to his wife and kiss her. It made them both feel young again. It made Mrs. Farley look up into her

MY BEST ACHIEVEMENT. A Symposium or the Opinions of Leading AtKletes and Champion Exponents of Outdoor Sports and Pastimes on their Most Memorable Exploits. HE achievements of the lead- ing exponents of athletic pursuits of every form provide a topic of the greatest interest. Dr. W. G. Grace once re- marked that as far as the national summer game was concerned, lookers-on frequently did not see \" most of the game.\" \" It's all a question of conditions,\" W. G. added. \" I've seen many a first-class batsman bowled by a bad ball which those in the pavilion have mistaken for a clinker. You've got to be actually playing the game to be able to judge accurately whether either batsman or bowler is really being seen at his best.\" This expert criticism applies forcibly to almost every sport and pastime. In order, therefore, to provide readers of THE STRAND MAGAZINE with their own opinions on their most meritorious achievements, we have collected the opinions of the leading athletes of the day and the cham- pion exponents of many outdoor sports on what they consider is the best \"effort\" they have ever \" put up.\" WALTER WINANS. (Champion Revolver Shot.) I find it difficult to separate two revolver shoots I have made, one in the conventional target shooting way, and the other in practical shooting. The first was made at Bisley in 1894, when I made the still-unbeaten world's record for twelve shots at fifty yards on a V»l. jtfv.-Sfl. Now WALTER WINANS. I'll Wallace Hater. two-inch bull's-eye. The score was eighty- two points out of a possible eighty-four, and the two doubtful shots were never- theless so close that they had to b/e officially examined before a decision could be come to whether they were, or were not, bull's-eyes. This won me, with several other scores, the Revolver Championship of the National Rifle Association for that year, also the first prize for military and the first prize for \" Any\" revolvers at fifty yards, the first six shots count- ing for the one and the last six for the other. for the \" Practical\" shoot. I would mention that a pistol is

THE STRAND MAGAZIXE. P. F. WARNER. (The Famous Cricketer.) To make runs on a,gopd wicket and to play a good innings on a sticky wicket are two such entirely dif- ferent proposi- tions that I think I must select two innings as the best I have ever played — that is to say, \"the best\" in my humble opinion. On a good wicket I think my best was the one hun- dred and forty- nine I made for Middlesex against Surrey at the Oval in August, 1907. I made one hun- dred and four- teen of these be- fore lunch, and the remaining thirty - five in forty minutes, and am glad to say that I gave no chance throughout. I feel in justice bound to mention that this one hundred and forty-nine was made against some pretty \" hot\" bowling, as cricket enthusiasts will appreciate at once when I say that N. A. Knox, J. A. Crawford, Lees, and Rushby were the chief Surrey bowlers. On a sticky wicket I am inclined to put down the sixty-four I made for M.C.C. against Yorkshire at Lord's in May, 1908, as my best performance in the batting line. M.C.C. only made ninety-four — the wicket was a perfect terror and helped the bowlers in every possible way, and there were no other double- figure scores in that innings. I went in first, and gave no chance throughout. Maybe, on paper, this does not sound a particularly commanding performance, but. as I have said, the wicket was too horrible for words, and as Rhodes, Hirst, and Haig were bowling like \" books,\" the performance, maybe, was not such a bad one. FRED WELSH. (Ligrit weight Champion of the World.) To turn the tables unexpectedly and gain a victory when most of the spectators have been P. F. WARNER. jm a Photograph by E. HawJcins tt Co. under the impression that one is \" beaten to the work! \" is a happening very pleasing indeed from a boxer's point of view. On that account I have always been particularly gratified at a humble effort which I once put in during a contest with Phil Brock at the Jeffries Athletic Club, Los Angeles, just over five years ago. A week before the match I had the misfortune to sprain my foot while on the road, and it immediately swelled up

MY BEST ACHIEVEMENT. all over me, and I felt the greatest relief. And, wonder of wonders, my foot became dead to all pain, and I was able to get about the ring with ease. Better still, with the ceasing of the pain there came a reaction, and realizing that I had the task of my life to carry out to make up for my loss of points in the early rounds, I let mys?lf go for all I was worth. It seemed to be a perfect rest to fight, to act, instead of merely thinking, and at once I started fighting! OKORGES HACKBNSCHMIUT. 'ltHit a Photoyruln I'll Ceiitt al Aen-«. 'AT LAST I SAW A FAVOURABLE OPPORTUNITY, AND IN A TRICK THK TURK'S SHOULDERS WERE PINNED TO THK GROUND.\" I have no very clear recollection as to what happened in the earlier rounds, but from the seventh onwards I bore into Brock with the energy of a madman, never slowing down even for a fraction of a second, lest he should have time to pull himself together. Finally, I won easily, and was immediately matched with Packy McFarland before the same club. The reason why—if I may humbly be allowed to say so—I have always felt such great satisfaction over the result of this particular contest is that all the time I was so to speak glued to the ground for the first six rounds, the pain my foot caused me was so intense that more than once the thought crossed my mind that I should have to retire from the ring to have it attended to. But, thank goodness, any will-power I may possess got the upper hand. GEORGES HACKENSCHMIDT. (The Famous Wrestler.) In the course of a lengthy career as both an amateur and professional v/rcstler I have taken part in so many strenuous bouts on the mat that I find it a matter of extreme difficulty to pin myself down to one perform- ance as being my best. However, after carefully running over my record I think I must give my vote to my success in the great Budapest Tournament. In this important Conti- nental tournament I defeated Albert de Paris in five minutes, Aimable in twenty- five minutes, and Vanden- berg in twenty-four minutes. \" So far,\" I remember thinking at the time,\" things seem fairly easy for me.\"- Then came my bor.t with the famous Turk, Kara Ahmed. The struggle whi h i olio wed I shall never forf3i as long as I live. For three solid hours we wrestbd and wrestled, until it c::erred as if the contest would go on far intothenight. Atonemoment

THE STRAND MAGAZINE. .L.. felt most proud has nothing to do with the breaking of records, of attempts to swim the Channel, or indeed of anything at all \" in the record line.\" It has to do with a life I once saved in Sydney, some years ago. On a cer- tain morning when the baths were reserved especially for the use of ladies I happened to look in at a time when there was only one lady swimmer present. In- deed, with the exception of the lady superintendent in charge of the baths, she and I were the only two living souls in the building. I don't exactly know how it happened, but, anyway, in the middle of the lesson the superintendent was giving to the sv/immer, who, by the way, was very nervous and could not swim a stroke, the former was called away and I also left the hide of the bath to ^~ go to the telephone to ring up a friend. Just as I got on to the number I wanted I heard an agonized shriek from the bath, \" Save me ! Save me ! I'm drowning ! \" followed a fraction of a second later by a still more agonized gurgle of \" Help ! Help ! \" I at once, of course, rushed back to the side of the bath to find the superintendent's pupil struggling wildly at the deep end of the bath, and just about to sink for the second time. Without the thousandth part of a second's delay I jumped in, clothes, hat and coat, and everything on, and was just in time to grip the unfortunate lady as she was rapidly sinking. Some people it is quite easy to save in the water, but this particular would - be swimmer struggled so fiercely — through nervousness, of course—that I had very considerable difficult) indeed in getting her safely to the side where she could grip on to something while I clambered out to help her to get back Mlss ANNRTTE KKM.ERMAN to dry land, However, rnmnMatarnpktfa»'*ft»»ii I managed it successfully, and after she had had a good rub down with rough towels, the swimmer soon became normal again. As far as I was concerned, I got off with a slight chill and the spoiling of a nearly new costume and hat. I somehow feel, too, that I was never quite adequately

MY BEST ACHIEVEMENT. I). MAI1KK DKRHY Ol'' bad race when, as a matter of actual fact, he may not improb- ably have ridden one of the best races of his life. Regarding race- riding as an art, I feel strongly convinced that I am right when I say that many a jockey who has finished close up second or third, and has been blamed for not actually winning, has really- ridden a far better race than the \" skipper \" of the winner, who, maybe, has scored with several pounds in hand. It will thus be seen that it is almost impossible for a jockey to criticize his own efforts and con- vince the racing public that he is doing so in a sound manner. In my own case. I can think of many a narrow victory I have gained when people have been kind enough to say that success has been more due to jockeyship than to any merit on the part of my mount. No win of this kind, however, has ever given me quite such satisfaction as my first success in the Derby in 1903, when I won the blue riband of the Turf on Sir James Miller's Rock Sand. Of that ride I shall always feel proud, for Rock Sand, in my opinion, was a really good horse, although racing experts declare that all the three-year-olds of 1903 were a moderate lot. I do not, however, consider that Rock Sand can be fairly classed in this category, as he was a long way in front of all his rivals of the same age, and was a real game little horse who could boast of one quality of inestimable value in a thoroughbred—he never shirked his work. Yes, if I live to he as old as Methuselah, I shall probably never feel quite so great satisfaction at riding a winner as when I steered Rock Sand first past the post in the Derby of 1903. BOMBARDIER WELLS. (Heavyweight Boxing Champion of England.) 1 have certainly won more important con- tests, but many boxing experts have told me —and I fancy they are right, too—that I have never put up a better performance in the ring than when I defeated Flynn at Olympia, some two years ago. Before the contest, I have an idea that most followers of boxing were of the opinion that Flynn would win— and win with something to spare, too. 1 felt, therefore, that it was up to me to do some- thing big, for I knew well that were I to surfer defeat, I should drop down co n- siclerably in reputation. For the first

5x8 THE STRAND MAGAZINE. I FANCY I HAVK NEVbK 1'U I UI' A KKT1F.K I'F.RFORMANCF. THAN WHEN I DEFEATED FLYNN.\" Prom a fight. All the time he was coming on and on, and I knew that if I ran up against one of those swinging rights of his 1 should probably discover that we weren't playing at pillow-fighting or blind-man's buff. When we took the ring for the last round the excitement in the crowded building was intense, for, while I was as strong as could be, Flynn was also far from lacking in punching power, and when two boxers are strong you never BOMBARDIER WEI.I.S. know what may happen, as Corbett found AVo\"'a n<>\"v^'*- out in the twenty-third round in his first match with Jeffries, when he thought he was three hundred winning easily, only to wake up some twelve and thirty five seconds later to find that he had been beaten miles, having and counted out. But. as far as I was con- been in the air cerned, it was a case of \" All's well that ends fifteen hours well,\" and finally I gained a fairly easy fifteen minutes, victory on points. I made my As proof, however, of the general impres- second attempt sion in boxing circles that Flynn would win on the coveted easily I might mention that after the contest, Royal Aero Mr. Hugh D. Mclntosh, the famous sports ChallengeCupon promoter, came up to me and said, \" Wells, December i8th, I congratulate you. If any man had come 1910, in Mr. into my office this morning and had told me M o r t i m e r that he thought you would even stay ten Singer's balloon, rounds with Flynn I should have quietly \" Planet,\" which shown him the door as a lunatic not re- he kindly lent sponsible for what he was talking about.\" me. We started Since then, all sorts of things have happened, at 2.10 p.m., and I have naturally gained a lot more reached the experience. But, all the same, and under all English coast at the circumstances, I don't think I've ever 4 p.m., leaving put up a better performance than that against Flynn at Olympia. The Hon. Mrs. ASSHETON-HARBORD. (England's Leading Lady Balloonist.! I think that winning outright in consecutive years the Three Year Royal Aero Club Challenge Cup is probably my best ballooning achievement, as challenge cups are rarely won outright in any branch of sport. My first attempt for the cup was on December i8th, 1909, in my balloon, \" Nir- vana,\" 80,000 c.f. capacity, with Mr. C. F. Pollock as pilot. By the way. he acted as pilot on all three occasions. We left at 4.30 p.m., the \\vind on the ground being west by north, but after getting away we found it was due west above, and at first we thought of descending in the Til- bury Docks, but eventually con- cluded that this would be more dangerous in the dark than chancing the wind changing later on, which, luckily, it did, be- coming more north. We left

MY BEST ACHIEVEMENT. Beachy Head about five miles on the right. After passing over Rouen the wind began to change and fall, and by 7 a.m. was blowing in exactly the opposite direction, so that as we were losing our mileage we had to come down at La Chatre, three hundred and fifty miles in eighteen hours thirty minutes. My third con- secutive successful attempt was on De- cember agth, 1911, K. RAY. « Ph tograiih by Sport «£ f in my own balloon, \"North Star,\" 80,000 c.f. We left Pembroke Docks at 2.45 a.m. and even- tually, after being five hours in inky darkness of themost \" Nuggetty \" Egyptian order, we came down at Witham, in Essex, two hundred and forty-four? miles in ten hours, which I may say is the longest balloon voyage uptonowdoneinEngland. I have slightly unpleasant memories of this particu- lar voyage, owing to the fact that during those five hours of darkness in mid-air we had no idea where we were, and the continual roaring of the swollen rivers from the floods sounded very much like the echo of the sad • sea waves. And a journey out to sea in pitch dark- ness, when one has not the remotest idea in which direction one is going, is an adventure which the most reckless balloonist would view with feelings of considerable trepidation. E. RAY. (The Open Golf Champion.) Of the many contests in which I have taken part on the links at \" ye royal and ancient game\" of golf—the game that Scotsmen knock \" 1\" out of—there is one which I shall never forget until Doomsday. It took place at Cruden Bay in 1911, and I was playing against Braid. We had both fought our way to the final, which was an eighteen-hole business. This we halved by Braid holing a fourteen-yard putt on the last green—a pretty useful putt, eh ? It was then decided that we should play a further nine holes. We did so, and this we again halved. I just \" got up on the post,\" so to speak, by holing a four-yard putt for a two at the ninth hole. We then proceeded to play until one or the other of us won a hole.

520 THE STRAND MAGAZINE. impossible, no man could stand the strain, and so on and so forth. As to the performance itself, curiously enough. I found no difficulties in regard to things where one would have anticipated trouble. Driving was pleasant, there was no difficulty in keeping warm, the perform- ance was not monotonous, and if I had wanted I could just as easily have done seventy-five miles an hour instead of the sixty-five that I did. The thing that created the real difficulty of the ride, however, was the track. This was new, and the continuous running on practically the same ground, round and round, broke holes through the cement, and these holes quickly became very deep indeed, and every time one struck one of them—and there were many on the track—the jolt was very painful from the driver's point of view and very harmful from the car's point of view. It resulted in large numbers of tyres being cut or torn which, under normal conditions, would not have occurred. This, therefore, during the last few hours made the drive very hard, because running into these holes continually was a very severe strain. Mrs. LAMBERT CHAMBERS. (Lady Lawn Tennis Champion of England.) I can't help thinking that a lawn tennis player ought to regard winning a match \"all but gone\" as an occasion justly deserving of being labelled \" My best per- formance.\" I can think of a number of matches in which I have managed to \" pull the game out of the fire,\" but none more desperate than a certain mixed double I played in some little time ago. This, 1 would men- tion, was not a championship match, but merely an ordi- nary club game. MRS. LAMBERT CHAMBERS. The SCOTCS (Tom (I l-twtofraph by Cmtml gam. S t O O d {OUT BRUCE LOGAN. From a PhototrravlL events all, and ours was the deciding match. How remote our chances of success looked at one time will be readily understood by lawn tennis enthusiasts when I say that the score was one set up and five games to love in our opponents' favour. The first set, by the way, we lost at 6—o and 40— 15 to

MY BEST ACHIEVEMENT. 521 while owing to some wrong instructions my work had been altered, and I had great difficulty in clearing my knees. Still, despite these drawbacks, we were favourites for the race. We got a good start, and at the top of the island had taken a lead of half a length, which we held to Fawley, when the other crew began to come up. At the mile we still managed to keep our nose in front, but here our opponents spurted mag- nificently, and in an- swering their effort we lurched badly, with just a trifle proud, but a little happening which took place when I was a competitor in the first motor boat race ever held at Cowes provides the particular incident which I think I can truthfully say has caused me more gratification than any other. During the race one of the Southampton packet-boats bore right down across the course of the boat I was driving. It was a very ticklish moment. Should I try and ease up the motor-boat and run the risk of failing to do so, which would probably have meant that we should have hit the packet- boat broadsides—the result of such a happen- ing is best left to the imagination—or should I go \" full steam ahead \" ? were the two pro- blems which I had to solve. Less than five yards separated us at the critical moment. I decided to go straight ahead, despite the fact that a warning blast from the steamer's siren sounded omi- nously terrifying. As luck had it, we just cleared the packet's bows, and so what might have resulted in \"AS LUCK HAD IT, WE JUST CLKAKKD THE PACKET'S BOWS.\" the result that they shortly afterwards took the lead. However, no race is won until the winner's number has gone up, and after a terrific gruelling finish, we got up inch by inch, eventually managing to make a dead-heat of it on the post in the record time of eight minutes eight seconds, beating the previous record by seven seconds. I would mention that, in its own small way, this is rather a unique record, inasmuch as the crews came from the same club, and established a record by dead-heating, also another record for the best time, and another one by beating the \" Diamond Sculls' \" record of eight minutes ten seconds. But for that punishing race in the morning I have often thought that we might have knocked another second or two off—but one never knows. Miss DOROTHY LEVITT. (England's Leading Lady Motorist.)

BITS OF LIFE. By O. HENRY. Illustrated ty A. K. MacDonald. I. I ne Pendulum. E IGHTY-FIRST Street—let 'em out, please,\" yelled the shep- herd in blue. A flock of citizen sheep scrambled out and another flock scrambled aboard. Ding - ding ! The cattle cars of the Manhattan Elevated rattled away, and John Perkins drifted down the stairway of the station with the released flock. John walked slowly towards his flat. Slowly, because in the lexicon of his daily life there was no such word as \" perhaps.\" There are no surprises awaiting a man who has been married two years and lives in a flat. As he walked John Perkins prophesied to himself with gloomy and down- trodden cynicism the foregone conclusions of the monotonous day. Katy would meet him at the door with a kiss flavoured with cold cream and butter- scotch. He would remove his coat, sit upon a macadamized lounge and read, in the evening paper, of Russians and Japs slaugh- tered by the deadly linotype. For dinner therewould be pot roast, a salad flavoured with a dressing warranted not to crack or injure the leather, stewed rhubarb, and the bottle of strawberry marmalade blushing at the certificate of chemical purity on its label. After dinner they would spread newspapers over the furniture to catch the pieces of plastering that fell when the fat man'in the flat overhead began to take his physical culture exercises. Exactly at eight Hickey and Mooney, of the music-hall troupe (un- booked) in the flat across the hall, would yield to the gentle influence of delirium tremens and begin to overturn chairs under the delusion that Hammerstein was pursuing them with a five-hundred-dollar-a-week con- tract. Then the gent at the window across the air-shaft would get out his flute; the nightly gas leak would steal forth to frolic in the highways ; the dumb-waiter would slip off its trolley ; the janitor would drive Mrs. Zanowitski's five children once more across the Yalu, and the evening routine of the Frogmore flats would Be under way. John Perkins knew these things would \"KATV WOULD MEET HIM AT THE DOOR.\"

BITS OF LIFE. \" NOW, WHERE ARE YOU GOING, I SHOULD LIKIi TO KNOW, JOHN PERKINS?\" happen. And he knew that at a quarter past eight he would summon his nerve and reach for his hat, and that his wife would deliver this speech in a querulous tone :— \" Now, where are you going, I should like to know, John Perkins ? \" \" Thought I would run up to McCloskey's,\" he would answer, \" and play a game or two of pool with the fellows.\" Of late such had been John Per- kins's habit. At ten or eleven he would return. Sometimes Katy would be asleep; sometimes waiting up, ready to melt in the crucible of her ire a little more gold plating from the wrought steel chains of matrimony. For these things Cupid will have to answer when he stands at the bar of justice with his victims from the Frogmore flats. To-night John Perkins encountered a tremendous upheaval of the common- place when he reached his door. No Katy was there with her affectionate, confectionate kiss. The three rooms seemed in portentous disorder. All about lay her things in confusion. Shoes in the middle of the floor, curling tongs, hair-bows, kimonos, powder - box, jumbled together on dresser and chairs — this was not Katy's way. With a sinking heart John saw the comb with a curling cloud of her brown hair among its teeth. Some unusual hurry and perturbation must have possessed her, for she always carefully placed these comb- ings in the little blue vase on the mantel, to be some day formed into the coveted feminine \"transformation.\" Hanging conspicuously to the gas-jet by a string was a folded paper. John seieed it. It was a note from his wife, running thus :— \" DEAR JOHN,—I just had a telegram saying mother is very ill. I am going to take the 4.30 train. Brother Sam is going to meet me at the station there. There is cold mutton in the ice-box. I hope it isn't her quinsy again. Pay the milkman 60 cents. She had it bad last spring. Don't forget to write to the company about the gas meter, and your mended socks are in the top drawer. I will write to-morrow. Hastily,—KATY.\" ALL ABOUT LAY HER THINGS IN CONFUSION.\"

5=4 THE STRAND MAGAZINE. Never during their two years of matrimony had he and Katy been separated for a night. John read the note over and over in a dumb- founded way. Here was a break in a routine that had never varied, and it left him dazed. There on the back of a chair hung, patheti- cally empty and formless, the red wrapper with black dots that she always wore while getting the meals. Her week-day clothes had been tossed here and there in her haste. A little paper bag of her favorite butterscotch lay with its string yet unwound. A daily paper sprawled on the floor, gaping rectan- gularly where a railroad time-table had been clipped from it. Everything in the room spoke of a loss, of an essence gone, of its soul and life departed. John Perkins stood among the dead remains with a queer feeling of desolation in his heart. He began to set the rooms tidy as well as he could. When he touched her clothes a thrill of something like terror went through him. He had never thought what existence would be without Katy. She had become so thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the air he breathed—necessary but scarcely noticed. Now, without warning, she was gone, vanished, as completely absent as if she had never existed. Of course it would be only for a few days, or at most a week or two, but it seemed to him as if the very hand of death had pointed a finger at his secure and uneventful home. John dragged the cold mutton from the ice-box, made coffee, and sat down to a lonely meal face to face with the strawberry mar- malade's shameless certificate of purity. Bright among withdrawn blessings now appeared to him the ghosts of pot roast and \" ' I'M A SCOUNDREL,' MUSED JOHN PER- KINS.\" \" UK SAT DOWN TO A LONI'.LV MEAI..\" the salad with tan polish dressing. His home was dismantled. A quinsied mother-in-law had knocked his lares and penates sky-high. After his solitary meal John sat at a front window. He.did not care to smoke. Outside the city roared to him to come and join in its dance of folly and pleasure. The night was his. He might go forth un- questioned and thrum the strings of jollity as free as any gay bachelor there. He might carouse and wander and have his fling until dawn if he liked; and there would be no wrathful Katy waiting for him, bearing the chalice that

B7TS OF T1FE. 5*5 John Perkins to come and dance in the train of Momus. And at McCloskey's the boys were knocking the balls idly into the pockets while awaiting the hour for the nightly game. But no primrose way nor click- ing cue could woo the remorse- ful soul of Perkins the bereft. The thing that was his, lightly held and half scorned, had been taken away from him, and he wanted it. Backward to a cer- tain man named Adam, whom the cherubim bounced from the orchard, could Perkins the remorseful trace his descent. Near the right hand of John Perkins stood a chair. On the back of it stood Katy's blue blouse. It still retained some- thing of her contour. Halfway up the sleeves were fine, indi- vidual wrinkles made by the movements of her arms in working for his comfort and pleasure. A delicate but im- pelling odour of bluebells came from it. John took it and looked long and soberly at the unresponsive grenadine. Katy had never been unrespon- sive. Tears—yes, tears—came into John Perkins's eyes. When she came back things would be different. He would make up for I M GLAD SAID all his neglect. What was lift- without her? The door opened. Katy walked in carrying a little hand satchel. John stared at her stupidly. \" My ! I'm glad to get back,\" said Katy. \" Mother wasn't very ill, after all. Sam was at the station, and said she just had a little spell, and got all right soon after they tele- graphed. So I took the next train back. I'm just dying for a cup of coffee.\" Nobody heard the click and the rattle of the cogwheels as the third - floor front of the Frogmore flats buzzed its machinery back into the Order of Things. A band slipped, a spring was touched, the gear was adjusted, and the wheels revolved in their old orbits. John Perkins looked at the clock. It was 8.15. He reached for his hat and walked to the door. \" Now, where are you going, I should like to know, John Perkins ?\" asked Katy, in a querulous tone. \" Thought I would run up to McCloskey's,\"

526 THE STRAXD MAGAZINE. her diffident eyelids and shot one per- spicuous, judicial glance at Mr. Dono- van, politely mur- mured his name, and returned to her mutton. Mr. Dono- van bowed with the grace and beaming smile that were rapidly winning for him social, business, and political advance- ment, and erased the snuffy - brown one from the tablets of his consideration. Two weeks later Andy was sitting on the front steps en- joying his cigar. There was a soft rustle behind and above him, and Andy- turned his head— and had his head turned. Just coming out of the door was Miss Conway. She wore a night - black dress of crepe de—crepe de •—oh, that thin black stuff. Her hat was black, and from it drooped and fluttered an ebon veil, filmy as a spider's web. She stood on the top step and drew on black silk gloves. Not a speck of white or a spot of colour about her dress anywhere. Her rich golden hair was drawn, with scarcely a ripple, into a shining, smooth knot low on her neck. Her face was plain rather than pretty, but it was now illuminated and made almost beautiful by her large grey eyes that gazed above the houses across the street into the sky with an expression of the most appealing sadness and melancholy. Gather the idea, girls—all black, you know, with the preference for crepe de—oh, crepe de Chine—that's it ! All black, and that sad, faraway look, and the hair shining under the black veil (you have to be a blonde, of course), and try to look as if, although your young life had been blighted just as it was about to give a hop-skip-and-a-jump over the threshold of life, a walk in the park might do you good, and ba.sure to stroll out of the door at the right moment, and—oh, it'll fetch 'em every time. But how cynical I \"ALL FLACK, WITH THE PREFERENCE FOR CREPE DE CHINE.\" am to talk about mourning costumes this way. Mr. Donovan suddenly reinscribed Miss Conway upon the tablets of his consideration. He threw away the remaining inch-and-a- quarter of his cigar, that would have been

BITS OF LIFE. 527 \"A QUIET BRNCH IN Till'. PARK.\" you took a little stroll in the park, Miss Conway—don't you think it might chase away some of your mully- grubs ? And if you'd allow me- \" Thanks, Mr. Donovan. I shall be pleased to accept your escort if you think the company of one whose heart is filled with gloom could be anyway agreeable to you.\" Through the open gates of the iron-railed old park, where the elect once took the air, they strolled, and found a quiet bench. There is this difference be- tween the grief of youth and that of old age : youth's burden is lightened by as much of it as another shares ; old age may give and give, but the sorrow remains the same. \" He was my fiance\" confided Miss Conway, at the end of the hour. \" We were going to be married next spring. I don't want you to think that I am deceiving you, Mr. Donovan, but he was u real Count. He had an estate and a castle in Italy. Count Fernando Mazzini was his name. I never saw the equal of him for elegance. Papa objected, of course, and once we eloped, but papa overtook us, and carried me back. I thought papa and Fernando would fight a duel. Papa has a livery business, you know. \" Finally, papa came round, all right, and said we might be married next spring. Fernando showed him proofs of his title and wealth, and then went over to Italy to get the castle fixed up for us. Papa's very proud, and when Fernando wanted to give me several thousand dollars for my trousseau he called him something awful. He wouldn't even let me take a ring or any presents from him. And when Fernando sailed I came to the city and got a position as cashier in a sweet-shop. Thref ijays ago I got a letter - .. from Italy, forwarded from home, saying that Fernando had been killed in a gondola accident. That is why I am in mourning. My heart, Mr. Donovan, will remain for ever in his grave. I know I am poor company, Mr. Donovan, but I cannot take any interest in anyone. I should not care to keep you from

THE STRAND MAGAZINE. walk back to the house just yet. And don't say you have no friends in this city, Miss Conway. I'm awfully sorry, and I want you to believe I'm your friend and that I'm awfully sorry \" \" I've got his picture here in my locket,\" said Miss Conway, after wiping her eyes with 'YOUNG MRN ARK GRAVE-KOBBF.RS BY NATJRK. WIDOW.\" her handkerchief. \" I never showed it to anybody ; but I will to you. Mr. Donovan, because I believe you to be a true friend.\" Mr. Donovan gazed long and with much interest at the photograph in the locket that Miss Conway opened for him. The face of Count Mazzini was one to command interest. It was a smooth, in- telligent, bright, almost a hand- some face—the face of a strong. cheerful man who might well be a leader among his fellows. \" I have a larger one, framed, in my room,\" said Miss Conway. \" When we return I will show you that. They are all I have to remind me of Fernando. But he will ever be present in my heart, that's a certainty.\" A subtle task confronted Mr. Donovan — that of supplanting the unfortunate Count in the heart of Miss Conway. This his admiration for her determined him to do. But the magnitude of the undertaking did not seem to weigh upon his spirits. The sympathetic but cheerful friend was the role he essayed ; and he played it so successfully that the next half - hour found them conversing pensively across two plates of ice-cream, though yet there was no diminution of the sadness in Miss Conway's large grey eyes. Before they parted in the hall that evening she ran upstairs and brought down the framed photoglyph wrapped lovingly in a white site'scarf. Mr. Donovan surveyed it with inscrutable eyes. \" He gave me UHS the night he left for Italy,\" sara Miss Conway. \" I had the one for the locket made from this.\" \" A fine-looking man,\" said Mr. Donovan, heartily. \" How would it suit you, Miss Conway, to give me the pleasure of your company to Coney next Sunday afternoon ? \" A month later they announced their engagement to Mrs. Scott and the other boarders. Miss Conway continued to wear black. A week after the announcement the two sat on the same bench in the park, while the fluttering leaves of the trees made a dim, kineto- scopic picture of them in the moon- ;K ANY light. But Donovan had worn a look of abstracted gloom all day. He was so silent to-night that love's lips could not keep back any longer the

BITS OF LIFF:. 529 All right. Why don't you go to her if you want her ? Take your arm away, please.\" \" I'll tell you, then,\" said Andy, wisely, \" but I guess you won't understand it exactly. You've heard of Mike Sullivan, haven't you ? ' Big Mike ' Sullivan, everybody calls him.\" \" No, I haven't,\" said Maggie. \" And I don't want to, if he makes you act like this. Who is he ? \" \" He's the biggest man in New York,\" said Andy, almost reverently. \" He can about do anything he wants to do with Tammany or any other old thing in the political line. He's a mile high and as broad as East River. You say anything against Big Mike, and you'll have a million men on your collarbone in about two seconds. Why, he made a visit over to the old country awhile back, and the kings took to their holes like rabbits. \"Well, Big Mike's a friend of mine. I ain't much in the district as far as influence goes, but Mike's as good a friend to a little man or a poor man as he is to a big one. I met him to-day on the Bowery, and what do you think he does ? Comes up and shakes hands. ' Andy,' says he, ' I've been keep- ing eyes on you. You've been going strong and I'm proud of you. What'llyou take to drink ? ' I told him I was going to get married in two weeks. ' Andy/ says he, ' send me an invitation, and I'll come to the wedding.' That's what Big Mike says to me; and he always does what he says. You don't understand it, Maggie, but I'd have one of my hands cut off to have Big Mike Sullivan at our wedding. It would be the proudest day of my life. When he goes to a man's wedding, there's a chap being married that's made for life. Now, that's why I've been looking sore to-night.\" \" Why don't you invite him, then ? \" \" There's a reason why I can't,\" said Andy. \" Don't ask me what, for I can't tell you.\" \" Oh, I don't care,\" said Maggie. \" It's something about politics, of course. But it's no reason why you can't smile at me.\" \" Maggie,\" said Andy, presently, \" do you think as much of me as you did of your— as you did of the Count Mazzini ? \" He waited a long time, but Maggie did not reply. And then, suddenly she leaned against his shoulder and began to cry. \" There, there, there ! \" soothed Andy, putting aside his own trouble. \" And whkt is it, now ? \" \" Andy,\" sobbed Maggie. \" I've lied fro

A Revolution in Rowing, By T. H. BRIGG, Mechanical Engineer. REVOLUTION in Rowing \" is a bold title. Many readers will be inclined to doubt whether it can be justified. I will begin, therefore, by quoting the opinion of one of England's most eminent professors, Mr. John Goodman, Professor of Engineering in the Leeds University. \" How interesting ! \" he exclaimed, after seeing my diagrams and photographs of the Oxford and Cambridge crews—labouring, as I pointed out, under very serious mechanical and bodily disadvantages, unconsciously self- imposed for want of a better knowledge and application of the eternal laws of Nature. \" Just think of it! We have been accus- tomed all our lives to descriptions and photo- graphs of the Boat Race, and yet what you have observed from these photographs has never occurred to us ! \" Never occurred to the mathematicians of 1he great Universities of this country—or, indeed, of any other—to apply their learning to the solution of the problem as to whether their respective crews were, orwere not,putting forth their forces to their best advantage ! For whatever reason, they have failed to do so. It is a fact that the design of a racing- boat, of a common farm-wagon, or of a loco- motive engine, despite all our mathematics, is almost as dependent to-day upon rule-of- thumb guidance as ever. We have no mechanical text-books in our own language— or in any other—teaching the scientific appli- cation of the forces of a racing-boat's crew; the suspension of a load on a simple horse- drawn vehicle ; or that of a locomotive on its wheels. Can we wonder, therefore, at the words of the President of the Cambridge Rowing Club when he publicly stated that he thinks \" a great deal of the bad rowing at Cambridge is due to faulty instruction \" ? Faulty instruction is the child of defective knowledge. Here, for a first example, is a case in point. I have had the pleasure of meeting eminent coaches in England, America, and Germany. Strangely enough, they have all been uncon- scious, until I demonstrated the fact, that every member of a racing crew has been placed in boats under conditions which make it absolutely impossible for any man to rely, at the most crucial part of the stroke, upon the muscular impelling capacity of both his legs. Quite unconsciously, he is making use of cne leg only. I will now proceed to demonstrate this fact by the aid of the frst set cf dia- grams and photographs (Figs, i to 8). For the latter I am indebted to Mr. R. H. Forster, of the Thames Rowing C'lub, for his kind permission to take photographs at the Thames Rowing Tank, and to Mr. J. T. (\" Bossie '') Phelps, the well-known leading oarsman and trainer, who has repeatedly posed for me in order that I might be enabled to pre- sent my facts as clearly, correctly, and lucidly

A REVOLUTION IN ROWING. 531 These figures, which are lully explained in the article, prove the startling fact, previously unknown to oarsmen, that under present conditions only one leg is in use at a time. which is left in the boat as useless weight, retarding, instead of heing able to quicken, the speed of it; for at one point of the stroke only—under present conditions—can the muscles of both legs be brought, momentarily, into simultaneous action. \" Ah ! \" the reader will exclaim. \" This may be all very well in theory, but it is im- possible that rowing men, in actual practice, can have remained in total ignorance of a fact so startling as that they were using one leg instead of two.\" It seems impossible, no doubt. But read the following letters, which resulted from certain practical experiments which I conducted at the Thames Rowing Tank—this time with no other than Mr. Ernest Barry, the world's champion sculler, who was profoundly amazed at the results obtained, as can be judged from the letter which he signed, and which was counter- signed by Mr. Matt. Wood:— February ist, 1913. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. T. H. Brigg to-day at the above concern (Messrs. Bower and Phelps\"), and after discussing his claims I accompanied him and Mr. Phelps to the Thames Rowing Tank, and there found, when pulling with all my might at the middle of the stroke, that the total leg thrust was, to my surprise, entirely upon the outside leg. Mr. Brigg then placed his hand between my inside foot and the stretcher, and asked me to push at it as hard as I could. I tried, but I could not pin it. In fact, Mr. Brigg moved his hand up and down during my heaviest pull, the blade of the oar being held at the time to enable me to effect a long, continuous pull. (Signed) ERNEST BARRY. Countersigned by eye-witness. (Signed) MATT. WOOD. Now let the reader pass on to the following letter, on the same subject, from Mr. J. T. (•• Bossie\") Phelps:— February 3rd, 1913. I have been interested in what Mr. T. H. Brigg has had to say about the science of rowing, and I must confess he has brought to light some very startling facts which I am sure must, sooner or later, lead to quite a revolution, both in the design of racing-boats, the rigging measurements and adjust- ments, and in the style of rowing. Although I am an admitted leading sculler of the present day in all parts of the world, and have rowed all my life, I must confess, as many of my friends have had to confess, that, until Mr. Brigg proved to the contrary, I was always under the impression that all oarsmen do fairly even work with both their legs. Now. however, there is absolutely no doubt about it, for I have proved that Mr. Brigg is right in saying it is impossible for any man with a single oar, of present dimensions, to work with both legs alike : for nearly the whole of the stroke is done with one leg.