HIRED fURNlSHED MARGARET B,\^GHT G L A N D TsmM^ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. .XX4-^ r^ ^ :^ Cliap.^£^... Copyright No.,__ UNSTED STATES OF AMERICA. HIRED FURNISHED. CvK.I« i "^ Si Hired Furnished. BEING CERTAIN ECONOMICAL HOUSEKEEPING ADVENTURES IN ENGLAND. / BY / MARGARET B.^WRIGHT. A_ i-\^t'^' BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1897. oRouen STARS INDICATE LOCATIONS OF THE " HIRTNGS." Copyright, 1897, By Roberts Brothers. THE LIBRARY or CONGRESS WASHINGTON John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. TO THE BELOVED COMPANION OF THESE HIKINGS, PREFACE. When the author of this little book returned to her own country, she was greatly surprised to dis- cover how vast the multitude to whom Europe is still an unrealized dream. "On the other side," every summer is so full of Americans that one absent long years from home naturally supposes that we all get there, rich and not rich, somehow and some time. Even if fewer of our country people went " Across " every year on their own responsi- bility, it almost seems (at least over there), that very few escape the scores, even hundreds, of Personally Conducted Parties whose advertisements occupy so much space in our newspapers, and themselves so much in European steamers, hotels, and railway- trains. Nevertheless, the fact is, that as many (or more) remain at home as ever go abroad, remain to hope for, and to dream of the happy day, ever and ever so long delayed, when they too may set forth to wander in the world of art and story. Even are there still others who scarcely hope at all, but merely dream of what might be, if dreams and dol- lars were the companions they almost never are. For it is as sure as fate that dreams and dollars can scarcely exist together, dollars so soon put an end to dreams by turning them into realities. With thoughts chiefly of these two classes of stay- at-homes, the story of these happy, these more than vill PREFACE. happy, " Hirings " was written. It is so little a matter after all, even for moderate purses, to go abroad, and that too without the breathless and cursory glimpses, really only squints, at storied Europe, of the "personally-conducted," that one who knows longs to tell every tired teacher, every over-worked college professor, every toiling author, indeed everybody with dreams and time, how it may be done. " Time ? " Time is money, we are often enough reminded; yet thousands of us have more time than money, time that perhaps cannot better be used than in the place of many dollars otherwise necessary for seeing Europe. Why should not a college professor's sabbatical, for instance, be spent in exploring beautiful England, hiring cottage and villa homes for six weeks or three months at a time, thus with always a delightfully inexpensive pied-a- terre to return to from far and near wanderings, on foot, on bicycle, by cheap railway trips.'* The author, with that famous work on hand that is to set the universe aflame by-and-by, what reason that he or she should not write in a " Hired-furnished " among English downs, among English meadows, in rustic villages, upon the English coast, rather than in a dull American village or expensive city lodg- ings ? The gain to health, and thus to the magnimt optis, would be incalculable, for all out-of-doors exercise in England would naturally resolve itself into walking miles away to historic castles, manors, picturesque hamlets, places and things immortal in song and story. In the space of a year, even of six months, very much of England could thus be fami- liarly known, and England lends herself most ex- quisitely to passionate pilgrimages, even in winter, with her gardens duskily abloom in November, her waysides and fields yellow with primroses in Feb- ruary, her meadows green all the year, even under PREFACE. IX light snows. Except during the one wild storm that comes usually in January, it is possible for the ardent pedestrian in England to walk as many miles as he pleases every day of the year. In many parts bicycling also is practicable, but not always in the soft southern counties, where the frost darts into the ground and out again at its own wayward will. As is told in these pages, furnished cottages are abundant all over England, hundreds to be ob- tained at the prices named. In answer to our own advertisement came offers from Ramsgate, Margate, Worthing, Deal, Folkestone, Dover, Littlehampton, Broadstairs, Colchester, Canterbury, Cookham, Heme Bay, Great Marlow, Aylesbury, Winchelsea, " Near Fareham," " Near Salisbury," Farnham, Basingstoke, Reading, with half-a-dozen others so near London that the fog spoiled them for our pur- pose. We advertised but once ; our whole supply (in England) came from that one source. Established in one of these cottages or villas, living expenses are as much under one's own control as in one's native village or city. The stranger need have no apprehension that his nationality costs him dear in the purchase of potatoes, bread and butter, as it does cost dearly in any continental market- place. The English provision-dealer, whatever his wares, is exactly as honest as those in our own country ; the farmer who brings butter, eggs, and vegetables to the cottage door gives not an ounce less to the pound that his customer is of Boston or Chicago, and not of London. Even did the carnal man prompt him to give only eleven eggs for a shilling, instead of twelve, the business man of him would know that the customer could not read the local papers without learning the market prices of everything. One important consideration of an English winter X PRE FA CE. is the cost of fuel. That cost seems absurd to us, with our ever-devouring furnaces, our consuming coal-stoves, even our hearty grates. English winters are damper than ours, but indescribably less biting. Outside of London, where the sun shines, summer grates are usually quite sufficient for winter tenants, with the best coal at twenty to twenty-five shillings a ton, usually about twenty-two. On the southern coast, as at Worthing, the bedrooms, even of in- valids, need very little or no artificial heat, and draw- ing-room fires burn dimly until evening. It is the same on the west coast. Englishmen themselves might criticise this statement, having so little idea of what Americans mean by " a good fire." " Hiring-furnished " has not often been tried by Americans in rural England. Two at least of the small number of those that have tried it enthusias- tically recommend the plan to those dreamers who are forever " haunted by the horizon," and for whom imagination gilds and refines into fairer than palaces, temporary homes in a foreign land that only ten or twenty dollars a month may " hire furnished." CONTENTS. Page Hired Furnished i The Dove-Cote 48 Fort Cheer 79 Martin and La Vieille 107 "Uncle Peter" 126 Garrison Service 138 In the Jersey "States" 145 Sark 155 A Little Dash into France 189 Guernsey , 224 Hauteville House ........ 239 Nellie Palmer 255 The Island of Alderney, its People, AND its Cows , 270 The Ladder .0 298 Clover Villa 325 "S. S." .351 An Acquaintance of Mrs. Clover . . 364 Phcebus 369 Windy How 375 Wordsworth's "Parson Sympson " . . 407 MoNA 428 Sundries 449 Hired Furnished. " Let us take a country house/'sneezed she. " Why not a dozen ? " croaked he. She decHned to be suppressed. " Yes, why not a dozen, one at a time? " The afternoon was not gray, although a winter afternoon in London. It was not the dirty gray of afternoons suggesting old kitchen nuns whose devotion is elbow service rather than knee. Even a dirty gray would have been auroral compared with it. It was a filthy brown, almost a greasy black, the hue of mendicant monks, and its odor was — well, it was if possible even worse than a begging friar's. The drawing-room seemed full of smoke, sewer gas weighted the air, the lighted chandelier struggled ineffectually to lessen the gloom, and both he and she kept each other com- pany in uncouth noises, all because this was Novem- ber in London. Fifteen minutes before, she had come home in a piteous state, having gone out to buy a lamp because of that fog-choked chande- lier. She had managed to find her way to the nearest shops in Oxford Street, although with extreme difficulty. The lamp could not be sent home, no goods were being delivered in this 2 HIRED FURNISHED. dangerous darkness, so she took it in her good right hand, the left carrying the porcelain globe. " Though I meet all the dukes and duchesses of the English peerage," she magnificently thought, "neither right hand nor left will I hide." She knew very well that the sharpest eyes in the peerage could see neither hand. Returning, the lamp-bearer came to grief. She utterly lost her way, the way familiar to her for years. Impossible to see the names on the street corners ; impossible to define any landmark ; im- possible to recognize any shop or house passed every day. Whether she had missed the right turnings she could not tell ; that their own familiar door was but a hand's-breadth away she tried to hope. Twice she stopped to ask where she was. One answer was, " Somewhere between Kentish Town and Victoria ; " the other, " I wish I knew myself, Madam." Grotesque forms drifted past her with vague outlines and shrouded faces ; but for constant gasping, choking, coughing, she might have fancied them ghostly fleers from Pluto's realm. She knew them to be of flesh and blood by the sympathy of her own suffering. Imprisoned odors of sulphurous chimney smoke ; of dead and living flesh, the rank out-put of butcher shops and public houses, — stung her throat, scalded her eyes, scorched her nostrils. Tears ran down her cheeks ; she heard them drop upon her ribbons, and she knew that channels of lesser grime were thus marked upon her counte- nance. Yet she dare not wipe a single tear away or reduce her blackamoor aspect, for to put clown lamp or globe even for a little instant was to lose sight of them forever. HIRED FURNISHED. 3 Then a gleam of something like hope, for some- body brushed closely by whose hobbling gait and crooked figure she often saw in their own Square. *' I have only to follow this lunatic," she thought, "and he will conduct me home." Then he vanished utterly, and left no wrack behind. In the course of time, black bitter time, some one of the distorted spirits of the fog proved to be a Giant Greatheart. His face she never saw, but he took her by the shoulders and turned her nose from north to east. " This is Store Street," he said. " You know your way from here, I suppose." So did she " suppose," that inkily weeping wanderer, but in less than three minutes she wished she had clung to Giant Greatheart no matter what his face might be, and refused to be parted from him. Then, O Joy ! Then she heard a blessed voice crying at brief intervals, " This is Gower Street," and she hoped everybody gave the invisible angel twopence as she did. A little farther on another heavenly voice sang, "This is Torrington Square," and she was at home ; that is, after counting the doorsteps till she came to No. 999. " I was just going out to look for you," he said anxiously. Then he added, " But I never should have known you from a chimney-sweep." A laugh, a hollow, mocking, horrible laugh, issued from her sooty lips at the bare idea of looking for anybody on such a day. " Let us take a country house," said she. " Let us answer some of the many advertisements of seaside and country villas to let at a nominal price for ^he winter. Let us go into the sunshine 4 HIRED FURNISHED. bathing Albion's white cliffs and kissing Enghsh meadows outside of black London. Let us hear what the wild waves are saying, and keep the rust from somebody's summer grates ; the moth from our own daily toil." Whether the earth-rending concatenation of sound that answered her was of admiration or derision she never really knew. They decided to advertise in the " Church Times." " It goes into all the rectories and vicarages of rural England," she said, " and all the spinsters read it." For their seventy-five cent advertisement they received threescore answers. There were villas, cottages, and if not mansions, at least houses that were neither villas nor cottages, but brick and substantial, gas-lighted and in seaside cities. Three of these letters were amusing inasmuch as they offered three villas at Ramsgate in the same street and with consecutive numbers. Two of the letters the lady read aloud as fair specimens of them all. "This one is from a place ^near Colchester,' but it seems too far away for our little time now. "Dear Madam, — In answer to your advertise- ment I wish to say that I have a most comfortably furnished detached cottage to let. Would take ten shillings per week from quiet small family. " The house is situated three or four minutes from sea, with good views of same. Ten minutes' walk from Frinton Station on G. E. R. Two hours from Liverpool Street Station. Five minutes from Church and dissenting mission room. Bracing air, splendid sands. Immediate possession may be had. " Yours truly. HIRED FURNISHED. 5 " He does not state number and character of rooms," they observed. "We have not time for a correspondence on the subject." The next was more definite and was from Faversham. " Madam, — Seeing your advertisement of this day for country cottage, I beg to offer one to your notice containing Draw'g and Din'g and Kitch., three good bedrooms, and other offices comfortably fur- nished. Would let it for six weeks at ten shillings per week. The house is detached and situate near Dover and Deal, and church near, about twenty-five min- utes from station and about ten minutes' walk from the Bay. Can be seen by arrangement. " Yours truly. The Americans carefully put these letters "^way for future use and chose Pevensey Villa. Now Pevensey Villa was only an experiment. It was hired by the week and only for six weeks, so the Americans were less exacting of requirement than had their hiring been for a longer period. Indeed, their paramount desire was to flee away the very soonest possible from darkness and gnashing of teeth, so they engaged without seeing it the villa to which was the shortest flight. Afterwards, when they found that this was not only the most economical but the most delightful way of seeing and knowing beautiful England, they became very high and mighty in their requirements, and picked and chose among their Mems as though they were spending fortunes in hiring furnished. Darkness was falling when they left their train less than two hours from London. Only two other people descended where they did, and the O HIRED FURNISHED. aspect of the little station was not smiling. Neither was that of the crouching village outside, which seemed a moist, unpleasant body, with a bad cold in the head. They found that they were still two miles from their villa, two dank, damp, dumb miles, to be done in a hired coach from an adjacent stable, a huge coach that loomed high above wayside cot- tages as though it were caiTying Brobdingnagian princes. Darkness had entirely fallen when at the end of a perfectly flat ride between draining ditches they came out through wide gates and saw the sea before them. The coach seemed driving straight into the water, but before the final plunge it was arrested by two running figures, — a man in a fisherman's jacket, and a woman in the most extraordinary head gear they ever saw. These proved to be their proprietors, who had been on the watch for them. " You see, sir, if you 'd driv up to henny bother villa to let," said Mrs. Pumpkin-Hood, ''you'd never got haway." Mrs. Pumpkin-Hood, they learned later, must always be addressed in a robust voice, not that her ears were dull, but because she never quitted that thickly wadded pumpkin-shaped hood day in (or night, it is believed) or day out, while they knew her ; this was a matter of rejoicing to them so long as they believed they had thus come upon a Dickensesque landlady, a tribe distinguished for immovable bonnets. Pevensey Villa proved to be a double one, peaked and puckered with beatings of the sea- side weather, flat on the flat ground, a little white picket fence about it, and directly facing the sea. HIRED FURNISHED. 7 The Americans had the favorite side, their pro- prietors told them, and as the Americans saw, it being the one most open to the wide view of uni- versal flatness. A bright fire welcomed them ; the sitting-room was the very picture of a home nest, with its large glowing lamp, its snugly drawn win- dow-shades, and lace curtains. " Are we in clover? " She must have spoken with vigor, for Mrs. Pumpkin-Hood quickly replied, '' No, mum, no such villa in Pemsy Bay." " Pemsy — " thus Dr. Andrew Boorde named Pevensey when he willed away his house in 1547; thus the inhabitants name it still. While Mrs. Pumpkin-Hood ran over to her own house for sheets, one other table-cloth and four towels, the entire "linen" of the villa, the new-comers took observations. But first the lady wrote in a book — " Mem. Lucky I brought towels ; never hire furnished without bringing extra towels and table-cloths." The sitting-room was undeniably small, but then two persons so closely related as these do not need a large one ; if they insisted upon large- ness, why, there v/ere the French windows open- ing upon a little balcony ; they were like cathedral doors. There was a neat carpet, fresh wall paper, '' ornaments," including a thermometer on the mantel, and window-shades that came down on the run but went only crawlingly up again. The little wall closets beside the fireplace had empty shelves, but the space beneath was a chaos of bottles, left by previous tenants. Neither of the Americans remarked that the key must be turned to keep the sitting-room door closed, or that the 8 HIRED FURNISHED. outside door would shut only by argument of a stalwart kick, then open again only by means of another from the outside. Not yet did they know that to every one who rang at that front door dur- ing their hibernation the salutation through the frail barrier should be, " Would you mind to kick ? " But both noticed that the sitting-room was beautifully warm, and that the little round table was brightly laid in readiness for the chops and bread they had brought with them, and the keen hunger given them already by the change of air. '^ And so near the Infinite, the Eternal Sea," she reverently chanted as she set the steaming tea- pot down. " What 's the matter with its nose ? " he asked. " Beds aired ? Yes, mum ; slept in 'em ourselves last night." Considering the chronic dampness of beds in England, particularly seaside beds, this was extra- ordinary thoughtfulness. The lady asked vaguely but sympathetically concerning possible rheumatic twinges in the weather-beaten substance of their proprietors. " Never 'ave henny," answered the pair. Days later, when the conversation touched in its flight upon that perpetual hood, " Nooralgie," the wearer explained, and the strangers were much disappointed. For do not Dickensesque landladies wear eternal black bonnets only to show which way the wind is listing? Fires were soon lighted in four rooms (the two comfortable attics left unexplored), and after a cosey evening by the sitting-room fire with the wild waves hinting unutterable things through the. HIRED FURNISHED. 9 chinks of the French window, they went to bed before the Hghts of Hastings burned low or those of nearer Eastbourne. She awoke from her first sleep to find herself in a coffin. Above that lidless coffin rose the damp walls of a tomb, a mildewed tomb, a shat- tered antique tomb smelling of things long dead, of seasons gone to decay. Upon the coffin's edge horrible shapes grinned and capered, clutching, snatching, clawing shapes, named Rheumatism, Fever, Neuralgia, Everydisease and Death. Out- side the tomb, far away from tliat danse macabre^ she heard the wild waves saying, " Well aired ? Slept in last night ? Go to, thou dunce's duncely daughter! Those beds have not been slept in save by the mists (which are not misters) since the bathing season ended." " And here it is almost Christmas ! " she cried. " Come, arouse thee, arouse thee, ray perilously sleeping one, and help me pile these bedclothes before the fire ! " " ' Bed is bed, however bedly ! ' " he quoted in yawning. " What do you expect, — all the luxuries of the season, even to a truth-telling landlady, for our paltry two dollars and a half a week, * linning and plate ' included ? I doubt if some of them are not missing even at fifteen dollars a week in the height of the summer." (By "plate" the sleepy one meant five lead forks and eight spoons of pure pewter. ''I will mem them," she had said, and wrote down " Mein. Never hire furnished without bringing our own silver." Glorious sunshine beat broadly into the sitting- room the next morning as they tilted fragrant and exhilarating even if nicked cups before a blazing lO HIRED FURNISHED. fire. Two long toasting forks were in the villa's furnishing, and they gleefully made the toast as they needed it, bronze and piping hot. " We are like young Wordsworth and Dorothy toasting their breakfasts before the fire in Dove Cottage," she said. '^ I cannot imagine Wordsworth doing anything for himself, even making toast," said he. " Dor- othy toasted for both. That 7vas a sister ! " The hint, if one was intended, fell upon deaf ears. " Ceylon tea," she smacked, '' delicious at only fifty-five cents a pound ! No wonder England makes the worst coffee in the world." Only a stone's throw from the breakfast table the sea sparkled with scarcely a murmur. Almost as near, one of Pitt's martello towers, meant to frighten the French, gleamed like marble, albeit really a most ramshackle and mouldy affair, stuffed with somebody's hay. This was their nearest neighbor of the line of seventy-five towers en- circling the coast from Eastbourne to Hastings. " W^e do not need to be more cosey," he mag- nanimously confessed. " I hope London fog is thick enough to dip with a spoon," she purred, albeit not particu- larly vicious, as women go. Pevensey Bay is not picturesque. It has no trees, no white cliffs, no beetling rocks, no verdure even in summer, and its "terraces," "places," and "villas " are all dolefully new, though faded. It is a hamlet of cheap summer cottages and one shop, squatted upon the edge of a marsh euphe ra- ised as Pevensey " Levels " and upon rough shingle, blazing, glaring in summer, in winter hid- HIRED FURNISHED. II eously bare though never bleak. The marsh (pardon, the " Level ") extends from the ancient seaport of Pevensey where William the Norman, that famous warman, landed with his motley crew of artisans and land-pirates. Deposits from a tiny river and the receding of the sea have formed the present site of Pevensey Bay ; over the very spot where the villa stands, the adventurer's fleet sailed twice at least, for from Pevensey he sailed six months after the Conquest for his first visit to Normandy. William, the burly, half-savage landgrabber, to the Americans was still very much alive in that Saxon region. They grew upon such familiar terms with him that they occasionally referred to him as " WiUie," even " Bill," after the fashion of their favorite New York weekly, by way of variety in such continual mention. Within walking distance (a " tidy walk," the natives would call it) is the spot where Harold fell, taking with him all the sympathies of these late- arriving Americans — the battle-field where the greedy Norman became forevermore " the Con- queror." At night the glow of Hastings edged the disk of their darkness ; whenever they re- turned by train from their many excursions, their way from the station ran through the grounds of a Roman castle already a ruin when the Norman landed beside it ; in the same spot, many say, where Caesar landed a thousand years before the Norman was born. This Pevensey Castle stands upon a slight eminence, and its ivy-grown walls are a landmark for miles. Its fifteen massive towers buttressing the walls were added probably soon after the Conquest, by one of William's half 12 HIRED FURNISHED. brothers, the Earl of Morton^ to whom much of Sussex was given. In this castle in 1399, Lady Pelham, who had valiantly defended it against King Richard (al- though women must not vote because they cannot fight), wrote to her '' trevve lorde," the earliest letter extant in the English language. Here, in 1405, young James the First of Scotland spent some time of his captivity in England ; and here in 1 41 9, Queen Joan of Navarre, widow of Henry Fourth, was imprisoned by her stepson. But per- haps none of those distinguished people ever occupied so high a position in the castle as these undistinguished Americans did. Since those prison-days, time has been busy filling in the roofless ten acres, till now the village path through the walls is within a few feet of the top of the towers. Probably when Lady Pelham chewed her goose-quill and gazed out of window-slits med- itating how to spell her letter to her " Lordes hie worschippe," she sat a hundred feet or more below the sodden path where, from a continent she never heard of, certain Americans passed and fancied they could teach her. " The insolence of thinking to teach a valiant dame who taught a king bitter knowledge, that ' yhowr avvnn pore I Pelham ' is not the latest style in the adjustment of letters," retorted one of them to the other. " Don't tell me that correct spelling is not vulgar, the trick of schoolmarms and proof- readers ! Chaucer's spelling was entirely Chau- cerian ; Goethe blundered as he pleased ; Swift allowed Stella twenty misspellings in one letter. Neither Romney, George Morland, nor Turner could spell ; Monk and Marlborough spelled fortuitously ; HIRED FURNISHED. 13 Washington put as many ;2's as he pleased in his ginn ; Queens Mary and Anne spelled in true Stuart fashion ; Victoria is by no means always vul- garly correct ; no king of England and no hero has ever spelled as correctly as a board school-mistress. Then think of Jane Austen with her ' arraroot/ her '■ neice/ and ' tomatas.' Don t tell me — ^^ " I won't, " said he. Pevensey has had distinguished visitors that have not been prisoners. The house is here in which tra- dition says the original of all Merrie Andrews was born. Tradition insists that not only here he was born, but that in the very next parish was the Gotham of which he wrote merry tales. Dr. Andrew Boorde is usually spoken of as physician to Henry Eighth. His name appears in no household books of the Court, and the only authority for such courtly association is his own word that he '* waited on the King." Tradition represents him as a sort of six- teenth century bohemian, seeing many countries and many men, loving flesh and wine, or living upon " a peny worth of whyte bread a hoole weeke," and finding it enough for an honest man " unless he be a raveneur." Boorde began as a Carthusian monk, but he was unable to bear the " rigouosity of the religion," and became a physician and a very roaming one, as is shown by his own writings. " I have travelyd specially about Europe and part of Affrycke throwow and round about Christen- dome," he wrote. Tradition says that he fre- quented markets and country fairs, haranguing crowds, disposing of his remedies and enlarging his practice by his drolleries and buffoonery, thus becoming known as '' Merrie Andrew " and the 14 HIRED FURNISHED. original of whole generations of " Merrie Andrews " who were the companions and allies of quack doctors and mountebanks. Sussex tradition insists that here in Pevensey he wrote the " Merrie Tales of the Wise Men of Gotham " that have been printed with his name ever since his own century. It says that he was not on good terms with the village authorities, and that he wrote ostensibly about those " foles of Gottam," while really ridicul- ing certain known actions of their own. That he owned a house here is not tradition, for he gave away " my house in Pemsy " by his will. Neither is it traditional that he roved in many countries, "in divers countries by the practyce of physyck for his sustentaysion," a profession which certainly requires stability of position for success, unless it be a bohemian success of a " Merrie Andrew." An editor of Early English text, Mr. Furnivall, one of the most amiable natural dispositions and the very most cantankerous literary temper, denies with asperity everything that tradition says. Not the Gotham of Sussex was meant, says ]\Ir. Furnivall, but probably the Gotham of Nottinghamshire, renowned for the foolishness of its inhabitants, and Dr. Boorde never wrote the tales. He repudiates the idea that Boorde ever frequented country fairs and made himself a '' Merrie Andrew." But as the Early English Text Society can substitute nothing definite for tradition ; as it can draw its inferences only from other of Boorde's writings (very vague inferences they are) ; as it is compelled to acknowledge that he died in the Fleet (as rovers so often have died), and cannot tell why ; as it can- not even tell when or where he was born (except that he was born in Sussex) ; in fact, as it does not HIRED FURNISHED. I 5 disprove the Merrie Andrew tradition to any other satisfaction than its own, — all who love tradition have every right still to believe that Andrew Boorde was a roving and a Merrie Andrew, "a lewd and ungratious pre'st " (priest), as he was written down thirty years after his death, and given to wine and wantoning, alternating with hair shirt and cold- water penance, just as the bohemian poet, Paul Verlaine, was wont to alternate, and many another besides King David. Mr. Furnivall would argue that a man who wrote piously must be pious, and a man who was pious could not be a Merrie Andrew or write the Merrie Tales of the Wise Men of Gotham. King David was the author of the Psalms, yet King David's private hfe was not set to the tune of Old Hundred. As for the Sussex Gotham, the name still adheres to a land and the site of a manor near Pevensey; and Sussex, Boorde's own country, is notoriously "Silly Sussex" in parts to this day. The marshy soil, horrible roads or rather no roads, so deep with " my re and dyrt " that so late as the last century people have gone to church drawn by oxen, made travelling almost impossible. Villages lived entirely by themselves, without acquaintance with other villages but a few miles away, which were considered "furrin parts." A Sussex man once returned to his native hamlet saying that he was " tired of furrin parts." He had been six months in a village sixteen miles distant from his own. Under such conditions there was constant inter- marrying within a limited circle, and this going on for generations with the natural result, the "foles of Gottam," as well as the Silliness of Sussex generally. The Americans, after examination of both sides 1 6 HIRED FURNISHED. of the question, decided to accept Tradition's say of Andrew Boorde, finding that say so much the more interesting and picturesque, although not even Tradition would tell them why so clever a man, and one with other houses to will away besides this one in Pemsy, died in the Fleet. " A very wise man," remarked the lady. " ' Beate her nat/ Boorde advised husbands con- cerning their wives." '' Did he not say * God made her subject to man?'" observed the other Villain. "What did that mean but a right to beat her at discretion?" " He wrote, ' Let every man please his wife and displease her not,'" recited Mistress Villain much as if reading from notes, " ' but let her have her owne wyl for that she wyl have, who-so-ever say nay.' Bless his merry old soul! How modern he was for an age we consider barbaric ! ' Homo is the Latin word,' he says, ' and in Englyshe it is as wel for a woman as for a man, but woman is a man in wo, and set wo before man and then it is woman, and wel she may be named a wo-vi\2^w, for as muche as she doth bear chyldren with wo and peyn.' Imagine him," she continued, " stand- ing on a cart surrounded by gaping yokels, a close-shaven man like a monk, wearing a httle cap and one straight stiff feather, with woollen hosen to his waist, and under his ordinary short cotes a petycote of scarlet to keep his stomach from ' croaking,' and over all a doctor's long cloak or robe. Lnagine him selling his cures, and tell- ing those Tudoresque Englishmen that ' the woman is subject to the man except when the white mare is the better horse.' " HIRED FURNISHED. 1 7 That same evening, with feet on the fender, as they spun their usual fancies both bUthe and pensive, they managed between them to enrich Enghsh literature with rhymes in remembrance of Merrie Andrew Boorde. THE LOST BROTHER. Seven Wise Men of Gotham were they, Yet none too wise to unbend to play, When the sun was hot and fields scorched brown, And nothing whatever was doing in town, And the river ran near and wimpled cool, And rested in many a placid pool, To tempt those men from sordid toil, From the stewing streets and the August broil. To bathe fevered frames in limpid shade And find failing forces thus remade. So the Wise Men started by dawn's first light. Having for fear of not rising sat up all night, And soon the whole seven were cucumbery cool, Immersed to their necks in a slumbery pool. " Ah ha ! " cried a Wise Man, pulling on his hose, ** How lucky we are no one of us to lose In those fathomless depths whence we all emerge And whose raging billows might have wailed our dirge ! " ( The fathomless depths were two feet deep, And their rippleless surface smiled in its sleep.) " Are you sure ? " asked another in mild surprise. " We were Seven at starting, if I trust my own eyes Now I see only Six, and does not that show That one of us lies in those fell depths below ? " (The Wise Man in counting saw each of the others, But forgot to count himself among all his brothers.) '■'■ You 're right ! " cried the others, after horrified pause And each counting himself in oblivious clause, " We 're but Six, as is plain ; at dawn we were more, So surely our brother has ne 'er come to shore. Ah ! How can we bear that dear brother to lose, Or how carry home the dolorous news 2 1 8 HIKED FURNISHED. To weeping aunts, sisters, cousins, and mothers, Widows, orphans, relations-by-marriage, and brothers ? How can we endure that dear brother to lose, Not the best of us worthy to tie up his shoes ? He surely was wisest and best of us Seven, For of such is always the Kingdom of Heaven ! " So they wept and wailed with clam'rous refrain. Then by fits and by starts they counted again ; But always forgetting that each counter was one, Came always to same number when the counting was done. Their grief grew tremendous, and its clamour rose high, Thus attracting attention from a man riding by, Who stopped his old horse to demand all the whys That the day should be rent by such hideous cries. " Our brother ! Our brother ! " was all they could say ; " We were Seven at dawn, we 're but Six at mid-day. We 'v.e counted ourselves a dozen times round. And always the Six reiterated found. The Seventh is missing, hence the truth is quite plain We shall never see our dear brother again." " Gad ! If a Seventh you want," cried the man in amaze, " I'll make you remember where he is, all your days ! " Then he gave one a lash with miglit and with main, And the Wise Man yelped like a bulldog in pain. " You 're One ! " said tlie lasher, to which lashed agreed. " You 're Two ! " and the second was lashed twice with speed. " You We T/wee, and yoti ''re Four, yoii ''re Five, and you ''re Six : You '11 remember your numbers by the number of licks." Then — with lash more cutting than ever — " You ''re SEVEN ; Thus you see you 're not yet of the Kingdom of Heaven ! " The Seven howled together with agonized glee, Thus suddenly restored their dead brother to see. '' God bless you ! " they chorussed, all prancing with pain, " But for you we should never have been Seven again ! " " Quite equal to Wordsworth's ' We are Seven,' " said one of them. And the other agreed. Pevensey Bay is not picturesque, but what care they for picturesqueness, the twinkhng, twittering, HIRED FURNISHED. 1 9 fleeting hordes for whose pleasure its exists? It is a cheap bathing place, made cheap b}^ its total lack of natural beauty ; where children dig all day in the summer sands, and bathing costumes dash from bedrooms straight into the water and drippingly back again. A constant succession of short holiday folk, shopkeepers, and office clerks and their famihes, dashes through the hamlet during "the season," few remaining more than a week or two at a time, and all leaving more or less, generally more, of havoc and smash behind them. The Americans needed not to ask who nipped the teapot's nose and lost the stove lid-lifter, and cork- screwed the poker, and robbed the oven of all its grates, and lost every key to cupboards and chests of drawers, and broke the thermometer's back and the spirit of all the upholstery in the villa except of the beds, which were perfect, even luxurious, as English beds always are. They needed not to ask concerning the brief summer tenant. Evidently the villa gave outward signs of the warm life within, for they all came, butcher, baker, milkman, grocer, from Pevensey beyond the marsh (pardon, beyond the Level). Even the sewing- machine man came, two of him for every week they stayed, and ten machines the lady waved away, — the first with mildness, the last without. Every day came the rosy maid whom they named " Ivy Leaf," so perennially fresh, so full of sturdy life she seemed, however the wind blew, the snow flew, whatever the wild waves were saying. Every morning she came from a market garden in '^ Pemsy " with her brilliant complexion not even suggestive of blousiness, not even of a " cabbage " rose, but of wild pink roses blowing over a dis- 20 HIRED FURNISHED. taut hedge, with the most cooing, winning voice in the world, a pretty accent, every h in its place, and an enormous basket from which one might select the order to come later. She went to every house in the hamlet every day of the year. " She 's been offered any price to go to London with summer visitors for child's nurse," said Mrs. Pumpkin-Hood, " but she likes this business better." The Americans found that even nicked cups and saucers, scarred platters, and a wounded tea- pot need to be washed after use, the mattresses to be turned every day, and then the dreadful ashes ! Likewise the more dreadful shoes. An old adage names " Sowsexe full of dyrt and myre," and a writer so late as 17 71 facetiously, asks, "Why is it the oxen, the swine, the women, and all other animals are so long-legged in Sussex ? May it be from the difficulty of pulKng the feet out of so much mud by the strength of the ankle that the muscles get stretched, as it were, and the bones lengthened?" "What a swinish advantage," she remarked. "Women are the only animals obliged to keep their feet clean. Don't tell jne that women are not shamefully put upon — don't tell me — " " I won't," said he. "To be sure," said Mrs. Pumpkin-Hood, "there's the Widow Rogers who will take your washing home. She will be thankful to do everything in the forenoon except cooking, for four shillings a week." Which the Widow Rogers did do, and perfectly, so that the Pemsy Villains were as independent of coals, ashes, and mud as Sussex swine or oxen. HIRED FURNISHED. 21 When the laundry basket came home the first time, — "Are you taking a nap?" he called from the sitting-room. " I 'm not snoring ! " came the indignant answer from the kitchen. " I 'm only smiling over the disappearance of London fog from the clothes ! " The dinners of these Villains came at night. Digestion waits better upon appetite after the brain's work is done for the day. The Mistress Villain prepared joints and vegetables herself; the sweets and deserts came from Pemsy shops or were brought home from Eastbourne or Hastings, where English plum pudding may be bought by the yard, or mile, and steamed, resteamed, re- re-steamed, so long as an inch of it is left. Mince pies too, the size of an American jam tart and entirely of fruit without admixture of meat, were perennially fresh by means of a tiny tin oven fitted to an oil lamp ( Mem. The lady had written " Never hire furnished without my oil lamp and oven " ). " We are in the very heart of the H topsey- turveyism, I mean the very 'art of it," said one of them, '■ yet Sussex speaks English, antique Enghsh, and it says pie for pie just as we do in America, and not tart for pie as London does." " Just so," said the other of them. '' Sometimes these Sussex expressions make me wonder for a moment how this ' strong Saxon English,' as they call it, ever became so ^ Americanized.' We both thought at first that yesterday's landlady was speaking American when she said the table was * out of kilter,' yet an old Sussex benefaction left money to keep the parson's breeches from getting 'out of kilter.' Londoners sometimes smiled at 22 HIRED FURNISHED. our use of the word ' crock/ yet the Sussex proverb tells that at the rainbow's end is a crock of gold, not a pot." " When I was a child in my native Maine, we were very funny when we dialogued ' Wat 's your name?' ' Pudden tame;' yet here in Sussex the dialogue is ancient, and the answer * Pudden ta'em ' means either ' pudding at home," or as wiser ones say, '■ pudding and a broach,' or a draught of beer. We sometimes added, ' Wat 's your nater ?' and answered ' Pudden-tater ; ' but that addition was undoubtedly of our new world." But apropos of these dinners. These i\mer- icans knew the bloom and the beauty of Califor- nia fruit even when imprisoned in tin. One morning the lady of the villa added to her order for the day, '' and a tin of peaches." The gro- cer's grin was wider than Mercutio's wound, for it was as wide as a church door. " You 've 'ad 'em hall ! 'Ave sent for more," he remarked. With books and work and healthful play the days flew by on wings. They were calm, still days, with that dehcate sunshine Americans never see in their own startling land, the golden light soft- ened by transparent mists, as a girl's blushes by her bridal veil. Sussex " dyrt and myre " was sticky but not deep, although too much so for bicycling, so they trotted many miles instead of rolling them, and almost buried Mrs. Rogers in her native soil. One day it might be Battle Abbey where the Conqueror willed that prayers should forever be offered up for the souls of those who had fallen in HIRED FURNISHED. 23 the memorable conflict, prayers forever before the high altar erected on the very spot where Harold's standard had waved. '' Perpetual prayer ! " what a mockery ! What a mockery is " perpetual " anything in a world that never for an instant rests from perpetual change ! Now the original abbey is level with the ground, and only the site exists of the high altar, where no prayers are said unless the sightseer includes one with his sixpence to the guide. The present Battle Abbey is a ducal dwelling shown to hoy polloy on certain days of the week. It is said to be haunted, not as one would sup- pose by mailed knights, but by a nameless old woman of weird and terrible aspect. " Do you ever see a weird old woman in the grounds?" a lady asked the guide. " Her Grace the Duchess," he answered. Evidently "weird" was too much for him. Sometimes it was a walk to Beachy Head, where in 1690 *' the English got one of the very few lickings they ever got not administered by us," remarked a Pevensey Villain, with filial pride in a parent hard to lick. Other times quaint bits of Sussex architecture embedded in " restorations " lured them for miles, or a storied castle, an his- toric manor, a quaint churchyard, even once a search for the grave in which a queer corpse was buried. At the funeral of a renowned smuggler a mysterious tall stranger in a cloak stood by the grave. When the coffin was lowered he ex- claimed, " I am not there ! " with which quite unnecessary remark he disappeared. A century afterwards the coffin was found to hold only stones. "The man didn't gain much," they 24 HIRED FURNISHED. agreed. " His own coffin by that time held less." Dehghtful beyond description to walk in rustic England even in winter, for one may scarce walk a mile anywhere without coming upon some relic of ages past^ some shrine of poetic history, some ruined temple of forgotten fame, some broken altar of faith, or some ghost of romantic art. Besides, there are always exquisite pictures of true English farmhouses and cottages, old when our Declaration of Independence was new, some older than the history of Plymouth Rock ; houses wrapped in living green, with low hanging eaves and massive skeletons showing through solid walls. No one was like another, and every one they saw between Pevensey and Herstmonceaux Castle they vowed was more antique, more picturesque, more utterly, unspeakably enchanting than all the rest. " Ah ! this is poetry ! This is what it is to live r^ quoth she, wiping the mud from her Eng- lish boots on the wayside grass. They were English boots and no mistake. Nowhere on this rolling globe could they ever be mistaken for anything else. They were as solid as iron, and as impervious to water or dampness as a man-of-war. They were laced in front high up the leg, they had Jacobean gables for toes ; they en- dured for years, and they cost three dollars. Ugly? Yea, verily, they were of unmitigated, absolute hideousness, in which a number three foot made tracks whereby scientists might imagine to follow some extinct mammoth. They however did per- fectly all they were bought to do, — kept the feet warm and dry whatever the road, for ever so " tidy " a walk. In New England's ice and snow HIRED FURNISHED. 25 they would be worse than useless, would keep the wearer oftener on her shoulderblades than her heels, because of their stiff-soled slipperiness. In all her years in England this American never wore out a pair of galoshes, and on their winter tramps and summer mountain climbs " Stumpity-Thump " her companion named the occupant of those iron- bound, Jacobean gables. Poetry ? Pages, volumes of it ; volumes which included lunches of bread and cheese in wayside inns, and afternoon tea in another inn miles nearer their hired-furnished. And such tea ! " Shall we ever be able to drink the concoction we call tea at home ? " they wondered, as in the humblest of parlors they drank at sixpence apiece elixir that ought to make any mandarin purr and prattle ; elixir that slid divinely over the tongue to mount to the brain, to descend to the heart, to rummage through all the veins and make the drinkers rise to Olympian heights of bliss and power. " Now I understand Hazlitt's intemperance," one said, and the other agreed. " I never could understand it before I came to England." Hazlitt was really a tea-drunkard, and weaned himself from brandy by its means. He would sit for hours over his strong, black tea, silent and motionless as a Turk over his opium, for tea served him precisely in that capacity. He was very par- ticular about the quality of his tea, using the most expensive he could get, and when alone consumed nearly a pound a week. He always made it him- self, half filling the pot with tea, pouring boihng water upon it, and almost immediately pouring it out. So fascinating to him was his beloved tipple, so deep the blissful peace into which it threw him 26 HIRED FURNISHED. for the time, that not even the intrusion of a dun, to which he was at other times so abnormally sensitive, could wrest him from his repose. When he died he said, " I have had a happy life," and must thus have remembered only his tea-happy hours. For otherwise he was very miserable. Unhappy with his two wives, he tormented himself with a foolish passion for a lodging-house keeper's daughter; was in money difficulties at times, and in the bitterest of literary and political quarrels. Evidently tea washed all those hateful memories away. De Quincey also was excessively fond of tea ; Shelley was an inveterate tea-drinker. What miles of poetry and prose Englishmen have written about tea, beginning with Waller, who pleased the tea-drinking spouse of Charles Second with a sonnet declaring that — " Venus her Myrtle, PhcEbus has his bays, Tea both excels," and continuing — " The Muses' friend, Tea doth our fancy aid, Repress those vapours which the head invade, And keep the palace of the soul serene." Very early in the history of tea Englishmen recognized it as a brain-elixir, softly thrilling the nerves to lyre-like trembling, bringing out whatever of music was in the instrument, an seolian quiver quite different from the vibrant effect of coffee. Poor forgotten Nahum Tate wrote a poem, "Panacea," about 1700 to represent all the divini- ties contending for the honor of standing as god- parent to tea, which honor finally fell to Phoebus. An Anglicized Frenchman, Pierre Motteux, wrote HIRED FURNISHED. 2/ another recommending tea to all who exercise their brain, to all who would " On soaring wings of contemplation rise And fetch discov'ries from the skies ; Ethereal Tea your natures will refine Till you yourselves become almost divine." They all unite in singing it the Phoebean drink, even though we know that Ben Jonson never put a teacup to his sack-swilling lips ; that Shake- speare never heard of the Phoebean elixir, or any other of the stalwart Elizabethans. " ' And I remember,' said the sober Mouse, * I 've heard much talk of the Wits' Coffee House.' ' Thither,' said Bundle, ' you shall go and see Priests sipping Coffee, and Poets Tea.'' " Writers rapidly multiplied in England after tea became a popular drink, doubtless because so many more brains were clear than when sack was man's beverage morning, noon, and night. They were not of the Elizabethan breed of writers, but they wrote, and in time a tea-ful printer set the world agog with fiction that could never have been nourished on pipe and bottle, yet that made many a pipe and bottle man weep. " Exactly, " said one of them ; " we have just been reading the diary of tippling Thomas Turner, a Sussex tradesman of one hundred and forty years ago, who sobbed between his cups (not of tea). ' My wife read to me that moving scene of the funeral of Miss Clarissa Harlowe. Oh may the Supreme Being give me grace to lead my life in such a manner as my exit may in some measure be like that divine creature's ! ' " 28 HIRED FURNISHED. Hartley Coleridge asked somebody to " Inspire my genius and my tea infuse," as if the two easily went together, and wrote, — " And I who always keep the golden mean, Have just declined my seventh cup of green." Shelley wrote of it, — " The liquor doctors rail at, and that I Will quaff in spite of them, and when I die We '11 toss up which died first of drinking tea." " Shall we have another sixpen'orth ? " asked the lady. " It is to be noticed that no American, distin- guished or otherwise, has ever been an excessive tea-drinker, such as Dr. Johnson, for instance, who declared himself a hardened tea-drinker whose kettle never has time to get cold ; as for women — " "And gossip?" interrupted the other. "The moment one speaks of women and tea in the same sentence I know that ' gossip ' will follow. Some people never can say ' Margaret ' without ' rare pale,' or mention an underdone joint without bringing in poor old Ben Jonson, or a day in June. Don't tell me that men are not the great- est gossips in the world ! Was not Plutarch a lively old gossip as well as Herodotus? The author of the 'Memoirs of de Grammont' said 'The Duke of Buckingham was the father and mother of Scandal.' " Anatomy-of-Melancholy Burton, before he knew tea (if ever he knew it), wrote, ' Our gentry — their sole discourse is hawks, horses, dogs, and what neivs.^ Pepys, Swift (to Stella), Boswell, were kings of gossip. Was ever a better HIRED FURNISHED. 29 description than Leigh Hunt's of tea-scorning Walpole's gossip, ' the perpetual squeak of its censoriousness?' Lady Blessington wrote that Lord Byron was very fond of gossiping ; any httle bit of scandal amused him very much. When she remarked this to him one day he laughed and said, ' Don't you know the elephant's trunk can take up the most ponderous things and the most minute? I do like a little scandal, I think all Enghsh people do.' Then there was Keats, a very apothecary except for his genius, who when speaking of ' personal talk ' said, ' I must confess to rather of an itch for it myself.' None of these gossips drank tea. Byron, Keats, and Walpole airily sneered at it ; Swift wrote superciliously against it ; the others did not know it. " Neither Tea nor Woman is really responsible for Scandal. ' Slanderynge coramythe of a dronkon hede,' the Goode Wyfe taught her daughter about 1460." " Yes, let us have two six-pennorth," said he. Thus the two Villains chatted over their cups in dusky inn parlors, where floors were often tiled, sunken, and bare, walls heavy and low, and those '' cups " more like the " dish " of ye olden time than those with which they were familiar, yet would they not change with tealess occupants of thrones. Why did our ancestors even down to our own century so often say, " Drink a dish," where we more daintily " take a cup " ? Was it that the '' new China Drink " of which Pepys wrote coldly in 1660, found " cup" already wedded to "sack," and a vessel not delicate enough to receive the 30 HIRED FURNISHED. costly beverage ? When the Oriental leaf was sold in London at sixty shillings, or fifteen dollars, the pound, and the liquid made from it taxed at eight- pence the gallon in coffee-houses, scarce wonder the coarse cup, boon companion with roaring sack, was considered unfit for the elixir dealt out of teapots holding half a pint, into measures scarcely more than a tablespoonful. Even so late as 1 703, Counsellor Burrill in Sussex recorded in his Journal as a valuable gift the three-quarters of an ounce of Te he gave away. The year after Pepys' " Cup of Tee., a new China Drink of which I never drank before," that is, the second year of the Restoration, the landlady in Dryden's "Wild Gallants " loudly complained, — ^' And your Worship came home ill {dninJz) last night, and your head was bad, and I did send for three dishes of tea for your Worship, and that was sixpence." Sixpences in those days were as large as " dishes " were small, and the cost of the new drink excuses the character in one of those old plays who " will get the tea ready and boyl it a long time." Sir Kenelm Digby's "recetes" of only a few years later teach a better course than to " boyl a long time," although his "recete " is still of huge economy, less than one " dram " of the leaves to a pint of water. " In these parts," he wrote, " we let the hot water remain too long soaking upon the Tea. The water is to remain upon it no longer than the whiles you can say the Miserere Psalm very leisurely." " Cup " was not in fashionable use much before the beginning of the Eighteenth Century, " that hoop-and-teacup-time." Then Pope and Cowper^ the teacup poets par excellence, never use any- HIRED FURNISHED. 3 I thing else, " dish " by that time having fallen low in the world. The new " China Drink," which was first named in English literature as a medicine for tipsiness (Pepys had no thought of literature), long held that poor reputation. Quite naturally, too, it was very early recognized as fit drink of the Muses in place of wine, ''which hath heat without light." Dr. Ovington, a court chaplain to Queen Mary of Orange, named it '■'■Anti-Circe inasmuch as it counter-charms the enchanted Cup and changes the Beast into a Man." "When the tea is brought in," says Sir John Brute, in the " Provoked Wife," " I drink twelve regular dishes." Sir John was a man of headachy mornings, being " drunk ten times in a fortnight ; " therefore even so late as his day (1694), those twelve tiny dishes must have been a dose. It was so considered evidently by that rough cavalier, General Blunt, in Shadwell's " Stockjobbers." Major-General Blount said of the tea-table, " 'T is ready for the Women and Men who live like AVomen ; adod, your fine-bred Men of England as they call 'em are all turned Women, but by my Troth, I '11 not turn my Back to the Pipe and Bottle after Dinner." Shadwell's " Stockjobbers " is interesting as containing the first mention of tea-tables., and also as evidence that the modern lady's " day " is no new thing. Eugenia, who is described as " a very fine young lady," the reverse of her sister Teresia, who is " a foolish, conceited, affected young Lady," exclaims, " Who that has the Sense of Vertue could endure the piteous Dullness of new Plays, the most provoking Impertinences of how-do-you 's 32 HIRED FURNISHED. and Visiting Days with Tea Tables ! " Evidently Eugenia was " fine " in the sense of being sensible, and regarding visiting days and tea-tables from the masculine or " dosed " point of view. Yet its his- tory shows that tea has been almost the best friend the Englishwoman has ever had. " If you please," says Touchwood, in the " Double-Dealer," exactly two hundred years ago, — " if you please, we will retire to the ladies, and drink a dish of tea to settle our heads." Tea was a "settler." It "settled" the "Rake- hells " till not one is now to be found in decent English society. It " setded " the Sir John Brutes till not one such dare show his head among visit- ing days and tea-tables. It "settled" the tea- table, too, on foundations deep in our civilization, binding families, communities, nations together in pleasantness and peace. Before tea came, Eng- land had only its heavy dinner-table, laden with strong meats and stronger drinks. There was no breakfast-table, no pleasant centre for afternoon tea. All through the seventeenth-century dram- atists are mentions of breakfast, but never of a breakfast-/^/^/^. The morning meal was then not much more than the ten-o'clock drink, a sop or a bite with it. The family did not gather de- cently together to the silvery tinkle of teaspoons, the chime of dainty china cups, the hum of lucid conversation. Sir William Davenant's description of a lady's tealess and tableless breakfast is enough to make all the world of womankind feel closely akin to Lady Gentle in Colley Gibber's "Wife's Resent- ment." Sings Davenant : — HIRED FURNISHED. 33 " Arise, arise ! Your breakfast stays, — Good water, gruel warm. Or sugar sops, which Galen says With mace will do no harm. Arise, arise 1 when you are up You '11 find your draught in caudle cup, Good nut-brown ale and toast." From caudle cups and morning draught of ale, tea has delivered England, even if it has devel- oped the traditional old ladies who make their living by taking tea at each others houses. " Tea," exclaims Colley Gibber's Lady Gentle, — " Tea, thou soft, thou sober, sage and venerable liquor, thou innocent pretext for bringing the wicked of both sexes together on a morning, thou female tongue-running, smile-smoothing, heart- opening, wink-tipping cordial, to whose glorious insipidity I owe the happiest moments of my life, ,let me fall prostrate and adore Thee." Then she falls upon her knees, and from her " dish " sips loudly, as nineteenth century Lady Gentles do not from modern " cups." When originated the popular superstition which links Tea and Gossip together? Who first put into print that the musical jingle of silver, the dainty tumult of china, the fragrant steam of teapots, was a necromantic spell to set tongues awag? Who in English literature not only recognized the potency of the spell, but slandered the character of the wagging? Who was first to make a com- mon-place of " Tea and Gossip ? " Naturally it was some man. The words still retain their ancient echo of a gruff voice. It was some man of a century in which only despised Woman loved tea, and arrogant Man did not. Quite as naturally it was some poet or dramatist, for in poems and 3 34 HIRED FURNISHED. plays are imbedded the pearls and pebbles of other times, so often to become the traditions and superstitions of our own. " Every woman is at heart a rake/' has jaundiced many a man's vision who never read a word of Pope. Without so much as a dream of the manner of our century, Shakespeare has fitted it with sayings for its every day's doings. Pipe and bottle were not conducive to the wagging of tongues. One closed the mouth, the other clogged the wits, and oftener under the din- ner-table than at the tea-table the Blunts were found. Now we see that tea was a silly woman- drink, beloved of chatterers with fancy aided by it, and souls made serene rather than muddled. What wonder that women wagged their tongues over dainty cups and tinkling silver, while their trencher-men lords piped, swilled, and snored ! At the end of the seventeenth century, or nearly half a century after elegant Waller's apostrophe to Tea, Congreve's " Way of the World " took an even more modern view of " that best of herbs " of which Waller wrote. Tea was now rapidly permeating England. The tea-table was a recog- nized feature of society. In "The Way of the World " Millament insists to Mirabell that she " be sole Empress of my Tea Table, which you must never presume to approach without asking leave." With characteristic insolence those silly women had taken the tea-table as their very own, that same tea-table to which pipe and bottle had exiled them. In Congreve's play Mirabell answers : '' To the dominion of the Tea Table I submit — but with proviso that you exceed not in your province but restrain yourself to genuine and HIRED FURNISHED. 35 authorized Tea Table talk — such as mending of fasliions, spoiling reputations, railing at absent friends, and so forth." We have him ! Congreve is the slanderer, — Congreve, whose plays are full of wine-bibbing male tattlers, backbiters, scandal-mongers, who even names some of his men " Scandal " and " Tattle " and never gives them a cup of tea ! Again in the "Double Dealer," Congreve makes Mille- fond answer Careless's question, " Where are the women ? I 'm weary of guzzling and begin to think them better company," with " Then thy reason staggers, and thou 'rt drunk ; " adding after- wards, " Why, they are retired to Tea and Scandal according to their ancient custom." After this the deluge ! The poets, than whom in the nineteenth century none are more given to the five o'clock cup, scarce mention tea without the companionship of scandal, or its meeker sister gossip. They are all men-poets, Mrs. Browning with her, " Then helps to sugar her bohea at night With your reputation," being almost the only woman who does so, and she only in one specified instance, not generally and sweepingly, after the manner of men. Indeed, by the eighteenth century it became a literary and social convention to unite the two, and quite inde- pendent of one's own observation and belief, as we speak of the rising and setting sun, knowing perfectly that there is no such thing in creation. Pope, however, in the eighteenth century recog- nized the much-maligned elixir as of balmy and amiable effect. He makes Lovet say, " Now stop complaining and come to Tea." Cowper, too. 3 6 HIRED FURNISHED. was the poet of the tea-table in its more humane and natural aspect, and without the hateful ac- complice Slander seen by so many other poets, — " the cup that cheers,'" etc. Tea has had to suffer for keeping bad company. For women are bad, as most poets and play- wrights know, — have been bad ever since Eve ate the apple. It was for woman exclusively that the ninth commandment was given, it was for women that Christ spoke the Golden Rule ; Judas must have been a woman in disguise. Woman is the sinner, Tea the innocent sufferer. For long before tea entered Europe, poets and playwrights knew women to live not by bread, but by gossip and scandal. When women were not bright enough to do much in the gossiping-Pepys and scandal-mongering Horace Walpole way, they were such women as Sir William Davenant de- scribed (/ the matter?" she thought. "Do I resemble his long lost love ? " With stern eyes still upon her, the military man made two fierce strides towards her. "The other side, sir, the other side ! " called the steward. Then that smiling steward confided to Mrs. Dove's ghastly smile, — "Gentlemen do make such a horation w'en they are hill." THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 2/5 " Why does he not sing to ' Our Lady of Suc- cor,' " whispered the American. '^ It must have been just about here that our own prayerless coun- tryman took the hehn in 1791, no doubt at the bidding of Notre Dame, and in answer to that shouted prayer in French. The milliner never opened her eyes. A Guernsey lady upon leaving St. Peter Port had been heard assuring another that she was never sea-sick in her life, never ! She had crossed the North Sea many times and voyaged to India as well as to America, the very worst voyage of all, with never a shudder or qualm. This lady was one of the tender-hearted sort, in spite of her stout stomach, one of the large-eyed, slim-waisted, weak- voiced kind, with high, stainless foreheads, and no chin to speak of, that were fashionable before Rossetti painted, and Burne-Jones set Love among ruins, or Du Maurier made Punch a drawing-room of strong-chinned English beauty. She was one of the ministering-angel-when-pain-and-anguish-wring- the-brow kind, who smooth Pillows and wipe Brows whenever they find a chance, — even though some- times wiping and smoothing the wrong way. Just as the steamer was about to start a party of French women came on board with loud weeping. Only one of them was to leave Guernsey ; the others had come to say good-bye to a girl of six- teen or seventeen returning to her own family in France. She was a moon-faced peasant, probably a farm-hand. She was returning in great trouble and fear, not in the least lessened by the boisterous lamentations about her, for she was returning not alone. A tightly rolled bundle, stiff as a block of wood, but from which goggled two watery eyes, 2^6 HIRED FURNISHED. was passed from one to the other of the women, each receiving and passing it on with intensified howls. The heart of the much-travelled lady was deeply touched by the spectacle of so much woe. She buried herself in the waiUng group in the steerage and learned the whole story. The women went ashore with a wail, the home- returning girl answered with another, her eyes swollen, her face distorted almost out of human semblance. " The poor creature says she is always frightfully sea-sick," said the lady, coming into the first-class part of the boat with a bundle, which she tilted and joggled in a most amateur manner. " I am never, never ill, so I am going to take this poor ten-days- old baby down into the cabin with me. The wretched girl is terrified almost out of her senses at the prospect of meeting her father. He does not know about this baby." Sea-sick ! Indeed the girl did not wait for the sea. The wheel had made scarce three revolutions, the wails on the pier were still audible, when her clamor changed from weeping to a variety of utterly in- describable noises, amid which that of weeping was least. Nobody had thought of giving up, when her perfectly unrestrained uproar filled all the space between bow and stern, and rose above the flag. " How fortunate that poor baby is safe," ob- served Mrs. Dove. " She is such a lawless young animal I think she would throw it overboard." "Best place for it," replied the other. Which Mrs. Dove could not deny. THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 2J'J All the way the girl mon-dieued in every possible animal tone, from wailing cat's to shrieking hyena's. Then the waves washed over the steerage, and the kindly steward lifted her forward among the first-class passengers. Evidently the change was for the worse, or at least she thought so, for — " If I dared move, I would go downstairs," murmured Mrs. Dove; "this is intolerable." Some little time later, the steward came and stood between the sightless milliner and Mrs. Dove, three feet from the tumultuous young mother. "A lady downstairs is frightfully ill," he said. "She begs anybody who can to relieve her of the baby she took into the cabin with her." " Pas moi, pas moi, mon Dieu ! " remarked the young mother, in the most human voice they had ever heard from her, then immediately recom- menced her menagerie din. With a somersault to strike the solemn stars, were any visible at high noon, the Little Courier bounds into Braye Harbour, and the milliner opens her eyes. " I keep them shut that my mouth won't spring open," she remarked to Mrs. Dove. The lady with the tender heart comes up to the air, looking like death. " It was that dreadful baby," she explains. " I think it has never been washed since it was born. If I had been on deck I should have thrown it overboard." They go ashore, and then stand for a few moments stick-stock-still, merely to enjoy the heavenliness of firm earth beneath their feet, in- stead of alternately sea and sky. A score or so of people stand about the pier, the most of them 278 HIRED FURNISHED. brought there only by curiosity, although one woman, the Doves were sure, was she to whom they had written concerning lodgings, and who could be brought to name no other terms than " satis- factory." As "satisfactory" is an idea with two faces, as it might look to lodger or to landlady, they had not answered her last letter. Now as they saw her keen inspection of the Courier's passengers, they assumed an expression of joy, to meet a wel- come among waiting friends, and passed her by. But first they watch the Little Courier unload, — Captain Whale, bound in the usual blue and gold, doing the major part. Almost everything seems for " The Canteen." Eggs, onions, potatoes, cases of bottles, "garden-sass," all go the same way. Even the mail bag is opened upon the pier, and the red-headed red-coated soldiers who take away the garrison letters leave but a shrunk bag behind. Alderney, like Gibraltar, is chiefly a garrison rock, every third person a soldier. The larger portion of the remainder are the descendants of English and Irish laborers, brought here for ill-fated Eng- lish government works, abandoned in 1847 ; some are quarrymen and stone cutters from France, while a mere fraction are of ancient Alderney families, to this day speaking among themselves a queer jargon of mixed English and mediaeval French. When they speak English, however flu- ently, their accent is strongly foreign. St. Anne, the capital, has two hamlets for neigh- bors, both low by the water's edge, while St. Anne is enthroned on Alderney's summit. One of the hamlets has a poor French Catholic church, while St. Anne has a Protestant church, a gift from a former owner of the island, huge enough to house THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 2/9 every islander. What in the world Alderney wanted with such misplaced grandeur and mag- nificence remains a puzzle, considering that the Salvationists have obtained a foothold there and other dissenters are not few. The only other large building, save forts, is a dynamite factory, sent to Alderney, doubtless, to get it out of the way. They climbed a long hill to St. Anne's. It seemed an utterly deserted town, although a very modern one, and nothing ghostly or plague- stricken about it. Neither is it in the slightest degree picturesque, but resembling the newest suburb of an English manufacturing town, a sub- urb of working people, not of noiiveaux riches. As the Doves pass through the one principal street, every door is closed, even of shops ; every shop shade down. " Is everybody asleep ? " they wonder. At the rickety little shop inside a slovenly en- closure where the guide-book had bid inquire for lodgings, a dirty, deaf old woman told that her son was at dinner, and could not be disturbed. No business signs of any consequence attract the eye. The whole island of 2000 inhabitants is en famille^ everybody knows the contents of every shop, hence no need of window displays or adver- tisements. Everybody, too, knows the contents of every clothes-press and chest, — hkewise of every larder, for the butcher shops are open only on the days of the steamer's arrival, and everybody knows just what the steamer brought. By a bright urchin's aid they manage to secure lodgings on " Blaggud Corner," in one of the few ancient houses of the best class, with the mullion 28o HIRED FUKNISHED.^ windows peculiar to Alderney, and walls like a fortress. " Blackguard " is scarcely an attractive name for corner lodgings, although corners are fine coigns of vantage for viewing a town or island from a window. The blackguards, however, were not very black ; they saw but two or three at a time, and they " guarded " only after working- hours. The junction of two roads where this old- time house stood always had one corner at least sheltered from the wind. It might be the corner of the dingy little general store, the corner of the dingy inn, or their own two corners, where idlers leaned and smoked and exchanged the stirring news of the rock. Twice a week the idlers can talk of larger news, of falling empires, and dying kings ; but ordinarily, to whichever corner they chng as the wind comes from English meadows and hedgerows, or over the continent from Rus- sian steppes, or up from African deserts, they discuss whether they like pork best or veal, or the benefit of an onion diet over one of cabbage. Perhaps the conversation is not much more inspir- ing among the upper circles, if one may judge from the quality of intellectual and spiritual pabulum furnished from the pulpit of the great church. For Alderney has its ^'^ hupper suckle " of course. It consists of a few officers' families, plain everyday-looking people, the rector's family, a bachelor curate with an enormous lisp, and a few feminine odds and ends, with no particular object in life except to go to church, to play golf and tennis, always with the same partners, to dance occasionally, always with the same few partners, and now and then to picnic among the coarse THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 28 1 weeds. To work among the poor, to re-create the slums, they have no chance, lacking poor and slums ; they cannot even cycle, lacking space. No library, no clubs, no theatres, no shops, no work, no real conversation, no change of faces, no news (except telegraphic) from the world oftener than twice a week, except a short season in summer, — if all things else fail to drive them to madness, the puerile drivel of their athletic curate ought to do it. The Americans heard him for the first time the Sunday Mrs. Dove waxed indignant at sight of the surphced choir. The boys looked quite angelic, and opened their mouths as widely as boys on a choric frieze. Out of those open mouths seemed to come angelic music, — sinless voices, newly come from the skies, chanting praises to an unforgotten Father. " Humbug ! " nudged Mrs. Dove. " Do you see all those girls in profane raiment hidden behind the organ ? They are doing all this angelic choiring." The drivel of the curate was such that the stran- gers did not wonder that the rector removed him- self as far from it as decency and the chancel would allow. This curate has a salary of $700 from an endowment fund provided by the giver of the church. It is more than he could ever get in America, where flocks choose their own shepherds, even their own sheep dogs, and have neither forced upon them as in England. The Doves wondered what this big bachelor curate has to say!of "Jer- sey hookers ; " for Jersey hookers let him slip every Jersey hook, and land in desolate Alderney still unhooked. Jersey girls are most unamiably 282 HIRED FURNISHED. named " hookers " by the spinsterhood of the other islands, for the reason that so few curates and officers ever leave Jersey unattached. It is not agreeable to Alderney girls, when a regiment or a parson is moved over from the principal island of the group, to see the young officers or the parson spending sq much time on the point of land nearest to Jersey, scarcely moving his glass from the portion of the horizon where it lies. The spinsterhood guess why these interesting faces are turned away from them, even if they do not know ; hence the curling lips which speak of " Jersey hookers." In windy, dull Alderney, the Americans found lodgings dearer than upon the gayer Channel Islands, even though house rents are extremely cheap. Forty dollars a year will hire a comfort- able house, one hundred and fifty a great one al- most suitable for an hotel. The reason of the dearness of lodgings is the scarcity of servants. Neither French nor English servants are wilHng to live on a rock two or three hours from everywhere, even in calm weather, and with that devilish Swinge between. Especially is a small rock dangerous to serving-maids, when a garrison is upon it, for though she be cold as ice and pure as snow, an English garrison always throws a taint of suspicion upon a girl's reputation. Neither will the island- born girls remain. From Alderney on clear days the glass roofs of Guernsey vineries, and her win- dows, blaze in the sun and lure Alderney girls away into the splendid mystery beyond the Swinge unto the larger isle which to them seems the world. Sark and Alderney furnish Guernsey largely with servants, Sark and Alderney go without. In the THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 283 Guernsey newspapers one may read piteous ap- peals from Alderney for cooks, nurses, and general servants. On the other side of Alderney, only nine miles distant, looms a projection of France, a vision to tempt any untravelled imagination. Between the two how can any girl remain on narrow Alderney unless she be entirely without imagination ? Then, entirely without that quickening spark, of what use is she as a serving maid ? " Our Alderney girls prefer to join the Salvationists and bang tambourines," said Monsieur Duplain. So they somersault away over the Swinge, and Monsieur and Madame Duplain must give up taking lodgers and offer Blaggud-Corner House, nicely furnished, for rent at a pound a week, because they have no daughters of their own and can hire no other man's. Their sitting-room on Blaggud Corner prettily furnished in old fashions and with ecclesiastical windows, had a library of four volumes. One of them was a French translation of " Little Women," one a gaudy French gift book, one " Stepping Heavenward," in English, the other Aldrich's " Story of a Bad Boy," in French. Some natural curiosity concerning the latter and its adaptation to the juvenile Gallic mind, led to the discovery that the chapter on Tom's sweethearts was expunged. The bedrooms were like wax in neatness, with inside wooden shutters, as had all the house. One sunk to rest beneath a lofty canopy with solemn tester, and beneath soft homespun blankets, quite under the imaginative impression that one's knee breeches or hoop-petticoats decorate high-backed 284 HIRED FURNISHED. chairs and that one's hair still retains the daytime powder. George the Third is king, unless indeed hideous George the Second still holds the sceptre ; and over the water a certain colony has increased too rapidly for its own good or indeed for any- body else's, and must be taught a sharp lesson or two. Alderney does not invite to many walks, having so few to offer. It has not much in the way of scenery, for the sea seen too near is not scenery. Whatever is looked upon must be on the gazer's own level, or else below it. Ravines, chasms, cliffs and boulders, however rent by tempest, and by gnawing and tearing waves, are much less im- pressive to the imagination when looked down upon instead of with eyes upturned. So much is in mere bodily position and relation that man never feels his superiority so much, as the final and greatest work of nature, as when he looks down upon her creations. So on Alderney, where so much of the coast is entirely inaccessible except to indefatigable gulls, who chatter and skim water and air as if gulldom were the universe, nothing whatever cheats the senses and imagina- tion with a vision of idealized things. On Sark, an island of the same size, one may find the light that never was on land or sea, the dream-forms of countries beyond the moon, but not here. The plateau is ugly, most of it coarse pasture land, and over it the wind blows continually till the rough furze, which elsewhere grows to tall bushes, here clings with its prickly fingers desperately to the ground and becomes a creeping vine. A struggle among Alderney furze is as much as a Dove's life is worth. Such walks as are described in the THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 285 guide-books receive all the attention they merit. The paths run along the island's edge that the only interest the island possesses may be looked down upon. The paths are the width only of two human feet ; parties must walk in single file or become either tangled in the clinging furze, or fall upon the rock below. The guide-books kindly warn tlie stranger of this last danger, and note the places where there is nothing but a thin layer of earth and stones below the turf. The Doves remarked the unanimously extreme caution with which strangers turned inland upon the furze at these indicated places, and left tlie path to more practised island feet. Also they smilingly remarked upon the dutifully trampled spots, islands of bareness in surrounding russet-green, where the guide-books had remarked upon something to be observed. " Elizabeth's Earl of Essex bought the whole island for five thousand dollars," remarked a Dove ; " what do you imagine he wanted it for?" " Can't," answered the other, " unless it be true that he intended to carry his royal mistress off and hide her here till she consented to marry him." Upon Alderney one has the sensation of being upon an enormous ship, where life and the out- look are quite as monotonous as they always are on a long voyage, and where one is almost equally apart from the world. On Sunday afternoon the Doves attended a meeting of the Salvation Army. Before going with Zilpha, the little maid, they had remarked from their windows- unusual animation round Blag- 286 HIRED FURNISHED. gud Corner. All the population of Alderney seemed darting past Blaggud Corner, swift-footed, because of the cooling wind, and burdened with something hidden beneath a cloth. Earlier in the day the Doves had watched much the same island ceremony, although then the burdens were smaller and the feet less fleet. Among the noon- tide bearers was an elderly man to whom English, they knew, was a foreign language. His English was as fluent as their own, but every word un- Englishy pronounced. He was of the ancient Alderney race, now almost extinct, had never been in England in his hfe, although once in France, and had taken a wife from Sark whom he had met in Guernsey, and whose English was as fluent and accent as foreign as his own. Far away in the world somewhere they had a son, they knew not where ; perhaps he was in America, that strange far country where so many roving souls disappear in the western clouds. They had not heard from him for years, yet how cheerful they both were, how ready with pleasant tales and merry anecdotes ! Mrs. Dove pondered deeply and long that a mother could remain on a bit of rock in the surging sea, that she could hear the loud winds hasting from far countries to farther ones, that she could endure the distant shining of the stars, the cold sadness of the moon, that morning did not torture her, that even- ing did not appal, that she could relate laughing histories, that she did not beg her weeping way from port to port, from land to land, till she found her son, or till she reached the final Country of us all. " But you see, raadame, not every woman spells son SUN as you do," explained her companion. Ten minutes later, when the hot and savory leg THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 28/ of mutton graced their table a deux, they under- stood what their landlord had brought from the baker's under that secretive cloth. " Our beans are baked at the baker's every Saturday night the same as the mutton, and we bring them away in the morning," explained Zilpha. "So do many in America," said Mrs. Dove. " Many Americans, in a part called New England, also eat beans on Saturday night." The possibiHty of such a forestalling of Sunday's breakfast had never occurred to the little Alderney maid. She opened wide her eyes to exclaim, — " How droll ! " Afterwards they heard her tell the strange story to the landlady, whose comment was, — " How droll 1 " "Reminds me of an occurrence of my youth," discoursed the elder Dove. " Once upon a time our New England minister preached to an audience of baked-bean eaters upon the Sabbath-breaking of having one's beans cooked at a bakery. The sermon made a great uproar, as may be supposed. All the week the congregation discussed it with more or less heat ; for New England's Sunday- morning beans, you know, are not to be insulted by any man, however sacred his office. When the congregation gathered together the next Sun- day morning, behold, the church steps were thickly strewn with raw beans, as much as to say to the Reverend Mr. Langworthy, ' Take your beans like cattle.' Of course that made more uproar ; but the culprits were not discovered, not even at the third bean-storm, which arose in the congregation the following spring, by which time the society had become generally known as the 288 HIRED FURNISHED. ' Holy Beaners.' The third commotion was when all the ground space about the Church of the Holy Beaners sprouted thick with beans, and con- tinued to sprout for weeks, from those swept away from the church steps the autumn before." After dinner to a little court apart from the narrow street, where the " Harmy " held a preli- minary service. The " Harmy " consisted of a captain, a Heutenant, and perhaps a score of privates. The two officers were rustic English maids, who lived on their pay of ten shillings a week apiece, and tea'd every day with the privates, thus saving tea and fire. They were blooming dairy- maids with tremendous singing voices, or what passed for such, and equal power in thumping tambourines, especially as contribution-boxes. This very Sunday was their last on Alderney, where they had been for a year. Their marching orders had come ; by the next steamer their suc- cessors would arrive and they depart, probably for Jersey ; they did not yet know their destination. The services began with music by the band, '^ said to be the best Salvation band in the Channel Islands," patriotic litde Zilpha declared, and prayer by the band-master, a round-eyed, flabby-mouthed, unintelligent looking youth, whose daily business was blacksmithing. Then came prayer by a decent working-man, in which was pathetic reference to the departure of " thy saints." "Saints," as applied to those chubby-cheeked girls, would have made the Doves smile had they not set their faces as adamant against any such lev- ity. The pathetic reference was expected, for almost before it assumed any form at all the cap- tain assiduously applied herself to her handkerchief. THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 289 But not for long did the dingy, crumpled thing dry her tearfulness, for her lieutenant gently insinuated it away to apply to her own. Then the captain's sorrow required it, then the heutenant's again; so, to and fro^ backwards and forwards, the unseemly rag travelled, till those meek Doves, peacefullest of their kind, yearned to charge the whole army and force clean handkerchiefs upon its officers. Not more than half a score of people were at the alfresco service, perhaps a score and five were at the service at headquarters. This was a room fitted with benches and a rough platform. The whitewashed walls were adorned with mottoes, and the congregation was largely of giggling young people. Certainly the most devout in manner were the even more youthful worshippers who arrived in what Zilpha called " prayambulators," and who kept their eyes devoutly shut till the braying of the band set them to shouting in shrillest army fashion. " Prayambulators," communed the Doves ; " how divinely named ! What do you suppose they are on week-days ! Can it be they are only the English ' pram ' which answers to our perambul- ator ? " " Corporal Smith will make a few feeble remarks," announced Captain Susan, while Lieutenant Jane circulated the contribution tambourine. Corporal Smith's remarks may or may not have been " feeble ; " to this day the Doves decline to testify for either side. For, as Corporal Smith had no teeth and no palate, and his throat was husky with the granite dust of the quarry in which his weeks are spent, they were unable to distinguish a word he meant to say. Neither did he seem to care 19 290 HIRED FURNISHED. whether he was understood of men or no, for he began to prepare to reseat himself fully three minutes before he and the bench came together, and made the last of those feeble remarks quite in the shape of a letter S. Zilpha explained that Corporal Smith had served as one of the light- keepers on the dream-palace Casquets. Nearly all his life of twenty years he had lived with his father on that rock which seemed so attractive as a mere picture or as a dream, cradled by the sea, watched by the heavens, sung to by ten thousand winds. " He had found it dull," Zilpha said, and had come to brilliant Alderney to break stone and flatter himself that he had reached a metropolis of the world. " He says he is tickled to death to live on Alderney," said pretty Zilpha. " I sup- pose it would seem quite small to him if he saw London." Before the present method of intrusting the care of lighthouses to four men, each of whom has a spell of holiday in turn, a family lived on the lonely Casquets from 182 1 to 1849. Upon one occasion the elder daughter paid a visit to Alderney, but she soon grew weary of its bustle. "The world," as she called it, "was too full of trouble and noise," and in a few days she joyfully returned home. However, some years later she was wooed from her rock to marry an Alderney carpenter. Two things upon windy Alderney were of great interest. One was the return of the cows, Alder- ney cows, every evening to the village ; the other a drill of the island militia. Those gaunt, fawn- colored cows, with soft, wistful, intelligent eyes ! For the first time the strangers understood the THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 29 1 meaning of '' ox-eyed Juno." Their interest in them never ceased, even after they ceased reaching out arms to touch the coast of France, so near that houses were distinctly visible. Under the waters of the Channel now lies the road which anciently connected this rock with Normandy, and for which to this day Alderney pays taxes for repairs. The Guernsey and the Alderney breeds of cattle are permitted to intermingle, being so much ahke, but the Jersey is entirely forbidden to both. The Jersey breed is said to have deteriorated from its condition of a century ago, probably for this very reason. Men and women decrease in size and beauty as well as in quality when too long insu- lated and forced to blood intermarriages, and naturally cattle are subject to the same law. The Channel Island cows are always tethered, even at pasture. They closely graze the grass within reach of their rope, then lie down to wait to be moved. It seems a cruel sight, that of these gentle creatures tied to a stake, frequently also with head harnessed down lest it reach up to apple-boughs. It is said that in Jersey are fifty-eight cattle to every one hundred acres. The breed in the three islands is very similar, although decidedly different ; in America we know no difference be- tween them. Each cow yields from four to five gallons of milk daily, and seven to ten pounds of butter a week. The Jersey cow is the smallest of the three breeds and the prettiest. None of them is it possible to fatten for the shambles, and their flesh makes very inferior beef, with yellow fat. One of the guide-books consulted by the Amer- icans stated that the prison of Alderney was seldom used. " By the salutary influence of the Salvation 292 HIRED FURNISHED. Army it has now seldom inmates." Considering that the island had found it advisable to erect a substantial prison of late years, and considering what they had seen of the " Harmy " on Alderney, this seemed a slightly insecure statement. When they visited the court-house and were shown about by the jailer, they asked if the prison was empty. " No," was the answer. *' I have three soldiers, nice fellows. They are in for breaking and enter- ing one night when they were on a spree. I tell them what fools they are. You see they are tired of sojjering and are playing a game to be dis- charged from the service. It would ruin them, of course, in England ; they could never keep a situa- tion if they got one, and they don't really mean to be criminals. They are just headstrong, reckless boys, the eldest only one-and-twenty. They mean to get kicked out of the army, and then go to America under false names. They 're nice fellows ; they are shut in together, and spend their time playing cards." It seemed to the Doves that everything rascally and adventurous had gone to America, or was going. " Were not our Pilgrim Fathers adventurers ? Had they no spice of recklessness in them where should we have been?" communed those pilgrim Doves. '^ We inherit the pilgrim part of them, if no other." But those cows, those cream-giving cows ! " Cream, solid, cream-colored cream ! " they chuckled before the first supper. " Cream from brimming pitchers into brimming goblets ! " The next morning nobody chuckled. Nobody wanted milk for breakfast, or indeed anything else. THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 293 " You drank ze milk wizzout ze water," explained their landlady. They never did it again. Every evening they watched those slow, digni- fied creatures, every one of them somebody's pet and answering to its name with beautiful docility, as they marched past their windows from the island fountain, where every evening and morning of the year they gather to drink (which water, except for cisterns, is the island's only supply). Every man's herd is by itself, but as all the herds came at almost the same time, it seemed like one long, stately procession, passing on to some flower- decked altar of the pagan gods. No cow straggled or capered (perish such an unworthy thought ! ) ; none flourished to one side or the other of the alley-like street. All was serious, even solemn; no shouts disturbed them or the Doves. They marched two by two, sometimes four abreast, and always with gentle countenances slightly inclined towards one another. Sometimes a herdsman was with them, at other times they kept the even tenor of their way without him. The Americans sometimes saw a herd halted before a shop while their attendant bought his salt-herring or codfish for supper. It was halted by a word, as at a word it started again. It was some time before they discovered that this rhythmic twilight march, in which each pensive marcher kept such perfect step and time, was man- aged by means of large loops of rope flung over each cow's horns, thus uniting the whole herd. These Channel Island cattle are very jealously guarded. No other cattle are permitted to land upon the island, except to be butchered for food. They never see another kind than their own, un- 294 HIRED FURNISHED. ■ less one be sold for a huge price and taken away over the sea. It almost seems as if these delicate creatures must be homesick when forced to asso- ciate with coarser beings of such different colors and forms from themselves. None of them upon their island home ever know their own calves, which are always brought up by hand upon diluted milk. If ze water was not put to ze milk of their supper they would refuse their breakfasts as the Doves did. When Queen Victoria visited Alderney and drove the people out of their wits with proud joy in 1854, a grand procession was arranged in her honor of these gentle bovine creatures, decked with green leaves, flowers being beyond the island's reach. One day the strangers became aware of some unusual excitement round Blaggud Corner. " Three o'clock," shouted one running boy to another. '' No, two ! " was the answer. " Pa told me himself." " None at all," said a blaggud, leaning against the most decorative design on the island, a show window full of anions and oranges, divided into triangles by tins of tomatoes. '' Is too," replied another, " we must be there sharp." " A review of the militia," exclaimed a little serving maid, excitedly, almost throwing the din- ner upon the table. " Mrs. Duplain says I may go." She danced about her duties with as pleased and excited expectation as if it were to be the trooping of the Queen's colors at the Horse Guards. Two hours later the whole island was astir. It seemed scarcely possible that so many men and THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 295 children belonged upon the rock. All tended one way, and thither tended the Americans. There, upon a windy field called Le But, they saw sixty men, the island's army of defence. They were of all heights and sizes, and unanimous only in wind-beaten complexions and absence of teeth, or presence in hideous ruins. There must have been an officer to every half-dozen men ; indeed an invading army would meet an army of defence composed almost entirely of officers. Some of these officers did nothing but stand about in groups as if holding important councils of war. An ex- tremely long-legged young officer in white gloves and much military braid, trailed a clattering sword incessantly. No darky with a watermelon was ever better satisfied with himself than he, with his sword and braids. His martial stride was almost too martial for the island ; one half expected to see him topple over the brink and scare the peaceful fishes to death by all that martial show. He did not concern himself with the rest of the army in the least ; his white gloves were more to him than any possible invader, the clatter of his sword was a visible ecstacy as he lurched and lunged from one army division to the other, in a way to strike admiration and terror to island maidens and our two Salvation lasses from rustic England. The army itself could not forget Blaggud Corner. It tried to shelter itself from the wind. It played sly tricks and pranks under the very eyes of the officers. At rest the men pinched each other and grimaced at nursemaids from the garrison. It is safe to say that there were not a score of sound teeth in that army, and no dentist on the island. So far from hiding the hideous lack, every 296 HIRED FURNISHED. one of those bold warriors seemed anxious to dis- play it in grins from ear to ear. In the roll-call each man answered to a number, but the officer in charge sometimes had occasion ex officio to bawl, " Now, John Heame, can't you answer to yer num- ber ? Ain't a-goin' to stan' no foolin' ! " Or, " Number Two, remember what you 'r doin' of!" The strutty young officer did nothing but strut, even though a youth of tender age, having called to a warrior bold, " Pa, I 'm goin' home now," ran between his legs.' He did nothing but strut and listen to maids whispering, " La ! Mr. Barbetson, ain't he nice ! " even when another officer makes a wide swish of his sword about him and shouts to crowding boys, " Here, you fellers, clear out ! " Another time, after " Eyes right ! " the other officer shouted, " Bill Bray, what are you a-squintin' at? " and forgot that Bill Bray was cross-eyed till the entire army shouted with laughter, and even then never saw the gun that was prodding helpless Bill Bray in the rear. This review was a village sensation ; every boy on Alderney watched it with eager eyes. Before many years he too could carry a gun now and then, and wear a uniform on Le But to dazzle nursemaids and frighten the never-coming invader. So the boys gathered close upon that warlike host in which were their fathers, uncles, and big brothers, and in spite of shooings and booings from both officers and men, nipped them irrever- ently wherever was a chance, not scorning to take unfair advantage in the rear, not fearing to dash straight through the wobbling ranks with hoot and yell, sometimes escaping gun jabs and some- times not, sometimes made prisoners of v.'ar and THE ISLAND OF ALDERNEY. 297 held by the slack of the trousers, till released with laughter and a thorough shaking. All this time the swaggering young officer, whose legs would certainly elsewhere have led to their arrest as drunk and incapable, continued his clat- tering and ecstatic gyrations. He was conscious of stranger eyes upon him ; the more conscious he grew, the more his legs gyrated. When all was over half or more of the island's defenders mounted a little child upon one shoulder, a gun upon the otllfer, and Alderney grew lively with bold warriors marching home to supper behind their cows and each with a child upon his shoulder. Probably even thus they would meet the Invader. 298 HIRED FURNISHED. THE LADDER. " Disgusting fog ! " sighed the lady. Her companion looked up in surprise. " The sun shines." " Really ! what business has it to shine in De- cember? It's pea-soup time." '^ Ah ! I see : you are craving fogs as an excuse to leave London. I do not know why we should not hire-furnished without one." "Neither do I," she cordially acquiesced. "I was only waiting for you to say so. I hunger and thirst for that Wine-Cellar." Among answers to their advertisements the lady had carefully preserved one which thrilled her to the very foundations of her being. It was a lady's letter, a lady's stationery, penmanship, and manner of expression. It gave the impres- sion of a stately dame in black velvet and lace, wearing a long-tabbed widow's cap, and with a higher nose and color than an American of her position would have. This lady, "Madame Noire," they called her, had noticed their adver- tisement in the Church Times (of course she was High Church) and "with sufficient recom- mendations was willing to let the advertisers have her house at B. for the sake of having THE LADDER. 299 it aired. There were seven rooms, gas, piano, and the Wine-Cellar." When she read this letter the advertiser nearly broke into a cheer. " Just think of it ! To own a Wine-Cellar during a whole winter ! What luxury ! What splendor ! What an atmosphere of ' hig-leef,' as our French friends say. What a flourish and finish to our letters home only casually to mention, ' He would certainly add a postscript had he not just run down to the Wine-Cellar ' ! How the Smiths, Joneses, Brovv^ns, would all have bihous attacks, imagining the butler, the footman, the chief cook, and the bottle-washer, the men-servants and maid- servants, the everything that properly consorts with an English wine-cellar ! Of course there should be marble-floored stables, and no end of flowing manes and tails to accompany the Wine-Cellar. If there is not, we have no occasion to mention so small a discrepancy to the Robinsons." " What will you put into it ? " "Into the Wine-Cellar?" The lady reflected a moment. Then she named the fluid consumed between them in sufficient quantities to wake the horror of all their English friends. Both laughed. For this fluid made a perpetual rift in the lute of their relations with their English friends who openly considered their perfect diges- tion and health an insolent flout in the face of of nature when they consumed vinegar ct Vameri- caine by the quart, instead of mustard a Va?i- glaise by the ton. The Wine-Cellar settled the question. No mat- ter what inducements elsewhere were offered, be 300 HIRED FURNISHED. it a softer winter climate (for little England's rela- tion to the Gulf Stream gives it more climates than you can shake a stick at, sometimes a pair of them in one town) than briskly bracing Broadstairs, be it " plate " included in the furnishing (with the Wine-Cellar there was none), be it even an " exten- sive library," as one offer held, — no matter for anything and everything, so long as there was but one Wine-Cellar, one glorious, one magnificent, one sublime, one unutterable VVine-Cellar ! It seemed consistently Wine-Cellarish that the black-velveted and high-nosed owner exacted references, though neither in the case of Villa nor in that of Cot, had they been demanded. *' You see," remarked the financial manager of the firm to the literary, — " you see it is not of our solvency, inasmuch as we pay for the whole term in advance ; it is of our moral and social status. Madam Noire does not intend to insult her Wine- Cellar with plebeian society." " What will the Wine-Cellar say to the vinegar ? Is n't vinegar, associating familiarly with raw onions and baked beans, a bit plebeian as compared with Veuve Cliquot and Clos Vougeot?" This was something of a blow. But, after a pause, " I will cork the jug tightly and label it Sweet Malaga^ They arrived at the Wine-Cellar after dark, wind- ing through the usual narrow and down-slipping streets of an ancient fishing village. From high walls and gabled gateway their carriage roused sleeping echoes murmuring not of ancient glories, of times and manners past, but, at least to the lady's ears, sweetly singing, " Wine-Cellar ! Wine- Cellar! " She pictured at the foot of the descent THE LADDER. lO\ a high-nosed dwelling with black-velvet portals opening widely upon a spacious entrance hall, a glimpse beyond of a stately drawing-room and handsome dining-room, made even more dignified by their consciousness that beneath them the Wine-Cellar extended its noble vaults. "All," she chuckled, " royally condescending to be aired by vagabond Americans for thirty dollars a quarter ! " The carriage drew up in the darkness of a corner gaslamp many rods away. " See ! " cried the lady. Then with less haste and more dignity, she pointed to the level of the pavement where burned a low thin line of illumination, the only bit of light in the whole facade. " Behold our Wine-Cellar !" " Do English dowagers illuminate Wine-Cellars at ten shiUings a week?" asked the other, with some inflexion of doubting. Dreaming of that Wine-Cellar the lady had brought her best silver and napery. She had visions during all the railway journey of the flash- ing decanters she should find over the Wine-Cellar, the crystal goblets of finest cutting, the fairylike china to match, and to make their breakfasts and luncheons poetry, their tea-tray a dream, their din- ners Music, Sculpture, Painting, and the Drama. An intelligent, well-bred young woman, evidently more a confidential friend than even a confiden- tial servant of the owner (as happens only in England), had come up from London for neces- sary domestic arrangements, and met them at the door. Suddenly the lady's reason tottered on its throne. Even the throne itself uprose and reeled. 302 HIRED FURNISHED. The Grand Portal was not of black velvet. It was scarcely wider than she was, scarcely higher than the partner of her hirings. There was no vista of drawing and dining room ; the Wine-Cellar did not make itself felt, the worn oilcloth of the narrow entry did^ — likewise the steep and nar- row stairs, cheek by jowl with the narrow front- door. *^ The stairs are always covered with oilcloth in English seaside places," whistled the lady. " The sand you know." Evidently his courage did not need whistling to keep it up, whatever might be suspected of hers. " The ' sincere ' English taste keeps its marble for its Wine-Cellar. Seems very comfortable here," said the wise one. The fooHsh one wisely held her peace. Wisely, because later the indescribable, unparalleled queer- ness of the house largely compensated for its shortcoming of the mundane elegance so unrea- sonably pictured. Never in all their wanderings had any such odd creation met their sight. It sometimes seemed a dwelling in wonderland, where on windy midnights they heard the mock turtle's lament that he was not real, where the Cheshire cat's grin wavered to and fro in the sunny mornings, and where viewless Hatters took tea with viewless Dormice and March hares in the dining-room, whenever they left it. When the Americans undertook to find a name for the house, as they always did name their hired- furnisheds, they found themselves embarrassed by the many peculiarities, any one of them character- istic enough to give a name. " Why not call it The Wine-Cellar?" THE LADDER. 303 The other partner's brow clouded. " It is not a Pub." " Of course not. It would n't pay. The Tartar Frigate, the Jolly Tar, the Man of Kent, not to mention the Dolphin are quite too near, the very youngest of them established in 1776." They never quite decided upon a name, though "The Ladder" seemed most appropriate and was most in use. They wrote to their London friends of their " Crystal Palace ; " the Smiths, Browns, Joneses, and Robinsons heard of their " Swell Front ; " to each other, when time did not too much fugit, they named it, " The House-in-which- one-may-not-throw-Stones." It had a swell front, one most decidedly swollen. But for that swell, swelling out toward the swells of the German Ocean, its width would have been scarcely more than twenty feet. The dining-room, drawing-room, and one of the bedrooms were largely composed of that elaborate swell. The house consisted chiefly (of course after the Wine- Cellar) of three flights of ladders (called stairs) climbing straightly up a white cliff of Albion, one of the very cliffs that Caesar and St. Augustine may have made remarks upon before these ladders hid it. Thus while the rotund front of three rooms was chiefly of glass, in the form of bow- windows projecting even beyond the brick swell, the back was blank and rigid, being of solid rock. Every room of the six was on a different floor, except the three bedrooms. They spread them- selves on the top level, three ladders from the kitchen, very hke an umbrella on its stick or a mushroom on its stalk. Naturally, the Ladder- esque style of domestic architecture has some in- 304 HIRED FURNISHED. conveniences. The sneeze and the handkerchief may not always chance upon the same level ; the needle may be with the thimble, but the buttonless garment three ladders away. Would the dinner- getter stay her soul with philosophic comfort between bastings of the joint, she must climb a cliff of Albion two ladders or three from the base to Marcus AureHus, or else cry upward that her philosopher be cast down. One needs to adopt the Ladderesque style of housekeeping to realize how extremely wayward are the habits of many small adjuncts of civilization besides handkerchiefs and thimbles, to realize too how possible, even though so highly improbable, to live, love, suffer, and die on a space of earth not larger than a family burial-lot, without an inch of space beyond that covered by ladders up the face of a cliff. The Ladder had no outside space wherein to hang a handkerchief or to dry a stocking. From the door there was but one step to the pavement ; through that one door, for lack of any other, the inhab- itants must receive their letters, visitors, and sup- plies, through it they must project their ashes. The crystal part of the dwelHng was about one third of the three front rooms. The enormous windows formed almost the entire facade and looked three ways upon the German Ocean, boom- ing beneath. Directly in front, the crystal faced France, and framed at times a looming hint of Calais Heights. Close beneath, were fishing boats and a quaint little oyster shop, where the fisher- man owner was rarely seen, and whoever entered to buy (in the winter) left his order and money on a shelf. Behind and above, were quaint, sun- less streets, flintstone arches, and ancient walls, as THE LADDER. 305 well as modern streets ; to the left, the sea ; to the right, a succession of empty lodging-houses and fantastic summer villas gone to sleep. The Ladder was its owner's summer home, that owner whose nose came down a few notches, and whose velvet and lace changed to merino and braid, when the Americans recognized how in- compatible the Ladder's space with trailing raiment and any unusual altitude of feature. They believed in her honorable sincerity now, having before credited her only with the artificial sim- plicity of the aristocrat, when she wrote them that she had bought the house some years before as a vacation refuge for her nurses and children. '^ It is n't quite an everyday nose, you see, even yet, and there 's plenty of velvet and lace in the winter wardrobes ; notice she writes nurses." "How many would the house hold?" asked the other, with mental calculation of the nurse-and- child capacity of three beds and a folding chair. The house itself, by reason of the vagaries of the cliff at its back, as well as every room in it, was shaped like the very craziest patch of the craziest quilt ever evolved from crazy minds. This eccentricity was magnified and multiphed by mirrors ingeniously fitted into every angle, recess, corner, where a mirror could possibly be inserted, as well as broadly between doors and over the marble chimney-piece. They were mir- rors long and mirrors slender, mirrors short and mirrors broad, all evidently designed to magnify space and dimensions. Two buffets in the din- ing-room below had mirror doors and backs, ditto one etagere in the drawing-room above. The result was less a magnitude of dimensions than 20 306 HIRED FURNISHED. a magnitude of glitter, of shine and shimmer, of high Hghts and cross lights, resulting frequently in such high and cross perplexity of vision that these Hirers gave way to dark suspicions. At times they mutually gazed aslant with an oblique- ness consorting oftener with paganism and pig- tails, than with American straight-forwardness, half expecting the fatal words, " How cross-eyed you are ! " and ready with that always effective retort, " You 're another ! " The tiny drawing-room midway up Albion's cliff, and largely out of doors, being so largely of glass, was furnished with a Brussels carpet evi- dently reduced from the London house and larger rooms of its owner, and upholstered with green rep now considerably faded. It had Nottingham lace curtains and antimacassars without number. Muslin flowers (ah, the untold millions of them in England) and tuppenny ha'penny ornaments beyond count gave impression of aesthetic decora- tion entrusted entirely to nurses and children. The general effect was of the strangest. Some- how, in spite of its one side of everlasting rock, its other side of solemn sea, the room held yet the spiritual essence of a British matron, but one eii deshabille and given over to summer-vacation ways. The strangers fancied they could see her wearing a sailor hat in place of the wide-tabbed cap, and with a Trilby blouse and short petticoats tumbling in from the sands, to sprawl all over this green rep with a Keynote or a Yellow novel, regardless of the conventions that elsewhere keep her nose and stockings up, and her literary taste under guidance of the "Church Times" and "The Queen." THE LADDER. 30/ Deep down in the bowels of the earth was the kitchen, whence that low line of light had greeted the Americans upon their arrival ; likewise there was the Wine-Cellar ; likewise the space under the pavement called by all indigenes " coal- scubberd." In no such dungeon in America would ^' help "' of any possible condition consent to be confined. No smutty scullion, however greasy, would stoop so low. It was nothing else than a grewsome cellar cemented top, bottom, and sides, and hung all about with fire-tried cooking utensils. Close under the ceiling two panes of glass, placed lengthwise and beside each other, not one above the other, touched the level of the street. They were always splashed thick with mud, and to wash them was foolish, for the next passing foot splashed them anew. Washed once a day, they remained in condition to afford a compre- hensive view of the native foot, often a consider- able object to view. The whole island might have been feet and nothing more, for all those panes revealed. During only about six hours of a sunny winter's day did twihght creep in, like a thing scared or ashamed. After three o'clock until nine the next morning, only by gaslight could a face be seen. There was no possible exit from this cavern save by a ladder, and no other possi- ble entrance into it, unless for the trayful of dishes, which more than once during the American period somersaulted into the dungeon without so much as touching a ladder, albeit Nellie, the tray- bearer, knew familiarly from base to summit that House- in-which-one-may-not-throw-Stones. The House-in-which-one-may-not-throw-Stones was delightfully clean, for it was an English house- 308 HIRED FURNISHED. keeper's own. Because it was the first of their hiring that really was somebody's own, and not furnished expressly to be let, these Hirers (at least one of them) was conscious of a delicious sense of peeping-and-prying, and the indulgence of that instinct of human nature which has created the Interviewer and the Personal Column, as well as made the quilting bee and the sewing society of our fore-parents, — the same instinct that makes Plutarch and Pliny of perennial interest, that has preserved dirty, mean Pepys from oblivion, that makes Bos well, the Due de Saint-Simon, Horace Walpole, and Madame de Se'vigne famous, and that swells the world's vast and ever-rising flood of biographies, autobiographies, correspondences, memoirs, and reminiscences. Many a time this peeper-and-pryer had inspected domestic interiors of England, but always under guidance. She had revealed the secrets of pandowdy, strawberry shortcake, and codfish balls in more than one indigenous kitchen, but ever with watchful eyes upon her. Never before had the bridle been taken from her neck, and she turned loose, with- out let or hindrance, among cupboards and clothes- presses not her own, not even of her own country ; and it was with the delicious taste ot forbidden fruit in her mouth that her face inserted itself between beds and mattresses, that she " hefted " pillows, peered into closets, and turned every kitchen utensil upside down with regret that it would not be turned inside out, and that it had no hind-side to be made a front one. Blankets were fleecy and abundant ; the coun- terpanes snowy, the beds martyred geese. Evi- dently Madam Noire was of the old school THE LADDER. 309 never modernized to hair mattresses ; although the feather beds were not of early eighteenth but late nineteenth century geese, and the ticking almost new. The chamber furnishing was extremely plain, but comfortable in every particular, as the English habit always is. In the dining-room-of-many-corners, the fireplace in the farthest one, the two decanters flashed as brilliantly as they would have flashed with ten companions ; wine-glasses were neat, and a full dozen minus three ; the china of the usual white-and-gold variety, and ample in quantity for a pair of Hirers with now and then a guest. " Imagine," said the lady, " there is not a bread or cake tin in the whole Ladder. Not a steamer, a double -boiler, an ice-cream freezer, a custard cup, an egg whisk, a pie plate, a gem pan, a potato-masher, a flour-sifter, a pancake-turner, a coffee or spice mill, a can-opener, a fruit-strainer, an apple-corer in the whole House-in-which-one- may-not-throw-Stones. " The other one of them looked aghast. "Go out at once and buy," he gasped, as if starvation already gripped them. " No. I will manage as the English house- keeper manages in her summer home, and buy bread and all sweets from the confectioner and baker. But what under the sun can I do with the English housekeeper's implements for sub- stantial cooking? Do see this whole nest of baby bath-tubs ; they are for English puddings for which the eggs are evidently beaten with this pitchfork. Those basting hooks would bear a heifer ; here 's a fish-kettle for a mother whale, and a smaller for her daughter ; one could rock-me-to-sleep-mother in this chopping-tray ; this roasting pan is divided 310 HIRED FURNISHED. into two hemispheres large enough to carry the Zodiac twins. I fancy one is for the roast beef, the other for the Yorkshire pudding ; one for fowl, the other for sausages ; or perhaps Madam Noire has a choice of joints for every dinner. These colossal objects explain the gravy boats and meat platters, in any one of which both of us might go ashore from a wreck. We can use the gravy boat platter for our roasts. I will buy a roasting pan commensurate, and we need not invest in a cork- screw, there 's one for every ladder." That there was no lack of trays needs not to be said. The god Tray is ever chief among the household idols of England. Who ever read an English novel into which the Tray did not enter, visibly or invisibly? It may be the Tray of breakfast, of luncheon, of tea, or of supper ; but there Tray is, succulent, stimulating, grateful, comforting, refreshing, solidly imposing, undeniably British. Who ever forgets that supper tray in Cranford, at sight of which the good mistress exclaims, as if in pleased surprise, " Why, Betty, what have you brought us ? " having herself been cooking for that tray all day. The English palace gathers unto itself trays of silver and trays of gold. The English country house is rich in heirloom trays ; the aesthetic London house outlays upon much inlaying of its trays ; Villadom adorns its trays with fine linen and much stitchery ; the Cottager has her painted idol ; the tramp steals every Tray upon which he can lay his hands. '' Why do we make no account of the Tray in America?" one asked. " Democracy's rights," explained the other of THE LADDER. 311 them. "The Triumph of the Modern Spirit and the Rights of Man. In our country we can go to the tray, but the tray rarely comes to us, lacking legs. The English Tray and the English coal- scuttle are Molochs that yearly devour their thousands. Think of the endless procession of servile legs that toil, and have toiled for centuries, up and down stairs with them, under bodies bent broken and despairing, a servile class and nothing more. Think of it, thoughtless worshipper of your Five-o'clock, and try to imagine a ' help ' in America 'accepting a position,' as they call it, where is a ladder between kitchen and dining- room, two ladders between the teakettle and the afternoon Tray ! " For a brief space of time one of the Hirers looked almost as uncomfortable as she felt. Then her brow cleared. " As you are no less a Five-o'clocker than I am, you may add your two legs to our tea-tray after this. But there are no ladders between our tea- kettle and tray, for there the kettle sings at the drawing-room grate on the trivet I bought the next morning after the evening of our arrival." In consequence of this little domestic interlude, at five o'clock that very afternoon two tea-cups and saucers came up from the dining-room in a man's bare right hand, the tea-pot in the man's bare left, the tray under his arm. As the other of them climbed up from the kitchen with the cut bread and butter, she inquired : — " Where are the spoons ? " " Daresay I dropped them somewhere," was the nonchalant answer. " You ought to keep the tea-things always up here." 312 HIRED FURNISHED. " And wash them, where ? " The rest was silence. Nellie, their Maid of the Morning, came singing to the Ladder with every winter's dawn. She was a fisherman's daughter from a dusky interior three doors away, and served them deftly and honestly, albeit with various perfectly visible sus- picions. Every morning the lady heard Nellie's blithe voice below, whereupon she rose for one little instant from her feathery couch and lifted the window a wee crack. The doorkey (there was but one, for chffs of Albion do not permit of back doors), was thrust through the crack attached to a long string. When a pull came upon the string it was evident that NeUie had possessed herself of the key. The string was drawn up, and the feathery couch received its own again till Nellie's pleasant voice announced the hot water and breakfast. Nellie was only sixteen, but already a clever cook. She was shyly but firmly convinced that she could cook "American things," if only once told how. The Hirers were wildly desirous of buckwheat-cakes, and Nellie, with amazement depicted upon her frank countenance, told them where buckwheat could be found, the only place in all Broadstairs. So the buckwheat was ordered, and with it a sealed can, or tin, of golden syrup, "two pounds for sixpence," the lady announced ; " eggs will come also, not at fifteen pence a dozen, but twelve for fifteen pence, oranges twenty the shilling, potatoes sixpence the gallon, apples four- pence the pound." " Apples by the pound ! ar'n't you ashamed of yourself to order less than a bushel ? Tell me, at THE LADDER. 313 fourpence the pound for goldings, how much will a barrel of baldwins cost? " The lady's face was troubled. It always was, when she was particularly reminded of apples by the pound. Until her arrival in England, many years ago, she had never seen apples sold by the pound, the most reasonable and just way to buy and sell them. She chanced to be passing a green grocer's, — never shall she forget the corner in a sordid neighborhood, a corner of Great Coram and Marchmont Street, — when she espied pleasant apples at something-or-other the pound. Exper- imentally she asked for a pound of those apples. When the boy gave her three, she exclaimed, " Is that all that goes to a pound ? Then — " She was about to add, " I must have five or six pounds," when the green grocer himself, hear- ing her exclamation, stepped up. "Three ain't enough for a fourpenny pound, ain't it ? Yer 'd better 'ave yer hown garding 'n grow happles fer yerself, er yer 'd better heat hun- yuns 'n' leave happles till yer c'n hafford to pay for 'em ! " The American was out of the shop by this time ; but for hours, " happles 'n' hunyuns, happles ^n' hunyuns," rattled in her ears, and not for months afterwards did she venture into a orreen- grocer's shop. When she did venture, she did not ask for apples, but for butter. " Hain't yer gut no heyes ? This is a green- grocer's," snarled the owner. " In my country we buy our butter of the green- grocer," she ventured to explain. The man looked her over from head to foot, then remarked superciliously : — 314 HIRED FURNISHED. " It 's a rum 'un, then." Years afterwards, tliis American heard an Eng- lishwoman returned from six weeks at the World's Fair lecture upon *' Impressions of America." She was a short, red-faced, dowdily-dressed woman, the very type and pattern of John Bull's wife, as American caricature represents her, who showed by her every word, that, while in America, she considered herself in a Pays conqiiis. It was actually pitiable that this woman was as uncon- scious as a dead woman of the effect she really had upon the taciturn Americans, supposed to be speechless from admiration. The lecturer even told of the excitement into which her English per- son and her " London frock " threw an entire vil- lage. The Americans in her audience did not doubt it ! "The lower classes in America are unspeakably insolent," said the lecturer. " I once went to a Chicago express office to ask after a strayed box. No sooner had I stated my business, than the clerk bawled to another, ' If here is n't another woman asking about a trunk ! ' ' Give me none of your insolence,' I said to the man, ' I am an English gentlewoman, and unaccustomed to im- pertinence.' " " Happies ';?' Jiunyuns ! happles ';z' hunytins ! " memory echoed in the audience, and an American longed to match the vulgar woman's experience of " American lower classes in an express office," during the rush and turmoil of a World's Fair, with her own experience of that very day in a Golden Grain tea-shop in Great Russell Street. Finding her tea too strong, she had asked for a little hot water. The girl who brought it, as she turned thb: ladder. 315 away, remarked audibly to another. "She 's goin' to get two cups outer one." When the buckwheat arrived at the House-in- which-one-may-not-throw-Stones, its bulk was amazing. "■ I don't believe it is ground," exclaimed a Hirer. " Never heard of henny that was/' said the man who brought it, and who knew it only as cattle fodder. The lady now understood the amazed ex- pression of Nellie's face during the buckwheat-cake conference, and why she always sniffed at but never tasted the Johnny-cake. And that relates to the Wine-Cellar. For to visit the Wine-Cellar, was invited the friend who brought with her the prepared package of Ameri- can gold dust from which the Johnny-cakes were evolved, as well as the " baked Indian," upon which Nellie kept a wary and watchful eye, but of which she could not be persuaded to taste, not knowing if it were of a friendly tribe. The lady was determined to live up to the W^ine- Cellar, of which she had talked so much before leaving London, although to live up to it, with only willing but very youthful Nellie, was not so easy to do. She purchased the caps and aprons of a stylish parlor-maid, and Nellie was persuaded to wear them, with many blushes and giggling protestations of unfitness for so much elegance. Nellie was thenceforth observed to glance fre- quendy into the multitudinous mirrors. When- ever a sudden giggle was followed by a dead, awful silence, it was known that a mirror had cast Nellie's reflection back at her in a guise of an 3l6 HIRED FURNISHED. over-powering swell. Yet she never could be enticed or deceived into wearing her finery out of doors. Even crossing over to the little oyster- shop for twenty-five oysters for two shillings, with no prospect of meeting a soul, she snatched off her cap and apron, and, in the twinkling of an eye, was transformed into a fishermaid again with tou- sled hair and bounding motion, till her return. Apparently, she thus avoided the comments of her acquaintances upon a towering ambition to become, without preliminary education, that creme de la creme of servants, a parlor-maid. She would make a perfect one, tidy, quiet, respectful, cheerful and capable ; the spirit of the lady re- pined greatly that clever Nellie was but a passing circumstance, and not a fixture of their hirings. Gladly would she have invited America to send for her, and be blessed in the acquisition, but for the knowledge that, with a net-ful of daughters, Nellie's parents had not enough of them to spare one out of their reach. The Americans thus had not only a Wine- Cellar to welcome their guests, but a staff of servants. There was Mrs. 'Arris at the head of the laundry department, who carried and fetched the family washing in a wheelbarrow, to and from the front door, Mrs. 'Arris concerning whose ex- istence was no possible doubt, she being rosy and rotund at past sixty-five, an age when she coquet- tishly confessed one ought to begin to "hexpect the little hitems and hincidents of hage." Besides this chief of the laundry department, was Nellie the parlor-maid, Ellen the cook, and Nell the butler. Alas, it was in the latter capacity that the staff came to grief. THE LADDER. 31/ " Another bottle of claret, Nell," said the hostess one dinner-time when the guests were two. " The yellow seal, top row, southeast corner of the Wine-Cellar," added the host, with a wicked smile. " None there, sir. I brought them both up before dinner," said the unsuspicious butler. Fortunately the other bottle was yet unopened upon the buffet and multiplied by a background mirror into three or four ; so nobody had occasion to weep, although much to laugh. When Mrs. St. John's Wood, author of " Court Circles " and " Queenly Graces,'' came from St. John's W^ood to the Ladder for a few days' visit, she seemed very much more English-you-know, that is, very much more unlike Americans, than she had ever seemed to the Hirers in her own home. Mrs. Sinjonood, as she pronounced herself, had spent some time in America, and was given to much criticism of Americans, which was not un- fair, as no people criticise other peoples more than Americans do. In fact, the absolutely unjust and conspicuously provincial criticisms by Americans of everything they see and hear away from their own country made these Hirers at times almost ashamed of their nationality. To hear nasal voices at their highest pitch proclaiming the cosmopoli- tanism of the " Amurricun Citizen " and the provinciality of " these Hinglish," in the very capital of England and almost of the world, was enough to make one speak disrespectfully of every stripe in the Starry Banner. In their own country these Hirers heard fifty oiTensive remarks concern- ing the English to one they heard in England of Americans. Hundreds of Americans return to 3l8 HIRED FURNISHED. their hot biscuits and ice-water every year, with nothing brought home from their travels but anecdotes and descriptions of European barbarism. When one considers the troops of ill-dressed ex- cursionists gaping through Europe without change of linen, personally conducted at so much a head ; back-country Americans with their hideously cor- rupt English, in which every a cants over upon its back instead of standing upright hke the rt;'s of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, George Washington, and Daniel Webster, when one con- siders this annual "American Invasion" into the beaten highways of the tourist's England without a single glimpse of the real England, the beautiful homes and domestic, intellectual, spiritual life of a people whose character has made their speech and their blood to dominate the world, one is almost disposed to beat one's breast and tear one's hair three several and distinct times, — as a Mayflower descendant, a daughter of the Colonial Wars, and a D. A. R. " It is positively amazing that English people who have never seen Americans in their own country think as well of us as they do," these Americans repeatedly agreed. Mrs. Sinjonood of St. John's Wood was not of the old school ; she hated feather beds and lay abed, to prove it, till nearly luncheon-time. She took meantime an exact inventory of her chamber furnishing, and enlivened the breakfast-table by recounting the spots on the toilet-table and the cracks of the washstand. Everything on the dining-table, excepting of course the food, passed throufrh the crucible of her criticism. The hitherto unsuspected duplicity of the china, the THE LADDER. 319 deceitfulness of the glass ware, the thinness of the carpets, the weak spots in the curtains, — she knew them all, and told of every one. It was only a hired-furnished that she thus mercilessly vivi- sected ; it was not the Hirers' own, and she con- tinually reminded them of her realization of the fact by saying, " Merely one of the seaside houses that English people furnish cheaply for the sum- mer ; " but for all that one of the Hirers grew very uncomfortable under the perpetual inspection and criticism of the hiring they enjoyed so much, and she knew that under the same circumstances, and a Sinjonood hiring, she would be less profuse of sarcastic comment. She believed Americans generally of the Sinjonood position would have the same reserves. She felt her nose rise not at the tip but at the bridge, and her color increase a ranglaise. With black velvet and a tabbed widow's cap she would have resented Mrs. Sinjonood ; without them shfe kept silence upon her conviction that it was not quite well-bred to make a hostess half ashamed of so poor a hired-furnished, and of realizing that poverty so incompletely as to invite a guest to share its misery even for three days. " Do not generahze all Englishwomen from one," expostulated the wise one. " Not to gen- eralize from the American who eats 'tomayto BOSS ' on his apple pie, and does Yurrup in thirty days, is what you are continually impressing upon English people. Mrs. Sinjonood lacked tact, as the English largely do ; but what did that pretty American girl lack last summer who bit an end from a Turkish sweet, and then returned it to the general quantity? " " Mrs. Sinjonood lives among courts and queens. 320 HIRED FURNISHED. at least in her daily work, and her father was a Q. C. The pretty American girl's father was a shoemaker who patented an invention, although, like all perceptive and receptive American girls, she had the dress and appearance of a princess. There 's where the mistake comes, and all the friction of misconceptions ; for no English person would ever think of expecting or excusing the manner of a shoemaker's daughter in her, but all exact the manners of the princess she manages to look. It is sometimes not all rose for the transatlantic plebeian in Europe that his, particu- larly her^ appearance is so much better than that of the same breed in England. Neither is it tout de roses for the rest of us." " Your table is very American," said Mrs. Sinjonood ; " you use a sugar basin and a spoon vase. We English prefer to offer sugar, a few lumps at a time, in a wine-glass or glass saucer. It is cleaner thus than the same lumps repeated day after day in a basin." " Ours is a clean country," feebly suggested a Hirer. " We do not use a nail-brush to our sugar, even though it be a month old, as London cooks have been known to do. You English do not use as many spoons as we, hence no spoon vases, now I am bound to say rather old fashioned even in America. You have fewer ' spoon-vittles.' All winter long you eat the same fork-vegetables, so to speak, onions, cabbage, turnips, sprouts, par- snips, all on the same plate. Our corn, squash, tomatoes, succotash, green peas, our peaches, cranberry-sauce, apple-sauce, etc. are saucer-served and spoon-eaten, hence our spoon vases." The lady almost blushed one day in offering a THE LADDER. 321 dish of Brussels sprouts to Mrs. Sinjonood, after three days of corn, tomatoes, green peas, and green beans. She imagined it so inhospitable to thrust eternal sprouts into mouths eternally winter- fed with them, remembering that English homes at the end of the winter always seemed to her per- meated to their inmost recesses, draperies, nap- eries, upholstery, even to the laces of the boudoir, the leather of the library, with the double distilled essence of roast mutton and Brussels sprouts. '' Now this is nice," remarked Mrs. Sinjonood with suggestive emphasis to the dish of sprouts. But to the dish of sugar corn. " It is sweetened porridge. Don't you hate porridge?" The House-in-which-one-may-not-throw-Stones turned its swell front to the sun nearly all the day long. From morning till mid-afternoon, the little drawing-room was flooded with golden light, even until the writing-tables and reading-chairs must be moved into the least dazzling corners. All those bright winter days were filled with work and play, with books from a good circulating library, with long letters and long walks, with visits, even with a ball and dancing programmes mysterious in mention of bd, gh,gd,ff, bt^ to be translated, *' blue dress," "golden hair," "good dancer," "flat- foot," "big teeth." There was also one occult /, declared by one of them to indicate " Idiot," but by the other of them translated " Incognita." " Our dear English friends highly resent the imputation of prominent teeth, and attribute the slander entirely to Gallic malice," laughed one of them, the morning after that delightful ball to which they were letter-of-introductioned from 21 322 HIRED FURNISHED. Cavendish Square ; " but the fact remains that there are enormous dental displays among them, a pecu- harity we in America have somewhat inherited. Whoever saw a Frenchman with conspicuous teeth ? " " They have not sufficient osseous structure," explained the other ; '■' and I beheve that is why they still keep up their absurd farce of duelling. They have not grown ashamed of flourishing swords, as the big-boned Englishman long ago grew ashamed of fighting with his fists. But why the English deny their valiant teeth I never can understand, particularly after a ball, or a walk down Regent Street. It was an Englishman, one Robert Coddrington, who, so early as the Com- monwealth, warned his countrywomen against ' that simper of the lips with which many gentle- women try to hide the greatness of their teeth.' " In the month of January sunshine, however dazzling, is not to be depended upon for con- stancy. In time the Ladder was wrapped in cloudiness. Then the winds beat and roared upon the House -in -which -one -may -not -throw- Stones, the wild sea before the house lashed itself to thunderous fury; no more the mock turtle's lament was heard in the elemental uproar that almost deafened them. Out upon that raging deep they knew poor souls must be struggling for their lives, perhaps to lose them even so near home; for out there, but a little space of calm water away, although now distant by leagues upon leagues of shrieking foam, were the fatal Goodwin Sands, where many a brave ship and brave life have left their bones. Twice during the storm they saw the lifeboat manned and launched into THE LADDER. 323 the very heart of the tempest. Where it went, save into a great darkness, they could not see, nor did they see its return, with the half-drowned sailors of a collier at the bottom of the English Channel. The Ladder did not rock one quarter- inch in all that turmoil as Pemsy Villa had rocked so many. The House-in-which-one-may-not-throw- Stones was much nearer the sea than Pemsy Villa, so near in fact that the salt spray almost dashed its crystal front ; but it was too firmly backed by a cliff of Albion to shudder, even when the earth itself trembled beneath the booming breakers. Nevertheless the drawing-room was in a high state of excitement. Sheets of manuscript hopped and skipped all over the huge Brussels roses and green rep ; leaves of books took their own time and pleasure, or rather the wind's, in the matter of turning over ; the crystal side of the room seemed half a mind to come in altogether and spread itself on the hearthrug before the cheery fire. Again the paste-pot came into ser- vice, again every crack and crevice was thoroughly calked, and the Ladder put in ship-shape order. Then Nelhe came to assure herself that her timid city pair had not gone stark mad with terror, she brought up the tea-tray ; and inside the crystal swell, beside a ruddy grate, peace spread its fair pinions over the cosy five o'clock. But the Wine- Cellar ! Brother and Sister Americans, countrymen and women, fellow-citizens ! Have we not in all our homes some grim dark place into which no man or woman enters, and of which the children are afraid? Is it not darkly haunted by gnome-like 324 HIRED FURNISHED. things, big-bellied and squat, wide-mouthed and iron-throated, hollow-faced and clanking, like chain-bound galley slaves? Are not unclean ob- jects often there, shapes which certainly are not of honor, even if not exactly of dishonor ? From a gloomy mystery of this sort under the lowest ladder of all, a Hirer one day withdrew a laughing face. " Call this a Wine-Cellar ? " he remarked; " we have no end of them at home. In the American language, they are pot-closets." CLOVER VILLA. 325 CLOVER VILLA. " Not a gentleman," said he. '/ Mr. Pumpkin Hood was not a gentleman." " He did not pretend to be, which makes all the difference in the world. This man does. He does not know, however, that a gentleman would not ask concerning us of our banker, we having paid the whole term in advance. What can a banker tell save that our account is regular? We may be escaped convicts for all the ' London and County ' knows. This man's only idea of eligibility is a correct bank account." The lady was quite of the same opinion con- cerning the good breeding of the offerer of Clover Villa. His letters were in every way correct; but how could she forget the day on which she had made a journey into Sussex only to look at Clover Villa? Mr. Boxworthy had written her how to reach the villa. She must take a certain train from Victoria Station, arrive at Hailsham in time for the omnibus for Hurstmonceaux, which would leave the Hailsham station ten minutes after the train's arrival. She had followed the directions imphcitly, though to do so made a breathless departure necessary, before the house in Cavendish Square was awake. A hurried breakfast in the railway buffet, then an early morning ride and an early forenoon arrival at Hailsham, all as directed. But then, — 326 HIRED FURNISHED. " 'Ersmunsoo bus ? " said men about the station ; " it does n't call for this train ; calls for the train an hour later." *•' Why did Mr. Boxworthy rend me from my bed at such an inconscionable hour, to strand me here in a most uninteresting town waiting the omnibus?" she murmured disconsolately. There was ample time for a lunch at a neighboring hotel, a saunter about the town, then the omnibus gathered wiser passengers than she, who had known enough to take the later train from London, and all set forth over the four miles to Hurstmonceaux. " Omnibus," it was called ; it was really one of the long, heavy, black and clumsy covered wagons with a seat upon each side, as in other omnibuses, but the centre filled with commissions from Hailsham, and for Hurstmonceaux, — groceries, wooden ware, iron ware, flour and feed, furniture, luggage, what- ever the little hamlet needed whither they were bound. There was scarcely room for the feet of the passengers who clung to the narrow seats as to a ledge upon a wall. The seats were thus narrow to enlarge the carrying capacity of the centre, filled now with both luggage and merchan- dise, the latter both added to and subtracted from by commissions at various shops and houses. The American noticed that everybody spoke of the thing as ^'carrier" not as ''omnibus." Mr. and Mrs. Boxworthy met her in Clover Villa, having driven from their own house in B in their pony cart. They had hired Clover Villa for their own summer use, they said, and furnished it for that purpose, but had concluded to let it to desirable tenants ; they expected four pounds a month, but could probably let it at those terms not CLOVER VILLA. 32/ more than six weeks 'of the summer; if the lady would take it for four months, as she said in her letters, she might have it at the rate of 15^". a week. The man never spoke to her without repeating her name. Over and over and over again, till she wearied of it, and would almost have welcomed the touch more of servility in the English shopman's incessant " Madam," even the cabman's and por- ter's " Lady." The wife was less effusive, and made a better impression, as vvives often do in England as well . as elsewhere, even though she alluded more than once to the "exceeding luxury" with which her own house was furnished. The stranger gave a guinea to make the bargain fast, and the man gave her a receipt for it, a perfectly proper and business-like proceeding. Never in any other hiring had she paid such a guinea or been offered such a receipt. The consequence was that she utterly forgot to take the receipt upon her return to London, but left it in Clover Villa, to receive it by post the very next day. "Strictly business-like," she thought, " but not in the least like our other hirings, where payment in advance has never been exacted, but always our own choice. " To-morrow I will send a check," she said, after binding the bargain with the guinea ; " now I must get the omnibus for that four-o'clock train from Hailsham." "What day is this?" said the man reflectively. " You see, Mrs. So-and-So, there is no return omnibus to Hailsham on any day except Saturday. But you can hire a carriage at the Woolpack, Mrs. So-and-So." " No doubt he is honest," thought Mrs. So-and- So, as she bowled along the pleasant road to 328 HIRED FURNISHED. Hailsham at an expense greater than her fare from London ; *' but he is not a gentleman. He knew very well there was no return omnibus to-day ; he knew there would be one to-morrow ; he did not tell me, because he wished the affair concluded as soon as possible for his own convenience." These people did not fail to keep up the char- acter in which they first presented themselves. All summer long, until late October, the Ameri- cans realized how useless to try to steal the piano or to levant with the drawing-room carpet. They knew that the kitchen poker would be missed with- in an hour ; they would run into the very arms of the Boxworthys round some corner if they fled with a kitchen knife. When they left Clover Villa and gave up the keys, lo, the Boxworthys were fleeing Clover Villa-ward on the wings of the wind, as no owner had ever rushed upon the scene of their dishonesty before in all their hirings. It turned out afterwards that they were professionals in the way of furnished houses, and the " luxurious home " at B • was theirs for a home only in winter, being let during the summer, whfle the family lived in Clover Villa if it were unlet, or if it were let, took refuge in a four-roomed laborer's cottage at Battle. As one knows, there is a difference in manners, even the manner of letting a hired-furnished for the summer. "What under the sun are you intending to peddle?" No wonder he asked. No wonder he en- deavored to possess himself of the parcel. No wonder the lady tried to escape both question and the endeavor. " It 's only a little economy," she said, as airily CLOVER VILLA. 329 as if it did not weigh as much as a raihvay train or a cathedral. " Little ! You carry it as if a ^ little economy ' was something to stagger under. Let me — " and he made another endeavor, again upon space. *' Unh-a-n-d me, V-i-1-l-a-i-n ! I assure you it 's only an economy ; 1 '11 prove it when we reach Hailsham." She dared not promise before that arrival lest he pitch her pedler's bag out of the train window. " I have made the boxes as light as possible ; but there are three of them, besides the boxes of books going down by goods-train, and they are heavy in spite of me. We shall have a pretty penny to pay for extra luggage ; the South Coast is notoriously the most niggardly and least oblig- ing railway in all England. We never pay extra on the Great Western, no matter what we have with us/' she remarked, as trippingly as if but a dainty hand-bag hung from her arm. To their surprise the porter who took charge of their luggage wheeled it directly to the train. There was no weighing, no receipt for extra lug- gage, everything seemed lovely and the South Coast enlarging its heart. When, established in their carriage,-the American gave the porter a shilling instead of the usual four- pence, the latter wore a disgusted face. " Ho, no, sir. Hit must be 'arf a crown at least. You see I didn't take hit to the horffice. If I 'ad you 'd 'a' been charged twenty shillin' for hextra." " Why did you not take it to the office as was your business ? It would be more honest to pay twenty shiHings there than sixpence here — " The train was about starting ; the porter re- 330 HIRED FURNISHED. ceived his 'arf crown. The Americans felt like thiev- ish confederates ; the lady even worse, she felt, in fact, completely done, thoroughly ''sold," as she hoisted her disreputable pedler's sack from the floor where the porter had bestowed it, perhaps under the impression that they were small iron- mongers thus removing their stock-in-trade. She would have disputed nobody who asked the price of her shovels and tongs. " My two litde oil-stoves," she meekly confessed. *' I would not put them in the trunks because of their weight." He laughed. It would have been a bitter laugh were any bitterness in him. "We 've cheated the South Coast out of seven- teen shillings and sixpence," said he, " and carry our house furnishings ourselves. Clever confidence operators, are n't we ? " Clover Villa was extremely inviting as they dis- mounted, one from his bicycle, the other from the carrier-wagon, at its gate. It was enclosed witli a little garden and buried in shrubbery. The garden and villa were higher than the village street, and reached by two or three brick steps. The large bow window faced the street, but was separated by so leafy and bushy a growth of green that it was in almost as great seclusion as with a park before it. The front door was on the other side of the house, and opened upon the tiny garden and brick walk. Within, the " drawing-room " was one side of the front door, the dining-room the other ; beyond the latter, the kitchen with brick floor, whitewashed stone walls, cook-stove, sink, and kitchen-table, and open rows of shelves. Above, were two good CLOVER VILLA. 331 square rooms, above them two airy and comfort- able attic chambers, decently furnished for servants, or for anybody in times of pressure upon accom- modations, as when^ for instance, during that exquisite summer a party of Harvard classmates of Mr. Clover's stopped on their way from the land of pumpkin pies to the land of the cypress and myrtle. "It is plain to see," said Mrs. Clover, "that Mrs. Boxworthy is a model housekeeper. She has delighted in furnishing and preparing the Villa, much as I dehghted in building a home in Dove Cottage. A house could not be more complete in the very small essentials that almost nobody thinks of till the need for them presents itself. Not only here is an abundance of bed-linen, not of superfine quality and not of [{?, premiere j'eimesse, though as white as driven snow, but also kitchen towels, flat- iron-holders, chamois-skin for the ' plate,' an iron- ing-board, even floor-cloths, glass and dish towels, stove-brushes, carpet-brush, sink-brush, floor-brush, every possible convenience for immaculate cleanli- ness. In no other hiring have we ever found such attention to detail. Even when we hire for only six weeks, we must furnish these or go without. I, you see, do neither. I manage that my staff of ser- vants shall bring them all from its own home, when our hiring is for less than months. Everything is as clean as clean can be ; the good English house- keeper I find a perfect paragon of neatness every- where. You see, Mr. and Mrs. Boxworthy enjoy this matter of building many littles into a whole ; it is their way of thrift, and their view of hfe and human destiny is minute, not comprehensive. Notice those chamber fenders, for instance. You 332 HIRED FURNISHED. may knock your toes against them for a lifetime, and the toes never complain ; for the fenders are the very lightest of black-painted pine, our land- lord's own handiwork. He upholstered the draw- ing-room furniture himself; his wife made the chintz coverings; he made the toilet- tables of packing- boxes ; she covered them with book-muslin over pink cambric. The washstands were more than second-handed and decrepit, he strengthened and painted them ; he matched the missing legs of the dining-room chairs, and replaced that foot to the dining-room-table. Only that large wardrobe in the front chamber with its mirror, and the furnishing of the drawing-room, do not plainly show his clever handiwork ; yet even in the draw- ing-room the mantel clock is his work, the dial face marked with his own and his wife's name in place of the usual numerals. Yet the result is extremely good, the general effect one of refinement ; the drawing-room has none of the faded glare of the Wine-Cellar, and there 's not a muslin flower in the house. The drawing-room piano is no better than the Wine-Cellar's, but looks very much better ; there are solid iron fenders in dining-room and drawing-room, fire-irons, a goatskin rug, and a pretty and fresh carpet with lace curtains. We are living on a much grander scale than in dear Jersey, but—" " Yes," said he, with the ready comprehension of subtle differences that is not usually the mascu- line habit. " Yes — But — " Then he added consolingly, " Fortunately there are no entrance hall and no statues to Hve up to. You can live up to flat-iron-holders, I suppose." Whereby the masculine intelligence once more CLOVER VILLA. 333 proved its total inefficiency to grasp the logic of experience and of facts. From what premise reasoned he that the partner of his hirings would not immediately transform every holder into a pen- wiper? From what fact of their mutual experi- ence did he conclude that she would not iron her ribbons and press her manuscripts, as she always had done, with the flat-iron grasped in a wad of paper ? What made him suppose she would waste precious time in remembering that somewhere behind the kitchen stove was a corpulent holder, when she had a kitchen towel, if not in her hand, at least closely near it? What gave him the right to suppose she could live up to the intricate and per- plexing conveniences of good housekeeping, when he knew that housekeeping was to her only a means of enjoyment of this glorious world in which we are for such a too-little season, not an end in itself, as the iron-holder woman so often makes it? " Nay, my beloved," she remarked impressively. " Never so long as a daisy blooms on the ground can I rise to the altitude of kitchen-holders." Indeed she fell so far below the iron-holder level that summer that when in crisp October they left Clover Villa, and took untold richness of pleasant memories with them to London, iron- holders were the only things the lady was obliged to replace. What Mrs. Boxworthy remarked to the inky ones left behind, she could only imagine. Not that there were no disruptive disasters among those fair-faced furnishings. Apparently the table-ware had fallen from the liigher estate of the " luxurious home." In falling into Clover Villa the vegetable dishes and covers had not 334 HIRED FURNISHED. always fallen together. During four or five months rattling and sliding dish-covers need not drive a housekeeper into the state of gibbering idiocy they would surely drive her to after a longer period. The more immediate Clover re- sult in the paws of the Villa's "staff" was a somer- saulting that left every dish coverless at the end of the first month. The bits were carefully preserved in proof of the misfititude which made their doom. That proof, the owners, to do them justice, did not demand, but preserved a discreet silence on the subject. Skill and finesse had worked mir- acles with those vegetable dishes themselves. Why queer-shaped little bits should separate them- selves from the very substance of those dishes they could not at first even guess. They did not even guess that those bits ever had done so till their staff was heard loudly lamenting. Between tears and sobs, day after day, she showed little odd- shaped holes in various dishes, and in the hot water the bit that had matched and stopped each hole. " Never mind," said the housekeeper, who was not model but only cheerful " Never mind ! The potatoes are bigger than the holes, and can't slip through. I can put a small white dish inside this blue and majestic one when we have peas." The dining-room was not sunny, as the drawing- room was, all day. Yet here again had human thrift and ingenuity wrought a marvel. For some time Mrs. Clover did not solve the mystery of that streak of sunshine which every morning greeted her coming down to breakfast, a path of tender radiance inviting her feet to the kitchen- CLOVER VILLA. 335 door, straightly across the north light of the only window. She did not ask why bright sunshine filled her spirit in an instant as her steps fell into that softly shining way, a way of chastened gold across the dull brown of the dining-room oilcloth. "Sunshine," smiled her Superior. "Just your way of finding it anywhere. That sunshiny path to me seems only a strip of new carpet of the same pattern of all the rest, but of a yellower color. A bit of bright patchwork, you see." It is a genuine English hamlet, untouched by change and remote from improvements, although not ancient as the word means in England. Its name dates from the Conquest and the marriage of one of the lords of Monceau, in Normandy, with the Saxon heiress of a family settled upon the place where are now only the picturesque ruins of a castle. The original hamlet gathered near this castle and about an ancient church (ruthlessly modernized) and a mighty tithe barn of the four- teenth century ; the comparatively modern village consists of dwellings thrust among ancient farm- houses a mile from the church for which it is named. These farm-houses give its old-world charm to the village, a charm evidently not ap- preciated by the corrugated-iron-dissenting-chapel folk whose artistic taste is best served by illumin- ated scripture-texts. One may imagine the in- terior of that house opposite the village store upon which the illuminated-text taste has twisted and tortured a vine to spell " Praise the Lord," in green letters three feet long. Though Sussex itself is notoriously flat, the land is beautifully undulat- ing, in this region rising sometimes to fairly re- spectable little eminences. From every one of 33^ HIRED FURNISHED. these little eminences are exquisite views of many silent villages as white and vaporous as midsummer snow. From out these snowy drifts always rises a great Alpine flower, or rather a mystic blossom dropped through white clouds from singing pro- cessions of angels. Sometimes all day long for days these angelic flowers bloomed upon the golden distance, till one almost thought he saw the heavenly gardens in which they grew. Some- times again the snowdrifts disappear in the vista- less dullness of the day, and the clearest eye could discover nothing more where the flower of Heaven had bloomed than a mere spectral stalk, leafless and wan, a very ghost of a flower fallen from the clouds so long ago that nothing of its origin re- mained. Then again, even in days less dull, the sight searched even for the stalk in vain ; the green slants, the vague distance, the pale horizon, would be as void of them as if they had never bloomed, or as if they had been caught up again to heaven. This mystery of bloom and fading, this continual enchantment of radiance and noth- ingness, haunted the Clovers. They could not forget, wherever they were, that the miracle was still at work. All sununer long they sought the laugliing httle slopes and stood there seeking this strangeness of bloom and blight. Thus were they the transcendent simpletons human beings must always be with more imagi- nation than reason. Many and many a mile they walked and wheeled that summer merely to find exactly what they knew they should find, no heavenly flower at all, only an ugly, groaning windmill. Sussex, being flat and without streams, grinds all CLOVER VILLA. 337 its com with these mills. It is wonderful that they have not gone more into English poetry, for no shadowy ship upon the sea's horizon has more poetic effect than they ; no angel of Paradise ever swept fairer wings through the gray of the dusky hours. The Clovers reminded each other in wonder that only as noisy chatterers are these white vis- ions usually mentioned. Even Stevenson, who carried the glamour of his artistic temperament al- most everywhere, failed to recognize their haunting effect in a landscape. He saw them, but only as everybody sees them, near at hand, busy, garrulous mechanics at work, never spiritualized by the Ely- sian atmospheres of distance. "There are in- deed," he wrote, " few merrier spectacles than that of many windmills bickering together in a fresh breeze over a woody country ; their halting alacrity of movement, their pleasant business, mak- ing bread all day with uncouth gesticulations, their air gigantically human, as of a creature half alive, put a spirit into the tamest landscape. When a Scotch child sees them first, he falls immediately in love, and from that time forward windmills keep turning in his dreams." This is the canny Scot, to the life — " making bread all day," thriftily, even though with uncouth gesticulations to enliven a landscape. Our American Indians showed more imagina- tion in their terror of the ''great white birds;" but even with the Indians it was less terror of their mystery of swirling wings and incompre- hensible speech answering to the mystery of the many-voiced winds, than of their monster teeth bitincf the corn of the Dutch colonists of New O 22 33^ HIRED FURNISHED. Netherlands. The red men never saw them as ghosts of white winds doomed to sad penance on earth in the service of these mites of men. A Knight of the Rueful Countenance is our chief literary association with windmills. And that knight we cover with undying ridicule, and fix his name to every windy scheme and whimsical ad- venture, to valor without reason and honor with- out sense, because he saw giants where we see only — windmills. Hotspur, with Shakespeare behind him in Henry IV., lacked the inspired vision of Don Quixote, and heard in their complaining only the airy gibber that most men hear. For he would rather eat garlic and cheese and live in a windmill, than with a complaining wife. " You see," said a Clover, " windmills belong to low countries without water courses ; and flat- land people never have the imagination of hill-top folk. That 's the reason they are so very httle in English poetry and romantic prose. De Tabley's poem is almost the only one ; do you remember it?" Remember it, indeed ! At least this much, — " Emblem of Life, whose roots are torn asunder, An isolated soul that hates its kind, Who loves the region of the rolling thunder And finds seclusion in the misty wind. " Type of a love that wrecks itself to pieces Against the barriers of relentless Fate, And tears its lovely pinions on the breezes Of just too early, or just too late. " Emblem of man, who after all his moaning, And strain of dire immeasurable strife, Has yet this consolation all atoning — Life, as a windmill, grinds the bread of Life." CLOVER VILLA. 339 Tradition and some histories tell that these wind spirits (let us avoid the word "mills") were brought home to Europe by Crusaders from the Holy Land. As the tradition has a suggestion of romance about it; a bit of poetry in its counte- nance, it of course has many contradicters. Some of these say, and their words are not foohsh, they being learned archaeologists, that mills were in Western Europe before the Crusaders, although not in France and England before the twelfth century. In 121 6, Matthew Paris mentions the overthrow of many of them by a great storm ; but before that mighty wrestle of the bond and the free they were in Normandy about 11 80. At the battle of Lewes, May, 1264, during the flight of the troops of Henry HI. before the victorious barons, Richard King of the Romans, the king's younger brother, took refuge in a windmill, bar- ring the door, and for a long while defending him- self from the fury of his pursuers. He was finally obliged to come out amid derisive cries. " Come out, you bad miller, you lazy mill master." A ballad of this event is among Percy's " Reliques." Chaucer mentions a windmill in the " House of Fame," and Dante in the " Inferno." " Let them rave," said the least wise of the Clovers. " Let them archxologically rave of their windmills before the Crusades. I don't believe a word of it ! For me the Cross-bearers saw them first, beckoning on the pale plains of Palestine. They saw them just as we see them, far away and ethereal, beings of an elemental world entirely un- like this to which they are bound. The returned Crusaders, with their travellers' yarns, never for- got their solemn beauty on mystic horizons ; 340 HIRED FURNISHED. and troubadours sang to harp and viol of their angelic floating in the hot winds of that fabulous clime. Then came some coarse Crusader, crusad- ing, you may be sure, for booty, not duty, who told what practical works these mysterious visions could do : not till then did Englishmen capture for their own service these sad children of the white winds." No railway whistle disturbed the peace of the village, no distant rumble of trains. The only excitements were the arrival at three o'clock of the postman on his tricycle, who served half a dozen hamlets, and the carrier-wagon bringing pas- sengers and London papers from the same train. The village post-office is an antique farm-house in a Shakespearian garden, the postmistress, a dusky widow with such a knack at harmless but piquant gossip as made her one of Mrs. Clover's most valued cronies. The village streets — there were two of them, both highways serving many scattered little hamlets — were as silent all through the long summer days as if all the world slept. At times the voices of children were heard at play, the lowing of distant cattle, the restless neighing of horses (who have no right to the privileges of "dumb" animals), and the sound of the village anvil answering the hammer. Occasionally farm-wagons drove by, sometimes a light carriage, oftener the pedler's wagons, upon which remote villages so much depend ; but for much of the time the bees and the birds had all to themselves. Several gentlemen's houses are within a mile or two, and the rectory is somewhat famous in religi- CLOVER VILLA. 341 ous biography, having been the home of Arch- deacon Hare, known to pious American readers chiefly for his relationship to the lady who caused the book, '' Memorials of a Quiet Life," and whose home was here, but who seems to have left almost no impression upon the memory of the village. Otherwise than these more imposing homes, the village is entirely rustic, its few villas quite of the Clover order, its humbler but ten thousand times more charming (to look at) dwelHngs of the rural English village kind, with thatched or tiled roofs, stone or half timbered walls, all half buried in liv- ing green. There was one gloomy general store, from which came equally sugar, sewing silk, and shoes, millinery, matches, and marmalade. Upon the garden of this general store Clover Villa depended, until Mrs. Clover learned the way to other gardens. In the garden back of the black- and-red-roofed post-office she found the earliest apples, and straightway ate them up. The tree in the cobbler's garden became flecked with gold, and was rapidly consumed by the Villa, followed in time by the tree a mile or two away, over- topping a straw roof with eaves scarcely six feet from the ground, under which lived, in antique twilight, the wife of a gardener at the Great House close by. Under these trees how many of the gossiping chats in which Mrs. Clover dehghted, when gossipers unconsciously opened to her a fascinating field of peculiar habits, and of char- acters shaped by an environment so different from her own into an ever fresh romance. She was supposed to be a Londoner ; that she might be an American never entered heads to whom America is as far as China ; and many a sly laugh 342 HIRED FURNISHED. no doubt was laughed at the Londoners who do not know when the hop-season opens, and mistake oast houses for turrets of chateaux. From the baker's garden came lettuce and peas, until the Clovers and the baker ate them all ; whereupon Mrs. Clover began her intimacy with the primly-pretty and sweet-voiced wife of the village saddler, from whose garden came the vegetable -marrow which the purchaser once mis- called summer squash, to the intense amusement of the saddler's wife. There were no h 's astray in her dainty speech, and no suspicion of such wandering among the aspirates of the postmistress (who was not a Sussex but a Norfolk woman). But when the tidy young wife of the cobbler and her tidy children called at Clover Villa, or Mrs. Clover gossiped with her under the apple tree, or beside the poles of green beans, Sussex as- pirates went fairly mad with delirious joy at find- ing so many soft places into which to nestle. The postmistress, Mrs. Clover soon learned, was step-mother to the saddler, and the feud was bitter between post-office and saddlery, be- tween letters and leather. Each confided the story of wrong to the supposed Londoner, who received each as never suspected before, yet who thus was reminded anew that human nature is the same in a tranquil Sussex hamlet as in an American country village where wrongs that really are not wrongs at all are brooded over and kept warm for a lifetime, and families one in name and blood live side by side, never so much as seeing each other. The son of the village postmistress was half-brother to the saddler, and neither had wronged the other so far as the postmistress and CLOVER VILLA. 343 the saddler's wife told, yet they lived within hourly sound of each other's voices, their trees dropped fruit upon each other's ground, they attended the same dissenting chapel, yet a wall colder than stone, harder than adamant, forever divides them. Sometimes the saddler's pretty daughter brought plums and berries to the Villa, as soft voiced as her mother, the same soft pink complexion and the same bronze-gold ringlets hanging quaintly beside her face, even as our mothers wore ringlets, as they still wear them in their youthful portraits. The saddler's wife has been ringleted all her life, as doubtless her mother was ringleted from her cradle to her grave ; and the saddler's wife has never thought to do else than twist her child's beautiful hair in stiff curl-papers every night since her hair became long enough to twist. The pretty child will grow up with her ringlets, and will learn her trade of the village dressmaker without changing them. Then will come the village swain to swear his adoration of ringlets ; when the bride sets up housekeeping within her pretty mother's sight, what is to prevent quaint, papered ringlets from going on for generations ? The saddler's wife is as cheerful as she is pretty, as trim and neat as she is chatty. Her daughter, her little toy and paper shop, and her housekeeping, filled her heart and time to the exclusion of yearnings, even such as haunted the cobbler's wife. She did not torment the future with questions ; but she hked to remember the past, and her American gossip rejoiced to hear her. " Was it a love-match? " " No, I should not call 344 HIRED FURNISHED. it one from what I read in books of love-matches," she said. " Girls in the country do not make such marriages, it seems to me. People cannot love till they know each other ; and how can they know each other till they are married? I suppose I married my husband because he has no palate." Mrs. Clover had recognized this lack in the saddler's speech. Yet she showed her surprise that the lack should have won so desirable a wife. " I came to school near here in that ivy- covered house on Windmill Green. My husband was also a pupil there ; but I never should have known it had I not heard the other pupils mocking his im- pediment. I took occasion to scold them, and to make friends with him, but never to any great extent. Then I went home and never thought of him for years. I was twenty-five years old, and working at my trade, when one day I chanced to be driving with some friends, and we stopped at an inn. Who should come up but my husband ! 1 should never have recognized him; he knew me the instant he sat eyes upon me [those ringlets]. We talked of schooldays ; he came to see me ; in a year we were married, and there — my cabbage greens are boiling all over the stove — don't go, I '11 be back in a minute ! " The saddler's wife must be superior to her position ; she was certainly superior to m.ost of her kind in New England rustic villages. Not only was her language and pronunciation more correct, but her acquaintance more active with the tradi- tions and stories of the neighborhood. She could always recognize, from Mrs. Clover's description, any far away mansion, farm, or cottage come upon in the long expeditions of the two Clovers, and CLOVER VILLA. 345 was ready with some bit of history or legend that made the object doubly interesting. "That fine old mansion," she said of a certain delightful Jacobean picture, " is at a place called Carter's Corners.- If you go to the churchyard of Hurstmonceaux church and stand in a certain place among graves marked ' Potts/ you can just see it, miles away in the distance. It once belonged to the Potts family ; when the head of the family died, he desired to be buried in a part of the church- yard from which the mansion could be seen." The Americans had often stood on the very spot. Mrs. Clover wished she could ask Mrs. Saddler of certain of her own acquaintances, formed among Sussex Archaeological Journals, to whom she gave many thoughts whenever she stood in that hill churchyard with its famous view, and, alas, its modernized aspect. She wished she could ask about Elyn Frankly n and William Longley, Thomas Bulke and John Honwyn, — all of whom were now the mould of Hurstmonceaux churchyard. But she knew how the pretty woman's eyes would stare at the very thought of knowing those Tudor English- men, whose wills only have kept their names on earth. William Longley, on the 28th of March, 1543, a husbandman of Hyrstmownsex, be- queathed his sowle into the hands of Almighty God the Father, to our Lady St. Mary, and to all the glorious company of hevyn, and his body to be buried within the churchyard of Hyrstmownsex. " Item, I will to be done for my sowle and all christian sowles thirteen masses, one barill of beere & a bushell of whete to be bake in brede & one fat shepe to be bake in pyes to refreshe the povyrte of the parishe." John Honwyn was also 34^ HIRED FUKNISIIED. buried in " cburcherthe," and willed that every priest at his burial, " to have for dirge and mass 8^." John willed 4^'/. to each of his god-chil- dren, " Best redde petycote, whyte fustyan doublett, blew cote with buttons, to James Swift, also old redde petycote & pair of whyte hose." In 1540, Richard Franklyn willed to Elyn, his daughter, " 2 kyne, 2 tolmontyngis, i pot, i panne, I quern, i foleing table, i chere, i akere of whete, I of Otis, I fedar bede, i bolster, i paire shetes, I blanket, i catel, i hog of i halfe-yere olde, all weanis, plewis, tyllis & yokis " (wagons, ploughs, harrows and yokes). They are all of churchyard mould now, Elyn with the rest, dug over and over again with the spades, and for the dead of three centuries and a half. So, however Mrs. Clover longed to know how Elyn managed with but one pair of sheets and one blanket, one pot, one pan, and one chair, with evidently all her husbandman father's farm to carry on, it was of no use to ask, not even to ask what clod beneath one's feet was once these warm beating hearts. " But you ought to know what a tolmontyngis was," Mrs. Clover complained to Mrs. Saddler. Mrs. Saddler shook her head. She might have retorted, " Why I more than yon, since Tudor Englishman were as much your an- cestors as mine." Another time they spoke of Hurstmonceaux Castle, which, to Mrs. Clover's disappointment, had never been defended against assault by a woman, but only weakly haunted by one. " She must be a great fool of a ghost, " said the saddler's wife. " She tried to be very poetic and CLOVER VILLA. 347 tragic, so gave out that she was starved to death by a cruel governess. The truth was slie starved herself, trying to get a slim waist. Ghosts are usually humbugs, don't you think so?" Mrs. Clover did think so, although she would give the world to see one that was not, and sought flesh-creepiness as she ought to seek wisdom. She asked them if the castle had ever known another ghost, a woman dressed always in white, and riding a milk-white palfrey with a milk-white doe running forever by her side. Mrs. Saddler had never heard of any such ghost, speaking only Greek to its English children, and living in semi- squalid grandeur in the castle, when not displaying its picturesqueness abroad. Evidently this lady, a very much affected one, and preposterously silly, haunts elsewhere. She was a wife of one of the Hares who owned the castle for a generation or two, and whose descendant was Archdeacon Hare. One day, in the course of a milky-palfrey and milky- doe display, dogs set upon the latter and killed it, upon which the Hare ran away from the hounds and refused ever to inhabit the castle again. In " Memorials of a Quiet Life," by that indefatiga- ble book- manufacturer, Augustus J. C. Hare, the story of this airy poseiise, whose maiden name ought to have been March, is told with all the solemnity proper in writing of an ancestral Hare. He does not mention that the fantastic creature's widower speedily remarried, taking a bride who never rode a white palfrey through English lanes with a white doe running beside her white self, and who never conversed in Greek with her Eng- lish children. This second marriage produced children as well as the first, and they put up a 34^ HIRED FURNISHED. tablet to their mother's memory beside their father's in Hurstmonceaux church. Mr. Augustus JuHus Cuthbert Hare gives a most elaborate and detailed description of the mural decorations and inscriptions of this church in his " Sussex," but leaving out entirely mention of the tablet to this second wife. Mrs. Clover regretted that the palfrey lady did not haunt the lanes about the castle. It would have been worth a double admission fee to see her. Of all the American's acquaintances, the cob- bler's fair wife was the only one who mourned an ever-escaping ideal. The postmistress was con- tent with her work, and above all with her son, whose dazzling proficiency in foreign languages had arrived at writing without fault, Le marchand a les Soulier s du tailleiir ; the gardener's wife asked only of fate that it send less rain to mould her toma- toes. When the cobbler's wife lamented, " Ah ! " thought Mrs. Clover, '' if but we Americans could mourn in such a ring-dove voice even grief would be a blessing to us as a nation." The cobbler's wife was twenty-four with five children and a pensive face. She never left home without the five ; the children never left their house except as pinks of neatness. They were pinks from under a shower, and everything they wore was damp, wrung from the basin five minutes before they were dressed. "Hit's a great care," murmured the gentle voice, — "a great care to have so many. You never know wat may 'appen the minute your heyes are hoff. 'Tis n't as hif we was wat I hexpected wen I married. I 'ad hideas then, as girls mostly 'as ; I thought hi married a shoemaker, but, to tell the CLOVER VILLA. 349 truth," — her bkie eyes here grew moist, — '' to tell the truth he don't make a pair of shoes a year. Nobody can make 'em better ; he longs and prays to make 'em ; we dream at night that he 's made a pair for the rector's daughter or Lady Chatterton, and that everybody admires 'em. I tell 'im in the morn- ing how beautiful they looked, how proud their arch from the 'eel was ; and he tells me how loving he drew every thread. Then he says, ' 'T was but a fleeting dream, Hethel, but sometimes dreams come true ; hile finish every bit of cobbling in the shop, then hawait my Shoes.' He goes to work very silent till the very last patch, then he puts 'em hall hout of sight in a row, and looks first at me then down the road. You could see he was hexpecting something. Sure enough, there was the rector's carriage driving hup ; I never saw Hedward look so strange. ' Hit 's a border for shoes at last, Hethel ! ' he wispers. We both blush for joy wen Miss HeUis henters with no sign of a parcel. Then says she, ' There 's hate pairs of boots hand shoes to mend. Hi 've left hum in the carriage.' My 'art haked for poor Hedward." Probably also his for you, poor wistful spirit, neither of you realizing that yours is but a com- mon fate, to pursue an ever elusive Ideal, with only cobbling by the way. " Very touching," said Mrs. Clover, " but I am obliged to say that the sewing she did for me was entirely on the cobbling plane, not the ideal." The Idealist, the charwoman mother of S. S., and the washerwoman Elphick formed a circle of the village society. Although Mrs. Clover received and visited the first two, she never attempted to enter the circle, and thus never saw Mrs. Elphick, 350 HIRED FURNISHED. who washed for the Villa. It was enough to see her daughter, an insolent young hussy of fourteen, with character and manners evidently acquired in her father's stable, rather than at her mother's honest washtub. There was a prance in her gait ; her neck was oftenest curveting ; she seemed to repress a neigh when she brought or took away the clothes. No bend was in her back from washtub service ; her dress was always as good as that of the saddler's petted daughter, who must have been a degree above her, amid the subtle distinctions of an English village. The Clovers looked with some interest upon this ill-bred young vixen, for she bore one of the most ancient and most dignified of Sussex names. Her far-away forbears were gentlemen living upon their own land, saying to this man, 'Come,' to that man, 'Go,' and obeyed with deference. They had the man- ners of the Sussex gentry, rough enough compared with those of modern gentry no doubt, but infi- nitely superior to those of their nineteenth-century descendant, who would jeer at their spelling and their pronunciation, and who has examples of far better behavior than her own every day before her eyes, if only in poor "S. S.," the Villa's staff of servants. " Is it the high blood in her that makes her curvet and prance and neigh insolence with every breath ? " the Clovers asked each other of this English girl. " Is it a restless, proud instinct of race, pricked and goaded by consciousness of the maternal washtub and the paternal carrier- wagon? Or is it the washtub and wagon instinct that knows no better? " Only echo answered, " Knows no better." "6-.^." 351 "S. S." " Silly Sussex " was lank and long, like the days in which everything goes right and nothing goes wrong. She was shambling and loose-jointed, and although less than seventeen had no teeth to look at although many to speak of. It was rare to see her without at least one pasty cheek violently swollen, usually two, and at every blunder brought home to her those poor relics received the blame. Her eyes were pale and a fieiir-de-ieie (or "tater/' a Clover remarked). The watery blue orbs never wavered in their dead solemnity of outlook beyond this fleeting world. They were the awful eyes of a soul "wropt in mistry," re- flecting nothing finite, absorbing nothing earthly, like an inch-deep pool. She was of Sussex since Saxon days, and her speech bewrayed it. Her ois were all eyes and her th was often d, — dis, dat, for this and that. How many times her plough- man and milkmaid ancestors have inter-married none may know ; but from her wretched physique, her poor thin blood, and skeleton ever cracking at its joints, one may imagine those inter-marriages to have been many. The traditional Sussex Sil- liness in her was doubled, looped, knotted, twisted ; no two distinct lines of ancestry could ever have had such tangled wits as hers. In the olden days Sussex men were whipped as vagrants if found 352 HIRED FURNISHED. too far away from home, even though within Sussex borders. In 1615, Robert Kinge was thus whipped for being out of his native parish. A few years earlier, Robert would not have escaped so easily, but been hanged as a gypsy, choicest fruit of the gallows-tree at that time. The Clovers felt in- tense sympathy and fellowship with young Robert Kinge, never grown older to the world's knowledge than at the fifteen years of his immortal whipping. They would have called back to him through almost three centuries, had it been possible, that they too felt that same hunger for the horizon for which he was whipped ; they too knew the enchantments of distance : yet they had never had half the whippings they deserved, while he had had at least one too many. '' Silly Sussex " was always " S. S." before her face, and never asked why she was not Martha as at home. As the Clovers so often spake an unin- telligible lingo in her presence she probably sup- posed all Marthas were " 6*. 6"." in the far land whence they came. " S. S." came only for the morning's work. She early displayed such consummate genius in the way of mistakes that Madam Clover was obHged 'to keep an eye, even two eyes, upon her most of the time. Also to unlearn certain of her habits of speech. Several times it chanced that S. S. dis- appeared in the very midst of the morning's work, and came no more that day. There stood the little market basket, and its prepared list, just where it had been placed awaiting her errand to the garden from which Clover Villa was suppHed. The dining-room was not dusted : the parlor mats were loosely lying about the front door; no water "S. sr 353 was in the pails. The third time this happened, one Clover complained to the other. " You say you did not send her for anything ? " asked that other. " Of course not. The other two times I asked her what she meant by quitting in the midst of the work, and she replied by being even more " wropt in mistry ' than usual." " What was she doing last? " A sudden light dawned upon a Clover, " She was helping me turn the mattresses. When they were turned I said, ' Now you may go/ I did not add, ' to your work.' " " She evidently stood not upon the order of her going, but went at once." " Has the rector's daughter lost her eyesight ? " her mistress one day asked S. S. Silly Sussex looked mysteriously away from finite things and with sibylline vagueness answered : — " She has lost her husband." "Subtle Sussex," called a voice from outside the door, " don't you see, she means she lost in him the light of her eyes." S. S. was extremely slow of motion. " Come, fly round," said her mistress. S. S. stared beyond time into the depths of eternity as she answered, unhasting like the eternal stars : " Dunno how." " Vo7i need n't laugh," said he, when the Missis repeated this to him. " When Billings, the baker, told you he was late because he had 'overlaid,' and that now he must ' move,' you gravely asked, ' Move where ? ' as if all his sfoods and chattels were in the little hand-cart in which he brings round the bread. He then seemed as bewildered 354 HIRED FURNISHED. as you were, although you both claim to speak English. Had you told S. S. 'Come move/ she would still have stared poor Eternity out of coun- tenance, but she would have understood you." S. S. told that her father's grave was at N., an adjoining parish, whither the vagrant Clovers often walked with never a fear of the whipping-post, before which they always stopped to gaze and grimly meditate, on the way. It was easy to fancy ghosts there in the dim of the evening, when the ghostly wind, a thousand centuries old, and with a thousand centuries of bitter memories, sighed through the rough field. Easy to recog- nize the wretched spectres of Anne, " whipped for a waygoer," of Alice, "whipped for a runegate," and Jane, " whipped for a rogue," of the Johns, Williams, Roberts, whipped for many things be- sides a wicked curiosity to know how men lived and trees grew in the " furrin parts " of an adjoin- ing parish. " We must look for your father's grave, some- time," said the Clovers. " Has he a gravestone ? " " He had a wooden leg," replied the " Mistry- Wropt." One afternoon the Missis came in to tea with three invited guests. She brought with her a paper-bag of sweet cakes from the oven-like shop of baker Billings (from whose ancient Sussex family Billingsgate was named) and three tiny packets of tea, the small currency with which she was wont to roam Sussex by-ways alone when her companion was too deep in his books to lead her in wider and more decorous ways. This small currency brought her many a curious history, that would have stopped often at stocks and whipping- "S.s:' 355 post in other days. They brought her so many a moment's nearness to the life that held so much of poetry for her, that more than once she came liome to beg her tyrant to let her go, away, away from roofs and walls, that she might become an " Egyptian," and know starlight better than lamp- light, and stand in the stocks, and be whipped at the whipping-post, with never a bit of starch in her petticoats again so long as she lived, or a ribbon to her name. "Silly Sussex" chanced to be in the house doing some extra cleaning. She was enough as- tonished to drop her " house flannel " as the Missis escorted her guests to the kitchen, and gave them cool water in which to lave, and invited them to shake themselves free of dust in the garden-path. Two of them were time and travel, but not beer, stained ; yet Silly Sussex almost blubbered that she served a " Wild Woman " who could bring home tramp parents and their child to tea. *' 'Op-pickers ! " she ejaculated, with energy that quite amazed her mistress. Hop-pickers of course, the whole countryside had swarmed with them for weeks. Every day two, four, six of them knocked at the front- door begging hot water for their afternoon tea. Every day the Americans saw groups of them by the roadside, sleeping off the fatigue of a long tramp, sometimes the wife making iron-holders or knitting dish-cloths, while the husband slept. They were a decent sort, a sort that chose a tramp of many days into fair Sussex, rather than the horrible companionship and orgies of East Londoners crowding into nearer Kent. These were usually decently dressed; they carried their batterie de 35^ HIRED FURNISHED. cuisine on their backs ; they answered respectfully when addressed. The only ones among them who ever begged were stout single men, who made but a bare pretence of wiUingness to " cleave some wood " in return for a bit of luncheon. Therefore her mistress's idea of " 'op-pickers " was not that of Silly Sussex, a hop-picker herself in the season, but always in one garden, never tramping miles for a job. There are social grades even among " 'op-pickers." When the somewhat abashed company was ready, the hostess called to S. S. to make the tea. The lank, blank maid received the order in silence, as was her habit. Then neither tea-pot or S. S. came, until the Missis, having made her choice of iron-holders and dish-cloths, grew impatient and called again, " Martha, have n't you made the tea?" The Mistry Wropt appeared in the doorway with pale eyes to say, — " Dunno how to make tea. My mother always buys hers." " For mercy's sake, what do you do when you put tea in a tea-pot and pour boiling water over it ? " The Mistry Wropt withdrew her gaze from Eter- nity, to rest her eyes upon perhaps the thirtieth century, as she answered almost cheerfully : — '' Wet the tea." "Do you suppose," said he, "that she would stoop to any unasked explanation before common 'op-pickers?" Poor Silly Sussex, she had left a situation as farm drudge, with wages of eighteen pence a week, to serve in Clover Villa (at four shillings) — what ''s.s." 357 wonder she found things queer, and the queerest of all a mistress who tea'd with tramps and ex- pected /lar to make tea. "Idiot ! " spurted a Clover. " Do you suppose she considers you anything better," said he, " when she remembers the stove ? " '' Don't tell me," said the other with warmth. " Don't tell pte that she remembers anything ! How should I know the difference between two sorts of blacking ! She had n't gumption enough to laugh when I undertook to teach her to black the cooking-stove." " With boot-blacking ! " added the other. *' But never mind, she did n't have a fit even though she gasped when you told her always to wash the dish-cloths after washing the dishes. She knows you are a maniac ; you know she is Silly Sussex : so it 's heads I win, tails you lose, with both of you." One day starting upon an absence of many hours in pursuit of Windmills, her Mistress enjoined upon S. S. to leave the usual covered pitcher outside the kitchen door for the evening's milk, and to be sure not to close the dining-room windovv at the top, for, over it, the baker always dropped the evening's breakfast-rolls. S. S. made every promise, with blank eyes lying loosely upon a certain lace fichu that she was sus- pected of dimly admiring, and that her mistress refrained from giving her, only because it was so absurdly unsuitable to her person and condition. (When the summer ended and the Villa closed, the rags of the fichu were cast into the ash-bin. The next Sunday S. S. wore them to church.) After dinner that niglit in an inn eight miles 35^ HIRED FURNISHED. away, the Clovers came home. All the brick pave- ment of the little garden was streaked, spotted, splashed, puddled with milk. Mr. Clover straight- way named it, " The Milky Way." Mrs. Clover ran to the kitchen door. The pitcher lay upon its broken side with every ap- pearance of having burst from a surfeit of bread and milk. Then the lady lamented both loud and deep that S. S. had tightly closed the dining-room win- dow, as it had not been closed for weeks, the baker had stuffed the rolls into the pitcher, the milkmaid had turned the milk in upon the rolls. " Unmitigated Fools ! " she remarked so many times, so emphatically, and in such various ways, that the other grew somewhat tired of hearing it. " It 's ' Silly Sussex/ of course, all round," he explained; " Borde's 'foles of Gottam,' were only two miles from that bread and milk, upon which the dogs have regaled themselves. Probably our maid's grandparents were ' foles of Gottam.' At any rate, we are no worse served than was poor Counsellor Burrell." They had just been reading Counsellor Burrell's diary, and found it one of the most entertaining and picturesque of all the seventeenth and eigh- teenth century diaries unearthed by the Sussex Archaeological Society. Counsellor Burrell illus- trated his diary in a sort of missal fashion, with pen and ink upon the margins. Pipes, tankards, snuff-boxes, runaway-servants, kitchen and garden implements, old crones, night-caps, make those margins almost a history of themselves. " Never such creatures in the world before ! Oh, for the decent, docile, well-trained servants, of the good old times ! " ''S. s:' 359 It is the nineteenth century who thus moans over the utter decay of domestic service. It is a way the centuries have of grumbling that ear- lier ones have taken the cream of all things. But Madame Nineteenth Century has not the last word, or rather moan. Up pops the seventeenth century, in the guise of this Sussex gentleman, in knee-breeches, bagvvig, and buckled shoes, to rap his snuff-box, and tell us that all was not color of the rose before he became a phantom. A grave, good man was Counsellor Burrell of Ocker- den House, in far Sussex, a careful master and kind, sometimes even recording regret that, having taken the sacrament and resolved to live a better course of life, he had yet been " too irritable with my servants." He gave much in charity ; he exercised a paternal care over his many men-ser- vants and maid-servants ; he lived in the good old times, and kept note-books (with illustrations by his own pen) for us to read. Yet October 17, 1692, this good master is obliged to write : " I pay'd Hollybone for setting the old pales by the orchard, ior earns,'' ''Swallow Flights,^* ''Random T^ambles," etc. 12ino. ClottL. Price, $1.50. EXTRACTS FROM ETIGLISH OPINIONS OF "LAZY TOURS." Mrs. Chandler Moulton's chapters of travel on the European conti- nent are charmhigly chatty. There is a literary flavour about them which reveals the accomplished woman of letters under all the guise of a lazy tourist. Acute and discriminating art criticisms, apt personal allusions^ and literary illustrations come i7i upon every page. Geneva is the more interesting to Mrs. Moultou because near there is the Maison Diodati, where Byron and Shelley lived for a time, and where Mrs. Shelley wrote " Frankenstein " ; a visit to Florence naturally calls forth loving references to the Brownings; a sojourn on the Yorkshire moors suggests "Jane Eyre" and Charlotte Bronte. These "Lazy Tours" are of value not only as a record of travel in pursuit of pleasure and health, but also as reflecting something of the writer's very charming personality. It is delightful to attend to the impressions of so ctdtured an observer. — From the Daily Mail, Lotidojt. The author gives us her impressions with much brightness and vivacity. She seeks less to inform than to interest ; and in interesting she thoroughly succeeds. These "Lazy Tours," in fact, are eminently the work of a clever and cultivated woman. — Daily Globe, London. Vivid and imaginative sketches of places and people render Mrs. Moul- ton's " Lazy Tours" a pleasant book into which to dip at random. The book reveals mind, as well as mood ; for Mrs. Moulton has ideas and the courage of them, and they leap to light in artistic criticism, and sometimes in subtle appreciation of much more tlian the mere pageants of life. . . . These Lazy Tours are recorded with a picturesque and cultured pen, and a fresh audacity of social judgment. — The Speaker, London. The author of " Lazy Tours " is a well-known American writer; and these essays are brightly written and entertaining accounts of tours in Spain, Italy, and Germany. — The Times, Londoii. Many are the women-writers who crowd our shelves with unquickened pages, but Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton is not of these. Her " Lazy Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. Life of Her Majesty ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ QUEEN VICTORIA. BY MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT. 12mo. Cloth. Portrait. Price, $1.25. In writing her "Life of Queen Victoria" the author has very wisely refrained from any attempt to narrate, even in outline, the history of the salient events of the Victorian era. She has concerned herself chiefly with what she calls the for- mative influences that have helped to develop the character of Queen Victoria, and have largely determined her position as a woman, and her career as a sovereign. E ven in treating the political and personal events of Queen Victoria's later reign, Mrs. Fawcett has selected and dwelt upon those which serve to illustrate the char- acter of the queen and her understanding of her responsibilities as a ruler. The tone of the biography is m,turally laudatory, — it could not well be otherwise, — but in its portrayal of a sympathetic, considerate, and unpretentious nature it keeps well within the limits of tliat impartial spirit which should alv/ays animate a biog- rapher. The book is exceedingly x-eadable, because it presents the leading events in the queen's career in an orderly and definite way, and it is moreover very grace- fully written. Selections from contemporary memoirs and from the queen's own correspondence and diary are judiciously used, and help to give animation to the narrative. The book has a fine frontispiece portrait from a recent photograph of the queen, and is provided with a chronological table and index. — The Beacon. Roberts Brothers, Boston, publish in a volume of about tv/o hundred and fifty pages Millicent Fawcett's useful and instructive life of Queen Victoria, in whom, the author conceives, modern constitutional government has found more support and development than in any other royal person. Aided by the queen's sagacity and devotion to duty, that pliase of human polity has been created, in the author's opinion. And this theory is well developed m the chapters of the book which give the childhood and education of Victoria ; her accession to the throne ; the mingling of politics and love which followed ; the leaning in difficult affairs of state upon her young German husband, without alienating her loyal and faithful ministers; the loss of that husband at the difficult time of the American Civil War, in which he showed himself a friend of the North ; the queen's retirement from society in con- sequence, and her quiet life ever since, while always ready for her duties as queen and Empress of India. The home life of the royal pair, and later, of the queen alone, at Balmoral and Osborne, and her more stately residences in London and at Windsor, takes up several chapters of exceptional interest. Chapter IX. is entitled "The Nursery," and its duties alone would have engrossed most women ; but the queen has been active for more than fifty years in large affairs of peace and wpr, and shown excellent judgment and conduct through them all. There are portraits of Her Majesty ta,ken in 1835, and again by photograph in later years. — Broollpi Eagle. One of the special charms of the book is that it is more personal than politic!'!, — that it gives us the always to be desired insight into the home and the domestic life of one who lives so much in the glare and glamour of publicity. — Advertiser. Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, by the Publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. Messrs. Roberts Brothers'' Publications, THE RIGHT HONORABLE WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE ^ ^tttlip from life By HENRY W. LUCY. 12mo. Cloth. Portrait. Price, $1.25. The obvious difficulty of writing within the limits of this volume a sketch of the career of Mr- Gladstone is the superabundance of material. The task is akin to that of a builder having had placed at his disposal materials for a palace, with instructions to erect a cottage residence, leaving out nothing essential to the larger plan. I have been content, keeping this condition in mind, rapidly to sketch, in chronological order, the main course of a phenomenally busy life, enriching the narrative wherever possible with autobiographical scraps to be found in the library of Mr. Gladstone's public speeches, supplementing it by personal notes made over a period of twenty years, during which I have had unusual opportunities of studymg the subject. Author's Preface. Mr. Lucy begins with the boyhood and early home-life of his subject, and in a series of twenty-six graphic chapters, some of the titles of which are "Member for Newark," "Chancellor of the Exchequer," "Premier," "Pamphleteer," "The Bradlaugh Blight," "Egypt," "The Kilmainham Treaty," "The Stop-Gap Govern- ment," " Home Rule," " In the House and Out," Mr. Lucy has drawn, we believe, the most accurate portrait of one of the greatest men of the century yet drawn, and has told most graphically, tersely, and at the same time comprehensively, the story of a great career not yet finished. We have nowhere seen a better description of Mr. Gladstone's methods, of his strength and weakness as a debater, than Mr. Lucy gives us. — Boston A dveriiser. Mr. Lucy entitles his new book on Gladstone "A Study from Life." It is more than this, for the book covers rapidly his whole life, from birth to the present time, describing with tolerable clearness the great events of which he has been a part. Koran outline biography the reader will find this narrative satisfactory and readable. P)Ut the greatest interest attaches to those incidents in Gladstone's life of which the writer has been an eye-witness. He describes with great vivacity the parliamentary function known as "drawing old Gladstone out." — Adva7ice. Roberts Brothers, Boston, have just published an interesting book by Henry W, Lucy, entitled "Right Honorable W. E. Gladstone: A Study from Life." Thougt not necessarily so intended, this history ot Gladstone is virtually the history of his country during the period of his ascendency at least, and the book is valuable frorr that standpoint, because it is evidently fairly conceived and executed. The sketch o Mr. Gladstone is that of an admirer, but that will not tell against it with the world a large, which is alone an admirer of the " Grand Old Man." Beginning with his boy hood, it pictures him with friendly but faithful hand to the end of his career as heac of the English Government, in language which gives an additional charm to the book- tracing his course from the day he became Member of Parliament till he was thi acknowledged champion of Home Rule, and showing how, as his mind develope( with experience, it cast off original errors growing larger day by day. — Brooklyt Citizen. Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed, post-paid, oit receipt of price, by th Publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. Dream I^ife ^ I^eal l^ifc. ai ilittle african g)tor^^ By olive SCHREINER, AUTHOR OF "dreams" AND "THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN FAKM.'' 16m,o. Salf cloth. 60 cents. These are veritable poems in prose that Olive Schreiner has brought together. With her the theme is ever the martyrdom, the self-sacrifice and )he aspirations of woman ; and no writer has expressed these qualities with deeper profundity of pathos or with keener insight into the motives that govern the elemental impulses of the human heart. To read the three little stories in this book is to touch close upon the mysteries of love and fate and to behold the workings of tragedies that are acted in the soul. The Beacon. Three small gems are the only contents of this literary casket ; and yet they reflect so clearly the blending of reality and ideality, and are so per- fectly polished with artistic handling, that the reader is quite content with the three. It is a book to be read and enjoyed. — Public Opinion. There is a peculiar charm about all of these stories that quite escapes the cursory reader. It is as evasive as the fragrance of the violet, and equally difficult to analyze. The philosophy is so subtle, the poetry so delicate, that the fascination grows upon one and defies description. With style that is well nigh classic in its simplicity Miss Schreiner excites our emotions and gently stimulates our imagination. — The Budget. All the sketches reveal originality of treatment, but the first one is a characteristically pathetic reproduction of child-life under exceptional circumstances, that will bring tears to many eyes. — Saturday Evening Gazette. Sold by all booksellers. Mailed^ post-paid^ on receipt of the price by the Publishers. ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston^ In Foreign Kitchens. W ITH Choice Recipes from England, France, Germany, Italy, and the North. By HELEN CAMPBELL, A-uthor of '* The Easiest Way in JlouseJeeeping and Cooleing," ** Prisoners of Poverty, '^ *' The What-To-I>o Club/' etc. 16M0. Cloth. Price, 50 cents. While foreign cookbooks are accessible to all readers of foreign languages, and American ones have borrowed from them for what we know as " French cookery," it is difficult often to judge the real value of a dish, or decide if experiment in new directions is worth while. The recipes in the following chapters, prepared originally for The Epimre, of Boston, were gathered slowly, as the author found them in use, and are most of them taken from family recipe-books, as valued abroad as at home. So many requests have come for them in some more convenient form than that offered in the magazine, that thelv present shape has been determined upon ; and it is hoped they may be a welcome addition to the housekeeper's private store of rules for varying the monotony of the ordinary menu. \ Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of the price by the Publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. POWER THROUGH REPOSE. By ANNIE PAYSON CALL. " When the body is perfectly adjusted, perfectly supplied with force^ perfectly free, and works with the greatest economy of expenditure, it is fitted to be a perfect instrument alike of impression, experience, and expression.^'' — W. R. Alger. One Handsome l6mo Volume. Cloth. Price, $1.00. "This book is needed. The nervous activity, the intellectual wear and tear, of this day and land requires a physical repose as has none other. Every intellectual worker finds so much stim- ulant in his associations and in the opportunities for labor that he takes on more and more responsibilities, till he has all the strain it is possible for him to carry when everything goes smoothly, and when complications arise he has no reserve for emergencies." — Journal of Education. *' A book which has a peculiar timeliness and value for a great number of people in this country is ' Power through Repose,' by Annie Payson Call. This volume, which is written in a very interesting and entertaining style, is a moderate and judicious effort to persuade Americans that they are living too hard and too fast, and to point out specifically the physical and intellectual results of incessant strain. To most people the book has a novel sugges- tiveness. It makes us feel that we are the victims of a disease of which we were largely ignorant, and that there are remedies within our reach of which we are equally ignorant. We know of no volume that has come from the press in a long time which, widely and wisely read, could accomplish so muCh immediate good as this little book. It is the doctrine of physical rest stated in un- technical language, with practical suggestions. It ought to be in the hands of at least eight out of every ten men and women now living and working on this continent." — Christian Union. Sold by all booksellers. Mailed^ post-paid, by the pub^ Ushers* ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. Messrs. Roberts Brothers^ Ptiblications, A BOOK FOR MOTHERS. By DR. GENEVIEVE TUCKER. Fully illustrated. Small 4to. Cloth. Price, $i.^o. The object of the author in presenting this work is to furnish a practical summary of the infant's hygiene and physical develop- ment. The aim of the book is to be a guide to mothers, particu- larly young and inexperienced ones. It purposes to teach and help a mother to understand her babe, to feed it properly, to place it in healthful surroundings, and to watch its growth and development with intelligence, and thus relieve in a measure the undue anxiety and nervous uncertainty of a new mother. The book in not in- tended in any measure to take the place of a physician, but rather to aid the physician in teaching the mother to care properly for her babe when well, that she may better nurse it when sick. Heredity. Prenatal Period. The Little Stranger, Growth and Develop- ment. Bathing. Dress. Sleep. CONTENTS. Crying Babies. The Eyes. Nursing. The "Wet-Nurse. Weaning. Feeding after Weaning. Teething. Hand-Feeding. Bowels and Kidneys. Posture. Exercise. Habit. A Study of Babies. The Baby's Basket. Nursery Pointers. Nursery Don'ts. Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, hjp the publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, 3 Somerset Street, Boston, Mass. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS <9 019 855 681 6