The Strand 1913-1 Vol_XLV №265 January mich

The Nature and Nurture of Beauty. Do Pretty Children Grow Up Good-Looking ? How Mothers Can Influence Their Children's Looks. By Dr. C. W. SALEEBY. HE saying that beauty is only skin - deep,\" said Herbert Spencer, \" is only a skin-deep saying''; and since the fact is that beauty goes as deep as the mind (however deep that may be), it is worth our while to study its nature and nurture. P'irst of all a few words as to what we cannot help, and then much more as to what we can. Beauty has foundations in \" nature,\" or heredity, which are beyond our control in any given child. What we commonly call the \" upper classes\" in this country are certainly the better-looking classes, and, though this partly depends upon the nurture of their beauty, it largely depends upon the fact that men of position and wealth have for generations been able to choose beauty in their brides, and have assuredly done so. Hence the type of beauty which we see at Lord's when the 'Varsities or Eton and Harrow are playing each other. It is largely the product of what we may call aesthetic selec-' lion, and its results are inimitable by any- other process. As a Eugenist I am interested to imagine what sort of an aristocracy we might have if ever men found brains. as a.tractive as beauty, which notoriously \" draws us by a single hair '' ; but that will probably not be until \" Doomsday in the afternoon,'1 and we need not speculate about it here, especially since there are more valuable things than even brains. Now. everything that is natural does not appear at birth—for instance, a man's beard, which he inherits, but which takes many- years to appear. We change from year to year as we are predestined to, and the question arises. Do beautiful children become beautiful adults ? Or is there no particular connection between beauty in childhood and in adult life ? Undoubtedly there is a connection, but it needs very careful statement unless we are to go wrong. The beautiful child is more likely than the plain one to be beautiful VoL xlv.—11. in adult life, but there are many conditions to note on both sides. Illustrations of beauty which was unmistakable in childhood and in later life can be seen on the pages of this article, but \"there are others\" which would tell another tale. Firstly, let no parent despair of a plain child.' Beauty, so far from being \" skin- deep,\" largely depends upon the proportion between the different parts of the face, and this depends upon their rate of growth. Before a boy's voice breaks he may have a very defective chin, a serious blemish for our ideal of manly beauty. But that chin may be destined to grow, just when the boy's beard begins to grow, and may transform him. I saw the other day an old school-fellow whom I could scarcely recognize, so vastly improved

THE STRAND MAGAZINE. • •fi THE QUEEN OF SPAIN. The mouth is notably similar at both ages. Prum a Photografih by Hughes & Muliitu. From ft Phvtogmpk by PratiKn, Madrid. plain at birth develop into eloquent beauty when they were only three years old. So much by way of hope for the parents of the plain child ; but there is much more to say of warning for the parents of the beautiful child. They may fondly suppose that all is well, and that they are called upon for nothing more than gratitude. Far too many instances exist to prove the contrary. As in a thou- sand other cases, the simple rule here is that, while we cannot create beauty, we can readily destroy it. Just similarly, we cannot prolong our lives beyond the \" allotted span,\" but we can shorten them, and nearly all of us do. As has been said, the beauty which comes \" by nature\"—like reading and writing, according to Dogberry—is inimitable, but nothing is more easily destructible, and there are more ways than one of compassing its ruin. Fond parents and nurses practise not a few, and the unwise heir or heiress of beauty often practises the rest. The truth is that Dogberry, who was always wrong, was never more so than when he said, \" To be a well-favoured man is the gift of Fortune.\" Thus, if anything matters for beauty, the shape of the jaws does. A mark of our species is that, among the higher races, the profile of the jaws is nearly vertical, instead of protruding, as in apes, for instance, or in the lower types of fnen. To have the jaws orthognathous, instead of prognathous, is an absolute essential of beauty as we understand it. But a protrusive deformity of the upper jaw, at any rate, can be readily cultivated in any child by the use of the dangerous and objectionable abomination called a comforter. Hosts of ugly mouths, which we see on all sides, owe their origin to this instrument. Illustrations of its action are absent from our pages, for reasons obvious enough. The child was born with well-formed jaws and palate, of the type characteristic of our race. But the constant reflex sucking of a comforter, sometimes almost without intermission by day or by night, causes a forward growth, especially of the upper jaw, which spoils its angle, and may even lead the front teeth to appear with a forward projection, instead of absolutely straight up and down. The modern study of the mouth by dental surgeons has proved this beyond dispute, as could be readily shown if THE STRAND MAGAZINE were the place for ugly diagrams. Thus the comforter is condemned, quite apart from the possibility of having the thing dropped—perhaps upon a filthy station platform, as I have seen—and then inserted

THE NATURE AND NURTURE OF BEAUTY. 99 PRINCESS PATRICIA OF CONNAUGHT. These photographs show us the unmouldcd moulh of the child developed into the delicate, well-defined mouth of the young woman. Fcom a Photograph bu Hnyhti it J/uHi/u. Prom a Photograph by Lallic Charles. directly into a baby's mouth. No baby needs a comforter ; its use is only an excuse for idleness and a substitute for proper attention to the infant's needs. There is no occasion to think of a natural child as like a youth who has to be sucking a cigarette to find life tolerable. However, there is something more to say about the microbes that may be introduced into a child's mouth by a comforter, for they may play a part in the production of that great enemy of beauty, adenoid growth in the nose and throat. Eight per cent, of our school children havs adenoids at the present time, and if we wanted to be a beautiful nation, to say nothing of being a healthy one, we should waste no time before removing them, a process which only takes about ninety seconds. Most of us will agree that Jewish children are often remarkable for the beauty of their faces, a beauty which depends partly upon their expressive eyes and eyelids, and partly upon the appearance of intelligence, a great factor of beauty, and one in which the Jewish race is pre-eminently rich. But it would be bold to say that adult Jews, on the average, are conspicuously beautiful. Too often they fail to justify the promise of childhood. I speak here of Jews in our cities, and not, let us say, of the Jew in Palestine. Now, it is well known to students, and is, indeed, recognized in music-hall versions of the Jew, that he is sadly liable to adenoids, and I believe that this single fact may largely account for the contrast too often seen between the Jewish child and the Jewish adult. No one with adenoids can hope to retain the beauty which was conditionally promised him or her by Nature. All Nature's promises are conditional. Thus, if I am asked what percentage of plain children may turn out beautiful in later life, like Southey, I do not know ; but I am very well sure that the eight per cent, of children who do not get their adenoids removed must turn out plain, what- ever their original possibilities may have been. Adenoids sometimes mean deafness, which makes one look stupid, and therefore less beautiful. More frequently they mean liability to colds in the head, constantly repeated, which spoil the delicate fineness of the eye- lids. Worse than this, they mean mouth- breathing. The nose swells, perhaps, but, though it is bigger, it is less useful. The child is made plain by the swollen nose and the swollen eyelids, but it is made far plainer by the chronically open mouth through

100 THE STRA\\D MAGAZINE. which it is compelled to breathe. No mouth- breather can possibly be beautiful. We were not meant to breathe through the mouth, and the act looks unnatural and morbid. More than that, the mouth is by far the most expressive feature of the face; in every sense it is our most speaking feature. But if it be necessarily employed for breathing through, it can never express anything but an unfortunate and unnatural predicament. Decision, kindliness, self-control, serenity— all these invaluable factors of true beauty must fail to show themselves as they should in the mouth through which its unfortunate owner is compelled to breathe. Compared with many Oriental peoples, we are a deplorable crew in terms of beauty. Mark Twain once forcibly commented on the contrast between the faces that pass one in an Indian or in an average \" Anglo-Saxon \" city. I believe that this contrast is by no means entirely due to causes in heredity. Probably the crowd at Lord's on a fashionable day would be hard to beat for beauty anywhere, but you do not find eight per cent, of adenoids there. In our northern climes we are specially liable to trouble in the organs of respiration —cold in the head, adenoids, swollen tonsils ; and these are specially destructive of beauty. Every mother who cares a straw about the future beauty of her child will take care that it breathes through its nose, as it naturally will, if it can. If it cannot, then its nose must be properly cleared out, until it can do the work for which it was made—work vital for more serious matters even than beauty. But if one must warn parents against such destructors of possible beauty as the com- forter and adenoids, what shall be said to warn them against neglect of the teeth ? Only Miss MARGERY MAUDE. This shows how the parts of the child's face have grown in varying degree, so that in the young face the proportions are good and make part of the face's beauty. From a Photoornph by J. Mnrtjju /\"'row a Photoortipk &y Rita Jfarfiii.

THE NATURE AND NURTURE OF BEAUTY. 101 lately have we come to realize how large a part the state of the teeth plays in our personal appearance. Most of us would be content to suppose that black or mr.sing front teeth are to be deplored and white ones welcomed, but there is much more in it than that. Plenty of foolish people, who would consult a dentist for decay in a front tooth, will be quite indifferent to the destruction of their molars. Parents are constantly guilty in this respect, and so are young girls who are really deeply interested in their personal appearance, and are perhaps not above Miss ELLEN TERRY. Even the younger porlrail shawj the sympathetic, loving mind in eyes and mouth. VraiA by Mitt Hand, Itnl hf Heart, llntehiaioit tt Co. only are they ugly in themselves, but they are liable to make it difficult to keep the lips closed, and the open mouth through which projecting teeth appear is an aesthetic disaster. Yet if the possessor had not been so foolish as to think that back teeth, which are not seen, do not matter, it might have been averted. All our teeth are worth having for the sake of beauty. If we lose our teeth our jaws, which chiefly exist in order to hold them, are bound to atrophy. We see this clearly enough in old age. Therefore wt must keep all our teeth, and our children's. They must be taught to chew properly, with the mouth applying to their faces a kind of beauty which is not even skin-deep. Yet what happens if we lose our back teeth in early life ? The chewing must be done somehow, and so the front teeth are called upon to do it. They were made for biting into things, but not for chewing, and when we ask them to perform the mastication which should have devolved upon our lost grinders, they are liable to lose their per- pendicularity and begin to protrude. It is very nearly all up with beauty now. No one likes projecting teeth, and no one should, for they are morbid, and an indication that something has gone wrong somewhere. Not

102 THE STRAND MAGAZINE. Miss FLORENCE SMITHSON. Shows the mouth formed by the intelligent mind in the course of years. From a Photograph by T. Brotnwich. Fntm a Photograph ly Qntteitberp. shut—which means a clear nose to breathe through. They must be given a fair amount of food that needs chewing, or they cannot in reason be expected to chew it. Things like raw apples are as attractive to Eve's descendants as they were to her, and are much more desirable. They are much to be preferred as a good-night treat to the chocolate which so many fond mothers seem to approve of. If the necks of our children's molars go to sleep in the deadly embrace of a circle of chocolate, they will not long survive that \" strangle hold,\" and the pro- trusion of front teeth will be the next phenomenon. This protrusion is not the same thing as we see in the prognathous jaw of, say, a negro. If we observe the front teeth in such a jaw, we see that they run straight up and down. A woman's jaws are normally some- what more projecting than a man's, and this slightly enhanced conspicuousness of the mouth perhaps makes it no less attractive to her lover, but the teeth in those jaws should run straight up and down, and directly they cease to be vertical her beauty is en- dangered. Take care of your back teeth in youth, is the moral of these observations. No one needs telling to take care of front teeth, but most mothers are too careless about the milk-teeth, supposing that they must soon go, and do not matter. Modern dentistry takes a different view. After all, the permanent teeth must be formed just under the temporary ones, and so, if we wish our children's permanent teeth to be well- formed, regular, and durable—the relevance of which to beauty no one will question— we should have the wisdom to take care of their milk-teeth also, and that is to be done less with the active aid of the dentist than by means of sensibly chosen food and the habit of chewing, with the use of the tooth-brush as a useful subsidiary. We should end our meals and our children's with food like fruit rather than with such things as soft biscuit, if we wish to preserve the beauty of the teeth, and some of the modern wheat foods which require chewing are much to be preferred to the preposterously sloppy things which used to be so much favoured. Of course children should chew their crusts. The old prejudice against sugar and sweet things as such is unwarranted ; the finest teeth in the world are those of the West Indian negro, who is chewing sugar-cane all day—but then he is cheieing it. Our study of the supposedly skin-deep

THE NATURE A\\D NURTURE OF BEAUTY. 103 LORD LISTER. The eyes and mouth show the ihinker, the searcher, the man familiar with tragedy. \" another Herakles, battling with death and pain.\" from a rkolitgraplt l>a Klliutt ,t fry. thing called beauty has gone as far back as the back teeth and the back of the throat and nose, but it has not gone far enough yet. The truth is that adult beauty—nay, beauty at any age except infancy—depends far more than we realize upon the mind and its state. Beauty, like youth, is really a state of the soul, not of the body. It is said that the eyes are the windows of the soul, and they are so to some extent. The dull person, or the person who will not be bothered to be courteous and interested in us, shows his native ugliness of mind in the immobility of his eyelids. The interested person, with a mind which may or may not be quick, but is certainly sensitive and responsive, has active eyes and eyelids, which affect us so pleasantly that they count for beauty, as they should. Smiling creases the skin round the eyes, and therefore advisers are to be found who say that beauty is best to be preserved by cultivating an expression- less face, so as to avoid crows' feet. It is poor advice, based on a superficial view of beauty which does not work out in practice. No one is ever the less beautiful for lines on the face—if only the) are in the right places. J. FORBES ROBERTSON. Cover the mouth, and observe how much the face loses. fVom ft rkutoyrtlph by flitted. What is true of the eyes is far more true of the mouth, an organ so expressive and signi- ficant, so capable of richness in beauty, that no bearded face can ever have the beauty of such a shaven face as shows a beautiful mouth. We have only to look at a beautiful face of which the mouth is beautiful, and then to cloak the lower part of the face with hair, in order to see what the mouth counts for in our estimation of beauty. But the infant's mouth is quite meaningless. The truth is that we make our mouths our- selves. On the physical side it is essential that the child be not allowed to breathe through the mouth, that all its teeth be cared for, and that the palate be not deformed by a \" comforter.\" But these are only the physical preliminaries. The rest we do for ourselves, and what we may do it would be only too easy to prove by photographs showing how beauty in childhood has been succeeded by plainness in maturity. The beauty which counts in the long run, and which alone retains its power, is beauty of expression, which resides, above all, in the mouth and the lines round it. Darwin showed long ago, in his great book on \" The Expression of the Emotions,\" that we have

104 THE STRAND MAGAZINE. in our faces various sets of muscles—the grief muscles, the anger muscles, and so forth—which are used for the expression of certain definite emotions. The habitual use of these muscles leads to a definite creasing of the skin of the face, just as the use of the muscles of the palm creases the skin there. We all thus draw our own portrait, with masterly draughtsmanship, in a few convin- cing lines upon the skin of our faces—that skin which is a blank in infancy, and little more in childhood. The cruel man, like Nero ; the kind man, like Lord Shaftesbury : the and the skin round it are little more as yet than an untouched canvas. In years to come every feature of physical beauty may be retained, but the beholder will exact require- ments which he does not look for in the child. Is that mouth now sullen, selfish, kindly, lax, stern, mobile, rigid ? Do the corners go up or down ? Are the lines from the nose to the corners of the mouth those of frankness or suspicion, contempt, cunning, or charity ? In such questions we discern the moral factor of beauty, which makes it a worthy subject for any philosopher or poet. NERO. The child's face foreshadows evil lo come. In the adult ihe angry contraction of the inner ends of the eyebrows, the snarling retraction of the upper. lip, and the sensual protrusion of the lower, paint with lamentable and horrible fidelity the portrait of the monster's mind. thoughtful man, like John Stuart Mill, register their profoundest characteristics in their own faces, in lives which any child, and many animals, can read. We can all paint one portrait as well as Velazquez or Mr. Sargent, and that is our own ; we can and we must. Here, then, is the unknown but potent factor which has to be allowed for when we look at the beautiful child, with its regular features, its wonderful young skin, the most adorable and inimitable tissue under the sky, its fresh white teeth, its clear and lustrous eyes. All these are good, so far as they go, and so long as they last. But the essential individual does not yet appear. The mouth The parent who is interested in a child's beauty will have to reckon with these facts. No words can over-estimate their importance. In photographs of beautiful children who have become beautiful adults it is beauty of expres- sion, inexorably limned upon the face, that we delight in. The beautiful children who have since drawn other portraits of themselves need no illustration here ; they are to be met everywhere. But this is the beauty to which a man returns, never sated; beauty which the touch of Time only reveals more clearly, and which justifies, in its noblest feminine mani- festations, the words of Ruskin, that woman was \" born to be love visible.''

GIC A STORY FOR CHILDREN. By E. NESBIT. Illustrated by H. R. Millar. CHAPTER III. HERE is a piece of waste land just beyond Beachfield on the least agreeable side of that village—the side where the flat-faced shops are, and the yellow-brick houses. Here also are gaunt hoardings. plastered with ugly-coloured posters. Some of the corners of the posters are always loose Copyright, 1912, and flap dismally in the wind. There is always a good deal of straw and torn paper and dust at this end of the village, and bits of dirty rag, and old boots and tins are found under the hedges where flowers ought to be. Some people like this, and see nothing to hate in such ugly waste places as {he one, at the wrong end of the town, where the fair was being held on that never-to-be-forgotten day when Francis, Mavis, Bernard, and Kathleen set out, in their best clothes, to rescue the mermaid because mermaids \" die in captivity.\" The fair had none of those stalls and booths which old-fashioned fairs used to have, where they sold toys and gilt ginger- bread and carters' whips and cups and saucers and mutton-pies and dolls and china dogs and shell boxes and pincushions and needle-cases and penholders with views of the Isle of Wight and Winchester Cathedral inside that you see so bright and plain when you put your eye close to the little round hole at the top. The big tent that held the circus was at the top of the ground, and the people who were busy among the ropes and pegs and between the bright vans resting on their shafts seemed gayer and cleaner than the people who kept the little arrangements for people not to win prizes at. It seemed a long time before the circus opened, but at last the flap of the tent was pinned back and a gipsy- looking woman with oily black ringlets and eyes like bright black beads came out at the by & Ncsbit-Bland.

io6 THE STRAND MAGA/.1XE. side to take the money of those who wished to see the circus. Of these our four were the very first, and the gipsy woman took the warm silver sixpences from Mavis's hand. \" Walk in, walk in, my little dears, and see the white elephant.\" said a stout, black- moustached man in evening dress—greenish it was, and shiny about the seams. He flourished a long whip as he spoke, and the children stopped, although they had paid their sixpences, to hear what they were to see when they did walk in—\" the white elephant, tail, trunk, and tusks, all complete, sixpence only. Walk up ! walk up! See the trained wolves and wolverines in their great national dance with the flags of all countries. Walk up ! walk up ! walk up ! See the educated seals and the unique Lotus of the Heast in her famous bare-backed act, riding three horses at once, the wonder and envy of Royalty. Walk up and see the very-table mermaid, caught on your own coast only yesterday as ever was ! \" \" Thank you,\" said Francis, \" I think we will.\" And the four went through the opened canvas flap into the pleasant yellow dusty twilight which was the inside of a squarish sort of tent, with an opening at the end, and through it you could see the sawdust-covered ring of the circus and benches all round it and two men just finishing covering the front benches with red cotton strips. \" Where's the mermaid ? \" Mavis asked a little boy in tights and a spangled cap. \" In there,\" he said, pointing to a little canvas door at the side of the squarish tent. \" I don't advise you to touch her, though. Spiteful, she is. Lashes out with her tail— splashed old Mother Lee all over water, she did—an' dangerous, too. Our Bill 'e got 'is bone set out in his wrist a-trying to hold on to her. An' it's thruppence extry to see her close.\" The children had, fortunately, plenty of money, because mother had given them two half-crowns between them to spend as they liked. \" Even then,\" said Bernard, in allusion to the threepence extra, \" we shall have two bob left. So Mavis, who was treasurer, paid over the extra threepences to a girl with hair as fair and lank as hemp, and a face as brown and round as a tea-cake, who sat on a kitchen chair by the mermaid's door. Then, one by one, they went in through the narrow open- ing, and at last there they were alone in the little canvas room with a tank in it that held —well, there was a large label, evidently written in a hurry, for the letters were badly made and arranged quite crookedly, and this label declared :— REAL LIVE MERMAID! Said to be fabulous, but now true. CAUGHT HERE. Please do not touch. DANGEROUS! The little spangled boy had followed them

IVET MAGIC. 107 Brown hair and seaweed still veiled most of the face, but all the children, who, after their first start hack, had pressed close to the tank again, could see that the face looked exceedingly cross. \" We want,\" said Francis, in a voice that would tremble, though he told himself again and again that he was not a baby and wasn't going to behave like one—\" we want to help vou.\" \" Help me 1 You ! \" She raised herself a little more in the tank and looked con- temptuously at them. \" Why, don't you know that I am mistress of all water magic ? \" Well, I was thinking about it,\" she said, a little awkwardly, \" when you interrupted with your spells. Well, you've called and I've answered. Now tell me what I can do for you.\" \" We've told you,\" said Mavis, gently enough, though she was frightfully dis- appointed that the mermaid, after having in the handsomest manner turned out to be a mermaid, should be such a very short- tempered one. And when they had talked about her all day and paid the threepence each extra to see her close, and put on their best white dresses too. \" We've told you— V,!'1 11 WALK IN, WALK IN, MY LITTLE DEARS, AND SEK THE WlltTB KI.KPHANT,' SAID A STOUT, BLACK-MOUSTACHE!) MAN IN EVENING DRESS.\" 1 can raise a storm that will sweep away this horrible place and my detestable captors and you with them, and carry me on the back of a great wave down to the depths of the sea.\" \" Then why on earth don't you ? \" Bernard asked. we want to help you. Another Sabrina in the sea told us to. She didn't tell us anything about you being a magic-mistress. She just said, ' They die in captivity.'''' \" Well, thank you for coming,\" said the mermaid. \" If she really said that, it must be one of two things. Either the sun is in the House of Libra—which is impossible at this time of the year—or else the rope I was caught with must be made of llama's hair— and that's impossible in these latitudes. Do you know anything about the rope they caught me with ? \" \" No,\" said Bernard and Kathleen. But the others said : \" It was a lariat.\"

io8 THE STRAXD MAGAZINE. \" Ah ! \" said the mermaid. \" My worst fears are confirmed. But who could have expected a lariat on these shores ? But that must have been it. Now I know why, though I have been on the point of working the Magic of the Great Storm at least five hundred times since my capture, some unseen influence has always held me back.'' \" You mean.\" said Bernard, \" you feel that it wouldn't work, so you didn't try.\" A rattling, rippling sound outside, begin- ning softly, waxed louder and louder, so as almost LO drown their voices. It was the drum, and it announced the beginning of the circus. The spangled child put his head in and said, \" Hurry up. or you'll miss my Infant Prodigious act on the horse with the tambourines.\" and took his head out again. \" Oh, dear ! \" said Mavis, \" and we haven't arranged a single thing about rescuing you.\" \" No more you have,\" said the mermaid. carelessly. \" Look here,\" said Francis, \" you do want to be rescued, don't you ? \" \" Of course I do,\" replied the mermaid, impatiently, \" now I know about the llama- rope. But I can't walk, even if they'd let me, and you couldn't carry me. Couldn't you come at dead of night with a chariot—I could lift myself into it with your aid—then you could drive swiftly hence and drive into the sea. I could drop from the chariot and escape while you swam ashore.\" \" I don't believe we could—any of it,\" said Bernard; \" let alone swimming ashore with horses and chariots. Why, even Pharaoh couldn't do that, you know.\" And even Mavis and Francis added, helplessly, \" I don't see how we're to get a chariot\" and \" Do think of some other way.\" \" I shall await you,\" said the lady in the tank, with perfect calmness, \" at dead of night.\" With that she twisted the seaweed closely round her head and shoulders and sank slowly to the bottom of the tank. And the children were left staring blankly at each other, while in the circus-tent music sounded and the soft, heavy pad, pad of hoofs on sawdust. \" What shall we do ? \" Francis broke the silence. \" Go and see the circus, of course,\" said Bernard. \" Of course, we can talk about the chariot afterwards,\" Mavis admitted. There is nothing like a circus for making you forget your anxieties. It is impossible to dwell on your troubles and difficulties when performing dogs are displaying their accomplishments or wolves dancing their celebrated dance with the flags of all nations: and the engaging lady who jumps through the paper hoops and comes down miraculously on the flat back of the white horse cannot but drive dull care away, especially from the minds of the young. So that for an hour and a hall—it really was a good circus, and I can't

WET MAGIC. 109 in being the kind of boy who always gets caught. If you are that sort of boy perhaps that's the best way to take it. And Francis could not deny that there was something in what he said. He went on. \" Then Kath- leen's my special sister, and I'm not going to have her dragged into a row. So will you and Mavis do it on your own or not ? \" After some discussion, in which Kathleen was tactfully dealt with, it was agreed that they would. Then Bernard unfolded his plan of campaign. same way. You'd better take a knife to cut the canvas, and go by the bark lane that comes out behind where the circus is, but if you took my advice you wouldn't go. She's not a nice mermaid at all. I'd rather have had a seal, any day. Halloa ! there's daddy and mother. Come on ! \" They came on. The programme sketched by Bernard was carried out without a hitch. Everything went well—only Francis and Mavis were both astonished to find themselves so much more 'A FACE CAMK TO THK SURFACE OF THK RATHER DIRTY WATKK AM)—THERE WAS NO DOUBT ABOUT IT—Sl'OKE.\" '' Directly we get home,\" he said, \" we'll begin larking about with that old wheel- barrow—giving each other rides, and so on— and when it's time to go in we'll leave it at the far end of the field behind the old sheep- hut near the gate. Then it'll be handy for you at dead of night. You must take towels or something to tie round the wheel so that it doesn't make a row. You can sleep with my toy alarum under your pillow, and it won't wake anyone but you. You get out through the dining-room window, and in the frightened than they had expected to be. Any really great adventure, like the rescuing of a mermaid, does always look so very much more serious when you carry it out at night than it did when you were planning it in the daytime. Also, though they knew they were not doing anything wrong, they had an uncom- fortable feeling that mother and daddy might not agree with them on that point. And of course they could not ask leave to go and rescue a mermaid with a chariot at dead of night. It is not the sort of thing you can

no THE STRAXD MAGAZINE. ask, somehow. And the more you explained your reasons the less grown-up people would think you fitted to conduct such an expe- dition. Francis lay down fully dressed under his nightshirt. And Mavis, under hers, wore her short blue skirt and jersey. The alarum, true to its trust, went off with an ear-splitting whiz and bang under the pillow of Francis, but no one else heard it. He crept cautiously into Mavis's room and wakened her. and as they crept down in stockinged feet not a board creaked. The French window opened without noise, the wheelbarrow was where they had left it, and they had fortunately brought quite enough string to bind wads of towels and stockings to the tyre of its wheel. Also they had not forgotten the knife. The wheelbarrow was heavy, and they rather shrank from imagining how much heavier it would be when the discontented mermaid was curled up in it. However, they took it in turns, and got along all right by the back lane that comes out above the waste ground where Beachfield holds its fairs. \" I hope the night's dead enough,\" Mavis whispered, as the circus came in sight, look- ing very white in the starlight. \" It's nearly two by now, I should think.\" \" Quite dead enough, if that's all,\" said Francis; \" but suppose the gipsies are awake ? They do sit up to study astronomy to tell fortunes with, don't they ? Suppose this is their astronomy night ? I vote we leave the burrow here and go and reconnoitre.\" They did. Their sand-shoes made no noise on the dewy grass, and, treading very carefully on tiptoe, they came to the tent. Francis nearly tumbled over a guy-rope— just saw it in time to avoid it. \" If I'd been Bernard I should have come a beastly noisy cropper over that,\" he told himself. They crept round the tent till they came to the little square bulge that marked the place where the tank was, and the seaweed and the mermaid. \" They die in captivity—they die in cap- tivity—they die in captivity,\" Mavis kept repeating to herself, trying to keep up her courage by reminding herself of the desper- ately urgent nature of the adventure. \" It's a matter of life and death,\" she told herself —\" life and death.\" And now they picked their way between the pegs and guy-ropes, and came quite close to the canvas. Doubts of the strength and silence of the knife possessed the trembling soul of Francis. Mavis's heart was beating so thickly that, as she said afterwards, she could hardly hear herself think. She scratched gently on the canvas. An answering signal from the imprisoned mermaid would, she felt, give her fresh confidence. There was no answering scratch. Instead, a dark line appeared to run up the canvas; it was an opening made by the two hands of the mer- maid, which held back the two halves of the

WET MAGIC. in \" We can't till we're rested a bit,\" said Vavis, panting. \" How did you manage to get that canvas cut ? \" \" My shell-knife, of course,\" said the person in the wheelbarrow. \" We always carry one in our hair, in case of sharks.\" \" I see,'1 said Francis, breathing heavily. \"You had much better go on,\" said the barrow's occupant. \" This chariot is exces- don't know whether you realize that I'm stolen property, and that it will be extremely awkward for you if you are caught with me.\" \" But we sha'n't be caught with you,\" said Mavis, hopefully. \" Everybody's sound asleep,\" said Francis. \"IT WAS A WKT, SLOPI'Y, SLIPPERY, HKAVY BUSINESS.\" sively uncomfortable and much too small. Besides, delays are dangerous.\" \" We'll go on in half a sec,\" said Francis, and Mavis added kindly :— \" You're really quite safe now, you know.\" \" You aren't,\" said the mermaid. \" I It was wonderful how brave and confident they felt now that the deed was done. \" It's perfectly safe. Oh ! what's that ? Oh ! \" A hand had shot out from the black shadow of the hedge and caught him by the arm. \" What is it, France—what is it ? \" said

112 THE STRAND MAGAZINE. \"A HANIl HAH MIDI or I I KOM I HI I!l. M K. SHADOW OF THK I1ICIH.K AM) CAl'UHT HIM BY THK ARM.\" Mavis, who could not see what was hap- pening. \" \\Miat is it now—what is it ? \" asked the n.ermaid, more crossly than she had yet spoken. (To be continued.) \" Who is it ? Oh ! who is it ? \" gasped Francis, writhing in the grip of his invisible assailant. And from the dark shadow of the hedge came the simple and terrible reply :— \" The Police ! \"

PERPLEXITIES. ^Vitn Some Easy Puzzles for Beginners. By Henry E. Dudeney. 109.—A CUTTING-OUT PUZZLE. HERE is a little cutting-out poser. I take a strip of paper, measuring live inches by one inch, and, by cutting it into five pieces, the parts fit together and form a square, as shown in the illustration (see also our No. 101). • Now, it is quite an interesting puzzle to discover how we can do this in only four pieces. iio.—A NEW MATCH MYSTERY. THIS is a little game that will tie your brains into knots. So far as I know it is quite new, and has never appeared in print. It is childishly simple in its con- ditions, and a good companion to the Squire's game given in our last issue. Mr. Stubbs pulled a small table between himself and his friend, Mr. Wilson, and took a box of mutches, from which he counted out thirty. \" Here are thirty matches,\" he said. \" I divide them into three unequal heaps. Let me see. We have 14, ii, and 5, as it happens. Now, the two players draw alternately any number from any one heap, and he who draws the last match loses the game. That's all! I will play with you, Wilson. I have formed the hea[«, so you have the first draw.\" \" As I can draw any number,\" Mr. Wilson said, \" suppose I exhibit my usual moderation and take all the 14 heap.\" \" That is the worst you could do, for it loses right away. I take 6 from the n, leaving two equal heaps of 5, and to leave two equal heaps is a certain win (with the single exception of i, i), because whatever you do in one heap I can repeat in the other. If you leave 4 in one heap, I leave 4 in the other. If you then leave 2 in one Heap, I leave 2 in the other. If you leave only i in one heap, then I take all the other heap. If you take all one heap, I take all but one in the other. No, you must never leave two heaps, unless they are equal heaps and more than i, i. Let's begin again.\" \" Very well, then,\" said Mr. Wilson, \" I will take 6 from the 14 and leave you 8, n, 5.\" Mr. Stubbs then left 8, 11,3; Mr. Wilson, 8, 5, 3 ; Mr. Stubbs, 6, 5, 3 ; Mr. Wilson, 4, 5, 3 ; Mr. Stubbs. 4, 5, i ; Mr. Wilson, 4, 3, i ; Mr. Stubbs, 2, 3, i ; Mr. Wilson, 2, i, i ; which Mr. Stubbs reduced to i, I, I, \" It is now quite clear that I must win,\" said Mr. Stubbs, because you must take i, and then I take i, leaving you the last match. You happened to play into a sequence that I know, and you never had a chance. The fact is, there are just thirteen different ways in which the matches may be grouped at the start for a certain win. But unless you have all the winning groups in your memory, it is practically a game of chance. In fact, the groups selected, 14, 11, 5, are a certain win, because for whatever vour opponent Vol. xlv.-ll may play there is another winning group you can secure, and so on and on down to the last match.\" in.—THE TWELVE MINCE-PIES. IT will be seen in our illustration how twelve mince- pies may be placed on the table so as to form six straight rows with four pies in every row. The puzzle is to remove only four of them to new positions so that there shall be seven straight rows with four in every row. Which four would you remove, and where would you replace them ? EASY Pl'ZZLES. 112.—MATCHES PUZZLE.—Can you place three matches on the table, and support the match-box on

UPSilBI^I ^i\\~ s'-\" / ',.,'\"*... ^?Li ?•' NONSENSE BOTANY. HUMOUR IN DOYLEYS. This amusing set of doyleys was supplied to us by Mr. James F. F. Sintzenich, who has had them in his possession for nearly half a century, and informs us that they were drawn by a lady friend of his family. They are curiosities in their way. and show a sense of humour, as well as of draughtsmanship. which we think our readers will appreciate.

NONSENSE BOTANY. BaccopipKAlhl Qracilis *f ^ taa**3*1 . '\\-Plumbunrna flutrifasa. '•;'•' X. .-•'-•* '> 1 •r ->, - I/ ia Stupenda .^

QUAINT QUESTIONS By BARRY PAIN. Illustrated by Rene Bull. HERE was once a young grocer who went to see a performance of \" Faust,\" and then supped inordinately before retiring to bed. The blend of excitement and repletion produced the following nightmare. He dreamed that he was standing behind a counter on which was a large canister of tea. Beside it were a pair of scales and some sheets of packing paper. There were no weights for the scales, and there was nothing else in the shop. \" This is a nice sort of outfit, I don't think,\" said the grocer to himself. \" If a customer comes in I shall have to put him off somehow.\" At that moment Mephistopheles entered, in a red cloak fastened with a large metal clasp. \" I want a pound of that tea,\" said Mephistopheles, fiercely. \" Certainly, sir,\" said the grocer. \" We will send it round almost immediately. Nice weather for the time of year, sir.\" \" That won't do,\" said Mephistopheles. \" I want that pound of tea now.\" \" Very sorry, sir. It's a most extraordinary thing—never knew it to happen before—but our weights have just gone to be—cr— synchronized.\" \" Aha ! \" said Mephistopheles. \" But will one of those scale-pans hold water ? \" \" ' IT CAN,' SAID TOPHELES, WITH INTENSITY. \" The right-hand one is scoop-shaped, and you could put a pint or more in it. But the other is absolutely flat, and you could do nothing with it.\" \" Very well,\" said Mephistopheles, pro- ducing a vessel from under his cloak. \" This vessel, the weight of which is unknown, contains exactly half a pint of distilled water. The clasp of my cloak weighs exactly six and a half avoir d u p o i s ounces. Take these two things and weigh me out a pound of

QUAINT QUESTIONS 117 pavilion. As he was taking off his pads he said to the bright young boy who was scoring: \" What did I make, Bill ? \" \" The clock has just struck once for every two runs you made.\" said the bright young boy, glibly; \" and if you had made twice as many you would have made three times the number that the clock will strike at the succeeding hour.\" Whereupon Bulger, incensed by the l.b.w. decision, and further incensed by his failure to obtain a plain answer to a plain question, smote the bright young boy on the occipital protuberance, and bumped his nose against the bowling analysis. But, speaking seriously, and calculating from Bill's statistics, what was the time by the village clock when Bulger was given out ? \" Walk over and have tea to-morrow after- noon.\" said old Dr. Sharper to young Mr. Woodhead. \" Thanks.\" said Mr. Woodhead. \" I'll start from my house at three. Suppose you start from your house at the same time and meet me. Then we shall meet half-way.\" \" Oh. no. I am an old man, and my pace is three miles an hour. You are young and active; you do four miles an hour. You must make some allow- ance for that.\" \" I see,\" said Mr. Woodhead, with that look of bright intelligence so often exhibited by the absolutely fatuous. \"That makes a dif- ference of one mile. Well, to put that right, I'll start a quarter of an hour earlier. Will that do ? \" \"Very nicely,\" said Dr. Sharper, with a mysterious smile. So Mr. Woodhead 'HE SMOTE THE BRIGHT VOUNC. BOY.\" walked four miles an hour. Dr. Sharper started at three and walked three miles an hour. They met, and Dr. Sharper turned back to his own house again with Mr. Woodhead. Over the tea-table

Solutions to the Puzzles and Problems in Our Last Number. A Set or Nutcrackers. By Henry E. Dudeney. The following are the answers :— QUEER RELATIONSHIPS. IF a man marries a woman, who dies, and he then marries his deceased wife's sister and himself dies, it may be correctly said that he had (previously) married the sister of his widow. The youth was not the nephew of Jane Brown, because lie happened to be her son. Her surname was the same as that of her brother because she had married a man of the same name as herself. A LEGAL DIFFICULTY. IT was clearly the intention of the deceased to give the son twice as much as the mother, or the daughter half as much as the mother. Therefore, the most equitable division would be that the mother should take two-sevenths, the son four-sevenths, and the daughter one-seventh. AN ARITHMETICAL QUESTION. FOUR-FOURTHS exceeds three-fourths by one-fourth. That is true; but what fractional part of three-fourths is one-fourth ? Clearly one-third, which is the correct answer. THE DOCTOR'S QUERY. THE mixture of spirits of wine and water is in the proportion of 40 to i, just as in the other bottle it was in the proportion of i to 40. THE NEW PARTNER. WE must take it for granted that the sum Rogers paid, £2,500, was one-third of the value of the business, which was consequently worth £7.500 before he entered. Smugg's interest in the business had therefore been £4,500 (one and a half times as much as Williamson's), and Williamson's £3,000. As each is now to have an equal interest, Smugg should receive £2,000 of Rogers's contribution, and Williamson should receive £500. AN IMMORTAL CHESS PROBLEM. Solutions to Nos. i to 6 as already given. R—84 R—R 7 R—R 7 R—R 7 R—R7 R—B i R—K8 R—Q B i R—K BS R—Q 8 R—Kt 8 R—Kt8 R—K R 4 The second move in Nos. 20 and 21 is : Castles after K moves up. In Hallstrom's position either R may play to the fourth square on first move. 7-— .R— B 5, or 6, or R— Q 5 or < g . K R— K.6(ch) 21.— 9-— . K— K6 22.— 10. — . K R— K 6 (ch) 23.— 11. — . R— B 5 24.— 12. — . R— K Kt 6 25.— I3-— . K— Q 2 26.—

CURIOSITIES. [ M'e shall be giad to receive Contributions to this A CURIOSITY FROM A KETTLE. S\"~ OME months ago a button of my waistcoat came off, and, bachelor - like, I proceeded to re- place it. I stood by the mantelshelf, on which needle and thread were ready, when my attention was suddenly attracted elsewhere. On turning round again I found that needle and thread had mysteriously disappeared. A search failed to trace the missing article, and another was procured. Some time afterwards, during cleaning operations, the object here depicted was removed from the family kettle. On examination it proved to be the lost needle and thread. The whole is coated with fur deposited during boiling operations, and the eye of the needle, besides the tangled thread, is plainly discernible. It seems that as I was turning round the needle and thread were dragged off the mantelpiece and fell into the kettle, with this curious result.—Mr. John T. Sargent, 21, St. James's Road, Hastings. section, and to fay for such as are accepted.] the Los hut CART WITH A HISTORY. ' I \"HE proprietor of X finest ca/e in Angeles formerly sold tamales \" from a push-cart, and, although he is now wealthy, he still preserves this old vehicle. In erecting a business block to house his modern restaurant, he built a cupola just large enough to contain the old uiinale cart, and it may be plainly seen from the street. In fact, far from being ashamed of tins relic of his days of poverty, he is so attached to it that when a fire threatened his establish- ment he directed the firemen to let the silver and cut glass go until the old cart was safe !—Mr. C. L. Edliolm. 4.624. Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, California. A CLEVER POSE. THIS puzzling but cleverly-taken photograph is the work of one of the pupils in a large school in Bexhill. The subject. Professor Stearns, has just planted himself in the horizontal position known as the one-arm balance—a balance exceedingly difficult to retain for any considerable length of time. The camera was then held in such a position that the feet and legs of the gymnast were entirely obscured by the head and shoulders. The fact that the left arm is extended towards the camera makes it appear of very scanty length. This is also called the \" weather vane.\" if the performer (as in the present case) can turn on his right arm as though on a pivot, thus indicating the

THE STRAND MAGAZINE. A LIST IN PICTURE- WRITING. E list ^ shown in the accom- panying illus- tration was found in the possession of a native \"groundman\" in charge of the property belonging to the Darjeel- ing Cricket Club, of which I was once hon. secre- tary. The man, being unable to read or write, had adopted this quaint method of listing the property in his charge. The illustra- tions represent the nature of each article, and the figures, which purport to be numerals used in the \" Deb Nagri \" language, the number of each article. It will be noticed that, although quite illiterate, the man was not without some natural gift as a draughts- man, since he was able to reproduce, though some- what crudely, the shape of each article in his possession.—Mr. C. E. Gouldsbury, c/o H. S. King and Co., 9, Pall Mall, S.W. EVERY ROOM A HOUSE. PROBABLY nowhere is there so strange a \" house \" as that lived in by Joaquin Miller, the \" Poet of the Sierras.\" In fact, in this case \" house\" is a collective noun, for the bard sleeps under one roof, eats and cooks under another, and entertains visitors under still another. Yet the poet insists that it is all one house, with merely a pleasant walk in the sunshine between the rooms. The poet's home is at Dimond, California, in the foothills at the back of Berkeley and Oakland. From the photograph it might appear that an entire village clusters on this hillside, but, as a matter of fact, the poet is the only occupant of these houses, or \" rooms.\" He is much visited by lovers of his poetry, however, and the \" guest room \" is generally crowded. In this room he has a museum of relics, and he shows with grim pride a piece of one of his own ears, which was frozen off in Alaska.—Mr. Aubrey Drury, 1,912, Virginia Street, Berkeley, California, U.S.A. WHAT IS THE MISSING WORD? SOME while ago your \" Curiosities \" page contained a verse in which half-a-dozen words were left blank, each of these words being composed of the same six letters. This suggested to me another verse -on the same lines, which I think your readers will find interesting and not too difficult of solution.—Mr. A. Salter, yEolia, 44, The Avenue, Muswell Hill, N. CEMENT AND SENTIMENT. A HOME-BUILDER in California hit upon a charm-