THE GIRL’S OWN
PAPER

ABOUT PEGGY SAVILLE.

By JESSIE MANSERGH (Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey), Author of “Sisters Three,” etc.

SWEET SYMPATHY.

All rights reserved.]

CHAPTER VII.

Peggy looked very sad and wan after
her mother’s departure, but her companions
soon discovered that anything
like out-spoken sympathy was unwelcome.
The redder her eyes, the more
erect and dignified was her demeanour;
if her lips trembled when she spoke, the
more grandiose and formidable became
her conversation, for Peggy’s love of long
words and high-sounding expressions
was fully recognised by this time, and
caused much amusement in the family.

A few days after Mrs. Saville sailed,
a welcome diversion arrived in the shape
of the promised camera. The Parcels
Delivery van drove up to the door, and
two large cases were delivered, one of
which was found to contain the camera
itself, the tripod and a portable dark
room, while the other held such a
collection of plates, printing-frames and
chemicals as delighted the eyes of the
beholders. It was the gift of one who
possessed not only a deep purse, but
a most true and thoughtful kindness, for
when young people are concerned, two-thirds
of the enjoyment of any present
is derived from the possibility of being
able to put it to immediate use. As it
was a holiday afternoon, it was unanimously
agreed to take two groups and
develop them straightway.

“Professional photographers are so
dilatory,” said Peggy severely; “and{114}
indeed, I have noticed that amateurs
are even worse. I have twice been
photographed by friends, and they have
solemnly promised to send me a copy
within a few days. I have waited,
consumed by curiosity, and, my dears,
it has been months before it has arrived.
Now we will make a rule to finish off
our groups at once, and not keep people
waiting until all the interest has died
away. There’s no excuse for such
dilatory behaviour!”

“There is some work to do, remember,
Peggy. You can’t get a photograph
by simply taking off and putting on the
cap; you must have a certain amount
of time and fine weather. I haven’t
had much experience, but I remember
thinking that photographs were jolly
cheap considering all the trouble they
cost, and wondered how the fellows
could do them at the price. There’s
the developing, and washing, and printing,
and toning, half-a-dozen processes
before you are finished.”

Peggy smiled in a patient, forbearing
manner.

“They don’t get any less, do they, by
putting them off? Procrastination will
never lighten labour. Come, put the
camera up for us, like a good boy, and
we’ll show you how to do it.” She
waved her hand towards the brown
canvas bag, and the six young people
immediately seized different portions of
the tripod and camera, and set to work
to put them together. The girls tugged
and pulled at the sliding legs, which
were too new and stiff to work with
ease; Maxwell turned the screws which
moved the bellows, and tried in vain
to understand their working; Robert
peered through the lenses, and Oswald
alternately raved, chided, and jeered at
their efforts. With so many cooks at
work, it took an unconscionable time to
get ready, and even when the camera
was perched securely on its spidery
legs, it still remained to choose the site
of the picture, and to pose the victims.
After much wandering about the garden,
it was finally decided that the schoolroom
window would be an appropriate
background for a first effort, but a long
and heated argument followed before
the second question could be decided.

“I vote that we stand in couples,
arm-on-arm, like this,” said Mellicent,
sidling up to her beloved brother, and
gazing into his face in a sentimental
manner, which had the effect of making
him stride away as fast as he could
walk, muttering indignant protests beneath
his breath.

Then Esther came forward with her
suggestion.

“I’ll hold a book as if I were reading
aloud, and you can all sit round in easy,
natural positions, and look as if you
were listening. I think that would
make a charming picture.”

“Idiotic, I call it! ‘Scene from the
Goodchild family; mamma reading
aloud to the little ones.’ Couldn’t possibly
look easy and natural under the
circumstances; should feel too miserable.
Try again, my dear. You must think of
something better than that.”

It was impossible to please those three
fastidious boys. One suggestion after
another was made, only to be waved
aside with lordly contempt, until at
last the girls gave up any say in the
matter, and left Oswald to arrange the
group in a manner highly satisfactory
to himself and his two friends, however
displeasing to the more artistic members
of the party. Three girls in front, two
boys behind, all standing stiff and
straight as pokers; with solemn faces
and hair much tangled by constant
peepings beneath the black cloth.
Peggy in the middle, with her eyebrows
more peaked than ever, and an expression
of resigned martyrdom on her
small, pale face; Mellicent, large and
placid, on the left; Esther on the right,
scowling at nothing, and, over their
shoulders, the two boys’ heads, handsome
Max, and frowning Robert.

“There,” cried Oswald, “that’s what
I call a sensible arrangement! If you
take a photograph, take a photograph,
and don’t try to do a pastoral play at
the same time. Keep still a moment
now, and I will see if it is focused all
right. I can see you pulling faces,
Peggy; it’s not at all becoming. Now
then, I’ll put in the plate—that’s the
way!—one—two—three—and I shall
take you. Stea—dy!”

Instantly Mellicent burst into giggles
of laughter, and threw up her hands to
her face, to be roughly seized from
behind and shaken into order.

“Be quiet, you silly thing! Didn’t
you hear him say steady? What are you
trying to do?”

“She has spoiled this plate, anyhow,”
said Oswald icily. “I’ll try the other,
and if she can’t keep still this time, she
had better run away and laugh by
herself at the other end of the garden.
Baby!”

“Not a ba——” began Mellicent
indignantly; but she was immediately
punched into order, and stood with her
mouth wide open, waiting to finish her
protest so soon as the ordeal was
over.

Peggy forestalled her, however, with
an eager plea to be allowed to take the
third picture herself.

“I want to have one of Oswald to
send to mother, for we are not complete
without him, and I know it would please
her to think I had taken it myself,”
she urged; and permission was readily
granted, as everyone felt that she had a
special claim in the matter. Oswald
therefore put in new plates, gave
instructions as to how the shutters were
to be worked, and retired to take up an
elegant position in the centre of the
group.

“Are you read—ee?” cried Peggy,
in professional sing-song; then she put
her head on one side and stared at them
with twinkling eyes. “Hee, hee! How
silly you look! Everyone has a new
expression for the occasion! Your own
mothers would not recognise you!
That’s better. Keep that smile going
for another moment, and—how long must
I keep off the cap, did you say?”

Oswald hesitated.

“Well, it varies. You have to use
your own judgment. It depends upon—lots
of things! You might try one
second for the first, and two for the
next, then one of them is bound to be
right.”

“And one a failure! If I were going
to depend on my judgment, I’d have a
better one than that!” cried Peggy
scornfully. “Ready. A little more
cheerful, if you please—Christmas is
coming! That’s one. Be so good as
to remain in your positions, ladies and
gentlemen, and I’ll try another.” The
second shutter was pulled out, the cap
removed, and the group broke up with
sighs of relief, exhausted with the strain
of cultivating company smiles for a
whole two minutes on end. Max stayed
to help the girls to fold up the camera,
while Oswald darted into the house to
prepare the dark room for the development
of the plates.

When he came out, ten minutes later
on, it was a pleasant surprise to discover
Miss Mellicent holding a plate in
her hand and taking sly peeps inside
the shutter, just “to see how it looked.”
He stormed and raved; Mellicent looked
like a martyr, wished to know how a
teeny little light like that could possibly
hurt anything, and seemed incapable of
understanding that if one flash of sunlight
could make a picture, it could also
destroy it with equal swiftness. Oswald
was forced to comfort himself with the
reflection that there were still three
plates left; and, when all was ready,
the six operators squeezed themselves
in the dark room, to watch the process
of development, indulging the while in
the most flowery expectations.

“If it is very good, let me send it to
an illustrated paper. Oh, do!” said
Mellicent, with a gush. “I have often
seen groups of people in them. ‘The
thing-a-me-bob touring company,’ and
stupid old cricketers, and things like that.
We should be far more interesting.”

“It will make a nice present for
mother, enlarged and mounted,” said
Peggy thoughtfully. “I shall keep an
album of my own, and mount every
single picture we take. If there are
any failures, I shall put them in too, for
they will make it all the more amusing.
Photograph albums are horribly uninteresting
as a rule, but mine will be
quite different. There shall be nothing
stiff and prim about it; the photographs
will be dotted about in all sorts of
positions, and underneath each I shall
put in—ah—conversational annotations.”
Her tongue lingered over the
words with triumphant enjoyment.
“Conversational annotations, describing
the circumstances under which it
was taken, and anything about it which
is worth remembering…. What are
you going to do with those bottles?”

Oswald ruffled his hair in embarrassment.
To pose as an instructor in an
art, when one is in doubt about its very
rudiments, is a position which has
its drawbacks.

“I don’t—quite—know. The stupid
fellow has written instructions on all
the other labels, and none on these except
simply ‘Developer No. 1’ and ‘Developer
No. 2;’ I think the only difference is that
one is rather stronger than the other. I’ll
put some of the No. 2 in a dish and see
what happens; I believe that’s the right
way—in fact, I’m sure it is. You pour it{115}
over the plate and jog it about, and in
two or three minutes the picture ought
to begin to appear. Like this.”

Five eager faces peered over his
shoulders, rosy red in the light of the
lamp; five pairs of lips uttered a simultaneous
“oh!” of surprise; five cries
of dismay followed in instant echo. It
was the tragedy of a second. Even as
Oswald poured the fluid over the plate,
a picture flashed before their eyes, each
one saw and recognised some fleeting
feature; and, in the very moment of
triumph, lo, darkness, as of night, a
sheet of useless, blackened glass!

“What about the conversational
annotations?” asked Robert slyly; but
he was interrupted by a storm of indignant
queries, levied at the head of the
poor operator, who tried in vain to carry
off his mistake with a jaunty air. Now
that he came to think of it, he believed
you did mix the two developers together!
Just at the moment he had forgotten
the proportions, but he would go outside
and look it up in the book; and he
beat a hasty retreat, glad to escape
from the scene of his failure. It was
rather a disconcerting beginning, but
hope revived once more when Oswald
returned, primed with information from
the Photographic Manual, and Peggy’s
plates were taken from their case and
put into the bath. This time the result
was slow in coming. Five minutes
went by, and no signs of a picture, ten
minutes, a quarter of an hour.

“It’s a good thing to develop slowly;
you get the details better,” said Oswald,
in so professional a matter that he was
instantly reinstated in public confidence;
but when twenty minutes had passed,
he looked perturbed, and thought he
would use a little more of the hastener.
The bath was strengthened and
strengthened, but still no signs of a
picture. The plate was put away in
disgust, and the second one tried with
a like result. So far as it was possible to
judge, there was nothing to be developed
on the plate.

“A nice photographer you are, I
must say! What are you playing at
now?” asked Max, in scornful impatience,
and Oswald turned severely to
Peggy—

“Which shutter did you draw out?
The one nearest to yourself?”

“Yes, I did—of course I did!”

“You drew out the nearest to you,
and the farthest away from the lens?”

“Precisely—I told you so!” and
Peggy bridled with an air of virtue.

“Then no wonder nothing has come
out! You have drawn out the wrong
shutter each time, and the plates have
never been exposed. They are wasted!
That’s fivepence simply thrown away, to
say nothing of the chemicals!”

His air of aggrieved virtue; Peggy’s
little face staring at him, aghast with
horror; the thought of four plates being
used and leaving not a vestige of a
result were all too funny to be resisted.
Mellicent went off into irrepressible
giggles; Max gave a loud “Ha, ha!”
and once again a mischievous whisper
sounded in Peggy’s ear—

“Good for you, Mariquita! What
about the conversational annotations?”

(To be continued.)

SOME PRACTICAL HINTS ON COSMETIC MEDICINE.

By “THE NEW DOCTOR.”

PART IV.

THE HANDS.

The appearance of the
hands is secondary
only to that of the
face, and many
women pride themselves
upon their
beautiful white
hands. But it is not
everybody who can
have white hands.
Manual labour will
always make the hands red and rough, and
no amount of applications will whiten them.
General servants and laundry women cannot
expect their hands to remain white. It is
interesting to see why house labour should
injure the appearance of the hands in this
way. In the first place the hands must get
a good deal knocked about by the rough
work necessary in a household. Laying fires,
cleaning grates, blacking boots, etc., make
the hands rough from inflicting numerous
small injuries upon them. You all know that
if you cut your finger the place remains hard
and horny for some time afterwards, and so
hands that are exposed to rough usage will
also get horny and coarse. Then, again,
rough red hands, being less delicate, are better
fitted to do hard work, and so Nature, who
cares more for usefulness than for idle beauty,
will tend to make the hands of those who do
manual labour hard and coarse. Another
reason why servants so often have red hands
is the constant use of soda and water, which
is necessary for cleaning the house. Soda is
very bad for the hands, and this, together
with the impossibility of keeping the hands
dry, is another cause of red hands.

With a little care, nearly everybody can
have white hands. Even in those who have
to work hard a little care will often do wonders
to keep the hands from becoming very red—not
from becoming red slightly, for nothing
will prevent this. When you wash your
hands, always dry them afterwards on a fairly
rough towel. In winter you should be very
careful about thoroughly drying your hands,
as it takes very little to produce chaps.

If you are desirous of having white hands,
always wear gloves when you go out. This,
indeed, will do more than anything else to
keep the hands white.

In the winter most persons suffer from
chaps. These are a more pronounced and
more acute form of “red hands.” But they
are often very painful, and if not properly
treated are apt to be very persistent and
unsightly.

Prevention is better than cure, and we can
do a considerable amount to prevent our
hands from becoming chapped. It is the
cold wind that produces chaps, and so, if you
would be freed from this evil, you should
always wear thick gloves when you go out in
a strong north-easter. I have already mentioned
that you should dry your hands very
carefully after washing. If you are very liable
to chaps, you should not wash your hands in
cold water, but only use warm water, not hot
(for this is worse than cold water for producing
chaps), but just slightly warm. You must
also be careful about the soap you use, as
coarse alkaline soaps are very bad, and make
chapped hands smart.

If the chaps are not very bad, a little
glycerine and rose-water may be applied after
washing. This is very efficacious in a mild
case, but it is insufficient in more severe grades
of the affection. The following preparation I
have found invaluable for severe chaps—sulphate
of zinc, two grains; compound
tincture of lavender, one dram; glycerine,
three drams; rose-water to the ounce.

A very much worse affair than chaps is
a chilblain. Indeed, a bad broken chilblain
is a very serious and unpleasant matter.
Chilblains may occur in anyone, but they
are most common in persons in whom the
circulation is feeble. I have seen a terribly
bad chilblain in an anæmic girl. Moreover,
when the circulation is below par, chilblains
do not heal properly, and give great trouble
often for months together.

Warm gloves, warm stockings, loose-fitting
boots, and flannel next the skin all over the
body, are the best safeguards against this
complaint. As chilblains are a kind of minor
frostbite, keeping warm will necessarily
prevent them, but it is very difficult for a
person with feeble circulation to keep warm.

If you have a chilblain coming do not
scratch it, for this makes it far worse. Bathe
the part gently in warm spirit and water, and
wrap the finger or toe, whichever it is, in a
thick layer of cotton wool. If you do this
you will probably prevent the chilblains from
bursting.

There are a large number of messy preparations
made of lard, dripping, tallow,
cream, and other “pantry drugs,” which are
advised for chilblains. They are none of
them any good. A broken chilblain is a
septic wound, that is, it is a wound that
contains germs. It should therefore be
treated as a septic wound. Wash the place
gently in diluted carbolic acid lotion (1 in 80),
or warm solution of boracic acid. Then cover
the broken surface thickly with powdered
boracic acid, and put on a bandage. If you
do this, and attend to your general health at
the same time, you get rid of your chilblains
more rapidly than by any other method.

Warts are more common on the hands than
anywhere else. Of their cause we know but
little. Irritation sometimes causes them, and
they are to a certain extent infectious from
place to place. We used to be taught that
lady-birds produced or cured them, according
to which version of the story we heard.
There is about an equal amount of truth in
each doctrine.

The best way to treat warts is to first soak
the hand in hot water, and clean it thoroughly
with soap. Then paint the skin surrounding
the wart with vaseline, and drop on to the
wart itself one drop of glacial acetic acid.
Wait one minute, and then well rub the
wart over with a stick of lunar caustic (silver
nitrate). This treatment may require to be
repeated, but I have never known it to fail.

(To be continued.)

{116}

GIRLS AS I HAVE KNOWN THEM.

By ELSA D’ESTERRE-KEELING, Author of “Old Maids and Young.”

PART II.

THE WITTY GIRL.

First let us understand each other.

By the witty girl is not here meant the girl—if
such a girl exists—whose conversation has
the high brilliancy which characterises the
conversation of certain men and women.

No. The thing here meant is nothing
more than the common domestic wit-snapper,
generally, say her enemies, more of a snapper
than a wit, concerning which statement it is
perhaps not unpermissible to say that he who
makes it shows himself to be less a wit than a
snapper.

While all but invariably of a character that
loses much by the process of retailing, the wit
of the girl here in view will sometimes bear
being brought to book. The samples of it
given in this paper are all authentic and
heretofore unpublished. They do not, perhaps,
reach a high standard of excellence, but
they who know girls will concede that they
are good girl-wit of the middle order.

Take a case like this: “My name is May.
I feel I am reaching the age when I should be
called Hawthorn.”

Or take this: “Your mother will miss you
when you marry.”

“No—then she’ll ‘Mrs.’ me.”

Such jests are the bric-à-brac of home
conversation, and make it pretty.

He who listens to the talk between girls
and their brothers will sometimes hear a thing
worth noting, in compensation for the many
things not worth noting which—if the truth is
to be told—he will also hear.

The following does not show young Ethel
at her best, but it also does not show her at
her worst.

“D’you know, Jim,” she said, “that two-year-old
babies can marry on Jupiter?”

“Don’t talk bosh, Ethel!”

“But they can. It’s this way. A year on
Jupiter is eleven years and ten months of our
time, so the two-year-old babies are grown up.
Ee—you didn’t know that!”

A runaway match
on Jupiter
the bride
being
under age

Jim said nothing. But when young Ethel
exploited her astronomy with Bob, she found
her overmatch. This is precisely what was
said by them—

Bob: “One can hear your voice ten miles
off, Ethel.”

Y. E.: “Make it nine, Bob?”

Bob: “Why?”

Y. E.: “Nine miles is the greatest distance
at which thunder can be heard.”

Bob: “TIT-BITS.”

The fact is that young Ethel is less an
astronomer than a student of current periodical
literature. What matters it, after all, however,
whence she gleans her general information,
if her reading enables her to say—as I
once heard her say—with veritable wit, to
a girl who was wearing a primrose brooch—

“Blossom and leaves of the primrose are —— Radical.”

There are funny men in Parliament who have
never said anything much more funny than that.

In her captious mood the witty girl is very
terrible. A North Briton has been thus
described by her:
“A big, lumpy,
pale-faced, red-haired,
freckled
Scotchman,” and
it was a witty, but
captious, girl who
said of a certain
pianist, a concert
given by whom
she had attended,
“His feet obscured the platform.”

A
pianist’s
great
feet

The literary appreciations of the witty girl
are few. She is apt, in appraising poets, to
take them at their weakest rather than at their
strongest. She judges
Wordsworth by his
“Idiot Boy,” and she
would be capable of
passing sentence on
Cowper as having cut
in his door three holes
of different sizes for
his tom-cat, his tabby
cat and his kitten.

She thinks
him a victim
of
heredity

Wordsworth’s Idiot Boy

Yet another tendency
of the witty girl which
must be strongly deprecated,
is to harp on
phrases which may
have once had a faintly
comical ring, but which
have long lost it; such
phrases as, “Where
does this live?” applied to inanimate objects,
or, “Hang on to this,” used in reference to objects
held in the hand. It would be interesting
to know who first evolved these mild witticisms
destined to win such enduring popularity.

The singular phraseology of girls not minded
to confine themselves to English of the
academies has of late been made the subject
of much comment. There follow here some
specimens of it in which the facetious was
aimed at, and in some cases not unsuccessfully.

Wordsworth was,
by a Scotch Annie,
described as a
“baa-lamby;” a
Welsh Beatrice described
“a most
wizened farewell
concert;” her impressions
of Holland
were summed
up by an English
Madge in the words “flobby bread and flobby
wall-paper,” and an Irish Constance, writing
to her home in Ireland from a school in
France attended by her with her sister Ethel,
penned this anomalous statement, “We are
here six Irish, counting Ethel, and six English,
counting me.”

Wordsworth
looking
sheepish

Both these girls were the daughters of an
Irishman and an Englishwoman. She who was
accounted of the six English had been born in
her mother’s country, while she who was accounted
of the six Irish had been born in that
of her father. In drawing the fine line of distinction
which made her English and her sister
Irish, the young maid Constance aimed not at
precision but at wit, and, as behoved her
father’s daughter, she did not aim at wit in
vain. Her letter was read with laughter.

In almost all girls’ letters there is a marked
quality of phrasing which, even when not witty,
is mirth-provoking. Take the following:

“Papa has just come back from London,
and has brought me a very thin umbrella,
with a steel stick running through it, just
simply frightfully elegant; also a pair of shoes,
fawn antelope, embroidered with gold beads.
You needn’t sniff.”

Sniff, indeed? Perish the thought!

“Tinpot” used as an adjective does not spoil
the following curious bit of description penned
by a London girl during a stay in Ryde:

“I am enjoying myself very much in a
quiet, non-dissipated,
tinpot way—walking
on the
sea-wall and the
pier, reading
Carlyle and
Marion Crawford,
and making
little vests for
Kilburn orphans.”

A
dissipated
tinpot

Only a girl
could have
written that, and of its kind it is admirable.

An idea largely held by girls, in common
with women and men who have a witty
tendency, is that appreciation is a form of
ignorance. It was, be it here called to
remembrance, to correct this notion, that
Wordsworth wrote, “True knowledge leads
to love,” and that Browning wrote, “Admiration
grows as knowledge grows.”

Appreciation
a form
of
ignorance

It is doubtless the circumstance that unkindness
is so often confounded with wit that
has led to the fact that of all good gifts the
good gift of wit is the one held in least liking
by the majority of persons. The truth would
seem to be that, with wit, as with everything
else not intrinsically bad, the thing of main
importance is that it be handled carefully.
Like gunpowder, it has its uses to him who
knows how to avail himself of them. He
who does not, would do well to do what
certain savages once did. Having come into
the possession of a bag of gunpowder, they
carefully preserved it till the spring, when
they planted it as they did their corn. It did
not burst forth when the corn burst forth; so
much the better for the sowers. That gunpowder
was very safely deposited, and much
wit might with equal advantage be held over
till the next planting
season.

PURE
HONEY

BEST
BALM

Another thing.
The wit-snapper
should always carry
about with him a
little balm and a little
honey. That was a
good sword that
Cambuscan had; it
could heal the wounds
it gave. Only the
wit-snapper who{117}
carries a little balm and a little honey will be
as well equipped as was the knight whose
story Chaucer “left half-told.”

A further point which calls for passing
comment is this. Wit and merriment do not
always go hand in hand; indeed, they are
often sundered wide. Thus, of the world’s
famous humorists, it is well known that they
were mostly melancholy at the home-fireside.
Something very similar holds good in the case
of girls—and there are many such—who,
while witty in society, are deplorably glum in
the family circle, in this unlike a girl of girls
whom her father called “Minnehaha”—laughing
water—so merry was she in her home,
beyond which her influence was to be shed
so far that she is known to-day from Indus to
the Pole as the friend of Indian women.

Nell Witty

If they be right who consider, in opposition
to Juliet, that something is in a name, then
those among us who hold that such a name as
Juliet tends to annihilate wit in the possessor
of it are not mere fancy-mongers, and we are
entitled to a courteous hearing when we
submit that on the other hand the name
Nelly, and still more the variant of it by
which it becomes Nell, almost announces the
owner of it to be a wit.
This circumstance is quite
independent of the fact
that Scott has said, in just
so many words, in reference
to a particular case,
“Mistress Nelly, wit she
has,” and if any explanation
of it may be hazarded,
the one which will probably
satisfy most is that
persons named Nelly or
Nell—and the number of
such is, happily, legion—are
hardly ever found lacking in whimsicality.
In the few cases in which they are deficient in
this quality they should be called—and, as a
matter of fact, they are generally called—Nella,
the name Nella being that form of Nelly
or Nell by which all the sparkle is taken out
of it.

In conclusion, a word on wits under their
physiognomical aspect. That a certain type
of face in general denotes a witty person may
be allowed.

“The slightly tossed nose,” says one of
Thomas Moore’s biographers, “confirmed the
fun of the expression.”

“The slightly tossed nose” for what the
French call “nez retroussé” is happy wording.
Girl-readers of this who have “tossed” noses
are, by their faces, wits. Let this console
them, if it so hap that they want consolation.
On the other part, girls with short upper lips
have a part of beauty, but lack a part of wit.
Wherefore, if they be vain, let there be a curb
put on their vanity, and let girls with long
upper lips hold up their heads, for a long
upper lip denotes wit.

OUR PUZZLE POEM REPORT: “TO A GIRL GOLFER.”

SOLUTION.

To a Girl Golfer.

Prize Winners.

Seven Shillings and Sixpence Each.

• Edith Ashworth, The Mount, Knutsford.
• Dr. R. Swan Coulthard, Coventry.
• Mrs. Deane, Lismoyle, Ballymoney, co. Antrim.
• Edith E. Grundy, 105, London Road, Leicester.
• Edward St. G. Hodson, Twyford, Athlone, Ireland.
• G. Honeyburne, 16, Hawkshead Street, Southport, Lancs.
• Louise M. McCready, Howth, co. Dublin.
• Annie Manderson, Waterfoot, Crumlin, co. Antrim.
• F. M. Morgan, The Library, Armagh.
• May Robson, Garry Lodge, Perth, N.B.
• W. Shattock, Hillmorton Villa, Sneyd Park, near Bristol.
• Mrs. Isabel Snell, 51, Mere Road, Leicester.
• Alice Woodhead, Tickhill, Rotheram, Yorkshire.
• Elizabeth Yarwood, 59, Beech Road, Cale Green, Stockport.

Very Highly Commended.

Florence Ashwin, Rev. S. Bell, Nanette
Bewley, M. J. Champneys, Edith Collins,
Nellie R. Hasmer, Helen Lapage, Annie
Roberson, A. C. Sharp.

Highly Commended.

Eliza Acworth, A. A. Campbell, N. Campbell,
Rev. F. T. Chamberlain, Rev. J. Chambers,
Mary I. Chislett, N. Chute, Nina Coote,
Mrs. Cumming, R. D. Davis, Wm. Fraser,
Percy H. Horne, J. Hunt, Alice E. Johnson,
Mildred E. Lockyear, Winifred Lockyear,
Annie G. Luck, Mrs. T. Maxwell, F. Miller,
E. C. Milne, E. Nerve, Edward Roqulski,
Gertrude Saffery, S. Southall, C. E. Thurgar,
Aileen Tyler.

Honourable Mention.

Mrs. Acheson, Elizabeth M. Caple, Annie
J. Cather, J. A. Center, Mrs. Crossman, Ellie
Crossman, Winifred Eady, A. S. K. Ellson,
Phyllis M. Fulford, Agnes Glen, Alice Goakes,
Beatrice E. Hackforth, Sadie Harbison, M.
Hooppell, Rose A. Hooppell, Mima How,
A. J. Knight, E. M. Le Mottée, Carlina V.
M. Leggett, May Lethbridge, E. E. Lockyear,
E. Lord, E. Macalister, Margaret A.
Macalister, Nellie Meikle, C. A. Murton,
Jas. D. Musgrave, Mrs. Nicholls, Henrietta
M. Oldfield, Hannah E. Powell, Ellen M.
Price, F. C. Redgrave, Ada Rickards, James
Scott, Violet Shoberl, Mildred M. Skrine,
Marriott T. Smiley, Annie E. Starritt, Ellen
C. Tarrant, S. Taylor, Mrs. Walker, W.
Fitzjames White, Florence Whitlock, Emily
Wilkinson, Edith Mary Younge, Helen B.
Younger.

EXAMINERS’ REPORT.

Hitherto we have been in the habit of
associating all that was best concerning the
game of golf with the Scottish Nation. In
the future we shall have to remember that out
of fourteen golf puzzle prizes, five went to
Ireland and only one to Scotland, and modify
our view accordingly. Of England’s share
we find it difficult to speak with becoming
modesty.

If the north of the Tweed had been honoured
by our earliest presence we should have found
no difficulty in explaining away the National
failure—for how else can it be regarded?—in
connection with this puzzle. “A poem with
such a title,” we should have said, “must
surely contain advice about our noble game.
As we have played it with considerable success
for at least four hundred and fifty years, we can
need no advice, and therefore we will not
trouble to solve your puzzle.”

But our birthplace was many miles south of
the Tweed, and such an explanation would
not appeal to us with any force. The simple
fact remains: Ireland receives one pound
seventeen shillings and sixpence, Scotland,
only seven shillings and sixpence, and England—well,
modesty forbids us to say how much!

Not long ago golf was regarded as an
occupation for elderly gentlemen whose time
and energies were at the service of any
respectable game. With much impressiveness
they used to traverse the links decked in red
coats, the brilliancy of which signified the
extremity of the danger to which the unwary
onlooker was exposed.

But a few years have changed all that.
Now for one elderly, impressive, red-coated
gentleman to be found, there are many young
men who cannot afford red coats and maidens
in plenty who wouldn’t wear them if they
could. To this last class our puzzle poem was
addressed, not by way of advice but as a
sympathetic intimation that we know all about
the game in which they so freely indulge.

Naturally enough the title was frequently
rendered “To a golfer,” and after much
serious consideration we decided to accept it.
This being so, some who did not receive prizes
will possibly wonder why. The explanation is
simple enough: our ruling left us with so
many claimants for the five guineas that we
set aside those who did not trouble to indent
the lines properly.

We wonder how many of the solvers who
wrote “helpless” in the first line really
discovered that the p was less than the other
letters. It is also to be observed that the ball
in the same line was much smaller than the
others in the puzzle and therefore was intended
to be designated “little.” Hence the rhythm
required the word “very” in the fifth line—s—very
small. So many solvers failed to
notice these points that it is necessary to call
attention to them.

It was not even right to leave out the
“little” and the “very,” because then the
rhythm of the first verse would not coincide
with that of the second.

Authorities differ as to the spelling of by-and-bye;
apparently the more modern ones
prefer it without the e, and of course we
accepted both ways as correct.

The statement in line thirteen does not
seem to have been universally understood.
When you are playing golf you do not “put”
the ball into the hole—unless no one is
looking!—but you putt it in, which is a very
different matter. Curiously enough, not one
solver who wrote “put” pointed out that the
reading involved a mistake in the line.

If any of our readers would like a puzzle on
any particular subject or subjects, let them
mention it. Their wishes shall certainly
receive consideration and very possibly
fulfilment.

{118}

“OUR HERO.”

A TALE OF THE FRANCO-ENGLISH WAR NINETY YEARS AGO.

By AGNES GIBERNE, Author of “Sun, Moon and Stars,” “The Girl at the Dower House,” etc.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE THREATENED INVASION.

Though no true-hearted Englishman
believed for a moment in the possibility
of his country becoming a French province,
all knew that the threatened
invasion might take place.

Many indeed regarded the attempt as
almost certain, feeling sure that Napoleon
would never be convinced of his
own inability to conquer England, until
he had tried and failed. And while the
final result of such an attempt might be
looked upon as a foregone conclusion,
yet no doubt much personal loss and
distress would be caused by even the
most unsuccessful invasion of our shores.

On one point all were agreed—that
safety lay and could only lie in getting
ready beforehand.

At that date steamboats and railways
were unknown, and telegraphs did not
exist. There was happily time, through
the slowness with which affairs moved,
after the note of alarm had been sounded,
to make preparations.

An extraordinary burst of enthusiasm
throughout the whole country was the
response to Napoleon’s threat. Large
supplies of money were freely voted and
eagerly given. The regular army was
increased, and the militia was called
out; while a volunteer force sprang into
being, with such rapidity that it soon numbered
about four hundred thousand men.

These “citizen-soldiers,” as it was
the fashion to call them, were all over
the country, each place having its own
corps. But the regular troops, drawn
from all parts, were stationed chiefly
where the danger seemed to be greatest,
between London and the south coast,
Sir David Dundas being in command.

Along the shore were erected batteries
and martello towers—the latter remaining
to this day. And since Boulogne
was the headquarters of the French army
of invasion, an advanced corps was
placed on the opposite coast, near Sandgate,
under General Moore, in readiness
to repel the first onslaught. There the
General occupied his time in such
splendid training of the regiments under
his control that throughout the long
years of the Peninsular War, after he
himself had passed away, the stamp of
his spirit rested upon them, the impress
of his enthusiasm and of his magnificent
discipline made them the foremost
soldiers in the British Army. These
were the regiments who, as the “Reserve,”
bore the brunt of the fighting in
Moore’s famous “Retreat,” and who
were known in Spain and at Waterloo as
Wellington’s unequalled and invincible
“Light Brigade.” Wellington used
those regiments for the saving of Europe;
but Moore made them what they were.

To the delight of Jack an opportunity
offered itself whereby he might exchange
into one of the Shornecliffe regiments,
and he grasped at it eagerly.

He had for Moore the half-worshipping
admiration which is sometimes seen
in a young man towards an older
man. Jack would be none the worse for
his hero-worship, since happily he had
fixed upon a worthy object. As yet he
had seen little personally of the General,
having met him but two or three times.
But long before they came together, he
had cherished an intense interest in the
man, an interest awakened first in more
boyish days by Ivor’s vivid descriptions
of campaigns in the West Indies and in
Egypt, descriptions of which Moore was
always the central figure. Jack had
seized with avidity upon all such details.

When at length the two met he could
feel no surprise at Ivor’s intense and
reverent love for his chief. The soldierly
bearing of Moore, his grace of manner,
the power of his unique personality,
together with his chivalrous devotion to
his mother and his courteous kindness
towards all with whom he came in contact—these
things from the first made
a profound impression upon Jack; and
the more he learnt to know of Moore,
the more that impression was deepened.
He counted himself thenceforward ready
to live or to die for the General; and
one day in a fit of confidence he said so
to Polly.

“Nay, Jack; live for him; do not
wish to die for him,” pleaded Polly.
“That will be the best.”

Jack was not so sure. His imagination
had been fired long before by the
story, told to him by Ivor, of a certain
heroic Guardsman—a man who, in the
West Indies, had flung himself between
Moore and the musket aimed at him,
thus giving his life for that of his officer.
But it was not needful for Jack to explain
how much he longed to do the
same. He merely smiled, and remarked,
“In all England there is no other his
equal. Of that I am convinced.”

To the great disappointment of Jack,
the General had been quickly summoned
away on important duty; and intercourse
between them came for the moment to a
close. The young subaltern, however,
found it possible to pursue acquaintance
with the General’s mother and sister;
and gentle old Mrs. Moore had a great
deal to say about this most idolised son
of hers, where she found a sympathetic
listener. Few listeners could have been
more sympathetic than Jack Keene, who
never grew tired of the subject. Mrs.
Moore had other sons beside the General,
but it was noticed that when she referred
to him he was always distinctively, “My
son!” not “My eldest son,” or “My
son John!” This did not touch the
close friendship between Moore and his
brothers, one of whom was a Naval
officer of note.

Through those summer weeks of 1803
Polly was longing for Captain Ivor to
come home. It was sad to think of him
as a prisoner, forced to stay against his
will in a foreign land. She knew, too,
that any day Jack might be ordered off
elsewhere; and one day, as she had
feared, he rushed in, to tell them that he
would be leaving immediately for Shornecliffe
Camp, there to await Napoleon’s
first attempt to land on English soil.

The news was less a matter of congratulation
for them than for Jack himself.
At Sandgate he would be in the
very forefront of the peril which threatened
the land. Mrs. Fairbank had to
rub her large horn spectacles more than
once; and she was disposed to blame
Jack for not referring the question to
herself, before he accepted the offer of
an exchange. Molly looked curiously
at Jack, and asked—

“Are you glad to say good-bye to us
all?”

“Not glad to say good-bye, but glad
to be going. People must say good-bye
sometimes, Molly. And I shall be
fighting under one of the best and
bravest men that ever lived. Would not
you like that?”

Molly shook her head. “If Roy was
here, I should never want to go away,”
she said decisively. “But if you care
more for General Moore than for us——”

“Pooh! What nonsense!” retorted
Jack; and Polly exclaimed—

“Molly, how can you say such a
thing? Jack wants to be one of the
first to fight in defence of England. Do
you not see? It is but right. He would
be no true soldier, otherwise. If Captain
Ivor were but free to do the same! Yes,
indeed, I do wish it! It is terrible for
him to be cut off from action—but not for
Jack to wish to be foremost. O fie, Molly
dear, you must have more sense.”

“Polly always understands,” murmured
Jack; and Molly would have
given much at the moment to have had
those words spoken of herself. She
hung her head and was mute. Tender-hearted
Polly could never endure to see
anyone sad or abashed, and her hand
stole into Molly’s as she went on—

“But Molly will understand now.
Jack, she and I have this morning learnt
by heart a verse of Mr. Walter Scott’s,
which ’tis said he has but just writ.
Molly, you shall say the words to Jack,
for they are brave words. Hold up your
head, dear, and speak out, as an Englishwoman
should.”

Molly obeyed, not sorry for the
chance to redeem her previous error,
and to re-establish herself in Jack’s
good graces, for which she cared more
than she quite allowed to herself. She
held her head well up, therefore, and
spouted with considerable effect—

{119}

“Come, that is good. That was well
said. You understand too, I see,
Molly. I e’en thought it must be so—you,
a British Colonel’s daughter! And
you’ll both bid me God-speed. And
when Napoleon is beaten, and old
England is again in safety, I’ll come
back, and be grannie’s home-boy once
more. Eh, ma’am?”

“Yes, yes, Jack; yes, my dear boy.”
Mrs. Fairbank did her best to control
her voice, and as usual when agitated
she knitted at railway speed. “You
will do your duty, Jack. I am sure of
it. And General Moore will be a good
friend to you.”

“But now I have somewhat else to
show you all, in return for Molly’s
poetry,” observed Jack in cheerful
tones, anxious to prevent a breakdown
on the part of his grandmother. “What
do you think it may be, Molly? Guess,
all of you. Must I tell? Well, ’tis
nought less than two letters about our
Hero, which his mother let me see.
They are writ some four years since to
the General’s father, Dr. Moore; the
one from Sir Ralph Abercrombie, and
the other from Sir Robert Brownrigg,
who was secretary to the Duke of York,
and Adjutant-General. Nay, these are
not the originals, for I can assure you
‘twould be no easy task to get them out
of Mrs. Moore’s keeping. But she
permitted me to take copies of the
same, and they are here. The engagement
spoken of was that on the second
of October, in 1799, between the English
and the French in Holland; and General
Moore was wounded early in the action,
but nevertheless he fought on until
wounded a second time. These, to his
father afterwards, both make mention
of his wounds. Shall I read?”

“Pray do so, my dear Jack,” said
Mrs. Fairbank; and, “O do, Jack!”
entreated Polly.

Jack obeyed.

“‘Headquarters. Zuper Sluys, Holland.
October 4th, 1799.

“‘My dear Sir—I cannot suffer the
accompanying letter from my dear
friend, your son, to go to you, without
assuring you that the wounds he has received
are attended with no danger.
Mr. Knight, the Duke’s surgeon, attends
him, and gives hope of his speedy
recovery. The wound in his thigh he
received early in the action, but it did
not prevent him from continuing his
exertions for two hours afterwards,
when a wound in his face obliged him
to leave the field. It is through the
cheek, and I understand has not
wounded the bone. His conduct in the
serious action of the 2nd, which perhaps
may be ranked among the most
obstinately contested battles that have
been fought this war, has raised him, if
possible, higher than he before stood in
the estimation of this army. Everyone
admires and loves him; and you may
boast of having as your son the most
amiable man and the best General in
the British service; this is a universal
opinion, and does not proceed from my
partiality alone.

“‘God bless you, my dear Sir. I hope
in a few days to have it in my power to
tell you that considerable progress is
made in Moore’s cure; and believe me,
with great respect and regard,

“‘Very faithfully yours,
“‘Robert Brownrigg.'”

Jack paused, and repeated thoughtfully,
“‘Everyone admires and loves
him—the most amiable man and the
best General in the British service!’
Yet by nature his is no easy temper,
ma’am; of that his mother could assure
me. She said that her son—ever the
best of sons to her—gave her in his
boyhood many an anxious hour, by
reason of his hot and impulsive moods,
and his readiness to fight. But listen
now to the letter of Sir Ralph himself—

“‘Egmond-on-the-Sea, Oct. 4th.

“‘My dear Sir—Although your son
is wounded in the thigh and in the
cheek, I can assure you he is in no sort
of danger; both wounds are slight. The
public and myself are the greatest sufferers
by these accidents.

“‘The General is a hero, with more
sense than many others of that description,
in that he is an ornament to his
family and to his profession. I hope
Mrs. Moore and his sister will be easy
on his account, and that you are proud
of such a son.

“‘Yours,
“‘Ralph Abercrombie.'”

This time it was Mrs. Fairbank who
quoted words from the letter. She said,
“‘With more sense than many others
of that description.’ Pray, my dear
Jack, what think you Sir Ralph might
have meant to signify?”

“Why, ma’am, I take it thus. Many
a man is brave and fights well, who in
fact is nought else beside. Whereas
General Moore is a man of extraordinary
genius and great nobility of character,
one who shines in whatever society
he may find himself, and above all,
who is ardently beloved by everybody
that knows him. What else might Sir
Ralph signify?”

“To my mind, ’tis a somewhat droll
mode of expressing himself, though,
none the less, ’tis clear what he thinks
of the General. Were he my son, I
could fain be proud of him. Not that
pride is so suitable a feeling as thankfulness.”

“In truth, ma’am, his mother is
proud and thankful too. She thinks that
all the whole world holds no man equal
to her brave son. And I—I am disposed
to think the same.”

Then Jack carefully folded his precious
letters, stowed them in his pocket, and
stood up. “Come, Polly and Molly,”
he said. “There is time yet for a turn
before dinner? We will go to the Pump
Room.”

Molly looked anxiously for leave, and
flew to obey. A walk with Jack was
always delightful. They entered the
old Pump Room together, finding there,
as usual, a large assemblage of gaily-dressed
ladies and fashionably-attired
gentlemen, some walking about, some
lounging on seats. The ladies wore
short-waisted gowns, chiefly of white or
figured muslin, with short cloaks or
mantles of bright hues, or short spencers
of silk or coloured crape, and great
feathered hats or bonnets, and plenty
of large gilt and silver buttons; and
many of the gentlemen were in tights
and long flowered waistcoats and silver-buckled
shoes, while others wore blue
coats with brass buttons. Pig-tails too
might still be seen, though soon to be
discontinued.

Jack gazed about for several minutes
in vain; and then they came face to face
with Mrs. Bryce, Admiral Peirce being
her attendant cavalier.

Both were immensely interested to
hear Jack’s news—how, in less than a
week, he would be off to Sandgate,
there to be under the command of
General Moore; and there also, as Jack
hoped, to be called upon to bear the
first brunt of Napoleon’s invasion.

“Not you, my dear sir,” objected the
Admiral, with beaming face. “Before
ever Boney reaches English shores, depend
on’t, he’ll render a good account
of himself to our ships of war. Trust
gallant Nelson for that, since he’s on
the look-out. I doubt me, Boney won’t
contrive to give our Navy the slip.”

Jack had no wish to get into a discussion.
“Well, sir, well, our Navy and
our Army too will both of them do their
best,” he said. “But he would be a
foolish fellow who should trust all his
eggs in one basket, as the saying is.
And should by any chance the slip be
given, and Boney arrive on our shores,
why, then the Army will make him
render his account, fairly! Has anybody
seen Mrs. Moore, ma’am?” and
he turned to Mrs. Bryce.

Mrs. Bryce had not the least intention
of parting hastily with her second
cavalier. To walk about the Pump
Room, in view of all her Bath acquaintances,
with a gentleman on either side,
was highly desirable. So Polly and
Molly were adroitly dropped behind, and
she set off.

“If not Mrs. Moore, Jack, I have
seen someone else of passable interest,”
she remarked. “Her name is Miss Jane
Austen—a well-bred young woman, I do
assure you. And only to think—the
good lady has writ a book, which
may by chance be one day printed.
‘Twas told my husband in strictest confidence;
and if I had not wormed it out
of him——Ah, ha! Jack—wait till you
get you a wife, and then you’ll not smile
on that side of your mouth.”

“I have found my bride, ma’am.
‘Tis my profession,” declared Jack.

“Nay, nay, nothing of the sort, my
dear sir. Wait a while, and you’ll find
your affections engaged in another
fashion. Can you be so hard-hearted
as to hold out even now, in the face of
all this youth and elegance? See—there
goes a bewitching young woman,
though ’tis true she wears a shocking
unbecoming gown! But she’s a prodigious
favourite, and she can dance as
tolerable a minuet as any young female
present. Then there’s young Susie,
yonder—something of a hoyden, may
be, and calls herself ‘a dasher,’ but uncommonly
pretty, and prodigiously good
spirits. And if you’d sooner have a
blue-stocking—why, I’ve but to introduce
you to Miss Jane Austen herself.”

(To be continued.)

{120}

METHODS OF MOUNTING FOR GIRL CYCLISTS.

By Mrs. EGBERT A. NORTON.

Nothing else, I think, affords one such
a good opportunity of judging of a girl’s
general capabilities or style in riding as the
way in which she mounts her machine.

In this matter as in so many others a
“good start is most important.”

Having already mastered the principle
of steering, the mystery of the mount
is a matter of balance only.

There are several points which, if
borne in mind, will considerably help the
beginner in first attempts, namely—

1. To select a road inclining slightly
down-hill.

2. Stand on rather higher ground than
the bicycle.

3. Incline the front wheel slightly to
the right.

4. Be careful not to check the motion
of the machine by too much pressure on
the pedal after it passes its lowest point.

5. Do not catch the left pedal too
quickly, or apply pressure before it passes
the top centre.

There are five distinct methods of
mounting for skirted riders, two of which
are suitable for beginners only, the other
three for more advanced
riders.

I.

Imagine an individual
who has some
knowledge of riding,
but who is unable to
mount alone; refusing
all offers of assistance
she determines
to assert her independence.

FIG. 1.

Standing on the
left side of the machine
with the right
pedal just past its
highest point, she
steps across the
frame, and places her
right foot securely on
the pedal, the saddle
being so low that she
is able to take her
seat easily, the left
foot being still on the
ground. Then putting
as much pressure
as possible on
the right pedal
and pushing off
with the left foot,
she starts the
machine—not
perhaps without
a few failures
first, but nil
desperandum.
Independence
must cost something,
and if she
will consider, I
have no doubt
her failure can
be traced to one
or the other of
the above mentioned
causes.
But how tiring
the ride will be,
and how awkward
the whole
position, the
knees moving
most ungracefully high with each revolution
of the pedal—all defects caused by
the saddle being adjusted much too low.

II.

FIG. 2.

Now if she would only listen, I should
advise her to raise her saddle inches
higher until it is nearly on a level with
the turn of the hip, and, if still determined
to learn alone, wheel the machine to the
kerbstone or other eminence, to enable
her to seat herself in the saddle, and then
push off as before. Her appearance once
mounted is now greatly improved, and
when I tell her so, after enjoying a nice
little run with none of the previous
feeling of tiredness, she is quite ready to
listen to what further I have to say on
the subject. Seeing that it is quite impracticable
to always depend on the help
of the friendly kerbstone, we will try and
master mount

III.

FIG. 3.

Having already learnt the importance
of the height of saddle or length of reach
from pedal to saddle, first ascertain that
this is adjusted correctly. When sitting{121}
erect in the saddle with the leg straight
and pedal at its lowest point, the heel of
the foot should be able to rest on the centre
bar of the pedal with ease. The saddle is
now so high that it is impossible to sit on
it with the foot still on the ground, so for
this reason “The Spring Mount” is the
term generally given to this method of
mounting. Taking a fold of the skirt in the
right hand, pass the right foot over the frame
and place it securely on the right pedal when
it is about half-way between its highest and
lowest point, the left foot resting on the ground
close to the machine and well before the left
pedal, stand quite central with the body perfectly
free from the saddle, then by standing on
the right pedal the machine moves forward, the
body is raised and drops gently back on to the
saddle, the other pedal rises under the left foot
ready for the next thrust forward, and the
deed is done, easily, steadily, gracefully, but
from the first there must be no hurry, no quick
jump for the saddle, or scramble for the left
pedal, but first the weight on the right pedal,
then the saddle moves forward under one, and
the downward thrust with the left foot
preserves the balance. This is the mount most
generally adopted, with more or less degree of
efficiency, and on the whole is really difficult
to improve upon; the only thing that can be
said against it is, that the first position
standing with the leg across the frame and the
foot raised is not particularly graceful.
Personally I much prefer mount

IV.

The near-side mount. It is more uncommon
and infinitely prettier in my opinion when well
done, than either of the others, but it requires
a little practice to get the skirt to fall well.
Stand close to the machine with the left foot
on the left pedal, then firmly holding the
handles throw all the weight on the pedal, at
the same time springing forwards and sideways
to the saddle. In first attempts all the fulness
of the skirt invariably falls to the left; this can
be remedied as the machine is in motion by a
little forward movement throwing the weight
on pedals and handle-bar, then as the skirt
falls straight down, move centrally backwards
to the saddle again. Be in no hurry to reach
the saddle and the skirt will adjust itself.
Move well forward with the downward
movement of the pedal, throw the weight on
the handles as it rises, the peak of the saddle
will then divide the skirt as you take your
seat and give your first thrust to the right
pedal.

FIG. 4.

This is worth a little practice, as correctly
done the skirt needs no arrangement with the
hand, and the mount is certainly quicker and
more graceful than any other.

V.

Is somewhat similar, but is done while the
machine is in motion, and is therefore pre-eminently
the mount for busy thoroughfares.

Walking on the left of the machine, give a
quick hop with the right foot, placing the left
on the pedal when in any position, then a
sudden pull on the handles, will lift one
forward on to the saddle without checking the
motion of the machine.

FIG. 5.

This is a most useful mount for traffic and
for all occasions where a quick mount is
necessary. It will probably require considerable
practice to accomplish successfully, but
the feeling of complete mastery it gives one
over the machine is worth some little trouble
to acquire, and when the feat is accomplished,
I think you will look back on the learning
of a new method of mounting as another
pleasure added to the many enjoyments of
cycling.

FILED—FOR REFERENCE!

He had let love and life slip past him, and
now he lay a-dying, and love and life lay
behind him for evermore.

Lying in his narrow bed, in the room which
in all his days of grinding work, he had never
troubled to make homelike or comfortable,
his thoughts wandered back over the years
with wearisome persistency. He had been a
successful man. The name of John Saunders
was known far and wide as the name of the
shrewdest solicitor of his day; hard-headed,
keen, practical—feared by friend and enemy
alike; loved, men said, by none.

They called him “old Dryasdust” in his
own office; they declared that his heart had
withered away in the atmosphere of work and
in the squirrel round of business in which he
had lived. Some, indeed, went so far as to
say that Nature had never provided him with
a heart at all.

And now he lay dying—a lonely man, in
his lonely chambers, looking wearily back
across his life.

His grey head moved uneasily upon the
pillows, arranged by his valet into clumsy
discomfort; his eyes glanced restlessly round
the room, turning almost impatiently from its
severe dreariness, towards the window, through
which he could just see a glimpse of a tree-top
in the square garden.

He was tired, most dreadfully tired. It
was a weariness to think, yet the busy brain,
that in all his busy life had never learnt to
rest, refused now to be stilled. Thick and
fast there crowded before his mind memories
of long forgotten cases, recollections of clients
long since dead, worrying details of business,
that had long ago been settled and done
with.

His head moved again impatiently. He
turned to look for the lemonade which should
have been on the table by his bedside. An
angry exclamation broke from him. The table
with the lemonade was placed exactly where
he could not reach it; what was the use of all
his years of labour, of all the wealth he had
acquired, if now he could not even obtain the
common necessaries of life?

The electric bell beside the bed was close to
his hand. He rang it furiously, and his valet
arrived, panting and breathless.

“Why can’t you put the things within my
reach?” the old man asked irritably. “Am
I to die of thirst, because you are careless?”

The servant moved the table nearer to his
master, handed him the tumbler, and, in his
own mind, considered the pros and cons of
giving warning on the spot. A dim hope of
a possible legacy gave the cons the victory,
but the man did not remain in the sick-room
a moment longer than was absolutely necessary.
As he confided to the wife of the
porter, in the basement, “Old Saunders was
getting that unbearable in his illness, it was
hard to stand him.”

The sick man lay quiet after the servant had
left him, his eyes fixed upon the waving green
of the tree-tops in the square. A faint
curiosity as to what tree it was that he could
see, ran through his mind. Was it an elm,
he wondered?

There had been elms in the meadow behind
the old Rectory garden where he had played
as a boy—great elms in which the rooks had
built year after year. It was a long, long
time since he had heard the soft cawing of
the rooks. He had a faint remembrance of
picking daisies and buttercups in those fields
under the elms, whilst the rooks cawed
soothingly overhead.

A little smile flickered across his hard old
face. Perhaps the tree in the square was not
an elm after all. It might be a lime. There
had been limes in another garden, and the
bees had hummed amongst their blossoms on
that summer’s day when—when—— Why,
how many years ago was it? Forty? Fifty?
Could it be forty years? He had been a
young fellow then, at the beginning of his
career, and life had been less crammed with
work and business.

He moved restlessly.

Yes! He had been able then to notice the
sweetness of a girl’s eyes, to heed the music of
a girl’s voice.

Pshaw! It was utter folly to let his
thoughts wander to so remote a past. What
was the good of remembrance?

And yet—— If he had not been so
wrapped up in his work, to the exclusion of
everything human and loveable, he might
now have had other hands than those of
Richard his valet to tend him. A woman
would have made his room look less like a
prison cell. A woman would not have put
his things just out of his reach. She would
not have been in such a hurry to leave him to
himself!

{122}

Again he stirred irritably. He hated the
sight of those rustling leaves now, even though
they held some strange fascination for him;
but they reminded him too strongly of youth,
and love, and happiness. And he had
wilfully put them all away from him with his
own hands. Ah! fool and blind that he had
been! And now—now, he was old and
dying—and alone!

The door opened softly. Richard stepped
quietly in, and seeing that his master’s eyes
were shut, laid a note upon the table, and as
quietly departed again.

“Bother the man!” old John Saunders
muttered. “He seems afraid to stay with me.
A letter for me? Strange—very strange.”
And he stretched out his hand and took up
the envelope.

A faint sense of something familiar stirred
within him as he glanced at the handwriting—a
something which he could not quite recall
out of the past. He opened the envelope and
drew out the letter almost rapidly. It was
very short.

“Dear John,—I wonder if I may still call
you that, after all the years that have gone
by? I would not have troubled you with a
letter now, but that I heard, only to-day, that
you are ill and alone. And I thought I must
write to you for auld lang syne, and ask you
whether you would let me come and see you.
We are both old people now, John; but let
me come to see you, for old sake’s sake.

“Yours, as ever,
“Joan Bentley.

“P.S.—Did you never get the letter I wrote
you more than thirty years ago?”

The letter dropped from his hands. The
keen grey eyes grew dim.

It was strange that this should have come
just when the remembrance had returned to
him of the lime-trees in her father’s garden,
of the bees that had hummed among them
forty years ago.

His dreary room faded from his sight. It
was as if the walls melted into space, and he
could feel the warm air of July blowing round
him, smell the fragrance of the lime-flowers,
step upon the softness of the smooth turf
beneath his feet.

He was young again! A man with his life
before him, and love within his grasp.

He could see the tall hollyhocks by the
gate—the hollyhocks she loved. There were
tall white lilies there as well. The sweetness
of them filled the air, mingling with the scent
of roses that clambered up the old red wall.
The wood-pigeons cooed gently in the copse
across the road, and the rooks cawed as they
swung upon the boughs of the lime-trees.

And Joan’s clear eyes looked into his;
Joan’s voice was in his ear.

“Oh, John, will it be long?” he heard her
say. And his own voice, young and strong,
replied:

“No, no, my dear—not long. How could
I let it be long, when I shall be working for
you? When I have made enough money I
shall come and claim you. Your father is
quite right not to allow a formal engagement
till then. But we understand each other,
Joan—my Joan!”

Strange! How the years had rolled away,
and the world seemed full again, as it had
seemed then, of Joan—Joan, and only Joan!

The vision slowly faded; the walls of the
dull room returned to their places, the noise
of the irritating clock on the mantelpiece
replaced the soft voices of the wood-pigeons;
he was an old man again, an old man who
was alone—and dying!

But Joan had not forgotten. Joan’s letter
lay upon his bed. She had remembered for
forty years; whilst he had forgotten everything,
except the work to which he was a slave.

He picked up the letter once more and read
the postscript first—

“Did you never get the letter I wrote you
more than thirty years ago?”

Had he received it? What then had
happened to it? A puzzled frown puckered
his brow, as he struggled to recall the long
past incident.

“I remember now,” he exclaimed suddenly
and aloud—”I remember! She wrote to me
when I was in the midst of a press of work!
Her letter was filed for reference—my Joan’s
letter filed for reference!”

His bell pealed through the house, and
when Richard appeared, he found his master
partially raised in bed, excited and breathless.

“Send to the office at once,” he said;
“tell them to send me up the files of the year
—— immediately! And who brought this
letter?”

“A lady called with it, sir. She said she
would return for the answer in about an hour.”

“Did she leave her name?”

“Yes, sir—Miss Joan Bentley, she wished
me to say.”

“When she comes back, bring her up to
me”—and the old man sank exhausted on his
pillows, his eyes closed, but a faint smile
upon his lips.

It was less than an hour later when a little
tap on the door aroused him.

“Come in,” he said, not opening his eyes,
till he heard the soft rustle of a dress beside
his bed. Then he looked up, but it was the
woman who spoke first.

“Why, John,” she said brokenly—”why,
John!” And all at once the shyness that
had assailed her as she climbed the stairs
slipped from her; the gulf of years that had
seemed impassable became as nothing, and
she dropped on her knees by the bed, looking
into the tired old face upon the pillow, with
wistful yearning eyes.

He put out his hand almost timidly, and
laid it upon hers.

“How sweet the limes smelt, dear,” he
whispered, “and the bees hummed all the
time among the flowers.”

She thought for a moment that he was
wandering, but he went on quietly.

“It was your letter that brought it all
back. You have been faithful—all these years—and
I—was a fool!”

Her clasp on his hand tightened.

“Did you forget,” she asked—”did you
forget? Was there someone else?”

The smile flickered out again upon his face.

“No, no, my dear, there was no someone
else. There was nothing but my work—it
wrapped me round, it has made me a successful
man—and it—has spoilt my life! They call
me Dryasdust, you know,” his weak voice
went on. “Somebody told me once that I
had no heart.”

“Ah, but it wasn’t true,” she said.

“Wasn’t it? I don’t know; I was a fool,
and blind—I—but now it is too late, my
Joan.”

The little caressing words came strangely
from the thin lips, but the hard, old face had
softened in some unaccountable fashion.

“Is it ever too late for love?” she asked,
and her hand touched gently the thin grey hair
upon his temples.

“I have wasted my life, and yours,” he
answered drearily. “We might have been
together all these years—all the long, long
years—with our children round us—and now—it
is nearly over. I am old, and dying, and
you——”

“I am old too, my dear; perhaps it will
not be long before—before——” her voice
faltered and broke.

“Are you old?” he said; “your eyes are
just what I remember, and your voice—it
seems to me you are just the same as when
I said good-bye to you under the lime-trees.”

“Did you never get my other letter, John?”
she said, after a moment or two. “I sent it
to you ten years after you left me, because—because
the silence was unbearable. Did you
get it?”

“Yes, I got it; and I was busy—very, very
busy. It brought me the scent of the garden,
and the memory of you; and then—then I set
it aside for a more convenient season, and it—ah,
Joan!—it was filed for reference. Forgive
me—Joan!”

Her caressing hand stroked his hair more
tenderly, though her eyes filled with tears.

“We shall find it here,” he said a little
later, when Richard had deposited a great
pile of letters beside him. “I was always
methodical in my work—the letter will be
here. Will you look for it?” His voice was
so much weaker, that she looked at him with
startled eyes, and the valet, returning, held a
glass of cordial to his lips.

The two were alone again after that.
Amongst the pile of old and faded letters the
woman had found her own—the tiny girlish
scrap, written impetuously, in a girl’s impatient
misery of long ago.

“Send me just one word,” it ran—”only
one word, to tell me that you have not
forgotten.”

A little bitterness surged up within her as
she read again the scrap of faded writing, the
old agony out of the past stirred once more at
her heart.

“If I might make a daisy-chain for you,
Joan—my Joan! How the rooks caw to-night!
Do you hear them, dear?” The
weak voice spoke dreamily; the bitterness
in her heart died away. She laid her
face softly against the tired face on the
pillow.

“My poor boy,” she whispered—”my poor
boy!”

“And the limes—are so sweet,” he rambled
on. “I think—it is—the bees—that hum so
loudly in my ears. Give me a rose, sweetheart.
It—is getting dark—so dark for you—out
here in the garden. You must go in.
The wood-pigeons are quiet now, only how
white the lilies shine—against the darkness;
and the bees—the bees are humming still,
and the—limes—are—so sweet.”

For a moment the tired voice stopped, then
began again:

“Never a someone else, my Joan, only you.
And the years slipped, and I forgot how fast
they went; we will have hollyhocks—in our
own garden, dear.”

The doctor, summoned by Richard, had
entered the room, but he shook his head sadly,
and moved towards the door.

“There is nothing to be done,” he whispered
to the servant, “we had better leave them
alone. There is nothing we can do.”

The room was very still, save only for the
laboured breathing of the dying man. The
woman’s hand still softly stroked his hair; he
lay so quietly that she thought he had passed
out of consciousness into that strange borderland
which is Death’s ante-chamber.

The setting sunlight streamed into the
room and across his face; the twittering of the
birds in the square, the soft rustling of the
wind in the tree-tops, were borne in at the half-open
window.

Suddenly the dying man opened his eyes in
full consciousness.

“I knew you would not leave me,” he
whispered. “I—said—a woman would stay—with
me, it was—you I meant. I—have
wasted my life—God forgive me! You have
forgiven, my dear—a faithful woman—has
forgiven—I think—God—will forgive—too—I—am
taking”—his voice almost failed—”my
wasted life—with me—to be—to be”—a
little whimsical smile stole over his face—”to
be—filed—for—reference.”

L. G. Moberly.

{123}

OUR LILY GARDEN.

PRACTICAL AIDS TO THE CULTURE OF LILIES.

By CHARLES PETERS.

Lilium
Speciosum.

For the last three months cut blossoms of
Lilium Speciosum have decorated our table in
the centre of London, and have afforded our
friends and us real delight, creating subject
for discussion at the dinner-table such as we
have never known in connection with any other
cut flowers.

Perhaps this has arisen from the fact that
the floral decorations consisted of flowers of
one botanical group only, making a truly
consistent nosegay, and creating from its very
uniqueness fit subject for special questionings
and interest. Of course in the group there
were several colours. The Speciosum Album
and the varieties of white, the Speciosum
Roseum with its varieties of lovely rose-colour,
and finally the deep and rich Speciosum
Melpomone. Nothing in the way of table
decoration could be more æsthetic and
cheerful-looking than an arrangement of such
blossoms, in which we find real white
mingled with a lovely purple red, and with
nothing but the right gradations of colour
between.

In the days of old it was the custom to
group flowers of every conceivable colour—reds,
blues, pinks, yellow, and others; but
now we know better, two colours or three
being the most effective scheme for table or
bouquet effect, and in all our experience we
have never found any general appearance more
pleasing than that of our group of Lilium
Speciosum.

One of the greatest testimonies to the value
of these flowers is that the buds will develop
and open into blossoms of their natural size
while in water in a close room of a London
square, and another reason for their value is
that they last two or three weeks if attended
to about every other day, that is, longer than
any other cut flower of our cultivation.

A month ago we took up to town a bunch
of Lilium Speciosum from our little country
garden to garnish the dinner-table of a well-known
doctor on the day of his golden wedding.
There were, we were told, many other
groups of flowers sent by friends for such an
interesting occasion, but although many were
from hot-houses, and some were valuable
orchids, the group of Lilium Speciosum, so
easy and so inexpensive to rear, had the place
of honour, was admired the most, and lasted
the longest number of days.

But we must not forget to mention an incident
which happened to us while carrying
this particular bunch through a City street
from the railway terminus. We became
conscious of a footstep close behind us,
and felt that someone was keeping close
to the flowers as they dangled at our side;
but walking on unheeding, we presently relaxed
our speed, when the follower made a semi-circle
round the bouquet, watching it greedily until
he faced it and us; then he turned and hastily
disappeared, but not before we recognised in
the London-dressed man a young and handsome
Japanese! The flowers came from his
distant land, and maybe reminded him of a
home, a mother, or a sweetheart, and all so
far away. We have ever since been ashamed
of ourselves for not offering him one of the
blossoms for a buttonhole.

The discouraging news given at the end of
our first chapter led us to think: “Lilies
will not grow in pots, but some kinds do fairly
well in the open.” “Lilies though suitable for
pot plants are unsatisfactory for the flower-bed.”
Surely it is impossible to reconcile
these two statements. Either one or both
opinions must be incorrect. We must settle
this point, and we can easily do so by growing
lilies, both in pots and in the open ground.

We have before told you that we have
ourselves grown eighty-seven distinct kinds of
lilies. We have grown them in pots and in
the open. We have obtained great satisfaction
from both.

Few flowers are easier to grow in pots than
lilies, and as they form probably the finest of
all pot plants the culture of lilies in pots deserves
more attention than it has heretofore received.

There are two ways of potting lilies, each
of which has its advantages and uses, so we
will describe both methods.

The first method is the simplest. Take a
large flower-pot. No lily should be grown in
a pot less than six inches in diameter. Of
course the pot must vary in size with the size
of the plant it has to contain. Lilium Concolor
and Elegans grow well in six-inch pots; L.
Auratum or Speciosum should have an eight or
ten-inch pot, while L. Giganteum will require
the largest sized pot procurable or a small tub.

One bulb only should be placed in each pot
if absolutely perfect plants are desired; but
very pretty effects can be obtained by growing
two or three bulbs in a large pot or tub.

See that the pot is perfectly clean. Place
about an inch depth of crocks, stones, etc.,
at the bottom, then put three inches of the
prepared soil in the pot, and over this place a
thin layer of peat, mixed with sharp sand and
pieces of charcoal. Take the bulb, examine
it, remove diseased scales and wash it in lime
water, as you did in the case of the lilies you
planted out last month. Dust it over with
powdered charcoal and place it in the pot
surrounded with sharp sand and peat. Then
fill up the pot with the prepared soil.[1]

In potting lilies, deep potting is to be aimed
at. No bulb should be placed at a less depth
than four inches below the surface. Large
bulbs require to be six, eight, or even twelve
inches below the surface of the soil. The
reason for this deep potting is that the flower
stems send out roots above the bulb, and it is
essential that these roots should be below the
surface of the soil.

The second method of potting bulbs is
similar in all respects to the above, except that
the pots are not filled up at once. When you
have placed the bulb in the pot you add a
little soil, but leave the top of the bulb
exposed. When growth commences, which
will be shown by the appearance of roots and
flower stems, you fill up the pots with the
prepared soil.

Established bulbs and bulbs of the hardier
lilies are best potted by the former method,
but for bulbs received from abroad,
especially those of the more tender species,
the second method of potting is to be
preferred.

Now that you have potted your lilies the
question arises, Where shall you keep the
pots? For the majority of lilies the best
place is either a garden or a balcony. Lilies
are too tall growing for window plants and it
is totally unnecessary to coddle them up
in rooms.

There are some lilies which will not come
to perfection out of doors in our uncertain
climate, except in very favourable seasons.
These kinds, many of them among the finest
of the tribe, will, however, grow admirably in a
conservatory or room.

If lilies are grown in rooms, they should be
put out of doors every fine day, as they require
sun to mature their flowers.

The lilies which are not sufficiently hardy
for the open air are, Wallichianum, Harrisii,
Philippinense, Neilgherrense, Formosanum,
Nepaulense, and Catesbaei. (With the exception
of Neilgherrense, all these lilies will
grow well out of doors in our southern counties
in exceptionally fine seasons.)

November is over; our lilies are planted.
How are we to treat them before the flowering
season arrives?

Lilies out in the ground require but very
little attention until the shoots appear. In
severe winters Lilium Giganteum, Cordifolium,
Speciosum, and one or two others,
should be protected by bracken or other
litter; but lilies stand the frost remarkably
well, and rarely suffer from this cause before
the flower shoots appear. Lilies grow all
through the winter, forming roots. Lilium
Candidum puts up an autumn growth of
leaves, and occasionally other lilies do the
same. When the shoots appear more attention
is required. Those kinds which send up
shoots in January, February, or March may
need slight protection, such as a hand light,
from frosts. As the season advances you
must guard against two great enemies—slugs
and drought. A dry April, not at all an
unusual occurrence, will often do great
damage in the lily garden.

During growth lilies require a very large
amount of water. In a dry season it is a good
plan to water them every day. An insufficient
supply of water is one of the commonest
causes of failure with lilies.

With lilies in pots only an occasional
watering will be required before the shoots
appear. As soon as this stage is reached
they should be watered daily until the flower-buds
appear.

{124}

If only we could guard against slugs!
These are the greatest of all pests to the lily
grower, and though there are many infallible
preventives against slugs used and sold, not
one of them answers its purpose. Soot is
usually regarded as the best agent to use to
prevent slugs from eating the tender spring
growth of lilies. The soot is thickly dusted
round the plant, and as slugs very much
dislike any powder which adheres to their
slimy bodies, they will not venture across the
sooty track. No, they will not cross the soot—at
least not until the soot gets damp, as it
does after the first heavy dew or shower of
rain. As soon as the soot gets wet it is no
longer a deterrent to slugs. Lime is also
recommended to be used in the same way as
soot; but it, too, fails to serve its purpose
when it has once become damp.

Then have we no way to keep down the
ravages of slugs? Yes!—we have one way,
a very excellent way, but a most tedious and
unpleasant one to carry out. The only
effective way of thwarting the ravages of the
slugs is to pick off by hand the culprits, while
they are gorging themselves in the evening.

The stem and bulb of L. Auratum showing the relative quantity of roots given off
above and below the bulb.

(From a photograph. Reduced to a quarter of original diameter.)

Go out as soon as the sun is set with a
lanthorn and a gallipot filled with strong
brine, and visit each lily-shoot in succession.
You will see the slugs congregated on your
pets by hundreds, from the little tiny fellow
of one-quarter of an inch long, who is eating
your best lilies in order that he may grow into
a larger and more capacious enemy, to the
slimy monster of six inches long, who is
attempting to fill his vast maw with lilies of
great value. All are there, all devouring
your best specimens, as though you were
their most hated enemy—as indeed you will
be if you want your garden to look gay.
These slugs are not, as one would suppose,
dirty feeders, but they are gourmands of the
deepest dye. They are not content with the
outside or decaying leaves—not they—they
want the very tenderest tops of the young
shoots! When the lilies are about a foot
high, they will not eat the leaves at the base,
they must needs crawl up the stem to feed on
the tender growing top of the plants. But
now you can have your revenge. Pick off
with your fingers[2] every slug you can see, be
he little or great, and put him into the brine.
The brine kills and dissolves them in a very
short time.

Some gardeners place cabbage-leaves, etc.,
on the ground as “traps” for slugs, but
alas! the tender lily shoot is far more tickling
to the palate of a slug than any cabbage-leaf!

The damage which slugs can do to lilies is
incredible, and unless these pests are summarily
dealt with, every lily in a garden may
be decapitated ere the summer commences.
One reason why lilies in pots do so well is that
it is not so easy for the slug to get at them.

The lilies are singularly exempt from the
ravages of animals other than slugs. The
aphides or green flies are, however, often very
troublesome. We will refer to this pest when
talking of the treatment of lilies just before
and during the flowering stage.

The leaves of some lilies are sometimes
eaten by the larvæ of the Lily Beetle (Crioceris
Merdigera), but as this insect is a great
rarity in England, we will not describe it.

There is neither animal nor plant which is
exempt from disease, and the lily has inherited
this universal tendency to disease.
There are not many common diseases of
lilies, and very few even of these do much
damage to more than one or two kinds.
But some of these diseases give great trouble
to the lily grower, and often tax his patience
to the utmost.

Some lilies are very prone to a form of
mildew which, beginning as a minute spot of
discolouration on one leaf, eventually destroys
the whole of the foliage and flower-buds, and
turns a beautiful, well-grown, apparently
healthy lily into a brown slimy stick.

This disease usually begins to show itself
about the middle of May. A small grayish
transparent spot appears on one leaf, and in
about a month it has spread and completely
destroyed the plant. Not all lilies suffer
from this disease, and of those which are
liable to be attacked, not all suffer to the
same extent. Of all lilies, Lilium Candidum
is the most frequently attacked, and in this
lily the disease usually destroys the deciduous
portion of the plant altogether. The other
members of the Eulirion group of lilies: L.
Brownii, Wallichianum, Washingtonianum,
etc., are also frequently attacked, but are
rarely much injured by it. It also occurs on
L. Speciosum, L. Superbum, L. Canadense,
and, indeed, most kinds of lily; but in these
it rarely attacks the flower-head and does
not, in our experience, do much harm. We
have never seen the disease in L. Auratum,
L. Tigrinum, or L. Longiflorum.

Of the cause of this calamity we know but
little, but we rather think that it is often due
to growing lilies in soils which are too poor
or are exhausted. This, indeed, seems highly
probable in the case of Lilium Candidum,
the most frequently attacked of all lilies, for
it is grown by most people without any care
being given to it, and made to shift in a dry
sandy garden exposed to the full blaze of the
sun and scarcely ever watered. Where lilies
can have a good rich soil, with plenty of
water, the disease is very uncommon.

Once established, this disease is very difficult
to cure. Syringing with solution of sulphuretted
potash, or of sulphur boiled in lime{125}
water, will sometimes stop it, but too frequently the disease runs its
course to the bitter end. If you uproot the plant and examine its
bulb and root, you will find both quite healthy-looking.

There is another disease which, though not so devastating to the lily
garden as the last, is yet very exasperating and even more fatal in its
results.

Here is a beautiful strong growing Lilium Auratum, eight feet high,
just showing its flower buds, and showing a large series of beautiful
glossy leaves. Next week we notice that the lower two or three leaves
are yellow and withered. Every day more and more leaves die, and
eventually what was once a beautiful plant is now a naked stalk with
a girdle of fallen yellow leaves and buds around it. Dig up the plant
and examine its bulb and roots. The base of the bulb is gone! And
its place is taken by a mass of evil-smelling pulp. Swarms of little
thread-like worms will be seen twisting about all over the diseased
portion. It seems natural to think that these worms are the cause of
the evil, but we do not think that this is so. The worms are the
result, not the cause of the disease.

Lilium Hookeri.

Lilium Auratum and L. Speciosum are the two lilies which mainly
suffer from this disease, but other kinds are occasionally attacked.
When once manifest, no treatment has any effect. Take up the plant
as soon as you are certain that this disease has started, thoroughly
wash the bulb in water, and let it soak in lime water for three days.
Then thickly cover with powdered charcoal, and replant. If you do
this the bulb may recover, and send up a good spike of blossoms next
year. If you have bought good bulbs, and have planted them as we
directed last month, you need not fear that you will lose many plants
from this disease. Of one hundred and six lilies which we had in pots
this year we have only lost one from this cause.

Yet another disease to irritate and discourage the lily grower!
Look at this Lilium Humboldti. Its leaves are well developed, and it
already shows five flower-buds, but on closer observation you will see
that the stalks which support these buds are black and withered. Or
see this L. Martagon, which shows a head of twenty blossoms. Touch
these blossoms, or gently shake the stem, and five or six buds drop
off! These buds, you will observe, have a black rotten base!

Lilium Roseum.

This disease is caused by three or four causes. If the bulbs have
been planted in a poor or dry soil, or if the spot is unsuitable, you
will lose many of your lilies from this cause. Bulbs which have not
been properly ripened often disappoint you in this way. Again, if
you delay planting your bulbs till February or March, you must
expect to be treated in this way. But the most common cause of all
is the presence of mildew among the scales. You can guard against
this by paying attention to the methods described in our last number.

There are three other ways by which lilies may disappoint you.
They may either not come up at all, or they may come out but fail to
produce flowers, or they produce flowers which are damaged and are
deformed or discoloured.

The first of these untoward results is usually due to the bulb having
rotted in the ground. You can do nothing for this but bear the{126}
loss philosophically. You should remember,
however, that some lilies, especially Lilium
Longiflorum, often lie dormant for a year, but
come up the next year better than ever.

No lily will flower every year, and some
lilies require a year or two to get accustomed
to a new home. These will not flower the
first year. As a rule, when a bulb does
not send up a flowering shoot, the bulb itself
grows to a very large size.

It is most annoying to see a lily which
promises well belie itself and produce either a
deformed or a cankered flower. The cause of
the first is almost always green fly. To this
we will refer later. The cause of the latter is
either too poor soil, abuse of liquid manure, or
continuous rain just before the flowers open.

Lilies like the rain. If the weather were
arranged to please a lily, it would rain every
day from the time when the shoot appears till
the flowering period has arrived. But lilies
object to rain from the time that the buds
begin to change from green to white, or whatever
colour the bud will eventually become,
until the flower is fully opened. It is here
that lilies grown in pots have the pull over
those grown in the open ground, for if a spell
of rainy weather occurs at the wrong time,
the pots can be taken indoors or placed under
shelter, which is impossible in the case of
lilies grown in the open. But something can
be done for the lilies which are exposed to the
weather. The buds can either be wrapped
round with oiled paper, or else they can be
sheltered by an old umbrella tied to a stick.
By this latter means we have saved many
valuable lilies from disaster.

Lilies vary much in their powers of enduring
excessive rain at the flowering period. Lilium
Auratum, Candidum, and some others are
nearly always ruined when they happen to flower
in a spell of rainy weather. Lilium Giganteum,
Concolor, Tigrinum, and many others stand
rain at their flowering time with ease.

Do not be frightened at this chapter of
possible calamities. Although it comes so
early in our series, do not let it damp your
enthusiasm. These diseases have to be described,
and we have described them, but
though they are, unfortunately, far from uncommon,
if you grow lilies carefully you will
not lose many from any of these causes. We
have grown many hundred lilies, we have seen
all these adverse conditions, but they have
not damped our ardour. We lose a few lilies
every season, but then there are plenty which
give us full satisfaction; and lilies are such
gorgeous plants! If you were to lose half of
your stock, and the other half were satisfactory,
you would not complain at the result,
for the good half would delight you and your
friends as no other flowers would.

(To be continued.)

THREE GIRL-CHUMS, AND THEIR LIFE IN LONDON ROOMS.

By FLORENCE SOPHIE DAVSON.

CHAPTER II.

THE PLAN OF OPERATIONS.

As we have seen, the incomes of our three
friends amounted altogether to £270 a year.
In the winter months the accounts for the
rent of the rooms, coal, gas, candles, and
similar expenses came to £1 3s. 6d. each
week, as the following accounts set forth—

For about a month in the year the three
were away, Marion in her own home in
Nottinghamshire, and the Orlingburys staying
with different friends and relations. Ada
Orlingbury had only three weeks holiday in
the summer, and not quite a week at Christmas,
but was busy with her type-writing all
the rest of the year. Jane had a far longer
rest from her cookery classes than Ada from
her work, and Marion had longer holidays
than either. When all were away they paid
rent for their rooms just the same, but, of
course, had no other household expenses.
Marion was a very economical housekeeper
and understood how to keep down expenses
as low as possible, whilst still having everything
comfortable. We must admit that very
acceptable “helps” arrived sometimes from
their friends in the country. It might be a
large box of eggs, or a “hand” of pork, or
perhaps a bag of apples, but this did not
happen very often. Once a week they had a
dinner without meat, but this was no hardship
to any of the three, for all liked vegetables,
fruit and fish, and this arrangement made
things much easier for the housekeeper.

Marion had quite grasped the fact that the
best way to keep down the bills was to
economise with the butcher’s bill, for meat is
the most expensive item of all. They had
soup very often, as nice soup can be made for
so little. They indulged largely in savoury
dishes of macaroni and rice, some recipes for
which we shall give in the course of this
account of the girl-chums and their doings.

Once a week, on Wednesday evenings, they
went to a choral society to which they
belonged, and, as they had to start at seven
o’clock, instead of sitting down to dinner at
that hour, they found it more convenient to
have a sort of “high tea” on that evening
and to have hot milk and cake or porridge
when they came back.

We must not forget to say that on alternate
mornings they had porridge for breakfast,
which Marion cooked the day before in a
double saucepan, whilst she was seeing to her
other cookery and which was warmed up in
the morning. They generally supplemented
this with scones, which Jane, with her superior
knowledge of food-stuffs, pronounced to be
very nourishing. On Sundays they dined at
two o’clock. For this meal they often had
meat pie, as that could be made the day before
and heated, or eaten cold, as they preferred,
or they chose something that did not take
long to cook, such as cutlets.

Marion found her path made easy by some
of the tradesmen with whom she dealt, who
were very accommodating to her wishes, and
never in the least resented her subtle knowledge
of ways and means, as they undoubtedly
did in the case of some other of their customers’
housekeepers of many years’ standing and very
much Marion’s seniors in years! Mr. Calvesfoot,
the butcher, for instance, let her have fat
for rendering down at 2d. a pound, and so she
was able to have a constant supply of excellent
dripping for frying and for pastry at the
slightest possible cost. She started her stock
with four pounds at the beginning, and by
straining it each time after using it, and by
rendering down one and a half pounds of fresh
fat each week and adding it to the stock, she
always had plenty of good dripping. To do
this she cut up the fat and put it in a saucepan
with a little water, and then let it cook until
the water had boiled away and the fat had
melted, leaving nothing but crisp little brown
bits; the liquid fat was strained off and the
crisp brown bits saved for Abigail, by whom
they were esteemed a great luxury. To others
Mr. Calvesfoot was adamant, and declined to
part with the fat under double the sum, but
Marion (who was asked the extra price at
first) refused to take “No” for an answer,
and asked him calmly why he could not let
her have it cheaply as well as the soap-boilers
whose carts she had seen waiting before his
shop early in the morning, and who she knew
only gave him a penny a pound for it.

At the exhibition of so much knowledge
he was dumb, and fell in with her views with
much meekness, as no doubt he would have
done for his other customers if they had not
allowed themselves to be beaten so weakly.

She always provided a hot dinner as she
found that, with proper management, it cost
no more than a cold one, and it was infinitely
more appreciated. She had learnt just how
much was required of any given thing, and so
there was no waste. The little that was left
over from their dinner was always worked
into the next day’s meals, or else was finished
up by Abigail on the alternate days when she
had dinner at “The Rowans.”

Here we have the list of a week’s dinners in
February.

On Sunday they had a light supper at half-past
eight, consisting of cocoa, boiled eggs,
and bread and butter.

Saturday and Sunday were the only days
on which they were at home to tea.

The breakfast for the week, on non-porridge
mornings, consisted of brawn, which Marion
had made a fortnight before, when they had
had half a pig’s face sent them from the
country. The brawn was excellently
flavoured.

Dinners for the Week.

Sunday.

• Beef and Kidney Pie.
• Baked Potatoes.
• Pineapple in Syrup.
• Rice Mould.

Monday.

• Cabbage Soup.
• Boiled Beef and Kidney Pudding.
• Boiled Potatoes.
• Cabbage.
• Jam Tarts.

Tuesday.

• Irish Stew.
• Apple Pie.

Wednesday. (High Tea Night.)

• Stuffed Herrings.
• Scones.
• Cocoa.

Thursday.

• Potato Soup.
• Curried Fish.
• Ginger Pudding.

Friday.

• Stewed Rabbit and Forcemeat Balls.
• Brussels Sprouts.
• Baked Potatoes.
• Swiss Roll.

Saturday.

• Brown Soup.
• Boiled Potatoes.
• Boiled Artichokes.
• Tapioca Pudding.

{127}

The beef pie which they had on Sunday
and the beef pudding of Monday were both
made out of a pound and a quarter of beef
skirt, which, costing only ninepence a pound,
makes just as good gravy as rump steak, and
if cooked long enough is very tender. The
half that was used for the pie was cut into
rather thin pieces, and half the kidney was
cut in dice; then all was dipped in pepper,
flour, and salt, and put into a saucepan to
stew gently for an hour before it was used for
the pie. Marion always did this now, as she
had noticed that if the meat was put raw into
the pie, the pastry got overcooked before the
meat was done. It was not necessary to do this
with the pudding, however, as that could be
boiled for a very long while—in fact, was all
the better for long boiling.

For the pastry for the pie she used half a
pound of flour mixed with a good teaspoonful
of baking powder, and three ounces of
dripping rubbed in lightly. Her hands seldom
got hot, so she made delicious pastry, and as
she was careful not to pour in too much
water, when mixing the flour and dripping to
a dough, it was not tough. She mixed in the
water quickly and lightly, using a knife to
begin the mixing and finishing with her hands,
keeping it as cool as possible while it was
being made, and being very careful not to
squeeze it, or work it about more than was
absolutely necessary. The pastry was rolled
out quickly and lightly, and the pie was baked
in a good hot oven, and it was voted a great
success. The pineapple needed no cooking,
being the contents of a sixpenny tin turned on
to a glass dish. The ground rice mould was
made with a pint of milk brought gently to
the boil with two ounces of castor sugar and
a bay leaf to flavour, two ounces of ground
rice were mixed smoothly with a little cold
milk while this was happening, and stirred into
the milk on the fire; the mixture was stirred
and cooked for a few minutes and the bay
leaf taken out, then it was poured into a
wetted mould to be turned out when cold.

On Monday Marion made the quarter of a
large cabbage do for the soup, and the rest
she cooked as a vegetable. The cabbage for
the soup was cut up small and put into boiling
water for three minutes to take away the
disagreeable smell; then it was drained and
put with a small onion sliced, a bunch of
herbs, a small piece of butter, a teaspoonful of
salt, and simmered for twenty minutes; half a
pint of warm milk was added, and a beaten-up
egg strained in. The soup was then stirred
over the fire for a few minutes to cook the egg,
but was on no account allowed to boil for fear
of its curdling, as happened, alas! on one
occasion when Marion left her handmaid
Abigail to watch it for a minute or two.

All stews were done in a brown earthenware
stewing jar that was one of her most cherished
possessions. While the stew within it was
cooking, the jar stood in a dripping tin containing
water in the oven; by this means the
contents of the jar never boiled, though the
water outside it might do so, and if the stew
cooked long enough it was always perfectly
tender. As the heat of the fire did not hurt
the look of the jar, the stews were always
served in it, which arrangement had the
double advantage of saving time and keeping
the dish hot. The Irish stew of Tuesday was
made with one and a half pounds of scrag of
mutton, three pounds of potatoes, and half a
pound of onions, all sliced and cooked gently
for two hours. There was a good deal over,
so it was used on Thursday, with the addition
of a few more potatoes, half a pint of water, a
gill of milk, and a piece of celery, to make a
delicious potato soup. The milk was added
last after the soup had been rubbed through
a sieve and re-heated. For the apple pie a
pound of apples of a good cooking sort were
used, and these turned a beautiful amber
colour in the pie. They had such a good
flavour of their own that no cloves were
needed to assist them.

The herrings on Wednesday were boned,
spread with veal stuffing, rolled up, brushed
with milk and rolled in brown crumbs, then
packed in a greased dripping tin and baked
for twenty-five minutes. They made a
substantial meal; on the next day there were
one and a half one over, which were sliced up
and put into the curried fish. The scones
were mixed with milk that was slightly sour,
as they are always lightest when so made.

The forcemeat balls that went with the rabbit
on Friday were made of veal stuffing, fried
separately, and served on a hot plate instead of
going in the jar with the rabbit. The Swiss
roll was made in the morning before the rabbit
was put to cook. The brown soup of Saturday
was made by frying lightly some pieces of carrot,
onion, turnip and celery in a little dripping,
and then pouring in the gravy from the rabbit,
and adding any pieces or bones that were left.
The lid was put on, and the soup simmered
an hour and a half; then it was rubbed
through a sieve, returned to the fire, brought
to the boil, and thickened with an ounce of
flour mixed with a little cold gravy.

When Marion looked through her accounts
(which she kept scrupulously) on Saturday, she
found that her food expenses had been as
follows:—

With this account of her expenditure she
was perfectly content. Her aim was to keep
the money spent on food below ten shillings
a head, and this week she was well within the
margin.

(To be continued.)

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

MEDICAL.

{128}

STUDY AND STUDIO.

OUR OPEN LETTER-BOX.

MISCELLANEOUS.

OUR PUZZLE POEMS.

FOREIGN AWARDS.

Prepositions.

Prize Winners (Half-a-Guinea Each).

• Helen Shilstone, Ellangowan, Fontabelle, Barbados.
• Mrs. Talbot Smith, Adelaide, S. Australia.

Very Highly Commended.

J. W. W. Hogan (Penang), Laura O’Sullivan
(Rangoon).

Highly Commended.

Mrs. G. Marrett (Hyderabad).

Honourable Mention.

M. Browne (Oudh), Elsie V. Davies (Australia),
Clara J. Hardy (Australia), Lily Harman
(Benares), Elizabeth Lang (France),
Maud C. Ogilvie (Deccan), Hilda D’Rozario
(Bangalore).

A Short Story in Verse.

Prize Winner (One Guinea).

Elizabeth MacPherson, Umbango, Tarcutta,
N. S. W., Australia.

Very Highly Commended.

Lizzie Cameron (S. Africa).

Highly Commended.

Nellie M. Daft (Portugal), E. Violet Davies
(Australia), E. H. Glass (Oudh), Mrs. Hardy,
Clara J. Hardy (Australia), Caroline Hunt
(Tasmania), M. R. Laurie (Barbados), Maud
C. Ogilvie, K. Prout (Deccan), E. Nina Reid
(New Zealand), Mrs. Sprigg (Cape Colony).

Honourable Mention.

Ethel Beven (Ceylon), Winifred Bizzey
(Canada), Gertrude Burden (S. Australia),
Milicent Clark (S. Australia), Lillian Dobson
(Australia), Maggie Douglas (N. Zealand),
John A. FitzMaurice (Australia), “Gertrude”
(Transvaal), Lily Harman (Benares), L. Hill
(Argentine Republic), Miss Horne (N. Zealand),
Margie C. Lewis (Johannesburg), J.
McDougal (Jamaica), Mrs. Daisy McFedries
(N. Zealand), Mrs. S. F. Moore (W. Australia),
Mrs. E. E. Murray (Australia), Violet Sellers
(Portugal), J. S. Summers (Bombay), Mrs.
H. L. Thompson (St. Vincent, W. I.),
Herbert Traill (Bombay), Fred. Walker (W.
Australia).