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

THE TWELFTH RIG.

IN SIX CHAPTERS.

CHAPTER I.—THE CHARM SUGGESTED.

In a certain district of Ireland, at the foot of a tall
mountain, and well sheltered from the wind, stood
the comfortable farm-house of Patrick Daly, who,
though not much raised above that class, so numerous
in Ireland, called small farmers, had by thrift
and industry, aided no doubt by good fortune,
attained to a position of some consideration, and
was accounted a wealthy man in the neighbourhood.
His farm was well stocked and his barns
well filled.

The dwelling was a long low building, substantial
and roomy, planted in front with some fine
trees, among which the scarlet berries of the
mountain-ash peeped forth, giving to the place
a picturesque as well as comfortable air.

One source of Daly’s wealth above others might
perhaps be found in the fact that, beyond a
daughter, he had no family. His wife had been
dead many years; and this only daughter, now
aged nineteen, ruled all within the house, not excepting
her father. As the farm would be her
undivided property, and it was known besides
that Daly paid occasional visits to a certain bank
in the nearest town, she was looked upon as a
great heiress. Be that as it might, she was reckoned
the loveliest girl in that part of the country.

On a mellow October afternoon, Eliza stood in
the garden before her father’s house engaged in
lopping off branches from the mountain-ash trees.
The finest and richest with berries were those she
selected, as if they were destined for some festive
occasion. The garden still presented a very pleasant
appearance, though November was almost at
hand; but the season had been a particularly
mild one, and few signs of winter were yet apparent.

As Eliza stood thus, her head thrown back, the
light straw-hat she wore fallen over her shoulders,
and displaying the glossy coils of her raven hair,
she made a charming picture. She had placed
some of the crimson berries in her bosom and hair,
and they became admirably her rich, sparkling
brunette beauty. Had she arranged them so
bewitchingly with any reference to some one who
might chance to pass that way?

‘Good-evening, Miss Daly,’ said a voice at the
gate; but it was the cracked tone of an old
woman.

Eliza advanced, her arms laden with branches.
An old woman, apparently about ninety years of
age, stood there. Her form was bowed almost
double, her face yellow and one mass of wrinkles;
but the dark eyes were still keen and clear. She
held a basket in her hand filled with small-wares,
which she hawked about among the farm-houses
in the neighbourhood, and thus earned her livelihood.

‘Oh, it’s you, Catty; and how are you?’ she
returned carelessly, while her bright black eyes
darted a quick glance up the road.

‘Very well, thank you kindly, Miss Daly. I see
you’re busy preparin’ for to-morrow evenin’. If
I’m not mistaken, it’s the last Hallow-eve you’ll
spend as Miss Daly. If we may b’lieve all we
hear, it’s a happy bride you’ll be long afore a
year’s over.’

She paused, as if expecting some confirmation
or denial of this statement. Eliza, however, was
engaged plucking off some withered leaves from
the branches she held, and made no answer.

‘He’s a good, steady gorsoon, an’ a handsome
too, well worthy your choice; an’ I’m sure’——

‘Who’s good and worthy my choice? Who
is it you’re talking about?’ interrupted the girl,
lifting her head quickly and speaking sharply,
while the colour deepened on her cheek.

‘Why, Mr Hogan, iv coorse. Sure, doesn’t
everybody know all about it; an’ it’s only waitin’
they all are every Sunday to hear you an’ him
called in chapel.’

‘Maybe then, they’ll have to wait long enough.
I might take it into my head to disappoint them
and him, after all. Suppose I shouldn’t marry at
all; or suppose—suppose’—— She stopped.

‘Suppose there is some one else you like better.
But sure, didn’t you give the go-by to all the boys{290}
in the place? an’ aren’t you an’ Mr Hogan always
constant together? at laste used to be till the last
month or so, when young Mr Crofton cum home
from foreign parts. But you wouldn’t be so foolish
as to be afther thinkin’ of a gintleman like him.
An’ you know, besides, don’t you, that he’s been
plighted since both were childer to his father’s
ward, Miss Ellen Courtney, that’s come to live
at the Hall?’

‘I neither know nor care whether he is or
whether he isn’t,’ returned Eliza, with a haughty
little toss of her head and a touch of defiance in
her tone. ‘He’s not married to her yet, at all
events, no more than am I to Will Hogan. But
tell me, Catty, have you seen Miss Courtney yet?
I hear she’s very beautiful.’

‘Yis, I have; an’ a sweeter, lovelier-lookin’
craythur never lighted on this earth—so gentle an’
kind to all in her manner too, an’ ready to help
them that’s in trouble. The folks are all jist
delighted to think Crofton Hall will have sich a
misthress.’

‘Maybe she’d never be that, after all.’

‘Well, maybe not. But tell me honey, is there
anythin’ rale at all betune you an’ Mr Crofton, or
is it jist a little divarsion you’re havin’, to thry
Will Hogan’s temper?’

Eliza broke into a ringing laugh. ‘Settle it
whichever way you please,’ she answered. ‘Call
a jury of twelve of your gossips, and do you state
the case to them.’

The old woman shook her head, and her strangely
undimmed eyes shot forth a flash of anger. She
was ill accustomed to be spoken to thus pertly;
for old Catty was looked upon with reverence and
some awe, and considered as a kind of oracle in the
neighbourhood, both on account of her extreme
age and the wisdom of her sayings, which it was
declared never failed to come true.

‘Woe be to them that part plighted lovers!
Woe be to them that break their own plight, woe
an’ bitter wailin’!’ she exclaimed; then drawing
her cloak round her, she moved on without a word
of parting.

The smile instantly faded from Eliza’s lips.
‘That old creature sends a chill through me,’
she muttered in a tone of annoyance. ‘Would it
be for my woe? Oh, if I could read the future!’
Suddenly throwing down her boughs, she opened
the gate and ran up the road after the old woman.
‘Forgive me,’ she said, coming up with her. ‘I
didn’t mean to be rude. Now tell me, Catty—they
say you know everything—what will be my fate?
Shall I be happier next Hallow-eve than I am
now? Or—or—shall I do anything to bring misfortune
on me?’

‘Sure, how can I tell?’ returned the other.

‘You are angry with me still. Come now, do
tell me. You know you can, if you like. You’ve
told others, and weren’t you always right?’

‘If you want to know your fate, try the charm
o’ the Twelfth Rig.’

‘And what is that? Tell me what I must do.’

They were standing beneath a wall. The old
woman seated herself on a stone, and leant her
arms on her knees. As she sat thus, her red cloak
drawn closely about her, her spare gray locks
hanging loose, her eyes glancing restlessly about
with a strange kind of motion, as if they were
set in work by mechanism, she looked like some
weird sibyl of ancient days. Eliza had to repeat
her question before an answer came. Then, in a
mysterious undertone, but so distinct that not a
word was lost, the other said: ‘You must go to
a field wid furrows stretchin’ from north to south.
Go in at the western side, an’ walk slowly over
the ridges till you come to the twelfth, then stop
in the middle, an’ listen. If you hear merry
music an’ dancin’, there’s a long an’ happy life
afore you; but if mournful cries an’ groans, you’ll
die afore a year’s over.’

‘How frightful!’ murmured Eliza, shuddering.
‘And should one go alone?’

‘Yis, entirely alone, an’ unknownst to any livin’
sowl.’ As she uttered these words, she rose and
walked on with a rapidity astonishing in one so
old and feeble.

Eliza gazed after her. She wanted to ask more
questions, but fearing to do so, she too turned and
walked away in the opposite direction.

The wall they had stood beside inclosed a
spacious park. But behind that wall there had
been a listener to their words, of whose presence
they were not aware.

In the centre of the smoothly gravelled side-path
a young lady stood still. She seemed to have been
taking an evening saunter when the voices outside
arrested her attention. As she now walked slowly
on, she appeared to be sunk in deep reflection,
evidently of no cheerful nature. The deep dark-blue
eyes, whenever the snowy lids with their
fringe of long black lashes allowed them to become
visible, were full of mournful expression. It was
a beautiful face, a perfect oval in contour, with
features more strictly regular than those of the
rustic beauty Eliza Daly; but wanting in the
brilliancy and richness of colouring which made
the great charm of that sparkling little brunette.
The full white forehead was very thoughtful. One
could see that melancholy would be at any time
the characteristic of her countenance, as it indeed
frequently is of thoughtful faces. But there was
so much sweetness and gentleness in it, and the
charm of its pensiveness was such, that you would
not have wished to change it for a gayer look.

‘How will it all end?’ murmured the lady.
‘How will things be with me in a year? If I
believed in presentiments I would say that this
weight that presses on me boded evil. Which of
the two fates is to be mine? To die, or to live
and be his wife. One or the other, I think; but
which?’

Suddenly she again stopped, and listened with
her head bent down. No sound seemed to break
the silence of the evening; but after a few minutes,
footsteps on the road without became distinctly{291}
heard, a light elastic tread, with a firmness in its
fall that told it was that of a man. She listened
with suspended breath, standing perfectly motionless,
the colour suffusing her pale cheek, her hands
clasped tightly, as if in intensest agitation and
suspense. The steps came nearer and nearer, went
by the park wall, reached the gate, and as they
receded, the colour faded slowly from the expectant
face, the hands unlocked themselves, and drooped
by her side, while her breath returned with a low
gasping sigh.

The next moment a thought seemed to strike
her; she sprang towards the wall, and stepping on
the trunk of a fallen tree, looked over it down the
road. The figure of a young man was visible at a
little distance, and while he walked, as if in careless
mood, he passed his cane lightly through the
wayside grass and flowers, striking off their heads
as he went by. She watched him till he disappeared
from view, taking the turn which led to
Daly’s farm.

‘I knew it, I knew it!’ she murmured; and in
that passion of sorrow which seems as if it must
take hold of and cling to something, she wound
her arms tightly about the young elm that stood
by her side, striving to choke back the sobs
that rose in her throat. The evening breeze went
moaning through its topmost boughs, mingling its
sighs with hers. A shower of yellow leaves,
shaken by her convulsive grasp, fell around her to
the ground, like the faded hopes for which she
lamented.

CHAPTER II.—THE CHARM TRIED.

The house of Patrick Daly was ever a favourite
resort on festive occasions; he was himself much
liked for his hospitality and genial manner; and
wherever Eliza was, there the male portion of the
population of the place were eager to go; although
many amongst them had given up their claims to
her hand in favour of the young farmer Hogan,
they now stood by to see whether he who had
defeated them would himself be defeated by any
still more powerful rival.

There was a merry gathering at the farm on
the eve of All-Hallows. Many bright pretty
faces were present that might well have consoled
the disappointed ones; but beside the radiant
young hostess who, in more than usual beauty,
dispensing smiles and hospitality at the head of
the table, they all paled into insignificance. At
least so thought Hogan, as he sat by her and
watched her graceful movements, and listened
with rapture to her sweet ringing laughter; the
merriest and most silvery of all, it seemed to
him.

On his other side a fair gentle-looking girl was
seated, who divided with Eliza the duties of hostess-ship.
But though her soft blue eyes rested often
on his face, and she evidently listened to him with
more attention than the other, he seldom turned
to address her. This was Eliza’s cousin, Mary
Conlan, who lived at the farm. Daly had risen
to his present comfort by his own efforts, but
had relations who were in a very different position;
and Mary’s parents when living, had occupied a
very poor cottage. On their death Daly brought
her to reside with him. Though her attractions of
person, and still more so those of fortune, could
bear no comparison with Eliza’s, she was still not
without her admirers; but notwithstanding her
gentleness, it seemed that she could be saucy too,
for none had as yet succeeded in winning her.
Daly, however, was not anxious for her marriage,
for she was invaluable in his household. Though
Eliza had decorated the room and filled the vases
with autumn flowers, Mary it was who had made
the cakes which the company seemed to appreciate
so highly, and whose skill as a housewife had in a
great measure won for the farm its reputation of
always having everything of the best description.
That Mary Conlan would make a model farmer’s
wife, everybody declared. Eliza was unusually
gracious this evening, smiling upon Hogan almost
as of old, and playing off a hundred arch little
tricks at his expense. Daly looked on well pleased,
for there was nothing he desired so much as a
marriage between his daughter and the young
farmer. Whispers went round that ‘to be sure it
was no one but Will Hogan Eliza would marry
after all, and it was only nonsense to think she’d
ever had any other idea in her head.’

Thus pleasantly, amidst talk and laughter, the
tea and cakes were passing round, when suddenly
the door was thrown open, and a young man,
whose dress and bearing unmistakably stamped
him as belonging to a very different class from any
of those assembled, appeared on the threshold.
He started as if surprised, on seeing the company;
but a close observer might have noticed something
a little studied in the movement, as if the intruder
were not altogether so taken aback as he would
have it appear. He advanced easily, however, and
going up to the young hostess, apologised gracefully
for his intrusion, requesting at the same time
that as chance had led him there, he might not now
be excluded from so pleasant a gathering. Eliza,
blushingly, but with warmth, gave the desired
permission that he should remain; whereupon he
drew a chair to her side, heedless of one, farther
removed, offered him by Daly, who did not seem
by any means so flattered as might be expected
by the condescension of his landlord’s son in thus
honouring his house.

There was a constrained pause. Charles Crofton,
however, leant back in his chair, conversing with
Eliza, and throwing out two or three general
remarks of a nature to provoke laughter, soon
contrived to restore things to their former state.
But for Hogan all enjoyment was gone. He sat
moody and silent, a frown knitting his usually
open brow.

The two competitors for Eliza Daly’s favour
were as great contrasts in appearance as in rank.
Hogan was the taller of the two, being above six
feet, and of more powerful and vigorous, though
less graceful build. Could he have settled his
claim to Eliza by personal combat, it is likely that
the other would have fared but ill at his hands.
Both were handsome—Crofton particularly so; and
it is probable that the cultivated expression of his
features and the play of his handsome eyes, which
he knew well how to make the best use of, would
have a greater charm for Eliza than the frank sun-burnt
countenance and straightforward untutored
orbs of her rustic lover.

{292}

‘All-Hallows eve, is it not?’ inquired the new-comer,
bending close to Miss Daly. ‘Has any one
got a ring? Have you?’

‘No, indeed; no one has yet, I believe.’

‘Then I’m in luck, for here is one in my cake;
and there, Miss Daly, why you have the other
half.’

‘Well now,’ whispered some of those near, ‘if
that isn’t an omen, to get a ring the same minute!’

”Tisn’t the right half,’ exclaimed Hogan, somewhat
roughly. ‘I have that.—Don’t you know,
Eliza,’ he whispered, ‘I got one before.’

‘This fits exactly,’ said Crofton, trying his own
and Eliza’s together. And so they did; but it
seemed that seeing was not believing, in Hogan’s
case.

‘No,’ he persisted; ‘they aren’t fits at all. Let
me try.’ He stretched out his hand, and almost
snatched the little shining crescent from the white
fingers of Crofton, who relinquished it quietly,
and with a provoking smile watched the other’s
vain efforts to make it fit.

‘You see now it won’t do,’ he said banteringly.
‘What haven’t been made for each other won’t go
together, no matter how you may try. But cheer
up; you’ll find the match yet.’

The young farmer, however, returned his smile
with a very black frown, and stood up. As he did
so he perceived Crofton whisper to Eliza, who
laughed merrily and glanced at him. He could
willingly have struck the young gentleman at that
moment. He determined, however, not to let him
have altogether his own way if possible; and when
the tea was removed and dancing begun, he went
up to Eliza and requested her hand. But Eliza
was engaged, and told him so.

‘Dance the next with me then, won’t you?’ he
pleaded earnestly.

‘No; I won’t: I don’t want such a sulky
partner,’ answered she with a saucy laugh.

‘I am not sulky, Eliza; indeed I am not. I’m
only sorry and vexed that you should turn from me
so, and for a stranger. It is not fair treatment.’

‘Not fair treatment indeed!’ returned the girl,
with a queenly toss of her graceful little head and
a curl of her rosy lip. ‘Ah, now say no more,
Will Hogan.’ And away she went round and
round with Crofton, while the fiddles struck up a
merry tune.

Hogan stood still between two minds whether
he would go away at once; but he was reluctant
to let his rival see him abandon the field. When,
however, the dance was finished, and the burning
of nuts and other Hallow-eve rites began, he
still found no opportunity of approaching Eliza;
and all the omens which in other years had been
favourable to his cause were against him. At last,
when Eliza’s nut being placed beside his, instantly
bounded away and fell into the fire, there was
silence for a moment, and glances were exchanged.

Dancing having recommenced, several came
round Eliza requesting her hand; but she answered
hurriedly that she could not take part in this
dance, but would in the next. She had things to
look after just now, and must leave them for a
little while. Saying which, she quietly quitted
the room.

A few minutes after, a slight figure wrapped in
a cloak might have been seen gliding through the
farm-stead. On emerging by the back-gate on the
road, it stood still for a moment and looked
behind. The pale moonbeams gleamed on the
face; but so blanched were the features, so altered
the expression, that even had any of her friends
been near they might almost have failed to
recognise Eliza. With a shiver, as if the chill
wind pierced her after the heated room she had
left, she drew the hood of her cloak closer over
her face and began to speed rapidly along. Nor
did she pause or again look around till, some
distance from home, she at last stopped, breathless,
at the gate of a potato-field. For a minute
or two she stood before it, as if irresolute.

‘Shall I go back without trying it after all?’
she murmured. ‘No; I will go on, and see what
comes of it.’

She entered the field and began to walk slowly
across the ridges, counting them as she went till
she had numbered TWELVE; then she stood still and
listened intently. The wind, which was high,
swept over the wide unsheltered space around.
Was that its murmur she heard? She held her
breath. Low moans and sobbing sighs seemed to
mingle with it. Surely no wind ever wailed with
such human anguish as that. Louder and clearer
it rose, swelling on the breeze, full of more piercing
passionate sorrow. She remained rooted to
the spot, terror-stricken, her heart almost ceasing
to beat. The sounds seemed to come along the
ground. As she listened, a slender figure rose up
slowly, as if from off the earth, confronting her in
the uncertain light, and gazing upon her with a
cold sorrowful eye. Shrieking, Eliza rushed back,
stumbling and sometimes falling over the ridges
as she ran. How she gained the road, she scarcely
knew, but she found herself flying along it, with
the cry of ‘Doomed, doomed!’ ringing in her
ears. She had heard it, low and despairing, as
she left the field, as if wrung from some soul
in mortal terror and anguish; now it seemed repeated
by a hundred voices exclaiming: ‘Doomed,
doomed!’ She flew before it, pressing her hands
to her ears, to shut out the sound.

The farm-house was reached in a shorter time
than one could have imagined possible. She
wrenched open the gate, rushed up the garden-path,
and with trembling hands knocked loudly
at the door. The summons rang through the
house, above the music and dancing, and the
buzz of laughing voices. Everybody flew into the
hall. On the door being opened, Eliza rushed in,
and would have sunk fainting on the threshold if
Hogan had not caught her in his arms. She was
carried into the room and laid on the sofa, while
every remedy for fainting was procured. Where
had she been? was the question each asked
the other. Her hair, damp and dishevelled, hung
about her, her dress was torn and soiled, her
hands covered with clay, and bleeding. At length
the remedies had effect; consciousness began to
return, and when it did, it came quickly. She
opened her eyes and gazed earnestly round, as if
seeking for some face. If it was Crofton she
sought, he was not there, having left some time
before.

‘What has happened, dearest Eliza?’ whispered
Hogan, close by her side. ‘Where have you been?’

‘I went out, and was frightened,’ she murmured.

‘And what frightened you, mavourneen?’ asked
he coaxingly, as if speaking to a wayward child.

But she made no reply, nor could any questioning
draw from her an explanation. The party{293}
broke up, and each went home indulging in all
manner of conjectures as to what had happened.
It was whispered by some that Eliza had gone to
the Twelfth Rig.

VITAL FORCE.

Though we have not the slightest conception of
what life is in itself, and consequently could not
define it, we may, for the sake of convenience,
think of it in this paper as some kind of force.

‘In the wonderful story,’ says Professor Huxley
in his Lay Sermons, ‘of the Peau de Chagrin,
the hero becomes possessed of a magical wild
ass’s skin, which yields him the means of gratifying
all his wishes. But its surface represents
the duration of the proprietor’s life; and for
every satisfied desire, the skin shrinks in proportion
to the intensity of fruition, until at length
life and the last handbreadth of the peau de
chagrin disappear with the gratification of a last
wish. Protoplasm or the physical basis of life
is a veritable peau de chagrin, and for every
vital act it is somewhat the smaller. All work
implies waste, and the work of life results, directly
or indirectly, in the waste of protoplasm. Every
word uttered by a speaker costs him some physical
loss; and in the strictest sense, he burns that
others may have light—so much eloquence, so
much of his body resolved into carbonic acid,
water, and urea. It is clear that this process of
expenditure cannot go on for ever. But happily,
the protoplasmic peau de chagrin differs in its
capacity of being repaired and brought back to
its full size, after every exertion. For example,
this present lecture is conceivably expressible by
the number of grains of protoplasm and other
bodily substance wasted in maintaining my vital
processes during its delivery. My peau de chagrin
will be distinctly smaller at the end of the discourse
than it was at the beginning. By-and-by
I shall have recourse to the substance commonly
called mutton, for the purpose of stretching it
back to its original size.’

This explanation may be very philosophical,
but it is only a roundabout way of saying that,
within reasonable bounds, we can recover the
effects of exhaustion by proper food and rest;
which, as a fact, people are pretty well acquainted
with. The error to be avoided is, in any shape
to make such a pull on the constitution as to be
beyond the reach of recovery. Life-force, or call
it protoplasm, is an inherent quantity not to be
heedlessly wasted; and this truth becomes more
apparent the older we grow. Why is one man
greater, in the sense of being more powerful than
another? Because he knows how to get out of
himself a greater amount of work with less waste
of life-force.

We see from experience that the more men
have to do the more they can do. And this
paradox is only reasonable, for it is the necessity
of great work that forces upon us systematic
habits, and teaches us to economise the power
that is in us. With the cares of an empire on
their shoulders, prime-ministers can make time to
write novels, Homeric studies, anti-papal pamphlets.
It is the busy-idle man who never loses
an opportunity of assuring you that ‘he has not a
moment in the day to himself, and that really he
has no time to look round him.’ Of course idle
people have no time to spare, because they have
never learned how to save the odd minutes of the
day, and because their vital energy is expended in
fuss rather than in work.

‘He hath no leisure,’ says George Herbert, ‘who
useth it not;’ that is to say, he who does not save
time for his work when he can, is always in a
hurry. One of the most sublime conceptions of
the Deity we can form is that He is never idle, and
never in a hurry.

The following words from a newspaper description
of the sublime calmness of power manifested
by the huge hydraulic crane used to lift
Fraser’s celebrated eighty-one ton gun, we take
as our type of the powerful man who knows how
to economise his vital force instead of wasting it
by fussing: ‘Is there not something sublime
in a hydraulic crane which lifts a Titanic engine
of destruction weighing eighty-one tons to a considerable
height above the pier, with as noiseless a
calm and as much absence of apparent stress or
strain as if it had been a boy-soldier’s pop-gun?
When we further read of the hydraulic monster
holding up its terrible burden motionless in mid-air
until it is photographed, and then lowering it
gently and quietly on a sort of extemporised cradle
without the least appearance of difficulty, one can
readily understand that the mental impression
produced on the bystanders must have been so
solemn as to manifest itself in most eloquent
silence.’ With the same freedom from excitement
and difficulty does the strong man who
saves his force for worthy objects, raise up
morally and physically depressed nations, take
cities, or what is harder to do still, rule his own
spirit. It is the fashion nowadays to say that
people are killed or turned into lunatics by overwork,
and no doubt there is much truth in the
complaint. Nevertheless it would seem that vital
force is wasted almost as much by the idle man
as by him who overworks himself at high-pressure
for the purpose of ‘getting on.’ It is indolence
which exhausts, by allowing the entrance of
fretful thoughts into the mind; not action, in which
there is health and pleasure. We never knew a
man without a profession who did not seem always
to be busy. It may be he was occupied in worrying
about the dinner or the place where he should
spend his holiday—which he did not work for—in
correcting his wife, in inventing pleasures, and
abusing them when found, in turning the house
upside down by doing little jobs foolishly supposed
to be useful. And women too, when stretched on
the rack of a too-easy chair, are they not forced to
confess that there is as much vital force required
to enable them to endure the ‘pains and penalties
of idleness,’ as would, if rightly directed, render
them useful, and therefore happy? The fact is
there are far more who die of selfishness and idleness
than of overwork, for where men break down
by overwork it is generally from not taking care to
order their lives and obey the physical laws of
health.

Let us consider a few of the many ways in
which we waste the stuff that life is made of. It
has been well said that ‘the habit of looking on
the bright side of things is worth far more than a
thousand pounds a year;’ and certainly it is a habit
that must add many years to the lives of those
who acquire it. Really every fit of despondency
and every rage take so much out of us, that any{294}
one who indulges in either without a great struggle
to prevent himself doing so should be characterised
as little less than—to use an American expression—’a
fearful fool.’ How silly it seems even to
ourselves after cooling, to have acquired a nervous
headache, and to have become generally done up,
stamping round the room and shewing other signs
of foolish anger, because the dinner was five
minutes late, or because some one’s respect for
us did not quite rise to the high standard
measured by our egotism! As if it were not
far more important that we should save our vital
energy, and not get into a rage, than that the
dinner should be served exactly to the moment.

One day a friend of Lord Palmerston asked
him when he considered a man to be in the
prime of life; his immediate reply was ‘Seventy-nine.
But,’ he added with a playful smile, ‘as I
have just entered my eightieth year, perhaps I am
myself a little past it!’ How is it that such men
work on vigorously to the end? Because they
treasure their ever-diminishing vital force. They
studiedly refrain from making a pull on the constitution.
Reaching the borders of seventy years of
age, they as good as say to themselves: ‘We must
now take care what we are about.’ Of course, they
make sacrifices, avoid a number of treacherous
gaieties, and living simply, they perhaps give some
cause of offence, for the world does not approve of
singularity. But let those laugh who win. They
hold the censorious observations of critics in derision,
and maintain the even tenor of their way.
In other words, they conserve their vital force, and
try to keep above ground as long as possible.
Blustering natures forgetful of the great truth,
that ‘power itself hath not one-half the might of
gentleness,’ miss the ends for which they strive
just because the force that is in them is not
properly economised.

Then as regards temper: any man who allows
that to master him wastes as much energy as would
enable him to remove the cause of anger or overcome
an opponent. The little boy of eight years old
who in the country is often seen driving a team
of four immense dray-horses, is one of the innumerable
instances of the power of reason over mere
brute-force, which should induce violent tempers to
become calm from policy, if from no higher motive.

Many people squander their life’s energy by not
living enough in the present. They enjoy themselves
badly and work badly, because they are
either regretting mistakes committed in the past,
or anticipating future sorrows. Now, certainly no
waste of force is so foolish as this, because if our
mistakes are curable, the same energy would counteract
their bad effects as we expend in regretting;
and if they are incurable, why think any more
about them? None but a child cries over spilt
milk. The mischief is done, and let it be forgotten,
only taking care for the future. Sometimes people
keep fretting about troubles that may never take
place, and spend life’s energy on absolutely nothing.
Real worry from Torturations of various sorts
is quite enough, and causes a greater draught on
our vital force than hard work. Let us not, therefore,
aggravate matters by anticipations of troubles
that are little better than visionary.

In looking ahead, it is of immense importance
not to enter into any transaction in which there
are wild risks of cruel disaster. There we touch
on the grand worry of the age. A violent haste to
get rich! Who shall say how much the unnaturally
rapid heart-beats with which rash speculators
in shares in highly varnished but extremely doubtful
undertakings receive telegraphic messages of
bad or good fortune, must use up their life’s force?
Hearts beating themselves to death! Rushing to
trains, jumping up-stairs, eating too fast, going to
work before digestion has been completed—these
are habits acquired naturally in days when it is the
fashion to live at high-pressure; but such habits
are surely not unavoidable, and would be avoided
if we thoroughly valued our vital force.

There are persons of a nervous temperament
who seem to be always upon wires. Nature has
given them energy; but their physique is in many
cases inadequate to supply the demands made
upon it. The steam is there, but the boiler is too
weak. Duke d’Alva, according to Fuller, must
have been of this nature. ‘He was one of a lean
body and visage, as if his eager soul, biting for
anger at the clog of his body, desired to fret a
passage through it.’ The same thought was wittily
expressed by Sydney Smith when he exclaimed:
‘Why, look there, at Jeffrey; and there is my
little friend ——, who has not body enough to
cover his mind decently with; his intellect is
improperly exposed.’ Now these are just the sort
of people who should not kill themselves, for
though wrapped in small parcels, they are good
goods. They owe it as a duty to themselves and
others not to allow their fiery souls ‘to fret their
pygmy bodies to decay’—not to throw too much
zeal into trifles, in order that they may have a
supply of life-force for things important. He who
desires to wear well must take for his motto
‘Nothing in excess.’ Such a one, as we have had
occasion more than once to urge, avoids dinners
of many courses, goes to bed before twelve o’clock,
and does not devote his energy to the endurance of
overheated assemblies. When young men around
him have got athletics on the brain, he keeps his
head and health by exercising only moderately.
He is not ambitious of being in another’s place,
but tries quietly to adorn his own. ‘Give me
innocence; make others great!’ When others are
killing themselves to get money, and to get it
quickly, that with it they may make a show, he
prays the prayer of Agur: ‘Give me neither
poverty nor riches,’ for he thinks more of the
substance than of the shadow. This is the truly
wise and successful man, and to him shall be given,
by the Divine laws of nature, riches (that is, contentment)
and honour (that is, self-respect), and a
long life, because he did not waste the steam by
which the machine was worked. In homely proverb,
he ‘kept his breath to cool his porridge,’ and
most probably was a disciple of Izaak Walton.

At this point, perhaps the secret thoughts of
some who have not yet learned how ‘it is altogether
a serious matter to be alive,’ may take this
shape. ‘What after all,’ they may ask, ‘is the
good of economising life’s force? Often I hardly
know what to do with myself, nor have I much
purpose in life beyond eating, drinking, and sleeping.’
To such thoughts we should give somewhat
of the following answer: There is a work for every
single person in the world, and his happiness as
well as his duty lies in doing that work well.
This is a consideration which should communicate
a zest to our feelings about life. We should rejoice,
as experience teaches us that each of us has{295}
the means of being useful, and thus of being happy.
None is left out, however humble may be our
position and limited our faculties, for we all can
do our best; and though success may not be ours,
it is enough if we have deserved it. Certainly if
there be any purpose in the universe, a day will
come when we shall all have to answer such questions
as these: ‘You were given a certain amount
of life-force; what have you done with it? Where
are your works? Did you try to make the little
corner in which you were placed happier and
better than it was before you came into it?’ It is
said that Queen Elizabeth when dying exclaimed:
‘My kingdom for a moment;’ and one day we
shall all think nothing so valuable as the smallest
amount of that force without which we cannot
live.

THE LAST OF THE HADDONS.

CHAPTER XXIII.—NANCY DEAN.

The moon was but just rising, and the shadows
were getting deep when I drew near to a clump of
trees at the end of the long lane, as it was not
inaptly called. I was a little sobered by my walk,
and perhaps the least bit disappointed at having
come upon no living creature for whom I might
do some kindness in Philip’s name. I stood hesitating
a moment; not liking to go on, yet still
more averse to turning back with my purpose
unfulfilled, when suddenly the opportunity came.

I saw something or some one moving amongst
the trees; presently I became aware that it was a
woman, retreating more into the shade, as though
to avoid notice. Her movements appeared so
mysterious that I stood silent a moment, my
pulses throbbing a little quicker than usual; then
I advanced a few steps, and said: ‘Have you lost
your way? Can I be of any service?’

No answer.

‘Can I help you in any way?’

‘No.’

I approached a little nearer towards the spot
whence the voice issued; angry and discordant,
or it sounded so to me in contrast with the
solemn peaceful stillness around. ‘Do not shrink
from me; I am only a woman; and as you see,
alone,’ I said.

‘What do you want here—and what do you
want with me?’

She had come out from the shadow now; and
stood looking at me in the soft gray evening light,
defiantly, sullenly, but a little curiously too. I
returned her gaze, and saw enough to know that if
ever a human soul needed sympathy and help, this
one did now.

‘What do you want?’ she repeated.

‘I want you, and I think you want me. Thank
God for bringing us together!’

She stared at me for a moment, then sullenly
replied: ‘I’m not one for thanking Him; and I’m
not the one for such as do.’

‘You are the one for me,’ I said, answering her
in her own short decided manner; perceiving that
she would bear it better than anything approaching
to softness.

She uttered a little defiant laugh.

‘You’re a lady; and I suppose you want to play
at reforming me and all the rest of it. You all
like to shew off your goodness that way! But it’s
all been tried on me over and over again. Ladies as
was so good, it a most made their hair stand on
end to look at me, have tried, and it was all no
use; they always had to give in.’

‘I do not mean to give in.’

‘Don’t be too sure;’ adding with another hard
laugh: ‘Why, I was the very worst they had up
there; and if they as was so perfect couldn’t’——

‘Let a woman who is not perfect be your friend.’

‘Friend! What do you mean? How can you
be my friend—unless’—— She shrank back a
moment, then bent eagerly forward again, gazing
wildly into my face. ‘You must have done something
wrong yourself, to make you talk like that,’
she whispered hoarsely.

Of course I had done wrong many and many a
time, and not at the moment perceiving her whole
meaning, I quietly replied: ‘Yes.’

‘And that brought you here to-night!’ she
ejaculated, adding in a low voice a vow, which
seemed almost a curse, against herself if she
betrayed me. ‘Tell me what it is you’ve done;
and tell me how I can help you?’

‘I will tell you about myself presently; and we
shall be able to help each other; do not doubt it,’
I returned, drawing her towards a fallen tree, and
getting her to sit down by my side, holding her
hand fast locked in mine the while.

‘You can’t help me, as I can see,’ she musingly
replied. ‘I’ve been up there for three months and
more; but nothing come of it.’

‘Up there?’ I asked, beginning now to apprehend
her meaning. ‘Do you mean at the Home
for the reception of poor women who have yielded
to temptation?’

‘Yes; though I never heard it put that way
before. You need not tell me you are not one of
the good ones, any more. Well, I was one of the
thieves they take in to reform. I’d been to jail
six months; and one of the ladies on the watch for
girls when they come out, got hold of me, and
persuaded me to go up there for a time and be
made different.’

‘How’—I was going to say—’kind of her;’ but
I saw the time had not come for that. She did
not notice my interruption, and went on.

‘Well, then, I run away, and got caught again,
and persuaded to go back to the Home, as they call
it, once more. So I made one more try. But it
was no use. To-night I run away again; and I don’t
mind what becomes of me now. Who cares?’

‘I care.’ It was no use, I thought, attempting
to talk of the Eternal love until she could believe
in the human. Whether the fault was her own
or not, I could not at this juncture tell; but one
thing was plain, being ‘cared for’ was what this
woman craved more than anything besides. The
misery of that half-defiant ‘Who cares?’ appealed
direct to my heart.

‘How can you care for me when you have never
known me?’—suspiciously. ‘How can that be?’

‘I do not know how it can be; I only know that
it is; and I mean to make you believe it. You
are exactly the woman I was seeking to-night. I
want you.’

‘What for? Do you really want some one to
help you?’ she eagerly asked, turning her wild
eyes suddenly upon me again. Even the moon,
which was shedding its silvery light upon us,
could not soften the wild sadness of her eyes.

‘Are they after you? What is it you have done?’

{296}

I placed my fingers on her lips for a moment,
to prevent her once more repeating the oath that
she might be trusted.

‘Tell me,’ she whispered.

I reflected a moment, then replied: ‘Yes, I will
tell you why it was absolutely necessary to find
some one like you to-night, if you will first give
me a promise to be my friend afterwards, and let
me be yours?’

She promised. Then with a trembling voice
I told her that night had brought a letter to me
from my lover abroad, whom I had not seen for
nearly ten years, and that in it he told me that he
had at last earned enough to make us independent
for the future, and that he was on his way home
to marry me.

‘And your trouble is that you haven’t been true
to him? You have gone wrong, and want to hide
away, and’——

‘I have been true to him, and I have nothing
to hide. But—my happiness was so much more
than I deserved—it was greater than I could bear,
unless I could lighten some heavy heart to-night,
and I shall always believe that I was led here to
you.’

‘Are you mad?’—struggling to free herself.

But I held fast. ‘You promised—you promised!’

‘More fool me. How can I be your friend?
How can you be mine? What do you mean?
Let me go.’

‘No.’

‘You’ll have to. What tie could there be
between you and me?’

‘Our womanhood.’

‘You don’t know!’—with a bitter laugh. ‘And
you’re but a fine lady after all, talking about
things you don’t understand.’

‘I am certainly not a fine lady. I am better off
now; but I have lived upon bread-and-water as
well as you have.’

‘Without deserving it?’—eagerly.

‘I cannot say as much as that. I have not the
slightest doubt I did deserve it, in one way or
another. At anyrate it did me no harm whatever
to go into training a little. A great deal depends
upon one’s way of taking things, you know.’

‘I can’t make you out.’

‘Never mind about making me out. Try to
trust me; do try.’

‘I’ve a good mind to trust you—in real earnest.
There’s something about you that makes me feel—— I
should like you to know,’ she said musingly.
Then after a few moments, during which I left
her undisturbed, she added: ‘Yes, you shall know;
though there isn’t another soul I’d tell as much to.
I never took that ring at all!’

‘A ring you were supposed to have taken?’

‘Yes; they thought I stole it. I was in service,
Miss’——

‘My name is Haddon—Mary Haddon.’

‘And mine is Nancy Dean.’

‘Go on, Nancy.’

‘Well I was in service, me and another young
girl who was nursemaid; and one day the mistress
missed a ring. I know now that Emma had
the ring, and when there was a fuss about it, she
slipped it into my box. She came to worse afterwards,
and told me the truth about it when I saw
her after I left prison. She hadn’t stolen the
ring either. It was given her by mistress’s son.
But when one of the children said she saw her
with it, and she was suspected of stealing it, she
slipped it into my box, rather than get Master
James in trouble, never believing that my box
would be searched too; and meaning to tell me
about it afterwards. But Master James he had a
grudge against me, because I hadn’t been so ready
to listen to his love-talk, and I think he meant the
ring to be found in my box. I know he told
Emma to put it there, and made her think he
wouldn’t have anything more to do with her if
she confessed the truth. Besides he threatened to
deny that he had given it to her, and then she
would have to go to prison instead of me. Well
I didn’t say much to her then; she was a poor
miserable creature already, and didn’t want hard
words from me to beat her down any lower.’

‘It was very hard for you, poor Nancy; but’—laying
my hand gently on hers again—’it might
have been harder. I mean if you had really done
what you were believed to have done.’

‘It was harder for another reason,’ she replied
grimly. ‘Wait till I’ve told you all. My mother
lived away down in Leicestershire, a respectable
shepherd’s wife, who prided herself upon bringing
her girls up honest and good. The first
letter I got in prison came from my married
sister, to tell me that my wickedness had broke
mother’s heart, and saying that it was no use
my ever going back there again, for not one of
them would own me; and father he would never
forgive me for being the death of mother. My
sister had married a well-to-do farmer, and was
ashamed of me before she thought I had done
wrong, for being in service; so she did not spare
me afterwards. A disgrace to the family, she
called me, and said they one and all hoped never
to see nor hear from me again. I came out of
prison a desperate woman! As I just told you,
when I came out of prison I was met by one of
the ladies on the watch for such as me, and I was
brought down to the place up there.’

‘You could not at anyrate doubt her motive,’
I said cheerfully.

A half-smile played about her lips as she went
on without noticing my interruption: ‘Then
they begun at me. I was dressed up in them
things. You’ve seen us parading off to church,
I warrant—people never forget to stare—so
you know what it is out of doors, walking
along two and two with the matron in front
dressed up fine to shew the difference! But indoors
it’s worse—worse a deal than ever prison
was. Mrs Gower (that’s the matron) has it all to
herself, and—— There; I don’t think it has ever
done any good to them as are as wicked as they
are thought to be, and it just drove me wild. Out
of fifteen of us, there wasn’t many who could say
they were better for being there. The sharp ones
pretend to be reformed straight off; it is the only
thing to do if you want to come off easy and get
sent off to a situation with a character. I gave
them a great deal of trouble. I knew I wasn’t
quite so bad as they thought me; but I didn’t
care about setting up for good in the way some
of them did neither. So I soon got to be thought
the worst character they had in the place; and
then they shewed me off as the bad one to the
visitors—a sort of curiosity. Mrs Gower liked
to have a wicked one to shew among the good
ones, I think. So I began to feel a bit proud
of it, and did little pranks on purpose to{297}
amuse them. There wasn’t so very much harm
in them neither, only they were against the rules.
But to-day I was fetched in to be shewn to the
committee. I didn’t mind them; making up a
face all ready for them; and they put up their
glasses to look at me, and I think they was
satisfied that no place could have a wickeder one
nor me to shew. I was laughing to myself, when
all in a moment I saw a face among them that I
knew. It was my old mistress’s son, who had
tried so hard to make me go wrong, and then took
his revenge by making me out to be a thief. The
thought came into my head to tell them that he
had been the cause of all my trouble. But I’d
hardly begun when I was ordered to stand down
as a liar as well as a thief. Of course they wasn’t
going to believe that a respectable gentleman like
him could do anything so wicked. Besides, there
was his face to look at; there wasn’t a gentler
and kinder-looking gentleman there than he was.
And he called me “Poor thing,” and said he hoped
they wouldn’t have me punished, for he did not
mind—everybody knew him! Well, I managed to
give them a bit of my mind before I was got out
of the room. I could ha’ borne the punishment
and all that easy enough, if there had been anything
to come of it. But I knew it was no use;
I should only get more and more hardened, as they
called it; so I got out of the window of the room
I was locked up in and cut. That’s my story, and
the whole truth.’

‘Poor Nancy! The story is a very sad one; all
the sadder because you do not see where you, as
well as others, have been to blame.’

‘Do you think I stole the ring, then?’

‘No; not for a moment. I believe you.’ I
hurriedly thought over what was the next best
thing to say, so as to do justice to those who,
however mistaken in their way of treating her
especial case, had meant to benefit her, and at the
same time be true to her. I saw what they had
apparently failed to see—she could be touched.

‘Then how have I been to blame, Miss?’

‘It is a private undertaking, is it not, Nancy;
almost entirely supported by one lady, although
managed by a committee?’

‘Yes, Miss; and the committee is managed by
Mrs Gower. They all do what she tells ’em;
though if they knew’——

‘And costs a great deal of money; does it not?
I think that I have heard this lady subscribes
between fifteen and eighteen hundred a year to it.’

‘Yes, Miss; I suppose she do. They say Mrs
Gower the matron has two hundred a year besides
lots of perquisites,’ replied Nancy, a little
surprised at what appeared to her the irrelevancy
of the question.

‘And this lady spends all that in the hope of
benefiting her fellow-women! How much she
must feel for them—nay, how much she must love
them, Nancy! Think of feeling so much love for
women who have done wrong as to spend all that
upon the bare chance of benefiting them! In
spite of their want of gratitude too!’

There was a new startled look in Nancy’s eyes,
as she murmured in a low voice: ‘I never thought
of that—I never thought about her caring.’

‘But she must, you know; and it must be a
great grief and disappointment to her to feel that
all she does is in vain. It is, you say?’

‘I am afeard it is—a most’—hesitatingly began
Nancy. ‘We’ve all on us been thinking about
Mrs Gower, and she’s’——

‘A moment, Nancy! It is quite evident that
Mrs Gower has not the same feeling towards you
all which her employer has, or you would have
experienced some good effects from it. But it is
equally evident that those whom the benevolent
lady is seeking to help have no gratitude towards
her—not even gratitude enough to acknowledge
her good-will towards them.’

‘I—never thought of her,’ repeated Nancy,
more to herself than to me. ‘I only saw her
once; a pale thin lady, who looked so sorry—yes,
she did look sorry, even for me, though she
thought I was the worst there! If I’d only
thought she cared!’—turning her eyes regretfully
in the direction of the house again. Then drawing
a heavy breath: ‘But there; she thought it
was all my wickedness! I let her think so; and—it’s
done now, and can’t be undone. There’s no
hope for me now—I told you so—everything’s
against me.’

‘Nonsense! No hope indeed! There’s every
hope for one with your keen sense of right and
wrong, if you will only act up to it. Do you think
I will ever give you up?’

‘What can you do for such as me, Miss?’—I
was glad to see a little anxiously.

‘Lots of things. Let me think a moment.’
Presently I went on: ‘There are two ways to
begin with, Nancy. One will require more moral
strength and courage than the other; but you
shall choose which you think best; and whichever
course you take, I promise to hold fast to you.’

‘What is it to do, Miss?’—eagerly.

‘One plan I propose is, for you to come at once
with me to the place where I am staying, and
remain there until I am married, which I shall be
shortly, when you should live with me as housemaid;
none but us two knowing anything about
the past, and’——

‘I choose that!’ she hastily began, her eyes
brightening and her colour rising.

‘Listen a moment, before you quite decide,
Nancy. The other course is more difficult, I
know; but I want you to decide fairly between
the two. It is to go back to the Home, take your
punishment, whatever it may be, and stay there,
with me for your friend, until I am ready for you
to come to live with me. I am quite aware it
would require a great deal of courage and self-control
to do that; but I think you could do it.’

‘Which would you like me to do best, Miss?’—anxiously.

‘If you succeeded in doing the more difficult
thing of the two, I should of course have greater
respect for you, Nancy; but I should not be less
your friend for your being weak. I am not sufficiently
perfect myself, to insist upon perfection in
my friends.’

‘That’s it, Miss; that’s just where it is! If
Mrs Gower our matron only had some faults—ever
such little ones—of her own, she might get
nearer to us. It’s the terrible goodness which
makes it so impossible for her to understand us,
and us to understand her. She seems to be always
a-thinking about the great difference there is
between her and us. It only makes us more spiteful
against the goodness, when we see how hard it
makes people. Why, the bad ones are ever so much
more sorry for one another, and ready to help!’

{298}

‘And you judge all others—the lady who has
done so much to prove her love and unselfishness,
as well as every one else—by this matron. She is
probably not suited to the office; but I do not
see’—— I paused, recognising that it was not
just then the best moment for advancing any
argument in vindication of what she termed ‘goodness.’
All that would be suggested by a better
experience, by-and-by. So I merely added:
‘Whether she feels it so or not, it is very sad for
Mrs Gower to have so utterly failed in reaching
your hearts, as she appears to have done. But we
must not forget that it is our own defects, and not
hers, which are in question just now, you know,
Nancy.’

‘I know what you mean, Miss; and I’m sorry
as I did not’——

‘Never mind about the past. There is plenty
of time before us, I hope. Which is it to be,
Nancy? Will you come with me now, or go back
to the Home?’

‘I will go back, Miss; and if you hear’——

‘If I hear! Of course I shall go to see you
to-morrow. You ought to know that.’

She rose, looked steadily towards the Home,
now darkly and sharply defined against the moonlit
sky, then turned her eyes upon my face,
grasped my hand with a strong firm grip for a
moment, and walked swiftly and silently away.

THE MORALE OF CRICKET.

Cricket is a pastime so extensively and deservedly
popular as to rank among the foremost of
English institutions. It is physically an excellent
test of wind, strength, and endurance, and is
intellectually attractive from the opportunities it
affords for the exercise of scientific skill. In a
social respect the advantages it confers are great,
because men of different grades are brought
together without prejudice to the distinctions
custom has created, and many genial consequences
remain from such meetings. In a moral
point of view cricket may be said to inculcate the
cardinal virtues. And it is mainly in relation to
this last aspect and the results, psychologically
speaking, that we here propose to consider the
game.

In the remarks we shall offer we will generally
assume some knowledge of cricket on the part of
readers; but still, for the benefit of the uninitiated,
will here record a few brief particulars.
Apart from preparing and keeping the ground
in order, the material essentials of the game, as
everybody knows, are simple and inexpensive,
consisting of merely bats, stumps, and ball. It
is usually played by two sides, each composed
of eleven men, and subject to certain recognised
rules. These sides alternately assume the
position of the attacking and the attacked. The
object of the former is to effect the fall of the
wickets, which the other side defends, and to frustrate
the endeavours of the latter to make or score
‘runs.’ It is on the superiority established in this
respect that the issue of a game depends. This is
a scanty and necessarily imperfect description; but
taken with what we shall say incidentally as we
proceed, it will be enough for the illustration of
the points we have in view. Let us now observe
that a member of each of the eleven is elected as
captain; and by the two captains all the preliminaries
of a game are arranged. Each then assumes
entire control over the members of his own side.
It is the captain who appoints the bowlers, assigns
to the other men their different positions in the
field, and settles the order in which his side are to
take their innings. Throughout the game it is
necessary that he should remain as watchful as a
general directing the movements of a battle-field,
and that he should be prepared with prompt
measures to meet the varying exigences of the
encounter in which he takes so prominent a part.
In a word his duties are manifold and arduous.
He must, according to circumstances, study and
maintain the morale of his men under depressing
prospects, or moderate their too sanguine anticipations
in the face of approaching triumph,
lest they beget carelessness, and so end in mortification
and defeat.

A captain must at the same time infuse a spirit
of contentment into his men, and also inspire them
with thorough confidence in himself. It is probable
there may be three or four men of tolerably equal
pretensions as bowlers, or two or three equally
ambitious to fill some other post in the field. The
captain will have to select between these rival
candidates, without condemning those he disappoints
to the pangs of secret vexation and annoyance.
Thus, in framing his dispositions for a
game, he will have to consider each individual’s
special capacity for filling a particular post, not
merely as it actually exists, but also in some degree
as it exists in the estimation of the individual
himself. He may otherwise leave room for petty
heartburnings, and for the feeling that an injustice,
or at least a slight, has been suffered. Should
this unhappily prove the case, it will, even unconsciously
to himself, mar a man’s usefulness in the
field, by inperceptibly or otherwise curtailing his
activity of either mind or body, or both. As to
the former, it is almost needless to observe that
attention is the great watchword of cricket.

Now, to enable the captain to acquit himself
satisfactorily on the foregoing heads, and to secure
the results we have indicated, with a perfect
knowledge of cricket, he should combine both a
knowledge of character and the exercise of considerable
tact and Prudence. The latter being the
point with which we are immediately concerned,
let us see how it is exemplified in the rôle the
players are all successively required to perform—that
of batsman. At each wicket stands a batsman,
and both are obliged to keep within spaces extending
four feet from the stumps, the spaces being
marked by lines transverse to that in which the
wickets are pitched. The ‘runs’ before alluded
to, which it is the great object of the game to
make, are obtained by the occupiers of the wickets
running the distance between them as often as
possible in the interval taken in returning the ball
to the hands of either the bowler or wicket-keeper,
after it has once left the bowler’s hand, during
which time it is said to be in play. But they cannot
do so, nor indeed go out of their ‘ground’ at all,
demarcated as described, while the ball is in play,
except at the risk of the wickets being put down.
This may be done by a batsman’s being either ‘run’
out, or ‘stumped’ out. He necessarily exposes
himself to a risk of the former contingency when
making runs in the manner explained. Consequently,
under such circumstances, a man has not{299}
only to be very watchful and quick in his movements,
but has also to make the best use of the
judgment at his command. The penalty of error
in this respect is fatal, unless some fortunate accident
should intervene.

Now in regard to the second of the risks referred
to, the occasion is one for the exercise of both
judgment and considerable prudence. In order
that this point may be properly understood, it
should be remembered that the balls bowled to
the batsman are either ‘lengths’ or the reverse—that
is, they are such that he can best play them
either by waiting in his ground or by stepping out
a little to meet them. When he should so step
out and when he should forbear—for there is at
all times a great temptation in the matter—is
the pivot on which his prudential considerations
in this connection revolve. Should he, after
advancing, fail to hit or stop the ball, the wicket-keeper,
who stands in readiness behind the wicket,
will have most probably picked it up, and put
down the wicket before the batsman can return
to his ground. But with prudence in the ascendant,
and a nice calculation of chances, the risk
to which the batsman exposes himself becomes
reduced to a minimum, or is altogether avoided.
And with the same principle governing his play
throughout, he delays or postpones the calamity
which finally compels his retirement from the
wickets until he has at least placed a fair amount
of runs to his credit; or as happens in exceptional
cases, he entirely averts the calamity, and
achieves the honour of ‘carrying’ out his bat.
But self-evidently, there is no honour attending
this performance if a score beyond the average has
not been made.

Now let us see in what respect it behoves a
bowler to exercise this virtue of prudence. Many
batsmen have a favourite stroke with which they
succeed better than with any other. Thus a man
may be able to hit effectively to ‘leg’ who does
not succeed so well at ‘off.’ In cricketing parlance,
he is in that case stronger on his leg than on his
off-stump. But the actual circumstances in any
given case may of course vary, and they may be
just the reverse of the foregoing. We shall, however,
suppose them to be as we have stated. Well, the
respective points of strength and weakness of the
batsman soon become apparent to the bowler;
and ordinary consideration or prudence then
naturally suggests to the bowler the advisability
of avoiding the delivery of balls likely to pass to
‘leg’ or the near side, and of directing the ball
as much as possible, consistently with the main
object in view, to ‘off’ or the far side, of the batsman.
This would both preclude the negative
result of the ball being hit away, and afford a fairer
prospect of the positive result of the wicket being
lowered, since it would be assaulted on the weaker
side. But these circumstances really represent
only certain elemental conditions of the game, and
are here brought forward simply for illustration’s
sake. Still, without a due observance of them, and
of such points as varying the length of a ball, and
bowling so that a catch may result—which are all
to be attained by the study prudence would suggest—cricket
would cease to be the scientific game
that it is; and a bowler would deserve the reproach
we sometimes hear applied to him of bowling only
with his hand, instead of bowling with both hand
and head, as he is invariably bound to do.

The necessity of Temperance for the satisfactory
prosecution of cricket is altogether too obvious to
call for argument. The habit itself is not only
essential to the unimpaired preservation of wind
and limb, but even a solitary occasion of deviation
from it may be productive of baneful effects.
What cricketer of experience cannot recall the
incident of a good ‘bat’ prematurely returning to
his comrades, to make their sympathising bosoms
the willing repository of his confession, that the
disaster by which he has just been overwhelmed is
due to either the salmon or champagne he took
overnight; in consequence of which he unhappily
‘saw double!’

Then as to Fortitude, there is perhaps no other
single quality adorning manhood which takes so
wide and active a range in cricket. There is the
fortitude which sustains the bowler as he finds his
best efforts fail in making an impression upon the
wicket, and teaches him to persevere with a heart
that is still composed and undaunted. He in
truth calms the flutter which will occasionally
seize him at such a time; and despite the conviction
painfully forced upon him again and again,
that his bowling has been mastered, he still manfully
endeavours, and frequently succeeds, in
pitching the ball on the one spot which above all
others serves to afford a crucial test of his opponent’s
mettle and prowess. But the latter meets the
effort each time with unswerving steadiness and
marvellous effect. With what ease and perfection
he stops the ball, with what consummate grace
and vigour he hits it away when a chance offers!
Immense indeed is the fortitude which enables the
bowler to bear up against soul-crushing vicissitudes
of this kind. And fortunate, too, for him is it
that in such a crisis the captain comes to his relief,
and institutes a change of bowlers. This change
is sometimes admittedly from good to bad. But
it nevertheless often produces immediate benefits;
and so well recognised is the fact, that it has
almost passed into an axiom of the game.

Let us now picture to ourselves the batsman in
circumstances contrary to what we have supposed
above. He is confronted by a bowler who sends
him, we shall suppose, a succession of ‘overs,’
comprising balls which are, with few exceptions,
all perfectly straight and of excellent length. He
occasionally plays the ball away; but it is quickly
returned by a smart ‘point’ or active ‘mid-wicket,’
so that he cannot obtain a single run. Oftener he
only succeeds in merely staying the progress of the
ball, and his resistance does not go beyond that.
Now, every time the ball rises against the body, or
perhaps the shoulder, of the bat, the consciousness
of a deliverance from danger rushes through the
possessor’s mind, which is naturally enough followed
by a thrill of delight and self-congratulation;
for however accomplished be a player, he for some
time at least feels that his fate is not in his own
hands. This is owing to the possibility of some
subtlety, such as a twist or bias, being suddenly
developed by the bowler in the course of a well-directed
and well-maintained attack, which takes
the defender of the wicket by surprise, and occasions
his fall. Such an event may easily happen,
and is to be reckoned among the uncertainties of
the game, in regard to which we shall have a
word or two to say. It will meanwhile, from the
circumstances we have stated, be seen that the
sensibilities of the batsman are subjected to short{300}
but severe fits of tension, as they rapidly undergo
the alternate forms of a vague fear or anxiety on
the one hand and of joy on the other. So decided
indeed is this fact, that numbers of spectators
very commonly sympathise, to judge from the
expressions which spontaneously escape them, as
they watch the events of the game. Fortitude
alone enables the hero of the bat, with stout heart,
to live through so trying an ordeal. And all
honour to him when he at length succeeds in
turning the tables on the foe, and finally punishes
the bowling to his own satisfaction and to the
admiration of the by-standers!

Now, in regard to this quality of fortitude, which
is essentially heroic in its nature—consisting in
the patient resolute endurance of suffering—the
wicket-keeper and long-stop frequently furnish
notable examples. The wicket-keeper’s duties
inevitably entail that condition of martyrdom as
their allotted burden; while as to long-stop, the
degree in which he is called on to bear the buffets
of fortune and of the ball very much depends upon
the precise circumstances in which he is placed.
Nor, in this connection, must we omit to notice the
possible case of some stout gentleman standing at
‘long-field,’ whom the energy of the batsman constantly
despatches in pursuit of the ball. In the
course of each rapid excursion he makes, with the
prospect of four or five runs resulting to the
striker, what is it nerves him with spirit and
determination, and despite his shortness of breath
and quivering limbs, impels him to struggle on,
but that heroic quality of which cricket teaches
us so sound and useful a lesson!

The love of Justice is undeniably one of the
sublimest instincts of the human mind, and it is
not too much to say that, so far as it goes, cricket
directly tends to foster and promote it. In a
primary or fundamental sense, the rules which
have been instituted for the management of the
game are a provision for its being conducted on
fair and equitable principles; and they are, moreover,
administered by umpires appointed for the
purpose, who adjudge all doubtful and disputed
points. The associations of the game are in
general so healthy that a wrong decision wilfully
given is a thing almost unknown; and one reason
why the umpires should discharge their duties in
a strictly scrupulous and conscientious manner is,
that they themselves are very much under the
cognizance of those who observe the progress of
the game purely for their own pleasure, so that
any glaring inaccuracy, or deviation from truth
or principle on their part (allowing the last to be
possible), would be at once detected, and lead to
public remark and comment.

How it is that others should be so easily able to
note points which it is the duty of the umpires to
decide, will be apparent when it is borne in mind
that, however important their effects, the casualties
which occur in cricket are of a very simple
nature, and are all referable to a particular condition
or stage of progress of the ball. Aided by a
knowledge of the rules, which are clear and explicit,
the eye has therefore merely to fix itself
closely on the ball. To take now an introspective
view of the matter, or to look say to secondary
and internal effects, the desire to do justice to one’s
companions, or in other words to see the fullest
possible scope given to the cricketing abilities they
may possess, is an essential ingredient of the spirit
which animates a side. The hopes and calculations
of success in a game of cricket are based on the
united exertions of the eleven men who form a
side, though special faith may often be placed in
particular individuals who have proved themselves
conspicuously good players. But in the inevitable
nature of things, such ‘stars’ are apt to undergo a
sudden eclipse when least expected, to the manifest
ruin of any calculations which may have been
made with exclusive reference to them. Hence
policy and experience combine to indicate the
above mentioned as the only course which is to be
relied on as perfectly sound and safe. It is consequently
a wish with every member of an eleven
that every other member should do the utmost of
which he is capable, both in his place in the field
and in the way of making runs and contributing to
the general score. This wish is bound up in the
breast of each member with the personal interest
he takes in the success of the side to which he
belongs. But this feeling is even extended, as it is
only right it should be, to the opposite eleven; to
whom, collectively and individually, the opportunities
of a free exercise of their powers and the
chance of winning on their merits, are never grudged
by any true-hearted cricketer. But it may be
argued that all this indicates only an absence of
selfishness and a love of fair-play. Yet what are
those feelings but the concomitants or essential
characteristics of that divine attribute which
springs from the cultivation of cricket, and by a
healthy reactionary influence, expands and purifies
in the process?

Among the other advantages of the game, a
moment’s consideration will determine that it is
directly opposed to the growth of arrogance and
self-assumption. There is this to be said of it, that
as the battle is not always to the strong nor the
race to the swift, so the victory in cricket does not
always go to the eleven who may, on a comparative
estimate with their rivals, be reasonably regarded
as of superior merit. This is to be accounted
for by the fact, that the forces the two elevens
represent act not merely in opposition, but also
in some respects in correlation with each other.
Therefore the result of a game of cricket, though
in the main due to the relative strength of the
sides engaged, is somewhat eccentric in its nature;
like the direction a movable body assumes when
operated on by forces acting from separate quarters.
And this affects not only the collective
fortune of a side, but also the individual fortune of
each player. Accordingly in other games and
sports the expert may revel in the proud consciousness
of superiority, and in weak moments betray
that fact in his demeanour; but the cricketer can
venture on no such dangerous exhibition of conceit.
He may in the early stage of his career, but
experience soon teaches him the folly of his conduct.
The reverses he meets with, often when
least expected, induce in him an air of becoming
humility, or at least of modesty, under all circumstances.

This then, in plain language, is the consequence
of those uncertainties of cricket which have been
spoken of before; and so it arises that when the
contending sides are tolerably well matched—a
condition embodied in the framework of the several
propositions we have advanced—even the greatest
and surest run-getters approach the wickets with
a secret sense of diffidence, and with their minds{301}
already troubled by that vague sense of apprehension
to which allusion has elsewhere been made.
Probably so eminent and successful a batsman as
Mr W. G. Grace may be exempt from the influence
of these feelings; but he is certainly not exempt
from the operation of that law of contingencies
which produces them in less gifted individuals.
In order to prove this we have only to compare
some of the enormous scores made last season by
him with his failure at other times. But not to
strain the comparison too far, it will be enough to
state that in the match, Gentlemen versus Players,
played in the beginning of July, Mr Grace was
caught for ninety in his second innings; while in
his first he was bowled by Emmet for the traditional
duck’s-egg (0)!

Indeed, taken in the aggregate, the uncertainty
of cricket equals, if it does not surpass, the uncertainty
which alike proverbially characterises love
and war. But so far from that being in any way
a drawback, it gives a special zest and charm to
the game, as it is impossible to predicate the issue
in any case in the light of a foregone conclusion.
Despite the blankest prospects consequently, the
hope of a possible turn of events, or at least of
luck, and with it the hope of winning, always
continues till the last. From this arises an expression
current in cricketing circles, that a game is
never lost till it is won.

No doubt, too, it is owing to this uncertainty
which attends the game that cricket has hitherto
afforded so little encouragement to the vicious
practice of betting, which would only have the
effect, if it existed to any greater extent than it
does, of detracting from its beauties and pleasing
sensations. All genuine lovers of the game will
therefore here cordially unite with us in the wish
that gambling may never, like an evil spirit,
further obtrude its presence in the sanctuary,
where honour and probity dwell in peaceful
union with generous emulation and manly love
and sympathy.

HINTS TO BEE-KEEPERS.

Though great progress has been made during the
last five-and-twenty years in the pursuit of apiculture,
much remains to be done, particularly in
spreading far and wide a knowledge of recent
discoveries, and attempting to induce a more
general adoption of this most profitable and interesting
occupation. It would be difficult to refer
to a pursuit in which larger returns are yielded,
considering the limited outlay; and as profit is a
consideration with the majority of those who have
bees, we propose to keep it chiefly in view in the
present paper.

It cannot be too often impressed upon beginners
that bees require attention. Many people seem
to think that they have only to purchase a few
hives and place their bees in them, and that a
large yield of surplus honey will be the natural
result, without rendering the little workers any
assistance at all. It is not by this happy-go-lucky
method that profits are made by apiculture.
It is certainly true that in spite of neglect bees
often do answer remarkably well; but the skilful
apiarian, by means of certain acts, to which we shall
presently allude, performed in the proper manner
and at the right time, will command success.

Our remarks will be founded on the assumption
that the pernicious custom of ‘smothering’
bees is extinct. Those acquainted with the rural
districts know, however, that the agricultural
labourers, and others who ought to know better,
do continue to burn their bees; but the practice
has long been abandoned by every one worthy of
the name of apiarian.

Many people are bewildered in commencing
apiculture by the large number of hives whose
particular merits are forced upon their attention.
There is only one golden rule in this matter,
carefully to consider the habits and requirements
of the bee, and decide whether pleasure or profit is
the desideratum. For example, observatory hives,
as they are termed, are all very well as a means
of studying the habits of the insect, but are not
to be recommended when ‘supers’ of surplus
honey are the result aimed at.

In order to take advantage, however, of the
various methods perfected by distinguished apiarians
for obtaining complete control over the
denizens of a hive, we strongly recommend the
adoption of hives on the movable-comb system,
invented by Francis Huber, perfected by Langstroth
in America, and by Woodbury, Abbott,
Jackson, Raynor, and others in England. By
means of the various hives made on this principle,
perfect command may be obtained at any time
over the bees, and the most difficult operations
may be conducted with an ease and certainty
marvellous to the uninitiated. For example,
natural swarming need not occur, and thus the
frequent loss of swarms will be prevented; stocks
which have lost their queen from any cause
may have one at once supplied without the delay
consequent upon waiting for the bees to rear one;
and the interior of the hive may be examined
frequently, to ascertain if the colony is healthy and
in good working order.

For this reason we reject straw hives; but if
these are used, let them be large. There cannot
be a greater mistake than to use the small straw
skeps one sees in cottage gardens. Years ago, when
people did not understand the enormous egg-producing
power of the queen, this was allowable;
but when modern researches have proved that her
majesty can, and will if she has room, lay more
than two thousand eggs a day, the absurdity of
preventing her from doing so is inexcusable.

Mr Pettigrew, whose father was one of the
largest bee-keepers in Scotland, uses large straw
hives only, and speaks of hives weighing from one
hundred to one hundred and sixty-eight pounds.
He observes, in his Handy-book of Bees (1875),
that ‘it would take three ordinary English hives,
if not more, to hold as much honey as one of
these hives—it would take three or more of them
to hold bees enough to gather as much in the
same space of time.’ His chief objection to wooden
hives appears to be their liability to dampness.
This evil has, however, been neutralised in the
best varieties of the movable comb or bar-frame
hives by the adoption of an almost perfect system
of ventilation.

Mr Pettigrew goes on to say that his father once
realised twenty pounds profit from two hives in
one season, and nine pounds twelve shillings from
another. The profits came from the honey gathered
by the bees, and not from swarms sold at large
prices. He continues: ‘The adoption of large
hives by many of the bee-keepers of Aberdeenshire{302}
and Banffshire put them last year in the van of
the advancing hosts. In a private letter which
lies before us it is stated that the first swarms,
obtained last year about the middle of July, rose to
great weights. One belonging to Mr Gordon rose
to one hundred and sixty-four pounds. Swarms
belonging to other bee-keepers rose to one hundred
and twenty-eight, one hundred and twenty-six,
one hundred and twenty, one hundred and nine,
and one hundred and four pounds. Mr G. Campbell
got four swarms from one hive; their united
weight (including the mother-hive, which was
ninety-three pounds) was three hundred and
seventy-three pounds. The profit from this hive
must have been very great. Three sizes have
been recommended: the first, twenty inches wide
by twelve inches deep, inside measure; the second,
eighteen inches by twelve inches deep; and the
third size sixteen inches by twelve inches. The
first size contains about three thousand cubic
inches; the second size, about two thousand seven
hundred cubic inches; and the third size about
two thousand cubic inches.’ He advises the use
of the three sizes according to the extent of the
swarms and the return of the season, and after
detailing the profits from his bees in a village in
Lanarkshire he adds, that for ‘gaining great profits
in a favourable season, and for continued prosperity
for a succession of years, the system of having
strong hives and early swarms is far before all the
other systems of managing bees.’

If we were asked to name the most important
desideratum in apiculture, we should say feeding.
Judicious feeding at a proper time will save many
stocks. We have not only to contend against the
absolute destruction during winter of a feeble or
ill-supplied stock, but the principle always before
the eye of the apiarian should be to be able to
commence the season with strong stocks, able to
take due advantage of the honey season directly
it arrives. By having this always before him, he
can easily double the working power of his colonies.
It will readily be seen that in a short or inclement
honey-gathering season it is important to make
the most of every opportunity of collecting stores,
and this can only be done if the workers are in
a fit condition to do so.

Feeding not only consists in giving them honey,
sugar, sugar-candy, or like sweet substances, if
they need it, but in supplying them with water,
salt, and rye or wheat meal. Let us briefly notice
these in detail. Mr Langstroth, an American
apiarian, who has written an excellent work on
the bee, quotes the following remarks by Mr
Kleine in the Bienenzeitung: ‘The use of sugar-candy
for feeding bees gives to bee-keeping a
security which it did not possess before. Still
we must not base over-sanguine calculations on
it, or attempt to winter very weak stocks, which
a provident apiarian would at once unite with
a stronger colony. I have used sugar-candy for
feeding for the last five years, and made many
experiments with it, which satisfy me that it
cannot be too strongly recommended. Sugar-candy
dissolved in a small quantity of water
may be safely given to bees late in the autumn,
and even in winter if absolutely necessary. It is
prepared by dissolving two pounds of candy in
a quart of boiling water, and allowing about half
a pint of the solution to evaporate; then skimming
and straining through a hair-sieve.’

It is astonishing what may be done with bees
when they are in a good humour. In order to
produce this desirable state it is only necessary
to sprinkle them with sugar and water. This
peculiarity is taken advantage of by the wise
apiarian when he wishes to conduct the process
of artificial swarming, taking away young queens
for other hives, removing honey, &c. Bees when
swarming rarely sting, and the reason is this: when
they leave their hives they naturally think it
prudent to take a supply of honey with them, and
accordingly pocket all they can. In this state
they are very peaceable. In order to make them
take honey and produce the desired state, apiarians
puff smoke into the hives; the bees gorge themselves,
thinking their honey is to be taken from
them, and pass to the upper part of the hive.
This method is pursued when it is considered
desirable to make an examination of the interior
of a colony.

Bees will freely take salt during the early part
of the breeding season; but water is absolutely
necessary for them, and should be regularly supplied
in troughs near the entrance, with straws
floating in it, so that the bees may drink without
fear of drowning. To ascertain whether bees are
sustaining injury from want of water, it is only
necessary to examine the bottom of the hive. If
candied grains of honey appear, no time must be
lost in supplying water, for the bees are eating up
their honey in order to obtain it. This is one cause
of the starvation of bees; for lack of water they
have too rapidly consumed their stores. Bees
work in the dark because the admission of light
would candy the honey, and they could not seal it
up in its proper liquid state. Glass hives, in which
they are made to work in the glare of light, are
therefore unnatural. An indication of their dislike
to light appears in the attempts they make to
obscure the small windows often placed in hives
for purposes of examination.

Some people think it possible to overstock a
district with bees; but we do not think it ever
has occurred in Great Britain. Think of the
square miles of orchards, fields of clover and
beans, and tracts of heather and other honey-producing
plants this country contains, and of the
thousands of tons of that substance which must
pass from them into the atmosphere, much of
which might be gathered for the use of man!
How many agricultural labourers and railway
porters in country districts might double their
earnings by keeping bees! Farmers who grow
clovers for seed would find that the multiplication
of bees around them would be of immense advantage,
for these plants depend to a great extent
upon the visits of the bee for fertilisation and consequent
production of seed. This simple fact
ought to be generally known.

It is a good plan to grow borage, thyme, mignonette,
heliotrope, heather, and other honey-containing
flowers in the neighbourhood of the apiary;
infirm or young bees will not then have to fly far
in search of honey. Fields of beans contain large
quantities of honey. Mr Pettigrew estimates that
a twenty-acre field of grass well sprinkled with the
flowers of white clover, yields to bees every fine
day at least one hundred pounds of honey; and
that twenty acres of heather in flower yield
two hundred pounds of honey per day. White
clover has been called the queen of honey-plants.{303}
Heather is more appreciated for bees in
Scotland than in Yorkshire, Derbyshire, and
Cheshire, where it also abounds. Bees will not
as a rule fly far in search of honey, but a circle
with a radius of four miles will almost everywhere
yield abundant pasturage. If there are
cultivated fields within two miles it will be all
the better.

We think there can be no doubt that the variety
of bee called Ligurian will enable the apiarian to
obtain more profit than if he kept the common
kind. These bees may be readily purchased now
at about two pounds a swarm, or twelve shillings a
queen, to Ligurianise a colony. (See The British
Bee Journal, published by Messrs Abbott, Fairlawn,
Southall, W.) To Ligurianise an apiary of common
bees, it is only necessary to remove the queens and
introduce those of the new kind, after a proper interval.
This species, which is also called the Italian
bee, was introduced into England from Tamin-by-Chur
in the canton of Grisons, Switzerland.

Another quality in which the Ligurian bee
exceeds the English variety is in its peacefulness
of disposition. Respecting the purity of race,
Dzierzon says: ‘It has been questioned even by
experienced and expert apiarians whether the
Italian race can be preserved in its purity in
countries where the common kind prevail. There
need be no uneasiness on this score. Their preservation
could be accomplished even if natural
swarming had to be relied on, because they swarm
earlier in the season than the common kind, and
also more frequently.’ Even if the breed is not
kept pure, little harm is done; indeed we know
one skilful apiarian who thinks that a cross between
the common and Ligurian varieties is a decided
advantage.

The fact that Ligurian bees are less sensitive to
cold has been pointed out by the Baron Berlepsch;
but he also noticed that they are more inclined to
rob the hives of other bees than the common
variety. He succeeded in obtaining one hundred
and thirty-nine fertile young queens from one
Italian queen. Ligurian bees begin work earlier
in the morning and leave off later than the
common bees.

If the apiarian decides to manage his bees on
the swarming or natural method, he must be prepared
to give a good deal of attention to his bees,
or employ a person to do it for him. Many swarms
are lost when the apiarian is away for any length
of time, particularly if he possesses an extensive
apiary. Besides this, two or more swarms sometimes
come out of the hive at the same time and
cluster together. In such a case it has been
found advantageous to hive them together in a
large hive, as it is a somewhat delicate operation
to divide the aggregated swarms and hive them
separately.

Occasionally a swarm alights on the high branch
of a tree, and can only be secured with difficulty.
Some apiarians place an old hat or black stocking
in a low bush near at hand, and this is said to
induce the bees to alight. We have heard of one
ingenious gentleman who never lost a swarm, by
making a large ball of bees by stringing dead ones
together, and placing this upon a string, in its turn
affixed to a stick, which he placed in front in a
conspicuous situation.

The old queen quits with the first swarm,
leaving royal cells ready to supply another
after her departure. The second swarm will
depart about sixteen days after the first swarm.
Bees, however, do not always think it desirable
to send out a second swarm. To ascertain this,
the apiarian should place his ear at the hive
occasionally during that period, in order to ascertain
if the young queens are piping. When the
old queen has left with the first swarm, the first
hatched queen is allowed to kill all the embryo
queens in the royal cells, if the bees have decided
not to send out another swarm. If an exodus is,
however, arranged, the bees prevent the queen
from killing the young ones in the cells. These
begin to pipe after a certain interval; and hence
if the apiarian hears the curious notes, he knows
that a second swarm may be expected.

The uncertainties of natural swarming have induced
many apiarians to dispense with it altogether.
The facilities for examination afforded by
hives on the principles we have before described,
render it easy to ascertain when a hive is ripe
for swarming. By contracting the entrance of
the hive the exit of the queen may be arrested;
and this is a capital plan to pursue when the
apiarian is unable to watch his colonies, but does
not want to take the swarm from the hive before
it is necessary. Our limits will not allow us to
go into detail respecting the various processes of
artificial swarming. One simple method, after the
necessity for taking the swarm has been ascertained,
is to puff some smoke (that made by burning
a piece of corduroy rolled up, is the best) into
the hive, take the top off, after stopping up the
entrance, and getting the surplus bees into an
empty box or hive placed on the top, by drumming
on the hive. In nine cases out of ten the queen
goes with them. In that case the parent stock
will require another queen, which may be supplied
from another hive with a great saving of time. If
the queen has remained below, the forced swarm
must have a queen supplied in the same manner;
or if this is not practicable, the bees will soon rear
one themselves.

The advantage of giving a fertile young queen
to the mother-stock is thus detailed by Mr Langstroth:
‘It sometimes happens that the mother-stock
when deprived of its queen perishes, either because
it takes no steps to supply her loss, or because it
fails in the attempt. If the mother-stock has not
been supplied with a fertile queen, it cannot for a
long time part with another colony without being
seriously weakened. Second swarming—as is well
known—often very much injures the parent stock,
although its queens are rapidly maturing; but
the forced mother-stock may have to start theirs
almost from the egg. By giving it a fertile queen
and retaining enough adhering bees to develop the
brood, a moderate swarm may be safely taken
away in ten or twelve days, and the mother-stock
left in a far better condition than if it had parted
with two natural swarms. In favourable seasons
and localities this process may be repeated four or
five times, at intervals of ten days; and if no combs
are removed, the mother-stock will still be well
supplied with brood and mature bees. Indeed the
judicious removal of bees at proper intervals often
leaves it at the close of the summer better supplied
than non-swarming stocks with maturing bees.’

We trust that the observations we have made
in the present paper may induce some persons
to commence this interesting pursuit who have{304}
hitherto been strangers to it. Those who feel
inclined to do so, we advise to purchase one of
the numerous manuals on the subject, and to
begin with a few hives at first. The best cheap
work on bees with which we are acquainted is
Practical Bee-keeping, by Frank Cheshire, Editor
of the Apiary Department of The Country.
(Bazaar Office, 32 Wellington Street, Strand.)
Price 2s. 6d.

VOYAGING AND STUDYING ROUND
THE WORLD.

At the present moment two notable schemes
of travel are before the world, to which we
will briefly advert. One is simply and purely a
pleasure excursion of a somewhat luxurious
nature, announced as a ‘Yachting Voyage Round
the World.’ It is proposed, ‘should sufficient
inducement offer,’ to despatch from London, on
August 15th, a large and fast steamer (Sumatra,
2400 tons), fitted with every comfort, to all
the principal seaports of the world. After calling
at Southampton, Bordeaux, Corunna, and Lisbon,
the passengers are to do the Mediterranean ports
in the most thorough manner, and then Egypt,
India, Ceylon, Burmah, the Straits’ Settlements,
and Manila. From Hong-kong the steamer is
to proceed to Amoy on the Chinese coast, to
enable the travellers to visit Nanking and Peking:
at least so the programme has it; but either
its author or printer has made a slip here, for
of course it must be intended that these very
interesting trips should be made from Shanghai,
the next port of call. Having thus skirted
the Celestial Empire, the travellers will be
spirited across the Yellow Sea to Japan, there
to behold the wonders of a budding civilisation.
Then after a three weeks’ voyage across the
Pacific, they will commence their experience of
the New World at San Francisco; and calling
here and there at places of interest on their south-ward
voyage, they will be taken through the
Straits of Magellan to the Falkland Islands; after
leaving which they will visit successively Monte
Video, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Trinidad, Havana,
and New York. The fare for this pleasure excursion
will be five hundred pounds with extras;
which, considering the promised accommodation of
every description set forth in the prospectus, does
not appear very excessive for a voyage calculated
to last ten months or thereabouts. We recommend
the idea to the attention of those who want
something more exciting and novel in the way of
travel than can otherwise be got within a thousand
miles of St Paul’s. One objection only occurs to
our mind in regard to the route proposed, and
that is the fact of our great colonies being entirely
ignored. Full information may be had by applying
to Messrs Grindlay & Co., 55 Parliament
Street, London, S.W.; or of the Hon. Secretaries
of the Association, Messrs Hide & Thompson, 4
Cullum Street, Fenchurch Street, E.C.

The other scheme to which we would allude is
one put forward by the Société des Voyages d’étude
autour du Monde, which has been formed at Paris
with the avowed object of organising annual steam-voyages
round the world. The Society aims higher
than the promoters of the ‘Yachting’ Cruise, and
desires to combine the utile with the dulce, and
to provide for respectably connected young men
who have finished their ordinary studies a still
more complete finish in the shape of ‘un complément
d’instruction supérieur.’ The Society states
that its plan has met with the approval of the
Geographical Societies of Paris and London and
several learned bodies in France; and it has
appointed a Council of Administration to carry it
out, as well as a committee of savants to organise
the courses of study which are to form a special
feature of the expeditions, and are to embrace
scientific, economic, and commercial subjects.
After a considerable period of incubation, the
views of the Society have just been enunciated in
some detail in a pamphlet entitled Le Tour du
Monde en 320 Jours (Round the World in three
hundred and twenty Days), (Paris: Ch. Delagrave).
From this we learn that the itinerary of the
‘Yachting’ Cruise will, broadly speaking, be reversed,
and that some additional places will be
visited, notably Auckland, Melbourne, and Sydney;
which in our humble opinion is a great improvement
from an educational point of view. Our
readers would hardly thank us for diving into
all the minutiæ of the scheme, which, with the
usual fondness of the French for petty detail, are
laid down in the pamphlet at considerable length
under the four heads: Organisation générale du
prémier voyage, Organisation matérielle, Organisation
morale, and Conditions du passage.

The arrangements made under the third head
of those just noted (Organisation morale) constitute
the distinguishing feature of the expedition.
They include a large library of all descriptions
of works on foreign countries, and a collection
of the most interesting of their products,
especially those which are or can be turned to an
account from an industrial point of view. Atlases
and charts will be provided, to enable the passengers
to make themselves acquainted with the
various countries and to follow with exactness the
course of the ship. In order to provide an educational
staff, the Society offers free passages to three
professors, who will be charged with the superintendence
of the following branches of study and
the delivery of lectures thereon: Economic science,
including the commercial products of the various
countries visited, their manners and customs,
historical sketches, &c.; Natural sciences, under
which will come the race of the inhabitants, animal
life, plants, geology, mining, &c.; and Physical
science and climatology, in which category
meteorology, winds and currents, geographical
details, seasons, &c. will be dealt with. We have
said sufficient, we think, to shew the peculiar
features of this proposed series of annual voyages
round the world for educational purposes; and we
shall watch the result with much interest, though,
from our own personal experience of long voyages
in hot climates, on board even comfortable
steamers, we should have thought that they
were the last places in which serious studies on
a large scale could be conducted with advantage.

Full particulars may be had from the Société,
8 Place Vendôme, Paris; or from Trübner & Co.,
Ludgate Hill, London. June 30th is the day fixed
for sailing; but, strange to say, ‘les dames ne seront
pas admises à prendre part au voyage.’ (No ladies
allowed to accompany the expedition!)