CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

HYGEIA: A MODEL CITY OF HEALTH.

A remarkable attempt has been made to bring
into one focus numerous suggestions put forth,
within the last few years by social improvers
and sanitary reformers. These suggestions, as
our readers are aware, take a very wide range.
Matters relating to water-supply, drainage, disposal
of refuse, lighting, ventilation, dry foundations
and dry walls to houses, stoves and fireplaces,
cookery and kitchen arrangements, washing and
drying appliances, cleanliness of person and of
garments, cleanliness of rooms and of bedding,
special arrangements for unwholesome but necessary
trades and employments, provision for the
sick that may not be perilous to other persons,
moderation in diet and regimen, avoidance of
vicious indulgences—all these and many other
subjects have engaged the attention of thoughtful
persons in a marked degree; and it can be indisputably
shewn that the annual death-rate is lowered
in districts where improvements in such matters
have been extensively adopted. Mr Edwin Chadwick,
perhaps the chief worker in this laudable
direction, is so confident in the eventual success of
such endeavours, that he announces the possibility
of building a city that shall have any assignable
death-rate or annual mortality, from a maximum
of fifty or more in a thousand to a minimum of
five or less in a thousand. Dr B. W. Richardson,
a physician and physiologist of eminence, has
taken hold of Mr Chadwick’s idea, and sketched
the plan of a city that shall shew the lowest rate
of mortality. No such city—we need hardly say—exists,
and he has neither the time nor the
means to build one; but his purpose is to shew
that it can be done, whenever public opinion is
ripe for it.

Dr Richardson, in an Address to the Social
Science Association, afterwards published in a
separate form, speaks of his Hygeia or City of
Health in the present tense, as if it already existed.
This is done for vividness of description and brevity
of language, and will be understood by the reader
in the proper sense.

Hygeia, then, is a city for a hundred thousand
inhabitants. (The main principles could be worked
out in a much smaller community, but in a less
complete form.) It has twenty thousand houses
on an area of four thousand acres of ground:
apparently rather densely populated, but not too
much so when good sanitary arrangements are
adopted. There are no very lofty houses. In
busy thoroughfares, where shops are required,
there are three stories or floors over the shops;
and some of the best streets in private or ‘west-end’
neighbourhoods have four stories in all; but
in others the general number is three. Underground
living-rooms and kitchens there are none;
instead of these, every house is built upon arches
of brickwork, which form channels of ingress for
fresh air, and of egress for all that is required to
be got rid of. Running along beneath each main
street is a railway for the transport of heavy commodities.
All the streets are wide enough to admit
plenty of cheerful sunlight and fresh air, and rows
of trees are planted between the foot-ways and
carriage-ways; the carriage-ways are paved with
wood set in asphalt, and the foot-ways with stone
pavements ten feet wide. Tramways are not permitted,
as they cut up the roadway; omnibuses
above ground and railways below will suffice
instead.

All the interspaces between the backs of the
houses are laid out as gardens. Churches, hospitals,
theatres, banks, lecture-rooms, and other public or
large buildings, follow the same alignment as the
houses in the streets, but all detached; and every
one flanked by a garden-space, however narrow.

There is no occasion for those unsightly concomitants
of London sanitation, scavengers’ carts.
The accumulation of mud and dirt in the streets is
washed away every day through side-openings into
subways, and is with the sewage conveyed to a
destination apart from the city; there are neither
gratings nor open drains; and there are no ‘gutter
children,’ because there are no gutters for children
to paddle and dabble in, and because we may hope
that, eventually, ‘young Arabs’ will disappear
from our towns.

{34}

There being no rooms or offices whatever below
the level of the street, how, it may be asked, are
the domestic arrangements carried on? The
kitchens and offices are at the top of the house
instead of the bottom. Plenty of light and ventilation
are thus obtained; while hot odours, being
lighter than common air, pass away without contaminating
the living and sleeping apartments.
All the larger houses are provided with lifts, up
which provisions and stores can be conveyed. As
there is a constant service of water, available to
the highest story of every house, the kitchen
boiler may be kept constantly filled; hot water
from the boiler can be distributed by conducting
pipes to the lower rooms, as well as cold water
from the tank or cistern—an inestimable advantage,
especially in bed-rooms. Every floor or story has
a sink for waste water, whereby the carrying of
the uncomfortable slop-pail up and down stairs is
rendered unnecessary. The scullery, adjoining the
kitchen, has an opening to the dust-shaft; and so
have the several floors or stories, every opening
being provided with a sliding-door or shutter.
The dust-bin, into which the shaft descends, is
under the basement of the house. The roof of
the house is nearly flat, paved with asphalt or
tiles; it serves either as a pleasant little garden
or as a drying-ground for clothes—the wherewithal
for a laundry being provided in connection with
the scullery.

The houses are built of a kind of brick which
has the following sanitary advantages—glazed, so
as to be impermeable to water and moisture; perforated,
so as to admit of circulation of fresh air
through the very substance of the walls; glazed
in different colours for the interior of the rooms,
thereby dispensing with the necessity for paint,
paper-hanging, or whitewash, and affording scope
for tasteful design in the selection and arrangement
of the tints; smooth and hard, so as to be easily
cleaned by washing; and some of them flattened
into tiles for more convenient use as ceilings.
Sea-sand is excluded from the mortar employed,
on account of its tendency to imbibe and exude
moisture. The chimneys, arranged on a plan
prepared by Mr Spencer Wells, are all connected
with central shafts; the smoke, drawn into these
shafts, is passed through a gas-furnace to destroy
the free carbon, and finally discharged colourless
into the open air. ‘At the expense of a small
smoke-rate, the city is free from raised chimneys
and the intolerable nuisance of smoke.’ On the
landing of the middle or second stories is a
bath-room, supplied with hot and cold water
from the kitchen above. The houses being built
on arched subways, great facilities exist for
the admission of gas and water into the several
domiciles, and for the exit of sewage and refuse.
All pipes are laid along the subways, and up
thence into the houses; and workmen have easy
access to these subways for the adjustment and
repair of the several pipes. Abundance of water
is at hand for flushing the sewers, which are laid
along the floor of the subways. All the domestic
offices of every kind being within the four walls of
the house itself, there are none of these unsightly
outhouses which so much disfigure most of our
towns, and so greatly lessen the available garden-space.

In the living-rooms an oak margin of floor
about two feet wide extends round the room; this
is kept bright and clean by the old-fashioned beeswax
and turpentine, the centre only of the floor
being carpeted or otherwise covered. In the bed-rooms
twelve hundred cubic feet of space is allowed
for each sleeper; and all unnecessary articles of
furniture, bedding, and dress are excluded—the
use of a bedroom as a lumber-room being a
fertile source of weakened health to the inmates.
The lift already spoken of, for conveying provisions
and stores to the upper story of the house, is a
simple affair: a shaft runs up in the party-wall
between two houses, and in this a basket-lift is
raised by a rope; while side-openings connect this
lift with the middle story or stories. The living-rooms
have the open cheerful fireplace which
English folks so much prefer to the closed stoves
of many continental countries; but at the back of
the fire-grate is an air-box communicating by a
passage with the open air, and by another opening
with the room; the heated iron box draws in fresh
air from without, and diffuses it in the upper part
of the room—on a plan similar to that devised by
Captain Galton.

Walking through the streets, what kind of aspect
does Hygeia present? There is an absence of
places for the sale of spirituous liquors. Whether
by permissive bills or by temperance pledges, this
kind of abstinence is so far enforced; and a drunkard
would be forced out of the city by the frown
of public opinion. Another moral restraint which,
however, is one extremely difficult to impose—we
will mention in Dr Richardson’s own language,
as it evidently expresses his opinion as a physician:
‘As smoking and drinking go largely together—as
the two practices were, indeed, original exchanges
of social degradations between the civilised man
and the savage (the savage getting very much the
worst of the bargain)—so do the practices largely
disappear together. Pipe and glass, cigar and
sherry-cobbler, like the Siamese twins who could
only live connected, have both died out in our
model city. Tobacco, by far the most innocent
partner of the firm, lived, as it perhaps deserved
to do, a little the longest; but it passed away, and
the tobacconist’s counter, like the dram counter,
has disappeared.’

The streets have plenty of life and movement in
them, but a minimum of rattling jarring noises,
owing to the heavy traffic being conducted through
the underground railways. Most of the principal
factories are at a short distance from the city; as
are also large clusters of workrooms let out singly.
A workman can have a workroom on payment of
a moderate weekly rent; in it he can work as
many hours as he pleases, but must not make it his
home. Each block is under the charge of a superintendent,
and under the supervision of a sanitary
inspector. The artisan goes away from his home
to work, like the lawyer, the merchant, or the
banker. There might appear to be some waste of
time in this arrangement; but it is more than
compensated, in the opinion of the citizens of
Hygeia, by comparative immunity from disease: ‘It
has,’ says Dr Richardson, ‘been found in our towns
generally, that men and women who are engaged
in industrial callings, such as tailoring, shoe-making,
dressmaking, lace-making, and the like,
work at their own homes among their children.
That this is a common cause of disease is well
understood. I have myself seen the half-made
riding-habit that was ultimately to clothe some{35}
wealthy damsel rejoicing in her morning ride, act
as the coverlet of a poor tailor’s child stricken
with malignant scarlet fever. These things must
be, in the ordinary course of events under our
present bad system. In the model system we have
in our mind’s eye, these dangers are met by the
simple provision of workmen’s offices or workrooms.’

Public laundries are a feature in Hygeia. If the
washing of a small family is done at home, the
housewife knows with what she has to deal; but
when ‘the washing is put out,’ the linen of the
family may, for aught she knows, have been mixed
before, during, or after the process of washing with
the linen from the bed or the body of some sufferer
from a contagious malady. Some of the most fatal
outbreaks of disease are known to have been communicated
in this manner. To avoid these evils,
public laundries are established in the outskirts of
Hygeia, each with an extensive drying-ground, and
all under sanitary inspection.

There is no one gigantic hospital, nor any
hospital for special diseases—with perhaps one or
two exceptions. Numerous small hospitals are
distributed equidistant throughout the city; each
constructed according to the most approved and
efficient plan, and surrounded by its own open
grounds. One of these would suffice for about
five thousand inhabitants. The current system
of large hospitals is abandoned, as being equivalent
to ‘warehousing diseases on the largest possible
scale;’ while special hospitals are deemed unnecessary—’as
if the different organs could walk out of
the body and present themselves for separate treatment.’
Each hospital has an ambulance ready to
be sent out to bring any injured persons to the
institution; the ambulance drives straight into
the hospital, where a bed of the same height on
silent wheels receives the patient, and conveys him
or her to a ward. The staff is so appointed that
every medical man in the city has in turn the
advantage of hospital practice; whereby the best
medical and surgical skill is fairly equalised through
the whole community.

Homes for little children are abundant. In
these the destitute young are carefully treated by
intelligent nurses; so that mothers, following their
daily callings, are enabled to leave their children
under efficient care.

In a city so organised, it is believed that insanity
would be very small in amount, and that a
few small special establishments would suffice for
its treatment. For the same reason huge buildings
as workhouses for the destitute would be neither
desirable nor necessary; small well-managed establishments,
with useful work for all who are not
really incapacitated, will be better both for the
unfortunates themselves and for the ratepayers of
the city. Ablution-baths, swimming-baths, play-grounds,
gymnasia, public libraries, public schools,
fine-art schools, and lecture-halls, are good and
plentiful in Hygeia.

At a distance from the city are the water and
gas works, and the sewage-pumping works. The
water, drained from a river unpolluted by sewage,
is filtered, and conveyed to the houses through
iron (not lead) pipes. The sewage, brought from
the city partly by its own flow and partly by
pumping apparatus, is conveyed away to well-drained
sewage-farms at a distance, where it is
utilised as a fertiliser. Scavengers traverse the
streets in early morning, and remove all refuse
from roads, pavements, yards, and stables in
covered vans to the sewage-farm. The public
slaughter-houses, at some distance from the city,
are under the control of inspectors, who examine
all animals before being killed for food; and painless
slaughtering, which is now known to be practicable,
is adopted. The city cemetery is artificially
made of fine carboniferous earth, on which vegetation
springs up quickly. The dead, either in
shrouds or in baskets or cradles of wicker-work,
are placed in the earth, and vegetation soon covers
them; and anything in the nature of a monumental
slab or inscribed stone is placed in a
spacious covered hall built for the purpose. The
burial system is thus a compromise between the
old graveyard usages to which England has been
accustomed for a thousand years or more, and the
very un-English process of cremation which has
a few advocates among us.

Such is Hygeia, the imaginary City of Health.
Dr Richardson states his reasons for thinking that
mortality would lessen to eight per thousand per
annum in the first generation, in a community
thus domiciled and organised; and afterwards
lessen to five per thousand. He says, to the
audience he addressed: ‘Do not, I pray you, wake
up as from a mere dream. The details of the city
exist; they have been worked out by the pioneers
of sanitary science; I am but as a draughtsman
who has drawn out a plan, which you in your
wisdom can modify, improve, perfect.’ Whether
by speculative landowners, architects, and builders,
or by social reformers who have no interested or
professional motives, a scheme has been brought
forward for a City of Health to be called Hygeopolis,
somewhere on the Sussex coast; but it is only in
the rough, without any detail of ‘ways and means.’
We fear that the whole project is little better than
a dream. It is certain that a city such as Dr
Richardson portrays in imagination could not be
established without a revolution in our social
habits; that a species of communism would supplant
a good deal of individual enterprise; and
that the local rates, however imposed and however
collected, would be enormously heavy. Nevertheless,
many of the suggestions are admirable, and
could be singly worked out in most of our existing
towns.

A CURATE’S HOLIDAY.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CHAPTER III.

When left alone by the farmer at whose house I
had so unexpectedly become a guest, I looked
around the room in which I was to pass the night.
It was small, ill furnished, and carpetless, but not
uncleanly; and as I listened to the gusty wind,
and heard the rain pelting against the casement,
I felt thankful to be under cover of a roof, however
lowly. Securing the door by the only means it
possessed, a rough wooden bolt, I said my prayers,
got into bed, and was soon fast asleep.

How long I had slept I have no means of
judging, before I awoke with a start from a dream
in which one of the farmer’s six sons—magnified
into a giant—had been poising me by the hair over
the ‘Devil’s Hole’ at the Spike Rocks.

The dream disturbed me so greatly, that for a
long time I could not again compose myself; but
at length I was just upon the point of relapsing
into unconsciousness, when a sound, too confused
to be at once explicable, but which appeared to
come from the neighbourhood of Mr Morgan’s
room, struck upon my ear, rousing me in an
instant to renewed wakefulness. Wondering what
it could be, I strained my attention to listen; but
it was not repeated. Presently, however, I became
conscious of other sounds, faint in themselves, and
partially drowned beneath the wail of the wind,
but which, nevertheless, my hearing, rendered
acute by anxiety, distinctly reported. They were
an intermittent creaking of the distant staircase,
accompanied by a shuffling kind of tread upon
it, such as might be occasioned by the cautious
descent of several persons bearing a heavy weight.
That at least was the interpretation which, with
a sickening conjecture as to what that weight
might be, I put upon these mysterious midnight
noises. Slipping from bed, I crossed the room on
tiptoe, applied my ear to the crevice of the
door, and bent all my faculties to hearken. I
am not, I think, a coward; but I must own to
experiencing a strong sensation of alarm when,
after standing there for a few moments, during
which I not only heard the wind whistling through
the passage below, but actually felt a powerful
draught, I knew from the cessation of both that
the entrance-door, which must have been opened,
had been again closed.

Noiselessly but swiftly I passed over to the
window, and pressed my face against it, in the
hope of discovering who and what it was that had
left the house at so strange an hour. But the night
was pitchy dark; I could see nothing beyond a
foot from the pane; and shivering, less from
exposure to the cold than from a horrible idea
which had taken possession of me, I crept back to
bed.

Several hours appeared to have elapsed, though
I have no doubt it was in reality less than half a
one, before, by an intuitive perception, I became
aware that the individuals who had quitted the
farm had returned to it. Trembling with dread,
none the less overwhelming from its being in a
measure vague, I once more concentrated all my
powers upon the act of listening, and was soon
informed by my terror-quickened senses that the
stairs were again creaking—this time beneath a
lighter tread. Then—yes! I was sure of it—a
stealthy step was coming down the passage, slowly
approaching my room! It paused before the door,
and in another instant a wary hand was at work
upon the fastener. Some kind of instrument
had been inserted between the door and its frame,
by means of which the bolt was being gradually
pushed backwards in the socket.

With a rapidity not unusual in moments of
excitement or danger, my mind flew in an inconceivably
short space of time through a course of
reasoning, which shaped all my previous surmises
and brought me to the following conclusions.

Firstly, that my friend and I had fallen into
bad hands, and that by some means or other the
villainous inmates of the farm had found out about
the money in Mr Morgan’s custody. Secondly,
that the poor gentleman had been robbed and
perhaps murdered upon its account. And lastly,
that those who had done the deed, having returned,
were now meditating the commission of a similar
offence upon myself.

Scarcely, however, had I arrived at this terrible
judgment ere there darted upon me a hope of
escape from the apprehended danger. It was
brought about by the reflection that in my case{44}
there was no booty—save the very insignificant
one of a few sovereigns and a clumsy silver watch—to
tempt to the commission of so great and
dangerous a crime. If therefore, I sanguinely
endeavoured to persuade myself, I could but
manage to deceive the amiable individual who was
so considerately striving to force a way into my
room without disturbing my slumbers, into the
belief that he had made it unobserved, an examination
of my effects might end, possibly, in both them
and myself being left untouched. The experiment,
at all events, I resolved should be tried, the more
especially as upon further consideration I felt sure
it offered my only chance of safety; for, as I
recollected with an access of consternation, it had
been arranged that Jonathan should sleep in a
hayloft apart from the house, and consequently,
should my solution of those ominous sounds be
correct, I was alone amongst these wretches, and
entirely in their power. Resistance, whatever might
be their design, would, I saw, be worse than useless;
and accordingly, though my heart throbbed
violently when I knew that the door had at last
yielded and that the intruder was in the chamber,
I lay perfectly still, breathing loudly and regularly.

The adoption of this line of conduct in all
probability saved my life, for as the issue of the
event proved, it was not to rob me, but to discover
whether or no I were asleep, that my surreptitious
visitor had entered my apartment. This fact
became sufficiently patent when, after leaning over
my bed for what, measured by my mental suffering
was an eternity, during which, with a difficult
exercise of self-control, I continued to respire like
one in heavy slumber, he stole away again, without
having meddled with my clothes or gone near
the rude dressing-table upon which lay my watch.
But my trial was not yet over. For I should think
fully an hour after he had quitted the bed-chamber
and carefully replaced the bolt, my unknown
watcher remained listening outside the door; and
throughout that time I neither dared stir a limb
nor remit my sonorous breathing. Eventually,
however, an exchange of whispers with some
person or persons, who had evidently been awaiting,
not far off, the result of this protracted test, was
followed to my intense relief, by the sound of
retreating footsteps.

Upon how I passed the remainder of that dreadful
night, with the long-drawn-out hours of early
morning which succeeded, I am not about to dwell.
But that no sleep visited my eyelids, and that,
tortured by suspense and enforced inaction, my
hard couch was by no means a bed of roses, it will
readily be believed. Upon that couch nevertheless
I forced myself to remain until considerably after
seven o’clock; then, rising and dressing, I bathed
my face in cold water, and studying it in the tiny
mirror, strove carefully to remove all traces of
solicitude or want of rest.

But when ready at length to go forth from that
chamber of horrors and satisfy myself, as I had
been so feverishly longing to do, as to the truth or
falsity of the theory (for after all it was little else)
which I had based upon the events of the night, I
shrank from doing so.

After another earnest prayer, however, for
strength to meet whatsoever might be in store for
me, and to act the part upon which I had determined,
I summoned up courage, drew the bolt, and
passed out. On reaching the room allotted to Mr
Morgan upon the previous evening, I found the
door standing wide open, and with mingled feelings
of awe and curiosity, I entered. It was, as a single
glance shewed me, in perfect order. The bed, of
which the coverings were turned down, was ruffled
no further than it would have been by a peaceful
slumberer, and the coarse sheets were unstained by
the slightest mark of blood. Nowhere could the
faintest indication of disturbance be discovered;
and as the welcome thought suggested itself, that
had any deed of violence really taken place, its
evidences could scarcely have been so cleverly
effaced, I turned with a heart lightened by hope,
which was well-nigh assurance, and went down-stairs.
A clatter of crockery greeted my ears as I
neared the kitchen; and upon arriving there, I
found the farmer with his family and Jonathan
the driver seated at breakfast by a large centre
table. A smaller one, laid with cups and plates
for two, stood nearer the fireplace; but the little
minister, a rapid survey of the apartment satisfied
me, was not present. Instantly my strong hope
perished, giving place to a pang of keen disappointment.
But commanding my features to an expression
of unconcern, I returned the good-morrows
which were showered upon me, and replied to a
question from my host as to how I had slept, with
the assurance that I had passed an excellent night,
and that indeed I was at all times a remarkably
sound sleeper.

Whilst making this statement, however, I was
fully conscious that in each of the several pairs of
eyes which I saw directed towards me there was
a hard, scrutinising look. But instead of disconcerting,
that inquiring gaze rather emboldened me.
Convinced thereby of the absolute necessity for
enactment of the rôle upon which I had decided, I
felt my spirit rising to meet the occasion. Crossing
the floor, I seated myself by the smaller table,
and inquired in a firm voice, and with a smile upon
my face, where Mr Morgan was, remarking, that in
passing his room, I had noticed that it had been
vacated.

‘Well, inteet yes sir; it is more as an hour I
should think since the goot gentleman will be
come down-stair, and that he is gone out for a
walk,’ composedly returned the farmer, to whom I
had addressed myself. ‘It is to see the Spike
Rocks that he will be gone, it wass no doubt. But
I ‘oold be glad he came now to breakfast, for he is
a long while away, whatever.’

‘The Spike Rocks!’ I exclaimed, feeling that
I was turning pale, and almost losing my self-possession.
‘Surely, we are not near the Spike
Rocks?’

‘But yes inteet sir,’ rejoined the old woman,
who was standing up, cutting bread for the rest,
and in whom I detected a large amount of
suppressed excitement. ‘It wass but very little
way off the Rocks, this farm. And it is name,
sir, the Spike Rock Farm. In the summer-time
there wass a many ladies and gentlemen will call
here to’——

‘Spike Rocks!’ I cried, interrupting her rudely,
and turning to Jonathan in a violent rage, which
for the moment swallowed up all thought of caution—’how
dared you, sirrah, bring us again to this
horrible spot? You must have known where you
were driving. You—you; or,’ I added, stammering,
as a highly discomposing suspicion flashed across
my mind, and finishing the sentence differently{45}
from what I had intended—’or you must have
been more drunk than I had imagined.’

‘But sir, I wass not drunk no more than you
wass yourself,’ rejoined the hunchback in a
threatening tone, glaring at me fiercely. ‘And
it is of no use that you will scold me sir, not of
any at all; for, sir, I did not know that we wass
come here myself—not till this morning whatever.
And by’——

‘Silence, man!’ I interposed, with an assumption
of dignity and a strenuous effort to appear collected;
‘swearing and passionate language will not
convince me that you are speaking the truth any
better than quiet words would do. But I will
go and meet Mr Morgan,’ I concluded, rising as
though to put an end to the incipient quarrel;
and taking up my hat, I prepared to leave the
house.

Following me to the door, the farmer politely
proposed that he, or one of his sons, should walk
with me for company. But upon my declining
the attention, it was not pressed; and contrary
to my fears, I was allowed to pass out alone.
Owing to the storm, I had on the previous evening
been able to pay no attention to the farm’s surroundings,
and my bedroom window, as I had
this morning found, looked out merely upon an
orchard by its side. But now, scarcely had I
opened the wicket of the little garden, than, with
a start of surprise, I distinctly recognised the
locality in which I stood. There, to my right,
at not many yards distant, appeared the identical
white gate by which our conveyance had waited
yesterday whilst the little minister and I paid our
visit to the Spike Rocks. It was down this very
road we had driven; and upon looking back thereat,
I even recollected the farm itself. I recollected
something else too, which made me involuntarily
quicken my steps, and which confirmed beyond
doubt the suspicion which I had just conceived—that
Jonathan might be in collusion with the
people at the farm. I had thought nothing of it
at the time; but I now well remembered, upon
our return to the dog-cart, observing a man,
who, it struck me, was our obliging host himself,
walking away from it in the direction of the
house.

The longer I ruminated upon the aspect of
affairs, the uglier they now became, and the more
clearly did I begin to perceive that the whole thing
had been a preconcerted plot. It was by no
mistake, I presently told myself, that Jonathan
had turned up that lane, and by no accident that
the horse had lost its shoe. We had been expected
last night at that farm-house, and we had been
taken there deliberately, in order that Mr Morgan
might be robbed of his money. Jonathan had
either discovered the existence of the three hundred
pounds, or he had been informed of it. But how
or by whom? The answer to this question was not
far to seek, and being supplied, it furnished the
completing link in the chain of evidence I was mentally
working out. The landlord of the Ship and
Anchor was the dwarf’s cousin; he had seen the
minister’s money. I recalled his covetous glance,
his suspicious presence in the closet, the fact that
he had proposed our taking the dog-cart; and
everything grew transparent as daylight. But had
the little Welshman really been murdered? And
was my method of accounting for the noises of last
night accurate? I could not doubt it; nor could
I dismiss a hideous idea as to how his body had
been disposed of, which, directly upon learning
that I was in this vicinity, had taken possession of
me. It was in fact with an implicit belief that
my late companion was lying at the bottom of it,
that I now approached that Hole which on the
previous day had affected me so disagreeably.
Leaning over the brink upon gaining it, I experienced
that peculiar kind of fascination which
attends the horrible, as gazing into its depths, I
watched the water foaming and whirling, and
occasionally rising in great sheets to cast itself with
angry impatience against the confining barrier.
Noting its fury, which appeared to have increased
since my former visit, I saw to a certainty that,
even were it possible to reach the bottom without
being dashed to pieces upon the rocks, no life
could be retained for an instant in that boiling
pool. To fall or to be thrown down here would
be certain and instantaneous death. There would
be no chance of being exhumed for interment in a
more hallowed spot, for what diver could be found
daring enough to descend below those gyrating
waters! No! had my friend been cast into this
‘Devil’s Hole,’ here he must remain. There could
be no tales told by his body as to how he had met
with his death, for that body would be seen no
more by mortal eye.

But to me the manner of that death had now
become no longer a mystery. Shut out from the
supposition that there had been actual violence, by
the total absence of any proof of it, I had lighted
upon another hypothesis respecting the crime,
which to my mind, however, was no hypothesis,
but a well-assured fact. It was, that by means of
something mixed with the whisky of which he
had drunk just before retiring to rest, the poor
little minister had either been drugged into unconsciousness
or actually poisoned, and in that
condition conveyed from the house and disposed
of as I had said. But although all this appeared
to myself so lucid and certain, I knew well that I
could bring forward no legal proof of the well-arranged
villainy, and, that consequently, the
scoundrels who had perpetrated it would in all
probability escape punishment, and Mr Morgan’s
disappearance be attributed to accident. Inwardly
raging at this thought, I was about to move away
from the place of his entombment—for so I felt
confident it was—when something occurred which
arrested my steps, and made my heart leap.
What that something was, I will endeavour to
relate in as simple a manner as possible.

For some time, during which the reflections I
have recorded had been passing through my brain,
my eyes had been resting quite unconsciously
upon an abutting fragment of rock some twelve or
fourteen feet below the level of the ground. The
rock sloped sharply upwards, forming an acute
angle with the well-nigh perpendicular walls of
the ‘Hole,’ of which it constituted perhaps the
chief irregularity. My gaze, I repeat, chanced to be
resting upon this inclined abutment, when, with
what indescribable amazement and awe may be
imagined, I all at once saw a human hand and
arm emerge from what appeared to be the solid
granite of the upright side, and grasping the projecting
shelf, draw after it the head and shoulders
of a man. During the first moment the back of
the head only was presented to my view; then
slowly, and as though with difficulty, a white face{46}
was turned upwards! Although pale, and drawn
as though in intense pain, I recognised it perfectly:
it was that of the little minister. But before
my bewildered faculties could collect themselves,
or my paralysed tongue articulate a syllable, the
hand had relaxed its hold, and the figure had slid
back as it were, right into the rock. The suddenness
and strangeness of this appearance so upset
my nerves that my knees trembled and shook
beneath me. Yet not for an instant did I entertain
the idea that I had seen an apparition. That
face I felt sure was the face of a living man, and
belonged to none other than Mr Morgan himself.
But notwithstanding my assurance upon this point,
I was so startled by the unexpected phenomenon,
that until I could hit upon some way of accounting
for his presence in and disappearance from that
singular spot, I could not even rejoice in the knowledge
that my friend was alive. I did, however,
hit upon a way of accounting for it, directly the
dazing effect of my astonishment passed sufficiently
to allow me to consider at all. And in truth the
explanation was obvious enough. Behind that projecting
crag, and entirely concealed by it, there
must be, it was plain, a hole or cavern so large in
size as to admit a man’s body. Upon being cast
over the precipice (about which there could now
be no further question), the little Welshman, in
a state of insensibility, had by a merciful providence
fallen upon that rocky escarpment, and
had either crept into the sheltering crevice
upon coming to himself, or—what was the truth
of the case—had rolled into it by force of the
descent.

This problem worked out to my satisfaction, and
with the blood now coursing through my veins
with delight and excitement, I leant forward with
the intention of calling out to attract Mr Morgan’s
attention, in order that I might warn him to keep
carefully hidden, and assure him that if he did so,
I would undoubtedly effect his rescue. Happily,
however, the warning which I was just preparing
to utter had not left my lips before a voice
at my elbow inquired: ‘Is it something in the
hole, sir, you wass seeing?’ The shock of this
abrupt address almost sent me over the precipice.
But recovering my self-possession by a suddenly
inspired effort, I turned, and seeing two of the
farmer’s sons close behind me, angrily addressed
the nearer: ‘You stupid fellow, you!’ I exclaimed,
‘don’t you see that you had nearly been the
death of me? Why did you so suddenly speak
before letting me see you! You might have
known, surely, that I couldn’t hear the sound
of your footsteps over the soft grass. I was
listening to the booming of the waters down there.
What an unearthly noise they make! But come
away; it’s an awful place,’ I added, moving a step
backwards, and striving not to betray the uneasiness
I felt.

‘Ay inteet sir, it is an awful place—as awful a
place as there is in the whole ‘orld, I wass well
belief,’ returned the young man to whom I had
spoken, fixing upon me a curious searching gaze.
Then letting his keen black eyes follow those of
his brother, he peered eagerly into the chasm, and
observed: ‘Pless us! it ‘oold be a pad job, look
you, if a man wass to fall over here. The prains
of him ‘oold soon be dashed out; ‘ooldn’t they,
sir?’

‘There’s not much doubt of that, truly,’ I
replied, not daring again to direct my own
glance into the Hole, and praying, as I had never
prayed in my life before, that the little minister
might not at present emerge from his hiding-place.
‘But where can Mr Morgan be?’ I subjoined,
shading my eyes with my hand, and affecting
to look carefully in all directions. ‘Do, pray,
come and help me to look for him, like good
fellows, for I want my breakfast;’ and in the
hope that they would follow, I began to walk
slowly away.

My request was obeyed, though not immediately.
But as a matter of course, the pretended
search proved fruitless; and returning to the farm,
I breakfasted alone, forcing myself to eat, and
expressing the while much displeasure at my
companion’s lengthened absence.

The meal over, I paced the sanded kitchen for
nearly an hour, looking every few minutes from
the window, and simulating increasing impatience
and anger. My estimable host meantime, with
his wife and several of their hopeful sons, remained
with me, observing me closely though stealthily,
and alternately making testing suggestions as to
what had become of the ‘goot gentleman.’ All
these, however, I pooh-poohed, and obstinately
adhered to the opinion I professed to have formed
myself respecting the matter, namely, that in a
fit of absent-mindedness—to which I declared he
was subject—Mr Morgan had extended his walk
to a great length, and not having noticed where he
was going, had ended in losing his way.

My acting I could see completely lulled all
suspicion; and when presently, I informed the
company that I was engaged to preach in England
upon the following day—which was Sunday—and
affirmed, that unless I returned to Lleyrudrigg at
once, I would be unable to catch the train by
which I must travel, no opposition was offered
to the proposition that Jonathan should forthwith
drive me there, and return again for Mr
Morgan.

The horse (already re-shod by one of the sons,
who had learned the trade of blacksmith) was
accordingly put into the dog-cart; and promising,
as a further blind, that before setting off for
England, I would inform the landlord of the Ship
and Anchor about my friend’s disappearance, and
leave it to him to take the proper steps for his
discovery, in case he should not have reached the
farm before Jonathan’s return to it, I tendered
the farmer a sovereign, and with an exchange of
civilities, drove off.

CRIME IN ITALY.

As a Supplement to our recent article on Italian
Brigandage, we give the following, which appears
in a newspaper from a Roman correspondent.
Referring to the effort now making in Italy for the
total abolition of capital punishment, he says: ‘It
is a wonderful reply to the urgent demands from
every part of the country, and I might almost say
from every part of Europe, that the brigandage,
which is rapidly destroying the civilisation of large
districts of Italy, and is portentously and undeniably
increasing, should be put an end to. The
real truth, however, is that the proposed alteration
of the law would but bring it into conformity with{47}
the universal practice. And it would be but
another step in the same direction to legalise
brigandage. We are not far from it. Take as a
proof the following story, told in the Opinione, on
the 17th instant: Ten men, all Sicilians, all old
convicts of the worst possible antecedents and character,
have been tried at Naples under the following
circumstances. They had all been condemned to
domicilio coatto—a species of imprisonment somewhat
resembling transportation—in the island of
Ischia. There these ten men forthwith established
a camorra. Among other things they imposed a
tribute of ten centimes (a penny) a day on all the
other prisoners. There was, however, one, and only
one, who persistently refused to pay this demand.
A meeting of the camorrists was therefore held, in
which he was condemned to death; and lots were
drawn to decide who should be the murderer. The
man to whom the task fell undertook to do it; but
his heart failed him, and he went to the authorities
and revealed the whole affair. The first thing
done was to place him in an inaccessible prison, to
secure his life. Then the man who was to have
been murdered was summoned and questioned, and
all his replies entirely confirmed the relation of
the other, even to the telling that he had been
warned that he was condemned to death. One
morning the informer was found by the jailer
hanging to the bars of his window. He had tried
to kill himself from terror of the camorrists, who,
he felt assured, would sooner or later wreak terrible
vengeance on him. However, the jailer was in
time to save his life. The ten men were all
taken to Naples to be tried, the public prosecutor
demanding two years of imprisonment for
nine of them, and six months for the informer.
The tribunal, however, acquitted them all! The
Opinione with much indignation asks what could
have been the motive of such an acquittal. Not
want of sufficient evidence, certainly. But the
reply to the question asked by the Opinione is but
too clear and unmistakable. These men were
acquitted because if they had been condemned the
lives of all who had any part in condemning them
would have been in danger—and no little danger—nay,
would in all probability have been taken.
But under such circumstances it was very evident
that the thing to do was to change the venue, and
take these criminals, say, to Turin to be tried.
But Europe, in the face of the line Italy is taking,
has the right to say, if not that Italy does not
wish to eradicate crime, at least that she is very
far from being duly impressed with the necessity
of doing so, and does not wish it at such cost as
is absolutely necessary to pay for it. Perhaps the
commission which has just followed the instinct
which impels Radicals to diminish the strength
of the law in deciding on the abolition of the
punishment of death, were moved to their decision
by the declaration in court of a man who had
murdered his wife in Tuscany, where capital
punishment has for some years past been erased
from the code, to the effect that he had come to
Tuscany for the express purpose of committing the
crime, because he could not there be punished
with death for it.’

ARCHIE RAEBURN.

A FRAGMENT FROM THE BERWICKSHIRE COAST.

CHAPTER I.—HOGMANAY.

I had been but three years married—short and
happy years they were—when Archie, my husband,
was called away to Queensland in Australia, where
an uncle of his, long settled there, was ill, and
required the presence of one whom he could trust
to keep, as the old saying is, goods and gear
together on his farm. I do not mind owning now
that I was very unwilling that Archie should go far
away from his bairn and me, to the opposite side
of the world; but go he would. ‘My darling!’ he
said, bending down his tall head to kiss me, for
I am but a little thing—’don’t cry; and don’t fear
for me, for have I not been, as an engineer, in
worse climates than that of Australia? See, Alice,
my dear; I cannot refuse to go to Uncle Scott now,
he that was so good to me as a boy, and first put
me in the way of earning a living. But with
Heaven’s help I’ll be back next year, safe and well,
wifie!’ So Archie Raeburn went over the waste
of waters to the far-away lands that lie beneath
strange stars that never shine upon us at home
in Britain; and his poor little wife, with our one
child, wee Lilian, went back to live at my native
place, East Craig, on the sea-coast, where I was
known, and felt less lonesome than elsewhere. I
was an orphan when Archie married me, and
there was none of my kindred left living there;
but still I loved the old place and the familiar
scenes, and chose to wait there for my husband’s
return.

We lived in a bit cottage close down upon the
sea-shore, so near to the tide-mark that the roar
and roll of the waves in rough weather, or their
plaintive plash when it was fine, were seldom
absent from my ear; and often I looked for hours
together over the changeful surface of the sea,
dreaming rather than thinking of Archie, so far
off. Then came ill news. The Good Intent, the
ship in which my husband had taken his passage
for the homeward voyage, was given up for lost.
She was long, hopelessly overdue. No vessel had
spoken her, no tidings been received concerning
her, for weary months. There could be no doubt
but that the Good Intent had gone down with
crew and passengers.

I was a widow then, and I so young, and with
my baby child to support as best I might. Brave
Archie, my own only gallant love, was gone!
Weeping and pale, the mere ghost of myself—so
folks said—I went about, in my new-made mourning,
that I felt I never should put off again, striving
to live, for the sake of the helpless bairn
in her black frock, that nestled to my side and
clung to my hand. We were poor—sadly poor;
for the small stock of money waned cruelly fast;
and the embroidery and other needlework for
which I had received such praise when a girl{48}
brought in very, very little, though I worked
with aching eyes and heavy heart deep into the
night.

How it jarred upon my ear, the merry talk of
the neighbours on the blithe Hogmanay (New-year’s
eve) that followed the sad news about
Archie! They all seemed—young and old—so
gay and full of hope in the glad incoming of a
new year, while I—what had the year to bring to
me? What I had saved and gained had waned so
low that soon we must leave the cottage and East
Craig, and go to some great noisy city, where employment
might possibly be found. That night,
as the bairn lay peacefully asleep in her cot, I
could not close my eyes through the long hours
of the darkness, but turned my throbbing head
from side to side. Archie, Archie! How I sorrowed
for the loss of my man. Weariful and
wae, how thankfully would I have rested beside
him for ever; but then there was the bairn to
claim my care. Towards morning I fell asleep.

CHAPTER II.—NEW-YEAR’S DAY.

I awoke, after my short sleep, in the gray dawn,
to find the world astir already, the great sea before
my window spreading far away, calm and glistening
as a lake, and the sun shining cheerily in the
pale blue of the morning sky. The people without,
in their holiday attire, seemed happy and
hopeful; but for me, alas! there was not much of
either hope or happiness. I began to think very
seriously of the future. Yes; I must leave East
Craig, and try in Edinburgh or Glasgow, or, who
knew, even in London! to earn a livelihood for
Lilian and myself. I could surely sew, or work,
for the bread we both needed. My bonny Lilian
unconsciously added to my sorrows on that bright,
sad morning of the new year, by the way she
lisped her little prayer for ‘dear father;’ but I
managed, for her sake, to be strong and brave
again, and came down-stairs with a smiling face.

‘I’m wishin’ ye a happy new year, ma’am!’
blurted out Jeanie, the lassie from a cottage
hard by, who performed the rougher household
duties of our modest household for such
wages as content a girl of thirteen. Oh, but it
was hard, to preserve a steady demeanour, and
acknowledge Jeanie’s well-meant greeting, and sit
down to breakfast with little Lilian in her black
frock beside me, and—— A knocking at the door,
quick and strong. The heavy tread too of a man’s
impatient foot upon the shingly path that led up
from the wicket of the narrow garden. My visitors,
I need not say, were few, and I knew none who
were likely to come thus early. ‘I can see no
one now!’ I cried apprehensively to Jeanie, as
that active lass bustled forward to answer the
peremptory summons.

‘Not even me!’ answered a voice, the sound of
which made me tremble and grow white, as they
told me later, to my very lips, while the door
burst open, and with dilated eyes I gazed as on a
vision. Yes; the tall, bronzed, bearded man who
rushed into the room and caught me to his heart,
and kissed me and the bairnie again and again,
was Archie, my Archie, my dear goodman that I
had believed to be dead and cold, far off beneath
the measureless waters of the Pacific.

‘And you thought me dead, did you?’ said
Archie, when, feeling safe in his strong arms, I
had sobbed out some portion of my short and
simple story. ‘No wonder, for the Good Intent
was cast away, but luckily without loss of life,
on the Van Ruyter Islands, so called from some
early Dutch navigator; and being out of the track
of ordinary ships, we wrecked folks had trouble
enough to keep alive on shell-fish and sea-fowls’
eggs, until we were rescued by an American
whaler. Many’s the night, Alice, love, that as
the wind moaned around the wave-worn rock, I
have knelt and prayed, with the bright stars of
the Southern Cross shining overhead, that God’s
mercy would lead me back to my wife and child;
and here at last I am!—We are rich now,’ said
Archie later, when we could talk more calmly,
and the first transport of my half-incredulous joy
was spent; ‘for poor Uncle Scott, who is dead,
left me heir of all he had, land, cattle, and money;
but the land is the best of it; and if you do not
fear to follow me so far, Alice, we will settle
in Australia.’

‘Gladly and thankfully,’ I answered him; and
had Australia been a land of cold and barrenness,
instead of one of warmth and plenty, I would
have followed him cheerfully to the very ends of
the earth. As it is, we are all happy and healthy
in Queensland, and it is there that I write these
lines; and Lilian and I, I need scarcely say, wear
black no more, and can look back smilingly to the
day, now long ago, when all our joy and happiness
came to us with the glad New Year.

SONG OF THE CARILLONEUR.